Anstractor: Vestalia
Author: Greg Dragon
Date: 2014-01-05 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction
Description: Remember when? Commander Rafian VCA the most gifted Space Marine in the Anstractor Alliance remembers nothing. Waking up with no recollection of his life before becoming a Jumper recruit, he falls in love, joins a rebellion, and focuses his efforts on overthrowing a government. But as his memory slowly returns, he recalls his original mission. Rafian now has a new goal: find his way home, make things right with the love of his life, and avenge the aliens who invaded his planet. But first, the Jumpers must pay, pay for ruining his life. Alternate-Cover Edition for ASIN B00HP8MQFM

ANSTRACTOR

VESTALIA

By GREG DRAGON

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

Table of Contents

Memory 01 | Prisoner

Memory 02 | Cadet

Memory 03 | First Grade

Memory 04 | Starfighter

Memory 05 | Aurora Rising

Memory 06 | First Mission

Memory 07 | Violent Vani

Memory 08 | Arisani

Memory 09 | Fall Out

Memory 10 | Camille Yan

Memory 11 | A Dark Education

Memory 12 | Blackout

Memory 13 | Rhiya of Talula

Memory 14 | Tyheran Flight

Memory 15 | Freedom Fighter

Memory 16 | Tempered in Fire

Memory 17 | Master Lucci

Memory 18 | Hatch Kitten

Memory 19 | Person

Memory 20 | Kept Oaths

Memory 21 | Guidance of Gods

Memory 22 | Homecoming

Memory 23 | Genocide

Memory 24 | Forever Love

Memory 25 | No Quarter

Memory 26 | The Final Phase

Memory 01 | Prisoner

The boy scanned the room for something to play with. His hope was for a small rock, a leftover trinket from someone prior, or maybe even a dead bug. The six-by-nine room was completely dark save for the slatted windows that sat near the ceiling, but his eyes had gotten used to the darkness. Strange—that escape or feeling sorry for himself were not the thoughts that flowed through his mind as he sat there. He understood that he was out of options, and for now, he tried to make himself comfortable in his new home.

New home…it sank in with a bittersweet twinge due to the fact that he had not called any place home in about a year. When the Cel-tocs had made their rounds the night before, he made the mistake of falling within the radius of their scanners and got caught. They had discovered him hiding behind a large Dumpster; it was there that he and his friend Colin slept when Lendi’s father wasn’t on duty at the stadium and able to sneak them in. He shifted despite himself, noticing for the first time that it was cold. What was to become of him in this cell?

Young Rafian was still thinking about his friends when the main door opened and the light shone through, forcing him to cover his eyes. When the pain subsided, he could see his surroundings, and the truth of his situation frightened him.

The cell that housed him was one of many, and none of the others were empty. He could see children, all of the lower caste like him, and many of them were not moving.

A Cel-toc waltzed gracefully into the room, scanning the cells. When it would pass one with a dead inhabitant, it would touch a panel, and the cell box would descend into the ground. Rafian watched it go through its rounds, feeding the living and processing the dead. He thought about how he would escape, and when the thought seemed impossible, he thought of how bad it would be to die there.

His mind found its way to Lendi Juns, the midcaste girl he called friend. He had always liked her but assumed that she did not feel the same way about him. He was always in trouble, and she was always there to help him. It was funny that he thought of her now, her Afroed hair that was never quite done right and her large doe eyes that always appeared excited. He was about a year older than she was, though his tenth birthday had come and gone without celebration. Who would have celebrated it anyway, outside of Colin and Lendi? Colin had died of food poisoning, and Lendi—he didn’t know whether she was dead or in one of the other cells.

His thoughts were broken up by the approaching cyborg, and he made sure to fidget so that it would know that life still flowed within his body. The Cel-toc made its way over to feed him, and for the first time, Rafian realized how beautiful it was. It was a female, and she spoke, asking him his name and his background, and whether or not he had been immunized.

She looked every bit like a human, but her arms were metallic with a gold tint to their slender surface. Her face was sculpted from a plasteel substance, and her eyes had a real intelligence.

On close observation, the Cel-toc did not seem the soulless machine that they were rumored to be. She fed him a mushy white substance and then sped away, onto the next survivor. The pasty “food” tasted like a delicious blend of several dishes, but he could not decide whether it was hunger or fascination that made him think that it was tasty. The Cel-toc was almost through with her rounds, and he knew that once she was finished, he would be in the darkness again. The light coming from the open doorway was very faint, but to Rafian, it may as well had been high noon with the sun beaming down in all its glory.

It was just then that he saw her. A little waif of a girl was standing off to his right, staring intently at him through the dark. The cell that separated them was one of the ones that had descended, so now they could see each other for the first time. His heart skipped a bit because he really believed that he was the only one who was alive or fully aware of the situation. Yet here was this young girl alive and staring at him. He could see that she was tall, but that was all he could make out as the Cel-toc closed the door and exited.

“Hello?”

“H-hey,” she replied, her small but nasally voice piercing the thick, musky air.

“What’s your name?”

“Anne Marie.”

Her name could have been anything and it would have seemed just as sweet. All that mattered was that she was real, and for a boy who thought he would never see another human being again, she was a ray of hope.

Anne Marie turned out to be a street scavenger like Rafian. She had been born and lived in the midcaste areas of Basce City, but when the riots occurred, she lost her parents and became homeless as a result. The pair chatted unguardedly for hours into the night. Not knowing how many days they had ahead of them, they held nothing back in their conversation.

Anne Marie had a way of making hunger disappear for Rafian. In the still of the darkness, the anxiety-filled situation seemed to melt with the sound of her voice. He wished that he could be closer to her. He really wanted to hold her hand.

Days turned into weeks, and before long, a month had passed for the prisoners of the Cel-toc maiden. Rafian, after realizing that he and Anne Marie were the last survivors of their unit, came to the conclusion that they were the only children immunized prior to capture. It was an eerie feeling in a cold, dark place that stank of death, and the Cel-toc’s food was obviously not enough to keep their bodies properly nourished.

One day, Rafian asked his captor if it was possible to get meat, sugar, or anything other than the muck that they were being made to eat. His request was met with silence.

The days began to go by slowly for the pair, and Rafian began to find it hard to focus. He began to ask Anne Marie a lot of the same questions over and over. It wasn’t much different for the girl, and they found that their conversation and connection was all that made their situation bearable.

When Rafian would wake up, the first question he would ask was, “Hey, Anne, are you awake?” And if she had beaten him to rise, then she would be the one asking the question, looking to start another day of games and trivia to pass the time. The questions would be subjects that they both knew and were interested in. These subjects ranged from street names to schools, locations of buildings, and at times, school stories that every child should have known. In between the questions, there was pain—caused by their bodies looking for vitamin resources that were not being provided. The Cel-toc was slowly starving them, and the children knew it. The only thing they had was each other, and it was a small respite.

“Anne Marie…will you be my girlfriend?” Rafian asked her one day as he curled up in the corner of the cell trying to wish away his abdominal pains. It was becoming more frequent, and he could feel his ribs even more than he could in the past. He had always been skinny, but the thought of bones poking out frightened him, and the pain made him feel as if his body was eating itself. Anne Marie was not much better off, and he began giving her part of his food in hopes that she would be OK. His thoughts were that he could be strong enough to fight the pain, so Anne Marie needed it more than he did.

“Yes,” she replied, her voice so low that any noise would have masked it. Her answer was a simple, tiny word that made him happy enough to fight harder, but she was beginning to talk less as the days wore on, and he felt as if he was going to lose her.

In the sixth week or so, when the Cel-toc had finished her ritual, Rafian made an attempt to squeeze through the bars. A few weeks back, he would not have been able to do it, but pain was no issue now as his stomach tightened, burnt, and irritated him.

He slipped through the bars and crawled over to her cell.

“Can you squeeze out too, Anne?”

The weak girl nodded as if she had known for quite some time. She made her way out towards Rafian, and the pair hugged each other tightly. The hug became an extended embrace, more for warmth than the union that they had so eagerly wanted in all those past days. They needed to find a way out, or the Cel-toc would not be pleased with their current position. So they broke away from each other and looked around for a chance at escape.

After a lot of searching, Rafian and Anne Marie found a hole connected to a sewage line, squeezed into it, and scurried through the vile fecal matter towards the outside of their cellblock. They could hear explosions in the sky, flying vessels, dogs barking, and people fighting. As they crawled, the most distinct sounds that came to their ears were the sounds of gunfire, screams, and most of all, death.

The sewer opened to the exterior of the cells, which was bordered by a chain link fence. It physically took everything for them to make it there, and they sat breathing heavily through their mouths.

It was late evening, and the sky appeared to be on fire. Some sort of war was going on around the prison, and the city seemed to be under siege.

Rafian knew that they had to get as far away from the Cel-toc as possible, but the fence seemed to go on forever. The only way through to the other side was to find a gate or cut through it. Exhausted and sleep deprived, Rafian did not get very far before he passed out, hitting his head on the asphalt and sending his mind into a vortex of blackness and dreams. When he awoke, it was due to a sudden sensation of burning. There was fire everywhere, and Anne Marie was gone.

“Anne!” he cried out, not caring anymore about discovery.

“Anne Marie!”

He didn’t want to hide anymore or play it safe from the Cel-tocs. The only thing he wanted to do was to find his girlfriend. The smoke was thick as the facilities burnt all around him. He fell on all fours to crawl forward, and the bits of glass and stone on the asphalt cut into his knees.

* * *

Throughout his life, Rafian often wondered whether or not he was meant to be in this world. He had always known pain, loneliness, and disappointment, but it was as if for him, there was nothing else.

His mother was a seeker, one of the gifted mutants of Vestalia—their home world. She would dream things that existed beyond the limits of their world. She could predict things, and when she was drunk or high on Rascene, she could transmit thoughts into another person’s brain. This skill was not uncommon among Vestalian women. In fact, it was the main reason the Geralos had invaded the planet and captured its inhabitants.

The reptilian race of Geralos would eat the brains of Vestalian women, a disgusting practice that allowed them to steal their power for at most a few months. When the invasions happened, Rafian’s father gave his life in order to get his wife and child safely onboard a produce ship. Rafian’s mother, heartbroken by the loss of her husband, would neither eat nor drink, and after a time, she became critically ill.

When the ship had finally landed in Basce City, capital of Voan, on the planet Genese, Rafian was a seven-year-old orphan who was forced to make his own way in the streets. The Basce City streets were a cruel teacher for the child, and he suffered things that no child should suffer. Still it did not make him bitter, only stronger, and he learned to survive as a scavenger.

In his early days, he would sneak into the local primary school and talk to the children there. They thought he was cool because he had no parents and could come and go as he pleased. He would listen in on classes and mimic the assignments given to the children in attendance. He wanted to be a regular child, but with no parents, he was forced to steal his education along with everything else.

The friends he made would bring him food from the cafeteria, and when the schoolmaster would discover him lurking about, Rafian would stay away from the school for a few weeks in order to stay off of the radar of the local authorities. It was at school that he met Lendi. She was a caramel-colored girl with big brown eyes, a seemingly permanent grin, and very curly hair. She came from a good home with parents who loved her. To him, she was perfect even though she would always correct his speech. Lendi tried to get her parents to take Rafian in, but their kindness had limits that would not allow for it.

Lendi was his guardian angel. She was always there to give him her lunch when he was starving. She would sneak him blankets from her home and talk with him even though his smell turned all the other children away. He always wanted Lendi to be OK, and he was willing to do whatever it took to make sure of this. She was the only person in Basce City who truly cared—before Anne Marie. To everyone else, he was vermin. Yet now, even her perfect world had turned to hell—decimated by the attacking horde that was setting everything on fire.

* * *

Rafian was deep in his weeping when a powerful arm scooped him up and vaulted him aboard a vessel. He saw the details in blotches but couldn’t tell much of what was going on. The man who had grabbed him pushed him inside what seemed to be a hold for cargo, and as his savior tried to board, he was cut in half by a tracing laser beam. It was horror after horror for Rafian, and although he never cried, the thought of Anne Marie dead or worse forced the tears from his eyes. The fluid was painful and hot as it trickled down his cheek, and he convulsed violently with regret.

He thought about hopping off of the ship, finding Anne Marie, and letting her know that it would be OK, that he would protect her as best he could, but the thought only led to more tears. He began bawling loudly despite himself, and the vessel began to lift.

The saddest thing about this entire episode for young Rafian was that Anne Marie had never truly existed…The tainted food, malnutrition, and disease that ripped his body and mind had conjured up this symbol of hope for the young boy when all else was lost to him. He had made her the image of that lovely little girl Lendi, whom he had known in the past…he thought that she was so pretty but felt too dirty to ask her out back then. Throughout his life, Rafian would remember Anne Marie and wonder about her survival, hoping that one day they would be reunited.

The vessel was the SSO-56 Venue, better known as Helysian, an A-class cruiser built for war. The marines aboard would not be happy to see a stowaway, but Rafian was safe, warm, and at least for the time being free from a cell, filth, and the eventual processing that would have happened when his body had finally given out.

Memory 02 | Cadet

There were times when Rafian wondered if he had been better off on Genese, ducking and dodging Cel-tocs, starving, and dealing with its various predators instead of living on this military ship being called every name in the book. It was not an ideal transition for the boy. He was taken before the ship’s commander to be drilled with questions he could barely understand, much less answer. They asked him about the Arbar Resistance on the surface, the raiding Geralos, and his involvement with either faction. They wanted to know whether he was a spy, a human bomb, or just some sort of plant who could decimate the ship and everyone onboard. They asked him if he was an Arbar agent, but he didn’t know any Arbars, and he didn’t know what they were resisting to begin with.

The worst part of the whole interrogation was that the soldiers, these tough looking men and women, had never heard of Cel-tocs or anything like them. The questions became harder and harder, and after two hours of questioning, it came down to a decision by the ship’s psychiatrist as to whether Rafian was innocent or would be ejected from an airlock into open space. The decision did not come quickly, but once it was made—that he was a starving child suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder—the airlock was still suggested!

Civilian children were not welcome aboard a military ship en route to war, so they deliberated whether or not he was worth the rations that it would cost them to keep him alive.

The situation was grave, and after three hours of discussion, the leaders decided to give Rafian a chance to earn his keep. He had to prove he could be useful to the corps within a year’s time, or they would drop him off at the nearest hub to fend for himself among the other homeless and destitute of the various planets. Living at a hub would be a death sentence, since compassion for children was in short order in those places. People fought over scraps of food. They robbed, raped, and preyed upon one another like animals. The only ones to survive were the ones strong enough or wicked enough to outsmart and get over on the others.

Rafian was taken in by Captain Samoo LES, a Vestalian farmer turned military war hero during the Seventh Invasion, known as the Geralos Vox. Samoo was unhappy with his assignment of babysitting a stowaway. He reminded Rafian daily that he was an annoyance by calling him names and constantly assigning him chores. Rafian’s name was “boy,” and his sleeping quarters was a tiny corner of the soldier’s apartment.

Samoo’s apartment was the same as the other 1,500 soldier-issued quarters aboard the ship. It was a ten-by-nine-foot space occupied by a bed, which flipped out from the port wall and could double as a table by selecting that option on an exterior panel. Samoo kept it as a table, not ever sleeping in the presence of Rafian, who wondered how the man could stay so sharp and clean without resting.

Samoo was a closed book on everything, including his eating and sleeping habits.

There was a tiny metal sink that protruded from the wall and a toilet and mirror, all retractable so that the room could become an empty cell with the simple touch of a button. Every day, between the hours of 0500 and 1000, the room was a cell for Rafian that was used for training.

Each morning the boy was roused, made to jog out a three-mile trek, do a number of push-ups and sit-ups, recite military doctrine, and eat a breakfast of laucks and mosh (which would be the equivalent of dry oatmeal and egg whites). This ritual continued for months, and while he hated every second of it at first, he slowly began to accept it and even liked it. The captain was given a year to make young Rafian into a prodigy. The boy was too impressive to be cast out with the rubbish, and Samoo was not going to fail, no matter how much he had to push him.

What made it very hard for young Rafian, however, was the fact that there were other children on the ship. They were called cadets, and they dressed and acted the part well enough. Rafian realized that he was being made to prove himself worthy of becoming one of their number, but he knew that they had not been required to do the same daily ritual as he. They were lucky, chosen from healthy, happy homes—the sons and daughters of military fathers and mothers. He expected that he would pass, and when he did, he would have the new hell of dealing with the constant ridicule and bullying from them, his would-be peers. It placed his mind in a dark place and made him very defensive and aware.

“Look at you now, boy, all fire and no weakness” was what the captain had to say after he had completed the eleventh month of training. He was nicer to Rafian now, offering him real chow from the dining halls when he could and telling him war stories from the past whenever they had time together. Rafian had grown fond of the captain and had developed a real love for training and military logic.

Samoo had given him a tiny las-gun a while back—a gift for being quiet and doing as he was told. The pistol had a fried ejection rod, so there was no way that he could shoot himself. Samoo had noticed that Rafian had nothing of his own, and with the importance of high morale in addition to Rafian’s diligence in his duties, he felt it was safe enough to hand it over to the boy. Without toys, vids, or any of the things that children his age played with, Rafian made the gun his favorite toy. At first he was content with playing starfighter and aliens by himself when things were quiet, but out of boredom one day, he dismantled the gun piece by piece, only to panic and scramble to rebuild it in fear of making Samoo upset.

As providence would prove, he was unable to fix it and was punished harshly by being hung with straps on his wrist, alone in the empty room. He was left to hang for a long time and made to run more miles the next day. When his temper had cooled, Samoo took the opportunity to show Rafian how to reassemble his broken weapon. This was typical of their relationship. Samoo would dish out hard penalties but would turn it into a teaching moment afterwards.

When it was time for Rafian’s big test, the two were actually sad that they would be going their separate ways. The test was nothing special to Rafian. Six different officers took him on a series of physical courses with obstacles—all of which he passed with flying colors. He was given a verbal exam on military history, the Anstractor galaxy, and the history of the Geralos occupation of Vestalia. He impressed them all with his skill, knowledge, and intensity, so it was decided he was worthy enough to join the Galactic Cadet Corps (GC2).

Rafian was given the rank of twelfth grade, the equivalent of where a nine-year-old would be in the standard system used for cadets. He was given a bed in the military bunk hall for the GC2 and was introduced to his commanding officer—a tall, skinny fourteen-year-old boy named Weine, who had brown skin and curly hair.

Once the adults had left and he was alone with Weine to go over his duties, the boy barked at him: “Come with me, char,” which was a derogatory slur for dark-skinned people on Vestalia, a carry-over from its fractured past. Rafian realized Weine was going to be a problem, as he nodded and trailed after the older boy, who was describing what his duties would be every day. Rafian had known he would be bullied, but if it was going to be at the hand of the top boy, it was not something he was willing to deal with.

The boys walked around to the sleeping area, and Weine showed him where the bathroom was. He then showed him the girls’ sleeping area and bathroom, while reminding him that it was off limits. He then showed him the gym, the mess hall, and finally, the flight-simulation deck.

The deck looked very much like the arcades on Genese, with its hollowed-out shooters set-up to give the users the virtual experience of starfighting and controlling a space vessel. It was love at first sight for Rafian, and he couldn’t wait to hop into one of them and master the controls. Weine interrupted his thoughts, reminding him the flight deck was reserved for third-grade cadets and below (the lower the number, the higher the rank).

Rafian’s first few days at the camp were rough, due to the various cliques and exclusionary attitudes of the children there. It was not that big a deal to a boy who was used to that sort of treatment, so he kept to himself, stayed out of trouble, and did what he could to fit in.

One little girl who caught his eye was a cute cadet named Vani. She was Rafian’s age, eleven, only she was a fifth-grade cadet who excelled in the academic areas of their military life. She came from military royalty (her dad was a colonel), and she acted very much like it. Even though she had the reputation of being a brat, she was beautiful to Rafian. It did not matter to him how unpopular she was with the other children. He wanted to get to know her.

Weine, however, was exactly as Rafian assumed he would be—a bully in fancy clothes. The way he was introduced to the others, the use of a racial slur, and the reminder to Rafian that he was not worthy of flight training, was him at his nicest. He would routinely prank the younger boys and make their lives a living hell while showing a face of great potential to the adults who supervised them.

To Weine, Rafian was fair game because he had no caring parents, and he anticipated making him his punching bag for as long as he could. The cadets looked down on Rafian, whom they saw as getting a lucky ticket into the academy. They made fun of him for having a low rank for someone of his age.

After a year had passed and Rafian proved himself worthy by acquiring a few more ranks, he decided he had had enough of Weine and his antics.

Now at twelve years old and as tall as his commanding officers, Rafian had become quite a soldier. With nothing else but the pride that Samoo had given him, he studied the books and principles of the standard space marine even more than was expected of a cadet his rank. His focus for the year was to get bigger, stronger, and smarter, and he accomplished this beyond his natural gifts.

Weine had this thing that he would do: he would grab a few other officers and kidnap a small boy to lock him away in a locker for the night. He knew that the trauma would make the kid struggle the next day with his exercises. Whenever Weine would nab a victim, he and the other officers would drill him extra hard the next day and then laugh when the child failed.

With one eye closed and the other intently watching as they were targeting a quiet boy named Levi, Rafian snuck out of his bunk and silently followed the three bullies to the area with the lockers. Here Levi was gagged and trapped for the night.

Earlier in the day, Rafian had sneaked a metal pipe into his room and hid it under his bunk in anticipation of this very moment. He armed himself with it, holding it to his back as he pressed to the side of the door and peered inside. The boys had just imprisoned Levi despite his pleas and cries.

Rafian walked into the room, pressed the lock switch to freeze the door closed behind him, and forced the three boys to face him with no hope of reinforcement or escape.

“What are you doing here, char?” Weine asked with a look of worry in his eye.

The answer he received was a shot to the face from the pistol that Rafian had fixed to shoot nonlethal rubber bullets. However, on the basis of the results, no one would know that the bullet was false. The boy’s face erupted into a bloody mess as he fell to the floor, screaming loudly from the pain.

“Our history reads that the days of people being chars, ashes, swirls, or any other stupid name passed the day we all united to save Vestalia, Weine. I never bothered you, disobeyed commands, or called you names. But people like you don’t need provocation to lock small kids into lockers, molest them, and abuse them, do you?

“This is why I am going to beat you and these two cowards you have with you.”

One of the other kids named Lenny pleaded, “Come on, Raf, it’s just fun. It was Weine’s idea, I swear!”

But the other was feeling lucky with their numbers. “Let’s just kick his ass and lock him up for a week,” he said.

To which Rafian answered, “Thank you, Mav. You will make me feel no conscience in doing this…”

Captain Samoo LES was a war hero on Vestalia. He was a war hero because he was captured by the enemy for two years, tortured and beaten within an inch of his life, and managed to escape through hand-to-hand combat. Samoo knew how to destroy people with and without a weapon, and his compassion for young Rafian led him to teach the boy some of these very skills during their time together. Though Samoo would not be proud of what his student did to these three boys, he would have been proud to know that beyond the tears, the anger, and the misunderstanding, his lessons had stuck, and his young student had soaked it up like a sponge.

When it was time for exercise, breakfast, and the typical events of the morning, Weine and two other officers were with the ship’s nurse getting treated for permanent injuries. Young Levi was well rested and feeling safe. Rafian was in front of the cadet commander explaining his actions and why he had felt he had to intervene. It was a situation the cadet commander could not fathom how to fix because the wounded boys were in leadership positions, and many kids had come forward to admit they had been tortured in hopes of helping Rafian—their savior—get a pardon.

A large-scale investigation that spanned the better part of six weeks was launched. Many outsiders, including parents and the new Vestalian government, were involved. It was a messy ordeal, and while the marine vessel drifted in deep space, the brass worked out the cadet massacre (as it was playfully dubbed) and what to do with the boys who were involved.

In the end, the three bullies were given the harsh sentence of expulsion from the cadet academy, and Rafian was given anger-management courses in addition to three weeks in solitary confinement. It was the best result that he could have hoped for, but unbeknown to him, his status was elevated among many in command, who saw him as having the potential for greatness as a marine.

* * *

By the time he was fifteen, Rafian was the textbook cadet. All “yes sirs” and discipline in action. He was now a second-grade major but disallowed from graduating to colonel due to the violent episode with Weine and the boys so many years ago. Still, the other children looked to him as a leader, and he carried himself as one—not an easy thing for the adults to miss. In the life of a cadet, you are given military ranks along with your grades. At sixteen, a child would need to be a cadet colonel in order to graduate into the actual Marine Corps as a private. The grade numbers denote skills, with the lowest being the best.

So a sixteen-year-old who managed to be a third or second grade along with the rank of colonel was normally considered so advanced that he or she could get a special assignment to attend a college of leadership aboard the ship. The advantage of all this was that after two years, he could emerge as an officer and leader of men.

Rafian didn’t care for any of the leadership ambitions of his less talented peers, but he desperately wanted to become a pilot—one of the privileged space jocks who got to fly spaceships, participate in dogfights, and get deployed on dangerous missions.

Life aboard the ship and its routine had become the norm for him, but he would throw it all away just to have a chance at flying his own vessel into battle. Since making third grade, he practically lived in the simulation booth. He had won all the top awards for simulated flight because of the number of days he logged in on the simulation. So in his mind he was already an ace.

One day Rafian was called into the office of the cadet commander to talk. It had been years since he had spoken with her directly. Thinking back, she seemed afraid of him when he shot and beat the three boys for locking Levi in the locker.

“You are a very special young man, Rafian. Do you realize that?”

It was nothing he had expected to hear from her, but he kept his eyes looking ahead, his hands at attention, and shook his head.

“Don’t be modest, Major! You have excelled with relative ease at everything we offer, and you know it as well as everyone here. Cadets with your smarts and talents are normally first-grade colonels in this academy. You do know this, right?”

“Yes ma’am, I do.”

“But you do understand why you are where you are?”

“Yes ma’am, I do.”

“Do you regret what you did to those young men and their careers, Major?”

He looked at her and replied, “No ma’am. But if I have permission to explain, I can and will.”

“Go ahead, Rafian,” she remarked and took a seat as if expecting a long, drawn-out answer.

But Rafian’s reply was not long, and he explained how his past had given him enough experience with people like Weine to know that he was not going to stop or change. The adults would never believe him, and something had to be done sooner or later.

By the time the meeting was over, Rafian was given the rank of colonel and clearance to take part in the planetary drop he needed to be considered first grade.

It was the rarest of honors. This drop was an insane test of resilience and knowledge for a young marine. The honors that came from doing it were so high that they had to be sure that the person getting it was much more than a well-trained bookworm. To become first grade was to become a member of a fraternity of galactic elite who could easily become officers. It was a privilege one had to earn, and the final exam was extremely dangerous. This was why a cadet was asked over ten times whether or not he or she was willing to participate.

For Rafian, a child rushed into adulthood by experiencing life’s worst circumstances, the first-Grade test was a no-brainer. He often felt as if he had died when he was imprisoned on Genese. He imagined that he had found his angel in Anne Marie and she had whisked his soul away to some unknown hell when the fiery explosion shook their world into a deadly inferno of flames. If he wasn’t dead and this wasn’t some cruel, twisted afterlife, then the worst had already happened. Dying in the middle of a test to grant him equal footing in a world that continued to remind him of his orphancy would be good, sweet death, so he happily signed up for the drop.

Memory 03 | First Grade

The Teradac-11 cruised low and silent above the stormy jungles of Qyeran—a city in the country of Flisx. This was a colony on the planet Geral, home of the lizard people—the same lizard people who had murdered Rafian’s father in their attempt to capture and eat his mother’s brain so many years ago.

This operation was an unusual one. Rafian was to be dropped into enemy territory and find a way out, then rendezvous with the ship, which would stay cloaked in orbit awaiting his return. The mission was to be completed within a week, or he would be left behind since they would have jumped to faster-than-light speed by then.

Rafian was more excited than afraid as he sat aboard the vessel, decked out in an all-black 3B suit with the Adaptus facemask firmly locked into his nostrils, ears, and mouth (to keep the Geralese atmosphere out). He was armed with an assortment of weapons, liquid-form food, and fluids that would keep him nourished for up to a week. The ship drifted in silently to avoid detection (a practice that many recon marines had mastered over the years), and with Qyeran being one of the low-tech countries on the planet, it was nothing for a skilled pilot to plant a young cadet onto her surface without any of the locals noticing.

Rafian nodded at his commander and Samoo, who had come along to wish his boy an extra bit of luck. Though they couldn’t see his face through the mask, Rafian shed a tear in appreciation of his teacher’s making the trip to see him off. The nod also told the pilot that he was ready to deploy as he folded his arms across his chest.

A hatch dropped from beneath him, and in an instant, he was falling rapidly towards the lush, green expanse of the planet. Rafian hoped this would be the beginning of an eventless adventure. The pilots had told him at his briefing that the way to remain undetected by the lizards was to delay deploying the chute until he was a few hundred feet above the trees.

The Geralos considered Vestalians to be an extremely tasty meal, so on discovery, they would not hesitate to tear him apart to snack on his innards. Rafian also had the seeker blood of his mother, and upon that discovery, his remains would probably be shipped to the top authorities for consumption—which may or may not happen while he remained alive and screaming in pain. After hearing all of this, Rafian decided he would eat his gun before risking capture by the Geralos. But until then, he would do what he was told to do and deploy his chute at the last possible second.

“The wind must be hot!” he thought as he fell, because his goggles became foggy rather quickly, and it took some time to adjust to the onslaught of humidity. His computer was set to trigger an alarm when he was at the lowest altitude possible for safe deployment, so he relaxed, awaiting its buzz to signal when to trigger his chute. The dark sky reminded him of nights on Genese when there was a full moon. It was dark, but light enough to see what was going on. However, he didn’t know if this was how it truly looked or if the goggles were just working their magic to allow him to see.

When the alarm buzzed, he delayed for two seconds and then deployed the chute, releasing the small wings, which flipped out from his backpack and forced his descent to turn into a glide. He flew circles, spiraling down towards the trees. The process was faster than he had expected, and before he knew it, he was on the ground of this strange planet. With his vilo-sword drawn and wrist map out (displaying details as to where he was), he plotted a route to the nearby city, where he would have to secure an escape to return to the ship.

Being able to breathe in his flight suit was hard due to the milliseconds it took to turn the thick chemicals of the planet’s atmosphere into clean, breathable air. It felt as if he was constantly out of breath and at the same time trying to breathe out of a straw. However, he couldn’t dwell on this discomfort, knowing the panic it could bring. So, putting breathing to the side, Rafian focused himself and kept his mind on the task at hand.

As soon as he calmed himself and set out towards the city, a rustling in the bushes caused him to spin around to witness the strangest creature he had ever seen. A herd of dhulon bulls had smelled him and sought after him out of curiosity. These animals had cowlike heads and humanoid bodies, but they walked on all fours and had eyes that seemed to flash fire. The alpha of the bunch immediately charged after Rafian, seeing him as a threat to the children. But Rafian jumped out of the way in time to beat a brisk sprint through the forest.

So much for stealth at this point! The bull was fast and bore down on him from the rear, so he dove out of the way to avoid being gored by the creature’s horns.

When he righted himself from the dive, Rafian let the blade of his vilo-sword arc towards the neck of the bull and took its head cleanly off. The heat of the blade cauterized the stump on both ends of the animal, so the blood, ichor, or whatever life fluid kept the beast alive was not splashed on him. The remainder of the dhulons retreated, and Rafian took the opportunity to move even faster between the trees.

He was on foot for the better part of an hour before he decided to stop. Rafian climbed a tree, secured himself tightly with straps, and activated his cloak to completely disappear from view. He slept for a few hours, and when he awoke, he was hungry, dehydrated, and disoriented.

Drawing a fluid-sustenance canister from his pack, he hooked it into place on his mask and sucked in the syrupy juices with much need and effort. It tasted like heaven, and he was good to go after a while. The skies had lightened, and the clouds lessened—which on Geral represented high noon, so he knew there would be people milling about, and he would have to be extra careful not to be detected.

Finding a better position at the top of a broad, massive branch on the tree, Rafian pulled out his binoculars to view the city in its entirety. From his observation, the lizard people seemed pretty civilized, and they dressed in very expensive-looking clothing. Their faces were extremely flat, but their heads held rough, bumpy ridges.

