Jeanne G'Fellers - Sisters Flight

As the Autlach cleric Longpass’ assault on the Tekkroon colony’s mountain stronghold increases, Rankil Danston struggles to keep her wounded psyche intact. Though sheis one of the Tekkroon colony’s Power Barrier Troopers, the bravest of warrior Taelachs, she can no longer ignoreher wounded child’s cries for recognition nor the flashbacks that accompany those cries. Drawn from her lover Myrla’s side Rankil is pulled into the fight of her life and thegreatest battle in Tekkroon history.
Sisters' Flight
is the long awaited sequel to
Sister Lost, Sister Found and No Sister of Mine

Sisters
Flight

Jeanne
G'Fellers

Preface

In
the late twenty-third century, numerous stars in the Milky Way were known to
have planets capable of sustaining life. One of these, Sixty-One Cygni, a
yellow sun with a planet similar in orbit and mass to Earth, intrigued
researchers and entrepreneurs alike.

Entrepreneurs,
given a head start by the civil unrest between the Earth and Moon/Mars
Alliance, won the competition for exploration, establishing a mining colony on
the mineral-rich, frozen surface of Sixty-One Cygni's sixth planet. A small
group of researchers soon followed and began studying the second planet in the
system—then known to be inhabited by a humanoid species called the Autlach.
When natural disaster struck the colony, the colonists fled to the Autlach home
world to await rescue—one that never came. As time passed, the colonists began
to intermingle then interbreed with the Autlach, forever changing the genetic
makeup of a people seemingly trapped in a tradition of patriarchal religious
oppression. The second generation of interbreeding brought out a recessive
human gene that only appeared when present in both parents. The resulting
daughters—pale, blue-eyed, sterile and telepathic—were everything the Autlach
were not. Rejected by their families, these daughters found acceptance among
each other, forming small clans that kept to the high mountains far above the
Autlach.

Generations
of misunderstanding formed into religious doctrine, giving the pale Autlach
daughters, now called Taelachs, the unwarranted title of witches. Their
presence believed to be proof of a woman's sin, they were killed at birth or
raised as slaves unless rescued by Taelach sisters talented at sensing Taelach
fetuses through empathy and telepathy. Those fortunate enough to grow up inside
a clan were subject to slavery or ritual burning if they were caught by the
Autlach. Life was precarious at best, but the Taelach persevered. Clans hid and
hid well—even from each other, which did little to increase Taelach numbers or
place until the Tekkroon clan emerged. Some sixty thousand in number at their
height, the Tekkroon welcomed any sister strong enough to reach their lands. A
people of science, they-were technologically generations ahead of the other
clans and ages ahead of the Autlach. They had harnessed the thermal energy
lurking in the ground beneath the volcanic dome they called home, had
effectively mastered the basics of gunpowder, and incorporated these as well as
other technologies into their existing world, creating an eclectic mix of the
past and present. The Tekkroon believed they must embrace the past to have a
future, including the technology of their human predecessors— especially at a
time when all other defenses were failing. The Autlach were on a crusade—one
the Taelach might not survive.

Introduction

The
initial form of this work was compiled and presented by Third Officer Belsas
Exzal as a capstone project of her historical archivist training at the
Kinship's Officer Training Grounds. The information herein derives from early
Kimshee training records and the personal journals of and early recorded
interviews with Rankil Danston, Myrla Rankils and Kaelan London. Shortly after
completing the research, Third Officer Belsas Exzal and Chandrey Cances, her
friend and adolescent sister educator in training, rewrote the work in story
format so that every sister may know more about her past.

