The Reservation Series: Morning Star

By P.Y. Yang

The date is 3021 and the whole world has collided into one large country, much like how it was once a single land. The Pangaean nation has now become what is known as the United Reservation, where there is a single army, a single culture, and a single language. However, the society is threatened by a terrorist group that calls themselves the Radicals, and they kidnap citizens in the night to execute them one by one, causing a panic among the government. The first and most important mission of the soldiers is to stop the Radicals from their terrorist activities, even if it costs them their family or their life. When Theresa Starr, a high-appointed soldier of the U.R. gets sacked during a rescue mission, she finds herself in an unpredictable situation facing a squad of armed, masked and angry radicals. She finds herself watching as a camera is pointed in her direction and a woman in all black with a full frontal mask stands by with her hands clenched savagely around a sleek, iron sword.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 12, 2016
• ISBN: 9781329736962

Book preview

The Reservation Series: Morning Star

The Reservation Series:

Book 1

Morning Star

The Reservation Series:

Book

1

Morningstar

P.y. Yang

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to real historical events, people, and places are used factiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living, dead, or fictional, is entirely coincidence.

Text copyright 2016 by P.Y. Yang.

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

For any information about bulk purchases or individual print copies, please consult the author at [e-mail].

Manufactured in the United States of America

The Reservation Series: Morning Star second edition, 2016.

ISBN (ebook) 978-1-329-73696-2

Acknowledgments

Thank you to my friends who gave me the strength to sit down for hours in my own head, to finally put this to paper. I owe them my special thanks for their love, unending kindness, and infinite patience that inspired for this world to finally be completed in a way that allowed the characters to be freed. It is still a mystery as to why my friends are still putting up with me, though as you readers shall see—the hardest hitting friends are those to hold close, for they are the most faithful of all.

Introduction

The date is 3021 and the whole world has collided into one large country, much like how it was once a single land. The Pangaean nation has now become what is known as the United Reservation, where there is a single army, a single culture, and a single language. The resources of the world have become severely diminished as the climate continues to become hot and humid, and the weather nearly unpredictable with typhoons, hurricanes, earthquakes, and sandstorms. With the erratic weather conditions and an unstable ecosystem, many animals and plants have become extinct over time. Water is scarce, and food is limited. With the help of the government, rations of two loaves of bread and a pint of water are distributed per day; and to limit the use of resources, the government refuses to aid those who are elderly, disabled, and too weak to work for the country. Those who are able to do labor are set to do various chores including: foraging, mining, digging graves, and working for the government as intelligence officials or soldiers. However, the society is threatened by a terrorist group that calls themselves the Radicals, and they kidnap citizens in the night to execute them one by one, causing a panic amongst the government. The first and most important mission of the soldiers is to stop the Radicals from their terrorist activities, even if it costs them their family or their life. When Theresa Starr, a high-appointed soldier of the U.R. gets sacked during a rescue mission, she finds herself in an unpredictable situation facing a squad of armed, masked and angry radicals. She finds herself watching as a camera is pointed in her direction and a woman in all black with a full frontal mask stands by with her hands clenched savagely around a sleek, iron sword.

Hello people of United Reservation. You may call me Natasha Voronin. Many of you may know me as an outlander whose husband your government cruelly cast away to die of starvation. Here is one of your soldiers: Theresa Starr. We have intelligence that she is the only child of Belle Starr, so this message is to you, Mrs. Starr. Will you inspire your government to stand down and accept our regime, or will you watch your daughter die? You have 24 hours before another live video message will be sent to you. If you cannot meet our needs, your daughter will be executed by my hand. 24 hours starts now.

Chapter 1

Theresa Starr extended her arms above her soft, sun-bleached auburn curls and yawned loud enough for Isabelle Starr to scowl from across the room. The mother-daughter duo spent most of their time in the day distributing rations to the people of U.R. Day in and day out. Theresa hands out two loaves of plain, bran bread and a pint of water to each citizen and makes sure to check the food stamp on every ticket. Her mother, Isabelle (Belle for short), oversees the distributions, making sure to document that the storage meets the needs of the people. Belle leans forwards and checks the timestamp.

