Zandeji Chronicles: Liberation

Zandeji Chronicles: Liberation

Christopher T. Mooney

Copyright 2010, 2013 Christopher T. Mooney

Smashwords Edition

Print edition is available at online and local retailers

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Zandeji Chronicles – Liberation is a work of fiction. Any semblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental, except for the Lord God and Savior of the universe.

Cover Image: ESA/Hubble & NASA (http://www.spacetelescope.org)

Id: potw1127a

Type: Observation

Release date: 4 July 2011, 10:00

Size: 1481 x 761 px

About the Object

Name: Carina Nebula

Type: • Milky Way : Nebula

• X - Nebulae Images/Videos

Distance: 7500 light years

Image used by permission (http://www.spacetelescope.org/copyright/ ) under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)

This book is dedicated to my wife, Ann,

without whose love, dedication, editing and

support this book would not

have been possible.

Ultimate praise and thanks to

my lord and savior, HaMashiach Yeshua

who makes all things possible.

Special thanks to Mary and Lee

for reading, encouragement

and suggested improvements.

Discover other titles by Christopher T. Mooney

Zandeji Chronicles: Liberation

Zandeji Chronicles: Revolution

Zandeji Chronicles: Redemption

Visit www.mooneybooks.com for free stories:

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Table of Contents

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Zandeji Chronicles: Revolution (excerpt)

About the Author

Other Books by Christopher T. Mooney

Connect Online

Prologue

Blue light surrounded him. Not the chill blue of electric discharge, but the ethereal glow of his own life energy. He was a shaman, and he was communing on the other planes. He strode carefully here; many creatures that had lesser powers on the material plane were forces to be feared here. All about him was the sickening red glow of evil, a galaxy full of it. He had memories given to him by the other shamans, passed down throughout the lore he had been taught, of a time when the planes were dominated by the energy of good, the eternal blue light that now surrounded his spirit body. Now he must sneak and hide trying to contact other good forces in the plane, others waiting for this reign to end, for the one to be sent to relieve them from this inhuman torture that the worlds seemed to be locked in. As he crossed the plane, he became aware of a breeze stirring. Turning towards the source, he prepared to defend himself. But when he turned nothing was there. The wind began to blow stronger, almost as if it were a gale of pure spirit rushing past him. Not able to look into the onrushing wind any longer, he turned to look to where it was blowing. Strangely it was not just sweeping in one direction, but was amassing at one point on the horizon. Then as the force of the wind grew to a climax, it stopped, and an explosive, blue-tinged force hurtled away from the point. The shock wave knocked the shaman’s spirit to the ground of the plane. As he arose, a surreal wailing issued from the evil spirits of the plane, and seemingly from the very rocks. A hand was on his shoulder, but he felt peaceful, not like he was about to be attacked. Turning, he found a man emitting blue flames of spirit. The man looked into the shaman’s spirit eyes, and said, Go in peace, the time is near then he was gone.

The shaman’s eyes snapped open in the material world, but he still saw that other plane. His breathing was heavy, and sweat trickled down his body. He had never had a physical reaction like this when coming back from the other planes, even when he had been in the deadliest spiritual battles. Like a veil drawn away, the scene of the other realm began to fade before him, slowly at first, but then more rapidly until there were just the last vestiges left in his peripheral vision. The cave that he sat in materialized around him, the familiarity of the warm brown rocks comforting him. Even though familiar surroundings materialized, the air itself had a strange feel to it, almost like an aftermath, or afterbirth of what he had experienced remained in all of the realms of existence. He became aware of nervous energy on the other side of the animal skin curtain that covered the entrance to the den-like cave set into the wall of the canyon outside. The runes etched into the floor around him finally drew into focus; the concentric circles of power within which he was centered. The entities he felt on the other side of the barrier were the chieftain and the chieftain's son, the future ruler of the people. The happening on the other plane had even stirred them; otherwise they would not even have dared come this close to the chamber. He reached out with his senses to see if the time had already started, but no, that was not it, the signs were not right yet.

Sitting up straight, the shaman did what none of his ancestors would ever have done. He bade the Chieftain to enter the sacred chambers. On the other side he registered confusion and fear as the Chieftain tried to decide what to do. Then, as the Chieftain's resolution built he threw back the curtain, and strode proudly, if not confidently, into the place, his son in tow, almost hiding behind him. Seeing the powerful markings in the room the chieftain fought the urge to run. It was too much for him after the strange events he had experienced this night. But his will was strong as he called on the Great Spirit to help him.

What news of the Serpent people, he finally bit out, his locked jaw barely allowing him to speak. It was the same question that the chieftains had been asking the shamans since the antiquated time when the Serpent people had first come to their world.

The time draws near.

What time? the Chieftain queried, puzzled by the response. No shaman had ever indicated a change in the state of their relationship to the dreaded Serpent people.

The time told to us by the most ancient shamans, the shaman extended his arm, palm up, toward the Chieftain and his terrified son. A blue flame appeared in his palm, but the flame did not burn him. The Chieftain, stone warrior that he was, was startled by the abruptness of it, and visibly jumped while his son shrank further into his father's shadow. The shaman brought the flame to within inches of his own face, and a wind began to blow about him, raising his hair, but remaining within the circle of runes.

