Book of the Week: NOVA VENDETTA #2: The Truce

Commonwealth Universe

Downfall Era/Era I

The Sorendaal/Pirate novels

From Writers Exchange

“What’s been going on outside?” Niall finally asked, when the hubbub finally calmed down and people went back to their bunks, got in line to use the sanitary cabinets now that there was hot water available, or gathered at the other table groupings to talk. Kimber and Sureena and the leaders of the prisoners in the other compartment joined the command team and Dr. Hallbar. It was time for a serious conversation, to finally get facts and decide what they could do.

“All clear, Doctor.” Selendon’s voice came through the medical insignia pin on the doctor’s collar. “Tell them whatever they want to know. It’s the only way we’re going to survive.”

“Tell me, Commodore,” Niall said, struggling to keep his voice calm, though it still felt like his throat had been scraped with sand, “did you authorize--“

“Absolutely not. And you should know that the ship punished those skabblenaqs before we even knew what was going on.”

“How?” He met Dr. Hallbar’s gaze, saw the shift to bleakness mixed with something like weary horror.

“Everything that could go wrong in the room where they conducting their questioning,” the doctor began.

“This is no time for niceties, Dru,” Selendon cut in. “Call it what it was, torture, plain and simple. The ship turned everything backwards in the room. We’re still trying to untangle the programming, figure out if it was a cascade failure on a massive scale, or this ship of … it’s our ship, not mine any longer.” A gusting sigh came through the connection, buzzing a little. “Our ship might just be sentient. Somehow. An angry, confused, hurting, frightened child, lashing out at the ones who hurt its friends. Or maybe even part of its consciousness. Who knows? We have no access to any of the research, any of the theories or science behind what the researchers were doing when they built the ship. Too much was either lost or deliberately destroyed and hidden.”

Book of the Week: NOVA VENDETTA #2: The Truce

Commonwealth Universe

Downfall Era/Era I

The Sorendaal/Pirate novels

From Writers Exchange

At the end of twelve days, Niall was escorted to the captured RA ship -- expected. The cargo bays had been modified into dormitories, and all the former crew of the Nova Vendetta were housed there -- also expected. The section where Niall was left contained almost all of his command crew -- not expected. He hadn’t identified anyone by name, but then again, Selendon also hadn’t asked about any of his tribe.

Everyone wore clothes similar to his. Simple, long tunics and loose trousers and shipboard-boots with magnetic plates in the soles. Dark cloth in blue, green or brown, with the silver sensor threads woven into a loose square over their hearts. Niall looked around the dormitory room with bunks for thirty and found an unoccupied bunk. He assumed it was unoccupied because the sleeping sack was still rolled up on one end, unlike the other bunks. Most of them had bags hanging from the support posts, just like the bag given him when he was finally dismissed from Selendon’s office for the last time. There were a few personal items in his bag, retrieved from his prison quarters. He assumed everyone else had been given the opportunity to find something they valued, to take to their next point of incarceration.

“They fixed the engines,” Nesta said, approaching him.

“Their mistake.”

“They’re listening,” Doc said from a bunk two rows away.

“We’ve had bigger challenges.” Niall sat down and settled the bag at his feet. He closed his eyes and felt the rumble of the engines coming up from the deck, through his boots. Flickers of his hallucination-dreams came to him, and he shivered deep inside as he imagined the Nova Vendetta had welcomed him home.

Book of the Week: NOVA VENDETTA #2: The Truce

Commonwealth Universe

Downfall Era/Era I

The Sorendaal/Pirate novels

From Writers Exchange

Niall and his crew were just centimeters away from freedom, escaping in the stolen starship they had christened the Nova Vendetta. Then disaster struck, paralyzing their ship. Retaken as prisoners, they found themselves transported on the very ship that had been their ticket to freedom.

Then the unthinkable happened: experimental technology and a risky gamble put the ship under their control. The escaped prisoners headed for the furthest reaches of known space, determined to stay free at any cost.

