The Ochiran Chronicles Read online

  About the Author

  Joe Horan is in his sixties. He first saw star trek as a teenager and has been a sci-fi fan ever since. He soon started writing his own stories, at first for his friends, though he has had two books and one short story published.

  His other interests include steam railways and steamships. In the summer months he can frequently be found aboard the Paddle Steamer Waverley.

  The Ochiran Chronicles:

  World’s End

  Joe Horan

  The Ochiran Chronicles:

  World’s End

  Olympia Publishers

  London

  www.olympiapublishers.com

  OLYMPIA E-BOOK EDITION

  Copyright © Joe Horan 2017

  The right of Joe Horan to be identified as author of

  this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All Rights Reserved

  No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication

  may be made without written permission.

  No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced,

  copied or transmitted save with the written permission of the publisher, or in accordance with the provisions

  of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended).

  Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to

  this publication may be liable to criminal

  prosecution and civil claims for damage.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is

  available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-84897-833-1 (paperback)

  First Published in 2017

  Olympia Publishers

  60 Cannon Street

  London

  EC4N 6NP

  Dedication

  To Kerry, my partner in intergalactic crime

  PREPARE YOURSELF; THE STORM WILL COME AND NO POWER AT YOUR COMMAND MAY TURN IT ASIDE

  Ochiran Proverb

  Introduction

  Four hundred years ago

  “Jessa! Jessa, where are you?”

  Jessa Salamandis felt a moment of complete panic. Her husband was home early and the evening meal was not ready. If he came home and the meal wasn’t ready she could expect a beating. Please don’t let him hurt me badly, she prayed silently in the hope that one of the gods would hear her.

  “There you are, Jessa.”

  Altonada Lindus came into the room. He was big and strong, a successful carpenter with apprentices working under him. Her parents had thought it a good match. The first beating came on her wedding night when she did not perform satisfactorily in bed and they had been regular ever since. Her mother told her it was a price she must pay to have a man to protect her. His hand was coming up and she instinctively turned away to protect her face.

  “Jessa, I’m sorry. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  In two years of marriage it was the first time he had apologised to her. She turned back and saw he was holding a sheet of paper in his hand. On it was some smudged printing. Cheap paper, cheap ink, the sort of flyer that merchants put out to advertise their wares.

  “These are all over the city,” he said. “No one knows where they’re coming from. Look what it says.”

  “You know I cannot read the writing,” she said.

  Normally to answer her husband in such a way would bring a blow, but today he merely looked at her.

  “I’m sorry, I forgot,” he said. “I will read it to you. It’s called The Five Truths:

  “The world had a beginning; it will also have an end. What comes between is not written until it occurs.

  The world is understandable by observation and reason.

  Nothing is forever; no belief is so ancient it cannot be changed.

  All men and women are born free and equal.

  Fear is an enemy that can be defeated.”

  “What does it mean?” she asked.

  “It means you are my equal. It means I may not beat you. It means I must ask your permission before I take the marital due.”

  She stared at him in perplexity.

  “If you are to be my equal then you must learn to read,” he said. “I shall teach you. And would you like to be a carpenter? You can be one of my apprentices and when you are fully qualified then we shall truly be equals.”

  She looked at him blankly. I must be asleep and dreaming. I need to wake up now.

  But she was not asleep.

  The High Priest of Sol stood in the temple before the Image and the Altar where the blood sacrifices were offered. A shirrit must be offered every night or the sun would not come up in the morning. Five virgins must be offered on the winter solstice or Sol would not bring the spring; winter would continue forever and the world would perish in cold and darkness. Sometimes the virgins went willingly; often they did not and their screams filled the temple, but it had to be done. Sol demanded it.

  Before him stood the twenty-five underpriests, silent and expectant. All knew why they had been called together…

  “I know you have all seen this,” said the High Priest, holding up a copy of the leaflet that had been circulating through the city and beyond. “Sol will be angry. Such blasphemy cannot be tolerated…”

  “If Sol exists,” said one of the underpriests.

  The High Priest’s eyes zeroed in on him; Herlem Gbasai, a young hothead who had caused trouble before.

  “If the world is explainable by observation and reason then we do not need gods to explain it,” he persisted.

  The High Priest paused. He remembered the last solstice; he remembered the girl who sobbed and begged for her life even as he raised the blade above her heart. He remembered her parents in the place of honour in the front row, their faces pale and wet with tears. Do the gods really demand this of us?

  “Gods who demand that we slaughter our children are no gods,” said Herlem Gbasai. “I will serve no more.”

  He began to remove his robes…

  “Wait!” said the High Priest. “I propose a test. We shall withhold the evening sacrifice. If the sun rises in the morning then we shall know that Sol is no god.”

  Damon Azuria, clan chief of Clan Azuria, looked at the sullen faces of his slaves assembled before him.

