When War Returns — The Beta Earth Chronicles: Book Three

By Wesley Britton

Wes Britton’s sci-fi series, The Beta-Earth Chronicles, takes you to a world you never experienced in Star Trek or Star Wars.

The Blind Alien (Book 1) followed Malcolm Renbourn, a man from our world, unwittingly transferred to a parallel Earth and forced to adapt to new cultures and a new language while coming to grips with the loss of his sight. In The Blood of Balnakin (Book 2), Tribe Renbourn traveled to a new continent, where even stranger adventures awaited Renbourn and his new family on land and sea, as mystical prophecies were fulfilled.

The story continues in When War Returns, where everything changes for Renbourn and his Betan wives. To secure protection from assassins, the scientist-spies of the Collective, and the anger of an island liege, he accepts the title of Duce of Bilan and joins the Parliament of Alma. He bonds with a female Ducei, but unhappily discovers that she is Sasperia Thorwaif, an enhanced mutant with the startling strength of ten men and an overheated metabolism that fuels her resentment against lesser-endowed humans. As a result, she begins a campaign to destroy the Renbourn tribe.

Tribe Renbourn is also drawn into a brewing war against the Lunta of the New-Dome, a High Priestess wanting to force all Almans and immigrants to bow in obedience and conform to her strict religious orthodoxy. When the Prince of Alma, heir to the throne, wants to add a Renbourn wife to his long list of women forced to surrender themselves to his royal will, the foundations of their lives on Beta-Earth are shaken.
Can Tribe Renbourn battle a church, a throne, and a bond-wife bent on tearing them apart?

Join the adventures reviewers praise with comments like: “If you are looking for a unique sci-fi story, with interesting characters . . . then this book/series gives you something which the standard sci-fi novels out there don’t.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: BearManor Media
• Release date: Mar 14, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386494270

Book preview

Part 1

I   Samlon Bedlam

Malcolm: No one could share the experience we witnessed at Crater Bergarten and walk away without being filled with nearly overwhelming wonder. How could anyone not feel awe as hundreds of us, hand-in-hand, brown, blue, and one more or less red skin, surrounded that ghastly grave that had been my birthplace, at least as far as Beta-earth was concerned? How could anyone not feel the hope of change despite the stench of rotting refuse rising from the bottom of that terrible pit?

Of course, Tribe Renbourn had just spent a year of nearly equally overwhelming changes. On one hand, our longtime advisor, Oja Bolvair, had legally bonded herself to our family as she feared her death was imminent from the Body-That-Eats-Itself, but serums drawn from my blood, or that of my children, had cured her. Strangely, she angered and resented not dying. We couldn’t understand this rage at all.

On the other hand, once the even more enraged Kin Salk learned his sister, Kalma, was destined to bond with me, Kin murdered my former wife, Bar, and himself in a fatal protest against the abomination of a brown woman sharing flesh with a light-skin.

We had come to the Bergarten crater just after witnessing two funerals and the joining of the Renbourn and Salk tribes, events that set in motion great changes in the country of Balnakin, yet these events weren’t the only concerns for my family. Moments after the astonishing ceremony around the crater came to a close, we learned the peculiar news that Balnakin security guards, their Secops, and our own special guardian, Noriah of the Willing Horse, had wrestled teams of would-be Arasad assassins to the ground during the ceremony. It seemed more than strange Arasad kept sending these inept agents after us, filling us with dread and accomplishing nothing but keeping us wary, alert, on guard. Of course, they only had to be successful once. Still, even such revelations could not distract Tribe Renbourn from the profound healing for our family, one tortured city, one divided country.

As we boarded our ship, the Barbara Blue, to sail home and depart Balnakin once again, my family also learned the power of that healing had revealed troubling new prophecies. Yes, Lorei had been given new haunting visions. In her mystic eye, she had seen a blonde-haired wild cub with the power to destroy us. She had seen a bearded-Prince grasping for us and then pulling back, his face full of horror, and stinking blood dripping from his fingers. She had seen an island and then a larger island and a large fleet of ships seeking new homes.

