Warlord: Arrival, Tales of Nevaeh, Vol 6, Journal 1: Tales Of Nevaeh

By David Wind

From out of the post-apocalyptic ashes of a dead Earth, 200 people placed into hibernation are sent into space to keep the last of humanity alive. Three thousand years later, the sole survivor of that starship awakens into the post-apocalyptic world of the planet of his birth.

—The Post Apocalyptical epic Sci-Fi Fantasy of Earth's future, Tales of Nevaeh, continues with WARLORD: Arrival, Tales of Nevaeh, Volume 6, Journal 1.

—the story of Solomon Roth's return to a vastly different earth 3,000 years after he left. The first books of the series will follow Roth's rise as one of the most powerful warriors in Nevaeh.

—The series, Tales of Nevaeh, WARLORD: Arrival, is both science fiction and fantasy. Reviewers have called it a mixture of Shannara, The Hundred, with a dash of GoT thrown in, and reminiscent of Andre Norton. WARLORD: Arrival, combines futuristic Post-Apocalyptic societies ruled by scientific magic, metaphysical powers, and strong men and women. The series follows Roth as he brings the dominions of Nevaeh together to fight the Dark Masters and their armies of slaves.

 

"What a great ride! All in all, a very good book and I look forward to the next one." —Julie Howard, BookBub 

" ...an epic, incredible read....At times, the likelihood that these books are our exact future seems eerie" —Pelican Freak, BookBub

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: ColSaw Publications
• Release date: Nov 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781735524603

David Wind

International award-winning author and double B.R.A.G. Honoree, David Wind, has published forty-three novels including Science Fiction, Mystery, and suspense thrillers. David is a Past-President of the Florida Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America. A Hybrid (Traditional and Independent) Author, David first Indie novel, Angels in Mourning, was a 'homage' to the old-time private detective's of the 50's and the 60's. (He used to sneak them from his parents' night tables and read them as a young boy.) Angels is a contemporary take on the old-style noir detective and won the Amazon.com Book of the Month Reader's Choice Award. David's Contemporary Fiction novel, published in December of 2017, and based on the Harry Chapin Song, A Better Place To Be, received the Bronze Award for Literary Excellence, from Ireland's prestigious DD International Awards; A Better Place To Be was named a B.R.A.G. Medallion Honoree, signifying a book of the highest literary quality and written by Independent writers. The first book of David's Epic Sci-Fi Fantasy Series, Tales Of Nevaeh. Born To Magic, is an international Amazon genre Best Seller, a Kindle Review of Books finalist for Fantasy Book of the year, and winner of the Silver Award from Ireland's Drunken Druid International Awards for Literary excellence. Over 80,000 copies of Tales of Nevaeh have been download. His mystery, suspense, Police procedurals, and thrillers are The Hyte Maneuver, (a Literary guild alternate selection); The Sokova Convention, The Morrisy Manifest, Out of the Shadows, and, Desperately Killing Suzanne. He wrote the Medical Thriller, The Whistleblower's Daughter, with Terese Ramin. The idea for this Medical Legal Thriller came shortly after the death of a close friend. David said, "I couldn't help but wonder about the medication...." David's his first nonfiction book, The Indie Writer's Handbook, is a guide to help authors who have completed their manuscripts to publish Independently. The Handbook was David's second book to be awarded the B.R.A.G. Medallion for literary excellence..   David’s Links --Visit David's Website at http://www.davidwind.com  

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THE JOURNALS

Warlord:

Arrival

Tales of Nevaeh, Vol. 6, Journal 1

THE JOURNALS OF SOLOMON ROTH

A Post-Apocalyptic Epic Sci-Fi Fantasy of Earth’s Future

By:

DAVID WIND

From the Author

Warlord: Arrival, the Journals of Solomon Roth, is the Sixth volume in the Tales of Nevaeh series, and contains the stories of his life based on the time Solomon Roth returned to Earth and follows his path to become the High King of Nevaeh.

David Wind

***

WARLORD: Arrival

ISBN: 978-1-7355246-0-3

Copyright © 2020 David Wind.

ColSaw Publications / DMW

Parts of the novella Prelude to Nevaeh have been incorporated into the first portion of this novel.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means.

Cover by Steven Novak

Editorial, L.J. Redding, Pelican Proofing.

For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact David Wind at [e-mail]

DEDICATION

They say you can’t choose your family,

but you can choose your friends.

I have both and I consider all my family.

It is to them whom I dedicate this novel.

***

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I give my deepest and most sincere thanks to my

exceptional team—the ones who make sure what you read,

is not just readable, but enjoyable, and relatable!

