Sanction

By B. Scott Tollison

Accused of murdering her husband and dumped upon the prison world of Sanction with her unborn daughter, Rhiannon stumbles, alone, from her landing pod into an alien forest. Taking cover in a cave from a marauding patrol, it isn't long before the contractions hit and she is forced to bring her child, kicking and screaming, into a ruthless, inhospitable world.

Fast-forward five years. Rhiannon has struggled and adapted as best she can. Her daughter, Lee, has grown but, thanks to the native berries and roots (the only source of food), both Rhiannon and Lee have begun hearing voices. For Rhiannon, the voice of her dead husband has been haunting her with increasing frequency, blaming her for killing him; a claim Rhiannon resolutely denies.

In a rare moment of inattention, Lee is kidnapped by a small group of hunters. Rhiannon is forced to follow, beyond the mountains, into the uncharted territories of Sanction to get her back. All the while the voice in her head, and its accusations, are only getting stronger.

• Language: English
• Publisher: B. Scott Tollison
• Release date: Sep 26, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463452288

B. Scott Tollison

Born in New Zealand and currently live somewhere by the beach in the Horowhenua. Working part-time as a postie and writing in my spare time. Requiem is my first novel. I've finished my second novel (also sci-fi) and am currently submitting to agents while I work on my third.Feel free to add me on Goodreads or leave a review either here on Smashwords or Goodreads.You can contact me at [e-mail] is also available on Amazon Books for $0.99.

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Sanction

B. Scott Tollison

Sanction

B. Scott Tollison

Copyright 2019 B. Scott Tollison

First edition

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced without permission from the publisher. For permissions contact: [e-mail].

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Smashwords edition

Cover by B. Scott Tollison created using both Pixlr's online image editor and, later, GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program).

Cover title font is Schkorycza by Bumbayo Font Frabrik. Author name font is Shatterboxx by Liquid_Graphix. Both fonts were made available for free for commercial and private use at 1001fonts.com. Thanks a lot to the authors and 1001fonts for making these available.

Thank you to Tony and the team at Jefferson-Franklin Editing for providing a valuable critique on one of the earlier drafts, and to Jess for reading through and advising on subsequent drafts.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Arrival

Chapter 2: Flint

Chapter 3: Life

Chapter 4: Five Years Later

Chapter 5: Follow

Chapter 6: The Howling Village

Chapter 7: Char

Chapter 8: The Old Man

Chapter 9: The Temple

Chapter 10: Clementine's

Chapter 11: Lap Dog

Chapter 12: The Pit

Chapter 13: Breathe

Chapter 14: The Trade

Chapter 15: Thunder

Chapter 16: Revenant

Chapter 17: Embers

About the Author

More from the Author

Chapter 1: Arrival

Death. In every grain of sand, in every dusty breath. In the weight of the sky above her and the pull of the world beneath her. Rhiannon's eyes burned inside her skull. She was a newborn, soft and frightened, bewildered by sensations she didn’t understand.

The voice whispered in the back of her mind.

'What have you done?'

She coughed into the sand. The grit and the heat made her skin itch. She rolled to her side, pushed her hair from her face. Raising a hand, she blocked the light from the fervent star seated atop the horizon. The world was bloodshot, bathed in red. A black speck, barely visible, was pulling away from the planet's surface, receding into the haemorrhaging light, up towards the enormous, pale face of the neighbouring planet. The pod she'd arrived in stood next to her, lodged in the sand, casting a long shadow next to hers. The door, blown from its hinges, was lying face down several metres away.

Holding a hand to her swollen stomach, she felt a gentle tap against her palm. Happiness at knowing she wasn't alone, resignation at knowing things would have been easier if she was.

She propped herself up and forced herself to her feet. She rubbed her hand over the crook of her left arm. It itched, burned almost. The skin there was dark, as if the blood was pooling just below the surface. A large blue vein ran like a ridge through its centre. She looked at her hand. Had to remind herself that it wasn't covered in blood, that it was a trick of the light from the red dwarf sun.

The desert sea surrounded her. A pale horizon in every direction. Where were the others? She was sure there were others.

Breathing was difficult, the air thick as if the planet itself was breathing down her throat.

