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Saving Aran: Redemption for a Ravaged Planet (Sons of Aran Book 1), page 1
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses or organizations, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Saving Aran
Copyright © 2022 by G. S. Kenney
Cover art: Deranged Doctor, derangeddoctordesign.com
More about the author: https://www.gskenney.com/
Praise for G. S. Kenney’s Ascent of Eden series
A Warrior of Eden
“This is a well-written book with lush descriptions. The mystery and adventure keep the reader guessing... Once you have read this book, you will be clamoring to read all the others in the series.”
– N. N. Light’s Book Heaven
“Fast-paced, engrossing story about a strong, resilient heroine… The writing engages the reader with its finely-honed observations of character and intricate descriptions of the future world that is Eden. I highly recommend this book to all ages.”
– Amazon Reviewer
Freeing Eden
“From the very first sentence, Freeing Eden charms with compassionate characters, and seduces with its intriguing premise. If you’re looking for adventure alongside your romance, this warm and beautiful novel delivers!”
– Elaine Isaak, author of The Singer’s Legacy series
“An intriguing story, well told, set in a rich, unique world. Send in the clones.”
– S. C. Mitchell, author of the Xi Force series
“What an innovative sci-fi romance! I loved the premise of a clone learning their identity and the plot twists and turns kept me reading. I highly recommend this story.”
– Bookbub Reviewer
“I read it in one sitting and then went back a week later and read it again, just to enjoy the detailed story and intense characters again.”
– Amazon Reviewer
”…the planet Eden is a cleverly conceived, intentional throwback civilization…Against this backdrop, the well-developed main characters ground the story in an intimate discovery—of self and one another—that keeps the reader engaged throughout.”
– Amazon Reviewer
The Last Lord of Eden
“A deeply thoughtful, swashbuckling sci-fi adventure. You’ll get swept away and lose track of time, as you race to the end, hoping beyond hope that Kell can save his home planet without betraying the woman he loves.”
– Suzanne Tierney, award-winning author of The Art of the Scandal and Blooms of War
“Beautiful and thrilling, this book truly is the perfect Sci-Fi romance.”
– NetGalley member review
“Skillful plotting and memorable characters abound in this well-conceived interplanetary adventure…So caught up in the fast-moving, intricate plot, I had difficulty leaving the book for meals or bedtime. Highly recommended.”
– Amazon Reviewer
“Once I got into it I had trouble putting it down. (But you have to sleep sometime)”
– Goodreads Reviewer
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Contents
1. Cort Earns His Knife
2. The Danger to Dilia
3. Dilia at the Base
4. The Danger to Cort
5. Escape
6. Departure
7. The Ways of the Khenaran
8. The Contract
9. Neder’s Village
10. The Ceremony
11. Cort’s Kiri
12. Dilia Attempts to Escape
13. Cort Reenters the City
14. Cort Gets on the Base
15. Travel Through the Woods
16. Jerrald and the Soldiers
17. Into the Khenaran, Okolo’s Village
18. Changes
19. In Neder’s Village Again
20. Journey to the Whynywir
21. Sojourn
22. Preparing to Return
23. Journey to the City
24. Arrival
25. A Public Death
26. In the Alien Prison
27. Saving Aran
Freeing Eden
Acknowledgments
Part I
Saving Dilia
Chapter 1
Cort Earns His Knife
The cry of pain echoed in the alley and flowed out into the street like a liquid. Like blood. Cort drew in a sharp breath and touched the scar on his arm. “That’s a child! He’s in trouble!”
“None of our business,” his friend Lor advised. His voice carried a warning.
Cort jogged a few steps to look into the alley, and his heart fell. It was Karl, the biggest bully in the school, with some of his gang. No friends of Cort, and a lot bigger than he was. Two of Karl’s cronies were holding a struggling child while Karl was trying to cut the boy’s arm. “No!” the child screamed. “No, stop!”
“Just cutting my initials.” Karl said. There was a sneer in his voice. “Hold still.”
Cort’s friends had caught up with him at the mouth of the alley. “Four of them,” Tark said. And three of us, he didn’t have to say. “Leave it.” Four fifteen-year-olds against three thirteen-year-olds were bad odds.
Cort touched the scar on his arm again, his breath coming more quickly. He’d been only eight when a gang of bigger bullies, teasing him about his father, had gotten nasty when he’d fought back. One of them had drawn a knife, and if a teacher hadn’t intervened just then, he probably wouldn’t have survived to help this child today. “Can’t,” he said.
He drew a deep breath, let it out in a whoosh, and stepped into the alley to rescue the child that Karl and his gang were tormenting. He waved his arms and trying to appear bigger than he was. “Hold off!” he shouted. “Soldiers coming!”
The gang members looked up, loosening their hold on the child, who ran off crying.
