Reformation (36 page)

Lodie raised his
head and pulled his eyes away from the ground to look toward the sky.  Even through the visor of his environmental suit, the deep red tint of the planet’s surface overwhelmed his eyes after a while.  Dust kicked up by the surface winds made the sky appear pink near the ground, but looking farther up the horizon granted his optic nerves relief with a vista of purple and blue.

He would have loved to rub his eyes, but a layer of clear plastic a quarter inch thick prevented his gloved paw from making contact.  He had to settle for blinking and
squinting his eyelids to wash out the red blindness.  With his eyes no longer screaming for relief, Lodie looked around by turning at the waist to make sure that no one in his team had gotten lost.

After months spent lobbying for the opportunity,
Lodie finally had his first command, and he was determined to succeed so that it would not be his last.  He looked out across the three mile crater and took count.  Thirty men and women were busy testing the soil, while another ten were setting up the core sampling rig.  They needed to verify the initial readings that the survey drone flying overhead had detected.

The equipment onboard the fixed wing aircraft had
only a fifty percent success rate when trying to detect deposits of titanium.  Before investing thousands of valuable man hours to set up a mining and smelting facility, the colony elders insisted the readings be verified, hence the survey crew.

The transport ship was nearing completion, but the current source to mine titanium for the ship’s outer hull was just about
exhausted.  To complete the build, a new source was needed.  The one hundred mile distance from the colony mountain was inconvenient, but not insurmountable.  A rail line could easily be built to move machinery here and haul ore back.  Initial surface readings were promising, but taking a core sample would give conclusive proof if the site was viable.

Lodie
was about to walk over and check on the rig when he suddenly felt an odd tremor beneath his feet.  The vibrations were subtle enough that he would have ignored it, but several of his team began frantically pointing toward the sky behind him.

He resisted the impulse to immediately turn and look
at the spectacle because he did not want to appear as a follower.  He was the leader and it would be interpreted as a sign of weakness, and that was the last impression Lodie needed to give during his first command.

An instant later the radio communication channel erupted with panic.  “What in th
e name of Mother Nature is that?” seemed to be the phrase of choice among the frantic team.

Lodie
felt the ground tremors intensify, which finally caused him to turn around and join the crowd of gawkers.  Once the turn was completed, the sight that greeted him sent a wave of terror through every fiber of his being.

In the distance
, near the location of the colony mountain, a towering column of smoke and scorching fire rose dozens of miles into the sky.  Lodie watched a shockwave ripple across the red sands toward him.  He had just enough time to get down on all fours before the once solid ground bucked him twenty feet into the air.

Lodie
managed to control his body enough midflight to come down on his feet.  He then crumpled onto his side to absorb the force of impact with his whole body rather than just his legs and knees. 

A moment later the air around him began pulsating against his environmental suit
, and the sound of a roaring explosion managed to seep through the air tight seals.  Lodie looked back toward the horrific scene only to see the calamity grow ten times worse. 

A second explosion that originated at ground level propelled a wide column of red soil and ash skyward with so much force that the particles did not dissipate at the top to produce the classic mushroom shaped cloud of a massive explosion.  This epic eruption reached for the heavens and met its goal by ejecting billions of metric tons of red rock out into space.

Any hopes Lodie harbored that the colony could have survived the first blast were thoroughly squashed with the realization that the more powerful explosion was the colony’s fusion reactor going critical from inside the mountain.

Panic stricken cries and screams of genuine pain reigned supreme over the radio until
Lodie put a stop to it all with a primal roar mixed in with his single commanding word, “SILENCE!”

It
took less than a second for his order to be followed with only the occasional whiny whimper breaking the dead airwaves.

“If you are unharmed or
can still manage to make the trek on your own, fall back to the rovers,” Lodie ordered.  “If you require assistance, speak up one at a time, otherwise maintain radio silence for those in need.”

The final casualty list was not nearly as bad as
Lodie initially feared.  One team member appeared to land visor first on a rock.  The man met a gruesome end as the low pressure of the basically nonexistent atmosphere attempted to turn his body inside out until the pressure was equalized.  Three other team members sustained broken arms or legs, but nothing that could not be fixed.

“We are heading back to the colony to look for survivors,”
Lodie communicated to the team, and then led the way as driver of the lead vehicle.  It took the convoy of five square shaped vehicles with six oversized wheels three hours to roll their way back to where the colony mountain once proudly stood.  Lodie was not the least bit surprised to find that the colony mountain, the entire mountain range in fact, no longer existed.

