Rescue: Rim Chronicles Book Three, #3

By Edita A. Petrick

It's not yet time to exhale….

A child that should not have been born in the Rimworlds, is hidden behind the impenetrable wall that screens the dominion of frontier gods from the tribal factions. Shortly before they were slaughtered by New Hebrides pirates, baby's parents named her Miranda. She is the hereditary princess of Bollidor, and a Duchess on her father's side. But the little girl doesn't know any of this. Her caretakers named her Kitaya. It is a name that fits the frontier—primitive, raw and savage. Yet it fits her far better than those other aristocratic titles of the DeWynter Dynasty.

 

The blockade of the passage to the Rimworlds lasts thirteen years. Then finally, the Confederation manages to push the pirates back to their region in New Hebrides. And Admiral DeWynter, who had buried the mother part of herself for many years, allows it to surface. She sends a single ship through the newly liberated passage. The captain has orders to ascertain what happened to Commander Daniel DeWynter and his wife. There is little hope that any of the Allied personnel stationed on Synoor at the time of the attack, survived.

 

Kitaya's caretakers would prefer to keep her on Synoor. It's the only home she's ever known. However, something so extraordinary happens that the frontier gods have no choice but to return the child to those who came to look for her parents.

 

Keenly aware that they are releasing someone who should have never existed to join the human ranks, the frontier gods suspect they may have doomed galactic humanity. The only consolation they have is that when risks seem to outweigh the benefits, the Universe seeks to re-balance itself. Because somewhere on the other end of the galaxy, another little girl stands on the lip of a horrendous crater, trying to understand the nature of the tragedy that orphaned her at such a young age. And this child knows the meaning of revenge frightening too well….

• Language: English
• Publisher: Edita A. Petrick
• Release date: Jul 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386455981

Edita A. Petrick

I'm a writer. That's all that can be said here. I love writing and I absolutely hate marketing. It just goes to show you where your natural talents lie. Writing comes easy. Marketing...that's something I will be learning until the day I die. All I can say about my books is that they're meant to entertain.

Book preview

Chapter One

The well-oiled heavy wooden door burst open. The force of the entry swung it on its hinges. It banged against the chiseled stone slabs of the wall. The door moaned and coughed up a small cloud. Joshua skidded to a halt, balancing himself with his hands to stay upright. He managed to avoid the aromatic puff or he’d have landed on his knees and keeled over by the time he’d made his entry. Carra wood’s scent could put to sleep half the tribes that lived in the Synoor jungle. It was one of the reasons why the Steering Mistress of the Treetop Witches removed the carra aromatis species from the training curriculum…and someone had sneaked it back into the learning program.

I found it, Taya, I found it, Joshua said breathlessly. His dark blond hair was soaking wet.

Why are you so reckless when you know nothing in Calamora ever stays the same for long? Is it raining? Kitaya asked. She found the sight of Josh’s wet hair plastered to his head more disturbing than his breathless declaration. It never rained in Calamora Fort this early in the morning. Rain just wasn’t on the daily Treetop protocol. Unless a delegation of farmers from the Rosik Lands came to sing and pray at the foot of the Great Sunrise Gate, imploring the frontier gods to send rain for their crops, the Treetop Witches had no need to practice making rain. They were busy every minute of every hour practicing everything else that the human tribes in the star fields performed to advance their civilization or to simply survive.

Joshua ruffled his hair with his hands, throwing off droplets of moisture. No, it’s not raining. I ran all the way. I’m just sweating…from excitement I guess.

Sweat the other way, Josh. I just put on a fresh tunic. I love you and all, but I don’t want to wear your sweat for the rest of the day, Kitaya said, scribing a basic protection circle in the air with her left hand.

You mean it, Taya? Josh wiped his moist hands into his sturdy sack-cloth pants.

Mean what?

That you love me.