  “You have all read the leaflet circulating through the landholding despite the efforts of my warriors to keep it from you,” he said. “Do you have anything to say?”

  “If all men and women are born free and equal then slavery is against the law of nature,” said someone; the guards noted who it was so that punishment could take place at the clan chief’s command.

  “Yes,” said someone else.

  “Aye.”

  Damon stood.

  “I too have read the Five Truths,” he said. “It is a new way of thinking, perhaps a better way.”

  He paused for a moment, then continued, “From this moment forward you are all free. Those who wish to remain will receive wages, twenty bits a week plus board. Those who wish to leave may go and find a place wherever they will.”

  There was a moment of silence, then the slaves who were slaves no more cheered.

  The Priests of Sol stood before the temple, their faces towards the east. There had been no sacrifice last night; according to what they had been taught, Sol would now retaliate by not bringing the sun up this morning. They were taking a terrible risk. If Sol was angry, if the sun did not rise, then many young women must die upon the altar to appease him. But if the sun rose anyway then there was no Sol; the sacrifices were useless.

  The eastern horizon was growing lighter. Above them Shydor still shone, but the sky was lightening and one by one the stars were winking out. They waited. Then the first part of the
sun appeared. The light shone upon their faces. Slowly the High Priest turned toward his underpriests.

  “The gods we serve are no gods,” he declared. “They are the inventions of our minds.”

  He removed his robe of office, tore it apart and threw it on the ground. The underpriests did the same.

  “Destroy the Image,” he said.

  They ran into the temple, threw ropes over Sol’s outstretched arms and pulled until the Image broke off at the feet with cracking sound, fell forwards and hit the floor with a crash. Its head came away and rolled across the floor. They fetched hammers, broke what remained apart and dragged it out of the temple. Then they turned their attention to the building itself. They attacked the walls until they fell, and the roof with them. Soon all that remained of Sol and his temple was a pile of rubble.

  King Aestartes sat upon his throne and listened as the Captain of the City made his report.

  “We have not been able to find the source of the leaflets, my lord,” he said. “They appear faster than we can collect and burn them.”

  The king looked down at the sheet of paper in his hand. The printing was smudged but there was something about these words…

  “My lord!”

  A messenger hurried through the door. He bowed before the king, who motioned with his hand for him to speak.

  “The Priests of Sol have destroyed the Image and the temple,” he said. “They have taken off their robes and declare the gods are not gods but the creations of our own imagination.”

  “We must make an example of them, my lord,” said the Captain of the City.

  The king looked down at the leaflet again. These words had power. He had ruled long enough by now to know how to bend with the wind.

  “For what?” he said. “Speaking the truth? No, it was said from the time of the Ancestors that a sword may kill a man, but a word can change the world. I did not understand the meaning until this day. We shall have a new law based upon these Five Truths, a law that guarantees equality for all men and women. We shall seek to understand the world by observation and reason rather than fables based around gods who do not exist. Write it in the chronicles. From this day forward there will be freedom in Ochira.”

  SO THE FIVE TRUTHS CAME TO US; NO ONE KNOWS FROM WHOM OR FROM WHERE, BUT WE TOOK THEM TO OUR HEARTS AND UPON THEM BUILT A NEW LAW AND A NEW SOCIETY. WE BROKE THE CHAINS OF IGNORANCE THAT HELD US AND LEARNT TO BE A FREE PEOPLE.

  Chapter 1

  Escape Pod

  Present day: On board the imperial Atumcarian Warship Balastar, beyond the border of human-controlled space.

  Gradually the fog of radiation cleared. On the Balastar’s bridge the viewscreen came back on and they saw the Colossus was stopping in RS effect. Like all empowered objects travelling faster than light, the laws of physics meant that it would lose speed as zero point energy returned to the vacuum. Its huge, thousand-mile-long hull was smashed open and wreckage was spilling out. The Balastar and Garatomba were two of the Atumcarian Empire’s most powerful warships. Between them they had hit it simultaneously with at least six energy bolts. It was huge and it was powerful, but there was no way the shields could hold.

  “Got it! Nailed it!” shouted Sub-lieutenant Lei Raspitulos, the excitable Arrican drive coxswain.

  The Colossus machines had been coming into human space for several years now, attacking populated planets seemingly at random. At first, what they were and where they were coming from was a mystery, but it was now known that they were gigantic part-organic ships built by the Arrachanoids, the only other spacefaring species humans had encountered. A thousand years ago, they tried to exterminate humanity but were defeated. It seemed they were making a comeback armed with these new superweapons, but the pair-balanced multies were equal to them, as they had just proved again. They had caught this one well before it reached human space and smashed it into a wreck.

  It was starting to tumble, shedding pieces of hull plating as it did so. Once the Balastar had recycled her tubes, they could fire again and keep on firing until it was completely destroyed.

  “Energy spikes coming,” said Sub-lieutenant Savare, the number one scanner operator.

  “Where?” demanded Captain Bellinger.

