The Dragons of Ordinary Farm (Ordinary Farm Adventures, # 1).
Author: Tad Williams
Date: 2009-01-02 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy; dragons; Young Adult; Childrens; Middle Grade; Adventure; Fiction; Juvenile; Urban Fantasy; Young Adult Fantasy
Description: Tyler and Lucinda have to spend summer vacation with their ancient uncle Gideon, a farmer. They think they're in for six weeks of cows, sheep, horses, and pigs. But when they arrive in deserted Standard Valley, California, they discover that Ordinary Farm is, well, no ordinary farm. The bellowing in the barn comes not from a cow but from a dragon. The thundering herd in the valley? Unicorns. Uncle Gideon's sprawling farmhouse never looks the same twice. Plus, there's a flying monkey, a demon squirrel, and a barnload of unlikely farmhands with strange accents and even stranger powers. At first,
Publisher: HarperCollins

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Copyright © 2015

Thirsty Bird Productions

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in retrieval systems, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recorded or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

For more books by the author

GregDragon.com

For more information on Anstractor – the world

Anstractor.com

Chart of Memories

Memory 1

Memory 2

Memory 3

Memory 4

Memory 5

Memory 6

Memory 7

Memory 8

Memory 9

Memory 10

Memory 11

Memory 12

About The Author

Memory 1

Warp crystals came in a variety of sizes, shapes and colors, but they all did the same thing – they teleported their masters from one place to another. What the dark education taught Phasers was that life as they knew it was only the structured half of the plane of existence. There are two sides to life’s canvas. There is the painted side—the one we all experience in life—and then there is the back of the canvas—the void that only a select few can access. The crystals give us access to the void; through it we can travel speeds that are faster than light. Transcend death, and explore the Multiverse.

Using a crystal is akin to ripping a hole into life’s canvas and walking through it to the back, only to re-emerge through another hole in another section of the paint. This movement, or “jump,” to the non-detailed back of the canvas is beyond mortal understanding. But for the Phasers, it is the galaxies’ deepest secret, a secret that grants them immortality.

– Aurora SYN, Biographer

It was a bright afternoon in Zallus, Vestalia and Rafian VCA was darting through the city’s streets, hopping from rooftop to rooftop, chasing his wife, Marian, in order to apologize. For the residents of the city of Zallus, it would have looked like a black shadow whisking by, but Rafian was more concerned with reaching his wife than to worry about spooking anyone. Before Marian could reach the exterior gates, Rafian, jumped off a particularly tall structure, somersaulted several times, and landed in front of her with his hands resting on her light hover-bike, preventing it from continuing forward.

Marian had known that someone was trailing her, but was unaware it was her husband. Therefore, when he sprung, she was ready and flew off the bike with her las-sword free. The wind produced a thick cloud of dust from the road, forcing her to shield her eyes as she moved in on her attacker. But she stopped short when she recognized the form of her husband, as he stood with his hands on her hover bike.

“I could have killed you Rafian! WHAT…THE…HELL?”

“I’m sorry.”

Rafian used his hand to fan away the dust as he approached the battle-ready Marian and hugged her tightly. She stayed rigid, and he knew that his earlier words were still on her mind.

She looked up at his dark brown face. It was slightly obscured by the sand, but his teeth gleamed through, annoying her even more. She pushed him off and his handsome features contorted into a mask of pure disappointment.

“Why would you say such a cold and calloused thing to me, Rafian? The Lucan galaxy is my home; I have blood relatives on Tyhera. Why would you say there is nothing left for me there?”

She was screaming at him as she powered down her sword and re-sheathed it. A crowd of onlookers came around to investigate the source of the yelling. As the citizens of Zallus approached the couple, Rafian felt embarrassed.

“I didn’t mean for it to come out that way,” he said. “All I could think about was the great progress we’ve made here, and how much it would hurt our cause if we were to lose you.”

Staring at him with disbelief, Marian walked up close to his tall frame so that only he could hear what she had to say. “It’s funny how life works,” she said. She crossed her arms defensively, looking off to the side. “I used to have a husband who adored me. I married a man who placed me above his war, his quest for revenge and his organization. I had a husband who cared about saving people – all people – not just those from his beloved Vestalia. I HAD a husband, who came into my world, my Lucan world, and helped a revolution grow so strong, that it could take out a well-established Empire. That husband would have heard me when I asked to return to my world, to check in on things. And he would have supported me. What happened to that man, Rafian?”

As she fought back the tears, Marian hopped back onto the hover-bike, then sped away towards their home.

What the hell is wrong with me? Rafian asked himself, as he dusted off his clothes and ran after her.

~*~*~*~

While Rafian VCA was on Vestalia chasing his wife, the marines of the Missio-tral were about to have major problems in deep space. A large Geralos destroyer drifted silently towards the area where the battle cruiser Missio-tral was located. After losing Zynec Prime on Vestalia to the Phasers, the Geralos leaders had decided to stay quiet for a time. Their plan: let the humans settle in before making a move against the fleet.

Missio-tral was a ship built exclusively for war. It had seen numerous battles, and was able to fight and jump away easily whenever things got too hot. Therefore, the Geralos wanted to sneak up on them and disable their jump drive, so that the humans would be forced to stand and fight.

When the Geralos were close enough to see the Missio-tral on their jump-radar, they began firing missiles and plasma rockets into its hull. Feeling desperate and overly exposed to the Geralos, the Missio-tral fired back at the battleship and sent out a distress signal to another Alliance battleship known as the Rendron.

~*~*~*~

By the time Rafian made it home it was evening, and he found his wife inside an erected watchtower that stood outside of their cavern home. She looked beautiful. Her dress was a silken, sand-colored thing made from a single piece of material. It was draped to keep things modest while being supported solely by a jeweled cord, loosely tied at the waist. Her hair was blowing wildly in the wind as she looked down upon the force field and lights that bordered their little city. She had seen her husband walking up the hill towards her, but she paid him no mind and stood with her hands akimbo, like a powerful goddess overlooking a civilization that worshipped her.

Climbing the steps to where Marian stood on the tower, Rafian placed his hands on her hips and spun her around. He touched his nose to hers in the standard greeting of Tyheran lovers. Marian allowed him to kiss her, but then she backed away to watch the disappointment in his eyes.

“You’re dusty and dirty, Raf. I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

Laughing and nodding at the rejection, Rafian countered, “Dirty? I can fix that in fifteen minutes if you promise to stay up here, just like you are now, so that I can come back and ravage you.”

Marian did not seem very interested and as he made to leave, she caught his arm and shook her head for him not to go. “Rafian, we’re alone, so I have to ask.”

He tensed up in anticipation of her saying that she was leaving him or something equally devastating.

“Where is Camille YAN?” she asked. “Ever since we discussed what to do about your relationship with her, she has gone off the grid completely. No one is saying anything and your dark, erratic mood has me thinking that the worst has happened.”

Marian had managed to slip out of his hands and stood with her arms crossed. Her eyes watched him intently for lies or any attempt to change the subject.

“Marian, Camille is not dead and she hasn’t been banished, so don’t worry about it.”

“Of course she isn’t dead, or in another galaxy like you claim, but she is somewhere that isn’t here. I would like to know where. She helped to start our agency, and at this, the most crucial hour of our cause, she is missing. Where the hell is she?”

Rafian could see that Marian would not give up her probing and was looking for him to lie so she could call him on it. He and Tayden, his sub-Commander, both knew of Camille’s fate, but had agreed that, until she was released, they would make up a false story for anyone who asked. Camille had no close friends outside of Rafian, so he assumed that no one would bother to pry. But here was Marian—in all of her fiery persistence—wondering about the truth.

“Camille is on a psych ship being evaluated and treated, Rhee,” he said, using the nickname he’d coined for her. “I would appreciate it if this stayed between us—”

“Who exactly would I tell? I know you think I hate her, but you’re wrong about that. I really do care about her and simply wanted to know where she was.”

Marian walked towards the edge of the tower. She leaned against the decorative metal railing that bordered its edges, and looked over the expanse of land that held the city and their military operation. Rafian stood watching her, admiring her slender but strong body. He was still very much in love with his wife. She made his heart do things that he couldn’t explain, and he knew that he hadn’t told her enough how much he loved her. She began to speak again but this time it was in her native Tyheran tongue.

“Thank you for telling me the truth. But I won’t lie and say it makes me feel any better about her ending up there. I did not want anything like that to happen. I have extended so much of myself to try and be friends with her, but she has never returned the gesture.”

She closed her eyes and shook her head before taking in a breath and changing the subject. “You haven’t been a good husband to me lately, Rafian. You are short with me, you keep things from me and you lie. I know that a lot of it has to do with her and I wonder if we were back on my planet, would things have been different. What I mean Raf, is that if you hadn’t lost your memory, would you still have fallen in love with me?”

Rafian thought long and hard on Marian’s question. It was a legitimate inquiry and she deserved an honest answer. He thought about the events of that day, when he and his feisty future-wife had squared off. That fateful day when he’d chanced upon her aboard a starship, weeks after they had tried to kill one another.

The memory put a smile on his face. He walked over to Marian and regarded her as if she were brand new. Her skin appeared as flawless, molded clay and her full lips curled in annoyance, as if she wondered what it was that he was up to. She was still his wild, Tyheran kitten, forever loyal to him, but hardly tamed. During the rebellion, she had switched allegiances for him when their love had forced them to choose a side. On her right forefinger sat the beautiful black ring he had given her back when she had agreed to be his wife.

“Rienne.”

The name made her flinch. No one had called her Rienne in ages. Not since the day she’d changed her name and identity to join her new husband and his.

Her lips parted slightly to ask him why, but Raf cut her off to continue what he was saying. “Nothing in this life could have changed the way I felt about you when we met and squared off that crazy afternoon in Veece,” he told her. “Even when I could barely remember what you looked like, I thought of you. And it wasn’t some admiration thing due to you holding your own against me in a fight. I couldn’t admit it then, but I had fallen in love with you.” With that he took her delicate hands into his own and looked into her eyes.

“We’re meant to be, my Tyheran hatch kitten. To think that I got blinked away to another galaxy and stumbled into the house of an enemy agent, not to get captured, but to gain a life partner. You need not question whether things would change if I had remembered Camille. In my heart, I believe that nothing would change, even if I had my memory.”

Marian stared into her husband’s eyes and Rafian could see the fight disappear from them as she remembered what they had been through and the deep love they shared for one another. She wanted to rub his baldhead and feel the bristles of hair growing back—it was something she always did whenever they were together. But she was upset with him and she could not let the physical urges she felt for him interfere with her feelings.

“Raf, what happened to us? In Luca, we were inseparable. You even considered retiring from the war so that we could be a family. Now that we’re here in Anstractor, I realize that it will never happen, but I was good with it because I knew that you would make my coming here worth it. When you shook off my concern for my people today, it really hurt me. I would have rather you had shot me instead of the way you made me feel earlier. I felt like I was in your way, like a toy you had grown tired of. It made me hate you. And it made me wonder, ‘why would he bring me here just to hurt me?’”

“If I vow to you, right here and right now, that I will never come between you and your family again, that I will do what I can to support you until they win their freedom, will you promise to forgive me and forget all of this?”

Marian smiled. “Yes, I can promise the forgive part; I can definitely do that. The forget part? I am not so sure about that one. That one is a bit beyond my control, Commander.”

She grabbed him by the beard and touched her forehead to his. They hugged and then separated to watch the shape of a large cruiser land and deploy a number of Phasers into the city.

“Probably going home to see their families.” Marian said, as if her mind were a million miles away.

“Are you okay, Rhee?”

“I’m just thinking, Rafian, I’m twenty four and you’re twenty six. I just really wish we could have children.”

The words were already out when her eyes found his to apologize silently. When Rafian had joined the organization—prior to his first jump, the dark education and meeting her—part of the Jumper’s process had been to sterilize the membership. Marian would not learn about this until she had followed her new husband home, ignorant of the hell that was going on in his galaxy and ignorant to the situation that he was in. She knew the reminder was painful to him but she had not done it out of spite. She was feeling emotional and the words had just come out.

Those members who’d joined the organization in recent years were lucky because the prospect of having a family was still a reality for them. Tayden Lark had taken the old rules of sterilization and dehumanization out of the training. But men and women like herself, Rafian, and Camille YAN were from the old, original order, and therefore lacked the ability to reproduce.

“I think I’m going to go take that shower now, Rhee.” Rafian said, his enthusiasm to reconcile with his wife now gone.

The only thing he wanted to do was wash up and retire for the night. He hated the thought of not having the ability to have children, and had always told himself he would find a way to reverse the process. Marian reminding him of his shortcomings made him want to get away from her as quickly as possible. He did not like that his first thought in uncomfortable relations was to run away, but that was how he had always dealt with the women in his life. Marian moved quickly to bar his exit, with speed that only a Phaser agent possessed, and while he could have dashed past her to descend the ladder, he let her stop him, curious as to what she had to say. Did she mention children out of some petty attempt at revenge for what he had done? Surely she was above that.

“Look, Raf. Stay. Wait. Please. I look over the massive city that you and I helped to make a reality and IT is our baby. We have developed something that meant a new start to a lot of refugees, and it will grow to become something wonderful. Can you believe it? Vestalians are back on Vestalia! Thanks to us! People that lived on vessels in space for an eternity are on solid earth. They are eating of its plants and animals, as your ancestors did prior to the Geralos. We did this!”

She was desperate and wanted to see him smile or nod – anything but that dark, downwards glance that he’d held once she mentioned children. He knew what she was doing and felt sorry for her, so he feigned a smile to appease her.

Marian knew it wasn’t genuine but she took it as an opening and continued to press. “When you built our home in that cave, you chose this hill because it’s hard to see what’s going on up here, right?”

Rafian nodded. “Yeah, it has a strategic advantage for us, should anything happen to the city.”

She grabbed his face and kissed him, and he didn’t notice that her dress had slipped off to rest upon her tiny, slipper-covered feet. She was really trying, and though he wanted to object, his body quickly surrendered to her touch. When he reached for her hips he noticed that she was naked and all of the anger faded from his mind as he enjoyed the warmth of her flesh.

They kissed each other passionately and she ran her nails down his spine in a way that forced his 3B suit to pop open and fall to the floor, joining her dress.

Rafian was right about the tower being hard to spy from the city below. There would be no one to see them on the top of that tall tower on the hill, or hear the things being uttered in Tyheran by Marian VCA.

~*~*~*~

“We’ve lost the Missio-tral,” the sad voice said.

Rafian sat on top of the tower, looking out at the lights of the city as the night breeze blew cold against his exposed skin. Marian had gone inside to shower and prepare for bed, but he could not join her due to the desperate call that had come through on his comm. Alliance soldiers were seeking his assistance with a Geralos strike. It was the last thing they’d expected the lizards to do and he realized that the alliance had been caught sleeping—which had cost them the lives of over a thousand soldiers.

“Was Val on Missio-tral?” he asked.

“No, the Colonel is actually on his way to Meluvia. I have to call him next, and it is not a call that I am looking forward to,” Aurora said.

“I can break the news to him if you want, sis.”

“No, Raf, it’s my job, so let me do it. I just know that everyone he knows was on that ship…”

“Not everyone.”

“Well, it is as much his home as Helysian was, Raf.”

“I know. Tell the commander that I have the intel and we will do what we need to do. I need him to get the Helysian out of the First Quadrant as quickly as possible and remain cloaked until that destroyer is taken care of.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Aury?”

“Yeah Raf?”

“I want you to leave Helysian as soon as you can and come down here with us.”

“You mean, there, on Vestalia?”

“Yeah, I want you where I can protect you. I’m not able to do that with you on the other side of the galaxy. Let them jump away and you come here with me and Marian. Can you do this for me?”

“I don’t know Raf. I have Luc here and the baby and… I’ll think about it and talk to him about it, okay?”

“Alright sis, but if you take too long, then I’ll take it as a yes.”

“Are the Phasers going to destroy the Geralos ship, Rafian?”

“We will be destroying that piece of schtill, oh don’t you worry—and a whole lot more. Just stay high and dry until things settle. Come home, baby sister. Vestalians are meant to be on the ground.”

He had not spoken to his sister, Aurora in over a month. As he thought of the friends he had lost on the Missio-tral, a wave of sadness overtook him. The sadness slowly turned into rage, and he considered going after the Geralos himself. However, he was Supreme Leader now and he had people that could do it without him having to be there. He looked over at the cave entrance of his home and the shapely silhouette of Marian stood at the doorway, waiting. She was always impressive with her dress. The sheer nightgown she wore barely concealed her form, and her hair was wrapped up in a towel. It could have been a crown for all he cared. It reminded him of how much he had to lose if he made a rash decision.

With much hesitation he flipped through his holographic Rolodex to the letter ‘Y.’ There would need to be an indirect attack on the Geralos command, since any direct assault on a primed destroyer would be suicide.

~*~*~*~

After the destruction of the Missio-tral, a tiny, black ship flew out towards the area of space where the Helysian sat. Even though it was within the larger ship’s radars, it remained undetected.

“Aurora, did you see that blip?” Aren TRU shouted to his fellow navigator. They were sitting at their posts, watching several large screens for any suspicious activity.

Aurora patted her afro nervously as she focused on the area. “There are always blips, Mister Paranoid,” she said, making a face. “It was probably a chunk of debris, floating close to the base.”

“It was moving pretty fast for debris,” he replied. His tan baldhead shone beneath the lights of the bridge. I wonder if it’s your brother doing one of those cool Phaser jumps or whatever.”

“I wish it were my brother. I haven’t seen him in months.”

As Aren and Aurora spoke, the tiny ship slid comfortably through Helysian’s shields and attached itself to the hull.

Maes Van Senthyn slipped on his skin suit and checked his reflection in the holo-display to make sure that he looked flawlessly human. He practiced his speech through an untested vo-corder and though he sounded good; he wondered if the people on board the Helysian would be convinced. He had no time to second-guess himself, so he took a deep breath and stepped through the rigged airlock. The blast doors slammed shut to protect the ship and he was onboard instantly. There was no turning back now, so he focused on his mission—he was to get onboard, blend in with the humans, and report on the Phasers.

The Geralos had chosen him for this mission because of his record. He was an unmatched spy and a brilliant practitioner of the martial arts. If any one of the humans or Meluvians were to see through his ruse, he would dispatch them quickly. There was to be no failure in this mission. The future of his people depended on it, and he was honored to have been the one chosen. He ducked behind a discarded torpedo when a few soldiers walked by. They were laughing and talking about the meal they’d just had so they paid very little attention to their surroundings.

I wish this were a standard mission so that I could slit their stupid, smooth throats, Maes thought to himself. But he let it pass. There would only be blood as a last resort. He waited until the hall was empty and then stepped out once more to look around.

“Wow! Now there’s something I haven’t seen in a long time,” a pretty, dark-haired cadet said when she saw the tall, pale-skinned man emerge from behind the torpedoes.

“Something wrong with my appearance?” he asked her shyly, and she giggled at how oddly he moved and spoke.

She couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old and Maes noticed that the 3B suit she wore looked extremely different from the one he was wearing. He had stolen it from the body of a fallen soldier during the takeover of an Alliance vessel several years back.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to be odd,” Maes said. “I am new here – really. I was on the ship Messio-tral before it got destroyed.”

The young girl gave him a sympathetic look and then led him out of the room and into a massive, well-lit hallway where humans, Casanians, and Meluvians were walking past one another en masse. It was the first time Maes had seen so many of them in one place and it was so much to take in that he almost panicked.

“You don’t like people, do you?” the young girl asked.

Maes permitted himself to shake his head in response. He had studied human behavior for months and had passed his tests with flying colors. Nevertheless, good grades and high marks did not translate smoothly to life, however, and after a time, he began to get many stares from the other humans.

“Why do you think they are laughing at me?” he asked the girl.

“My name is Jayne, what is yours?” she asked, ignoring his question.

“I am Sako,” Maes told her. “Sako Trynessis. Pleasure to meet you, young Jayne of Helysian.”

“Sako, the funny way you talk, your odd stomp walk and that horribly old 3B suit you’re wearing … that is why they stare at you. You stick out like a Geralos!”

Maes panicked when she said this and stopped to drop into a defensive maneuver to thwart off anyone that would attack him now that she had blown his cover.

“The Geralos aren’t really here, silly,” Jayne said, shaking her head. “I was making a point. You’re a jumpy one. See, this is where everyone hangs out. This is where you can buy some new 3B that is of the times.” She chuckled. “And you can get a haircut, too. I’m not sure what they did on Missio-tral—those poor souls—but I can see that military fashion was not happening there.”

Maes thanked his young escort and took another breath to calm himself as he tried his best not to stick out. The girl had noticed his oddness too quickly so he knew he had to try harder.

He looked around. The place was a mall of sorts, with flashing lights, long lines and people speaking loudly—it was everything he hated about the Vestalians. He placed some credits on the panel of a sales kiosk and then watched them vanish as the machine ordered him to stand still. Within seconds, he was in a slick 3B suit of bright silver. Now he looked as stylish as the other young people that were on the ship; now he really fit in.

“That color suits you,” a baldheaded Meluvian said to him. She walked up and deposited her own credits to purchase a maroon and silver version. “How does this color look with my skin?” she asked.

“It looks very attractive on you, Miss …?”

“Ura, Ura Dohn. I’m the cadet commander. Funny, I would think you would know that.”

“Oh, I’m Sako – ma’am, pardon my manners. I am not from this ship. I was rescued and brought here after Messio—”

“A refugee? Wow, this must be a terrible time for you, Sako. I am so sorry for your loss!”

“Thank you, Lady Dohn, I appreciate you talking to me.”

“Lady Dohn? Wow, I like that. You hear that, children? This young man called me Lady Dohn. If you want extra points on your physicals, you should do the same,” she announced loudly to every cadet within earshot. Then she winked at Sako and made to leave the busy hub.

Maes felt good about the exchange. She was an adult Meluvian—a race with more acute senses than human beings—and she had not seen him for what he was, even when he’d made the dumb mistake of calling her “lady.” He continued to meet new people, his confidence growing as he did so. Within a week he would be just like them, indiscernible to anyone he came across. He got a haircut, moved into a dorm, and started taking military classes. It was very easy for him to get inside, even though he had no record on the Helysian file system.

~*~*~*~

Yuth Varience was a legend on his home planet of Louine. He had left the comfort of a plush palace, several husbands and wives, and a promised lifetime of luxury in order to join the humans in their fight against the Geralos.

The united governments of Louine had given in to the foolish notion that they would be left alone by the lizards once they had consumed all of humanity and made themselves the rulers of Anstractor. They wanted nothing to do with the war and chose to sit out, hoping the Geralos would notice, consider them a peaceful, non-threatening ally, and leave them alone. Yuth had been one of the premier pilots during the Davinine World War. He was a national hero, but war had changed him immensely.

Unlike the other “heroes” that decided to accept the easy life or substitute their uniforms for the formal robes of a politician, Yuth had wanted to take his heroics beyond his planet to help the galaxy. After three years of fighting and showcasing his brilliance as a tactician, Yuth was invited to join the Phasers.

Yuth was a mystery to his fellow Phasers. As a Lyrian from Louine, his looks were exotic. Lyrians were the color of the Vestalian Sea at its shallowest point, a beautiful aquamarine. Their blue canvas was broken by white-lined tattoos that were mostly random at birth but held patterns that revealed his lineage. Lyrians were a handsome race, all cheekbones, shapely skulls, and tiny blunted spikes that grew in the places where hair would grow for a Vestalian.

The average Lyrian height was six feet and they had three strong fingers on each hand and foot. From a distance—color aside—it would be hard to distinguish a Lyrian from a human, but the two races could not be any more different, especially when it came to their customs

Throughout his career Yuth had been approached by many men and women from different agencies, and he’d indulged them whenever he could. But he found them odd even as he played along to learn more about them. It was one of these women that he had allowed to convince him to join the Phaser Agency. Her name was Tayden Lark. The Phaser agency was everything that Yuth could dream of as a career soldier, and he believed they had the tools and abilities to truly affect change.

Once a Phaser recruit, Yuth had quickly passed the tests and excelled to the point where he joined the elite Phaser Aces. This gave him a position of leadership and though he enjoyed being out in the field, he was extremely happy with his rank and wanted to help make the agency even better.

When Yuth Varience received the call from his commander, it was at a very late hour. But to have Rafian VCA call him personally for a mission meant it was something that required his personal touch. What Rafian wanted him to do seemed impossible and insane, but he knew this was a test to see if he was worthy. A challenge from the top Phaser was the greatest of honors and who better to do it than Louine’s own Vyther Ret (Bringer of Death)?

It was a week later when Yuth uncloaked his Whyte after flying through the steamy atmosphere of Geral. The Whyte was one of the newer stealth ships that used reflective technology to appear invisible to the naked eye. For the radars, a skilled pilot would cloak for the ten minutes that it was up and then utilize low altitude to allow the cloaking to recharge. He knew how to remain unseen and he was able to do it with older ships that had no technology outside of a fast thruster engine.

After several hours of invisible flight—to make it to the bustling city of Rudshe—Yuth armed his guns, bit into a Softex pill and prepped for the beginning of his lengthy mission. He banked the Whyte around a high-rise, then climbed and landed on its rooftop. He unlocked his seatbelt and then secured his mask and weapons before saying a few silent prayers and hopping out onto the roof.

A light rain fell and the sky was a gray soup of mist, clouds and occasional lightning. There were some patrols flying around the buildings but Yuth was certain they would not see the ship due to its unique surface.

He wore a COREX mask attached to his 3B suit; it was a Louine invention and one that most Phasers had not adapted yet. The mask was one that stuck close to the skin, and its entire front panel was transparent so that the wearer looked as if he wore a tight hood with a piece of glass covering the face. The advantage of the COREX in comparison to a 3B mask was that it increased visibility. It could also track heat and cold signatures just by translating the wearer’s thoughts. This alien technology demanded that the mask could only have one user in its lifetime, as it could confuse owners and hurt its wearer. One other advantage the COREX had was its ability to stop the Geralos from invading the wearer’s mind. It was for this reason that Yuth wore it. It was also why he encouraged Rafian to make it a mandatory part of the battle uniform.

As he moved to the rear of the Whyte and made to descend the building, he triggered the cloak on his 3B suit and leapt off the side before the drones could see him. He had five minutes of invisibility before the suit would have to recharge and he knew it would take a lot longer to reach the streets below. The building was a skyscraper so he triggered the wings of his suit, jumped, and began a slow glide towards the streets below. As he descended, he pulled a pistol from the small of his back and held it at the ready in case he was spotted. He reached into a pouch that was at his waist and took out a small clip filled with crystal bullets. He fired a shot into the ground near a dark alley, then retracted the 3B suit’s wings and jumped through the beckoning crystal portal (tear) to teleport to the area that he had shot.

Phaser Aces used crystal guns to instantly teleport during firefights, but Yuth used it in just about every mission to perform maneuvers that gave him an edge over the enemy. He blinked out and appeared in the area where he had shot the crystal, then leaned down to retrieve it and placed it carefully back inside the pouch. He turned off the cloak and pulled out his las-sword as he walked out towards the main area of the city, keeping to the shadows as best he could to avoid detection.

When he emerged from the alley to the dirty side street of the slums, he looked up and off to the distance and saw the large command center for the Geralos Navy. He felt his two hearts skip with joy at how close he had managed to land without detection. He then slunk back into the alley, where he touched the side of his mask and called Rafian VCA to update him on his status.

“Commander, I’m at the heart.”

“You’re one hell of a Phaser, Yuth! Stay dark down there until you hear from us. We will send supplies through the tear to hold you and if you need company, just let me or Tayden know. We can join or switch places with you.”

“These type of operations get busted whenever there are multiple agents, Commander,” Yuth said. “I can hold out for as long as you need me to. Once I get the go-ahead I will move on the city and take the command center out. They will be clueless as to what caused it to happen, and I will be back in space to assist with the assault on that destroyer.”

“Call me if you need anything. I will move fast so that you are not stuck down there for too long.”

“Thanks, Commander.” Yuth hung up.

Rafian looked back to see if Marian was still waiting in the doorway, but she was gone and the lights had been powered down. He wanted to jump for joy at the quick success that Yuth had had on the enemy’s planet but he resisted the urge. Phasers were good, but an Ace like Yuth was in another class. He pumped his fist into the air and then ducked back into the cave to see if he could catch Marian before she went to sleep.

~*~*~*~

“How do you become a Phaser?” Maes asked Aurora SYN as she walked ahead of him, up the ramp to the ship’s bridge. He was carrying her boxes of files, and she was scolding him about annoying her fellow officers.

“That’s an odd question to be asking me, cadet,” she responded. “Having high aspirations, I see.”

“Yes, ma’am. I would like to be in the Special Forces one day an—“

“Well, you don’t become a Phaser, cadet,” Aurora said. “They choose you. Where did you say you were from again? I didn’t realize that Messio-Tral even had cadets. Were you on a field trip there or something?”

Maes smiled. “Yes, a field trip! I was there from the destroyer Rendron, with—“

“You mean, battleship? The Rendron is a battleship.” When she said this, Aurora spun on her heels to face him and looked him over with curiosity. She touched her fluffy afro and knitted her brow, then raised her voice a bit when she spoke to him. “You aren’t being honest with me, Sako – if that is even your real name. Who are you, really, and why are you on my ship?”

Maes wondered how quickly he could throw the boxes at her, draw his hidden las-sword and cut her head off before escaping. But this was a finesse job, and he had been chosen because of his skills as a spy, not because of his sword arm. Killing Aurora would grant him the greatest pleasure but she was not a Phaser; she was his key to finding the Phasers, so he would have to play the game.

“I am sorry Captain, it was foolish to lie,” he said, his tone apologetic. “See, the truth is… I do not really know who I am. The ship got attacked and I must have blacked out.”

He watched her expressions to see if she was buying it. If she so much as suggested that she knew what he was, he would have no choice but to snatch her life from her body.

Her expression softened so he continued. “My only recollection of anything was waking up on this ship to strangers and questions that were both hostile and foreign to me.”

Aurora smiled at him and pinched his cheek. She led him to her station where he placed the boxes down neatly at her feet. He made to excuse himself from her presence.

She stopped him. “Hold up, Sako. I am sorry. I have met many Phasers—some have come from the ranks of this very ship and it is a testament to our training and dedication to the cause that it has worked out like that.”

“How come you aren’t a Phaser, Captain SYN?” he asked as she plopped down into her chair and crossed her legs in the most graceful way.

She looked up at him with her large brown eyes and shook her head as if he was hopeless. “I am a navigator, not a field warrior, Sako. The Phasers are shock troops. They are in firefights, sword fights and constant violence. For this, they only recruit the top warriors that excel at combat. There is no place for map pushers and number crunchers. Once you become a Phaser, they take you away from your loved ones – even your family. You belong to their order and for that sacrifice you get all sorts of magical powers and immortality.”

“Immortality!”

“Was that a hiss?” Her eyes grew wide as she looked around. “What in the maker’s name… that was an interesting sound you made just now.” She laughed at him, then covered her mouth. “Wherever are you from?”

“I’m sorry,” Mae said quickly. “It wasn’t a hiss—I was just very surprised. So Phasers cannot die?”

“No, they can’t and this is why they are not allowed to have families, or come to see their sweet baby sister once in a thyping while.” Aurora looked down with some frustration. She shouldn’t have sworn.

She seemed annoyed and Maes surmised that a past lover or family member of hers had become a Phaser. “Do you have someone there?” he asked.

“Don’t worry about that, Sako,” Aurora said. “This was a good talk, but I have work to do. We have files on the Phasers in the ship’s library. Go do some reading – maybe they will sate your curiosity. Do not get your hopes up about joining them, though. It can become obsession and it will lead you to a very uneventful career. Trust me, I have seen it several times before with cadets. It isn’t a pretty picture.”

He thanked Aurora and walked from the bridge to the light-train, where he rode it to the library and pulled up the Phaser archives. However, the information there was either sparse or exaggerated, so they were no help. The Phasers were a mystery, but with Aurora knowing so much and having a loved one within their ranks, he knew he would have to stick close to her. The exchange they’d had earlier revealed to him just how easy she would be to break. All he would have to do was play her until she trusted him. Eventually she would crack and tell him everything he needed to know.

Memory 2

“In time, I will learn how to stay on your good side, Rhee,” Rafian joked as he poured milk into Marian’s glass.

She sat at the tall table, bouncing her right knee rapidly. She always seemed to have limitless energy and could not sit still to save her life. “Ever wonder which one of us is the most messed up?” she asked, looking up at him from her glass.

He sat next to her and rested his left hand on her leg to make her stop. “Sometimes I do, but I settle on me being the crazy one. You are just a spoiled Tyheran that never got used to the words ‘no’, ‘stop it’, or ‘behave yourself.’”

“Well, at least I learned how to love before I became an adult. I really wish I could blink back about fifteen years and make you watch a vid on coupling, companionship, or just general empathy.”

“Although you’re joking, I do hope you realize that I love you, Marian, even in my limited capacity. I do love you,” he said, squeezing her knee gently and staring into her eyes.

The sparks of light that danced around inside of her pupils were jumping around rapidly now. It was how he could tell that she was upset with him.

“I know you do, Rafian, but you and I have very different definitions of the word. Your dealings with the young girls on Helysian and whoever else has been with you has damaged you in ways you will never realize.”

“Okay, that’s enough now,” he said, snatching his hand off of her leg and furrowing his brow with frustration. He knew that she was pressing him like she always did whenever there was a spat.

“Just know that I am not crazy, Rafian VCA. I am just a woman from Tyhera who sees things differently from the marines of that ship where you grew up, okay?”

“The marines on the Helysian see eye to eye with you on matters of trust, love and infidelity, Marian. It was the Jumpers and the dark education that made me into what I am. I will never see sex the way you see it, and like it or not, that makes me a powerful weapon as a Phaser. We use everything at our disposal to get the edge. We use our knowledge, our skills, our weapons and yes, we use our willingness to have sex. This means that eventually you will find yourself in bed with a man that isn’t me, just like I will find myself with other women. Do you not remem—“

“I know what I signed up for, Raf,” she barked at him. The milk was ready to fall from the table as she gestured wildly. Her temper was flaring up but it was too late to rein it in. “Don’t repeat it to me as if I am some newborn, boomer fetus that just hopped onto a planet for the first time. I know that I will thype other men and women when it’s absolutely necessary, but gods damn it Raf, here, where we call home, I will only have sex with you. Is that so much to ask of you in return? As Phasers we own nothing, but as a show of loyalty, commitment and love—and as my chosen life-partner, I ask that you show me some respect and do the same.”

“I am sorry, Marian, how many times must I say it? Should I remove a finger to prove to you that I am finished with that nonsense, or will you be willing to drop it and start fresh with me on my oath?”

“How many women have you slept with here in the city, Raf?”

The question made him pause, since it was direct and unexpected, and as he stalled with indecision, he reminded himself that he was to be completely honest with her. She was beautiful in her black, silken robe, even with her hair wild and unkempt, but the rage that she now held in her eyes made her ugly. Rafian stared at her as he ate his eggs and he knew that lying to her would be the worst thing he could do at that moment.

Thype it all, he thought to himself as he looked up at her. Better to own it and lay it all out in the open than to keep up the lies and the hiding. Face it like a Phaser!

“Karla, Jolani, Marit, Goane, Rita and of course, Tayden. There are others, but the ones I mentioned are—were—regular bouts for me. But of course, you know this from the recruits that you had spying on me.”

Marian began to cry and it surprised Rafian so much that he dropped his eating sticks to rush over and console her. He felt guilty for hurting her with his words and he couldn’t stand to see her cry. When he got to her side, she punched him in the groin so hard that he vomited food all over her arm and collapsed to the ground, holding his crotch.

“You chased me down yesterday, took the time to remind me of a time when I would have cut an arm off just to be with you, and then you tell me this? After all that we have been through, all of what we mean to each other, you still manage to give these unproven crutas what you know is mine? Is variety all that you care about, Rafian? Or is it some strange, perverted mission that you have to thype every woman you consider pretty within your vicinity?”

She reached down and grabbed his arm and helped him to his seat before sitting back down in front of him and brushing the hair out of her face. He was about to speak, but she motioned for him to remain quiet and kept on with the scolding.

“Do you know that I will kill you if you continue to make me feel low like this? Seriously kill you. Without a care for the war, the state of the human race, or whatever prophecy you are fulfilling. You are to make me, your wife—if you can remember—happy, as I am to make you, my husband, happy. Gods know that thyping you daily, joining your war and being there to hear you when you speak has not been enough to make you happy, but it is my charge to keep trying. All I ask in return is that you do the same. For me, it’s easy. All I want is your commitment beyond me wearing your ring and carrying your designated name.”

“You know, Rhee, I really, really, wish you wouldn’t resort to violence with me whenever things are not going your way,” he said as he practiced a monk’s level of patience in keeping his cool. He bit down hard and inhaled slowly. She is worth it, she is worth it, he kept repeating to himself. He looked as if he was about to pass out, and she forced herself not to look at him as the guilt began to take over her.

She got up and washed the vomit from her arm, then brought over a damp cloth to clean him up. He looked at her with fire in his eyes and held his finger up, ready to explain to her just how close he was to doing something rash. She nodded at him to let him know that she would try to control her temper and then began to wipe his face. He stiffened when she touched him, but she whispered apologies into his ear as she caressed him. She was volatile but considering everything they had gone through together, she belonged to him and he needed to forgive her. He let the rage pass and reached around behind her legs and caressed her calves.

“You know what? Don’t change.”

“What makes you say that? I need to change. I punched you in the balls pretty hard just now. That was immature and ridiculous, no matter how upset I was. You’re right about the Tyheran brat being very much a part of me still.”

“You’re a warrior, Marian. Who am I to question your fire when I upset you? I make bad decisions when it comes to women. This has been an issue since my days as a cadet. I am the classic case: a boy that had no attention, who became a man that has too much of it.”

“So do you promise to try, Rafian? Will you stop sleeping around and embarrassing me?”

“Yes. I promise.”

And with that she sat gently on his aching lap and hugged him closely. They sat like that for a long time, thinking about their relationship.

~*~*~*~

“You two been fighting again?” asked Tayden Lark after frowning at Rafian’s tardiness and observing the mechanical way he and Marian hugged each other at the door.

She was in a circular room beneath the base. A large, holographic image of Vestalia floated in the center of the room, showcasing the areas that had bases and prisons owned by the Geralos. This was where Tayden and Rafian would set up attacks and plan strategy, but on most days they used it to get away from the recruits and spend their day talking or making love.

“When aren’t we fighting lately?” Rafian replied.

“Well, if there was an award given out for bad husbands, Raf, I think you would have a case full of them. Not that I’m complaining, but you don’t even try to resist whenever we get cozy down here.”

“It’s not the same when it comes to you, Tay. You know this. What you and I have is not something we can just stop. We have the skin bond…you know as well as I do what that means.”

“Raf, you are so full of it. Just admit that you like thyping me a whole lot and that you don’t want to stop. All of that skin bond nonsense is meant for Camille YAN, since it’s a racial consequence of her Filan blood. What you and I have is just lust—well lust and something else primitive—but you know what I mean. If you want to stop, you need just say the word. I don’t want you to say the word, but at the same time, if I were your wife, I’d make you say the word, or you’d wake up with your you-know-what lopped off by my las-sword.”

“Lop it off and I’d just suicide and clone,” he said with a wink. “But let’s just get to work Tay. We have a lot to cover and the hour is almost near for us to take Soreble back from the lizards.”

Tayden smiled to herself when she noticed that Rafian had changed the subject instead of swearing off sex with her. She walked over to one of the many panels on the deck, and moved her hands around in mid-air to rotate the globe. The city of Soreble had once been the capital of technology for Vestalia, but the Geralos had converted it into a feeding plant for their psionic agents.

“You know as well as I do what lies in wait in this city, Rafian. How do you propose we move on a place whose inhabitants can see into the future and no doubt know what we have in store for them?”

“They may be able to borrow our abilities to see the future, rurit, but their ability is limited. Let me ask you this. Does seeing a future where you get killed by an unknown source change just because you can see it before it happens?”

His use of the term “rurit” bothered Tayden. It was a term of affection he had given her due to what he believed was her resemblance to the tiny, spotted, squirrel-like creatures that lived all over Meluvia. Tayden had tiny freckles all over her face, so Rafian had joked with her about her being a tiny, but deadly rurit. She had always liked the idea of being his rurit, but with his marriage to Marian and the reminder that her love was merely borrowed, the name felt cheap and dirty. She wanted him to stop using it.

“I’m no longer your ‘rurit,’ Rafian. You have a wife.” She stopped and held his perplexed glaze for a time to make sure he understood that she was being serious.

“Alright, Tayden, I won’t call you that any more. What’s wrong now? Have I offended you?”

“From now on, no pet names, okay? No spooning and no more of anything that will make me look at what we have as anything more than a thype. You got it? And, as to your question—of course the ability to see the future alters my chance of being killed. I would know to duck, dodge, or throw up shields in time when the attack begins.”

“What if it comes from all sides and you are unable to see clearly how you will be hit?”

“That sounds like I would need to call you and all of our Phasers, before evoking my last rites. Possibly for me, I would want to make sure the cloner is set to take me when it happens. It would be the end, but at least with knowing it is coming, I can prepare.”

“Exactly! That is what I wanted you to understand. We have the crystals and the Geralos don’t. We’ll kill them, and they won’t be able to stop us. We will drop a hundred Phasers on them and hold the line until our brothers and sisters can liberate the city. We jump into the center of the operation, cut the leaders down and when the boys and girls come pouring down hell from all angles, the most the lizards can do is fold up and die.”

Tayden stared at him. “The amount of fire I see in your eyes when you explain this move makes me excited, Rafian. I know that the other Phasers will be fired up, too. I think that this will be a great operation for us, but what do we do about the eventual counter? Reinforcements will come when we hit that city.”

“I thought about that, too, but it’s rather standard. Yuth Variance awaits us on Geral to supply a nice distraction during the operation. Val Tracker will be planet-side, taking his rangers into the heart of hell.” He pointed to a base outside of Soreble. “They’ll be scrambling – it is how we have always won against them. Simultaneous strikes at key points, to force them to decide on where to send help. The places that they leave open, we will burn to the ground. The lizards are terrible at defense, even more than we were when they came at us the first time and took this planet. Phasers are a weapon; there is no defense that can stop us.”

“You’ve got that right, Commander.”

“We will continue to massacre them until they voluntarily leave our home. And when they do, we will not relent. I will take our best onto the planet of Geral and turn it into a charred version of the swampy hellhole that it is right now.”

Tayden liked to hear Rafian fired up. It was the way she remembered him, before he’d jumped to the Lucan galaxy, lost his memory and returned with Marian. After they had liberated the Jumpers from their leader and converted it into the new Phaser Agency, Rafian had become somewhat of a stifled, lovesick version of himself. She had told him this several times, but this was the first time she’d seen real glimpses of the old Raf.

“So where do we begin, Raf? What do you want me to do?”

“I’m going to call Val. I want you to make the call to Frank. We need him ready to command a fleet of fighters, with aims at crippling that destroyer. In the next month, I want us to be on our way into Soreble to liberate the humans there and to rack up a lizard body count that would make our dead ancestors proud.”

“Wait, Raf. This doesn’t feel right without Camille. Have you heard anything about her sentence, or are we to assume that she is gone for good and will not be returning to the fight?”

Rafian looked at Tayden as if she had just said the silliest thing he’d ever heard in his life.

“You know more than anyone else what Camille means to me, Tayden. Even if the military sentenced her to life in prison, or death, I would not stand by and let it happen. We aren’t a part of their rules or politics anymore.”

