A King Ascends, page 1
A KING ASCENDS
A KING ASCENDS:
Book One of the Tyrea Trilogy
Copyright © 2022 by Jane McKay
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1-7379427-0-2 (Paperback Edition)
ISBN: 978-1-7379427-1-9 (eBook Edition)
Cover Design: SelfPubCovers.com/billwyc
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Printed in the United States of America.
Published by arrangement with IngramSpark.
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Also by Jane McKay
Available from Amazon and other retailers
The Tyrea Trilogy:
A King Ascends: Book One
Young Adult Novels
The Pebble Trilogy:
Pebble, Adventure of a Drone: Book One
To Look to a Star: Book Two (coming soon)
A KING ASCENDS
By
Jane McKay
Dedicated to:
All the men and women out there,
Who fight the good fight,
Against life takers—small and large.
Soldiers
Fire Personnel
Police Personnel
Teachers
Clergy
Case Workers
Judges
Politicians
Medical Personnel
“Fas est ab hoste doceri.
One should learn even from one’s enemies.”
—Ovid, Metamorphoses
CHAPTER 1
Black mists swirled around his thoughts, keeping them unclear, always just out of reach. Urgency surged through him. There was something he needed to do. He tried to focus on the thought, but it receded into the distance.
“Come on, respond dammit! What the…?”
The doctor snatched her hands from the hot flesh as she reacted to the sudden golden aura pulsing from the patient’s body. Red blood infused the skin as a white film developed, forming a protective shell.
“What is that?” a nurse exclaimed.
All of the monitors in the room screeched warnings, causing the medical team to jump. The noise increased, and medical personnel bumped equipment, backing away from the figure prone in the center of the room.
“Doctor, he’s flat-lined!” the nurse shouted. The team moved into rapid but controlled action. Here was something they all understood. The frantic movements became focused and smooth. Each knew their job, performing around each other in the particular dance of health professionals. The shiny white emergency room reflected the tense drama being played out within its walls. The twelve-foot square space suddenly seemed much smaller as people maneuvered for position. The emergency room, usually cool, seemed to increase in temperature in response to the frantic activity.
The glow of the patient’s skin faded, the alarms stopped, and everyone gave a sigh of relief. The quiet monitors resumed recording again, showing them within normal human limits—or what she hoped were his normal limits. Now the calm beeps seemed abnormally loud in the room. The medical team stared at the monitors, then at each other. They had handled the emergency according to standard procedure.
The only prison hospital on the planet, Greenwich, the staff handled both local patients and inmates from fifty different worlds due to the lack of other nearby medical facilities. Each patient had slightly unique physiology because of differences in gravity and climate.
They could hear the quiet rush as other doctors and medical personnel worked in nearby rooms on the other patients brought in with this one. None had life-threatening injuries, just a collection of broken bones or concussions. None had exhibited the amazing ability to form protective shields over their injuries.
A planetary shuttle crashing close to the prison was highly unusual on their planet. The people traveling in it were lucky that most injuries were minor. This patient, though, appeared to have sustained the worst ones. Some appeared not to have been caused by the crash. The other men looked military. This patient wore completely different clothes but was of the same tall stature.
“Well, that was interesting. He appears stable at the moment.” The doctor sighed as she scanned the monitors.
“What just happened?” she asked. The others in the room looked as perplexed as she was. “Okay, then let’s double check everything. The patient looks humanoid, but obviously his ability to heal is either a natural adaptation or it’s been modified. Collect all your data, and let’s meet in my office in twenty minutes. And Phillip, see what information you can find on similar physiologies.”
The medical team eyed the patient as they wheeled him through the door. Most prisoners were in wards, so she assumed this was someone important. Nothing concerning this man seemed normal, including the two men waiting in the hall.
Doctor Alexis Michaels mentally squared her shoulders as the two men approached her.
“Warden Skinner,” she said, as she inclined her head toward the gray-haired man on her right. Turning to the other man, she noted the look of open menace. His left arm was in a fresh cast, and he did not try to hide his impatience.
“Will the prisoner live? Can we move him?” he spat. “This delay is intolerable.”
Prisoner? Dr. Michaels thought. That certainly explains the difference in clothing.
“Yes, I believe he will recover, but I need to know what I’m dealing with first. Everything went well, but I have a few hundred questions. First, you say he’s a prisoner?”
“Before we get into your questions, Doctor, I demand that you keep him sedated. I need to transport him as soon as possible.” The man sniffed and turned away from her, as if her demands didn’t need to be discussed.
