Hope for Mercy

By Bowen Greenwood

One-time lovers clash in an apocalyptic battle for the soul of Human Space. The cost of winning may be more than Langston Wheeler ever imagined.

Once, telepaths called Archons almost wiped out humankind. Long after that war, a brotherhood called the Gentle Hand worked to keep it from happening again. They failed. The Archons are back. Mind control is back. All of Human Space is at war, and an Archon ship laden with their deadliest soldiers bears down on the Gentle Hands’ home.

Langston Wheeler, a Gentle Hand with a tortured past, leads what’s left of his order. The Exile War has left them battered and desperate, without the numbers to fight this new threat. Worse, almost none of them believe in Langston, because he can’t keep his most dangerous secret: He’s in love with the woman who leads their enemy.

Cleo Sable, once a Gentle Hand, now Ruler of the Archons, commands the force bearing down on Wheeler and his allies. Thousands of powerful telepaths ride with her. She wants more than victory in the Exile War. She wants justice for everything Langston cost her.

When they meet in a final, apocalyptic battle for the soul of Human Space, Cleo has a mind-bending surprise for Langston. The cost of saving everything he loves may be higher than he ever imagined.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bowen Greenwood
• Release date: Nov 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005359089

Bowen Greenwood

Bowen Greenwood is an Amazon charts bestselling author of thrillers and science fiction. His experience as a police beat reporter and as a court clerk inform his thrillers. His lifelong love of science fiction and fantasy led to the Exile War series.

Book preview

CHAPTER

ONE

Felicitas Corporation is harboring a war criminal.

The words came from a virtual reality stream projected into the middle of the room. It was going out to every comm on Felicitas. The woman in the stream wore black from her head to her combat boots. Cargo pants and fatigues bulged with a collection of pockets.

A bandana shrouded her face, but there was no doubt who she was.

Legs like gently curving artwork led into the elegant sweeps and curves of a woman’s figure. A face of delicate lines rose to deep blue eyes. And above them …

Golden hair and a braid down past her neck.

I am Cleopatra Sable, Ruler of Rulers of the Archon Dominion.

She held herself straight as a yardstick, seeming to look down her nose at the people assembled to watch her message. Even those who were taller than her felt small under that gaze.

Her VR stream projection said, "The First Elder of the Gentle Hand, Langston Wheeler, used a child soldier in battle.

"I have come to bring him to justice, and the apocalypse itself comes with me. Aboard my vessel are more than two thousand Archons, each one skilled in mind control, each one a veteran of telepathic combat. We also carry more pig-human hybrids than have been dropped on any human civilization since the start of the war. This force will destroy Felicitas. Worse. This force will enslave Felicitas.

"You need never see them, though. Surrender the war criminal Wheeler. If you do, this army will never touch Felicitan soil.

"Langston Wheeler sent a fifteen-year-old girl to her death at Halving Beach. In all the chronicles of human civilization, sending minor children to war has always been a heinous crime. Warlords who did it were hauled before tribunals for the civilized peoples of humanity to administer the harshest justice.

"I call for the same for Wheeler. He must stand trial for the war crime of sending a child soldier to battle. Wheeler is all we want from Felicitas. Once we have him, the Archons will leave this world in peace.

Surrender him to us for justice, she said.

Or we will take him.

Langston Wheeler stood watching her, listening to her accusation. At least, he started out standing. At the words ‘sent a fifteen-year-old girl to her death,’ though, he collapsed backward, barely catching the chair behind him, nearly tipping over onto the ground.

Before his will to stand collapsed, Wheeler stood six feet, four inches tall with pitch black hair and dark eyes. Wearing the tan uniform of a Gentle Hand, with its collar brushing his chin, he gave every impression of a penitent monastic when he slumped to the chair and dropped his chin into his hands.

Wheeler sat, along with the senior leaders of the war effort, in the middle of their field headquarters. It was a private home whose owners had long since evacuated as the battle for Felicitas raged. Still images of popular musicians decorated the walls. Limited VR streams of waterfalls and other outdoor locations played in corners. Couches, chairs, and other seating occupied one room, a long dining table another.

Sable’s VR stream flickered out, but the bleak mask of pain remained on Wheeler’s face.

Cleo.

A glittering party among the wealthy, where she had come without her customary braid, and a golden waterfall of hair had framed a soft face and wry smile. They had danced, and their playful banter had led to a passionate embrace and so much more.

Cleo.

A walk in the forest at night, hand in hand, sharing secrets.

Cleo.

The Fall of the Yard. Bitter rain. Screaming at each other from opposite sides of the war.

Cleo.

Save my children, Langston. Hal and Lena live, or you die.

Cleo.

Her daughter Lena was dead.

General Krane, commanding officer of the Cetian Marines, said, An FTL ship just wormholed in, out past the heliopause. That stream arrived only seconds behind the radiation. She’s on her way here.

Wheeler’s head still held the memory of the stream, perfect as a cut diamond: her eyes bluer than the bottom of the ocean and just as deep. The face of a warrior. The black mask of an Archon.

War had returned to Human Space. The mind controlling telepaths who had called themselves Archons were back from exile. With them came the horrifying pig-human hybrids they had used as soldiers in the last war.

