Notice!

Well, it’s taken me a lot time to think this through.  And in fact being sick and unable to write the posts for a few weeks helped to solidify my decision.

I’m going to put this blog on hold for a while.  Perhaps until I can get book one published.  The last 9 months have been incredible: I’ve learnt how to write quickly and efficiently, I’ve learnt the discipline of having a defined time target in which to work, I’ve fleshed out a bunch of background stories and therefore made my particular important characters more fleshy.. which is always good, and as a consequence of this blog storyline I’ve expanded upon a section of planning for book three in a direction I hadn’t even thought of and solved many of the problems I was having with book three.  It’s been great.  However, I need to be realistic.  I’ve done very little other writing, so much so I haven’t even had the time to finish my latest publisher submission which I was started a few months before I started the blog.  I haven’t started writing book three, and barely done the necessary editing for book two.  This was supposed to be an aside… a fun hobby thing to do in my spare time… but insted it turned into the main event.  Which was of course awesome for me because I needed a fresh view to write from for a little while.  But I have so little excess energy and I must spend those energy spoons on the most important things.. and that is getting published.  I do fully intend on coming back to the blog storyline… I have evil evil plans for Taelin… which I still intend on writing, I just, have to get real and spend my spoons wisely.

Anyway, people are welcome to read and nag me to write, but as of 27 June 2009, I’m going to have to put a pause on the blog for a few months.. at least until I can get that latest publisher submission completed and perhaps a good skeleton draft for book three.

Eventually, when I get the time to start properly on the website, I will move this entire blog story over onto the website.. but that’ll be a slow project, and I’ll put up a notice for that when it happens.

Anyway, *bows modestly* Ara nee tasa
(this is basically the same as “Namaste”.. leave a comment saying as much if you’d like me to add a literal translation of this conlang phrase).

 

Chapter One, Scene 3 (6June09)

Rahan Aria
* 3 *
(17 Milana 3003)

There was a deep sense of tension inside Tae and it wasn’t just the anxiety in the guard seated nearby.  The room was too crisp and clean, almost suffocatingly so.  Perfect clean white walls, crisp navy colored carpet and unmarked light wood doorframes and skirting boards.  It was all perfect and so new feeling, as if no one lived or worked there or as if someone came through and cleaned the entire house from top to bottom twice a day.  Perhaps they even redecorated every few months to keep that crisp new unused feeling.  It made him very itchy.  He couldn’t have worked comfortably in such a room.

Tae looked down and sideways at the guard, Rahan, eyeing him warily. The man was very agitated, which made Tae a more than a little nervous.  That agitation could mean he was going to make the situation more complicated and the morning had already been long from his time in the catacombs.  He was already tired and sore, and certainly didn’t want the afternoon to become complicated either.

“Please…”  The man looked at him distraughtly.  “She could be… we have to stop it!”
Taelin frowned at the man.  “What are you talking about?”

Rahan looked at the hands in his lap, defeat and desperation pulsing around him.
“There are these two Agents.  For the last couple of months, on the seventeenth, they bring a new woman here and stay a week.  She never comes out until the end but when she does she looks beaten and terribly hurt…  and… not even five minutes before you arrived they checked in with another one… they could be…” His voice trailed off as he continued staring down at his hands.

“Why don’t you tell your superiors?”
His gray eyes were edged with tears when he looked up at Taelin again.  “They’re A0.  They ARE my superiors.”

“Can you show me upstairs without turning the security on?”  Taelin indicated the laptop in front of them with one hand.

Leaning forward, the man spoke fast as he typed.  “I should be able to get into the camera feed direct.  The security system connects to the camera feed but they are on separate power systems so turning one on without the other should be possible…”

Taelin knew a little about security systems and their computer interfaces, but he was impressed and surprised at how skilled this guard was.  Perhaps he was a Computer Talent.  Although, if he was a Talent he’d have to be high rated because he was much quicker than Hiran and she had been rated at 7/10.

“…They’ve manually shut down the camera feed in the bedroom of the apartment, but… I can probably turn on the one in the living area… ah… there you go!”

Sidestepping around and behind Rahan’s chair Taelin looked over his shoulder at the screen.  It was a small living space, door and white kitchenette on the left, plain table and chairs in the center of the screen and he could see the edge of a couch on the far right.  The place was a mess: chairs knocked over, bagged food spilling out onto the floor and coats lay randomly around the room.

Taelin frowned.  “Is there any sound?”
At that moment a dim distressed yell sounded from the laptop speakers and in his shock he swore quietly under his breath.  “Soth’en!”

Tae reached out to his friend’s mind in a nearby room.  “Nama!” He let his distress seep into his mental tone.
“What’s wrong?”
“Someone’s being attacked upstairs.  I’m going up there with the guard.  Maybe you could send Arlan out here to keep watch?”
“Sure.  Just be careful.”
“Always.”

Taelin looked sideways at the gray eyed man and nodded.  “Ok.  Unlock just that one door and you’re coming upstairs with me.”
The dark haired man tapped quickly on the keyboard.  “Ok, done.”

Rahan stood and looked sideways at Tae with a touch of amusement in his gray eyes.
“I don’t suppose I can have my weapon back?”
Taelin suppressed a chuckle as he shook his head.  “Come on.”

He followed the young man through a door and into a dim hallway.  In front of them, stairs led up and around to the left to the second floor.  Left and right of the stairs there were closed doors, behind which he assumed the others were packing up supplies to take back to base, hopefully his new base.

Rahan ran up two steps at a time and Tae followed him.  There wasn’t time to see much of the cramped stairwell above because Rahan turned at the top of the stairs and barged in through a door on the right.

The room through the door was the same mess that he’d seen on the camera feed with a kitchen left of the door, a small dining area in front of it and a sitting area to the right with stuff flung around the room.  Curtains had been pulled opposite to the door, and made the room fairly dark.

