Pawns

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Book excerpt

Chapter One

Richard’s dead.

Maeve blinked back tears as the Talon powered through Earth’s atmosphere. They’d evaded the Jegg’s ground-based weapons, but that was merely the first line of defense.

Once they hit open space, their problems increased exponentially. She didn’t have to look at the sensors to confirm the Jegg ships were following them. The Talon was the first Earth ship to be airborne in five years. Even though the hull was black and silver, it may as well have been pink and yellow with a huge bull’s-eye painted on it.

For eighteen months, they’d planned this mission. With the help of his contacts in the Underground, Richard not only restored a junked Space Corps cargo ship but somehow combined a Jegg quantigraphic rift drive with a Terran supralight engine. Two completely different technologies, and he miraculously got them to speak the same language. This brilliant engineer, the man she fell in love and had a son with, was the key factor in the Underground’s last-ditch effort to find a way to escape the alien conquerors who had subjugated the human race.

They’d celebrated last night, the ten of them: Maeve, Richard, their fourteen-year-old son Davin, Richard’s protégé Gaspar, and the entire team that toiled in utmost secrecy to get this bucket off the ground. The mood was ebullient, as it seemed their mission would finally commence.

Mission! Maeve snorted as the ship burst through the stratosphere and out into open space. A Hail Mary is what it is. We’re hanging our last hope on the word of a shimmering alien being and praying there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Brushing strands of her purple, shoulder-length hair away from her face, she cast a sidelong glance at the copilot’s chair. Seeing its emptiness, a tear escaped her violet eyes.

Richard’s dead.

My husband is dead.

So are Manny, Kacy, Calvin, Ji-Yan, Suri, and Mahesh.

She chided herself. Now was not the time for these thoughts. They threw her adrenaline rush out of whack and disrupted the concentration she badly needed right now. There were still three lives to save, including her own. Fighting down her emotions, she called upon the piloting skills she spent fifteen years in the Space Corps sharpening.

Jegg fighters were nearly impossible to detect unless they were right in front of you, one of the reasons the Terran Defense Forces had been so helpless against them. Gaspar increased the sensors’ capabilities just enough for them to know fighters were in pursuit. Judging from the number of explosions detonating near the ship, causing it to rock back and forth like a kayak on white-water rapids, there had to be at least three of them.

Regaining her focus, Maeve banked sharply to the right and fired the sublight thrusters, making a beeline for the Asteroid Belt. Once they cleared that, and the Jegg dampening field that effectively rendered supralight technology inoperable, they could engage their makeshift QRD and be out of the Terran system in the blink of an eye.

The pursuing Jegg fighters increased their speed. They were gaining.

Maeve flipped a switch on her panel. “Gaspar!” she shouted. “I don’t think they’re gonna let us go without a fight!”

“Oh, ya think?” came a frazzled voice from the other end of the intercom.

“Any ideas?” Maeve asked. She pushed the steering column forward a few inches, and the Talon increased its speed. The vibrations intensified, as if the ship was about to fly apart at the seams.

“Hold on a sec,” Gaspar said, pausing briefly. “I’ve got four canisters of D34Z ready to jettison. Let me know when to detonate. Maybe we can take a few of ‘em out.”

She checked the sensors, which indicated five Jegg fighters in hot pursuit. “Stand by!”

The Belt loomed in front of them, millions of rocks that had floated in space between Mars and Jupiter for eons. A few more seconds, and they could lose themselves within it. Or die a fiery death.

Davin burst through the cockpit door, threw himself into the copilot’s chair, and fastened his safety belt. “Anytime you want to get us out of here, Mom . . .” Sweat and grime caked his freckled face and curly red hair, but his eyes shone with fierce determination.

She returned her gaze to the viewport, gripping her controls even tighter. “Don’t start, kiddo, we’re in some deep-level shite here. Where’ve you been?”

“Helping Gaspar load the canisters into the airlock. Let’s blow this pop stand and go, okay?”

“Roger that,” she said as another explosion rocked the ship. Into the intercom, she yelled, “G! Eject the first three canisters . . . now!”

The sound of a metal hatch clanging open echoed through the ship, followed by a whoosh of compressed air as three large, yellow containers shot from the airlock, one after the other. She followed their trajectories on the scanner, watching as the Jegg fighters pressed in.

“Detonate on my mark!”

Seconds ticked off as the enemy ships drew ever closer.

“Mark!”

A huge explosion violently rocked the Talon again. A control panel behind Davin sparked and began to smoke. He unhooked himself, leaped out of the chair, grabbed a fire extinguisher, and sprayed the panel with fire-suppressing foam.

Maeve checked her scanner again. Where before there were five faint blips following them, there were now only three, and one was falling behind, obviously crippled.

She allowed herself a smile. “Three down! Well done, G!”

“Major?” came Gaspar’s voice, laced with desperation. “We have a big problem!”

“What now?”

“The quantigraphic rift drive is offline! That last explosion blew the containment field!”

Oh, shite. Not good. “Can you restore it?”

“Assuming the manifold stabilizer isn’t fried, yes.”

Maeve gulped. “Be careful, G.”

“You got it. Give me two minutes.”

“No promises.” Maeve executed a barrel-roll, evading the maelstrom of rocks that seemed to fill nearly every square inch of the window. The two remaining Jegg fighters were still right behind them, firing in a continuous barrage.

Just then, a crazy idea came to her. “Dav, is that fourth canister ready to go?”

Davin, back in his chair, checked the panel in front of him. “Locked and loaded.”

