Prologue - Neraka Parallel

Ifshar Rewede Beneklat

Ifshar Rewede Beneklat was Taymat mir Beneklat or King of the House of Beneklat. He was 91 inches tall, big even for a Tamaratry male, heavily muscle and blonde haired his oiled golden skin and twin hair-braids shone in the harsh lights of the cell as he pursued his favourite hobby. His current plaything was a Tamaratry female called T’Gira Seeneta Gerhant who was accused of being a spy from the House of Albalanta.

T’Gira was in a metal frame that fit closely to her body. Attached to the frame at the neck, forehead, wrists, waist, knees, ankles and each individual finger she could be moved into a wide variety of positions to make things easier for her tormentors. She was currently upside down which meant she was unlikely to faint whilst Ifshar applied a hot iron to the soft skin of her inner thigh. The smell of cooked meat began to fill the air and the Pain-Nurse turned up the extract fans in the ceiling. T’Gira’s screams were muffled by the clamps which held her mouth shut.

Ifshar then put the iron down, examined the instruments on the table and turned the frame around so that T’Gira was upright and her face was at the same level as Ifshar’s. He picked up the miniature blowtorch and watched T’Gira’s eyes widen as he flicked the ignition and narrowed the flame to white hot. He hummed to himself as he methodically burnt the flesh from her right thumb and forefinger leaving blackened, oozing bone. When he looked up T’Gira was unconscious and he shouted at the Pain-Nurse to adjust her medication.

“Wake her or you’ll be the next one on the frame!”

“I’m sorry my lord,” said the Pain-Nurse. “She should be awake very quickly now.” As he pumped chemicals into her unconscious body.

“Welcome back my sweet,” Ifshar taunted T’Gira as her eyes flickered open. “How could you want to leave our date so soon?”

Ifshar grabbed one of T’Gira’s breasts in his taloned gloves and twisted hard. His other hand stroked her cheek the way he had done when they’d been lovers.

“I know that you’re in the pay of the Albalanta. Why not just tell me who you report to and give me the names of the other rats who spy on me? I promise that your death will be quick. If you won’t tell me then I will bring your son in next, attach him to the frame opposite you and pull the skin from his body.”

T’Gira tried to speak and her head made frantic motions as she tried to say yes and no at the same time.

“What’s that my love?” crooned Ifshar. “You won’t tell me?” Ifshar picked up a pair of pliers and gripped T’Gira’s nipple. “Then perhaps you need a little more persuasion.”

The torture continued as Ifshar had always intended it would. He didn’t know or care whether T’Gira was really an Albalanta spy. She’d been beautiful and an enthusiastic lover but he was weary of her and anyway he had already moved against the House of Albalanta. Growing tired of his sport he turned to the Pain-Nurse on duty at the control panel monitoring T’Gira’s vital functions.

“Have it recorded that she refused to speak and as such the penalty will be that she be crushed until she speaks or is dead. Now wake her up, patch her up, then make sure that she can never speak and have her crushed in the courtyard. Make the crushing last for two days and I’ll see that you get a healthy bonus.”

“Yes taymat!” shouted the Pain-Nurse. “At your service, always!”

As Ifshar stalked from the room the Pain-Nurse brought T’Gira’s frame level and called in a crash team to revive and treat her. Only the healthy and those able to properly feel the glorious pain were crushed. If the taymat had been displeased then T’Gira would have been impaled - and that could last for a week given the proper care and attention to detail.

Chapter I - Izzy Barnestone

The colours were too bright and everything seemed to have too sharp an edge when I woke up from my death. Once I’d realised where I was I got the shakes but they didn’t last long, after all it wasn’t the first time I’d died and I had a brand new body now.

The sun was streaming in over the full length mirror which meant that it was late afternoon in Chausey. Standing in front of the mirror I examined the figure reflected back at me. My breasts were slightly higher and fuller than they had been when I was last a Type 1 Human. I had fine, dark hairs all over my legs and when I lifted my arms I could see that in fact all my body hair was back. Arturius Prime had obviously reset my physical appearance to my mid 20’s, removed all my scars and crow’s feet and I could see no outward sign that I’d been 44 before I was modified. Most importantly I no longer resembled T’Gira Seeneta Gerhant, the Type 2 Tamaratry female whose sleeve I had worn until I’d been executed. I’d miss T’Gira’s body; she had been a foot taller and curvier than me. My skin was its natural light tan colour once again and my hair was raven black courtesy of my Bharatiya ancestors. My eyes, however, were deep blue and I missed the sparkling green that they’d been when I was T’Gira.

My full name is Isabel Amla Barnestone; I was born in 1966 in Kingsferry, London, New Albion. I grew up in New Normandy, New Albion and I am a Captain in the Royal Parallel Scouts. My ancestry is half Caledonian, a quarter New Albian and a quarter Bharatiya. My father, Hugh Barnestone, is Caledonian and also served in the Paras. He is now a farmer in New Normandy where he lives with his new wife Aesha. My mother Elizabeth Khatri was half Bharatiya and half New Albian. She grew up in Dhillika and was a linguistics professor at the Royal Tudor College in Winchester. My mother died in the first Tamaratry incursion when I was 11.

When not away on missions for the Paras I make my home in Chausey which is one of the Channel Islands and the closest to the Normandy mainland. I live alone apart from Oorar the cat, who is very forgiving of my long absences. 

After a long, hot shower I threw a shirt on and went downstairs to the kitchen where I put the kettle on. As I spooned instant tea and sugar into a mug I saw that there were 7 messages waiting on the console.

“House,” I said to the Domestic AI, “play messages.”

