Preview: The Voyage of Egeria

My promise of a new short story set in my acclaimed Soul Cycle cosmos became a centerpiece of the sleeper hit campaign for my upcoming SC prelude novel The Burned Book.

And while I put my hand to the plow in the word-fields and never looked back, today I must confess that I could not keep my promise of a new Soul Cycle short.

Because my backers and patrons are getting a brand-new Soul Cycle novella.

That’s right. The story grew in the telling. So after more than one writing marathon of 6,000 + words, the Voyage of Egeria first draft is complete!

Elite neopatrons now have access to the full draft. But they shouldn’t have all the fun, so it’s my pleasure to give Kairos readers this sneak preview …

 

“Have you even heard the name ‘Godwin’? I want an advocate!”

“Nope. And you’ll have a seat.”

The Sergeant that slams me down into a steel chair in the Foro Street Enforcer station looks like an ex-boxer turned toxic waste handler. His Legister, seated across the formed plastone table from me, looks like a struggling male model. He smells like it, too. Despite his flaxen stubble, knockoff aftershave saturates his Shianese copy of last year’s third-chicest Stranosi suit.

“Warren Godwin III,” Legister Plainclothes reads off his smoked crystal tablet with smarmy exaggeration. He sets my file down and lifts his fashionably scruffy face to meet my cultivated visage. “I’m Ral Bern, your last friend in this stratum.”

The Brotherhood’s training built on my mother’s lessons in sizing people up. Bern is the typical striver. Attained middling secular order rank under forty. Thinks that makes him some kind of prodigy. But the Guild’s glorified swordarms don’t have prodigies. The Steersmen do, and I should know, because I’m one of them.

I lean closer and rest my cuffed hands on the firm, grippy table. “Not much room for friends in my business. Which, by the way, I was engaged in when your guys grabbed me and dragged me down here. It’s rather important, so let’s conclude this transaction.”

Bern puffs out a humorless laugh. “You robers are all the same—thinking just because you can fly, your feet never touch the base ground.”

For a beat my eyes dart to the gold-embroidered cuffs of my black silk-draped arms. “Grounded is just what I am,” I say calm and slow. “Because of you. So give me your song and dance so I can get back to my client.”

“You asked Bander if he’d heard your name,” says Bern, pointing to the Sergeant. The big man’s combination hazmat-bomb suit defies even my ability to read.

I shrug. “The lower orders should be mindful of their betters.”

“And you prentices should know how real Steersmen hate you,” says Bern. “Say what you want, they made their bones going through the system; not glomming onto some senile Master handing out Journeyman degrees like candy.”

That dig sets my teeth on edge, but I force my jaw to loosen. “It’s got to sting knowing I still outrank a try-hard sec like you. We’re both on the Brotherhood’s time, so make it worthwhile, or get me a hearing.”

Bander smacks me across the back of the head with force that belies his big padded glove. I blink to clear my vision as Bern waves the bruiser out of the room. But I know the bad cop will be waiting within earshot.

Bern makes a show of rubbing the back of his blond head of hair. “Your ‘client’ is under suspicion of aiding an attack that caused twenty million in damage to a Guild facility. And your involvement compounds the offense with malappropriation of trade secrets. You know what that means?”

I play dumb, shaking my head. Though I think I know where he’s going, and my stomach sinks.

“It means,” says Bern in his grating Vigh accent, “that you don’t go in front of a local judge. Instead, I put the grievance against you before a Guild steward who decides if you get off with a fine or stripped of your robe and indentured.”

My stomach lands in my shoes. All I can do is swallow.

“Now, a peasant like me doesn’t know how they do things in Ostrith,” Bern says with a smug smile. “But here in Vigh, most stewards are rober Archons working on rotation. Did I mention how much company guys like them hate free riders like you?”

I can’t help but lick my dry lips. “If you had anything on me, you wouldn’t need to make threats.”

“Oh, I’ve got something on you.” Bern tosses the tablet across the table. It lands at an angle right in front of me. Images swim just under the tinted glassy surface: the alabaster lobby of Vigh’s Guild house. Hundreds of people from every walk of life and representing all ages are queued at the four L-shaped desks bracketing the main gate when an explosion tears through the platform.

“Working of twenty mil is gonna take a while,” Bern whispers as the carnage plays over and over.