Labeled rebels and pirates and criminals, they held to the principles that had let them survive and stay Human during their time in prison. To the outlying colonies slowly being abandoned by the disintegration of the Central Allied Worlds, the crew of the Nova Vendetta and its slowly growing fleet of allies were heroes in the truest sense of the word.

Then the revolution reached out to threaten Niall's homeworld. It was time to go home. He had to protect Sorendaal, even if it meant giving himself into the hands of the very people who wanted him dead.

Book of the Week: NOVA VENDETTA #1: The Injustice

Commonwealth Universe

Downfall Era/Era I

The Sorendaal/Pirate novels

From Writers Exchange

“End the suspense already,” Garen said, reaching as if he would take the box from Niall’s hands.

The other four laughed, mostly because Garen was usually the one who tormented the others by making them wait for news or to find out the latest rumors or which professor was taking interns and apprentices.

“All right.” Niall pulled out the multi-tool his professor of field service had given all the graduates. In a moment, he had slit the outer sealed skin. The box was held shut with straps that he cut in a moment.

Inside were small translucent green cubes.

“Old-style video cubes,” Garen said, picking one out of the box. He turned it over between his hands. “I think I know where you can find a player.”

By the time Niall, Amber and Garen tracked down a machine that would play the cubes, they had lost the other two friends, who professed sleep interested them more than video cubes. The trio ended up in one of the machinery archives. They were just as amazed as the archives keeper that there were more than a dozen of the obsolete display and playback units in storage. One cube was marked, “play this first,” so they did.

“Hello, son.” Gaellon Encardi smiled from the screen, looking even more battered and worn and browned from thin ship shielding than he had the last time Niall saw him -- when he was twelve Standard years old. His Exploration Corps uniform looked new enough for all his badges and insignias and honor citations to be crisp and clean and bright. That meant he was heading out for another long-range mission. The elder Encardi specialized in finding habitable planets and clearing them for colonization. If there were any conditions that would threaten the security and success of a colony, especially the health and reproductive ability of the colonists, he could identify it faster and with more accuracy than most others. It made him a valuable asset to the CAW’s colonization efforts. If the truth were ever admitted within the Niallon household, it gave him an excuse to stay away from Sorendaal and his wife’s family, the dynastic leaders of the colony.

Book of the Week: NOVA VENDETTA #1: The Injustice

Commonwealth Universe

Downfall Era/Era I

The Sorendaal/Pirate novels

Niall Encardi heard the news of the coup at the beginning of the final lecture in MERAH, before graduating as a doctor from the Merkator Medical Academy. His classmates spread the rumors and speculations in harsh, rapid whispers, punctuated by curses, as they waited for the team of professors to step up to the lectern in the center of the lecture amphitheater.

The timing of the news struck Niall as symbolic and ironic. The new regime called itself the Restoration Alliance, and had been threatening the entrenched government of the Central Allied Worlds for nearly three years now with strong backing from the Set’ri, who insisted on “purifying” the Human genome. Their dogma included sterilizing all “defective” genetic variations, and making slaves of any humanoid race that didn’t match their narrow, exclusive criteria. 

MERAH stood for Medial Ethics Relating to Augmented Humanoids – meaning Wrinkleship pilots, Khybors, and all the lesser mutations and variations that had come about by accident or as byproducts of the tinkering of generations of scientists. The ones who couldn’t reproduce were safe, and perhaps to be envied. The Set’ri didn’t care about them. The ones who could pass their augmented genetics on to their children -- especially Khybors -- or whose tangled genetic side trips could show up in future generations of their family line even if they themselves didn’t or couldn’t reproduce -- such as Wrinkleship pilots -- were their targets.

Book of the Week: NOVA VENDETTA #1: The Injustice

Commonwealth Universe
Downfall Era/Era I
The Sorendaal/Pirate novels

From Writers Exchange

Niall Encardi was ready to graduate after long, intensive years of medical training, and go home to the colony world of Sorendaal. His life-long dream was to be a healer and help the people led by his uncle, the governor. 