After hours of searching,
the only evidence that intelligent life once flourished in the location was a mound of twisted titanium half buried under the red soil.  It was the remains of the mostly completed space craft.  The ship would clearly never fly, but it actually held up quite well given the magnitude of both explosions it sustained. 

Lodie
crouched low as he stepped through an airlock to the ship that was bent forty-five degrees to the side.  He followed his lead engineer through a similarly leaning corridor that opened up to the craft’s rather sizeable command capsule. 

“It is over here
, Leader,” the engineer said and beckoned Lodie to his side with a wave of his arm.

Lodie
had not believed the reports at first, but seeing the green glow of an indicator light attached to the ship’s main computer core gave him hope.  Everything the colony had rediscovered over the prior three thousand years was housed in the core: farming techniques, chemical equations, mathematics, engineering diagrams.  Most important of all, the still active computer core housed the designs to build another relic altar.

This was not the end of
everything; it was yet another new beginning.  With only forty-one survivors, it would take hundreds of years, but the colony would eventually return to its former glory.

The engineer had
more good news for Lodie.  “The ship’s fusion reactor is damaged, but I think it can be repaired if we are able to pull up the designs from the computer core.”

Lodie
nodded his head slowly and allowed a hint of optimism back into his mindset.  His first command was going to be a long-term stint after all.

THE END

Help me out:

I sincerely hope you enjoyed the third volume in the story of Hastelloy and his crew.  I would greatly appreciate your feedback with an honest review on Amazon.com. 

First and foremost, I am always looking to grow and improve as a writer.  It is reassuring to hear what works, as well as receive constructive feedback on what should improve.  Second, starting out as an unknown author is exceedingly difficult, and Amazon reviews go a long way towards making the journey out of anonymity possible.  Please take a few minutes to write an honest review.

Best regards,

Mark Henrikson

SNEAK PEEK:

Most fans of the Origins series are well aware that the back story of Hastelloy and his Novi crew was actually dreamed up by the creative mind of my older brother, Jeff Henrikson, in the form of a brief plot outline.  He opted to let me run with it since his writing interests lay in a different project that I am proud to announce will be published on September 1, 2013.

This first installment kicks off a fantasy series about the long war between light and dark elf factions, and a final peace process that will reconcile their differences.  The back cover description and first chapter of his book are included here for the interested reader.

Do the Gods Hear Our Prayers?

By

Jeff Henrikson

Book One of the Reconciliation
Saga

Back Cover of Volume 1

After fighting for thousands of years, peace between the light and dark elves is within sight.  Ordered by the Overlord to settle their differences, the gods from both sides meet to hammer out a treaty, until the unthinkable happens.

Pawns of the gods above, the human kingdom of
Kentar and the last elven kingdom of Armena are thrown into war by the conniving genius of the world’s most powerful thieves guild.  Nations rise and fall as pieces move around the board in this high stakes match for domination of the world, and the heavens themselves.

Two
elven brothers and a thief are the mortal foot soldiers in this war between Kentar, Armena, and the Talon Guild.  The brothers try to right the most grievous of wrongs, not knowing that their true destiny is to save their race, or die trying.  The thief is in it for the power, but is the cost too high, or is he willing to make the sacrifice for his own selfish ends?  This is a novel of combat, politics, and religion played out on a three-tier stage where mortals try to win the favor of the divine, wondering all the while if the gods hear their prayers.

Evisar
double checked the sword in his scabbard and the quiver on his back.  Today he was going with Lord Chas to talk with the humans of Kentar for the first time in three centuries.  Evisar prayed to Invictus that there wouldn’t be any trouble, but it was his job to defend his lord if there was. 

In his great grandfather’s day the
Glenmyr Forest had teemed with elves, but that was three hundred years ago, before the Retreat began.  During that fateful time, most of the elves chose to leave the Glenmyr Forest in order to seek a peaceful existence away from the prying eyes of man, orc, and goblin.  These races were always encroaching on their territory and cutting down their trees.  Those elves who couldn’t bear to leave their home stayed behind and formed Armena, the last elven kingdom on the continent of Tellus.  Armena was only a fraction the size of the old elf empire, and it was centered on the eastern side of the Glenmyr Forest, away from the humans of Kentar.  For three hundred years Armena had been left in relative peace, but time was finally beginning to catch up with it.  Humans and other more ghastly creatures were slowly moving into the forest to fill the void left by the elves after the Retreat. 

The tiny kingdom of
Armena maintained some trade with the human villages to the northeast, near the Ring Sea, but Kentar and Sena to the west and south hadn’t seen or heard an elf for fifteen of their generations.  Humans were impulsive and their lives were as short as their memories.  No doubt a party of elves at the gate of Kentar’s farthest frontier town was going to bring quite a shock.

