Zandeji Chronicles: Revolution

Zandeji Chronicles: Revolution

Christopher T. Mooney

Copyright 2013 Christopher T. Mooney

All Rights Reserved

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Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Zandeji Chronicles – Revolution is a work of fiction. Any semblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental, except for the Lord God and Savior of the universe.

Cover Image: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

(http://www.spacetelescope.org)

Id:heic0506b

Type:Observation

Release date:25 April 2005, 06:00

Related releases:heic0506

Size:3857 x 7804 px

About the Object

Name:Eagle Nebula, Messier 16

Type:• Milky Way : Nebula : Type : Star Formation

• X - Nebulae Images/Videos

Distance:7000 light years

Constellation:Serpens Cauda

Image used by permission (http://www.spacetelescope.org/copyright/ ) under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)

This book is dedicated to my children. May God's revolution nearly two-thousand years ago free you to live the life that He intends for you.

Praise and thanks to the Word and The Way, Jesus Christ who was, is and is yet to come. I pray your light shines through the pages of this novel.

Thanks and gratitude to my wife, Ann, who puts up with these mad bouts of writing. Without you, these books would not exist.

Thank you Uncle Chuck for the Palm T|X, on which most of this book was written.

Discover other titles by Christopher T. Mooney

Zandeji Chronicles: Liberation

Zandeji Chronicles: Revolution

Zandeji Chronicles: Redemption

Visit www.mooneybooks.com for free stories:

Miami Knights: The Messiah

Miami Knights: I was blind...

Table of Contents

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Zandeji Chronicles: Redemption (excerpt)

About the Author

Other Books by Christopher T. Mooney

Connect Online

9

In the morning his mind was troubled,

so he sent for all the magicians and wise men of Eyatar.

The Nahde told them his dreams,

but no one could interpret them for him.

– Book of Ancestors

Siasha was walking across one of the plains in the northern regions. The tall grasses blew in the wind, rustling. The sky was pitch black; where were the moons, the rings? Ahead the lupine creature walked. Somehow, she knew that she must follow it, but where it was taking her she did not know. It would run ahead, sit to wait for her, and then run ahead again. They were approaching a tree, that stood alone in the midst of the prairie. Gnarled and ancient, it seemed to emanate a darkness from its very core that reached out to envelop both of them. Siasha began to feel very afraid, and stopped. The creature turned yet again, and looked at her reproachfully. She knew that it would continue to sit there until she followed. Still fearing the tree, but reassured that the creature was with her, she continued onward. As they approached, it appeared that the tree was blowing in the wind, except that there was now no wind at all to feel. Disturbingly, the undulating branches moved in contradictory directions.

As they approached the tree, Siasha noticed the grasses wilting and dying. Within a short running sprint of the tree, the earth took on a scorched appearance and she could tell that the tree itself was dead; it would never bear fruit. The creature she followed began to hunker down, growling and crawling along as if it were stalking something. It was then that she noticed the tree's branches were covered with writhing, serpentine creatures! Startled, Siasha stopped about twenty paces from the tree, frozen in place; the lupine creature low, crouching and growling next to her.

Smoothly, silently and faster than Siasha could think, one of the serpents uncoiled itself from its branch. Impossibly long, it reared up in front of her and hissed, spitting, and barring its hideous, venomous fangs. Siasha stared, immobilized. The lupine creature leaped to attack it, but faster than that the serpent crashed into Siasha’s chest with a thud; sinking its fangs into her heart!

Siasha awoke from the terrifying dream with a start. Her heart was hammering in her ears, and there was a tingling sensation in her chest. She looked around fearfully, until it registered that she was in her bunk aboard the star voyager Alexis. Through the porthole, she could see the bizarre coruscating luminescence of fold space; the strange light being generated by the actual warping of space-time by the craft's engines to allow it to carry its passengers quickly across the unimaginable expanses between planets of the Nowa Empire. Slowly sliding her hand beneath the covers of the bunk, Siasha gingerly touched the center of her chest. Relieved, she found nothing there but her nightshirt. The nightmare rapidly fading, Siasha remembered that she and Ace Nova were currently on their way to the next destination on their missionary tour of the outer star-systems. She did not remember where exactly, just somewhere more toward the central Imperial worlds. After the countless rim worlds they had visited over the past two years, one world had began to look like another, and one name might as well be used for every world. She and her mentor Ace Nova had traveled from world to world where religion still survived, helping those who could not help themselves. Often this included helping people deal with corrupt local governments that were able to skirt Imperial law; oppressing the peoples that they ruled beyond what what those laws allowed. Ace and Siasha had been at the center of the liberation of more than one planetary system, including the world where Ace and Siasha had met, Kesheron.