To their far right next to the sitting area was an open door and through it under the sound of running water came the noises and yelling consistent with a struggle.  Rahan stepped decisively over the mess, towards the door.  Tae followed the guard into a very cramped bathroom area.  The shower was running in the bathroom, Tae turned to secure who ever was in the shower as the guard strode through to the next room.  Over the sounds of the running shower Taelin heard the guard yelling.

The bathroom was very small, but seemed to have a shower, sink and toilet all cramped into a couple of square meters of space.  To his left the shower suddenly shut off and a naked man stepped out of it into the bathroom.  Tae lifted his weapon and on seeing him the blond-haired man calmly picked up a nearby towel from the floor and wrapped it around his waist.  Tae couldn’t sense anything from the man only an odd emotional iciness, which reminded him eerily of Cheetah.  His instinct told him that he would need to keep a very close eye on this man.

“Get in there.”  Tae growled indicating the second room with a flick of his weapon.  The man in the towel nodded slowly and did as he was told.

When Tae entered the small bedroom behind the Agent he discovered a second man holding down a young woman on the bed.  The woman stared sideways at him; her big round gray eyes were wide with terror and she was crying.

“GET off her!”  Rahan stood on the other side of the bed, his voice was very angry.

As he stared in surprise at woman on the bed, Tae became aware that the man from the shower had crept backwards out of Taelin’s sight with his back against the right hand wall.  Turning his head slightly Tae watched in his peripheral vision as the man slowly leant over to pick something up from the ground.  Tae glanced down and saw a gun in amongst some discarded clothes.

Turning swiftly to aim Tae fired his gun.  With a slight choking sound the man in the towel was pushed sideways along the wall and down to the ground by the impact of the bullet.

Tae picked up the weapon on the floor and slipped it into calmly into his jacket pocket next to the guard’s gun.  Facing the remaining man on the bed with a glare, Tae lifted his weapon again.

“Get off her.  Now.”  His voice was quiet but deliberately hostile.  The man didn’t move, instead he returned Tae’s glare over one shoulder with icy blue eyes.
“Do you even know who I am?”  His voice dripped with indignant hostility.  “I could get you and your friend here demoted and sent to Rona for the rest of your miserable lives.  I order you both to leave this room.”
Tae kept his voice quiet but hostile.  “I’m a Rebel; you can’t demote me.  Now, get off her before you join your friend in the Great Darkness.”

The moment she was able to the woman struggled out from under her attacker, scrambling off the bed and running out of the room past Tae in a cloud of abject terror and panic.

“Rahan, can you go after her and stop her leaving?  My friend downstairs won’t know what’s happened and might shoot her.  We’ll follow close behind so no trying anything, ok?”
The young man nodded and turned to follow the distraught woman out of the tiny apartment.  Tae glared at the ice-eyed man.  “Follow the guard downstairs to the parlor.  If you try anything it will be my pleasure to shot you.  Got that?”

 

Sorry…

I’m very sorry folks, I seem to have caught a winter bug that’s going around and I just haven’t had the energy or functioning brain to get this weeks post done to a nearly high enough standard to post.  And worst still I am also going away in two days for a week to help my mother with a house moving expedition.  Problem being that my mum doesn’t have the internet beyond a dodgy dialup connection.  I’ll do my best, but I may not be able to post this or next weeks post until the 15 June when I come back.  I’ll see what I can do before I go, but it depends on how I’m feeling.

 

Chapter One – Rahan Aria (30May09)

* 2 *
(17 Milana 3003)

Tae knelt undercover behind some square cut bushes and looked up across a road at the small two story wooden house.  It looked like a house, just a normal two story turn of the century white wooden house.

It wasn’t as if Tae had never been on a supply run.  He was fully aware that the Agency used specific buildings for supply depots because they looked like other things.  But often those buildings had tell-tale signs such as obvious security guards and cameras, fences, commercial satellite dishes, and other signs of non-residential habitation.  But this place looked like a real house with no obvious external signs of it being an Agency supply depot.  There was even a small covered balcony with a swinging chair on it, for Founders sakes!

Tae reached out mentally to Nama.  “Nama, are you sure…?”
His friend’s mental voice sounded mildly irritated.  “Look at the roof, bay window on the right.”
His eyes traveled up and in the darkness of a window he saw something he hadn’t the first time: the red light of an active security camera.  “Ah.”
“When you’re both ready, you and Arlan go in.  When it’s clear signal me.  Yaan and I will come in with the van.”
“Will do.”

Arlan sat next to him on a grassy lawn with his back to the bush and the house loading his weapon.
“You ready?”
“Almost…”  His weapon clicked as he pulled the loading mechanism.  “There, loaded and ready.  What’s the plan?”
“We go in the front door and be on the guard quick as possible.  Come on.”

Taelin was half standing half crouching to keep under the cover of the bushy fence as he made his way along it towards the road.  Arlan, with his own weapon ready, followed close behind him.

They would need to get inside and force the guard to turn off the security system, it would have to be quickly too.  It had to be done before he or she could trigger the alarm for backup and before they could bring out their own weapon.  But once inside and the guard secured it would be fairly easy to get the supplies they needed then get out again.

There was cover from the edge of the bushy fence to the road in the form of a parked delivery truck, from there a fairly large tree obscured the view of the house until the letter box, and then it was only about ten meters to the front door.  Backed up against the battered white delivery truck, Taelin looked around them.  The street was curved around to an almost hairpin shape with the target building at the apex of the curve so that he could look down both sides of the quiet residential street.  There didn’t seem to be any pedestrians on the street and only a single car at a distance traveling away from them.

“Ok, go!”  He whispered to Arlan.
Together they ran across the road and quickly through the short garden entrance, up the stairs across the small balcony to the white door.  He barely paused to turn the handle and they rushed into the parlor where a man was crouched over in front of a desk having just picked up something from the ground, which he dropped again.

