Ancient Birthright
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Authors: Kendrick E. Knight
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Ancient Birthright
Kendrick E. Knight
Copyright Notice
Copyright © 2014 by Kenneth E. Kirchner
All rights reserved.
By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Corrections
Extensive efforts have been made to present a correct and complete work of fiction, but even the most deific individuals sometimes mess up. In the event you identify one of these transgressions please email the details to : [email protected].
Chapter-1
Colony ship
Universe Explorer
: 126.8 years ago:
Saigg Garuu shifted his balance and sent his thrustboard looping up the curved wall of the growth chamber. His momentum slowed as board and rider reached their apogee and began the almost frictionless slide toward the deck below. His speed built to a gut-curling blur from the combination of his thrustboard’s propulsion and the increasing gravity.
The other four members of his gang followed his lead through the acrobatic course they had constructed in the unused growth chamber. Some of the jumps and transitions were spectacular this close to the centerline of the spinning ship. The centrifugal-force induced gravity in the outer levels was close to home planet normal, but here it ranged from one-half normal to near zero gee at the center bulkhead. Saigg nudged the thrust exhaust port a few degrees to the right and headed for the exit door.
Jerr cut him off with a driving skid that almost knocked the thrustboard board from beneath Saigg’s feet.
“Jerr! What the Petuua shit is wrong with you. Watch where you’re going.” Saigg’s facial colors darkened to deep gray, and his dorsal spines snapped open as he squared off with Jerr. “You’ve been busting my thrust vector all night. You want to prove something? Bring it on.”
Hey, guys. Let’s make one more run and then call it a night. We’ve been in here for hours. My folks are going to molt if I don’t get back to the family cabin soon,” Kaas called, as he came to a stop between the two posturing Luzzon males.
Saigg rattled his extended dorsal spines and sent flashes of hot color through the translucent membrane connecting them. “I need to get out of here. Mom’s been ragging me about cleaning up my room. I’m going to head home and crash for a few hours. Once I get up, I’ll toss a few things I don’t want, and stuff the rest in the closet. Maybe that’ll satisfy her, so she gets off my case. I wish I could figure out a way to get her to focus on Karonna and Davvie instead of me.”
One of his gang yelled, “I volunteer to focus on Karonna. Why don’t you go home and send her back to ride with us?”
Saigg’s blood heated at the thought of his sister getting involved with his friends. Granted she was from the same clutch as him, and at fifteen, they were of an age where bodily changes and surging hormones brought on thoughts of mating, but zagit, she was his sister. Why would they be interested in her? She was just Karonna, the biggest pain in the ass in his family. That is, after Davvie the dork.
“You guys nuts? She’s like your sister. We all grew up together. Go chase some other tail that’s not family.”
“Have you taken a look at her lately? She’s got some of the finest tail on the entire ship,” Jerr, his main competition for group leadership said.
Kaas shoved past Jerr and headed back to the start of the course. “Come on guys, I want to get back to skating before someone finds us in here and tosses us out!”
Jerr looked like he wanted to continue baiting Saigg, but the other two kicked their boards to full thrust and followed Kaas. Saigg knew Jerr could not let the implied challenge from Kaas go unanswered.
Saigg opened the entry hatch and took a quick look in both directions to make sure the passageway was clear. The enormous growth bays were off limits to him and his friends since they were not considered official members of the ship’s crew. With a final wave to the remaining four, he pushed off down the hall.
Halfway back to his cabin, his thrustboard began losing power. Saigg pulled a small cube of aluminum from his pouch and dropped it in the refuel hatch in the nose of the unit. A quick stop at a food dispenser to refill the water tank and his ride was back to full thrust.
The trip had been boring until he’d discovered a supply of cargo lifters and figured out how to modify them into personnel transportation units or thrustboards as he had christened them. With a few ounces of aluminum for catalyst and a splash of water to convert to steam for lift and propulsion, he had made the perfect ride to zip around the ship. Removing the wired controls and mounting switches for foot operation was simple enough.
When he got to the family cabin, the lights were already dimmed for the sleep cycle. Watching his step and moving slowly he made it to his room without waking his parents. He hung his thrustboard on the line he’d stretched across the ceiling of his room and climbed into the rumpled covers on his bed. It took a few minutes of squirming and twisting to get comfortable and position the loose bedclothes around his body the way he liked. It took less time to fall into exhausted oblivion.