Unlatching the safety netting, Siasha wriggled her way out of the bunk. Looking back over the past two standard years, she realized that, in reality, what she remembered of each world was the different people they had encountered, the adventures she and Ace had, and the people they had left behind. Thoughts of the planet Kesheron came unbidden to her. It was the world that she was growing up on, under the care of her great aunt while her father, an officer in the Imperial forces, was away quelling rebellions on periphery worlds of the Empire. Upon learning of her Aunt’s death after Ace had rescued Siasha from one of the raider gangs of the planet, Siasha had decided to leave with him on his missionary quest. This was not without some difficulty, though, as she had to leave behind one of her closest friends, Vasisis, the Imperial Marshall for their region of the planet. For Vasisis part, she had reluctantly helped Ace become Siasha’s guardian in fact, in some part due to issues with contacting Siasha’s father, but also that it would have been virtually impossible to stop Siasha from leaving with Ace if Vasisis wanted. Of course, considering Ace had no valid Imperial identification, this had also required that Vasisis use falsified records that were injected into the Imperial computer systems by Alexis, the shipboard artificial intelligence of the star voyager ship in which Siasha and Ace were now being transported. Siasha had tried to convince Vasisis to come with them, but now that the biggest raider gang on the planet had been thwarted and Vasisis had access to a private army- the natives of the plains of Kesheron - she felt her place was on Kesheron, defending the people she was sworn to protect.

Ace and Siasha had been so busy the past two years after leaving Kesheron, that Siasha would have passed her 17th standard birthday without a thought had Ace not been sweet enough to remember. Ace Nova, her mentor and teacher, was the sole escapee from a planetary, biological computer in which his civilization had been imprisoned for what he had thought to be ten-thousand standard years; ever since the beginning of Imperial rule in the galaxy. Siasha laughed a little at that. Ace had been very shocked when he realized that a year in the Empire was a very flexible thing, tied to the reign of the current Empress. Each Empress was said to rule for one millennium, so when the Empress' daughter took the throne, she would declare the year to be one-thousand years from the beginning of her mother's rule. There had been to date ten Empresses, and the eleventh Nowa Empress now sat on the throne. Siasha knew this vaguely from school, but never gave it a thought before meeting Ace. Not understanding this strange way of measuring time, he had believed that ten-thousand actual years had passed while he was imprisoned, while in reality only one-thousand actual standard years had gone by. If one asked the average Imperial citizen what year it was, though, she would invariably give you the Imperial year rather than the actual year; for who wanted to invite the kind of trouble that stemmed from going against the decree of the Empress? According to Ace, the Empress was a demon-possessed human whom he feared may actually be the first Empress herself. There were many things that Ace said that did not make sense, like how a mortal could physically live that long in the flesh, but there were also many things that she had seen and done in the past two years that should have been just as impossible as a person living over one-thousand years. Why Ace did not believe that there had been a succession of rulers and why Ace feared the first Empress specifically, she wasn't sure, but he usually had his reasons.

As these thoughts flowed through Siasha's mind she made her way from her cramped room to the ship's small galley. Every few feet along the corridor, she felt like she saw something moving out of the corner of her eye, or the hairs on the back of her neck would stand up, and she would have to turn to look behind her. She felt like she was being a child, and would reprove herself and remind herself that she was in the hands of Zotan, her people's name for God, but it was to no avail as she continued this cycle all the way down the corridor. She had dreamed about the place in the dream that she had just awakened from many times, and had always been struck at how real it seemed. Tonight, though, was the first time that she had actually approached the tree. Usually the tree was far off, or the lupine creature led her along paths on the prairie about it. In fact, she had never even skirted the dead zone around the tree until tonight's nightmare.

Once she arrived in the small galley, Siasha poked through the ship’s provisions looking for something to help calm her. She finally found what she was looking for in the cabinet after staring at it for longer than she cared to admit. It was a bitter green syrup that she had acquired from an underground priest that they had helped on one world. Once it was mixed with boiling water the syrup made a very relaxing and healing drink.

