by Renee Duke
Shield Of Beom
Side Trip Book 2
By Renee Duke
ISBNs
EPUB 9780228605935
Kindle 9780228605942
WEB 9780228605959
BWL Print 9780228605966
Amazon Print 9780228605973
Copyright 2018 by Renee Duke
Cover art by Michelle Lee 2018
Cover model photography by Summer Bates, Copyright 2015
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
Dedication
To Myra Su McKay, who is, as yet, too young to read this book but likes space age stuff, and to my Side Trip cover models, Emma White (Jip), Kaylan Hait (Kirsty), Annabella and Emiliano Feeney (Meda and Simon), and their sister, Antonella (my mentally visualized Arlyne model).
Acknowledgements
Family support throughout the creative process was very much appreciated, as was input from my editor, Nancy Bell, and beta readers M.D. and Linda Rogers.
Thanks, also, to my cover artist, Michelle Lee, my photographer and touch-up artist, Summer Bates, and my cover models, Annabella Feeny, Emiliano Feeny, Emma White, and Kaylan Hait.
Prologue
I’ve been told I should offer up this prologue for the benefit of those who have not yet read the first narrative I penned about the planet-hopping exploits of yours truly, Andromeda Anne Brent, and co. The co. being my siblings, Arlyne and Simon Brent, and my friends, Kirsty MacGregor, and Jipthidovrillavorimvaisse Vor-Zoag. (Yes, I know that’s a mouthful. We call her Jip.)
A few months back, my parents, and Kirsty’s parents, thought it would be a good idea to put us on an edu-tour while they were off on assignments for the expansion department of the Association of United Planets (AUP). And that my sister and brother should go along too. Being an amenable sort, Arlyne didn’t mind too much. Even though the tour only took in AUP–member planets, was boring in the extreme, and was run by a middle-aged termagant who was determined no kid on the tour was going to enjoy the experience. Being much less amenable, Kirsty and I took off on our own. As did—we found out later—Simon.
Long story short, we met a Vorlan girl on the, then, AUP-member planet of Heltiga, did some travelling about on the independent planets of Gethev and Sustra, met back up with Simon, got involved in a plot to overthrow the lawful monarch of the independent planet of Cholar, and managed to thwart said plot. A plot devised by a dissident faction on Cholar and, I regret to say, AUP, which was keen to add the influential, resource-rich, technologically advanced, Cholar to its list and wanted a planetary leader more receptive to the idea.
Unfortunately for AUP, its involvement in what is now known in AUP circles as, ‘That Horrible Cholarian Business’, led to a decrease in membership rather than an increase. A lot of member-planets withdrew from membership, and almost all the independent planets hitherto willing to do business with AUP called off the arrangement. Even the few still disposed to having dealings with it demanded such dealings be modelled along the lines of those of the new ruler of Cholar, who refused to go beyond a mutual defence treaty and a limited (very limited) trade agreement. And AUP wouldn’t even have got that much if the parental Brents and MacGregors hadn’t agreed to let their—what he considered to be, neglected—offspring stay on Cholar with guardians of his choosing whenever they had assignments that took them away from Yaix, their base planet in the Zaidus system.
For a while, they didn’t get any. After it became known AUP had tried to further its own interests by interfering in the affairs of an independent planet, worlds wanting to join the Association were in somewhat short supply, and any recruitment and integration work there was did not come their way. But then, after a tiresomely long period of base duty doing some type of administrative work they all loathed, they were told a seeker patrol had found some new planets that seemed receptive. With their high-level expertise once more in demand, they dispatched us to Cholar as agreed, little knowing we were headed for another side trip — details of which a history buff like myself feels obliged to set down for posterity in the same manner as I did the first time.
Simon and Arlyne are history buffs too, that being something of a family trait on our father’s side. Although, with him, it apparently skipped a generation. He’s always been more into what’s happening in the here and now, and what’s to come, than what went on ages ago. He’s never shown the slightest interest in our Earth ancestry, which admittedly doesn’t include any famous statesmen, explorers, war heroes, or other well-known people, but does include some distinguished historians whose work is still being read by fellow academics today. One of them even took the trouble to follow our own family history all the way back to the eleventh century, AD, where he found some of our predecessors listed in something called the Domesday Book. That book, along with various other public records, gave him the means to follow our lineage to that specific point and even, to a less reliable extent, beyond it.
Few records are completely reliable, of course. Dates concerning births, deaths, and noteworthy happenings did eventually become more accurate, but accounts of the latter (who did what, and why) have always been open to the interpretation of the chronicler.
As is this one, although I really have tried to be as exact and fair-minded as possible.
Chapter One
The following recounts what happened when, instead of the memorable, fun-filled, visit to Cholar we’d been anticipating, my friends, siblings, and I were forced to put all thoughts of that aside and embark on a secret mission that, while indeed memorable, wasn’t exactly what you could call fun.
The following recounts what happened when, instead of the memorable, fun-filled, visit to Cholar we’d been anticipating, my friends, siblings, and I were forced to put all thoughts of that aside and embark on a secret mission that, while indeed memorable, wasn’t exactly what you could call fun.