Yet, she wasn’t the only one granted mystical foreknowledge. From the spirit world, the realm Prim Mica Brann had reached for when she tore me from Alpha Earth. The ghost of the murdered Bar Tine Renbourn Sofig appeared to her sister Joline. Bar said she was now our spy in the sky, her joke for me which told us we now had a guardian from the spirits looking over us.

Not all the harbingers of our future were so other-worldly. In another irony, Balnakin ships escorted us into international waters when an Alman submersible took over protection duties. Symbolically, the sub mostly remained unseen under the waves, a constant reminder that Alma desired the Renbourns to make their country our new home. Why? What were their expectations? We had much to reflect on as we began yet another Philosea crossing.

We also had much to ground us, if that is the right term for a water journey, during this unhurried cruise back to Kirip. For one matter, at long-last Doret released her first, her precious, tiny, tiny daughter, Malet. Holding the smallest of all Renbourns in my lap, I was flooded with a renewed need to protect all my innocent children. Holding Malet made me decide that my tribe needed a Helprim of our own, a healer for our family with no connections to the Munchen Collective and their mixed motives.

Then, there was the pearl-loving Kalma, my new Balnakin wife, energized by her Bergarten bonding. Her breath-taking, incomparable chest and insistent lips and thighs often left one mere mortal male in exhausted, vanquished peace as we laid listening to the endless, pure conversation of the sea.

Nothing is more grounding than a herd of growing heirs running over every inch of our almost overcrowded ship. These children had seen too much in so few years. There were the Hearthstone-born school-agers, Loes, Morei, Bethmal, Malbet, Jolcolm, and my special one, Becky, the girl born in defiance of Olos, the daughter named after my Alphan birth-mother. What did these minds understand of our lives in Rhasvi, our trials in the land of their birth, then our times in Kirip, and especially the death of Becky’s mother, Bar, so few arcs past? I didn’t know if I should just laugh or worry when they’d pop up on the main deck, brandish imaginary oracle rings, and zap imaginary Arasad pirates into the sea.

Then there were the Kirip born Sikas, Qere, Malnenia, Holjo and Pere, the son now more attached to Joline than his own birth-mother, the mysterious Oja. I loved their squeals of delight when they looked out at sea and watched a tall-necked Bosarm sticking its creepy natural one-eyed periscope in the air, looking back at the young ones as if they could be lured into joining it for lunch.

Now, little Malet was a member of our congregation. No doubt, more were to come, assuming I survived the nights I was scizzored between Kalma’s strong muscled limber athletic legs. If I didn’t survive, they could just feed my remains to that Bosarm.

Joline: We shared one moment of levity when we landed in Kirip. The children decided to all wear Noriah-inspired disguises and scowl at the Pharisees as we laughed our way from our ship to our land-bound eight-wheeler. It was nice to return to the newscasts with such comic images as the children surrounded their father riding in his Starship, his much despised wheelchair we used to reduce the heart-straining stress of crowds. The mood changed as none of us drove up to the Samlon Bolvair with much happy anticipation. Looking up at its immense outside walls, we felt as if we were entering an intimidating six-sided monument. A home not.

A gigantic labyrinth of halls and chambers once filled with dust and neglect and cold marble and granite. For years, it had been a largely empty tomb of an unknown past. Samlon Bolvair reminded me of my childhood hidden in Aufrei cliffs, a settlement built in fear of others. Well, we were a tribe in need of sanctuary, protection, and thick walls to hide us from prying eyes. We’d spent so long fighting back calls to put us under the guardianship of others. I wondered if we’d finally confined ourselves in a place that looked and felt like a fortress against armies of enemy tribes.

For us all, the saddest part of this move was abandoning beautiful Samlon Blan. The town of Moran and the region around it had been gouging us and sucking us dry simply because they could. No longer.

In short time, Malcolm started calling our new abode Samlon Bedlam.

Samlon Bedlam? I asked.

On Alpha, Malcolm laughed, Bedlam was an asylum for the insane and crazy, those unable to live in society and behave themselves. Each time I set foot downstairs, I feel like I’ve entered the asylum, especially with all the staffers, children, and hands running about.