The revolutionaries who overthrew the current government of the Central Allied Worlds had other plans. When the homeworlds of Niall and his classmates didn't immediately give support and approval to the revolutionaries, the medical students were labeled enemies of the state, and transported to prison.

Despite every effort to stay focused on his first calling, healing and medicine, Niall became a leader, first on a prison planet, then on the prison space station known as the Abyss. Every time the government changed hands, he and his friends and then his allies in the prison society were labeled conspirators and sympathizers and condemned to yet more imprisonment.

By the time the Abyss was attacked, Niall and his people had become a force to be reckoned with. Their goal: freedom, even if meant turning pirate like the falsely imprisoned nobleman who sailed the ancient seas, on a ship called the Vendetta.

Book of the Week: THE PIRATE AND THE PROFESSOR

            Kiryn emerged from her bedroom with her tears dry and her head aching, and found her father’s former crew waiting. They were a vast difference from the refined, powerful people of Sorendaal’s colonial government who had surrounded her when the news of the starship’s destruction first arrived. No wine or other refined, expensive beverages for these men. Tanned by radiation, scarred by shipboard explosions, grim and heavy-set, they sat around the oval table where her father, the governor, had entertained ambassadors and officials. Their glasses were filled with murky brews that could have come from the coolant tanks of their battered, fierce starships.

            

She was gladder to see these men than anyone else who might have come to console her. Kiryn knew they wouldn’t speak soothing words and offer useless philosophy and homilies to to ease her pain. They would be just as angry as she that Captain Niall Encardi, the Terror of the Spacelanes, had met his death at the hands of the government that had once begged, long ago, for his help.

            What did it matter if galactic civilization and the government of the Central Allied Worlds shredded a little more every day, and the soldiers in the attacking ships had been rebels? The government provided those weapons and trained those soldiers, and failed to keep its vaunted control over the far-flung colonies throughout the galaxy. The end result was the same. Her father and mother were dead, despite their ship being clearly marked an ambassadorial vessel and transmitting their identification on all frequencies.

            Their deaths hadn’t been an accident.

Book of the Week: THE PIRATE AND THE PROFESSOR

Commonwealth Universe novel
Colonies
Downfall/Era I

This week's book is actually a novella. This week's and next week's books were once part of an anthology called Damsels OF Distress -- meaning the damsels caused the distress, rather than being in it.

For those who might be interested, PIRATE and SADDLE were based on some fun speculating based on two favorite old movies. First: What if Captain Blood had a daughter? and then: What if Zorro had a daughter? And what if their stories weren't set in the past, but on a far distance planet in the future? And so we have stories of two strong young women filling in when their heroic fathers aren't around.

THE PIRATE AND THE PROFESSOR
from Writers Exchange

As civilization crumbles, Kiryn realizes the only way to protect her planet from pirates is to become one. She takes up the mantle of her father, a reformed pirate who saved his homeworld.

As captain of the legendary pirate ship, Nova Vendetta, she makes her homeworld a haven for the downtrodden. Then the scholarly representative of a neglected colony comes as a peace envoy and makes her think of more than just surviving. When the two of them are shot down in the badlands of her planet, they become partners to survive, then friends, then maybe something more.

Book the Week: SLIPPING THE WEAVE

Commonwealth Universe novel
Khybors story

From Writers Exchange

“Interfacing?” He sat up straight, alerted to the implications that didn’t quite solidify right away in his thoughts. Rorin always loved that churning of theories and possibilities, and waiting for a brainstorm to hit.

“Never mind that. You were asking about Elin. She’s out on a training expedition right now. Don’t expect her back for three, four days.”

“Training who?”

“The children. All the children who survived. She’s the only mother they have now, and the way they cling to her … it’s a little frightening, if you take enough time to sit back and really think about it.” He settled back further in his chair and clasped his hands on the cluttered surface of his desk.