This particular race had very sensitive tails; webbed feet, which helped them swim the lakes of their planet; and scaly skin, which looked to be rough to the touch.

When he had dropped payload on them via the simulator, Rafian had never imagined that he would ever see Geralos up close. He was now looking at them as they lived out their lives very much like human beings, and it dawned on him that the Geralos were people and not the monsters that he always thought of them to be. He imagined the soldiers who had chased his mother down and the death they had dealt his father. However, the rage he wanted those thoughts to stir within him didn’t happen. He figured his parents were a casualty of war and raiding, and he would soon be doing the same to some baby Geralos’s family once he completed his mission and proved himself worthy of becoming a marine.

His joints were on fire from the position in which he lay in the tree high above the ground. There was heavy traffic below him now, and he was forced to stay in the tree for a couple of days until it was safe to climb down.

In terms of waste, the suit was wonderful and efficient, as there was no cause to take it off. He needed only to urinate or defecate as usual, and the suit would filter the waste into a reservoir. As soon as things settled down, he could empty it at any time. The reservoir could hold five bowel movements and a gallon of urine, but he was hoping that he wouldn’t have to accumulate anywhere near that amount before he could leave.

As he continued to spy on the city, one of the more exciting happenings of his day was when a hunter brought out the head of the dhulon for the other hunters to inspect. They stood around it for a long time, possibly wondering how it had gotten decapitated so cleanly. The head seemed to tell them a lot, as uniformed officers got involved and began making a lot of ruckus. Rafian realized that his time on Geral would end up being much less than a week because he would have to get out of there fast or be found and consumed.

When it got darker and the streets of the city thinned out, a team of Geralos assembled with intent to search the jungle from where the head had been discovered. One of them seemed to be a tracker. Rafian hoped he would not start tracking until they were much deeper in, since it would mean he would be discovered. He concentrated on the task at hand, which was to get into the city and commandeer a space ship fast. The other dilemma he faced was that the battery on his cloaking device was charging, and he was at the moment very much in the open and visible.

The hunting party was about two hundred yards from where he was perching, and if any of them thought to scan the trees, he would be discovered within the minute. There was a path that led from the city into the forest, and it cut through a large expanse of tall grass and flowers.

Rafian slid down the tree to the forest floor and then sneaked through the grass, angling away from the approaching hunting party. When he reached the city wall, he climbed it effortlessly using the suction technology of his suit’s gloves and boots.

Once atop the walls and crouched low, Rafian descended the other side into what appeared to be a market. He then thought what his next move should be.

The city was a small one and appeared to be shaped like a circle, surrounded by a thick metal wall. A few sentries were patrolling the wall, and Rafian felt extremely lucky, since a more high-tech city would have an installed dome camera tracking every single thing that moved. As he thought about his strategy, an older Geralos began shouting at him. He had discovered the stranger’s movement as he tore down his stall for the day.

The language was foreign, but Rafian didn’t need to understand. His discovery would mean the end of a career, so the cadet rushed the old man and then bound and gagged him within minutes. Next he found the rooftops and began dashing along them recklessly in search of a ship or some sort of vessel to help him escape the planet.

When he finally found what he was looking for, he realized that it was in the worst possible place—the center of a military barracks. This compound, as small as it seemed, was packed with angry lizards that were well-trained, armed, and extremely dangerous. It was in the center of the city and had towers facing to the north, south, west, and east. The walls were mere chain link fences that emitted a strange blue glow that Rafian assumed would be death if he got anywhere near them.

The towers were laden with bricks and could be scaled easily with his suit, so he would only need to get to one of them to be inside within a matter of minutes. Rafian hopped down from the roof into an alley that ran perpendicular to the barracks. He made his way towards the nearest tower and used his knife to take out one of the guards who got too close as Rafian exited the alleyway.

He dragged the body to a pile of discarded boxes, hid it beneath them, and kicked dirt over the blood that stained the earth. Rafian then climbed the tower and hung near the edge, waiting for a guard to get close. When a lizard was close enough, he stuck his blade into the soft area of his neck and pierced his brain. The Geralos died silently, and Rafian vaulted into the tower’s station, stripped the lizard of his clothes, and then placed them over his own.

The clothes were meant to camouflage his looks from the other soldiers who could only see him from a distance. When he was done with the disguise, Rafian placed an acid pill into the naked lizard’s mouth, and the body quickly dissolved into liquid, which flowed silently down the edges of the tower.

From his observations of the past days, Rafian knew that the Geralos kept a few guards on watch all night long, and they rarely used their ship to leave the surface. He hoped the ship would actually fly, because it would really be a bummer if he risked melting a man and wearing his clothes only to find out that his ship was inoperable.

He counted at least twenty guards walking the grounds and doing their duties. The only ones he had to worry about were the ones in the tower, who appeared to be armed with high-powered weapons. He thought about it for a minute and realized there was one small snag he hadn’t considered.

Robbing a craft, flying it out into space, and rendezvousing with the ship was the task, but the marine ship Helysian was cloaked—since his mission was to be a secret—and this meant that he could not have Geralese space vessels chasing him when he managed to dock. He was supposed to escape undetected, and it was starting to feel like an impossible mission.

The city of Qyeran was powered by Zynerian crystals, which were pushing out fuel from a plant built deep underground. Rafian knew this because it was how planets like Geral made sure living areas had unlimited light and power.

The thought of shutting down the city’s power in order to escape was a no-go. His other option was to kill them all, but how could one man take out twenty when they had the advantage of knowing their terrain and calling in backup on alarm? He could stealthily take them out they way he had that poor puddle of muck, but how long could he go before a random soldier looked around and figured out that all of his buddies were missing? What was the answer?

The solution came to him faster than he expected, and he was fine with trying it despite the odds.

Sneaking down to the ground level and into the parked vessel, Rafian found an area in the rear to hunker down and hide. He began waiting for someone to enter. Taking the opportunity to catch his breath, Rafian ejected the refuse canister from his suit and sighed in relief at the knowledge that he wouldn’t have to sit in his own feces—if his wait lasted a day.

He took in some fluid from his reserves and then closed his eyes to calm himself from the excitement of the past few hours. Much time passed, and the next day, the city came alive with panic as a tracker figured out their city had been invaded. Even worse, the panicked old man had told the tracker about the shadow who had bound and gagged him by his stall.

A soldier was found dead and another was missing, with traces of his DNA all over the tower he had manned just the night before. Rafian could imagine the Geralos thinking he was some hellish creature that had come up from the jungle to kill their people. Despite himself, he smiled at the chaos he had wrought in only a few hours. Everything was working according to plan, and he knew in time they would take the ship above the city to do a manhunt. Rafian didn’t have much longer to wait, as two loud Geralos came onboard. The engines came alive, and the ship began to rise.

He took out a las-gun that was rigged with a silencer and attached an elemental selector. He watched the pilot intently to see if he could figure out the controls and was relieved to see that it was not unlike the ones he had used on the simulation ships.

When they were airborne and circling the city, Rafian moved the elemental dial to ice and shot the passenger in the head, which rendered him bone-stiff as his innards froze in a slow, painful death.

Next he slipped behind the other pilot, cut his throat in one motion, and pushed him over to the passenger seat. He took over the controls and righted the stalling vessel. He knew that anything would look suspicious if he moved to escape too quickly, so he continued to circle the city as the deceased pilots would have.

While Rafian circled three times, he established some familiarity with the various switches of the HUD, pointed the nose of the ship upwards, and jettisoned the engines to launch into space.

The whole process of killing the pilots, flying circles, and breaking into space took less than an hour. Yet for the tense teenager whose nerves were like icepicks, it seemed like an entire day.

Once in orbit and with no trace of anyone following him, Rafian signaled the Helysian, and it materialized in front of him. He managed to dock the alien vessel—albeit roughly—aboard the ship and was then rushed into the decontamination center, where he was immediately scanned for parasites and biological weapons. While this was standard protocol for planet jumpers, the process was one that you never get used to.

Rafian felt a twinge of relief as the boom of the engines let him know that they had jumped into deep space and out of range of the Geralos horde. He was made to sit in the chamber for a couple of hours as various scientists and doctors looked over his suit and body to make sure he was not a danger to the crew. Once cleared, he was given a uniform he didn’t recognize and met by none other than the beautiful Vani, who was tasked to escort him to the bridge. Rafian felt the entire situation was bizarre, since Vani was being nice and actually talking to him. She had always been so rude and cold before, but now she was talking to him excitedly as if they were old friends. She was praising him, but the events of the past day were still so fresh in his mind that he just could not focus on her.

She was saying things about how amazing he was and how they all felt he would not return. However, his thoughts were on how his racing heart had felt as if it were bursting as he flew up and out of that city, knowing that a tracking ray could tear his ship apart once the Geralos realized what was going on.

The couple emerged from the detox station through glass sliding doors and was met by five thousand people—practically everyone onboard—cheering and clapping for Rafian. Vani was pulled out of the way as photos were taken, holos recorded, and congratulations were issued to the ship’s outcast stowaway now turned recon graduate. From the crowd emerged the cadet commander and the ship’s commander in full decoration to stand in front of the tall, slightly embarrassed Rafian, who could do nothing but salute.

“Congratulations, Colonel,” the commanders said in concert, and the ship’s commander pinned a badge to Rafian’s chest that had the symbol of a phoenix rising from an orb.

“Colonel Rafian has been awarded the topmost rank and designation of first class for doing the impossible for the greater good of the galaxy,” the commander bellowed.

Then the cadet commander followed up by saying, “We sent you into certain death, but just like the phoenix, you rose bright, terrible, and victorious. Congratulations, Raf! You did it!” And it was as if she had forgotten all protocol because she ran up and hugged him tightly.

Memory 04 | Starfighter

At At sixteen years of age, Rafian was a man. As a first-grade cadet colonel he was able to choose his own destiny, so he chose the one thing that he had been fighting for all along: the right to fly ships and rain death from the skies on the enemy. The one thing he didn’t account for, however, was the amount of book reading and writing that came with piloting.

To be able to fly expensive warships, you first had to become an engineer. Then you had to study the history and theory of flying. After you knew your history, you had to dabble in the sciences to learn about the properties of space. A pilot also had to know the galaxy, the location of the various planets, and how to plot a course to each. It was a grueling ritual, and Rafian felt as if his time on Geral had been a hundred times easier.

In the days that followed his promotion, he and Vani had gotten close. She was a very pretty girl, and many of the boys on the ship were trying their hand at getting with her. Vani had long, dark-brown hair and light-brown skin. She had large, curious brown eyes and a button nose that was trumped only by a mouth that always stayed slightly open, revealing a row of perfect white teeth behind a set of full, dark-red lips. Vani paid more attention to her appearance than any of the other girls on the ship, and Rafian could tell that they hated her for it.

Though her beauty could not be questioned, Vani could be annoyingly critical at times, and it resulted in many arguments with Rafian over trivialities. Vani hated his clothes, his background, and his ways. For Rafian, she was a godsend due to her relative ease with academics, so he would often sit with her to do homework and then take her out for lunch or dinner so that she could maintain her status as the first-class love interest. While Rafian was aware that he was being used for his status by this girl, he genuinely loved her big brown eyes and her beautiful crop of hair, which she always fashioned in the coolest way. This was the reminder he would recite to himself whenever she was at her most critical. She had other good qualities, too, beyond to her book smarts and liberal attitude.

At age sixteen, the former cadets were given their own apartments, and Vani made sure that hers was next door to Rafian’s. She did this so that she could always be with him whenever he wasn’t training or doing a class. But her antics wore on Rafian, and when their relationship would not get physical—oh, how he tried—he turned his attention to a fellow pilot by the name of Kim.

Kim had a reputation for being quite generous with the boys, and he got to know her in his off-hours—while ducking and dodging Vani. Things eventually took a sexual turn, and Kim became his first. This first time was awkward, disappointing, and nothing like he had imagined or had been told by his peers. When Kim learned that he didn’t like it, she made sure they did it every afternoon, and before long, Rafian became addicted. He found himself unofficially living with her and admitting to the other boys that she was indeed his girlfriend. Vani did not take this well and felt hurt and embarrassed.

“Vani, we were never actually going out! Why the sudden attitude over me and Kim?” Rafian asked when she finally confronted him.

Vani flinched visibly at the confrontation as she stood in her doorway barring his entrance. She unloaded a reply to end all replies. “Ohhh, now he cares to ask! What were we, Raf? Just buddies like you and Val? Don’t even pretend we weren’t together just because you dumped me for some whore who—by the way—has slept with every guy on the ship. Yup, uh huh—even some of the men! I am no longer your friend, and I no longer want to see you!”

And with that, she pressed her lock switch and let the hard glass slide loudly in his face, almost taking a few of his fingers with it. Rafian felt a strange twinge of vindication over being told off by “the shrew” who only wanted him as an accessory. He now felt he had closure and could pursue a real future with his beloved Kim. He thought of her body then, and the familiar electric shocks of lust ran through him as he stopped to reflect on her.

Kim was a tall, tan brunette who needed no makeup to be considered pretty. She had smoky gray eyes that always seemed sleepy and a set of full, red lips that were often held in a sneer, as if the world was not impressive to her. She kept her dark-brown hair braided in standard military fashion. Though he knew she had a history, Rafian was not deterred. He too had an imperfect past, which had made him into the fractured person he was today.

No, to him, Kim was perfect in all of her scandalous glory, and she knew how to touch him in ways that made the pain retreat into the recesses of the night. Their affair was wild, crazy, and uninhibited, as teens their age tend to be when unchecked. The military only cared about young Rafian’s future as a pilot and young Kim’s future as an officer, so the two were left alone to be completely careless with their love life. They threw every care to the wind, including the need for birth control. They utilized sex as a means to everything, not limited to argument resolution, sleeping aid, and, of course, motivation.

It was three months into their relationship when Kim approached Rafian with some alarming news. He was with his friends—Marce COI, Velman TOR, and Zennel OBO—when she stopped short in front of them. When he attempted to kiss her, she told him quite loudly that she was pregnant. With his naiveté and love for Kim, Rafian was excited at the news and grinned ear to ear at the thought.

Kim seemed determined and upset, so the smile faded in lieu of concern. It was then that she stated the baby was not his, but was in fact his friend Marce’s. The embarrassment was too much for the young soldier to bear, and he beat a hasty retreat towards his room to be alone.

As he neared his door, Vani was leaving her apartment and was about to shoot him her customary look of disapproval, but she was stopped short by the tears in his eyes and his desperate dash for escape as he ran inside his apartment and attempted to lock the door. But Vani was quick. She barred his door with her body and slid behind him. She locked it behind her and began inquiring as to what was going on.

“I don’t do well with betrayal,” he admitted to her after her incessant pleading. He switched his disheveled bed into table mode, and Vani sat with him to discuss what had happened.

“You do know this is karma, right, asshole?” she asked him in a very matter-of-fact way, and he nodded despite himself and apologized to her.

“You were using me, Vee…” he said silently as he picked up the old pistol Samoo had given him and took it apart as he always did when he felt alone.

The room went silent after he said that, and she sat there as still as a rock, staring at him quizzically.

“Can we try again, Raf?” she asked after what seemed like an hour. He snapped the barrel pieces of the gun in place, laid it on the table, and muttered, “Why would you want to?”

Vani walked over to his refrigerator and helped herself to a vial of milk and then plopped down with it by the wall, staring at him as she batted her big brown eyes in a way that she knew he would notice. She was in civilian clothing and had probably been on her way to the mess hall when he had come dashing in. So her entire look was very natural, innocent, and beautiful. It made him feel low for stepping out on her with Kim.

“I know that nobody likes me, Raf,” she finally admitted. “I know the boys only want one thing, and the girls want to string me up. I know these things, but you genuinely liked me—we were a thing, and losing that…well, it’s killing me, OK?”

She let her words sink in, and the room stayed silent with nothing but the clicking of his gun being reassembled. She took a deep breath and then uttered, “Please.” She said the word so silently that had Rafian not been looking at her, he would have missed it. But he did see, and all of a sudden, all he wanted to do was to take her off the ship and disappear into forever after.

“You will stay faithful to me, and you will never leave me unless it is mutual, OK? Say that you promise!”

It was already 3:00 a.m., and Rafian was being drilled by Vani to take her vows so that they could be together.

“Yes Vani, I swear. Do you think I want to go through this again? Gods, I mean, I can’t even show my face out there now after how Kim made me look to those guys.”

Vani was in one of her Cultin button-down shirts, socks, and tiny shorts, and she sat with him on the bed with her tiny hands grasping his. “I don’t want to hear the name of that dirty girl anymore either.”

“OK, Vani. I will forget her.”

“We will wait until we are older for sex, and we will always take precautions.”

This last bit seemed a bit much for a boy whose last girlfriend did it every single day, but this was Vani. Despite himself, Rafian finally promised, and they fell asleep together as he tried to forget the events of the day.

Vani was quite different after their relationship vows. She was much more physical in her affection and very loving. Rafian’s hesitation to face his comrades died after they realized that he had “upgraded” his relationship status, but it was still something he refused to talk about with anyone. He pretended that Kim did not exist and spoke very bluntly and directly with Marce whenever he was forced to speak to him. Marce felt terrible about the entire affair and tried no fewer than seven times to reconcile with Rafian, who had an eerie way of pretending he was over it while avoiding any gestures of friendship with the boy he had once called friend.

Although he knew the entire planet system and was doing very well in his studies, Rafian knew he would have to take an actual flight test before he was given his wings. This was tough for the teen as he desperately tried to fit Vani into his life. Yet the times that he was with her, he wished he were spending them in the simulator.

Sometimes he would make up a lie to get a few hours to himself before seeing her, but he was worried that one of the other simulator regulars would tell her where he was, and it became a tricky cat-and-mouse game, which he felt silly for playing.

“I hear that the final exam is extremely dangerous, Raf,” said Vani—whom he playfully called Vee. They were sitting at one of the circular tables in the mess hall, which was a massive collection of tables with food dispensers lining the north wall. The selection of food was actually good, so it was the popular spot for cadets when they were not doing their particular duties for the corps.

“I looked into it, Vee, and it is—which is why I’ve had to start doing some simulation time after classes.”

He glanced at her as he snuck in the admission, and he noticed the twitch in her eyebrow at receiving the information. But he continued quickly in order to move past the subject.

“From what I understand about a pilot’s exam, they put a few of us into broken ships and force us to fix them and fly. The thing is, the ships are drifting in space when they place us in them, and the controls are normally alien. The danger comes with accidentally turning on a self-destruct or an eject switch, firing at another person, or doing any number of other things that can go wrong. It also becomes our first ship for sorties as a recruit.”

Rafian was rambling, but Vani looked petrified. “And why does this not concern you, Rafian? All of you guys going out are friends. Well, Marce used to be, but what if someone gets shot or blown up?”

“We’re a galaxy at war, Vee. People are going to die. I stopped being a kid after I went to Geral, and to be honest, I don’t expect to die on my exam. I expect to become a pilot and fly us off of this ship. I never told you…but what we have to do for this exam is exactly what I had to do to get off of that planet.”

Vani wanted to say something, but she knew that it wouldn’t make a difference.

“I will visit the temple for you…” she said silently, and he smiled at her and squeezed the finger that held the ring he had given her a week ago.

* * *

The graduation ceremony for the future pilots of the Helysian was typically a sad one that spoke of promise. It was up to the cadets to study the language and customs of the galaxy in order to help them adapt to any situation. The problem was the number of languages, which were in the thousands. Even Vestalia had over a hundred.

When the boys and girls of the Helysian had donned their pressure suits and boots to fly, they were transported to an area in space that held twenty-five discarded ships. The cadets were ejected into space and had to use the boosters on their 3B suits to glide to a ship, open it, seal it, fix it, and bring it home. 3B suits were black and oily in appearance, and they clung tightly to the body so that they looked like a second skin. The masks were very tight fitting, and the goggles were large and bug-like in appearance. However, the pilots loved to wear them leisurely around the ship to show off their perfect bodies, the results of years of combat and training.

Now in space, the time for fashion and games was past, and the teens gained a new appreciation for their suits as they glided towards their destiny, propelled by their boots. This mission rang similar to the one Rafian had done in order to get to first-class status. He found out that as a first class, he was permitted to skip this exercise, but he argued to participate in order to be sure that he was ready. When he did this, Vani had gone ballistic and punched him in the chest before he left. The girl had the nastiest temper and would get physical whenever she couldn’t get her way. He could still feel the ache on his left pectoral from that last blowout.

When the pilots neared the cluster of ships for the exercise, things took a turn for the worse when two people went for the same ship and decided to fight over it. One of the boys’ thrusters accidentally caught the other during their struggle, and a hole was burnt through the material, freezing and killing him instantly.

Another girl triggered the wrong switch, and her ship shot off into deep space on a predestined path back to its original owner. The problem was that its owner would more than likely be the enemy, and with no light-speed technology working in the vessel, there was no way that she would make it out alive. The rest fumbled along fixing their individual ships, but a few misfired weapons caused five more future pilots to lose their lives. It was nerve-racking, but Rafian pulled his together in good time to fly out of their stalled circle of death.

Upon docking his ship (a Casanian model), he stood on the deck and waited to see who else would return from the exercise. Vani snuck in under his arm to hug him tearfully, and he kissed her on the top of her head as he squeezed her close. The end of the day resulted in only five of the twenty-five cadets returning with their ships, and twelve had to be rescued before their oxygen depleted.

The ceremony was conducted that night to a crowd filled with a mixture of tearful young faces and the stoic but proud stares of older space jocks who had been through the same thing in the past. Marce was one of the five pilots who made it, and he came over to shake Rafian’s hand and congratulate him. It was a grand ceremony, and of all the things that went on, the one thing that stuck with Rafian the most was the smile from Kim. She was standing in the crowd, holding a cute newborn and looking proudly up at him.

He wondered at the smile but put it out of his mind just as quickly as it had come, realizing how lucky he was, because it could have gone very badly for him. Kim had missed her chance when she ended up pregnant, and at this moment, he would have felt tremendous guilt if the baby were his. He looked over at Marce, who wasn’t paying her any attention, and felt a twinge of regret for her situation.

Above all, however, of the other thoughts that ran through his head as he got congratulated, medaled, and promoted, was the fact that he had now realized his dream of being an actual starfighter. He had not skipped the final test, and he had not panicked during the worst. It made him feel enormous and worthy. As a reward for his service, Rafian was immediately given the rank of lieutenant and allowed to take leave for a week. Before he could leave to start his break, he was summoned to the ship commander’s office for debriefing.

“Rafian, take a seat, young man,” the commander offered. “Before we begin, I am going to have to ask you to select a surname, soldier. I have heard your history and witnessed your rise, and I don’t think it would be right for a man like you to go any further without a surname to stamp your legacy.”

Rafian felt a strange heaviness come about him at the inference, because this was something that had bothered him since he was first allowed into the academy. He had no legacy name—none! His parents had only taught him his first name before they left him, and it was something that the other children never let him forget. He recalled the most hurtful of heckles, which came from Weine at the time. A new officer had witnessed an exercise in which Rafian outperformed the other cadets at martial arts and asked, “What is your name, Cadet?”

“Rafian, sir!”

“Rafian what? What’s the family name of a cadet who shows so much hope?”

And Weine had burst out laughing with the words, “What family? He’s Rafian-Rafian, a boy from nowhere!”

Such a hurtful Memory, he thought, but the commander would not back down from this.

Rafian thought of the planet his people were from—Vestalia. The allied military on the planet had chosen to use initials to symbolize their family names in order to transcend language, race, or heritage. It was the reason so many children on the ship at the cadet level had last names such as OBI, VAL, and things like that. Their parents were soldiers from the old planet, so they were blessed with the legacy of an honorable surname.

“Sir, my surname will be VCA,” Rafian said after some thought.

The commander regarded him and nodded in approval. “You honor our home world, I see. I was expecting you to name some powerful beast or god, but you again surprise by going with tradition. What does VCA stand for, Rafian?” he said, seeming to be genuinely interested.

“Well, sir, the V is for Vanguard because that is where I will be in all matters of service. And though I hate it, the cadets gave me the call sign Centuri, so I will own it. A is my commitment to fight for our galaxy, Anstractor. So it is VCA. That will be my name.”

Commander Abe RUS walked from behind his desk and shook Rafian’s hand firmly with a grin. He was an older man whose hair had gone completely white. His skin was as dark as Rafian’s, and his voice sounded like a ship’s engine. Everyone respected the commander because of his lengthy history of war and strategy, but as a man, he had a presence that stayed with you. His large nose flared as he spoke during the handshake, and to Rafian, it felt as if he were saying good-bye.

“We weren’t very nice to you when you came aboard, were we?” he stated with regret in his eyes. “I think these slights against you may have been something that stayed with you throughout these years and has driven you like some sort of vengeful spirit. Hell, son, you probably hate my guts for the events of that day—though I suppose many people have let you down in your young life, haven’t they? You are our best young soldier, Rafian VCA, and I imagine it won’t be long before you’re commanding your own armada to unleash holy fire upon the Geralos for what they’ve done to Vestalia. But for now, I am proud to have you as one of our weapons in this war, son. The VCA name suits you because you will very much be the vanguard in this fight.”

Pausing, the commander handed Rafian a glass of whiskey and nodded at him to knock it back. Then he walked him to the door with some final words. “I would like for you to take a short break.”

This was the most that Rafian had ever heard the big man say, and though it wasn’t an apology, he took it as one and left the office to see about his shrine to Captain Samoo LES. His mentor had not returned after a ground skirmish on Vestalia a year ago, and Rafian had built a memorial to him. He could see Samoo’s dark pupils and silver-streaked hair in his mind’s eye, as if the man were in front of him issuing congratulations.

On Vestalia, Samoo was from a long line of warriors in a culture of immense discipline. He was nothing like the other soldiers, and that part of him had stayed with Rafian—his final student.

“Where do you want to go?” Vani asked, startling him as he knelt with eyes closed.

He turned quickly to see her standing there, eyes on fire the way they always were whenever she smelled opportunity. It took everything within him to keep his cool rather than lay into her for the disrespectful interruption.

“You’re not going to like my answer, Vee,” he said quietly.

“OK, so out with it then, Commander Rafian!” she teased.

“Cute…but it’s lieutenant, and before I take any sort of leave, I want to go look for the cadet whose ship went into autopilot. It has only been a day, and I think I can find her.”

Vani wanted to argue but knew her boyfriend well enough not to bother. She kissed him and hugged him longingly. Then she asked whether he planned to actually go on vacation, to which he answered: “If there’s time.”

Memory 05 | Aurora Rising

Rafian wondered how it felt to be drifting alone in the cold of space, knowing no one would be there to rescue him. He imagined that for the quiet girl who had gotten stuck with the ship that took off, the universe was beginning to feel like a flood of disappointment sweeping down upon her—a bug stuck on a twig, drifting down a stream, waiting for the flood to finish her off. He had lied to the chief on the bridge, telling him that his goal for taking his ship out was to familiarize himself with the controls—so that he could utilize her properly in a real mission, of course. They had torn out the guts of the ship and replaced it with a regulation cockpit. While it was not completely finished, it was still flyable and relatively safe.

“Lieutenant VCA, you have flown beyond acceptable boundaries of the Helysian,” the ship’s controller warned.

“Windry, can you cover for me, please?” Rafian whispered back through his communications device. Windry had been one of the nicer girls in the academy when they were kids, and while she and Rafian were not necessarily friends, she respected him and liked him enough to comply.

“I can get into a lot of trouble for this, Raf,” she whispered. “Please don’t get lost or killed.”

Rafian didn’t reply but turned off the radio and sent a message to her personal CODEV saying that he owed her one. He turned on the radar of the ship and wired an AMP to it that he had stolen from the Helysian’s reserves. The tiny radar on his panel normally displayed blips around the perimeter of the ship for up to a thousand thrusts, but the AMP transformed it into a unit that was more suited for large starships and extended its reach to cover a minor sound jump.

“Where are you, Cadet?” he asked out loud as he scanned the radar, but he could not make out anything that would have been a part of her ship. Following the direction of her flight as he remembered it, he increased his thrusters and hoped she had not self-destructed from being panicked and pressing random buttons. He had enough fuel to last a few days, and he was hoping that the chief would forget about his departure and allow him the time it would take to rescue his classmate and bring her back home.

It was a few hours later when he found the ship, but it was abandoned and looked as if it had been torn apart by a trace-laser. His ship was a traditional long-nose, similar to those from the Vestalian Second War. It had wings that curved upwards, a feature that was built for aesthetics over function, and the cockpit had glass that allowed him to see 360 degrees. Rafian believed this feature was ugly, but it was extremely useful for his search.

Shutting off the engine and using the side thrusters to float around the discarded ship, he tapped the boost lightly to rotate around the debris and wondered where the pilot could have gone. Her mangled body, even if vaporized, should have been drifting near the ship, but it looked as though she had managed to get out before the attack and had somehow vanished into thin air.

He was on his fifth rotation when the mother ship materialized in front of him, large and imposing. He had never seen anything like her, not even in his textbooks, and his mouth fell open at the sheer size of her. It was as if a huge wall had appeared, blocking everything as far as he could see. It was good that he had let himself get distracted at the ship’s details because he instantly blacked out, never seeing the lizak ray as it shone into his cockpit and sucked out the air before pulling his craft into a cargo hold.

Rafian awoke with a start, and his eyes grew accustomed to his surroundings. He was quite surprised to be living, even more so at the fact that the vessel was pumping out breathable oxygen. The temperature was warm, and he looked down to realize that he was lying in a vat of thick, pink liquid, deep inside a pit of some sort, with a plantlike growth covering its metallic, cylindrical sides. He thought of how silly he must look lying there in what appeared to be a giant’s serving cup filled with corroded old milk.

He stood up and checked himself in case he was missing parts, but he was good. He looked around wildly for any trace of a door or window. The whole situation felt hopeless, and he wished he knew something of his captors so that he could gauge his next move. The walls were smooth to the touch, and Rafian checked the growth to see whether it could hold his weight—no such luck, and he wondered if this would be his end.

The water smelled like old shoes, and he scanned it intently to see if he could figure what it was. There were lumpy objects beneath its surface, and Rafian reached in and pulled something out to see if he could make sense of it. He dropped the object with a start and gasped despite himself when he saw the eroded flesh falling off of the skull he had pulled out from the muck.

“This is some sort of slow acid!” he whispered as he looked around again to see if there was a way out.

The cylinder was too wide to even consider triangle jumping, which was a technique the soldiers learned that involved springing onto one wall and then using it as leverage to rebound onto the other. He decided he was not going to panic, no matter what. Even if the liquid began to eat at his feet, he would rely on his training. He kept repeating this to himself over and over again until he was more than certain that he was going to die honorably. He thought about the Virulian super spies who were each given a fake tooth to pop out and eat to commit suicide if caught. He always loved watching the holo-vids of the spies in training and wished he had one of those fake teeth to make his death quicker than death by acid. It was then that he saw the girl; she was on the edge of the cylinder looking down at him—a half-naked, brown-skinned, slender creature with a frightened look in her eyes.

“Rafian?” she whispered. He nodded in response not knowing her name. “Hold on; I’m gonna get you out.”

As soon as he nodded she disappeared again, and in about a half hours’ time, she was back with a rope fashioned from what he realized was her clothes. Hooking the rope to a fixture above the cylinder, the girl threw the free end down towards Rafian, and he managed to scramble out of the trap with much effort.

“Thank you!” he whispered and hugged her as if he knew her.

“I’m Aurora,” she said once they were settled, and Rafian offered her his slimy jacket to serve as a makeshift skirt. He realized the top of the cylinder was one of a few thousand as they stood on an expanse of holes that resembled metallic Swiss cheese, stretching on as if there was no end. From the low ceiling hung what appeared to be plant life, and the vines would periodically descend into the holes to feed on the pink fluid that lay within. Rafian looked about for an escape, but all he saw were holes, plants, and the dull, blue light that illuminated the area.

“Aurora, how long have you been here?” Rafian asked.

The girl looked at her feet as if thinking before shaking her head no.

“Aurora, you’ve been missing for half a week! Have you eaten?”

She again shook her head no, and Rafian thought about what he could do to help.

“If I could feed you that forsaken hell plant I would, Aurora, but I am sorry, we need to find my ship so that I can get to my rations.”

She thought for a while and then sat down quietly, as if they had all the time in the world.