12:30. Only a few more hours before swapping. How are you doing Theresa?

Belle Starr is a small woman, nearly 5’4 and has the same identical caramel brown hair that falls just below her shoulders. She looks about forty three years old, but is actually 35 and although she was slight, Belle was a person with an intense personality that was both bold and terrifying. Theresa was slightly smaller than her mother at 5’3 and her hair was long enough to go down to her mid-back, but she usually tied it up in a taught bun. Even though she was only eighteen, Theresa had finished her basic training to become a soldier when she turned sixteen, making her one of the top soldiers in her rank.

When do you suppose they’ll lower the rations again?

Belle sighed, Hopefully not anytime soon. I don’t know how long the people will last on only two loaves of bread. I can’t imagine how it’ll be with only one. I’m glad dad isn’t around to suffer like this.

Theresa became silent at the mention of her father, Sergeant, who was kidnapped and executed by the rebel terrorists, the radicals. It has been nearly two years since his kidnapping, and although the government had tried to negotiate with the radicalists, a video was sent to Belle showing the execution of her father. Belle was never the same since, and has become harder and colder towards others. At night, Theresa listened to her mother’s silent sobbing through the thin cement walls of their abode. The government was the sole form of democracy and leadership that the people had and Theresa looked up to it just as her father had. Sergeant Starr was a high ranking captain of the army, and took care to make sure that his wife and daughter also supported the government’s leadership. After his death, Theresa and Belle both entered the U.R. Army in memorandum of Sergeant and became a well-known force.

Theresa coaxed one of her curls from her bun, I see less and less children around now. I hope the government will tell us if there are more kidnappings. She slammed her fist on the splintered, wooden countertop, I shouldn’t even be here! I should be out there fighting the terrorists like dad did.

And what would that solve? Belle scolded, There are always kidnappings, we can’t stop them all even if all of us were out there fighting. Besides, because of us here, our neighbors aren’t starving to death.

Theresa’s arms crossed indignantly, But if I was out there, we might even have a fighting chance. They let the newbie handle the fighting, what do they expect?

Small hands extended towards Theresa, grimy and black. One hand held the ticket and the other held a small daisy the color of the scorching sun.

Hey there Lise, you’re late Theresa took the flower and looked down at the small, fragile little girl. Lise, much like all the other children, worked in the coal factory and came often for her ailing mother to grab their rations. She was a bug-eyed, oriental child with black hair and brown eyes that were hazed over like she’d been crying for days. Her smile was one of the best parts of Theresa’s long day distributing rations.

Lise placed the ration card on the counter and Theresa stamped the day’s date. Her smile faded slowly, mommy’s sick again. I had to run back home to grab her ticket, but I’m glad I did because I found a flower under the red rocks on the way back!

Flowers like this were rare nowadays because of the drought. And whenever Lise found one, she’d give them to Theresa as gifts, Thank you Lise, it’s beautiful…

One day, there’ll be lots of them! Mommy says so.

Theresa placed four loaves and two water containers in the child’s outstretching arms, I believe so too, we have to be patient for that day.

Belle waved as Lise smiled and turned away.

That poor child. I hope Amanda will get better soon, she’s been poorly ever since her husband passed.

Theresa nods, Lise is a strong girl, I know she’ll help Amanda out. I still can’t believe that he was executed too.

Not only that, but the government made that curfew for everyone mandatory Belle rubs her eyes sleepily, now it’s harder for the Surveyors to work at night.

Theresa stared into the horizon as the scorching orange sun shone rays of burning light onto the sand. She remembered patches of green along the red rocks that were once brown mounds of soil. Nowadays, patches of soil are rare, and the only traces of soil belong to the state so that the government can hire workers to farm the fertile soil. Everything else is pretty much desert land, scorched by the low-setting sun and dented by the sad traces of dried up bodies of water.