A
Note from the compilers:

It
is said that misplaced sisters become one of two beings—a soul poisoned by the
abuse of her Autlach birth family, or a woman so strong in survival instinct
and character that she leaves an impression wherever she goes. Rankil Danston
swore they were a little of both, and she would know, for she, too, grew up
misplaced but with an advantage most didn't have—her autistic and musical
wunderkind cousin Archell. Raised as slaves within their Autlach birth family's
farming compound, they came to the Taelach through Rankil's mother's hampered
attempt at setting her free, but neither was without the inner and outer scars that
every abused child possesses. A near fatal confrontation with Archell's father
left Rankil with a unique facial scar that eventually became her mark of fame.
It scarred Archell with the guilt of patricide. Rankil's memory of the scar's
creation and the near loss of everything she had grown to hold dear, including
Archell, spiraled her into depression and to the brink of insanity, her
salvation coming in the unlikely form of a sociopath sister named Easton
Outbrook. Rankil and Easton shared a common bond, one of misplaced sisters, of
sisters lost. Rankil, however, achieved where Easton had failed. Seeing her
possible future in Easton's madness, Rankil fought to remain intact, seeking to
find her true self beneath the scars. In doing so, she rediscovered all that
gave her joy, especially Myrla, her first and only love. After winning a battle
for Myrla's autonomy, Rankil's story became renowned, she and Myrla sister
celebrities, their tale of love lost and found retold among the Taelach clans
until it had entered the realm of romantic legend—all before either Rankil or
Myrla reached the age of twenty.

In
Rankil's early twenties, during the passes before the first era of peace and
growth, the Taelach clans began to converge. This was when the Autlach cleric
Longpass's crusade and a multitude of other Autlach campaigns against the
Taelach reached their crest. Longpass used his powerful oration skills to twist
the teachings of the Autlach god Raskhallak, insisting that believers hold true
to Raskhallak's deepest truths. The Whitewitch, Raskhallak said, had no place
among the Autlach. While many Autlachs believed this meant they were to be
shunned, Longpass's interpretation was more sweeping. The Taelach were lesser
beings meant to serve the Autlach, and those who wouldn't submit were to be
cleansed and sacrificed in the name of Raskhallak. As Longpass's power grew so
did his propensity for violence toward anyone, Taelach or Autlach, who
questioned his authority. His word was law, his bloody whims were reality,
especially for the hundreds of Taelach slaves toiling for his gain. Taelach
heads hung from spikes just outside the Tekkroon clan lands, a warning to any
sister who dared try to cross through the one known pass into the
well-fortified Tekkroon lands. Though a gruesome warning, sisters migrated in
droves, entire clans risking extinction for a chance at safety. The elite of
Tekkroon military, the Black Powder Barrier, in which Rankil proudly served,
kept watch over the gorge, protecting any sister who made it in, killing any
Autlach who followed.

This
is the second story of Rankil's life. The details are our herstory, how we came
to be, came to be one. What follows recounts the birth of our now, the
beginning of the end of the Hunts, of the slavery, of some of the old ways and
the rediscovery of others. This is the herstory of the Taelach but, more
importantly, of how sisters from different backgrounds and, indeed, different
continents assembled in the common cause of liberation. This is the story of the
dawn of the Silver Kinship.

So,
read carefully and learn, my sisters—for our past shapes our future.

Mother
bless and keep you close at heart,

—
Third
Officer Belsas Exzal

—
Chandrey
Cances

Chapter
One

It
Begins

Master:
State the basics.
Apprentice:
From the beginning?
Master:
That
is the best place to begin.

Rankil

By
the time I was in my early twenties, my stormy ways seemed to have settled, at
least in everyone else's eyes. Myrla thought me happy, and I thought so too, at
least I felt happy when I didn't think too much about the past. Being young, I
was still a bit of a firebrand—quick tempered and quickwitted. What young
Powder Barrier trooper isn't when she takes the notion? But inside, deep
inside, part of me hid from what hurt and from the world in general, a world
that had burned me on many levels more times than I could count. It took many
passes to realize what was happening then, but time has made it clear. I can
best explain the situation by saying that the child part of me, the most
beaten, scarred and scared part, had never had a chance to fully express her
rage. The rest of my being shushed her cries so often that it eventually became
routine. I was good at keeping her quiet. Her voice was ugly and hateful and
cut at my soul, but I still ignored her because I thought I had to—to listen
was to admit what she cried over had actually happened. I wasn't ready for
that. Not on the level the angry girl insisted on, and so it remained with me
for several passes. She would cry out for me, and I would turn away. In fact,
it wasn't until Longpass's crusade reached its highpoint that she became too
wild to ignore, and I began losing my hold on reality. The child began to break
from her place inside me, began to run rampant through my mind, smashing and crushing
all that I held dear, just as any ignored child will. Bad attention was better
than no attention, and it took far more than me to bring her under control.