“What’s frightening about it? Elin’s always been especially protective of children. That’s her whole dream, inherited down through the family line. Finding a place where the children can be safe. You’d think a poisonous place like Norbra, our enemies would leave us alone and hope the world would kill us off, so they don’t have to expend time and resources.” Rorin grunted and fought off a shudder of pure disgust. “That hope certainly didn’t pan out.”

“Definitely not, and they’re going to regret …” He sighed. “It didn’t occur to me until now, the way you’re talking, you’ve taken the big step, haven’t you? No turning back.”

“If you mean that I’ve made it impossible for my superiors to ignore that I’ve got Khybor blood and Khybor sympathies, absolutely. I’m committed.” He grinned. “So … how is Elin doing with instant motherhood?”

“It’s been an interesting experience. She’s ready to die for those children, and they know it, and they also know she won’t tolerate even one second of rebellion. It’s life-and-death, even inside the walls here. I might be the administrator, and officially I’m the final authority, but the truth is that Elin is queen of Norbra. We’re all here to support her vision, her plans.”

“That makes more sense than anything I’ve heard in a long time. So, how do I find her majesty and pay my respects?”

Dr. Teller tipped his head back and laughed.

Book of the Week: SLIPPING THE WEAVE

Commonwealth Novel
Khybors story

From Writers Exchange

“The only Khybor?” Dr. Teller frowned as he settled into his desk. Then he shook his head and a weary chuckle escaped him. “Is that what they’re telling all of you back in the core worlds?”

“Well, all the adults were slaughtered and the children were so badly damaged they needed life-support tubes and had to be shipped off-planet to better equipped medical facilities. There were all sorts of stories of equipment problems and sabotage, and needing to do a purge of the staff here, because the Set’ri had infiltrated some of their own to prepare for the attack.” Rorin thought for a moment, while the administrator just watched him, that hint of a smile waiting to emerge. “What is idle speculation, what is hopeful theorizing from our enemies, and what is self-defensive lies?”

“Granted, we did do all we could to hide the numbers of the children who survived the massacre and what condition they were in. Yes, all of them required life-support tubes. And yes, we did consider shipping them off-planet for more sophisticated care than we could offer them. However … we’re a long way from Vidan. It wasn’t just the communication lags that slowed down our decisions and asking for assistance.”

“The higher-level facilities were reluctant to help, reluctant to take the children? Public sentiment was entirely in our favor for a while.” Rorin sighed. “For a while.”

“Exactly. We couldn’t guarantee that the hangers-on of the attackers weren’t still in the area. All we needed to do to complete the massacre was let the children out of our custody, put them on a ship, under the control of one person with Set’ri tendencies. All their ethical guidelines and healer vows wouldn’t matter, like wet paper in a tornado, compared to Set’ri dogma. We chose to take our chances with the equipment we had, with people here who valued the children and supported Khybor survival. Then …” That hint of a smile returned. “Then it didn’t matter anymore.”

“How many children did you lose? The stories that filtered back to us said there were major equipment problems, all sorts of strange things going on. No one could be sure if it was the planet itself, the supposed curse of Norbra from the ancient myths, refusing to let any children live on this planet, or something worse was happening.”

“Hmm, that’s interesting. I know the first generation or two that tried to settle here did reinforce the stories of the ancient queen and the punishment of the higher powers, but … Yes, that much is true. We did have equipment problems, but it was related to khrystal interfacing with the equipment.”

Book of the Week: NORBRA'S CHILDREN

Commonwealth novel
Khybors story

From Writers Exchange

            “Hello, be-u-ti-ful!” A tall, lean figure in the sloppy, eye-aching purple fatigues of the Wedge, the exploration-and-rescue arm of the Galactic Fleet, stood in the doorway of the next checkpoint.