“Freeze!”  Taelin yelled as he lifted his weapon.

The man stood fully upright, his mouth opening slightly as nearly silver gray eyes widened in his surprise.  Long agile fingered hands lifted up to shoulder height as surprise and fear pulsed around him.

Taelin stood shoulder to shoulder with Arlan, both weapons raised up pointing at the man.  There was silence for a few moments as Taelin looked around them.  The room was oblong shaped, wide but not long.  There was another door behind the guard, and a third directly opposite the entrance.  No other furniture cluttered the plainly decorated room except for the desk and chair behind the guard.

“Hand over your weapon.”  Tae barked.
The man stammered slightly in his fear.  “I… it’s… um.”  He swallowed and tried again.  “It’s on the desk… behind me.”
Tae signaled with the barrel of his weapon for the man to move out of the way.  He obeyed, stepping sideways away from the desk and computer.

Taelin walked sideways so as to keep an eye on the man as well as reach for the weapon that rested on the paper cluttered desk.  When the handgun was in his pocket he turned to face the man with a deliberately cold look on his face.

“I… I’ll do anything you want… I won’t cause you any grief.  But please… there’s a woman upstairs and I think she’s in trouble.  You’re Rebels right?”
Taelin nodded.
“You can help her.  Send someone upstairs… please.”  This man was flaring fear and a touch of desperation, but Taelin knew that these things could be faked and that this man could be trying to trick them.  Perhaps even tricking them into raising another alarm upstairs or into a gunfight with any present Agents.

He lifted his weapon higher.  “Right now you need to worry more about yourself.  Turn all of the security off, lock the upstairs doors.  Do it slowly, no tricks.”
The man nodded and turned towards the computer.  He and Arlan followed carefully, Taelin directly behind the man and Arlan went around to the other side of the desk.  Slowly the man sat down at an office chair and put his hands onto the laptop keyboard.

Watching in surprise, Taelin stared at the speed of the man as he typed.  Windows flickered into and out of sight in the blink of an eye.  The man was using some kind of operating system that involved direct coding input rather than some recognizable program.  Then a small message flashed into the screen, “Zone One Security immobilized”, and then another and another, until ten different immobilized zone messages flashed onto the screen.  The man lifted his hands from the keyboard up to shoulder height again.
“It’s all down.  Even the secret system that’s linked up to the silent alarm and two hidden cameras in this room.”

There was no sense of trickery or deception from the man, but Taelin found he couldn’t push into his surface thoughts which made him suspicious.
“What’s your name?”
The man frowned slightly.  “Rahan.  My name is Rahan.
“Well, Rahan, I’ve never seen any security system go down that quickly before.  Even considering how fast you type.  You’re going to have to prove that you did what I asked.”

He looked sideways up at Tae with those odd gray eyes and there was a touch of fear in his face.  “I’ve been altering the system for months… the designers of this system know nothing about efficiency… or…”  He swallowed nervously at their emotionless faces.  “I guess you don’t need to hear the technical details… but I programmed in a quick shut down… I just hadn’t got around to the GUI yet so that the other shift workers could use it.  Let me show you a sensory output from the security systems…”

He lowered his hands back onto the laptop and fingers buzzed quickly over the keys.  Taelin leant in to look over the man’s shoulder.  On the flat screen lines of text shot up the page as some command outputted data.  When the string of text stopped there was a list of each of the ten security systems and the sensory layers of those systems.  Each line, about twenty-odd lines, had written next to it in block bold red text the word ‘INACTIVE’.
“Is that enough proof?”

Taelin stood physically close to the man and through this nearness he had a distinct sense of the man’s emotions and immediate personality.  There was no trace of deception or even that he was a deceptive person in general.  Taelin wasn’t quite sure how to describe why, but he felt instinctively that this man was not tricking them in any way.

He reached the short distance to Nama’s mind.  “Nama, security systems are off.”
“Confirmed, we’re on our way.”

Making his voice warmer Taelin smiled slightly at the guard.  “Ok, Rahan.  Good job.  Now you get to watch us rob the place.”
Gray eyes stared back at him and the man shook his head.  “No, you have to help the woman upstairs.”
Tae frowned.  “What makes you think she needs help?”
“She…”

The front door opened as Nama and Yaan rushed into the small square room.
“Tae, stay with the guard.  Arlan, come with us.  We have to do this quickly.”
Nama kept walking and led the other two through into another area.  The room was suddenly quiet and Tae was alone with the guard.

 

Chapter One – Story Bridge (23May09)

* 1 *
(17 Milana 3003)

They stood looking up at the three story stone Capitol City bus terminal building.  Taelin frowned sideways at his sister.  “Well, who is she then?”
“Her name is Araian and her son is Boe, she’s a friend of the Rebels.  That’s all you need know.”  She snapped back at him.
“But…”  Tae caught himself and let his breath out.  This was going to be difficult to get the hang of; to not ask so many questions on someone’s request.  He looked sideways at her and smiled slightly.  “Ok.”

Asha looked back at him with a deep distracted tension in her face.  She stepped towards the crowded bus terminal and lifted her hand up in a stop motion.
“Stay here Taelin, I’ll go in and find her.  You’re still on the wanted list.”  He nodded and watched her walk towards the terminal.

The high roofed stone building had always been a transport center, at least as long as he’d known it.  It must have been a few hundred years old because of the older style of construction with its carved stone window frames and smoothed rounded edges.  The building was an oblong shape, long but fairly narrow through the middle.  Where he stood, surrounded by cars was the main entrance to the bus station and on the other side of the building were lines and lines of raised platforms where buses the parked to load and unload passengers.