After making the hot drink, Siasha settled down at a computer terminal in the small recreation area adjacent to the galley. The room served as a dining area, target range (with the shipboard practice weapons), unarmed and primitive combat training area, meditation area, and even included a full Tri-D holo-projector. This had the dual purpose of showing entertainment, as well as full three dimensional tactical displays for combat planning and fleet direction. Ace had told her that the Alexis itself was really an integral part of a much larger ship, and was used as a mobile command center for the forces transported by that class of ship. The terminal that Siasha settled into was often used as a combat control station, with a twin station next to it, and faced into the area where the holo-display was projected. Now, though, she used the terminal to interact with the shipboard library of religious writings. She used the cross-concordance to look up ‘fear’. Instantly she had dozens of references to choose from. She recognized that one of the references was from the collection of writings, the Sel-Azaad, that were from her home world, Icios:

Though the baleful eye of death may watch me,

the lance and command of my Lord comfort me.

He leads me to the open glacier, and secrets me

within the deep valley when the gale of the enemy

blows about me.

193:10-11, Sel-Azaad, Book of Holy Verse

10

But those who hope in Razion

will renew their strength.

They will soar on raptor's wings;

they will run and not grow weary,

they will walk and not be faint.

– Book of Ancestors

The star voyager Alexis swooped down upon the landing field like a streaking raptor, coming up short of the landing field and hovering to a soft landing. Just like the scream of a mad predatory bird, the engines settled the craft and then whined to a halt. The hull still glowed with the heat of the ship's entry into the dense atmosphere, but jets of water sprayed up from the landing field’s array. Superheated steam boiled away and the fuselage became cooler by degrees.

Inside, Siasha and Ace disengaged themselves from the restraints that held them into the bridge’s acceleration couches. Siasha slowly levered herself up onto the edge of the capsule that surrounded the seat. She was always a bit queasy on landing, even though the ship’s internal atmosphere and gravitation had been slowly acclimating them to the planet’s environment during their approach. Of course Ace’s piloting often left her stomach reeling anyway. To quell this internal distress, Ace had suggested she learn how to fly the craft herself, and often it helped if she did the flying. When it came to landing in such a populated place, though, she gladly let Ace take over even though it meant recovering from a wild ride. He deftly maneuvered the craft through the complex three-dimensional traffic patterns, talking to ground control, orbital control and her all at the same time.It often made Siasha despair of ever learning to fly as well as he, but in those times Ace reminded her that he had been flying since he was much younger than she, and with the simulation time he had put in during his people’s captivity had over a thousand years more experience.

So where are we again? she asked.

This is Chandara VII, one of the most populous worldlets on the outer rim. I’ve been waiting to come here. I have felt there’s something going on here that I can’t quite place, but we cannot afford to skirt about this world anymore. After this we will begin to move into the inner worlds of the Empire; deeper into the witch’s domain.

In that case, Siasha said, rising and walking over to the weapons locker We should be prepared.

Siasha was fiddling with the lock mechanism when Ace came alongside her, We won’t be taking any arms.

What? She said looking up at him, shocked. They had always carried protection of some sort wherever they went.

You’re in the great Nowa Empire now, he said sarcastically, Citizens protected by the Empire have no need of arms. The Empire is all the protection they need, he said smiling.

Siasha smiled back wryly, Ha, ha. ‘K joke’s over Ace, she said opening the lock, Here’s your sword. Siasha handed it to him only to find it placed right back in its spot in front of her.

No joke, He said as she looked up at him. Weapons on the Imperial worlds are outlawed. They let the outer worlds get away with having them, even though they are outlawed throughout the Empire, because of the difficulties in sending enforcement armies out there. Did you not know that?

I thought people were free to defend themselves. Isn’t that one of the rights that the Empire gives to its subjects?

Sure, you can defend yourself, you just can’t carry any weapons. Only the police and military can carry weapons, that way the people are safe, and protected.

That doesn’t make any damn sense, Ace. If they can’t enforce the law on the outer worlds, how do they think they have the manpower to remove weapons from the hands of every person on the inner worlds? Especially the criminals!

Ace grinned proudly at her budding ability to see faults in arguments, not just trusting everything someone said but thinking for herself. He had taught her those critical thinking skills and was happy to see her applying them now. He was also smiling inwardly at the way she still slipped into the coarse speech that she had learned to use during the first fifteen years of her life whenever she became impassioned. She still had more to learn in the realm of self control.