“Do you know how I got out of my hole?” she asked. “It was by chance, luck, something. One of the vines came down, and I grabbed it as it ascended. Scary stuff. They have teeth, y’know? I…I knew I was dead when I failed the exam, so I made a game of seeing if I could count the holes here. I think the highest I got was about 115…”

The girl trailed off, shivering and looking the worse for fear, so Rafian sat next to her and pulled her close to share his warmth.

“I’m not trying to get fresh with you, Aurora, though you certainly are attractive,” he said and smiled slyly. She unexpectedly smiled back at him.

“You need to get some food and warmth. I came back for you, off the record. I intend on getting you home, getting you fed, and getting you the wings that fate cheated you of.”

She had tears in her eyes on hearing this, and he held her close so that she could cry. There had to be people controlling the ship, he thought, because someone uncloaked, captured his ship, and took the time to feed him to this greenhouse horror. This didn’t seem like the random act of an alien. He felt around in his pockets for some sort of weapon but eventually found nothing.

“Get up, Aurora,” he said. “Let us find a wall and follow it.”

They walked for two hours along numerous pits before reaching a wall, and Rafian realized that it could be several hours more before they would get lucky and find a crevice, a door, or anything that led out of the expanse of pits. He was wondering how long he had been out after the ship had captured him. It didn’t feel as if much time had passed, and he was not the least bit hungry or thirsty. He wondered about Aurora and whether or not his mind was playing tricks on him. Was he still drifting out in space? Was he aimlessly lost and without air? If they could survive a few more days, the Helysian would come looking for him, or at least go to the last known location of his ship, and…he immediately felt a panic! The Helysian would not stand a chance against this vessel, given its size, unless they were lucky and there were no weapons mounted on it.

“I just want to know who our captors are,” he said, not so much to himself or to Aurora, but more like an announcement. “If I can find that out, I could know what we need to do to get out of here.”

The pair walked for a few more hours, and before long, Rafian had to carry Aurora on his back. When she became too heavy, he would cradle her in his arms and then switch her again to his back as his arms would tire. After a while, the two got so exhausted they just hugged each other closely for warmth and a couple hours of uncomfortable sleep. Near the end of what would be the second day of walking, Rafian observed a light breaking through the blue mist from what he hoped was a doorway that was left ajar.

Aurora was beginning to look pale, her almond-shaped eyes barely slits now as she struggled to be strong and make her own way as much as possible. As fatigue settled in, Rafian felt as if their long trek along the ship’s wall was much like running a marathon. Crouching in the shadow of the wall near the door, he waited to see what would emerge from the light. His wait was soon rewarded when a figure floated through the doorway. It looked like a Vestalian octopus with twelve tentacles that appeared to hold it aloft. Its movements were slow and rhythmic, as if it were dancing whenever it moved. Eyes ran along its body like metallic windows, and it seemed to be surveying the pits.

The movement and iridescent color of the creature were so foreign to Rafian that it sent shivers down his spine just to look at it. He looked over at Aurora and realized that she was dying; he had to make a move, and it had better be the right one if he was going to save her. He wanted to be on his ship and off of this alien craft. He didn’t know what this creature was or what it was capable of, and most importantly, how many of them were waiting for him through the lit doorway.

Rafian waited for the floating creature to move away from the door, and then he swiftly picked up Aurora and bolted into the doorway, ready to take on whatever might come at him. Luckily for them, there were no more creatures in sight as he ran, but there was not much else either. The hallway was a massively tall, narrow, lit alley of strange hieroglyphs. It seemed to go one endlessly and defied Rafian’s heart’s capacity with every stride. He felt as if his chest were on fire. Before long, Rafian was beyond fatigued, and the hallway dead-ended into what appeared to be a computer room with a curious set of controls.

“This is an algae food and fuel factory vessel, Aurora!” Rafian yelled to Aurora behind him.

“Hush, Rafian! He may be coming back!” she gasped weakly.

“No worries, Aurora. That was no alien. That was actually a machine—a harvest droid, to be exact—and it will be making its rounds for a while to make sure the plant is fertilizing properly.”

Aurora seemed relieved as Rafian sat her down on the chair, and she cupped her chin in one hand.

“How do you know all of this stuff?”

“Well, I have been doing my fair share of reading in the archives, and when I learned about our fuel, I learned that we buy algae and curlar from the Vinnevux Corporation. This is one of their ships. I can tell by this logo right here!” he explained excitedly.

“So they use human remains to fuel our ships?” Aurora asked.

Rafian stared at her, unable to find an answer to a very perplexing question. The Vinnevux Corporation was a company in Searne, Casan, that had figured out how to make fuel from the waste and debris that floated around in space. The thought that some of that fuel might actually be human remains made Rafian sick to his stomach, but he was equally disturbed by the entire process.

“How about I get us off of here?” He smiled at her, and she looked up weakly at him and nodded.

“Yes, let’s quit this dump.”

Rafian poked around at the controls of the vessel, and after a few moments, he figured out how to activate the transmitter. Pulling up the star map, he transmitted a message to the Helysian for rescue and put in the verification codes that were asked of him the minute it went through. Almost instantly, the ship erupted into a screaming alarm, and Rafian steeled himself for combat as several of the octopi came into the room and paused to look at the couple.

“Dvat…sel…un…Rafian…cuor Aurora,” Aurora offered up in her best Searnese.

Rafian understood her to be introducing them to the machines, but he didn’t know whether they would understand her. Before long, the alarms went silent, and even though the robots had seemed ready to vaporize them a second ago, they wheeled away to continue their work.

“To think, our thoughtful marines were content to let a brilliant officer like you die in space, Aurora. Ha! What you did just now was nothing short of amazing!”

Rafian was sweating like crazy, but he managed a grin.

But Aurora was not looking well.

“Can you hold on for another hour, Aurora—just one more hour? Can you do this for me, hon?”

He was pleading with her as she fought to keep her eyes open and focused while he rubbed her hands to make them stay warm. As the minutes ticked by, Rafian tore the room apart, looking for something edible to feed Aurora. His search yielded nothing, but luckily for them, it didn’t take long for the rescue ship to appear. Aurora was extremely pale, but she propped herself up on one arm, trying her best to be brave.

“In a few minutes, you will be on a friendly ship, with food, drink, and all of the things that you like, Aurora. What do you think about that, huh?”

Rafian made it a point to keep talking so that she would be forced to respond, and when they boarded the ship to be rescued, she made sure to stay awake in order to acknowledge that it wasn’t all a dream.

* * *

On Helysian, Aurora was fed, vaccinated, and taken to the infirmary, while Rafian was scolded and punished for his unsanctioned rescue mission. It was a complicated return and ceremony for Aurora, but she was granted her wings as a pilot for “making it back to the ship.”

About a week after they had returned, Rafian was in the simulation room gearing up for a mission when a beautiful, young woman in a pilot’s uniform sat down next to him and held him close.

“Erm, hello?” he said quietly as his eyes began scanning the room quickly for any sign of Vani.

“Rafian…do you not recognize me?” she exclaimed before punching him solidly in the arm.

“Oh, my gods! Aurora?” he said as he stood up to take her all in. “You look…you look like a model!”

Smiling, Aurora patted the seat next to her, motioning for him to sit. When he did, she poured her heart out, tearfully thanking him and letting him know she owed him her life in debt. Rafian thought about it for a while, and then, after a hug that lasted an eternity, he looked at her and said, “How about I call you sister?”

“What do you mean, Raf?” she asked, puzzled.

“Well, we’re both outsiders, Aurora, and I can’t shake the closeness that I feel with you, having had you as a partner in hell these past few days, y’know? It would be nice to have some sort of family here beyond girlfriends and things like that. Someone who will actually care when I do good things or when I get into trouble. Nobody seems to care about us outside of our uniform and service. So if you’ll have me, I’d like to call you sister.”

Aurora’s eyes were all fire and excitement at the prospect, and she kissed him on the cheek with glee.

“Yay! Of course, brother!”

Though there would be no official vacation given to young Rafian as a result of his adventure in saving Aurora, he felt he had done something useful, and it made his heart full and humbled.

“You know, Vani, the feeling I have right now over what I did for Aurora is a feeling I want to have after every mission I succeed in. I want to help people more than anything else.”

Vani was happy to see Rafian back, and when she thought of him as lost forever, she had cried for days from her heart breaking. Now, hearing that he wanted to make it his life’s calling to run missions like this one scared her even more. But she felt compelled to offer him support.

“Just promise me that you will always fly home, Rafi,” she said quietly, and he put his index finger on the bridge of her nose playfully.

“I would be the worst kind of fool if I didn’t, babe.”

And with that, she gave him the toothy smile that always came whenever she felt that she was getting her own way.

Memory 06 | First Mission

The Seryac Z-class android threw the las-sword at Rafian as he rolled out of the way and ejected two blasts at its torso from his hip pistol. The las-sword was one of the most specialized weapons that the Geralos used, and Rafian wanted to be comfortable fighting with and against it. For this he had rigged up a training module using some of the marines’ elite androids to spar against in order to improve. However, this particular android must have been fitted with a master AI, because Rafian could find no break in its moves or mistakes to exploit in order to get the better of it.

For two minutes (which seemed like a lifetime), the boy and the machine had clashed las-swords. The android parried his swing strongly to the side and swiped at Rafian’s exposed arm, slicing the skin into a burning gash—which would have taken his arm off if the las-sword had been powered up beyond training level. Without giving in to the pain or severity, Rafian had spun a back fist into the skull of the droid but lost his las-sword at the same time.

They had kept the fight going, with Rafian using unarmed martial arts to parry the machine’s swings and thrusts. After Rafian planted a side kick into its chest to knock it across the room, the android threw the sword. That was when Rafian pulled out a hidden pistol and angrily shot back to put it out of commission.

The fight had lasted all of five minutes total before the gunshots went off, but by the time it was over, Rafian was sore, tired, and regretful of having to resort to cheating in order to take out the android that was meant to train him. Perhaps setting it to kill mode was a bad idea, as the machine had fought him the way an angry, skilled Geralos would have if the situation were real. Even worse was the swipe that had nailed his now-numbed arm. Had that sword been powered up, he would now be without an arm—or worse. The machine was rigged to finish the job, and if he had been a second too slow, he would have been hit by the thrown blade and killed.

Rafian was no stranger to life-and-death situations, as that had been the narrative of his life, but to lose to a training exercise was not the most glorious end to a soldier’s life. That was not the way he wanted to go out, by a long shot! He opened the door to the training room as he wrapped his seared arm and slowly made his way back to his room. He ran into Vani, who looked as if she had seen a ghost when she saw him.

Almost instantly, she began yelling. “Are you all right? What the hell happened to your arm? OK, OK, infirmary, right now, Lieutenant! We need to get this looked at before it’s too late!”

* * *

For all the loud explosions, screaming from superior officers, and random panicky cries from fellow officers that Rafian had endured in his career as a military person, the screams of a baby in close proximity was in a category of its own. As he sat in the ship’s infirmary clutching a badly burnt forearm, Rafian tried his best to ignore the screaming boy who commanded an audience despite the objections of his young mother, who all but looked defeated. That young mother was none other than Kim, the girl he used to love, who had broken his heart with that same baby.

Fate has an odd way of forcing us to face the cruelest and most embarrassing situations sometimes. Having to sit in a room with this girl was one of life’s little jokes at his expense. The boy kept on screaming, and Kim produced a breast for him to feed on. She wrapped an attractive blue blanket around the act to keep him comfortable and herself less exposed to Rafian and the other five people present.

“Rafian?” She exclaimed, as if seeing him for the first time.

He looked up to regard her but was cut off by Vani, who had removed her earpieces just in time to hear it. “You don’t talk to him, cruta!” she said to Kim, while gripping Rafian as if to show ownership.

“Cruta? Who’s the cruta now, Vani? You over there acting as if you’re his rabid watchdog or something,” Kim spat back, clutching the boy close, eyes like hot coals searing into Vani’s as they squared off against each other. Vani made to get up, but Rafian reminded her quietly that Kim was a mother with child, and his flustered girlfriend sat back down and gestured rudely at her.

An awkward silence followed until Kim broke the air to continue. “You don’t have to like me, Vani. You don’t matter to me. I was just concerned about Rafian…Raf, can you talk to me?”

She seemed almost desperate in the way she said it, and it made him wonder where Marce was.

“I got burnt with a las-sword jousting,” he said finally, then felt uncomfortable under her stare, which would not break no matter how much he tried to avoid it.

“I heard what you did for Aurora,” she said to him as he looked over at Vani, who sat with her hands crossed, fists balled up and face cocked to the side with eyes shut so tight it looked as if she were about to explode.

“You’re like the ship’s biggest hero next to the commander or something. That is so freaking cool…”

She was cut off by the medic’s voice over the telecom calling her back to see the pediatrician. Vani was still coiled ready to strike, but Rafian kissed her on one of her closed eyelids, and it was enough to diffuse her fire and make her open her eyes.

She looked up at him as he placed one hand on her cheek and kissed her on the lips. The pair forgot where they were and kissed longingly as Kim gathered her things. Vani’s fists had opened to find their way to Rafian’s back in an embrace, and she smiled despite herself, forgetting what it was that she was upset about in the first place. The gesture was enough to distract Rafian from seeing Kim disappear into the back room, which had been his intent with showing sudden affection to Vani.

Rafian didn’t hate Kim, as she assumed he did; he merely hated what had happened between them. Kim was a reminder of the times when things were so unfairly negative for him, and her stare brought him back to the time when he was a green virgin intoxicated with the spell of her beauty, sex, and experience. Now he stood as a marine, one of Vestalia’s hopefuls, and he could not stand to remember how much of a loser he had been to think this girl was going to be his forever.

“Get her out of your head!” Vani said as she brought him back from the abyss of his mind. She held him close until he was summoned by the doctors to have the skin on his arm replaced and the scars removed.

* * *

Aurora had given up on her dreams of piloting after experiencing the worst of it before being rescued. She would visit her brother often and spend the weekends with him and Vani whenever the pair was not arguing or busy with errands, as they so often were. Although Rafian had been grounded for rescuing Aurora and disobeying orders, he was still responsible for gaining leadership knowledge. So he was made to shadow different commanding officers on random days, and when he wasn’t doing that, he was responsible for staying sharp via the virtual machines and holographic study.

Vani’s duties were more mundane. Being primed for navigation, she often pored over galactic maps projected so large that it took up most of their tiny apartment. Vani had grown fond of Aurora, but her jealousy of the closeness Aurora shared with Rafian was hard to put in check at times. The fights she would get into with Rafian would range from her being upset about Aurora hanging out too much to his aloof attitude about everything that seemed to concern her.

For Rafian, Vani was a drama queen. But he saw her as his drama queen. He would often call her a “spoiled spacer brat,” better suited for some tucked-away planet like Louine, with maids and manservants who would cater to her every whim while she was oblivious to the galactic war. Louine’s royalty was frowned upon by the galaxy because they stayed out of the wars that threatened even their own privileged existence. It was a nice insult to levy at Vani, but Rafian would say it only in those rare moments when he was angry, since he cared very much for his Vani no matter how crazy she would get.

Rafian and Vani were the talk of the ship as far as passionate, dramatic lovers go, but it was all her. If he had it his way, she would be as quiet as he was—quiet in her objections toward everything and quiet about her disagreements with him. She was so vocal and expressive that it made him love her when she was happy and hate her when she was upset. He never wanted to end up coddling her and bend to her will, as he feared she would get used to it. So he fought back when she was disagreeable and encouraged her when she was being cute. At the end of the day, he loved her immensely, but he was concerned about their future if she didn’t find a way to curb her rage.

It had been three months since he rescued Aurora, and he was told that he could finally fly his first mission whenever he was prepped and ready. But he was restless and mentally drained from both Vani and his superiors. So he decided to hop onto the next shuttle heading to Missio-tral. This was a large Vestalian cruiser that was primed for heavy space combat. Since the Helysian was part academy and floating barracks, missions were not carried out off of her. This prevented any retaliation against her from enemies who may follow the pilots home or spies who managed to see where she was cloaked and orbiting.

Rafian stepped off of the shuttle with a spring in his step, 3B suit primed and air supply full. He was armed to the teeth with the weapons he had chosen for this particular trip. On his person, as usual, was the gun he had cherished since childhood, a las-sword very much like the one that had almost taken his arm off, and a sniper rifle fitted with a stealth shield that he had stolen from the special reserves.

“Rafian VCA in the flesh,” a loud, deep voice stated from somewhere in front of him. He recognized the voice as that of Val, his old friend from his days as a cadet. Val had grown to be very mature—in terms of looks and speech—unlike the other boys, who still maintained boyish features and higher voices.

The pair grasped forearms in the customary greeting for Special Forces, and they took a corner to catch up on their individual happenings in life. After the first-class exercise that Rafian had undergone, Val was transferred to the front lines on the marine vessel Alpha Terracydes, where he was deployed into fighting on a small moon by the name of Cairn. Many had died on the moon, but Val had proved himself an ace at survival. He told Rafian of his tour of duty, and Rafian in turn told him of the Aurora mission.

“So with a badass like Val Tracker down there with a star gun and balls the size of planets, why would they need a half-witted spec-ops scrub like me to do a drop?” Raf jokingly asked.

But Val reassured him that the mission was indeed important and best suited for a soldier who could pull off a stunt like the one he had done on Geral as a cadet.

The friends spoke for an hour before they were summoned to be briefed on the mission. The man in charge was a short, scarred brute of a colonel who went by the nickname Rend and the official name of Colonel Cilas MEC. Cilas had a raspy voice that sounded like ball bearings inside a rotor that badly needed oil. The man was hard to understand, but Rafian was in awe at being in his presence.

The fact that Rend was in charge of a mission meant that it was not only important but that it was classified, high-level, and more than likely going to be something legendary that he would never be able to discuss. The muscular man spoke, and the entire room dared not breathe lest they miss an important detail about the mission at hand. Rend was a man of few words and wasn’t the type to repeat himself.

“Marines and elites, let me just congratulate you on being chosen for this mission. This duty that you are being asked to perform is one of great importance and one that will strike a critical blow against the disgusting Geralos and gain us much ground in retaking Vestalia and granting our people freedom.”

He continued to tell them of how honored they should feel for being selected and reminded them of their sworn secrecy in matters of military service, especially when it came to missions that involved him. Rend was not a man to be trifled with, so the soldiers swore on their names to keep the details classified.

He then brought up an older woman to give the pertinent mission details to the group. Her name was Hylga ATE, which she combined to make her call sign, Hellgate, a name she earned from singlehandedly destroying sixty Geralese spacecraft in dogfights during the Sixth Expanse. Hellgate, unlike Rend, was soft-spoken, but nobody dared mistake this for weakness or calm, as she was known for her ferocity and merciless flybys on multiple enemy cities, leaving nothing in her wake but fire and death. Hellgate had leveled her share of civilizations, and Rafian imagined her kill count being in the tens of thousands. He smiled slightly at the war heroine because she was one of the soldiers who had inspired him to seek flight as a career.

Hellgate explained the mission details, and Rafian blinked away his admiration in order to truly listen to what she was saying.

“It has been 183 days now since we have clashed with the Geralos over the moon of Meruda, whose rich resource of Io-89 they have coveted since they started aggressions with the United Worlds. Colonel Cilas and his troops have gained much ground in the last few months, after the Geralos commander Baiken fell from tripping a silent mine outside Unik5 some six or so months ago. The Gerals are in disarray, and it is due to their lack of leadership. So far, we have been able to take advantage of this panic state and destroy a number of their forward operations. We cannot afford to lose momentum now. In order to maintain this momentum, we have called upon you, the best of the best, to stage a hard push into the capital of Arisani, jewel of Unik5.”

The hard woman paused to look across the room, her eyes focused a bit to the area where Rafian was standing, and he felt as if she was speaking to him.

“We aim to take that capital by any means necessary, marines, so this mission is a ride-or-die operation. Once we have the capital, it will be very difficult for the Geralos to come and go, so their reinforcements, supplies, and ultimately their morale will deteriorate. With our success, we will turn the tides of this war, and the United Worlds will recognize Vestalian marines with the proper respect that we deserve.”

Hellgate spoke more on the specifics of the mission and the divisions that would carry it out. Rafian thought he would be there to run flybys on the enemy in Hellgate’s Nighthawk bombing squad, but he was chosen for recon instead and was hustled aboard the Shadow Raven en route to the moon of Meruda to be dropped on foot with Val and the other marines. They were to march under deadly fire upon the gates of Arisani and take her. He felt a knot in his stomach that was very much like the one that came about when he thought he would not escape the cylindrical prison of the resource ship with Aurora.

Rafian was made to don full marine armor, a blast helmet, and trek boots, so without thinking, he kept the 3B suit on and placed the armor over it. The company he was in was nicknamed the Twelfth, since eleven had gone before them on similar missions. He counted thirty soldiers in his unit, and they all seemed to know one another in some way.

“Time to cash in that death sentence we all signed up for, eh, boys?” a freckled, red-headed marine with a permanent grin on his face shouted as the men and women strapped themselves into their cryogenic chambers in preparation for the jump to light speed. He was met with laughter and a few similar jokes, but the mood was still forlorn, and Rafian hated the way it all felt. The wait after being strapped into cryo seemed to last forever, but in actuality it was only half an hour when the glass doors shut around each one of them, encasing them within individual egg-shaped pods and a cold, thick, white mist coalesced about them, freezing their vitals and placing them into stasis, which would allow them to survive faster-than-light travel. The enormous Shadow Raven lifted up out of the mission central dock and blasted instantly into light speed, only to appear moments later above the war-torn moon of Meruda.

When the cryo chambers had thawed out, the doors opened up to allow the soldiers to mobilize. Rafian realized that one of his hands had not been thawed and panicked at the sight of his paralyzed fingers and the grim claw that they formed.

“One second, Lieutenant!” a pretty, young corporal announced as she rushed over. She shoved a six-inch needle into his arm to thaw it instantly. Rafian thanked her and got down on the deck to do his ritual of push-ups and sit-ups, which would allow his body to shake off the strange sensation he felt all over. All of the marines had their post-cryo rituals, and as the ship moved to break orbit and drop them off, they all eventually found the deployment bench located behind the pilot’s cockpit and strapped themselves into it.

The moon of Meruda had gravity close to what the soldiers would consider normal but it had an unfriendly, nonoxygen atmosphere, making it a mandatory helmet-and-suit affair for air breathers. Rafian thought it was pretty brazen of them to attempt a hostile takeover of a moon that circled the enemy’s planet, but he was excited for the mission and was convinced that there was no other place that he’d rather be.

The ship cruised near the surface, and the countdown for them to deploy started. By the time it had reached thirty-one and then thirty seconds, a ranged missile crashed into the side of the ship, and the Night Raven no longer had the desire to stay airborne. They were falling fast, and the pilot did his best to level her to the ground as Rafian and the others took emergency measures and waited for the collision. The front of the Teradac-11 hit a large rock, killing the pilot instantly as they slid into the surface of the moon on landing, and the momentum carried them forward a few hundred yards. There was gunfire everywhere as the sounds of the war became real to them, and as a unit, they exited the back hatch of the downed vessel and primed their weapons for the attack.

“STAY LOW AND HUG THE CLIFFS!” a man with a captain’s shield on his lapel was yelling back at them as laser fire and kinetic bullets rained down on them from all angles. Rafian saw four soldiers go down from gunshots, and the rest of the company huddled close to one another and ran along the face of a raised crater that provided some cover from the onslaught of bullets. Rafian thought the position they were in was simply stupid, but the brave marines pushed through it, returning fire as they could until there were only twenty left, hunkered down into a fissure that kept them safe from the fire and allowed them to regroup and catch their breath.

Meruda was a desert moon, and the sand ranged from white to a graphite gray. Above them, a blazing star kept the surface bright like a spotlight shining down through the inky expanse of space. The sky appeared nightmarish, all red clouds with black splotches, broken only by the bright orange star, which gave the planet a strange crimson tinge.

“VCA get to a vantage point!” the captain commanded as an out-of-breath Rafian looked over the other marines. It was his cue to take action, and as commanded, he scurried back along the fissure on his elbows and knees until he could see a large dune behind the area where the ship had crashed. Triggering the cloaking device on his arm, Rafian climbed out of the fissure, and the other marines began lobbing bombs and gunfire in order to draw the Geralos’ attention off of the invisible sniper who was trying to flank them.

Rafian made it to the dune with a minute to spare on invisibility, but he could hear the sound of a gun above him at the apex of the dune and knew that a Geralos was already using it for cover. He pulled out the las-sword, happy to finally put it to good use, and began climbing the dune, angling in a way that his tracks would not clue in anyone watching of his presence. He reached the gunman as soon as the cloak wore off and ignited the las-sword to maximum power as he swung it with all of his strength into the shoulder of the Geralos.

The sound that resulted from his chop was not unlike some fruit being thrown against a wall. The creature’s torso split into a seared gash of spurting blood as it died silently and unaware, just as Rafian had planned. The soldiers below were still firing at one another, and Rafian dug himself into the sand beneath the bloody body and commandeered his rifle. His thought was to camouflage himself from the other Geralos soldiers who would look his way for retaliation. He spared no time in picking off the other snipers who were shooting down into the ravine carelessly, thinking themselves safe from one like him. He killed five, and the infantry troops who were pushing on the fissure to flush out his comrades were starting to drop as he began plugging away at them once their snipers were gone, leaving them no cover.

The marines rallied, and before long, the ravine was secured. The Geralos who survived were retreating to another point, but within two hours, the Vestalian military had set up an outpost at the crash zone and was able to check in with their command.

Rafian wondered how Val had dealt with situations such as this one for as long as he did without dying, and it made him respect the hardiness of his friend even more. He sighed in relief but stayed stationary in case any Geralos were dug in and waiting for him to slip. He slowly scanned the battlefield for signs, but nothing was moving. He wanted to get up and run to the rest of the troops but something in the back of his mind told him to stay put.

He thought of his training, the basics, where they had to learn how to use old Vestalian kinetic guns to snipe and how much he had hated it. Laser-guided sniping was the true art, he thought. The margin of error decreased, but now it became like a game of billiards, poker, or chess—you had to plan your moves way ahead, and that separated the first-rate snipers from the scrubs. He was no scrub, and he knew patience—the long hours and days in punishment hanging from the rafters of the ship as a younger teen had taught him how to silence the weakness of his mind during times of solitude. There was only room for strength and focus, and here he lay, waiting in earnest for whatever the Geralos had left behind to make its move.

“What’s your situation, Lieutenant?” the captain asked, speaking through the nano-com, which sent signals into Rafian’s mind. His brain translated the signals into speech, keeping it silent to anyone within their vicinity. “IHO,” Rafian replied.

“Roger that, VCA. Get home before 0800 hours if you can.”

IHO was the code for Instinctual Hold-Out. It was a soldier’s way of saying, “Trust me, I think something’s up.” Rafian did not want to say that he thought a sniper was playing possum because the captain would have answered by commanding his troops to level all of the dunes with artillery. A smart sniper would survive the noisy onslaught, and a few more marines would end up dead within the hour. The only answer to a sniper was another sniper, and Rafian hoped that he would see the enemy before the enemy spotted him. The dead Geralos who lay on top of him was heavy and beginning to stink, and the dusty dune sand was making an awful noise against his helmet as a steady wind blew from the east. Why was there wind?

He began to wonder if something had happened off in the distance, but his concentration snapped back into focus when he saw the dark shape come into view and then duck behind a rock instantly. The Geralos was waiting out his cloaking device very much as Rafian would but had made the mistake of being seen before he reached that rock. Rafian spotted him about 150 yards from the camp where the marines were now setting up and felt the sense of urgency come over him to stop the progress. He had to flush that Geralos out into the open to make his shot because the cloak would allow him to get close to their camp and deploy a bomb or carry out whatever assassination attempt he had been assigned.

Rafian had been waiting on that dune for four hours before the shape appeared, and his squad did not realize how lucky they were that he had. The Geralos he spotted held a microwaved Lafarok detonator and intended on lobbing it into the camp, wiping out every marine who was stationed there. The detonator had been devastating against the Vestalians since the war had started, and due to the lack of sophisticated trackers to catch cloaked insurgents sneaking into camp, the chance of being blown to bits by an invisible enemy was very real. Rafian’s mind was racing for an answer. It normally took five minutes for a cloaking device to recharge, and then it would keep you invisible for another five. He would have to make his kill shot before that Geralos could move, but the large rock he was hiding behind was enough to keep Rafian blind from getting the shot.

He thought about jumping from the dune and running to the soldier to kill him with his sword, but the distance was too great, and while he was pretty fast on his feet, he was not going to make it off of a dune and cover 150 yards in an instant.

There were two minutes left until the cloak would be active, and Rafian desperately contacted his captain over nano to ask for some fire to be leveled at the rock. The request was met almost instantly, and Val Tracker was the one to do it. Val walked out to the center of the camp with a heavy star gun strapped to his waist and planted himself into the ground, and the loud rotary motor of the gun began to spin as he laid out kinetic gun fire in waves upon the area of the rock that Rafian had signaled. The Geralos ran out from the rear to seek cover, and Rafian planted a plasma round into his neck as soon as he popped out. Through the scope, Rafian could see the detonator on the ground where it fell, and he shot it so that it detonated, leaving a massive crater in the moon’s surface. He hoped that the other Geralos would assume the mission was successful and grant them some respite for a time.

Either way, the threat had been removed, and he could finally crawl from beneath the ripe body of the dead sniper and rejoin his fellow marines.

Memory 07 | Violent Vani

The fighting was intense on Meruda as the marines moved towards the capital as, commissioned by Lady Hellgate. After the rough landing and a few brilliant displays of command by Captain Relled ZEK and young Rafian VCA, the marines finally got a break. One of the brave men of the Eighteenth had taken out the communications tower at the main forward outpost of Arisani, and that allowed Hellgate’s squadron of Nighthawks to bring air-to-surface warfare on the Geralos.

Rafian had lost track of time, but it had been three weeks of fighting for him. Fifty-three confirmed kills and one nagging injury from a kinetic shot that grazed his helmet when an enemy sniper found his position. The shot rattled his head a bit, and he found himself getting on-and-off headaches. The soldiers were all brave, and while a few of them could use a bit of charm school, he could not ask for a better team to watch his back in a time of aggression.

The squad had come up to a small lake on the outskirts of Copl, a city a few miles outside of Arisani. The Nighthawks had done a number on the buildings, but there were still snipers and hardcore infantrymen dug in deep. The marines were asked to take the building and secure it for high command to use as a final stage for the takeover of the main city. The soldiers took to the water and began wading in on the city as the starry sky lent enough illumination to give the situation an eerie ambience. They had barely made it halfway across when gunfire started ripping into the water around them like raindrops. A few men took shots, and the medics rushed them into stasis suits to pull them out of the water onto the near shore.

Rafian swam behind a rock and ducked for cover along with some of the other men. It was impossible to see where the shots were coming from, as the ruined building walls remained tall and mysterious in the distance, obscuring whatever and whoever was there firing on them. Val Tracker took to an area behind what seemed like a downed vessel and began spraying the buildings with his kinetic star gun. His return fire slowed the enemy’s barrage enough for his fellow marines to keep pushing forward, and Rafian swam over to his friend and initiated his invisible cloak so that he could observe the enemy without any distractions.

His night vision revealed numerous shapes moving within the buildings, and he realized that there would be quite a fight if ever they made it to the shore and engaged the attackers. Relled ZEK kept his men moving forward, an energy shield protecting him as he huddled them close to him and advanced on the shore. Val’s gun barked like a large dog hitting anyone careless enough to be in its crosshairs, and Rafian stood at his hip picking off the clueless Geralos who were not under cover.

The soldiers stormed the beach, and the fight became extra violent. Two men were disintegrated by scrape bombs, and a Nighthawk was shot from midair as it lagged behind its commander on a flyby called in by ZEK.

When Val and Rafian made it up to where the others were, the wild gunfire from the Geralos had gone silent, and the only shots were some unfortunate marines being picked off by their snipers. The open gunfire barrage to keep them from crossing had now become guerilla warfare under the cover of ruined buildings, with the distant stars as their only light. The moon’s rotation was relatively fast and gave them eight hour days of scorching, hot light. But it was dusk when they were commanded to take the shore, and they all knew it was to give command the luxury of arriving during the day to take the reins and move on Arisani.

“Raf, come with me,” Val whispered, and he retracted and shouldered his heavy weapon before pulling out a CD-Pistol.