Rhiannon looked over the red desert again, scanning for signs of life, for signs of the other prisoners that should be littering the dunes. She stepped around the pod. A few hundred metres away a black figure was resting at the crest of one of the dunes. She stared at it for a moment. The occasional gust of wind flicked up sand around the body. No movement.

Glancing back at the pod they'd dropped her in, she noticed a jagged edge where the door hinge had torn off. She knelt down next to it and bent the hinge back and forth until it snapped off. She tore a piece of fabric from the wrist of her overalls and wrapped it around the piece of metal for a handle. The makeshift knife was light in her hand. Looking down at it, she didn’t know exactly what she intended to do with it. If it was a tool, then how useful would it be? If it was a weapon, would she even be capable of using it? She swallowed the dryness in her throat and started hobbling towards the body on the dune.

* * *

The weight of the baby pushed each awkward step deeper into the sand. The sweat was already beading on her forehead. She unzipped the front of the black prison issue overalls, pulled her arms out of the sleeves and tied the sleeves around her waist. She pulled her singlet down, but it could barely reach past her belly button. There was a large sand basin to her left which she detoured around, following the ridge. She didn't want to have to struggle uphill with the baby, didn't want to be stuck in a hole with no way out.

She stopped a couple of metres from the body. The pod he'd arrived in was horizontal, half embedded in the side of the dune. There was a trail of footprints leading from it to where the body lay. The door had been shot off down into the basin.

Her grip on the blade tightened. Her free hand instinctively went to her stomach. There was a kick from the baby. She waited for more, but nothing came.

Her eyes scanned the horizon once more then turned back to the body. The blood was a slightly darker shade of red than the sand, but there were no wounds, no footprints other than his and her own. His pod had a few scrapes and cracks, a bit more roughed up than hers, but not enough to explain a dead body.

Stepping closer to the body, she flicked sand on him with her foot. No movement. No signs of breathing. He was thin. Thinner than her probably. Even his overalls couldn’t hide that. She kept watching for breathing, but saw nothing and so took another careful step toward him.

The wind whistled past her ears. A strand of hair blew across her face. His hand jerked up. A knife, hidden in the sand. He swiped, cut through the air. Stumbling back, she went too far, her foot struck the edge of the basin. She threw her hand back to steady herself but her balance was lost. She fell onto her back and slid down the curve of the sand. The man jumped down after her.

Rhiannon crashed face-down to the bottom of the basin, managing to prop herself on her elbows to protect her stomach. She’d lost the makeshift blade. The man leapt on top of her. He grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her head back. The knife was brought to her throat. She grabbed his wrist and held it back. He pulled her hair harder. She threw her head back, crunched into his groin. He stumbled back. She rolled to her side, noticed the makeshift blade lying in the sand. She scrambled towards it. He jumped on her again, lunging at her chest. She slapped his hand away, shot a knee into his groin. He grunted, swore. His grip on her arm loosened. She tried to roll again, reached out for the weapon, wrapped her fingers around it, not feeling his knife cut into her arm, she swung the blade back as hard as she could.

It bit into his shoulder, sinking deep behind the collar bone. She pressed the blade in as far as she could. She yanked it down. The blade caught on his collar bone. He shrunk from her and she fell with him, driving the blade deeper.

His mouth hung open, twisted in pain. He fell back onto the sand, his screams gargled and thick with blood. He tried crawling away from her, swinging his fists blindly, his feet slipping, kicking up sand.

Her hand was shaking, dripping with his blood. The pain in her left arm began to register. Her attention moved to her bicep, to the grip of the man's knife sticking from it. Rivulets of blood streaked her arm.

The man continued to scream, trying to pull the blade from his neck, fumbling with the blood, sinew and bone. His eyes were straining, trying to see what his fingers were doing.

She tried to get to her feet, stumbled, her knees buckled. She threw up. Bile and strings of saliva. The man's screams were weakening. His hands were shaking violently, still fumbling at his throat. There was no colour left in his face, save the red of the sun.

Rhiannon's muscles tightened and her stomach heaved up more emptiness. The baby kicked.

