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    Uncharted: Book Seven of The Channel Riders
    Uncharted: Book Seven of The Channel Riders
    Uncharted: Book Seven of The Channel Riders
    Ebook293 pages4 hours

    Uncharted: Book Seven of The Channel Riders

    By Valerie Gaumont

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    Another season is closing and Elena once again remains of Haven. The Guild is still unsettled after the destruction of the Guild and unhappy with the fact that with the exception of Elena, Mateo and Riko, all of the other councilors flee earthside for the off season leaving the remaining Guild to once again fend for themselves. The world is changing and the Council has yet to accept it. Left skyside and uncertain if she will ever be allowed to go back to Earth, Elena does her best to set the Guild on solid ground while returning to her own trade aboard the Storm Chaser but with Riko's death imminent and change following close behind, will it be enough?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherValerie Gaumont
    Release dateJul 31, 2019
    ISBN9780463604199
    Uncharted: Book Seven of The Channel Riders
    Author

    Valerie Gaumont

    Valerie Gaumont is an evil genius whose mission is to take over the world. Her latest efforts were thwarted when her flying monkey army discovered beer. Currently they are in Rehab because no one likes a drunk flying monkey. (Thank you for your cards and letters of support.) When she is taking a break from villainy she can often be found with a pen in her hand. Yes, sometimes she is doodling, other times writing fiction and discovering new and interesting ways to combine reality with the outré. She has had short stories in the Violet Ampersand Anthology, Poetry, Prose and Other Voyages to the Edge, and the online Journal, Gothic Fairytales for Melancholy Children. In 2007 she was listed as a finalist in the William Faulkner International Writing Competition in the Novel-In-Progress category.

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      Book preview

      Uncharted - Valerie Gaumont

      Uncharted

      Book 7 of The Channel Riders

      Valerie Gaumont

      Copyright 2019 by Valerie Gaumont

      License Statement

      This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book 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 reader. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Books in the Channel Rider Series

      Pilot: Book 1

      Storm Chaser: Book 2

      Alliance: Book 3

      Haven: Book 4

      Skyside: Book 5

      Councilor: Book 6

      Uncharted: Book 7

      Chapter 1

      Elena stood on Haven’s docks watching ships slowly fade into the horizon. While the channels of Haven, passageways from planetary waters into space allowing the Guild of Families to conduct intergalactic trade, were a constant depth, Earth based channels would soon be too shallow to pass. Soon those channels would close for the season and anyone left off planet would remain so for the duration of the off season. The ships she watched depart all belonged to Councilors on the Ruling Council of the Guild of Families, the ruling body.

      Well, the other Councilors, I should say, she reminded herself with a self-depreciating smile.

      She was new to the Council, the first to sit the North American seat and she was still getting used to her new role. Growing up, she, like the rest of the Guild, believed the Councilors to be almost omnipotent. They knew all, they saw all and they ruled with an iron fist. Their rule was tolerated because they kept the Guild as a whole safe. While she now knew they had their weaknesses and blind spots, it was still somewhat disconcerting to be named among their number.

      She watched the departing ships with mixed feelings. Part of her was relieved to see the back of them. With the Council in Haven, the daily political tightrope had to be walked with precision. Haven was technically part of Elena’s holdings, but with the Docking Facility, the human population’s home away from Earth, destroyed by the Matrovean during the last off season, the Guild as a whole was temporarily re-located here. Maintaining Haven as independent of the Council, without looking as though she were taking over the Guild and its Council caused more headaches than she cared to admit.

      Despite her relief, a part of her was both angry and disappointed by their departure. When the Docking Facility was attacked, the Council was gone. They retired back to Earth for the off season leaving the rest of the skyside Guild exposed and fairly unprotected.

      I suppose they were hoping for the best, Elena mused, still studying the horizon.

      They didn’t get it. Knowing the Guild would be at its weakest during the off season, the Matrovean attacked in force. Elena was not a Councilor then, but she and her cousin Mateo were the two highest ranking Heads of House left skyside. Commander McLaughlin, leader of the patrol, was happy to turn over the evacuation of the DF to Elena. While she tried to keep panic down on the DF and ship people and goods out in an orderly fashion, Mateo and Kiera, his then fiancé now wife, got the evacuees settled in Haven.

      When the season re-opened, the Council found the Guild re-located and somewhat upset that the Council left them to fend for themselves. The respect they could command as a group diminished and most of the Councilors found themselves plagued by inconveniences and accidents. The accidents didn’t stop after Elena took her seat on the Council, although she was immune to the various bumps and scrapes the others endured. As the standard rule was that only death retired a Councilor, the only way to foster a change in leadership was to encourage that death to be a speedy one.