I avert my eyes from a little boy’s shoe protruding from a slab of rubble—his tiny foot still in it. “You trying to shock me? I wasn’t there. Take a close look, Bern. That clip clears me.”

“Good advice.” Bern rises and struts around the table to hold the crystal screen under my aquiline nose. “I already took it. Know what my close look showed me? These guys.”

He taps the glass an inch to five o’clock of center. Two men in dark clothes with nearly identical hair, complexions, and builds are caught in mid-stride running opposite the fleeing crowd.

“A couple of Inspectors,” I scoff without conviction. “Makes sense they’d be the first responders.”

Bern chuckles. “Since when is Customs the first on-scene? Look again: Matching descriptions; in the exact wrong place at just the right time.”

My brow furls involuntarily. “Are you saying these two robbed a Guild house?”

“Not quite.” Bern advances to a still timestamped four minutes, thirty-two seconds later. It’s the same two suits, but this time, they’re flanking a third person: a woman with platinum blonde hair, brown-gold eyes, and fair skin.

“They’re helping someone to the exit,” I say with rising apprehension.

“Yeah,” says Bern, “and when that someone is a prisoner, we call it a jail break. Fugitive’s Egeria, self-styled Gen priestess still fighting a war that ended before you spat out your silver spoon. Security’s still not sure how the Resistance sprang her.”

I collect myself with an effort and lean against the bars of my chair back. “As a free-riding rober, I wouldn’t know.”

Bern’s chair scrapes on the stained tile floor as he drags it over. He sits in it backwards perpendicular to me and folds his arms on the top rail. “I know you wouldn’t, Warren. You’re just the help. But I’d bet my pension your boss does.”

It’s my turn for some jokeless laughter. “The Captain? He’s no criminal mastermind; just a small businessman scrabbling for crumbs under the big boys’ table.”

“Maybe you just see him that way because he wants you to.”

My already thinning patience tears. “Or maybe control freaks like you can’t stand the thought of men like Jason Tremore living free in your syndicated world. The fact that he’s managed to survive under your boot keeps you up at night, doesn’t it?”

Bern’s pitying look makes me itch to fashion a Working and blow it off his ex-male stripper face. But even if the disruption field in the walls wasn’t binding my prana like the cuffs bind my hands, the pretty boy had a point. My Master rushed my training, teaching the minimum to stand for a degree. As a Factor I’m not good for much besides manning the Wheel, getting in and out of the Ether, and sending messages—the pros and cons of private instruction.

“I’ll tell you what keeps me up nights,” says Bern. “Knowing that unlicensed factors and fairy tale spooks are out there threatening my city. Screw the damage estimate. Fourteen people were injured in that blast, and two died. I think some of their blood’s on your boss’ hands.”

I pound the table. “The Captain’s not with the Resistance. He’s a family man, for Heaven’s sake!”

Bern’s suddenly flat affect gives me a chill. “He was.”

“What?”

A couple more taps of Bern’s imitation gold-ringed fingers calls up the image of a ransacked apartment on the crystal screen. Cheap, worn furniture—none of which matches—lies toppled amid hand-me-down clothes and dogeared books. I can almost smell the stale prepackaged food and a faint note of mold.

“If that’s your place, Bern, you need to ask for a cost of living raise.”

Bern keeps his business face on. “That’s 1616 Foothill Street, Apartment 503, Northridge, Salorien. The address ring a bell?”

I give my head an honest shake.

“It’s your client’s residence—at least it was until he abandoned his wife. Left her to raise three kids alone.”

“You’re lying,” I snap. “He dotes on those girls!”

“Then why hasn’t he been back home in eight months?”

“The Captain took a long-haul job out of Mithgar,” I sputter, knowing how dumb the excuse is the instant I hear it. “He wouldn’t have to take that kind of scut work if you leg-breakers would quit squeezing the little guy.”

“You may be right,” says Bern. “But you’re wrong about Tremore going to Mithgar. That’s where he told everyone he was going, but I checked. Customs has no record of the Chronos docking at Ostrith or any other Guild facility on the sphere in the past twelve months.”

Dread creeps from the back of my mind as I stare at the tossed apartment. “That can’t be right.”

