THE LONG OF IT:

Man fled the dying Earth in great generation ships, vessels so huge, they carried hundreds of thousands of refugees. The people had no destination; they hurled themselves into the universe not from a need to explore, but out of desperation. Perhaps they’d find a new world to colonize, or perhaps their great-great grandchildren would perish in the cold of space.

But mankind didn’t perish. Over centuries of wandering the void, their governments broke down from want of results, but were replaced by something less rational than spiritual, dependent less on words than on the steel in its back. This was the new religion, supplanting the old faiths that preached submission to the will of God and the inevitability of suffering. This religion taught that survival was possible, prosperity could happen, if only through obedience to the officers of the Church.

The Church replaced not merely every other faith, but the governments as well. It grew strong, and made itself stronger. Any who refused to shelter beneath its wings were raked by its talons. The Community of God was born.

Community made good its promises. It found new worlds for man to inhabit. Some of those worlds were harsh environments requiring the grueling work of terraforming. Generations labored to wrestle planets and moons into forms that supported if not loved the presence of man. Some worlds grew rich in the gifts of nature, some less so. But all knew the iron-fisted guidance of the Community of God.

Miranda St. Billiart is one such citizen of the long-established world order. An orphan, she was raised by Church and Community and now serves as a Soldier of God. In the dictatorial theocracy that spans the known worlds, Miranda lives near the top of the food chain. She enforces Church will and destroys Church enemies be they armed insurgents or just people who wish to worship as they please. She stakes and burns heretics -- schisoids, they call them. She is feared and often resented by the people she pounds into domestication. Does Miranda like what she does? No. But better to be the iron boot than the neck beneath its sole. The terrible things she is compelled to do would be done to her if she refused her duty. So she kills heretics, she burns schisoids, and grows more revolting each day.

Then she discovers a strange thing, an inquisitor found among the defeated dregs of a schisoid community. Inquisitors are the frightening ultimate enforcers of Church will. Assassins, all women, their skills are so honed that they are considered invincible. Even Miranda, in full combat armor with the best advanced weaponry, would never consider challenging an inquisitor. And all that inquisitor might have is a knife or a sword. And their perfected skill at killing.

Now, an inquisitor has been found among the enemy, perhaps had been working with them. Even more extraordinary, the inquisitor looks exactly like Miranda. What is this? How is it possible? In a society in which family is second only to faith, how can Miranda ignore the chance that the strange woman, that assassin for the faith, might be her sister? Her twin sister?

This revelation, if indeed it is true, propels Miranda into a new, uncharted destiny. She must rescue the inquisitor from those who would see her destroyed. She must rescue the woman from herself, as well. She must discover the secret that separates twins and binds them to servitude, the same dark secret that turns an unstoppable assassin for Community against the society that bred her. Schism awaits Miranda, schism and religious war. But, perhaps in the midst of desperate conflict, she might also find herself and a reason to live. Above all, the truth beckons, and cannot be denied.

Space Fantasy - Mild Language - Action/fantasy violence

Buy On Smashwords

Buy: Ebook and Print!