From the road behind him two sirens screamed loudly.  He turned to watch an ambulance and police car travel swiftly past in one direction.  When he turned back to look at the long stone building he spotted Asha walking slowly in his direction.  Following closely behind her walked a slightly shorter woman with close-cut light hair and icy blue eyes, in her arms she carried a sleeping toddler.

When they got within earshot Asha smiled tensely at him and indicated the other woman with one hand.
“Taelin, this is my friend Araian.  Arai, this is my brother Taelin.”
The look in the woman’s eyes spoke of being hunted for a long time.  She was very definitely afraid and uncertain but underneath the uncertainty he also sensed an underlying strength.  He offered his hand to shake.  “Nice to meet you.”
She gave him a tense nod of the head but did not lean in to shake his hand.  He smiled and withdrew his hand awkwardly.

“Come on, let’s get out of here.”  Asha’s voice was cool and emotionless, and Tae momentarilywondered what he wasn’t being told.

Wordlessly the three adults walked through the fairly large car parking lot to the street.  The bus station was right in the center of town surrounded in tall sky scrapers.  North of where they were through the large park was the Cathedral, East a couple of blocks stood the tall tower of glass that was the Agency building, and South, some distance away were the harbor, docks and the main industrial section of the city where many of the Rebel Cell bases stood.

The street was very busy with cars and people walking everywhere.  Tae focused on getting across the road and didn’t notice until he’d got to the other side that the two women were not with him.  He turned to look back behind him.

The lights at the nearby intersection changed and cars flooded onto the road from all directions.  Tae lost sight of them for a few moments, but when he next saw them they were walking across and were about halfway.  The child in the woman’s hands had woken up and was crying.  He couldn’t hear the boy’s wail over the sounds of the traffic but he sensed the fear and confusion that permeated around the poor boy in his mother’s arms.

To Tae’s left a large dark bus filled with people turned the corner into the street towards the two women.  “Asha!  Watch out!”
It was too late, they turned to see the bus up close to them, there wasn’t even time to yell.  The bus should have hit the two of them straight on, instead he watched Araian lift a hand up and the bus stopped its forward motion.  It seemed as if the bus moved very slowly: the back end rising up into the air and the front end of it stationary centimeters from Araian’s hand.  Then the entire thing lifted up over the two women, flipping end over end, only to straighten up in time to land roughly back down on its tires.

Taelin stood on the street gaping in utter surprise and shock.

As the two women ran across the road and past him Asha grabbed him by the elbow pulling him back away from the road and with them.  Regaining his sensibility again Tae followed.  The Agency building was less than a block away and once they knew what had happened it wouldn’t be very long before the area was crawling in Agents.

The three of them ran down a narrow side road and out of visual range of the bus and the street.  Zigzagging they ran swiftly along three blocks of shops and buildings.  Asha led them into a dim alley that cut between two old brick buildings and they stopped for a moment to catch their breath.

Asha started to speak.  “Arai is Psi PK.”
“No kidding, Asha!”  He looked sideways at the light haired woman.  “A bus?  You can throw a bus?”

Her voice was firm but quiet and ice blue eyes stared at him calmly.  “Yes, I can throw a bus.  Can we please get to where we’re going?  It’s not safe for us out on the street like this.”

Taelin swallowed and nodded slowly as he looked from the new person to his sister.  “Nama’s?”
She shook her head.  “No, Taelin, we’re going to your new base.”
He grinned suddenly.  “I’ve got a new base?  When did this happen?  How far away is it?”
Laughing, Asha indicated with one hand to follow her.  “Not far.  Come on.”

In fact it wasn’t far at all, only two more blocks into the edge of the industrial area of Capitol City.  They came upon it quite suddenly, walking through another access alley and stepping into a quiet street with old stone buildings either side of it.  It was a long white stone building with three stories towering above them.  It looked a bit like it had once been some kind of old fashioned estate house or perhaps a small hotel.  Long but thin, roads and footpath surrounded it on three sides.  On one side a high fence cordoned off what could be a garden area at the back.  It didn’t look particularly run down: the windows all still had their glass, much of the paint was still white, and the rounded curved edges of the windows, sides and upper skirting of the roof were all smooth and undamaged.

They walked across the road towards the main entrance and the steps leading up to it. The wide cream-painted door was framed nicely by two stories of clean frosted glass.

Tae stood at the base of the concrete steps and looked up.  It was nicer than he thought was possible for a Rebel base.  The building had to be a few hundred years old, surely.

“Pretty ain’t it?”  Nama stood in the doorway holding the door open as the two women walked through into the building.  He gave Tae an open friendly grin.
“Its got no electricity and only one set of bathrooms has running water, but you’re lucky to get such a treasure.  Unfortunately, there’s no time to admire it.  We’ve got another job and it needs doing right now.  The others are on their way down.”
Taelin frowned slightly.  “What mission?”

Nama stepped fully through the wide door and down the steps towards him.  He put a hand on Taelin’s shoulder and gave him a broad grin.  “Supply run, come on.”

 

Not well…

Sorry folks, I’ve been very ill and stressed out this week, it’s come to saturday.. and I got 500 words done.  So, depending on the severety of a particular drama on a forum I help to run and how much time this takes up, I will post as soon as I can.  Hopefully that’ll be by the end of today so it’s there for folks on their saturday, but I’ll see how it goes.

Again, I’m sorry.  But it can’t be helped at this time.

 

Prelude to Chapter One – 20May09

***

Asha sat with her legs up on the couch reading a trashy novel, with her left arm immobilized in a high sling.  The bright morning sunlight shone through high windows onto her face and shoulders, covering her and the room with a peaceful warm light.

“Asha?”

Looking up from her book and around the room, for a moment Asha thought that the voice had been audible.  She reached out to the subtle telepathic touch.  “Yes?”