Bern’s haughty smirk returns. “If you’re divulging that your client evaded Customs, that’s a whole other set of charges we can talk about.”

I sit bolt upright. “No! I wasn’t even on his crew yet.”

“Finally, some truth! I know you weren’t. None of Tremore’s current crew were with him on his last job. Don’t you think that’s a bit odd, a freighter captain back from parts unknown replacing his whole ship’s company with lowlifes like that chiseler Shipwright Buelle? And that nutcase Atikavin? And, no offense, a green rookie like you?”

It pains me to admit, but Bern is better than his social climber image suggests. Cops’ real weapons aren’t guns. They’re questions that subtly prod you till you’re slamming the door on your own cell. This time, he’s posed one I can’t rationalize my way out of.

Bereft of logic, I try humor. “Alar’s a good enough guy once you draw him out of his shell. And Vegor … You’re right, he’d charge a client rent for his own tools.”

“I’ve got a confession, too” Bern says as he stands and picks up the tablet. “The truth is, I do envy you, Warren. There you are, joking in my interview room like it’s your mother’s parlor. But I can’t bring myself to laugh when two of my people are dead—along with Tremore’s family.”

That bombshell hits me harder than Bander’s fist. Despite my best efforts, I flinch. “They can’t be. He still talks about them in the present tense, for pity’s sake.”

Bern flips the screen to show me a mugshot I see my client’s features in. Only it’s not him. It’s a young woman with his blood-red hair, but much longer, and his blue eyes, but greedy instead of smiling.

“Neriad Tremore,” says Bern, “the Captain’s oldest. Salorien PD picked her up when she called saying her little sister wasn’t breathing. They found the youngest, Nadia, dead from fever in the shambles of that apartment you just saw.”

My mouth works for a second before sound comes out. “The oldest wrecked the place out of grief?”

“No. Forensics said the apartment had been trashed nine days before—right around the last time anybody remembers seeing the middle girl.”

I gaze at the mugshot, forgetting my own problems to ponder the sad fates of others. “Did the oldest girl tell the cops where her sister went?”

Bern shakes his head. “She pulled a vanishing act from the Northridge lockup before they could ask.”

“Sounds like you and Salorien’s finest have problems in common.”

“More than you know.” Bern slides to an image of a fresh corpse lying in filthy alley. It’s not the man’s blood that makes me wince. It’s the deep scars curving over his scalp and down his face.

Bern spares me the trouble of asking. “Inspector Seral Culvert, found dead three blocks from 1616 Foothill the day after Neriad Tremore disappears.”

“Condolences on losing such a valued colleague.”

Bern scoffs. “Save it. The man was a savage one step above the gutter trash he busted. But guess who he was investigating when fate caught up to him?”

It’s a rhetorical question since no other answer explains why I’m sitting here. “Tying the Captain to your prison break because a crooked Inspector leaned on him makes a pretty flimsy case, Bern.”

“I know.” Bern switches the tablet off and tucks it in the crook of his arm. “That’s where you come in.”

Now I get to smile. “So does client confidentiality.”

Bern wags his finger like a scolding tutor. “That line might work on the local cops but not with me. Not if Guild secrets were used to aid a Gen’s escape.”

“I’m not a snitch.”

Bern takes a deep breath. “Then enjoy mining ether metal for the next several decades,” he says, blowing out. On cue, Bander tromps back in and hauls me to my feet.

The reality of my situation crashes down on me like a free-falling ship. I thrash in Bander’s grip to no avail. The lout must have transessed hands. “I’m a Brother in good standing!” I protest as I’m marched out of the room. “You’re committing a major charter violation!”

“Archon Gaughden disagrees,” Bern says with a nod. “Her verdict came in while you were babbling about your boss’ grammar.”

“You uppity scum!”

“Don’t worry, Warren,” Bern says as his muscle shoves me into the dingy hallway. “You can profess your integrity to Tremore and the rest of his crew on the mine transport.”

The door slams shut behind me.

 

Burned Book backers will receive the finished Voyage of Egeria eBook soon!

Even if you missed the epic crowdfunder, you’ve still got a chance to experience this epic novella. Elite neopatrons can already access the full first draft. To enjoy the whole thrilling voyage, join the ranks of Margrave and higher tier patrons.

Join on Patreon or SubscribeStar now.