LACIE REDDING

TERRY DAVIS

LYNN ROSEBUR

And as always, my anchor,

BONIE WIND

PREFACE

Late summer, 5289 A.D.

As I continue to write in the journals I began on the starship, I realize the stories I put down on these sheets of parchment-like cloth, will far outlive my mortal life, which, thanks to the stasis that kept me alive for three-thousand years, has allowed me to be a part of things no one from my time could come close to imagining.

Now, as my years increase, and my mortality becomes more than evident, it is time for me to tell my story for the future generations of Nevaens to read, understand, and learn from. Having spent my first twenty-six years of life on a vastly different Earth, I find it to be my obligation to detail what has happened since my arrival on this new version of what was once my world.

My son sits on the throne I once occupied as High King of Nevaeh, sworn as I was, to uphold the laws, traditions, and customs, of Nevaeh. Sworn also is he to protect all of Nevaeh against any and all enemies, foreign and domestic. Yes, I brought that little excerpt of American Constitutional Law with me from the twenty-second century. It applies here as much, if not more so than before, as the Circle of Afzal has been defeated, the Dark Masters destroyed, yet somehow tendrils of the destruction and darkness they foisted on our world remains.

My journals will hopefully long outlive me, but my journals will do what has not been done before; tell the full story of who I am, and of how Nevaeh fought and won its freedom.

I will write these not as a historian, but rather I shall put ink to paper to narrate the stories, and as any good storyteller would by taking the narrator’s all-encompassing view rather than just my own viewpoint. I can do this because I have what was known as an eidetic memory, and also called a photographic memory—all it means, is I never forget ... anything.

There is no electricity in Nevaeh, and no one misses what they do not have. Technology is not important in Nevaeh—I suspect this is a genetic memory reflex—but science is important here. The difference between the science of the twenty-second century of the world in which I was born into, is vast: twenty-second century science was investigatory, with fact-based results from proven theory and experimentation. In the world of the fifth millennium, and of Nevaeh, science is different. Nevaen science is what the people always called magic; it is what the scientists of my time, the twenty-second century referred to as the ‘paranormal’. Nevaen science is composed of metaphysics, physics, chemistry, paranormal abilities including magic, extra sensory perception, and more extreme psychic abilities. Yes ... such is the science of Nevaeh, and the scientists who wield our magic, are the Women of Power of Nevaeh—our sorceresses.

How these women gained their ‘scientific’ powers, is within the pages of the story I shall tell.

But at present, these journals will be put away until such a time as they are needed to explain the history of Nevaeh. That time is not yet upon us, for Nevaeh, after three thousand years, is still in its early stages of growth. Presently, from what I and my wife, a great Woman of Power sense, it will be a long time before they are opened.

But when you—the person who discovered my journals—reads them, I leave it to you to judge if the time is right to share this with your fellow Nevaens.

In Service to Nevaeh,

Solomon Roth,

Captain, United States Naval Space Command, retired.

THE JOURNALS OF SOLOMON ROTH

Tales of Nevaeh, Vol VI, Journal 1

WARLORD:

ARRIVAL

Book 1

—The Early Years—

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CHAPTER 1

4048 A.D.

THE great seal of the office of the President of the United States of the Americas filled the screen. Five seconds later the screen flickered, and the president came into focus. The date appearing in the lower right corner of the screen read April seventeenth, two thousand, one hundred and thirty-seven.

Watching the playback from his chair, the viewer scrutinized the image. Deep concern etched the president’s features. His face was a taut canvass of beige-toned skin accented by pale blue-green eyes set above a sharp aquiline nose. His short curly hair was more salt than pepper, and his usually full lips were set in so tight a line they were barely visible.

"In the one hundred and thirty-six years leading to this point in time the world has not just imploded, it has divided into two separate entities: the Americas and the rest of the world.

What started as a horrible terrorist attack in New York City in 2001, escalated into a war we have had no choice but to endure. First, came fifty years of biological warfare utilizing mutating viruses, and now nuclear weap— No! He paused, shook his head once, and went on. I am not here to repeat to you a century of the history lessons we are all too painfully aware of, nor of the mistakes made on all sides; what I am here to tell you about is the future.

The president paused; not a single line of tension had slid from his face. "There are now two parts to our world: theirs and ours. The unified terrorists known as the Circle of Afzal, led by Afzal Mahmud Terak, have played the part of destroyer. What was a once great world, which our ancestors built into a multitude of nations spread across the globe, is no longer so.