  “All over it, sir.”

  He had seen this before, the first time they fought a Colossus. It was going to self-destruct, overload its fusion reactors and blow itself up with the power of a supernova, flash burning several million tons of hydrogen to open a rift in space and release zero point energy in an attempt to take its conquerors with it. The Balastar was too close and they were in trouble. The very last salvo the Colossus fired had hit the number three support strut, already damaged earlier. With two longitudinal members severed, they dared not reverse the engines at lightspeed. The only option was to turn.

  “Get us out of here, Lei,” he said. “Main engines to emergency full power and skew the drive field for maximum turn.”

  Lei was screaming at the engine room, trying to impress upon them the urgency of the situation. The ship was beginning to turn. Speed was forty-three LUs and rising, but it would soon drop as they scrubbed off speed in the turn.

  “All sections secure for uncontrolled inertial forces,” said Lieutenant Prurt, the first officer.

  Lei had given up yelling at the engine room and was now shrieking in some obscure Arrican dialect. It was probably just as well no one could understand what she was saying. The ship began to shake…

  The Balastar was turning. She was a big ship, and fast, but not designed to manoeuvre quickly. For reasons that had never been adequately determined she turned slightly faster in the horizontal than in the vertical plane so Lei had put the helm hard to port instead of full up or full down. In the extensive trials they carried out, she had taken six minutes twenty-nine seconds to do a one-eighty degree turn at this speed, but Lei was breaking all the rules to get her round quicker. Captain Bellinger felt as if the vibration would shake the teeth loose in his skull. He couldn’t actually see what was on his monitor, but he knew that the drive field was skewed as far as it would go and the ship was turning at the absolute limit of boundary cohesion. If that damaged support strut failed, they would be dead before they knew what was happening…

  Lei was still shrieking; she had reverted to standard Atumcarian and had just promised her firstborn child to the Powers of Jurress if they survived. As she screamed, her fingers flew over her console, balancing them on the very edge of destruction as they turned. She stopped for an instant…

  “Turn completed,” she said calmly (for her). “Centring the helms now. Engines at emergency full power. Speed thirty-three LUs on maximum acceleration curve.”

  It had taken four and a half vital minutes to turn the ship, and speed had been scrubbed off in the turn, as he knew it would. Had it taken too long?

  “We need to reinforce the aft buffer screen,” said someone urgently.

  Captain Bellinger shook his head to clear the ringing from his ears and said, “Divert power to aft buffer screen generators. Bring them up to maximum loading.”

  The Rachman-Schloes effect had almost brought the wrecked Colossus sublight. The Garronica was a hundred thousand sub-radii away and getting further away every second, but the Balastar was still only fifteen thousand sub-radii away and making thirty-six LUs. They were by no means safe…

  “Huge energy spike!” yelled Sub-lieutenant Savare.

  The viewscreen briefly showed sections of hull plating being blown off the wreck, then it blanked as the explosion came. This time it did not come back on. There was no way to create a visual representation of what was happening. Only the instruments told the tale…

  The explosion was so huge, the amount of energy so vast, that it ruptured the space time continuum. The shockwave that raced outwards travelled faster than light; its initial speed was over a thousand LUs. It was on the Balastar in a matter of seconds…

  The impact was immense. The aft buffer screen was identical to the forward one
; it had been foreseen in the design stage that the pair-balanced multi was essentially double-ended and it might under certain tactical situations be advantageous to attack stern-first. Even then, so much energy impacting across the entire surface of the buffer screen was beyond its capacity to cope. Energy blew through across its full diameter and on into the ship. The stern doors buckled and blew in; instantly the shuttle bay was a raging inferno. Plating was ripped from the hull and the tubes. The aft support struts were stripped of their shell plating and the structural members exposed to the blast. Number three buckled, and with the main strut already weakened the tube started to twist sideways. As it turned it exposed its flank to the blast and began to twist faster and faster. The computer, detecting that number three tube was detaching, did the only thing it could to save the ship. It opened the confinement at the front and back, engaged the annular confinement generators in static mode and allowed the energy within to drain into space.

  Lei continued to shriek in a mixture of her Arrican dialect mother tongue and standard Atumcarian. She struggled to keep the ship steady; if they turned even slightly, if they took the blast of energy on anything other than the buffer screen they were lost. The bucking of the support struts and the incipient detachment of number three tube gave her a whole new dimension to deal with. There was no time to do calculations; pure instinct, the intuitive knowledge of an experienced drive coxswain was all she had to help her. She cursed the ship, she cursed the universe, she tried to make deals with the Powers of Jurress, but in the end it was her own skill that saved them.

  The shockwave passed, and as it did so number three tube twisted off and spun away. The Balastar’s drive went into a full asymmetric shutdown; there was no way to balance any number other than four tubes. She pitched over and went into an uncontrolled spin. If the ship’s damaged hull broke up under the strain they had seconds to live…