I understood exactly what he meant. Back in Samlon Blan, Oja Bolvair Renbourn was the very embodiment of insanity, a woman surrounded by a tribe amazed at her passion to die. Here in Samlon Bolvair, Oja took refuge in her third-floor rooms with her consort, the timid, devoted, and quietly lovely Bli Swelard, and lost herself in her art assembly, all those graphic images of women in pain. Still, we hoped her new circumstances helped her healing. In her words, moving from her former first-floor apartment to the top level of the Samlon gave her a very different view of the world around her. Now, the insanity of Samlon Bedlam had nothing to do with its former mistress, but instead seemed to flow in so many directions.

Inside this sanctuary of stone, Tribe Renbourn gratefully had its own private space in our third floor living quarters. Strange said, this was the only floor that felt Renbourn. There, we set up a meeting room with a small cooker and cooler across from Malcolm’s office. There, we could hold our morn-meals and councils to avoid all the activity on the main floor and in the other two branches housing our Secops, the Alpha Project, and the Al-Beta Three-Way marketing business. True said, it was as if we were living above and beside a small city we observed and administered while we waited — but waited for what?

In our first arcs, only Alnenia and Kalma seemed ready to rejoin the fray in our new circumstances. In quick time, Alnenia went down the floors and took control of our part of the estate. Kalma walked over to the Al-Beta Three-Way and threw herself into the account matters that fed the tribe. I joined her there as Malcolm contentedly returned to his long abandoned skoling now that Balnakin had returned the rights to his writing. Kalma suggested that he begin recording the Alpha stories he told our young ones for marketing around the world. Husband loved this, sitting with our offspring while he spun out his yarns to the happy audience before him and soon in homes everywhere. It was a fun Renbourn project and, as Kalma hoped, was a new way to bring in accounts.

While we engaged in these endeavors, Lorei and Elsbeth watched our children and took them to many parks and sites. Doret took on the quest Malcolm desired most, that of seeking a Helprim for us unconnected to the Munchen Collective. Thanks to Noriah of the Willing-Horse, we’d learned the Alpha Project was investigating much more than Alpha-Beta biology. Malcolm had plans for them.

Elsbeth: One eve, Doret shared her learnings. I discovered an Ordinem in Verashush that is part of the Old-Domes network. The Orkphin Ordinem specializes in merging Olos beliefs with health-science. One of its schools is world-renowned for its work with blood and blood-trees. In Verashush, this should be surprising not. That continent is such a mix of cultures and traditions. Few there can claim heritages easily traced in one path. Jona Solem is a recent graduate, a woman said to be worthy of a path to becoming a Mother-Shaper. I have invited her to come visit. We can decide then if we like her. She brings resources of her Ordinem unrelated to the Munchen collective. She can draw from fellow graduates to support her if we decide to hire a full Int-Clin staff. Which I’m sure we’d need do.

When Jona arrived a half-moon later, I felt it strange that, for someone supposedly filled with so many blood-trees, this tall, bony, auburn-haired woman was extremely pale. I joked she must wear special belts to keep her pants on — she had no shape for togs to hang on. I smiled at my own foolishness. With a bit more time under Sojoa, Jona would turn as dark as Kalma. Her paleness came from spending all her time at work and prayer. The Verahushan was full of health, full of knowledge, and full of confidence. Her voice, flavorless and measured, spoke of years of reading and little speaking. She’d clearly studied what was publicly available on our family, especially our spiritual practices. When she heard about our worries with Munchen, she surprised not.

Someday, she said, I will share my misgivings about the great Collective. I’d prefer to hold them in myself until after I see what they have done with your workings.

All she lacks, Malcolm observed out of her hearing, is a personality.

You’re wife-shopping not, I scolded. We seek not a healer and entertainer.

True said, Malcolm laughed. If she clears Noriah’s security check, she seems fine to me.

So, Jona came to us, but other events happened before she could be confirmed as reliable.

