Calan, Psion Factor Son

By Christine Myers

Calan Narcaza is a smart, sexy, psion who does "parlor tricks." Like his father before him, he has come back to Earth to find his psion mate, Ajha Lann in Farringay. He has felt Ajha Lann reaching out to him for several years. He knew that for her to reach him over such interstellar distance could only mean that she was his psion mate.

He knows the dangers from the stories of his mother’s life on Earth in Farringay before his father came to find her. Only Calan has a different plan...

Instead of taking Ajha to his homeworld, Calan is going to stay and make a life there. He has bought an empty industrial complex on the outskirts of the ruins to convert into a refuge for the community he wants to build.

It’s a simple plan with unexpected complications.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christine Myers
• Release date: May 31, 2024
• ISBN: 9798215771006

Christine Myers

Chris Myers has been a science fiction fan since seeing the original “Day the Earth Stood Still” at age eight. Her favorite subgenre is space opera romance. Among the most influential in her work are the Lazarus Long novels by Robert Heinlein including “Time Enough for Love”, Marta Randall’s “Journey” and of course “Star Wars”, everything “Star Trek” and “Fire Fly”.A lifelong resident of Silver Lake, NY she wrote her first novella at age fifteen. She has a BA in Cultural Studies from Empire State College majoring in creative writing. She writes a regular column in the local weekly newspaper “Perry Herald”. Chris has written four novels in The Aledan Series:

Book preview

Chapter One

Mikki Pelker peered around the corner of the ruined brick building to see if she and Ajha (Ăh zhă) Lann were being followed. Crossing the brothel district in ganger territory was risky, but they needed the packaged food the charity at Starport City handed out once a month. Foraging in the city ruins for small game and edible plants didn’t always bring a steady supply of food when winter was slowly turning to spring.

Their sling bags were full of food that would keep for a month if they could find a safe place to stash it. The overlords owned the only places in the ruins that were secure. Where ever they hid, it would have to be good.

The two young women were dashing across alleys behind the shattered buildings of Farringay. So far, they hadn’t seen any of the gangers—young men who trolled the ruins for women to sell to the overlords for their brothels.

Mikki and Ajha were both attractive young women. Mikki was older, tall, and statuesque, with dark red hair that tended to be wild and curly. Ajha was not as tall and more average-looking, with dark hair that Mikki had bobbed for her with a hunting knife. Dressed in baggy, ragged clothes, they deliberately played down their femininity.

They moved from building to building, checking each alley for gangers. Ajha looked behind them while Mikki looked down the alleys. As they came to the last alley, before they could make their run for their first hidden hole, two gangers were coming up the alley. As they turned around, two more gangers appeared from the alley behind them.

Run Ajha! Mikki grabbed her and shoved her ahead of her. Go, I’ll hold them off!

I don’t want to leave you.

Go, I’ll catch up, Mikki insisted, giving Ajha another shove. This time, the younger woman sprinted away.

Mikki turned and charged toward the two guys behind her. They tried to grab her, but she skirted around them and headed down the next alley. There was only one ganger there.  Mikki charged him because there were two guys behind her. She was as tall as he was.

She charged the guy as he crouched slightly, intending to grab her. Mikki rammed her fist right into his crotch, and he crumpled. When she reached the end of the alley, three guys were waiting at the opening. Two more came up and circled her.

Mikki turned in a circle, assessing her adversaries. She wasn’t going without a fight. She struck a martial arts pose, waiting for one of them to make a move. Two rushed her, and she punched one in the face and kicked the other one in the gut.

Naturally, these thugs never expected a woman to fight like Mikki could. Her father had taught her mixed martial arts as a child. He had been a cage fighter in the fight clubs surrounding Starport City.

She took down three guys before one hit her in the head with a club.

Ajha made it to the first hidden hole and hunkered down, out of sight until dusk. She went to four different hideaways once dusk settled over the city. It was completely dark by the time she reached the hovel they called home. Exhaustion set in, and she couldn’t keep her eyes opened even though she wanted to wait for Mikki.

Maybe she would be there by daylight. Ajha was well hidden, and most of the gangers weren’t morning people. The other reason she didn’t want to sleep was the phantom lover in her dreams. He came to her when she was the most exhausted. He held her close in her dreams, but she always woke up alone. He told her he was coming soon to be with her.

He never said when. That, along with the voices in her head, made her start to believe she was crazy. Mikki didn’t know what to think. But she loved Ajha like a sister. Mikki rescued Ajha when she was ten, and Mikki was sixteen. There was just something about Ajha that brought out Mikki’s protective instinct.

Twelve years, they had eked out a living, hiding from the gangers and scrounging for food. They did pretty well. It was a mistake to go to Starport City for the food handout. The gangers knew to watch for them on their way back.

Ajha and Mikki needed the food. They had gone without food for three days. They had no education and no way to earn money to buy food other than selling their bodies. The only safe place to do that was in Starport City. But it was against the law there.

Inside the city walls, such vices weren’t allowed. Outside the walls were brothels on every side of the city in territories controlled by overlords whose cronies ran them. Brothels and fight clubs with bars lured the respectable citizens of Farringay Starport City. It was also a favorite place for long hall star freighter crews to take shore leave.