Lord Chas looked at
Evisar and his other two escorts and asked, “Are you ready?”

Evisar
tried to look absolutely certain as he replied, “Yes my lord,” but Lord Chas must have noticed his discomfort.

“Don’t worry
Evisar, I am sure you will bring honor to your father’s name today.  Just follow my lead and everything will be fine.”

**********

A man named Jon walked in contemplation along the stockade wall of the human logging camp that had been dubbed ‘
Endwood.’  The camp was a quarter mile long by a quarter mile wide, and made entirely out of wood.  Through the main gate was a large courtyard divided neatly in half by a river that was used by the loggers to transport wood downstream.  Across the river and past the courtyard was a town hall, several troop barracks, storage buildings, and a number of houses. 

Jon was a simple Lieutenant in the Army of
Kentar and he had the day watch.  He shook his head as he thought about his dumb luck at being assigned to a logging camp out in the middle of nowhere.  To make matters worse, for reasons that surpassed understanding, the king of Kentar had sent an entire battalion of soldiers with the founding settlers three weeks ago, all but ensuring Jon would never see any action.  On their trek out to the frontier Jon had heard the settlers talking about the dangers of the woods. 

“My friend said there is a huge dragon in the woods.”

“When I was a boy my grandfather told me there used to be three villages out on the wooded frontier that were all mysteriously wiped out.”

“Did you know the forest is protected by a caregiver?”

“I heard the forest is haunted.”

As the column of wagons had pulled up to the site that was to become
Endwood, Jon quickly gained respect for the grandfather who talked about past villages that had been wiped out.  The foundations of a previous town were clearly visible among the overgrown vegetation. 

Since then, everyone had settled into a routine as the lumberjacks set to felling trees and the guards started patrolling. 
Endwood sprang up quickly and the townsfolk were full of youthful energy.  Many of the men had brought their families with them because of the opportunity the abundant forest promised to those who were willing to work hard for their fortune.  Jon spent his days lazily walking around the top of the stockade, and today promised more of the same.

Then he caught sight of four figures walking out of the woods boldly up to the gate.  They wore brown and green clothes, with ornately carved longbows slung over their backs and swords at their sides.  They looked vaguely like humans, but not.  The tallest of the four stood only five feet tall and they were all thinner than Jon had been as a boy.  In fact, had it not been for their sharp features and pointy ears, they could have been mistaken for children.  The four foreigners walked out of Jon’s view as they approached the gate, where Corporal
Darron had the command.

Jon quickened his pace, and as he climbed down the wooden stairs nearest the gate, he could hear one of the foreigners speaking in a barely understandable form of the common tongue.  “… do not understand.  … wish to … speak with your leader.”

Corporal
Darron said, “I can’t let you into Endwood.  I have my orders.  Now, you will have to step back from the gate.”

Jon could see the conversation was going in the wrong direction and raised his voice as he approached, “
Darron!”  Jon quickly closed the distance and said, “What is going on here?  Report.”

“Ah, yes sir.  They claim to be the legendary race of elves.  They’re
askin’ to speak with the capt’n.”

Jon couldn’t believe his eyes. 
Elves.  Here.  At Endwood.  Like any child of Kentar, he had heard legends about the caregivers of the Glenmyr Forest, but if elves existed at all, they had disappeared hundreds of years ago.  If these strangers were here claiming to be elves, then perhaps the legends were at least based on fact.  “Thank you, Corporal.  I will take it from here.  Why don’t you go find Captain Sheval and bring him to the gate?”

“Yes sir.”  With that,
Darron saluted sharply before turning around and trotting off. 

Jon turned his full attention to the foreigners.  “Yes gentlemen.  How may I help you?”

The lead elf responded, “I am Lord Chas, and these are my countrymen, Evisar, Laithar, and Falon.  Are you the commander of this town?”

“Not exactly.
  I’m second in command of Endwood.”  To hear the elf’s voice was strange.  His voice was musical and rhythmic and his knowledge of the common tongue was rusty and formal.  It was as though he had been born a thousand years ago and was a step out of touch with the current world.  “Can I help you while my soldier finds the Captain?”

“Yes.”  Lord Chas began slowly.  “Are you familiar with the Treaty of
Glenmyr?” 

Jon thought back to his school days and answered truthfully.  “No, I can’t say that I am.”