Alnenia: Our long wait regarding Alma finally ended three moons after our return from Balnakin. When Ambassador Sopotwud called and asked for a meeting, we all felt deep relief. Sopotwud, of course, had been the Alman representative who’d spoken to Malcolm and Lorei back at Samlon Blan, the man sent to us to explore how Tribe Renbourn might be agreeable to settling in Alma. Three days after his call, Sopotwud came to the Samlon with two fellow Almans. One was a 4th-Level Cavaler in the Alman army named Jiha Kusrant. With her was Ducai Jhan Grei, one of the Almans who’d shared respects and regrets with us after Bar’s murder. As they walked through our entry arch, I noted each of these smiling visitors wore nicely woven formal tunics with chests full of impressive tribal sewings. The gray curly haired Cavaler’s cuffs and shoulders also showed off emblems of her military rank. Looking around at her surroundings, her cleft jaw seemed to continually bounce and quiver with restrained energy. Standing beside her, Ducai Grei was likewise no striking beauty, but was nonetheless a compelling figure who was clearly used to being listened to. I had never seen a woman with two stripes of long black hair offsetting the rest of her almost colorless white crown. I thought Sopotwud would have been an ideal physical match for Jona. He, too, was tall, lean, pale. His face showed he was a patient man well used to quiet listening.

For this group, Tribe Renbourn laid out full hospitality in the large first floor diner. I happied to see Oja among us for the visit and I noticed she was now using face oils and colors to give the illusion of the sheen and Vitality of her pre-illness moons. Thanks to Alpha antibodies, she no longer suffered the dark circles under her eyes, the sallow, diseased gray skin tone, and she was no longer too weak to leave her bed. Again, her hair shone with lacquered luster, her high cheekbones seemed to flush with restored health, her hard breasts thrust forward as if to proclaim, this is a woman for all to desire. She moved well and seemed focused, even if her eyes signaled Oja Renbourn was still filled with impenetrable secrets. She had lost her girlish, chirping voice of old and now seemed destined to always speak with her new raw and raspy tones. She now hid her thinner limbs underneath long sleeves and a flowing scarlet al-Beta skirt that draped down to her ankles.

Oja looked around the soft blue walls displaying more framed family portraits than I could count. They hung over the newly polished floors of the once abandoned chamber. Tribal trophies were on show including the famous Arasad boot, a globe of Alpha-earth, and some of Bar’s nicely tooled art pieces. In her honor, we also displayed one of Bar’s round slave fertility Kokens with its protruding fleshy spears. It hung near a tall and wide basket filled with many of the decorative blind-sticks given to Lorei and Malcolm during our travels. Looking around at all this, Oja said soft, I should have done such things myself all those years past. This be a place for sharing life.

Indeed, the huge hall vibrated with welcoming energy. Not only was each table covered with bright eggshell-white cloths, Elsbeth’s bowls of plump Yarrow blossoms filled the air with fragrant odors replacing the dusty, musty smells of times past. Watching Oja’s approving gray eyes studying our help-hands pushing around their trolleys piled with fresh delicacies, fruits, nuts, clattering dishes, and bottles of pink, tan, and white pravines, I wondered if this was a small moment in her soul-healing.

Kalma: Each of us was wearing our finest garb, although, unlike our guests, we only had three sewings on our tunics, our own family sign and those for the Salk and Ricipa tribes. We enjoyed perfect table-plates, and we shared the best pravines from our private stock. To honor our dignified guests, each of them was first seated at a small table by themselves with three or four Renbourns for more intimate conversations. After our meal-end, we full-growns gathered around one long table where the Cavaler set up a display. Our three guests sat together, and the rest of us sat as a family expectantly.

Well, I guess I should begin our presentation, Sopotwud announced amiably. I’ll let our Cavaler begin. She can best explain many parts of our offer to you.

The Cavaler smiled and stood. For most of you, she said, the map I’m laying out for you shows many details I’ll explain in a moment. For Doctor Renbourn and Lorei, we prepared what we call a sensory-map.

Before our unsighteds, the Cavaler placed a boxed-in shape-map that was textured with outlines of coastlines, hills, and other ridged areas. Like our visual map, the center was filled with a large island shaped like a fat-bellied S with the top and lower branches ragged and bent. This was Island Bilan.

