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Wiki: Kemtewet History

The Kemtewet Empire was established shortly after Neith consolidated her power on Keidem and abolished the augmentation development program. When it became apparent that Kemtewet population growth would outpace human population growth, Empress Neith established colony worlds to both grow the human population in a dedicated environment and outsource cultivation of other resources. Three more expansion periods followed, resulting in the current 8110-planet empire.

Wiki: Kemtewet “Geography”

The Kemtewet Empire was responsible for colonizing all populated worlds in the galaxy except Earth, the Kemtewet capital world of Sais, and Gertewet worlds. It consists of 84 planets indexed in the standard navigation system: the Imperial capital, five kingdom capitals, 25 lord capitals, and 50 outlying support worlds. The Kemtewet also established a three-planet penal colony colloquially known as the Grand Empire to relocate subversive  elements, both human and Kemtewet. Other systems are known to have activity and semi-permanent populations, such as shipyards and intelligence depots, but these are not included in the standard navigation system.

Planet location designations are normalized by mean free distance between habitable worlds [estimated by 3/4 of the cubed root of (the volume of the galaxy divided by the number of habitable planets)] where (0,0,0) is Earth and (1,0,0) is Sais.

This Alien Sympathy: Prelude

A deleted scene from the short story “This Alien Sympathy” (after “Little Setira” and before Rights of Use, Project Black Book Volume 1).

Setira’s mother was asked to retire when Setira reached 708, after she wed but before she bore children. When she turned 73, still a young woman, still trying to understand the world, her mother’s retirement was mandated, right before the birth of her first child.

Yesterday, she and her husband had traveled to the clinic, met with Dr. Mila, who’d healed her broken leg as a child, and delivered her baby.

Dream Child. Her mother’s dream, kindled in vain.

Tonight, she cried over him. Her beautiful baby. Her mother would have loved him, if the lord’s enforcers had only let her stay.

Distant Starlight sat against her and wrapped his miner’s strong arms around her and their child. He propped his chin on her shoulder, his mustache tickling her ear, but he didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say; his parents were retired, too.

“Do you think your parents are still together on Sais?” Sais, the purported vacation world, every need attended in reward for centuries8 of hard work on a lord’s planet. Some reward if the retirees had no choice.

“If they can be, they are. We should all be so lucky.”

Anyone who lived to retire hadn’t been taken in a raid.

She leaned harder into his arms. “We will be. I can feel it.”

They came in the early dawn, broke down the door, and dragged Distant Starlight off the pallet by his ankle.

Setira screamed and beat on the strange men. The man between her and Starlight shoved her hard, slamming her back onto the pallet onto something warm and soft.

Someone warm and soft.

Setira cried for days.

She cried until tears no longer came and her dry mouth no longer stuck closed.

What was the point in water when her family was gone?

This beginning sets up the motivation for why Setira became involved with the Gertewet. I pulled this part out, because it needed a lot more detail to properly set up Setira’s motivation, but doing so would detract from her relationship with Katorin. To keep it would require a much longer story.

A much longer story would have been a problem, as writing “This Alien Sympathy” was motivating me to continue revising Katorin’s plot in Draft 11 of Rights of Use.

“This Alien Sympathy” is available on Amazon, Kobo, and many other sellers.

TAS: Little Setira Goes to the Doctor

A deleted scene from the short story “This Alien Sympathy” (before Rights of Use, Project Black Book Volume 1).

Setira clutched her mother’s hand while her father ran her to the clinic. If she held tight enough, it could drown out the agony in her leg. It thrubbed with her father’s every step, and she screamed harder. She squeezed her mother’s hand.

“Sh! We’re almost there.”

Long minutes of pain later, Setira opened her eyes in a bright, clean space. People sat on benches scattered around the open room.

“Bring her here!” An old woman in a smooth, white robe patted a white bed set into the back wall.

Kissing her hand, her father lowered her into place. Her mother squeezed her hand, kissed her, and let go.

“Lie back.” The woman in white pushed her back then straightened her leg.

Setira screamed.

She awoke in a new room, gasping for breath, her throat still raw from screaming. Her chest hurt. She bolted up. “I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!”

Another old woman in white guided her back down. “You’re okay. Take some deep breaths. You’ll feel better in a half kilosecond or so.”

Setira studied the woman’s warm eyes.

The stranger leaned closer. “I’m Doctor Mila. I’m going to take care of you today. Can you tell me why your parents brought you?”

Setira pointed at her leg, and the doctor looked.

“Oh my, you got your pants all bloody. Let me roll them up and take a look at your leg.” Gingerly, she did just that, with Setira staring on in morbid fascination.

When she’d last seen her leg, something white had been ticking out through her skin. What would the doctor say? Would it surprise her?

When Dr. Mila tucked the fabric up, nothing remained but smooth skin and light bruises. Setira gasped.

Chuckling, the doctor rolled her stained pant leg back down. “Looks like it was just a broken leg. It’s all back together now. While you’re here, though, let’s check to see if anything else is wrong.”

She patted Sarah’s shoulder and crossed the room to stand at a control screen that showed an outline for a body with a blue outline of a break on its leg where hers had been. “Okay, sweetie, I’m going to run you through the other teleporter to see if anything else is wrong. When I say so, I want you to blow out as hard as you can and not breathe back in. Can you practice for me now?”

Seitra nodded. The doctor looked like a parent’s parent right before leaving for retirement; she was easy to trust. Setira blew out really hard.

“Good job! Now, breathe normally.”

She gulped down air.

“Okay, one more time.”

Setira blew so hard, the room winked out. She blinked. “What happened?”

“The teleporter took you away to scan your body then put you right back where you were.” Dr. Mila studied the screen, which now showed every feature Setira saw for herself, from her curly red pigtails to her newest freckles. Holding still on the screen, though, it didn’t quite look like her. “It looks like you have an incipient cardiac condition, um, a heart problem that isn’t affecting you yet. Let’s take care of it now.”

Setira shrugged. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing bad. I’m going to tell the computer how to fix you, and I’ll run you through the teleporter one more time. Then you’ll be all set to go home.” Dr. Mila tinkered with the screen a little while longer. Smiling at last, she looked up. “One last time: breathe out.”

Setira did, and the room winked, and she put her hand over her heart to feel the difference. Nothing seemed unusual.

“Sweetie, you won’t be able to tell. That’s the point: so you’re always as healthy as you are now.” She guided Setira to her feet like her mother’s mother had before she retired. “You’re all ready to go. Your parents are through that door and down the hall. Play safe from now on. Promise?”

Nodding once, Setira ran out.

This warm-up scene was the bridge between the original idea and the story of how Setira got involved with the Gertewet. Originally, I was seeking only to explore more about the Kemtewet health care for human colonies, but that quickly turned into a “kill all the characters!” story.

“This Alien Sympathy” is available on Amazon, Kobo, and many other sellers.