Angels of Eternity: The Complete Novel Read online

  ANGELS OF ETERNITY

  The Complete Novel

  By Timothy L Mayer

  Portions of this novel have been published in slightly different forms.

  Table Of Contents

  Chapter 1.

  Chapter 2.

  Chapter 3.

  Chapter 4.

  Chapter 5.

  Chapter 6.

  Chapter 7.

  Chapter 8.

  Chapter 9.

  Chapter 10.

  Chapter 11.

  Chapter_12

  Chapter 13.

  Chapter 14.

  Chapter 15.

  Chapter 16.

  Chapter 17.

  Chapter 18.

  Chapter 19.

  Chapter 20.

  © 2016 Timothy L Mayer

  Chapter 1

  Shakti was five standard days on Harmony when the watch busted her for shaking down a customer and selling her body without a license.

  It was hard to get a license to do business in Harmony as the planetary governor made plenty of money on the side selling them to the girls who needed work. He pocketed the difference between what the legal code allowed and what the girls or their pimp paid him. It was usually double what the regulations permitted as the standard fee. Plenty of the pleasure workers found the spare coin for it since the governor approved only so many permits every year. To be caught in the capitol city, Nuvar, without a permit while selling your favors was a serious crime.

  Shakti didn’t care for their permits or permission when she found herself on the planet. Harmony was another military planet where she could earn some fast money and move to the next world. Recruits in the emperor’s armed forces were sent there as part of their basic training. The planet had plenty of different terrains to support the many fighting scenarios the soldiers encountered over the thousand worlds of the empire. Some place was always in revolt or trying to cause trouble to another star system. The emperor always had need of new bodies in uniform to hurl at pirates or planets.

  Harmony was close to the capitol world of the empire; only ten standard light years away. When the dominion of humanity spread across the stars, it was one of the first colonized by humans. The local flora and fauna still survived, although many of them thrived only in zoos or botanical gardens. It was a tragedy, but the empire needed some place to train the legions and Harmony was ideal.

  The shuttle dropped Shakti off three standard days ago. She was a busy girl who earned her first handful of silver from a lonely merchant. He supplied provisions to the local officer’s quarters. Female companionship was hard to find on Harmony, since all of his wives were off world. It was a brutal and harsh training environment in the port city where she disembarked. Shakti stood alone the day she paid the smuggler on the shuttle and walked to the nearest bar from the landing field. She carried with her a bag of clothes and personal possessions; all she owned in the universe.

  The merchant was the first man she met on the planet. He’d left the bar when the green-eyed, dark woman with the travel bag walked up the street. She was alone and the middle-aged merchant saw an opportunity. If the woman was by herself, she was new. He wouldn’t have to pay an absurd amount of money for her companionship this evening. It was a lucky day for Mr. Lin Dai. This new arrival appeared no more than twenty-five years of age, which was ideal.

  Shakti saw him right away. He had fine clothes and the need in his face. No uniform, which meant he was not part of the military. This man had to be a contractor to the emperor’s legions. He needed some love. It was a thing she could provide for the right price. It was expensive and she knew the going rate.

  “Good evening, Citizen,” He addressed her as the slender woman stopped in front of him. “Would you need an escort to your home tonight? The streets of this town are dangerous in the evening. Let me give you some assistance.”

  “Why, thank you, kind sir,” Shakti told him. “I am new to these parts and appreciate your generous offer.” She looked at his eyes closely to make sure. “Would you need some companionship for the evening?”

  “I am a lonely man,” he told her. “I don’t have a lot of money, but I can let you stay at my hotel tonight and take care of you for the next few days until my ship leaves.”

  Shakti offered him her arm and he took it as they walked down the street toward a waiting car. Her clothes were not the best, so he bought her some better ones that evening. He was the envy of many men at the restaurant that night and made certain they all saw him with the young woman by his side. After dinner and some entertainment in the city, they returned to his room.

  Shakti spent two standard days learning about her latest port of call. She needed to know how things worked on the streets. She made Mr. Dai’s lonely nights warm. She listened to him when he told her about his supply and transport problems to and from the planet. Shakti made him feel young again and he would remember always the soft dark face next to him in the soft light with the small scar across her nose. She curled next to him every morning. Shakti stayed with him and didn’t leave the bed until he was awake.

  And, with great skill, Shakti lifted all the money from Mr. Dai when she exited that final morning with a three-hour head start.

  For many reasons, it pained him to report her to the city watch when she left early with all his spare cash. He should have known better, but Shakti was a professional in her field just as he was in his. The watch commander told Mr. Dai they would do their best to find the woman who robbed him.

  In another part of the city, a woman of nineteen standard years found herself inside a jail cell when she walked off with an officer’s class ring. Durga was an expert at separating men from their personal items when they didn’t notice. She found it easy enough after a night of hot passion with a soldier.

