Reckoning

By Leanna Renee Hieber

A tale of survival, revenge and passion in the aftermath of a psychic battle in the stars.

Captain Temesia Elysse has just steered her ship through almost certain death. With the help of her gifted crew, the Dark Nest has survived. Her newly evolved psychic people are targets of Homeworld genocide. Hundreds have been killed aboard the Light Nest. Back on Homeworld soil, her people are being hunted and she knows her lover may be dead, the gifted teacher Taryn Wolfe. It will take all Captain Elysse’s restraint, with vast new psychic powers available to her and her people, not to let anger get ahead of them. But there must be a rescue mission for those still alive. There must be justice. There will be a reckoning. And the Homeworld council has no idea their persecuted victims are alive, or just how powerful they’ve become.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bryant Street Publishing
• Release date: Jan 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9781094400211

Leanna Renee Hieber

Raised in rural Ohio and obsessed with the Victorian Era, Leanna’s life goal is to be a ”gateway drug to 19th century literature.” An actress, playwright and award winning author, she lives in New York City and is a devotee of ghost stories and Goth clubs. Visit www.leannareneeheiber.com

Book preview

Chapter One

Taryn Reyn rushed his class out of the burning remains of the Training School, trying to block the smell of destruction and burnt flesh from his nose, but harder was the ability to block the searing emotions that came with an unexpected attack and the shock of sudden death. He had to fortify his mental shields entirely, always a jarring and unnatural quiet for an empath. He hurried his class outside and into the dangerous heat of the Homeworld’s surface temperatures.

Ask why later, he commanded himself. Survive now.

Out from the fire, into more heat. If they could just get up the mountain, in whose shade the Training School for the Psychically Augmented had been built, there would be shade and cooler air, a place to regroup and figure out what the hell had just happened.

He prayed Saire had gotten the middle PA grades out of the East wing. He couldn’t be sure.

Then came gunfire. More screams. A new wave of shock, fear, horror and pain broke over Taryn like a tsunami wave, cracking open the blockade of mental shields and leaking the terror in. His class, a group of six graduate-level teenagers began to scream, all of them feeling the whole of the event more keenly than he.

The surprise of the explosion had knocked the students off guard and they hadn’t raised their barriers in defense of further onslaught. While they were Defense trainees, they were Empaths first and foremost, and it was empathy that defined their existence.

His class stopped in their tracks, paralyzed by the conflict between the adrenaline to keep moving and the desperate need to respond to the mental and physical anguish bursting from their besieged classmates. Several of them were swaying back and forth, their mouths an ‘o’ of despair, some tore at their uniforms, fine grey tunics now marred with soot and ash, and one started running back towards the burning building. Taryn caught her.

"It’s not an accident, Professor Reyn! We’re all being attacked," Joiye cried, her normally high pitched voice ratcheted up a further octave by fear. Soot from the explosion marred her face save for where the rivets of tears and sweat had cleaned it away.

Indeed, Taryn said, gathering himself, restoring his mental shields and casting out a calming breath from his mind to theirs. If you can’t stay calm now, you won’t stay alive. We’re heading to the generator. Keep to that wall. Shut your mind off everything but training. Remember your last evasive maneuver drill. Think of this as routine.

Taryn sensed their panic settle into workable if not shaky foundations. Their walls snapped up and their resolve sharpened; he could feel it as clearly as he could see a blurry lens coming into focus. Good. Now run and stay down. He was grateful his voice held authority, because his heart was in his throat and his perspiration had nothing to do with the heat.

Taryn’s rage, a dormant dragon he’d forced deep into the core of himself and locked away, awoke, roared, and threatened to undo him. He clamped down on the impulse to turn and fight, knowing the awesome and vengeful creature he could become. But children were his responsibility. Not adventure, not travel, not combat, not revenge, nothing like the glorious life he was sure Captain Temesia Elysse was living, but their next generation. He had to get them out alive.

Professor Brodin was right. His worst fear had come to pass. But Brodin wasn’t here. He was on the Dark Nest, far away, where Temesia held sway. And she’d never forgiven either of them that Taryn himself had stayed on at the school.

Temesia. He hoped she was having a better day than he was.

His class ducked behind the waist-level retaining wall that once held a lake on the other side, and ran to the generator building that climate controlled the school.

Taryn pushed his six students, ranging in age from thirteen to seventeen, into the generator filled room. Condensation kissed all the pipes but didn’t make the room any cooler. It outsourced comfort, but at least they were out of the sun. But unarmed. Easy targets for Homeworld henchmen.