“You should have married her, Rafian. She joined the Jumpers with you just to remain by your side and what did you do? Huh? You brought a beautiful alien woman home from your mission and left her hanging. A part of me thinks that she’s fine, just on a ship staying far away from you.”

Rafian looked at Tayden wearily. He couldn’t believe that she would place the blame on him for Camille’s departure.

“Okay, first of all, my thyping memory was wiped. Remember? I came back with Marian because she, who I married while I was on that mission, was—I mean, is—the love of my life. I didn’t marry her to hurt Cammy. Hell, had I known… damn it, Tayden.” He wanted to walk out on her.

“I haven’t seen my friend for over a year and you haven’t mentioned her, so I asked.”

“Camille is supposedly getting treatment for her mental issues—of which I have no idea since she was perfectly sane—but the intelligence I received said that she was still being treated.”

“So, over a year and this is what you hear?”

“Yes, Tay. I am doing my best to be fair and patient.”

“When you told me that she was on a Psyche ship and we agreed to keep it quiet, I took it to mean that you would follow up, Raf. Nobody stays on one of those ships for this long. We need to figure out what is going on with her.”

Rafian was still angry at her for bringing up the marriage so he averted his gaze and nodded at her. He wanted to get away from her and she knew it, so she gave up on her quest for answers.

“Go ahead and call up Val,” she said. “I will call Frank in to brief him on our plans.”

Rafian was glad Tayden had relented, and he put his hurt feelings aside to clear the air between them. She was his sub-Commander, and it wouldn’t work if he were upset with her.

“Before I forget,” Rafian said. “Please send Yuth Varience some food supplies and a holo-stimulant to make the month’s wait easy. I want him at his absolute best when this all goes down and I want the lizards in a frenzy. I am going to see if I can get Val Tracker here within the week and we can bring our plan to fruition.”

Although he said these words and she agreed with them, Rafian’s mind was still on Camille and how he was going to get her home.

Memory 3

Vin’yns were large predatory creatures that lived in the mountains of Geral. They had skin like stone, were as tall as buildings and resembled the gorillas of Vestalia. Val Tracker was given the name “Vestalian Vin’yn” by the Geralos, because like his namesake, he was a frightening behemoth on the battlefield. The marines of Vestalia learned about the nickname when a captured Geralos began to panic and convulse when Val Tracker got close to him. He kept mumbling the gargled words: “Vestalia Vin’yn, Vestalia Vin’yn, Vestalia Vin’yn” and it immediately stuck.

For years, Val had held the line successfully against the lizards. He wore heavy armor, he packed a stargun—one of the biggest automatic weapons in the military—and he never showed any fear. In many of the bloodiest battles in the recent history of the war, Val was there. He loved combat, craved the opportunity to rack up kills, and on one opportunity, had head-butted a Geralos commander to death—right in front of his frightened men. Val was like a demon in a fight, and while Rafian’s name was more myth than reality to the Geralos, the Vestalian Vin’yn was the real thing.

Val was deep in the thick jungles of Laer, Meluvia when he received the call from Rafian, asking him to make his way to Vestalia to help the Phasers.

“You’re like a needy girlfriend, you know that?” Val said. “Marines don’t leave a fight, Rafian. As a former brother, I would think you’d understand this.”

“What do you mean former, Vallen?” Rafian’s use of Val’s full name was a veiled insult but it was what the two men did when they talked: they would insult, jab and make jokes at one another’s expense.

“Don’t mess around and get yourself beat. I don’t care how many Phaser martial art maneuvers you learn. I am the big brother, remember? And you are the smaller, quick one. None of your disappearing tricks will stop a heated up Vin’yn from bringing the pain at you on all angles, brother.”

“You said brother!”

“Can it, Rafian. You know we need to finish up here before we can help you there. It can’t be helped, not unless there’s some sort of unexpected surrender from the rebels that are trying to sack this city.”

“I understand Val, but how long before you can jump to the first quadrant and help us out down here?”

“This is guerilla warfare unlike anything you have seen, Rafian. These Meluvians are dug in deep, and we have to extract them from the ground or one of our allied cities will suffer for it. There’s a rumor that they have a Geralos leader. Can you believe it? These terrorists have destroyed many businesses in the city. They’ve been a pain in the rear so the Meluvians asked for Alliance help. We’re all they have and this is looking like three months of fighting, brother. Your timing is inconvenient.”

“Well, we need you, bro. I’m sending a couple of agents down there to help you. They can slip behind enemy lines, kill the leaders and allow you to route the followers so that you can get out of there a bit faster.”

“How long will that take?”

“They’ll be on their way within the hour. I will tell them to look for the big dumb animal with a stargun. Call me when you are about to jump off planet.”

~*~*~*~

Marika examined the room she had entered. She was both impressed and bewildered at its alien architecture and odd furniture. She looked at an odd, cylindrical, crystal-adorned fixture that descended from the ceiling towards the center of the room and wondered what it was used for.

“Marian, your house is beautiful,” Marika said, as she sat on one of three, white, leather couches. “But I have so many questions.”

From the outside, she had expected it to look like a cave. But once she was inside, it was more like an apartment, furnished and decorated with much love and care. The walls remained the rocky natural texture of the cave, but Marian had put in false windows that showed images from the outside. The illusion of these windows made it appear as if the house was aboveground, and it gave Marika an uneasy feeling.

“Oh, hi, Marika. Please come on in and make yourself comfortable,” Marian announced from a room deep inside the cavernous house.

She emerged from a doorway and stood wearing a lime green dress that was supported only by the necklace around her neck and a tiny clip in the back. Marika was curious how Marian could appear and disappear so quietly and made a silent promise that she would find out. Though Marian had given her no cause for concern in the past, she had a reputation, and her alien heritage made her a mystery to everyone besides Raf. Marian walked over towards her in long graceful strides, her heeled feet clicking rhythmically against the wooden floor, confidence in every step. This was a minor annoyance Marika had with her—nobody should be this perfect.

“You guys sure do like the color white,” Marika said.

“I would blame that on Rafian.” Marian smiled. “He was the one who put this place together, furniture and all. I just added the highlights, but that man really loves the color white. He probably wanted this to look like the old Jumper headquarters that he was trained in.”

“The headquarters had white walls?”

“It was like a nightmare of stark white, Marika, and it was the first place I experienced in this galaxy. I should hate having the reminder in this house, but I have grown fond of our white walls and furniture, just like I have grown fond of many things in this galaxy.”

Marika was silent for a moment. “So… you wanted to talk?” she said, looking at Marian.

“Yes. I wanted to ask you a very big favor that you will probably refuse, being that we are not yet the best of friends.”

“Not…yet, eh? What sort of favor, Marian? I have spied on Rafian for you and I appreciate the Casanian home that you had delivered for me in return.” She winked at Marian. “But what else do you need done?”

Marian plopped down close to Marika on the couch and waved her hand in the air to turn off the vid that was being played. The room plunged into complete silence.

“Rafian has promised me that he is done with sleeping around and I believe him. What I need your help with is to kill Palus Felitious, the most powerful man in the galaxy of Luca.”

“Oh, that’s it, huh?” Marika said, raising an eyebrow. “You’re too funny. Now, I’ve had my share of tough marks, but that one sounds like one for the record books. How powerful are we talking? A galactic conqueror using some sort of crazy tech? A warlord whose fleet is so deep that even a crystal jump would not be enough to get us near the mother ship? Or do you come from a really low-tech civilization where we can just walk up to this guy as the stone tipped arrows bounce off of our 3B suits and cut his head off in a matter of minutes?”

“Hahaha, more like a bastard who floats around in his battleship, issuing commands at various planets, where the people suffer under his rule.” Marian laughed, gazing at the windows as if she expected them to have company.

“So, why not ask Rafian to just go over there and handle it? You’re a Phaser Ace just like me. Hell, you could probably do it alone if you wanted to.”

“Trust me, Marika, at first I was going to sneak away and do just that. But I have responsibilities here to the agency, just like you do. Rafian will take Soreble and then there will be a lull as we terraform that country for our needs. None of the leaders will be able to leave, especially THE supreme leader, so I will ask for the clearance to jump to Luca, but I have no idea what I will be jumping into.”

“So you need me there to watch your back.”

“Before you became a Phaser, you were the deadliest assassin the galaxy has ever known. I can bring Phasers who came from lives where they were just extraordinary soldiers, but I need someone who lived and breathed the art of assassination. I want to kill that bastard myself, and I will. But I need you there to make sure that I can get to him. Are you willing to help me, Marika?”

Marika smiled at the opportunity that was being given to her by Marian. She had assassinated many dictators in her past career, but none were of another galaxy. She was still processing the fact that Phasers could jump to different galaxies, and now she was being given the opportunity to expand her legend across realities. She felt her heart swell at the opportunity. There were few important people that didn’t live in fear of the name Marika Tsuno, and for good reason. She was the “Black Hand” that was hired whenever there were trade disputes, deep grudges or power plays. And she had never failed. The only time she had come close to failure was when Rafian VCA had appeared behind her, after she had cut the throat of a diplomat whose mind had been taken over by the Geralos.

The two of them fought when she refused him, but she was outclassed in every way, and was made to bow before the humming of his las-sword. He informed her that her order had been wiped out and that she was the last of the assassin’s guild. She had no choice but to swear her allegiance to what she considered to be a superior, assassination guild. She had never regretted that day, especially after learning that she could continue her work. As long as it was for the Phasers and not for her own financial gain, Marika could continue taking contracts and increasing her notoriety. She couldn’t bring herself to tell Marian that she and Rafian had made love countless times since her recruitment, or that he had come to her not two nights earlier.

Marian was not a fool, nor a woman to be trifled with. Marika had fought her during her training as a Phaser and had grown to respect her skill with a knife. She would be happy to follow this woman into hell, but the attachment Marian had to her husband was a weakness that could be exploited if she wasn’t careful to close off her heart from his manipulation.

“I’d be happy to play wing to your knife-arm, Rhee. But I need you to hear me out.”

“What do you need to tell me?”

“The assassin’s guild was one of secrecy, where none of us knew who our brothers and sisters really were. It is different here. We live longer, we care about one another and, Marian, we are intimate with one another. I cannot lie – the care I have for Rafian VCA stems more from the time we have had together intimately than the oath I took for our order.”

She watched Marian as the admission sank in, and she saw her struggle to keep hold of her senses as she battled internally to keep her composure.

“So, you too, huh, Marika?” She smiled sadly, twisting her dress as she fought the rage and hurt that was building up inside. “You know, he named off several names and I think it is funny that he left yours off the list. Was this a one-time thing, or is it ongoing?”

“We made love just last week,” she admitted. “It was probably our—look, I tell you this not to hurt you, sister, but because I respect you. I need you to realize that the rage making you destroy that expensive dress of yours right now will be the death of you if you don’t learn to deal with it.”

“Marika, where I am from we look at a husband’s infidelity as the absolute worst thing that a man can do to a woman. I know it is different here, but I cannot shake who I am. Do you understand? What pains me is that Rafian knows how much this kills me, but continues to do it despite my broken heart.”

“Would sleeping with another Phaser help you come to terms with the reality of your marriage, Marian? I am quite sure that I can help you in more ways than one to forget him, so that you can think clearly.” She moved closer to Marian’s body and as their knees touched she bit her lip slightly, not caring that it gave away her intent.

Marian furrowed her brows as Marika touched her hand. She forced herself to calm down and think about what Marika had just said. Would spending time intimately with Marika, or any of the other Phasers, make Rafian more acceptable as a cheating husband? Or would she simply be fooling herself in the attempt to muddy her own beliefs, to try and match up with his?

“I appreciate the offer, Marika, but I would prefer to have him stop rather than make myself into a hypocrite.”

“What if I told you that your sweet lips were what I wanted in return for me swearing my loyalty to you and your galaxy’s cause?”

“I… what?”

“You will not be going on any missions with me until you see Rafian as a bad husband and not the heroic god that you have set in your mind.”

“I don’t see Rafian as a god. I just—“

“You are on Anstractor and you are a Phaser, Marian. We all share intimacy here and you need to get over whatever old beliefs you had. I want you, and I want you now under the backdrop of your pretty white walls. You should take me up on my offer, especially if you are serious about this mission.”

Marian couldn’t believe what she was hearing and got up to throw Marika out by her tiny ears.

“Marika, if ever I share my bed with you, it will be outside of the concept of bribery, blackmail, or force. I think you need to leave.”

“Calm down and take your seat. I am not going anywhere.”

“So, what? Was this some sort of test?”

“No, but you’re a sister and I won’t let you get yourself hurt, especially with the pain I can see in your eyes. Look, if you won’t make love to me, then you have to promise me this: the next evidence that presents itself that Rafian has broken his oath to you, I want you to call me and we will jump to Luca immediately. Do you understand me? You are done being the lowly wife of the Supreme Leader. You will act like the queen of the Phasers that you are meant to be. So make a choice, Marian. You can break your oath and lay with me, or you can harden up, stick to your guns, and make him suffer the consequences.”

“Okay, then I choose both.” Marian said as she reached out and took Marika by the nape of her neck. “But you will give me your knife whenever I ask for it. Do you understand? It will not just be for this mission; it will be for all things that I need a deadly friend in. We will become partners, and if Rafian is found to be disloyal after today, we will forego his approval and move on Luca so that I can check in on my people. You will be by my side when it all happens, Marika. Do you still wish to pledge yourself to me?”

She pulled her in and bit at the side of her neck gently, then ran her hand down the front of her gown. Marika could barely breathe as the feeling of Marian’s lips against her was too much to take. She forced the words out as she struggled to regain composure.

“You’ve got yourself an assassin, Marian. I will kill anyone you want me to. Now, I am too hot to keep on talking, so let us celebrate our new friendship.”

~*~*~*~

A few days after telling Tayden what he knew about Camille YAN, Rafian decided that he was done waiting. He needed to check in on her. He worried for her, after learning that she was on a psych ship and not able to communicate with anyone outside. During his time on the ground, he had done intense investigations into where Camille was stationed and had tried for a very long time to remain patient until her release. Now he was a day’s flight off Vestalia and piloting a Phantom X12 towards her prison—cloaked and undetected.

The Geralos destroyer was still fighting with the Rendron and he knew that if it managed to win, Helysian would be next. Being that the psyche ship was in the Helysian fleet, this meant that Camille would be lost. He had woken up flustered the night before and, without questioning the reason why Marian had not come home from her flight with Marika, he had jumped onto his hover-bike, rode over to the Phaser base, and launched his phantom into space. He was no longer interested in just checking on Camille. He was bringing her home.

Seeing nothing that looked like a dock, Rafian moved the ship to what he knew would be a blind spot on the psych ship’s radar and ejected out into space. The boosters on his back propelled him towards the dark, egg-shaped ship and after a minute of propulsion, he touched the exterior of it and was able to climb along its hull with relative ease. Within an hour he found what he was looking for—a debris-trapping hatch that would open up once or twice every ten minutes. He timed its opening as best he could and then let it pull him in and drop him with the rest of the refuse inside of a conversion room.

Once inside, Rafian pulled out a torch and burnt a hole through the wall, leading into what sounded like the engine room. Pulling himself through and replacing the block he had cut, he ducked behind a Celon radiation drive, climbed to the ceiling, and wedged himself in a corner. The ship had three men on staff working on the engines and they were preoccupied with a number of things, so none of them bothered to look up. Rafian waited patiently for them to separate, then dropped onto the closest one, knocking him out instantly. He then removed the bright orange jumpsuit the man wore and pulled it over his 3B suit before walking out of the room.

“Bathroom!” He coughed and ran out of the door, hoping they would assume it was a serious emergency that would keep their partner occupied for a while.

The ship’s interior was of standard medical design. Its walls were stark white and the air smelled of Lurenium medicine. Self-important men and women walked around, focusing on the read-outs on their tablets. Nobody paid attention to him as he walked by. Every room with a door had a glass that he peered through and, from what he saw, it made him very uneasy about Camille. Prisoners ranged from the slightly deranged to the mad, and they were being treated with the most archaic of procedures. The methods applied to these people seemed experimental at best, and having seen a functional, working psych facility on Helysian, Rafian wondered why an alliance ship would be doing this.

He thought about Camille and why she was sent there, and he wondered why they hadn’t committed her to the hospital on Helysian. Putting her on one of the remote Psych ships hinted at something more. The answer was obvious: Camille had killed someone near and dear to an important figurehead, and so they’d shipped her off as a form of revenge.

As he quickened his pace to find Camille, he knew that the engineers would be wondering why their partner was taking so long. It had been twenty minutes since he’d left and he wondered if he would have to get lethal with the rescue. An alarm began to go off and he pulled out his sidearm. An alarm on a medical ship meant they were preparing everyone for an invader. The guards would be looking for him and he suspected they would not be stopping to ask questions.

“All of you inside this room!” he commanded as he motioned the doctors in the hallway to enter an empty office.

The hallways quickly cleared as the guards began to look for him, but they didn’t realize the caliber of invader that was now searching their ship. He shot guard after guard that ran at him as he continued his search for Camille. As the situation worsened, a voice came over the intercom.

“Intruder, who are you and why are you here?”

“I am here because you have a friend of mine that should have been released a long time ago,” Rafian shouted. “What you all are doing here is a crime against humanity. If you want me to stop killing people, bring me the person in charge right now! You have exactly sixty seconds to comply.”

Rafian knew they could track him, so he cloaked to disappear, took to the ceiling and waited on the so-called leader of the psych ship to appear. Thirty seconds passed before a Geralos doctor ran down the hallway with a number of armed human guards. Upon seeing him, the rage that had built up inside Rafian turned into white hot fire and in a flash he was onto them, killing the guards with point blank shots, then taking the Geralos captive while pressing the gun against the small of his back.

A GERALOS! On a vessel owned by the Helysian, of all places. The thoughts ran through Rafian’s head a mile a minute, and he couldn’t believe it. This means that someone important has been mind-controlled, he thought to himself. Corruption was a weapon the lizards loved to use. But for it to happen so close to home made him wonder how many other ships had a Geralos on it.

“Who is your friend?” the Geralos was asking, speaking so fast that it took Rafian a while to figure out what he was saying. He sounded as if he were gargling water as he spoke, and it was the first time Rafian had heard a Geralos speak.

“How about we start with, why are YOU here? Why is a Geralos murderer running a Vestalian psych ship, and why are you torturing the mentally ill?” Rafian looked about quickly and then backed into a corner, dragging the Geralos with him. “Speak quickly, lizard. I want answers now and not when you think that there will be a rescue party coming for you.”

“We are everywhere, human. Not just on this ship, but on many ships, blended with your people,” he bragged, his flat, green face a mask of scales and self-importance. “On ships like this one, we cannot be detected. We have corrupted the entire staff. Everyone here will fight for me until their death.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. I have no reason to lie to you. I recognize your uniform; I know what you are capable of. Spare me, and I will tell you everything.”

“What happens to the humans here if I kill you?”

“Their conditioning cannot be reversed. They would rise up and strike you down for killing me. They will see you as the enemy, very much like you see me now.”

“Wonderful. Now tell me. Camille YAN. Filan woman. Light hair, light eyes. Where do you have her?”

“Oh, YAN? She is in room fifty-five.”

“How many of you are on Helysian?”

“I’ve said enough, human. I have told you enough. If you want to know more, you must promise to keep me alive.”

“You conniving little cruta! You’re giving me the orders now? Thype you! “And with that, Rafian injected the Geralos with a freezing compound that put his body into instant stasis. He left him in the corner as he ran to the room where he was told that Camille was being held.

Camille YAN lay emaciated and weak from the days of “treatment” that had been given to her by her doctors. The doors opened and she steeled herself for what was to come. But the blurry figure that appeared in the doorway seemed to be a man in black, brandishing a pistol.

“Raf?” she asked with new life and hope echoing in her voice. Before she passed out, she saw the blurry figure rushing towards her.

When she woke up, she was onboard a familiar ship, flying rapidly through space. She was buckled into the co-pilot’s seat and Rafian was next to her, pushing the ship towards a huge blue planet that looked very much like Vestalia. Her mouth felt like it was packed with cotton and her muscles burned as if they had tiny cuts running all along them. She blinked back the tears as the painkillers wore off, and the things that had been done to her shot fiery lances through her nerves. But here was her Rafian; he had come for her. This was enough to make her stay strong and not let the pain overcome her.

“Is that… Vestalia, Rafian?” she asked, her head drooping off the side of her seat as she struggled to right herself again.

Rafian reached over to brush her cheek gently as he answered affirmatively.

He could tell that she was in pain, as her blinks were hard twitches and she was drooling without being aware of it. Camille didn’t bother to ask him how it was that he was flying to Vestalia—a planet she knew was owned by the Geralos. She had to trust him in knowing what he was doing, even though it didn’t make sense to her at all.

When they broke the atmosphere, she bit her lip, so hard she tasted blood, to make sure that she wasn’t in a drug-induced sleep and dreaming. Rafian plunged the vessel into the ocean, losing the Geralese ships that had begun firing on them as soon as he was visible to their radars. Submerged below the waters, the enemy drones could not pursue them, and after an hour or so he flew into a submerged tunnel that twisted and turned before it ascended and opened up into a valley filled with mist and rain.

The tunnel system took a few hours to maneuver, but Camille’s steady zoning in and out of consciousness made it seem like minutes. It was a bizarre trip that she soon realized was a strategic route to stay off of the Geralese radar. When they finally crossed a broad expanse of mountainous terrain, the shielded high-rises of a tiny city appeared on the horizon and Rafian flew far west of it, banked and took to a rear point of entry in order to access what turned out to be the Phaser headquarters.

When he landed the ship and opened the cockpit, a hot, bright light shone down on Camille and she didn’t want to believe that it was the Vestalian sun. Warm rays poured into the ship, burning her in the most wonderful way possible. It hurt to smile but she did it, anyway, because she never thought that she would ever see—yet alone experience—her homeland again.

“How did we do this, Raf? How did we get here? How did you all… Rafian, how long have I been gone?”

Rafian lifted her from the phantom and cradled her like a newborn as he walked into the building towards the medical wing.

“Questions later, Cam. Let’s make sure everything is okay with you. Once you are up and out of danger, I will answer any question that you have of me. Okay?”

He was so angry that he was shaking. Camille was one of the strongest women he knew and yet here she was, clutching his lapel as if she were a child scrambling for the safety of a parent. With every ounce of strength she could manage, Camille reached up and kissed his cheek. She looked pale and felt as light as a feather, but Rafian would not permit himself to lose focus.

After giving Camille over to the medical crew and watching her as they placed her on a bed to start their evaluations, he rushed back to his ship and gathered the sleeping Geralos tucked away inside the rear hatch. With the help of a few Phasers, he took the body to their interrogation wing.

Tayden Lark appeared and ran to Rafian as he stood watching his men handle the Geralos. She looked very tired and forced a hug upon him that made him finally relax. Tayden was always on time, no matter the situation, and he needed to calm down from the rescue that had put him on edge.

“There are so many questions, Raf.”

“There are answers, Tayden. But besides answers, there are heavy concerns, too. We have been compromised on the highest level. All of these mini victories, moon captures and whatever else we pat ourselves on the back for are nothing. That Geralos was in charge of Camille’s psych ship and had been running experiments on human beings unchecked at least for as long as Camille was there. We will need to inject Phaser agents into the staff of every high-level ship from here to Varien in order to find out who the traitors are and flush out any and all planted Geralos.”

Tayden squeezed his hand to get his attention. “Don’t do this again, Rafian.”

She had a stern look on her face as she said the words, her eyes never leaving the Geralos as the Phasers placed him in a holding cell.

“It was Camille, Tay. What was I supposed to do, leave her?”

“Look, I know how you feel about her and I know you would have done the same for any Phaser in here, but you can no longer go on unsanctioned missions. When you took command of this organization, you forfeited your right to act like a hotheaded pilot. No more. I will not have it, do you understand? What you should have done was to get me and Frank into a meeting, tell us your intentions, and let us cover your ass when you went for her. This was you letting emotions take a hold of you, and Rafian…”

She swallowed the words she was about to say, catching herself instantly because her voice had risen to a shout and she was now in front of him, flushed red with anger.

Rafian knew that she was right and he regretted his actions upon hearing her lecture. He was a commander now, not a wild cadet onboard the Helysian, hopping into his phantom and pushing missions at will.

“Go ahead, Tayden. I want to hear what you have to say.”

“Rafian, we do not need an emotional leader. We need a rational, clear-thinking leader. There are going to be losses. You cannot save all of us, and when your life is held in compromise of another, you are to choose yours, not theirs, because you are our leader and we need you here to lead!”

“And you call me emotional?”

Tayden ran forward and pushed him with all her strength to knock him down, but Rafian was like a mountain to her and while it forced him to step back, her push did not yield the result she wanted. In fact, it was she who bounced back from the force.

“I may not be able to push you, you giant oaf, but you light up that little sword of yours and I guarantee you that I can drop you with my sidearm.”

“Tayden, are you actually upset with me?”

“Don’t you ever let me worry like that again, Rafian! I dealt with it when you jumped to Luca and I dealt with it yesterday in an even harsher way. We look out for each other. You promised me that back when we were bunkmates. Did you forget?” she replied, and he could see her lips tighten and her jaw twitch when she said it.

“Tayden, I am sorry.”

“Say what I want to hear, Rafian or I swear to the maker that I will quit my post and leave you where you stand. Say it!”

“I will never do this to you again, Tayden.”

She stood looking at him for a time and he shrugged in defeat as he regarded her.

“Are you being honest with me?”

“What can I say, Tayden? It was instinct, and old habits die hard. So when I thought about my girl being detained for so long over an accident, I began an investigation outside of Phaser protocol. This business with the Geralos and the rescue – it came from out of nowhere. You need to believe me that I am all about this crew we have put together. But if it were you or Marian that were gone, just like Camille was? I can’t lie and say that instinct—not emotion, instinct—would not take over my mind and force me to act.”

Tayden’s hard edge diminished as she rested her hands on her hips. She sighed and walked past him towards the elevator that led up to their offices. Rafian recognized the need for them to take their conversation beyond the eyes and ears of their subordinates so he fell in behind her at a distance. When she reached the shaft, she waited for him to enter before closing it and waving her hand across the panel. As they reached her office, Rafian banned access to their current floor via the elevator’s override and then followed her. By the time he caught up to her, she had removed her long Phaser coat along with her boots and was pouring herself a drink from the bar.

“This is my first time seeing your finished office,” Rafian said as he admired the hexagonal shaped room with its off-white walls and dark green carpeting. It was cozy and everything was tiny, just like Tayden. She walked over to where he stood and placed a glass of brandy in his hand. Next, she let her hair loose and retreated to a circular loveseat that sat in place behind her desk.

“Did Marian know about your adventure today, Commander?”

“No, Rhee doesn’t know about any of this.”

“I didn’t mean to beat you up verbally earlier. It’s just, well, although I never like to talk about what it is we have… you know, beyond us being old bunkmates, the Jumper academy and our history.” She sighed. “You do understand that if you get hurt, it will kill me, right?”

“Tay, I know that you care about me,” he said as he approached her and touched her shoulders, the way he always did before kissing her.

“I know that you thought we were coming up here to thype, Rafian,” she said, wiggling her shoulders so he would remove his hands. “But that won’t be happening. I needed privacy to talk to you about something personal.”

He felt disappointed at her rejection because he wanted her badly. She was angry but cute, and her brown, almond-shaped eyes had hinted at wanting him, too. He wondered if she were merely delaying the inevitable. He would answer her questions, then take her to the couch and do the things he’d wanted to do since coming back.

“What’s on your mind, Tay?”

“You know, Raf, those three plus years ago when we were forced to spend the night together in order to secure our Jumper bond, I knew you would become our leader. The way you took charge of a terrible situation for all of us and made me—a perfect stranger to you—comfortable enough to go through with it, showed your ability to talk me into anything. But I have watched you since your return and I really hate how you treat us… women, I mean.”

Rafian was shocked. He had no idea what he had done to give Tayden the opinion that he was in any way negative towards women. Tayden was always quick to tell him when he was wrong and she was normally right, no matter how much he wished she wasn’t. The thought that he was hurting the women in his life made him anxious so he simply stared at her in silence.

“You willfully brought Marian into a world where Camille had given herself to you. During the Jumper trials, we not only had sex when they made us do it, but we kept on doing it weekly after they told us to stop. You slept with several other girls while pretending to be true to Camille in your heart. She was really messed up during that time, Raf, and you were too busy thyping everything with hair and legs to notice. She was imprisoned for a year and what does she come back to? Her man freshly married to a drop-dead gorgeous woman from another galaxy. You and I continued to mess around even with your wife and broken girlfriend still in your life. See where I’m going with this? Look, I took the same oath you did… our bodies belong to no one. I get it, but I have feelings for you, and to be honest with you, I don’t thyping want them, man. It is beyond thyping and giving our bodies up, Raf. You are missing something and you are trying to find it through sex and using the women who actually love you.”

Rafian couldn’t believe what he was hearing and he wished that Tayden could understand how hard it was for him. She would not understand. He wanted to leave her and her judgment as quickly as he could. He didn’t want to hear anymore, and while he had always relied on her to share her bed with him, she was now judging him for doing so. It was not what he wanted to hear…not from her.

“If I could fix my woman issues I would, Tayden. What would you have me do? Divorce Marian, jump her back to her galaxy, and then swear myself to Camille YAN? It has crossed my mind several times, but if I did that, I would probably just stay in Luca with my wife, where things made sense for me. But I can’t make that choice, now can I? The amnesia, the two girls; it made a mess that cannot be cleaned up.”

“I want you to be true to your wife unless you are on a mission, Rafian,” Tay said.

It burned her to let him go, but the long nights of worrying and waiting for him had gotten old. She realized that he would never commit to her, and now that Camille was back, she would fall into the dreaded number three category. She respected herself too much now to be his plaything, but she loved him and wanted him to do better. “How hard is it to be a decent man until situations force you to be otherwise? I doubt it would be very hard for you. The honor is there and the love is there. You just need to keep it in your pants.”

Rafian threw up his hands and rolled his eyes at the hypocrisy. Tayden had been sleeping with him since the days of their recruitment and it hadn’t slowed down after he married. Now she was scolding him for being with her, as if she had no part to play in it. She read what was on his mind and put up a hand to stop him from arguing.

“Look,” she said. “I know the type of woman Marian is. She is fiercely loyal to you, but she respects herself, too, Rafian. If she were to find out that you are still doing things behind her back, I can see her shutting down the cloner and sinking a knife into you.”

“Yeah, we have already been down that path. To be honest, the day I told her that as a Jumper I should be able to sleep with any and everybody I chose, she has been different to me. I am not sure if what we had in Luca will ever come back, and it is totally my fault. She treats the ring I gave her as a metaphoric noose that she will tighten if I cross her, then throws out the option of us separating as if it is a choice. Tyherans don’t believe in divorce and Marian is my wife. In Phaser years, that is a millennia and I can’t say that I am good with that. I am more confused now than I ever have been, but I’m working it out slowly. I just need time.”

He walked over to the door and made to leave. He needed to get away and to retreat into himself the way he always did when life’s awkward moments made him feel vulnerable. How they judge me, he thought as he looked over at the tiny Vestalian warrior he had slept with on multiple occasions, now levying blame at him for being a womanizer. It seemed hypocritical, but he knew he was wrong in terms of Camille and Marian. He should separate from them both, but Marian was his wife and he was in love with her. He had to work at reigniting their bonds of matrimony.

“How about this, Commander? How about you actually try? Everything you have tried to do in your career has been a tremendous success, yet you shy away from trying at love and loyalty where your heart is concerned. You never talk about your history, but it wouldn’t take a psych expert to realize that somewhere in your past you lost something and you are playing it out now with the feelings of those you love the most.”

“I guess so, Tayden. This is the second time now within the span of an hour that you have reminded me that I have issues based on my history. Look, I understand and I will try to keep it in check for you moving forward, okay? For you, for Cammy and for Rhee. I will be a proper officer and a Phaser.”

Tayden walked over to him with the empty glass in her hand. She smiled at him and quickly twisted her hair into a bun and slipped a pin into it. He watched her go through the motion with some curiosity, then made to exit her office so that he could find something to punch that would not break. Tayden stood before him, barefooted and smiling the way she did with her subordinates whenever she had given a command and wanted them gone.

“Don’t look at me that way. I don’t appreciate it,” Rafian said to her, annoyed and unimpressed with the gesture.

“Rafian, do not make me into the enemy for talking to you. I love you—gods know I love you!” She reached up and touched his cheek before delivering a delicate kiss to his, a kiss he didn’t return. She smiled at him being suddenly cold to her, as if she’d expected it. She knew him better than anybody else outside of Camille, and she knew that in time he would get over it. “I love you Rafian, but you need to hear this, so thyping deal with it, man.”

With a nod of mock appreciation, Rafian VCA exited the office of Tayden Lark—the one woman whose enigmatic relationship with him had always been reliable, without any of the dramatic strings attached. He already missed being with her—she looked so good with her hair pinned up like that—and it felt as if a small part of him died inside her office. He felt small and stupid, and he silently vowed that there would be a change where the women in his life were concerned. Not necessarily the things that Tayden implored him to do, but he would cease giving himself up in the way he had done in the past.

He needed a drink and some alone time, so after taking the ban off the floor that Tayden’s office was on, he took the elevator up to the top floor. Once there, he locked the access to his office and sat in silence for a long time.

~*~*~*~

While Rafian was rescuing Camille from her torture, the Rendron was deadlocked in a fight against the Geralos destroyer. Commander Cilas "Rend" MEC sat on the bridge of the Rendron, scanning numerous screens and issuing orders for his subordinates to fire one thing or another to counter the Geralos's attack. The Messio-Tral had been decimated and when the Rendron jumped in to lend some assistance, it had been too late to save them. But Cilas MEC was not going to let the destroyer go.

It was times like these when he missed his friend Helga the most. She was an ace in every sense of the word and if she were there, her Night Hawks would have been all over the Geralos ships, mincing them up into pieces. The pilots he’d sent out to do the job were being massacred, but pride would not let him quit and jump away to safer space. This was his fight and he did not aim to lose it. The Rendron was to hold the line as long as possible, till reinforcements showed up to rout the Geralos.

There had been calls made to elite forces all around the first quadrant and one of them was bound to answer—Cilas was sure of it. The ship’s shields were close to critical but he made sure that the faster-than-light drives were protected above everything else. The first direct hit to their hull—once the shields vanished—would prompt him to jump away to the third quadrant. But until that happened, he would keep on playing defense against the enemy ship.

After an hour had passed and the main shields were gone, twelve, red-tinted fighters appeared beneath the Geralos destroyer. The ships seemed to have appeared out of thin air but began a display of masterful maneuvers as they destroyed the Geralos fighters, one after another. Rend knew them to be the Phasers of Vestalia but his happiness was stunted by the realization that the Geralos could call for help from one of their other destroyers.

"Commander Cilas, this is Frank OTA of the Phaser Agency of Vestalia. We have been sent here by Commander VCA to disable the Geralos destroyer. How are you holding up, sir?"

"Just happy to see you, Frank. You think you can disable that floating fortress with those mosquito ships? You make it sound easy but I know better than to question a Phaser."

"Happy to help, sir. We will have the Rendron clear in just a few..."

"Don't take too long, Phaser. There will be more of these things flying in soon if they start losing."

"The Geralos know our ships well, Commander. They would be foolish to give us more targets."

The crimson fighters continued their onslaught and forced the destroyer to take its attention off of the Rendron to lock in on them with trace lasers. But the Phaser phantoms were too fast and skillful, and before long all of the Geralos ships were destroyed and the Phasers began taking turns at the destroyer. Seeing the tide turn in his favor, Cilas ordered his crew to retrieve the disabled ships floating around outside and to begin repairs on the shields. He saw no reason to press the Geralos with the Phasers there and took the opportunity to get the Rendron back to full power to deliver a final devastating blow.

Inside his phantom, Frank OTA turned away from his comrades and fired a strange-looking shot through the shields of the destroyer. Frank was a golden giant with short blonde hair, cut low in the way of a Marine. He knew that the Geralos would jump away from a losing fight but his orders were to kill all of them. As soon as he fired the shot, the FTL drives of the destroyer came to life and it blinked away, retreating from their region of space. The Phaser phantoms—with no more targets to destroy—landed in a neat line aboard the Rendron and Cilas rushed down from the bridge to thank them personally.

When he saw the empty phantoms parked on the bridge, he was confused.

"Is this some sort of joke?” Cilas asked. “Chief, where the hell are the pilots of these vessels?"

"You won't believe me, Commander, but they landed, hopped out with assault rifles and then vanished into thin air."

Cilas MEC began to laugh hysterically when he heard this. He had known the Jumpers before they became the “Phasers” of the day, and he knew they had the means to disappear and reappear magically. He slapped the massive chief on his shoulder as he walked past him on his way back to the bridge, and gave him a wink to let him know to keep it between the two of them.

"They are gone to finish the job, Marec. You can continue looking to our disabled fighters as they come in and don’t worry about our friends."

"Aye, aye sir." Marec said, confused and frightened at the same time by the Phasers. It wasn't every day that a man saw people appear out of thin air and then vanish again, but it was his commander's casual acceptance of it that confused him.

As the destroyer jumped to a safe area above Geral, Frank OTA and the eleven Phasers he had brought with him appeared inside what seemed to be a cafeteria. Injured Geralos were arguing over plates of food and the atmosphere held a strange mist. The Phasers began to open fire on the helpless Geralos and Frank flicked out his las-sword and set the edge buzzing before running through the hallways, looking for the bridge. He was not as skilled a swordsman as Rafian or Yuth Varience, but to an enlisted soldier, he was death incarnate.

The cruel las-sword cut ribbons of light through the mist and the stunned Geralos fell before it, not understanding how the humans had managed to get onboard their ship. One of the commanders of the destroyer heard the familiar hum and took out his own las-sword to be ready. When Frank came upon him, he was forced to pause and the two men stared at one another for a time. The large Geralos was quick and started the fight with a number of flips and twists in hopes of intimidating his human opponent. Frank did a small kata of his own, throwing the las-sword up to twirl while he spun, kicked and bowed, then grabbed the hilt as it fell past his knee and launched himself into the unsuspecting Geralos. There was a mutual respect between the two, the kind that comes when enemies recognize the discipline of the fighting arts in one another.

They clashed blades and parried as if they had all the time in the world. Phasers filed past Frank with their guns drawn, but he and the Geralos commander paid them no mind. They knew that a mistake, any mistake, would result in their opponent taking off their head so the only thing that mattered to them was winning the duel. Frank feinted a thrust to draw out the Geralos' guard and as the big lizard swung to disarm him, he spun acrobatically and drove a hidden knife into his throat before dancing out of the way of a possible counter. The Geralos fell with a strange look of satisfaction across his face and Frank bowed out of respect. He hated that he’d had to resort to a trick to beat the Geralos swordsman, but he was out-classed and it would have taken a better Phaser to best a creature of his skillset.

After the fight with the Geralos swordsman and the charging of the bridge, it wasn’t long before Frank OTA had commandeered the destroyer and the Geralos onboard were taken prisoner and locked inside of the brig. Frank sat in the captain’s chair and breathed a sigh of relief as his men tried their best to decipher the controls of the Geralos ship. The plans were to keep the ship for the Alliance and deliver the Geralos prisoners to Meluvia, where they would be tried and executed for war crimes.

Frank waited several hours before calling Tayden and Cilas to update them on their status, since he was enjoying the feeling of having his own ship.

“Have you considered just keeping the damn thing?” Tayden asked when he told her what had happened with their invasion.

“Are you serious, Tayden? What about the qualified captains and military leaders of the alliance, won’t they want this ship for the war?”

“Do we, the Phasers of Anstractor, own our own destroyer, Frank?”

“Well…no, we don’t.”

“Are we a part of the bloody Alliance?”

“No, we Phasers stand apart. But…”

“But nothing Frank. What you and your men did was the type of maneuver that makes it into the history books. Name the thyping ship and enjoy it…Captain. I will brief Rafian on this new change and maybe soon I will be able to come aboard and check it out for myself.”

~*~*~*~

The Geralos Maes stood frozen in the bathroom as he watched his comm readout relay the message that they had lost the Helysian’s psych ship and the Phaser woman named Camille. How long would it be before they came for him, he thought as he walked back to the bedroom where Pryston, his Meluvian lover was napping. He wondered how many times he would need to sleep with the man in order for him to start talking. The Meluvian was an ace Marine pilot who was rumored to be on the list for Phaser recruitment. He sat on the bed and injected a shot of adaptation serum in between his fingers so that he could deal with the artificial oxygen for another sixty hours.

“What you injecting there, lover? AND, can I have some?” the Meluvian asked as he turned on his side and began kissing Maes’s abdomen.

The Geralos stared down at him with disgust, wanting to push his eyes into his skull and bite him in the head. This was the one part of the job he hated—sleeping with disgusting aliens. He got no satisfaction from it. He missed the boys at the temple of Florax back home, and had used his imagination to conjure them up in order to consummate the session with the Meluvian.

“Rumor has it you will be a Phaser soon,” Maes said, trying to get him on the topic. He had tried in vain many times before, but the Meluvian had a one-track mind.

“You and your obsession with Phasers, Sako,” Pryston said, using the alias Maes had come up with. “It drives me up the wall.”

“Answer my questions and I will stop asking Pryston, Is that so hard?”

“Not hard at all. I don’t know much more than you, though. I know that they admire talent, that’s about it.”

“Ever thype one before?”

“Now you’re speaking my language! No, I can’t say that I have. I bet it would be amazing though… They know how to move in a fight, so, naturally it should transfer into their thyping, right?”

Maes was getting annoyed at Pryston, so he thought about the information that he did have. Aurora had a lover or friend that was a Phaser. It was something he’d overheard on the bridge when she had taken some time off recently. The controllers were gossiping about her and he caught enough of it to know, so he turned the conversation towards her.

“What about Aurora’s—“

“Who, Rafian?”

“Is that his name?”

“You are on Helysian how long and you don’t know Rafian VCA? That’s Aurora’s brother. He rescued her from death when they were cadets. He did a drop on Geral, stole a ship and made it back in one piece. He is probably the greatest soldier to come out of here.”

“That’s amazing. He dropped to Geral, you say? Are all Phasers that good?”

“Considering that he’s the leader, probably not, but every Phaser that I have met impressed the hell out of me.”

Sleeping with the Meluvian had finally proven fruitful for Maes. He now knew that Aurora’s link to the Phasers was more important than anyone else’s. She was the sister of the most dangerous threat to his people and more importantly, she was vulnerable. It would be easy to kidnap her and draw him out, but he had heard about Phasers teleporting all over the place, so he would only do it when they knew how to capture Rafian. He lay back down next to the Meluvian and thought about it at length. He would need to get the scientists back on his planet to figure out a way to keep Rafian’s body in stasis. This way, he could kidnap Aurora, draw her brother out, then freeze him in stasis and bring him back to Geral for questioning. He couldn’t help but smile at his luck in being so close to Aurora. He would relish the day when he could capture her and lock her away. All of this was thanks to the Meluvian lying next to him.

“Thanks for spending the night with me, Pryston,” he said in a convincingly affectionate way.

“You know, it’s my pleasure, Sako. I should be thanking you.”

Memory 4

Camille Yan woke up to the sound of birds chirping and the heat of the bright sun beaming down on her face. She couldn’t believe she was on Vestalia, and waking up to birds made it even harder for her to believe. Her body no longer ached with the pains of her capture and as she looked down at her fingers and toes, she realized that someone had given her a manicure and pedicure sometime during her sleep.