            Elin nearly barked a response that bordered on crude, but she knew she was under surveillance as much as she kept those idiots at the last checkpoint under surveillance. She was a Khybor, and no matter how valuable her services to the government, no matter how flawless her record, she still had her family reputation to live down. Her multi-great grandmother had been the first Human to successfully carry bio-crystal in her blood. Kheeran had been classed a rebel and a danger because she refused to let the paranoid military lock her in a dark box for the rest of her life. All her descendants had proven themselves just as stubborn about freedom and personal choice, and just as willing to seriously damage anything that stood in their way. Even though Elin’s great-grandmother had forged a profitable, useful alliance between Khybors and the government of the Central Allied Worlds, the so-called voice of civilization and Humanity, that didn’t mean the family had given up its dedication to fighting for what they believed in or wanted. Elin’s mother had taught her to watch her mouth whenever she was around the unenlightened. Who knew, after all, when the Set’ri would decide that a foul tongue meant Khybors were mentally defective, therefore unstable and a danger to Humanity?

            Elin shoved aside the constant complaint about elitists and paranoid cowards that ran at the back of her mind in a subliminal grumble, and offered a wide grin and wide-spread arms to Colonel Rorin Pace as he strode down the walkway toward her.

            “Fi’in bless me, but I must have done some clean living for a change,” he declared as he scooped her up, held her tight against him and spun them both around two revolutions. “You look good, bratty kid.” He set her down, but didn’t step back right away.

            “You don’t look so bad yourself, mud-grubber.” Elin ducked when Rorin reached to yank on her long, bronze-colored braid. She stuck her tongue out at him, earning a roar of laughter.

            “If I’d known you got the short straw this duty shift, I’d’ve come down to personally escort you,” he said, as they strode up to the last checkpoint before Elin could enter the ship.

            “Why?” She saw the answer in his eyes before he opened his mouth. “More Set’ri threats?”

Book of the Week: NORBRA'S CHILDREN

Commonwealth novel
Khybors story

From Writers Exchange

            Elin hated it when her duty rotation required her to mediate yet again between a Wrinkleship pilot and the spaceport authorities.

The pilots didn’t bother her. They were decent enough people, even the worst of them, even when they acted like elitist snobs. Part of the problem, she knew, was that she did consider them people, while a growing percentage of the officers and officials and technicians she had to pass on her way through security levels to get to the Wrinkleships, did not. Wrinkleship pilots, according to the proponents of the pureblood radical genetic dogma of the Set’ri, were mutants. Mutants had to be destroyed, to prevent them from contaminating the true Human genome, according to the Set’ri. However, Wrinkleship pilots were necessary to the expansion of the Central Allied Worlds, so they weren’t destroyed at birth, or when their mutations manifested at adolescence.

Lucky for them. Or maybe not so lucky.

            

What did it matter that their bodies were so malformed and defective that by the time they entered their second decade, most of them needed life support? According to all the ethics books Elin had studied, and the inherited memories of her ancestors, the mind and soul determined if a life form was Human, not the viability and performance of the body. Elin had enough experience – her own, as well as those imprinted in the Khrystal in her blood – to convince her that the converse of the Set’ri dogma was true, and a great many who looked Human did not qualify for the title.

Book of the Week: NORBRA'S CHILDREN, Commonwealth Universe

Commonwealth Universe novel
Khybors story

From Writers Exchange


Before the Commonwealth, there was First Civ, and then the Downfall, an age of barbarism when the galaxy-spanning civilization shattered and colony worlds were abandoned to die or to survive by their own strength.

This is the story of Elin, a direct descendant of the first Khybor,

with the future of her race resting on her shoulders. When the Set'ri wanted to declare them non-Humans and have them exterminated, and other factions in civilization wanted them declared a slave race, Elin led the way to a desert world called Norbra, where Khybors had a chance to live free and to raise their children in peace and safety.

But their enemies followed them...

Book of the Week: KHYBORS: IN THE BEGINNING

            “You will be seeing the latest generation,” he continued as he led the military representatives into the central lab of the family compound.