We need to get closer to the mountain, Taryn murmured. There’s a safe-house. But the only direct route is in plain sight—

Professor—

Greo, hush.

Professor, there’s a tunnel. Below here. I know it.

Taryn raised a surprised eyebrow. Greo, a tall and infamously handsome young man of sixteen blushed, his fair skin pinking to his ears.

The tunnel…goes over to the girl’s quarters, Greo added. That’s closer to the mountains and to the caves. I assume—

Greo Fiorla. Taryn smirked. You have been the prize pain in my ass since you were six and I’m glad it hasn’t been for nothing. Show me.

Greo’s blush persisted. He swiped a hand through his tousled blonde hair and moved to the back of the room and punched a code on a console. A door slid open.

You know the code? Taryn asked. He didn’t even know the code.

Greo shrugged. Only so many possibilities.

"Now that is determination. If only you’d applied that same fastidiousness to your Community Consciousness lessons."

Taryn couldn’t help but grin. Jorri, a generally quiet thirteen year old round-faced boy, giggled. The door swung wide and they descended into a service tunnel that was blessedly cooler than above.

Once his students were inside, Taryn glanced back. Outside the small generator room window, he could barely see black-helmeted heads peeking over the retaining wall, hundreds of yards away. He gestured for everyone to keep silent. He shut the door and urged them to move quickly away. A maze of cement tunnels three quarters of their height spread out before them.

Greo, we’re entrusting our lives to your love of girls, Taryn muttered, gesturing for Greo to lead the way.

It’s okay, Chief, I really love them, Greo replied, and ducked into the first of a sequence of twisting tunnels. This time, everyone giggled. A bit of humor helped to weigh against the paralyzing fear, and spurred them on.

After a few tunnel lengths, their path opened to a wide concrete switch room filled with a large metal cabinet. There was a sign over the fuse boxes designating cables as those that connected to the female residences. Taryn knew they were far enough in to continue on to the Safe-House underground, he just had to check the map.

Taryn gestured that they stop. He opened the cabinet door and stared at the mass of wiring and buttons a moment before locating their position by the numbers. A thick metal door slid across the opening of the tunnel that would have lead back to where they came. Sealing them off. Taryn heard Joiye squeak.

I know, J. I know. We’ll go back when and if we can. But for now, I need all of you safe.

Joiye had a little sister in the middle grades. Taryn only imagined what she might be feeling, and what young Franca may have mentally transmitted to her. Joiye’s bright, silver eyes were filling with tears and her thin body was shaking. Taryn reached out and seized her hand. J, you’ve always been a class leader. Since you were eight years old. I need you to be one now. I need your help.

Joiye nodded, batted almost violently at her eyes, and pressed her back against the concrete to stop shaking. Her lips were thin and her knuckles were white, but she calmed.

Taryn slid his long black braid behind him, the feather attached to the leather thong that bound it a small detail indicative of an ancient people to whom it was said he’d once belonged. He didn’t remember life in the foster home on a scrap of land called by the antiquated, legendary word reservation. Life began when training began, and it was that way for most of the PA population, their powerful minds a youthful blur until they learned how to control all the noise.

Taryn unbuttoned the top buttons of his grey tunic and pulled a chain from around his neck. Attached was a small, grooved piece of metal. His students stared at him, eagerly, looking for salvation or methods of retaliation. Pressing the side, a metal filament slid out and a holographic map came glimmering into view.

He pressed the piece of metal to his forehead and concentrated his mind into one powerful thought that he sent into the air like a bullet discharging from a gun. It’s happened, Brodin. I’m taking students to the Safe House.

A little dizzy from such a strong mental telegram, he opened his eyes again to see everyone staring at him, and the map, alternately, waiting for an explanation. The hologram map had two sparkling points; one where they were, another halfway up the mountain, with a line between delineating their escape route.

Taryn recalled Professor Brodin’s last words for him before he stowed away on the Dark Nest. When things fall apart. And they will, go here. Take the children. And learn. Send me a message when you do.

Myself and a few other Professors have been thinking for quite some time that the Homeworld doesn’t know what to do with us, doesn’t want the newly evolved human to share in their world. You’ve seen it in how you’ve been monitored, how your freedom and travel has been restricted, your citizenship questioned. We feared it might get worse.

The Homeworld, fearing our empathic abilities, wants to kill us? Is their insecurity so vast? Hissed Myrrha, a wide-eyed girl with dark skin and perfectly twisted locks who was known to hone in on simple and precise truths in difficult matters.

It would seem so, Taryn replied.

An emotional wave of anger, hurt and confusion washed over him.