Of course I love you, Kitaya said, with an exasperated groan and shrugged her shoulders. She had thought-spun the new tunic last night and tried it on. It fitted perfectly. However, this morning the tunic seemed to be shrinking on her with every minute passed. She was sure she had the thought-weave technique right. It wasn’t a difficult exercise anyway. There was no reason for the fibers to keep compressing back into their original flax seeds…unless the flax seeds were mutating into something inorganic and constricting.

Then today’s the day and you’ll come with me, Joshua said, beaming at her as if trying to copy the sunrise exercise.

Come with you where?

Over the wall, out of Calamora and down to New Havedon.

New Havedon’s a ruin. It’s been like that since the Regent’s privateer partners rained down fire on everything and everyone. Besides, we can’t leave Calamora. I have lessons and you have chores to do. Maybe later on, in the afternoon we can go take a look at the Mirror Well—

Josh cut her off. I don’t want to look into a stupid mirror that shows me things I can’t touch. I want to walk the streets and see all around me, with my own eyes, what’s out there. I want to talk to people who are like you and me, not like the old women with silver eyes and no hair who talk at me all day long.

Kitaya turned around and went to the long wooden box that stood at the foot of her bed. She hoped its contents hadn’t been re-formed overnight by the training efforts of the Veddlings. The Treetop Mistress gave strict orders to cease all training activity during the night. It was often ignored because the Treetop Witches strived for perfection. This morning she woke up in a large, almost cavernous room with a cathedral ceiling. The few pieces of furniture that last night had fitted nicely in a cozy chamber looked like beached debris from a shipwreck. Last night, she drifted off to sleep to the healing scent of aromatic cedar wood. This morning, cedar was just a memory. It had been replaced by living carra wood that noisily breathed out the scent that was difficult to describe. It was very potent, bringing sleep in a matter of seconds. Playa, generally regarded by the membership of Treetop Witches as their Mistress’ second-in-command, forbade the use of carra wood for fashioning anything larger than a small cup. As usual, her orders went unheeded, and it wasn’t because the Witches and Kitaya herself were immune from the intoxicating scent of carra.

Most of the time Kitaya didn’t mind such drastic overnight changes. Out of four-hundred and forty-three, two hundred and five Treetop Witches in the Calamora Fort were still Veddlings. They were students. As such they needed to train thought-forming and re-forming…everything. The morning started on a high note but then Josh burst in and started his campaign for running away. She didn’t know how to stop him without dampening his enthusiasm. She could be blunt for once and tell him that if he found a place where he could scale the wall, it would be only because the Treetop Witches led him to it. If he actually scaled the wall, it would be because they wanted him to do it; and if he managed to make his way into the jungle it would be because they would have guided him through it and it would most likely be due to Chatari’s interference, meant to piss off Mikki, Joshua’s nurturing caretaker. Why couldn’t Josh understand these simple principles governing their existence in Calamora?

She opened the wooden box and smiled from relief. The contents were left untouched. She took out a new tunic that she thought-spun last night. It was much larger than it needed to be and dotted with blue stars around the shoulders. She walked back to face Josh, holding out the garment for him. I made you a new tunic last night. There’s plenty of room in it for you to grow. You can get rid of that old one you’re wearing. See? She walked up to him and pressed the garment against his chest to show that he would indeed have ample room in it.

Josh swatted her hands holding the tunic. I don’t want your stupid shirt. I can make my own, you know.

Ever since she remembered, Josh kept trying to thought-form simple objects like a twig or an acorn without success. He couldn’t make a blade of grass, never mind spin flax strands into a fabric that would further become a garment.

You need a new tunic, Josh. I made it for you. Take it, she said simply and once again held it out to him.

I’ll take it if you come with me. Josh found a new way to motivate her into coming with him on another illegal adventure quest.