The voice opened up and she could sense her friend and the Rebel Leader, Hawk.  “I’m sorry am I interrupting something important?”
Asha smiled slightly.  “No, sir, I’m not busy at all.  What’s wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong, I just need to ask a favour of you?”
“Sure, of course, you know I’m pretty open to helping…” She underlined her words with amused sarcasm and she sensed him laugh a little.
“It’s not a large favour, Asha.  I just need you to pick up Araian from the bus station later today.  I can’t go myself without risking her.”

Asha’s mouth opened slightly with her surprise.  “Araian?  Your little sister Araian?  I thought… I mean, last I’d heard she was still missing?”
“I finally found her down in Peera.  Can you meet her at the bus station at 2pm?  She knows you, she’ll feel safe.  You may as well bring Taelin if he’s available by then, just in case there’s trouble.  I’m aware you’re still recovering from Cheetah’s attack.  You’ll need to set up some kind of block to keep Taelin from picking up anything from her and you mustn’t tell her or Taelin that she’s my sister.  It’s not safe for either of them to know any more about me at this time.”
“Of course.”
“You’ll only need to baby sit her until the morning.  It might be a good idea to take her to the new base instead of Nama’s to sleep if it’s ready.  The less people who see her face the safer she’ll be.”

She nodded absently.  “Do you happen to know where Tae will be by then?”
“Hopefully the Cathedral… Nama sent him over to make peace, but we’ll see how that turns out.”
Asha laughed as she put the book down on the floor next to her.  “Well, here’s hoping something will get through that thick scull of his.”
“Yes, I’m hoping as well.  I’ll meet the two of you at the train station at 8am tomorrow morning.  Is that ok?”
She nodded even though he couldn’t see her.  “Of course, we’ll see you then.”

There was a sense of disconnection and Hawk’s mental touch disappeared quickly.  Pulling her legs around to the front she gently shimmied off the couch and up to a standing position.  She’d taken a few days to figure out how to stand up from a sitting position without causing pain in her shoulder, it looked very awkward but she didn’t care as long as it didn’t hurt.  She would have to check with Nama that Taelin’s new base was ready for habitation and get a spare mattress or stretcher for her.  But she had plenty of time to do all of that before she would need to go.

 

“Utu” – Scene Seven (16May09)

*7*

The metal of the gun was cold on the skin of his temple.  Tae let out a breath of defeat and closed his eyes for a moment.

“You’re good.  What are you, an ex-Agent?”
Opening his eyes and looking sideways at the bald bouncer’s white round face he shook his head.  “No, ex-cop.  You?”
The man came around to Tae’s front and dropped his gun to stomach height.

“Just a regular ex-con.  What d’you do to Tandi?”
“Nothing, she’ll wake up tomorrow and be fine.  What now?”
“First give me your weapon.”

Slowly, Tae lifted his gun hand.  As the man reached to take his weapon a gunshot fired loudly.  The bouncer was pushed back by the impact, dropping his gun as he fell against the stone pillar and down to the ground.  His heart racing, Tae stepped behind cover and listened carefully.

The shot had come from the wrong side of the chamber to be Father Owen and besides, an accurate shot at that distance with adequate light would have been difficult for anyone let alone a priest standing in this gloom.

“This one’s dead, Taelin.”  At the voice, Tae peaked around the pillar to look at the speaker.  Someone was crouched over the body of the young man in front of the archway entrance.  It took a moment for Tae to recognize the voice.
“Did I kill the other one?”  Father Owen’s voice was deep and calm.  Tae frowned but leant down to check the pulse of the bouncer.  Dark blood seeped out across the man’s white shirt and chest.  Tae couldn’t see where the bullet hole was but it didn’t matter anyway because there was no pulse.

“Dead.”  Tae picked up the bouncers gun from the ground, flicked the safety on and shoved it into a jacket pocket; the guy wasn’t exactly going to use it again.

Standing to face the priest he felt oddly creeped out.  He hadn’t sensed Father Owen at all and the man had come from the wrong direction.  The man had killed someone at 100 feet with a handgun, limited line of sight and nearly blind.  More so, the man was a priest, which was supposed to be the most pacifistic profession on the face of the planet.

Tae tried not to show in his voice how spooked-out he was.  “Where did you come from?”
“There is another entrance on other side.  You did say to be careful when I came back.”  There was a touch of amusement in the man’s voice.

Tae frowned and scrubbed at his hair with one hand in his confusion and surprise. Giving himself time to figure his thoughts out, he walked slowly towards the priest.

“Are… are the others safe?”
“Yes, they should be up in the Cathedral by now.  Here.”  The man passed him what felt like an electric torch.

Taelin turned the torch on and looked around them at the ground.  The young man’s gun had dropped and bounced nearby into a small pool of water that had collected in the carved indented Symbol of the Founder in the floor.  Often guns wouldn’t work if they’d been underwater, but he could probably clean it out and get it to work again.  He dipped his hand into the small pool of water and put the gun into his other jacket pocket.

Father Owen’s face was almost cold as he met Tae’s eyes.  “You’ll have to come by later with some help to get rid of these bodies and I’ll need a hand to fix the wall they broke through.”
Tae nodded slowly.  “Of course.”

Tae followed the priest silently as they headed in the direction they’d gone with the family before.  He didn’t know quite how to broach the subject with Father Owen, to find out why he wasn’t like other priests or even if he really was a priest.

They walked through the rows of carved stone coffins and past the far wall where a large black stone throne was carved into the circular indent of the wall.  In the artificial torchlight Tae saw a lot of intricate carved detail in the floor below his feet.  The whole surface, in fact every surface within sight was carved.  It was as if the entire place was an art piece.  He felt slightly guilty to even be walking over such intricate art work.  But there was no choice.