She immediately bristled at his curt tone of dismissal. She was used to dealing with difficult and dangerous people, and this man seemed to be both. She needed him to answer a few questions.
“Who is he, and who the hell are you?” she asked icily.
The calm blue walls of the corridor contrasted with her fiery red hair and hot temper. Her five-and-a-half-feet of bristling energy made her seem like an angry terrier to the prefect. He couldn’t find a more fitting comparison. His lip curled as he turned back to face her.
“Who he is, Doctor, doesn’t matter. You only need to know he is a criminal I am responsible for, and I wish to transport him as promptly as possible. I am Prefect Tamias of the planet Tyrea.”
“In the operating room, something happened I’ve not encountered before, and I need some answers before proceeding. If I do the wrong thing, I could kill him. For starters, what is his name? We can’t call him ‘hey you.’ And what is he? Is he Tyrean, like yourself? What planet is he from so we can treat him properly. Also, do you have any documentation about his physiology so we can manage his care?”
“Actually, you can call him ‘J.’ That would be perfect. There will be no more information.” The prefect snarled his answer to the doctor. Yes, he thought, call him J on this planet. Just hide him in plain sight. That should work perfectly.
Dr. Michaels stepped forward to continue her argument, but the warden stepped between them and asked the doctor what had happened in the ER. She pulled her anger back with visible effort.
“I have a meeting in my office in about fifteen minutes to review the feed. Warden, you and the prefect are welcome to attend.”
Every operating room had a recorded feed monitoring the actions of prisoners and medical personnel for security. This was SOP (standard operating procedure) at all prisons. She hoped the feed would give them some answers.
“He went from zero vital signs to stable almost before my team could go into action. He isn’t human or any other species I know. I need information. His other injuries appear to be older, not life-threatening, and he has a scab-like substance that formed over his worst injuries.”
The prefect inhaled sharply. It surprised both her and Warden Skinner when the prefect turned pale.
“Prefect, what’s wrong? Do you know what it means?” the warden asked.
He recovered his composure and told them. “He has defenses of his own to help him heal. Again, Doctor, I demand you keep him sedated. He is very dangerous.” He turned to the warden. “I expect him to be guarded at all times. Put him in isolation, and keep his room locked.”
“Surely these precautions aren’t necessary. This is a prison hospital. We already have strict security measures. Medical personnel need to get to patients rapidly. I will not authorize locking the door. That’s entirely unnecessary.”
“I insist.” The prefect turned his back on both of them and walked away.
The warden looked after him and shook his head.
“Carry on, but do NOT lock his door.” He nodded to Dr. Michaels and turned back toward his office.
She headed toward her office. She needed a few minutes to recharge after being on her feet for twenty hours straight. She sighed as she sat. The last few days had been brutal at the hospital.
I need a few hours of sleep, she thought. What I will get is another cup of what the prison calls coffee.
As she moved around her office, she stretched her five-foot,
A few minutes later, the medical team assembled in Dr. Michaels’ conference room to compare notes. The medical team talked as she sat down at the head of the table. They quieted as they waited for the woman they admired, not only for her skill but also for her willingness to support staff and patients.
“Okay, let’s get started. According to all the scanner records and the feed, everything was proceeding normally until he suddenly flat-lined. Let’s look at what happened next. I recall Stephen saying we had lost his pulse.”
One of the team reached for the paper EKG record, marking a place on it. “Here it is. You can see his heart just stopped.
“What does the EEG say? Does his brain wave scan show anything? A loss of activity, or maybe some bleeding into the subarachnoid space causing brain damage?”
Another team member reached for the EEG sheets. His eyes widened. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen activity like this.” He passed the EEG to the person next to him. The readout made the rounds of the team, ending with Dr. Michaels. “Instead of showing some kind of brain damage, it showed extraordinary brain activity. This is not the EEG of a patient in a coma, or slipping into a coma, or dying. It might mean an extraordinary ability to repair or separate damaged areas in the brain. One more mystery to add to all the others regarding this patient,” the team member added.
“When the substance formed over his injuries, the readings just stopped,” Stephen said. “We can extrapolate he suffered from head trauma, heart damage, and maybe other organs, too.”
The team studied the readout. Dr. Michaels studied the blood test results that appeared on her computer. She needed more information on Tyrea to compare with what she was seeing.
“Phillip, did you find out anything about Tyrean or any similar physiology?”
Phillip activated the viewing screen to show a minor planet.
