SHETHOR (The Rabanian Book 3) Read online

  SHETHOR

  Dan Haronian

  Translated from Hebrew by Dalit Shmueli

  Edited by Thaddaeus Moody

  Cover by damonza.com

  Copyrights © 2012 by Dan Haronian

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise – without written permission from the author.

  In memory of my mother, Hanna

  The sensor vibrated wildly on my neck. The screen stood on a shaky table. In its upper section a clock counted down the remaining time. The screen flickered, synchronized with the vibration of the neck sensor, and then stopped. Instantly, eight splits of scrambles were injected into the network. It was done. In two hours the lights of the Kolsar malls would go out. When the backup systems failed, transformers would explode, and people would panic, running each other down trying to escape.

  This time it was for real. This time people would be hurt. The Mampasians already suspected something, but now they would know that the blackouts, leaks, and control failures were no coincidence. Forty seconds left. I sniffled and wiped away my tears. I had updated the splits of the big scramble as soon as I had broken into the network. The remaining forty seconds were barely sufficient to update the rest. These were smaller, but still more effective than power failures. They were my irreversible weapons. If I didn't update them, they would converge, one after the other, and cripple Mampas. Conversion of the big scramble would completely wipe out life on the planet. I hoped I wouldn't need to go to that extreme. I hoped, but I feared it was in vain.

  Nearly overwhelmed by fear, I still managed to keep going. Access to the cave had never been easy and it was becoming more difficult every day. The Mampasians already sensed that something was going on and time was short. I feared they would find me before I had time to explain my actions to the desert people.

  I wondered at my confidence that I would be able to explain all this. I often woke in the night thinking I must be crazy. Crazy to be doing this, and crazy to think I could rally the desert people behind me. After all, they had lived in the Mampas desert for some two hundred years, and knew no other way of life. On the other hand, I was born here too, and I still thought, no, I knew, it could be and should be different. That was just me. Maybe I was crazy.

  My exposed arms were dark, tanned reddish, by the heat of Dion in the desert of Mampas. Once again, I had forgotten to take my medication, leaving me with watery eyes and a runny nose. How I developed this allergy is a mystery. The desert dust was part of desert people’s life. Developing an allergy to it was almost like being allergic to air.

  I made sure I looked Desertian when I left for the desert. My long hair was tucked under my hat and my gray overalls were stained with oil, as if I was one of the thousands of desert people who drove the tribes’ economy. Though my soul was Desertian, I detested their way of life. Maybe that was the reason for my allergy.

  Ten seconds remained. Only one update was left. My eyes were tearing, my nose was dripping, and my chapped lips were burning. I blinked away the tears and focused on the screen, my body tense and motionless. One second, then another, and it was done. I pulled off the neck sensor with one hand and disconnected the terminal with the other. A fading hum sounded and my body automatically relaxed. The screen went black. I sniffed and wiped away the tears running down my cheeks. There was a twinge of pain from the scar on my hip. Maybe the pain had always been there, unnoticed until now. I rubbed the small bump under my skin. The swelling had subsided and I could feel the capsule that I had implanted under my skin. "I am definitely crazy, if I'm capable of doing something this insane," I said to myself and took a shallow breath. I wanted to take a deep breath and sigh, but I was afraid I’d irritate my sensitive nose. I stretched my neck and stood up. I was exhausted but I knew I had to leave the cave at once. If I’d been detected, they would respond quickly. I couldn’t let the hovercrafts find me there.

  I rushed to the entrance, carefully leaping over concrete rubble and scrap metal placed there to make the cave appear deserted. The light outside was blinding, yet I could clearly see Aesder’s rings, their marvelous bright colors extending over the sky. Once again, I remembered the scar on my hip and unconsciously reached to feel the capsule. The particle storm from Dion that created the Aesder's rings was so strong this year that the tribal elders could not remember a time when the rings had been so magnificent and bright. Although the information on the network was ambiguous, it had been at least 150 years since they were last so clear.

  I took this as a sign, however my logic is unorthodox. Some might say that my mind is warped.

  “This will be a year of new records," I mumbled to myself as I covered my face. I shifted a small rock that was lying in front of the cave. It faced the aperture of the micro-camera camouflaged in a depression near the entrance. A slight click indicated that the camera had captured the new location of the rock, and that the detonator connected to the solid-fuel underneath the cave had been re-armed.

  My small, single-seat hovercraft was waiting by the entrance. It looked like a piece of junk, but still functioned. I sat down, put on my helmet, and accelerated. The engine choked, the hovercraft leapt forward, then suddenly stopped. I was thrown toward the front windshield, nearly hitting it. I leaned back, fastened the seatbelt, and reached for the controls. I looked around to see if anyone had heard the noise, but the Mampas desert was desolate and endless. If someone were there, I probably would have already known.

  I skimmed over the dunes as the hovercraft leaped and faltered. From time to time, the engine stopped its whistling, threatening to send me gliding to the sands. It had happened before, more than once, but every time, being a descendant of Raban, I had managed to revive it and return home before anyone suspected anything.

