The First Penitatas - Out of the Pit
Lord Governor Wokun studied the broken child in the cell with cold, dispassionate eyes. It was not that he was cruel by nature, although his upbringing did reward aggressive, confrontational behaviour. In this case his lack of care was personal, born...
The First Penitatas - The Long Night
There was no time inside the cell. The walls and doors were thick enough to muffle any sound, the cell deep enough below the surface to keep out any light, and the only change in ambient heat came from Hafn's own body. When he'd first been thrown in,...
The First Penitatas - The Lives That Follow
Only half awake, yet with no desire to be roused, Lyy shifted awkwardly in her bed. The Daysider girl's rust-coloured fur was ruffled by her shifting in the night, brushed and folded in awkward ways by the thick, clinging mattress she slept upon....
The First Penitatas - Resolution
_Big thanks to Professor Bob for the series cover art. It'll be retroactively applied to all the stories, but this is the first one to get it!_ * * * When Sam finally woke up, the first person she saw was Skal. For the blonde Kyyreni girl the road...
The First Penitatas - The Breaking Point
Above him, in the skies of Urokon, a hateful sun burned. Haakyr had never stood beneath it in the flesh, but it haunted his dreams. He knew its malevolence well; the unending heat of that sun had created an inescapable desert across a third of the...
The First Penitatas - Justice
Change never came easy. For Skal, that change was accepting punishment. For Kadan, that chance was keeping his temper in check. The new routine was simple: each morning, typically before breakfast, Skal was disciplined. The punishment came in the form...
The First Penitatas - Dysfunctional Family
The knick-knack shop was an obvious target; small, quiet and bound to have hard coin on site. Sakyr had approached the problem of robbing them with the same methodical care she did with all her work, even if the very idea sickened her to the core. It...
Ozyel - Second Cycle
The life of Ozyel, 12 year old Kyyreni Penitatas, ended on a bench beneath a Rejuvenator. The technician pressed a hypospray to her neck and said, "count backwards from ten." She never even got to nine. The life of Ozyel, 6 year old Kyyreni Penitatas,...
The Chronicles of Vaahn - The Lost Years
The ship was adrift, belching drive plasma from its gutted innards. Decks had twisted and warped under the strain of battle, creating a bizarre parody of a once-proud ship of war. Vaahn left a trail of blood behind him as he crawled on all fours toward...
Veyyr - A Wife's Duty
It was a day that Veyyr Cae Imyyl had put out of her mind until now. She had known it would happen, she'd known the moment the marriage was arranged, but it had always been a distant concern. Now, as the hot, pulsing urgency of mating season took hold...
The Lost Boy
_A lifetime ago..._ Space travel was dull. While in system the passengers had the novelty of watching the planet fall away to aft, and then occasionally the sights of other stations and worlds. Now, nothing. Anartes stared idly out of his cabin's...
Ozyel
The mind of a rejuve was a strange and mysterious thing. All the science, all the theory, all the biological studies indicated that rejuvenation should be a total reset, a one-stop cure for the physical ailments and chemical dependencies of the...