This week’s snip is from Epsilon: Broken Stars–a bit of prose in which Aaron Taylor thinks of his beloved mother, Madeline, dead for several years by the time the story begins.
In a universe where the fate of free worlds hangs in the balance, can one man make a difference?
The Resistance is a thin line of defense for the free planets of the Borderworlds. The strip of former colonies forms a shrinking boundary between the Earth-controlled Drilin Imperium and the Epsilon Alliance, superpowers locked in a cold war a hundred years old. It’s a no-man’s land home to billions living under the constant threat of Imperium invasion, a place where the Alliance dares not intercede for fear of sparking all-out war.
Aaron Taylor knows what’s at stake when he volunteers to join the Resistance. The son of an Imperium general, the Alliance-trained military spy’s existence can be officially disavowed at a moment’s notice. It’s work that’s already cost him everything he holds dear–including his beloved partner of seven years.
He joins the Resistance as a man with nothing left to lose at a time when the Resistance needs men like him the most. It’s far from the disorganized rabble both the Alliance and the Imperium think it is, but without more able hands, the Borderworlds are doomed. Soon, he begins to believe as they do–that there’s no hope for humanity without the men and women willing to fight and die for their homes on the border.
Torn between duty to both, when the chips are down, which will Taylor choose: the Alliance that made him, or the Resistance that made him its own?
Snippet below the break.
The priest smiled and turned fully back toward me, folding his hands in front of him demurely. “The Cathedral Beyt’knesset Saint Adhara bin Kahlid has been here since colonization in 2117. Vasily could show you the founding stone if you’d like to see it.”
Must have been a coalition of the Faith at the founding, then, with a name like that for the place. Founded between the Preytax Wars—dead-center. I wonder if people were running away from the ravages of war in the settled systems. There had been two Preytax Wars, the first back in the very early days of the twenty-second century, then another in the 2120s. Growing up on Epsilon, I knew that the first war had ended with a battle on my homeworld, along with a simultaneous human victory on Cadine. That was more than most people knew about the wars.
I smiled a little. “Maybe some other time, Father.” I looked back toward the altar for a long moment.
“How long has it been?”
My brow furrowed and I didn’t look back at him. “How long has what been, Father?”
“Since your last confession.”
I winced. Didn’t expect that question. “A long time, Father,” I said quietly. “A very long time.”
He grasped me by the shoulder. “Sounds like you’re due, then. Come with me.”
He wasn’t going to give me much choice in the matter, with the grip he had on my shoulder. I stumbled sideways, trying to turn without twisting my bad knee. I coughed, groping for words and suddenly feeling wholly out of my element, caught off-guard for no good reason. My mind reeled. Confession? I can’t confess anything to anyone short of a military chaplain with a security clearance six feet above my ass. I’m not even sure those kind of chaplains exist. “I…the last priest I encountered wasn’t quite this adamant about getting my confession,” I managed as I finally caught my balance about ten feet away from where we’d started. He was dragging me into one of the rounded alcoves off the center of the worship space, one crowded with a few wood-paneled confessionals. For half a moment, I wondered if they were like the soundproofed ones on Zephyr before I remembered myself and put all thoughts of actually confessing anything out of my mind. It was pretty clear that I was going to end up in the confessional anyway. I’ll just have to make something up.
“I know the look of a man when he has serious sins to confess, the kind that eat away the soul and rot the heart from the inside out.” The priest opened the penitent’s side of the confessional box and gestured that I should climb in. There was a hard glint in his eyes, one I could’ve sworn I’d seen before. “Secrets,” he said slowly, “will eat you if you keep them long enough. It’s time you whisper some into the darkness, Mr. Terrel.”
I ducked into the confessional box, hopefully fast enough that the priest missed the look of blood draining from my face and before I began to shake. He shut the door behind me. The phrase about secrets, I’d heard that before—heard it exactly like that before.
“Secrets will eat you alive if you keep them long enough. There has to be something more you can tell us about your husband’s disappearance, Madeline. Please. Let us help you.”
“I don’t know what else I can tell you, Major,” my mother said softly. They were sitting in the kitchen of our house on Epsilon, just the two of them, with me crouched in the darkness of the family room across the island, unseen, unnoticed. I was eleven.