True, and that is why people are killed in higher numbers by criminals, and ‘accidentally’ by police and military personnel on the inner worlds. There is no way to defend yourself from evil or tyranny, but the official reports will never tell you that. In any case, we have to walk through a security checkpoint to get into the city, and I don’t think they would take very kindly to us walking in there with an army’s worth of armaments

Shakloc, she said switching to her native tongue and cursing under her breath, I never thought that we were so powerless. Growing up on Kesheron, we were so far out I guess I was unaware of a lot of this. Where did you pick it all up?

I’ve just been reading between the lines of a lot of the official propaganda that is constantly broadcast on nearly every communications band. I learn more, though, from news that inadvertently gets leaked from time to time over the news channels when some censor isn't doing their job. Typically you only hear those bits of news once and never again.

They exited the star voyager through the cargo loading door, and both said farewell to the ship’s artificially intelligent, or AI, entity, Alexis, who was quite miffed that she would be left alone again after their long voyage together.

You won’t be alone, Ace said, We’re taking our comm pins with us, you’ll be able to see where we’re going and hear what we’re doing for crying out loud!

It’s just not the same, she melodramatized, but I’ll be okay, you organics go have fun without me.

Sheesh! Ace commented under his breath, You’d think we were her kids.

Siasha just smiled knowing that this was just a playful argument between old friends.

The walk across the private craft landing field was nice in the waning hours of the evening. The planet Chandara blocked out the heavens, an immense gaseous ball coloring the evening sky. They were on the seventh moon of the world, one of three habitable moons that circled the immense body. The system’s primary star was setting behind Chandara as the seventh moon rocketed towards the planet’s terminator to the night side. The complex negotiations of the various heavenly bodies had worked strange cycles upon the system's native inhabitants, a race of rodent-like creatures that had become a servile class to the Imperial inhabitants of Chandara VII.The seventh moon, under Imperial rule, had become an interstellar trading center for the Chandaran system that included not only the planet of Chandara and its material-rich moons, but also the other planets of the Chandara system that made it a perfect ship-building system. The seventh moon, however, was not the home of the Chandaran natives. They had come to sentience on the third moon. The fifth, hundreds of years before, was originally a forbidden world, being the center of the Chandaran religion. No outsiders had ever visited it and any ship that had landed there had been forced away, except for Imperial vessels. There had yet to be a place the Nowa Empire would be turned away from, and in the end they had given in to the Imperial philosophy that religion was an outdated form of social order, and that the universe would be better off without the problems it imposed. Now their holy world had become another tourist attraction where the universe could go to see authentic reproductions of ancient rituals, and gaze aghast at manuscripts that spoke of miracles, prophecies, and even one of a time when the worlds would be freed of the grasp of evil. Of course in this enlightened age no one could possibly believe these prophecies could be true.

Other than some funny looks from the sentries at immigration in the port as they scanned their identification chips – which were fakes Alexis had helped produce – Ace and Siasha passed through the checkpoint without any real problems into the bustling life of the spaceport. Siasha had grown used to the varied inhabitants of local space, but the vast expanse she stepped into was a massive enclosed structure filled with more races than she had ever seen in her life. For each species that she could recognize, there were at least three species she could not even begin to identify. Moving throughout this mass of life she also detected many of the largely unnoticed indigenous inhabitants of the Chandara system, quiet and reclusive. She watched their attempts to move nonchalantly, but their sense of purpose was unmistakable to an eye trained in subtle observation. She could even empathicly feel the web of conspiracy flowing between even individuals that seemed to have no interest in one another. Almost as if...

Amazing isn’t it?

Hunh, Siasha said looking up at Ace from her reverie. She thought he was commenting on the spaceport’s main concourse, but if she had not been startled, she would have realized it was not that simple.

An entire culture waiting under the oppression of an alien power, knowing for a fact that God will free them.

That’s what I feel?

And I think something more, a secret within the secrets. That’s the part I’m not sure about

Siasha looked up at him wonderingly. He looked at her and raised his eyebrow.

The trip from the spaceport to the local city center, the city of L’Madra, took only a short time by underground magnetic rail. Ace and Siasha were packed tightly in amongst the other passengers. So tightly that Siasha was having trouble breathing. Looking about, she was feeling light headed and like the train car was moving in more directions than forward as the train rushed into the city center station. She felt her eyelids waver a few times and then felt Ace’s mouth close to her ear.

We’re being poisoned.

Whaa –, Siasha’s eyes widened as she focused infinitely inward, catching the feel of the poison in her blood. Immediately, as Ace had taught her, she began drawing upon the power of Zotan from the surrounding universe. Regulating the production of her biochemistry she