  Today she’d been lucky. The colonel was carless and removed the ring to wash his hands at a public washbasin. She spotted it from the door and snatched the ring when he turned his back. Durga, a tall and hefty pale girl was on her way to sell the ring when a squadron of soldiers jumped her. She hadn’t noticed them in the background...

  Chapter 2

  Trazalk was one of several penal colony planets the emperor had established years ago to send the problem cases which plagued his realm. It was just the right distance from its star to provide heat and light for terraforming. The planet could be reached by the picket ships that called on it. The empire did just the right amount of work to its biosystems and atmosphere to make it habitable for humans, but no more. A few ecological stations ringed Trazalk, but they were not there for any kind of advanced studies. Planetary terraformers used it to train engineers and students.

  The main purpose of Trazalk was a penitentiary.

  Temperature extremes were severe and the local flora and fauna where nothing to be trifled with. The dominant animal species had evolved in response to any number of plant forms, which learned mobility in the past. To leave the walled penal cities was instant death as the creatures evolved to meet the threat represented by the intrusion of humans.

  Before its incorporation as a penal colony, a religious group obtained a charter from the Imperial Planetary Office and attempted to modify the environment to make it human-friendly. This turned out to be a bad mistake and the group turned the planet back over to the empire. They managed to leave with a few families still intact. The empire finished the terraforming job on the planet and was pleased with the result. The toxic microbes were no longer in the atmosphere, but it was still deadly.

  The emperor’s court sent people to the penal planet when they were beyond rehabilitation or usefulness. Several annoying religious groups still farmed the surface, bu
t most of the inhabitants were prisoners with no hope of parole. Once sent to the planet, you were expected to take a job at any one of the many prison industries, or try your luck outside the fortified cities. They doubled as dwellings for those exiled down to the planet. Since the life expectancy outside any city was less than two weeks, most of the prisoners opted to stay inside.

  Both Shakti and Durga ended up in front of the imperial judge on the same day. When the watch commander hauled them into the magistrate’s courtroom, the judge looked at the screen floating in front of him and then at the two women in the court.

  The judge sighed and made a note on a pad with his writing brush. Most of the court officials in the empire used simple writing utensils as a way to connect with the empire’s distant past. It was a means to show you had respect of your office and a good method to grab the eye of a court superior who might have a vacancy to fill.

  “Ms. Shakti,” he spoke to the dark woman in front of him, “it pains me to see you have been a frequent guest of our legal system. By the records in front of me, I see you’ve had encounters with the empire’s justice ever since you turned fifteen. Most young women learn better by the time they reach the age of reason. However I see you haven’t even applied yourself to your chosen profession.”

  “You mean a whore?” she snapped at the judge, not caring for his opinion. Tossed in front of the magistrates in any number of planets and expected to perform like a trained animal was old. She was tired of this dance.

  “I mean as an employee in any one of the registered houses of pleasure,” he returned. “You were entered on the roster the day you turned eighteen. If you wish to earn a living as a pleasure worker, you need to do it inside and not on the street. You also need to quit robbing your patrons.”

  “Sorry, judge,” she told him, scratching one arm under the cheap tunic they made her wear in the jail. “I make ten times the money on the street and don’t have to split it with a madam. Sorry about rolling the John, but he left his cash out where I could see it. I thought it was a tip.”

  The judge shook his head and looked at the other name on in the docket before him this morning. He’d decided to deal with these two personally and get them out of the way.

  “And Ms. Durga,” he said while he looked at the screen a second time as the tall fair girl was shoved in front of his bench. “You too have graced us with your presence today. A ring, child, how could you be so stupid. This is a training planet for the emperor’s military and you are so ignorant to walk off with an academy class ring?”

  “Who’s ‘we’?” she said to the judge. The pale girl, hardly old enough to be considered a woman in the known worlds, was attractive if you liked them with meat on the bone. “Did you want to hire me for a party, Judge? Looking for a discount rate with you and a lady friend?”

  “Always a class by yourself, Durga,” he told her. “I see by the report in front of me you haven’t put your time in at the house where you are employed. Unlike Shakti, I see you are a local. Didn’t they teach you in school what happens to careless women around a military base?”

  “The only thing I ever learned in school,” Durga growled at him, “was to duck when one of the military brats swung at me. They quit swinging when I learned how to swing back.”

  “Then you should have found a career in law enforcement, not as a provider of comfort.”

  “I make more money on my back, Judge. At least when the goddamn watch isn’t running my ass down the street. What harm have I ever done trying to turn a little cash from the boys in green? Okay, some fool officer left his ring and I found it. Finders, keepers, Judge. The damn ring was gold and I knew someone who was willing to buy it.

  “But his men found you first, to everyone’s good fortune,” the judge noted. He was an older man with tired eyes. It was time to make a ruling.

