Preface to Angels Tread

Angels Tread is the final volume in the Black Angel series which was published this month.  The preface was necessary for readers who have not read the previous volumes to help explain the series and understand this story.

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Lieutenant Jezlynn Chambers was an engineering officer aboard the United Planets Alliance’s Space Service Corps Embassy Ship the Constant when it was destroyed. She woke in the mines of Ezredin as a slave, but she didn’t know who she was and had no memory of her previous life. Another slave, Khajarian T’Carta Kar, owned her, his guards having given him his royal due as a prince of Khajari.

Jezlynn had changed. She was no longer one person but became six different individual personalities. May emerged first. She is deaf, mute, and filled with fear. Any event could trigger a terrifying memory. The emotional personality Lynn emerged next. She relieved May’s fear and her own grief through song.

T'Carta escaped the mines, taking Jezlynn with him, but he released her once they reached safety. During their trip to freedom, Jesse, the social communicator and perfectionist persona emerged. She could control body time for the others.

Others emerged. Alyss is blind, but that does not hamper her logic, perception or insightful planning and predictions. She prefers no one know about her. Nael is a masculine persona who was an inventor and expert investigator. He also avoided recognition—being a man in a woman’s body was hard. Jet emerged last. She was a hyperactive, fun-loving and reckless military persona, a soldier and pilot who always protects Jezlynn as a whole.

Once free of the mines, May’s unexpected memory of Jezlynn’s military status made Jesse return to the Service Corps. She learned she had been deemed a deserter and was transferred to the Rangers to complete her service obligation, a demotion from her former Corps ‘elite’ status to a common soldier, or Ranger ‘meat.’ She served during the Alliance-Khajari war, earning distinguished service medals. Once released from the Rangers, she served on several trade ships before joining the crew of Sanker Tricome’s pirate ship. On a stopover at a non-allied space station, she found Commander Thomas Langston, another of the Constant’s supposed deserters.

When Tom’s father disowned him, his aunt gave him her last name of Thorson. Together Jesse and Tom decided to find the other Constant crewmembers deemed ‘deserters’ but were sold into slavery, a dangerous and expensive endeavor. They financed their searches by raids on Space Service Corps drone ships, finding Rafe Dakota and Henry Wakeman, among others. Eventually, Jesse’s ability with finances allowed her and Tom to proceed legally with the Pilgrim Shipping Lines.

The head of the Alliance’s intelligence department became aware Chambers was the supposedly mythical pirate, the Black Angel. He demanded she use her investigative and discovery talents for his purposes. This brought her to the attention of Undersecretary Corrao, who forced her back into the Space Service Corps with the mission to prevent another conflict with the Khajari. Onboard the Sentinel, she was under the command of Captain Lucien Krayne, the same captain with whom she had fallen in love two years previously while he investigated the Black Angel’s supposed misdeeds on the Xanthean inhabited planet Ҫiro. He is Lu to Jesse, but Krayne to Jet, and Lucien to Alyss.

Jezlynn successfully completed her Service Corps mission, but now finds herself assigned as an ambassador to negotiate a peace treaty with the Khajari.