As
ill as I was, I remember much of what happened.

Captain
Tara's shuttlecraft looked different from when I'd discovered it dented,
rusted, half-buried and covered in vines in the small volcano dome adjacent to
the Tekkroon lands. The Tekk scientists, hungry for pieces of our past, had
moved Transport Two into the center of Tekkroon lands, where they'd leveled and
aired the ship then cleaned every bit of dust and dead vine from their precious
find. Above all else, however, they assured that Captain Tara's remains, our
first real link to our human past, were studied then given an honorable funeral
pyre. Afterward, her ashes were scattered so she could find peace. Then the
scientists repaired Transport Two's crumpled underside to the best of their
ability, replacing the most damaged sections with steel panels scavenged from
earlier times. Technicians mapped and indexed every section of the ship,
comparing their findings against the diagrams discovered during the scientists'
initial search of the transport. Alongside the blueprints they found an Old
Tongue word book called a dictionary, a collection of poetry written by a human
woman named Amy Lowell, and several technical manuals, thrilling Maeminya, the
Tekkroon's top historical linguist, until she all but fainted from excitement.

The
wait was made worse by intense training in Old Speak and Tekkroon technology,
but Gen and I were finally allowed onto Transport Two's helm so we could become
familiar with the layout. Less than a moon cycle later, we were digging through
a translated technical manual, reviewing the most recent repairs. Most of the
helm lights functioned, though not always like they should.

"Now
where is it?" Genevic flipped through the soft hide booklet in her lap.
Gen might have been in her middle twenties, but she still had the gangly,
shapeless build of a Taelach teen— especially her face, which sometimes seemed
lost under her crooked nose. She glanced over that nose at me as I lay on my
back under the helm, comparing a diagram to the tangled couplings underneath.
"And the low air indicator means?" she asked.

"It
means we're going to have trouble breathing." I brushed back the wires
closest to my face.

"But
all the hatches are open and a breeze is blowing. Why's the light on?"

"Beats
me." I reached up and thumped the console. "That do it?"

"Yeah."
Genevic chuckled as the light flickered off. "But the manual doesn't
exactly suggest we do that."

"It
should." The overhead lighting flared then cut off, throwing the helm into
darkness. "Hey! What the ... Ouch!" I banged my elbow as I climbed
from under the console. "Gen?"

"I'm
working on it." Genevic reached across the controls, where I could hear
the click as she depressed an indicator near the console's edge. "The helm
is occupied."

"Sorry,"
said a voice across the intercom, and the lights returned. "Did that
work?"

"Thank
you."

"We're
having troubles with a power relay," said another voice I recognized as
one of the senior technicians. "Can't guarantee it won't happen
again."

"What
else is new?" I mumbled when the intercom clicked off. "If it's broke
we can't always fix it. If it's running today, it might not be tomorrow. If
it's always worked we can't figure out why it does."

"You
got half the console lights on," said Genevic. "I never thought we'd
get that many working."

"I
did do that, didn't I?" I climbed into the empty pilot's seat and leaned
back, lacing my fingers behind my head as I did when I stopped to think.
"Myrla's got it as bad as we do here. She says they're backed up in
translations again. How's Isabella's work going? She still backed up too?"

"Is
she ever! If she weren't so dedicated to her work I'd wonder if she were seeing
someone else."

I
took in Genevic's expression, which, as usual, was calm, giving me no clue to
her true feelings. "Something going on?"

"Nah."
Genevic flashed a contented smile. "I trust Bella. Besides, she comes in
with so many stories about what she sees that she couldn't possibly have time
for anything else. It's just frustrating when we barely get to see each other,
much less spend real time together. I think I see you and My more often."