Things didn’t start out too badly, and the visit should have been a thoroughly enjoyable one. Having helped to put the rightful ruler on the throne, we’re quite highly thought of on Cholar, and have full Cholarian citizenship. We also have some impressive titles and offices awaiting us once we’re of age — which, there, is the Earth equivalent of twenty-five —and even now can perform certain symbolic duties related to them.
As soon as we got to the capital city of Cholaris, I cast my mind back to the tasks we’d been assigned for the coronation of Supreme Ruler Taziol IV. Held on a picture-perfect day, the coronation was carried out with all due pomp and ceremony and suffered only one glitch. A glitch that was covered up well at the time but, looking back, was perhaps not as insignificant an occurrence as I thought.
On Earth, there was once an invader who fell flat on his face while landing on the shores of the place he planned to take over. Something his troops could easily have viewed as a bad omen. Being a quick thinker, he grabbed two fistfuls of the local soil and cried, “See, my lords, by the splendour of God, I have taken possession of England with both my hands!” Impressed, his men set about the invasion with great enthusiasm and won their perspicacious leader the title of William the Conqueror, who, wanting to know exactly how much his latest acquisition had netted him, later commissioned that Domesday Book I spoke of.
Cholar’s a long way from Earth, but its High Chancellor is a quick thinker too. When Kirsty dropped the sacred Sceptre of Beom at a critical point in the ceremony, Verim shouted, “Behold! The sceptre has been cast down. In accordance with ancient le
gend, he who picks it up is assured the same long and successful reign his ancestor Beom enjoyed.” Yet another quick thinker, the almost-but-not-quite-yet-crowned Supreme Ruler got it before it stopped rolling.
I’m not sure there ever was such a legend. If not, there is now. To quash any misgivings, one of the planet’s leading historians rooted around in the royal archives and produced a convincingly archaic-looking scroll containing it.
The Cholarian year runs about four hundred and twenty-five Earth days and is comprised of six seasons. In addition to the rough equivalent of our spring, summer, autumn, and winter, a second, much harsher, winter and a second, much hotter, summer follow on the heels of the regular ones. We’d left in mid-autumn, just after the coronation, and when we returned, spring was in the air, which suited me as I’m not a huge fan of snow and ice on any world.
At the time of our return, the we only consisted of me, Arlyne, Simon, and Kirsty. Jip was still on Vorla with her parents and younger brother Pakiaduvrishoxen. (Paki, to us.) Being archaeologists, her parents often go off-world on digs, but usually take the kids with them and claim to enjoy having them around at home as well. Though busy collating information from their latest excavations, they were really only letting Jip go to Cholar to spend time with us, and she was scheduled to arrive closer to summer, accompanied by Mr. Skoko. In view of everything the ill-tempered little Ralgonian had gone through whilst secretly watching over us on our earlier travels, I was surprised he’d agreed to escort her, and could only conclude the Vor-Zoags were paying him double. Maybe even triple.
Before leaving Yaix, I overheard my father grousing to Mr. MacGregor about how long it had been since they’d been offered any real work.
“But I suppose, if Cholar’s insufferable potentate hadn’t so magnanimously insisted we be allowed to retain our positions, we wouldn’t even have had base duty.”
“No,” Mr. MacGregor replied glumly. “We’d have been turfed out altogether with neither references nor pensions.”
Had it been Kirsty, she would have said oot instead of out, but she’s the only one in her family who actively uses the accent and phraseology of their ancestors. Her way of establishing a more individual identity, I guess.
AUP employees, especially those in high positions, are supposed to instruct their offspring in AUP’s ways and encourage them to enter its service as soon as they’re of an age to be of some value. Our parents — particularly mine — had always followed this directive assiduously, but after the Horrible Cholarian Business, it was unlikely Kirsty would ever receive an offer of employment, and the same applied to Simon and me. The MacGregors also had to accept their son’s decision to train for a non-AUP related career in anthropology. Neil and a couple of friends had taken a gap year to travel around some alien worlds and what they’d seen on most of the AUP-Member ones had caused him to start having doubts about AUP’s integrity. Doubts that became certainties after he learned its most recent nefarious actions had threatened the safety of his kid sister.
I think Mr. and Mrs. MacGregor had some doubts too, but were approaching middle age and had to consider those pensions, which for integrators were quite substantial. All in all, however, they managed to take the repercussions from the foiling of AUP’s plans way better than mine. Inspired by the fact that several members of AUP’s Directorate had once been recruiters, my parents had dreamt of eventual membership in it themselves, and once that became something they could no longer count on, the atmosphere in the Brent household can best be described as strained.
Much of my parents’ interaction with us had been future AUP employment-oriented. With both Simon and I out of the running for that, I don’t think they knew what to do with us. As I’ve already said, my father wasn’t one for history, and he and my mother didn’t have many other interests in common with us either. Or with Arlyne, who has quite a bit of artistic talent. They allowed her to amuse herself with it, but long ago made it clear the ability to produce pretty pictures was not something AUP had much use for.