The knife was left protruding from her bicep as she struggled to her feet, her back screaming at her. She wiped the saliva from her lips and stepped cautiously towards the dying man. He was holding a feeble hand up to stop the bleeding.

She stared at him, unable to look away. She did not know how long it had been since she last spoke. She swallowed, her throat ached.

‛Don’t... don’t look at me like that.’

He tried to shuffle back from her. She wanted to say something, but couldn’t think of anything and so swallowed again and stepped towards him.

She pulled his hand away from the blade in his neck and pulled it out, averting her eyes somewhat as she did it. Her hands found the zip down the front of his dark overalls. She drew it down, stripped his overalls off and removed his singlet. She would have taken his underwear if he hadn’t begun to soil them.

Crouching down, she tore the sleeve from his overalls before tentatively wrapping her right hand around the handle of the knife in her bicep. She breathed in the stale air as far as her lungs would allow, then out again. Her heart thumped, the baby kicked. A sharp breath before she yanked the blade from her arm, dropping it to the sand. Her hand shook as she took the torn sleeve and bandaged her arm, tying it as tight as possible. It wasn't stinging as much as she might have expected, at least not while the adrenaline was still running.

Her head dropped. She didn't look at the man.

'Self defence,' she said, almost choking on the words.

His eyes found hers. They were blinking uncontrollably, hoping with every flicker to wake from a dream.

She wanted to say something. Part of her wanted to apologise. Another part wanted to stand there and watch him wither and die, which, she believed, is exactly what he would have done to her. But there was fear in his eyes. A fear that was no doubt mirrored in her own. To die alone, deliberately forgotten. She could already see his skeleton through his skin, parched, bleached, and crumbling to dust. He was already nothing and, come to think of it, so was she. She was as much a part of this wasteland as him.

'Don't look at me like that,' she muttered.

The heat had already dried the blood, fused it to her skin. She didn’t bother trying to wipe it off.

The man was left facing skyward, to die alone. The blood on the sand already dry. Rhiannon tucked her makeshift blade into the sleeves wrapped around her waist. She slung the extra overalls and singlet over her shoulder, picked up the knife the man had stabbed her with and started the climb back up the basin, crabbing along at an angle and stopping to massage the pain in her back every few metres. Covered in sweat and with her legs tight and aching she reached the top. She rested in the shade of the dying man's pod until she caught her breath before she began walking, putting the red dwarf star at her back.

As she walked she held out handfuls of hair and worked the knife as close to her scalp as she could, letting the strands and clumps of black hair fall to the ground behind her to join her hollow foot prints. Her gaze was set on the horizon.

* * *

The baby pressed against Rhiannon's bladder. Even with the heat, she frequently had to stop to relieve herself. She would use the man's singlet to catch the urine and then drink it as quickly as she could, trying not to spill or waste any of it.

Often, she would glance back at the sun, but it hung stubbornly above the horizon line, refusing to sink down, refusing to offer reprieve from its heat or give her any means with which to measure her progress.

Some time later she found more fresh footprints. Three sets converging, still yet to be hidden by the wind. Two lines came from her right and one from the left, as if they had all agreed to meet at this spot and then move on together. There were no signs of a struggle. No blood, no shuffling quarry of footprints. She looked up to try to spot their makers but could see nothing, only waves of heat on the horizon, the ground melting into the sky.

The footprints led away from the sun, towards what, she had no clue. The only thing she knew was that three people had decided to walk in that direction, and three might have a better sense of direction than one. Whatever their reasons might have been, she hoped, perhaps a little too blindly, that they would serve her just as well. If they led to shelter, maybe even to water then the risk of following them might just be worth it.

She followed the footprints. At first she tried stepping inside their outlines, as if it might make it easier to walk. It didn't, so she gave it up to walk beside them, limping somewhat as she tried to counter-balance the weight in her stomach and the cramps cutting into her legs and back.

Her mouth was dry, her feet, swollen and red from the heat of the sand. It took her longer than it should have to take the overalls from her shoulder and the blade from her waist and cut strips to wrap around her feet. The cloth didn't assuage the swelling, but at least it absorbed some of the heat.