  The Mampas desert surrounded me. The light from Dion that reflected off the sand was blinding. I looked up at the sky again. Despite the glare, Aesder's rings were as bright and sharp as if it was midnight. I remembered the small water bottle next to my chair, pulled it out, and drank its entire warm contents in one gulp. The fan in the hovercraft dried my sweat and began to dry up my nose too. I knew this was only temporary relief. Once I left the hovercraft, my allergy would immediately act up again.

  The engine’s whistle stabilized and half an hour later I noticed the metal sheds marking the entrance to the underground city. On the left side of the sheds, was a black strip, close to the yellow ground, flickering in the desert heat. It extended as far as the eye could see, marking the industrial zone of the Raban tribe. It was an odd collection of sheds and piles of hovercraft and space shuttle parts baking under the harsh glare of Dion. This sight, more than anything, symbolized the gloomy life of the tribes. I loathed the place, and the feeling only increased over time.

  A few minutes later, I arrived at the road connecting the industrial zone to the city. There was heavy traffic, so I hovered parallel to the road. When it cleared, I quickly swerved back to the road. Four wheels unfolded from the bottom of the hovercraft and a sharp whistle accompanied their touchdown. Another whistle sounded as the engine switched to land driving mode, and I slowed down to merge into the gloomy scenery around me.

  As I approached the sheds, I saw people playing Hoops on the endless dunes of the desert. It was the Raban team training for the annual tournament. The Rabanians towered over the other tribes’ teams, but they had never won a title. This year everyone in Raban was hoping for a miracle and some wins. If I succeeded with my crazy plan, it would undoubtedly be a miracle and a victory for Raban, yet in a totally different game.

  The playe
rs were concentrated near one of the hoops by the road, their faces shiny with sweat. I had never understood the point of this game. To me, 40 people in a mad dash running in the blazing heat of Dion, just to push a small ball through hoops the size of the air inlet on a large shuttle engine, was a psychotic form of entertainment. I had no doubt that the players, and their fans, did it mainly to compensate for the lack of open space in their underground cities. Even Ronban, my adoptive father, had once been a fan, but not recently. I had given him other things to think about.

  A week after I had arrived in Raban, Ronban took me to a game. He must have hoped that the game, and the hundreds of spectators from different tribes, would give me a sense of belonging to something greater, something organized. I had hardly looked across the dunes at the players running around the hoops. I found the clothing of the people around me, and their difference in physical appearance more interesting. It was all so new to me. Ronban had made an effort to explain the rules hoping to spark my interest. He thought I didn't understand, but I did. I was 12 years old, and the game wasn't that complicated. I hadn't seen a game since, and pretty quickly I had found myself concentrating on one single hoop – the one that would choke Mampas into acquiescence. As I passed the Hoops field, I thought that successful or not, after the events I had planned for Mampas and the Desertians, no one would care about this year’s tournament.

  I was born in Raban to Ram and Bedatur Own. When I was two, my parents relocated to Amner for my father’s job. The transition to Amner made sense. My father was an airplane test pilot for the Four Tribes company, and he spent most of his time in remote locations around Mampas. The proximity to the city was vital, not only for the tribes who sold their hovercrafts, but also for his meetings with the many rich Mampasians that were looking for the newest and most powerful version of hovercrafts that were offered by the Four Tribes Company. They knew how to overcome barriers, mainly diplomatic, in order to extract my father and his family from the desert. Of course, my father’s charming personality helped as well.

  I was careful to maintain the order of my names until I was fifteen: Shethor Own-Eliaston. The last name of my biological father, Own, was important to me, and I wanted it to appear right after my first name. I think I was afraid I would forget my parents. Later, when I acknowledged my calling and knew what I was going to do, the order didn’t matter anymore, and I abandoned that name. When I started attacking Mampas City, everyone knew me as Shethor Eliaston, adopted daughter of Ronban, the president of Raban.

  It's funny, but when I was a little girl in Mampas City, I didn't know that I was not a Mampasian. There were so many signs, but I didn't notice any of them. When I finally realized the truth, it was suddenly so obvious. It was as if a colorful and loud chorus was calling out to me, "YOU ARE A DESERTIAN."

  It happened after a meeting with the school principal, two months before my father’s death in a terrible accident. I have no doubt that destiny delivered these events in this particular order for a reason; first to learn that I was a Desertian, and only then to lose my father. If things had happened the other way around, it might have driven me insane.

  I used to think that I was a spoiled child, especially in light of the fact that I had never noticed the many clues that revealed my origin so clearly. The stories my father used to tell me at bedtime were just one example. He kept that ritual even when he came home late, or before he was forced to leave for a new mission in the dead of night. I loved his stories about a faraway planet, with its strange people and their strange customs. The stories fascinated me, but I didn't think there was anything special about them. I was sure that in every house in all the cities of Mampas, mothers or fathers were sitting by their children's beds and telling them similar fascinating stories.

  This in itself was true, but the stories my father told me were special. They were the ones that the Desertians told their children in their underground cities. In the rest of Mampas they told very different stories.