And in the time when the warrior road of the sky is blocked in shadows of the canine moon, one shall come from the great beyond... in the flame a man appeared, dressed in black and white cloaks, wearing a strange headdress.

It is the prophesy! the chieftain’s boy exclaimed.

Yes, the shaman said, eyes boring into the poor lad. The prophesy of the ancient shamans, passed down in lore for over two-thousand thousand seasons. It is coming, the time of the great warrior-shaman, the fusion of power and strength that will free us from our oppression.

1

Look! The wicked raise their weapons;

they load them with ammunition to

cast from the shadows at the upright

in heart.

- Sel Azaad, Book of Holy Verse

Siasha curled lower into the bed of the aging cargo transport, as supply boxes jostled about her. Kesheron’s harsh suns had been hidden by one of the boxes, but with the constant jarring as the eight wheeled vehicle rumbled over the plain, it had tumbled to the bed. Where they had once been protected in the shadow, her alabaster skin and brilliant green eyes were now exposed to the blinding rays.

Seeing that the fallen box was undamaged she slid down into a new position, using the ancient transport's only gun turret to block the harsh radiation. Siasha was not well suited to life on these dry barren wastelands. Her mother's ancestors had lived for generations on a world where ice and snow made the landscape. Consequently, the people of her world had evolved over the generations to be better suited to that environment. Siasha favored her mother, the pale white skin and bright green eyes were definitely of her mother's heritage, but the hair was her father’s. The long black strands were so dark that they reflected the indigo color of the sky.

When the rim colonies had begun a guerrilla war on the civilized worlds of the Empire, claiming the right to self-government with no intervention from the Empress, Siasha’s father, an officer in the Imperial reserve army, decided that he would join the regular forces and that she could not move with him or remain on Icios. Thus he had sequestered her away on this forsaken hole, asking his aunt to care for her, and giving her great aunt some excuse that there was no one with which he felt safe leaving the girl. Though it was further out than even the rim colonies and should keep her safe from military upheaval, this planet had dangers of its own. Her father had no idea of the threats that existed on this back-space planet, but her great aunt did and tried her best to protect Siasha.

Kesheron had been exciting when she had first arrived. The new environment was exotic to her; she romanticized the desert world's threat of bandits and raiders at first. It had even been fun to learn to use the legally banned weapons that her great aunt told her might save her life one day.

But then, one horrifying night, the raiders had become all too real. They invaded the village where her great aunt lived, raping and killing Siasha’s best friend here on Kesheron. Siasha had watched frozen with terror from her hiding place as it happened. When the raid started, Siasha raced to the place where she and Kineda, her friend, had agreed to meet if anything should ever happen. They had fun fixing up the crawlspace beneath a building that they found access to from one of the courtyards in the town. They had stocked the place with food and clothing, and brought some of their treasured belongings here secreting them behind some of the loose stones in the foundation.

Siasha crouched in the crawlspace looking out through the slit in their makeshift door that covered the hole in the foundation facing the courtyard, waiting impatiently for Kineda to get there. Suddenly through the smoke and haze of fires set in the raid, she saw a figure running toward her. When the figure ran into the light of the courtyard, Siasha saw that it was Kineda. Just as soon as she came into the light, though, a hand reached out from the darkness and the fingers wrapped into her hair snapping her head back. Kineda cried out and was dropped to the ground as a handful of her hair was ripped out of her head. Five large hominids materialized through the smoke around her, laughing and jeering. Kineda was crying and struggling against them, but to no avail. Siasha was frozen in horror as she watched the hominids cut Kineda's clothes from her body, slicing her flesh at the same time. Then one of them had Kineda pinned to the ground. Siasha turned away and held in her screams, as the man defiled her friend. She was shocked back into looking when, through the battle-thickened air, Siasha heard the man scream. Straining to see through he slit and her tear blurred vision, she saw the man’s chest spilling blood, flesh and cloth dangling from Kineda’s mouth. Enraged, the man half turned and grabbed a dagger from one of his accomplice’s belts and slicing the battle-smoke with it, he drove it into Kineda’s chest. Siasha turned away before it hit, but the thud and Kineda’s blood-curdling scream cut through Siasha's senses. Pressing her back to the wall she went into an uncontrollable fit. Tears streamed from her face, and she was hyperventilating. She wanted this to be a nightmare, and wished she would wake up. But those screams were real, washing over her until a grave silence took over.

It took a long time for Siasha to come out from that small crawlspace, and when she did, just the sight of her friend was enough to put her into hysterics again. She ran from there, back to her great aunt's, into a closet, and sat there screaming until they had found her there; hoarse and in shock.

After that day she was never the same. She had no trust in anyone, and had problems going out in public. She had become so paranoid that she now kept two knives on her at all times. One in her boot and the other a blade that was built into a spring-loaded wrist mount in her thin, reflective jacket. If she flexed her wrist in a certain direction the blade would tear through the fabric ready to cut. Seeing Siasha’s reaction to the incident worried her great aunt. Trying to help her grand niece as best as she could, her great aunt coerced her into going on this supply run, just to get her out in the open.

Siasha didn’t feel out in the