by J. Naomi Ay
Firesetter
Book 1
A Thread of Time
By
J. Naomi Ay
Published by Ayzenberg, Inc
Copyright 2015-2016 Ayzenberg, Inc.
070216
Cover Design by Amy Jambor
Cover art [email protected] & [email protected]
Also by
J. Naomi Ay
Firesetter series
A Thread of Time (Book 1)
Amyr’s Command (Book 2)
Three Kings (Book 3)
Exceeding Expectations (Book 4)
The Two Moons of Rehnor series
The Boy who Lit up the Sky (Book 1)
My Enemy's Son (Book 2)
Of Blood and Angels (Book 3)
Firestone Rings (Book 4)
The Days of the Golden Moons (Book 5)
Golden's Quest (Book 6)
Metamorphosis (Book 7)
The Choice (Book 8)
Treasure Hunt (Book 9)
Space Chase (Book 10)
Imperial Masquerade (Book 11)
Rivalry (Book 12)
Thirteen (Book 13)
Betrayal (Book 14)
Fairy Tales (Book 15)
Gone for a Spin (Book 16)
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 – Lance
Chapter 2 – Jan
Chapter 3 – Ailana
Chapter 4 – Lance
Chapter 5 – Jan
Chapter 6 – Pellen
Chapter 7 – Ailana
Chapter 8 – Jan
Chapter 9 – Ailana
Chapter 10 – Lance
Chapter 11 – Pellen
Chapter 12 – Ailana
Chapter 13 – Dov
Chapter 14 – Rekah
Chapter 15 – Lance
Chapter 16 – Rekah
Chapter 17 – Jan
Chapter 18 – Ailana
Chapter 19 – Sandy
Chapter 20 – Ailana
Chapter 21 – Dov
Chapter 22 – Ailana
Chapter 23 – Dov
Chapter 24 – Ailana
Chapter 25 – Lance
Chapter 1
Lance
I joined the Allied SpaceForce for one reason and one reason alone, I was flat broke and I needed money. After hocking everything I owned at the local pawnshop, or selling it on Craigslist, I was down to forty-three dollars and thirty-seven cents, in addition to the ancient Euro my father had left me as an inheritance.
“What the heck is this?” I had mumbled, holding the single coin in my palm, while at the same time, the lawyer was informing my brother, Hank that he was bequeathed everything else in my father's estate.
Granted, Dad was no billionaire. His estate was pretty simple, a modest house in a not-so-great town, in the center of the continent, affectionately referred to as The Armpit. Still, it was worth something, and undoubtedly, more than this useless coin. I mean, a Euro? Europe hadn't existed for several centuries!
“Ha!” Hank had laughed in his annoying nasally voice, gloating over his victory in this final round of the sibling game. Yep. Dad loved him best, and that was now proven without a doubt. I was the loser when it came to paternal affection.
“Congratulations,” the lawyer said to Hank, but not to me.
Hank nodded regally, savoring his win. Had the lawyer not been there, my brother would have left with a minimum of a bloody nose and a maximum of a five month stay in traction.
“I'll just have you sign off on the deed.” The lawyer presented the documents to Hank as I rose from my seat, flipping my precious antique Euro coin between my fingers. “Good luck, Lance. Hank, let me take you out to lunch.” The lawyer scumbag barely glanced in my direction, as I let myself out.
“Good riddance.”
I didn’t really blame him. He knew this cow was dry. He'd milk no costly legal fees from me and therefore, I didn't merit even a handshake.
Stepping out into the street, after leaving the dark and overly air conditioned building, I was momentarily blinded by the sudden burst of sunlight. I thought the crosswalk light was in my favor. I thought there were no vehicles on the street and the heat that was washing over me was merely the sun, while that roaring sound was a bus on the next corner. I thought wrong on all four counts. The next thing I knew, I was bouncing off the hood of something, only to end up beneath its wheels. Fortunately, by this point, I wasn’t awake.
Three days later, I was, and less than delighted to discover I was in traction, the sort that I had wished upon Hank. Karma could sure be a bitch.
When my brother came to visit me in the hospital, sitting by my bedside and describing in great detail the renovations he was going to make to Dad's house, if I could have, I would have reached up and smacked him. Alternately, I would have yanked his tongue from his mouth, or removed his eyeballs from their sockets with my fingernails. As I couldn't lift a finger, and was far too drugged to even spit in his direction, I lay there prone, subjected to yet another round of fraternal gloating.
Six months passed until my back was more or less healed and I was released from the hospital, a new, but not improved man. I was also totally broke, so much in debt that four lifetimes of delivering pizzas, my previous occupation, wouldn't yield enough to ever make me a free man.
Briefly, I considered stepping into the street again and encouraging another vehicle to roll over me, this time finishing the job completely. That was the only way I could foresee escaping the hospital's payment plan, which as I departed, was detailed on an invoice that would follow me for the next forty years.
Instead, I headed to a local pub where I spent the next day and night drowning my sorrows in beer, drinking up what little remained of my money. It was stupid, of course. I should have put it toward the hospital's first installment. Somehow, and at some point, I managed to stagger home to my flat, where fortunately, the landlord had taken pity upon me during my absence.