As you can tell from the outlines on your map, the Cavaler explained, helping both Lorei and Malcolm feel the coasts of the island, what I’m showing you is a representation of one of our islands, Island Bilan. Bilan sits in the Bridge-Sea between Alma and Mange, much closer to Alma, as you can see — or feel. For years, much of it has been used for our military. We plan to make changes. She took Malcolm’s finger and traced over the top branch. On this part of the island, is base 86. 86 is an observation post we use for monitoring the seas and movements on them in that region. She took Malcolm’s finger and helped him trace the bottom stem. On this part of the island is the town of Biol. It is largely a fishing village of around 500 people. It is quiet, during Sojoa-light. By night, it has been the home for entertaining the many troops that have worked here. She put Malcolm’s finger on the island’s center. All this is about to change. For that base in the island’s center is about to be closed. It has long outlived its usefulness. We need the 86 observatory up here, but this will require only one-fifth of our existing Eniq. This means before this year is out, most of Island Bilan might well sit deserted.

As Malcolm and Lorei took turns brailling the sens-map, Ambassador Sopotwud spoke up. Let me explain. When we close that base in the island’s center, mainly a training camp now, a cluster of buildings near the shore facing Alma will be empty. There are three large buildings being used for housing and offices. He took out packets of photos and began passing them around. As most of you can see in these pictures, there is a large two-floor center building with a dining hall about the size of where we sit now. There is one very nice house our friend the Cavaler lives in. There are other smaller buildings for other purposes. We think it might serve well as a base for the Renbourn tribe.

The island has the obvious advantage, the Cavaler added, of privacy. It has the advantage of being but a half-hour from the mainland. Should our proposal serve you, you would have an additional advantage. For we would be prepared to include in the remaining garrison an Eniq devoted to protecting the island and its inhabitants. Should things develop as we hope, this Eniq would also serve you in transports to Mange, Alma, or other near countries on this coast.

Malcolm smiled. Go on. I know there’s much more to this than simply giving us this land and Eniq.

Well, of course, the Ambassador replied. For all this to be legitimate, we’d need this family to accept official status in our government. We think, Doctor Renbourn, you’d make a fine Duce of Bilan, responsible for the care of your island, and responsible for the town of Biol that’s but a half-hour road trip from your possible complex. And more.

The Cavaler took Malcolm’s fingers and traced over the areas on the mainland across from the island. Along here, she said, is the region called Oyne. This area is mostly enclaves of immigrants from various countries who’ve come here for work and trade. These are high-strata communities not. Rather, the region is of hands of all sorts assembling and shipping goods. The coastline here is good not for large ships. This is a region not of high-commerce. Further down, she moved Malcolm’s finger, is the city-state of Persis. It is largely a city of admins for the region, although it is unpleasant not for its dwellers. Inland from Oyne and Persis are the town-areas collectively known as Berkumel. All this is a region represented by two votes in the Tribal-Centela of Alma. One-third of it is also represented by the Duce of Berkumel in our mostly hereditary Mentela.

What we’re thinking of doing, Sopotwud said, his hand on his chin, is elevating the current Duce of Berkumel to the station of Lord-Minister of Internals, a position he is worthy of. This is supported by the Ducal Mentela and our Liege. This would leave his former rank open. All his heirs, all daughters, have other titles by bondings in Alma and other countries. We think half of this region, the inland area, should be given over to a Ducai from an old blood-tree. Oyne, Persis, and Bilan, we think, would be best served by being united under one male Duce, namely you.

For all this to happen, Malcolm replied dryly, I’m presuming I’m to ally myself with one of these old blood-trees, presumably with the lady who will become the Ducai of Berkumel?

This is where I come in, announced Ducai Grei. May I share with you my little plan? For, even before your recent sailings, I was given the task of seeking out a possible bond for this family. If nothing else, you might find my work diverting.

Joline: We all looked at Malcolm, knowing his mind. This was one matter he more than disliked negotiating, a violation of his remaining Alpha consciousness. All that would follow he’d