“Just us?”

“Just us. Captain wants us to play recon.”

Rafian took out his combat knife and a pair of acid knuckles, and then he moved the las-sword from his back to position it on his hip. They stayed low and moved silently around to the side of the city in hopes of gaining entrance to the west. Captain ZEK had a few mechanical cannons assembled and fitted near the entrance to give the illusion of troops providing covering fire as the pair of soldiers moved as fast as they could to get around the wall. Val was not as fast as Rafian, but he stayed at his back with his eyes aware.

When they arrived at a busted-out hole in the wall at the west of the city, a Geralos soldier noticed some movement and popped out with his gun drawn, only to have his hands cut off and then his head by the rhythmic humming of Rafian’s blade moving like lightning in the night.

“Nice weapon you got there!” Val whispered with a smile.

Rafian replied, “This is their technology. If we come across another one, it’s yours.”

Val nodded in approval.

They took out three more men before making the ascent to the mayoral building, which was their mission. Rafian radioed Captain ZEK to begin the approach. Val and Rafian reached the balcony of the large mayoral building, which was a mixture of Vestalian and Geralese architecture stuck within an assortment of lower buildings, giving it the appearance of power that the architects desired.

Val sat with his back to the south-facing wall, pistol drawn and eyes and ears ready. Rafian was cloaked and had his rifle on a tripod as he lay prone on the thin wall of the balcony, looking south towards his incoming squad. Every Geralos who tried to engage ZEK and company had a shot coming from the rear.

“These guys must really be in a panic!” he whispered to Val. “This is basic-level stuff, bro. You gotta watch your flank.”

He was wondering at the general ease with which they had taken the city, but he was right about the panic, as the lizards mostly retreated to the main city to make their last stand against the invaders who were intent on taking their moon. Along with Rafian’s crew and the pilots of the Nighthawk, Colonel Rend had coordinated eight drops around the city at various positions. His thought was to move the eight squadrons into the center simultaneously and disallow the Geralos any chance of reinforcements or escape.

Their retreat to the capital was exactly as planned, and by the time the eight made it there, they would surround the capital and have Hellgate airborne, dropping enough biological payload onto the city that nothing would survive long enough to hold out in a fight. Now with their mission looking like a success, they would be primed and ready for the final stage, and maybe, just maybe, they could be done with this trip.

Rellos ZEK took to the stairs and walked up with two other marines, Connor YEM and Vestalia LAU—a beautiful female soldier who stuck out more so for her name reflecting that of their home world than her pretty face and sultry voice. The soldiers greeted Rafian and Val and then focused on the door to what would be the mayor’s room. ZEK used hand gestures to let them know that the other soldiers were scraping the city and that he intended to take the room cautiously, in case there were Geralos waiting inside. The five marines pulled out their handguns and then stood to either side of the door as Connor rigged a short to its mechanical faceplate and waited for ZEK’s signal. The captain nodded once, and the door flew open with a jolt; Val then threw in a flash grenade to temporarily blind anyone inside, and Rafian and Vestalia rushed in with pistols cocked and ready.

There were four occupants in the room reeling back from the grenade’s light, and Rafian shot one in the face and slid to the ground as another began firing recklessly in their direction. Vestalia caught the worst of it as three bullets hit her in the torso, and she screamed in pain, trying desperately to cover the holes in her suit. ZEK was inside as soon as Vestalia went down, and his shotgun plastered the remaining three Geralos against the wall in an instant. Connor mounted Vestalia to tape her suit where she had been shot; the atmosphere of the moon was full of things that didn’t do well with human flesh, and while the bullets were doing enough damage to the beauty, the parasites and toxins would kill her if they were permitted too much time with exposure.

Connor and Val hoisted the girl up on the table and brought out a stasis suit to freeze her vitals until they were able to bring her home and patch her up properly. Rafian held her hand as they did their work, and through her mask he could see the strength in her eyes as she squeezed his hand tight until the stasis had frozen her solid.

“Tough bird, that one,” Connor said to no one in particular.

“In a way, her name fits her perfectly—a tough girl who refuses to die. That’s our planet, isn’t it? And just like Vee here, we have to make these lizard crutas pay for what they’ve done to her.”

Connor was always poetic, and Rafian nodded at ZEK, who looked as if he was shouldering the guilt for what had just happened to Vestalia. Rafian placed his hand on his captain’s shoulders to reassure him and spoke freely, disregarding protocol.

“First-class shooting there, Cap,” he said to the man whom he had grown to respect over the course of their stay on Meruda.

“Right back at you, son. Hell of a head shot on that entrance.”

“Best place to put it, sir,” Rafian replied, and they both nodded in unison, allowing the credit to settle in to calm the adrenaline that had reached a boiling point during the firefight.

The sun was beginning to come up over the city of Copl, and the soldiers secured its perimeter and set up camp. The lucky ones who were allowed to sleep bunked themselves into old Geralese homes and slept.

Rafian thought of Vestalia’s pretty face looking up at him with so much courage after she had been wounded, and his mind drifted to Vani and what emotions would come about if that were to ever happen to her. It bothered him that he felt nothing, but when he thought of how her family would miss her if ever she died, it brought a weary sort of sadness to him that made him blink away any fearful thoughts. He loved Vani and planned to marry her as soon as they were given the go-ahead by command, but he wondered if he loved her out of duty and obligation, or if he was in love with her. The fact that he felt nothing at the thought of her being hurt like Vestalia bothered him, since he did feel anger at his fellow soldier being wounded.

Was it too abstract a thought to replace her with the woman in his life? Was this the reason for the numb feelings now? He couldn’t understand it, but he missed his girl despite it all, and he wanted to taste her plump lips in a kiss more than anything else in the universe.

“Just another stupid city and a couple of smart moves before I can go home to those lips,” he thought, and then he smiled at the thought despite himself. He allowed his mind to wander off into the pleasures of actually bathing and eating solid foods. He had been living like a dirty worm since they dropped on Meruda, and there had been no pause to allow them to set up a proper camp that would let them remove their suits and clean their unmentionables.

“Just one more mission,” he thought. “One more mission, and I can go home to her.”

Val came over to where Rafian sat in deep thought and plopped down across from him to begin talking. “Let me guess, marine. You’re probably thinking of that pretty girlfriend of yours.”

Rafian had to smile at the accusation.

“Is it that obvious?” he asked, but Val didn’t return the smile as Rafian assumed he would.

“Well, I know you weren’t thinking of her while fighting these things, but check your thoughts when you do. The lizards have consumed enough pureblood Vestalian women that some have been gifted with the ability to read us and put thoughts into our heads. It happened to me once when I sat on my gun thinking of Chelle, and some recon spucha bastard gave me visions of her being tortured and killed. I wondered where the hell that level of thought came from. I thought it was the war, y’know, screwing with me.”

Rafian was intrigued and horrified at the same time.

“So these guys have us outmanned and outgunned, and they can put thoughts into our heads now?” he asked Val, but not in a way that Val could answer. “How exactly are we even winning on this moon with those odds?” Rafian mused.

Val gave a mocking laugh, injected a ration bar into his mask, and then sat back chewing for a while, as if the question was worth considering.

“Who knows, Raf. Maybe they’re letting us win for some greater strategy. But remember what I told you, in case you’re ever alone with one of them. You should keep Vani and her Memory off of the battlefield, where she’s safe.”

Rafian nodded and thanked his friend. Val then went on to make fun of him for having a thing for bad girls, a joke that apparently had made its rounds to Missio-tral from all the friends who knew him.

“Vani’s not a bad girl, Val. What has she done to anyone besides be annoying?”

Val looked genuinely surprised. “What? Do you not know why they made her a button-pushing navigator instead of leaving her on the admiral path that she was pursuing?”

Rafian shook his head, sadly awaiting what he assumed would be disappointing news.

“Well, your woman punched out the cadet commander after they had words one night, and the woman was carted out to receive multiple zaps to her face to keep her pretty. I’m surprised you didn’t hear about this. Look at you, thinking that you had a gentle wildflower all this time. It got bad, man. You must’ve been on a mission or something, but princess had to call mommy and daddy to bail her out, as the commander was a step away from shooting her out of an airlock for assaulting an officer. Her parents are powerful people so she got away with it, but you need to watch your back with Vani Narcila. That girl has a temper on her!”

Rafian chuckled. “She didn’t tell me about any of this when I got back with Aurora.”

“See? You and bad girls, man! First with Kim the Terrible, and now with Violent Vani. Hell, if you and Vani don’t work out, you can holler at Rueche SYN, the girl who tried to blow up the ship after she failed out of Special Operations.”

“Ha!” Rafian looked at Val and smiled. “What about Vestalia? Is she a bad girl?” he asked, still thinking of her beautiful face grimacing from the stasis.

Val got serious and made to get to his feet as he answered. “You’re not her type, Raf. Trust me, Vani would get her before you would. Either way, I’m gonna go take advantage of this chance to sleep, buddy. If I were you, I would do the same.”

Memory 08 | Arisani

The hot steam of the pressurized cleaning chamber felt good on Rafian’s skin as he scrubbed the sweat and grime that had accumulated on his body all those days he was in uniform. He had forgotten to remove the skin-tight 3B suit when they had forced him to put on his blues, and it was actually painful to remove. Something had changed with his body, and he couldn’t tell if he had been shot unknowingly and the atmosphere had seeped in, or if it was purely mental trauma from everything that had occurred up until now. He couldn’t tell how long he had been in thought when he collapsed, but the people who were waiting in line to use the chamber saw it happen, and he was rushed to a building that the field medics had converted into something of a makeshift hospital to treat all of the wounded marines.

When Rafian opened his eyes, he was strapped to a desk with wires running from nodes attached to areas of his naked body. He felt vulnerable and wondered why they hadn’t bothered to give him some underwear before tying him down to the cold hard desk to work on him.

“Am I all right?” he asked the doctor, who was an older man he had never seen before. Rafian thought that he was odd looking, because the military ships had nobody that looked like him. He was neither muscular nor military looking in the least, and his pallid face had the scars of someone who had come face to face with a detonator.

He noticed that the equipment around him had not been brought with them on their march through hell to take the city. The strangeness of it all and the man’s odd appearance made Rafian think that the doctor may have been flown in, just like the rest of the equipment, which meant that things were pretty bad for their tiny group.

“How long have I been in stasis?” Rafian asked, but the man was ignoring him, typing away at a panel and looking over notes the entire time.

“You’ve been here a week,” he finally replied, and then shifted his attention to another machine.

“How long were you in that 3B suit?” the doctor asked Rafian as he checked the computer rapidly, paging through the vitals on the screen.

“A little over a month, I think.”

He felt as if he had run a marathon, because his breathing seemed to get increasingly harder.

“Son, have they sat you soldiers down and explained to you what the 3B suit is and why you should use it sparingly?”

“Sure they have, doc, but that was a long time ago for me. We have always worn these suits—hell, for a time, they were a fashion statement on the base.” And he smiled at the Memory.

The doctor turned around with a serious look on his face and then gave Rafian some bad news. “Lieutenant, the 3B suit is a deep-space Zyrotech experiment that got pushed ahead way before it should have. It was due to the war that we went ahead and bypassed protocol to allow it, but this was contingent on the user knowing and understanding the risks. When you put on your marine armor, the suit should have been removed first. The suit is an alien technology that adapts to your environment and to the needs of the life-form wearing it. What has happened to you is, your body has adapted to the suit and vice versa. So when you took it off, your vitals panicked, and they are now trying to fix whatever it is that they assume is missing…even though you technically are healthy.”

The doctor’s lecture was the last thing that Rafian wanted to hear, as he had welcomed the thought of finishing the entire mission whole. He asked if he could just wear the suit temporarily to rejoin his comrades, but the doctor wasn’t trying to hear it. He sedated Rafian in order to prevent him from leaving—as most soldiers tended to do when told they were unable to fight—and then began working on fixing the damage the 3B suit had done. It took another week before Rafian was released and able to move around on his own without issues.

He found out that the legendary Hellgate had gotten killed. He asked if she was flying when it happened but was told that it was at her camp that the war maiden had met her demise. Of all the bad news throughout the war, this was the one that finally got to Rafian, and he struggled with his emotions and whether or not it was appropriate. Colonel Rend was using Hellgate as the mission codename for taking Arisani, and he came to the camp to give Relled ZEK the objectives before leaving with three soldiers for recon.

“That was my bloody call!” Rafian muttered under his breath as a young girl by the name of Levoria DRE told him everything he had missed while in recovery.

“So how do you feel, Lieutenant?” the young girl asked. She couldn’t be any older than fifteen and was only on the mission because her teacher (Wei Venthai), an expert anthropologist, died from a bullet upon deployment. Levoria was very knowledgeable about the geography of Meruda, so they sent for her immediately to aid in the affairs of the takeover.

“You are to stay here until you’re summoned,” she reminded him, as if to squelch any hope he may have had of being allowed to grab his gear and run after the squadron. It wasn’t as if he could, since his 3B suit was now worthless and had been sent back to Missio-tral for salvage. Rafian was not trained as an infantry grunt. If he were to try to leave, the heavy armor and automatic weapons would only serve to annoy him, since they were not the tools of war the academy had trained him to use.

“You know, Levoria, this above all else is worse than anything I’ve had to deal with since coming to this godforsaken moon!” Rafian yelled into the air.

But Levoria just shook her head and retrieved a scan pad. “We’re due for a storm any day now,” she said quietly, sitting with her legs crossed and fingers poking and sliding rapidly on the surface of the pad.

“Sounds about right,” Rafian responded, sounding defeated. “I’m gonna take a jog and do some exercise…if I may have my leave?”

“You can go, Raf, but I need your word as a starfighter that you will not do something stupid like traveling to Arisani city.”

A starfighter’s oath was a guaranteed thing from a space marine like Rafian. During the course of training, drilling, and preparing for death, the boys and girls of the various bases were made to respect the oath as sacred above everything else. They were told that the oath was the one thing they could rely on when the universe went to hell and that breaking it would make a man or woman into the worst kind of soldier ever.

“I swear it!” Rafian said as he saluted her and exited.

There were many injured warriors in the city now turned hospital where Rafian jogged. He saw many other restless marines playing games, priming weapons, and wrestling one another. He even came across a couple of older women pretending to tan themselves under the Merudian sun. Of course it was a joke, being that a skin-colored texture on a 3B suit fitted with a mask was truly nothing like the half-naked women on Vestalian beaches. The whole spectacle reminded him of the pathetic facade that was a soldier’s vacation. He recalled how philosophical he had been when they gave him leave after rescuing Aurora. He sat with Vani on the holographic beaches of Medine in old Vestalia, pretending they weren’t locked into a machine, allowing it to fool their brains that they were elsewhere. This was the reality he was supposed to have as a soldier of Vestalia, but he couldn’t accept that this was it for them.

“We are going to free Vestalia or die trying,” he said to himself out loud as he ran. His respiratory system was well again, and it felt good to breathe. After eight miles of rotations around the hospital-city-camp and a few brief moments when he ran into familiar faces and was made to stop to say hi, Rafian retired to a house that had been gutted for holo-vid entertainment and treated himself to the illusion of swimming in the oceans of his old world.

A day later, Rafian got the news that Colonel Rend had taken the city. He also heard that Val Tracker was with him, and that made him proud and happy for the success of his friend. It was all bittersweet because he wanted to be there. But he was happy for the memories that stayed with him of picking off all the Geralos with his rifle. What he wouldn’t have done to see the look on those lizards’ faces when Vestalian black uniforms emerged from every point on the compass, laying down deadly fire in their direction.

He imagined it was glorious, and Rend had delivered one of his famous prebattle speeches.

Rafian was sitting at a table eating by himself with his mask off. The disappointment he felt in himself for the suit situation was slowly eating him alive. This tour was his opportunity to finally take it to the Geralos after years of training, simulation, and reminders that he had no parents because of them. It was his first mission, and what was he doing? Rotting away at a table eating hard rations mask-less, a luxury afforded only to those lucky enough to be in their bubble-camp, with the Phalene pipes providing a safe atmosphere. Val and company were stomping lizard skulls, taking the city for humanity, and actually finishing the mission.

“You’re lucky to be alive!” Levoria had reminded him. She watched over him like his personal guard, and he was trying to figure out whether she had been hired for this duty to keep him out of trouble or as an excuse to get her out of the fighting. Levoria DRE was more civilian than soldier, as her primary study had been maps, civilizations, and weather since her tenth birthday. Though she was very introverted and odd at times, he appreciated her company and the fact that she never flipped out the way his girlfriend did.

Vani was extremely worried about Rafian, and he was only allowed to speak to her once every other day for a short period of time. Their communication was normally:

“Hi, how are you…?”

“Good to hear….”

“Stay safe!”

“Love you…”

He knew he was lucky to be allowed even that, as the marine brass was extremely cautious about sending signals that could be picked up by the enemy. For all the disappointment he felt about missing the final phase of the war, he was extremely lonely and wanted to see Vani soon.

A few days after the taking of Arisani, vessels began landing on the moon to replace troops, and a Veralyn medical cruiser was there to take the wounded back to their respective ships for treatment. Rafian was taken to the Helysian, where he was presented with a Platina panther’s skull for bravery in reconnaissance affairs.

It was an extremely high honor, and it was accompanied by a letter written by Hellgate herself, who had learned of his suit incident and hurriedly typed and sent in recommendations for him to receive the skull, in the event he didn’t make it. The letter was on rare Louinian clover paper and the ink was laced with stardust—very expensive. It was the written words, however, that held the true value of the award for Rafian, because it was a personal letter to him from his military hero. The letter read:

Lieutenant Rafian VCA, though we never met formally, I have followed your rise on the vessel Helysian and want to say that I admire your spirit. It is men like you who will win this war for us, and if the fates allow you to live past this night, I hope to fly wing to wing with you on the take back of Vestalia. Get well, soldier, and keep your head above water and your finger firmly ready to squeeze. For we are going to free Vestalia, or we will die trying.

— Lt. Col. Helga ATE

The letter forced tears from Rafian’s painfully dry eyes, but he was still in his mask and suit, so he let them flow freely in the Vestalian custom of opening one’s heart to the dead.

“I will always fly wing to wing with you, Hellgate,” he muttered silently under his breath, and removed his helmet in a way as to allow his sleeve to wipe his face to remove the tears. Choking it all back was a task, but Rafian did so as he faced his commanders, saluted, and thanked them for the honor.

Vani was in the room waiting for him when he arrived. She ran to the door, and as she embraced him tightly, her chin dug painfully into his shoulder. The debrief from the mission had taken a toll on him. His commanding officers had queried him on every single detail about the mission and what had occurred, and they did not allow him to skip anything. He ran into Vestalia, who managed to survive her wounds and was decorated with a Platina tiger skull, the infantry version of his award.

Platina was a rare ore that was dug up from the destroyed world of Xaio-9, so it was used in jewelry and major decoration for the military. Its color was a shiny red that had a similarity to the Vestalian gem garnet, but like all things from Xaio-9, the surface of the metal held tiny starlike imperfections that glittered on and off.

Rafian expected that if Vestalia survived the affair and they were reunited, it would be a warm greeting of embraced exchanges and things that would probably make Vani very upset. Their greeting, however, was something formal and awkward, and Rafian managed to say, “I’m glad you made it out, Tali,” before feeling stupid for referring to her with a pet name that she had never given him permission to use. Her reaction was mysterious to him as she nodded and tilted her face slightly to look at him over her nose. But he realized it was her way of stifling a dimple-filled blush, so he knew she approved of his calling her Tali. The girl was beautiful and she was tough, so he reverted back to the shy stowaway he had been when he first entered the Helysian. This was not the way he wanted their reunion to be, but she kept moving to run to her family, and he wanted nothing but to run away from her as fast as he could.

Aurora SYN came by the apartment to see her brother, and he didn’t mind telling her the story of his week of boredom in the city of Copl—since everything else about his adventure was classified.

“I can’t believe we took Arisani!” Aurora exclaimed after he had finished talking.

Vani was next to her, beaming with a similar excitement. “Do you know what this means, Rafi?” Vani asked as she clasped his hand inside hers. The trio was on the bed, and Rafian was inclined, looking up at the ceiling as they spoke. Vani had her legs across his torso with her back against the wall, and Aurora lay next to him with her right hand serving as a brace for her head.

“Well, I assume it means that sooner rather than later, General Ara is going to send his comets of doom to Vestalia to start a decades-long war to win her back before she gets terraformed,” he said.

“Why must you be so negative about it?” Vani pouted, and Aurora laughed at her the way she always did whenever Vani would make a funny face.

“I swear, Vani, you could be a holo-actress, as you are so funny! You’re as pretty as those girls, and you have loads more personality!” Aurora declared.

Vani, who always liked to be reminded of how beautiful and talented she was, ate it up with a smile. Things seemed to have cooled off between the two girls in his absence, and he noticed it almost instantly when Aurora came in and Vani regarded her in a familial way, rather than with the coldness she had customarily exhibited before he left. Rafian was right about the command to take Vestalia, but that effort would come along only after the planet of Geral was given the same treatment that their home world had suffered. General Ara was a man with a hardwired code for revenge against those who had slighted him. As such, it would only be a short time before the war on Geral was underway.

That night Rafian slept like a rock. It was the first real sleep he had had in months, and he dreamt of Vestalia the way it had been described to him before the Geralese invasion. He dreamt of walking her busy streets hand in hand with Vani, breathing air that was natural to their planet and not manufactured from a machine made to sustain human life. He wasn’t sure how long he was out, but it didn’t matter with a dream like his occupying his time. When he awoke, he was no longer in the plush apartment of a Vestalian city but a tiny military apartment, on a lumpy, metal-based bed with a beautiful young woman nestled in his arms, sleeping soundly as if there were not a worry in the universe as long as he was there.

“We are going to free Vestalia, or we are going to die trying,” he muttered, and as he watched Vani sleep, he realized that for the first time, he actually believed it.

Memory 09 | Fall Out

At eighteen years of age, Captain Rafian VCA had twenty-three missions under his belt, over 240 certified kills via dogfights, and his face on a plaque in the Hall of Honor aboard the Helysian. He had done drops on Geral, recon in the seventh quadrant of Finian space, and helped retake Arisani when she was assaulted by Geralese Special Forces a year back. He was what the marines referred to as a war dog, because he had a sixth sense for danger and an eye for strategy that went beyond his years. Many soldiers from other ships sought him out for counsel, and his name had become somewhat of a legend within the ranks of the Vestalian military.

Vani, who had taken Aurora’s praise seriously, began acting in small holo movies during her off-hours. It made her stressed out and tired all of the time, and she and Rafian would argue constantly because of it. Eventually, Rafian grew tired of the torrid situation between them, and when clearance came down from the commander for him to marry her; he locked it away in his bunk safe and never told her he had received it. After a while, he began sleeping in his ship or in the bunk beds of the barracks just to stay away from her. Vani was one of the sweetest girls he knew when she was happy, but it was her bad times that became unbearable, and he came to the silent conclusion that they had gone as far on their journey as they could.

To clear his mind—and also as therapy after missions—Rafian began a routine of scouring, shining, and running maintenance on his ship, the H1G8. It was a ritual that would take literally hours, and once it was completed, he would go home to Vani, kiss her goodnight, and crash on the floor from exhaustion. The tension between them was going on the second month, and she was beginning to realize that he wasn’t going to be the one to apologize and make up this time.

One day after he had spent time on his ship, she confronted him. “Am I that terrible that you can’t come home to me, Rafian?” she asked with as much effort as she could to mask the hurt and anger in her voice.

But he was not swayed by it in the least and stated most affirmatively, “Short answer is yes, Vee. You’re not the kind of stress a man needs to deal with after risking his life.”

She was about to retort, but he cut her off and continued. “For as long as we have been together, we should be inseparable like normal couples are—knowing each other, loving each other, and being open-minded to compromise. All you ever want to do is complain and make me feel bad for my career.”

Vani kept her mouth shut and nodded in agreement, then began to cry loudly. Unable to help himself, Rafian embraced her, and she sobbed into his shoulder for what felt like days.

“I think we need to take some time off from each other, Vee…just for a while, till the air clears a bit.”

Vani loosened her grip a bit on him but kept her face on his chest and spoke. “Ya…maybe we ought to do that.”

Vani hadn’t said anything to Rafian, but she had become extremely edgy with him after hearing the way the other women were talking about him and his body. He had grown to be a handsome, muscular young man, and his name carried more weight now than man his age could have ever imagined. Vani was even more beautiful, filling out in the right places, carrying herself like a goddess, and staying extremely feminine for her role in the holo-vid industry. However, being beautiful was not enough to slow her jealousy, and the admirable self-esteem she pretended to have that she displayed through her spicy tongue was no longer considered cute by her peers. She had become angry and nasty in their eyes, and Rafian received the worst of it as she punished him verbally for every pretty eye that batted itself at him from a distance.

Women were the last thing on Rafian’s mind as he became more and more obsessed with Vestalia and the opportunity to one day visit and bring the war to the Geralese invaders. Women were looking, but the young captain was always busy poring over info pads and holo recordings or seeking the counsel of older men. Once in a while, he would run into Kim, but after largely forgiving her for the past, he paid even less attention to her than before. For a time it was like this, and the lack of Vani on his arm made its rounds, and soon it was assumed that the young captain was single. Unfortunately for Rafian, the news of his temporary split with Vani reached the ears of those who had a personal interest in seeing them married, and he was summoned before the Minister of Military Affairs.

“Take a seat, young Rafian,” the minister commanded as soon as Rafian entered her office. It was a very interesting layout, this office of hers, as there were no angles like the apartments and offices of all the other military personnel onboard. The minister’s office had a circular layout with plush round chairs and a domed ceiling; even her desk was circular.

Rafian felt as though he had walked into a room that wasn’t onboard the ship. Even the minister was very different from the other crew members on the Helysian. She had what appeared to be a permanent smile on her face, flowing robes with little lights sparkling along its length, and a matching headdress that held a half-circle symbol at the top.

Rafian sat in the bubble chair that faced the desk and crossed his legs in anticipation of trouble. The minister walked past him, and her hand caressed his shoulder ever so gently, so as to let him know that she was friendly. She was a Meluvian woman, and her smooth olive complexion was broken only by the trademark freckles that Meluvians had around their eyes and nose area. She had straight white teeth, light-gray pupils (another Meluvian trait), and dark-green hair. By human standards, she was beautiful, and it made Rafian a bit uncomfortable knowing that his answers would probably be influenced by the fact that he wanted this woman as much as he did.

Meluvians were always used for interrogation and positions of judgment, due to the effect their aura had on others. A Meluvian prostitute would always be the busiest and best paid, and a Meluvian lawyer would be the one at trial to fear. These facts were the cause of his worry as to the nature of the meeting.

“Do you love Vani Narcila, Captain?” the minister asked as she walked to the front of her desk and leaned back against it. Bracing herself with hands on top of the desk, the minister pushed herself up and sat on the desk facing him.

The first thought in Rafian’s mind was that she was sitting a bit too close to him for comfort, as he noticed that he could almost see past her robes. He snapped to attention, not allowing his eyes to wander, knowing she would notice immediately. He concentrated his gaze at a painting of the Meluvian landscape that rested above her desk in an alcove of the smooth, rounded wall.

“I love Vani. I suppose I love her—though I have never been so sure what love is, or if what we have is it, Minister.”

The woman laughed, an act that made her even more beautiful. Rafian became uncomfortable at the fact that he was sexually aroused.

“You can call me Suwle,” she said softly, and then she continued without taking her eyes off of him. “Your command is worried about the recent happenings between you and Miss Narcila. You were given clearance to marry her, and they like for their soldiers to be married at eighteen. As you can see, the fact that this has not yet happened, and the fact that many are saying you two are no longer together, has caused a bit of concern for them.”

Rafian nodded. “I am not planning on marrying Vani Narcila anytime soon, Suwle, or anyone else for that matter. I have found that women create more stress than they relieve—for me as an alliance soldier…no disrespect to a beautiful, respectable woman like you, ma’am.”

Suwle got up from the desk and walked behind it to sit down on her chair. Her scented perfume drifted into his nostrils, and he closed his eyes to take it all in. When he opened them, she was again staring at him. Suwle winked at Rafian as she began to type away at her computer.

“Young girls can be a handful when you are with the wrong one,” she said after a short pause, still typing. “I am writing a report stating that you are more classified as a playboy than the standard military marrying type. I do warn you that this will give you a bit of a reputation, but it will keep the brass out of your business when it comes to relationships. It will also forego your need to ask permission for marriage moving forward.”

Rafian thanked her several times, and then stood up to kiss her ring, which she graciously allowed. She stared at him curiously and then said, “It’s a pleasure meeting a young man who knows our customs. Know many Meluvians, do you?”

“I met a few women of Meluvia when I fought for the bridge of Traxis,” he answered, not realizing that his standing revealed the proof of his excitement in the front of his suit.

“So, do you know of any other customs we Meluvians have?” Suwle probed him further as she got up to walk around her desk.

“I do know quite a few…” Rafian continued, making sure to lock his eyes with her to show his intent. With that, Suwle Vale of Livinone Meluvia locked her office door to allow them an hour or two of privacy.

* * *

When Rafian fought on the bridge of Traxis, it was a mission to defend the access port leading to the Meluvian atmosphere tube. In order to protect the planet from invasion, the advanced race of Meluvians had constructed an atmospheric shield that had only one point of access. This access point was constantly bombarded by enemy attacks, and on one of these occasions, Rafian and several other pilots were deployed to be on guard for a week’s time. Upon driving off the invaders, the men and women were treated to a Meluvian feast, accommodations, and for Rafian and a few of the other men, company with Meluvian escorts. The experience had blown his mind and was part of the reason he began to fall out with Vani. Humans who experience sexual relations with Meluvians normally needed psychological help in order to get past the obsession that typically came with the Memory.

After the mission, Rafian did not develop an obsession with the women he slept with, but he had indulged heavily in everything they had to offer, and it made the time he had with Vani extremely underwhelming and disappointing. For Vani, on the other hand, he came back from Meluvia as a sexual ace. She wondered what might have brought on this change, and it resulted in her deeper jealousy of what she thought might be another woman onboard teaching him new things.

When the Minister Suwle reached out to him to have a meeting and Rafian realized she was Meluvian, the memories came back to him in a rush, and it took everything within him to hide his mental conniptions. When he left the office, he made it a point to call up Vani and let her know that their split was permanent. He thought that he would get resistance from her about this, but surprisingly, her attitude was extremely reserved.

The next week he had his belongings moved out of the apartment. He used some of the credits in his savings account to purchase an officer’s quarters, complete with a cybernetic butler and a holo-circle for simulations. Sitting on the plush leather couch and eating an Algo bar with ice cream, he thought about how much things would improve without Vani, and he smiled at the opportunity to be able to date different women and start his love life all over. He wondered if Vestalia would want to go out on a date with him and resisted the urge to become inappropriate with Aurora the next time she came over.

The breakup with Vani reinvigorated him as a soldier, and he spent longer hours cleaning his ship, hanging out in the cafe (to look at the cute prospects), and, at random times, he would spend an evening or two with a certain Meluvian minister—until the sad day when she announced that she was being sent away for business on another ship. Rafian was a new man; an eighteen-year-old with nothing in the world to hold him back except badge and duty. It was the best he had ever felt in his entire life. He felt free and unchained, and he could focus on the one thing that he actually wanted to focus on, which was the war. A couple of months later, he invited Aurora over to see his new place and to also to pick her brain on what was going on with his ex.

“Vani is taking this pretty hard,” Aurora said to him as she sat on the couch. Her skin flickered with the light of the artificial fireplace that played out on the wall next to the door.

“I think breaking up was probably the best thing I could have done for her, Aurie,” he said as he finished mixing her favorite drink and handing it to her.

“How is she even upset? Half of this was her decision, and she drove our relationship to this point with her incessant whining and bullying.” He was upset at the notion that Vani would make him out to be the bad guy, and Aurora decided to drop the subject.

“Soooo, this is nice!” She smiled, looking around at his new apartment with approval. “When I come in here, it’s as if I am no longer on the ship,” she continued. “I mean, look at this!” And she brushed her hand over his center table and pointed at the staircase in the rear of the apartment, which led to the loft that housed his glass bed. “You even have a glass bed! How much do they pay you special whatevers?”