Walking through a large gap neatly cut into a wall they entered another chamber.  This one was much smaller but no less ornate and filled with more carved stone coffins.  He followed Father Owen silently as they weaved around and between the coffins to a flat black bricked wall on their right.  At first he didn’t recognize that this wall was different, but then as he stared at it he realized that it was the only section of wall that was not ornately carved.

Father Owen silently approached the wall and using a broad hand pressed a stone at about eye height.  The stone brick moved into the wall a few centimeters and much of the blank wall moved inwards and became a door.  They stepped into a dark narrow brick corridor which led to another opening.

Father Owen walked ahead down the corridor, through the gap and as Tae followed he found himself in a small sleeping room.  A fire was burning in a nearby fire place, a bed with blankets and a pillow stood in one corner and a desk with a modern chair sat next to it.  All other available space was taken up by shelves filled with books and old parchment.  An old fashioned fire torch hung in a metal bracket near the desk and illuminated much of the room.

As he looked around at the remarkable little room Father Owen turned to look at Tae with a firm and intense look in his eyes.  “You no doubt have questions, Taelin.  Now might be a good time to ask them.”

Taelin was taken aback by the man’s directness.  “I do have questions.  I wouldn’t know where to start, though.”
“If you could only ask one question which would it be?”
Tae leant on the large black stone hearth that surrounded the fireplace.  There was only one question that really mattered to him.  “Who are you really?”

The man put a hand on the wooden desk nearby and frowned.  “What do you mean?”
“You have an ease with guns that no priest I’ve ever known has, you’re also a fair shot and you don’t seem to have any moral conflict with killing folks.  You just can’t be a priest, what are you?”

The man’s blue eyes almost glowed in the reflected amber light of the fire and one corner of his mouth lifted slightly but Tae sensed no amusement this time.

“You were a policeman, right?”
He shrugged.  “Yes.”
“Are you a policeman, now?”
“No, I’m a Rebel now…”
“I’m a priest now.”  Father Owen interrupted Tae firmly then his voice shifted to a gentler tone.  “All you need to know is that I haven’t always been a priest.”

Father Owen started to walk towards a second open doorway to Tae’s left, he didn’t look back.  “Are you coming, Taelin?”

A sense of deep sadness and grief permeated from the priest as he walked away and Tae suddenly understood that something painful had occurred in Father Owen’s past.  He immediately felt a deep shaft of guilt for prying into the priest’s private life.

He followed after the man.  The second doorway led to a narrow and steep stairwell.  As they made their way up the very old looking stone stairs he watched the man’s broad back.  This man had helped the Rebels for a few years now.  Putting his own life at risk and risking the Cathedral as a whole just to help the Rebels survive.  He’d been nothing but friendly, polite and giving; not only to Taelin but to many other Rebels.  And Tae had questioned him the whole time, never saying thank you, never even realizing the deep risks involved in a private citizen helping the Rebels.  He’d been insensitive and demanding, he’d been acting like a teenager expecting something as a given without being aware of the cost and now he’d demanded personal information from Father Owen; information that he really had no right to ask for.

He stopped climbing the stairs and sighed sadly.  “Father Owen.”
The priest stopped and looked down the stairs at him, his vivid blue eyes unendingly calm.
“I’ve been so difficult.  You’ve been there to help us all along and I’ve just been a prick the whole time.  I’ve been so worried that your secrets are a threat to us that I didn’t notice how much you’ve been helping us and what risks you were taking.  Will you accept my apology?”

In the dim torchlight he saw Father Owen’s square face broaden into an open almost affectionate smile.  “Of course, Taelin.”

 

“Utu” – Scene Six (09May09)

*6*

They stood in the entrance to a huge chamber.  The firelight revealed only some of the huge space: it was perhaps two stories high and fifteen meters wide but its length from left to right was lost in the shadows making it at least double as long as it was wide.

He stood in a stone archway staring around the room in amazement.  Everything was carved out of stone: what he could see of the walls were covered in carvings, ornate patterns flowed up the many two-story pillars that bisected the room in four lines, the few stone coffins he could see clearly in the dimness were carved with writing and detailed imagery, and even the floor had been carved with patterns and little indented Symbol of the Founder sigils clustered together.

The others stepped down from the archway into the chamber following Father Owen to the right.  The fire light moved away in that direction and shadows dimmed the air around him.

Behind, back the way they’d come leading back to the first chamber a loud crack got his attention.  He heard voices: they’d broken through!

Stepping down into the chamber he jogged after the small group.  Everyone looked tired.  The eldest child walked silently with his head down, the youngest child was asleep his head resting on his mother’s shoulder and the girl had been picked up again by her father; pain pulsed around her from her badly sprained ankle.  All three adults looked tired and the parents seemed especially haggard in their exhaustion.

Tae jogged up to the priest’s side and put a hand on his shoulder.  Blue eyes reflecting darkly in the fire light looked sideways at him.  Tae’s voice was a whisper.  “Father, they’ve broken through the wall.  You go on ahead with the others and get them to safety then come back for me.  But be careful.”
The priest nodded and Tae turned back towards the stone archway.

He had to find a place where he could see the archway but had cover and before all of the light was gone.  There were lines of square stone coffins all around him, at the nearest edge of the room the wall was black rock and another throne had been carved into the wall on a platform.  As he neared a good vantage point to view the archway the fire light flickered out of sight and plunged him into near-darkness.  Next to him were more stone coffins and he quickly ducked down behind one.  He hoped that their pursuers would have a torch of some kind otherwise he would probably only be able to hear them, which didn’t make shooting accurately very easy.  To complicate the situation more-so this black stone seemed to block or interfere with his Psi abilities: he couldn’t sense anyone and yet he knew there had to be people within his range to sense even if only above him.

Tae sat in the darkness with his back to cold black stone.  He couldn’t hear any more noise or sense anything so he waited calmly.

