Chapter 1 – Izzy Barnestone

Parallel – New Albion

The colours were too bright and everything seemed to have a sharp 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 woken from death 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 my Chausey home. Standing in front of the mirror I examined the figure reflected back at me. My breasts were 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 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 on 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 on a shirt 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 30 odd 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 message 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 on the 27th of April at 16:43 from the Dhillika Deli...”

“Delete,” I instructed.

Many 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 30 years ago.

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.

As the evening progressed I caught up on social media, watched the news and ate the meal prepared by my domai. Oorar refused to leave my side and I appreciated his purring company as the dark descended over the island.