“Very little, I’m afraid. Human is the closest physiology. No Tyrean has ever been here. The IntergalNet also had little. The population on Tyrea comes from Terran stock, and they share the same blood types and basic physiology, including atmospheric pressures and structure, but there are some minor differences that come from the differences in planet gravity and nighttime neural patterns because of the longer day and night cycle. Planet gravity is at 0.8, which is less than Earth’s 1.0. It would account for his unusual height. It was a long time before trade started on that isolated world. Tyrea is a Class M planet with Earth-like features and atmosphere. It has two polar regions and similar zones as Earth-temperate, tropical, and so on.”
The overhead indicator flickered on, interrupting Phillip, and signaled the feed from the ER was ready. Phillip leaned forward and pushed the play button when Dr. Michael nodded okay. It started with the patient being wheeled into the room. He lay completely quiet even though lines of pain were seen on his face and his hands had clenched into fists.
He appears completely human. An unusual looking human, but human, thought Dr. Michaels.
His clothes were constructed of high-quality materials and seemed to be an outdoor outfit. The feed continued showing the team as they studied the various tears in his clothing. After removing them, they studied the various injuries. Some were older, while some looked serious and new. The promptly assessed injuries caused the team to jump into action in what looked like organized chaos. The feed showed the patient to have dyed eyelids of a light blue, and his long hair was a light brown. He was a very tall individual—at least seven feet six inches. An X-ray scan done automatically by the emergency room bed showed his internal organs were basically the same as human, but the arrangement was different, and there seemed to be an extra, unidentifiable organ. It showed the injured organs surrounded by a milky white substance, similar to what had formed around his body. A small disk appeared in his left shoulder.
“Have the tech enlarge this one, ASAP,” Dr. Michaels said, then turned to the blood tests, where she found several other anomalies. He had Type-A blood, but the red blood cells seemed extra-large.
“Since we don’t know if that’s normal, we can only look at these from the closest human baseline. The prefect has clarified that he won’t release basic medical records for this patient, so let’s keep very careful records of anything else unusual about him. Also, he’s a prisoner of Prefect Tamias, who claims he’s very dangerous and wants guards stationed outside his room.”
“I wouldn’t choose to be a prisoner of that man,” said Phillip.
“As I was saying, be on guard around him; we don’t know what he’s capable of doing. Okay, let’s keep studying these readouts, and don’t be afraid to ask questions. I don’t think he can get off the bed, but as ordered by the prefect, guards will be outside the door.”
Dr. Michaels knew human stock had moved out into the universe thousands of years ago and settled onto very diverse planets. Insufficient time had elapsed to separate humans into different species, but the different planets had put their own special stamp on each segment. The team settled down to study the differences that Tyrea had stamped on their patient until the next emergency occurred.
CHAPTER 2
Matt O’Shea, head of the Intergalactic Police Force Training Facility, and Lu-zan Cinh, as its head training instructor, made a formidable team. Matt was tall, with the muscular build of a wrestler. He was also innovative, intelligent, and appreciated those qualities in others. Lu-zan was shorter and lightning fast. Both had been impressed by Jon when he applied for the Assistant Survival Specialist position.
Lu-zan was impressed by Jon’s knowledge of other worlds and customs. He remembered well the initial interview.
“Why do you want this job?” Lu-zan asked.
“I come from a peaceful planet called Tyrea and have always been fascinated by what my ancestors did to make it peaceful. Planets have different customs and ways to deal with physical and mental stresses in their cultures. These include ritualized movements or meditation techniques that are forms of survival methods, including ritual combat. Knowledge is one of the prime ways to survive in the chaotic universe,” he answered.
“Your resume says you have traveled to twenty other planets after graduating from college. Why?”
“We have a long lifespan on my planet, and I probably will not inherit the family business for a very long time. So, I decided to know as much as possible about the universe. Tyrea has only been open to outside trade for a short time, and there is so much to learn.”
“But why apply for this position? It’s for an expert on teaching survival techniques.”
“Several of the planets I visited had areas that called for training in those techniques. I found I had an affinity for that field of study and so took courses to broaden my knowledge. The range of knowledge I gained, I think, can now be applied in the offered position.”
Lu-zan was fascinated by this young man, and he felt that this was someone he could teach. After forty years on the job, Lu-zan wanted to retire and pursue his other passion. He knew a lot of the known martial arts and was trying to catalog the unrecorded ones in existence on other known worlds. He was teaching Jon Tor some Tae Kwon Do and Judo moves when Jon Tor went on this last mission. The ancient martial arts from Earth were novelties to Jon. The planet Earth was an unknown planet to Jon, who had not traveled quite so far from his own home planet of Tyrea. The moves fascinated him, and he felt they helped with his coordination, but he also hoped he would never need to use them.
