Under Two Moons: Paradisi Chronicles: Caelestis Series, #2

By Louisa Locke

Mei Lin Yu, a shy studious young woman from a Founding Family, and Silence, a fierce snowcat running with outlaws, shouldn't have anything in common. But on New Eden, a world where the native Ddaerans have psychic abilities, a world ruled by the Founders who fled a dying Earth…anything is possible. 

 

When Mei Lin is forced out of the comfortable refuge of Mynyddamore and confronted with a secret from the past that is very much alive, will she be able to save herself and Silence to gain the trust of a man who has no reason to trust anyone from a Founding Family?

 

Under Two Moons, a science fiction action adventure novel, is the sequel to Between Mountain and Sea and is the second book in USA Today bestselling author Louisa Locke's Caelestis series in the Paradisi Chronicles (an open source science fiction series created by multiple authors).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Louisa Locke
• Release date: Aug 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386029175

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Mynyddeira Mountains

Caelestis, New Eden

April 3, 167 AA

Silence jumped lightly down from the branch, careful not to land in the deep snow that still lay on the sunset side of the tree. She was immediately joined by her two sisters who appeared from behind the rocky outcrops on either side of the trail. They lowered their noses to draw in the scents left behind by the three men, briefly lifting their heads, upper lips curled back, breath stilled, as they distinguished each separate smell.

Two of the men, one belonging to a pride that roamed this area, the other a beak-nosed stranger, had left their scents on this trail within the last double rising of the two moons. She hissed and felt the fur on her neck rise as the scent of the third man revealed that he was one of the rootless ones, cut off from the teeming life of this world. One of the Evil Ones.

Follow? Smallest Sister asked, light grey eyes wide.

Yes, but keep well behind. Tell us if they turn back. Youngest Sister, you take the far side of the canyon.

The sun had risen to its highest point and was pleasantly warm on her back by the time she met up with Youngest Sister where the canyon was blocked by a wall of stone. It had been easy to keep out of sight as they tracked the men’s noisy progress up the trail.

Youngest Sister lightly touched some dried scat with her right front paw. Father’s kind?

Silence didn’t answer. This sister was all too interested in the wild snowcats of this world.

Take cover, she ordered, hearing the men’s voices grow louder. Youngest Sister leapt back up to the edge of the canyon and disappeared.

They’d been instructed to track and observe these men who arrived far down the valley in one of the flying machines. She chose a narrow ledge well above the men’s line of sight and lay down, knowing that her grey-spotted white coat would make her all but invisible. She stilled her heart as her mother taught her, becoming one with the rocks behind her.

Here’s the place I was telling you about, the beak-nosed man said as he led the other two into the end of the canyon.

In a display of dominance, the Evil One pushed past him and pointed at the towering wall of rocks. Under that?

That bootleg survey report by the first Founders said this region of the Mynyddeira Mountains would be a good place to look, the beaked-nose man answered, lowering his eyes to demonstrate his subordinate status.

Silence didn’t understand every word, but the Evil One showed his anger in the darkening of his skin and his clenched fists. He said, What good does that do us as long as the damned Ganesh Family side with the tree huggers every time there’s a vote on the Council? They don’t want to lose their monopoly on Tenebra. If I’m going to back something illegal…I need to know there will be results. Can you promise me that, Bekker? You’ve failed me before.

The beak-nosed man pointed at the other man, the one whose scent marked him as belonging to a local pride, and said, Peddwyn swears that what you are looking for is here…a lot of it.

Silence saw the local man freeze like a startled ngharw. There was something off about this man’s scent. Something more than simple fear. She had smelled it once when she and her sisters came across a clustiau hir that had tried to chew off its leg caught in a trap.

The Evil One’s voice rose. And you say he knows this because he can hear it singing? How would some ignorant Original know what we are looking for?

I told you, I’ve trained him to tell me when he senses one of the rare ones. I can assure you, he knows the price he will pay if he turns out to be wrong.

The Evil One slowly gazed around, his eyes gliding right by Silence. Rubbing his hands together, he said, If the rumors are true that the deposits on Tenebra are running out, I’d make a fortune.

Yes, sir, that’s what I’ve been telling you.