Chapter-2
Socorro, New Mexico: Present day
Beldon felt a hand clamp onto his shoulder and squeeze as he swung his locker door open. ”Ahhh...that hurts!” The pain buckled his knees, and he would have ended up on the floor if the meaty fist hadn’t held him up.
“I need to talk to you, Dumbass. You’re going to do my math homework. My dad says if I don’t get my grade up at least to a C, I will be in summer school. All summer!”
Beldon’s books hit the floor as his right arm was shoved up behind his back. “Let go of my arm. It doesn’t bend that way!” Beldon felt his shoulder blade slide past the knuckles of his hand as Billy rammed his arm up his back. “I’ll do it. I’ll do it! Let my arm go before you break it!”
“Just a little friendly indication of what will happen to you if you don’t get my math homework done. So’s you don’t forget, take a closer look at the inside of your locker.”
Beldon’s head scraped the locker shelf as Billy jammed him in and slammed the door.
“See you around, Dumbass.”
Beldon heard Billy snicker as he walked away.
He shifted the knuckles of his left hand and rapped the metal door. “Somebody...Help...open the door. Anybody? Please.” The walls were shifting, closing in, clamping around his chest. “It’s too tight. I can’t move, can’t breathe. I have to get out of here. Ahhhg...my shoulders.”
In his struggle to reach the latch, Beldon felt the muscles and tendons in his left arm and shoulder protest in agony. “Nahhhhga
.
” He could feel the lock bar with his fingers, but it wouldn’t budge. Billy must have spun the dial to lock it.
“HELP! Someone let me out.” He managed to move his knee and rattled the door. “This must be how people feel when they’re trapped in the snow from an avalanche. If I could just take a deep breath.” He sucked in as much air as his collapsed lungs would allow.
Oh gag, it smelled like old books, paint, and stale lunches. No, he revised that thought. It smelled like rotten lunches, ones that had been stuffed in an overheated locker and forgotten.
Footsteps?
“HEY! I can hear you walking down the hall. I’m in locker 327. Please open the door.”
The steps paused. “Who’s there? Where are you? Quit screwing around, or I’m going to call a teacher,” floated through the door vent.
“Yeah, call a teacher but first open the door. I’m Bel...Beldon Dumas. Please open locker 327. Please—I need to get out of here. I can’t breathe.”
The door handle rattled. “I can’t open it. It’s locked and I don’t know the combination. Whose locker is this?”
“It’s mine. The combination’s left twenty-four, right six, and left nineteen.”
“Why are you in your locker?”
What does she
think
I’m doing in here? Who is she? Her voice sounds familiar.
Beldon’s smartass attitude kicked in. “I’m looking for an apartment and thought I’d check this place out, see what the view was like.”
A long pause and the rasp of the combination dial stopped. “What kind of rent are they asking?” drifted in accompanied by a surprised laugh.
“Low, real low. Please don’t stop. Open the door. Billy Breathsword offered to show it to me. He laughed the whole time he was pushing me in here and slamming the door.”
“Billy! He cornered me once. I told him if he didn’t let me go, I was going to start screaming rape and claw his eyes out.”
“That’s Billy, muscle without a brain attached. He’s the only kid in Central High whose waist size is larger than his IQ. I think the only reason he’s going here is because he was kicked out of every private school his father sent him to.”
Clunk, creak.
“Oh God, blessed fresh air. If you could help me just turn a little and… Pull. Oh, crap my legs won’t hold, they’re asleep.” Beldon saw the floor coming at him, but couldn’t break his fall. “Ah...that hurt! It feels like I bruised my elbow when I hit the floor.”
It’s Cindy. She looks like an angel from heaven from down here. Nice legs. I wonder if she realizes we have a class together.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, my legs are asleep and won’t move. Give me a minute to get the circulation going again. Okay, I think I can stand if you’ll help me up.”
“For a skinny guy, you sure are heavy.”
“Thanks for the help. You’re Cindy Merrimen, right?” She looks even better up close and her perfume. Beldon leaned on Cindy a little harder as he nosed her hair and drew in a deep breath. “We have language arts class together, and I saw your picture in the Socorro newspaper. You got the ‘Outstanding Student’ award in French class.”
“
Oui j'ai fait. Je ne pensais pas que toute personne même lire cette histoire
,” she said as pink stained her cheeks.
“Sorry, I don’t speak Chinese. What’d you say?”
“I said, ‘Yes I did. I didn’t think anyone had even read that story.’ And it was French not Chinese.”