He knew he should be creeped out by the situation; he was after all in the pitch black underground and in an ancient tomb with no way of escaping but in fact he wasn’t creeped out at all.  It was oddly peaceful in this ancient temple and he found himself absorbing that peacefulness into himself.  There was no psychic chatter or emotions to clutter his mind, no noises, no demands, and he wasn’t particularly afraid of these two men.

There was just peace there in the black and his mind went utterly quiet for a moment.  In the silence his mind stepped back from the present and hovered sedately into memory.  Images and feelings from the past flickered randomly through his mind.

He heard Father Owen’s voice: whispered, quiet and almost mournful.  “Let us bury and mourn the dead, but lest the grief take from us our very life, let us also celebrate that we are living.”

Death was a part of life.  Any Rebel knew this.  A friend could be alive and happy one day then dead the next.  No one could change that fact at least not without completely destroying the Agency and plunging Arana into anarchy.

He smiled slightly as he remembered his old friends; those he had recently lost.  He heard the sounds of laughter and saw the image of Bez and Ella playing tickle with their two eldest children.  More images flickered in his mind, the teenage twins pulling faces to make the serious old Braan smile and Braan holding his serious face until they gave up and left the room, only then he would turn to Tae and laugh in that deep raspy voice of his.  He remembered Ana and Nala laughing as they waited for Braan to sit on his favorite chair after the twins had sawn through the legs as a joke.

There had been so much laughter over their three years together as a lesser Rebel Cell.  He had so many memories of good times with them and now it was all over.  There was only Nala and the three children left.

A tear found its way out of one eye and dropped slowly down his cheek.  He missed them all so much.

Hiran’s gentle face came to his mind.

Loose black hair framed an oval regal face and blue eyes darker than the ocean smiled playfully at him.  Long delicate fingers touched his unshaven cheek.
“You’re an ugly one, Taelin… but you’re good in bed… so I think I might keep you.”
He laughed.  “Keep me?  What happened to just friends with benefits?”
Mischief underlined her voice.  “I killed it… is that bad?”
His voice dropped into gentle affection.  “No, it’s not bad.”

A sound snapped him out of his memories.  There were voices and heavy footsteps on stone.  He stiffened.  Someone swore and Tae watched above him as the beam of a torch cut the dusty air like a knife.  He wiped his face and eyes of tears with one sleeve and re-gripped his gun.

“Follow them into the sewers you said… it’ll be fine, you said… they can’t get far!  Soth’en, Junior, your dad is going to kill us if we ever get out of this forsaken place.”

Tae peaked around the side of the stone coffin.  Two men stood in the archway.  The bald bouncer held a small electric torch, the other man was much younger and he seemed rather afraid.
“Let’s just tell dad we lost them in the sewers and get out of here.  This place gives me the creeps.”
“He’ll know.  We’ve got to at least try.  C’mon, grow some balls and let’s get on with it.  Which way do you think they went, left or right?”
The younger man shrugged.  “I don’t know, right?”

Carefully, Tae clicked his safety off.  He waited under cover for the torchlight to flare away in the other direction.  Then standing up, most of his body still protected by the stone coffin, he lifted his gun and fired at the two men.

The younger one fell down almost immediately but the bald bouncer ran for cover and jumped behind a large pillar.  The torch fell from his hands as he ran and it bounced off the stone floor before blinking out.  The room fell into blackness and Tae ducked behind the stone coffin again.  Breathing very quietly he listened and reached out with his mind to see if he could locate the bouncer.

He could sense the badly injured semi-conscious young man lying on the ground at the base of the archway.  He radiated pain and fear in sharp pulses around him.  But it seemed that the stone pillar stopped Tae sensing the bouncer although he could hear the man’s quick fearful breathing only meters away from him.

He poked his head slightly above the stone coffin and tried to see the man.  It was too dark to see a lot of detail: he saw the lines of the pillars and the lines of the coffins on the other side of the pillars but it was otherwise all in black and gray shadows.  To his right his eyes picked up something moving between a pillar and a flare of empathic tension told him that it wasn’t a trick of the eye but that it was the bouncer moving.

Careful to be quiet Tae moved around the stone coffin and to its side so he could get a better view of the man as he moved.  He walked slowly, this bouncer, slow and careful: away from his friend and away from where Tae was.  The points in his movement where he wasn’t behind a thick pillar Tae sensed that he was looking for better cover and a better vantage point to take out the man who had intruded on their bar and possibly hurt Tandi.

Tae stepped towards the man following his movements carefully and calmly, but also making sure that the man would not see him.  They walked from pillar to pillar across the center of the huge chamber, both of them keeping distance and cover between them.  In the moments where Tae could sense what was going on in the man’s mind he saw that he was aware of Tae following him.  And the man seemed to become more and more frightened for his life.

The man stepped behind another pillar and disappeared from Tae’s sight.  Tae stepped out of his own cover to follow and sensed movement to one side of him.  Too late to react the bouncer stepped out from cover right next to him.  He heard the sound of the loading mechanism of a revolver click and something cold and metallic touched his left temple.

Tae stiffened.

 

“Utu” – Scene Five (02May09)

*5*

The rounded tunnel had darkened considerably since the openings to the street stopped.  But in the dripping stone roof were small dim waterproof lights at regular intervals and a thin concrete walkway had been made above the water level.  He was thankful at least that they were no longer wading through the water and that there was actually some light.  At regular intervals smaller tunnels connected to the flow of water, adding to the overall mass.  The tunnel stretched out ahead of them in a lazy curve.

Walking around the curve they came to a T intersection and stopped to look in both directions up the huge circular pipes.