Gloria didn't evict me, or toss my things in the street during my convalescence. This could have been entirely due to the fact that no one else was willing to rent that dive. It also could have been because she liked me. Poor Gloria was on the wrong side of forty, nearly twenty years my senior and throughout her life, had a habit of selecting the wrong kind of guy. This included me.
I regretted what happened. I became a whore. While I scrambled to pay the hospital bill by selling my stuff and raising money in any way I could, I kept Gloria entertained in exchange for the rent.
Every month, on the first, it went like this. Gloria would knock on my door, usually bright and early, undoubtedly, waking me from a sound and contented sleep that was much nicer than my reality. Groggily, I’d stumble from the sofa, swing the door wide open to admit her and feign surprise at her arrival during this ungodly hour.
“The rent, Lance,” she'd say frostily, holding out a hand, the other knuckled into her side, a foot tapping out an impatient rhythm. “I can't let you go another month without paying.”
“Rent,” I'd mutter sleepily, running a hand across my night's beard. “Oh. Gloria. Yeah, the thing is---”
“What?”
“I'm a little short again this month.” I’d pat my hands against my hips as if checking inside the nonexistent pockets of my marginally clean and slightly torn boxer shorts.
“Mhm,” she'd mutter, her eyes drawn to my hands, where inevitably she'd find a prime example of morning wood. “Oh. Is that for me?”
“It's all I've got right now,” I'd say, which was followed by the old couch being cleared of my ratty blanket and the even older sleeper mattress beneath extended to its full size.
&
nbsp; Then, I did what I did best, because at twenty-four, I was a loser at every other round in this game of life. Gloria left happy, and my lack of rent was forestalled for another month.
Eventually, Gloria tired of this game, or maybe, she preferred to play it instead with the guy in the apartment across the hall. At any rate, she gave me an ultimatum. At the end of the month, pay up or get out.
“You got anything else?” the pawnbroker asked, as I stared at the measly number written on my ticket.
“Hey, that ring is worth more than that!” I insisted. “It was my mother's. She left it to me to give to my future wife.”
“I'm doing you a favor then,” the guy replied. “You give a girl this piece of crap cubic zirconia and she's liable to throw it back at you and walk out of your wedding.”
“It's not a fake.”
“Listen to me, son. I've seen a lot of rings in my day, and that one's about as real as my tooth.” He proceeded to reach into his mouth and pull out a shiny, white incisor. “Look's nice, eh? Indestructible, too. Better than the real thing, but my wife doesn't wear it on her finger. So, you got anything else for me to look at?”
I would have liked to offer him my fist, but I didn't. Since Gloria dumped me, this guy was about the only friend I had. Putting my hands in my pockets to restrain them, I pretended to consider the paltry offer on my mother's ring. I was going to take it. I had no choice. I was down to my last nickel, or rather, the forty-three dollars and thirty-seven cents which were already promised to the hospital.
“Just this,” I said, finding that stupid Euro coin in my pocket. “Maybe this is a collector's item?”
“Let me see.” The guy dropped his loop over his eye and turned the coin this way and that way. He murmured something, while trying to read it. “I don't know what in the hell this says. It's a piece of crap. Not worth a nickel.” He tossed it back, whereupon it rolled the distance of the counter, before falling flat.
Heads. Some dude in a crown looked off across the horizon at the ancient toasters and television sets with orange price tags hanging from them.
“It's an ancient Euro.”
“No, it's not. What language does that look like to you?”
“I don't know. Greek? Russian? Portuguese?”
The pawnbroker shook his head and glanced at the door. Another customer had come in, or more likely, another victim of the decrepit economy came to hock whatever he had in order to eat. “Are you taking my offer on the ring, or no?”
“I guess so,” I said, studying my not-Euro coin again. “You sure this isn't worth anything?”
“Not to me.”
“That's worth a fair amount in the old Empire,” the new customer interrupted. “Although, it'll cost you a heck of a lot more to travel the ten lightyears to get there.”
“Where?”
I turned to look at my neighbor, only to discover he was wearing a SpaceForce uniform and carrying an old iPad from the twenty-first century.
“I found this in a rummage sale on Darius II. Is it worth anything, Pops?” He set it on the counter for the old man, and then, held out his hand to take a look at my coin. “Yep, this is an old Imperial dollar. It’s definitely worth something to collectors around the galaxy. It dates back to the reign of the Great Emperor. That’s who this guy is on the front. You wouldn’t want to sell it to me, would you?”
“I will buy it first,” the pawnbroker interjected.
“No way.” I snatched it back from the spandex-clad spaceman. “You can buy his iPad, Pops. You missed your chance with me.”
Grabbing my mom's cubic zirconia wedding ring off the counter as well, I left the pawnshop with a new spring in my step. I was determined to take my coin to a place where its value would be appreciated. Worth something could mean several thousand and several thousand would easily pay off the hospital bill. This coin would give me a chance to restart my life debt-free. On the other hand, if I had to take the coin across the galaxy, why would I bother coming back?