How long did I sleep? She wondered this as the thought of someone clipping her fingernails and toenails drove home the reality that she had been unconscious for quite some time. The bed that she laid on looked like a flat, circular, glass table, but the surface was soft and sturdy and though she could see the floor beneath her, it felt like heaven. She had never seen a bed like it and the equipment attached to it was foreign, too.

Glancing at the room itself, she was reminded of the Jumper temple and all of the wonderful secrets that it had held when she and Tayden had torn it apart, looking for answers. She attempted to sit up. She was afraid of the pain that would come from the effort, but was too brave not to try. To her surprise, her limbs felt strong, stronger than she had remembered them being even before her capture, and it reignited her enthusiasm.

Hopping off the bed onto the metal floor, she flinched at the coldness that ran up her bare feet to her knees. That was unfamiliar. She walked over to the screens that displayed her vitals and began to peruse them, wondering what had been done to her. It wasn’t long before she found her answer.

“Cloned.”

The word fell out of her mouth in a whisper as she read through the medical records and saw where the attempts at healing her damaged body were considered futile. So a cloning procedure had been ordered and her first body was processed to reveal all evidence of what had been done. The records showed the worst of atrocities and as she read through them, she didn’t realize that she was crying. There was a time when Camille wondered how Rafian could live with the amount of hate he had for the Geralos, but now she understood.

They had experimented on her, keeping her awake for the majority of it to gauge her reaction to pain. The worst of it was when they’d cut her head open to do things with her brain. The Geralos had an interest in the female Vestalian brain because of the “sight.” Random women on the old planet were prescient and called seekers. This “power” was one of the main motivations behind the lizards’ invasion and continued torture of her people. They would bite into the brain and steal the gift, using it in turn as a means of psychic mind control.

Camille was not a seeker—her Vestalian racial line being Filan—so she did not possess the sight. This had not stopped the Geralos from trying other things on her to test her limits. The memory of it was patchy and distorted, but it made her angry. She closed her eyes to calm herself. She was safe now. She had survived the worst that they could dish out and she was back with her sanity in place, and her fires raging to Jump wherever needed for her to kill the Geralos.

Wiping her tears with the end of her sleeve, Camille turned off the console. She walked to the door and touched the panel. She was in a tiny clinic but she didn’t recognize any of the people there.

“Commander Yan!” A young man in a powder blue 3B suit ran over to help her, but Camille waved him off with a smile and showed him she was able to walk.

“The Supreme Leader asked me to alert him as soon as you were back from stasis, so if you wouldn’t mind staying on this floor I will do so now, ma'am.”

Before Camille could stop him, the man was on his comm, talking to Rafian. She smiled at his professionalism and willingness to follow orders, then took to testing out her body by walking fast, running, then somersaulting down the hallway. The doctor was frightened, begging her to slow down as she bounced off walls, throwing out kicks and punches, shadowboxing. Camille no longer heard him. She wanted to make sure she was back in Phaser shape and ready to bring the fight to the Geralos.

As she spun quickly to do a spinning hook-kick, her leg narrowly missed a ducking Tayden Lark, who moved in on her person and laid her on the ground with the slight touch of her hands. Camille was not used to anyone taking her down so easily and while she knew Tayden to be extremely formidable, she had always thought herself the better warrior.

“How in the hell did you do that, Tay?” Camille asked as Tayden pulled her up from the ground with a wink.

“Ha! You and I have never sparred, Cammy. You have some catching up to do. We have grown a bit more ‘knowledgeable’ in your absence and there are a few things I have to show you.”

The way that Tayden said the word “knowledgeable” made Camille regard her curiously. “Exactly how long have I been in this clinic, Tayden?”

“You were brought here about three weeks ago. I am sorry, Camille. We tried everything we could to fix what they did to you, but the trauma would have killed you if we’d left you in your original body.”

Camille pulled Tayden in and hugged her tightly as she thought about how they’d grown so distant prior to her arrest. Tayden Lark had been a true friend to her when she was stuck in limbo on her first jump and Rafian was with Marian in a distant galaxy. Tayden had saved them all and here she was again, present when needed most.

“I love you, Tayden.” Camille said it in such a genuine way that it broke Tayden’s heart.

“You’re my sister, Cammy. There are only seven of us left over from the original class.”

“I’ve been a bratty little schtill, haven’t I?”

“Yes…but never to me.”

“Well, I have a lot of apologizing to do, especially to Marian. I am going to take advantage of this second chance and be a proper Phaser commander instead of the angry little girl I was before. I put our group in jeopardy by getting drunk and allowing my emotions to get the better of me. Let’s not even get into the fact that the Phaser Commander himself risked his life to pull me out of my own schtill after everything I had done to him. I…I am humbled.”

As she said this, Marian ran forward from where she stood from a distance, listening to the two women catch up. She embraced Camille warmly and the two wept freely as they understood each other more than they could admit.

In the distance, Rafian observed Camille making up with his wife and decided that he didn’t want to ruin the moment with his presence. He still did not know how to move forward with them after his talk with Tayden, but he wanted to see Camille up and about with his own eyes. To see her happy put a painful lump in his throat and he moved before any of them could see him.

Exiting back into the elevator, he descended five floors, then retreated to the lobby where a Meluvian Phaser by the name of Laern was chatting up an injured recruit.

“How long have you been waiting here, cadet?” Rafian asked the girl as he approached them, studying her injured hand that she held wrapped in bloody bandages.

On instinct, she made to stand and salute with her damaged hand, but Rafian rushed over to stop her and then backed up, shaking his head at her for trying.

“Oh, not long, Commander!” she said. “Please forgive me for not saluting. The med-droid did tell me not to move, so I am trying my best to obey her orders until she says differently.”

“Do you think I would rather you hurt yourself further just to salute to me? No need to answer; I appreciate the gesture. What is your name, recruit?”

“Milla, sir, Milla NAL.”

“What were you before the dark education, Milla?”

“A pilot, sir. I was the top ace on my ship. The Rendron.”

Rafian looked over at Laern with slatted eyes, then looked back at the girl. She couldn’t be more than nineteen years old and her dark hair and emerald green eyes stood out in a wonderful contrast against her pale complexion. She was definitely attractive and like many of the newer males that had graduated to become full Phaser agents, Laern was taking advantage of his rank by using it to convince recruits that sex with an agent could do wonders for their blooming career. This annoyed Rafian to no end and he had dished out the harshest punishments for anyone he caught doing it. Laern knew this and as he watched Rafian glaring at him, he didn’t know whether his career would be over or his arm would be broken.

“Milla, did Laern here tell you about the time he slept with a Xinoc prostitute from Hiyt?”

The planet of Hiyt held a poisonous atmosphere, so while their inhabitants could travel off world and mingle with people from other planets, the sexually transmitted infections that they gave to humans—though involuntary—were enough to impose a strict, “do not touch” reputation amongst soldiers. Laern was a Meluvian and the advancements in medicine on his planet made any disease a mere treatable nuisance, but for any woman to hear that he slept with someone from Hiyt, it was more than a turn off from any future acts of intimacy.

The girl shot a glance at Laern that could have melted steel and the Meluvian flinched with a look of embarrassment across his face. “Commander, please don’t!” he said.

“Do you want to finish the story, or should I?”

The question was a masked version of “don’t you have some work you should be doing?” And Laern knew its intent perfectly. He saluted the commander and nodded at Milla before leaving to see about his missions. Rafian followed behind him to head back to his office, trying to conceal his laughter at the other’s misfortune.

~*~*~*~

Camille YAN sat atop Rafian’s Phantom X12, sunning herself as if she ran the risk of never experiencing the sun’s heat again. She looked down at her young, freshly cloned body and searched her head for memories to make sure that she was indeed herself and not a machine of some sort. She had always been skeptical of cloning and almost thought it to be some sort of trick that was used to keep Phasers in line. But here she was with none of the scars of her past, more energy than she had felt in a long time, and nothing missing in her mind from her short lifetime of experiences. She thought back on the day when Rafian had called her into his office to educate her on the crystals and the various secrets of the Phaser organization, that only a leader would have the privilege of learning. She recalled the easy way in which he’d explained everything and how she had still been skeptical about the entire thing.

He’d been seated behind his desk when she had entered the “white room” as it was called back in the old temple, and he hadn’t bothered to rise and greet her like he always did.

“Glad you could come, Cammy,” he’d said. “Want a Softex to relax?”

His offer of relaxation pills made her wonder what he was going to tell her and if she should accept it in case it was too much for her to bear.

“No thanks, Raf, I’m ready.”

“Very well, then. One of the final lessons we receive as Phasers is that of the Life beyond Life. Tayden and I learned much of it from Arn’s archives but it only became clear when I was taken into the Maker’s ship and shown telepathically how life, cloning and the magic of the crystals work.”

He walked from behind the desk, whispered into the air and the shiny tiled floor transformed into a cushiony surface. Soothing music began to play through the walls and he took her hand and sat her down on the floor in front of him. The two Phasers sat cross-legged, staring into each other’s eyes. Rafian set his hands on his legs, palms up, and motioned for her to take them. She did as he suggested and she felt a pulse of energy flow through her as he kept his eyes locked on hers and continued talking.

“Do you know what happens when we die, Camille?”

“No, Rafian, and I don’t think anyone knows. I understand that many religions have their own interpretation, but to be honest with you, I just don’t like to think about it.”

“There are several realms of existence,” he told her. “This is but one. The main realm, the one that is beyond our understanding, exists before and after life as we know it. It is a world where spirits, or as we call them ‘souls,’ play. These souls have no form and no memories. They are so innocent and pure that they would seem like children to us if we were able to see or hear them. Periodically, a spirit decides to go into a realm and it chooses almost randomly whether to do so as a single entity or multiple. This is why children are like them in the development stages. We are those spirits, Cammy, but with a physical body we are given memories and experiences which make us into who we are.”

“So you are saying that you and I are separated only by our bodies, births and histories then, Raf? That there is a chance that we could be a spirit that has split itself to make two persons in our realm?”

“Exactly, but it is a lot more complicated, and beyond our human understanding.”

She dropped the formalities and looked at him, concerned. “We could be the same spirit, as in the same person, and this does not bother you? I’m freaking out over here. What does this say about individuality and the religious texts of the ages? Is everything we learned a lie?”

“Cam—”

“As Filans, we are taught that in life we find one true love. We don’t get to play by the same rules as everyone else and I’ve grown to accept it. You aren’t Filan and you like to sleep around, but I chose you. I love you and you know this, just as I know you love me. One lifetime, one lover; that is the law that I know. Ancient books passed down from the makers dictate this. Now you’re telling me that it’s all a lie? What gives you the right?”

He touched her gently on her hand and then brought it up to his lips and kissed it. “I would never try to deceive you in something like this, Camille. You saw when the makers landed and brought me into their ship. You saw how I was when I left and how different I was when I emerged, ready to lead our order?” She nodded at him, enjoying the feeling of his lips against her hand.

“I’m sorry, Raf. Continue. It’s just a lot to take in,” she said.

“It’s okay, Cammy. I was the same way when I first learned it. The spirits are part of a single stream of life; they can choose to be individuals in their realm but they are all part of the fabric of existence. We want to assume that we are special, that when we die we keep our thoughts and start out in another world where we can still remember our parents, family and all of our happy highlights. But when the light shuts out here, the energy that is your life leaves the body and seeps back into the top realm where it can again play with others or choose another life to role play within this world.”

“So what happens when we clone, then?”

“Good question; I was just getting to that. What the Makers have taught us about life is that the spirit will linger for a few hours after death in hopes that the body can be revived, or as an act of sentimentality for the years spent within that body. When a Phaser dies in this realm, the cloner activates the new body and the spirit chooses to use the healthy one. A spirit only loses its memories once it passes from this realm, so all of your data is kept when you come back into your newer body.”

“I don’t know what to say, Rafian.”

“I know this is a lot to process, but this is how we clone. We must believe in the makers so that we can teach the Phasers who come aboard. One day you yourself will be cloned and it will do you no good to think of yourself as artificial, or anything other than the reality of what it is.”

“I understand.”

When the pair stood up, Camille felt lightheaded. She wished her parents had had the means to clone, and she wondered why the Phasers did not share the technology with everyone in Anstractor. She thought better of it when she thought about the Geralos getting a hold of their cloners and accepted that it was a limited gift, given to their order to use for the betterment of the galaxy.

The memory ended there. Camille’s thoughts lingered on the conversation as she turned over on her stomach, trying to even out her tan as much as possible. The phantom was parked within a valley some miles away from the base where she had flown in, and she was as naked as a wood nymph enjoying the sun that she still could not believe she was experiencing. Rafian had been avoiding her for weeks, and she missed him and wondered if with her new beginnings, she would be strong enough to leave him alone. She didn’t want to think about it and ruin her afternoon, so like every other negative thought that aimed to cloud her mood, she pushed it to the side and smiled as the rays from the sun bronzed her slender, muscular back. I deserve some happiness, she thought and with a big smile and a sigh, she closed her eyes and shut everything out of her mind.

~*~*~*~

The Geralos doctor paced the misty room, looking around for something to do as he tried to keep his sanity. How disgraced would he be to the others when they found out that his grand experiment on the humans had failed and that he had gotten himself captured? He had never seen hate like what he saw in Rafian VCA, and though the human’s skill was impressive, he had a power that he could not comprehend. He also didn’t know where he was, but the gravity he felt was not artificial. Were they on Vestalia?

How could the humans have a base on Vestalia when a quarter of the Geralos military were there? He looked out at the men and women walking around outside of his glass cage and he looked at the other cells that, except for a few that had humans in them, sat empty. There were a number of guards walking around and some were dressed like marine soldiers. It was this observation that made him realize he was indeed on Vestalia and the angry human had managed to set up a base in the heart of their territory.

As he wiped the condensation from his flat, textured face, a familiar shape appeared before him and he realized that it was the man who had captured him. The man was no longer angry but he seemed annoyed. In his hand was a chair and as he walked up to the glass, he placed it on the floor. He sat in it and stared at him for a long time.

“What is your name, lizard?”

The Geralos scoffed at him and then folded his arms defiantly. He hated being called lizard and with the disgrace of losing his station and being captured, he would rather die than give more information to the human. This man was not a friend. He would never be a friend and he hated him without understanding anything about him.

“How did the Geralos know that we had the power of sight?” Rafian pressed on but the Geralos stared back at him with a defiant gaze. “So, you’re going to be a soldier about it now? Do you think that being imprisoned is the extent of what I have planned for you, lizard? You have no clue as to what I can do.” And with that he stood up and slowly moved the chair away and looked around.

“Everybody, get out now! Get out. Lock that door and do not open it until I leave. Do you understand me? This goes for all levels of leadership, including Tayden Lark. I am not to be disturbed in here. Lock that door and place two guards outside of it.”

Once the Phasers had obeyed his command, Rafian turned off all the lights and stood before the cell where its blue light shone out to reveal his large, muscular physique. The Geralos stood up and readied himself. As he looked around to see what could possibly be used to zap, spray, or burn him, Rafian put on a respiratory mask and vanished, appearing inside of the cell, in front of the Geralos, where the mist coalesced and formed water droplets on his suit. He swung a quick fist into the lizard’s jaw and the weakened man fell against the glass and slid to the ground in pain. He was of the upper class in Geral and was not required a tour of duty in the military like most boys—so pain and torture were not things he dealt well with. Nevertheless, he was now in a cell with a human, one who was willing to do anything to him in order to make him answer his questions.

“Hit me again and I will bite my tongue off!” he hissed at Rafian, the gargling sound of his voice box making it sound as if he were about to vomit as he struggled with the words.

“Come here!” Rafian yelled. He grabbed him by the neck and jammed a needle into his throat.

It burned like fire and rendered the Geralos helpless as his body went still.

“Try biting your tongue off while paralyzed,” he said and then stood in front of him, waiting to see if he could do it.

When a few minutes had passed and the Geralos didn’t move, Rafian blinked back outside and grabbed the chair. He then blinked back inside and placed the Geralos on top of it. The prisoner wondered what sort of power Rafian had that allowed him to move quickly through solid glass and walls, but his curiosity turned to fear when Rafian reached towards him and began to touch the bumpy ridges of his head and run his fingers through his hair as if he was looking for something.

“Hey, lizard, I bet you want to tell me your name now, don’t you? That’s okay; there’s no need. We are about to become really close, even without your permission. You see, my mother had a gift that a few Vestalian women had, where she would at times get glimpses of the future. Vestalians remember this gift as a curse that brought your lot down on us, ravaging the minds of our women, slaughtering our men and kidnapping our children. We were nothing to you but batteries for a power that your leaders deem divine. Well guess what?”

Rafian removed his gloves and mask, then stood rigid in front of the seated Geralos with his hand on the other’s scalp and his eyes closed. The Geralos was frightened at what Rafian was capable of due to the various things he had already done, which defied everything he knew about humans.

“It was about four years ago when I was visited by the Neeraki Sentients—both of our races refer to them as ‘the makers’.” Rafian waited to see the spark of fear and surprise reflect in the Geralos’ eyes, and then smiled as he continued. “The makers gave me a new education. They named me guardian of a new power that would help us win back our home and remove the threat that had grown within the galaxy. That threat is you, but since my original plans to destroy every living thing on your planet was a bit…shortsighted, I think it would be best to get to know you on a more intimate level. That way, I can understand your motivation and devise a better way to stop your need to conquer planets.”

Rafian’s eyes shot open suddenly and his pupils were dilated as he held his hand in place and continued to lecture the helpless Geralos.

“The makers educated me, lizard, and they gave me tools that only the son of a gifted seeker like my mother would be able to use. You bite into our brains, hoping that you will get the gift, but I need only touch you to get the answers that I seek. Like, there!”

And reality fell away like petals from Rafian as his mind found itself on another plane of existence. He saw fields of white metal, bordered by mountains textured with bolts and digital wires, all shining brightly beneath an immense sun without clouds to interfere. He walked the length of the field and he looked down and noticed that he was not himself. He was pure light, shimmering, too bright to look at, though his steps felt heavy and he could feel the cold metal beneath his toes. The place was so foreign that it frightened him, but he had experienced it once before, when he’d entered the mind of the Cel-toc at the behest of the makers, as they taught him how to use his power. When he got to an area of the plane that had a bit of shimmering in the atmosphere, he reached up and touched it. It opened a doorway leading to darkness. With some hesitation, he stepped inside of it.

The darkness removed everything. He no longer had a body, he no longer had a memory and he no longer had any recollection as to why he was there. All he seemed to be was an invisible entity within the memories of a Geralos. He began to see what the childhood and life of a privileged lizard was like, and why they did a number of the things that they did. He grew to like what they stood for, admire their quest for growth and innovation, even though some of their leaders went as far as using the lives of what they deemed inferior alien races to alter their genetics. The Geralos sought immortality above everything else, and through their quest for this, they developed many impressive things. However, they had no talent for fighting, as violence was primitive and low class. The prisoners, lower caste and the poor became soldiers and militiamen. Disgraced scientists, fallen diplomats, or outcasts that had an admiration for military motives normally led them. Occupation of planets was the ultimate way to grow the race and in time—they thought—the Geralos would be able to travel to any environment, see the future, and conquer the lower planets of Anstractor.

The memories went on for hours and while they seemed in real time to Rafian’s mind, they were being played at such a rapid rate that he had absorbed all of the Geralos’s thoughts within a short period of time. When he had finished pulling out all the information he could, he fell through the darkness and reappeared above the metal landscape, where he found himself falling without the means of stopping it. As he hit the floor, the pain shocked him back into his own plane of existence and he was on a bed within a clinic. Tayden Lark was holding his hand, a look of panic in her eyes.

“Rafian, are you back?”

“Yeah, I guess,” he said, looking around at the machines and then at Tayden. “Why am I in here and what’s with all the wires?”

“You were found inside the cell with that thing. You were poisoned from the environmental gas, weak from not eating, and in a coma.”

“Where’s the Geralos?”

“He was dead. It was very strange, Rafian. You had your hand stuck on his head and you were standing like a statue. It took several Phasers to pry your hand off of him and you were barely breathing.”

Dead? He repeated the word in his head and tried to remember what had happened and how he had managed to hurt himself. The journey into his mind was vivid, but the moments before when he had confronted the lizard was hazy.

“I was inside of his head.”

“What!”

“You are the only one that knows about this, Tayden. You understand what I am saying to you, right? It is an ability given to me, but it comes at a great price. Jumping planes is the most unnatural of things a human being can do and for non-seekers, it is suicidal. I lived, but my body feels like a train hit me. I hurt, everywhere.” He closed his eyes briefly, then reopened them and focused on her. “There is also confusion, because my body thinks I am undergoing a ton of poison so it is fighting me back—making me nauseous. I am also depressed. There are so many ill feelings going through my head and it hurts, Tayden. I think the best thing to do is to put me into stasis for a couple of weeks and let me dream myself back into normalcy somehow.”

“Whatever you say, Raf. I want to be mad at you right now because you again did something rash without telling me, but I know it’s not the time. I just want you to be okay.”

“Does Marian know?”

“Everyone knows. The Phasers that eventually opened the doors—despite your order not to— thought you were being corrupted and rushed in to aid you. They thought you were dead and the news spread fast. I’ve told them that you were merely sick, but every day someone has come here inquiring to see you. Marian was here every day the first week, but I commanded her to go home and take care of herself since she seemed so damned intent on joining you in the afterlife. Frank, Camille and the others have been popping in, and Camille spends the night sometimes. You know how much we all love you, Commander. This is why I have always asked you to tell me first.”

Rafian turned his head away from her to feel the cold surface of the bed against his cheek, but Tayden took it to mean he didn’t want to hear any more from her. Their last conversation had been a fight, and she knew that it was not good for them to be at odds with one another.

“You know, Raf, I’ve been thinking … I was a little rough with you that day in my office. Who am I to judge you when I do the same things you do and…”

He stopped her. “We’re good. You don’t ever have to back down from me or my feelings. We will have fights and we will get over them. I’m just—my head just feels like it’s the size of a planet. I am being serious about the stasis. Freeze me, disallow visitation and prepare our Phasers for war. I have seen the motivation of the Geralos and I know which of their order is funding a galactic takeover. I also know which leaders will need to die to stop it. We no longer have to look at this as a defensive fight that will last a millennium. The sight has given me real targets. Let me rest and get better, and then we can start working on bringing the Geralos to heel within this very lifetime.”

Memory 5

Yuth Varience was several levels deep into his meditation when he received the call from Rafian to move on the Geralos. He had not expected the commander to call so soon, but was ready nonetheless and headed out from the basement of the abandoned building in which he was hiding. The day was bright for Geral as the sun tried in vain to pierce the dark clouds that inhabited the sky. He wore a hooded cloak to conceal his mask and did his best to keep to the alleyways of the city. When he encountered curious Geralos, he dispatched them quietly and kept on moving. Unlike Rafian, Yuth did not feel the need to kill every single Geralos that he came across and so he chose stealth whenever he could slip past them. He knew that once he reached the tower, he would be required to destroy it, along with many Geralos warriors. But in the city he saw the lizards as civilians who did not deserve the wrath of a well-trained Phaser.

By the time he reached the dark back-alley of the Geralos headquarters, he had put several homeless Geralos to sleep and killed three police officers that were on patrol. When Yuth entered the back door of the building, he found himself in a bit of a confusing situation. The building opened up to a room with immense white light and the walls made it appear circular and much larger than he expected. Several Geralos sat facing inward wearing nothing but yellow loincloths, and in the center was a set of spiral staircases that ascended until they vanished into a bright white light. The Geralos’ eyes found him as the door opened and a woman let out an ear-shattering scream that sent fifty warriors rushing at Yuth to subdue him.

Yuth tossed his hooded cloak up into the air and vanished as the first Geralos got to him. He appeared within his cloak several feet above the confused lizards and then fell hard to the ground with his las-sword pointing down. The blade impaled the Geralos beneath him and he withdrew it to continue cutting swaths through his remaining attackers as they tried in vain to invade his mind. A few of them retreated up the stairs as he turned the room into a slaughterhouse.

From the exterior of the building where he emerged from a large crystal tear in the atmosphere, Rafian VCA, Laern Cobo and a young Phaser recruit named Dott Toga, charged the door where they heard the familiar hum of a las-sword inside. Laern and Dott ran inside to join the fight while Rafian began to scale the exterior of the building. The fight—if you could call it that—was a massacre and before long Yuth and the two younger Phasers were running up the spiral staircase as armed Geralos hidden beyond the light shot down at them. Yuth increased his pace as the others tried to keep up with him and the shots that hit him bounced against the glass of his COREX mask.

Laern laughed at how absurd it was that the Geralos still used kinetic weapons, but his happiness was gone in an instant when a Geralos mind-mesher got into his head and began to control him. Yuth knew it would happen eventually and was prepared, so when Laern suddenly caught Dott by her throat and threw her from the stairs to her death, Yuth turned and ran him through with his sword, then tossed his body off the edge and continued his ascent of the staircase.

“The two of you were too inexperienced to be here,” he said. “Go with the Makers. I will see you on the other side.”

“Co-Commander, I am okay!” Dott yelled as she struggled to pull herself back up onto the staircase. She had caught the railing as she fell and had survived the betrayal.

“Good job, girl! Climb back up and join me at the top.”

He was gone before she could answer, but she counted her blessings as she looked down at Laern’s broken body. He would clone and be back on Vestalia to whine about it, but she was not yet an agent—this being part of her trial—and did not have the luxury of cloning. Rafian had asked for volunteers for this mission and she thought it a good idea to join him to elevate her position. However, as she gained the stairs and the shots continued to rain down upon her, she wondered if it had been a good decision. She had come so close to a true death.

“I’m right on your six, Commander Yuth!” she yelled up at him, but he was already in a fight with several other Geralos and wasn’t paying attention to her.

How could stairs climb endlessly into the air without floors and beams to support them? She wondered. She marveled at the Geralos’ ingenuity in building what looked like an ethereal temple.

Rafian had seen the interior of a Geralos psych headquarters before—through his invasion of the Geralos doctor’s memory—so he knew that all of the “enlightened” were stationed at its apex, at the top of the so-called “eternal staircase.” His thruster pack and 3B suit helped him scale the building like a speedy spider and within an hour, he was on the rooftop, high above the Geralos metropolis. He looked down through a thick pane of glass at the high-level psionic Geralos scrambling to figure out who was attacking them. At the base of the building was a thick crowd of Geralos military officers, pouring into the building and setting up a perimeter to prevent the intruders from escaping.

Rafian took out his sword and powered it on and the las-tech edge of the blade hummed and turned into white-hot fire. He cut a circle into the roof and dropped down quietly as the Geralos scattered and looked at him as if he were some sort of demon.

“Tar cap shah!” he yelled mockingly and began to laugh. In Geralos his words meant “hello” and they were some of the only words he knew from his younger years as a cadet, when he’d studied the planet of Geral. The head Geralos was in a bright red robe and he quickly pressed two fingers into his mouth as he tried to occupy Rafian’s mind to control him. Rafian feigned the movements of someone that had been occupied and then began laughing again as he paced the room, looking at the frightened Geralos as he swung his sword menacingly at them to mock them.

“You can’t get into my head, lizard. You don’t get to play with this seeker like you do the rest of the human race. Let me see if I can get into your head, though. Maybe I can learn a thing or two.” Rafian walked over to him and placed him in a headlock before gouging out his eyes with his fingers. The enraged Geralos fell upon him with their swords out and as he dropped their screaming leader, he dodged their attacks effortlessly and began to summarily kill them one at a time.

Yuth noticed that the shooting had stopped and that he and Dott were able to climb the stairs easily. He wondered why they had stopped firing on them. The light that gave the room the illusion of nothingness was soon below them as they reached the top floor, and the stairs opened up into a scene from the most horrific horror vid. There were over twenty dead Geralos on the floor and in the corner stood Rafian VCA, pasting a tiny bomb on the wall.

“You did good. Yuth. Thanks for prepping the crystal so that we could plant the bomb.”

“Thank you, Commander, but what is our next move for this operation?”

“The entire Geralos military and police force is outside and some are inside right now, climbing the stairs to get to us. Flying around above us are a number of drones and drop ships. They plan to take us from both ends but they will have a nice surprise in a few minutes.”

“What’s the plan, Commander?” This time it was Dott who spoke, but Rafian acted as if he did not notice her there.

“Where’s Laern?” he asked.

“He got corrupted and died from my las-sword,” Yuth said and Rafian shook his head at the disappointment he felt in Laern.

“They take the minds of the weak and the vulnerable. I don’t see Laern as either, but he was probably so caught up in looking at Dott’s body that he let himself be taken over. I didn’t think he was ready for this when we gave him the agent rank and I still think it was a mistake. Will you be a mistake, Dott?” Then he gave the muscular, tanned woman a look that made her flinch.

She thought on the question, which hinted on her getting a promotion. As planned, this mission would see her graduate into an agent. After all, only an agent could disappoint a commander, not a mere recruit. It took everything within her not to jump for joy.

“I have faced death sir,” she told him. “You can ask Commander Yuth. I am ready for it!”

“Good, because it will be you who will deploy the bomb. When they come in, you start the countdown and you blink out in the way we have taught you. Do you understand me?”

Dott was mortified at the mission he was giving her, but it was a rare honor for the Supreme Leader to give out a mission to a recruit. She knew he believed in her and that made her believe in herself.

“We finish the mission, Commander!” she said and clicked her heels in a salute.

“Okay, Phaser, we will see you back at the agency in a few hours. But if we don’t, then it has been an honor.”

He saluted her and then grabbed Yuth as they stepped through a portal that Rafian had deployed from crystal dust. It was one of the most advanced techniques of their order and Dott marveled at how he was able to do it so effortlessly. She suddenly felt alone as she listened in on the Geralos’ approach and thought up different scenarios for her escape. She didn’t have even a quarter of the skill that Yuth Varience had with a sword—and even Yuth was a mere amateur compared to Rafian VCA—so she gripped her pistol and hoped it would be enough against the lizards.

The breech that occurred from the ceiling was so sudden that Dott fell to the ground to cover her head as a number of armored Geralos appeared through a large hole they made to eclipse the one that Rafian had made. She didn’t wait to recover or think on what her next move would be. Before her Phaser training she had been a ranger and her military instinct kicked in as she triggered the five-second countdown on the bomb and then dashed down the stairs where a number of other Geralos were ascending. She grabbed the railing and fumbled for the crystal that was in her pocket as several shots caught her in her chest and shoulder. The pain was immense, but the crystal was in her hand and she threw it over the side as she slapped away the hand of the nearest Geralos. She threw herself off the side of the stairs, hoping she had calculated her jump right. As she plummeted to her death, the roof of the building disintegrated with the boom of a loud explosion. The debris followed her as she fell and she panicked, since the tear she expected from the crystal did not open immediately below her.

~*~*~*~

On the outskirts of the city of Soreble where Val Tracker and his marines had landed, the signal of a red, holographic crystal appeared above Val’s wrist-comm and he knew that the bomb had gone off successfully on Geral.

“Let’s get it!” he screamed at his men. He rushed from behind some bushes with his stargun blazing at any Geralos he caught moving. The two hundred marines behind him fanned out into the city and Val ran to a nearby building and began screaming into his comm for the Phasers to give them cover. Phantom fighters littered the skies as the marines held the ground. Due to the suddenness of the attack, the Geralos were unable to mount a defense to maintain their hold of the city. Val stood fully armored in his bomber gear and he looked like a large droid of death as he yelled and fired at all angles around him. He was beginning to feel the battle rage, but when the Geralos armed themselves and fought back against his marines, he became angrier and decided he needed to change tactics.

“Hey, Bwane, new orders. I want you to take a team around the city and start taking down those atmosphere poles! This is our planet and I want to be able to breathe the oxygen that is natural to it, not Geralos mist. Do you understand me?”

“It’s done, Colonel. Give us a few!”

Val nodded with pride, as he knew that Bwane would see to his commands successfully. He then signaled for several of the soldiers to follow him as he headed to what appeared to be a large car garage. They were running across a broken stone bridge when the Geralos began firing rockets at their location. Four soldiers were caught in the blast and injured by the time they were halfway across it. Val Tracker was angry at the lack of air cover and pulled up his arm to scream into his comm when Tayden Lark interrupted him.

“Sorry, Val, we got it. Were there any casualties from that blast?”

“Don’t you worry about it, Tayden. Just put fire on those boys so we can get to the garage.”

“You got it!”

Val did not know that Tayden Lark was commanding the air cover herself, but the thought of it made him feel safe, so he pushed his men and women to move faster on the garage, while several stayed back with a medic to tend to the wounded. When he got to the bottom floor of the four-level garage, Val thought back to the time when humans were all over Vestalia and the garage held cars, trucks and motorcycles. Soreble seemed like a painful memory of what humanity once was and it hurt his heart to see the occupation up close, now that he was in it. Like Rafian, he was a son of Vestalia, but he had never been on the planet. Free humans had not lived on Vestalia for over a hundred years, so when they would mention “Vestalia” or “our planet,” it was more of an idea than a reality. Now Val was seeing the history of his people through the ruined buildings, empty vehicles and the absence of oxygen within the city walls. He was sure that every Geralos would die that day, or he would die in the dirt of the planet, where a true son of Vestalia belonged.

In one of the buildings that looked to have been a hospital at one time, the assassin, Marika Tsuno, made her way quietly through the halls. When the attack on Soreble was announced, she was enlisted to play the part of reconnaissance while her new partner, Marian, stayed behind to assist Tayden. They had grown close since their arrangement and had spent a lot of time together since.

She knew the Geralos were using the building as a farm, but she was not sure if any of the humans inside were alive, or what to expect when she found them. She would slide past a door and look inside, just in case there were Geralos ready to shoot her on sight. A few times, she had caught some in a room, squatting down against windows to fight against Val’s soldiers, but she dispatched them silently with her knives as she continued her search for the missing humans.

By the time she made it up to the third floor, she had gotten tired of playing it safe. She started kicking in doors with her gun drawn, until she found a room where she saw a number of humans tied down on beds with tubes running into their arms. Some had their heads cut open, dead, and others were traumatized and crying, but locked in a form of stasis that prevented them from screaming. Though she was Casanian and did not consider the fight for Vestalia her own, Marika was upset at the audacity of the Geralos; to take a planet and treat its people as experiments. She touched her leg and a long, silvery spear appeared inside her hand as she walked past all the beds, looking for the Geralos keeper. When she finally found her, she was cowering behind a curtain, hoping that Marika would miss her. Upon seeing the cruel weapon in Marika’s hands, she panicked and made to get up and run.

“CRUTA!” Marika hissed and thrust the spear into the Geralos’s stomach, causing her to make a gargled scream until she pulled it out of her.

The Geralos woman looked up at the assassin, begging for mercy, but this just prompted Marika to stick her again, this time in the leg, and then in the shoulder and once again in the stomach. Marika stuck the woman until she no longer screamed and her rage had diminished a bit. She then went from bed to bed, unlocking the restraints and freeing the people. She then dropped a tracker inside the room so that once the city was liberated, the marines could come back to rescue the inhabitants. After freeing all of the prisoners, she opened an adjoining door, where she found a network of toddlers—birthed from the women in the farm—floating in liquid tanks. It was too much to take, and she dropped another tracker before beating a hasty retreat. It was time to return to what she knew how to do best, which was to hunt down her enemies and murder them.

~*~*~*~

Rafian and Yuth kept to the shadows of the city as the hour grew late. They took their time in finding the building that Yuth had left his Whyte parked on. They could not allow it to be found or taken by the Geralos, as it could reveal the location of many of their hidden bunkers throughout the galaxy. In the distance, a section of the Geralos city was burning from the building that had exploded, and the city was in a panic. Reinforcements from across the country flew in to find the saboteurs and Rafian hoped that Dott had found a way to escape.

“What do you think of Dott, Yuth? Do you think you could bring her up close to your level if we promoted her?”

Yuth Varience had not said a word for the two hours they’d spent crawling the city. He looked at Rafian curiously, as his three eyelids blinked rhythmically to keep the sweat from blinding him within his cracked COREX mask.

“She’s one of us, Rafian. You should have seen her; she made me proud. Laern, too, though I know that you aren’t too fond of him. They came in with subpar equipment for fighting the Geralos and he lost his life for it. When he was alive, he fought bravely and handled the las-sword the way I taught him. Dott did her best, but what impressed me was her courage when facing death. She should become more than an agent, possibly a Phaser Ace, and we should do her the honors.”

“Thank you. I will consider it then, if she’s alive.”

“Oh, she’s alive, Commander. In fact, she will be waiting by the Whyte for us to fly her home. The crystal I gave her had a twin that I left there.” Upon saying that, he gave one of his rare smiles that revealed the curious fanged teeth of his people, and Rafian could not help but chuckle at his comrade’s confidence.

When they reached the building and scaled it to the top, Yuth used a device on his belt to uncloak the Whyte. As he moved to climb up into the cockpit, he noticed the injured Dott sitting under the wing with a satisfied smile on her face.

“How long have you been waiting here, Dott?” he asked. He hopped down and began examining her wounds.

“Commander! I did it. I did what the Supreme Leader instructed me to do.”

On the other side of the craft, where she had not seen him standing, Rafian listened. He was humbled at the amount of importance Dott placed in his approval. He had left her as a test, though his original plan had been to deploy the bomb himself. When he saw her there and knew her to be one of their hopefuls, he decided on a whim to let her do it, so that she could prove herself through the manipulation of the crystals. He played her words over and over in his mind and while he hated the old Jumper moniker of “Supreme Leader,” the way she said it made him understand just how revered he was among them. Taking a deep breath to snap out of it, he walked around to where Dott sat and smiled at her.

“You finished the mission.”

“It is what we do, sir, for I am a Phaser.”

“You know, Tayden Lark would be the happiest woman alive to hear you speak those words, Dott, especially in your current state. So, how did you get out?”

Dott struggled to stand. She got to her feet with a renewed fire in her dark brown eyes as she rested against the Whyte. “I set the bomb and then threw a crystal over the edge and jumped into the tear it created.”

“Did you get hurt prior to your jump?”

“The stupid crystal struck the stairs and opened up near them, so I hit the rail upon entry. I think it cracked some ribs.”

“What you did was an advanced move that even the most experienced of us are hesitant to try. This tells me a lot about you. Hold it together for a few more hours. Yuth and I are going to get you home.”

~*~*~*~

It was four months after the taking of Soreble when the Phasers decided that a celebration was in order. The marines occupied the city and were slow and methodical in seeking out any hidden Geralos. They were also fighting back against any would-be attempts to reclaim the city by its distant allies. Taking territory was always risky in any war, as the enemy could strike at your weakest points to reclaim territory, force attrition, or catch you off guard where you could lose everything. To make sure that human territory stayed human, the Alliance military would rebuild the cities, set up barracks and keep the communication open whenever they were attacked.

Inside a large, saucer-shaped building, a number of marines, Phasers and civilians gathered to celebrate the success of that fateful mission which had brought humanity back to the city of Soreble. The building sat on top of the highest mountain that bordered the valley where Zallus was. On one side, it had a large expanse of beach and there was a thick forest on the other. They called it “The Revival Center” and typically they used it as an office for holding meetings with important visitors.

Rafian had arrived with Val Tracker in the middle of the night and the friends had separated when Val saw how lovely Marika looked in her sheer black dress. Rafian went to the bar to get a drink and a break from the citizens who had swarmed him to thank and congratulate him. Val walked up to Marika, who shook her head in amusement when she saw him approaching with two glasses of wine in his hands—one she assumed was meant to be hers.

“Hey! Marika, is it? Let’s play a game.”

“Something tells me I am not going to be interested in this game of yours, big man,” she said.

“Well, let’s see, eh? You may like this game.”

“Okay, what is it?” She took the wine glass from him and sipped it slowly while eyeing him suspiciously.

“If I can guess the number of spots on your head, you let me take a look at the spots on your chierne.”

“You are as much a Marine as I assumed you to be, you big oaf. What if I change the rules – to you guessing the amount of spots on my head to determine whether or not I pull out your small intestines or not? Eh? THAT sound good to you?”

Val clapped his hands so loud that the entire room turned to look at him. “Wooooo!” he bellowed. “I like this girl! Okay, okay-okay, I was just messing around with you. See I’m actually joking, but you, I think you’re actually considering that threat you threw at me. So I’m gonna apologize and back away slowly now.”

“Oh, relax, Val. I’m just messing around with you. Okay, then, I’ll have your drink and if you keep me entertained, maybe I’ll let you give me that spot check. But, if you fall in love with me—like you humans tend to do with women like me—I may just have to pull out your intestines to get you to back the hell off.”

“I’ll take those odds. You better believe I’ll take them,” he said as he stared at her, smiling, unable to look away from her beautiful eyes, the pupils as black as a Geralos heart.

“How many Casanian girls has that pathetic line worked on for you, by the way?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been in Meluvia for a few years and there aren’t many Casanian women there.”

“That’s what I thought,” she said.

He was brazen, the way she thought all men should be. Marika would not admit it, but Val was the type of marine she was attracted to. It was what made it easy for her to fall into Rafian’s bed, and why she was secretly happy that Val mentioned her spots. Some humans were not attracted to Casanians and it was always an obstacle when it came to finding dates. They were a beautiful species by human standards, but they had red skin that came in a variety of shades, and spots on their hairless heads and shoulders. Val had mentioned the spots, and the fact that he was comfortable enough to joke about them let her know that he had no issues with her.

The pair walked over to the bar and continued talking while Rafian—who was watching them go at it across the room—smiled in admiration at his friend's luck. He found a lonely seat near the glass door and rested there, listening to the music and sipping his drink. It was a nice party and the servicemen and women danced and mingled with one another freely. He wanted to trigger his cloaking device and become invisible so that no one would bother him with small talk, but he knew that it would be a temporary solution, at best. Someone would corner him eventually.

He got up, walked across the room and touched his hand against the Courian glass. It shimmered and vanished to allow him to exit the room before shimmering once more and solidifying again behind him. It was nighttime and he looked out over the violet ocean at the reflection of the moon as he tried to count the waves that reflected its light. As he scanned the beach that ran alongside the building, he saw a pair of lovers on the sand, doing a variety of things that demanded more privacy. It was embarrassing to stare, so he focused forward, closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

A noise brought him around with a start as Camille materialized from the room. She slid effortlessly over to stand at the railing next to him.

“This is some sort of romantic backdrop, isn’t it?” she asked, in a way that made him feel her smile through the words without looking at her.

Nodding and looking at her for a second, Rafian resumed his thousand-yard stare into the night, as if she were a mere distraction.

“I don’t want to ruin your alone time, Raf. I know how important these moments are to you, but I can never catch you to talk to you.”

“What’s going on?”

“Well, a couple things that I’m concerned about. Can you please look at me?”

Turning to look at Camille, Rafian noticed that her hair had been cut into the teased, short hair-do that she hated. She was wearing a dress, something she never used to do.

“What’s on your mind, Cammy?”

“You’ve been avoiding me. I know you have, so please do not deny it. You’ve also been avoiding Marian. I know this because she took it out on me recently, assuming I was the reason somehow. You know, I probably know you better than anyone in this city does and I can honestly tell you that you are in a darker place than I have ever seen you in. I’m a little worried.”

Not knowing how to respond, Rafian rubbed his hands the way he always did when at a loss for words. He averted his gaze to the shore, where he saw that Val and Marika had taken their conversation for a romantic walk on the beach.