  I realized later that my father had an ulterior motive. Often I would wake up angry in the morning after falling asleep in the middle of a story, and only remembering part of it. Sometimes I would wake up as if in a dream taken from a story my father had told me that night. Years later, when I realized that these stories had been about my people on our planet, Naan, I wished I had been old enough to ask him questions, and make him tell me more. I was angry that I had been such a selfish and spoiled child, but that was a long time ago. Now I know that I was really only angry that I was a child. Period.

  My mother died when I was 4 years old. I don't remember her at all, not directly in any case. I used to have a collection of photos and videos of her. She died of an illness, but I never knew what really happened. Several times I asked my father and each time he would sigh and say that it had all happened so fast. He never gave me the details. When I realized I was bringing up painful memories, I stopped asking.

  The Desertians were considered outcasts in Mampas, and cooperation between them and the Mampasians was rare. This was why our move to the city was so unusual. We were the only Desertians who lived outside the desert. My father was very well liked among the test pilots of Mampas. In the distant past, there had been other Desertians in the city, but decades of information scrambling had so tarnished the reputation of the Tribes, that every negative report on the network was tied to them with a high reliability factor, and they were no longer welcome.

  The reliability factor was never questioned. The Desertians stayed in the desert, and no one cared if the stories were true or not. The Mampasians had one strict rule: never do business directly with the Desertians. Every deal went through a reliable intermediary who guaranteed its quality. Upholding this rule was expensive, but easier and cheaper than losing your money if you were tempted to make a deal with them without such moderator. Besides, after 200 years, no one really believed the truth could be any different so why deviate from the common practice.

  As a descendent of Raban, the great savior, and like all Rabanians, I also had Mampasian ancestors. When my father died, they told me that I had to leave the city and move back to the desert. After I arranged my thoughts I realized I simply wasn't enough of a Mampasian for them. If it happened today, out of spite I would probably tell them I was just as Mampasian as at least half of the people that live there. One of my great grandmothers was Su-thor, wife of Sosi and daughter of Oziri-Dos, leader of the rebels 200 years ago. My other great grandmother was Mei-thor, wife of Raban, who together with Raban and the Mampasian rebels, conquered Mampas. Su-thor and Mei-thor were full-blooded Mampasians.

  I didn’t know all of this at the time, and I was so upset over my father's death and from the unjustified shame I felt, that it would not have mattered if I had. Even if I had hurled these facts in their faces, it wouldn't have made a difference. The true stories of Sosi, Raban, Mei-thor and Su-thor had been scrambled thousands of times, and none of the official stories were true.

  Raban had been swept into the war between the Mampasian rebels and the Mampas leadership when he escaped from his cousin, who was trying to kill him. At that time, he lived in the City of the Chosen; the city founded by his parents, and was selling locally grown produce. His cousins, the brothers Daio and Dug, who lived elsewhere in Naan, controlled all trade with other cities. Daio was the ruler of Naan and guarded his realm jealously. When Raban decided to go out on his own and bought a space shuttle so his city could do business independently, the brothers feared he was trying to undermine and sabotage them. Naan, Daio's son, thought he meant to conquer the planet Naan, and overthrow him as the successor to Daio. He kidnapped him and took him aboard his own shuttle, then sold him to the rebels in Mampas for his scrambling services. Miraculously my great-grandfather was saved. He went on to conquer Mampas, by combining the deviousness of the Naanites with his Seragonian blood. He crushed their resistance easily with scrambling abilities, the likes of which had never been seen before in the entire universe. These abilities awoke 200 yea
rs later. They awoke in me.

  Ronban Eliaston was anxiously waiting for his daughter to return. He knew where she had gone. He had known for months, ever since he saw her come home sniffling and teary-eyed. It took him a month to believe what she told him, and several more months for him to process the shocking plan that she had worked out down to the last detail. And he had thought he knew everything. He had known when she was a child, that she had strange abilities, but had never imagined how far she would come. In the last few months, she had told him so much more, and he wasn't always sure how to react. Layers upon layers of ideologies and actions, cleverly put together with amazing complexity, had distanced her from him and from everyone else. She lived in a world isolated from the reality that she wanted to change.

  He had been sitting in the empty house for two hours, waiting and thinking. He had heard the sound of the Mampasian hovercrafts outside. They always showed up after she had been to her cave. Usually, she would make it home before the hovercrafts arrived. Today they had arrived before she did, and he was worried about her.

  As he waited he recalled the night ten years ago, when they brought her to him, pale and sniffling. It had taken two days for her to open her mouth and say something in Mampasian. She was dark-skinned and rather tall for a Mampasian child. He had guessed that underneath that guise, she was a Desertian, a Rabanian like him. He couldn't have known just how Rabanian she was destined to become.

  The first years of her life, she had lived in Amner, the city near the dam, and years later, her accent still had Amnerian nuances. It hadn’t disappeared even after she moved to Mampas City at the age of eight. She had lived there, with her father, in a middle-class neighborhood, not far from the seat of government. She used to say that her father hid there from himself, and thought that no one would discover that he was Desertian.