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  With that the rebel army launched their final attack. The young prince stood his ground, and for a time his superhuman strength seemed to keep the enemy at bay. However, his force-field began to grow weaker and one seckle caught him on the arm not protected by armour. Another cut was made to his waist and then to his exposed neck. He fell and the insurgents fell on him, scenting blood. Their seckles plunged down into the young prince. He did not get up again.

  Malkin bowed his head momentarily in grief and then continued his descent until he reached the door leading to the parade ground and the path to the Central Transportation Portal. There were loud shouts of alarm from outside. He paused and saw through one of the ground floor windows that the security grid had gone. His heart sank……if the grid had gone then……Lord Blackstone!

  He took a couple of steps back towards the stairs but then the infant kicked in his arms and Malkin realised he had orders to follow. He exited the Palace and hurried to the Central Transportation Portal hangar doors.

  The Ilsid levitation tanks flew over the unprotected barriers and blasted the defensive ranks of the soldiers left behind to defend the retreat. Many a brave soldier died. The gates were blasted open and the invaders charged in. Remo Shanks was using every ounce of his experience and bravery, marshalling the troops in advance of the attack. He turned to the young lieutenant he had spoken to earlier at the gate.

  ‘Lieutenant Anders, hold this line as long as you can.’ Lieutenant Anders, face dirtied by smoke, straightened his back, standing tall and saluting his confirmation. Remo saluted back, proud of his fellow officer, and ran to the hangar to carry out his final orders - the Central Transportation Portal must not fall into enemy hands.

  At the forefront of the Ilsid strode Zylar, his two seckles shimmering in the moonlight. Photon shots bounced off his personal force-field or were deflected by the two seckles manoeuvred at great speed in front of his body. Behind the Ilsid the insignias of the Malacca and Tyther clans could be seen.

  It wasn’t long before he reached the front line of the hastily prepared inner defence and found Lieutenant Anders confronting him. He saw the determined jaw line but dismissed it…..a moment later his seckles cut the young soldier down. He walked on towards the vast hangar hewn into the mountain.

  Inside the hangar the final refugees and soldiers were ready for transportation. In the midst stood Malkin holding the infant, carefully shielding the identity from the rest of the refugees.

  There was no need to worry, the mass of people, some four hundred strong, only had eyes for the hangar doors and the fighting outside. All the transport ships carrying thousands of survivors had fled earlier in the week. Transportation would now only be in person.

  Only a handful of soldiers remained guarding the hangar. They were bunkered down behind sandbags near the hangar doors. Remo rushed past them and shouted, ‘Hold them men….they must not get their hands on the portal.’ Remo reached the complex array of levers and switches. The operators were inputting the final calculations to send through the remaining survivors.

  The Ilsid had reached the hangar doors and were in hand to hand combat with the remaining Royal Guard. Remo knew his soldiers had no chance. It would only be a matter of time before they would be brushed aside.

  ‘Ready?’ he said to the operators. One gave him the thumbs up. ‘Go on then, get in there.’ He motioned his head to the transportation portal. The operators, not needing any more encouragement, scrambled up the evacuation causeway.

  Remo placed a number of devices against the computer. The powerful explosives would decimate the controls and, more importantly, make the portal unusable.

  Zylar, some twenty metres away, saw Remo near the controls. Guessing correctly what he was attempting, he threw one of his seckles, sending it spinning wickedly towards Remo. Remo ducked just in time and the seckle whistled harmlessly over his head, curving and returning to the outstretched hand of its owner.

  Remo, wiping the sweat from his face with his sleeve, placed the final explosives around the console and pressed in the final instructions to send the final cargo to their destination. He turned and ran for the causeway. A photon blast hit him in the shoulder and he staggered towards the transportation field as the portal cranked up its power. The enemy poured through the doors, all the Royal Guard dead or dying. Remo lifted himself up the ramp. Another blast hit him and as he fell down arms reached from the portal at great risk and pulled him in. His body flopped over the rim of the portal just as there was a tremendous blue flare as the portal sent the survivors on their journey. In the midst Malkin held his important bundle closely to his chest.