“Looks like we’re going to have to turn Val into a Phaser after all,” he said. “I know that he keeps on refusing, but it’s not his prerogative to do so. Plus, he has the heart of our Casanian assassin; he’s going to have to become one of us, if he plans to keep her.” With that he gave the couple a bit of a smirk, then raised his glass mockingly at Camille. “Can’t have love without conflict now can we, Cam?”

“Hey, nice try at changing the subject, Rafian, but there is something else I need to tell you, too.”

“What is it?”

She hesitated. “The connection. You know … our connection? It’s … it’s gone.”

Rafian turned to look at her. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s strange, but I can no longer sense you when you’re close. You no longer make me… you know… when you’re near. It’s as if we’ve never made love, Rafian. It is completely gone!”

What Camille was referring to was the bond she had made with Rafian due to her Filan genes. Filans could only have one mate in their life; it was a reliance that made them physically sick when apart from their lover. The bond came with another side effect that had gotten Rafian in trouble on more than one occasion, and it was due to Camille being able to sense him whenever he was near. When Camille had slept with Rafian aboard their mercenary ship so many years ago, she hadn’t told him about the repercussions, so when it was done and they had been together, she was permanently bonded to him, even though he had married Marian.

Rafian shook his head in disbelief. “How is that even possible, Camille? What do you mean it is gone?”

“I think it was the cloning. Ever since you got me off that ship and flew me back here to clone, I have been feeling a bit different. Mostly in a good way, but I know that our bond is one of a number of things that got lost with my old body.”

Maybe I should clone then, Rafian thought, as he wished that he could get her out of his head.

“Nothing has changed in my mind though, Raf. I am still in love with you, despite the chemical connection being gone. I still think about you constantly, about everything we’ve been through and I still wish… well, I wish that we could go back.”

Rafian sighed and replied with resignation in his voice. “That right there is why I have been staying away from you two. I don’t like running from my problems. Hell, I never thought that I’d have to. But this love triangle of ours – I no longer want to be in it. I have tried reasoning with myself on how I can make this work, but the only solution that comes to mind is to get away from you both. It’s been working well for me and with the chemical connection being gone, I suggest you find a way to get over me, too.”

She moved into his arms and put her body close to his. “What if I don’t want to?”

It took everything within him not to surrender to her. They embraced for a time until Rafian thought about what would happen if Marian came into the party and saw him hugging another woman through the glass. He gently moved away from Camille by holding her upper arms while stepping backwards. He bowed his head as if defeated.

She felt the dismissal and a wave of embarrassment washed over her. “Okay, Raf, I won’t tempt you as you seem to have a lot going on inside of your head. But you must realize that I am tormented, too in my own way. You saved me from the jaws of death and I can’t stop worrying about you.”

“Just get my back in the field like you always have, Cam. We look out for one another, – you know this. None of that warrants gifts, repayment, or life debts. Do you think I would ever consider letting you stay on a psych ship forever? We are nothing without you, Camille YAN, and I don’t want our complicated love interfering with the reality of that.”

“That means a lot, Rafian. It really does. Part of my happiness with being cloned comes with the knowledge that I no longer inhabit a body defiled by the machinations of the Jumper organization. We all gave up our very souls for this knowledge and skillset that we now hold, so even a little appreciation of that feels good to hear.”

“Can you forgive me, Cammy?” he asked. Tayden’s words were still fresh in his mind and he felt guilty. Camille was to have been the love of his life but Marian VCA had filled the role.

“You’re forgiven, Rafian. I can’t stay upset with you.”

With that, the two lovers embraced again and Camille rested her head gently against his chest as she fought back the emotions welling up inside. They belonged together and she knew that he knew it, but they could not—his honor would not allow it. The situation made her want to cry and she almost wished that she had died on the Psyche ship.

“Well, I can only stand awkward for so long, Raf, so I will take my leave now if you don’t mind.”

“Where are you off to?”

“I’m going home,” she said. “This was a wonderful party and I appreciate our talk, but I’m not feeling welI. I will talk to you later.”

He wanted to run over to her and make her his once again, but despite his feelings he stood frozen. “Goodbye, Cammy.”

She walked through the translucent glass and into the party as Rafian turned to look once more on the beach where Val and Marika were now missing. He felt guilty, but as he stood watching the waves as they crashed against the base of the tower, he began to feel better. As the minutes passed, a number of recruits, soldiers and friends who saw him brooding outside went to him to offer up drinks, conversation, or general inquiries.

He was about to re-enter the building when Marian stepped through the glass wearing a thin silver dress. Her hair was a waterfall of curls that bounced as she walked, giving her a rather remarkable appearance. She looked at him as if he were someone she hadn’t seen in days. She flashed him a wicked grin when his look of surprise caught her. When he made to hug her, she stopped him short and then looked behind her to make sure they were alone.

“Hey, Rhee, it isn’t…”

“You know what, Rafian,” she said. Her every instinct wanted to shove him off the edge into the waters of the sea below. But she resisted the urge and fought back her temper. He could see her struggle manifest itself across her features and made to approach her before she stopped him short.

“I’ve been thinking for a long time now, ever since you’ve been back from the Soreble fight. And I haven’t seen you in days,” she said. “Now initially, I thought you and Camille might be playing an intense game of catch-up that meant long nights of passion, but when I followed you – yes, I’ve followed you – I saw that you spent most of your time alone. You just stay away from everyone, even me, which for all sense and purposes is just sad. So I came out here to tell you that you can have what you’ve always wanted. You can have your freedom.”

Rafian looked at Marian with interest, wondering what she meant by “what you’ve always wanted.” She walked up to him and placed the ring into his shirt pocket, then returned to her original position without saying a word.

“I never asked for this, Marian. I never—“

“You never asked to love two women,” she cut in. “I know, and I know that for all of your many wonderful strengths and gifts, your weakness in this is just too much for me to handle. When we were on the ship and you told me how you would sleep with all the girls you wanted and expected me to accept it as a good Phaser soldier, I began to hate you.” He opened his mouth but she held up a hand. “Wait, let me finish, please. I know that you more than anyone else understand hate. You have to realize that it poisoned my very soul and turned me back into the person I was before you met me. I can never be Rienne Laren again, Rafian—now that you have taken me away from all that I know—but I refuse to sit in your world as anything less than number one where love is concerned. I have stuck it out; I have looked very much like a fool, and now I must return. Tyhera needs me and it is time for us to part.”

Rafian stood frozen as his beautiful wife continued her exit speech. He didn’t even realize that a cadet in the local military branch had come outside to get his autograph but was now witnessing the most devastating episode in his entire life.

“But Tyherans don’t divorce, Rhee—“

“Well, we are neither on Tyhera or Luca now are we, Raf? Look, Tayden gave me clearance to jump back and check on my family and I wanted to take you with me – funny enough, that is why I came here tonight. However, seeing Camille against you like that brought me back to the reality of our situation and I’m sorry Raf… I’m just done with all of this.”

“Marian, please. Don’t do this,” Rafian said quietly as he stared at the ground, feeling powerless to save his marriage at that very moment.

He expected the dark woman to lash out and deny him any chances of changing her mind but Marian’s eyes produced tears and they were not tears of anger.

“I can’t lose you,” Rafian said as he stared at her, but Marian held her ground and looked back at him as if expecting something more. “I’d like to fix this if you’d let me, Rhee.”

The two soldiers stood looking at one another. The silence seemed endless as they inhaled air into heavy chests and wished away the painful knots lodged in their throats. After what seemed like an hour of brooding, Rafian spoke again, but this time he spoke as he walked over to her and placed the ring back on her finger.

Surprisingly, she allowed him to do so, then reached up and touched his cheek before kissing him gently on the lips.

“Rafian, I am still leaving you, but only for a time. While I am gone and taking care of my people, I want you to think hard on why it is you brought me here in the first place.”

“How long will you be gone, Marian? I should come with you. I still have the temple in Veece and—“

“You’ve made it more than clear that everything you truly love is here in the galaxy of Anstractor, Raf. The crusade I am about to embark on is one of love and care for the people of Luca and eliminating the Felitian tyranny. You were one of us when you made your first jump and lost your memory, but the man you were then—the man I loved beyond the stars—is not the man that would return with me. Take the time, my love. Take the time away from me to heal and come back to yourself.”

With that, Marian spun dramatically to make her exit, the loose silver cloth of her dress trailing her long strides as she touched the glass and disappeared into the building.

As he stood looking at the space where Marian once stood, he suddenly felt an emptiness he had not felt in a long time. It was an empty fear that he would never see her again, or get to hold her slender body within his arms. He rushed the door and broke into the party looking for her but knew that she would be long gone. He walked out to the front of the building, mounted his hover-bike without a word, and sped off towards his cavern home, hoping he could catch her before she jumped. He knew that he wouldn’t. Marian would have already jumped by the time he made it home to beg her forgiveness, so he stopped the bike on a hill overlooking the city and took a deep breath.

“I will fix this,” he said to himself and then changed his destination for the Phaser hanger.

Memory 6

When Rafian stepped out onto the deck of the Helysian, he felt as if he had not been back in ages. There was no reason for that feeling, as everything was exactly the way he remembered it. There were numerous fighters lined up, ready to deploy at the drop of a command, and there were a number of dockhands tending to them and other broken down versions that had seen the worst side of a battle. He checked his own phantom and found that it looked sleeker than any other ship there. This was thanks in part to Camille, who still made it her routine to shine the exterior of his ship. An athletic and spry pilot came bounding up to him as soon as he had gathered his thoughts and stood beaming at him as he looked around.

“Hello?” Rafian said, unsure of what to make of the man and his strange behavior.

The pilot caught himself, touched his chest quickly and bowed in a salute. “I am so sorry, Commander VCA, but I, well, uhm. Sir! I am Sako Trynessis and I am a big fan of yours. I have studied your files for years and fashioned my fighting after you and…well, it is an honor to meet the real Rafian VCA in the flesh, sir. I know this is where you grew up but I didn’t guess that you would be back.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Sako. Quite an accent you got there. Where are you from originally? Were you one of the pilots that helped out in the defense of the Messio-Tral?”

“Yes, sir. I downed five of the Gerries but was forced to jump out of there when a trace laser caught three fighters in my fleet. I learned that your Phasers were the ones who eventually beat that beast of a destroyer. Phasers are in a class of their own so I am not surprised.”

“Met many Phasers?”

“No, sir, but there was a lengthy expose on them on one of the vids in the Imperial archives. I am from Traxis originally. Is there anything I can do to help you, Commander?”

“Yes, actually. I am looking for a woman named Aurora SYN – she is my sister. I think she is still doing the navigation for this vessel, but it has been many months since we last spoke. She’s a beautiful woman.” Rafian was met with a blank stare and he added, “Cocoa brown complexion, large eyes, big smile and a bubbly personality.”

“Sorry, Commander, I don’t know an Aurora and the description you gave matches too many women on this ship for me to direct you. If you will permit me, I can walk you to our commander’s office. He would be happy to know that a true son of Helysian is onboard and would be able to track down your sister for you.”

Rafian nodded and Sako took him past the ships to the exit of the dock. The next room opened up into a large hub where numerous soldiers and civilians were going about their daily lives talking, eating and enjoying life. Rafian remembered how much he disliked this area, as it was the main hub for the more popular kids on the Helysian. He had grown up an outcast, until the day he’d taken the military test to become a First Grade Cadet. All of a sudden, the popular crowd was yearning to know him. His thoughts returned to Kimber, his first girlfriend and the one person who had given him a chance when everyone else was trying to use him. He hadn’t been an angry child, but he was incredibly focused. He only wanted to be a pilot and nothing more. He wondered at Sako’s goals—were they lofty, or did he only wish to fly the way his hero flew? It felt odd, walking and talking with someone who modeled their military career after him, when he had done the same with Helga “Hellgate” ATE. If she were to appear to him now that he was the all-important Rafian VCA, would he rush to accompany her and talk to her like Sako was doing now? No, he wouldn’t. He would want to take her to dinner, buy a bottle of her favorite liquor, and toast the military life. While the uniforms, protocol and empty rules were a distant memory to him now, he recognized that it was the military that had given him the foundation to be who he was now. Without the Marine Corps, there would be no Rafian VCA, Supreme Leader.

Sako took him through the multi-leveled floors of activity to the bottom where they crossed the carpeted floor to a hallway that held numerous doors. The people that passed by them would gush as they recognized Rafian, who wore the thick cloak of a Phaser over his 3B suit and had his las-word swinging loosely at his hip. Some tried to stop and talk to him, but Sako shooed them away quickly and picked up the pace so that Rafian could get through without obstruction.

“We ought to have a VIP hallway for you, sir,” he said after he stepped in front of a crowd of cadets that had caught wind of Rafian’s arrival. They’d rushed to the square to see if they could score autographs, vids, or photographs with him. Rafian let Sako lead him away, but felt obligated to stop when a nervous boy ran up to him and hugged his leg. The child couldn’t have been any older than eight years old and Rafian knelt and returned the hug before inviting the rest over to hang out with him for a time. Sako was annoyed but smiled it off as an effect of someone like Rafian VCA coming aboard. The children showered Rafian with questions and he answered them all. He took his time signing their helmets, vilo-swords and whatever else they brought up to him. This went on for the better part of an hour when a beautiful woman with her hair tied back in plaits walked through the crowd to stand where he could see her.

“Okay, cadets, I think the Commander is tired from his trip and would like to find his room. Don’t you agree?”

There was a chorus of “yes, ma’ams” and “alrights” from the crowd as they broke away from Rafian and he stood up to see who had broken up the party. His face lit up when he recognized Aurora.

“AURY!” He hugged her tightly before turning to introduce her to Sako, but he had vanished.

“RAF! Why are you here? You didn’t call ahead to tell anyone you were coming and you came alone. Like, where is Marian?”

“Rhee is back home training some of our Phasers, sis,” he lied. “She wanted to come but I told her that this was a solo mission.”

“Mission?” Her face clouded with concern. “Is there something going on here, Rafian? What mission?”

“The mission to bring you to Vestalia. There is a new city, a large military, and a chance for growth there that you will never see here on this ship. I wish that I were asking, Aury, but it’s more of an order. After what happened to the Missio-tral, I just can’t chance that happening to you. The Geralos are growing agitated with us and will be moving to bring an all-out assault on our space presence to try and wipe us all out. I am afraid that my Phasers have made them very afraid of humans and though I cannot go into detail, I know they are taking the fight into space.”

“Rafian, I have a family now. You have a nephew you haven’t met, and I have a husband. We have a really cozy home and I cannot uproot them,” Aurora said. “You yourself lived on this ship when the Geralos were in full swing and not once was Helysian attacked. The Commander keeps us hidden; you know that he values his civilian passengers as much as he does his soldiers. He would never put us in danger and you should trust him. Look, I appreciate the gesture but I cannot go with you. Helysian is my home—it is your home, too!”

Aurora took Rafian’s hand and led him away from the square. The pair stepped into a hover-car and sped away towards the military housing area. The car was fast, drifting above the heads of the various citizens until it was out in the main area of the ship, which was big enough for them to fly freely. Aurora slowed the car down to a crawl, then reached over and kissed Rafian again on the cheek as she threw her hands up as if to cheer.

“Stop ruining the moment, brother! No more talk of taking me away. I want you to accept your home and those of us who still live here.”

“Yeah, I know Aurora, but what we have on Vestalia is not what you think it is. We are very well hidden from the Geralos and we have the defenses to take out anything that would threaten us there. You and your family would be safe, and you would be able to do so much more than you can here.”

Aurora drove silently after he said this and seemed to be in deep thought as Rafian reminisced mentally on the days when he would fly around the ship to his various classes and to his apartment when he lived with his volatile girlfriend, Vani. He had already made up his mind that he would leave with Aurora. She did not know it yet, but he wanted her off the ship because they were on the eve of a massive war that would see the Helysian in action. Having not been in a battle for over fifty years, the people on board would not be ready for it. If Aurora wouldn’t come with him, he would have to blink her out using the crystals, and he didn’t want to do this due to the amount of questions that would arise.

“So, what’s your son’s name?”

“You’re going to laugh, but I am a bit of a sentimental girl, y’know. His name is Ian.”

Rafian smiled, as he knew that it would either be his name or something relative to him, due to their past. Ian was the second part of his name – Raf-Ian – and he recognized it immediately. Aurora was not his biological sister, but he had rescued her when her ship had gone haywire and she’d floated out into deep space with no hope of survival. When he had brought her back, he had made her his sister. The two of them were very similar in terms of them being outcasts, and Rafian had yearned for the companionship of someone who was not a girlfriend.

“That’s one hell of a name.”

“I believe it is.”

“Does the boy know the weight that comes with a name like that? The curse of being a thorn in every woman’s side that he comes in contact with and the eyes of death around every corner?”

“He’ll be fine. I heard that his uncle is kind of a big deal. I was thinking that one day when he’s old enough, his Uncle Rafian could show him how to be strong and how to survive all the things life will throw at him.”

“I’d be honored.”

She then landed the car in the area designated for them outside of her apartment block.

~*~*~*~

On Vestalia, Tayden Lark stood in front of a procession of Phaser recruits who were dressed in uniforms of black and red as they sat waiting for the promotion ceremony to begin. At either side were the handsome Yuth Varience, smiling as he always did, and Frank OTA, who had come in from his new destroyer The Gheist to see who the new Phaser Ace was that would be joining their number. Camille YAN stood off to the side with her las-sword drawn at the ready and Dott Toga, dressed in a silvery-blue 3B suit, began to ascend the tall stairs with her own las-sword drawn and a fierce look in her eye. When she reached the top of the stairs, to the stage where the leaders stood, she screamed a loud battlecry and held her sword aloft. The crowd of Phasers erupted into cheers and Tayden concealed a smile as she walked up to the podium and began to speak.

“There is nothing more dangerous than a Phaser for an enemy of Anstractor. There is absolutely nothing. We finish our missions, we fear nothing and we cheat death—the ultimate of losses. While these words may be true of a Phaser agent, a recruit has to risk death, risk failure and ignore fear in order to prove him or herself worthy of the crystals. Many have come to us, but only a few have crossed over. Look at those who stand in front of you and those who stand with me. Know that they have sat where you now sit, and have gone through what you go through now to earn the title of agent. Today we have a woman that would be an agent, but has proven to be so much more due to her actions on the poisonous planet of Geral.”

Dott then walked over to the center of the stage and turned her back to the crowd. She bowed to Tayden and the other leaders and then turned to bow to Camille YAN. She respected Camille the most out of all of her leaders because she knew her story well. She knew her to be a woman of no fear and action when it was needed. Tayden was a role model for all women in the Phaser agency, but Camille YAN was a legend; she had single-handedly taken out a crew of pirates and was one of the soldiers that had helped Tayden and Rafian turn the older Jumper Academy into their own operation. To become a member of the Phaser elite, Dott would have to prove herself with a las-sword, a pistol and the crystals. She would have to fight a master in Camille YAN and she would have to survive, until one of them was sufficiently defeated, or—at worst—sent to the cloner. It was a fight that she should be afraid of, but she wasn’t.

Camille stood tall and beautiful in her black 3B suit and newly spiked hair. She kept her eyes ahead of her as Dott began bouncing in her fighting stance, ready for their duel. As Tayden made the alarm go off for them to begin her test, Camille blinked from her location and appeared in the air above Dott, falling with the las-sword humming dangerously, as if to cut her in half. Dott did not expect her to be the first to attack and was barely out of the way when the sword came down and caught hers as she threw up a guard and shifted out of the way. She began a series of deflections and parries, as Camille stayed on the offensive. When she saw that there was no letting up from the attacks, she used the crystals as she had been taught and blinked back near the edge of the stage to get away from Camille’s onslaught. She pulled out her pistol and began firing round after round at Camille who dropped down low after the first shot and then was suddenly behind her with the hilt of the sword knocking her gun away. She followed this with a roundhouse to Dott’s jaw and a sidekick that threw her off the side of the platform. The crowd gasped as she fell to her death, but she had dropped a crystal when Camille surprised her and threw one below her as she fell, so that she passed through the tear and appeared in front of Camille with her sword ready. The women fought like demons for the better part of five minutes and though it was intense and life threatening, Dott could hear Camille encouraging her under her breath and saw that Yuth Varience was actively cheering her on, also.

She had learned the way of the sword from Yuth and though Rafian had taught her one or two moves whenever he had come by the temple, Camille YAN still had a significant advantage over her. She knew the Phaser legend was holding back and though she appreciated the sentiment, it angered her that she would need their help to earn her star.

The two women clashed swords violently and Dott leaned in and whispered, “Please, Camille. Take off the training gloves. I want your respect, not your pity.”

Camille used the sword to push Dott back and then wiped the sweat that had collected on her brow from the hot afternoon sun. She took out her gun and cocked it and then stood with her sword still buzzing, as if she was waiting for Dott to move. When the young girl did not move, Camille addressed the Phaser who stood in anticipation of the fight.

“You will not get my respect if you die. Do you understand me?”

“More than you think, Commander.”

With that Camille vanished and Dott followed her, to the bewilderment of everyone watching. A loud scream brought everyone around as they appeared near the stage. Dott was crawling away from Camille with her sword up to guard as the veteran Phaser swung deadly arcs of the blade at her. The first swing had caught Dott in the side and while the suit she wore deflected the powered-down edge of the las-sword, the force that Camille had swung it with had reinjured the ribs she had hurt before. The pain was unbearable for her and she screamed, but deflected the sword using every ounce of strength she could muster. She had only one crystal left and she wanted to save it for a final move, but Camille was not letting up and she needed to get out from under her.

“You’re bleeding, Dott. We can stop this at any time. You can be a Phaser agent; there is no shame in that—gods know you’ve earned it, girl. But if you want to be one of us, an Ace, you will need to stop your crawling and show me that you are A PERSON!”

The word person had a bitter tone that echoed bad memories into the minds of Tayden Lark and Frank OTA as they recalled the past when the agents that graduated from the Jumper academy were “persons.” The title implied that the organization recognized you. The Jumpers looked down on everyone that was an outsider and when they drafted a soldier into their ranks, he had to earn his way up to becoming an individual in their eyes—or “person.” Earning person status meant that you had been re-educated, retrained, and had made your first jump. It was the highest of honors.

The persons in the Jumper academy were their elite class, and while the Phasers forced those who would become aces to fight their masters, the old “persons” endured worse. The thought of it made Tayden sick, as she wanted nothing of the Phaser agency to be like that of the Jumpers. But Camille was a cynic and she saw very little difference in their methodology than what they had been put through as recruits. Dott rolled out of the way of her last swing and pulled a knife from her boot, a leftover from her days as a Ranger. She put the weapon up to her face with her right hand and used her left to hold her side. The las-sword had cut through the alien fabric of her suit and had broken the skin where the blood now flowed freely from the wound. The world was losing focus to her and her slow death forced her to go back to the weapon that she knew and trusted, even though she knew it was nothing against a las-sword.

Camille powered down her sword and put it back in the sheath before raising her sidearm. She looked disappointed with Dott, and it was obvious that she disliked the ceremony. As Dott rushed forward to stab her with her knife, Camille fired off three rounds in succession. Two burned through the 3B suit to take out Dott’s legs, and the third was in her chest, where it barely missed her heart.

“Okay, recruit, I’m impressed. You have a lot of heart and you do not fear death. Can we stop this stupid gladiator nonsense now? Or do I really need to kill you?”

“CAMILLE!” This time it was Tayden and she was visibly angry as she ran up to the Phaser Ace and began talking to her in hushed tones as Dott tried in vain to stand.

“What the hell is your problem, sister? Do you not agree with our methods?”

“This is the same schtill that Arn did Tayden. We are better than this!”

Arn Stryker was the Supreme Leader of the Jumper organization back when Rafian, Camille, and Tayden were recruits. His methods were cruel and archaic in their time, and after Rafian killed Arn and restructured the Jumpers into the Phasers, Camille expected them to do much better.

“So why wait till now, to put on an embarrassing spectacle in front of the recruits? Why couldn’t you share your thoughts on this a long time ago?”

“Because, it never crossed my mind then, okay?” Camille snapped. “This is the first time I am seeing this and I am not impressed. Why do we rely on our physical prowess to determine who is worthy of the next level of education? Shouldn’t it be much more than this? Tayden, we are Aces because we were able to survive hell.” She was shouting now to where everyone could hear her, and Yuth Varience and Frank were attending to Dott. “I did a stint in a prison where I was brutalized and—ugh! They threw Rafian into the middle of a civil war. You managed to take out the leader of an advanced military and Frank was able to survive three months of torture. As Jumpers, the trials we were given prepared us to be the type of warriors that could dominate any situation. A young girl getting her ass kicked and killed will not be on our level. It isn’t fair to us, it isn’t fair to her, and it isn’t fair to them.” She finished her speech and stared at the crowd, who had gotten so quiet it was as if they were frozen.

“What about Yuth? He is a new Phaser Ace and he has proven himself matchless in his abilities,” Tayden said.

“Yuth Varience is the equivalent of a Rafian VCA on his home planet of Louine, Tayden. Are you even listening to me about this? Dott deserves to be properly made!”

Tayden felt helpless and angry as Camille undermined her in front of the recruits. Dott was held up to stand by her two comrades. She blew the hair that had gotten in her face, and then took a deep breath and looked around the stage. Dott knew she was dying, but she did not want to say anything to ruin her induction and was hoping that Camille would come around and grant her entrance. It was Yuth Varience who spoke up after what seemed like a long pause and when he did, it was to the surprise of everyone listening.

“This is disgraceful, Camille,” he said. “This girl fought you with everything that she had and lived. Before this trial, she accompanied Rafian and I as we took the tower in Geral and performed actions that only an Ace could do. I vouch for her, Rafian VCA vouches for her, and Frank OTA vouches for her. Why muddy her graduation with this questioning of our methods while the poor girl bleeds out in front of us?”

Camille looked at Dott as if noticing her wounds for the first time and then screamed for the medics to give her help. The men in blue ran up the stairs and saw to Dott with a healing rod and a floating equipment droid, as the leaders stood around discussing her fate. Camille, whose rage had gotten the better of her, calmed her nerves and then nodded rapidly at Yuth to let him know that she agreed. Dott had fought like a Phaser Ace and though it bothered her that she would be on the level of those that had been through the hell of the Jumper organization, she knew she was being unfair.

“I apologize, Phasers,” she said to the crowd as she holstered her weapon and smiled anew. “I get caught up in the battle sometimes and I lose focus on what is truly important. If none of you are allowed entrance into the Ace ranks, then why should we even have it? My temper got the best of me and I am ashamed. I vouch for Dott Toga and I welcome her into the Ace program. It is a hard life as an Ace and as you know, only those completely committed to the Phaser way of life would even consider it. Dott will heal up and stand tall amongst us, and I will greet her as a sister. I hope to see many more of you up here one day – not just as agents, but as crazy Aces willing to let me kill you.”

And with that, the crowd erupted and Tayden felt extremely proud of Camille YAN.

~*~*~*~

Maes/Sako was beside himself. He had finally met Rafian VCA. Not only had he met the Phaser leader, but he had walked with him, talked with him and stood close to him. But then Aurora had shown up and he’d had to remove himself from the scene quickly. She was such an annoying woman. The hours of preparation, speech rehearsal and strategy it had taken to find out when the Phaser would arrive, to get himself in position to escort him and prepare a conversation that would lead to an assumed friendship – it had all been for nothing. He hated the skin he wore and the long period of time he was forced to live amongst the humans. Now that time would be extended due to Rafian VCA slipping from his grasp.

With Rafian being on the ship it was time to act, but with a man as dangerous as he was, what could a lone spy like Maes hope to do to capture him? He would have to be inventive, and it would have to involve Aurora. Maybe something lethal that would put her brother off completely. She had a husband and a child, but harming a child could be unpredictable. He thought on it for a time and then he had an idea. He could be her hero. If he could get a Geralos destroyer to attack Helysian, there was no doubt that the people onboard would be frightened. Aurora would be in a panic, just like the other humans, and he could be a stalwart and lead her to safety as the ship was ravaged. No, it was still too unpredictable. What if the destroyer’s appearance prompted another battleship, or worse yet, the Phaser Aces, to attack? Then there would be no panic; there would only be a loss of Geralos lives. He would need to be creative.

Maes hovered near the entrance to Aurora’s home, where he had followed her car with his makeshift hover-bike. The layout of the homes was interesting: there were apartments stacked on top of one another, but each “home” had two floors. The entire complex looked like a metallic honeycomb of hexagonal buildings, each with a door or window. Aurora’s sat a few floors up, near the center of the honeycomb. He stared at the door as other cars flew by him and landed at their own doors, the honeycomb an active, moving thing.

“Go ahead and feel safe for now,” Maes muttered under his breath, then hopped onto his bike and headed back to his own home.

~*~*~*~

The baby boy kicked and spat up all over Rafian, as he used the bib to wipe his mouth. Aurora stood back in her husband’s arms, smiling. Her brother seemed to be a natural at the role of caretaker for his nephew. The man she had married was Velman TOR. He had once been a close friend of Rafian’s back when they were cadets, and had become a bit of an engineer in the Corps, looking after the engines of the Helysian as she drifted in space. Velman was a tan, good-looking man, who kept his face clean-shaven and his hair neatly combed. Aurora had met him on the bridge where they worked and after what seemed like years of passing by one another, he had courted her and married her in one of the biggest weddings on the ship.

“Rafian, besides the fact that Velman and I want to stay on Helysian to raise Ian, we are officers and cannot leave our posts in the Vestalian military. I know that Phasers are allowed to pull who they can to become agents, but you wouldn’t be doing that. You would be asking me to commit an act of treason and leave this ship high and dry, which you do not want to do. You are on the ground in a city you control, with dangerous men and women to take care of anything that would interfere with your way of life. We are on a military ship whose purpose is to protect the refugees of Vestalia and answer any call to action that is made whenever the Geralos threatens one of our allies. You aren’t seeing the reality of what is happening up here, brother; you have become disconnected.”

“We have Marines on the surface, too,” Rafian told her. “You two would fall under the command of Val Tracker and you would be set up in one of the cities we have reclaimed. There would be no treason, just a transfer, for the sake of Vestalia.”

Little Ian settled peacefully in Rafian’s arms as he bounced him gently to put him to sleep. He looked around at the grand apartment that Aurora had. When he was a Marine, an apartment of that size would have cost a Colonel’s wages, and he was impressed with them for making it feel as warm and comfortable as it did. Aurora had called him disconnected and though he knew what she meant, he did not like the implication that he was no longer a part of the people.

“Disconnected,” he said, repeating what she’d said. “Nevertheless, I am on the ground, tearing down the lizards’ terra-form towers to get us back on our own planet, sis. I see the reality of our hell every day as I wake up in a place I had always believed to be inaccessible. No Aury, I am beyond connected, and everything I do is with the purpose of making sure that children like Ian will once again breath Vestalian oxygen without the worry of some lizard trying to bite him in the head.”

“Rafian, I know that and we all appreciate the amazing feats that you and the Phasers have accomplished. But what I mean by disconnected is much more…I don’t know. Velman, help me out.”

Velman looked at his old friend and smiled. He had known Rafian when he was just a tall, awkward, teenager, trying his best to impress his superiors while staying away from bullies.

“Rafian, do me a favor. When you leave Helysian, fly over to one of the hubs and hang out for a couple of hours. Just walk through, get yourself some coffee and take a look around. I won’t tell you what to expect because it needs to be new to you. Travel to a hub and then you will understand why Aurora and I cannot leave.”

“Okay, Vel, I will do that. I am due for a ceremony on Vestalia, but I will visit a hub on my way there. Don’t think that this means I am okay with you and Aury staying here. This ship is a big accident waiting to happen. Come down to our hidden city, to the Vestalian soil where you belong—where my nephew belongs. I promise you will not regret it. At least think about.”

“We will, Rafian. Thanks for keeping us close to your heart.”

~*~*~*~

When it was clear that Aurora would not join him in leaving the Helysian, Rafian decided he would forego a visit to the commander and travel back to Vestalia. The trip to Helysian had been impulsive, but he had not seen his sister in a long time, and he’d needed to check in on her to try to remove her from what he believed to be a death trap. He flew his phantom towards the moon of Lear, Vestalia and docked at one of the satellite hubs to do what he had promised Velman he would do. The satellites had once been used by the towers in Vestalia to broadcast vids, assist spacecraft, and hold supplies. But after the Geralos had invaded, the humans had turned them into living spaces for refugees. Rafian had never been to a hub, but as a cadet, he had been taught that they were a nest filled with parasitic human beings, preying on the weak to survive.

When he was asked to identify himself, Rafian made up a name and told the guards that he was there on supply detail. The security was lax and they let him dock and enter the hub without any show of identification. The dock area was full of rough men working on ships and hauling supplies. Rafian walked through them quickly, but in the corners, he noticed a few vagrant-types, their makeshift homes of old boxes and crates lined neatly against the walls. He moved into the main living area of the hub and the number of box homes grew, making it difficult to avoid stepping on them. When he got past the large room of boxes, he came upon a lively area. There were shops with fancy signs above them near the walls, and in the center was a crowd of people – too many for them to be comfortable yet so used to one another that they tolerated it.

Rafian saw large, makeshift house-crates suspended from the ceiling. There were boxes in the corners and near the walls, and people without even that to live in, lying on the floor. There didn’t seem to be enough water for all of them and the place stunk. As he walked through all of this, heading towards a coffee shop, he saw what appeared to be a prostitute, letting a john have his way with her as several children looked on. The few parents who were present did not care to hide any of it from them, as they were more curious about him—a clean presence in a ship full of filth. He thought on his youth when the Marines had debated whether to keep him or send him to a place just like this. He knew that children were probably preyed on more than anyone else was and his heart sunk at the thought of what they were going through, and what his life could have been if he hadn’t been given the opportunity to leave.

As he neared the coffee stand, an old man with black and yellow teeth ran up to him and touched his cloak. “Phaser!” he yelled in recognition of the article of clothing.

Rafian looked at him with curiosity, as the old man seemed to be wearing the fatigues of the old Alliance Army.

“Who are you, soldier?” he asked the old man.

The man looked at him and smiled, happy for the recognition. “They called me Brise when I was a human being, Phaser. Now, they call me Sarge—though my rank was not quite that.”

“Sergeant? With whom did you serve, Brise? You look like you’ve been to hell and back. How did you get here and how can I help?”

“I served with a Commander Retzo Sho, aboard the Rendron, back before the lizards took over his mind and made us all kill one another. I fought alongside Rend and the woman they call Hellgate, back when she was a spoiled young cruta who couldn’t tell the butt of a gun from the barrel.”

With that, he smiled, showing off a crooked row of ugly, rotten teeth and brushed back his patchy red hair, as if that would be enough to fix his appearance. He had a thick beard that showed some grey poking through, but his face was still very youthful.

Hearing that he’d fought alongside Hellgate made Rafian even more eager to help him. He sat with the old man outside one of the nicer crates and the pair swapped war stories. It was all a sad situation to Rafian, as he listened to Brise brag on about being one of the best engineers in the Alliance. It didn’t really matter what he was, because whether or not that were true, he was stuck on a disgusting hub with criminals, eating rotten food, dealing with poor hygiene and living the life that no hero of the Alliance should live. Once he had finished telling Rafian everything, the Phaser got up, purchased two coffees, handed one to Brise and toasted Lady Hellgate.

“I’m taking you with me, Brise.”

“What!?”

“You don’t know who I am or what I have going on, but no lizard-killing hero of my father’s age need live out his life in a hub.”

“Gratitude to you soldier, but you see, I cannot just leave these people. They are like family, see? And while I have my old stories and my good years as a soldier, I won’t abandon them. I left the Rendron during the time of the lizard mind control and I abandoned Rend and Helga. I thought I was the smart one for doing that and they never knew what happened to me. But I came here and hid for years, paranoid that the lizards would find me and take my brain. After a while, I got the news that Rendron was taken over by Rend, but I was now here and settled. If I had gone back, they would have tried me for treason, or worse. So I got comfortable, got married and made a life here.”

Rafian thought for a long time about the living conditions he was witnessing. There were thousands of hubs all around Vestalia and it had never dawned on him that this was the reality of the human condition and not the military ship that he had grown up on. Rich, privileged children were able to become cadets in the military and they gave him a chance, as an orphan, only because he had stowed away on the Helysian.

He flew back to Vestalia with the hub embedded in his mind and decided that for every city that they reclaimed, the inhabitants of a hub would be flown in to be given housing within it. The military would maintain governmental control for a time, but only until the people elected their own officials, who would then answer to the Alliance. He would empty all of the hubs, starting with this one, and then he would send all of the disgusting satellites into the suns. He was upset with himself for only seeing the living conditions now and he understood what Aurora had meant when she’d said he was disconnected.

All the drama that he had with the women in his life, the tunnel vision he held for the war, the struggle to win back Vestalia – it had all kept him blind to the reality that was the human condition in space. He had grown up in the dirt, just as these children were, but it was not something that defined him. He thought about the slums on Geral and how they seemed like expensive mansions compared to the crates and boxes he’d just seen his fellow humans living in. For hours, he stewed on it and when he finally landed in front of the Phaser agency, he rushed out to talk it over with Tayden.

By the time he landed, it was late evening and Camille, Tayden and Frank were waiting for him.

“You’re a little late aren’t you, Raf?” Tayden said as she removed her arm from around Camille’s shoulders.

The latter seemed upset and Frank was shaking his head as if to warn him about what he was about to hear. Leaving nothing to assumption, he hopped out of the phantom and walked over to them.

“What happened?” Rafian asked. “Full details, please. Spare nothing.”

“Camille feels as if she’s let us down. There was a fight to see if Dott was Phaser-ready and she spoke out against the practice in front of the recruits.”

Rafian looked over at the red-haired Phaser and kept staring until she raised her silvery pupils to meet his. “Camille. You know as well as every soldier here that undermining Tayden in front of the recruits opens a door to unhealthy speculation and possible hesitation in carrying out her orders. Now, don’t get me wrong; I do agree with you. We need a better way to promote our Aces, but we cannot allow ourselves to show anything but a unified front.”

Camille nodded and then walked over to hug him. She did it in such a way that he could not stop her, and he purposefully averted his gaze from Tayden with the silent hope that she didn’t read anything into it.

“Where is Dott now?” Rafian asked as he released Camille and rested his hand on Frank’s shoulder.

“She’s in the hospital being patched up. Camille cut her on those sore ribs—from the mission—and then shot her up pretty badly.”

“Well, Camille, the fact that she survived all of that punishment from you should be proof enough that she has an Ace’s toughness. Do you not agree?” Rafian asked her with a wink.

“She’s one of us, Rafian. I said as much to the recruits after I went off on Tayden about the process. The only thing she needs now is for you, the Supreme Leader, to make her official.”

“Well that sounds great; take me to her so that I can promote her immediately.”

~*~*~*~

Maes Van Senthyn was running out of time. He was out of adaptation serum and was at risk of exposure if he didn’t get off of the ship soon. He had missed his shot at Rafian, but he had enough information to make his mission a success. The night before, he had sent a signal to the Geralos command, alerting them to where the Helysian was. His plan was to have the Geralos strike at Helysian and within the ensuing chaos, sneak off to rejoin his comrades on the ship. He would be given a hero’s welcome when he did that, and the Phasers would be next on their strike list.

He wanted to get the location of their hidden city, but this was going beyond his mission parameters. What he had on the humans was enough to make his mission a success, but his pride pushed him to get more. He wanted the Phasers’ base of operations but Aurora was not talking and he was running out of time.

Pryston had been asked to a meeting with Yuth Varience—a high-ranking Phaser, from what he understood. When he told Maes that he would be leaving to become a Phaser, Maes feigned sadness at him leaving but took advantage of it to try one more desperate move. He was in bed with Pryston when he rolled over and touched him to wake him.

“Pryston, you awake?”

“Now I am. What’s up? You can’t sleep?” Pryston asked with a warm smile on his face.

“I have something to tell you, but you have to promise me that you won’t get upset,” Maes said as he sat up and switched the light on.

Pryston was curious at what it was that would make his normally quiet lover wake him up, so he, too sat up and stretched his muscular arms. “I promise, so spill it. What do you need to tell me?”

“You know how everyone says that it is intel from this ship that led to Missio-tral being attacked?” he asked.

“Yeah, that’s the rumor. What of it?”

“Well, the last few days I’ve been seeing some odd behavior on the bridge, and I’m thinking that I know who the traitor is on Helysian.”

“Stop speaking in riddles, man. WHO?”

“Colonel LOB,” he said under his breath and threw up his hands as if he expected Pryston to lash out at him.

“That isn’t funny, Sako,” Pryston said. He knew the woman well and had served under her, so he didn’t appreciate Maes—who was still considered an outsider—talking down on one of his mentors.

“Why would I make such a joke, Pryston? I know what she means to you. Schtill, I greet her every day and she has been one of the nicest people to me. Everyone treats me like I don’t belong, as if I am a useless charity case that Helysian inherited.”

“Come on, Maes, I didn’t mean it like—”

“It’s okay, you don’t have to believe me. But just remember that she sits at the right hand of the commander, Abe RUS. If we were to get attacked suddenly by a host of Geralos ships, remember what I told you, and know that we had a chance to stop it, and we let it happen.”

He stared at Pryston, waiting for his reaction and the young man seemed uncertain as Maes’s words did their magic.

“I will mention it to the Phasers when I go see them,” he said and Maes let it drop, knowing that the seed had been planted.

Memory 7

When Rafian entered the hospital room of Dott Toga, he noticed Laern Cobo was with her and the sight of him soured his mood. He didn’t know what it was about Cobo that rubbed him the wrong way, but it only took one glance for him to get angry whenever the younger Phaser crossed his path. The young agent saw the commander walking towards him and got up from his seat to salute. He knew not to stick around due to Rafian’s demeanor and after the salute he walked past him, wondering if he was angry with him for dying on their mission.

“Commander, may I have a quick word?” he asked meekly as Rafian stood with his back to him.

Rafian turned slowly to face him. “What is it, agent?”

“I just want to apologize for my conduct, and for letting you and Commander Yuth down on the mission on Geral. It was an honor to be picked out of so many to accompany you and I know that you expected a lot more out of me.”

“Laern, before you were reborn into the order, what did you do?”

“I was a pilot, sir. I was a captain for a fleet of asps onboard the battleship Ridex.”

“So the lives of many men and women were in your hands on a daily basis. Who recruited you and why?”

“Commander Frank OTA found me, sir and he informed me that my selection was due to my outstanding record as not only a pilot but as a leader.”

“How’d that make you feel?”

“Like a god, sir. I have had many kudos throughout my career, but every soldier knows that to be chosen as a Phaser, you have to be the absolute best. Having a Phaser Ace tell me that I qualified made me feel like a giant. I will never forget the day that he visited me.”

“Have you stopped to ask any of the other Phasers about their history, Laern?”

“Not really, sir,” he admitted. “We all talk about our past once in a while, especially as recruits, but I couldn’t tell you much about any of my brothers and sisters. I just know that we all were chosen and that we are here to do a job no one else is able to do.”

“Every Phaser here has a military or civilian track record for action that would impress the most seasoned battleship commander. All of you have histories that are beyond impressive and all of you were taken out of units that desperately needed you for success. This includes the recruits vying for position, the pretty young girls that you flash your badge and tattoos at, and the men and women that carry out some of the lower-end jobs like building new fighter jets and designing new uniforms.”

“I can explain my—“

Rafian didn’t let him finish. “Save it. I am not telling you these things to get an explanation or an apology. The woman in that room was a recruit when we selected her for that mission and you were an agent. Think on that; on what happened that day and the fact that she is about to be made into a peer to the other Phaser aces, and reconsider your direction here.”

“Yes, sir!”