Do some tests. See what you find. I’ll set it up to look like we are scoping out a good place to build our next small hydro-electric plant…provide cover for sending a team up here. But they have to be men who will keep their mouths shut. No Originals. In fact, I want a plan from you on how to get rid of any of the natives who still live in this part of the mountains. You’ve done it before down in Vida. Poisoning the water is the easiest way. Then offer to move them to one of the existing villages to the south of here. Anyone resists…well…you know what to do.

Yes, sir.

The Evil One laughed and said, You better be right about what is under that cliff, because if you’re not, or anyone gets wind of what we are doing, your pet Original isn’t the only one who will pay a steep price.

He turned and strode back down the trail, the beaked-nose man following behind.

When they were out of sight, the local man looked up at her, staring for a moment directly into her eyes before slowly nodding once and then swiftly disappearing from sight.

CHAPTER TWO

New Hong Kong

Caelestis, New Eden

Late afternoon, April 12, 167 AA

Mei Lin, your great-grandmother wants you to bring her back one of the sticky buns they make in the MynyEnergy cafeteria. Hen Nain says it’s the only thing she misses from the days when she had to come to New Hong Kong for the company board meetings, Tesni said, smiling broadly, the holographic image of her so clear I felt like she was sitting just across from me instead of over two thousand kilometers away.

I laughed and said, Tell her I promise I’ll get some, but I don’t know how well they will last the five-hour trip back home.

Hen Nain was the respectful name that Ddaerans, natives like Tesni, gave my great-grandmother, and I was sitting at her large desk in her seldom-used MynyEnergy office, high above the well-maintained streets in the business district of New Hong Kong.

New Hong Kong was a sprawling city of over a million on the eastern coast of the continent Majesta, and it was the largest city on New Eden, the planet in the Paradisi System of the Andromeda Galaxy that the Founders colonized a century and a half ago after fleeing a dying Earth. The city held all the major government offices of the New Eden Council of Ten, the body that represented the ten Founding Families who led this colonization effort, and it was also the capital of Caelestis, the nation ruled by one of those Founding Families, my family, the Yus.

It was also a city I despised, even though I had lived here between the ages of eleven and sixteen, while I attended the New Hong Kong Academy, the premier institution for young Founding Family children.

Home for me now was Mynyddamore, located far to the northwest between the western foothills of the Mynyddeira Mountains and the aptly named Sapphire Sea. Mynyddamore, built on the model of an ancient Earth roundhouse, consisted of two concentric circular stone buildings with a large square building at its center, and it was home to nearly three hundred people. My own rooms, like those of my grandparents and great-grandmother, were on the top floor of the outermost four-story circular building. Each room had windows in the outer wall, as well as windows and doors onto a circular roofed walkway that overlooked the interior courtyard. The two floors below housed the hundreds of native Ddaerans who made Mynyddamore their permanent residence. The first floor provided stables for the Ddaerans’ meddalwyn herds, whose milk and fleece were processed in the dairy and spinning and weaving rooms of the one-story innermost circular building. The square building in the very center of the courtyard was the heart and soul of the community, holding its nursery, schoolrooms, kitchen, dining room, and medical center.

There was nothing like it anywhere else on New Eden, and it had been designed by my ancestor Mabel Yu to replicate the roundhouse she lived in as a child back in China…before she took the long journey through the wormhole to come to New Eden. To Mabel, it was the living symbol of her belief that the Founders from Earth and the native Ddaerans could live peacefully together.

I knew Mabel believed this, because two years ago, when I came to live at Mynyddamore while I recuperated from eye surgery, I discovered her diary. A diary that told the story of her life on the space station, the Nautilus, that orbited Earth, and then her two-year trip on the SS Nightingale, one of the ten ships that brought the Founders to New Eden. A diary that detailed the ways in which those Founders did and, more frequently, did not achieve their goal of building a new society––a society they hoped would avoid the social, economic, and environmental disasters that were killing the Earth they left behind. The diary that was the basis of the dissertation I was writing for my doctorate in history and became my excuse for staying at Mynyddamore and completing my undergraduate and graduate studies through an accelerated online program.