  Zylar swore and as the blue light diminished he noticed the explosive devices around the console. He called his soldiers away from the portal and ran back outside the hangar. The explosives blew up, taking the portal with them, and the nearest rebel soldiers were blown off their feet. The shimmering blue tinged black force-field protected Zylar as he stood watching the inside of the hangar disintegrate.

  On the fourteenth floor of the Palace, Lord Logan Blackstone smiled. His eyes closed and his body slumped back onto the divan. His last thought was of his son.

  Chapter 2

  Western Quadrant

  Present Day

  Kabel woke up with a start, bathed in sweat. He stared up at the slowly rotating fan in the wooden ceiling which did its best to cool down the warm room. It was always the same dream – large imposing building against a backdrop of a mountain, many soldiers marching back and forth through the open gates and tradesmen and women working on gun-ships and levitation tanks too numerous to count.

  The principal focus of the dream was on a figure swathed in black and dark red armour, with lifeless blue eyes, pacing between the tradesmen. The amount of fear in the workers eyes always shook him. Then, when he thought the dream would end he would find himself looking at a woman, blonde hair flowing down her silky and expensive tunic, her face pale and sad. The girl was in a room at the top of a dome-dominated building looking out upon parade grounds with hundreds of armed soldiers training. The red flag with the diamond crest fluttering in the breeze.

  His heart always ached to see her smile. Then he always woke up.

  He climbed out of bed, his night wear soaked with sweat and the lingering memories of the nightmare clinging desperately to him. He lifted his tall, angular and tightly muscled body from the relatively small inadequate bed. They didn’t make beds in the village of Livescale long enough for his six foot and six inch frame. He pulled off his damp night wear, readjusted the pendent that hung around his neck and stepped into the Diffuser.

  The Diffuser was his baby, his invention… the device used water and air sucked from the atmosphere inside the Outer Perimeter Wall to form a ‘wash and dry experience never experienced before.’ He quoted his own sales slogan. Air was sucked in from the atmosphere via a large collecting pipe which was pushed through the ceiling and then through the ground floor wall; water droplets condensed and then were warmed. The warmed water was then forced through a number of jets that surrounded the body. Once the washing cycle had completed, air from outside was heated and then blown from four different directions to dry the body – no towels were needed. As he stepped out of the Diffuser, suitably refreshed, he wondered whether the date of the Federation Fair had been set.

  The Federation Fair was the biggest fair in the Western Quadrant. It was a coming together of all inhabitants in the remaining quadrant, and, indeed, before Zylar had enslaved the people of the other quadrants, this was a fair attended by all dignitaries and royal clans throughout the Earth Colony. Now, and for the last twenty years, the Federation Fair was limited to the Western Quadrant and any refugees who had escaped the fighting. Irrespective of this, it was still the most vibrant market and entertainment event in the calendar. It was also a good excuse to travel outside the immediate village coordinates.

  Travel in the Western Quadrant was firmly controlled, with only Elders and Achievers allowed tr
avelling rights between villages via the transportation portals present in each main village. Without this a long journey by foot was the only way. This ensured travel was limited as the villages were spread far and wide.

  To be an Achiever one had to be on the Village Council and this was only possible when trial by peers proved that a resident added something of significant value to the safety and security of the people in the Western Quadrant. Unfortunately his Diffuser was only seen as an appliance rather than an improvement to health and the environment they lived in.

  Kabel went red with frustration and his lips tightened in his suntanned face. The rejection at yesterday’s meeting still hurt – the third time he had been refused. He had passionately put forward his case. The Diffuser used less water and air than any other washing device and with the immense pressure on the limited supply of zinithium from maintaining the Ozone Shield, which protected the people from the harmful sun radiation and the Outer Perimeter Wall; his invention would help the inhabitants live a good quality life but mitigate the environmental decay. The Outer Perimeter Wall was easily the largest user of energy. It was invisible to the naked eye but protected each of the quadrants in turn to prevent any surprise attacks that could wipe out the whole Expeditionary Force.