Laern suddenly felt a wash of embarrassment and panic as Rafian’s words sank in. It drove home the point that Dott had outshone him. Being an agent was a soldier’s dream, but being an Ace was much, much more. He bowed to Rafian as the big man turned, but he couldn’t help but feel that he was being scolded because the commander actually cared. Did Rafian believe that he had what it took to become an Ace? Why else would he be so annoyed at his juvenile antics that he would give him a speech about leadership? Laern brushed back his green hair and took in a deep breath as he thought about it at length. Dott had told him that Yuth Varience had defended him and now Rafian, the Supreme Leader, had scolded him in the way a father might do. In Meluvia he would have cut himself several times in front of the commander to force forgiveness, but as a Phaser he would need to do a lot more.

“Now isn’t that a beautiful smile,” Rafian said as he leaned over the bed of Dott Toga. He kissed her on the forehead.

“Seeing you makes all of my pain fall away, Commander,” Dott said. “Plus, how many girls are lucky enough to be kissed by Rafian VCA?”

You have no idea, Rafian thought as he smiled at her and held her hand. Dott was an attractive woman, but she looked very much like the stereotype of a soldier. She was hard and muscular in her appearance, but her skin held a pretty, reddish-brown complexion that hinted at Casanian blood in her family line. She reminded him of Hellgate, and he wondered if the soft spot he had for her was due to this. She caught him staring and blushed, confused at his intent until he caught himself.

“This is long overdue,” he said, and handed her a set of pins that signified her new rank as a Phaser Ace. The pins were to go on her coat for their more formal meetings, but the true rank he gave her verbally. It was from the lips of the Supreme Leader and all Phasers and military commanders across the galaxy would hear of it. He let her know as much, and then sat with her to explain Camille's history so that she would understand why the ceremony had been so dramatic.

"I know that you didn't have to tell me any of that and I appreciate you so much, sir,” Dott said after he had finished his explanation. “Camille YAN is a hero to me; she’s a hero for most women in the military. I will prove myself to her, one way or another. She will soon truly accept me as a sister.”

“Good. So, have the doctors told you that you will be required to clone? Have they put your records into the machine as of yet?"

"Not yet, sir, but I won't need to clone. I am going to be worked on tonight and they say that I will be able to leave as soon as tomorrow evening."

"Wonderful!" Rafian said. He made to leave before Dott stopped him short.

"Can you stay for a few minutes more, Commander? I have something private I would like to talk to you about."

"Sure thing. What's bothering you?"

"Well, sir, it's the cloning. As Phasers we are cheating natural death, aren't we? Our lives will eclipse whole lifetimes and we are given such tremendous power. I guess that—well, what I’m asking is, what is to stop me from becoming a dangerous, immortal monster?"

Where is all this coming from? Rafian asked himself. He tried to keep his voice even in order to hide the annoyance that he felt. "Nothing. A Phaser is a dangerous weapon, yes, but the education teaches us control,” he told her. “The first Supreme Leader became that monster of which you speak, and we were forced to wipe his records from the cloner and take his head off with a las-sword. Without the skills, cloner and crystals, we are ordinary men and women. Two of those elements can be taken away from you instantly, so you can only remain dangerous for a short period. This is why the Makers tasked multiple people instead of only one."

"But what if someone as powerful as you were to become dark, Commander? With your knowledge of the crystals, the las-sword and seeker abilities, we would not be able to slow you down, let alone stop you."

"I was chosen to guard the crystals, Dott. I cannot deviate. If ever I were to do the things that you suggest, my masters would come for me and destroy me in an instant. You have nothing to worry about. The only demons I have are my own. I would sooner sink a blade into my own chest before turning on those who I’ve sworn to protect."

Dott was not convinced, but she was happy to hear it. She knew that within a week's time she would have the power and responsibility of a Phaser Ace and after a visit from the Supreme Leader, she was already looking forward to it.

~*~*~*~

When Marika Tsuno stepped out of the crystal room within the Phaser halls of Vestalia, she felt as if she had been gone for many months. She had jumped with Marian to Luca but things had escalated to the point where Marian had begged her to return home to talk to the Phasers. Her first instinct was to find Val, but Marian was unstable and she knew that if she left her alone for long, there was a good chance the woman would try to take on the Felitians all by herself. She all but ignored the numerous recruits that tried to talk to her as she marched for the elevators, waving and nodding as she went, but not giving them eye contact or conversation. When she reached Tayden’s floor, she almost ran her over as she sprinted out of the elevator shaft.

“Marika, when did you girls return?” Tayden asked as she sidestepped the assassin and touched her on the arm.

“Tayden! Good. I was looking for you,” Marika said. “Luca needs us; they need Phaser power badly. Marian is trying to do it all herself and since she’s fighting with Rafian, she won’t come ask. So, I’m here, and I am going back, but I need agents and recruits to accompany me.” She spoke rapidly, her hands gesturing wildly.

“So, let me get this straight, since you’re rambling a bit, girl. Marian, who—Maker guide her heart—is a sister that I love to death, caught a temper tantrum and fled back home to her galaxy. In doing this, she left behind her agency, her duties and her husband, with no care for what is happening here—“

Marika, who saw where Tayden was going with her refusal, felt the need to interrupt, even though her rank decreed that she listen to her commander.

“Tayden, please stop. It’s not like that. Marian just wanted to check in on her people. Rafian wasn’t—“

After raising her hand to Marika’s face to signal her silence, the tiny commander backed up a step and crossed her arms with a smile on her face. “When did you start thyping Marian VCA, Marika? This is too funny. I would call myself shocked, but considering what Raf’s been doing to her for so long, I’m kind of proud of her. I just didn’t expect it to be you. Aren’t you and Val—wait. Is this serious, or are you girls just playing around?”

Marika was becoming agitated with Tayden. It wouldn’t be long before Marian got herself in trouble if she felt like she wasn’t going to get help from the Phasers. She needed help and Tayden’s jealousy and defensive nature when it came to Rafian was making her focus on things that were not important. Before she could think better of it, she shot the commander a dark glance and spoke again, this time firm in the fact that she would not be interrupted.

“Look, I am not talking about Rafian okay? A sister and her nation of people are dealing with a planet wide genocide, just like here! If we cannot help them, then tell me that, but do not delay me further with gossipy schtill and trivial accusations. Marian’s people have been bombed and burned on their moon, Tay. They are starving the rest out and she is in the middle of it. If you won’t help me, then let me talk to Rafian. He was a resistance leader there, back when he was without his memory. They know him and he knows their struggle well. Clear me to bring it to him if I am disallowed from bringing a fellow Ace or two.”

Tayden was struggling with what to do about Marika’s insubordination, but the always-respectful Casanian was behaving strangely out of character, and this made her believe that her request for urgency was real. She could grant her the use of an Ace or two to help Marian, but what kind of message would that send to her as a Phaser? That, when the time needed it, she could rise up on her as if she were actually a peer?

“I don’t like your tone, Marika. It is very disrespectful and unlike you, but I understand that you are under a lot of stress. Go back to Marian with this message from me—and you are not to talk to any other Phasers about this mission. We will send help but Raf is the one who knows the details. I will be talking to him tomorrow and he will decide how to get you girls the aid that you seek. Now excuse me, I need to go calm down before I rip your face off.”

Tayden stood frozen as the commander walked past her and took the elevator down.

When Marika was alone, she exhaled with satisfaction. There would be time later on for her to patch things up with Tayden, but for now she would go see her Vin’yn and share a tall bottle of celebratory wine with him.

~*~*~*~

“I think that phantom is about as shiny as it is going to get, Cammy,” Rafian said as he stood near the wall of the academy watching her buff and shine her ship in the beaming sun.

“Well, is this déjà vu, Commander, or were you just checking me out?” She was in a grey tank top with tiny shorts and Rafian would be lying if he were to say that he was not looking at her. Marian had been gone for over two months and while he had kept his promise to her, he found himself thinking of Camille and feeling guilty.

“This was how we met the first time, wasn’t it?”

“It was, except you didn’t have that arrogant smirk and your ego wasn’t the size of a planet.” Camille said. “You were a pilot that just wanted to make money to get a bigger apartment.”

“And you were a pilot, who was driven, ambitious and seemed a little lonely.”

“So it was you that saved me from loneliness, Rafian?”

“Not sure why you think my ego is so big, Cammy,” he said as he gazed at her, allowing his feelings for her to run free. “It was you that saved me. You gave me focus, you reminded me—with those beautiful eyes of yours—that there were things worth fighting for in this galaxy and that being a great pilot was insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Before you, I was just a boy who wanted to prove to the bullies of the ship, that even though I had no parents, I was meant to be there. I remember our first night together like it was yesterday and I remember thinking to myself: did that just happen, is this girl real? You were my first stroke of good luck on Helysian and—look, I don’t know why I am giving you this monologue, but I’ve never stopped loving you. I just want you to know that I’m glad you’re back.”

“I know, Raf, but don’t start playing with my heart again, okay? ENOUGH! Just…please, stop,” she said, her voice high and irritated. She stomped away from him to the rear of the craft in order to hide the tears that were falling from her eyes.

Rafian thought about her words and how correct she was in everything, and he felt ashamed at what he wanted to do. His mind began to wander and he thought of the fight he’d had with Marian that had prompted her to leave. She had all but divorced him before abandoning him to run back to Luca against his wishes. He was a Phaser and Camille had been his betrothed before he even knew Marian’s name. Who could fault him for wanting to return to familiar territory when left alone like this? Could he live with himself for breaking his promise? It would be a slippery slope that would find him once again within the arms of not only Camille, but several other beautiful women that lived inside the agency, the academy and the city.

“Sorry, Camille, I don’t want to complicate things. I just wanted to apologize for my behavior and see if we can coexist without losing the bond we have.”

She walked over to where he stood and took his hands in hers and shrugged. “We cannot deny our feelings, Rafian. It was what made it so complicated before.”

Rafian placed his hands on Camille’s tight, slender waist and was on the way to kiss her lips when Tayden walked out of the building and yelled his name. The timing was perfect, but Rafian’s mind was committed and he could not shake the memories of how good Camille felt, so he tore away from her painfully, as if he lost a limb.

“RAFIAN!” Tayden screamed.

“WHAT?” he shouted back, enraged and annoyed at the interruption.

“Marika came back last night and we need to talk. It is beyond urgent.”

~*~*~*~

Marian was sleeping peacefully within silken sheets inside a large tent when Rafian made it to her camp. It had taken him the better part of a week to track the crystals that she and Marika had used. His quest had led him to the discovery of the camp where she and the new rebels lived, preparing for the Felitian military. Marian’s tent was evident by the two freedom fighters that stood guard at its door. Rafian, cloaked, slid past the guards, then once inside, climbed into the bed beside her. She looked so peaceful, and he propped himself up on one elbow to watch her sleep.

She took his breath away, but as he used a finger to brush a lock of hair away from her nose, she woke up, mounted him in one swift motion, and then pressed her knife against his throat with a thumb against his eye.

“Rafian?”

Though the position Marian was in meant death in the most painful way, Rafian relaxed his hips so that she could settle on his lap comfortably. He used his hands to caress her sides through her nightgown.

“I’ve missed you my hatch kitten,” he said as he slid his hands down to caress her thighs that eventually relaxed from his gentle touch.

“Raf, how did you…why are you…HOW ARE YOU HERE?”

Rafian took her hand away from his throat and gently removed the knife and dropped it on the side of the bed. He then began to kiss her despite her attempts to talk, and she gave up on the idea and began to return his kisses in between her tears of joy.

“Rhee, I am sorry for the way that I—“

“Shut up, shut up, shut up. You came here. That says everything I need to hear. Take this off.” She jabbed her finger into his ribs to indicate the 3B suit and he did just that, along with the rest of the gear and weapons he had brought along.

By the time they had finished making up, it was as if they were back in time to the morning when they had first consummated their marriage. Marian held him in a way that he hadn’t felt in years and he held onto her as if any release would see her float away from him and into oblivion. He felt stupid about his pass at Camille; why would he want to be with anyone else but this phenomenal woman that he now held in his arms? Whenever he and Marian were on good terms, he felt as if there was nothing else that mattered in the world. But when they fought, he would run to another woman, and it was this realization that came to him as he lay there with her. I can be better than that, he thought. I truly love my wife.

They lay like that for several long moments before Marian broke the silence to answer the questions that needed to be answered for true reconciliation.

“You know what the problem is, Raf?”

“What is it, Rhee?”

“It’s Anstractor.” When she said the words, she adjusted her body so that she was lying on top of him and staring into his eyes to make sure that he was listening. “You are not yourself there, Rafian—well, not the Rafian I fell in love with. Am I making sense? Here in Luca, I have you. I have the man that I gave up everything to be with. Here, we are happy, we are inseparable. In Anstractor, I am forced to share you with everyone and they are not okay with allowing me to have the biggest portion of you.”

Rafian slipped his fingers into her curly, ebony hair and kissed her full, maroon-tinted lips longingly before speaking. He noticed that in the moment he could think of nothing else but her and making her as happy as she could be. It was different from how he felt not even three months ago, when she was one of many responsibilities that he felt the need to juggle out of fear of it all falling apart. He had grown confused once again, on whether he wanted her forever, or if it would be Camille, his lovely Filan Ace. It wasn’t until he had spoken to Val that it had dawned on him how childish and unlike a leader he was acting about his wife. He had made her a promise and had led her to believe that he was her last stop on the journey to love. That it was indeed fated that they be together. He would not let himself grow distracted again, not for anyone or anything, and he felt lucky to be allowed another chance at making things right

“It does seem that way, doesn’t it, Rhee? Here in Luca, we are husband and wife first and warriors second. In Anstractor, we are Phasers first, soldiers second and married last. How do we fix that moving forward—especially since it involves so much more than us? How do I get you back there and not revert back to what I was when you left me?”

It was Marian’s turn to kiss him gently. She moved her legs to fall outside of his and straddled him anew as she sat up on his lap. She was making it very difficult for him to concentrate, even though they had gone at it with the energy of droids not two hours earlier. She whipped her hair to her right shoulder and as she gave him a warm smile, she answered his question.

“Well, I was thinking. Help me set up with some crystals and you can leave me here to be with my people. Here, I can undo the damage that the Felitians have wrought and you can go back to the war against the Geralos. I would visit you—very often—and you can visit me the rest of the time. We would miss each other greatly. That cannot be avoided. But we would stay happily married and on top of that, we could simultaneously tackle the issues of our two worlds.”

“That’s a tough proposition, Marian, one that would drive me crazy. I need to be with you more than you want to believe and it would kill me to have limited time with you in that way. Plus, you have no cloning ability here. I could lose you, or you could age out and leave me due to the difference in our galaxies time. This cannot be your wish.”

“Of course it isn’t a wish, but I am not happy in Anstractor.”

“You were not happy because you were never given a chance to be happy. I brought you into a war that you have no stock in, forced you to befriend strangers, and I turned into a terrible husband who neglected you.”

Marian thought for a long time and then nodded. “It wasn’t all you, baby, so please don’t take all of the blame. I put up with a lot, yes, but we could have talked it out. I left you to punish you more than to come home and check on things, and I am wrong for that.” She looked around, as if she were taking mental notes of their surroundings, then looked at him again as she ran her hands over his chest. “You know, if we could remain this way, I don’t think location would matter at all. I just need to know that despite everything, you are mine, Rafian VCA. Mine. Mine alone.”

“You got it, Baroness Rienne. I am yours, just like I swore to you that day on the cliffs. You no longer have to worry about that.”

“And Camille?” she asked.

“Cut the flesh and it heals, but there is a scar left behind to remind us that it was cut. Camille and I have a bond that doesn’t break with words or actions. I would do anything for her and she would do the same for me. Everything we have gone through, finding one another the way we did. Two aimless, misunderstood fish in a sea of doubt and negativity. We found one another and that made us feel like we belonged together. I won’t lay here and lie to you that it is anything less than that. But what I can tell you is that her Filan bond with me is gone, thanks to the cloning and I have learned how to choose my honor over everything else where she is concerned. I love her, Marian, I really do, but my heart is yours eternally and you need not worry for it anymore.”

Marian looked physically annoyed at what Rafian had said and she looked around, shaking her head, as if accepting his words were a painful and unrealistic thing to do.

“You have some nerve, Rafian. This brings me back to the night aboard the ship where you told me that no matter what I did, you would continue to sleep with Camille.”

“I did say that, and I was an idiot. At the time, you were still Tyheran and I was a Phaser. Those words I spoke were based on me being an emotional and rude bastard to you. What I’m saying to you now is honestly based on reality. I refuse to lie to you about anything, Marian. I need you to accept it. You can be upset with me and hate her for it, but I will not sit here and lie to you that the past has not made Camille into something that isn’t easily changed. What I need is your trust, once again, in knowing that I am here for you where it counts. I won’t stray…”

“We’ll see. The thought of you two together just makes me see red. Do not let me think that you are with her, Rafian, ever again, this you will promise me or you can jump back to Anstractor and consider me dead. You and Camille – the closeness is now a theory. Do you understand me? I don’t want to see anything that hints otherwise, or I will sink a blade into her and I will be gone from you. Promise it to me!”

“I promise, Rhee. I do. You are my everything.”

“Okay, husband,” she said.

Marian then told Rafian about her plans to assassinate the most important man in the Lucan galaxy. He was impressed beyond words at the plan she had put into action. When the morning hours brought in the rustling sounds of her rebels in their dusty, brown armor and second-hand gear, he kissed her longingly and placed a small pouch inside her hand. She looked down and opened it and saw mysterious crystals blinked beautifully back at her. She hugged him closely while whispering her thanks – for finding her and providing help.

“Are you going back to Anstractor now, Raf?” she asked as he quickly dressed and washed his face.

“Only if you and Marika are with me. You have a mission, Marian, and I have no doubt that you will do it well. What I aim to do now is to fly back to Tyhera, set up a proper refuge for our brothers and sisters there, and then wait for you after you’ve pulled the trigger. Rhee, you do know that once you do this, we cannot easily return?”

“I have given that a lot of thought, Rafian, but it’s a sacrifice I am willing to, make,” she told him. “Tomorrow, men that have caused Luca to be in turmoil will be wiped out by Anstractor’s finest. We will finish the mission and then I will be with you to return to the war against the Geralos. Raf, you cannot understand what this means to me, to have you here on the eve of my most important day. I love you more than life itself.”

“I’ll always be there for you, Rhee. Now get to your preparations and I will see you in a day or two.”

Memory 8

It was early in the morning when Camille YAN slid through the doorway of Dott’s bedroom and threw her 3B suit at her. Dott woke up with a start. She fumbled for her pistol, placed an arm over her eyes to shield the light, and then went into a barrage of expletives before realizing that it was Camille.

“Commander, what’s this about?”

“We have Geralos problems, sister. We need to move!”

“The lizards are here?”

“Get your ass up!” Camille barked. “They are not here, no, but they are lighting up the Helysian and several other battleships in deep space. We have had a breech in intelligence and the enemy now knows where our ships are hiding. Dott, they have destroyed two hubs! We need to help these people, sister. Get up!”

Dott jumped up and pulled on her 3B suit and gear. The action only took a few minutes and before long she was running next to Camille as they made their way into the hangar.

“Where is Rafian and Tayden?” Dott asked as she sprinted effortlessly. She was saddened at the loss of life that two destroyed hubs meant but excited that Camille had come for her to do a mission. “What’s our plan, Commander?”

Camille seemed annoyed at the questioning and pressed forward until they could see the fleet of phantoms, ready to take off. Hers was primed and ready at the front.

“You ride with me, rookie. Now hold your thyping tongue and stay frosty. I need you at my side when I do this and after our little dance for your promotion, you are the only one I trust right now to understand how I move.”

They hopped into the floating fighter vessel, with Dott sitting behind Camille as she hurriedly buckled in. A glass materialized above them and cool, artificial oxygen took over the cockpit. Camille did not hesitate in her actions as she barked orders at the other fifty Phasers who had been waiting on her. The phantom fighters lifted up in cadence and shot through a crystal fissure that had opened up into an area of space.

Dott sat in awe of the way that Camille carried herself. The fissure closed behind them and soon they were flying through the emptiness of space, heading towards a myriad of lights. She could make out the debris of what used to be a satellite hub and a number of Geralos zip-ships were flying around the area, taking out any escape pods they could find. Camille and her fighters flew directly at them, with their ships forming the shape of a diamond. As they broke the ranks of the Geralos squadron, the phantoms made easy prey of their enemy, destroying them with precise hits and doubling up on their aces whenever they managed to escape the attacks.

“Ready, Dott?” Camille asked. Before the rookie could reply, Camille put her thrust into overdrive and shot past the other fighters towards a tiny, blue dot that sat out in deep space. As they grew near, Dott could see that there was a war going on between three Geralos destroyers and two Vestalian battleships. She recognized them as the Helysian and the mighty Aqnaqak. She wondered how it was that Helysian was surviving the amount of damage the ships were dishing out, but the Aqnaqak had a reputation and was proving it by keeping the attackers on the defensive. Helysian was also a breeding ground for space aces; their procedures for teaching pilots were the most hardcore in the entire galaxy so the ships that flew around picking off the Geralos were almost as good as any of her Phaser phantoms.

As they neared the chaos, Camille felt her chest swell with pride. It was on Helysian that she and Rafian had learned how to fly, had become aces and had fallen in love. Helysian was home and a symbol of what they fought for, so the breach in security was a violation and one that she personally wanted to see fixed and rectified.

“This is Commander Camille YAN of the Phaser agency, requesting permission to board the Helysian,” she said into the comm as they came closer to the massive battleship. Its shields flickered like a dying light bulb as the shots bounced off them.

“The Helysian welcomes back a true daughter of Vestalia,” the deep voice on the other end of the comm replied.

Almost instantly, a tractor beam pulled them inside the ship as several Helysian fighters flew near to guard them as they made their entry into the vulnerable dock. The hatch opened and they flew in. It closed immediately as a number of zip-ships crashed into the hull, trying to follow but missing the opportunity. Camille landed gently within the enormous hangar and they hopped out onto the floor with Dott pulling her pistols and looking around for trouble.

“You can secure those. We’re safe,” Camille said, but she smiled to herself at how much of a soldier Dott was, and a welcome partner for what she intended to do. “We’re here to talk to the commander, take care of the traitors, and then see about putting those three Geralos mosquitos out of their misery.”

Dott was impressed at the way Camille was in this instance. She had always heard stories about how the “golden chameleon” turned to ice during fights, but had only seen the civilian version of her except for when they had fought during Dott’s “promotion.” Now she looked at a woman who was all focus, her white 3B suit a defiant choice to let her enemies see her as a leader, and her pupils that were so light that from a distance she appeared to have none whatsoever. The red hair that she had kept for so long was gone and she was back to her platinum blonde. It was short and unkempt—from where the helmet had been in place—but she was like an all-white laser, seeking out a target to burn into oblivion.

As they ran through the halls of the Helysian, she could see the frightened civilians and cadets as they scanned the many vid screens for the situation outside. They cheered for the aces they knew and relied on to keep them safe. She began to feel anxious and wanted to be out there helping the Marines, but Camille ran with purpose and it took everything within her to keep up.

“What’s going on, Commander? Who are we going after?” Dott asked.

“There’s a breach from somewhere on the bridge,” Camille said. “I highly doubt that it’s Commander Abe RUS, so I want us to nab the XO. Yuth got a tip that she is a Geralos spy.”

“How does he know it’s her?” Dott asked.

“One of the recruits from Helysian told him. Says his boyfriend works on the bridge and overheard stuff. In any event, if it is her, we can prevent further damage. If it isn’t and that little schtill is lying, then we will act as if it was a ruse to draw out the real spy. Either way, the culprit will know that we are on to them. Just keep your eyes open and watch my six.”

“CAMILLE!” Someone yelled at them as they passed the apartments on board but Camille did not slow down. They had been running for thirty minutes and had made it to the center of the ship, where the bridge was chaotic. Camille finally looked over to find Aurora out of breath, who had been running alongside them. They had not seen each other in years, so Camille slowed her pace to a quick walk and they hugged and exchanged greetings.

“Cammy, I am so glad to see you. How did we get found out? Rafian warned me to get off the ship and we stayed. Now my son… he’s missing! Have you seen Raf? We want to come to Vestalia. I want to find my son and prevent him from being in this sort of danger.”

“Oh no!” Dott exclaimed at the thought of a child being hurt. “What is being done to find him?”

“My husband and I were looking. Someone said that Sako, an ensign, got him to safety when all of this happened. We were looking for Sako when I saw you two. You going to see Abe? What’s going on?”

Camille, who had picked back up her run, grabbed Aurora by the hand and shouted at her. “Aurora, go find your boy, then meet us at the hangar. Stay near the white phantom and don’t move. It will be a tight fit, sister, but Rafian would want you off here. Do it quietly and do not let anyone see you. I can only take the two of you, since the phantom can only hold at most, three people. You can send for your husband when things settle down. If he’s Vestalian, he will understand. I’m sorry Aury, but we have to go!”

Aurora nodded rapidly and then stopped to watch the two Phaser women sprint towards the bridge. She envied them in their strength and confidence to fight the Geralos and not feel the sort of fear that she and the other people onboard the Helysian were feeling. She felt stupid for not listening to Rafian when he had come to see her those few months back, and she felt even worse now that it was under duress that she and Ian would be squeezing into a fighter vessel to escape their endangered home.

“Thank you, Camille,” she said under her breath as she steeled herself for the conversation that she was going to have with her husband before leaving for the dock.

When she got back to the area where she had left Velman to look for Sako, she found her husband with Ian and the ensign waiting for her. “Oh, thank the maker for you, Sako!” she said and then gave the Geralos spy a warm embrace and a kiss on the cheek.

The move repulsed him, but he kept his composure and nodded, pretending to care about Aurora’s family and worried for their lives due to the attack.

“How did they ever find us?” Aurora asked as they moved towards an area of escape pods where Velman intended for them to wait, just in case the Helysian got into critical condition. When Aurora saw his intent, she pulled them up short and then asked Sako to wait as she spoke with her husband privately.

The Geralos watched them walk off to talk and he turned to look through the large bay windows at the exciting dogfights happening outside. The Geralos command had approved his request to hit Helysian without an argument. He knew that all he had to do was mention the fact that the Phaser leader had been there, and that he had a sister onboard the giant vessel. If risking a destroyer was all they had to do to capture the man that had cost them so many lives, it was a small price to pay, though Maes had not counted on the Aqnaqak showing up to help the other ship. The Geralos destroyer had to call in help from two other ships and now their focus was on survival, as the superior Aqnaqak was enough to take on any ship that the Geralos threw at her.

He watched the fighting and the explosions and thought of his plans blowing up with them. If the Helysian survived and Rafian did not come, he would kill the girl Aurora, her husband and their drooling child. He wondered what they spoke about since Aurora seemed insistent and the husband agitated. They came back to where he stood and she bore a false smile on her face.

“Sako, I am going to take Ian to the rear of the ship to a relative,” she lied. “I am not sure when next we will see them, so I want to make my farewell.”

“I will come with you then, Aurora. You don’t know; these lizards can be nasty. There could be a few onboard putting people in danger.”

“You’re a sweetheart but I must do this alone. No worries, we have Phaser help onboard—“

“Phasers! Where, onboard?” Maes panicked. If there were Phasers onboard then they would lose the fight and all of his plans would have failed. Even more devastating than that, the Geralos command would blame the deaths of the people on the three destroyers on him. His family would be disgraced and executed. He could not do that to them so he had to think fast.

“I know how much you love the Phasers, Sako but this isn’t the time. My s—“

Before she could finish her sentence, Maes took off running for the bridge. If Phasers were onboard, they had found out that there was a traitor. This meant that they would question the soldiers on the bridge and they would point to him as the “strange fellow that came off of the old Missio-tral.” There was a good chance that one of the Phasers knew enough about the Missio-tral to see the flaw in his tale. They would seek him out and then kill him. He had to get to them first and be one of the people there who could sway their investigation. He quickened his pace and whispered a prayer to his gods.

It is too late in the game for failure, he kept telling himself.

~*~*~*~

Camille and Dott walked onto the bridge of the Helysian as Commander Abe RUS barked orders at his staff to do a variety of things to defend the ship. When he saw the two women and noticed their cloaks, he ran over to them and thanked them for coming aboard to assist.

“Thank the Maker; we’ve got Phasers on board!” he said triumphantly. His booming voice made sure that everyone who was at a machine turned around to acknowledge the women standing confidently before him.

“I am Commander Abe RUS. Permit me to welcome you aboard the starship, Helysian.”

Camille stepped forward and touched him on his shoulder before saluting. She leaned close and whispered something into his ear that made him rock back on his heels, stunned.

“A spy, you say? One of our own?”

“Yes, a corrupted Geralos plant. It is not his or hers fault; the lizards select their targets randomly.”

The commander and the Phasers spoke in hushed tones, but out of the corner of her eye, Dott could see that Abe’s executive officer was inching closer to eavesdrop on what it was that they were saying. She suspected the woman could be their target and feared that she would learn that she was in danger and alert the Geralos ships. She had to get her away from Camille, so she acted quickly—improvising as she went along.

“Are you the Helysian’s XO, Colonel LOB?”

“That would be me, yes.”

“Can we have a talk? My commander is talking to yours about some high-level operations and I need to prep the ship for it as soon as possible.”

“Tell me. What’s going on?”

Dott took the colonel’s arm and walked her over to the navigation panel to get her away from Camille so that Alline LOB would not hear of their plans to detain her. She was a husky woman who wore her medals proudly on her jacket, as if she needed them to reinforce her position. She had her brown hair pulled back into a bun that looked uncomfortable and at her waist hung a vilo-sword, the alliance’s answer to the Geralos lastech blade. As they neared the console, Abe RUS called to them. When Alline turned to see what her commander wanted, Camille YAN shot her in the forehead with her sidearm. The bridge erupted into a flurry of screams, shouts and movement, as the confused soldiers bore down on the Phasers, ready to protect their commander.

“Keep calm, soldiers. Alline is okay.” Abe said calmly, his deep voice penetrating the noise in a commanding way that he had mastered after years of leadership. “She used a stun shot and our beloved XO is in stasis. She has been corrupted by one of those damned lizards and this has caused her to reveal our position, along with give up several pilots that we assumed were missing in action. I know that it is hard to see someone so loved and trusted be reduced to this, but it is the war we fight. These Phasers—Camille, a daughter of the Helysian and her subordinate, Dott Toga—have investigated Alline’s crimes. They came aboard during the most dangerous of times for our ship and took out the person responsible for it. Alline and I go back to our days as cadets and I truly hope that the Phasers can remove her corruption and allow her to keep her life. She has four children who love her, a surviving father, and a bridge full of us that want her back whole, to lead, laugh and be with us once again. Could you promise me that, Camille?”

Camille scanned the room and saw that every soldier was hanging on the words of their commander and looking to her to decide the fate of one they had considered a leader. It made her sick to her stomach that they would want someone who had done so much damage and caused so much death, to be alive. She bit down hard and took a breath through her nostrils in order to calm her nerves before speaking. Before she could get a word out, Maes burst onto the bridge and Camille turned with her gun pointing. She immediately noticed something peculiar about him.

“Commander, do you see what I see?” Dott said under her breath.

“Abe, we have made a dreadful mistake,” Camille said calmly as she laid the sleeping body of the XO on the ground. She removed her cloak to cover her. “If you want retribution for this mistake, the fault is my own. Just know that Rafian and the Phaser agency mean no ill intent to the Alliance of Anstractor. Bear with me, old friend, and play your part for a time.”

The ship’s commander, confused by Camille’s sudden change, let his eyes follow theirs to where Maes stood. He noticed that a section of the young man’s face was drooping and the green from his real skin was beginning to show.

“Is everything okay? What are they doing to Colonel LOB?” Maes asked, trying his best to seem as concerned and genuine as a real Vestalian would have been at seeing a commanding officer injured.

He had not taken his shot in a week. He had used up all of his serum and he had no way of replenishing it without visiting Geral. Those shots were supposed to last a week, but with the sprint that he had made to make it to the bridge and the drop in temperature of the ship, his artificial skin was falling apart and without a mirror, he was not aware of it. Camille and Dott knew what he was, so they had to carry on an act in order to get the jump on him. A Geralos that could breathe their air, dress and talk like them, and embed himself on the bridge? This spy was dangerous and they didn’t want to take any chances.

Camille lowered her gun and looked around at the soldiers that were eying her angrily. They had not noticed Maes face and were still upset with her for shooting the XO. She brushed off her 3B suit and then addressed them, as if Maes had never shown up.

“Let me get this straight, men and women of Vestalia. I have here the husk of a woman that once held the same beliefs as you do but now taken over by the mind of the enemy. And you want me to make her good and send her home? Is that what I am hearing from you all?” She let out a little laugh as she put her arms akimbo and shook her head in disbelief. “What about Colonel Alline? Do you think she could live with herself after all of this? Do you think she would be able to look into the faces of people onboard as they judge her, knowing that she caused the death of their sisters, brothers, children and parents? You all know better, and as the commanding officer of a ship that carries hundreds of thousands of people, she would accept a warrior’s death instead of a life of dishonor.”

“So you want to just murder her in cold blood? Is that what you Phasers do?” said a guard who was standing near her with his rifle cocked.

“It is not my call. We will take her back to the agency to stand before Rafian VCA and Tayden Lark. If they see fit to let her loose, she will be coming back to you. But if they ask my opinion and choose to take it without question, I will shoot her in the head again. And this time, it will be a live round. The Geralos are not to be trifled with, Vestalians. I am not sure if it’s the peaceful living that you have been afforded for so long aboard this ship that has made you all so thyping soft, or the cozy bridge you get to push buttons on to take out the enemy from a distance. The war I know and fight is up close and ugly. As a Vestalian, I risk death, being eaten, getting my mind invaded and torture. Therefore, I have no sympathy for the lizards, not like you lot. I am going to take your XO and leave this ship. You can thank us when that destroyer out there goes down easily, since its little spy is no longer here to tell it when to hit your shields as they recharge.”

Maes looked up at his commander, Abe Rus and as he did so, Dott vanished and appeared behind him. She drove her knife into his back and slashed his Achilles tendons in two quick motions, causing him to fall and vomit bile all over the deck. She smiled and mounted him to deliver the coup de grâce.

“DOTT, STOP!” Camille yelled, and then walked over and pulled the false flesh off Maes’s face.

The bridge erupted into a panic and it took all of Abe Rus’s power to settle them down as they surrounded the Phasers, curious to see what their infiltrator looked like. Most of them had never seen a Geralos that close before and the sight and smell of the vomit, combined with the alien features of Maes’s face, was too much for many of them to accept.

“I ATE CHOW WITH IT!” One of the men yelled out in horror and several others that had slept with the soldier they knew as Sako went through a variety of emotions.

“Nobody saw this coming, Marines; you shouldn’t feel bad about it,” Camille said. “Listen to me: I want every single one of you to swear an oath of silence right now about what you saw happen here today. We do not want the entire ship in a state of panic, and we do not want other ships panicking, either.” She looked at the commander and he nodded at her to let her know that it would be under control. She wished that Rafian were there. This was an unprecedented move by the Geralos and it hinted at greater dangers to the Alliance than they could have imagined possible.

“We need him for questioning,” Abe RUS said to her.

Several soldiers had rushed in to tend to their fallen XO while others moved to collect Maes to take him to the brig.

“This is your ship, Commander, but I hope that I don’t have to stress how volatile this enemy is and the threat he poses just by remaining on Helysian.”

“Girl, I was knee deep in Geral swamp piss while you were a baby cadet learning how to count. How about a little trust and respect, eh?”

“Forgive me, Commander,” Camille said, feeling properly chastised. “You know my heart and my intent is not to undermine. I’m just… I just want you to be careful. This is my home, after all, and to see it attacked like this—“

“Cammy, we’ve got it under control. Look outside at those destroyers. Does that look like your home is any danger to you?” As he said it, she saw a trace laser from the Aqnaqak split a Geralos destroyer in two and change focus to one of the other two. She sighed in relief and then turned to face the frightened marines who stood like statues, looking at their commander for answers.

“I spoke harshly to all of you just now, but it was necessary to stall this piece of schtill. Use this situation as an indicator that this war is not one that will allow us to let our hair down and play complacent. The lizards are always plotting and they are always trying to get inside of us. Please give Colonel ROS my sincerest apologies.”

Then she reached down and offered Dott a hand for her to stand up.

Maes managed to laugh despite his poor health and he smiled at Dott with an ounce of respect. “We will figure you out in time, Phaser. We will figure out why you can do those amazing tricks that you do. We Geralos are smarter than you are, we adapt better, we learn faster and in time—“ His words were cut short as Camille’s heel found his forehead as she stepped on his face to silent his threat.

~*~*~*~

When Camille and Dott reached the long hallway and were out of sight of everyone, Dott opened a crystal-tear in the space before them and they stepped through to emerge inside a dark corner of the docks where they could see Aurora waiting by the phantom.

“Well, that was new,” Camille said as they walked towards her.

“I heard that something happened to Sako,” Aurora said as soon as they got her to the ship.

“He messed around and got himself shanked,” Dott said with a smile on her face.

“That isn’t funny,” Aurora said to her. She squared up on the tall, dusky, brunette, with Ian asleep in one arm and her other hand balled up in a fist.

“That guy was a Geralos made to look like us here on Helysian,” Dott said, ignoring Aurora’s attempt at taking an aggressive stance.

“Get off it,” Aurora said, not wanting to believe what she was hearing.

“No worries. My ranger knife found him before he could do any more damage.” Dott smiled at her in the way one does when you see a pathetic animal trying to defend itself.

This only served to infuriate Aurora even more as she got closer to her. “I’m not afraid of you, Phaser cruta, and I will not have you talk about my friend like that.”

“Alright girl, bring it down a notch,” Camille said. She was amused at Aurora’s brazen disregard for taking on a woman as dangerous as Dott Toga. “Dott speaks the truth. You had a Geralos spy as a friend and this attack happened because of him. Now shake hands or hug it out, you two. There’s a long flight ahead and I don’t want to deal with the tense air in my ship.”

“So, Sako was—“Aurora had tears in her eyes at the thought of the violation.

“Maker, girl. You didn’t sleep with him, did you?” Camille chuckled and the two women stared at her in anticipation of an answer.

“Not funny, Cammy!” Aurora shouted, annoyed and ready to lash out at her, as well.

“Oh, Aurora, you’re a kitten,” Cammy said, bored at the exchange and ready to leave. “Now, granted, you’re a kitten with a lot of heart, but if YOU got hurt, Rafian would find a way to blow the entire planet of Geral to pieces. Nobody messes with his baby sister. So with that in mind, let us fly you to safety before this place explodes and I end up having to explain to Commander Hard-ass why we didn’t get you out in time.

~*~*~*~

The Marines threw Maes Van Senthyn into a secure cell on the lowest level of the brig. It was a level for the most vicious of criminals, and Maes was the only inhabitant. This level was a circular room with a transparent glass wall that ran around all of the individual cells. On the other side of the glass were three guards, who walked around it looking at him, curious to see what he was and what he would do. The pain he felt was unbearable, but while his body wanted him to give up, his rage wanted revenge, and he would not have it if he died dishonorably.

As he looked out at his captors, a portion of the wall exploded. It happen so fast that Maes covered his face and when he recovered from his panic, he noticed that blast doors had covered the hole as the shields repaired it. His guards were dead—sucked out into space—and the alarms were going off. He looked around to see if there was anything to pry open his bars. He was too weak even if there was, and he could no longer feel his legs.

He cursed Dott and cursed the Phasers, vowing that if he were given the chance, he would make them pay. Several hours passed and he closed his eyes, wondering if his luck was up and he would die alone in the large, empty room.

When a few hours had passed by, a young guard came inside the room to change places with one of her fellow soldiers and Maes thanked the makers for his luck. The young girl looked around as if confused, her blonde ponytail whipping this way and that as she touched the handle of her pistol and ran around the outside of the glass, looking for the soldiers. When she couldn’t find them, she took a look at Maes and wondered to herself if the Geralos had managed to kill them.

“Help me, please,” Maes whined, hoping that he could get her to come inside of the glass area and near his cell.

“Where are the guards that were watching you, lizard?” she asked. He could tell by her body language that she was unsure how to handle the situation, so he pretended to cry and cleared his throat to try a pathetic voice.

“I … am … in … so much pain, sister. Help.”

The young guard wanted him to tell her what he did with her fellow guards so she slid the glass door up and entered. She marched over to Maes’s cell, crossed her arms and looked down at him. “Talk, lizard. Tell me where the men are or I will make you tell me.”

Maes despised the act of corrupting a human mind, but in his desperate state, he would do anything and he thanked the gods that they’d given him a young female guard. He knew that she would be unprepared for one like him, so he started the ritual by thrusting his fingers into his mouth.

Julienna Varennes fought back with all her heart; but he had her under his control within an hour. He was in her mind and able to control her, happy to be walking around—even in a strange body—than to be restricted to his own broken form.

While posing as a recruit aboard the ship, he had bitten into the heads of three young cadets. He had hidden their corpses and lied to their commanding officers that they had not come back inside after their flight exercises. His biting into them was to prepare for the moment when he had to do this despicable act—mold his mind with one of theirs—but he had prepared well and as Julienna Varennes opened his cell, he thanked the gods for granting him perseverance.

Julienna lifted his body into her arms and closed his cell, listening for anybody coming down the stairs and keeping to the shadows of the walls. The brig had been one of the areas of Helysian that had been hit severely, so many of the lights were out and the guards were tending to their families, leaving the prisoners to sit in panic. She climbed the steps with Maes’s body and when she found a fuel disposal bin, she placed him gently inside of it and upon activating its hover mechanism, walked with it out and made her way to the robotics lab.

~*~*~*~

It was the day before they were supposed to jump back to Anstractor when Rafian and Marian decided to take a trip to the city of Veece, Tyhera. Marian was still packing and Rafian was exploring the woods. He was thinking of the meetings they had been attending for the last week and he’d taken the morning to mull things over away from his wife.

On the way back to their camp, Rafian stopped and clenched his fists, trying to see if he could will himself to jump. It was a futile exercise that he had always tried since learning how to jump using the crystals. He held his legs firm and clenched his muscles, trying to will himself to jump back to Anstractor. He closed his eyes tightly, then opened them, hoping to be at his destination. Nothing happened and he relaxed his muscles, laughing internally at his futile attempts. He tried it again, but this time he kept his muscles relaxed and his eyes open, focusing on his destination and the details of the place that he wanted to jump to. He imagined his bedroom and the thin, soft, glass bed that sat at its center and though his brain kept trying to place his beautiful wife on top of it, he focused on the room itself and how badly he wanted to be there.

As if an earthquake occurred in his brain, Rafian’s vision began to shake and he lost focus of where he was. When he regained focus he grew excited, because the fact that he had experienced something meant that there was a chance that his attempt at crystal-free jumping was not out of the question. He tried again, but this time he tried to jump to the area that was beyond the woods and near the camp. He relaxed and focused, using his mastery of meditation to help settle his mind. The shaking occurred, but he didn’t lose focus. What happened instead was that he felt himself moving, out of body and invisible. When he stopped and his body reformed, he was in the area that he’d wanted to teleport to. He patted himself down and looked around, making sure that he had indeed jumped and there were no complications with him doing it.

He was so happy that he wanted to jump for joy. He kept on teleporting, doing less each time to activate it. He wanted to master it, so he tried for different lengths and places. But he realized that without the crystals, he could only jump to places visible and under a hundred yards or so. He teleported to the camp and dusted himself off and looked around. He felt like a child that had been given a new, popular toy. This is a game changer, he said to himself, then looked over at Marian.