Over the years, she’d gone with him often enough to know that it was an exercise in futility. She loved him dearly and couldn’t imagine a day without him in Calamora; but lately he was becoming very sullen, very moody. He was four years old when Kao and his Pandragon hunting party had dropped him off at the Great Sunset Gate. They ran away before the Treetop Mistress, Sanubia had a chance to zap them with a sizzling blue bolt. Mikki, one of Sanubia’s eight senior advisors, was put in charge of Joshua’s upbringing and academic development. The Treetop Membership held a session and voted on whether to keep Joshua in the fort or whether to send him to be raised by one of the farming families from the Rosik Tribe. Any issue that was put to vote had to be unanimously endorsed by every one of the four hundred and forty three Witches before it was implemented. Joshua’s acceptance did not receive a unanimous approval. Chatari, Sanubia’s junior advisor, voted against keeping Joshua because a male presence in the Calamora Fort would be an unprecedented breach of the Treetop Protocol. However, Mikki’s awesome mothering instincts would not be denied. It took only a scant few hours for Mikki to grow so fond of the toddler that she threatened to leave Calamora if Joshua was sent away. Sanubia decided to risk an uprising at some point down the road when Chatari’s rebellion grew bolder, rather than to lose her handmaid.

Chapter Two

Thirteen years later, Kitaya thought that Mistress Sanubia should have perhaps risked Mikki leaving with the toddler. Joshua had grown very unhappy living amongst the Treetop Witches. These last few months, Kitaya couldn’t remember a day when Joshua didn’t whisper to her that they were prisoners in Calamora and that at least he was going to break out of prison. She knew that she came to the Witches when she was just a baby. She was carried by a native Aramite nanny who stayed for couple of years to look after her and then returned to her own tribe. Soussan had arrived at the Great Southern Portal. She camped by the gate until Playa, the most rebellious of Sanubia’s senior advisors, broke the thought-circle. The Witches had consolidated a membership loop to vote on the issue of admitting another human child into their midst. However, before the votes were counted, Playa simply swung open the gate for Soussan to walk inside. And from that moment, Calamora had become her home. It’s how she thought of living amongst the Witches. It's what it felt like each and every sunrise and sunset. She was home.

But that’s not how it felt to Josh.

Kitaya sighed and looked down at the shirt she still held out to Josh. Okay, I’ll go with you if you take the new tunic.

He grabbed it out of her hands and unceremoniously ripped off the old threadbare one he wore, then put on the new one she made for him. For a moment, the sight of his bare chest with small ripples where his muscles were still forming, sent light shivers down the back of her neck and across her shoulders. It was a dangerous feeling. She had been warned enough by Sanubia and anyone else who deemed it necessary to admonish a young pretender about her lingering looks at the un-sanctioned male living amongst the frontier gods.

These last couple of years, Josh grew so rebellious that he kept tossing off his tunic every chance he got. He loved to work and play without a shirt in the gentle, friendly sunrays streaming down from the achingly azure blue sky. Their warmth was maintained within a well-defined range of human comfort by the thought-forming efforts of the Treetop Witches and nothing else. Josh didn’t have to worry about sunburn. Mikki kept forever running after him, offering him his tunic before one of the other senior Witches saw him and went to report such inappropriate behavior to Sanubia. Foolishly, Josh kept ignoring her. Once or twice he tried to escape her by running. Mikki might have been eight thousand years old but that didn’t mean she was senile or inattentive, especially when it came to her baby. At first she’d float after him. If the distance between them grew longer than Mikki thought comfortable, she’d zip after him faster than a lightning bolt. Then she would slip the tunic on him and tighten it with her thought-command such that Josh would not be able to take it off for many days. Eventually she’d relent and lift the spell and the tiresome game would start all over again.

You still have so much to learn, Josh. Why do you want to leave? Kitaya asked, wondering why Josh was trying to dust off the blue specks.

What’s this dirt? He kept brushing off the blue from the gray-white tunic.

I told you they’re stars. You’re wearing a star mantle around your shoulders. Up there, in the night sky, when you look up at night—that’s what I thought-embroidered on your tunic. I guess you can think of it as a star map.

Looks like blue dirt, he mumbled and continued to brush the cloth with his fingers.

Dirt is brown or gray, she said.