“Perfect!” She pulled back on the controls, banking upward and narrowly missing a huge, jagged asteroid. It was impossible, but Maeve swore she felt the wind of it going by.

One of the pursuing fighters wasn’t so lucky. It tried to veer off at the last second, but it was too late. The asteroid clipped its starboard thruster, and it spun out of control until it crashed in a fiery conflagration on another enormous rock.

“One more down!” yelled Davin.

The last remaining fighter bore down on them, firing salvo after salvo. The Talon rocked again, and sparks poured from another control panel.

Maeve activated the intercom again. “G, we gotta go! Is the containment field back up?”

“Yeah!” came Gaspar’s voice. “Thirty seconds to power up the jump!”

“Okay, here’s what’s gonna happen,” Maeve instructed, banking hard left again. “We eject the final canister, and detonate it at point-blank range just as we make the jump.”

“Are you crazy?” Gaspar sounded frantic. “The hull’s already been weakened! You detonate that close, it’ll tear right through us!”

Maeve sighed. “The Jegg’s long-range scanners will think we were destroyed. It’s our only hope right now.”

“Major –”

“No time, G! Prepare to eject! Twenty-second countdown till jump, mark! Get yourself to safety!”

“On my way,” he said, and the intercom cut off.

Maeve and Davin both held their breath.

The Talon twirled around another flying asteroid. They’d cleared the Belt.

“Eject!”

Another clang, followed by another whoosh.

Maeve’s thumb hovered over a button that read ‘QRD – Engage’.

“Detonate!” she shouted.

The screen displaying the ship’s rear sensor array flashed fiery orange and red.

Half a second later, Maeve pressed the button. “Mark! Hang on, Dav!”

A whir of built-up energy filled their ears as the quantigraphic rift drive powered up. The control panel on Maeve’s left erupted in a shower of sparks, and she felt an intense burning sensation on her arm.

Her mouth opened in a silent scream as an energy field enveloped the Talon.

Chapter Two

The midday sun hung high in the cerulean Elystran sky, and the view was magnificent. Kelia shrugged her kova-leather satchel off her shoulder and took a long, quenching sip from her water-skin. She’d worked up quite a thirst during the hour-long walk from her village to this spot. She stood upon a prominent outcropping of rock, overlooking the vast Praskian Desert that stretched out between the Ixtrayan Plateau and the distant Kaberian Mountains. Over her thirty-six years, she’d visited this spot many times, but never with such a profound sense of purpose as today.

This outcropping marked the western edge of the Ixtrayu’s territory, which ran from Lake Barix in the southern range of the Kaberian Mountains through the large expanse of forest north of the Plateau the Ixtrayu called home. Not for the first time, Kelia smiled at the irony that this part of Elystra belonged to a tribe of women, and not a single one of the distant kingdoms, ruled for millennia by men, even knew of their existence.

Arantha has been good to us, she thought. Eight centuries, she’s kept us safe and hidden.

She took a deep breath of the warm, dry air and sat down in the shade of a large huxa tree that grew a few yards from the edge of the overlook. Its trunk was thick and its bark hardened to withstand the desert climate, but it seemed to welcome her presence like an old friend. She absently moved a tress of her long, dark brown hair over her left shoulder, where it hung past her breasts. She took a moment to admire the intricate braid her aunt, Liana, had woven for her, and how beautifully it complemented her loose-fitting reddish-brown robe.

Her hand then moved to the lump of lustrous brown metal that hung from the loose leather string around her neck. The necklace had been crafted by her daughter Nyla when she was only six years old. It consisted of six wooden beads strung together, three on either side of the tiny piece of metal that hung between it. Touching its smooth surface brought forth memories of her mother, as it had been Onara’s final gift to her before her death.

Even though her powers of divination paled in comparison to those of her Onara, she was still able to discern much from the images that flashed through her mind during her most recent consultation. Since assuming the mantle of Protectress, she’d hoped each consultation would reveal the reason Onara had decreed a halt to the Sojourns; but every time, Arantha chose to keep that knowledge to herself. Since her mother’s death, not a single Sojourn had been taken, and therefore, not a single daughter had been born to the Ixtrayu. Kelia’s people pleaded with her, wanting answers she couldn’t provide.

For the last thirteen years, her visions had been unremarkable––frustratingly so. That morning, however, Arantha finally showed her something new.

She saw, clear as the waters of the river Ix, an image in her mind of this exact spot. She felt the image pull at her, as if her very essence was being drawn here. She knew there was something of grave importance that Arantha wanted her to see. Liana packed a satchel with provisions for Kelia, who set off from the village within two hours of having her vision. The Council suggested she not travel unaccompanied, but Kelia insisted she go alone. What Arantha had in store for her was for her eyes and no one else’s.

She opened her satchel and surveyed its contents: several pieces of riverfruit, a few strips of dried kova meat, a loaf of holm-grain bread, and two extra skins of water. Liana had even included several sachets of jingal-root tea and a small metal kettle for steeping. As an Elemental Wielder, she didn’t need a fire to get water to boil; she could not only manipulate water’s physical form but also its temperature. She knew she would need the tea to help her stay awake and alert, since she had no idea how long Arantha would require her to keep watch.

Kelia nestled back against the trunk of the tree. Her dark brown eyes scanned the barren wasteland that lay spread out before her, searching for anything out of the ordinary. She felt a faint tingle of excitement as she wondered what Arantha had brought her there to behold.

Book Details

AUTHOR NAME: Patrick Hodges

BOOK TITLE: Pawns (The Wielders of Arantha Book 1)

GENRE: Science Fiction

PAGE COUNT: 405

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