As long as they kept their dirty business outside of the city walls, the city police left them alone. Hell, they even went outside the city walls to enjoy such entertainment, then went back to their safely fortified city.

Farringay had another name centuries before, but no one remembered it. It was once a small town in the eastern USA Earth that grew into a city when they put in a starport. Now, it mostly lay in ruin except for the walled Farringay Starport City.

Mikki didn’t come back any of the days after she sent Ajha running from that fight. That left Ajha struggling to survive on her own. The voices got louder, and it was harder for her to be around people. Ajha sought out the loneliest places in the city outskirts to hide and live.

Two years later, Ajha was still alone. If Mikki had escaped, they hadn’t found each other. For the last three months, he came to her in her dreams almost every night.

Ajha, you know who I am and why you keep seeing me in your dreams. You have nothing to fear from me ever. Soon. I will be there for you soon, she-ell.

As always, there was a shadow over his face, but she felt nothing but kindness from him. He didn’t seem to mean her any harm, but she still didn’t understand why he haunted her dreams. If he really were coming, she would soon know.

Ajha Lann hid behind the open doorway of the ruined office building of the ancient city, waiting for the thugs to pass by. She needed a few minutes to catch her breath before she meandered back to the tattered building where she made her home. So far, Redmyn Berke’s men hadn’t found it. Fortunately, she had sensed their presence before they saw her.

She’d led them on a chase through what was once the business district—before the Procyon War left Earth in ruin almost eight hundred years before she was born. Now, it was just a maze of ruined buildings that provided many places for the dawning psion to hide. For as long as she could remember, she had been on her own.

Ajha knew she’d had a mother and father at some point, but she didn’t remember either of them. The closest thing to family she’d had was Mikki, an older girl who’d shown her how to evade men like the ones trying to capture her now.

They were gone, far past her hideaway. It was safe for her to go back now. Ajha emerged from the doorway at a dead run, her bare feet making almost no sound on the crumbling pavement. She ran about seventy-five yards, then turned down an alley that led to an old block building with the windows broken out.

That made for an easy escape if her cooking fire brought intruders. She’d killed a fat rat she needed to cook. Ajha didn’t stop running until she was inside. She moved the old piece of ragged plywood over the doorway. She went to her simple stacked brick fireplace under the open window in the back.

Good. There were still embers enough to revive the fire. She squatted down in front of it and quickly added some twigs from the pile beside the fireplace. Soon, a flame rose from the embers as they caught fire. Gradually adding bigger sticks, she put the old metal grate on the top.

She opened her cloth shoulder bag, took out the dressed-out rat carcass, and put it on the grate to cook. It was big enough that she could probably make two meals out of it. While she waited for it to roast, she munched on wild strawberries from a small pouch and intermittently fed the fire.

It was times like this that Ajha really missed Mikki. They used to do this together—stoke up the fire and cook whatever small animal they’d killed. Mikki was gone now. The memory of when the gangers took her played in her mind every day, haunting her.

Mikki sacrificed herself so Ajha could get away. She knew Ajha had begun to hear the voices. It always seemed worse when they were around a lot of people.  They were almost overwhelming while they were in Starport City. When the voices started, she thought she was going crazy, but then she realized that the voices were other people’s thoughts. Ajha figured that out while talking to someone when she would hear the words in her head before they said them.

It started with a sixth sense, which she knew when people were watching her or looking for her. She wasn’t all that good at controlling her ability. Ajha could catch stray thoughts or sense when someone was after her, but she couldn’t often concentrate her efforts on deliberately reading people.

A few months before, she’d met an old woman who had the psionic ability. She told Ajha she had the power as well, but it would take time to learn to use it.

Ajha wished she could find the old woman to learn more, but she never saw her again. Then, the dreams had started to recur a few weeks ago. There was a man, but she couldn’t quite see his face. He was a presence that came into her mind when she slept. She couldn’t seem to reach him while she was awake, even if she closed her eyes and concentrated.

She could sense he was out there, a vague yet living apparition that had never entirely left her consciousness. It was frustrating. Didn’t he feel her, too? Didn’t he know she was trying to reach out to him? Why didn’t he reach back?

Ajha shook her head as though that would get him out of her awareness. The old woman said it would take great patience to learn to use her gift on her own. Ajha wanted to stay and learn more from the woman, but it wasn’t safe. She couldn’t protect Ajha from the ruthless males in the gangs who preyed on women—raped and killed them or held them captive and sold them as sex slaves.

Ajha turned the meat that had begun to sizzle on the fire and sighed. Maybe the time had come to leave Farringay—to realize that Mikki was probably gone for good. The gang that caught her didn’t know the location of their hideout. Ajha stayed, hoping Mikki would escape and come back.

Apparently, she was either dead or unable to escape. There was a chance she could still be alive. Mikki had always told her to give them what they wanted to stay alive. Offer them pleasure, let them fuck you if that’s what they want. Do whatever it takes to stay alive.

So far, Ajha had been lucky. She wasn’t much of a fighter, but she could run fast and knew the best places to hide, so they would run right by and never spot her. There had been a boy once, and she had loved him. They had learned about sex together. She and Fenn and his friends Vick and Mikki had been a foursome for several months.

Then, one day, the guys went out to hunt for food and never came back. Mikki and Ajha never found their bodies, and they never came back. Mikki tearfully told Ajha