"Yet, there is still hope. Three years ago, nuclear war raged across Asia and Europe, and reached down to the tip of South America. Moreover, while no nuclear bombs have yet detonated within our country, we must live in a world filling with radioactive fallout. Nuclear winter is coming. The sun is fading from our skies as clouds of contaminating darkness seal the heavens from our eyes. The infecting radiation has all but destroyed agriculture. The world is beginning to starve: our animals are dying and the ones strong enough to survive are changing in ways to stagger our imagination. Our children are being born—those unfortunate enough to live—physically and mentally mutated.

"Yet, there is still hope. A year and a half ago, the Council of the Americas voted to find a way for our civilization to continue. Some scientists believe it will take tens of thousands of years to recover from the nuclear devastation working its way around our planet. Other scientists have theorized that it might be as short as three thousand years—thirty centuries—for the Earth to rid itself of the worst of the fallout and the mutated viruses.

"Yet, there is still hope. Twenty-nine years ago, our space program built a starship intended to discover other habitable worlds. The program ended eleven years after it began, and two years after construction was completed, for reasons of which we are all aware. The ship has been in high orbit, twenty-five thousand miles above our planet. For the past eighteen years, it has been orbiting under our full control. The ship’s cameras are the finest ever produced and give us pictures of the world, every day. Sadly, these pictures speak of a dying planet. Most of Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa are now desolate radioactive wastelands with clouds so thick the land is barely discernible. It appears no people have survived.

Yet, there is still hope, the president repeated for the fourth time. "Over the past year and a half, we have been conducting a search for people who—for whatever reason have been lucky enough to have not succumbed to the fallout—those who are still one hundred percent biologically human without any genetic mutations, either physical or mental, induced by radiation. We have found two hundred qualified men and women.

"While two hundred is a small number, our scientists calculate it will be enough to repopulate the world, thousands of years from now. The technology to put people into ah ... a form of ‘suspended animation’ came about at the same time as the ship’s construction.

"The method our scientists discovered to put a human body into a state of stasis has proven successful on both animals and humans. While it is not the stuff of science fiction—freezing a person to keep them preserved until awakening—it follows a similar principle. The body stops functioning within the stasis field. The scientists explained the theory behind stasis, but I will not try to explain it to you, as I do not understand the science. What I know, is exhaustive tests have been made over the past twenty years for both long-term duration and waking/sleeping durations, and the stasis fields work!

"Animals who live only a year or two have been awakened ten, fifteen and twenty years later, showing absolutely no changes from the day they had entered stasis until the day of their revival. The scientists awakened several every few months to see the effects of waking and reentering stasis over a long period. Again, there were no negative effects: no muscle degeneration, no brain degeneration, and no cellular aging. Anyone entering stasis can come out of it at any time in the future; I repeat, at any time!

Therefore, mankind’s greatest hopes rest on the two hundred men and women who have volunteered to keep humanity alive. Allow me to introduce the flight crew.

On the screen behind the president was a photograph of a group of six men and women.

From the left to the right. First is Admiral Theodore Wingate, Mission Commander— the president began. The first picture filled the screen while the president’s voice emanated from the speakers. —next to him is Commander Andrew Tibbetts, Chief Navigation Officer. Captain Carol Cantor is our Chief Pilot and the officer next to her is Captain Solomon Roth, Chief Scientific Officer and backup pilot. Dr. Simon Marks is the Chief Medical Officer and Dr. Samantha Calloway is the Assistant Chief Medical Officer.

The images faded and the president came back into focus. "These six men and women are the crew of the starship aptly named, Mayflower. Their passengers, culled from every area of our country, are a full representation of our civilization. They are comprised of scientists, medical practitioners, teachers, engineers, military, and technology specialists. The Mayflower is also an Ark, carrying the cell tissue of our world’s animal life.

"The shuttles to the Mayflower took off early this morning. As I speak, the crew and the 194 passengers are preparing to depart orbit. When the ship returns to us, three thousand years from now, and if our world proves habitable, those two hundred men and women will herald mankind’s rebirth. If not, the crew will set course for one of three planets identified as habitable and begin the search for humanity’s new home.

Thank you and bless you.

The monitor went dark, flickered, and the president reappeared. This time the emotions playing across the watcher’s features all but reached out through the scene and into the Mayflower. That speech was broadcasted to the world this morning. Now let me tell you six of the reality of our situation. For the past eight years, ever since the fall of China, our scientists have been working on a project to protect the planet from the heavier wave of radioactive fallout heading toward us.