Unfortunately, the fare on a spaceplane to the nearest port where the coin could be exchanged, cost more than I would have gained selling the ring and the clothing off my back, as well as the old sofa, and the toaster in my flat. The only way to get myself from here to there was to get on a ship that didn't cost me anything.
“The dude's spandex uniform wasn't all that ugly,” I told myself, walking into the SpaceForce recruiting office down the street. “And, I'd get three squares a day, a hot shower, and a clean bed without any aging landladies in it.” That didn’t sound a whole lot different than prison, but at that point, I didn’t care.
An hour later, I walked out, officially a recruit with a contract in hand, and an induction physical scheduled for the following day.
Chapter 2
Jan
I wasn’t meant to venture anywhere beyond my little village, and neither did I wish too. Unlike my older brother, who dreamed of adventures on faraway planets, I was content to keep my feet firmly planted on the sunlit planet. I loved the sea, though, the calm rolling of the ocean waves, and the wind, which I imagined lovingly whispered my name.
My name was Jan, an ordinary, plain, single syllabic handle which should have been simple enough for anyone to pronounce. Like my name, my appearance varied from predominately dull to boring, depending who was judging it at that particular moment.
“Isn’t Jan sweet,” my mother would say, preferring to overlook my unremarkable appearance with blinded, maternal devotion.
At the same moment, my brother, Taul might proclaim my face homelier than his pet frog, a mummified creature which had grown only uglier since it had died several years prior.
I had never understood the comparison to the frog, as my hair was not green, but a nearly white blonde, bearing only a hint more color than the snow white cloud of my advanced years. My eyes were also pale, a clear, almost-colorless gray, providing no enhancement to my fair skin, while my body was equally as plain. As a young woman, I had the figure of a tall boy, with only tiny budding breasts, flat hips, and a waist, though slim, clearly without curves.
“Makeup,” my mother insisted. “Cosmetics will do wonders for Jan. When she’s old enough, twelve or thirteen, we ought cover her in mascara and dye her hair red.”
Unfortunately, for my mother, I had no interest in enhancing my plainness, preferring instead the loneliness of my little boat, in which I would meander down the river, never quite reaching the sea, chasing the fish as they sought to run from my net.
When I was fourteen, my appearance no more improved than in my preteens, I acquired a friend, a boy much smaller than myself. One day, I discovered him sitting upon the dock, gazing curiously at my little boat. His small feet were hanging just above the water, bare of any shoes, his toenails cracked and dirty.
“Hey, get away from there,” I called, immediately assuming the worst, for orphaned and homeless street urchins were prevalent during those times.
“Is it yours?” the boy asked, turning bright blue eyes upon me, his gaze so intense it momentarily threw me off guard.
“Yes,” I snapped, upon recovering my senses. “Now, get away from it, you little thief.”
“I’m not a thief. I was only looking at it. I wish I had a boat like this. I think I would love to sail.”
“That’s ridiculous.” The child looked no more than eight years old and without a penny to his name, let alone a boat. “Go away.”
I shoved him aside, although I didn’t want to touch the child’s filthy torn t-shirt or the sunburnt skin of the shoulders peeking through.
He shrugged, those red arms drifting up and down, his intense gaze and colorful eyes refusing to leave me in peace.
“How come you have a boat like this?” he asked, the innocent words drifting from lips my Aunt Ailana would have said were both as plump and red as a cherry, as becoming on this child as a woman fully grown.
“It was my father’s,” I replied, doing my best to ignore the little pest, and instead s
et about preparing my fishing nets, and the single sail which would take me from the shore.
Clipping the sail to the halyard, I laid the sheets where I could reach them with one hand. Since neither my mother nor Taul took to the sea, I had become quite proficient at guiding the tiller with one hand, while controlling the sail with the other.
“Would you like some help?” the boy asked, already rising to his feet, assuming his presence was desired. “I’d like to come, and I can help you sail, or row with your oars.”
“No! Absolutely not. Go away.”
Untying the bow line, I made haste to hurry away from this annoying child. The prow of my little craft swung outward.
“I can be useful,” the boy insisted. “Please let me come with you.”
I didn’t deign to answer as I released my stern line and drifted off. I let the wind and current direct me onward, to the river and the hint of salt-filled air, the brief few hours of solitude, and the peace, as well as the dinner it would bring to me.
Unfortunately, my pleasure was all too brief. Though the sky had been clear at the outset of my adventure, only moments later, dark clouds swarmed overhead, accompanied by what would become torrents of rain. Quickly, I turned the boat homeward, now fighting the wind back to my dock, and the boy who sat waiting expectantly, his face inexplicably lighting with joy as I once again sailed into his midst.
“What are you going to do now?” he asked, rushing for my bow line and expertly tying it before I could think to refuse his aid.
“Go home, I suppose.” I climbed on the foredeck and reversed all I had done less than an hour earlier, stowing my sail, and locking the single hatch.
“Oh.” He gazed at me, the raindrops already dampening his hair, a golden mass of dirty wild curls that only made my tresses pale further in comparison.
“I suppose you want to come home with me,” I pronounced, already half way off the dock. “I suppose you think my mother will feed you and give you a bed.”