            The monitor bracelet on Kerin’s wrist buzzed twice, in the simple code used when unwanted visitors showed up without warning and their scientist family had no time to check on the status of the various projects before dealing with them. She tapped the tiny screen on the bracelet twice, pause, twice more, signaling that all was well. The bio-crystal hadn’t produced any new strange outgrowths or let off any new frequencies suspiciously like brainwaves. That was the goal after another ten generations of growing, programming, and tinkering: mimicry of Human brain activity, so crystal would augment the body’s natural healing ability and bridge the gap where there was nerve damage, to give movement and feeling back to the paralyzed, hearing and sight to the deaf and blind.

            She looked upward, in time to see her father step onto the edge of the clearsteel dome over the pit of the growth lab. What were her chances the visitors would content themselves with staying on the observation level today? Dr. Nicorazon’s voice came through the speakers as he rested his hands protectively on the clear shell that provided the growth lab’s outer defenses.

            “The scanners must clear all of us for entrance.” He smiled and gestured at the spectrum camera directly below him. Behind him, the lights dimmed and took on a faint bluish cast. Kerin went back to her work, satisfied that the lab’s defenses hadn’t been overridden by the military, and the sensors were checking for spying mechanisms, bacterial intrusion, and weapons. “The crystal is presently in the fourth stage,” her father continued, the changing location of his voice indicating he was walking around the dome toward the short flight of stairs down to the growth lab, “transferring to the fifth stage of growth and testing. Thus far, our readings are well beyond our expectations.”

            “What happens in the fourth stage?” Colonel Areyzi asked.

            Kerin flinched at the sound of his voice, and looked up to the monitors. His gaze roved, focusing everywhere and on everything in the room, except for the face of the man he spoke to. That was typical. Colonel Areyzi trusted no one, and scientists least of all. Kerin wanted sometimes to shake him and shout in his face until he listened -- just because the Nicorazon-Leto family were scientists studying the Human body did not mean they supported the extremists who had begun to make themselves heard, advocating total control -- legislated and mandatory -- over the definition of what made someone Human, what gave them value. Bad enough that for the last two generations the government of the Central Allied Worlds required citizens to earn the right to reproduce, either through the contributions they made to society or their genetic perfection and inborn gifts. Her parents had brought her and her brothers up to believe in making full use of all the variations in the Human genetic spectrum, not culling and pruning and taking authority out of Fi’in’s hands, to decide what was truly Human and what should and could be destroyed.

Book of the Week: KHYBORS: IN THE BEGINNING

The Central Allied Worlds

Fifth generation since gaining spaceflight

Colony world Paskal

Third colonization ring

            Kerin watched the visitors coming down the long hallway by way of the monitor strips in the ceiling. Not that she paid much attention with all the work she had to do in the growth lab today, but enough to feel annoyance at the intrusion of the military into her family’s sanctuary. Why did they have to arrive now, when the bio-crystal had started showing signs of reacting beyond her father’s hopes or projections? Maybe there were spies, despite her brothers’ best anti-spy ‘bot devices. Maybe, just like the rumors said, the authorities would confiscate every new development once crucial progress had been made, and hand them off to more loyal -- meaning more easily controlled and intimidated -- researchers?

            “They’re perfectly balanced between organic and mineral, neutrally charged and programmable to adapt to any tissue needs. The more advanced we become in our control of the growth process, the more delicately we can guide the uses of these crystals.” Pride filled Dr. Nicorazon’s voice as he lectured on his brainchild.

            He gave the same lecture every quar when the military or other government representatives showed up. He gave the lecture whether the various officer and officials had returned, or there was someone new. There was no guarantee anyone would bother to remember what they had been taught the last time they intruded on the Nicorazon-Leto family’s research, and every chance that someone would use the slightest change as justification for cancelling their funding, their research licenses, confiscate all their work, and other major and minor punishments.

Book of the Week: KHYBORS: IN THE BEGINNING

A Commonwealth Universe novel

A Khybors story

Go far back in Commonwealth history, before the Downfall of First Civ, when the galaxy-spanning civilization called itself the Central Allied Worlds. 

Three novellas in one volume explore the birth of the Khybors, whose descendants will impact the Downfall, the rebirth of civilization, the return to the stars, and the Commonwealth far into the future.