Lord Chas pulled a scroll of parchment out of his brown tunic and handed it to Jon.  Jon was one of the few men in town who could read, and the scroll was actually written in the common tongue.  The title read, 'Treaty of Glenmyr.'  Jon read the first few sentences and was surprised to discover that the scroll outlined a treaty between the elves of the old elf empire and the humans who arrived on Tallus.  Jon didn’t want to be rude, but he couldn’t avoid the facts.  “Our history says that the old elf empire doesn’t exist anymore, and we are from the Kingdom of Kentar, not Tallus.”

Lord Chas shook his head in disagreement.  “We are what
is left of the old elf empire, and this treaty was meant for any humans living on Tallus, as you are now.  This town is breaking the treaty by cutting down the forest.  By treaty, the forest belongs to Armena, not Kentar.  We have come to ask you to stop cutting the forest.”

Jon honestly had no idea what the elf was talking about.  “I had no idea we might be breaking any kind of treaty.  I didn’t even know elves were real until I saw you walk out of the woods, but if we are in the wrong then we will make amends.” 

As Jon finished his statement, Captain Sheval came quickly striding up to the gate.  “Lieutenant, what is going on here?  Why did you talk to these elves without my leave?”

Jon was surprised by the rudeness of his Captain, and the fact that he knew what an elf was.  “Sir, someone reported foreigners at the gate.  I simply came out to investigate.  Once I saw who they were, I sent for you immediately.”

The Captain pulled Jon backwards by the arm and whispered in his ear.  “You shouldn’t have talked to them at all, but we’ll deal with that later.”  Captain Sheval grabbed the scroll parchment out of Jon’s hand and turned his attention to the elves standing under the gate.  “What exactly do you want here?”

Lord Chas took note of the Captain’s rudeness and continued.  “May we come in to discuss our dispute with you?”

The Captain folded his arms across his chest defensively and said, “I don’t think so.  You can say what you wish right here.”  Jon stood back and didn’t dare say anything, but he saw no reason why the captain should be so cold to the foreigners.

The Captain looked around at the gathering crowd and said, “Get back to work!  Get back to your posts!”  Everyone except for Jon and the Captain slowly turned around and pretended to go back to their duties, or at least got out of earshot.

Jon eventually found his courage and spoke up to fill the void.  “Captain, they claim ownership of these lands and say we are in violation of some treaty between our peoples.  They’re asking us to stop cutting down the forest.”

“Is that so?  Well, good elves, I’ve been expecting you for some time.”  Jon’s mouth dropped open in astonishment.  How could the Captain have been expecting these elves?  “But it turns out you have no right to ask us to stop logging the forest.  The treaty between our peoples was signed by the elves of the old elf empire and the first humans on
Tallus, not between Kentar and Armena.  Besides, the treaty clearly states that the border shall forever be the forest.  As you can see, we are not in the forest.  Therefore, the land you are standing on belongs to Kentar.”

Lord Chas kept his head about him as he stated, “The treaty also state that
Kentar will not cut down any living tree in this forest.  If you did not cut down any trees, then there would be no dispute over the border.”

The Captain didn’t give an inch.  “The king of
Kentar claims the cleared land.  I’m afraid there’s nothing else I can do for you gentlemen.  Good day.”  With this statement the Captain stepped back and began to shut the door in the lead elf’s face.  Lord Chas moved in a blur and slammed the door open.  Corporal Darron's hand moved to his sword, but Evisar drew his bow, notched an arrow and fired, in one fluid motion. The sword flew out of the Corporal’s hand and an arrow sprouted from his palm.  He screamed in agony and fell to his knees. 

Lord Chas didn’t respond to the violence at all, but simply said in a forceful, strained voice, “You do not respect us.  We could destroy you all.  We have come in peace, to find a compromise, but you are selfish.  Are you saying you will not stop killing the trees?”

Other soldiers drew their swords and moved forward as Captain Sheval responded in kind, “That is exactly what I’m saying.  Now be gone!” 

With this final statement, the elves backed away and the gate was shut.  Jon could hear the elves talking in a foreign, melodic language as they retreated into the forest.

Jon turned angrily to his Captain and asked, “What in the seven hells was that, sir?  They came here in peace and you shut the door in their faces?”

“You don’t understand, Lieutenant, and there’s a reason you were not informed.  Return to your duty and remember your place.”  Jon turned around reluctantly and walked away from his Captain before he said something that would get him thrown in the brig.  He resumed walking the stockade and eventually came to the realization that the crown may have sent a full battalion of soldiers to
Endwood because they were expecting trouble, or perhaps hoping to start trouble.  One thing was for sure, the Captain’s treatment of the elves had all but guaranteed a confrontation.