  The Village Elders and their previously selected Achievers on the Council disagreed. They thought even though the activity saved water it also encouraged greater depletion of resources by increased usage and did not warrant either financial support or the granting of Achiever status to him.

  What really hurt, as the Elders, the bulk of them in their dark green cloaks and the Southgate Clan pale yellow tunics, argued against him, was that the Teacher sat there not saying a word. He simply played with his grey beard and pulled his black cloak tightly against his vibrant blue tunic.

  When he had stormed out of the meeting the Teacher had caught up with him, taking him by his arm and whispering in his ear, ‘Sometimes you win by persistence. Don’t give up.’ The Teacher then thrust a book into his hands. At the time he simply glared at the Teacher, grabbed the book and left, still fuming.

  Did they not realise that zinithium, the raw material that brought the Expeditionary Force in the first place to Earth, was in short supply? The quicker they mined it underneath the noses of the humans, who didn’t even know it existed let alone knew it was the material that could take Mankind into the wider Universe, the more it was dispensed into the force-fields, environmental programmes, weaponry and everyday living of the Colony. He had stormed off to lick his wounds.

  Later that day, in a much calmer mood, he picked up the book, which lay next to his bed, discarded in a fit of pique. The book was entitled “Rules and Guidelines of Village Council Etiquette”. His interest was aroused as it dawned on him that there was a hidden message in the Teacher’s cryptic mark earlier. Kabel had then settled down and read the book from front to back. It was late into the night when the penny finally dropped and he had drifted off to sleep a happy Zeinonian.

  ‘Breakfast,’ came the cry from his mother, breaking through his recollection. Kabel pulled on his tunic and trousers and ran upstairs – all bedrooms in the villages were below ground for defence, a habit based on life on Zein. He pushed past his elder brother, using his extra weight to lever him out of the way.

  ‘Kabel,’ his brother cried ‘what the hell are you doing, you lanky sod?’

  ‘Stop that, Drogan, I will have none of that language in this house,’ their mother ordered.

  Drogan snarled at his brother but did not say anything more.

  Kabel ignored him and sat down, curling his legs underneath the chair so that he could eat at a sensible level. He then tucked into some of the delights of the Zein traditional breakfast: mouthwatering curly baons – a light and fluffy pastry soaked in butter and syrup; good old baggies – meat cured from the finest manikins, one of the animals brought from their homeland and which populated the villages fields. The meat was beautiful. For desert there was a sweet mango from Earth topped off with cinnamon sauce.

  As Kabel folded the baggies into his mouth he glanced up and down the table. His dad, Hilah Wheatstone, had already gone to work at the Village Council. This left his mother, Maggia, frying up more curly baons, his Aunt Palminder, his younger sister Delilah and brother Drogan. He frowned slightly as he always did when he looked at his family, noting the differences. They all were significantly smaller in height than him, only reaching his shoulder. Hilah and Maggia Wheatstone, a hard working couple of the Southgate Clan who had taken him in as a refugee when his parents were killed in the uprising, loved him deeply and provided a loving place for him to live.

  Kabel knew that he was different from a pretty young age - his tallness set him apart. He could not even go on the child excavator trucks as they only fitted the smaller framed bodies. When he went swimming he would finish well before the others as they swam with the currents of the local river, the Mee. His toned body would cut through the water swiftly and he always enjoyed the feeling of strength his muscles provided.

  His training with his Teacher took place every morning. The teaching covered the history and geography of both Zein and the Earth cultures and traditions. They also studied a selection of raw materials, especially the use and application of the rare zinithium, tactics on the battle field and hand to hand combat.

  He enjoyed elements of the teaching but could not understand why he could not go to the local school. The response from his foster parents was that the school could not take him as they were full. They could only accommodate a certain quota of the refugees from the other quadrants.