Kerin survived a brutal lab accident and discovered the benefits and dangers of

khrystal, which fused with her genetics and made her the first Khybor.

Her twins should never have been born, and broke new ground in understanding khrystal.

Her great-great-granddaughter led the way in battling for the survival of the new race.

In the Spotlight: CHORILLAN, Chorillan Cycle Book 4

The 4th book of the Chorillan Cycle, CHORILLAN, brings Kay'li Fieran back home to Chorillan.

The situation is growing dangerous. The artificially generated fear and hatred of Wildlings is increasing. Kay'li has been commissioned by the Scout Corps to investigate and find out who is behind it, what they hope to gain, and if possible, what causes Phase and if there is a cure.

She isn't sure who to trust, but she wants to trust Lucas Aidan,

her childhood friend. After all, when they were children, they made a blood oath that she would come home someday and they would explore Chorillan together, and nothing would ever keep them apart.

The hardest part of her mission: keeping her mission secret from Lucas.

At the same time, Lucas wants to trust Kay'li, but can he? The future of all Wildlings rests on him. One wrong choice, one mistake, could endanger them all.

In the Spotlight: SCOUTS' PRIDE, Chorillan Cycle Book 2

SCOUTS' PRIDE, Book 2 of the Chorillan Cycle, a Commonwealth Universe novel, takes place several years after the events of AZULI EYES.

Ian has decided to stay on Chorillan and try to find help and some answers, maybe a cure or prevention for Phase. He and Miranda have married and have a daughter, Kay'li. Nobi Cole, Ian's cousin, has joined him on Chorillan, and during the spring and summer they search the wilderness of Chorillan to find children going through Phase and bring the Wildlings home safely, without damage or trauma.

Miranda is ill with the same debilitating illness that killed her

father. She knows when she is dead, her mother will use all her political influence to take Kay'li away from Ian, and if possible drive him off the planet, so she makes him promise to take Kay'li off-planet to protect her.

That promise launches Ian and Kay'li on an adventure that will take her into adulthood, and train her for the mission her parents were unable to complete: finding the cause and cure for Phase, protecting Wildlings from the growing prejudice against and fear of them, and find out who is interfering with the growth of Chorillan as a colony, and why.

Kay'li grows up among the Scouts of her father's team and learns how to respond to danger, how to defend the innocent and fight for what is right. She learns to be a hero, just like her ancestor, Bain Kern, who established the Scouts in the first place.

In the Spotlight: AZULI EYES, Book 1 of the Chorillan Cycle

Today's Spolight is on AZULI EYES, the first book in the Chorillan Cycle, soon to be released by Writers Exchange e-publishing.

Scout Captain Ian Fieran is cleaning up operations after battling a Gen'gineer team that attacked and decimated a small colony. The crime of the colonists? Their genetics didn't suit the exacting standards of the Gen'gineers, who continue the dogma and goal of the Set'ri from centuries ago, trying to create the "perfect" Human genome. Captured data leads Ian and his team of Scouts across the galaxy to the Rim colony world of Chorillan, where they hope to track down a Gen'gineer nest.

At the same time, Mirana Riallon, a schooltacher and daughter of very important members of the Colony Council, is worried about one of her students. The boy is an orphan, and she wants to adopt him. However, Ranny is showing all the signs of going into Phase -- the sensory overload that hits some children near adolescence. No one knows what causes Phase, and there is no known cure. Some fear that the Azuli, sentient canines native to Chorillan, are stealing the children when they escape into the wilderness, seeking to ease their discomfort that has been compared to an allergy to civilization and all things processed, manufactured and synthetic. When Ranny vanishes, Miranda determines to go into the forests of Chorillan to find him.

She meets Ian and his Scouts. They help her look for Ranny while she helps them hunt down the Gen'gineers. As each side educates the other, they come to a partnership, then friendship. The choices Ian and Miranda make during their hunt will change Chorillan for generations to come.