Belle told Theresa a story about the land before the United Reservation:

Once, a long time ago, your great-great-great-great-great grandparents lived in a time where the lands were separated by blue oceans of salt water and sea life: fishes, algae, and so much more. The sky was blue with wispy white clouds to block the rays of lights that once gently warmed and browned the skin instead of burning. Theresa was always awed by the fact that the continents that her mother told her about were separated by water so deep that the depths could not be discovered. Theresa never saw the edge of the land where the water touched the red earth, but she often heard about it from others in the force that were able to leave on expeditions to find resources. They told her that the water that they saw was murky brown; so cold that when it touched bare skin, it would nearly burn the skin on contact with frostbite. Theresa longed to see the water, even though it was no longer blue and beautiful; she wanted to see the blue skies and wispy white clouds that her mother described and she dreamed of long fields of green grass that were as soft as new cotton against skin.  Her father had also told her about how night used to be before the sky became red: when the sun went down, the sky became black, be-speckled with beautifully bright orbs of white light, called the stars. She was told that many years before, humans were able to leave the planet and see space, surrounded by stars and planets just like the Earth. Sarge also gave Theresa a small photo book of space that consisted of constellation names and orientation. Although they were no longer visible, Theresa felt comfort that at least the stars were still there where they should be, however invisible to the naked eye.

Theresa knew that everything that her mother had described was gone now and all that was left was red-burned sand, red rocks, scorpions, and dust. Everyone called it the New Dust Bowl Era. With little resources and almost no food or water, the government acted to preserve what was left of human life and called the new regime the Reservation which was made up of the many groups of people littered around the dense Pangaea to become the United Reservation. The sole purpose of the reservation was to act as the providing hands that governed the strays of population. To make travel and documentation easier, the Government decided to move the populations of people closer together, and stripped language and ethnic barriers to form a uniformed peoples, in addition to wiping out any such conflicts that existed before. Religion was one of these issues, although her father still referenced to God and Christianity just the same.

Many oriental and ethnic populations were hesitant at first, but after the dust storm of 3000, nearly everyone became dependent on the government to provide for them. The stronger population enlisted as the United Army, and the weaker population was hired as regular laborers of the Reservation. Out of the new Regime, a group of radicals dejected the idea of Uniformed Poverty. or so they had called it in propaganda. The Radicalists often raid the town at night and take supplies, but more often than not, people. For months, the government had no idea what had happened to the missing persons. But weeks later, the first of many videos was sent to the government relaying a ritualistic extermination of the missing people. One by one, families were shown the awful deaths of their loved ones through beheading or having a gunshot to the head. And every single video had the same woman relaying the same message with a different name:

Hello people of United Reservation. You may call me Natasha Voronin. Many of you may know me as an outlander whose husband your government cruelly cast away to die of starvation. Here is one of your peoples. We have intelligence that the person is related to _______.So this message is to you, family of the victim. Will you inspire your government to stand down and accept our regime, or will you watch your loved one die? You have 24 hours before another live video message will be sent to you. If you cannot meet our needs, your people will be executed by my hand. 24 hours starts now.

Theresa? Theresa!

Belle’s voice rang crystal clear and cut through the depressing atmosphere that Theresa’s mind created. When she looked up, Belle’s face contorted from strict confusion to apathetic understanding of the dire situation.

This is not the time to daze, Theresa Isabelle chided softly, If we take one second for granted, we’ll be on the red list tonight.

Theresa sighed and stood up straighter, letting her dark, caramel brown hair cascade down her back and placing the rubber hair tie on her forearm defiantly. I don’t red list, mom. I am the one who puts people on the red list.

Belle shook her head and waved Theresa off, your shift is over now; you are dismissed soldier.

Theresa winked at her mother and left the station, making sure to lock the water and bread chests before turning out the door. Instantly, the harsh, dry wind met her at the entryway. Everyone in the Reservation gets used to the