Rafian laughed and did the math for her to explain his ability to afford the apartment. “I have been getting paid a few credits ever since making first class as a cadet and carrying out missions for the alliance. I have been in action for…what? Five to six years? And I haven’t spent money on anything outside of a few gifts for Vani here and there, and some fancy dinners. I won’t lie, Aurie, it depleted my funds, but this is my reward to myself for getting rid of the beautiful baggage known as Vani Narcila. You girls are both knockouts who can have any guy on the ship, so she needs to get over it. She will be quite fine, hell! Before she knows it, some dumb spacer will be begging her to marry him.”

Aurora gulped down her mixture of Vestalian brandy and Geralese gin and then cocked her head to the side and smiled at him. “OK, Rafian, first of all, thank you. I’ve never gotten that sort of compliment from you before…brother.” She said the “brother” in such a way to remind him of their relationship, but his eyes assured her that he had meant nothing of it.

She smiled at him to let him know that she got it and continued. “But second of all, Vani is in love with you. That isn’t something you get over easily.”

Rafian waved her off with his hand and continued to pace the apartment. “I refuse to feel guilty for her,” he finally said, and then he made himself another drink.

Memory 10 | Camille Yan

Tall and slender, with hair like golden rays of sunlight—Camille YAN was a fighter pilot who had made a name for herself on Star Base Alpha, during the often-forgotten Twilight Wars. Like Rafian, she had gone the classical route of star cadet turned ace, but the two had never met until today, when he walked onto the deck to start his custom of cleaning his ship.

“Nice ship!” Rafian remarked as he regarded her smooth-nosed Vestalian Classic with the triple-winged design (which made it look like an asterisk from the rear). It had been ages since he had seen this model, but Camille’s was in good shape due to her meticulous maintenance, which mirrored his own. Camille was buffing the surface when he walked onto the deck and didn’t stop as she nodded to him.

“Name’s Rafian VCA,” he said. He took her greasy paw within his and shook it.

“Everyone knows who you are, Rafian. I’m Camille.”

“YAN,” he finished, to make sure she knew that he knew of her too. “Is this the ship you burnt through the Relethan motherbase with last year?”

“Same one!” she replied, and the two began to speak of missions, ranks, and the love they shared for space. Camille YAN turned out to be the sort of military brat Rafian used to make fun of back when he was a cadet. Children of her background were often teased for having never stepped foot on a planet, and Rafian would call them “spacers”—a nasty term that would normally lead to a fight. But Camille was an interesting spacer, as she seemed to have huge ambitions when it came to flying and military service. They spoke about the first-grade advancement and their respective missions to attain it, and Rafian grew to respect her even more when she told him how she had managed to get off of Geral without any casualties. She had rigged up a broken-down alliance vessel that was in the forest and flew it off the world without encountering a single lizard. His story also impressed her, and he could sense the admiration she had for him, facing the enemy and surviving to stand before her to talk about it. He found out that she had been personally trained by Hellgate and had been on another mission when the taking of Meruda had occurred.

Camille was a mirror version of him in terms of military accomplishments, and the two spoke at length about their lives, lovers, and ambitions. After a couple hours of talking and cleaning their ships, the pair said their good-byes. Rafian assured her that in a future mission, they would fly together, and he would finally be able to see the legendary Camille YAN light up the sky.

“Somehow I feel that it is going to be me looking up to you soon, Captain,” she said as she bounced away for the exit, and Rafian found himself watching her hips sway rhythmically as she exited the deck.

Something had happened to Rafian when he met Camille, because she would not leave his mind for many days. It was something beyond her looks—even though she had the most exotic light-gray eyes he had ever seen—and her lips had a shape that looked as if she smirked at the world unimpressed. She was nothing like the girls he had grown up with on the Helysian. She was very much a soldier. Still, her face would not go away, and he found himself finding every excuse to talk with her beside her ship.

The pair developed a friendship and a kinship that they couldn’t understand, and the days of talking turned into weeks before Rafian admitted to himself that he was in love with her. The ship’s deck was the ultimate spot for them to talk and hang out, since they were both introverts and the only two pilots who loved to clean their own ships. Rafian found himself looking forward to it from the time he awoke till the time that he was landing his vessel after his recon rounds. Camille was always there, waiting for him in the same location.

“Have you ever been to Vagnar Centures?” Rafian asked one day as he crouched next to her while she worked on the underside of her ship, the Gorgon.

“Can’t say I’ve ever been there, Raf. You heading there on a mission?”

“Well, I was going to go and investigate something in that quadrant, and wanted to see if you’d like to go with me.” He said it in a shy, soft-spoken sort of way, as if he expected her to say no. But Camille had always wanted to go to VC and would never pass up the opportunity to do so.

The real reason for Rafian’s need to visit the quadrant was to rendezvous with the battle cruiser Elegance to do some mercenary work to bolster his credits. He had burnt through his entire savings when he bought the officer-styled home to serve as his living quarters—and to get over what had happened between Vani and him—but he found himself low on funds for his daily activities.

Camille would be excellent company, he thought, and she could actually help him on those missions, seeing that two pilots could make short work of what needed to be done a lot faster than one could; plus, she had such a sexy, slender shape that stuck in his mind like Merudian slime. She was the only woman to occupy his mind more than the delicious Meluvian Minister Suwle, and she was a beautiful woman, a warrior—and on top of it all, he could not stop thinking about her.

A few days later, they rendezvoused on the deck to leave, and Rafian made sure to get clearance with his commanding officers so as to not cause any issues such as had had when he flew out to rescue Aurora. When they finally got onboard the Reaper transport vessel, Camille immediately took the controls and began pressing buttons and sliding diagrams.

“I love flying these things!” she exclaimed, and Rafian rocked back on his heels, smiling.

“You’re so cute!” he said before catching himself.

She looked over at him then slid a lock of her golden hair behind her ear and smiled. “So you don’t mind me driving, Captain?” she asked after the uncomfortable silence had gone on for several forevers.

Rafian replied, “Please do.” Mentally, he began kicking himself for the awkward faux pas, and he felt like keeping his mouth shut for the entire trip for fear of another stupid slip. The engines of the Reaper screamed loud and fearsome as Camille pulled it out of the dock and into open space, pushing the speed dangerously past five waves, which made the vessel feel as though it was going to tear itself apart.

“Sorry to scare ya, Raf, but at this speed, we can make it to Elegance in three days, being that this bucket of bolts lacks a jump drive.”

“I’m not scared, Cammy. You are one of the best pilots on the Helysian. If I can’t trust you, who can I trust?”

The first day of the trip gave them time to talk even further and without the chance of someone walking in to eavesdrop. They touched on more personal details of each other’s lives. Camille was divorced. Her husband had married her illegally, and the wedding was annulled when she found out that he was using her to smuggle a bomb aboard her starship carrier. She laughed at the stories Rafian told of Vani and seemed genuinely concerned when he spoke of Kim and the baby incident with his friend.

On the second day, they studied the star map together, speaking about places they would investigate as a team when they were finished with this chore and back on the Helysian.

As Camille was intently talking about the Feoton star cluster, Rafian snuck his hand on top of hers, and she didn’t pull it away even though she knew that he had done it on purpose. The sexual tension between the two was as thick as swamp air, but neither of them dared push the issue out of fear of hurting the magical chemistry that they had as friends. In the late hours of the day, they sat together in the kitchen and watched an old Vestalian romance movie to try to make themselves tired enough to sleep.

“This was a very productive day, wasn’t it?” Camille said as she let her hair down and kicked off her boots to relax. When Rafian didn’t reply, she looked over at him to see if he was asleep and then jumped back, startled to find him staring intently at her and moving towards her slowly, like a man possessed or crazed.

“Raf…what are you doing?” Camille whispered as if they could be heard by anyone outside of the walls enclosing them.

“Something I should have done a long time ago, Cammy,” he said to her softly, his eyes locked into her silver orbs as the surprise slowly crept away from them. She had put her hand up to cover his mouth, but he noticed that her other hand had taken hold of his 3B belt tightly, as if she wanted to pull him closer.

“Are you married, Rafian? Is there anything you haven’t told me in our talks?”

He could barely breathe as he struggled for the words, but managed to say no as he regained his composure.

“OK…well…do you have a girlfriend?” She kept pressing, but by the time she finished, he had pushed past her hand to take her bottom lip into his mouth and sucked it gently before moving into a passionate kiss with their tongues finally touching. It was as if lightning went up and down her spine as Rafian kissed her, and she surrendered to his touch, letting herself melt into his arms. Camille tasted like heaven to him, and he felt relief when her stiffened body relaxed to allow him to truly embrace her.

As the suits, pants, and boots fell to the floor, Camille took matters into her own hands and straddled him on the bench. They made love for what seemed like forever, and when they both had had their fill, she pushed him to the floor, undid the remainder of her hair, and mounted him for another round. Spent and exhausted, Camille lay on top of Rafian, and the sweat that had come from their heat just moments before caused her to shiver from the cold. She breathed deeply, trying to slow down her pounding heart. But it was beyond passionate, and she felt as if she would die.

“I feel silly!” she managed to say as Rafian pulled his cloak from off the bench to cover them.

“Why do you feel silly, sweetheart?” he asked.

“I…well…” she managed before she started to giggle. “Well, I can’t feel my feet!” She laughed, and Rafian could do nothing but kiss her because she was very cute at that moment.

The remainder of the trip was delightful once the lovemaking was introduced, and Rafian found it odd that even after their tryst, he still could not stop thinking about her.

“Can I admit something to you, Cammy?” he said as she decreased their speed a bit and looked over at him in the other pilot’s seat. Expecting negativity, she grabbed a tuft of her long blond hair and brushed it back in an almost violent way.

“I think that I’m in love with you.”

Camille met his words with a mysterious stare, and when it got to be too much, Rafian tried to fix the odd air by continuing.

“It’s just that I think about you all of the time.…I have never had that happen with anybody before.”

Camille kept staring, and it made him uncomfortable until eventually she caught herself and finally admitted the words, “I love you too.”

She had said it in her standard, neutral but nasally cute way, but it was as if the bells of true love and happiness had begun their toll on the pair. She had said the one thing that Rafian VCA did not expect her to say.

“You know, you don’t have to agree with me, Cammy. I just wanted to let you know,” he said, suddenly embarrassed at how vulnerable he was.

“What are you talking about? Do you think I would wait on the docks for just anybody, Raf? Had I not fallen for you, I would have hidden from you every day until you got the hint. But I waited. I waited every day, looking forward to hearing your voice, your war stories, and to seeing the way you looked at me. I am here, Captain, on this ship, with you, a man whom I am in love with. I am here…for you.”

By the time they made it to the Elegance, Rafian was no longer interested in doing mercenary work for credits. He took over the controls and piloted them to the nearest mystery void they had plotted on the star map and stopped the ship.

“What about the credits you need, Raf?” Camille asked.

“I have things I can sell. When I made the deal to come here, I did so because I wanted to get away from Vani more than anything else. Helysian can feel like a prison sometimes, and this was the perfect excuse.”

“So, what are we going to do out here?”

“Well, I was thinking we could actually watch that movie from a couple nights ago, and I can find a way to persuade you to move in with me on the Helysian so that I don’t have to burn so much brain power imagining that you are there whenever I go home.”

“Ha! Someone sure moves fast. Slow down, Captain, we just started this thing. What makes you think I would be a good roommate?”

“Well, if you trash the place, I would be happy to clean it up for you, every time, Cammy.”

“I won’t trash your place, silly.”

He sat looking at her, happy to have taken the gamble of pushing things when he did, and she smiled back at him and winked.

“OK, Rafian. I will move in with you.”

Memory 11 | A Dark Education

As Rafian VCA and Camille YAN became a couple, the two of them were inseparable. Rafian loved everything about his beloved Camille, and she made it her duty to make sure he was happy at all times. Despite Rafian’s plans to move his love into the penthouse he had purchased, the couple decided against it due to the close proximity to Vani and Kim. Camille wanted nothing to do with the two women and their negative energy, so she talked Rafian into selling his home and purchasing a modest place with her away from his old life. The place they chose was in a tiny civilian area deep in the tail end of the Helysian, where vacancies were plentiful due to the commander’s insistence that the ship remain a strictly military vessel.

It was now a year since they had sworn love to each other and about six months since they decided to push ahead with a move instead of the constant visits they made to each other’s apartments. Careerwise, things were great. Rafian’s resume had grown, and he began receiving invitations to the starfighter spy network in Virulia. Camille was given the post that the legendary Helga ATE had held as commander of air to ground assaults (CAGA), and she too was being wooed to become a spy.

The invitations were a tremendous honor for the couple, but even though they were the best in their respective Special Forces divisions, they didn’t think they would ever be recruited. Nobody on the ship knew people who became spies, and when they had encountered spies in the past, it was always such a brief and hurried introduction that it was difficult to form a real opinion of them.

Rafian had fought alongside one before, and the man had moved and fought like something beyond human. Rafian had always wondered whether spies were outfitted with cybernetics or were made to be on a vine of some sort. To fight like that man would be a dream come true for him. However, with the mystery of the Virulian spy network and the many rumors about their order, he hesitated in accepting the invitation for fear of the worst.

“You know if we do this, it will not be the same between us, right?” Rafian said to Camille on one of their many evenings together. The pair could normally be found embracing and talking on the wing of Rafian’s Alpha X Pterodactyl whenever they were both on leave and not running missions for the base. These moments were rare, private, and precious for them, as they barely got to see each other during the week.

“Being spies would take us off of the front lines, Raf,” Camille replied, her golden hair gleaming under the lights of the dock, making her seem strangely elfish. Her hair had been cut when she became CAGA, and she styled it into a tiny Mohawk, which made her very cute to Rafian.

“Don’t look at it, Raf. You know I thypin’ hate it!” she declared as he looked over her hair with a smile on his face.

He knew to stop because of the cuss word—Camille was not one to curse frequently, and when she did, it indicated she needed a full stop.

“I don’t care what you think about it, babe. I like it, and I think it makes you look badass.” He said this knowing that unlike her pilots who shut down when Cammy started cussing, he had nothing to fear from the Golden Chameleon.

Scoffing at him while rolling her eyes, Camille wouldn’t admit that she appreciated his words, but she punched him in the arm to remind him to stay on topic. “Thype the hair, VCA. When are we going to decide on these invitations? You know that this is an honor that people aren’t allowed to turn down.”

She was right of course, because they knew this invitation to the network was more of a summons. When you stuck out as a candidate and they had room for recruitment, they would summon you—and it was never a question. If you dishonored them with a refusal, you would disappear without a trace.

“I get it, Cammy. And being a Virulian spy is the stuff of dreams, so I think we need to accept immediately. The only thing that concerns me is the process. The spies I have met are like gods, but from what I know, to get there, they have to give up a part of their souls. Come on, you’ve seen how they are.”

Camille sat up and then got to her feet to stand next to him. She walked over to one of the thrusters and began playing with its length—her mind working rapidly as she went over the decision and what it could mean to them.

“I know this isn’t very soldiery of me, Rafian…but I just don’t want to lose you. I can deal with death, but spies are rumored to be void of all empathy. I fear that we will cease to be what we are right now…forever.”

“Cammy, look, we are both strong people who have been through a lot of shtill to get where we are today. What exactly can they do to me to force me to stop loving you or giving a damn about those lizard bastards who killed my parents?”

It was a question that he should never have challenged the fates to answer. When the pair sent back word of acceptance to Virulia, two agents in 3B suits immediately came to visit them at the apartment. The odd thing about the arrival of the spies was that they didn’t come from a ship, seeing that none had docked on Helysian for weeks, and they had never seen them onboard.

The man was a big guy, but he moved like a cat—all quiet and dangerous. The woman was slight, but her eyes indicated she was very much a predator. The man stepped forward and introduced himself as Michyl, a midlevel agent in the organization, and the woman was Ree, a recruit who had just gotten her clearance and held the rank of “person,” which seemed an odd rank to have. The introductions were brief but turned awkward when Camille asked about grabbing a packing cube to shrink and carry her things. Michyl stopped her short, shook his head, and produced a device that resembled a very tiny silver capsule.

“A spy owns nothing” was all the couple heard before the light consumed them, and they were unconscious.

When he awoke, Rafian found himself standing in front of a graying old man in a stark white room with padded floors and walls. The room was large, and the ceilings seemed taller than the Vestalian standard. He also noticed that the gravity level was lower than it should be for humans, and it made him wonder if his eyes and mind were deceiving him.

“Am I dead?” Rafian asked, halfway joking due to the irony of the bright, white room and the old man—also dressed in white—who looked at him as if he could read him.

“Do you know how you got here, boy?” the old man asked suddenly, his voice as deep as an earthquake with confidence as sharp as a knife.

“First of all, you will not address me as boy; I am Captain Rafian VCA of the Helysian, a proven officer for the honor of Vestalia.”

This brought a smile to the old man’s face, and he shook his head with amusement. “You see this?” he asked, indicating nothing in particular. “This right here never gets old to me, and I have been doing this for an extremely long time…boy. You recruits come in, you spout out all of the honors that weaker men and women have afforded you, and you expect to get respect.” As soon as he said “respect,” he made a fist, and Rafian felt a crushing pain in his chest that caused him to cry out. He then noticed that he was in the air, floating as the old man’s magic hurled him across the room into one of the padded walls. It hurt like hell, and it took him a moment to regain his composure.

The old man seemed annoyed. “Let’s get to it, shall we? That move that I hit you with just now is a skill that I picked up from the third planet of Jenua when I jumped in as a defender of the Skale Republic as they faced genocide by the Jash Alliance.”

“Sir! I do not know what any of that is, and I am VERY well studied on our galaxy’s history.” Rafian managed to speak as he climbed to his feet and wiped the blood from his mouth. “I will say that I aim to learn whatever sorcery you hurt me with, if only to return the favor to both you and those Geralos lizards who desecrated my home planet with terror and savagery.”

The old man got up from his seat. His flowing white robes sparkled with silver gems and was awesomely accented by black-and-red trimming. Despite the torture and pain he had felt in his chest, Rafian thought that the man looked beyond impressive, as a true master should. He thought about the meeting he had had with the spies and wondered if he was now in the spy recruitment center. Was he undergoing a test, or was this a warrior’s hell where he would spend eternity with a beautiful but cruel old man?

“The Geralos lizards are the least of your concern, young Rafian.”

The elder said his name this time with a respectful tone and seemed to admire Rafian’s bravado, despite the blood and the obvious pain that the young man was feeling.

“So you aim to torture and possibly kill me, then?” Rafian asked, misunderstanding the intent of his words.

“How boring a thought, boy! The Geralos are a plague in THIS galaxy—Anstractor, as it were—but there are many galaxies and many planes of existence that need our help.”

“Wait…planes of existence? Is this some sort of religion I signed up for? I thought that the spies were a military organization.” Rafian became visibly angry, fearing that he was being indoctrinated into a religion and the worship of some ideology that would yield little results and keep him from assisting in the complete annihilation of the Geralos.

“As usual, the disbelief,” the old man said passively. “The countries I mentioned, the war, the skill I demonstrated are all from another plane, you see. We jumpers—or as you call us, spies—have the means to jump to the various galaxies and on rare occasions jump to other planes of existence.”

Rafian stared at the old man intently, waiting for him to burst out laughing at the joke, but what he read in his face was that he spoke the truth. It made him feel like a tiny, irrelevant gnat on the surface of a world too big to appreciate his existence.

“For all your rank and respect, Captain, you are a mere toy soldier in a very real war to protect humanity. I guess you realize now why your titles, your accolades, and your petty revenge do nothing to impress me?”

Rafian ignored the slight to ask, “What’s on the other side?”

“Fantastical things, my boy, fantastical things. Things that I cannot begin to explain to you. But the catch with jumping planes is that we cannot control it. We can only stay for a time or come back at will using warp crystals, but we cannot open a new fissure on our own. The openings to other planes are controlled by a higher power; we take advantage whenever the opportunity is presented to us.”

“So, what is a fissure, and when and where do they open?”

“About a hundred years ago, during the first conflict, there was a Meluvian scientist by the name of Genda who found a large crystal on a dead planet near the third meridian. The crystal was a curious thing, as it produced a tiny ripple within its vicinity. And when Genda tried to touch it, he noticed that his hand would go through it. Genda took the crystal to a secret base on Vestalia, and he and a number of other important people would go through that first tear and make contact with the people of the planet on that other plane.”

The old man went back to his chair and sat down, rubbing his bald scalp as he continued his tale of the warp crystal phenomenon.

“That other plane had a world that was ancient, but the people could do miraculous, magical things. Their technology was very different from ours. While the professor could take things into the fissure with him, he noticed that it would only allow small things to be taken out. Carrying a tiny bit of the crystal itself inside the fissure allowed him to warp back to this side just by exposing it to the right amount of light. Don’t ask me to explain much of how this all works.

“That was our first contact with one of the other planes before extreme experimentation and study allowed us to learn of its miraculous properties, giving us faster-than-light travel, spirit jumping, and so much more. To say it in words that you will understand: with the crystals we can jump to galaxies, resurrect ourselves through cloning, and explore other planets throughout the known universe.”

The education on the warp crystals blew Rafian’s mind, and as he listened and thought about it, he understood why the jumpers seemed so cold, distant, and elitist. Knowledge of things so life-changing that they were unable to explain to the standard galaxy would make the common soldier appear as a mere golem to the powers that be and largely insignificant to the bigger picture.

The jumpers had learned how to expand their survivability through cloning and had learned to manipulate powers that were beyond human thought. The biggest eye-opener to Rafian, ever the martial student, was that knowledge gained through missions within a fissure was forever grafted into one’s DNA. Jumpers were not limited to the tiny brain capacity that a standard human being was—that part he didn’t want the details on, as it was all too much to process already. Rafian wondered how Camille was taking all of this and whether there was a white-haired old woman in her padded room running down the crazy powers that she was about to be given.

The tutelage went on for hours, and then he was escorted from the room to a facility that housed a number of men and women who looked wide-eyed and stunned (just as he was) from the “education,” as they called it. The room was all white and had tall walls, as if it were built to house giants or starships. There were tall, cathedral-styled windows that depicted jumpers in various poses, and Rafian could not shake how religious the whole place felt. Light spilled into these windows, illuminating the hall in an ethereal way, and each space between windows was a circular column that had a patchwork of digital lights that danced upon its surface.

Along the walls were seasoned jumpers, all dressed in white 3B suits that left no part of their perfectly sculpted bodies to the imagination. The ceiling was painted with a diagram of what he assumed to be the universe. He tried to find Anstractor and realized that it was the smallest of all the galaxies. When they got all the recruits together (there were twenty of them), he saw his beloved Camille, but as they were hustled along through the hallway, she would not look up to give him eye contact.

They were taken to the cloning lab, where a specialist downloaded their DNA and physiological data. As if to answer the question that was on all of their minds, they were given a demonstration via vid on how cloning worked. Next, they were given a live demonstration by the old man who had spoken to Rafian. He squared off against a younger jumper, and while it was an impressive display of skill, neither fighter could get the upper hand, and Rafian wondered at how it would end. After minutes of fighting, the elder produced a las-knife from his robes and stabbed his opponent through the throat, causing him to fall and thrash about in pain. It had to be one of the cruelest kills that Rafian had ever seen. Gasps and horror covered the faces of everyone watching, but within minutes, the man’s death throes had ceased and he emerged from one of the clone stations, happy, unscathed, and very much alive.

The dead body took on a grayish hue as the blood continued to pour from the neck. Rafian stared at the clone, trying to see if the man was merely a twin and this a trick of some sort.

“I don’t know how cool I am with this,” said one of the female members to nobody in particular, and the old man spun and threw the knife into her head, causing her to instantly drop dead! Again, there were gasps and expressions of shock until she cloned and popped up out of the machine looking scared, angry, and red-faced.

“YOU HAD NO RIGHT!” she was shouting, tears streaming down her face. She was all fire and unaware of her nakedness as she ran out to face down the old man while giving the recruits a full-on display of her goods. When she realized her nakedness, she froze and panicked. One of the aides brought her a robe to cover up, and she quickly hustled away.

“Very appropriate,” the old man began as he paced the metal floor looking at each of the recruits, who now stood at attention.

“Appropriate because jumpers are to be removed from the shackles that are sexual commitment, personal possessions, and, as much as humanly possible, matters of the heart. Your bodies belong to the organization now. I own you all.”

That statement elicited a reaction from Camille, who had found herself next to Rafian, both observing the horror of the membership they had signed up for. The couple was holding hands, and the old man glanced at them as he spoke. Rafian balked at the thought that they would be punished somehow for revealing their togetherness, so he unhooked Camille’s hand and made a mental note to stay away from her to avoid further suspicion.

The recruits were then made to partner up with each other, preferably with members of the opposite sex, and the general idea was that partners were to have sexual relations at some time every week and were not to develop any attachments from it. Refusal meant permanent death, or “perma-death,” as it was called, and as jumpers, they were mere recruits doing as they were commanded until the time when they prove themselves worthy to be given the rank of person.

They were next given number designations as names, which were to be used on missions and in espionage operations. Names were only given to jumpers who had proved themselves worthy of being regarded as persons. Rafian became number 03 (pronounced Zero Three), and Camille was number 11. He saw her get paired with a large, red-headed man who got number 13, and it crushed him to think about what would be happening to her moving forward. It took everything within him not to go berserk and start killing every spy there, but of course he knew that he was outmatched. Still, the thought of Camille in another man’s arms made him truly feel the horrors of his new position, and for the first time in years, he felt completely helpless to play the part of savior.

The girl he got partnered with was the spitfire who had gotten herself cloned. They were escorted to their room, which seemed very mundane compared to the stark white aesthetic of the rest of the building. It was a metal-walled tiny room with full-sized plasteel beds that took up the majority of the space. There was enough walking room for a single person to shuffle between the beds to access the storage dressers, and next to the entry were a tiny refrigerator and stove.

Based on the size of the room, Rafian realized how close they would be forced to be. He tried to figure in his mind how he could make things less awkward between himself and his new partner.

“I could just die,” the girl said. She was pale with dark-almond eyes; long, shiny black hair; and a face that could be best described as plain. Rafian felt no real physical attraction to her, but something about the way she had fought back earlier made him look at her with admiration. Her name was Tayden Lark, and she was given the number 05 by the jumper commander who killed her. They found out that his name was Arn. He seemed to be more feared than respected by the veteran jumpers, and in his presence, nobody talked without permission.

The girl who introduced herself as Tayden Lark was a first-grade starfighter on her own ship and colonel to a squadron of rangers known as the Screaming Ayries. Rafian had fought alongside them in the past, but the situation had been so intense that there was no way Tayden would remember him.

“Tayden, you are a leader of men; you have to come to terms with this,” Rafian finally said after listening to her complain for what seemed like hours.

“Thype this shtill, Rafian! What if I don’t come to terms with this lunacy, huh? Cloning, warping, and forcing rape on us weekly? How are you good with any of this?”

“Whoa, who said anything about rape?” Rafian snapped back, suddenly concerned.

“It’s sex that we didn’t sign up for or WANT, Rafian, oh great ‘leader of men!’”

She stared at him angrily as if he were the dumbest man alive. “Do you or your girlfriend out there want to be made to cheat on each other every single night? Or are you looking forward to nailing every girl in here? If it’s the latter, then cheers to you, mate! By the time you become a thyping ‘person,’ you will have added ten notches to your bloody belt.”

He shook his head in sadness and retreated to his bunk to process everything that had happened since they were taken. First of all, if Tayden, with everything that had happened to her, noticed that he and Camille were together, then everyone else would have noticed also. He thought of everything the old man had told him and tried to see the good in being a jumper. There were some serious perks to this new job, but the killing to prove cloning and the forced sex were not what he imagined the “good guys” would be doing.

“How can they know if we are having sex, Tayden? Do they have capture cubes in here or old-school cameras?”

“Oh…I guess they didn’t catch you boys up, eh?”

She hopped off of her bunk and danced a mocking jig in front of him as she explained.

“We women have been sterilized. You may want to check yourself to see if you feel odd because I’m quite sure they’ve taken away your baby card as well! A jump’ah does not procreate without permission, apparently, a little item they forgot to add to the recruitment paper we signed. Oh, and in terms of sex? We women will be checked for evidence of intercourse every week, and upon failing said test, will be summarily punished for noncompliance. How ya feeling now, future super spy?”

Rafian was still absorbing the sterilizing portion of her statement and decided that he was done with Tayden’s attitude and mocking accent.

“Drop the attitude; I’m not the one forcing you to do this shtill, OK? One way or another, we’re going to have to play ball or die dishonorably in this hellish recruitment facility. My ignorance to this nonsense is not due to me ignoring the signs. Like many of the other people out there, I too was not informed. Do you think I’m enjoying this any more than you do?”

With that he moved over to the refrigerator, where he found a bottle of chilled Virulian rum and a flask of purple berry juice. He poured the liquids together into a couple of glasses and shoved one into the chest of the exasperated Tayden, who tried to mull over the words Rafian had just barked back at her.

He walked towards her and touched her shoulder. “Consider that we are made to do this mess, Tayden, and that we will not be able to drink once the murderous training starts, which you know will suck.” And with that, he gave her a wink.

“How about we drink to you being the first badass woman to be cloned in our company and learn to become friends, eh? You’re a soldier, right? Well, soldier up and become the type of marine that I need at my back.”

Tayden accepted the drink in surrender and gulped it down desperately. Like Rafian, she was intent on getting drunk to break the ice and get things underway, and it took only two more glasses before she was completely calm and relaxed. Before long, the two recruits were chatting; then the chatting turned into joking, and the joking turned into friendly touches, which became a wrestling match. Giggling, careless, and with too much to drink, they began kissing each other in the fiercest way, and what Rafian assumed would be awkward sex turned into one of the best nights of his life.

Tayden had needed an outlet for the entire situation and was appreciative of Rafian’s willingness to take the lead and bring her back from the hopeless abyss she had felt when the old man murdered her in front of everyone. She wanted to make love to him forever, hoping it would delay the inevitable months during which they would have to deal with Arn and the jumpers, but as they consummated the deed and the passion left their bodies, the fantasy dissipated, and she realized that she was still in hell.

Rafian was further under than Tayden was, having emptied the bottle as they spoke, and he was out cold minutes after he finished. When he awoke in the middle of the night, stirred by a nightmare of the wildest kind, he found her sleeping peacefully on his chest. Despite their rough start as partners, he was glad that they had gotten the sex out of the way, and it made him feel for the first time that he could survive the hellish recruitment.

Memory 12 | Blackout

One of the lowest days that Rafian had ever experienced occurred a week later, when he got a chance to sneak off to meet Camille. The shame and guilt that they both felt was overpowering, and it was as if they were strangers talking for the first time, with long pauses and silence as they held hands and stared at each other, trying in vain to cope. It was Rafian who decided to clear the air and address the giant elephant in the room.

“Let’s just be completely honest about—”

“How many times have you guys done it?” Camille cut him off to ask the question that had been irritating her all along. Tayden was one of the few girls who seemed in high spirits during the first week of hell. Camille had noticed the girl’s happiness and came to the conclusion that Rafian had made himself extremely comfortable with the situation, and Tayden was the recipient of the wonderful things he had shared with her every other night on the Helysian. He was taken aback by her interruption and fought himself internally with the choice of remaining absolutely honest or lying to spare her any more hurt than he had already caused.

“We have had sex practically every day, Camille,” he said without flinching. Her face immediately became pallid, and she balled her fists and stared at the ground next to her right foot, locking up the way she always did whenever she wanted to be emotionally strong, as she resisted the urge to rip his head off.

“How about you, Cam? How many times have that flame-maned lion slept with you?”

She took a deep breath and surrendered a “Two” before staring at him intently, as if to beg him to save her. Camille had the most dramatic mannerisms of any woman Rafian had met—even more than Vani, the queen of drama, and it always took a lot of effort for him to not bust out laughing at her and what he called her superhero poses. This time he had no urge to laugh as she fidgeted with visible uncertainty. He reached out to hug her, and she stepped into his arms and hugged him tightly, as if to melt into his chest and vanish.

“This sucks,” she whispered, and Rafian thought it was an opportune time to impart on her the new clarity that he had found.