“Which way now, Father?”  Tae asked, his tiredness unintentionally seeping into his voice.
“It doesn’t matter.  The water here flows left as well as right and all the water flows to the central drain.  Though, following this,” Father Owen pointed to the narrow concrete band on the right hand side of the tunnel where they stood.  “Will more likely help us avoid the bigger hazards such as waterfalls.”
“Ok.”  Tae nodded warily and started walking again.  “Do you know how far it is?”
“Not too much further now the open drains stop about a kilometer before the central drain.”
“And what will we find when we get there?”
“The main drain section has a sealed maintenance area and off this is an access route to the catacombs below the Cathedral.”

Tae looked at the priest in surprise.  “Catacombs?  I didn’t know there were catacombs.”
“Yes, the Cathedral was originally built on top of a temple.  In ancient times the temples often had adjacent catacombs or grave plots.  To the ancient ancestors Death and Divine worship were sacred and irretrievably linked.”
“You sure are a fountain of knowledge about odd things, Father.”
The priest looked back over his shoulder flashing a sliver of vivid blue at him.  Tae sensed amusement.  “Thank you.”

A prickly static feeling slowly filled the air around them.  Tae stopped and turned to look behind him with a frown.  The father, Jodan, started to ask him what was wrong and Tae put a hand up to quiet him.  “Shhh.”

The prickly feeling around them was mirrored inside him in a deep sense of unrest and tension.  He couldn’t sense anything telepathically or empathically.  He couldn’t hear anything either, but he stood listening intently to the dripping silence for several breaths.

The feeling of static lowered and disappeared but his inner tension increased.
“Something is wrong.”  His voice was low and firm.  “We run.  Now.”

His body was tired and he certainly didn’t want to run with the girl still in his aching arms but he had to trust his instinct.  It was always better to be wrong and alive instead of right and dead.

They ran along a straight part for a few hundred meters.  The tunnel around them was wider now and a larger body of murky drain water flowed swiftly below them.  Ahead the concrete path led directly up to some rough metal stairs and a sealed door.

Pulling hard on the wheel handle he found the metal was rusty and had obviously been there for a long time, but with a little encouragement from him slowly the wheel started to turn under his hands.  There was a very loud clang as the wheel unlocked the seal and allowed the door to open.  Everyone filed into the dark space quickly and Tae turned to step inside.

A gunshot echoed down the tunnel the way they’d come and a bullet ricocheted off the metal door.  He didn’t even bother to look back at whoever was firing at them he simply jumped in through the doorway and out of range of their weapons.  There didn’t seem to be a way to lock the door from the inside other than just sealing the door again with the wheel.  He gave it a firm yank and ran to follow the others.

The circular corridor led to a large antechamber.  The entire space was made of rusting metal and seemed very much like it belonged in a submarine.  There were many oval doors, doorways and narrow corridors off this large room, there were even ladders bolted to the walls leading up to gangways and other doors.

When he got into the square high roofed space he found Father Owen pulling at another door.  The second door seemed to open much quicker than the first one and they all ran through it into a long dark corridor.  Tae went to close the door behind them but Father Owen stopped him with a hand to his elbow.
“No, Tae.  There are others who live down here and those men will kill them.”
The priest turned away and Tae frowned and called after him.  “But what about us?”
The priest replied over his shoulder.  “There are plenty of secret places to hide in the catacombs.”

There was a banging clank sound nearby, it echoed down the narrow dark passage and everyone started to run again.  There were steps up to the next doorway, which was a simple unsealed metal door.  It opened easily with very little sound.  As he pulled the door he heard voices, the door clicked closed and a weapon fired behind them with a corresponding metallic bullet ricochet sound.  There wasn’t any way of locking the door so they had no choice but to just keep running.

Dim light filtered from a source he couldn’t immediately find and reflected through the narrow tunnel off roughly cut light-colored bedrock.
A few meters into the tunnel the creamy rock walls began to be interrupted by lines of old dark brick, only to be swallowed again by bedrock.

Ahead of him on the right Father Owen called for a stop in front of a section of brick.  By the time Tae ran up to the huddled group a dark hole had opened up in the brick under the priest’s hand.  “Everyone get in!”
The gap was only just big enough for the adults to crawl into but they filed into the darkness fairly quickly.  Last to go in to the dark space, Tae put his leg into the hole and crouched down.  Back the way they’d come he heard footsteps and he looked up to see the bald bouncer striding towards him down the tunnel, another younger man walked behind him and both of them held their guns up at him.  Tae ducked quickly and pushed himself quickly into the hole as gunfire sounded.

“Soth’en!”  He swore loudly, falling back and down a little from the hole in his haste to get out of their weapon range.  It was stupidly dark inside and the ground felt cold and dirty underneath his hands.

He felt someone pass near him and the small amount of light coming through the hole faded and sealed them up into darkness.  As he stood, blindly feeling around him he heard the sound of a flint being scraped and sparks of light revealed tiny bits of the room around him.  The room was wider than the sparks could show but he could see that there were dark square objects looming nearby.

The sparks flared brightly and firelight opened out the room.  Next to him Father Owen held a long old fashioned fire torch in one hand.

They stood in a dark oblong room, four long stone coffins stood in each corner.  The fire light flickered off various small pools of water that filled indents in the floor.  At the two long ends of the room large black stone thrones were carved out of the rock walls on raised stages.  “Maara!”

Turning around in his surprise and awe at the amazing room of stone he looked at the wall above their heads some kind of text was carved in huge unreadable shapes into the stone.  He just stared up at it his mouth open in his surprise.

Father Owen stepped next to him permeating a deep blue calm around and over Tae like pulsing ocean waves.  “It says: ‘Let us bury and mourn the dead, but lest the grief take from us our very life, let us also celebrate that we are living.’”  His voice was quiet, nearly a whisper.  “It’s thought to be the words of the Founder.”

A dim banging on the wall nearby reminded Tae suddenly that they were still in peril.  He pointed at the noise.  “How easy is that to get through?”
“Unless they get lucky and find the catch, it’s solid rock.”
“Well, then let’s get out of here.”