Their first strike had fallen like a sledgehammer on the planet Felicitas, conquering in mere days a world that had forgotten the concept of conquest.

The second strike had fallen on Earth itself, wiping out the interplanetary government known as the Union of Human Space. Alongside the Union, Servants Yard had collapsed in the face of the assault. The telepaths who rejected mind control, who chose to serve and never to rule, collapsed with it and fled the homeworld.

Now, Langston Wheeler was nearly all that remained of the Gentle Hand and their ethic of service and humility. Together with General Tsaiden Krane, his Cetian Marines, and Tia Dynn, the Chief Executive Officer of Felicitas, they had taken the war to the other side. They had invaded Felicitas from orbit to set it free from the Exiles.

They were winning. With one continent fully liberated and the other almost entirely freed, only recapturing the capital city remained before them. The Marines, together with a new army of Felicitan citizens recruited since the invasion, encircled Prosper City.

The outcome was inevitable. Langston and his allies would win this planet back. Before they could, though, months of brutal house to house fighting remained before them.

But Cleo Sable arriving in the system changed the entire course of the war.

Until he went to war, he had never known sunshine. The equivalent on his home planet was dim, cool, feeble, unhealthy. It took invasion and conquest to give him a taste of what the rest of Human Space took for granted: warmth on his face. No chill in his bones. Plentiful water. Easy crops.

He liked this planet. He was in no hurry to give it up.

Rontak watched the stream from this Sable person, frowning. He didn’t know this woman who called herself Ruler of Rulers. He didn’t know Langston Wheeler. He certainly didn’t know why he should abide by this promise to leave Felicitas in peace. All he knew was that the Return had not gone anything like he had expected—anything like he was promised.

He was one of the generations of Archons who had been born in exile on the planet Gehenna. He knew the history of the injustice his kind had suffered from the Gentle Hand. Once Rontak’s people had been born to rule, with the power to take chaotic humanity and mold it into order. They called themselves Archons—those who rule. The inborn ability to touch the quantum entanglements gave them the capacity to read minds, control the elements, and bend human brains to their will.

The Gentle Hand had rejected all that. They threw Rontak’s ancestors into unmapped deep space, exiling them to a cold world with a weak star. They stranded them without the first inkling of the technology that made Faster Than Light travel possible—with no way home.

In its place, the Exiles had had only a prophecy. The oldest ancestors, the first to arrive on Gehenna, taught their children that there was a plan, that someday they would return to the warm worlds with the bright suns, that exile was not forever. The ancestors taught their children, and they taught theirs, that someday they would rule again. Someday, they would Return.

It had all come true. They did Return. They lived again on a warm world orbiting a beautiful yellow star. That, however, was the end of the resemblance between reality and prophecy.

Everyone who had ever ranked above him since the Return was dead. The life of everyone who had taken the title of Ruler had been claimed by the war. Rontak’s life had narrowed down to defeat after defeat before the advancing forces of the Gentle Hand, and the two men who he used to call Ruler had both died in that conflict.

So, this new Ruler of Rulers? Maybe she was what she claimed. Or maybe she would die like the rest. One way or another, simply asserting the title was no cause for Rontak to obey her.

His lips slid into a mirthless grin. They were Archons, after all. They lived by the rule of taking what you wanted. If this so-called Ruler of Rulers wanted him to give up Felicitas, let her come and take it.

There’s obviously no need to fight with her about this, Langston said. I’ll go. I’ll go happily.

General Krane shook his head indignantly. You can’t do this, Wheeler of the Union. It’s not right. You ordered Sable’s daughter to stay on the ship. I was there. It’s not your fault that she stowed away down to the planet.

But it’s my fault she was on the ship in the first place. If I hadn’t assigned her to relay messages to and from the bridge crew, she would have been left behind on Tau Ceti with the other children.

You and Richter of the Union made that call, Wheeler. You didn’t make it alone. And you did it because she wanted to come. You are not guilty of the charges against you.

I was the First Elder, Wheeler replied. She died on my watch. I take responsibility. Tsaiden, you ought to know better than anyone the burden that comes with command.

The General frowned. He obviously did not like being outargued.

Tia Dynn’s eyes had been moving back and forth between Wheeler and Krane as each spoke. He knew her well enough to expect some input, and she did not disappoint.

"Lang, I understand where you’re coming from here. I know where the buck stops too. But that woman is overstating the case. You and Richter may have been wrong about choosing to let the girl on the ship, but there’s a vast distance between that questionable decision and being a ‘war criminal.’

The strongest possible case that wom— argh. The strongest possible case Sable can make is that you allowed her teenage daughter to get close enough to danger that the girl’s own impetuousness could get her killed. That’s a serious matter between the two of you. I don’t have children, but if I did, I think I’d want to kill you too. That doesn’t make it a war crime, though. ‘Used a child soldier in battle’ is overstating what happened.

Tia’s objective evaluation made him feel far worse than Cleo’s charge did. It was one thing to put his chest forward and nobly take responsibility. That felt almost good. It was quite another thing to hear someone who knew him so well tell him it really was his fault.

He had been telling himself that since Lena died. He just hadn’t been prepared to hear it from Tia.

"Call it