“Yes Izzy,” said Domai. “Would you like them in chronological order or in order of importance?”

My Domai had never been brilliant at deciding what was most important and sometimes seemed to consider a spam messages about cleaning products more important than messages from the scouts. Not for the first time I wondered how much they paid the programmers for product placement.

“Just play them in time order please Domai,” I instructed the machine.

“OK Izzy, message 1 received yesterday at 16:43 from the Dhillika Deli...”

“Delete,” I instructed.

The next 3 were also sales pitches, one was a call from my bank, one from my friend Ellen and the final one was from Colonel Thomas Yaxley, my commanding officer.

“Izzy, I just heard about what happened,” his accent still held traces of his upbringing on Avalon. “I know that you are probably disappointed, but I am proud of you and what you’ve done. Please report to Tudor City HQ tomorrow morning at 10:00 for a full debrief.”

Tom wasn’t only my commanding officer; he was also a family friend. He was from Caliburn on Avalon and had been posted to New Normandy soon after his basic scout training when he’d been selected for the Paras.

I sat with my tea on the wooden deck behind my house watching the sun dip towards the horizon. There were gulls riding the evening breeze around the sailing boats as the sun dipped down towards the English Channel. Thinking back over what had happened I was pretty sure that there wasn’t anything I could have done to prevent my execution and it had been relatively painless after the torture. After Ifshar Rewede Beneklat, my captor, had departed the Chief Pain-Nurse had left the Tamaratry medical team to repair my body for crushing. The Pain-Nurse who had taken over was another Albian operative. He woke me up, told me what had happened and explained that he was going to kill the body of T’Gira so that I could escape. He then fed false feedback into the monitoring machines to make it look as though had suffered for another two days.

The next thing I knew I was back in my bed on Chausey. What worried me the most was that it seemed clear that someone in the Tamaratry hierarchy knew things that they shouldn’t. That meant that either we had a traitor, or the Tamaratry had succeeded in doing exactly what we in the Paras did - they had planted undercover operatives to gather intelligence.

Chapter II - Debrief in Tudor City
It took 10 minutes by train to get to Bishopsgate Station from Sheppey Airport in Essex. At Bishopsgate I went into the ParaTrans Station and transferred to the Bethlem ParaTrans Station in Tudor City, Nova Anglia. The move between parallels always left me feeling little-light headed and dizzy but I’ve been told it’s all psychosomatic. ParaTrans is old science now and I’ve done it hundreds of times but still the feeling of stepping into a Cubicle, seeing the doors close and then open on a whole new universe never fails to thrill me.

It was sunny but cold in Tudor City and I was glad to be in full uniform with my greatcoat tightly buttoned up as I walked over Arthur’s Bridge. The bridge was beginning to fill with tourists, shoppers and office workers on their way to work. To my right I could see the canopies of the Frost Fair and people skating on the frozen waters of the Tamesis. Beyond them was the new St Edmund’s Bridge and I could just see the Tudor Column in Nelson Square. To my left I could see the skyscrapers and towers of the Isle of Avalon in the distance beyond Bermondsey Bridge. On the south east of the bridge stood the Akshardham Cathedral which served as a place of worship for both Bharatiya Hindus and New Albion Catholics alike.

I was still early for my debrief so I stopped to have breakfast at the Frost Fair. As I walked down the steps at the end of the bridge I could smell coffee, spices and fresh bread coming from the food section at this end of the fair. I sat down under a canopy and ordered orange juice, ande ki bhurji, plain paratha and a pot of coffee as the smiling Bharatiya waitress placed blankets over my legs and shoulders.

As I sat eating my eggs I watched the families skating on the ice and kept an eye on the flatscreen hung in the corner of the canopy. There was news from the parallel we called Henry Tudor as it is the only parallel that we’ve found where Saint Arthur died young and his brother Henry became king instead of pope. The news from Henry Tudor always seemed to fascinate us Albians and the coverage was a feed from one of the Henry news channels who were filming a war somewhere in their middle-east.

The eggs were delicious and spiced just right for a cold day. As I paid the waitress my phone rang and I pressed the button on the side of my cap just before it went to voicemail. I could see my father’s features beaming at me from the vizard screen on my cap. He looked well, much younger than his sixty-two,  his full beard was only just starting to grey.

“Hello Dad,” I said as slid the screen down.

“Izzy my darling! Wonderful news!” He beamed. “I’m going to be a father again and you’re going to get a new baby sister!”

“Congratulations Pop. I wondered if you two were ever going to have your own children.” Hugh had three children from his first marriage, this would be Aesha’s first.

“Yes well, as you know we’ve been busy getting the farm going for the last few years. Between the farm, the reserves and building the new house there’s not been time for us to plan a family.”

“Well, it’s wonderful news Dad. How does Aesha feel?”

“She’s very happy, she’s on her phone speaking to her mother in Dhillika right now. Knowing Mrs Mehta she’s busy packing her case to come and stay with us already. When are you coming over Izzy? I know it’s not easy but I haven’t seen you in months.”

“I know Dad, sorry about that but I have been off the commonwealth for a few weeks, in fact I only got back yesterday.”

“I know love, I spoke to Tom Yaxley yesterday. He said that you’d had a difficult mission but you’d done a great job. Shouldn’t you get some leave now?”

“Hopefully, I could use the R & R but I’ll know more when I’ve met with Tom. In fact I meet him in 10 minutes. Can I call you later? If I do have time off coming to me I’ll try and get over for the weekend.”

“OK my child. Let me know what’s happening. I love you.” And with that he rang off, no doubt to speak to my sisters in Kumasi and Caliburn. Hugh Barnestone always liked to do things in the right order.