“Cammy, baby, this test they have us doing here…The goal is for us to give up our bodies. When we came here, you worried that things would change between us due to the conditioning, the brainwashing, and now this ridiculous ritual of promiscuity. They have our bodies, babe. Your hesitation and worry over that will not serve you because it is gone. They cloned us, practically raped us, and will kill us without a moment’s hesitation. Right now the only thing we own is our minds—what’s left of them—our souls, and our love. I haven’t stopped thinking about you since I got here, and they took you away from me. I’ve come to terms with this vessel of mine being taken and given to the jumpers, and you should know that I blame myself for dragging you into this nons—”

She cut him off with a hammering punch to his shoulder.

“No! Don’t you take this on, Rafian VCA; we made this decision as we have made all decisions concerning our careers: together. I will not be the sad, pathetic partner allowing you to take the blame for this or anything else concerning us. OK?”

They kissed passionately and held each other for a time, no longer worrying about the fact that they could be caught and punished for violating protocol.

“One day…” Rafian whispered with his lips pressed against Camille’s neck, so that only she would hear it. “One day, we will change this culture. We will rise and succeed, and then, like all other bullies in this galaxy, we will take away their power and change…this…culture.”

Camille was suddenly afraid, for she knew that her boyfriend was a man of his word and the implications of the treason he whispered would see him skinned and displayed if ever the jumpers were to know his intentions. But she too was fed up, and after listening to Rafian’s speech about the surrendering of her body, she felt a sense of peace that made the idea of martyrdom seem like the most beautiful thing a human being could do in his or her lifetime.

“It shall be done,” she replied, and they held each other in the tiny corner of the library for a few more minutes, speaking of happier times when they thought that they would save Vestalia together and retire there. When they separated and sneaked back into their rooms, Rafian felt a twinge of satisfaction having used the techniques of stealth taught to him the week past to rendezvous with his girlfriend right under the noses of his masters. He slid through the circular window of the apartment and replaced the glass before bolting it, locking it, and finally taking a breath.

“So how did she take it?” Tayden asked. She was awake and sitting up in his bunk, which was her way of letting him know that she wanted to go a final round before they were made to get new partners the next day.

“Oh, she was upset, of course. But how upset could you be when you are forced to commit the same atrocity that your lover is made to do, eh?”

He moved over towards the bed and removed his clothes to lie beside her, but she didn’t make any advance outside of pulling him close and kissing his shoulder.

“I would like to thank you, Rafian VCA, for being such an awesome bunkmate and—”

“Lover?”

“I was going to say ‘good guy’!” she snapped back, grinning.

He was confused and looked at her quizzically.

“Oh, I’m serious, lover,” she continued, this time touching him in a way as to influence the excitement that would be necessary for the upcoming act. He put his questions to the side and made love to her as he always did, vainly trying to imagine her as his beloved Camille. Imagining was futile, as Tayden’s enthusiasm and vocal cues were just too much for him to ignore. He would be lying to himself if he said he disliked it. Tayden had become special to him in a way that he couldn’t understand, and he wanted to keep in contact with her even after they had graduated as persons.

At the same time that Rafian was “tucking Tayden in,” Camille, in her own bed, had taken her boyfriend’s words to heart about her body and was using it to assist her partner, the red-headed Zevon, to get over his own sadness. When he had learned about the sterilization process, he took it hard and was plotting to kill Arn and many others for ruining him. Camille had managed to calm him down, but with the change of partners that was going to occur the next day, he began to plot again, and she knew that sex was a way to keep him focused.

Zevon wanted to be a father and thought that a position with the jumpers would provide a better quality of life for him and his wife, who was left at home. He was a good man who was ignorant to the jumpers’ way of life, just as Camille was. This ignorance now meant he had lost his wife and the ability to father children.

* * *

On the third month of training, the twenty recruits were down to thirteen. Cloning was a privilege afforded only to persons and above—the demonstration with Tayden being an exception. When they squared off in teams to play war games against each other, seven recruits had managed to lose their lives. Arn had been missing for a little over a month, and new jumper trainers were flown in weekly to train them on the various skills they would need to be the galaxy’s saviors.

The sex ritual was finished after month number two, and each jumper recruit was stationed by himself or herself now with a new directive to avoid sexual relations for the remainder of the year. Rafian didn’t imagine that it would be as hard as it was to obey this new rule, but he found ways to sneak around with Camille, Tayden, his always-horny fourth bunkmate Willen RAE, and, of course, Foh, the half-Meluvian beauty with the snow-white hair and gorgeous dark-green freckles.

The recruits had grown—as was expected—to accept their fate as jumpers, and their focus shifted to excelling at the various tests rather than feeling sorry for themselves.

Camille had become hardened. It was very difficult for Rafian to see this when they were together, since she was always a delicate flower with him. But her resolve was all steel, and she was responsible for the deaths of two of the seven dead recruits. Both of the men she killed were bunked with her at one point, and Rafian suspected that the deaths were due to revenge. Rafian assumed that his suspicions were correct since Camille would clam up when he would ask. He felt they must have hurt her in some way when the whispers started to circulate that she had cornered them on the course and summarily executed them.

With Rafian, she was always sweet, and while the other recruits feared her ruthless ways as a peer, he didn’t see her as any different from his future wife whom he had met on the docks of the Helysian.

As the calendar skipped along, the days and nights of training all felt the same, and the exercises were the only thing that had any variation for them. Since each of the recruits had been an elite soldier prior to coming here, physically the training was not difficult. Mentally, they had all been through it one way or another, and while some adjusted quickly, many were like Camille and Zevon.

The recruits would wake up early in the morning and do a run of about eight miles. They were given a liquid breakfast and a few minutes for a bathroom break, and then they were made to run simulations that would place them in the middle of wars, natural disasters, and more. At one time, Rafian was made to survive space after being ejected from his ship with limited air and no real way of getting back home. There was never any indication what a simulation would be, and when the recruits entered the training ops, they had to be ready for any situation at any given time.

Once the recruits managed to finish a simulation, they were given three hours of break for lunch, shopping, and personal time. It was during these times that Rafian would sneak away with Camille or one of the other girls, or he’d find a quiet corner of the base to meditate and practice some of the things that he was learning. Once the three hours were up, the recruits would reconvene, spar one another inside the arena, and try to improve their fighting skills with unarmed combat. The next couple of hours were dynamic, as it depended on who was leading the course. Whatever the exercise was, it normally took them into the evening, when they were sent home to shower and return to study warp crystal technology before dinner.

This ordeal kept Rafian’s muscles sore, and he began to pay Nobel Dethu—a fellow recruit who was a trained masseuse—to massage him once a week. The recruits all got to know one another extremely well, and Rafian knew them all by their first names and corresponding numbers. There was Tayden, the lusty and auburn-haired Willen, Foh (as previously mentioned), Nobel the masseuse, Zevon, Cathe, Valk, Mithryl, Lei, Kari, and Syphl.

Syphl was one girl whom Rafian would never forget, because she burst into tears when they became bunkmates. Due to Rafian’s height and grim visage, she swore he would be rough with her and eventually harm her, so she cried out of fear that their week together would be traumatizing. Rafian, aware that his physique could be intimidating, made every effort to be extra gentle with her. This led to them becoming very close afterwards.

The jumpers who died were not ones he knew well, but he felt it dutiful to learn their names and honor them. The men Camille had executed were Maurice and Rusl; the others were Destyn, Jo, Akbar, Bryan, and Fin.

As the year trickled on, Rafian and the others began to notice a change in their form, shape, and abilities. It went beyond the training and conditioning, and it was assumed that a sort of hormone or steroid was being given to them through the food to make them physically impressive. There were no complaints about this, of course, but Rafian wondered if there was a reason for it beyond the needs of combat. It was not a big enough concern to raise an issue, so he kept it to himself and did his training.

* * *

On the eleventh month of training, Rafian was summoned to Arn’s office, which was the large, padded, white room that he had first visited. The place still had nothing but a chair, some holo-desks, and furniture that would materialize on command whenever they were needed.

The old man got up from behind the desk, and it vanished into the floor as he did so. He walked over and inspected Rafian from head to toe before nodding in approval and sending away the aides who had brought him in.

“We’ve been grooming you, number Zero Three,” he said slowly. “You and your beloved number One One, that fiery Camille Yan of the Helysian.” He said her name in a mocking way, which led Rafian to believe that she had crossed him a few times throughout the year.

“Grooming us for what, sir?” he asked humbly, a respect that had been learned through months of pain and conditioning under the leadership of the jumper organization.

“I know about you two, y’know,” he said as he bit into a cherry and stared at Rafian intently while nodding his head in amusement at the shock that was echoed on his face.

“The sneaking about, the nastiness, and most of all…the plotting. We know it all.”

He let the silence get uncomfortable and cautioned Rafian to stay quiet.

“We expect recruits to be strong, number Zero Three, not broken. You have feigned compliance; you, that girlfriend of yours, and number Zero Five have all played the part of liars and conspirators within this temple of learning. Though you think it your free will expressing itself, my boy, I assure you that this sneaking, lying, and rule breaking were all part of the test, and you three have passed with flying colors.”

He kept watching Rafian, whose rapid eye movement seemed erratic as he puzzled over what was going to happen to him, and whether or not Camille and Tayden were going through the same thing.

“What’s to happen to me, sir?” he finally asked, resolved that he would finally meet his fate through pain and death, the way he had always imagined it would end within this hell of white walls and mysterious people.

The old man kept pacing, and a number of men and women walked in, dressed in silver armor and brandishing black staves. When they surrounded him—there were six in number—he dropped to one knee in anticipation of lashing out and forcing them to kill him as a fighter instead of a prisoner or a pathetic example for the other recruits. When he fell to his knee, one of the armored women touched him with her staff, and he felt his body go still and then topple. He was now helpless, unable to control any of his limbs or utter a word.

The six jumpers interlocked the staves in a way that hoisted him above their heads and took him to the library, where they moved a panel on a shelf. It opened up to reveal a circular room where a bright crystal stood floating within a column of light. There was nothing else in the room except for a stone chair decorated with symbols that looked like nothing a human could have made. Rafian wondered what had happened to the other recruits. He would normally see some mulling around during that time of day, but the temple seemed to be vacant as his captors strapped him to the chair facing the crystal. He began to feel a numbing pain behind his eyeballs.

“Welcome to your first jump, young Rafian.” The old man was speaking, but it appeared as if he was doing so telepathically.

“In a few minutes, you will cease to be who you are and will forget everything that you think you know about your life, your history, and even your beloved Camille YAN. You will be making your first jump, recruit, and when—or should I say if—you complete the mission, you will come back to us a person.”

As soon as he said the word “person,” Rafian lost consciousness, and the bright light was the only thing that he would remember for a very long time.

Memory 13 | Rhiya of Talula

On the quiet streets of Dearin, Talula, a lone, dark figure appeared from the mists, looking about as if it were his first time there. It was midnight, and the clean night smell was welcoming to his nostrils, especially after a long day of running madly through the wilderness to get here. The man was cold, and he paused by a streetlight in hopes of its warmth being sufficient, at least for a little time. A Soltek officer walked by, giving him the customary nod, and he smiled in response. She was pretty cute and probably the most pleasant thing he had witnessed since his arrival. Her beautiful round face was enough to make him forget his aching legs for a while, so the gift of a welcoming smile was the least he could give her.

With much hesitation, the man pulled himself together and continued his stroll, his mind flashing to the past’s unknown and the future’s uncertainty. His memories were a dense nothingness, and it hurt when he tried too hard to bring them up. He knew his name, though, which was the only thing he could manage when he tried to remember how he had gotten on the moon of Talula.

His name was Rafian, but where he was from was a mystery to him. He had awoken in a wilderness lush with olive-colored foliage, blue flowers, and streams of pinkish water that reflected the tiny sun that illuminated the moon. Looming like a giant eye above him was a beautiful blue-and-green planet, and though he knew enough to realize that he was an educated man, Rafian was still unsure as to what may have caused such deep Memory loss.

He walked for a number of days before he saw the lights of the city and made his way towards them. On his journey out of the wilderness, he found an abandoned camp with some leftover food inside a tent. About a mile or so later, he came across the bodies of the campers, who seemed to have been mauled by a large animal. He rummaged through their clothing and collected the coins and items that they had on their persons. While he had no Memory, he felt as if he knew everything about the people of the city.

His deep thoughts were soon interrupted by las-gun fire, and he dashed to the sidewalk to avoid the crossfire. Some men were pursuing a darkly clad man, exchanging shots midstride and endangering anyone unfortunate enough to be in their way. Ducking behind a bench, Rafian watched the fight continue until the man killed the two pursuers with expert aim and precision. With his heart pounding, Rafian snuck behind the closest building and dashed towards the next intersection. Looking around for any more trouble, he spotted a lively saloon and made his way into its doorway.

The saloon was bustling with activity. It seemed as if the entire city were there. Rafian walked in and checked his pockets as if more credits—other than the two hundred he had taken—would magically appear. To his dismay, there was no such magic, so he tried to find a private area where he wouldn’t be tempted to spend the few that he had. He looked around for some time and eventually spotted an empty booth towards the back of the saloon. He started making his way towards it.

“Welcome to the saloon, handsome!” A short human female stepped in front of him to bar his way, breaking the background noise with her greeting.

“Hello,” Rafian said, astonished by how bold this woman was. She wore a very short skirt and a golden top that left nothing to the imagination. Her hair was cropped short and accented by azure fanlike frills. Her skin was a light tan and was complemented by lovely full lips, tinted blue to complete the ensemble. She stood a little over five feet, was extremely shapely, and was very well proportioned. Rafian immediately knew what she was as yet another thread of familiarity broke through his amnesia. Apparently, she was a prostitute who smelled the off-worlder on him and had moved to meet him as soon as he came in. No matter what galaxy you were on, the foreigners were usually the easiest tricks to turn, so it made sense for her to be as friendly to him as she was being. Rafian in this state of mind was no different, because he wanted her, and he wanted her badly.

Seeing the surprise in his eyes, the sexy nymph introduced herself as Riyah Mist and took his arm as he walked to his table. The fur couch felt like heaven as he sat across from her and relaxed for the first time in two days. Scanning the saloon, he noticed the walls were made of stone. The bar itself was also made from a rocklike substance, and the glasses all had a dark transparency that made it difficult to tell what fluid was being poured into them.

The clientele was a mix of alien races, and very few resembled him and Riyah. People were staring, but most were caught up in their own conversations and drinking without a care in the world.

“So, where are you from?” Riyah asked as she seductively ran her right leg up Rafian’s left. She was smiling with her tongue between her teeth and wiggling to let him know that she was hot.

Rafian felt as if he had to keep his cool, as this woman seemed like a she-wolf who was after the few credits he had and nothing else. With much effort, he concentrated on this fact. She wasn’t his friend; she didn’t care about where he was from, and if she could sucker his credits away without a sexual act, she would gladly rob him and leave him as dead as the men he had witnessed getting shot earlier.

Snapping into gear, Rafian cocked his head with a sly smile and said, “Be cool, lady. I’m not from here, as you can probably tell. I don’t suppose you know any friendly locals who could help me feel at home here, do you?”

Riyah flashed a toothy smile and asked, “What do you do? Are you an officer or merchant? I can’t imagine anyone else outside of that hopping around the galaxy…or maybe…are you a pilot?”

Looking up at the dance floor with a distance in his eyes, Rafian replied, “I am a bit of each, babe. Please don’t think me rude, but it grows late, and I have an urge something terrible. The only cure may be a drink and a bit of tenderness, if you know what I mean.”

In a strange, awkward moment, Riyah Mist stared at Rafian as if trying to read the thoughts in his head.

“You do understand what you’re asking for, don’t you?”

Rafian brushed it off and scanned the room. He was not sure what he was doing or why the words flowed from his mouth so effortlessly, but he kept talking, partly hoping that the prostitute could read more into who he was and tell him.

“I’m no nugget, Riyah. What type of credits do they lay on you for a bit of your love in this place?”

As she answered, Rafian missed it as he spotted what he was looking for. A large brute—who seemed out of place in the saloon—kept glancing in his direction as he and Riyah spoke. Either the brute wanted Riyah as badly as he did, or he was her “manager.” Rafian suspected the latter, and, turning back to the beauty, he thought about what his next move should be.

“Price sounds fine, lady; how about you show me what Talula has to offer?”

Smiling that toothy smile of hers, Riyah replied, “I want to see what YOU have to offer, outsider. I will be right back. Let me run to the little girls’ room, and we can head out once I return.”

As she swayed her hips off towards the saloon’s hole, Rafian crossed the room behind her, trying to mask his intentions as best he could. As they stepped into the bathroom lobby area, the brute pursued—as Rafian knew he would—so he slid a knife into the palm of his hand and held it close to his body. Time crawled by, seeming like eons as he let the calm settle within as he neared the women’s bathroom door. Some pretty Carians were leaving. Their hair was adorned with jewels, and they were wearing scented clothing that accented their supple, voluptuous bodies, causing the passion in Rafian to rise again.

The lobby emptied conveniently, and he paused outside the bathroom door as the brute approached for the usual robbing and easy money. Rafian drove the knife under his exposed chin to pierce the man’s brain, withdrew his blade, and in a matter of seconds slit his throat and buried the knife hilt deep into his solar plexus. The dead man collapsed into him, and Rafian grabbed him and shoved his body into a nearby closet.

Things were really bumping in the saloon, and the band’s loud melody and the fortunate timing made killing the pimp almost symphonic. Rafian’s original plan had been to possibly scare the man into letting him have Riyah, but he knew the empty lobby was a sign. At least he thought it was a sign.

Rafian checked for blood on his person and secured his mood. Then he stepped into the women’s bathroom, where Riyah was waiting, smoking a cigarette and looking at herself in the mirror. Apparently this was the usual activity for beauty and the beast. The lobby had not cleared by accident, since she was waiting for the murdering brute to come in and deliver money from Rafian’s corpse.

She played it cool as he entered, but her puzzled expression was an open book.

“What’s the matter, baby? I would think you didn’t expect me,” Rafian mocked, smiling widely as if he were being genuine.

“I told you I have an urge, lady. It got crazy as I waited out there for you. Solteks came and took this big guy away, so I slipped in here during the entire bustle. I was lucky they didn’t see me.”

He let the lie sink in and examined her reactions. As expected, she believed what he had told her.

“Remember, it’s a hundred credits, right?” she asked, smiling back, and Rafian placed the money he had slipped from the pimp’s pockets onto the counter.

“You paid, so we can do whatever you want,” she said as she inhaled the smoke with a seductive, demonic glaze over her eyes. “So, should we go find a room?” she asked.

But Rafian was no longer talking. Taking her hand into his, he guided her into a stall and locked it. Riyah complied as he pressed her up above the toilet and made love to her, hard. It was not to punish her with sex, as that would be too easy. It also was not a tactic he was a big fan of. He wanted a good time. It was what he had wanted all along, before the brute and his nymph’s attempt at a trick. Riyah moaned in pleasure and surprise as she was filled from minute to minute, their lovemaking taking the better part of an hour. There seemed to be no end to Rafian’s lust, and she wondered if an eternity of this was worth the credits that he had given her. When he was finished, she was worn through and smiling. He seemed surprisingly energetic and not at all embarrassed at the many times people had come in, hearing and knowing what was going on. He had sparked something within her, and she was grateful that her abusive boss had been taken away. This outsider was mysterious and sexy, and she wanted to see more of him even if credits were no longer involved.

Smiling and thanking her for the good time, Rafian exited the saloon, rented a hotel room a few blocks down the road, and slept peacefully for the first time in a long time. He was bothered by his loss of Memory. His past was a dark cloud, and his only Memory was of a voice giving him instructions to survive and wait for a sign.

When Rafian had arrived in Dearin, Talula, he had no Memory of anything prior, yet one thought was embedded in his mind: he was to stay there until he received a mission. What the mission would be, he had no clue. Hell, he didn’t even know who he was! He thought that due to his build, skill with a gun, and stamina, he might have been a soldier of some sort, or some sort of Soltek agent. Whatever he was, he remained at the hotel for a few weeks, only leaving to visit the saloon for food, drink, and the occasional romp in the stall with Rhiya.

During the weeks that passed, Rhiya sought out Rafian daily and became attached to him in a way that even he couldn’t explain. Despite his misgivings about her, he never ran her off. He happily accepted her advances, especially since she no longer charged him for it. Their bond turned into an odd relationship, with him using her for sex and her using him for protection—and eventually room and board.

When his mission finally came, it was six weeks later, and it came by way of a traditional courier.

When Rafian opened the package, the only details were a number and a vid-phone, which he used to call his contact for mission details. A voice told him that his mission was to join and aid “the resistance,” and he was to get their attention by making a name for himself. He listened to the message while pretending to use the bathroom and quickly destroyed the phone when the voice was finished speaking.

“So, I am a Soltek agent, then,” Rafian muttered to himself as he tried to make sense of his call to espionage, the whole business of his amnesia, and awaiting missions in hotel rooms. The contact he was given for joining the resistance turned out to be a man named Corren Fox. Corren had a slight build and a crop of orange hair, which seemed to be the fashion on Talula. His face was hard, and his demeanor was that of a killer. Rafian recognized him as the same man who had shot the two pursuers six weeks back, and they became quick friends after some conversation.

Over the next couple of weeks, the men bonded through nights at the saloon, throwing back drinks, and Rafian introduced him to Riyah. Corren’s specialty was armed robbery, and he lived very well due to his success at pulling them off and flying under the radar as he did so. No one knew of Corren, but many had been killed by him.

After warming up to Rafian enough to trust him, Corren asked if they could speak business one night in the hotel room. When he arrived, Riyah answered the door to let him in, and he sat across from Rafian, staring at her hungrily as if he couldn’t help himself. Who could blame him? While at home, Riyah always wore transparent, silken, body-length robes that showed off her shapely body, despite the slight underwear beneath them.

“You want Riyah, don’t you, Corren?” Rafian asked with a sly glint in his eye, and Riyah shot him a glance that could level buildings, showing her disapproval of his suggestion.

Laughing out loud, Corren shook off the question and without breaking a sweat, started talking to Rafian. “Hey, you have training; you’ve told me yourself. Do you want to use some of that military know-how to help me rob these trade union folks? If we score, you could be on a ship off of this moon in less than a month, bro.”

Taking a sip of his vodka and thinking a bit, Rafian became annoyed as Riyah plopped down next to him. Numbing the urge to shoo her away, he looked into Corren’s blue eyes and answered, “I’ll need a piece, buddy. I have no weapons here, and you know how hard it is to get a gun through the Felitian’s watchdogs.”

As if to answer, Corren slid a pistol across the table.

Rafian picked it up, measuring the heft and studying it. “Corren, good friend, this seems to be the beginning of a beautiful partnership!”

“Cheers!”

After a time of some drinking, laughing, and discussion, Riyah went off to bed, and the real business was discussed. The plan was to rob one of Corren’s contacts on his route the next day. Rafian was to start the transportation, and Corren would hold him up and rob him before shooting him and dumping his body in the wilderness between Dearin and Corpys. The plans were laid out over three hours, and Corren took off into the night while Rafian headed into the room to join Riyah. She was waiting in bed, lying on her side feigning sleep. When Rafian lay beside her, she sat up and powered on the lamp sitting on the bedside table next to her.

“What the hell was that?”

Rafian turned to face her as the surprise reflected across his face and the light forced him to shield his eyes.

“What are you talking about, Riyah? Are you upset with me about something?”

She began to curse at him in a language he was unfamiliar with, and when she realized that he did not understand, she switched back to the common tongue. She let him know that she was hurt at his attempt to play pimp when he first introduced Corren to her.

“Are you not a prostitute?” Rafian asked with a smile on his face. “I was just trying to help you score another customer so that you can help out a bit around here.”

When the words fell out of his mouth, he instantly regretted them as he watched Riyah turn away from him to turn off the lamp, with tears falling from her eyes.

“Oh,” she said silently as she wiped her face and took a trembling deep breath. “I guess I misunderstood you and what this is.”

Memory 14 | Tyheran Flight

With blood running down his arm, Rafian VCA ducked behind the mining facility in hopes of seeing his friend Corren emerge. His brain was throbbing as the blood steadily rushed through his veins from the excitement of the previous hour. The heist had gone down flawlessly, but the two men had not accounted for their victim’s history. When the trap was sprung, they realized all too late that he was a high-ranking Felitian official. Not only was the man an official, but he was also a martyr. He had tripped a homing signal as he fell to his death, which sent the authorities in the direction of Corren and Rafian’s location for prompt retribution. When the troopers came in firing, Rafian hit the fields and escaped into the wilderness. Corren was a second too late and was gunned down by more than twenty troopers.

Rafian was getting impatient. His friend should have emerged by now. Corren would have been smart enough to wear armor, right? He thought about it and then realized the answer. To sneak into the mining facility, his friend had to make it through the detection fields and would have avoided wearing armor in order to remain invisible to the scanners. Rafian felt lonely and stupid. What was he thinking?

With much effort, he tried to recall his past, but again he was met with darkness. Being a wanted man in this galaxy was not a life he wanted. Soon there would be vids displaying info about him. Every starport would bear his likeness on their screens, and then the bounty hunters would come. His mind turned to Riyah as he ran towards a spent reactor bin outside the saloon, and by coincidence, he spotted her walking up to begin her night’s work.

“Psst! Riyah! Over here!”

Rafian motioned to the beauty, and a grin crossed her face as she ran to him. “Hey, baby, why are you out here tonight?”

Quickly Rafian grabbed her and muffled her mouth with his palm to silence her.

“We have to get out of here tonight, Riyah. Corren bit it, and I am two turns away from being shot like a dog in the streets. We crossed the Fels, and, well, your lover here is public enemy number one on some trooper’s piss list. We need to book, and I mean book fast!”

Riyah suddenly looked lost and confused. Her eyes glazed over as she slumped down by the alley wall as if depressed.

“No one makes it out of here if they’re wanted, Rafian. Maybe we can lie low for a while—you know, till they assume you’re dead or just forgotten. I can make us enough money to live on, and I can get everything you need, take care of you, and—”

Her words made Rafian even angrier. “Are you out of your damn mind? Lie low? No, no, no! We are getting out of here right now!”

Retiring to a camp outside of Dearin for the night, the two discussed their escape plans. The security on the starport was just too tight, but they both knew that renowned criminals flew in and out of there all the time. Finally they came to the conclusion that they would have to buy a small noncommercial ship from Gorda the Gangster. Gorda was the head underground official for the moon of Talula and a Hithian legend. But Rafian was wanted by the Gangster for a double cross on one of his associates, so it would take Riyah’s “persuasion” to, hopefully, garner a flight for them out of there. She seemed elated to help and spent the entire night gabbing about Yunen ruins, riverside cottages, and all of the rumors that surrounded her home planet of Tyhera—their destination.

Rafian sat back as Riyah happily told tale after tale about Veece, Apun, on Tyhera, and its beauty. It bothered him that he had no Memory of his own planet, and it bothered him that he felt guilty for Corren’s death and everything that he had done. With a mental effort, he decided to forget it, saying that today is what’s important, and he would surge forward. Having nothing to show for a forgotten past, what was the point of even remembering it? For a minute he wished he were dead, but after a while, Riyah’s sweet voice had melted into a song. She said it was a song of her homeland, and after a time, it lulled him to sleep.

When Rafian awoke, he was alone. The camp was neatly arranged, and a small note was tacked to his chest. Ripping it off, he read it to find that Riyah had set out to talk to Gorda. The sun was bright overhead, and he lay back to enjoy it for some time, staring up at Tyhera and wondering if he would ever touch its beautiful surface.

“Well, may the Maker bless me. If it isn’t the off-worlder!”

Rafian’s eyes lit up with shock at the sound of the voices. Feigning sleep as the footsteps approached, he recognized the clothing and boots of the four figures and knew them to be Mehlba gang members. From some run-ins and shootouts a few months back, Rafian had earned a deadly reputation among the local gangs. The chance to not only kill him but to also collect the bounty on his head was one that any Mehlba lackey would sell his own mother for.

As soon as the first Mehlba got close enough, Rafian swung his leg around, sweeping him off of his feet while launching himself into the second. Within moments, it turned into a frenzy of knives, punches, and kicks as Rafian spun and flipped through their attacks, landing blow after blow of assaults. Grabbing the wrist of an attacking Ranalos, Rafian spun behind him and stomped down on his calf to force him into a kneeling position. In one swift motion, he snapped the Ranalos’s neck and ended the spin into a tornado kick to the side of a Daltak’s neck. The two other human Mehlbas were already suffering on the ground, one from an eye stabbing and the other from an apparently broken leg. When he had all of them on the ground, Rafian reached down to retrieve a fallen pistol and shot each in the head, making sure that they were dead.

With Rafian now wanted, the situation was proving to be as annoying as he suspected. Why did I survive, and why am I able to fight like this? He silently pondered this thought over and over again. He would always lie to people when they asked about his past. He would tell them that he was once a Soltek agent. It was the only answer that would stick, but in truth, he didn’t know. At times it felt as if the world moved in slow motion and in perfect harmony when he fought, flying through the air, moving like wind, parrying attacks, and returning them.

“At least I have some talent,” he muttered to himself as he kicked a large tumble brush that had managed to get too close. “I have talent, and I have Riyah!” The last thought made him smile, but it was gone when he realized that he had sent her into the arms of a beast.

* * *

Riyah felt like a walking dessert, being ogled from head to toe by the criminals who inhabited Gorda’s building. It was customary to set up meetings before seeing the Gangster, but she hoped that waltzing in unannounced would show more of her urgency to leave Talula. Never before in her life had she felt as frightened as she did now, but she thought of getting one of Rafian’s rare smiles if she could succeed, and it was enough to keep her going.

“I seek audience with the honorable Gorda,” she announced to the dirty android at the entrance to Gorda’s main room.

“I am sorry, but you do not meet the description of my lord’s twelve o’clock appointment,” the android replied.

Smiling, Riyah went on. “I know, but your lord will not mind my relaying a quick message about his appointment prior to.”

The android seemed to ponder and then asked, “And what is this in reference to?”

Riyah feigned a look of horror and replied, “Your lord really needs to hear this from me; it is worth a lot of money!”

Gorda the Gangster had sliced out a nice bit of living on Talula, staying relatively hidden from the Felitian authorities. He controlled the underground with an iron fist, and his affairs were always quiet, so only criminals knew his name. His only concern in life was money and acquiring as much of it as he could swim in before he “decided” to die. Gorda was a Hithian, and like many who occupied that water planet, he appeared very much like a fish out of water. Hithians were mermen, having gills on the sides of their faces, large mouths, and orb-like eyes that blinked constantly to filter out the dry dust that occupied the atmosphere. As a Hithian he hated humans, perceiving them to be lower than his own people, both in looks and ambition.

Rafian had killed Gorda’s large pimp, who managed a few girls in the local saloons. It was good money for the Gangster, so when the pimp died, the girls’ money halted and Rafian became a marked man. All of the women who were under the pimp disappeared as well, and Gorda promptly put a mark on their heads, including Riyah’s. Luckily for her, Gorda had no idea who she was.

Three women were assisting the Gangster with his afternoon meal—if one would consider what they were doing to be assisting—when his android butler entered the chamber with a pretty, blue-haired woman in tow.

“Your honor,” Riyah uttered, bowing deeply to him. “I have a favor to ask you, which I am willing to pay heavily for.”

At the mention of money, the Gangster’s attention was given over to Riyah, and with a gesture he shooed the women away to their respective corners.

“Who is it you want killed?” he asked, his booming voice sounding as if he gargled water as he spoke.

“No one, your greatness. I need swift transportation to the planet Tyhera for myself and my husband. You see, he has quit the service of the Felitian Nation, and they want to question him about it. You know as well as I do what that means, Your Honor.”

The Gangster chuckled. “What’s his name, and which division was this husband of yours in?” he asked as he swallowed two small, unfortunate potatoes.

“His name is Oda Mancozulu, Lord. He has always kept his affairs private, so I cannot reveal more. We offer fifty thousand credits.”

The Gangster rubbed his fat, scaly chin then spewed back his offer: “Sixty-five thousand. No less!”

Riyah looked as if she was about to cry. “Please be reasonable, great one!”

Looking her up and down, the Gangster seems to soften. “Fifty thousand credits, then, but no less! You are quite fetching and are lucky to find me in a good mood today.”

Riyah sighed with relief. It was all the money they had, but it meant freedom and a chance to start over. The Gangster gave her a location and password to use that night to get off of Talula. It seemed like an eternity before she could leave his disgusting presence, but she was so excited to return to the camp to tell Rafian the good news that she forgot everything it had taken to get there.