Because that first summer, I fell deeply in love with Mynyddamore and all the living beings within its walls, including my great-grandmother. Like me, Hen Nain first saw Mynyddamore when she was still in her teens. She came to work there as a botanist intern under Mabel Yu nearly a hundred years ago. Back then, my great-grandmother was just young Betsy Kuttner, the red-headed daughter from one of the other Founding Families, not the imposing Hen Nain who had been ruling Mynyddamore and all of the western province of Caelestis for over sixty years. She achieved this position of power because she didn’t just fall in love with Mynyddamore and the local Ddaerans; she fell in love with and married Mabel Yu’s youngest son, Michael.

This made her one of the few non-Yus to marry into this branch of the Yu Founding Family, and the reason I, her descendant, looked so different from other Yus. Something I was reminded of every time I looked into a mirror and saw my green eyes and the threads of red that wove through my own black braid.

But my hair and eye color were not the only unusual traits that I inherited from my great-grandmother. These unusual traits were one of the reasons I had been reluctant to take this trip to New Hong Kong with my grandfather, even if it was for only three days. I had so much more to learn from Hen Nain about my heritage, my telepathic powers, and my future at Mynyddamore, and much as I hated to admit it, her days were numbered.

I leaned forward towards the computer screen and said to Tesni, How has Great-grandmother been since I’ve been gone?

She’s doing well, but I left her to take a nap before dinner. She wants to be rested for your return.

Oh, no, Tesni, tell her I don’t want her to stay up for me. It might be midnight before I get back.

Hen Nain had been sleeping more and more the past few months. Tesni said it was nature’s way of easing her gradually into death. I hated even thinking about that possibility, but my great-grandmother repeatedly said that 117 years were quite long enough to have lived.

Tesni chuckled. As if your great-grandmother would listen to me, even if I am her medical advisor! Are you sure you will be all right coming back alone? Hen Nain said she could send Bron out with the other helio to pick you up tomorrow morning.

The original plan had been for me to return to Mynyddamore this evening with my grandfather. He was the reason I was even in New Hong Kong. He had asked me to come with him to attend the quarterly meeting of the Board of Directors of MynyEnergy, the company Mabel Yu’s father founded, the company that was the basis of my branch of the Yu Family’s wealth. My grandfather, who acted as my great-grandmother’s proxy on the board, wanted me to become familiar with the board and the workings of the company. That was because someday, when Hen Nain died, I would take over the position of chair as her designated heir. He told me he wanted my impression of the other board members, saying that it was always good to have another point of view.

Thankfully, the visit had been generally stress-free, particularly since my obnoxious older brother Albert, who was the Director of Resources for the company, was away on a business trip. I not only learned a lot about the inner workings of MynyEnergy, but I got a chance to do some research into the early years of the company for my dissertation. That was what I was working on when I got Tesni’s video-call. She had learned that Grandfather was called away to the New Seattle branch offices…some sort of patent issue…and that I was to return to Mynyddamore on my own this evening.

The last thing I wanted was to spend the night in my grandparents’ empty apartment, so I told Tesni, "I will be fine traveling alone. Must I remind you that while I’m not an old woman like you. I am eighteen!"

This was a common joke between us. Tesni was only two years older, but she tended to mother me. Probably my own fault for being so pathetic when we first met…scared of everything and everybody. Sometimes I worried that I hadn’t made much progress since then…given how much I initially resisted Grandfather’s suggestion I come with him to New Hong Kong. Too many bad memories of the Academy and being bullied by my older brother Albert during the holidays.

But I was a lot more grown up than I’d been two years ago, which was why I went on to say, With Betrys off to shuttle Grandfather around New Seattle, I don’t want to take Bron away from Mynyddamore. What if there was a medical emergency somewhere in the province and both of our helios were gone?

Tesni nodded approvingly, and I knew I had made the right decision.

Tesni was one of Mynyddamore’s healers who combined traditional Ddaeran medicine with the modern techniques she had gained studying for a degree at the New Beijing Gunther Medical school. About my height, five seven, and slender, she had skin that tanned in the summer and paled in the winter, short, curly, light brown hair, and warm green eyes that, even virtually, made me feel better.

Ddaerans came in every size and shape and color, as had the Founders who came here from Earth. So, on the surface, you really couldn’t tell the difference between the two groups. Except for the eyes. I hadn’t yet met a native Ddaeran with the epicanthic folds of a Yu or Nakata Founder descendent, and very few Founders or their descendants had green eyes, which seemed to be Ddaerans’ dominant eye color.