  “I, Magistrate Jonathan Dee, representative of Our Enlightened Emperor in this district on the Planet of Harmony, do hereby set forth this ruling. The women known as Durga and Shakti will be sent to the penal colony on Trazalk on the next picket ship leaving with the other consignment of prisoners. You are sentenced to twenty-five years on that planet for theft and working as pleasure women outside your registered houses. I hope you take the next quarter-century to reflect on your poor life choices. Perhaps you will find useful occupations on the surface of your new world.”

  Shakti and Durga stood in silence unable to believe what they heard. The judge sentenced them to twenty-five standard years on Trazalk with no chance of pardon? There was always a supposed to be a chance of appeal, Shakti thought. The emperor was the final arbitrator in the empire and he could and did overrule any number of decisions by court officials or magistrates. Who the hell was this judge to tell them there was no means to appeal the decision? Why…

  Then it hit Shakti as she stood there. The judge had slid it into her better than any man who held a purse of gold. No one would ever hear their plea from a penal planet. When you were sent there, it was to be forgotten about. The empire long ago banned executions as inappropriate to a civilized people, but there were plenty of places in the known galaxy to send people they wanted to get out of the way. She and Durga were being sent to a place from which few, if any, people ever returned. They were given the death sentence in all but name. The two women were headed to hell itself.

  While they stood there in shock, the court bailiffs came by and moved them out from the chambers of the magistrate to a holding cell. A metal door slid open and they women were tossed into a room with no windows and a drain in the floor. As they hauled themselves up from the ground, the women looked at the metal door and where they stood.

  “How can he do this to us?” Durga said to her new companion. “That asshole doesn’t have the authority to send us off-world!”

  “He has a mandate from the emperor,” Shakti said to her. “The judge can do whatever he wants. Think about it. Tonight he’ll have a scribe write up his decision where it will be sent to a district office. The judge will go home and play with his wife. Or he’ll head over to one of the houses where we used to work and play with one of the girls there. Then he’ll go home and sleep. Meanwhile, we’ll be on our way to the toilet of the empire.”

  “But I thought we could appeal. Isn’t supposed it to be our right as citizens?”

  “Who will hear your appeal in that hellhole?”

  Durga sat down. She hadn’t considered this outcome. Shakti continued to stand and think about her situation. Both of them were headed to the worst place in the universe and there was nothing they could do to prevent it. It reminded her of the last time she’d seen her mother. The woman who was supposed to be her mother did little to help or raise her. Shakti’s home world was mired in poverty and people sold their children off to the conscript companies once they could make some money off them. She was sent to a brothel at an age forbidden by imperial law, she later was told, but who cared? Just another off-world brat when she was entered on the rolls of her the house where she worked and no one asked about her age.

  The judge was very busy that day at the Hall of Imperial Justice. Another one of these tarts, he thought, when the next one came across his bench an hour later. This woman was on the medium side, slender and didn’t say much. For a minute he looked at her big eyes and thought, perhaps, he would be lenient with this one. Her name was Lashmi and she’d made the bad decision to kill a watch commander. No, she was going to the penal world too. Time to clean up the streets and quit hearing from the army officers about how the recruits were fleeced by loose women with light hands. This would send a message to the scum that he would no longer tolerate such behavior.

  “Twenty-five years!” he proclaimed as she too was hauled off.

  Funny how she never said a word, the judge thought.

  As the first two women welcomed another into their cell. Lashmi was company for them, even if she didn’t talk much.

  Someone else was on her way to Trazalk. Her name was Chimata and she be
gan her career in the Houses of Toleration as well. However, she managed to save up enough money on the side. She’d bought a small airship capable of reaching low orbit on her home world of Skullstone.

  The world of her birth was full of money, but her family didn’t share any of it. Her father lost everything in a bad business deal soon after she was born. When her family dissolved, she moved in with an aunt. Left to her own devices, she took to the street and then the pleasure houses. It was there that the dark and tiny woman learned how to read people.

  With her new business venture, she made a tidy profit ferrying down material from low orbit to the surface. This way she evaded the customs fees. It was enough money for her to locate and help the family members she hadn’t seen in years. But eventually the customs people figured out her landing pattern and waited for the airship. When they found a vast sum of jewels on board, she was sent packing to an imperial magistrate who decided to make an example of her as well.

  So she too was on her way to Trazalk. Her sentence was only ten years, but it didn’t matter. It might was well be a hundred for the way she felt. Life expectancy was only five outside the settlements. Chimata was fated to arrive on the penal world the same day three other women would be dumped from their picket ship.

  After humanity left its ancestral home thousands of years ago, interstellar ships travelling at near relativistic speed branched out into all the nearby star systems, seeking, but not finding, intelligent life forms. For a thousand years, the domain of humanity expanded from the home and into the galaxy. Due to the extreme lengths between stars, most of the human population were able to live apart from each other and dwelled in relative peace.