      Once this was pointed out to the Council, the law was changed. Now for the first time in Guild history, a person could retire from a seat on the Council, passing it on to their acknowledged heir.

      No longer did the Councilor have to die.

      No longer was there massive bloodshed in the family of a deceased councilor as all eligible claimants sought to eliminate their rivals.

      Or so it was hoped.

      Elena arranged for the change in law to keep her cousin Mateo from being killed by either her Aunt Elizabeth or her cousin Therese. While Therese died in a somewhat suspicious fire, Elizabeth was still an issue.

      Elizabeth arranged for Elena’s parents to die and even though Alexandro officially retired and Mateo took the Guild oaths in a public ceremony, she harbored no illusions about her Aunt’s contentment. Of the ships still heading towards the horizon, she was glad to mark her Aunt Elizabeth’s as one of them. Elizabeth desired one thing in this life and that was to take her father’s seat on the Council. She was not likely to take being bypassed easily. Elena suspected she would spend the off season on Earth plotting against Mateo.

      ‘Not something to look forward to, but not unexpected,’ Elena thought sadly.

      Elena was more than ninety percent certain Elizabeth killed her father Antonio, Elizabeth’s own brother, to gain a clearer line to their father’s seat. She doubted arranging the death of a nephew would cause her much concern. Elena shook the thought away. Her grandfather left the day before aboard his ship the Wind Dancer and before he weighed anchor, he promised to keep his daughter under surveillance. At the moment it was the best Elena could get, even if it did leave her feeling unsettled.

      Family problems aside, some of the Council harassment died down after Mateo took Alexandro’s seat. Elena suggested in their last Council session that some of the Councilors consider remaining in Haven and skyside during the off season, making a show of not abandoning the Guild when things were still unsettled.

      Even though Mateo added his encouragement to hers, the suggestion was not well received. Despite her preference for having them gone, she knew it was for the best if some of them stayed. Elena was hoping up until the last minute that some of them would heed that advice.

      Elena heard the sound of a footfall and turned to see Mateo approaching. Upset not to be going with them? he asked coming to stand next to her.

      Elena smiled. She and her businesses came under scrutiny as of late by some form of governmental agency, although Elena wasn’t certain which one. She prepared for a time when she would not return to Earth, but remain skyside indefinitely. Even though she stripped out all of her personal items, leaving little behind to look suspicious, when her assistant Victor arrived in Haven with the news that her businesses and apartment were seized, it hit hard. Elena no longer knew if she could go back to Earth, or at least to the United States anyway.

      She found it somewhat disconcerting that she didn’t know if she was considered a fugitive.

      A little, she confessed. Peter promised to check on my former employees and make certain they didn’t suffer too much and maybe figure out where things stand.

      More than anything, she worried about the people she left behind. While her two stores and apartment were confiscated, their contents no doubt moved to some sort of warehouse facility to be gone through with a fine toothed comb, oddly enough business continued.

      Her stores served as a model for many other guild-owned businesses. The repackaging facility and test kitchen were still intact, because they never appeared on anyone’s radar and she was the silent partner in several other stores using the business model. With the confiscation, the goods that her ships secured from her House’s trade routes simply wound up on the shelves in other people’s stores.

      While she missed both Calabrese Imports and Nibbles, worried over her staff and hated the thought of what they endured, financially not much changed. Instead of her regular bank account, her earthside revenues went into a secured numbered Swiss account that was safe from scrutiny. Without the overhead of the stores, she was even able to increase her savings.

      ‘Especially with no rent or spending of earthside currency,’ she thought. Being sequestered skyside was good for her savings plan, but not much else.

      None of them knew the Guild existed and none of them did anything wrong, she told her cousin, still thinking of her staff. I hope they were just questioned and let go. All of the books were legitimate and all of the taxes paid. There shouldn’t be any reason to hold them.

      You won’t know about your property or your people until Peter returns at the end of the season.

      I know, Elena said. And I’ve made my peace with that. As long as they are safe and relatively un molested I can live without the stores. I’m more worried about them. She gestured to the ships fading into the horizon.

      Aren’t you happy to see them go? God knows I could use a break from them. They are just exhausting.

      Elena smiled. More than happy to see the back of them for my own personal sake. Less so for the Guild’s.