“They’re talking about closing the case, Madeline. There has to be something.”
“I…I’ll see what I can figure out.” Her voice was shaky. “…thank you, Major. For everything you’ve done.”
“Don’t thank me. I haven’t done anything that wasn’t part of my job.” A chair scraped against the floor. “Thank you for the coffee. Perhaps another night, you’ll have secrets to whisper to the darkness.”
“God, but I hope so,” my mother whispered. “God, but I hope so.”
But this priest hadn’t been that man, the major who’d tried so hard to help my mother. For the life of me, I still couldn’t remember who that man had been—the man who’d investigated the disappearance of my father so long ago.
The priest’s voice jarred me, brought me back to myself. “How’s old Longshot?”
My eyes widened and I slowly looked toward the thin screen that separated the priest and I inside the box, the one that obscured our identities. How does he know Hunter’s ID? Unless… Something clicked inside my brain. “Pardon, Father?”
“I don’t think I misspoke, Mr. Terrel.”
“Sotheby,” I murmured. Of course. Of bloody course.
He didn’t deny it. “How is he?”
“He’s…he’s fine,” I answered unsteadily. They’re old friends. That’s why Hunter asked me to look for him. He’s…worried. Hunter doesn’t worry. Or does he? I thought of his tone of voice, when he told me to be careful out here. He does worry. He’s worried about his friend, and he’s worried about me, too. “…why are you off the grid?”
“…haven’t you heard? Alexander Sotheby is completely insane.”
Funny. He doesn’t sound completely insane to me. Sounds about as sane as I do. I reflected that comparing his sanity to mine probably wasn’t fair to either of us. “You don’t sound it, sir.”
“I must be faking sanity well, then.” There was a long pause. “He puts five agents down on the ground here and number five finds me without even looking. Don’t be so shocked, Mr. Terrel. It’s not because you’re obvious about what you really are, because you’re not. You’re probably in the same league of agents as people ten feet above your pay grade. I see things, you see. A…gift…I received on Demar.”
Oh god. What am I getting myself into here with this guy? Demar was a haunted place, one where whole divisions went to die. It had been one planet the Alliance had gladly handed over to the Imperium back when Denalt and a few other worlds fell back when I was still in the Academy. Men and women in the service can be a superstitious bunch, but even the folks that weren’t agreed that Demar was a place they’d rather not go.
“Longshot is the only one who takes me seriously. That’s why he watches, and why I hide. He told me to, told me it was safer to run and hide, he’d watch as he could. The Alliance doesn’t care what I do, or what I see. But God does.” He paused for a few moments. “…and you will, too. You’re like him. I can see it.”
He’s crazy. “I don’t understand.”
“You don’t have to yet,” Sotheby said quietly. “When the time comes, you’ll know it. And then you’ll see and know all that you’re meant to see and know.”
Cryptic. No wonder the General likes him. “So you…saw me coming here?”
“I saw a lot of things, Mr. Terrel. A great many things. I can’t tell you all of them.” He paused. “I can tell you one thing, though.”
“What’s that?” Maybe he… I tamped down hope. To imagine that he’d seen something about Caren, and that I’d believe it, was almost too much.
“For any of this to come to an end without the stars awash in the blood of all humans, the Redeemer and the redeemed must survive.”
My brow furrowed. The hell is that supposed to mean? Ross has to live, sure, but I wasn’t going to let him get himself killed anyway. “That’s all?”
Sotheby laughed. “You’ll understand when the time is right.” He calmed after a few moments as I put order to my thoughts. “So, Mr. Terrel, about that confession.”
I shook myself. “…how many levels above my pay grade are you, sir?”
“Enough, Mr. Terrel. You have a need for absolution?”
By God, I do. I squeezed my eyes shut and exhaled. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been ten years since my last confession…”
Don’t miss Epsilon: Broken Stars, available where books are sold!
Links:
- Amazon (US) ♠ Amazon (UK) ♠ Amazon (DE) ♠ Amazon (FR) ♠ Amazon (print)
- Barnes and Noble (Nook and Print)
- Kobo Books
- Smashwords
- Createspace (Print)