Conversation therefore had its limits, and despite having more free time to indulge in family activities, they couldn’t seem to think of any that would be mutually enjoyable. Ever eager to please — and make up for the reprehensible behaviour of her siblings —Arlyne would doubtless have enjoyed anything. But, just as it had been before our little adventure, our care was mostly left to servants and our education — now no longer AUP-based — to the teachers at our Yaixian day schools. And what time our parents did spend with us held what I couldn’t help feeling was an undercurrent of resentment.
As the months passed I thought that would diminish, but it didn’t. As evidenced by my sixteenth birthday, which is, after all, something of a milestone birthday. Kirsty’s sweet sixteenth rolled round just a little before my own, and her parents did make some effort to celebrate it, though few similarly-aged sons and daughters of their AUP colleagues deigned to attend the party. Taking this as a sign our families were still out of favour, mine didn’t bother to throw one for me. Not that the day passed without recognition. I got the usual good wishes and the pick-out-what-you-want-and-order-it present we always got; in person if they were home and through servants if, as was mostly the case, they weren’t. But, as Simon pointed out, they probably wouldn’t have expanded upon their usual practice anyway. A tenth birthday constitutes a milestone too, being the first to have two digits. His had fallen the day before we set off on the edu-tour in the care of veritable strangers and even that hadn’t garnered him any extra natal day attention. He didn’t have any high expectations for his next one either.
Not so Arlyne. She was due to turn fourteen while our parents were away and was sure they’d at least send her a star-comm on the big day.
“They never have before,” I said when she expressed this thought soon after we took ship for Cholar.
“I know, but that might be because we’ve always been in the care of people Mother and Father knew and trusted. I don’t personally have any concerns about the new Cholarian arrangements, but they might.” She sighed happily. “I’m so glad their superiors are giving them proper assignments again. And that those new planets are willing to give AUP a chance to redeem itself. It is trying to. I was really concerned for a while, but Father said the Directorate’s learned its lesson and has put a stop to all the corruption and meddling that was going on. I’m sure he and Mother were never a party to any of that. And with AUP trying to get back to its original ideals, they must be thrilled to be back in action.”
“But maybe too caught up in what they’re doing to give much thought to us,” I cautioned.
“That’s not fair, Meda. They’re busy people with important jobs to do. They might contact us this time. Things are different now. They’ve seen more of us lately. They’re getting to know us better. Mother even told me she thought one of my pastel drawings was really quite good.”
It was very good, I thought, remembering it. But not good enough to go on display somewhere in the house. Or taken with them to be put up in the quarters they’d be occupying on the potential AUP-member planet they were heading to.
Unwilling to deprive her of the pleasure she took from any vestige of parental praise, I didn’t say anything, and shot Simon a warning look to keep him from making some kind of disparaging remark. Not that that would have stopped him, but the excitement of going back to Cholar had put him in a charitable mood and he, too, refrained from comment.
Chapter Two
Cholarians are very family-oriented. In choosing guardians for us, Supreme Ruler Taziol and Queen Vostia didn’t just pick people they thought would be suitably nurturing. They picked ones they thought we’d really get along with. And since they all lived in Cholaris, we were even assured frequent contact with each other.
I got to stay with the historian who found the scroll containing the sceptre legend. Royal Archivist and Chronicler, Ezrias Lur-Rithos, and his wife Maranta. Arlyne was happy with her placement too, as Sub-Ruler Tolith and Sub-Queen G
alya’s home was filled with beautiful works of art, including some by Galya herself.
Kirsty was welcomed into the home of High Chancellor Verim and his wife. Being well in their eighties, they were quite old to be foster parents, but had successfully raised five kids, three of them their biological offspring, two the much later-born Taz and his older sister, Dalara, who lost their own parents at a young age. These credentials aside, Verim had asked to have Kirsty. Possibly because he wanted to personally keep an eye on that somewhat hot-tempered, impulsive, accident-prone scion of one of Scotland’s oldest clans. He and Lady Atrellia seemed to genuinely like her though, and upon her arrival presented her with a lovely necklace.
“’Tis a family heirloom,” she told me. “Lady Atrellia said the giving of it makes me an honorary member of the family.”
A gesture I know she appreciated as much as the necklace itself.
And Simon? Well, he got the best billet of all — the royal palace. Even though he jeopardized Taz’s succession to the throne by purloining the sacred object required for that, Taz has always been extremely fond of Simon. Something most people acquainted with my little brother would find hard to believe. Arrogant, headstrong, and contemptuous of authority, he’s never exactly endeared himself to any of the adults who’ve had dealings with him. He’s very bright, however (IQ way above mine), and Taz is sure, with the right guidance, he’s destined to do great things. Simon, in turn, has always admired Taz, according him a level of respect no one else has ever been able to command.
Taz and Vostia weren’t his actual guardians, though. That dubious privilege went to Taz’s cousin, Prince Mardis, the (unwilling) challenger to Cholar’s rulership during the succession dispute. But Prince Mardis and his wife Princess Zovia lived in a palace apartment close to Taz’s own, so Simon raised no objection.