“Rhee, take a look at this,” Rafian said as he stood in front of their hover car with a big smile on his face.

She walked over to where he stood, curious as to what he had discovered.

“Now you see, I have no crystals on me.”

“Okay, no crystals. I’m watching.”

He vanished and appeared behind her, where he grabbed her butt, causing her to drop her bag and spill Zerillian wine all over the soil.

“What in the—how are you able to do that?”

“Do you remember my fight with Arn, back when we had jumped back to Anstractor?”

“Yeah, I can remember it quite well, actually. It scared the life out of me.”

“Arn was able to teleport and I never understood it. Once I got educated, I assumed he had his rooms laced with crystals and utilized them to perform his tricks. After all, we had never seen the old man outside of the temple, so I thought he was tricking us and it was this thought that made it possible for me to beat him.”

Rafian knelt down to pick up Marian’s items, but she was still trying to figure out how it was that he could do a jump without the crystals. When he got up and handed them back to her, she touched him on the shoulder and asked him to continue.

“Nobody has been saying anything to me about it, but my pupils have changed, along with Tayden’s, Camille’s and many of the other first generation Phasers. I’m not sure about yours, since you are Tyheran and your physiology is a little different, but the change has happened.”

“Your pupils? Let me see,” Marian said. She opened his eyes with her fingers and looked into them to see what Rafian meant. The shock on her face let him know that she recognized it. She looked at him with a questioning look and he smiled at her with reassurance.

“Marian, the crystals are becoming a part of us,” he told her. “That mechanical pattern inside of my pupils are due to heavy crystal use, and this is why I am able to do minor jumps without a crystal.”

Marian beamed upon hearing this and her next thought was as to whether she would be able to do it. Rafian had been using the crystals a lot more than anyone else in the Phaser agency and this was the first time that he had discovered his ability. “So, can you blink back to Anstractor from here without a crystal?” Marian asked, her eyes bright with anticipation.

“I tried earlier, but it gave me a tremendous headache. I think that for dramatic jumps like that, a crystal will always be necessary. But how is this for motivation for our membership, Rhee? The fact that with experience, we will eventually become stronger in the way of the crystal.”

“This is unprecedented, babe,” Marian said. “Especially when it comes to combat. Now one more question. How do you feel after a jump without a crystal? Do you feel drained, tired, or can you do it freely?”

“I feel a little disoriented, so it does take something out of you. But I recall the Makers telling me that too much use of the gifts we’re given will at first change us and then become detrimental if exploited. When I fought Arn, he used it a few times and I was able to run him through. A part of me feels that he weakened himself trying to get the jump on me—considering his old age and it cost him his life. I will continue to use the crystals on major jumps, but this trick will be a bonus for those tight situations.”

“I want to try it!”

“Okay. Now, you can only jump short distances to places that you can see. So focus on an area, clear your mind like I taught you to, and release yourself to teleport there.”

Marian stood still for a time and then she looked at Rafian, her eyes wide and frightened, as if she had seen something horrible.

“I think I almost had it! My eyes shook a little and my body tensed up. Is that what you feel?”

“Yes, you’ve almost got it, but I don’t think you’ve had enough of the crystal taint to activate it fully.”

“Aww, that sucks! Oh, well. This will inspire me to do more missions.”

“Keep this between the two of us for now, Rhee. I don’t want Phasers abusing the crystals in some foolish attempt to get this ability through exploitation.”

Marian placed her items into the car and primed the engines for their trip. She stopped, nodded, and then spoke again. “Hey, we need to name it! This is a brand new skill for our Phasers, so as the founder, you need to give it a name. Let’s hear it, Commander. What do you call it when a Phaser jumps without a crystal?”

“Sorcery!”

“Oh, be serious, silly! Come on, name it. I won’t fly us to the temple until you do.”

“Okay, Rhee. Let’s call it Phasing.”

“How original,” she said and rolled her eyes, but the name was out and she had to accept it. The couple got into the car and sped off to the old Aygis temple, where Rafian was intent on finding out what had gone wrong to cause the Felitians to find out about the location of the resistance fighters.

~*~*~*~

When Julienna finished the cybernetic adjustments to Maes’s body, she sat down next to the corpses of the former engineers and Maes pulled his fingers from his throat and stood up. Everything was so painful that he almost passed out, but upon pulling the breathing apparatus up to affix it to his face and activating the drug-filled needles that ran into his veins, he felt very much like himself. He looked like a terrible green and silver monster, but he was alive and that was all that mattered. Julienna had stolen a heavy black cloak and 3B suit from a supply closet, so he dressed in them now and stretched his limbs to make sure he was as mobile as he hoped to be. He was still dying, but the enhancements would be enough to keep him alive for a few years.

He smiled at the body of the unconscious Julienna, who would be dead within the hour and blamed for aiding the escape of a “Geralos spy.” Finding his way out into the hallway, Maes stole a hover bike and made his way to his old apartment. The confusion of the battle was still too raw for the marines and they would not have cleaned out his place, thinking that he was still in the brig. He collected his belongings and then flew out to the Helysian’s lower cafeteria area. The blast doors had sealed off access to the kitchens, where a large hole had been torn out from a Geralos missile. There was a large collection of repair droids working on the damage, so Maes followed them through the airtight portal to access the kitchen and the vacuum of space. He was sucked out of Helysian immediately, but he quickly signaled his ship and the cloaked, black vessel floated over to him. They pulled him inside and sealed itself shut. Two of the destroyers had been obliterated by Helysian and Aqnaqak, and the third was in bad shape. There were no Geralos fighters defending the ship and he knew that trying to board it would mean his death.

Maes knew that his string of good luck had run out and without an FTL jump drive on his tiny ship, he would have to land somewhere. They were not too far from Meluvia and with the Alliance winning the hour with their battleships, he could not trust sending a signal to another Geralos ship. He looked into his backup supplies for medicine and found enough to carry him for a time. On Meluvia, he could lie to his command about his motives and they would send him help.

He cloaked the ship and slipped away from the battle towards Meluvia. He would find a quiet city and go silent for a time. This mission had been a failure, but he had seen what the Phasers looked like and what they could do, and he no longer feared them. He would take the time to think of a way to destroy them and then exact his revenge.

~*~*~*~

The city of Veece had been reduced to rubble and the VCAs flew over it towards Aygis. The mood became melancholy as they recalled the times when Veece was the leading city in fashion, commerce and government. The rebels had eventually taken the city and the Felitians, seeing the city as a lost cause, had sent in battle cruisers to level it all to the ground. The air was cold and the skies overcast, and Rafian thought he could feel the dead souls of his friends in the musty air.

“Such a waste,” Rafian said, but Marian was crying and barely able to steer the car straight.

“Everything I have seen so far makes me so sad that we left, Rafian. So many lives lost, so much ground lost. What can we do to stop the Fels now?”

“You and Marika removed their king and his heir, so they will be in turmoil for a while. At the same time, if the resistance does what we discussed this morning, the Fels will be too busy defending territories to elect a proper leader. We lost a lot, Rhee, but at the same time we now have hope. Your assassination has started a proper revolution, whereas before, the things that we were doing would not have made that much difference.”

He expected Marian to say something back but she remained quiet and dried her face. “I’ve cried enough, Raf. My heart is broken for Tyhera, but like you said, we now have a proper revolution. I will burn scented stones for our friends once we are back home, and I will make sure they are never forgotten.”

The car stopped outside of a ruined temple and it was Rafian’s turn to feel sad and angry at the loss of something he’d held close to heart. The order of Mera Ku monks on Tyhera had taken him in and made him a member, back when he had been a hotheaded resistance fighter. Through their teaching, he had learned the healing meditation and the way of the sword, and he had graduated to the level of master. It was his charge to start the Aygis temple and through it the resistance had a well-concealed base of operations. Now as they parked, he hopped out to observe the fallen walls and broken statues that lay about in the tall grass.

“I’m sorry, Raf,” Marian said. She walked up to rub his back as he scanned the empty landscape.

“Do you feel the spirits?” he asked her and she nodded sadly. “I need some time alone,” he finally said and she kissed his cheek and got back into the car to return to Veece. “I’ll call you via nano comm whenever I’m ready.”

Marian nodded and sped off into the dusky horizon.

When he knew that he was truly alone, Rafian removed his shirt, knelt in front of the temple, and started his meditation. He stayed that way for a long time and in his mind he probed for answers. They came to him through a series of images. The Fels had bombed the entire landscape of Veece and the surrounding cities. The loss of life was unreal and many Felitians lost their lives along with the rebels. The Mera Ku monks, in an attempt to save the people, brought many of them into the underground temple, but the bombs collapsed the entrance and sealed them inside and the temple became a tomb for several hundred people. Rafian was the last of the Mera Ku monks and this fact weighed heavily on him, as he remembered his time with his master, Lucci.

“Are you ready, Rafian?” a distant voice said.

When he opened his eyes, it was dark and the beautiful star-filled Tyheran sky was all around him. Marian handed him his cloak as he pulled on his shirt and stood up.

“I’m ready. I have seen what I came here to see. I think it’s time to return home to Anstractor, so that we don’t lose it there like we have managed to lose it here.”

“I agree.”

Memory 9

Following the success of Rafian’s takeover on Vestalia, a number of other military units tried to do the same without contacting him, and many soldiers were killed in the attempt. This prompted the leaders of the Vestalian Alliance to seek an audience with the Supreme Leader, to see if he would assist them in their ambitions and aid them in finding land on Vestalia. Rafian did not like that they had moved on the planet without coordination and saw it as another greedy attempt at power by the Vestalians. Instead of meeting with the commanders of these various ships, he organized his own meeting—inviting only the men and women he knew he could trust. What he hoped to accomplish from this meeting was an agreement on strategy that would see an end to the Geralos on Vestalia.

Rafian stroked Marian’s arm gently as she lifted her head up off his shoulder. She had been sleeping during their flight to the city. They were inside of a sleek, pod-like vessel that floated alongside several other ships of varying shapes and sizes. With them on the craft were the Phaser aces: this included Camille, Tayden, Yuth, and Frank. The only Ace missing was Marika Tsuno, who had volunteered to stay behind in case Zallus needed her.

They flew over the remnants of an old city, which held a bizarre contrast in technology to the one they were headed to. As if he could read the thoughts that went through everyone’s mind, the Meluvian guide began to explain why.

“The city that we are flying over is known as Garse and the one that we are heading to is Dystalis. I am sure that many of you are wondering why the buildings are made out of stones and the rooftops, mud and leaves. Well, we have a tribe of Meluvians known as the Cynetari and they are against anything that hints at modern technology. Garse is their city and no outsiders are allowed within its gates.”

Marian sat up upon hearing this. She tousled her hair roughly to shake off her grogginess as she peered through the translucent floor of the ship. They were flying over an expanse of green and the houses were primitive and beautiful in their own right. She saw many things that she had only seen in classic vids, like windmills, rope bridges and houses built alongside trees. When she looked at the city they were flying towards, the contrast was very alarming. Unlike Garse, Dystalis had buildings so tall they pierced the clouds. Instead of greens, browns and olives, the city was whites, blues and the metallic silver of industry.

The fact that the cities bordered one another made it even more bizarre, and upon close inspection, she saw that the refuse that came from Dystalis was running out of sewer lines into a toxic lake that surrounded Garse. She flipped out a memtocflo bot that she had brought along with her and opened up a window to let it out. The tiny, fly-like machine began to flap its wings, then with its camera primed and Marian’s guidance, it took a full panoramic shot of the area and then flew back through the window, where Marian held it up to inspect the holographic image that it had captured.

“See there.” The guide pointed at the giant sewer lines that emptied into the lake. “The inhabitants of Garse tend to look a little different from the people of Dystalis and it is due to them using the toxic run-off from the city.”

Tayden Lark made eye contact with Rafian and frowned because she knew that he would expect her to comment on how terrible it was. She kept her mouth shut and the vessel took them past many high-rises until it settled down on the surface of a floating platform.

“Welcome to the ‘first step of peace,’” the guide said.

As the Phasers stepped out onto the platform, they realized that it had no foundation or support. It simply floated and spanned the length of a field for sports. The Phaser Aces loved it but Yuth hesitated. It was translucent like an ice cube and he was not sure about its stability.

“How is this possible?” he intoned as he looked at their guide, who stood grinning next to the parked vessel.

“Meluvian secret, Commander. It is one of the twenty wonders of Meluvia. The plans were to make one hundred of these, all connected, and leading up towards our atmosphere. We were hoping that in impressing the makers with our ingenuity, they would one day visit us and bestow upon us their great favor.”

“We have nothing like this on Louine,” Yuth said. “But I am sure that upon seeing this, many of our architects and engineers would get to working on something equally as impressive.”

“Competition is good, my Louine friend, but unfortunately in this climate we are too busy fending off those invaders instead of working on things of beauty and ingenuity.”

In the center of the circular platform was an assortment of chairs and tables, each translucent like the platform, and the Phasers were led to take their seats as the other delegates made their way to the party.

“I’m not sure why I am so nervous about this,” said Camille, who had not spoken much during the trip. She was dressed to the nines in her Phaser reds and Rafian had a hard time keeping his eyes off her. The remaining shuttles landed and various men and women from across the galaxy came together to meet in the heart of Meluvia. When they had all taken their seats, after exchanging greetings and introducing themselves, Rafian took the center and began to speak.

“Thank you all for agreeing to meet with us on such short notice. You are all people we know and trust from our dealings in this war. Some of you, I’ve fought with on this very planet—or on its moons. Others have dealt with Yuth Varience, Camille YAN, or Tayden Lark. You are trusted, and this is why we sent for you and not your so-called leaders of the Alliance.”

The collection of twelve individuals that had joined the Phasers at the platform either nodded at Rafian to continue, or smiled at him in memory of times past. They all wanted to hear what he had to say, and none wanted to speak until he did. After a few seconds of pause, Rafian paced the center of the circle and began.

“Many of your commanders asked to meet with me, but I refused. Actually, Cilas MEC, who is seated right over there, is one of the only men of the old guard that I would not refuse to meet. Look, this is not out of disrespect; I know what it looks like. Quite the opposite actually, it is out of respect – for time, the one resource that we all value. I did not want to meet with men and women that view power and position as being more important than the survival of our race. I did not want to meet with men and women who—once we have all of Vestalia reclaimed—will rush to positions of control over our people instead of positions of support. As a Phaser, sworn to the quest of winning our planet back, I have nothing to discuss with people like that. We all grew up with their ilk.” The people listening could see a very visible look of disgust on his face as he said the word ‘ilk’ and it became obvious that Rafian knew something they would not like hearing.

“We grew up with their kind on board the military ships, didn’t we? The exploiters of the weak, the runners of the poor and destitute. We watched them grow to positions of power, break bread with the Geralos, and engage in meaningless skirmishes with no movement towards ending the war. Humans, Meluvians, Genesians and Louines are dying by the hour. Why? So petty commanders can fly large luxury cruisers disguised as battleships and send the children of their lessers out to die? No, I’ve seen enough—and I have seen plenty. What I would like for us to do today is talk. I want us to talk, listen and respect one another’s opinions. To see what we can do to get back fully on our planet and keep the lizards from ever trying it again.”

This time when he paused, Cilas “Rend” MEC spoke up. At fifty-three years of age, he was the oldest person there, but he was one of the most dangerous and they knew it. Rend was a soldier who had fought since the time of the Sixth Expanse and they revered him because he’d lived when any other man would have died.

“Rafian – son, I am surprised to hear you say ‘keep them from trying to do it again.’ I thought that our collective aim as refugee fighters was to wipe them all out. It’s the way Helga saw it, it’s the way I see it, and it’s the only way to get the galaxy back to what it was before they started pillaging.” With that, he sat back down and crossed his legs. He looked like an old, coiled cobra, ready to strike at a moment’s notice. Rafian tried to imagine what he would have looked like as a younger man. Had he developed that aura of danger as he’d gotten older, or had he always been that imposing?

“Commander, you dealt with the Jumpers in the time of Hellgate, right?”

“Yes, sir. I had a friend named Arn that was in charge of them. The same one who taught you, I believe, before you took over,” Rend said.

“Knowing Arn, you know that we possess power unlike anyone else in the Universe.”

“I know that you all can come and go as you please and use those swords like the Gerries do.”

“What if I was to tell you that beyond these powers, I have the ability to steal the mind of a Geralos, just like they do to us?”

There was a chorus of gasps and shocked looks. The seventeen guests looked at Rafian as if he had said the most ridiculous thing in the world. He looked around, letting his eyes meet each and every one of them to show that he was telling the truth and that there was no joke or illusion to it. The faces of the three women he loved were the most interesting. Marian looked worried, Camille looked betrayed and Tayden, having known before any of the rest, smiled like a child on a gift-giving holiday.

“I’ve corrupted a Geralos that we captured, when I rescued one of our own from them. It took years off of my life, and I now have terrible nightmares, but I saw things that have given me clarity. Believe it or not, they don’t all want our brains to suck on and steal for seeker sight. A major governing body does. So what we have with the Geralos is a situation very much like that of my wife’s galaxy. You have a group of animals ruling over regular people, and it will take brave men and women to kill these animals in order to bring about peace.”

Rend had begun smiling where he had looked puzzled before. “Like I said, we wipe them out. Manufacture a bomb that can cover hundreds of miles, drop our Aces and your Phasers. One, two, three, boom, boom, boom. Crispy lizard for dinner, ladies and gentlemen. The Rendron will happily serve the first course.”

“This is why I brought you all here together, Cilas, to discuss this very thing. Once upon a time we thought that the Geralos were a parasitic, wicked, monster race, whose lot in life was just to bring about war and pain to anyone that didn’t look like them. After I looked into the mind of the one I held, I saw them to be people: vulnerable, regular people whose military and governing body are hell-bent on the genocide of our race. Is it our prerogative to do the exact same thing that they aim to do to us, or should we be better than them and wipe out the rotten portions of their civilization?”

Everyone then began talking to one another and Rafian walked out of the center to meet with Rend to discuss the fate of the Geralos.

~*~*~*~

As the tiny shuttle flew away from Dystalis, Rafian and Marian retired to their room to make an attempt at falling asleep for the trip. Rafian laid face down on the soft, half-circle shaped bed and Marian sat next to him, gently massaging his back. Five minutes into this ritual, he looked up at his wife and noticed her smiling with a strange look on her face.

“What’s going on, Rhee?”

“Oh, nothing. I’m just proud of you.”

“Proud? You mean for putting together the summit, or is it something else?”

“Its several things, Raf, but the summit was amazing. Meluvia takes my breath away; its people are so courteous and polite. The buildings are so impressively built and they all seem to view you as a hero, even though I never hear you talking about them.”

“I spent much of my young days as a Marine here, in Meluvia. It was where I learned how to relax and enjoy life. It was where I first made love and where I learned the true meaning of sacrifice. I feel as much at home here as I do on Vestalia, the Helysian, or on Tyhera with you.”

“So your first girlfriend was a Meluvian, then? Is that what you said?”

“Something like that. I was a new officer recruit, having graduated with honors from the cadet academy as a first class colonel. I had been with girls on the ship—being first class had its perks—but when I fought for the bridge of Traxis, I met a lot of exotic, beautiful women. How can I explain it? Meluvian women are different than humans. They are extremely sexual and—never mind, it will merely upset you if I continue. Look, Rhee, when the war for Traxis ended, the commander had to force me to come back to Helysian, since I was depressed. I was quite content to drink and have sex with prostitutes for eternity. That’s the way I was introduced to Meluvia.”

“Sitting around feeling sorry for yourself? Outside of the sex, Rafian, that sounds nothing like you. What about your beloved Vestalia, the land you swore to win back for humanity?”

Rafian took note of the hint of sarcasm in Marian’s voice and turned over to look into her eyes as he spoke. Those sparks of light inside of her pupils were always a source of mystery for him. All Tyherans had this feature, and when he was there and without memory, he thought himself a freak for not having it. It was an odd curiosity for anyone who ran into Marian within Anstractor; the sparks in her eyes were brilliant and could be seen even when the lights were out. She looked at the wall as if bored, then closed her eyes to feel the gentle hum of the engines as the shuttle kept its course.

“Sorry, I went off on a tangent about my lusty past there. But I love Meluvia and its people; they have always treated us humans as brothers and sisters.”

“We could live here, Raf. Just us. In one of those lovely penthouse suites overlooking the old city."

“That sounds extremely Vestalian, Rhee. Are you sure you’re not from here?”

As he said that, they heard a tiny knock on their door and Marian hopped up and touched the panel next to it. The red glass shimmered and grew transparent as the crimson color fled from the center towards its edges. Within seconds, the image of Tayden Lark appeared outside, smiling, with Frank OTA in tow. Marian quickly opened the door and they stepped inside and motioned for her to lock them in.

“What’s going on?” Rafian asked. He sat up, confused by the intrusion.

Without hesitating, Tayden plopped down on the bed and smiled at him. Since the day when she had scolded him, he hadn’t talked to her outside of the realm of work and duty. Her smile had something behind it – a possible plea for peace, a returning to what they once were. But he wasn’t ready to let her back in. The hurt of her words and the embarrassment were too much for him to forget. He felt her staring and gave her a false smile before locking eyes with Marian.

“Aren’t these rooms just the coziest?” Tayden began as she lay comfortably on the bed. Frank stood near the door, trying his best to appear in good spirits.

“Is there something we can help you with, Tayden?” Marian asked, slightly annoyed by the intrusion.

Tayden noticed her tone and then sprang up to stand next to Frank. Frank OTA, like Rafian and Camille before him, was a Marine of the Helysian. He had fought with Val Tracker and had built up an impressive war resume before the Phaser agency drafted him. He was a remarkable soldier, but revered Rafian VCA to the point where he was visibly uncomfortable around him. Tayden had handled most of his training in many ways, and kept him to herself when many of the other Phaser women inquired upon his interests. Rafian felt a twinge of jealousy over he and Tayden, but he couldn’t explain why, or what brought on the feelings.

“Sorry to mess up your alone time, Marian. I know you don’t get to see him often, but I wanted to talk with Raf about the meeting today,” Tayden said.

“What’s wrong?” Rafian asked.

“Well, it’s Cero Dillis, the representative from Genese – you did notice that he was missing from our meeting, right?”

“Yes, I was disappointed that Cero missed it. What about him?” Rafian said. He sat up to look at Tayden, hoping that she wasn’t about to tell him that Cero was dead.

“Our friends tell me that Rend detected that Cero was corrupted and being controlled by a Geralos infiltrator. He locked him up on the Rendron before flying out to meet us and now the Genesians are calling it an act of hostility from a so-called ally.”

“I wonder why he hasn’t told me or the other commanders about this. It is very uncharacteristic of Rend to—we cannot allow infighting during this war, Tayden. You know that.”

“Of course I know that, as does Rend, so he released him back to the Genesians, but Frank thinks that it may cause us some problems down the line. Genese has always been an ally of Vestalia, but we’ve done several things to weaken the bond over the years and this was a major one.”

“It most definitely was, but Rend has faced Geralos corruption more than anyone we know. I would take his word over the Genesians on Cero being corrupt, but this is really bad. We will need to play it forward and watch our backs when the Genesians are involved.”

Tayden had taken a seat next to the sink and Frank stood at attention with his back to the door. He hated the idea of the Geralos violating human minds, but he knew that it was part of the war. Their enemy used the brains of human beings to transmit thought into others and as badly as he wanted to sever the pattern, it was going to take a really long time for them to get there.

“I think that I will personally travel to Genese, talk to their leaders, and draw the corruption out of Cero for them to see.”

“Rafian, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Marian began, but he squeezed her hand to calm her down.

“It will be a homecoming for me. I will fix our alliance, set up crystals in case of anything, and kill Cero Dillis.”

“Why not send Marika? That is her specialty,” Marian asked, thinking on the relatively easy way Marika had killed the red lord, Queran Kyle. “It would be nothing for her to do it, and it would allow you to do the diplomatic portions of the mission without being accused.”

“I agree, Raf. You have a team. There is no reason to make this into a solo mission,” Tayden said. She moved to sit next to Marian, as if proximity gave them strength in changing his mind. Frank remained silent and just stared at him, wondering what the commander would decide was best for the mission.

“I have to talk to the Geralos that holds Cero to let him know that their corruption will carry a heavy toll from now on. Every time they invade the mind of one of our leaders, I will take out a city on their world. I am going to invade his mind and meet this Geralos in the plains of Cilas’s consciousness.”

“You will do no such thing!” Tayden said, her bubbly appearance growing suddenly dark. She looked at him as if he were a lunatic. “The last time you did that, it hurt you badly. You looked as if you were dying and it frightened the hell out of me. Marian and Frank did not see the look in your eyes when I found you. No, Raf, I cannot let you do it. Who will find you this time? Who will pull you back when you are lost to the world and stuck in that crazy psychotic limbo? You need to think this through. Let us help you bring Genese back around and if you have to do the mind thing, one of us will be there.”

Marian spoke up. “It will be me. I will accompany Rafian and help with the Genesians. It will allow me to see the streets of the city where my husband was raised and answer many of the questions that I have about him.”

Tayden thanked Marian and then got up to leave the room. Rafian noticed that Frank had not said anything the entire time. He stopped him short when he reached the door.

“What do you think, Frank? You’ve always been a man of solid strategy and intelligence. You’ve been quiet. What do you think I should do about Genese?”

“Pardon me for saying this, Raf, as I mean it with the utmost respect, but I think you should learn to trust us to handle missions just like you do. We all want to win the war and get back to peace as much as you do, and we are more than qualified,” Frank said. He was being careful and it bothered Rafian that he would be afraid to speak candidly with him.

“Thanks, brother. Duly noted,” he said to the big man, his tone cheery, as if he was happy to hear his opinion.

When the pair had left and the door shut, Marian walked over to him and hugged him tightly.

“It almost killed me when you went into that coma after the first time you invaded the mind of a Geralos, Rafian. I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep, and I just worried that you would never wake up. My world—at least the way that I knew it as a young girl—is gone. My parents, my sister, my allies; everyone, gone. You are my only family now and though we can clone to repair our bodies, I don’t know what that does to our mental state, Rafian. Do you need to do this?”

Rafian thought about it for a time and knew that he was being unnecessarily reckless with the situation. But if he could meet the invaders and threaten them, they would think twice about corrupting minds. They would know that Rafian VCA had the ability to do what they could do and then they would fear him. They would say, “What would stop an angry human like Rafian from corrupting one of our commanders and destroying our planet?” It would make them want to seek terms; it could be a major strike for the alliance.

“You won’t lose me, Marian.”

“I love how you say that as if you have control over—” she started to say but could not finish, since he lifted her into his arms as she wrapped her legs around his waist. They hadn’t been together in a while and even though Tayden’s intrusion had killed the intimacy of their retreat, Rafian couldn’t resist the way he felt about her. The sheer nightgown and her hair loose and flowing over her shoulders were enough to wipe out any thoughts of the prior conversation, or any worry for what he intended to do to the Geralos.

After what could easily have been a lifetime of pleasure, Marian laid next to her husband, staring up at the metal ceiling of their room.

“You need not worry about me, Marian. Everything I do is calculated when it comes to the Geralos. I may be a reckless fighter, but believe me, I have thought this through.”

“I know you have, Raf, but it doesn’t make it any easier to hear. But let’s drop it. I am enjoying my time here lying with you and listening to the hum of the shuttle. Isn’t it peaceful?” she asked in Tyheran.

“It really is.”

Memory 10

Maes was worried. He paced the room, rubbing his hands, not knowing what the leaders would say to him when he called. He was in a sewer beneath the large Meluvian city of Dystalis. He had landed his ship on a building and found his way to the streets of the city at night, slipping into the sewers and setting himself up a temporary home. He drew a symbol on the communications tablet that he held and after a while, the face of a Geralos woman appeared.

“This is main control. What is your business?” she asked.

He replied with his name, rank and credentials. Before long an angry, older Geralos showed up on the screen and the moment that Maes had feared was upon him. He set the tablet on a stone platform and the face took on a holographic representation and hovered above it. Soon the entire body of the man materialized and his image stood before Maes, tall and impressive. The cyborg spy bowed to the hologram, but the figure kept a look of disdain on his face. It then began shouting at Maes, but the spy kept his head low.

“Three destroyers, Colonel. Three! Do you know how many soldiers died trying to give you the distraction needed for the Phasers?”

“Yes, General. I know that many lost their lives,” Maes admitted, “But it has paid off. I now know much about the Phasers. I can capture one and bring him in for study, and we can find out about their power.”

The Geralos on the hologram sat down and began to eat something from a tray. He was nonchalant in his movements, but his eyes were calculating.

“You are a liar, Maes Van Senthyn. And why are you dressed in that ridiculous armor? Have you no pride?”

“This is my new body, sir. I am outfitted with cybernetics and some artificial vitals.”

This made the Geralos stop eating and he examined Maes with new interest, his eyes wide, as if he were shocked. “You merged yourself with a machine then. What other atrocities have you done?”

This last question made Maes lose his grip on his formalities and he stood up angrily and jabbed a finger at the hologram. “You and the council sent me on this mission because you were desperate! I came face to face with our enemy and survived, but that is not enough for you. Of course I made desperate decisions on my desperate mission. You sit there, plump, eating at Ri-las fruit and pick at me. You forget that I am the best you have! The souls of the soldiers on those three ships are as much on your shoulders as they are mine. You don’t know these Phasers; you don’t know that we are all going to die from them!”

The outburst was too much for the general and he stood up fast, knocking his plate of food over as he did, but too angry to care. “There is no Geral for you to return to, Maes Van Senthyn. You and your despicable new body are not welcome here.”

“So, I hear that one of our temples mysteriously got destroyed and many of our kind were killed. How many human corpses did you find in the rubble?”

Maes had found out about the temple onboard Helysian, when the news had reached them. The Phasers would occasionally leak information to military ships about their strikes; it was a way to keep morale high and let their allies know that they were on the frontlines of the fight. He didn’t want to bring it up to anyone from Geral, since it was a source of great shame to them, but it was a necessary trump card for the elitist General Krylat Par.

“How do you know about the temple?” he asked, the shock revealed in his face as it transformed from smug disdain to panic.

“Oh, I guess you don’t realize that our vulnerability is the public knowledge of the entire galactic alliance. See, while I am an abomination due to my necessary life-sustaining enhancements, our entire people are the laughingstock of our enemy. Phasers can touch us at will, General; their power is that immense. The gods have left our graces and have empowered the humans with gifts that can bring about our demise. This is why you must help me. Take your head out of your rear for long enough to look at the big picture. I have been close with the Phasers. I know their limitations.”

The general walked closer to his comm projector so that his entire body was now massive compared to Maes’s. His face seemed to have aged twenty years from the news he’d just heard but he adjusted his jacket and looked around, as if he was making sure that no one could hear him.

“What do you need from me?” he whispered.

“I need to create a distraction that will drive the humans out of Vestalia for a time. I need an order of cleansing for the city of Dystalis on Meluvia. I need you to send in the Crak-Ti.”

The general nodded and then closed the comm channel, embarrassed that one such as Maes Van Senthyn had outmaneuvered him. If the Alliance knew that they were vulnerable to attack by the Phasers, then what would stop them from unifying and staging an all-out attack on Geral? As a commander in the military, he would lose face and if it came to light that he’d had this information from Maes but chose pride over action, they would execute him and his family would be made into servants until the end of their bloodline.

Maes smiled when the general left, because he knew that all he had to do was wait. The Crak-Ti were legendary for a reason, and no matter how good the Phasers were, they would not be able to stop the damage Meluvia would soon suffer.

~*~*~*~

Val Tracker sat with Rafian VCA at the top of a tower deep inside the territory of Ariqua, Vestalia overlooking a group of Geralos marching around a sizable barracks. They had decided to scout the place out to see its defenses, as it was to be the next target for liberation. The area where they sat had tall bushes and large insects that wanted badly to get at their flesh, but both men wore 3B suits that radiated an aura that kept them away.

“Ever wonder how Geralos breed?” Val asked as he looked through his scope at the commander of the marching regiment.

“What? Do you see a pretty little lizard thing you want to lay down with?”

“Yes, actually, that one right there. You see how she walks? Now that’s a woman.”

“You know that most Phasers are convinced that you have and will thype anything, right?” Rafian asked.

“They can think what they will. The only person whose opinion I care about is right here, brother. No disrespect to Marika, of course.”

Rafian, who had gotten distracted from a bit of lengthy thought, looked at his friend and nodded. “My parents were from this country.”

“Aren’t you an orphan?”

“Yeah, but there are times when I can sense things. Last night I dreamt of my parents rushing me onto a ship and it was in this very territory, back when there were high-rises and a growing young city.”

“We’ll get back there, Raf. No worries, brother. Just a couple million lizards’ souls and we will be back there.”

“Yeah, I know. So how’s your Casanian killer?”

Val couldn't mask the massive smile that took over his face at the mention of Marika. “Let’s just say I’m glad I met her, bro. She’s run off again, by the way. Not sure if you knew about it.”

“Yes, I know. She and Marian have gotten extremely close. Marika is the best assassin I have ever seen, and as a Phaser, she’s a pretty dangerous enemy to have. Whoever they’re going after is one unlucky cruta.”

“You don’t know the half of what skills that girl has.”

“Val, you can go ahead and keep that to yourself. You know that I’m a seeker. If you want your girlfriend in my head, showing me her skills, that’s on you. But I wouldn’t advise it. Next thing you know, thoughts become reality and Marika and I are joined at the hip… bow and stern. Catch my drift?” He made a motion with his hands to make sure that his friend understood his meaning.

“Oh, please. You wouldn’t be able to handle her, Raf. Trust me.”

“What? Do you think I have it any easier? You just don’t know the real Marian VCA. If I managed to marry that knife-wielding lunatic, I don’t think Marika would be a problem.”

“Ha, I’ll take your word for it. So, I’ve been meaning to ask—and don’t get mad at me—but you had Camille, an exotic Filan that bleeds Alliance red. What made you go off and marry Marian? Now, don’t get me wrong – she’s a stone cold knockout and a genius in her own right, but you two are volatile. One minute I can’t reach you because you’re thyping all day long, and the next she’s running away to another galaxy. Why’d you do it? Were you and Camille having problems?”

Rafian cringed at the question, it was a subject that he hated but one that would not go away.

“It’s deep, Val and the Jumper organization had a lot to do with it. But thype it, I’ll accept the responsibility in this. Marian and I understand each other on the deepest level. Our outlook on life, duty and our feelings are perfectly aligned. You know, it sounds corny but I love Camille—I always will. What she and I have is something that you can’t turn off, and it would be dumb to try. But, I’m IN love with Marian. That’s the difference. It’s pretty heavy and I hate that she and I don’t know how to reconcile our emotions and handle them. Phaser logic and military protocol seem to get in the way of our thing, and it makes us react harmfully to one another.”

“We do have a situation with these lizards preventing that love, brother.”

“Give me a perfect world where none of us are needed and I would take her away and disappear into the mountains.”

“Marika and I have a pretty crazy relationship, too, but I feel like it’s voluntary chaos. Nothing like what you and Marian have, though. I don’t envy you, bro, though I know most of the fools in the academy do. The woman is a physical specimen, and she won’t take part in any of our thype games. This keeps her a mystery, and there’s an army of young bucks wanting to crack her code.”

Touch her and I will kill every one of them, Rafian thought, annoyed at the idea that his Phasers would even try to get anywhere near Marian. He knew that he was being hypocritical but it couldn’t be helped. Marian was his wife, and he didn’t like to think of other men being with her.

“Thype games? They still do that schtill? All that nonsense is old school, from the days of the Jumpers. Only the horny recruits and agents like Laern are doing it. Marika isn’t into that, is she?”

“She is, but your agents are too afraid of the Vin’yn to try her.” He smiled with pride. “They know that she is claimed, brother.” He flexed his massive muscles to re-emphasize his point.

Since the time when they were children on Helysian, Val had been Rafian’s only true friend. They had seen each other go through the trials, and had watched each other’s backs during wars. There weren’t many men that Rafian could trust, but Val was different. He was the brother he’d never had. He couldn’t bring himself to tell Val that he had been sleeping with Marika, but he was happy that the two of them had found one another.

“Marika is a special girl, Val. I like the two of you being together.”

“You say that because you think that she’ll recruit me,” Val said, shaking his head at Rafian.

“No, that’s not why. I’m being serious. We’re brothers, and our two girls are together. I don’t see why me being happy about that has anything else behind it.”

“If you say so, Raf, but I know better.”

Their conversation died down for a time as they watched a large dropship deploy an army of Geralos into the camp. Rafian was still thinking about Val’s question. So he weighed Camille against Marian in his mind and all he could think about was his wife’s body.

“Marian is perfect, isn’t she? I still catch myself staring at her sometimes, and it’s as if I’m convincing myself that she really exists. Just imagine how I felt when I woke up from memory loss to find myself next to that beautiful, alien woman. Not only waking up to her, but finding out that she was my committed wife. I couldn’t leave her there, Val. I wanted to spend every thyping moment with her. So I decided to bring her back here, back to the Jumper academy despite all of its issues, and that decision poisoned me and made me into a terrible husband for her.”

The two men grew silent for a time and it didn’t seem like Rafian had moved while he poured out his heart. The silence was one of reflection and peace, the kind two friends could share without the pressure of conversation. Val noticed that Rafian was talking a lot more than he normally did and he wondered if his friend was depressed.

“You okay, bro?” he asked, and Rafian understood his intent.

“I’m here with my war buddy; what do you think?”

“I think that you, Tayden, Frank, and Camille are excellent leaders. With me and my Marines backing you up, things are well under way here.”

“Val, you are meant to be a Phaser. Everybody knows it.”

“Well Helysian produced warlords, brother. Look at you, badass Cammy, and silent Frankie.”

“Look at yourself,” Rafian said, staring at him. “We’re weapons from the same forge.”

“So is Vani,” Val teased, bringing up the name of Rafian’s first love, who’d caused him a lot of trouble back when they were all cadets.

“SHUT THAT SHTILL UP, MAN! Don’t bring her into this. Hell, I’m still trying to forget that crazy girl. But seriously, bro, why do you refuse to come aboard?”

“It’s not an easy decision, brother. I still need time.”

“I’ve known you longer than most, Val and you’ve gotten bigger, harder and smarter. Somewhere along the lines, you’ve even grown a heart. But if there’s one thing that has never changed about you, it’s your honor. You are the kind of friend every man needs and I don’t say that lightly. You also love Vestalia just as much as I do. Hell, one of my best memories is when the two of us—lean, mean, and bright green—stormed the beach on Meruda.”

“Yeah, that was our first official tour… the one where we lost Hellgate. I thyping cried for her like a little cruta, man. It was tough. That was such a schtill storm.”

“It was bro, but me and you… when we were getting cut to pieces, we held it down.”

“We did, Val, and this is why I need you to join us. The gifts that you will receive from the dark education will make you into twice the warrior you are now. It would also mean a longer life for you. Just think on it. Even if you tell me no, though, just know that I will always have your back.”

The two men locked wrists in agreement and then started down the hill, back to where they had hidden their bikes. Val hoped that Rafian understood his hesitation in joining the order. He knew enough about the Phasers to get a good picture of who they were, but the secrecy and opaque nature in which they conducted business made him think there was something that Rafian couldn’t tell him. They held Phaser meetings behind closed doors and there were rituals he witnessed that were beyond bizarre. He loved Marika, but he wondered if she was worth the price of joining up.

~*~*~*~

Tayden Lark and Laern Cobo had spent the majority of the evening together, as she played the part of councilor to the demoralized agent. She had broken off her plans with Frank to take a walk in the countryside, but she was used to this exercise of putting the Phasers first in all things. She didn’t like Laern and she could see why Rafian was hard on him. He was spoiled, entitled and weak, despite all his talents as a soldier. He was asking her about his future and she was telling him light versions of what she thought his chances were to become a leader in the organization.

“Anyone ever tell you the words ‘suck it up?’” Tayden asked after seeing the hour and realizing that he had been venting to her for too long.

“Is that a Vestalian term, ma’am? It sounds disgusting. What exactly am I to be sucking up?”

“Your situation, agent. You are here, you are alive, and you have another shot at improving your station. With the war being what it is, we have no time to play about with hurt feelings and misunderstandings within our ranks. Rafian is the Supreme Leader and though you feel that you have some sort of relationship with him, the bottom line is that you need to be tending to missions, not worrying about what mood our commander is in.”

“I understand Commander, and I will. But I still don’t get the sucking thing; the explanation didn’t make any sense.”

“I’m done talking, Laern. It’s getting late.”

She dismissed him with a pat on the shoulder and then locked her office door so that she could change into her evening attire. The Phasers had given the Geralos destroyer to Helysian so that it could be salvaged for parts to make repairs. Having a Phaser destroyer in space was ambitious, but Rafian had said it was too soon and the people of the Helysian were desperate. This brought Frank back down to Vestalia to resume his duties and it made him happy, since he didn’t want to spend his career flying around in space.

Tayden slipped into her pants and adjusted her top as she thought about the last few nights at the base. Rafian was always gone, so she had a lot of time with Frank. Their small chats had evolved into an unspoken relationship and now he was inviting her on romantic getaways, and she was more than happy to accept. Frank’s affection made her realize her worth and it made the times that she had slept with Rafian seem dirty and shameful. It wasn’t because of Rafian’s marriage to Marian, or his feelings for Camille. It was about him not considering, not even for a moment that they could be together. She had never taken to the casual nature of their relationship and had held out hope that in time he would see that. She should have been angry with him, but the only emotion she ever felt was sadness when it came to Rafian VCA.

She heard the tone of the panel outside of her door as someone with a high-access passcode unlocked it. Instinctively, she grabbed the pistol sitting on her desk and held it behind her leg, waiting to see who would barge in unannounced. The door slid open and Frank was there, smiling. He wore wearing a hover-bike helmet and held another one under his arm.

“Put the gun down, sexy. We’re going riding.”

“Frank, you scared the living schtill out of me. How did you know I was even in here?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, I’ve been waiting for you to finish with Laern. I had finished briefing the boys and girls on what I need done tomorrow, so I came over here to see if we could still salvage a bit of this evening.”

This was why she loved Frank, even though she would not admit it out loud. He was thoughtful and made her feel special. She had not felt special to anyone in over ten years. As they took the elevator down to start their date, Tayden saw a bright las-sword in the distance flicking this way and that. She stared intently at the bright light of the blade in the low light of the evening and she surmised that it was Laern Cobo, practicing. The scene touched her, because the drive that Laern exhibited was enough to make the things she disliked about him seem trivial.

“He deserves another trial mission,” she mumbled to herself.

Frank, who stood alongside her, watching the agent, looked down at her in confusion. “You do realize that he’s recently cloned, right? I thought we were going to give him a year to get better and grow before putting him on another mission.”

“He told me that he doesn’t care about dying, Frank. He just wants another chance.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

She looked up at him when he said this and then nodded her head in earnest. “He’s like a boy who grew up watching too many action vids. He looks at Rafian and Camille and the situations that they get into and he thinks that’s what being a Phaser is all about. I suppose to him, I’m just a glorified manager, making sure they are trained and sending help to whomever calls.”

Frank leaned down and kissed her gently on the lips and winked. “Who cares what he thinks? You are the toughest Phaser I’ve ever met. It doesn’t matter what some spoiled, Meluvian boomer agent thinks.”

She liked hearing that she was the toughest and as they stepped out of the elevator she shouted to Laern. “KEEP PRACTICING!”