      Mateo frowned and nodded. They’ve spent a lifetime being ruthless dictators, he reminded her. Currying favor with the masses when it isn’t a strictly business deal is a little out of their comfort zone.

      True, Elena admitted. Warm and fuzzy, the council was not. "I didn’t see the Sea Dragon though."

      Riko’s ship?

      Elena nodded. Councilor Inoue Riko was perhaps one of the more ruthless Councilors. While there was some sense that others, like Peter Baranov, were ruthless doing simply what had to be done as expediently as possible, Riko seemed to enjoy the darker aspects of enforcement. Admittedly, now she was rethinking some of those aspects.

      Elena didn’t know what illness was eating the Councilor, but it was terminal. Riko was not long for this, or any other world. Faced with her own mortality, she realized that there were few who would mourn her. To this end she began working on a project with Elena, one that would ensure that at least a few people would think kindly of her on her departure. The project was so secret Elena did not even whisper it to anyone, including Mateo for fear of a leak. She was pretty certain those in her House who could be considered her senior staff knew something was up, but respected her silence, trusting her not to lead them off a cliff.

      The responsibility for the fate of others still made her tremble inside. The fact that those she was now responsible for actually trusted her to do what was best, left her both humbled and occasionally terrified.

      Riko is staying, Mateo said. It was less of a statement and more of a question, the words tilting upwards towards the end.

      Elena shrugged. I suppose, although I doubt it is because of our suggestions.

      Riko reached a stage in her illness where modern medical science could do nothing for her. There was nothing on Earth or on any of the alien worlds they encountered, that would extend her life. She found the tropical heat of Haven beneficial and with her personal physician in tow, was spending more time in the house she claimed here. Elena thought she also had a better chance of staying away from Hashi, her would be successor, if she remained in Haven, but didn’t tell her cousin lest it lead to explanations she wasn’t ready to give.

      I wonder if she plans to die here or to stay here until the end and then have one last trip out, Mateo mused.

      If she plans one last trip out it means she will more than likely last the off season then, Elena replied. I really hope she doesn’t plan to die here.

      Usually the guild died with their ships and their bodies were lost to the sea, whichever sea that happened to be, or the dark of space. As a rule, bodies were rarely recovered and memorial stones rather than grave sites were their way of mourning. Elena wasn’t certain what to do if Riko died on planet. The facilities here were somewhat primitive and there would be no way to keep Riko’s body preserved in the tropical heat of Haven. The only thing she could think of to do would be to put Riko on the Sea Dragon, tow it out to sea and set fire to it.

      Hopefully her doctor and Edgar know what to do if she dies here, Elena added. Knowing Edgar, the quiet and competent aide to Riko she was sure he would come up with something for the eventuality.

      But hopefully it won’t be needed, she finished. It would be helpful for her to stick around a while longer.

      While she would never count Riko as a friend, they had an agreement between them. Riko believed her successor, Hashi was cut from the same cloth as she and would seek to rule the families of her House as she did. From everything Elena saw of Hashi, she suspected the ailing councilor was right. She didn’t have any hope of keeping the transfers quiet for too long, but hoped the guild would be a little more settled before Hashi found out the House he intended to rule was gutted by his predecessor.

      Riko suspected Hashi would encourage her death if he found out about the transfers, which Elena admitted was a rational fear on her part. The families transferring also kept quiet knowing that with Riko’s death, the transfers would end. Elena suspected there were now more people concerned for Riko’s health then there had ever been during the rest of her life.

      Realizing there was little she could do about Riko, Hashi, the departing councilors or her current banishment from Earth, Elena shifted the thoughts to the side.

      Grandfather left yesterday, she told her cousin as the two of them left the docks and began walking inland to the town proper.

      I know, Mateo said. We had a long series of meetings before he left. Mateo shook his head. I think he was afraid to leave any detail out.

      Well, he is still getting used to retirement, Elena said.

      As a show of support for the new law allowing councilors to retire instead of die in office, Alexandro Calabrese retired, passing his seat on the Council to Mateo. It was an ongoing adjustment and one of the reasons why their grandfather stated emphatically that he would not be staying on Haven during the closed season. Elena suspected it was the only way to keep himself from meddling in what were now Mateo’s affairs.

      I have the feeling he will be very used to it shortly, Mateo said. Once he finished relaying all the details he felt necessary, he practically skipped out of the house and did a jig on the steps.

      At least he didn’t fall down them, Elena said with a laugh. I can’t wait to see what hobbies he comes up with to occupy himself. Speaking of the changing of the guard, how are you dealing with the new additions to you hearth and home?

