Free The Poet Heroic (The Kota Series) by Sunshine Somerville Page B

down the Dominion. My brother must be stopped.”
    Off-camera, a male voice calls, “Sir! I see Dominion speeders approaching from the east!”
    Kaytrine reaches for her headset device like she’s about to jump up and run, but Beathabane motions for her to wait. He glances to the side and smiles at someone.
    “I once read an ancient story about a man in an iron mask who was imprisoned by an evil king. Legend has it that the man was the king’s twin, and the king hid him away so that he could never challenge the king.” Beathabane turns his shaved head for the camera to see the slashed Dominion tattoo. “My twin had a different approach, as you all know. But in my marked exile I’ve challenged his rule every way I can. You might not trust my face. You might not trust my ex-Dominion followers. But we will never rest until the Dominion’s evils are undone. Trust in that.”
    Kaytrine reaches to shake his hand. “Thank you, Beathabane. I’ve heard a lot about you, and you’re apparently as scholarly as they say. And inspiring. I hope you don’t mind if I try to find a more respectful title for you than ‘Beathabane,’ sir.”
    He smiles. “That would be appreciated. I-”
    “Sir!”
    “Evant, can you see-”
    Beathabane stops when suddenly the spotlight goes offline, and the whole room is now dark.
    The same male voice, presumably Evant, calls through the darkness, “My coms aren’t working!”
    “Mine either!” says a new female voice.
    Beathabane responds calmly. “They’ve zapped the power out of the building.”
    The cameraman speaks up. “Ha! Not the whole building! I’ve rigged this thing to run on a looped system that can’t be-”
    “We’d better get out of here,” says Evant. “They’ll storm the stairwell first.”
    “Nocturna,” Beathabane orders, “go check our exit.”
    “Okay, I’m on it,” says the woman.
    The noise of a chair scraping back is loudest over other noises of scuffling.
    “Thank you,” Beathabane must be saying to Kaytrine.
    “Merci,” she answers. She groans angrily, then continues to speak in a stream of Dominion-unauthorized babble.
    “Ah, crap,” says the cameraman. “The power cut must’ve knocked her translator offline too.”
    “That’s exactly what she just said,” says Evant.
    Kaytrine tries in English, “I thank for interview. Okay if I call you… Poet Heroic? That not right. I mean…”
    “No,” laughs Beathabane. “That’s perfect. I’d be honored.”
    “Sir,” says Evant, “we have to go!”
    Sounds of gunfire erupt from some distance away.
    “Yeah, sounds like the end of an interview to me,” says the cameraman.
     

Author Information
     

         Sunshine Somerville lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She self-published her first book in college in 2004 and has been evolving The Kota Series since she was nine, basing the story on childhood fantasies derived from watching too much X-Men and Star Wars and reading too much The Chronicles of Narnia and A Wrinkle in Time .
         She would like to point out that, yes, this is her real name.
     
    For more, visit:
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