Laern almost dropped his las-sword when he heard Tayden’s encouragement and it fired him up to keep at it. The Phaser Aces believed in him and if he could just stop getting on their nerves for a time, he could probably be forgiven for his past. He swung the blade a few more times to try and emulate the way Rafian fought, but when he stopped to see if Tayden was impressed, she and the giant man that had been next to her were nowhere to be seen.

~*~*~*~

Camille YAN placed the keys of the car into Aurora’s palm and exhaled a sigh of relief. She had moved her into a nice house within Zallus and had set up three servant droids to help her. She had bought her a flying car that came with clearance for the Phaser compound so she would be able to get around, visit her brother, and meet the other citizens. The entire ordeal had taken the better part of a week, but Aurora was extremely grateful.

“Cammy, I owe you my life. When Velman comes back, we are going to cook you a true Vestalian meal. And we are going to go to the spa-house and I am going to make sure that you get a true day of rest and relaxation.”

“That actually sounds wonderful, Aurora, but it’s not necessary. With things—“

“I’m not taking no for an answer, Camille YAN; you look worn through. Have you had time to relax and settle down after the business on Meluvia? What am I saying? Of course you haven’t; you’ve been doing this with me ever since. That little cruta that was with you on Helysian seemed to have time to relax – I saw her in the park, lying down in front of Raf’s statue. You have always run yourself into the ground and I am not going to let you do it. I am here now, sister, so tomorrow I am coming to get you.”

Camille let herself surrender to Aurora’s demands; not just because she needed a break, but because she really loved her. Aurora was unlike any of the Phaser women she knew: she was sassy but genuinely kind, and above all else, she was nurturing. Growing up onboard a ship of soldiers and graduating to the Phasers in her adult life made face-time with women like Aurora extremely limited. The Phasers referred to one another as “brother” and “sister,” but the way that Aurora said it made her feel like she truly meant it. She reached in, hugged the tiny woman and then excused herself to return home. She hadn’t heard from Rafian or Tayden, so she took it as a sign that she could retire early.

When she got to her apartment, Marian and Dott were there and she knew that her hope for relaxation was now out of the question.

“Ladies night out, girls?” she asked them sarcastically as she parked her bike and walked towards her door.

Marian made to intercept her, but Dott stood her ground, staring off into the darkness as if she were being made to stand guard.

“Okay what the thype is this?” Camille asked. “Are you taking an aggressive stance with me, Marian?”

“Makers, no girl. Calm down. I just wanted to get your attention.”

“So, what is all this, then?”

“Have you seen Tayden or Rafian?”

“No, I haven’t seen either of them since I came back a week ago. Raf went off somewhere with Val, and Tayden has been missing since yesterday. What is going on? Do you think they’re—”

“That’s not what this is about. Dott, could you please bring the flobot over here?” Marian asked.

Dott walked over and showed Camille a memtocflo bot. Marian had sought out Camille to see if she could make sense of what she had seen. “I tried calling Tayden and Frank, but their comms are off, which makes absolutely no sense. Rafian is doing recon—which frustrates me to no end because he has people that can do that schtill without him—so I can’t call him.”

Camille activated the bot and it hovered in midair and shot out a holographic image all around them of the city of Dystalis and the town of Garth. The holograph steadied itself and then became extremely vivid; it was as if they were giants, peering down into the actual city. Camille examined the beautiful countryside and the sewer lake that ran around Garth, below Dystalis. “Nice capture, Marian, but what is it that is concerning you?” she asked, looking about for anything that would seem out of place.

Marian walked over to stand near Camille and placed her finger on the top of one of the outlying skyscrapers that bordered Dystalis. “Does this tower not look familiar to you, Cam? Like, as a pilot that has fought just about every model of Geralos ship there is, I want you to really take a look at that tower and tell me why is it that the architect chose to go with that shape as opposed to everything else that is on that building?”

Camille took a long look at the tower and how intricate it looked compared to the smooth surfaces of everything else. She used her hands to expand that area of the image and as it grew larger, she could make out even more detail. She still didn’t understand what Marian was getting at, so she tilted her head to get a different view of it. What does architecture have to do with us? She thought, and then it became immediately evident what Marian was worried about. Her heart skipped as she recognized the Geralos ship that had camouflaged itself as one of the towers on top of the building.

“That’s a Geralos elite!” she said in shock.

Marian walked over to look at it again, nodding her head in agreement. “We were all at that meeting while the Geralos was there, Cammy. I’m not sure if they know what we are planning, or if any of the Meluvians we dealt with were corrupted. This makes me feel sick to my stomach, and I think that we need to act on it immediately.”

“Dott and I are still in a decompression period from the Helysian thing, so we—“

“I wouldn’t dare come here and ask you to return to space, or to travel after what you dealt with on Helysian, Cammy. I just wanted you to confirm what I saw before I bring it to Tayden or Frank.”

“This is major, Marian. Tayden may have to go herself, or have you go with her.”

“That’s the thing, sis. I am about to jump to Genese with Rafian for the diplomacy mission—remember?”

“That does put us in a bind. What if we send a few agents to scour the city for the spy? They should be able to snuff him out in less than a week’s time. Let’s hear what Frank and Tayden have to say, whenever they come back online.” The two women exchanged knowing glances at one another, as if they knew what it was that Frank and Tayden were doing. “When is Rafian expected back, Marian?”

“I’m not sure, but we fly out in a few days, so I was hoping he’d be back home tonight. The decision falls on you then, Camille. What do you think we need to do about this Meluvian thing?”

“Call up Val Tracker and tell him that we need his Marines for a recon mission. I also need twenty Phaser Agents front and center at 0600 so that we can make plans to back them up.”

“You got it,” Dott said and Camille looked at her as if she had not seen her there the whole time.

“Dott, I have another mission for you, sister, but it will start only after the Phasers have jumped to Meluvia.”

“A solo mission?”

“Yup, this will be your first Jump as an Ace. I don’t have to tell you that it won’t be an easy task, so make sure you are sharp and rested when I call on you in a few weeks.”

“Of course.”

The three women grabbed forearms and hugged one another before separating. Marian headed off to find Tayden Lark. Camille, exhausted, entered her apartment and climbed the steps laboriously and then fell facedown into her bed and fell asleep.

Three days later, after the Phasers had made a plan to seek out the Geralos spy, Rafian and Marian stood inside of the crystal room and bid their farewells to Tayden, Frank, Dott and Camille Yan. Marian’s smile was warm and genuine as she stood near her husband. He glanced at her and squeezed her hand and she looked up at him and nodded. He didn’t have to say it but they were good and he saw the evidence in her eyes as the lights were dim—the sign of a happy Tyheran.

“We all have tough missions to embark on, but something tells me that yours will be the hardest,” Tayden said, her voice shaking as she saw them off. “I hope that your corruption games don’t hurt you permanently, Raf and that you come back to me—us—safe and secure. Marian, please watch out for our commander and let me know if you need backup.”

“He’s in good hands, Tayden. I won’t lose him; I promise you.”

Rafian kept his mouth shut and nodded at Frank, before smiling at the other three women and squeezing Marian’s hand. “Please save your concerns and worry for my friend Vallen. His mission is one that worries me the most because he cannot clone—we can. Make sure you all take care of yourselves, as well. There are a lot of unknown dangers right now and a chance that we may even have a Geralos spy within our walls. Stay cold and aware and Marian and I will make sure that we fix our alliances on Genese. We are Phasers and we will finish the mission.”

Then he activated the large black crystal and he and Marian were gone in the blink of an eye.

Memory 11

The streets of Genese were still the same as Rafian remembered them. Filthy, dark and mostly barren. They were slick and wet from a storm that was floating through the area, and it made the smell of garbage even stronger as the five shadowy figures made their way to a small pub called The Arc. Marian and Rafian were holding hands, and a Genesian diplomat dressed in a suit and tie accompanied them. He wore a wide brimmed hat that kept him dry despite the rain.

“Those outfits you Phasers have are quite revealing, Rafian. So I hope you don’t mind me saying that your wife is quite the specimen. One of the most beautiful women I have ever seen in all my years,” Cero said to Rafian. He spoke in the Genesian dialect, a language he knew Marian could not understand.

The other men in suits all made noises of agreement and Rafian swallowed hard on his cynicism. Memories flooded back into his mind of Genese and the massive chasm that separated the rich from the poor. Here they were, walking the dirty, neglected streets of Basce city, with its slum housing, orphans peering through dark alleyways, and starving citizens looking on in wonderment. He and Marian were dressed in heavy Phaser trench coats with an umbrella droid floating above them, but the upper caste men in their company wore suits—that were getting soaked—which cost as much as a year’s worth of food for any family there. He used to be one of those scavengers watching the elite stroll through. Back then, it was a dream to catch one alone, rob him and then sneak into the city to purchase things that were essential for one’s survival.

“What do you think about that, Rhee? Cero says that you have beauty beyond comparison,” Rafian said to her in Tyheran. “I’m not sure how to take it, being that he hasn’t stopped staring at you since we got out of the taxi.”

“Let him stare; I’m used to it.” She looked up at her husband to make eye contact and then continued. “I am yours, remember? He can do nothing but envy you and I am proud to be your wife.” She stepped in closer to him and hugged him close, so that her head was touching his shoulder. “I am beyond sad seeing the state of this place and knowing that you had to grow up here, Rafian. How does one go from this to where you are now?”

“You can thank the soldier that gave his life to get me onboard the Helysian, kitten. If he had not grabbed me when he did, I would be just another casualty of the war.”

Cero, who was still staring at Marian, continued to ask about her, not knowing that Rafian’s patience was rapidly declining. “I love that sing-songy language of hers, too. I have never heard such a dialect in all my travels. Is that one of the languages from your home planet of Vestalia?”

“Actually it is, Cero,” Rafian lied while wishing to himself that the Genesian had come alone. It would only take a moment for him to jump into his head and take the Geralos inside to task. He would punish him for invading a friend’s mind and for sizing up Marian the way he was.

They marched on through the wet streets until they came to the pub they were looking for. Cero pushed open the door and they stepped inside and hung their wet coats on a rack. A cel-toc maiden strode over to them and began asking about their drink orders, then turned around to take them to a private room with soft, comfortable orange seats and a music player screaming out tunes from a Genesian pop star. Traumatic memories of the past flooded Rafian’s mind and he remembered vividly how he had been at the mercy of one of those androids when he was too young to fight back. I should find the factory that builds these things while I’m here and plant a sizable bomb at its foundation, he thought. His dark thoughts were interrupted by the sounds of approval coming from his company as the cel-toc parted a curtain to reveal a large table. The scene was very old-world and cheesy to Rafian, but for Marian, it was surreal and extremely alien.

“We should open up a Phaser charity here to help the children of Genese, Rafian,” Marian whispered to him as they walked into the room. “We could have an apartment above it and visit often. I love how low-tech and real it feels here. They have gas-run vehicles, wooden houses – like, look at this!” She touched the walls of the room, not realizing that as she did this, her round posterior was on display for the three men who accompanied her husband.

“I take it your wife has never seen wooden buildings before, eh, Raf?” said Cilas as he took the cider the cel-toc had brought him.

Marian sat next to Rafian and brought her tea up to her nose to smell its aromas. She scanned the room for cameras and the men for weapons, sizing them up for what she knew was about to take place. As she drank the delicious, hot liquid, she thought about the meeting they’d had the day before. Rafian had masterfully brokered peace with the Genesians over Rend’s slight and was reassured that there would be no complications with the alliance. Cero liked Rafian a lot and it didn’t take much to forgive him. Once the formalities were over with the council, the pair had begun telling war stories, sharing drinks and watching vids. It was Rafian’s idea to search the ghettos for a good pub and while Cero hated the idea, he knew that Rafian wanted to reminisce. As an extra precaution against what he called the “savages of the street,” Cero had insisted on bringing two secret service agents to keep them safe as they walked. So here they were.

Marian began to like Cero as they hung out, drinking and chatting and she wondered if there was a way to remove the Geralos that was influencing his thoughts without killing him. She had spoken to Rafian at length about it—in Tyheran, of course, in case of any spies—and he had promised to see if saving the diplomat was realistic.

“What’s good here?” Cero asked the cel-toc and the droid began her routine of talking about what dishes were popular and which ones she preferred personally. Rafian finished the countdown that he started in his head and Marian did the same, since it was her move.

With the hum of a vilo-sword and a move so fast that even the android was caught off guard, Marian hit the two guards simultaneously with the black edge of her blade and the men fell forward, toppling their drinks—stunned and out of commission. As she did this, Rafian slipped next to Cero and jammed a syringe into his neck. Marian was on the table in an instant. She slid across to the stunned cel-toc to bop her with the hilt of the sword, causing her to fall over, useless and out of commission. The entire attack took no more than three seconds and Marian secured the door to their room and stood guard, her vilo-sword now switched from stun baton to deadly serrated edge.

“Hurry up, babe. We don’t know how long before they begin to miss the droid,” Marian said.

Rafian nodded at her quickly as he took Cero’s head into his hands and commenced the ritual to enter the plane of thought that was his brain. He found himself falling once again, but this time there was no plane; it was a dense forest with crimson leaves and a sky of swirling black clouds. The nightmarish vision of Cero’s mental reality was enough to concern the Phaser, who looked around for the presence of the Geralos that was hiding, leaking back intelligence to his masters.

When Rafian landed, it was painful, as he broke a number of tree limbs falling towards the floor of the forest. The ground sank beneath his feet like a sponge and he stood up and dusted himself off, a move, which did nothing to his formless shape. His corruption of Cero was much different than when he had done it to the Geralos. He wondered if all species held different planes in their brains, or perhaps it was different people, each reflecting something of their reality and maybe a bit of his. He began to feel his head throbbing from a headache as he searched the forest for the Geralos.

Marian watched her husband drift off into his head as his pupils disappeared. He stood erect with his hands on Cero’s head, but was mentally gone from her, in a mysterious ritual that she couldn’t understand. After ten minutes had passed, she took out a set of stasis strips and bound the men’s hands as she sat them up on their chairs. She took the cloth napkins that were on the table and placed them in their mouths as gags. She then lifted the cel-toc to her feet and shook her awake as she walked out with her, closing the door behind them. She didn’t know what to make of the cel-toc maiden. She knew that Rafian hated her species and she didn’t know how much of it was machine and how much was organic. Would she need to kill her, or could she be coerced into silence?

The cel-toc came back to consciousness with a start, then struggled out of the hands of Marian and stared at her with her mouth open. “Assassi—.” Before she could sound the alarm, Marian had her hand on her mouth and a knife at her abdomen.

“Make a scene, girl. I dare you,” she whispered to the cel-toc as she looked past her to see if anyone had noticed them.

The room they were in was tucked back behind a series of empty tables, so no one had noticed the scuffle that had occurred between the two women. Marian saw other cel-tocs serving patrons, so she felt confident that theirs wouldn’t be missed for quite some time. She pulled her back into the room, secured the door and then locked her into stasis strips. She gagged the cel-toc and then sat her next to the other men. Breathing a sigh of relief, she took her place once again near the door and set her clock to thirty minutes, so that she could wake up Rafian in what she assumed was a good amount of time.

It felt like a whole day that Rafian searched for the Geralos, and he began to think that he would never find him within the forest. Suddenly, he saw another figure of light take off running away from him and he raced after it, his feet no longer heavy as he increased his speed. As he ran, he began to imagine that he could fly and instinctively he jumped and flattened out, knowing he would stay aloft, floating towards his target. He shot past trees, hills and depressions as the other figure ran, eventually catching up to it and slamming it to the ground. When he touched the light of the other figure, he blacked out and found himself on the floor of a temple very much like the one he had destroyed in Geral. Several Geralos were seated with him in a circle, looking on for answers. He opened his mouth and the words he spoke were from their language.

“Where am I?”

“High lord, you are in the temple of Ri. Do you need Sapra water to reduce the confusion?”

“No, but I need to rest. My head is pounding and I am not sure what is going on. Why am I in the company of lizards?”

“Lizards? Where do you see lizards, great one?”

And it was then that Rafian realized what was going on. Looking around at his surroundings, he knew it to be a high temple for the Order of Tancha, the religious sect of Geralos that had begun the crusade to take over Vestalia. In the distance he could see other Geralos seated like he was, controlling important Genesians, Vestalians and whoever else they could. He wanted to drop a bomb in the building and let it kill them, but even if he had one, the corruption from the Geralos would kill the hosts and many battleships, countries and squadrons would lose their leaders in one instance. He wondered what he could do to get them to stop. What was the secret to breaking the minds without risking lunacy and death for the poor souls being made into puppets? He was inside a high official, one of the unquestioned leaders of their cause. Who would question him if he started exhibiting strange behavior? So why not ask?

“Tell me, man, what is our secret to leaving a host’s mind without killing them?”

“Is this a test, my lord?”

“What do you think it is?”

“Sorry, lord, it’s just unlike you. Well, sir, I suppose you could just stop. If the host dies, we die, but we have the ability to enter and exit the mind of a weakling at our leisure. I hope that was the answer you were looking for.”

Rafian stood up and the circle of Geralos stood up with him in unison.

“Get the rest of them up and at attention. I have something to say.”

The Geralos complied and before long he had over thirty sleepy monks staring at him, wondering what great words of wisdom he would bestow upon them. The entire episode almost made him smile, but he kept his composure, despite his throbbing head, and took a deep breath to address them.

“I am not your high lord.”

He waited for his words to settle in. They all looked at him, puzzled. Some wondered if he were about to tell a joke—like they were used to—while some took it as another one of the tests needed to promote them. Rafian studied their scaled faces for reactions and when they all stood waiting for him to continue, he walked over to a table and picked up a curved knife.

“You came out of nowhere – the whole lot of you. Caught us sleeping peacefully, after we made nice with the neighbors. You robbed us, ate us and took our only home, forcing us to live unnaturally in space aboard vessels of iron and oxygen.”

One Geralos was elated. “Master is offering up one of his ironic poems! He has taken to the role of a Vestalian dirt-sucker. Please continue, master. This is a welcome break from work. Yes, indeed!”

The crowd joined in on his elation and began to nudge one another with glee as they awaited even more of the performance from their lord.

“You do not know me but you will know my name. I am Rafian VCA and like you, I can ride the planes of the mind. Yes, you heard me right. I possess the one thing that you all have been biting into the heads of our women to possess. I am a Seeker.”

The Geralos were now well aware that what was happening was not a joke, or an act of irony on their master’s part. They began to approach him carefully. He held the knife at the ready and continued to smirk at their bewildered faces. Rafian felt slow and lethargic in the body, but he knew that at any time Marian would snatch him out. He only needed to survive long enough for them to panic and once the timer on her clock went off, she would pull him out. He assumed that he would get out unscathed and would shake Cero back to consciousness. His friend would understand why he had to do what was done, and they would find a way to prevent further corruption of their government. The Geralos rushed him as a unit and as he adjusted to his host’s lack of speed, he cut through two of their necks. They fell to the grown flailing, black ichor pouring all over the floor.

“Listen to me, you fools! If I can dislodge an old master priest from the mind of one of my own, what is to stop me from taking over your planet?”

With that, the body of the old priest slumped over as the rest of the Geralos rushed at him to beat him. Rafian was pulled through the fissure of time, back into the crimson forest. The light being he had tackled was now beneath him as a pile of ash. He began to hear Marian’s sweet voice yelling at him to come back. Looking down at his shimmering body, Rafian jumped and took flight. He aimed high into the center of the spiraling clouds and accelerated in velocity as he climbed higher and higher towards an alien atmosphere that he assumed would set him free. As he broke the glass of the bubble that contained him, his light body dissipated and he saw nothing but blackness as he began to fall. His fall was shocking and he struggled despite himself to regain flight. When he crashed back through the clouds of Cero’s mind, he was back in the pub and Marian was holding him steady, shouting at him to come back to her.

~*~*~*~

Rafian sat between Marian’s legs in the warm water of their bath. She touched the wet sponge to his scalp as he stared off into space, trying to remember where he was.

“I don’t know if you can hear me, Rafian, but I don’t want you doing this anymore.”

“I don’t plan to,” he said.

“Did the Makers tell you what would happen to you if you kept on doing it?”

“Makers? What ar—oh, you mean the mind thing. Yeah, they said I would die, permanently. Stuck in the planes of thought, or something like that. I was to use it only once, heh.” He grinned like a fool as Marian continued to sponge his head. He rested his forearms against her knees and watched the strange flaky residue of the soap float around him, inside of the emerald water. “I love you, Marian.”

The sponging stopped as Marian leaned into him and hugged him close. She rested her head against his back. “I love you too, Raffy.”

She wanted to say more, to scold him for risking death to perform that strange ritual, and to ask him why he had done it. But she didn’t; she chose instead to trust him in his promise that he would never do it again. She began to imagine how life without him would feel and it scared her in ways she had never felt before in the past. Why did she need him so? She tried to think of her goals and aspirations before he had come into her life and she realized they had all been superficial ones, based on the Felitian way of life. Here in Anstractor she was an honorary Vestalian, sworn to the cause of saving a planet ravaged by invaders, and in love with the man who would have them punished for it. She was his right hand and she got to see the man behind the legend, intimately and at her behest. Without him, she was just an alien, far away from home. At home she was a traitor and everything she knew had gone up in flames. She squeezed him tightly as she thought on all of this, then cleared her mind and resumed her sponging.

“I will not lose you, Rafian. Not to the Geralos and not to this mind thing. So promise me again that you will never do it again.”

“You have my word, Marian. Unless the Makers fix it so that it is no longer deadly for me to do it, I will not tempt fate again.”

They sat quietly after that, the only sound the water from the sponge being squeezed over his head. Before long, Rafian VCA was asleep. He dreamed of many things, and some seemed more than dreams as he floated through the span of space and time. There were images of Camille and two mysterious women, flying away from a Geralos battleship whose trace lasers lanced this way and that, trying in vain to pick them off. Camille showcased her masterful flying skills and stayed out of the range of the shots as she made to rendezvous with her fleet. He saw Laern, locked in a deadly gunfight alongside blurry soldiers who were dressed in green. He had a tattoo across the left side of his face written in Louine.

Rafian’s visions were a mixture of clear faces with blurred background images and it was as if he was a giant voyeur, rotating a globe of events within his hands, once in a while stooping close to peer within it, to see what was happening to the people inside. The dreams felt lucid, but try as he did, he could not control himself, or wake up. He was an aware prisoner, being made to look in on the lives of those he cared about. Little Ian materialized in front of him, screaming bloody murder as his father ran with him, cradling him as a portion of the base they were in was blown open. The blast doors quickly slammed behind them as many, blurry people were sucked out into space to die.

The father running with his child triggered another memory and before long he found himself falling towards the big blue orb of Vestalia. It was a different Vestalia, but he knew that it was her. The clouds parted as he fell to reveal ancient airplanes, exotic birds and radio signals being transmitted from space. As he drifted down in freefall, he saw tall buildings, roads crisscrossing like scattered yarn, and tiny, ant-like vehicles crawling along their length in cadence. This was Vestalia the way it was before the Geralos. He liked this vision and he closed his eyes and felt the breeze against his face. He tried to open his eyes but to no avail. When he finally could, he was a few hundred feet above the lanes of a highway and as he fell towards the ground, he suddenly began to panic.

The fall broke the coma and he sat up in bed, drenched in sweat and looking around to see if he could recognize where he was. He was in a large room and as he looked around for signs of Marian, he noticed the time. It was very late. I wonder how long I’ve been out, he thought to himself as he held his head and got up.

“Marian! “He shouted into the air.

Only silence returned and he got up and walked to the door. He opened it to a bright light and several people talking in hushed voices.

~*~*~*~

The scene was that of a party without music. There was a large living room with scattered chairs everywhere. The attendants all wore robes and seemed to be representatives of several planets. There was even a governor of Traxis in attendance and a set of beautiful blue twins from Louine. Marian was holding court with Cero and a number of his aides. When they all saw him emerge from the room, they greeted him with loud applause—it seemed like they were in a hotel and they had all been waiting for him to arise. Marian made to get up as he pulled his robe tight to cover his nakedness, but he stopped her with his hand and began to speak.

“Rhee, can these people be trusted?” he asked in Tyheran, making sure to avoid eye contact with any of the thirty pairs of amused eyes that looked upon him in awe.

“Yes Raf, I sent for them to be here. This is—“

“Leaders of the alliance, I appreciate and love my wife so much for having you here to see me. I am Seeker and the way of the visions present themselves in the most sporadic and inconvenient ways at times—but we must heed them, as they are given to us for a reason. I have learned much from my invasion of the Geralos mind and the long sight that it gave me afterwards. I would implore you to take notes, if you can, and send it to all intelligence agencies across the galaxy.”

He grabbed a chair and then placed it in front of the door as he used an arm to prop himself up, since he felt lethargic. Marian moved over to him and injected something into his arm. It seemed to help quite a bit as he felt himself grow stronger as he spoke. “The Geralos now know that we can do to them what they have been doing to us for decades. I have corrupted one of their leaders.” He looked at Marian as her sad eyes revealed disappointment with the reminder that she had almost lost him due to it. “I was able to save Cero Dillis, but I will not be doing it again. This ‘gift’ of mine was made to be used only once and I have done it twice, at the risk of my own life.”

Marian poured water into a glass and helped him drink it, soothing his parched throat.

He continued. “One of the things I want to inform the alliance of is that corruption is not a permanent curse like we believe it to be. The Geralos comes and goes into the person’s mind at will, but that person is still his or her self. They just get pushed out temporarily while the mind-stealer controls them. Due to this, I would encourage your scientists to find a way to prevent them from getting in. We need something permanent and mass produced. You can use the technology of this Louine COREX helmet as your source of study. The Louines may have stayed out of the fight, but they are geniuses. Use their tech, reverse engineer it. Find us some defense against the brain invaders.”

The room broke out in cheers as the happy attendants passed the helmet around, examining its alien design and making comments on its beauty. Rafian let them talk to one another for a time, then resumed his speech, speaking even louder above the noise.

“All of Geral isn’t bad,” he said and a few gasps followed by silence let him know that he had their attention. “That planet is ruled by an ambitious group of world conquerors, but its people are as varied and complex as we all are. I learned this—not from my visions, or my studies—but from my first mission as a cadet, when I was made to sneak amongst them and steal a vessel to leave their planet. We must not be blinded by hate if we are to win. We need to be focused, together and relentless at putting a stop to what they are planning. They wanted to use Vestalia’s resources as a means to grow an armada, one that is human-run, corrupt and extremely effective, but we thought they took us over to eat our brains. How wrong we were! Galactic domination, ladies and gentlemen – the Geralos are more than the lizards we want them to be.

“This armada that they set out to build would take on the forces of Meluvia, Genese, Traxis and Casan. The massive flotillas of your military would be rocked and decimated. These fanatics believe that Anstractor was once a galaxy where they were the only intelligent race across all the planets. The legend they believe say that one of their scientists began to experiment with genetics and planted samples on several worlds. These samples became all of our ancestors—can you see that? They think that we are of them. The Vestalian, the Meluvian—you get my point.”

“So what do we do against them, Phaser?” asked a woman seated in the room.

“We must take the fight to Geral.”

“Are you crazy?” Cero exclaimed, his eyes wide as he looked around for reassurance from the others listening. “Rafian, my friend. My gratitude knows no bounds for you saving my life, but we cannot fight an extended war on that poisonous, jungle planet.”

“Who said anything about an extended war? We need everyone in the fight to snuff out the Geralese government. One thousand battleships deploying aces and hardened soldiers on the surface would shut down the Geralos war machine faster than we think. We must work together, or we will continue to fight defensively for several lifetimes until they take over Anstractor once and for all.”

Silence drifted across the room and Rafian knew that his words had sunk in, but he was not feeling positive that they would listen to him. He often wondered how he would save Vestalia and make it impossible for any outsiders to take the planet again. No matter how skilled and awesome his Phasers were, they would never be enough to do the job alone. But getting diplomats to risk a cushy life of war-dodging to take up arms was an impossible task on its own. The visions he had seen showed people fighting, but they were mostly Marines, star fighters from alliance ships, and of course his own Phaser agents. The allied planets had always helped Vestalia, but they had never brought the sort of force that was needed to end the Geralos, once and for all. He thought of how the rebels on Luca had tried in vain to overthrow their overlord and he wondered if his Phasers were nothing more than a mirrored version of that. The thought made him feel defeated.

“Well, I’ve said my piece and I know you won’t budge just because I asked you to. Just think on what I have said today and take it back to your leaders. Do not wait until their saucer-like drop ships are thick in your atmosphere, deploying killers and brain-biters to ravage your people and take your land. Vestalia did that and look where we are now. We must act fast, but I know you need time. The Geralos have been growing in number, improving in technology and divvying up the galaxy while we play war with their petty soldiers. Please think on my words tonight and think on what it would mean for us to do this together.”

~*~*~*~

Laern Cobo pulled the cloak tight against his face as the rain fell in sheets and doused everything it could, including his fatigues. They were on Meluvia, on the outskirts of Garse, the city of the untainted. They had landed Val’s large ‘copter in the backyard of the people’s church and if that hadn’t annoyed them, the presence of technology within their walls surely did. The soldiers were not given passage to walk through Garse and were forced to go around it—which resulted in them having no eaves to hide under as it began to rain.

Laern looked around at the short, brick buildings that made up the “city” and it impressed him that so many people could live off planted food, well water and animals. As a child he had heard about the Cynetari people: they were reclusive, mysterious and they hated Meluvians like himself who embraced technology. When he had emerged from the ‘copter next to Val, they had given him the nastiest of looks, disappointed that a Meluvian would be flying around with an outsider. Even worse was that this outsider was in a loud and frightening machine. When he saw the twisted features of the Cynetari, it had made his blood run cold. They seemed mutated, with ears at odd angles and teeth that were black and crooked. They wore rags and carried primitive, blunt instruments. Even the few women he saw were monsters and it made him glad that they weren’t hospitable. Better to soak in the rain than be under the same roof with those creatures.

He had come along with Val Tracker at the big man’s behest, and it was some welcome action after days of inactivity. After the talk he’d had with Rafian, Tayden Lark had stopped using him for missions and he wondered if this was coincidence, or whether the lead Phaser had instructed her not to do so. He was trying his best not to be resentful of Rafian. The man was a hero, a legend and any number of other labels used to praise one of his qualities, but he had been less than supportive of Laern’s ambitions. He tried not to think about it and fall into the abyss of guessing at his commander’s moods, choosing instead to walk over to Val “The Vin’yn” to see if the bronzed giant had any words of wisdom for him.

“Gimme a good reason why you’ve left your post soldier,” Val barked at him and it made Laern stop in his tracks until Val broke out laughing at the expression that was on his face. “Boy, you look scared as schtill! I thought you Phasers were not allowed to nut up like this. What would old Rafian think?”

“He’d probably agree, being that he thinks I am a failure who is unworthy of the black and red.”

“Don’t start with the whining, leaf-mane. It isn’t very manly.”

“No, no whining from me, Colonel. Just telling the truth, is all. What are we out here doing, anyway? We must have marched through ten miles of sheer bush to get here.”

Val Tracker looked at Laern Cobo with a hint of pity. It meant a lot for a soldier to be chosen as a Phaser agent, but it meant even more to be cosigned by the big three: Rafian, Tayden and Camille—in that order. If Laern thought that Rafian was disappointed, it meant that he probably was. How lucky for him that of all the skilled Phasers on the planet, he would be stuck with a black sheep – probably so void of confidence, that he would become a liability.

“Listen to me, Phaser. Let’s leave Rafian be, alright? We’re out here to do recon and all I need you to do is keep your head up and your thyping eyes open.”

As if on cue, a rustling came from in front of them and a beast of many legs came rushing at them. One shot of Val’s plasma pistol stopped it short. The loud gunshot caused the curious Cynetari to gasp at the audacity of an outsider brandishing a firearm on their land and wasting an animal that would normally mean days of eating for their tribe. They could not stand for it and before long, a mob of people rushed at them to collect the beast and take it back to the town square.

“Okay, I don’t know how much more of these dirty people I can take, Colonel. We Meluvians are extremely disciplined people when it comes to cleanliness and I feel like I want to throw up.”

“Really? What if I told you that part of the mission is to intermingle with these people? Eat their broiled beast feet, sleep with their whores and sit in a circle on their soil, throwing up prayers to their gods. Are you going to not play along because it isn’t ‘clean’?”

“I—didn’t mean it that way. It’s just that… Maker’s fist man, I have never seen Meluvians this disgusting in all my life!”

“We’re supposed to help these people,” Val said dryly.

Laern looked at him as if he wanted to cry. “Help them, how? It’s only the two of us.”

“I didn’t want to alarm you, boy, but that big city you see up there? It’s about to get rocked, and down here in the world of the untouchables, we have the advantage of preparing a counter-attack that could save lives. Drop that crystal I asked you to bring and once my demons start pouring out of that magical hole it makes, you go back into that city and you find a way to get those people to understand that it’s about to get real.”

Laern was shocked at what Val was saying to him, but he obeyed and opened the tear so that the Phasers who were ready could walk through, accompanied by Val’s marines. As this began to happen, the Cynetari became agitated and he ran back to them, waving his arms and trying to explain that they were there to protect them. The leader of the Cynetari told the men above the wall of the city to open the gates as soon as Laern approached them. He walked out to meet the Phaser, accompanied by guards brandishing bows and arrows.

“This is almost comical,” Laern said under his breath, and then waited for the leader to approach him and begin talking.

The man’s breath stunk and it was all Laern could do not to turn around and let the dirty wretch suffer whatever fate had in store for him.

“Why are you here, outsider who looks like us?”

“We are here to help the Cynetari people.”

“Our village does not bother you people of the skies. We do not ask anything, nor do we interfere with your affairs. We have only a few acres of Meluvia for ourselves and I ask that you honor the peace that you promised us when we seceded from this country.”

“Oh, you think me a government official, or—no, no, no, I am a Phaser – a protector of Anstractor. I am here because you are in danger. I don’t want your land, or to disrupt your way of life. But in a few days this place is going to—“

As soon as he said this, Laern was knocked down on his face without warning. He picked himself up from the mud to see who had attacked him, and realized that a bomb had gone off. Half of the village was embroiled in flames. The city of Dystalis that once stood like a crystal crown above the stone buildings of Garse was now crumbling slowly down from the cliffs, into the sewage lake that separated the two. The bomb had been large and lethal and when Laern looked to the area where Val Tracker had met his men, there were gunshots and plasma cannons crisscrossing back and forth between them and the Geralos within the city. He grabbed the leader of the Cynetari and pointed towards a cave that sat a few hundred yards from their location, telling him to get his people there as soon as possible. The frail man obeyed and Laern snapped back to focus, angry and unsure of what to do and how to stop whatever was attacking the people.

“Come with me,” Val said as he grabbed him by his arm.

They ran to the sewer lake and began jumping across, on top of the submerged pieces of building that had fallen from the city above. When they made it to the surface of the cliff, Val led Laern up as they climbed to gain access to one of the holes that the sewage of Dystalis used to flow through. It was a long and difficult climb, but when they reached the nasty opening, Val sat inside the greenish waters and pulled Laern up next to him. “Sideline that Meluvian cleanliness schtill until this is over, Phaser. You got me?”

“Of course!” he yelled back, annoyed.

They began to wade through the massive pipe in search of a ladder. It took several minutes before they found one and Laern offered to take point in climbing up to see what was going on above. He reached for his belt to activate his cloaking device, but found that it had gotten hit by something unknown and was no longer usable. He climbed up the long ladder without it and when he got to the top to look through the grill, he saw a scene straight out of the worst horror vid. The Geralos were butchering people with their las-swords and they were not dressed like the soldiers that he was used to fighting. They were “Crak-Ti,” the military elite forces. He knew that Val’s soldiers were unmatched in warfare but if ever there were a contender to take them down, it would be the bloodthirsty Crak-Ti.

Geralos Special Forces had no interest in capturing aliens to experiment on, or biting brains, or negotiating. They were killers and they were only deployed when the Geralos command expected a city to be completely wiped of all life. It was apparent that this was the case with Dystalis and the Crak-Ti were painting the silver streets red. Laern looked down at Val and shook his head.

“That bad huh, kid?” Val said when he saw the expression on the Meluvian’s face.

Laern thought of all the mistakes he had made since becoming a full-fledged Phaser under Rafian VCA. He wondered what the commander would do if he was there, in that moment, seeing his people butchered by the best the Geralos had to offer. His mind found its way to the memories of his mother and father, and how they had loved and cared for him. He wondered how they would remember him and then, without thinking better of it, he pushed open the grill, climbed out and turned on his las-sword.

All of this took mere seconds to happen as Val Tracker pulled his big body up the ladder to follow Laern, angry that the young Phaser had given him no warning before being exposed. As he neared the top of the ladder, he could hear the electric-like clashing of the lastech weapons and a sense of panic took him. The Crak-Ti were masters of the sword; it was the only weapon they used and it was the only weapon they needed. Laern was good but he was no master. When he emerged from the hole and found himself surrounded by Geralos, he saw the crumpled body of Laern twitching on the sidewalk. He was missing an arm and his sword and the Geralos seemed unwilling to finish him off.

“Val! I’m, so-sorry,” he managed as he cringed from the missing arm sparking numbing shocks of pain through his body.

But Val was not listening. The Vin’yn was in war-mode and he brought up two MCPT-90 pistols that Marika had gifted to him and began shooting massive balls of death into the Crak-Ti horde. There were many who skillfully dodged Val’s shots, but most were hit by the bullets and the shrapnel that exploded upon impact.

“GET SOME!” he shouted as his guns rained death into the hordes of Geralos.

It was a nasty scene and Val stood like a turret, pumping out fire without much care for the las-swords being thrown at him or the suicidal Geralos that ran at him through his shots. When one Geralos got close enough to raise his sword to cut the big man, Val sidestepped the swing while bringing the butt of his gun down on the Geralos’s scalp.

“Laern, get your ass up and give me a hand. Phasers finish the mission right? Well. The citizens of this once-beautiful city need us to remove the Crak-Ti and I can’t do it alone.”

Laern knew that Val was a joker, but this was the cruelest joke. Here he was, missing his arm and a weapon. How could he possibly be of any help? He didn’t like to think of himself as weak, but here he was again on a mission with one of the elite fighters in the galaxy and he had been downed again by the Geralos. He clenched his teeth and tried his hardest to move past the pain. He came to his feet and hunched over, and tears poured from his eyes like hot wax. He saw the fallen las-sword of a Crak-Ti lying amidst what used to be its chest, now open and exposed from a direct hit by one of Val’s bullets. He snatched it up in his weak right hand and moved to stand with his back to Val’s. He turned on the lastech and held the fiery white blade in front of him.

“I’m ready for the lot of you crutas!” he screamed in defiance and Val—who had paused from his slaughter to watch him—smiled.

“Now you seem more like one of your tights-wearing brothers and sisters, Laern. Stay up and stay angry. In about a minute the cavalry will be here. I have about twenty seconds on these guns before they overheat into uselessness, so we need to shoot to keep them at bay, rather than to try and wipe them out ourselves.” No sooner than the words had come out of Val’s mouth that several drop ships appeared above them. A few hundred Crak-Ti fell from the sky, using their rocket boots to slow their fall as they surrounded the pair and made to rush them with renewed gusto.

“Well, kid, the cavalry won’t make a dent in that.”

“So, what’s the plan, Colonel? We go out fighting, or what?”

“You have the privilege of clon—“

“Actually, I don’t. We get one every year or so and I spent my lucky token on Geral. It’s been an honor fighting with the Vestalian Vin’yn, sir. If a Phaser is lucky enough to choose his death, he’d envy me right now, going out like this. I…I am ready.”

“Shut that schtill up, boy! I have some of the finest Casanian chierne waiting for me back at Zallus. I intend to die old, or in the arms of my red-skinned goddess. Move like a Phaser!” He snatched Laern up by the belt and threw him into the hole they had emerged from before joining him with a leap, clipping the edge as he fell down. The blow knocked him unconscious as he splashed into the sewer water. The flow of the stream pushed their bodies back towards the exit above Garse, and Laern worried about the infection that would come from his open wounds coming into contact with the toxic water.

A noise brought him around and the figure of Maes Van Senthyn stepped from out of the shadows. He walked in, slow and menacing, keeping his eyes on his enemies as he held his humming las-sword by his side. The two men were unable to fight and Maes smiled at his good fortune, since he recognized Laern’s uniform as that of a Phaser. He walked over to where they lay, ready to deliver the coup de grace, but a bright light shone on him from the corner and Dott Toga stepped through a tear with her las-sword powered on and ready.

Maes could hardly believe his eyes as the female Phaser came at him; she was one of the ones that had revealed him to the commander on board Helysian and he never thought that he would get the chance to repay her for stabbing him. He blocked her swing with his own sword and then paced around her as she bounced up and down excitedly, showcasing her combat stance.

“I remember you, human, but you probably don’t recognize me.”

Dott looked around to see if anyone else had heard the lizard speak and then shook her head as if to clear it of the illusion that the Geralos spoke her language.

“Dott… that is what the white-haired one called you. Dott!” He said her name with a tone that could be best described as fascination. She stopped bouncing and stared at him, but made sure that she was ready in case he tried anything.

“How is it that you are able to speak like us, lizard?”

“You used your knife on me, Dott. Where is your little knife? Can you use it on me now, when I am not pinned down on the ground and helpless?” He spun and swung the las-sword at her throat and she barely dodged it as she met his request by pulling her knife from the small of her back. She feinted to his left and swung the knife at his face, cutting into his jaw and causing him to retreat while holding it.

“You aren’t as smart as you think, lizard—or that fast, really. I was sent to find you. I knew that if anything I would find you in the sewer, since it’s about as close to your toilet of a home planet as Meluvia can get.”

He spat at her to show his disdain at her insult, then flicked the sword this way and that, hoping to frighten her into a mistake.

She kept her intense gaze on his face and resumed the bounce that complemented her knife training. “You’ve maimed one of my brothers and now I am going to take those cybernetic parts away from you,” she said. She darted in to stab him in his abdomen before retreating out of the reach of his sword counter.

“How are you moving so fast?” he asked, confused and frightened by Dott’s ability to wound him at will and his helplessness in countering it. If he knew about the crystals he would understand, but what he was seeing was a strange woman whose fighting prowess defied everything he believed to be true about Vestalians.

“The time for talking is over,” Dott announced and moved in to take out a leg with her sword.

But Maes had not risen to the top of the military ranks by chance. He was ready for her and as soon as she telegraphed her move, he stepped forward and spun with his las-sword out. The acrobatic spinning was a fast and unpredictable move that Dott did not see coming. She launched forward to cut his leg and the las-sword caught her shoulder where her armor started. It split in half, causing her chest plate to hang uncomfortably off her body. She bounced back out of the deadly vortex to throw the armor off and as Maes came out of his spin, she darted back in with the sword to stab him. They began to fence as strikes gave way to counters and counters riposted as they danced the waltz of the warrior in the wet tunnels of the Dystalis sewers.

It was thanks to providence that Dott found Maes when he was part machine. The warrior had been an unmatched practitioner of the las-sword—back when he’d cared about that sort of thing—but now he was a wounded man trying his best to adapt to a cybernetic body. He could tell that Dott was a new Phaser and her unorthodox swordplay was not so much a brilliant creation as he suspected but more raw effort borne from desperation and the fighting spirit. They clashed and parried for long minutes and as they did this, the wounded Val Tracker opened his eyes to see the bone jutting out of his leg and the young Dott Toga losing ground to a swordfight. He tried to reach for his gun, but he couldn’t move for some reason. The fall had been bad and he wondered if it was paralysis. Laern and his broken body was near him and not moving, so he tried his best to talk, calling his name to wake up and help Dott.