That night, Rafian and Riyah boarded a run-down Tyheran supply ship under the guise of Mr. and Mrs. Mancozulu. They exchanged formalities with its pilot and settled in among some smelly boxes in the back. Trying to make the best of the situation, Riyah smiled at Rafian and took his hand, but he had the same distant look in his eyes that he always did.

“Where are you, Rafian? You aren’t here with me.”

Finally, his eyes focused on her, and he returned the smile. “I was in my mind’s eye, Ri. I was repenting my sins. It all came back to you, though. Only you can release me. So what’s it gonna be? Do you forgive me of my sins?”

Lifting his palms to kiss them, Riyah let a tear fall on them and looked up at him for a long time before speaking.

“You have it all wrong, Raf. You were forgiven from the day you killed my slaver.”

It shocked him to realize that she had known all along that he killed her pimp on the day they met in the saloon on the moon of Talula, so long ago. Over time, he had learned to stop underestimating Riyah, but he had no idea that all along she knew he had killed the brute. He wondered what else she might know.

“You have never asked about my past, Raf, nor I yours. We were just living day to day in our respective roles. I can’t begrudge you that. We have a long trip ahead, so I think it would be a good time for us to actually talk.”

Rafian agreed as he stared back at her. “Slaver? Riyah Mist, all this time I thought you were a willing partner to the scheme at the bar.”

Smiling, she assured him that she knew. For hours they talked and learned more about each other. It was the best of all ends to that beautiful moon of such ugly inhabitants. Throughout the night, he held her close as he mentally drifted back to his place of repentance. He felt he owed the world penance for his many crimes on Talula, and he made an oath to become a good person within his new life and new planet.

“Good-bye, beautiful Talula.”

He muttered this out loud, and the smile that Riyah displayed as the ship broke Tyhera’s atmosphere was bright enough to light the entire planet of Valuneer. Like two pups in a store’s front window, the couple watched as the lush planet came ever closer with the ship’s descent. It was very blue, a pretty azure field with clouds that masked beautiful green landscapes and occasional brown swampland. They were so enthralled; they did not notice the three vessels tailing them. Suddenly, a loud voice came over the speakers.

“This is the Felitian Air Patrol. Slow your descent to a halt and prepare to be boarded!”

Nervously, Riyah looked at Rafian. Their trip to paradise had hit a brick wall.

In response, he smiled and squeezed her hand. “Positive thoughts, pet,” he said.

“Hold on back there!”

It was the pilot’s voice now on the announcer, and before Rafian and Riyah could react, they were slammed into the rear wall as the ship bolted away from the pursuers. Shot after shot rained on them as the pilot did his best maneuvers to outrun the authorities. But there was only so much maneuvering one could do with a freight vessel. The ship was being torn apart, and it was not going very well.

“Oh, man, Gorda will be most unhappy!” the pilot uttered as a huge explosion rocked the side nearest Riyah. As they were torn apart by the sudden movement, Rafian desperately tried to grab her falling body. But the ship was hit again, this time propelling him into a far wall. When the pain had subsided enough for him to open his eyes, he thought he saw Riyah reaching for him. In almost an instant, everything went black.

* * *

Rafian opened his eyes to find himself on the banks of a swampy pool. The remains of the craft were strewn all about, and refuse seemed to be everywhere. He took in the situation soberly. They had been attacked, he had passed out, and now he was on Tyhera.

After checking for any visible wounds, he began to search for Riyah. The fragments of the ship were everywhere, and for hours he rifled through them, searching unsuccessfully for his mate. He managed to find evidence of the pilot’s demise, but it seemed as though Riyah had vanished into the atmosphere. Where was she? After a few more hours, Rafian came to terms with reality. The skies of Tyhera were all that Riyah would experience of her homeland. He was sole survivor—lucky, unscathed, shaken, but alive.

“May your next life be a royal one, my beloved. Maker knows you have earned it,” Rafian muttered to himself as he became overcome with emotion and fell to his knees crying. While onboard, he had neglected to tell her how much he loved her. He thought it would have been his first words to her in their new life. Now she, like his Memory, had been taken from him, and he felt very alone in the world.

Memory 15 | Freedom Fighter

The minute Rafian set forth into them, the swamps of Tyhera seemed endless. He had no idea where he was going but knew if he kept walking, he would eventually run into something or someone. Three hours passed, and the heat and his exhaustion began to play tricks on his mind. He began to see men and women coming and going between the trees. These people were dressed strangely, nothing like the inhabitants of Talula, and he felt as if he knew them. He tried to call out to them a few times, but they never paid much attention to him. They continued their ritual of emerging from one tree and then walking into another before disappearing.

He began to talk to himself. “Maybe there is a worse fate for me than you, Rhee. Obviously this is some hell that I am lost in, a hell with pretty phantoms to try my sanity. I can feel myself going mad.”

Stopping to catch his breath after a time, Rafian looked about at the vast swampland and considered his situation. Dark thoughts began to cloud his mind as he headed for a nearby rock to sit. He had not eaten for days, and he felt an interior ache throughout his entire body. Suddenly a Memory was triggered, pushing itself from out of the dark cloud of his delusion. He recalled himself as a starving boy. He was in a sort of jail cell, and he was alone, just as he was now, with no hope of escape. Was this Memory real, or was it just another illusion? With much effort, he forced himself to stand up and pushed forward, choosing to ignore the Memory as he put one foot in front of the other.

* * *

Cally, Apun, is a small city that is barely on the thoughts of the Felitian Empire. So is not surprising that its population consisted mostly of freedom fighters, rebels, and their infamous resistance. Cally was not as advanced in its architecture as Dearin was on Talula. It did not have the metal work and masonry that blended to form graceful shapes on the horizon, or the advanced solar technology to keep it lit at all times of day. Cally was a slum in comparison to Talula’s cities, and the outskirts held savage, doglike animals that would devour those who dared leave with their guard down. Within its streets, the people were mostly outlaws and scavengers. It would be rare to find Felitian troopers there, and “the resistance” had gotten so comfortable with their haven that an open recruiter to the cause would patrol the streets looking to convert any nonbelievers he or she could find.

Whenever the Felitians were present, the city was relatively peaceful and quiet. The magistrates knew that Cally was a nest of traitors to the empire but left it alone to use for information gathering and for the occasional raid whenever pressure came down from the top. The city had its good parts too. The saloon was reputed to have the most exotic dancers in the entire Lucan galaxy, and it was rumored that the queen herself was born there, in the days before the rich and powerful moved out.

Rafian VCA looked the part of a vagrant as he plodded through the rain and wet road, limping towards the resistance recruiter. By fate, he had stumbled upon an abandoned bike whose saddlebags were laden with credits, a warm cloak, and a gun that still worked well. He stole the items before the owner returned and was lucky for finding it because the gun was enough to ward of the hum hounds that tried to make a meal of him. His plans now were to drown his sorrows inside the deep, red abyss of some Tyheran brandy, or at the very least, a cheap mug of beer.

The odd makeshift uniform of the recruiter caught his eye, and her warm smile and nod pulled him almost magnetically over to her. She looked no older than eighteen, and her jumpsuit seemed to be the kind he noticed being worn by trash collectors on the edge of the city. Her clothing was an olive color, but it was covered in various places by silver armor, which on close inspection favored that of the Felitian National Guard.

“Well hello, citizen. Are you interested in a world of peace, free from Felitian oppression?”

Hesitantly he looked her up and down, taking in her ambience, clothing, and demeanor.

“What is this? What are you talking about? The Felitians are everywhere. Best you quit this charade before you get yourself vaporized, girl.”

Smiling, she returned, “Thank you for your concern, but I represent a higher power. The Felitians who oppress you are fading. Soon light will be returned, and freedom through the resistance will be a reality.”

Rafian regarded the recruiter and asked her to wait. Making his way into the saloon, he purchased a tall bottle of wine and made his way back to her. Smiling, he offered her a drink, which she quickly refused. He seated himself on a nearby wall and motioned her over.

“Tell you what, sister. I would like for you to tell me about this resistance that you are so passionate about while I wash away the pain in my feet and legs.”

Obligingly, the recruiter began her story, and Rafian listened for a very long time. Riyah used to speak of the resistance to him; she had been passionate about their fight and wanted to join when they reached Tyhera. She had dreams of infiltrating Felitian bases as a spy and would make up long scenarios and relay them to him. He would always blow it off as political nonsense, since he saw the Felitian rule as absolute. The only “resistance” in his mind was men like him who “defied” them by breaking the law for a fist full of coins.

To actually meet a member of the infamous resistance intrigued Rafian, and the more the recruiter told him, the more he liked it. After all, it was three of these same Felitians who had killed Riyah. It was Felitian justice that had wiped out Corren, and when it came to any problems in his past, it was a Felitian figure that clouded his mind. It made him angry! Oh, his sweet Riyah. The bottle of wine was empty, and he cried openly, knowing that the rain would hide it from anyone who might see him. What a pathetic sight Rafian was, thoroughly soaked with a mixture of swamp water, wine, and tears, and slumped down in the gutter of a seedy saloon, in a town deemed as trash on a paradise planet. The recruiter helped him up and looked at him with stern eyes.

“Sir, we have all suffered at the hands of the Felitians. I have told you of our fight and you have told me of your past. This is your chance to right your wrongs and defeat those that have wronged you! Join us in our fight. Help us bring this planet back to what it should be!”

It seemed to take hours for Rafian to respond as he righted himself and looked back at her with red burning eyes. He recalled the one message that was embedded within his brain beyond the amnesia: join the resistance. So he weighed the odds and couldn’t fathom any other direction that would make sense for him.

“You may be right. Maybe revenge will finally give me some peace. I want to be recruited into the resistance army.”

Smiling, the woman entered his name and information into a data pad and handed him one similar to hers.

“You will be a hunted man, VCA; the Felitians aim to wipe us off the planet and will not hesitate to kill anyone who fights as a freedom fighter. Recruits must accomplish an assignment to be one of us. Will you accept an assignment?”

Looking down at his data pad, Rafian observed the mission details and nodded.

Saluting sternly with a smirk on her face, the woman got serious and replied. “Very well, recruit VCA. When you have accomplished your mission, please return here in appropriate dress for your induction into our faction.”

“What is appropriate dress?” Rafian asked.

“Anything that is more respectable than that cloak. You will encounter opposition in the camps that we are sending you to. See if you can scavenge something that fits, and we will take care of the rest.”

Lazily returning the salute, Rafian shuffled off into the night. The sudden change in events was not easy for someone who had no recollection of his former life and training. The Rafian of old would have laughed at the simplicity of this operation, but the current version was rightfully nervous. Some would-be slaver thugs had attacked some farmers on the outskirts of Cally. Five people had been abducted, and Rafian’s mission was to get them back home safely. His datapad gave information about the camp’s location, and he made his way close until he was roughly a mile away from them.

It had taken him an hour of jogging to get this close, and after some fits of vomiting combined with his aches, he arrived soberly aware and anxious to prove himself.

The rain stopped, and he was feeling dizzy. It dawned on him that he needed sleep, so he found a slight depression bordered by rubbery trees. He set up a hammock by tying a number of the giant leaves across it and then securing it with fabric torn from his cloak. He tested it to see if it would secure his weight, and then he rolled up into his cloak and went to sleep. It took mere seconds for him to pass out, and he slept for a very long time.

The recruiter had given him an old rifle that was barely functional, and while it could fire, he did notice that the aim was off. When he woke up the next morning, he cleaned the rifle. However, he knew it would come down to luck and his special gift in hand-to-hand fighting.

As Rafian neared the slaver camp a few minutes later, he felt as if his heart were in his throat. Five thugs were patrolling the grounds, and from what he could see, they were armed and seasoned. These men were killers with a lifetime of gunfights to back them up. Rafian contemplated his next move for a bit, but it seemed suicidal to him. Was this a trick? Who in their right mind sends a new recruit on a rescue mission? Maybe the recruiter had seen something in him that made her feel he was capable of pulling off a one-man operation that truly needed a small army. But then again, he wondered, what in a tired outsider coming into town for a drink would lead someone to assume any of that? The whole situation was making him frustrated, and as he fumed over it, he heard a noise.

“Psst! Hey! Are you Rafian?” a voice whispered, and he quickly nodded at the yellow eyes that emerged from the bushes behind him. A young Daltak dressed and armed for battle stepped out from behind a pair of trees wearing a grin not unlike a child that was up to some mischief.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Orion Zee, rifleman, at your service, Rafian VCA. Seems like we are to be mission mates.”

Shaking his hand, Rafian observed the Daltak with interest, then sighed and expressed his gratitude for the help. Daltaks were humanoids that seemed to be carved out of stone. It was merely how they looked, however; they were soft like humans and could show emotional expressions visually, as humans did. However, Daltaks didn’t have all human features because they were missing a nose and ears. Instead, they had holes covered by flaps to smell and hear, and their skin tone ranged from a pallid white to a light blue or deep indigo, depending on the area of Daltak where they originated. Orion was the color of the azure sky, and what he lacked in hair, he made up with tiny bones that resembled horns. This was the pride of the Daltak people. They considered humans to be ugly due to the lack of bones protruding from their heads.

“So you’re a rifleman? Hmm…how good are you?”

“Well, I made second rank just today…”

Rafian had no clue what second rank was but assumed it would be good. So he assured the man by saying, “It will have to do, Orion. Cover me when I go in.”

“Are you crazy? Go in? We aren’t supposed to go in. We’re supposed to stay hidden and eliminate this threat from a distance!”

Rafian laughed and said, “I figured as much with you, but I do better hand-to-hand than I do popping melons from a distance.”

Orion shook his head in disagreement. “Trust me; we need to do it this way.”

But Rafian was already gone. Orion watched the dark figure of his partner edging closer to the camp, and with much frustration, he lay flat and uncapped his rifle for what was to come.

The camp consisted of a metal tent and a portable four-post cell with chromian posts and laser crossbars that held the prisoners. There was a conductor tower next to the cell that gave Rafian enough cover to get in close to the thugs without being detected.

“How about we bring out Cinny again for some fun?” Rafian heard a voice say, and then, in concert, the other four thugs replied in agreement. Next, the whimpering of a young boy caught his ear, and he managed to peep around the conductor to see what was transpiring. It seemed the slavers were about to have a bit of “fun” with a young farm boy and had opened one of the laser bars to bring him out. Holding his rifle by the barrel, Rafian swung a deadly arch overhead into the closest of the thugs, shattering his head into a bloody eruption. As he went down instantly from the impact, Rafian was on the rest like a beast unleashed. Laser fire ripped into the other men from Orion’s sniper’s nest, and all except one of the thugs fell—the Ranalos who had gone in for the boy.

“Orion, secure the farmers!” Rafian yelled as he headed after the slaver through the dense Tyheran swamps. He was gone before Orion could reply and was hot on the trail of his mark as the Ranalos thug ran for his life. The two raced for a long time and Rafian was getting tired, but the Ranalos seemed to have endless energy as he fled. Dropping to one knee, Rafian laid down suppression fire at the thug and managed to nick his leg with one of the shots. Screaming in agony, the thug went down and began to crawl away. He was desperately afraid of his pursuer and began thrashing about in the murky water as he crawled.

Tired and annoyed, Rafian unsheathed his knife and slowly pursued the desperate, wounded Ranalos. When he finally caught up with him, he knelt over the fallen thug and pushed his head down into the mud, his hand entangled in his tentacle mane. He held the knife so that his victim could see it. He then took time to reflect on his life since his arrival in Talula and the emptiness he felt after losing Riyah. Lifting the Ranalos face from the murk to make sure he could see, Rafian spoke to him in earnest, steeling himself to do what he must to complete his mission.

“How does it feel being mounted, rapist? You don’t like it very much, do you? Do you think that I am going to be merciful? Answer me! Unfortunately for you, the man I will be tomorrow is not the one who will be seeing you off tonight. You see, the man who speaks to you now is a tired, twisted, and angry man who has had the only thing he cared about torn from him. So within this cruel knife lies my retribution, and you are a symbol of everything that has made me suffer up until today.”

The Ranalos’s screams could be heard for miles.

As Rafian tortured and killed the last of the slavers, Orion did not worry about waiting for him. He, Orion, would be a freedom fighter after that day, and he was on the side of the psychopath who seemed to favor fighting up close. The only doubts in the sniper’s mind were about Rafian, as he wondered whether the screams were his or the Ranalos. He quickly put it out of his head, though. Either way, it did not leave him with good feelings.

Memory 16 | Tempered in Fire

The rain came down in sheets as Rafian VCA sat at his usual table in the saloon. His favorite dancer, Dawna, was not in tonight, and due to the early hour, neither were his friends Orion and Corgan. Looking about at the saloon’s patrons, he tried hard not to let his thoughts roam on the past. He badly needed a distraction, and it took all his nerves to avoid approaching the vine-peddling smuggler named Vinny. Drugs had become a welcome distraction from his problems, but having to buy them from a shady and cocky individual such as Vinny was just unbearable. So Rafian let his mind drift from that form of escape. He missed Dawna. She was always good conversation. The other girls were either looking for a rich pilot to whisk them away or pleasuring themselves in mind games with grunts like him. Most saloon girls weren’t worth the trouble, he thought. Dawna had been an exception.

With much effort, Rafian reflected on his resistance career to keep his mind occupied. He had earned the respect of some of the top freedom fighters since he freed the slaves that fateful day of his arrival. Just recently, the freedom fighter leadership had sent him a letter of appreciation for his obsessive thwarting of the Felitians, through the various missions and rescue operations he had led in the months following his recruitment. In the months that passed, he and Corgan raided the capital of Veece, Apun, to rescue fellow freedom fighters, and then there was his hugely successful solo effort that destroyed multiple Felitian satellite camps. It was freedom fighters like him who kept Cally invisible to the Felitians. He had every right to be proud, but it was never enough to take away the melancholy mood that haunted his every moment.

As he reflected on all of this, he heard a familiar voice. “Hello, warrior!”

Rafian smiled without even looking up because he knew the honey-sweet voice to be that of Dawna.

“Dawna! I was just thinking about you.”

“Oh, really?” she teased him as she began her dance routine in front of his chair.

“Well, it’s either you or the war. I think I’d rather think about you,” Rafian said, smiling at her.

Dawna was a tall, blond amazon of a woman. She was the first dancer he had met, and they had become quick friends. Since the death of Riyah, the thought of intimacy with anyone else would reopen old scars for Rafian, so he saw Dawna as a friend and nothing more—at least this is what he had convinced himself of. Dawna was also a fellow resistance soldier. He was surprised by this revelation one night when he attended one of Corgan’s raid meetings, and there was Dawna decked out in full armor, semiautomatic gun inside her belt, and war paint smeared all over her face. He had never looked at her quite the same ever since. This indeed was the people’s rebellion, and the way she hid her identity during her daily work hours was something that Rafian admired.

Orion, ever the enigma, came in after another hour, looking cleaner than normal. He was wearing a purple smock and carried a spice pipe horn instead of his rifle, and he joined the band onstage to begin droning on his instrument. Looking on, Rafian smiled in spite of himself. War or no war, everyone had a special something about them, and he loved how they were able to turn it off to enjoy their lives beyond the fighting.

Rafian got up and walked outside quietly, shaking hands with his Daltak friend Makk on the way out. With ill intent to keep his mind clear, Rafian headed towards the rear of the saloon and injected a shot of the vine that he had bought from Dawna’s friend Losa. The brand was called Mystic Ginger, and it burnt him when he injected it, causing him to worry that he was using a bad product. These days, it seemed as if Rafian was always on the vine. He felt he had to use it as a crutch for the depression he suffered consistently. Rhiya haunted his mind nonstop, and he had never forgiven himself for dragging her into his mess and causing her to die in the skies above her home planet. The vine was an escape from it all. That sensation of fire was now in his brain, and he felt less like the perpetuator of Rhiya’s death and more like a god of war.

Sitting down with his back to the saloon wall, Rafian withdrew the needle slowly and relaxed. He was feeling calm, and the grin would not leave his face. This was a side effect of the drug and one of the reasons he hid when he took it. Vine heads were not looked upon favorably, and for Rafian VCA to be seen grinning like a fool would cause him to lose every ounce of respect that the rebels had for him.

He reflected on that first night he tried vine. It was several months after he had made his first confirmed Felitian kill. He had gone into the city of Veece by himself, armed with only a rifle and a goal. The goal was to test his skills at assassination. He was engaged by two officers within the city after they recognized his resistance fatigues, and it led to a long chase into an abandoned building near the palace. It was in that building that he shot one Felitian officer in the head and boldly chased the other into the streets to execute him. It was a foolish act, and he spent the remainder of the day hiding within the enemy city. Luckily, such a small incident did not alert the Felitian Special Forces, but it was enough to increase the security in Veece and bring about monthly raids on the city of Cally. When he made it back to town, Rafian was excited, celebrating with friends in his small home. It was then that he decided to try the ginger. It was liquid adrenaline and enough to hold the demons within his mind at bay. He didn’t become addicted, but he knew to use it during the times he couldn’t get Riyah out of his head.

After the lengthy reflection on that proud moment, Rafian passed out on the ground. It was the oh-so-familiar crash from injecting illegal vines. For two hours he lay brain-dead and fried from the vine injection, and then he awoke vomiting all over himself—he had taken this a bit too far. Embarrassed and now sober, Rafian took the back route home to clean up. Once he had showered and changed his clothing, he returned to the festivities at the saloon as if nothing had occurred for the three hours he was gone.

It was dawn, and the band was still in full swing. The Primian and human women were spinning onstage in a sort of dervish brought on by the melody of the horns. The place was packed and Rafian’s favorite seat was taken, forcing him to stand as he clapped along to a freedom fighter song led by Orion.

“Hey, Rafian!” a familiar voice yelled, and he smiled at his good friend Saiko, a fellow freedom fighter with a spotty background just like his own. According to his story, Saiko was the victim of a mind-wash and was at one time a hired gun for the Felitians. He was commissioned to kill an important figure they wanted removed. As a result of the payment for his services, he was made filthy rich. But his mind was also wiped, and his memories of the event were removed along with any recollection of family, friends, and skills.

Rafian wondered sometimes if he too had once been a great bounty hunter like Saiko, wiped of his Memory to protect a client. Saiko’s story had always interested Rafian—being that he too suffered from a similar affliction. So they struggled together to remember a past now gone and had become close friends for sharing this struggle. As a test of what they had once known, they would train together and then spar outside the saloon to test new skills learned from sparring or from the battlefield. It was an activity they both enjoyed.

“What’s up, Sai? How’s the training?”

Saiko nodded and replied, “Good, man. I’m getting it back little by little every day.”

They found a place on the stairs to watch the girls while knocking back a few beers and sharing battle stories. The night was in full swing, and Rafian could count over fifty freedom fighters in attendance, including himself and Saiko. This was always a bad omen because Felitian’s spies had breached the small town. No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than an alarm went off to warn of an incoming attack.

Rafian tossed his mug down and pulled a five-foot-long sword from a sheath on his back. It was time to thwart another raid, but the town had gotten used to it. Doctors readied their medi-kits, and the saloon crowd filed out the front, weapons drawn. The sounds of gunshots and explosions could be heard from over the central bridge in Cally, and the sky was flashing red as the Felitian ships rained deadly fire down on the saloon entrance, killing a few unlucky souls who came out at the wrong time.

Looking on, Rafian could see his Deijen friend Barri amid the fray, ducking and dodging gunfire while tossing detonator after detonator at the Fels. The fight was intense and it made Rafian’s blood boil, so he started up the bridge in full stride swinging a bloody arc at any Fel who dared cross his path. Running into two Felitians, Rafian slid left, then right, allowing his blade to cut a horizontal V path in front of him. Dodging the deadly slash, one of the Fels ignited a rocket-pack and flew backwards while covering Rafian with dangerous flames. Raf dived over the edge of the bridge to douse the flames in the water below. He barely made it, and then he swam to the bank to take the hill and rejoin the fight. He was wet and scarred from the scorching, but he was not slowed, as his anger carried him forward. Swinging the blade like a scythe, he managed to bring one assailant down before taking a gunshot to the arm. Dropping the blade, Rafian rolled towards his shooter and knocked him down with a sweeping attack. He then mounted the Daltak marksman and choked him to death with his bare hands before recovering his blade and rushing back into the fray.

The small band of fighters were getting desperate. Never before had there been this many Felitians in Cally. Rafian continued his berserker run amid the Fels until he was floored by a martial arts practitioner who happened to be a Ranalos. The Felitian commenced to stomp on Rafian’s chest with blow after blow until a gunshot to the head dropped him. Rafian felt the giant arms of Barri pulling him into a nearby building, and he silently thanked the giant for saving his life.

Cally had become a battlefield, and Rafian knew things were going badly when not only Barri, but Vinny, Orion, and Corgan were wheeled in to be looked at by the doctors in their makeshift clinic. His own wounds were too great for him to be allowed back into the battle, but Rafian couldn’t allow himself to watch as his friends were patched up and released back into the hell outside. Impatiently, he got up from the bed and with sword aloft joined them in regrouping.

“Look, it’s the one from before!” he heard the rocket-wearing Fel announce, and then, suddenly, all eyes were on him.

Rafian did not hesitate to rush the Felitian who had burnt him. Two freedom fighter shots had split his armor in two, leaving the Fel vulnerable in multiple places. Felitians wore plasteel armor. It was a flexible material that reflected kinetic weapons and could be destroyed only with laser technology. The Felitian had felt invincible against Rafian’s attack, but the rebels of Cally were bringing the rain, and he had managed to get shot a few times. Ignoring imminent death, Rafian slid himself to the left of the rocket man and buried the blade deep into his stomach between the cracked armor. The Felitian screamed like a stuck Bara pig as Rafian did a crescent kick into an axe kick to land him face first into the water.

All attacks turned on him, and his pants caught fire, so he dove once again to avoid the lasers. Again the water saved him, but he became disoriented and unaware of his surroundings. An enslaved Deijen picked up the broken body of Rafian and lifted him up as he was jeered and mocked by the now-winning Felitians. Looking around as the life escaped his body, Rafian realized that he was alone. His comrades either were dead, strewn about like rag dolls, or had fled the warzone to live to fight another day.

On the ground, about ten Fels were left to do with him what they wished. Slamming him to the ground, the Deijen roared as they handed him a flamethrower. Desperately, Rafian pulled out the last of his Mystic Ginger supply and jammed the needle into his hip. As new life erupted in his eyes and with renewed effort, he recovered the blade, grinning, and dropped into a pose before the Felitians.

The leader, impressed, motioned to the Deijen to stop. “I want this rebel tortured, blinded, and broken—”

Rafian took the Deijen’s arm off while running towards the saloon. He barely made it to the doors. A low-flying X-11 Zenu had appeared and scattered the Felitians as it landed resistance reinforcements from Hammerhead, Jaloos—the other moon that orbited Tyhera. Cally had once again been held, and the shouts of celebration were almost deafening as Rafian, the indomitable fighter, smiled from between his charred lips in recognition of his survival.

Memory 17 | Master Lucci

Blu the Deijen was an incredible doctor. His techniques were unparalleled by any within the city, and with the help of fellow physicians, he patched up every single freedom fighter who had fallen in the fray that fateful day. The Deijen race was from a swamp planet like Geral, but where the lizards were rough and smaller in stature, the Deijen were more like humans. While their features were flat and plain, they were intelligent and resilient beings who stood as giants. The average Deijen was over seven feet tall, and their muscular bodies were equally intimidating. From what Rafian had learned, the largely human-run Felitian Empire had joined forces with the Ranalos and conquered Deijo just as they did Tyhera. So it was no surprise to anyone that most of the Deijens were hard-core members of the freedom fighter resistance.

While Rafian lay in his hospital bed awaiting treatment, he thought of the martial arts masters who could simply will away their wounds to make themselves heal. He had witnessed it once when a couple of masters were in a duel, and the loser—who should have died—simply meditated before getting up to collect his things and leave. He thought about how easily he had gotten disarmed with the sword by a better martial artist when the Fels raided Cally. It had made him feel inadequate, and he knew he needed to train in order to compete.

“If only I could just meditate these burns and bruises away…” he thought. He had begun the training to become a Mera Ku monk when he learned that they were weapon masters. He, however, still needed the advanced lessons where this magical meditation skill would be studied. The raid by the Fels had come when he was new to the Mera Ku way of the sword—a drastically different style from his innate fighting skills. Though he foolishly ran into the battle with it, he was proud for doing as well as he had done under deadly fire. He smiled as his friend Blu came over to him to dress his wounds and check his status.

“You fought like a demon out there, Rafian,” he said, smiling.

“Thanks, Blu, but that was all vine and wine that you saw out there.…I hope to be that great sober one day,” Rafian replied—not to seem cocky (though it came off that way), but to let his friend know that he was still in training.

Chuckling, Blu started treatment on the wounded rebel. Rafian had always impressed the doc since coming from out of nowhere to command the position he held with their resistance. He himself had taken out three Fels that day. Everyone had done his or her part, but they knew this would not keep up for long. The Felitian Empire was getting too curious about Cally and its citizens, and before long, they would bring their Special Forces Dreadnaughts to completely wipe them out.

The long night passed in celebration as a wounded Rafian VCA and his fellow freedom fighters drank in victory to another successful defense of Cally. A few eager freedom fighters from Hammerhead had decided to take the fight back to the Felitians in Veece. This was typical activity for post-defense morale, and it made Rafian sad that he couldn’t join them. For Rafian, the aches were severe and his head throbbed, but it felt good to be alive. The dancers were being extra friendly, drinks were on the house, and the lovely Dawna paid him a visit with promises of extra “attention” when he could get out of bed again. How was that for motivation?

The wounded freedom fighter decided to get out of recovery early and call it a night so Dawna could make good on her promise. He took her into his home and made love to her passionately. She was his first since crashing on the planet, and for the first time in months, Rhiya was a distant Memory.

* * *

It was late evening in the city of Cally, in the country of Apun, on the planet of Tyhera, and the streets were bustling with activity. It was the norm at this hour, being that many people shuttled in late to take in the nightly experiences for which it was famous. Casinos and saloons were jumping, Felitians were at bay, and there was always the chance of seeing a fight with as many thugs as the city held. In a room high above the streets, Rafian VCA sat with Lucci Vadosh—a Ranalos war hero and fellow Mera Ku martial arts master—and a host of other freedom fighters. Lucci was a legendary leader in the underground movement and was responsible for the freedom fighters’ success on old Talula. He had met Rafian one day while selling rare cyber-knives, and when Rafian met him with their fellowship’s bow, he gave him his deadliest knife for free.

Lucci took Rafian in as an apprentice in the Mera Ku arts and became his comrade in military affairs. They had become quick friends and fought alongside each other in many skirmishes across the city of Veece. The Ranalos master was invincible in Rafian’s eyes, and Rafian yearned to have the skill and cunning to match his friend. Lucci had the healing—a gift mastered by only the best of Mera Ku practitioners—and he was a warrior of humility.

The discussion in progress was on the affairs of Talula. It seemed that Lucci needed help on the old moon. The plan was for a small mobile unit to move upon one of the Felitians’ primary training camps. The tactics were to stick and move, killing stray units while moving slowly on the camp. Looking over at Rafian, Lucci pointed at him and said, “This will be our leader for the expedition.”

Not knowing why he was selected for the job, Rafian reluctantly accepted but quickly explained his “wanted” status on Talula.

“That’s quite fine, my friend,” the Ranalos said with his gravelly voice that sounded like stones trapped in an old ship’s circuits. He looked at Rafian and continued.

“You worry for your name on Talula, but you must realize that your reputation has spread from beyond the confines of Talula AND Tyhera. You are on the list now, brother. You are an enemy of the Felitians, and it is very well known. We will hit Dearin, Talula, covertly and then run the lands towards the Fel camp. No worries about thugs and reputations. Gorda fears the resistance. The only thing you need to worry about is bringing us victory.”

Ranalos eyes always glossed over with an odd light, and that was how they blinked, due to having no eyelids on their large, orb-like eyes. Rafian was still not used to seeing it, but he watched it flicker several times on Lucci’s face before nodding.

Leaning back in his chair, Rafian looked off into the distance and sighed. He had not been back to Talula since his escape with Riyah. It brought up painful memories, and he wished he could completely forget about her. Maybe this was fated, he thought.