Not in Calamora it sure isn’t. I remember a while ago when they were practicing out on the field, tilling or something. The soil started brown but in the morning, it was blue.

They were practicing thought-forming inorganic minerals that are normally blue. They were learning to build a planetary crust of worlds orbiting less than friendly suns from scratch, she said, stifling irritation. Josh just didn’t want to understand that thought-creation took years and centuries of practice before a Treetop Witch could just fling her thought out to the stars and a new planet would be born, complete with its orbital path, atmosphere and crust. Every creation was composed of untold steps and layers that had to be brought together in correct order for something to function as it was meant to function. The human tribes in the star fields spent decades, even centuries, terraforming worlds that they mapped and categorized within a narrow habitable range. A Treetop Witch could build a world in a blink of an eye. However, that skill had taken her centuries to prefect to a degree where her terraforming efforts would be simply indistinguishable from a naturally evolved planetary body.

All right, if I’m going to skip my lessons today then we’d best be going, Kitaya said and grabbed Josh’s hand to make him stop trying to brush away the blue specs.

You don’t learn anything anyway so those lessons they force us to practice are kind of useless, Josh said, grabbing her hand and dragging her toward the open door.

That’s not true. I’m learning something new every day and every other day I practice what I’ve learned.

"Then how come you can’t teach me anything that they do or even what you do?" Josh challenged her back.

The problem was that Josh wasn’t really forced to do lessons at all. He was brought in only because Mikki would not have her baby stigmatized by being differently treated. Kitaya heard Sanubia say often enough that thought-realm lessons were a waste of time on Josh because his mind was a closed cave. The Mistress was careful not to voice such sentiments when her handmaid Mikki was around but Kitaya knew that Mikki too was aware that her baby was just another average human being.

The answer to his challenging question was simple. Unfortunately it was the kind of answer she could never give Josh. It would hurt him like nothing before. Joshua’s mind was permanently sealed. He was born that way and so were all the rest of the species living on Synoor. The small world situated on the galactic Rim had given birth to several species, human, humanoid and reptilian. None of them had the gift of silver shine. The Witches had silver eyes because their minds were in a constant state of flux, generating energy, or shine as they liked to call it. In their native form, they were energy beings; they could animate organic matter and shape it, to take on form, whether human or humanoid. Kitaya remembered being tested by Sanubia and all her senior advisors for receptive anomalies when she was very young. Almost right away, Playa started to train her in simple thought-forming exercises. Back then, Joshua laughed when she thought-formed her first juicy apple for him from a sample image Playa planted in her mind. He bit into the apple and smiled as the frothy juice dribbled down his chin.

She hadn’t seen him smile like that in what seemed like years.

Flash us to the edge of the tilled fields, Joshua said when they stopped just inside the main gate. It would take them out of the communal complex that like all things in Calamora, never looked the same for two days in a row. Today, the walls around them were made of stone. Tomorrow, they may be made of hard-packed mud. With Treetop Witches, you never knew what to expect when it came to training efforts.

Why can’t we just walk out there? she asked, not looking at him. Lately his presence by her side grew warm if he stood there for just a few seconds. If he stayed longer, her body practically overheated. She didn’t know how to control such inappropriate reaction.

Because they’d see us, he said.

Josh, they see us wherever we are. Don’t you understand that?

I’m clever. I can hide well enough for them not to see me, he insisted.

She moved to a side because discomfort that his presence caused her was becoming overwhelming. Immediately she regretted it because his heat came with a pleasurable musky scent that she told herself had to be his sweat, wafting from his body, but deep down she knew it was more; much, much more.

You’re very clever with your hands, Josh. Why can’t you take pride in that? You already know how to build complex habitats from the shelters and sheds. she asked, cringing. She already knew what his answer would be. Not because she had reached out with her thought-probe but because she had heard it often enough these past few years. Josh did not want to build structures with his hands. He wanted to do it the way the Treetops were teaching her to do it—quickly and efficiently, with his mind.