Of course, no soldiers came. It took Karl only a moment to grasp the situation. “You all alone, Street Scum,” he said. “Now I cut you instead.” He swept his knife in a broad, threatening gesture.
Cort drew back.
“Savage!” Karl’s leering, singsong taunt cut the air like his knife.
“Not!” Cort retorted. His heart pounded so loud the sound seemed to fill the alley. He breathed shallowly and too fast, looking from right to left and back again. His friends were gone. No blame for that, but he sure wished that one or both of them had his back now. At least the poor kid had gotten away. Good.
But there was no escape for Cort. If he turned and ran, he was as good as dead. His back would provide too easy a target for four knife-wielding fifteen-year-olds.
Cort stood his ground.
“Where’s your knife, Savage?” Karl passed his own knife from his right hand to his left, then back again. He made a mocking jab at Cort, who jumped back to avoid being cut.
Karl’s three friends were moving around to block his escape.
“Yeah, where’s your bone knife?” teased the boy at his left.
It had been a mistake last year when Cort had mentioned that knife—the only possession his father had left him. The school bullies never forgot. Cort clenched his fists, then forced them to unclench. If only he had a stunner or, even better, one of the starmen’s lasers! He’d blast all of them, especially Karl.
By Earth, he just wanted to survive the next five minutes.
He didn’t have much of a chance. The older boy was fast and mean, and, unlike Cort, he had a knife. But the odds were better against Karl alone than against Karl and his three friends. “So why does it take four of you to blast one person half your size?” he taunted back. “You afraid of me, Karl?” He tried to keep an eye on the three boys to his sides and rear. “You afraid I can beat you one-on-one?”
Karl snorted a contemptuous laugh. “I can take you, Savage,” he sneered, his eyes narrowing. “I can blast you to Earth without a ship.”
“Then get your friends off my tail.”
Karl signaled with a jerk of his head, and the three other boys moved to the side of the dead-end alley where they had trapped Cort. Karl slashed at Cort, hard and vicious, not mocking this time.
Cort scraped against the wall as he ducked. “I’m going to cut you into little pieces and jettison them like garbage out the hatch. No one going to find the body.” Again he jabbed forward.
Cort grabbed his arm and pulled. Off balance from the extended thrust, Karl fell to his knees. In an instant Cort was on the older boy’s back, fighting for possession of the knife.
But Karl was bigger and stronger. He rolled over so that Cort was locked underneath him. Still, Cort refused to let go of his knife-wrist. Karl twisted so that he faced down toward Cort, now pinned to the street under the bigger boy’s bulk. And he began driving the knife toward Cort’s che
With every fiber of his strength, Cort fought to keep the knife away, but centimeter by centimeter Karl pushed the knife downward.
Cort’s arms burned with the effort. When they started trembling, Karl’s sneer turned to a grin.
Cort could hold Karl away no longer. Just before his arms gave way, he squirmed hard to his right. The knife meant for his heart plunged into his left arm. The cut seared like fire.
Cort forced himself to pull away, ripping muscle and skin.
Someone yelled, “Karl! Soldiers!”
In an instant, Karl jumped up, and he and his friends were gone.
Cort sat, pressing his right hand over the wound. Blood ran through his fingers and down his arm.
A squad of six soldiers ran down the deserted street toward him. Not aliens, of course. The starmen seldom visited the city, not even the few alien soldiers. Judging by the uniforms, these were in a private army, working for some rich kingpin who could afford to hire his own protection. Maybe even Sleb’s, the kingpin who owned the block Cort lived in. It was a job requiring little education, and Cort and his schoolmates usually scorned it—but right now he was thrilled to see them. Behind the soldiers were two boys—Cort’s friends.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Cort tried to stand. He felt faint and stumbled.
“Bad wound you got, boy,” said the first soldier to reach him. The soldier supported Cort as he stood.
“Babies playing with knives!” another soldier said. “It makes me want to puke.”
“Easy, Osk,” said the first, “we all played with knives when we were little. You aim to fly a ship, you need a practice run or three.”
”Osk was probably one of the worst,” added a third soldier.
Lor said, “He was trying to save a little kid.”
“Were you, now?” the third soldier asked Cort, studying him as intently as if his face might reveal how to save, not just a little boy, but all the khena trees of Aran.
Cort drew a breath and straightened up. If the soldier laughed at him, he would have no regrets. He’d do it again if he had to. By Earth, he’d save all the khena trees of Aran, too, if it came to that.
But the soldier just nodded, then fumbled at his pouch and withdrew something. To Cort, he said, “Hold still, boy. This is a starman bandage. It’ll stop the bleeding and prevent infection, too.” He started to wrap the bandage around Cort’s bleeding arm.
“What’re you doing, Garn?” Osk said. “Sleb’ll blast you to Earth if he finds out you wasted one of his expensive bandages on this street rat.”