      With Mateo and Alexandro’s changes in status, Alexandro’s bodyguard Marcus, along with his longtime aide Antonio, relocated from Alexandro’s house to Mateo’s. Given their Aunt Elizabeth’s unhappiness with recent changes, she was relieved by the presence of a bodyguard and amused by the aide.

      It’s interesting, Mateo said. He ran a hand through his hair, scrubbing his scalp with his fingertips and making his hair stand on end. I’m used to seeing them with grandfather, so seeing them around isn’t all that unusual, even if it is odd that they now work for me and not grandfather. Kiera is having a few issues, especially since Marcus is protecting her more than me.

      As Mateo’s wife Kiera was currently pregnant, she was just as much, if not more, of a target for Elizabeth’s wrath than Mateo. Mateo becoming a father would push her another step further away from a council seat. As she spent the bulk of her life plotting to get that seat, she wasn’t thrilled with the prospect.

      How is Kiera holding up? Elena asked.

      Pretty well, considering, Mateo said. Luckily Madame Dupry came through with some maternity clothing which helps a lot as Kiera was running out of things that fit.

      I’m not surprised, Elena said. Evalene Dupry, dressmaker extraordinaire would not have wanted to see anyone discomfited by lack of proper clothing. The fact that she provided clothing for Kiera’s engagement announcement and wedding dress meant that she would have considered it a personal snub to not provide maternity clothing.

      I wouldn’t let her hear you say that, as she is sensitive about the weight gain.

      I didn’t mean about the not fitting into her clothes, Elena explained. She shot her cousin a dark look. And don’t you go telling her I did. I meant Evalene’s involvement.

      Of course, Mateo said with an unrepentant grin. Of course Kiera’s a little less sensitive now that we met with Dr. Kyle.

      The obstetrician? Elena said, sorting through her mental files. Is everything okay?

      It is and the reason Kiera is larger than expected is that we are officially having twins.

      Twins? Elena said. She smiled. Congrats. Did you tell the others?

      Well, grandfather shipped off before we found out, but I told mom before she left this morning so he will no doubt hear of it soon enough. I know she won’t keep it to herself.

      Well, I know he was plotting world domination with one great grandchild. I’m not sure how that will work with two.

      Probably co-dictatorship I would imagine, he said. I’m more worried about what Mom will bring back when they return from earth. Even though we got local craftsman to build nursery furniture she is probably going to hit every baby themed store on the planet before she gets back.

      I wouldn’t put it past her to gather up all the little old ladies she can find and force them to knit the entire off season, Elena added. It’s her first grandchild. Or grandchildren. Now that she is used to the idea and not freaked out by the thought of someone calling her Nonna, she’s bound to go a little crazy.

      True, I could just see the knitting sweatshop set up in the living room. At least she’ll have to do general pastels instead of a wave of either pink or blue.

      Elena nodded as they approached the cross roads and the librarian’s domain. While they managed to get qualified professionals and a large amount of medical equipment onto the formerly unoccupied planet, an ultrasound wasn’t on the list, so no one knew the gender of Mateo’s as yet unborn children.

      God help you if they are girls, Elena said with a laugh. As her Aunt Catherine raised three boys she was eagerly anticipating a time where she could indulge in pink and frilly baby outfits. As they walked a though occurred to her. Do you think they will have Kiera’s ability as well as the piloting gene?

      It’s possible, Mateo said. Evan is fairly bristling with excitement over the prospect. I think once they are born he will be visiting nearly as much as grandfather.

      While the ability to see and ride the channels was something that was a part of their family’s genetic make up, Kiera came with a different set of skills. She, and people like her, had abilities with plants. She could hold a seed in her hand and make it instantly grow at an accelerated rate. She could also tell what the plant could be used for and the things it needed to remain healthy and productive.

      On Earth, this was an ability that needed to be hidden. When she hired Kiera in her capacity as a paleo-botanist, the rest of her people saw Haven as a place where they could more or less live openly instead of hiding who and what they were. As a consequence, a colonization effort was begun with a large number of families relocating.

      Their skills were useful in settling the planet and adapting to new fauna, and as the guild spent most of their time on earth hiding what they were from prying eyes, the skills of the House of Terra were not looked on as freakish but beneficial. Elena wondered what the outcome of being able to live so openly would do to those raised here. While Mateo and Kiera’s children were the first to be born on Haven, there were other pregnant women and many small

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