I don’t want to build shelters and taverns for the filthy privateer scum that’s in New Havedon. I want to build star ships that ride for the sky on pillars of fire. I want to build myself a star ship so I can leave this stinking world. Are you going to flash us to the wall or not?

She would have to, eventually, if only to keep him from storming away, but maybe she could hold him for a while, talk him out of it.

The last ship this world has seen was a privateer craft, one of many in their flotilla and it rained fire on New Havedon until nothing was left but smoking ruins. I was a baby and you were almost four years old and we both lost our families in that privateer raid.

What’s your point?

She sighed. Once upon the time, this world was billed as the Gateway to the Rimworlds. It was a thriving outpost, with Regent Banoran as the Allied representative to look after the Allied interests. Traders came down here and brought supplies, building materials, machinery… Josh, if in thirteen years no one from the Allied worlds out there came to see why all communication from the world ceased, it’s a good bet that no one cares about this Rim world. The Allies tried to establish a post here. The New Hebrides privateers scuttled their efforts. The Allies gave up on the idea. No one’s coming. We’re here and this is our world now. Why can’t you accept that?

Because there’s a star-link com center near the Holbach Castle, he said and gave her a crafty smile.

About a year ago, Mikki, in her misguided effort to make her baby happy, showed him the old communications post. The Allies had built it on the edge of the jungle. It was situated within sight of the ruins of the Holbach Castle that used to be Regent Banoran’s seat. Kitaya had stood behind Josh, cringing as he kept smiling when he saw the scene unfurl for him in the Mirror Well. Mikki meant well but the kernel of the dangerous idea had already started to germinate in Josh’s mind. He wanted to scale the wall encircling the Calamora Fort. He wanted to skirt what once used to be the bustling City of New Havedon and now was a fearful place, and make his way down to the com-link center. In less than three years, she’d already flashed him five times to the wall when he rushed into her room, excited because he found the place where he could scale the wall.

Josh, let’s say this time you do find a place where you can climb up the wall and get outside of Calamora. Let’s say you make it down to the old com-link center and let’s say the com-link center still stands and isn’t much of a ruin—when you get there, then what?

"When we get there," he said and winked at her. Then, before she could move, he leaned close to her and gave her a brief kiss.

Don’t do that. You know the Treetops don’t like us… her voice trailed off. It was a dangerous topic to broach, especially now when Josh stood within an arm’s reach of her, all sweaty from excitement of an adventure that he felt would yield what he wanted—his freedom from the only home he’d ever known.

Then say it.

Say what?

You know what?

I’m not going to read your mind.

You can do it. I give you permission.

No. Frivolous mind-reading is prohibited by Treetop Protocol.

Do I look like I care? He grinned at her.

You should ’cause you’ll only get in trouble if you keep at this—

"When we get there, Taya. When we get there we’re going to send a message to the nearest Allied world to come and get us. It’s that simple."

And you think the Treetops will allow a ship to assume orbit around Synoor, never mind send down landing parties?

Josh shrugged. Why not? They let the Kenarsis Scouts build a trading post down here. They let the Allies establish a Regency outpost here. They let the privateers reduce the Allied outpost to a charred and smoking graveyard. They keep letting Kao’s Pandragons hunt Rosiks and then cook and eat his captured prisoners. They don’t help anyone and they don’t harm anyone, so why should they suddenly decide to hold us back?

Even as Josh talked, something uncomfortable started to worm in Kitaya’s mind. Josh was right, of course. The Treetop Witches didn’t interfere or take over any situation, good or bad. It was the strongest directive that featured in their Protocol. Interference into the affairs of human and humanoid tribes was forbidden.

"Josh, what makes you think there’s a charged imprindium crystal at the com-link post?" She found a new way to challenge him. The com-link center may have been still standing, and it may even be running on residual batteries. However, having lights and keeping instruments ticking was not the same as having an operation crystal to power the com-link; a com-link that would be capable of sending a message half-way across the galaxy to touch an Allied world—any Allied world.

There probably isn’t, he said, putting