The Achvizr Empire: Reality Ripped, #2

By C.F. Villion

Away from the Kerpathi's preying eyes and into the arms and gaze of the UFSM. Both well-intentioned and none delivering on good. Mila or as she prefers to call herself X13N2 attempts to navigate an increasingly surreal situation. To make matters worse the Legate, her glorious father deigns to visit her onboard the UFSM ship.

• Language: English
• Publisher: C.F. Villion
• Release date: Oct 9, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386355342

C.F. Villion

A spark was kindled in C.F. the first time she read Terrance Dicks' Spacejack and a love for Sci-Fi was born. Never quite satisfied with the endings of her favourite books she wrote her own. Eventually, C.F. started making up new worlds and characters. Not to say that the occasional television show or movie doesn't get a better ending than it initially received. But creating universes are more fun. Living in sunny South Africa C.F. enjoys reading as much as she writes and dreams of the next great adventure.

Book preview

ONE

She missed her star friends. Her view was awe inspiring-or should have been. Speeding through space was magnificent. Commander Evans claimed that many found it soothing.

So far they hadn’t ventured close to any planets, but in the distance-the very far distance-she saw orbs hanging motionless.

Seemingly suspended at random, hung by a child without care for symmetry. She knew or rather understood that there was indeed symmetry. Each planet had its proper position in its circuit. It was merely her angle that added disproportion.

X13N2 turned away from the viewport and surveyed her room. Her quarters, a space so impersonal that any warmth attempted simply got sucked away.

A carpet that by all intents came across as lush seemed austere and cold to her. Artwork generic and boring stared down at her, not even hung but moulded onto the walls.

Rationally she understood that a military vessel could ill-afford actual paintings. Paintings that would fly off the walls during a battle causing undue havoc. Her soul however longed for the beauty and warmth it would bring.

She felt guilty at such thoughts. Gratitude should have been paramount instead. Commander Evans could as easily have stuck her in the Med Center as Doctor Dufresne had requested. Instead, he had declined the doctor’s request.

Insisting that a daughter of the Empire deserved the best they had to offer. At the time she was elated, now she wished the ship had warmer and gentler offerings.

X13N2 shook her head; those were Mila thoughts. She wasn’t Mila, despite what she’d been told. No spoiled empire brat was she, hadn’t been for a very long time.

She gently probed the opening on the back of her neck. The Kerpathi probe was inserted there on a daily basis. She couldn’t feel anything different, no sudden change had occurred, or emerged as she increasingly feared.

What if something more permanent had been inserted? What if the probe didn’t connect to her brain but instead to something else? She kept telling herself it was silliness, that Doctor Dufresne had assured her that her body was free of alien tech.

She believed him for the