He pulled out his tablet, prepared to request Bocook allow him to say a few words and propose exactly that change instead of what Coalson supported.
Coalson’s face grew hard.
“I’d hoped we could find common ground in this, at least, after what happened to your wife.”
Denholm froze. What could Coalson possibly mean by that now? What did this ridiculous change in the Charter have to do with Lynelle’s death?
“Isn’t this exactly what killed her, Carew? Out in a storm, working with the stock instead safe inside?”
Mylin stepped forward. “Now, see here —”
“Do you wonder about it?” All Coalson’s previous tone of friendliness and reason had vanished, replaced by the bitter hatred Denholm had come to associate with him. “If you’d kept her safely in her place, would she still be alive now?”
Denholm’s vision blurred, his throat tightened, and he spun around to blindly force his way through the crowd and out of the tent — it was either that or wrap his hands around Coalson’s throat and assuage his anger and sorrow that way.
The truth was that Coalson’s words struck far too close to home and the pain of Lynelle’s death was far too recent for him to have any perspective about it.
He had wondered that very thing. Not in so many words, certainly not in so hateful a tone, but he had wondered.
What if he’d kept one or two of the hands back that night, despite Lynelle’s insistence they were needed in the village? Surely the village would have made do without? What if he’d insisted she remain safe and warm inside the farmhouse?
Despite Doctor Purdue’s assurances that neither the work nor being outside in the storm had made a significant difference, Denholm still blamed himself. For bringing her here, away from the safety and security of the Core. For not keeping her safe, as he thought he should. For everything.
“Denholm —”
Mylin caught up with him outside the Conclave tent, grasping his arm to stop his flight.
“No, Sewall, I’m done.” He pulled out his tablet and ran fingers across it. “That man, those … it’s everything I hate and I’m through with it.” He swiped a finger on his tablet to send Mylin his proxy for the voting. “There, you’ve my proxy to vote my shares on the rest of the issues — vote as you see fit.”
He shrugged off Mylin’s hand and started toward where the Hulses, Julia Levett, and the other new indentures waited for the long trek back to his holding.
They’d worked so hard to get here and build something, he and Lynelle, and it had all turned so wrong. He’d lost so much and felt he didn’t have the energy to give to the colony at large anymore. It was enough to care for his lands, the indentures who looked to him, and Harlyn.
“Will you leave the running of the colony to the likes of Coalson, then, Denholm?”
“I’m done with it, Sewall. I’ve my own lands to run and a son to raise.”
A Note From the Author
Thank you for reading Planetfall.
I hope you enjoyed it.
If you did and would like to further support the series, please consider leaving a review on the purchase site or a review/rating on Goodreads — if you received Planetfall as a free gift for signing up for the mailing list, you can still leave a review :). Reviews are the lifeblood of independent authors and let other readers know what books they might enjoy.
If you’d like to be notified of future releases, please consider following me on Twitter or Facebook, or joining my mailing list. The mailing list is limited to no more than one or two updates a month on the status of forthcoming books and the occasional update on what I’m reading myself.
Planetfall was written for those fans of the Alexis Carew series who wanted to explore the lives of some of the other characters on Alexis’ home world during the time before she was born, as well as some more world-building around the colonization and indenture processes of the Fringe Worlds, something that’s hard to do from Alexis’ perspective in the Navy.
I started writing Planetfall in the fall of 2014, even before Into the Dark was published. Mutineer was complete and ready to go to the editors, The Little Ships was but a glimmer in some nether-recess of my brain, and I wanted to write something that would explore all those things I just mentioned.
Since then, though, the outline for “Planetfall”, which was originally planned as a single, 20,000-word novella, grew to over 60,000 words — and I made the decision to publish it in two parts:
Part One, this volume, covering the first few years of the colonization and up until the time Alexis’ father, Harlyn, is born.
Part Two, forthcoming later this year or in 2017, showing a slightly more mature colony and introducing the second generation.
Splitting it up will allow me to release the parts as I finish them, and, really, they are two separate stories — this, from Denholm’s perspective, and the second from Harlyn’s.
It’s also, I have to admit, one of the more depressing stories in the series to write … given Alexis’ family’s history, I suppose there’s no way it could have been any different. Still, for as brief a time as I had with some of these characters, they came to mean a great deal to me.
I actually wrote the scene where Lynelle dies while I was on a cruise … so picture me there on the Promenade deck, laptop on the table before me, fruity-rum drink close to hand … with tears streaming down my face …
“Sir? Sir, are you all right?”
“I just killed someone I love. Leave me alone.”
“…”
Take care in the questions you ask writers.
J.A. Sutherland
Washington, DC
February 19, 2016
Also by J A Sutherland
Alexis’ adventures continue in HMS Nightingale (Alexis Carew Book 4) now available for purchase.
Alexis Carew: Books 1, 2, and 3 Page 110