  The one to one teaching only helped to increase the differences between him and the local children. This was compounded when his seemingly never ending energy drove him to walk and run faster than anybody else and this meant that he sometimes was clumsy and knocked the smaller children over. Many a fight occurred when this happened and his punishments at the hands of his father were fair but severe.

  Notwithstanding this, Hilah Wheatstone was a kindly man with a warm look in his eyes and softly spoken. His father was always pleasant, unless he was scolding Kabel of course. There was, however, always an underlying sadness in the man. The Teacher had told him that he had suffered a great loss with the death of his twin brother, who had been killed in the flight from the Southern Quadrant.

  Kabel respected and loved his parents deeply and tried to keep out of trouble, but it was hard. Many times he found himself left out of groups and his brother hardly spoke to him. It was his sister whom he turned to for comfort. Delilah was some four years younger than Kabel but had an emotional intelligence that was years older.

  He often talked with his mother and father, asking why he was so different from other children in the village, and his parents would smile kindly and tell him that he was a Blackstone of course, how they loved him dearly and that it was fine to be different. Kabel’s frustration grew - he knew there was more from the sideways glances they all gave each other……Would no one tell him the whole truth?

  The Ample, the local paper, dropped through the door. His sister had half got out of her seat but Kabel stuffed a full fork of food into his mouth and sprinted to the door.

  ‘Hey, let your food go down,’ his aunt shouted, with a small smile on her lips.

  ‘Sorry, Aunty, I need to know the date for the Federation Fair,’ he said, grabbing the paper and eagerly turning to the centre pages, where local events were located.

  ‘Great,’ he said to no one in particular and clenched his fist in delight.

  ‘What is it, Kabel?’ his sister asked, looking up from the table and her half eaten breakfast. Kabel didn’t answer immediately; he had butter dripping from his mouth onto his chin and absently wiped it away with his sleeve. Only then did he answer the question posed.

  ‘The Federation Fair date has been confirmed as the twenty-six date of the sun rising of the eight month. That’s only ten days away,’ he finished excitedly. The Zeinonians had
adopted the Earth’s calendar rather than the Zein calendar of manos and termins simply to assist their eventual assimilation with the human race below.

  ‘I suppose you are going to try and sell that useless invention at the fair,’ his brother smirked.

  Kabel didn’t rise to the jibe. ‘Certainly am, dear brother,’ he answered cheerfully.

  ‘But if you are not awarded Achiever status you will need to start the journey tomorrow,’ said Delilah, worried that Kabel was going to run out of time and the Federation Fair would be so much better with him there. Kabel flashed his standard cheeky smile.

  ‘I have a plan,’ he lowered his voice conspiratorially.

  ‘Humph,’ Drogan snorted. Delilah laughed - she couldn’t stay worried or angry for long with Kabel.

  He kissed his mother as he passed her at the stove. Maggia tutted but could not hold back the smile.

  He sat down next to Delilah just as Drogan announced very pompously that he was going to the Village Council meeting. Drogan, who was older than Kabel by some ten years, had been awarded Achiever status some time ago and worked with their father at the council. Kabel ignored him, used to the snide remarks from his brother. Drogan picked up his cloak and hat and went outside.

  Kabel turned his attention back to his breakfast.

  His sister whispered in his ear, ‘Are you going out tonight?’

  Kabel smiled, ‘Yep.’ For the last three months once a week he had sneaked into the Transportation building with his brother’s master key. His brother was very careless of divulging things which he shouldn’t, like where he kept his master key, especially after plenty of hola beer, the traditional beer made from the famous Zein flower.

  Last night he had set up his next trip. The Teacher had been taking him through another chapter in the history of Zein and had fallen asleep in the chair. A piece of paper had slipped from his pocket. Intrigued and being careful the Teacher did not awake, he used his foot to move the piece of paper away and when it was at a safe distance he picked it up and opened it. There was a set of coordinates on the paper, ones he had not seen before.