No one knew why Ddaerans and the humans who traveled here from Earth were almost identical in their DNA or why only Ddaerans, or those who were part Ddaeran, such as myself, were the only ones who developed telepathy. All I knew was that after a lifetime of living among Yus and other members of the Founding Families, and feeling like a freak who didn’t belong, discovering the secret of my Ddaeran genes and developing my telepathic abilities changed my life. Suddenly, I had family and friends who accepted me for who I was…so I could accept myself, and Tesni played a key role in that transformation.

Tesni interrupted that thought and said, I’ve got to sign off, but Eurig just came in, so I will let you say hello first. See you tonight.

Eurig appeared in the holographic image, putting one of his skinny arms around Tesni’s neck and making his usual chuffing sounds. He had round black eyes, set in the upside down triangle of black fur that encompassed his short muzzle, and his ears, of the same black fur, nestled like parenthesis in the golden fur of the rest of his round head. Somehow he managed to look both wise and merry at the same time.

Golden-furred gwynddoeths like Eurig were one of several sentient species on New Eden, which meant they were also able to communicate telepathically with Ddaerans—not that any New Eden scientists would admit that fact. I assumed that over the millennia, gwynddoeths, like the wolf-like llynogs, had developed a special bond with Ddaerans through that shared telepathy.

Eurig was the first to recognize my own talents when I arrived at Mynyddamore, and for some reason, he immediately chose to be my special companion. While he worked with Tesni in the clinic during the day, he spent all the rest of his time with me, even sleeping at the foot of my bed. His commitment to me was so great that he and his partner, who was a permanent member of one of the fishing fleet’s crew, had decided to let Tesni foster their daughter, Eilwen.

I had to admit that leaving Eurig for the three-day trip to New Hong Kong had been very difficult. I said, I’ve missed you, Eurig! I hope you and your daughter Eilwen have been well.

As I had been doing with Tesni, I spoke in Ddaeran, having gotten quite good at the dialect spoken in western Caelestis. In fact, it had been odd to shift to English, the universal language of New Eden citizens, while I was in New Hong Kong. I knew Eurig would understand me, since he had command of quite a large vocabulary of Ddaeran words.

He nodded vigorously and then shrugged, and I belatedly realized that since he didn’t have the ability to speak orally, he really couldn’t answer me without our usual telepathic connection. It was as if he had suddenly become mute.

I hadn’t thought about this when I was talking with Tesni because I was used to speaking out loud with her. I still wasn’t as expert as I could be at processing the blend of words and emotions that went into really effective telepathic communication, so it was just easier in casual conversation with her or Hen Nain to supplement the telepathy with human speech.

But that wasn’t possible with Eurig. So, while I usually spoke out loud to him, his main method of responding was to send me a medley of emotions and images in addition to his thoughts, which were in a sort of Ddaeran short hand. But this afternoon, all I could do was guess at what he was thinking and feeling by looking at his expressive face, which seemed sad to me. Perhaps because he had come to the same realization I had––telepathy didn’t work over the Net, no matter how clear the signal.

I had the rare talent of being able to communicate over distances––most Ddaerans could only communicate telepathically when they were in close physical proximity––but I had never been able to send or receive at a distance greater than twenty or so kilometers, certainly not the two thousand or more kilometers that separated me from Eurig right now. So I shrugged in turn and sent out my warmest thoughts, hoping that he could at least read my feelings in my body language.

I couldn’t ignore the irony that one of the key reasons I resisted coming to New Hong Kong was my fear I wouldn’t be able to tune out the thoughts of all the people living here, something that had made my life at the Academy a nightmare. But now when I really wanted to be able to hear Eurig, I couldn’t.

Tesni and Hen Nain had been teaching me the techniques to control my abilities, including using the mental image of the Mynyddamore gates closing to shut off the thoughts of others. And I was getting better. At the board meetings over the past three days, I had been able to selectively turn on and off my ability to hear the thoughts of the people in the meeting room. And I got better at distinguishing between the thought patterns of each board member.