A map filled the screen behind him. This is the projected path and timeline of the oncoming radiation. As you see, it has already begun to affect us, years ahead of schedule. However, in the coming months, our scientists will release a strain of bacteria, one that has been developed—and believe me when I say I know how strange this will sound—to eat radioactive fallout and render it harmless. At least that’s how they summed it up after trying to explain how the bacteria surrounds each radioactive isotope, absorbs it, and neutralizes it. We have seen promising results at the strike in the Falklands. This is our hope for you and your mission; but it will not happen immediately. In fact, the sad truth is it will not stop the radiation from destroying all life. The scientists believe the bacteria will work within the projected time span of three to five thousand years and remove the radiation from the ground and the atmosphere. This way, when you return, it will be to a clean but barren world, a world ready for you and your passengers. As you know and as our tests keep reaffirming, over seventy percent of the people remaining in the world are sterile and the number continues to grow.

All that remains is to wish you good luck and for you to remember one thing: humanity depends upon you. The president looked to his left, and then back at the camera. He started to speak, swallowed hard and shook his head. I was about to say, all our prayers are with you, but given the reality which has brought us to this point in time, those words seem more a curse than a blessing. So instead, let me simply say, goodbye, good luck, and thank you.

Solomon Roth shut off the monitor, ending the two-thousand-year-old recording and turned to the controls. It had taken almost an hour for the fogginess to depart and another half hour for him to shower, dress, and hydrate. He would hold off eating for a few hours until his body adjusted to full consciousness. When he’d stepped onto the bridge, the first thing Commander Solomon Roth had done was to turn on the monitor and play the president’s final transmission.

Each time he had been awakened; he’d played the recording to re-acclimate himself to the purpose of his new life. Now fully awake, he looked at the surrounding screens. There were no windows on the ship’s bridge, located in the center of the ship, because the center was the safest place: protected by layers of hull and decks made of Trilimion, the strongest metal ever discovered.

The Mayflower’s elliptical orbit traversed the solar system without coming too close to the sun. The ship came into Earth’s view every two hundred years. It was the crew’s job to monitor and review the files of those passages and to scan the Earth.

This was Roth’s fifth duty round since takeoff. Scheduled for duty every four hundred years, he was out of stasis for two months each waking period, which translated into two duty periods every millennium.

During his last awakening, four hundred years earlier, he’d read the alert files left for him. Thirty-two travelers had died during the three rounds of duty preceding his, and another seven had died in the years between the previous stasis period and now.

He’d found the problem had been stasis equipment failure. Unfortunately, he had been unable to find the cause. To find the reason, Roth had set up monitoring instruments and cameras in all stasis areas so he could see what was happening when awakened for his next duty tour.

Turning the command chair to his left, Roth activated the cameras in the stasis rooms and inspected each stasis chamber. When he pressed the button for the fifth chamber, his heart skipped.

Ten of the chamber’s twenty stasis units showed failure. The floor of the chamber held ten bodies in varying stages of decomposition. Bile flooded his mouth. He propelled out of the chair and headed to the chamber. When he stepped inside, the odor of death and decay struck like a punch.

Roth returned to the bridge. Darkness bored deeply inward, centering within his soul. He forced himself to return to protocol by reviewing each chamber. When he was done, he had found thirty more stasis unit failures.

Forty people had died in the past four hundred years, which meant, since their journey started, twenty-four hundred years ago, half the travelers were dead.

He reprogrammed the crew’s stasis reawakening duty schedule to adjust for the losses. Then, staring at the mission calendar, he wondered if he would survive the next millennium.

CHAPTER 2

5245 AD

ROTH stared at the planet centered on the control room’s main screen. I didn’t sign on for this, he thought. How long has it been? It was a pointless question because he knew exactly how long: two years, eight months, and twelve days of consciousness since he had boarded the shuttle at Earthport; two plus years of life rationed out over three thousand years of stasis.

The ship had voyaged through the universe for three thousand one hundred and seventeen years, following a huge elliptical orbit. This was Roth’s ninth awakening of his service rotations. With each revival, there had been fewer and fewer travelers. He had spent as much time as possible trying to find out what had killed them but had been unable to come up with an answer before he’d had to go back into stasis.

Although six months premature, the last awakening had begun routinely but ended with the knowledge he would never return to stasis. When he’d discovered his awakening had come early, he’d checked the logs to discover his waking had been caused by an automatic alarm because of the rate of death of the passengers.

When he looked at the screens, he discovered he was the last person alive: all others had died either by a malfunction of equipment or by the same mysterious issue that had caused the other deaths, an issue he had finally solved. A dormant and mutated bio-engineered killer virus, possibly a CVDV-32 strain variation—created by the fanatics who had been using viruses since the early twenty-first century, and brought aboard by one of the colonists—had entered the ship’s air circulation units when the colonist’s stasis pod malfunctioned. When the virus entered the ship’s atmosphere, it went live. Of the two hundred people on the ship, over three quarters had died from the virus. Roth alone had proved immune. The forty-three who had not perished because of the virus died due to various equipment failures. Those who had started the war of annihilation had finally succeeded in destroying their enemy and themselves by, he was sure, destroying every inhabitant on Earth.