“Weren’t you ever a child once, Osk? The boy did a good deed, so we’ll do one for him, too. Sleb isn’t going to find out, now, is he?”
Osk was silent.
Garn finished wrapping the bandage, then patted Cort on the shoulder. “Get out of here, boy, before those thugs come back.”
“Thanks,” Cort breathed. “You saved my life. I won’t forget.”
The soldier laughed and said, “Save someone else’s life sometime.”
“Hey, think big,” Osk muttered. “Save the whole buggin’ planet.” He turned to leave, and the other soldiers followed.
Cort made a vow to himself that he wouldn’t forget. He wouldn’t forget the kind soldier, and he’d save other lives, too, if he ever had the chance. More immediately, he wouldn’t forget Karl, either. He intended to repay both.
The house was small, only one room, with one door, one window, one worktable, and one shelf for storing cooking utensils, but Dilia was grateful to have any kind of home at all. In the lawless nighttime people died out on the street, or went missing, which amounted to the same thing.
She was kneading dough for the bread that would be their dinner when she heard the door open. Preparing dinner was her responsibility, since Cort went to school, and his mother Mara had to work. Dilia turned to see Cort silhouetted against the glare of daylight. He was thirteen, the same age as her, but taller. Someday soon, if he kept growing, his head might almost reach the top of the doorway. She put a hand up to shield her eyes while he, uncharacteristically awkward, took off his pack and closed the door.
Dilia caught sight of a fresh white bandage on Cort’s arm, and her heart leapt in fear. Had he been in a fight? How badly was he wounded? Might he… Dilia had trouble even thinking this… die? An injury could easily mean death in the city, where infections were not unusual, and the medications the aliens used were hard for the city people to come by, even on the black market.
She covered the dough with a damp cloth and came over to look at his arm more closely. The bandage was shiny and unusually white. “Is that an alien bandage?”
He nodded and looked at his arm, as if he too was still marveling over the exotic dressing. And maybe he was.
Dilia felt a wave of relief. With one of the aliens’ bandages, whatever wound was underneath it would heal quickly, and it wouldn’t get infected.
She turned his arm one way and another, examining the shining white bandage as if she might by sheer intensity see the cut underneath. “Is it bad? Does it hurt?” she asked in a shaky voice. Dilia loved Cort as something like a brother and a best friend, rolled into one. His death would be devastating, as bad as losing her father, as bad as then losing her mother. Cort was a bright flashing danger sign that said, “Don’t dare love him too much. You could lose him, too.”
Cort shrugged. “No, it’s nothing. I’m fine—really.” But he winced when she turned his arm a certain way, and Dilia now understood that he’d been awkward with the door because he was favoring that arm.
“What happened?” she asked. “Are you in a gang?”
“No,” Cort said, looking away.
Maybe he wasn’t, yet. But in another year or so, he and his school friends would all be in gangs, making trouble and getting hurt. There must be a hundred gangs ranging from school children to adults, city-born to newcomers newly arrived from the forest. Everyone was out to get what he could, however he could. Anyone not out making trouble was bound, sooner or later, to be a victim. Someday, Cort would be seriously hurt. And there was nothing she could do to prevent it.
Dilia had to stop thinking about this. She took Cort’s school tablet out of his pack and sat against the wall with it, using her bedroll as a cushion. “We’re really getting your money’s worth out of your tuition—two for the price of one.”
Cort flopped down to sit next to her, rearranging the bedroll so that it would pillow both of them. He smiled at her. “I learn more, too, when we go over it together.”
Instead of attending school, Dilia worked in a shop near the gate to the base. Her meager earnings barely paid for her food; anything left over was added to Cort’s mother’s earnings and to whatever Cort managed to steal so that they could pay the tuition to keep sending Cort to school. But Dilia had no complaints. She was grateful to Mara for taking her in, and she loved being part of this family. Besides, she was learning so much just by sharing Cort’s homework.
Turning to today’s Mechanics lesson, she hunched over the tablet as if it contained all the riches they owned, her long auburn braid falling over her shoulder. But the lesson might have been written in a code for which she had no key. She couldn’t concentrate. All she could think was that Cort was going to get himself killed.
“And then, when I get out of school, I’ll be able to support you and Mama by myself,” Cort said. “I’ll make sure you have everything you ever wanted.”
Dilia patted his hand affectionately and gave him a wan smile. “Not if you keep getting hurt in fights.”
“I don’t plan to,” Cort said, a defensive tone edging into his voice. He turned back to the lesson on the tablet.
Maybe he was already in a gang. Dilia shivered. “Oh! And you think this will be under your control, do you? So tell me how you got that wound.”
He looked away. “They were bigger boys. Bullies, picking on a little kid. Couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven. I gave the kid time to get away, that’s all.”