What I wasn’t so good at was controlling my own thoughts. When I was upset, I tended to involuntarily broadcast my emotions for quite a distance. Probably most of the Ddaerans at Mynyddamore had heard my initial resistance to Grandfather’s request I come with him to New Hong Kong. Very embarrassing.

I once asked Grandfather why it was so difficult for me to do what any Ddaeran child could do by the time they were four. He explained that since most Ddaerans couldn’t communicate telepathically over distances, except with their closest relatives, it was usually an infant’s parents or siblings who were inconvenienced by their random thoughts and strong emotions.

He had said, Rather like any parent whose child is going through the ‘terrible twos,’ there is a strong motivation on the part of family members to train a child to control when and how they project their thoughts and emotions, as well as teach them not to listen in to the thoughts of others without permission.

So there it was. I might be eighteen. But in terms of telepathic abilities, I was closer to a two year old. Thank goodness the Ddaerans at Mynyddamore were a tolerant bunch that actually seemed pleased at my efforts to master my talents. And Eurig was the most tolerant of all of them.

So I blew him a kiss and told him I couldn’t wait to see him. Then I signed off, eager to wrap up the work I’d been doing when Tesni called so I could go back to my grandparents’ apartment, pack, and order the car to take me to the helioport to start my journey home.

CHAPTER THREE

I’m sorry to interrupt, Miss Yu, but your brother wished to see you before you left.

Albert, ten years my senior and my parents’ pride and joy, strode into the office, giving my Grandfather’s administrative assistant, Camilla Dai, one of his charming smiles.

He said, Miss Dai, be a dear and make sure no one interrupts us. I have some very pressing business with my little sister.

As soon as she closed the door behind him, I saw his smile blink out and felt my mind assaulted by a bolt of white-hot fury. Without thinking, I imagined the heavy eastern gate of Mynyddamore slamming closed, bringing me enough relief so that I could begin to process his words.

Where’s Grandfather? he barked out. "I just got back in town, and I need to speak to him. Miss Dai said she didn’t know how best to reach him—probably forgot. She must be a hundred. I don’t know why she’s still working here."

Grandfather’s in New Seattle.

"I know that. What hotel is he staying in? For some reason, he didn’t answer when I messaged him directly."

I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.

I hated that my voice quavered. For as long as I could remember, my brother treated me like I was some idiot put on the planet for the sole purpose of irritating him. My old nurse once told me that he resented me because when I was born, he was sent off to the Academy a year early. But that never made sense, since he thrived at school…unlike me. He graduated first in his class, got into Chandler U, the best university on the planet, graduated with degrees in business and physical engineering, and started a meteoric rise in the family firm, becoming two years ago, at the age of twenty-seven, MynyEnergy’s Director of Resources.

As far as I could see, I had never been a threat to him. My parents constantly praised him and gave him anything he wanted. Yet I once heard him think how much he wished I had never been born. That was before I understood my telepathic abilities, so at the time I thought I was hearing things. Now I knew I was hearing the truth.

Albert was a good thirty centimeters taller than I was, having inherited his height from Grandfather. But, unlike my grandfather, he had broad shoulders that I knew he had worked hard to achieve through a carefully designed daily workout regimen. I also knew that women found the chiseled planes of his face and his obsidian-black eyes handsome, both traits inherited from our mother. The only bit of family resemblance I ever saw between the two of us lay in the slight curl of his thick, black, carefully coifed hair…no doubt another reason women found him, in his words, yummy, if Albert’s bragging about his sexual conquests could be believed.

Today he was dressed in a conservative dark navy suit with what I assumed was the current fashion of tight pants and lapel-less jacket, plus his trademark buttoned-down shirt with starched collar and cuffs that matched the blinding whiteness of his teeth. I would have felt more confident if he’d shown up in one of his silly weekend outfits based on some old Earth fashion trend. Today, he just looked the way he was acting, like an arrogant, cutthroat businessman.

While I looked at him apprehensively, he paced around my great-grandmother’s office, looking with apparent disgust at the furnishings. Even though Hen Nain had not been here for decades, the office did reflect her strong personality. The desk, built out of a slab of reclaimed lumber from a pincdalen tree, dominated the room, and the comfortable chairs arranged around a table with an elaborate ceremonial tea set were upholstered in brightly died meddalwyn wool. Large screens adorned the walls, each showing a beautiful view of her beloved