For the first five months after the last awakening, he had been insane—a skeletal lunatic of a person who cried and screamed and ranted against everything. Then, one lonely day, the ship's alarms had gone off.

What Roth had seen in the ship’s monitors should have been the last straw of whatever shreds of sanity remained; but instead, what lay before him had returned him to sanity.

Two hundred thousand miles ahead, floated planet Earth.

After an unimaginable amount of time, his mind had worked through the insanity and his training had risen to the surface. He’d taken control of the ship from the computers, which had kept the ship in its elliptical orbit within the solar system for the last three thousand years, guiding it toward home. He had done this in spite of his wondering if there was any point to having remained alive.

The original mission had been the recreation of the human race; and, sadly, Roth knew he could not be the newest version of Adam, for there was no Eve—the women were long dead—unless you counted the embryos in stasis, though Roth doubted they had survived.

He’d gathered what little strength he could manage and put the ship into high orbit nineteen hours after the first warning had sounded. Once the orbit was established, Roth had sent out a dozen automated spy-bot probes. The almost invisible probes had spent twenty-six hours covering the entire planet, axis by axis. When the spy bots returned, Roth spent weeks watching every second of the videos they had recorded. Against every eventuality the scientists had been able to theorize, he’d learned that the radiation unleashed by the nuclear holocaust had not destroyed Earth. In fact, the bacteria the scientists had released at the time of his voyage, had not just succeeded but surpassed all imagination.

What remained of America held life such as he had never before seen. Yet, the people inhabiting it were seemingly backwards—appearing more like the people who had lived just after Earth’s medieval period. They wore armor of leather and metal, fought with sword and knife and bow. They lived in castle-like keeps with towns spreading out about each keep. Science appeared forgotten, technology non-existent—a happenstance Roth believed to be for the best, seeing how science had murdered the planet.

He’d spent weeks reviewing the visual records. He’d laughed until he could no longer catch his breath and then cried for the billions who had died three thousand years before. Perhaps, he hoped, the people who had survived would do better.

Then Captain Solomon Roth, the last survivor of his race, and of all the races of the peoples of the planet from when he came, had done the hardest and wisest thing possible. He’d sat back, and instead of rushing down to the planet’s surface, he waited, studied, and learned.

Roth spent the next seven months watching the world below. Sending out daily probes until he’d gotten every inch of the planet charted, he had learned the language and the customs of the people inhabiting what was left of the North American continent. What he’d seen in the remnants of Europe, Asia and Eastern Europe had terrified him. That part of the world held the desolate ruins of nuclear war and was populated by horribly misshapen beings—mindless masses ruled by hidden beings that did not appear in any of the probe recordings. These beings, this darkly threatening force, he’d become certain, were the remnants of the Unified Circle of Afzal—the very ones who had destroyed the world of his time.

South America was fractured and split by earthquakes and missile strikes. It was barren of life, both human and animal, and separated from North America by a swirling ocean of what had once been the lands of Central America and Mexico. The giant rainforests of the equator were gone. Canada and Alaska were ice-infested frozen mountain ranges surrounded by oceans of ice and tar fields created out of the ruptured veins of gas and petroleum from deep below the North American continent.

The oceans were lower, which seemed impossible, yet visually true. And while he had no way to measure the change in the world’s seas, he wondered if the land masses had somehow risen, or if the refrozen Arctic, and the Antarctic, which were now larger than before had been the cause of the sea level’s drop. The only other possibility was the continents themselves had risen higher.  

While North America’s land mass had changed, it appeared to be the only solid surviving land mass of the Americas. The nuclear attacks that had destroyed so much of the world had not destroyed North America. The reports he’d viewed from the bots had shown only a few small hits and two massive strikes. One strike was on the finger-like island of Manhattan. It was still there, but only the rubble of the once mighty center of America and world commerce remained. Where Central Park had been, there was now a giant fused crater. The damage from the explosion had radiated outward in a huge circle of destruction that left nothing standing.

Florida was no longer an appendage of America; rather it was a nub at the southernmost tip of the country. The entire East Coast, from what used to be Connecticut, and stretching to Florida, was like the Palisade cliffs of the Northeast—and like those Palisades, they rose high above the ocean.  

A strange orange-red