Rhiannon ran her fingers through her unevenly cropped hair, collecting the droplets of sweat, and held her hand to her mouth to suck what moisture she could.

She had been following the footprints for some time, only occasionally looking up to check for movement in front and behind her. The sun hadn’t seemed to have moved at all and the waves of heat played with her eyes. Despite her burning throat, she quickly learned to ignore the distant glimmers of heat, the false promises of water. She kept to the footprints, trusting that if there was nearby water, they would have led her to it.

Eventually she came across a body on the lee side of one of the smaller dunes. Male, white, naked, sprawled on the ground face first with the quiet wind already packing sand over him, trying to hide the evidence.

Rhiannon stalked up behind his bare feet, one hand cupped under her stomach, the other, gripping the knife, outstretched before her. There was a gust of wind, it burned her lips. She held the blade out and drew it across the man’s foot. Blood slowly oozed out. She cringed, looked down at the ground. He remained face down in the sand. The curls on the back of his head moved as the building wind passed over. His skin hadn’t been burnt yet. However he had died, it had happened recently. She looked up from the body, scanned the horizon again. Nothing. The baby kicked. She kept her hand to her stomach, hoping that would be enough to calm it.

She continued following the footsteps. Only two sets now. Her steps were much shorter than theirs. Three to their two.

There was blood coming from her cracked lips. She ran her fingers over them, tried to peel a flake of skin off but it kept tearing, running deep into the skin. She pinched the strip of skin and tore it off, sucking back the blood as it trickled out. At least it tasted better than piss. She tried pressing both hands into the small of her back to counter-balance the weight of her stomach, but the relief was slight and only increased the pressure on her bladder.

* * *

She could see it much more clearly now. A dark line stretching from one end of the horizon to the other. It had been upon the horizon for some time. Initially she'd ignored it as just another mirage, but the closer she got the darker and thicker the line became. The very edge of a forest, perhaps. There was a pale, serrated edge behind the black line that might have been mountains, but from this distance she couldn't be sure. She looked back, holding her hand over her eyes to block out the light. It looked like there was a dark figure sliding down one of the dunes but when Rhiannon tried to focus, the figure was gone. She turned back to the dark line.

* * *

The closer she got the less it looked like a forest and the more it looked like some kind of miniature city. A city, burned and stripped by some great purging fire. The trees had no leaves, no branches. They were naked, jet black, point up at and angled towards her, towards the red star, like outstretched fingers. As burnt and desolate as it looked, still she hobbled towards it.

* * *

Rhiannon looked into the strange forest, trying to spot movement, any indication of life. The black trunks moved slightly with the wind and she could see the petrified remains of what looked like tiny leaves and possibly flowers on the forest floor. She had passed several lone standing trunks, glancing up their black, corrugated faces, but not bothering to stop, not wanting to slow down for fear she'd never start again. It had almost crushed the hopes she'd had that water might be near, but still she persisted, anything offered more hope than that endless, red expanse behind her.

The sand slowly gave way to firmer soil and her thirst and exhaustion pushed her, stumbling, feet dragging into the obelisk forest. Her eyes ached from squinting at the horizon. Her throat burned and itched, desperate for water. She passed the thick roots on the lee side of the trees, like guy wires anchoring the trunks to the tightly packed soil.

She glanced up one of the black trunks, like some kind of obelisk or monument that had been stabbed into the ground. A weightlessness swept through her. She reached her hand out to brace herself and fell next to one of the trees. Her feet were aching. The strips of cloth she had wrapped around them had come loose. There was dried blood between her toes but she didn't dare examine the damage. When the light-headedness passed she realised her hand was damp. There was a deep creaking and groaning coming from inside the trunk. Alive. Not burned at all. It was slowly writhing and shifting beneath her hand. She sniffed the moisture on her hand but it only smelled of sweat. Her tongue passed over her lips. She swallowed, dried her hand then placed it on the tree again, on the thick channels and ridges that ran the length of the trunk. Her palm was wet again when she pulled it away. Without another thought, she picked up the knife she'd dropped and plunged it into the tree, but the blade only sunk in a couple of inches before it wouldn't go any further. She tugged at the handle to retrieve it, but the knife wouldn't budge. The bark around where the knife was plunged had shrivelled, greyed, and dried out. Not a drop of water spilled from it. Rhiannon pushed and pulled at the knife but the tree's hold was absolute. She swore at it. Slapped feeble palms against it. She took the makeshift blade from her waist, was about to pry the knife loose but thought better of it.