The fight was going on too long and Dott’s arms were on fire as she reduced her counters to merely blocking, trying her best to stay alive, looking for an opening to get him off of her. It was no use; Maes’s strength seemed to be increasing with every strike and hers was blinking away. She saw her life pass before her eyes, an honorable death to the wicked sword of a superior warrior. Camille and the VCA’s would be proud of me, she thought. Rafian had always told them of “a warrior’s death” in their training and she had wondered if she would be so lucky – especially if cloning was off the table and a true death were imminent. She stepped in to catch him as he swung his sword, but the fatigue was too much and she miscalculated. He tripped her and brought the hilt down on her skull out of instinct and she was down, the murky water of the sewer splashing across her face.

Maes looked down at her with admiration. He hadn’t expected her to have that amount of fight in her and he did the warrior ritual across his chest to honor her. He went to take her head to complete the ritual when the blast from a rifle knocked him on to his side, where it burned like hell beneath his ribs. He looked up to see Laern Cobo, sitting up and looking wearily at him. He laughed at how pathetic the Phaser was and then struggled to his feet and jumped from the sewer’s exit to the lake that lay below.

“I’m alive!” Dott shouted in a frightened sort of exasperation that shook the dying Val Tracker back awake.

He looked over at Laern and a wave of sadness came over him. The Phaser was slumped over and no longer breathing. “You Phasers…are—” he tried to say, but couldn’t finish as the pain wracked his body and he regained some feeling in his limbs. “Tough crutas. You’re all alright.”

Dott ran over to him and examined his leg. Then she went over to Laern and looked at his arm. They were all bruised and battered from the attack and it didn’t look like they would be able to stop the Crak-Ti from taking the city over. Where were the reinforcements? She helped the men out of the sewer water and onto a raised area that was dirty and dry. She then opened a tear with a crystal and dragged Laern through it before reemerging with a medic and a droid. Phasers were not allowed to jump directly to the base without express permission from the top three, but Dott took the situation as above the law and before long, Val Tracker was in a hospital bed alongside Laern Cobo.

After a few hours had passed, Tayden Lark showed up at the hospital.

“Dott, what’s the situation?” she asked.

“Tayden! There’s so much to tell. We have a problem. A half cyborg Geralos did this to us. The boys did us proud, but right now Dystalis is in flames. If we cannot help them to get those murderers out of their city, it could turn into a bigger issue for the entire Alliance.”

“We have it under control, but I was worried about the three of you since you went off the grid.” She walked over to the screen that floated next to Laern’s bed and flipped through it while furrowing her brow in apparent disgust. “Where were you guys fighting, in a toilet?”

“That wouldn’t be far off the mark, to be honest with you, Commander. We were in a sewer.”

“A sewer and you encountered a lizard in metal?”

“Yes, ma’am. He’s the same one that Cammy and I discovered on Helysian. They had him in the brig, but he must’ve gotten out somehow because that was him. I’m not sure why we weren’t told about this… ugh, Helysian has so many issues as it is. But in any event, he got himself patched up with cybernetic enhancements and had parked out in Dystalis for a long time.”

“How do you know all of this?”

“The ship we saw in Marian’s hologram was his, and he had a bit of a makeshift home in the sewer. Oh, and one other thing. He was skilled, not like the Crak-Ti or other specially trained Geralos, but he spoke in the Vestalian dialect of my ancestors. He spoke to me in Crian.”

“Crian? How would he know that you’re a descendent of Cria?” Tayden asked as she looked over Dott’s bruised and battered face.

“I don’t know…I would say research. He was pretty twisted up about what Camille and I did, so he would have obsessed. Camille and I have unique enough looks to pinpoint our race on Vestalia, so he would have looked into it. He fought like a machine, Tayden. It’s going to take Raf or Yuth to take him out if it’s close quarters combat. He infiltrated Helysian, got close enough to Aurora to learn a lot about Rafian, and he knows about the Phasers.”

“Sounds like he needs to die.”

“That’s where I was going with this. If he knows, then the Geralos know, and before long they will be training their soldiers to avoid us or to counter our maneuvers. Part of our ongoing success with missions is due to the enemy’s ignorance of us. If he were to learn about the cryst—“

“Stop. Who knows what else a lizard so slimy has up his sleeve. You could be transmitting a message back to him through a bug or something. So keep the things we protect to yourself. Now let’s get you cleaned up and I will see what Rafian is up to.”

Memory 12

Mera-Ku monks healed the body and the mind through intense meditation that could go on for days sometimes. Rafian had jumped to Luca—the galaxy where he’d met his wife—and had come back with the mastery of the monk’s martial arts and their warrior code. He knelt in silence in the center of the small cruiser as Marian flew it through the cloudy skies of Meluvia towards Dystalis, where a small war had broken out between the alliance of Anstractor and the seasoned Geralos elite. He opened his eyes after a time and stood up, testing his limbs before pulling his arms back into a stance and letting the blood course through his body. It all felt good and he looked out the windows at the tall skyscrapers. He knew he would be fighting within a few minutes. He ran to the cockpit and hopped into the chair next to Marian.

“Well, look who’s out of the world of peace and nothingness,” Marian said with a wink, as he planted a kiss on her cheek and shifted her face so that he could put one on her lips. She smiled at him doing this because it was one of many similar gestures he had exhibited since coming out of his coma. She wondered how long it would last before he reverted back into the focused warrior with little to no time for affection, but she put it out of her mind, wanting to enjoy it while it lasted. “You seem ready, Rafian, but I want you to be careful. The Crak-Ti are masters of the las-sword from what I was told, and they use it as if it were an extension of their arm.”

“I look forward to facing them. Samoo LES and the alliance military taught me how to fight. By the time I was seventeen, I could hold toe against a lizard using their own technology. None of us fear death; we don’t have to fear the Crak-Ti.”

“Well... the hero of Vestalia is back, ladies and gentlemen. Let’s give him a round of applause.”

“Oh, hush.”

They continued to tease one another playfully until Rafian’s got a call from Tayden Lark.

“Tayden, what’s the plan?”

“Raf, the situation there on Dystalis is worse than you think. Val and Laern were hurt pretty badly and the majority of the marines there have been routed.”

“Where are the marines currently?”

“I’m sending you the coordinates, but they are backed into a closed off street. Those lizards…I’ve never seen anything like it. Raf, just—“

“Is the big man alive?”

“Barely. We are thinking we may need to operate on him. He could end up with replacement parts…that’s if he pulls through.”

Rafian felt a heaviness come over him when he heard Tayden’s words, and he felt exhausted and sad for his friend’s state. Marian saw the change in him and knew that he loved Val the way that one loves a brother. He forced himself to gain composure and put the situation out of his mind. “What about Laern Cobo? How bad is the Phaser?”

“He got maimed and horribly infected. It doesn’t look good, Rafian, and he has used up his cloning token from that mission a few months past.”

“Listen to me, Tayden. I want them both alive – do you hear me? Dying is not an option for them and I want them to understand this. We have some of the best doctors in the entire alliance down there and you tell them that I request for these men to pull through. Put them in stasis and do what needs to be done, if possible. Make Laern sleep a year if that’s what it takes for him to clone through. Val…put his brain into a cel-toc, whatever – just make sure they pull through.”

“I won’t let them die, Rafian. But realize that these lizards are nothing like the ones we have been fighting all of these years. They are numerous and skilled. You should wait for—“

“We finish the mission, Tayden. Two of our best went down doing that and—how the hell did they get out? Did Laern pop a crystal and pull them through, or did you jump in? We can’t have them learn about the jumping. How were they rescued, Tayden?”

“It was Dott. I don’t know how she managed it, but she rescued them. She said they have a cyborg lizard down there that had her dead to rights. She was pretty messed up, Rafian; she was frightened out of her mind. Let me assemble the hawks and we can jump through and do a bombing run while we wait for the Meluvians to get their act together. Meanwhile, you can find this mechanic lizard and take it out. How does that sound?”

Rafian listened to the strategy Tayden was suggesting and thought about the loss in Meluvian life that would result from it. “Tayden, that’s a negative. Grab the aces and all the recruits and jump in at these coordinates. There have been too many Meluvian casualties and I don’t want us to be responsible for a blanket massacre. We are trained to be specialists, to be precise, so let’s act like it. On your lead I want you to bring order back to the city.”

“Sure, Raf, but do you think they’re ready? The recruits, I mean. Some of them haven’t even—“

“Tayden, three of our Aces are out of commission. None of our recruits are new to warfare; they were the best of the best in their lives before the Phaser Agency. We don’t have the luxury to pick and choose from them at the moment. Look, I know I’m asking a lot and you haven’t been out here much, but Tayden, what else can we do?”

“I’m gearing up right now, Rafian, so don’t think anything of it; you can rely on me. What’s your plan of attack?”

“Same as always, rurit. I’m gonna fight the fan with air.” He hung up the comm and Marian turned her chair around slowly and looked at him.

“So, we’re flying into a schtill storm, is that what I heard from you?”

“Yes, we are.”

“And it will be the two of us against a host of mysteriously skilled murderers?”

“Yeah, that’s about right.”

She smiled coyly at him and spun back around to take the ship off of autopilot. “So what the hell is a rurit? I assume it’s a pet name that’s going to make me want to kill you before the Geralos do. Am I wrong?”

“It’s a pet name.”

“Remind me to kick your ass after the war, husband.”

“As long as after you finish kicking my ass, you stick around,” he joked.

Marian flew the cruiser into a swarm of Crak-Ti dropships and began to exchange shots with them as she tried to find a place for them to deploy.

“Open the hatch, Rhee. I’m ready. Set the auto and we hop out and find the Marines.”

“We are going to get our asses kicked, Rafian. Are you sure about this?”

“More than sure, babe. Open it up.”

She opened the circular hatch in the middle of the ship and Rafian ran, somersaulted and fell through it to a sky littered with lasers and gunfire as an intense battle took place above Dystalis.

~*~*~*~

When Frank OTA looked around at the empty Phaser base, he felt slightly panicked. If there was ever a time for the Geralos to reclaim the territory from the Phasers, this was it. Tayden Lark had jumped to Meluvia with over seventy percent of their force and left him behind to play leader and be the bell ringer in case something happened. He wondered at their defenses; if the force field that bordered the Phaser agency would hold, and if they were truly hidden from the Geralos as Rafian and Tayden believed. Worrying didn’t do much, so he made his rounds to check on the recruits, reminding them that they were the “it” if anything was to happen and instructing them to carry a weapon at all times until the fight for Meluvia was resolved. This routine went on for the better part of the day and though he grew tired by evening, his stressing would not allow him to stop.

The city was unaware of the missing Phasers—Tayden’s jump had to be fast and unplanned to save Dystalis—so he spoke to the mayor about defensive maneuvers and made a personal trip to Aurora’s house. The two knew each other from their years on Helysian and he was elated when Rafian told him that she was now in Zallus, but he had not gotten time to visit her and the family. Now he was going to her with grim news and instructions, and it burned him to no end that this was how he would be greeting an old friend.

“Don’t you dare stand out there and ask to be invited in, you handsome lug. C’mere!” Aurora shouted at him as soon as he got to her doorway. He did just that, hugging her tight as he let the door slide shut behind him. She seemed smaller than he remembered, skinnier and more muscular. She had her hair out in the wild afro that was her trademark and behind her within his stroller was a toddler who seemed just as happy to see him.

“I can’t even begin to tell you how happy I am that you live here now Aury,” he said as he released the bear hug, fearful he would crush her to death. She was still the young girl with the smile that could light up a room and as he took her in, Velman appeared from the bedroom and crossed the room to shake his hand firmly. Frank pulled him in from the shake to hug him tightly – they had been cadets together on a few missions and a shake would not suffice for men that had gone through so much together. Velman was older, of course, but his beard almost made him unrecognizable. “Look at you with the beard, brother. I tell you, that poor child over there does not stand a chance. Mom has hair that goes on forever and dad has a beard that goes on forever. He’s going to have to shave every day!”

All three began to laugh at his terrible joke and little Ian, who was amused by the shouting adults in the room, instinctively began to laugh, too, which made them laugh even more. It was what Frank needed and within an hour he was at the dinner table enjoying the food Velman had been cooking and playing with Ian, who was told that this was his “Uncle Frank.” Uncle was a term of respect for adults that children were instructed to use when there was a friend to the family, but to Frank, it was much more. Hearing the words made him want to play protector to the child and be there to watch him grow into a great Vestalian.

“You all don’t get to age, do you, Frank? You don’t look a day older than twenty, brother,” Velman said as he looked at Frank with interest.

“We can age, I thank you for the compliment. The only thing we aren’t allowed to do is to become inefficient…wait. Raf would kill me. That sounded awfully harsh didn’t it?” The couple nodded slowly as they waited to hear what it was that Frank truly meant. “Okay, let me just spell it out. We are meant to be spectacular fighters, defenders of the galaxy against aggressors like the Geralos lizards. So, if I lose a limb, come down with a deadly disease, or get damaged to the point where my quality of life is crazy, I am forced to clone.”

Aurora was intrigued when she heard this and leaned in to whisper, as if she might be in trouble if she asked it out loud. “Cloned? So, is it still you when you clone, or is it some clever replica that gets downloaded your memories and such so that the rest of us aren’t freaked out?”

“The details are a bit hard to explain, Aury, but it’s us. We don’t get to pass on easily as Phasers.”

“So, what’s to stop you all from abusing that? I mean, it’s for a great cause and a super-necessary one, yeah, but what’s to stop someone from being reckless and putting people’s lives in danger because they can just clone and get a second chance? It doesn’t really seem fair.”

Frank noticed that Velman stood wide-eyed and quiet as Aurora needled him for answers and he wondered if he knew about the cloning, or if it was just so much to process that he couldn’t get involved in the questioning.

“Considering the things we are made to do to earn this privilege, Aurora, it is fair. We get one clone per year unless Rafian, our Supreme Leader, deems it worthy to violate that rule. There’s a young guy in the hospital, poisoned with toxins and missing an arm from the las-sword of a Geralos. He used up his cloning privilege earlier this year, so he may have to live in discomfort for a time unless Tayden can convince Rafian that he is worth it. Outside of the limitation that stops a scenario like the one you’re painting, there is also the fact that one cannot clone oneself. You need a skilled, knowledgeable Phaser to do it for you. Right now, the only ones with that skillset is myself, the Supreme Leader, Tayden Lark and Camille YAN.”

Aurora’s mind was blown. She did not know these things about the Phasers, and as she listened to Frank she felt a bit betrayed that Rafian had not confided them to her earlier. She was his only family outside of Marian and the fact that he was not allowed to die or fall short of being the perfect warrior made her feel sad. It was great that her brother was now virtually immortal, but what kind of life did it mean in the long term? The thought made her balk and she grabbed Frank’s hand to force him to look at her.

“What does this mean for Rafian, Frank? Are Phasers allowed to retire, to have a chance at a normal life with family, friends and loved ones? If the answer is no, then I will die before him, Ian will die before him and while it’s great that his wife gets to be immortal with him, what becomes of their humanity? You lose friends, life becomes this cycle of sadness, loss and depression, and you only know how to kill, pop up on bad guys, police the galaxy, but nothing of family…true family. Please tell me you all have an out.”

Frank stared at her with an apologetic expression on his face for the answer that he would be forced to give. There was no backing out of the dark education. If a Phaser was at the end of his/her line and truly wanted out, the best way to do this would be to talk to Rafian and Tayden. Special exceptions could be made for someone they knew to be worn through and finished with the life, but for the Supreme Leader, Rafian VCA, only the makers could grant him respite from his charge. “We can retire Aurora, but unfortunately, Rafian doesn’t get that option. Look, I’ve told you all too much as it is. The cloning is no big secret, but Rafian is…well, how can I put it? He’s special; he was chosen. Supreme Leader isn’t an elected position, nor is it one that you can pass on. He is here to protect us and he extends that privilege to warriors like myself.”

Aurora sat back hard without taking her eyes off of Frank, twisting her lips into a grimace that made it seem like she wanted to spit. “I know that I am being unrealistic with my dreams, Frank, but I want my brother to live and die happily with people who love him. I owe him my life, as do several hundred people in the galaxy, but I love him. We are practically of the same blood. Everything he has ever done is for Anstractor; everything! Why would he be cursed like this for being such a harbinger of hope for people like me?” She began to weep when she said this and Velman snatched her close to console her.

Frank sipped at the juice that was in front of him and wondered what had encouraged him to be so candid about their mortality. He knew how close Aurora was to Rafian, but he hadn’t known that the Phasers frightened her. He wished they had the ability to reverse time, because if they did he would have come in, made nice and then told them that the town was on lockdown till the Phasers returned. They could clone and fight like hellions, but they couldn’t manipulate time, so he sat and sipped his juice.

“I’m sorry, Frank,” Aurora said. “You don’t need me screaming at you because of my fear. I’m happy to see you and I want you to visit us often.”

“I definitely intend to do that.”

Aurora wiped her face and then looked off to the side. When she looked back at Frank, she had a mischievous smile on her face. He wondered how she could switch her moods so easily, but it was good to see her smile—Aurora was a woman he wanted to keep happy.

“So, mister. You and Tayden, huh? I would have never guessed that you liked loud, little crutas like her, but from what I hear you two can’t keep your hands off one another.”

Frank almost choked upon hearing this. As he collected himself, Velman laughed and excused himself. “I’m going to let you two catch up. Come on Ian, let’s go get you to bed, boy.”

When he left the room, Frank looked at Aurora, his face red from embarrassment. “H-how did you come by this news, Aury?”

“Hmm, let’s just say that the flight from Helysian had me in a vessel with two other women that are very close to you. Girls talk, as you know, and someone let me in on a little too much about their sub-commander’s… erm, sleeping habits. It’s okay, Frankie, your secret dies with me. I just wanted to tease you about it.”

“You mean it dies with you, Velman and the kid,” he grumbled as he thought about the havoc it would cause if Tayden knew that Phasers were talking. “Seriously, Aurora, we can’t talk about this; it’s out of bounds. We aren’t official, may not ever be official, so it would be in my best interest to change the subject and ask you to forget it. Oh, and we’re on lockdown due to the war. Has anyone showed you how to make your apartment slip into bunker mode?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, we went through the whole ordeal when we moved in. Look, I’m just happy for you, that’s all. Phaser women seem to all be crutas—except for Marian and Cammy—but if you can get along with the queen of the mice, then I’m happy for you.” She gave him a devilish grin, as if it would cover up the harsh words that she had for Tayden.

“I’m staying out of it, whatever it is between you and Tay.”

He hung out for another hour to help Aurora clear the table and then to smoke a cigar with Velman. But once the hour grew late, he felt guilty for staying so long and excused himself to run back to the base. It was dusty and dry as he sped along the path from the city to the base and he didn’t notice the odd-shaped ship land behind the mountains to the north. Normally, he was always checking the skies, but Aurora’s jokes about Tayden had thrown him off and as he drove the hover bike slowly along, he was looking down at the screen, trying to assess whether she would spread the gossip.

~*~*~*~

Marian set the autopilot so that the ship would circle the area while defending itself and then ran to the hatch and dived out after her husband. It had been a while since she had been in a firefight and the adrenaline ran through her like a current, forcing a smile of excitement to cross her lips.

They activated the wings on their backpacks and glided to the streets. A number of Crak-Ti saw them approach and moved to cut them up with their white-edged swords. Marian threw down a crystal and popped up behind them with her blade humming. As they fell in pain from the mortal wounds she dealt, Rafian picked up one of their swords and turned it on. He had always loved the dual wielding fighters that he saw on vids as a young soldier, and had always practiced to be as good as they were in the real application of the fighting arts. Crak-Ti warriors came at him in pairs and in bunches as he dashed this way and that, letting his twin blades weave slashes of death into their ranks. He wanted the metallic Geralos that he had heard about and he was not going to wait for him to escape, heal, and spring another trap before facing him.

The couple took on all challengers, most confused by the fighting style of the Mera-Ku master, but Marian’s Lucan fencing arts threw them off, as well. They had trained together for a moment like this—the rare time when husband and wife would have to watch each other’s back on the battlefield. The Crak-Ti were in a class of their own, but the acrobatic maneuvers and crystal-play of the VCA couple could not be beaten. To see a Mera-Ku monk fight was akin to watching a master of dance perform maneuvers that didn’t seem humanly possible in cadence. The Crak-Ti couldn’t keep up with Rafian’s blade, and after a time they fled from them to find less skilled victims cowering or hiding within the city.

Once they broke off, Rafian sheathed his blades, pulled out a pulse rifle and began to pick them off as he made his way to the Vestalian marines, who cheered him on as they closed the distance from the drop to where they were standing. As they ran over to the humans, a tough-looking blonde came out to meet them and saluted hard at the sight of Rafian VCA.

“I’m Lieutenant Colonel Hera Kane, sir. It’s an honor to see you!”

“At ease, Marine. What’s your situation?” Rafian said, putting all formalities to the side.

“We are cut to pieces, sir. The lizards have been on us hard the entire day and they fight like nothing that I’ve seen so far. What you did just now though, you have them running scared. I heard stories about Phasers, but that—that was nothing short of amazing.”

Rafian looked behind her at the tough men and women that stood looking around for surprises, their guns drawn and their eyes wide. They were about forty in number, but about twenty more lay on a tank that was rolling slowly with them. It looked like a funeral procession and compared to the victorious rally that they had made at Soreble, he knew that Val’s heart would be broken if he saw them.

“Listen up, Marines. Val Tracker is okay. We pulled him out after he and one of our Phasers got ambushed in the streets.”

“We came too late to join the Colonel,” Hera said, sounding disappointed and wounded at her admission. “Climbing through the sewer to gain the streets was tougher than we thought. By the time we got here, the Colonel was surrounded and then he just vanished. Are you saying that you have him? Is he with the Phasers?”

“Yeah, one of our girls rescued him and pretty soon we’ll have you out of here, too.”

Hera Kane was about to object when a loud explosion brought her around. The cruiser that Rafian and Marian had flown in crashed into a building, the top of it sliding off at where it had split and toppling into the next. Marian hoped that the people had been evacuated from that area of the city.

Tayden and over 150 Phasers took to the streets and the Crak-Ti were forced to take on fighters that were more skilled than the soldiers and civilians they’d been cutting up throughout the day. A number of Phasers fell, but the Geralos elite were being pushed back. In the skies, Camille and her pilots began to shoot down their dropships and even though their fighters countered, the golden chameleon was too much for them to handle.

“Hellgate,” one civilian said, as she watched the lead ship of Camille YAN run the Geralos aces into buildings and outmaneuver them at every turn.

“Hellgate,” another Meluvian said, as eyes turned to the sky to watch as the deadly Phasers cleaned up the Geralos one by one through a variety of skilled maneuvers.

Before long, there was a loud procession of citizens chanting the name Hellgate. It was Helga “Hellgate” ATE that had come to their aid a few decades ago in a situation as dire as this. Camille and Rafian had looked up to the same Hellgate as an icon during their training, so hearing the name being chanted in cadence to Camille’s destructive run made Rafian smile with pride.

The Marines picked up the chant, as well and Tayden pushed the Phasers harder. She was every bit the commando, with lasers burns across her green 3B suit and blood streaked across her freckled nose. As the host of Phasers clashed with the rallying Crak-Ti, all she could see was smoke and the bright white edges of las-swords slashing this way and that. There were men and women flanking the melee with starguns blazing at any Crak-Ti foolish enough to give them an opening. On the other side of the city, Yuth Varience and a few other Phasers were helping the citizens to escape the city.

Tayden’s comm lit up and it was Rafian who looked as if he were running somewhere. “Tayden, you said Dott fought the big Geralos in the sewers, right? Did she tell you where he made off to?”

“No Raf, she barely got out alive. But she said that Laern had shot him and he fell into the toxic lake below the city. He’s probably dead, Commander. What do you want with him?”

“I don’t think he’s dead but we can talk about it later.”

The Phasers surprise attack on the unsuspecting Crak-Ti forced them to beat a hasty retreat into the few drop ships that remained. Before long the city was quiet with the exception of the sound of people dying. They had done what they had set out to do and Dystalis, the premier city for the Meluvian elite, was now a mixture of smoke, ruins and dead bodies. The Phaser recruits began to canvas the city, looking for any Crak-Ti that had not escaped, or who lay in wait for innocent victims. Tayden took a hover bike to where Rafian and Marian were and she was surprised to find that they were unmarked, as if they hadn’t been in a fight just minutes ago.

“I see you two made it out okay.”

Rafian nodded and Marian walked over to her and gave her a hug. Tayden’s 3B Suit had taken heavy damage and it made Rafian wonder if many of the recruits had been killed.

“How did they come at you Tay?” he asked.

She understood the question more by the way he looked at her than the words he had uttered.

“We lost a few of them Raf…non-cloned permanents, too. Phaser recruits that hadn’t tested yet, but like you said, they were no strangers to war.”

“I feel terrible for that, Tayden. It was my order.” He rubbed his head and walked around aimlessly, thinking about what had transpired and what he could say or do to make it better. “How many, exactly?”

“I don’t know yet. When we get the official count and the names of the fallen, I will get it to you as soon as possible, Commander.”

“This whole thing seemed like a ploy to pull us in and distract us, doesn’t it?”

“I’m afraid so. A part of me has that sinking feeling about the repercussions of today.”

“Tell you what. We better get the Phasers back to base and patched up immediately, Tayden. Get home and rest up and heal. I am going back into the sewers to see if I can track the Geralos that attacked Dott.”

~*~*~*~

Val Tracker had been through hell a few hundred times in his life, but nothing compared to the pain he felt before they put his body in the recovery tank. It felt odd; he could feel the pressure of the machine that worked at fixing the damaged tissue, but he couldn’t feel it. The worst of it all was the helplessness he felt. He knew that Rafian had called all of his soldiers to fight for Dystalis, but he didn’t know if his Marines had still been alive to help. Marika was on a classified mission. She had learned about his condition and had sent him back a message. It was harsh but tender, the way she always was and by her command, he was not to die without her. Where has she been all my life, he thought, grinning at the thought of her and anxious for her to return so that they could enjoy one another’s company in a variety of ways.

As he looked around the room at other men and women in similar tanks, he realized that he was the only one awake. One of the tanks held Laern Cobo, but he was fully immersed and the cloned arm that they had crafted specifically from his DNA was already attached. A number of other things were being done to him that he couldn’t comprehend. The fluid in their tanks was a different shade than the other sleeping inhabitants. Laern and Val’s was an olive color instead of the pretty aqua shade of the other twelve. Val knew it was due to the toxins of the sewage being drawn out, and it gave him hope that he would be back to form after a few days.

He was looking around at each patient, trying to imagine what their story was, when he saw the eyes through the doorway. They weren’t human, but not quite Geralos, either. All he could make out was that they glowed and it took everything within him not to panic at the vulnerable position he was in. Could a Geralos get through the cloaked force field of the city to walk around freely in the Phaser base? It was possible; the Phasers were on Meluvia and the long months of peace had convinced the leadership that Zallus was invisible to Geralos intelligence. He slatted his eyes to pretend he was asleep, but he kept watch on the glowing eyes as they stared at him intently, without moving. What a position to be in, where you couldn’t even call for help.

He tried to move his limbs, but the induced paralysis was not having any of it. What could he do to alert the Phasers? What would stop the infiltrator from coming in and disabling all of the healing tanks? He was still going over it when he realized that Dott was not in one of the tanks. He hoped she was okay and that she was fighting with the Phasers away from the base. The eyes kept looking at him but they eventually moved off to the side, out of his view. It became a nerve-wracking bout of patience as he waited to see if they would emerge. A Geralos in the city; it was unheard of! What a time to be injured and out of fighting form, he thought. There had to be a way to alert Rafian.

Maes walked out of the medical bay and back to the recruit’s hover-bike that he had commandeered. There was still blood on the seat, but he didn’t mind it one bit. The fact that he had managed to find the elusive Phaser Headquarters was enough to win back his honor with the military of Geral. He wasn’t sure on his next move. He had followed the tracker that he placed on the girl, Dott, back on Dystalis and had stumbled upon the hidden city within the valley. He was impressed that the humans could hide so well, but now that he was there, he did not know what to do. The Phasers—at least the ones that could challenge him properly—had fallen into his trap and would be distracted for days. He could go from house to house, killing the inhabitants, but what would that earn him, outside of a reputation for being ruthless? The Phaser base itself seemed impregnable. None of the locks were easy to crack and the only one that was left open was the hospital. If his goal was terror, he could empty the tanks and slaughter their sick, but to what end? He could reveal the location to the local branch of Geralos military, but they would take his intel and come rushing in, paying little attention to the fact that he and he alone had been the one to discover it.

He had to do something major, something that they couldn’t take away from him in the history books. The mechanical enhancements that he had made to himself on Helysian made it impossible for him to wear the human skin and blend in with them. He was also unable to jump into a mind to corrupt them due to the trauma that it had done to his brain with the girl on Helysian. Whatever he decided, he would have to do it as himself. It would have to be fast, since the others would be back soon, but it would take some thought, and it was for this reason that he decided to return to his ship. There would be a reckoning, but it would be planned and executed professionally. He would think on it for the night and by morning he would know what needed to be done.

~*~*~*~

There was something about the soup at Helene’s of Zallus that kept calling Dott back. She was supposed to be resting; it was required that after a day in the tank, a patient needed over ten hours of sleep. But the city was jumping and with parties happening all over the place, the young Phaser wanted to let her hair down and relax after coming so close to death.

“Having the usual, Deetee?” Helene asked as she leaned over the bar to look at Dott.

It made her feel good when Helene used her nickname, it made her feel normal, like an average Vestalian citizen of Zallus. “Yes! But can you hold the Rolli buns this time, please? I’m not supposed to be ingesting spice while I’m on recovery.”

“Recovery? From what, hon?”

“Oh, it’s classified as usual, Helene, but I was injured in a fight trying to save some soldiers.”

“Look at you, the hero,” Helene said. She was a blunt, Amazonian woman with an unconventional beauty that Dott couldn’t understand. She was always quick with the tongue, but it always came from a place of love. So when she said these words Dott didn’t take them as sarcasm, just Helene responding as she always did, with a little bit of spice.

“Your leader give you a medal or anything for risking your neck, girl?”

“No, not yet. We don’t really do the medal thing…”

Well, that’s a shame. You deserve a medal.” She pulled out a stool and stood on top of it and whistled loudly for the mingling patrons to pay attention to her. She was all legs and curly black hair as they looked up at her, and she made sure that they all gave her their undivided attention. “Listen up, Zallus. Deetee here is in recovery from rescuing soldiers while fighting for our freedom to drink my wine. What say we show her some appreciation, eh?”

The crowd erupted in cheers that ended in a loud singing of an old Vestalian battle song to honor her achievement. Dott went through a few emotions that started with embarrassment and ended in pride and when they finished singing and had come over to thank, hug and pat her on the back, she felt as if her heart would burst from pride.

“Gee, thanks, Helene. I have never felt so loved and appreciated…”

“Well, you’re family, hun. You will always get a hero’s welcome here at Helene’s.”

The soup came out soon after and before long Dott’s brain was drifting away on a flavor highway. Helene’s soup always reverted her back to childhood. She didn’t even realize that she was kicking her legs on the stool, much like she’d done as a little girl, as she ate bite after bite of the chunky goodness. She was on her tenth spoonful when an explosion brought her to her feet. It shook the earth and sounded like it had come from the direction of the Phaser base. She was out the door in a matter of seconds and as she rode up the hill towards the base, she called Camille on her comm.

“Dott, what’s up?” Camille asked nonchalantly on the comm.

“Hey, Commander, I just heard a loud explosion coming from the Phaser base. Do you know of anything going on there?”

“No, there shouldn’t be anything going on there. The Phasers and the Marines are off fighting in Dystalis. Have you talked to Frank? He’s supposed to be on watch for the night. Perhaps it’s him.”

“Haven’t tried him yet, Commander—”

“Cammy, Dott. When you became an Ace, you earned the right to drop the formalities. Call me Cammy. I’m in Soreble right now, looking into some strange activity that was going on here. I can be back by you within the hour. Be careful; we are supposed to be invisible to the lizards but we could have been infiltrated. Finger on the trigger at all times, Dott. You may be alone if Frank is hurt. I need you to hold it down until I get there.”

“You know I will, Cammy. See you in a few.”

Dott thought about the explosion and what could have caused it. Frank would not be blowing things up at that time of night, and the entire building would have been on lockdown. She pulled up to the fence that separated the barracks from the Phaser Academy and she could see that something was on fire outside the city. She pushed her bike towards the area and unclipped the rifle that was under her thigh and swung it around to her back. Finger on the trigger at all times. She repeated Camille’s words in her head as she pulled her sidearm and did just that. As she grew closer to it she could see that it was a Geralos dropship. Someone had blown a large hole into its hull and it was now a black husk as the flames roared hungrily all around it.

There was activity in the smoke. Dott could make out the white edges of las-swords swinging this way and that as two figures fought near the ship. She crept closer, making sure to keep her eyes out for any other Geralos, and as she cleared the smoke to climb a hill about fifty yards from the fighting, she knelt and placed the scope of the rifle to her right eye.

The shock of seeing Maes fighting with Frank almost made her pull the trigger prematurely. Why was he on Vestalia and more importantly, how had he escaped from the ship? She saw that Frank was struggling, but he fought with the ferocity of a lion. There was no time for sword code, honor, or any of the things that warriors held close in a fight like the one Frank was having. If the Geralos killed a leader of the Phasers, he could bring in friends, empower them to fight like he did, and before long Zallus would be lost and the Phasers would be on the run and off the planet. I need you to hold it down until I get there, she remembered Camille saying, so she aimed at Maes’s torso—

As she got ready to deliver the kill shot, her comm came alive and Rafian’s face appeared on it. She answered quickly and rolled to her back where she could be out of sight and still talk to him.

“Gimme a sitrep, Dott,” he ordered, looking this way and that as if he was still under attack.

“Commander, Zallus has been breached!” she whispered. His blood-speckled face grimaced in fury as he nodded at her. “It’s only one Geralos but he’s part machine—” She tried to explain after seeing the annoyance reflected on his features.

“Wait. Is it the Geralos that was here on Meluvia?” Rafian asked and Dott nodded slowly. “So he followed you? I’ll be right there; I don’t want any of you to engage it!”

“Too late for that, Commander. He’s fighting with Frank,” she said with sadness in her voice.

“Drop a crystal now; I’m coming in to handle him.”

She hated that she had disappointed the Supreme Leader in allowing Maes to track her but she promised herself that she would make up for it later. She opened a pouch and collected a crystal, then threw it to the side where a tear opened up in the atmosphere.

When Rafian came in through the tear, he immediately ran towards the area where Frank was struggling against Maes Van Senthyn. They were clashing blades in a frenzy, but Rafian could see that Frank was seconds away from losing his life.

“Pull apart,” Rafian announced as he slowed his run to a walk. He moved towards Maes, who turned to look at him with surprise.

“Rafian VCA,” the Geralos announced, and then mocked him with a bow as he slowed his heavy breathing to calm himself.

Frank made to rush him when he let his guard down, but Rafian put up his hand to tell him to stop.

“You’re hurt, brother. Stand clear and let me finish him. Dott is over yonder. Both of you need to get to the hospital and take care of your wounds immediately. This lizard has caused a lot of problems in Dystalis and we will need you war-ready if things don’t pan out for us there.”

“Yes sir!” Frank said. He saluted Rafian, then took off towards Dott, holding his side where Maes had cut him.

“That’s a good boy. Run when your master tells you,” Maes mocked. He hunched over like a piece of broken machinery and followed Frank with his head.

“You did a whole lot of damage to meet me, didn’t you, you twisted piece of schtill!” Rafian spat at Maes who regarded him with what could have been mistaken as respect. The Geralos shrugged off the insult and stared at him, then began to speak with the gargling accent that Rafian hated.

“The Phaser that can corrupt minds. It is an honor, VCA. You strike fear in the heart of my people, the true rulers of the galaxy. In time they will learn you, find you, and bite you!” He began to laugh hysterically when he said this, and Rafian noticed that Maes left his guard open.

“Why are you here?” he asked Maes, looking around to see if there were any other Geralos hiding in the bushes. “You landed near our base but I don’t see any damage. My Phaser didn’t report on any citizens dying and you seem to have come alone. You were on my home ship, the Helysian, and you damaged my second favorite planet. I don’t understand you. You’re either an obsessed fan of mine, or this has been the greatest sequence of circumstance that the galaxy has ever known. Why are you here?

“My name is Maes Van Senthyn, and like you, I am a true son of Anstractor. I was tasked to learn about you Phasers… and I did. My mission was to learn where you train, well, here … I … am.” And he gestured to the agency that stood behind Rafian. “See, Rafian, we are the same, are we not? Warriors that finish the mission.” He winked when he said this, and the hint at the Phaser code let Rafian know that he knew a lot about them.

“Yes you accomplished your mission, alright. You know our code, know our location, and injured three of my people. What happens next, Maes? Will a bunch of Geralos of your skill or better land and wipe us out?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Maes smirked. “You think that attacking my ego will make me reveal the grand plan to you, Rafian. I am no sophisticated, Ri-Las fruit-eating lizard like the ones you have fought before. I am Crak-Ti, and you will learn to respect me.”

He stood up and tested the grip on his las-sword as he looked down at it. Rafian found himself admiring his bravado, even in the face of apparent death. Maes was injured and dying and Rafian was fresh and ready. He could have rushed in and taken Maes’s head, but he needed to know his plans, and the Geralos warrior had given him a lot.

“Why don’t you take a warrior’s death and let me take your head without struggle?”

“A while back I would have done that, Rafian. Surely losing to one such as you would please the gods. But you will get no surrender from me today, Phaser master. I am still able to fight, despite my appearances.”

Rafian glanced back at where Dott lay and shook his head at her to stand down. “The time for talking is over, lizard. Draw your blade and let us finish this.”

“I was saving this for you, Rafian, just in case the gods allowed me the honor of killing you.” He took out a pill from his coat and swallowed it quickly as Rafian watched on in horror. The mechanic parts tightened into his flesh and his color changed into a darker shade of green. “See, Rafian, as good as new, ready to fight the master.”

He smiled widely to show off his wicked, jagged teeth and Rafian charged him with his shoulder. On impact, Maes slammed into the side of his ship and fell to the ground. They grappled with one another as Rafian placed his hands around Maes’s throat and the Geralos fought desperately to keep his trachea open. The shoulder charge was at a speed that Maes could not understand and it seemed as if Rafian had simply vanished and was on top of him, choking the life out of him. He used his metal arms and legs to push him off, but Rafian rolled and sprung up, this time with his las-sword loose and humming with life.

Maes got to his feet and ran at Rafian, waving the las-sword this way and that to throw him off. But Rafian was of Mera-Ku and he ignored the blade and again rammed Maes with his shoulder. The move was again unexpected and it caused Maes to lose his sword. He clutched his chest, gasping for breath as Rafian stood over him with no expression on his face.

“Surely, you can do better than this,” Rafian said, his tone dry and bored. “I left my wife in Meluvia to come fight you. The least you can do is put up a challenge.”

The words drove Maes to anger as he dropped all of the warrior etiquette to become enraged. He threw up dust towards Rafian’s face, rolled to grab his sword, and was on his feet again. This time their blades met, and though Rafian’s style was unorthodox, Maes remained defensive to counter him, and then struck at his legs when he saw an opening. The las-sword of Maes Van Senthyn swung at the Supreme Leader’s legs, but he jumped and spun to dodge it. The spin was followed through with one leg and then another as Rafian’s tornado kick slammed into Maes’s jaw, causing him to fall to the side as he lost his balance from the swing.

Rafian walked up to him and kicked his sword away as Maes reached for it to protect himself. Rafian lifted his las-sword, drove it into the Geralos’s abdomen, and twisted it before withdrawing it amidst the blood-curdling screams of Maes Van Senthyn. The fight was gone from the deadly spy, and he looked up at the Vestalian sun and smiled at the opportunity to die as a martyr. In Geral they would honor him and his family name would be lifted. He had done them well, and they would be proud.

“Go ahead, do it,” Maes muttered as the pill’s effects began to wear off and the weariness of the day took over. He could feel his life going, and his vision blurred as he saw Rafian above him, ready to finish him off.

“You won’t get the il ad ach tchi from me, Maes,” Rafian said in the Geralos tongue as he powered down his las-sword and sheathed it. He walked over to where his cloak had fallen, dusted it off, and then swung it over his massive shoulders. He then walked back to where Maes lay and knelt next to him to watch him die.

“You are exactly what we were taught to believe,” Maes said amidst the hot ichor that poured freshly from his mouth as the life began to leave his body. “No...Honor. Just walking, talking, food.” And he began to laugh at his own words. He had called home to the General to report his findings and would have waited for the cavalry to come in, had it not been for Frank who had discovered his ship. The Phaser had immediately fired a rocket at him and while he barely escaped, he found himself in a sword fight immediately after.

Dott shouldered her rifle and ran up to Rafian. “This piece of schtill tracked me home. Please tell me that no one else has been hurt tonight for my carelessness. Please tell me this is over.”

“Well, I don’t know about over Dott, but I know that this doesn’t look good. A Geralos that can make itself look like us, heal itself with cybernetics, and track us even when we jump. This is but one lizard and he got to you, Laern, Val and Frank. What if they send ten of them?”

“Then we better be ready to face them.”

The tear opened up from the crystal that Dott had thrown earlier and Marian stepped through. She ran over to Rafian and Dott.

“What is this?” she asked as she looked down at Maes who was still not dead.

“This, my dear, is the start of a whole new set of problems for our Vestalian home,” Rafian said as he looked over at her.

“I came back to tell you that the Crak-Ti have returned. We need to jump back to Meluvia.”

Rafian shook his head at the misfortune they’d suffered at the hand of Maes and took Marian’s hands into his own. “I’m glad you’re here with me.” He said to her, and she smiled and hugged him, happy to hear the words. “You got this from here, rookie?” He winked at Dott, and she smiled and nodded as he opened a tear.

“Seeing you fight makes me feel like a rookie, Commander,” she said as he moved to step through.

“Secure our home, Phaser Ace,” he said to her, and he and his wife were gone in an instant.

She walked back to the base to see if Maes had damaged anything and Frank collected the Geralos corpse and place him inside of the lab for research. Next, they checked the tracker and video system and saw where Maes had entered the medical building and left. He had been in there for an hour, so they assumed that he had gone in to finish off Val and Laern.

They ran inside to check on the injured and were surprised to find everything intact. The patients were either sleeping or in stasis and the readouts looked normal. Dott turned to Frank and he looked down at her, their eyes reflecting the same worry.

“That lizard was here to spy on us,” Dott said finally as she walked over to Laern’s tank and touched it. “We’re about to be raided and if our Phasers are in bad shape on Meluvia, we may have to evacuate the city immediately.”

About The Author

GREG DRAGON has been a creative writer for several years and has authored on topics of relationship, finance, physical fitness and more through different sources of media. In particular, his online magazine has been a source of much pragmatic information, which has been helpful to many. As a result, his work continues to grow with a large and loyal fan base.

This Florida author brings exciting action and drama to his written work. His storylines keep readers engaged with characters that come to life from the beautiful celestial scenes of science fiction, to the gritty world of urban drama.

See Greg’s author page at gregdragon.com or keep up with his latest books and appearances through email.

Table of Contents

- Memory 1
- Memory 2
- Memory 3
- Memory 4
- Memory 5
- Memory 6
- Memory 7
- Memory 8
- Memory 9
- Memory 10
- Memory 11
- Memory 12
- About The Author