She looked back into the desert again. The figure she had noticed before was there again, walking along the crest of one of the dunes. A man. Dark skinned. The sleeves of his overalls were rolled up, as were his pants.

Looking back at the knife again, she cursed herself and the tree. She tried once more to wriggle it free, but it was part of the tree now.

Reluctantly she left the knife in the tree and walked further into the forest. The dried leaves and flowers crunched like wafer under her feet, far too loud for her liking so she avoided stepping on them as best she could, thankful at least for the firm ground under her feet and some cover from the sun. The undergrowth thickened the farther into the forest she went. Thin, black trunks even darker than the obelisk trees but only about two metres tall. From the head of the thin trunks sprouted several long, arching stems with reddish pots, like an orchid, hanging on their ends and weighing them down so the plant looked something like a fountain.

Rhiannon hobbled towards them, feeling the pockets of fluid, air, and blood in the blisters on her feet. She stepped over the small shrubs and tangles of roots and reached up for the lowest hanging stem and pulled the flower pot down to look inside the bowl. She dipped her finger into the pot and pulled it out. The liquid was translucent, sticky, she tasted the tip of her finger, screwed up her face at the sourness of it. She looked back into the pot and spooned some more into her mouth but the taste was repulsive.

She spat out what was in her mouth and sat down against a large trunk when she noticed small, dark berries growing on the shrubs next to her. She picked one and squeezed it. A thick, dark liquid oozed out. Poisonous? She had no idea, and wasn't desperate enough to try; not yet. She dropped the berry and wiped her hand on her legs. She leaned her head back against the trunk, but didn't close her eyes. If she did, she would fall asleep and with the man from the desert so close behind she knew she had to keep moving.

The footprints she was following had disappeared almost as soon as she had entered the forest, so she would have to make her own way from here, but they had served their purpose anyway. She hoped whoever had made the tracks had wandered further into the forest and hadn't waited somewhere to ambush her.

The baby kicked as if to tell her to get moving so she rolled onto her knees, got to her feet and started into the forest.

Chapter 2: Flint

Rhiannon stopped and listened. Somewhere nearby, water was running. She was about to rush toward the sound when a rustling noise behind her caught her attention. She shuffled behind one of the obelisk trunks. She waited and listened with the blade in her hand. Feet were crunching over the forest floor behind her. Distant at first, but soon close enough for her to hear the weight of each step.

He walked past the tree she was hiding behind. The man who had been following her. She could have reached out and touched him. She waited for him to walk a little further before slipping around to the other side of the tree. The man paused for a moment as if to listen then started off left towards the sound of the water.

Gripped in his hand was the knife she’d left lodged in the obelisk trunk at the edge of the forest. She looked down at her bent makeshift blade. It probably wouldn’t last long. Reluctantly, she followed the man to the brook, keeping cover behind the trunks and watching where she put her feet.

He was tall, gaunt, cleaner than she thought such a place would allow. Eventually, he approached the brook. He dropped his overalls to the ground, bent down to the water and splashed his face before drinking.

Rhiannon scanned the trees and bushes around her to make sure he didn't have anyone waiting for him. She removed the spare overalls and singlet from her shoulder and placed them on the ground at the base of one of the trunks before stepping out from her cover to slowly approach the man as he crouched at the water's edge. The ridge of his spine stabbed up from beneath his skin. Her heart was thumping, hands shaking, she closed the distance between them. In one hand she held the blade, the other was clutching at her stomach.

'It's alright,' the man said. 'I'm not going to hurt you.'

Rhiannon froze, dared not make a sound, tried to convince herself that he was talking to someone else.

He held his hands up in the air. 'You're armed. I'm not.'

‛Bullshit,’ she said. She looked at ground by his feet, then at the overalls. ‛Where’s the knife you were carrying?’

'You're the one I was following across the desert, right?' the