The next day, Lucci provided him with a false ID card, and they boarded a shuttle that was heading towards Talula. It was a small shuttle, and thanks to Lucci’s well-planned disguises and change of identity, they sat next to a couple of Felitian troopers, who were unaware of them as resistance members. For Rafian, it was odd being so close to Felitian troopers without fighting them, and the trip seemed to last forever. When they finally touched down, he was all too eager to be away from the starport and away from the soldiers he had grown to hate.

The two monks checked out of the large lobby and were met by a shady fellow who was heavily armed under a closed trench coat. Glancing for a second at Rafian, the fellow greeted Lucci warmly and motioned them to enter a car. Lucci’s friend seemed very dangerous and was dressed as if he were meant to take on the Fels by himself. Every item on his person was black, even the five or six guns he had strapped to his body, and he bore the tattoo of the Bounty Hunter Guild—a mark to be feared by anyone who knew about them. He mostly spoke in a whisper and was so quiet that Rafian wondered if Lucci was hearing everything he was saying to him as they drove.

“Rafian, this is Eagle,” Lucci finally said. “He’s my best friend and probably the galaxy’s most dangerous bounty hunter. He says we are going to rendezvous with a man named Kael for the raid.”

Rafian took in the lush Talulan landscape at a glance and thought deeply as he nodded. It was a sunny day, and the wind smelled of Vendris, the native blue flowers that Riyah used to love. Eagle was extremely unfriendly, but that was always the nature of bounty hunters in Rafian’s experience. This made sense to him, as they regarded everyone as a couple hundred credits away from being a potential mark for their bombs, nets, and gunplay.

When they made it to the landing zone where they were supposed to meet Kael, it turned out to be a bushy expanse of field that was bordered on three sides by dense forest. Kael DAL was a dark-skinned man like Rafian, but he had long gray hair that flowed down his back, and the spikey bones that jutted from his jaw revealed that he was part Daltak. He was a noble-looking freedom fighter, but this wasn’t reflected in his speech as he stumbled over the plans for the night to follow. Rafian listened and relayed his own thoughts, instructing Kael’s group of six to scout the main Felitian headquarters inside the town. They would rendezvous later, communicating by old radio—a technique that the resistance used to stay off of the airwaves of the Felitian spies.

Shunning all covert tricks while in the bush, Rafian quickly dressed himself partly in plasteel armor—stolen from the Felitian museum—and partly in a Mera Ku robe. He had grown more serious about the training and was slowly converting into the spiritual side of things. The armor and robes had become his trademark look, with the mustard-colored breastplate, white shoulder pads, matching bracers, red Mera Ku Hakama, and metallic resistance-issue steel-toed boots to complete the ensemble.

His weapon for today was his newly acquired war staff. As part of a swordsman’s training, this was a weapon of choice due to its enormous heft and the incredible discipline required to master it. It was also devastating in close combat—especially devastating towards blast-resistant machine-types. Lucci and Eagle seemed to be at home in the bush, floating through the tall grass and trees like panthers. Rafian stuck close to them as they crawled, and after two hours of tracking, they made motion to camp and take a break.

Pointing east, Lucci spoke. “The Fels are just over that hill about a mile away. We camp here until night, and then we’ll move.”

Calming his nerves to slow his heart, Rafian carefully stared east as if to visualize the upcoming battle. This was very different from the raids he had become accustomed to.

“Look alive, all; we have company,” he announced, and the others filed forward to see for themselves.

“Yup, that’s a troop coming!” Lucci said. He motioned for his two trained Ro-cats to come over. The cats were part of Lucci’s legend because they loved Felitian flesh as much as their master did. They were huge feline droids formed from scrap metal, and their demeanor made Rafian uncomfortable. The cats were always quiet, and they had cloaking technology—the ultimate predators. Rafian always wondered how Lucci could acquire one, let alone two.

“That thicket of aplopes over yonder can conceal us,” Rafian said, suggesting the old freedom fighter trick of hiding among aplope bushes to avoid body-heat detection by Felitian scanners. The smell was never pleasant, but the reward of stealth was always worth it. The trio of men scurried over to the bushes, and while it was hot to the touch, they hunkered down and waited while Lucci petted the wiry manes of the two killer cats. The troop neared their position, and they could make out three cadets and an instructor.

“Sha!” Lucci whispered to the cats, and instantly they broke from the aplope bush, sprinting towards the troop. The poor fools could not react fast enough, and one fell from having his throat torn out. In the confusion, they barely noticed the three rebels approaching them, but when they did, they began firing, some to hold back the cats, while others aimed at the freedom fighters. Gunshots flew a bit too closely past Rafian as the troop leader suddenly caught fire and went down screaming. Eagle had sealed his fate with a cruel gun that held explosive rounds, and the man’s face melted as if it were plastic. Finishing off the others in a barrage of kicks and staff blows, the small party proceeded to the north and pounced on another unexpected troop. The ambush games went on like this for the three freedom fighters until they heard an alarm, which meant that there would be reinforcements. Worried about his reconnaissance people, Rafian radioed Kael to get an update.

“Hey, Kael, what’s going on?” he whispered.

It was quite evident that Kael was out of breath, as he could barely speak. “I’m so sorry, sir. We’ve been detected. I couldn’t control the men! One guy ran in recklessly, and now we have Fel troopers combing the area.”

Frustrated, Rafian relayed the message to Lucci.

“We need to leave fast!” he said, and then the ground began shaking.

“What the hell is that?” Rafian asked, and then he saw it.

An air-to-ground mechanized drone was coming for them. It was one of the large floating tanks that the Felitians used for mass destruction. As a single unit, they began running. It had become desperate. Laser fire was everywhere, and their lives were on the line. Before they could make it to the car, Lucci stopped Rafian short.

“Rafian, Eagle and I are going to go back.”

This didn’t make sense to Rafian, and he inquired why.

“We aren’t finished with these Fels, Rafian. This is what Eagle and I do all the time. Trust me. Get off of Talula, and I’ll radio you the details later.”

Nodding in spite of himself, Rafian wished his friend good luck and started back on the long drive to Dearin and then home to Tyhera. He had never flown a flying car before, but somehow, the controls came naturally to him, and he was at the starport in a matter of hours and then on Tyhera by the following afternoon.

Hours later, over a large bowl of soup, Rafian received a call.

“Hello, brother. It’s Lucci.”

“Hey, old man, you made it! What is the body count for the Fels?”

There was a bit of a pause before Lucci continued. It sounded as if he was at a camp eating. “Let’s just say we killed every last cadet in that facility. The Felitians will not be having a fresh batch of troopers coming from our moon anytime soon.”

This was major, and Rafian could not believe his ears.

“You men are unbelievable. Well done, Lucci!” he exclaimed.

Excited about the huge success of Lucci’s revenge run, Rafian eagerly summoned Orion, Saiko, Barri, and Corgan to share the news with them. They celebrated with a round of beers at the saloon and tipped the dancers heavily that night. When he had sobered of the celebration, an empty feeling came over Rafian about the mission. The tactics and bravery of Lucci and Eagle had brought success, but in the grand scheme of things, they were detected and routed, so in fact, the operation was a failure.

Talula would now be under the microscope of the Felitians just as Cally was, and for what? He thought they were capable of much more than that. The ideal operations would be the covert ones in which the Felitians would lose a lot but the freedom fighters would not have to atone for much more than they already did. He pondered this for an extremely long time and then got up to return home.

* * *

It was another five months into Rafian’s dealings with Lucci and Eagle when they decided it was time to make their own organization. The old master was sick of the infighting among leaders in the resistance and wanted Rafian to help him build a smaller sect that would stay out of politics and concentrate more on results. With that, they decided to get their most trusted partners together and have a meeting.

Lucci’s meeting was convened at a large camp outside of Dearin, and the people gathered to form an alliance known as the Aygis. The name was chosen by Rafian, who had extensive knowledge of the war. He was known to spend many of his lonely nights poring over vids and holos that told tales about the war. Aygis was the name of an attack ship that had carried out an impossible mission on Primia—the planet home of those voluptuous women most Tyheran males lusted after. Primia was taken by the Volf Alliance for their rare ore, which was called dyuirt. The amazons of Primia fought back but were outgunned and outmatched until the Aygis showed up to claim over one hundred thousand Volf raider lives. The Aygis won Primia her independence, but the atmosphere was not friendly for the Volf, and most of the men and women on that mission died saving the Primians.

Lucci’s Aygis was to be a small, tight-knit group that specialized in strikes such as the training camp mission, and he surprised Rafian by naming him one of the leaders. The eight members of the newly formed Aygis did a traditional ritual of cutting the palm and holding it above a fire to take their oaths of commitment. The Aygis leadership numbered five, with Lucci as the spiritual leader, Rafian as war commander, Sa-Lin—a cute Primian tailor—as espionage lead, Tyren the escape artist, and Eagle the assassin masquerading as a bounty hunter. The sixth officer was a funny-looking Deijen who called himself Bigun (pronounced “big gun”). He was probably the biggest Deijen that Rafian had ever seen, but he was extremely fast and an ace at using ranged weapons.

Within the walls of the alliance were other resistance fighters whom Lucci had invited, and he was happy to move among them in hopes of great things to come. The Felitians had taken Talula like a storm, and Lucci and Eagle did a lot of missions by themselves, none of which gave them traction in taking back the moon from their enemy. As a unit, the Aygis aided in many military skirmishes and developed a reputation for being the special forces you would call whenever a situation seemed hopeless. Rafian found himself fighting on Tyhera, Talula, Deijo, and even Rofe. His bravery was a thing of legend, and he rallied many hopeless fights into victories, always on the front lines.

Under Master Lucci, Rafian the lost rebel with no Memory became a master of the Mera Ku arts. He gave up vines and whoring for meditation and mastered the unarmed combat arts in their entirety. He became a successful resistance leader and officer, showing up to fights whenever he was called and burning Felitian camps all over the moon.

The Aygis organization was turning out to be a dream come true. That is, until the day Lucci Vadosh disappeared. For months, no one heard from him, and after a while, he was assumed to be dead. Rafian believed that his friend and master had gone too far in his meditation and had fallen into the abyss—a place they all feared in their particular religion. Everyone else assumed the old Ranalos to have been captured or killed by Felitian Special Forces. Whatever the case, it appeared that Lucci was gone from them forever, and Rafian was saddened by the loss.

In an effort to keep Lucci’s dream of the Aygis alive, Rafian tried in vain to keep the meetings and operations going, but soon the other members began disappearing too. Lucci had been the glue that kept their motley crew together, and with him gone, they held no loyalty to Rafian, the cause, or any of the other officers. Out of frustration and disappointment, Rafian returned to Tyhera to the resistance fighting. He was one of the last remaining Aygis members after Bigun was arrested and Sa-Lin and Tyren were killed in action. Eagle vanished like Lucci before him but resurfaced to let Rafian know he would always be there in the shadows. Many members broke their oath and went into hiding after Bigun’s arrest, but Rafian and Eagle sought them out and killed them one by one in honor of the blood pact that they had broken.

A year later, in one of the bravest coups in the history of the resistance, Rafian and a fellow Mera Ku master named Ill Switch executed a plan of tactical genius. The results of their months of organizing and training led to the pair slaughtering a prison full of Felitian troopers to rescue their brother Bigun from its walls. It was a glorious reunion. Felitians began to fear the Mera Ku robes that men such as Ill and Rafian wore into fights, because the men moved like ghosts and struck with deadly precision. It didn’t matter whether it was with gun or knife, a Mera Ku master was a one-man army on the battlefield.

With the help of Ill, the Aygis was reformed on Tyhera behind a bunker owned by Rafian. It was a well-hidden base within the northern mountains of Apun, and it sat upon the ruins of an old Mera Ku temple. It always felt as if the spirit of Lucci was watching over them. Rafian was named supreme leader, with Ill and Bigun as his lieutenants—devoted warriors sworn by blood and oath to do as they were charged in taking the hell back to the Felitians.

* * *

One late night Rafian was thinking about Lucci as he walked through the main halls of the temple. Unsheathing a sword that hung on the metallic wall, Rafian examined it and smiled to himself. He had used this sword when he fought alongside his friend a year ago.

“Which will be your focus, Rafian? Unarmed fighting or the sword?” Lucci had asked him one day as they sat discussing philosophy on the steps of the Aygis.

“To tell you the truth, Lucci, I favor both.”

“I think you should lean towards sword and master it. The way of the sword is an old discipline that even the Mera Ku has neglected for many years. Everyone is able to use a fist and a gun, but you can be one better. I bet if you stick with your sword and your lessons, no one will be able to touch you.”

He was right, of course, and the Memory saddened Rafian.

“Rest in peace, my Ranalos friend,” he muttered to himself as he replaced the sword in its sheath.

The sword had been his chosen path. In his heart he made an oath that he would cut the Felitian Empire’s head off from its neck or join his friend in the void if he failed.

Memory 18 | Hatch Kitten

If life as a leader was stressful, then one would assume that Rafian VCA had a masochist yearning for trouble. The war had grown intense, and while he had a personal love for the cause, he often worried if there would be any end to the fighting that turned their tiny side of Tyhera black with the char of burnt barracks, bases, and cities. For the two years of fighting, the only “love” Rafian knew was through the prostitutes of the saloons and the faster women of the resistance. Many women assumed the resistance leader to be eternally a bachelor and were happy for a night or two with him whenever his busy schedule would allow it.

On the inside he had made himself hard as steel, refusing to allow the depression he once felt over Rhiya to return. Passing on any relationships with women for fear of losing them to his enemies was not what he wanted to continue doing. This wasn’t to say Rafian didn’t get close, but the women of the resistance were too convenient, and unless he could find a way to stop the fighting, he continued to be a bachelor very devoted to their fight.

It was the supple lips and rhythmic hips of a Felitian baroness that finally caught his eye. Though Fels were eternally his enemy, this beautiful woman was enough to bring thoughts that should not have been in the mind of a commander. Her name was Rienne, and she was a Felitian lady of Veece. It was during an escape from freshly rallied Felitian troopers that Rafian happened upon her large apartment and dashed in blindly with hopes of finding it empty.

“What the…Dog! Resistance scum! How dare you come in here! Help!” she screamed as he gained her doorway, but her objections were cut short by his strong hands as he clasped her mouth shut and held her slight body firmly against his.

“Silence, you little Fel snake. I won’t be here long!” he said as he held her firmly.

Rienne continued to struggle under his grasp regardless of his threats, and it made Rafian frustrated.

“Look, either you play nice, or I will stick you!” he said and brought up his sword to her face in warning.

“I am not bluffing, girlie!”

The threat still did not seem to have any effect on her, and in one clean motion, she spun from his arms and landed a slap soundly on his jaw. She was free now and staring intensely at him. She began to walk in a crouched circle. Her hands were clenched into tight, pale, knuckled fists, and her eyes were all fire. She began to make snarling noises at him.

“You need to calm down,” Rafian said, turning as she circled, keeping his eyes on her the entire time. Experience in multiple situations had taught him to assume the worst at moments like this. Even though his sword was drawn and he was intent on killing, this woman was not backing down. The other thing that kept him wary was the look in her eyes. It was a predator’s look. Her body and facial expression remained calm, but her eyes read intense rage, which made him feel that she was a killer.

It was too much for Rafian, so he took the initiative. Tripping her with his left leg, he swung the hilt of his blade down in an arch towards her head. But Rienne was too quick, and upon being tripped, she forced herself to fall flat and fast, rolling away from the intended blow. Within seconds, she was back on her feet, drawing a hidden dagger, which she held in front of her menacingly. The troops had passed, and it was quiet outside. Rafian assumed that it was quiet inside her house too, but his blood pounded drumlike canters in his ears so loudly he could not notice. He let himself go calm and feinted in and out with her, trying as best as he could to identify the dagger. It looked old—not old as in ancient and rusted but old as in old technology. It was not a cyber-knife, and it wasn’t even metal. It looked like stone, the same type that the cavemen of Toone had used. The same stone daggers that usually came doused and finished in deadly spider poison—this woman meant business.

Rafian could tell by her parries and feints that she was a fencer of sorts, but he was getting too annoyed for admiration. He knew that he had to radio in soon, or his men would worry about him. So with a desperate lunge, he allowed himself to swing the sword wildly, hoping that the she-devil would fall for his trap. Luckily she did and came in for the intended free killing strike, but it was welcomed. Releasing the blade as he swung, Rafian used the ridge of his left hand to knock her strike away while simultaneously hooking his right fist squarely into her jaw. Rienne crumbled instantly, the impact of her fall snapping the legs of her coffee table, breaking the glass and knocking her painting of the Veece Palace off of the wall. Reaching down to take the knife, Rafian realized that his hunch was correct—a nick from its blade would have been instant death.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked the unconscious woman. Then, breathing a sigh of relief, he exited her house to head after his men.

After that day, Rafian hoped he would never see her again. It was a short-lived dream at best, as destiny is cruel that way. A few weeks later, on a trip back to Talula on business, he found himself seated across from a beautiful woman who had a strange familiarity. It bothered him the entire flight until he noticed she was staring at him.

The air became uncomfortable, so he spoke first. “Excuse me. I don’t mean to be rude, but should I know you?”

Smiling widely, the mysterious woman motioned to a mark on her cheek. She was a creature of natural beauty, light brown in complexion with ebony hair spiraled in the style of the day with golden clips as décor. The day they fought, and this day on the flight, she had dressed in the same way—a long, patterned crimson dress offset with comfortable dark dress shoes. She was tall with a slight build, and at a glance she could easily be mistaken for a dancer or model instead of the viper that she really was.

“You know, rebel, you left an impression on me, and after that day, you have not left my mind,” she replied to Rafian, her lips curving into a warm smile.

Ignoring her charm and the sexy accent he couldn’t place, Rafian looked into her eyes again, and they read the same intent as the day they had fought.

“I’m glad I made an impression on you,” he said. “Forgive me for hitting you. I meant only to stop your advance. I am the last man to wish scars upon a beautiful woman, no matter what side of the war she is on.”

This was an obvious lie because Rafian was responsible for the indiscriminate deaths of many Felitian soldiers, no matter their looks or gender. This seemed to anger Rienne more than amuse her.

“Save that Buraa shite for the saloon trash, outlaw. I was doing my duty and failed.” She leaned in with a coy expression and then whispered as if embarrassed that anyone else could hear, “My life has not been easy since I let you slip. The Felitian command was not very happy.”

With interest, Rafian stared at her anew. “You underestimate me, you know that? This is why you have the scar and not me.”

Rienne was flustered and spat back, “Only a scar for me, you coward. Were the tables turned, you’d be dead!”

Looking around at the startled passengers, who now regarded them with interest, Rafian smiled as if they were old lovers quarreling in order to take the attention down a notch. Speaking to Rienne under his breath, he made it clear that he was serious.

“Do you think I fear death? I am a man of Mera Ku. It’s the disgrace of dying to a pawn of the Fels that made me even fight back. Look at you, playing the part of their pretty attack dog. You escaped with your life that day, a feat that many have not managed to accomplish with me.”

Rienne kept her eyes locked in on him. “You dare talk to me like that? Outlaw. I allow you to fly on this aircraft without revealing you to the Felitian authority, and you show me arrogance?”

She was visibly upset now, and Rafian looked back at her calmly.

“You’re too uptight, you know that? Call your dogs, and you can watch me dice them into mincemeat, the way I do weekly without challenge. I’ll tell you what I know, though, my pretty little snake. You won’t call the Fels because of your code. You’re a killer like me. I am your mark and no one else’s; you would not let me go so easily without sinking a blade into me first. Would you? Tell you what. When this bird lands, let us go settle our differences, OK?”

* * *

The sun shone brightly through the window slit of the apartment as Rafian opened his eyes. Using his right hand, he began to stroke the long strands of hair flowing from Rienne’s sleeping head as she peacefully purred warmly into his chest. She was in a deep sleep, and her arms clutched his body tightly, as if allowing him no chance of escape. He could not explain how they had come here or why they had made love as opposed to dueling, but he knew that for the first time in years, he felt at peace. Rienne was an amazing woman who made love as savagely as she had fought. She was so good, in fact, that those little pictures of “happily ever after” danced around in his mind as he caressed her hair, ignoring everything else in the world.

Her large brown eyes opened, and she was awake. Lying still for a few moments as if to gather her thoughts, she sighed, smiling, and said, “Good morning!”

Still caressing the mane of his lioness, Rafian replied, “That it is. Did you sleep well?”

Rienne thought for a second or two and then said, “The best sleep I’ve had in a very long time!”

She then sat up, the sheets falling away to reveal her perfectly rounded breasts, which made Rafian wonder how they had managed to go from trying to kill each other to waking up relaxed, as if they had each other’s backs.

“What time is it?” she asked suddenly, turning towards Rafian.

“Too early for you to leave,” he replied and pulled her back down unto the bed.

The time ticked away as the lovers explored each other’s bodies as well as minds. Rafian learned that he had somehow found himself in the arms of a high-ranking baroness of Veece, and Rienne realized that her lover was the most notorious leader of the resistance movement. They laughed at this interesting turn of affairs, but it was Rafian who suggested a proposition.

“Why don’t we let them think we are dead and run away together?” he asked as he examined the scar on her cheek that he had dealt her so long ago.

Holding his hands and staring into his eyes, Rienne replied, “This is crazy, but do you think it would work? People in OUR positions? There would be investigations, and if discovered, I fear the worst punishment for us both.”

She paused before finishing in a hushed voice, “Along with disgrace.”

It was true of course, especially the latter half. The last thing Rafian wanted to do was bring shame on himself or his cause. The resistance would be scarred by a scandal such as this. But for all that he had given up for the fight, he laughed at the thought.

“I can see it now. ‘Rafian VCA the traitor. One of the most militant of the resistance…blah…blah…blah.’ Look, Rienne, before you, I have known only one woman who gave me the feelings I have right now. Beyond lust and the physical, in this moment now that we are both experiencing, I feel something else. You yourself admitted to thinking of me long after your scars had healed and your pain had subsided. The excitement of that day wreaked an impression of one of the strongest women I have ever faced. Then our reunion on the ship revealed to me how absolutely beautiful you truly are. Do not deny how right we are together, us two all fire and fight! Opposite sides of a war though we may be, we are and should be a unit!”

Looking away for some thought, Rafian continued. “Look, Rienne, we don’t have much time. I cannot sit here and play the game of courtship with you. I am a straightforward man, and given the circumstances, I think you know what I am saying. Even if you deny me the part of running away together, I need your reassurance that today will not be the only day that I get to see you.”

Rienne was smiling. Her eyes, once locked into Rafian’s, seemed bashful suddenly, and she began to blush. “This is so crazy. How will we do this?”

Squeezing her palms, Rafian smiled at her and replied, “You just stay beautiful and attend to your duties. It is I who will come to you.”

* * *

The rebels of the resistance began to see a change in their leader Rafian VCA. There was a spring to his step unlike before; he was very accommodating, talkative at times, and actually…friendly. His habit of disappearing for long periods of time increased, but instead of returning with dust and mud caked to his body, he would return clean, freshly dressed, and beaming. It was rumored that the young commander had found love somewhere. Most of his fellows believed her to live in Divina to the north. This was the ploy that Rafian made them believe; instead, he would fly from Aygis to Divina and then bounce from Divina to a private shuttle within the walls of Vyre. From Vyre he would fly off to Cally and ride a Buraa mount northwest to the hidden cottage that he and Rienne had set up as their home of escape.

With the danger of discovery looming, the two would do this ritual only twice a month but would stay together for three to five days before painfully separating again. This continued for a long time during the war. Sometimes they would do foolish things in desperation of finding each other—or out of love. For instance, when three lone Felitian soldiers in a starport of Veece discovered Rafian’s identity, Rienne, who happened to be passing by, watched her lover take them down, but he was injured in the process. With little heed to herself, she ran to his aid in plain view. He scolded her, since it jeopardized her life for them to be seen together. But she promptly explained that she couldn’t help it.

Rafian himself had foolishly stormed a trooper garrison and destroyed it based on his discovery that a superior officer had slapped his lady. As their relationship lengthened, the foolish mistakes increased, and they both knew that they would eventually get caught. There were also bright times, when they would retreat for a week to a remote location. They would disguise themselves as Lord and Lady VCA and fly off to Vare XV, Chebe, and sometimes Lochte. As dangerous as their relationship was, Rafian VCA was a happy man. To him, he was not in love with a Felitian woman; he was in love with Rienne, a lost soul stuck in the Felitian’s world.

One day Rienne received a strange vid-message asking her to fly immediately to a waterfall in the country of Vyre. Not knowing what to expect, she made herself battle ready and headed out to meet her fate, fearing that her assassination for sleeping with the enemy had finally been realized. On arrival, an official in full regalia was waiting there with Rafian, smiling, handsomely dressed in his military uniform. He looked at her as if she were New Year’s Day.

“My love?” he queried, and with tears now running down her cheeks—fully understanding—she replied, “Yes, Rafian.” It was all she could manage to say.

Rafian VCA, freedom fighter and leader of the covert rebel group known as the Aygis, was married to Rienne Laren, Felitian baroness and lady of the house of Laren, Tyhera. They both took a month’s personal leave and escaped to Lochte for their honeymoon. Lochte was run by the infamous pirate Samael, who owed Rafian a favor from a long time ago. For the honeymoon, Rafian had contacted him, and he set up accommodations for the commander and his new wife. They were promised no outside interference, and with the pleasure of peace for at least a month’s time, they left behind all communication devices and settled down.

“So here we are!” Rafian said finally when they were settled in.

The accommodations were exquisite. Samael lent him an outlying palace of sorts with everything provided, fully maintained by an android staff with no questions asked. The palace was shaped like a disc, with the walls transparent and the furniture made of Zeynic glass and painted in off-white, yellows, and earth tones. The color matched the hot desert landscape that was the planet Lochte, and its planes of Yuir held up the massive twenty-story spike on which the palace balanced as it slowly spun through technological magic that only Samael could explain. The entire interior was a lounge lizard’s dream, and the bar had enough liquor to host a year-long party with a thousand guests.

Rienne made herself comfortable and plopped down on a dais, staring at her newly acquired ring. She began laughing.

“Rafian! I will not begin to ponder how this will remain hidden, but this ring now affixed to my finger…I don’t intend to take it off, and there will be questions.”

Rafian placed his wine glass on the counter and walked over to his wife. Kneeling in front of her, he took her ring finger, slipped it into his mouth, and slid it out slowly.

Rienne began giggling uncontrollably. “Stop! I’m being serious, hon. How are we going to do this?”

Rafian got up from his knees, sat beside her, and examined the ring himself. “It is beautiful,” he said matter-of-factly. “I had it crafted by a close friend. The ring itself is made from Ranalese Drake tissue, and those are bits of death crystal around it.”

Rienne looked as if she couldn’t draw breath. “This must cost a fortune!” she yelled, and Rafian laughed.

“It did, but you’re worth it. The cost is merely a physical symbol to show others how much you mean to me, Ree. We can keep in hiding as long as you wish, but there are other alternatives—”

Before Rafian could continue, Rienne kissed him to silence whatever he was going to say, because it was a dialogue she knew would come up eventually.

After a time, she spoke. “I know the alternative, Raf, but they would never let me go so easily. For you, I know switching sides is not an option, so it remains a choice I would have to make. This secrecy we have—it gets tiring, and our mistakes will grow. I don’t wish to continue like that.”

Standing up and walking away in deep thought, Rafian pondered. “I don’t want you to sacrifice your livelihood, Ree, and if the Felitians lay one finger on you, it would unleash something within me that I swear they would regret. Let’s drop it for now and enjoy our time together. The future will play itself out as it wishes.”

* * *

The month-long honeymoon seemed to fly by at light speed, and before long, the couple found themselves out of time. On the shuttle back to the Lochte Starport, Rienne flashed a smile and looked at Rafian.

“Guess what?” she asked, and he suddenly looked concerned.

“Oh, no. Are you with child?”

Her expression changed to one of annoyance and she punched him in the arm.

“OUCH! Maker’s sake, woman, you hit pretty hard!” he exclaimed, holding the arm and observing the black-and-blue area where her wedding ring had left its bruise. He looked up angrily, but she was still smiling.

“No, wrong! Try again!”

She was giggling now, and Rafian was getting annoyed. Snatching a chunk of her flesh underneath her arm, he pinched her hard, and she squealed like a stuck Eola and jerked her arm away.

“OK, woman, now spill it—”

He couldn’t finish his sentence because of the pain in his groin. Looking down, he realized that Rienne literally had him by the balls! He raised his hands up in surrender, which prompted a bigger smile on her face.

“See? Aren’t you glad I am on your side?” she asked.

“I know you’re a fierce hatch kitten who doesn’t give up. That I do know!” he said, shaking his head.

Then, upon releasing him, Rienne melted into his arms, whispering, “Well, that’s OK, because I am now your kitten forever, Rafian. I was just going to tell you that I will be leaving my post to be by your side. Do you think they would accept me in Aygis?”

Rafian squeezed her tight and kissed her on the top of her head.

“Accept you? My dear, you will be their first lady!”

Rafian and Rienne hastily gathered her belongings and depressed them into a moving capsule—a phenomenal invention that defied all logic. The capsule could contract to the size of a fist, shrinking anything within it to allow for easy storage. In secrecy, the couple flew into Cally and then shipped off to Vyre, Tyhera, where they spent the night. The plan was to sneak her out of her Felitian command station without anyone knowing. The Fels would assume she was dead or kidnapped, and in time, she would be in his arms, happily married and protected by his freedom fighters.

“Rafian, I was thinking of changing my name,” she said when they were finally settled in, and he nodded at her in quiet approval.

Holding her hands as they sat on the edge of the bed, he began talking to her quietly.

“I didn’t intend on this being so hard or painful for you, Rienne, but I promise you this: from the day we eloped, you were and will always be my queen. You are what I hold dearest to my heart, and this is a life bond. I will never do anything to hurt you in any way, and my fight for freedom will finally mean something—it will mean a life of peace where we can be a family. Please don’t ever forget that I love you and always will.”

Rienne edged in even closer and whispered in his ear. “Thank you, my love. I know whom I married, and I understood all of that the day we exchanged vows. I love you!”

The sound of a trooper patrol was outside their Vyretian hotel, so the lovers kept quiet and waited until they had passed. It was another thirty minutes or so before Rienne began speaking.

“What am I to you, Rafian? It will decide my new name. Trust me, what am I?”

It was an unexpected question, but rather than answer with deep thought, he just spoke candidly. “You are mine, babe, you are my Rienne.”

Suddenly Rienne hopped up excitedly, clapping and dancing around, looking as much the fencer as she had on that day they met.

“Yes! I am, and I love it!” she exclaimed.

Rafian was confused. “What are you going on about, Ree?”

She grabbed his arms and began to dance with him. “Don’t you see? That will be my name! You said my Rienne! Well, that is what I am! I am your Rienne! So you see, Myrienne will be my name!”

Barely understanding, Rafian thought it through. His odd accent with the Tyheran dialect had made him pronounce it like a name.

“So your name will be Marian, then?” he asked.

“Yes!” she screamed. “Marian VCA, the beloved wife of Rafian VCA, resistance warrior and galactic savior!”

She was more excited than he had ever seen, and it made him energized to witness it. As he watched his nubile and extremely happy wife play around with her name and dance about the room, he felt complete—and it was not a feeling he was used to.

Memory 19 | Person

It was the fifth month of the push on Veece when Rafian woke up confused and aware for the first time in years as to who he truly was. He had had a dream the night before in which he was visited by a woman. She had long dark hair and clothing that resembled nothing he had seen before on Tyhera. He knew that her name was Tayden, but he couldn’t understand why he knew her. She was repeating something to him, and it took a while to figure out what it was she was saying.

“You must come back to us; you are taking too long to return.”

She was dressed in a skintight white outfit, and her hair flowed wildly over her shoulders—she certainly was not a woman of Tyhera, because hair let loose was seen as the fashion of immoral women. It did not seem strange to him, however, and the more he walked towards her, the more she seemed familiar. When he woke up, the memories flooded his brain like a broken dam. The reality of his situation began to make sense to him, and his world and everything he thought he was came crumbling down in an instant.

“Where am I?”

Marian was awake now and caressing him worriedly while telling him that he was in Veece with his wife. Of course he remembered. The resistance had taken the capital city, and after a grand celebration, he had taken Marian back to her house, where they slept after emptying her cupboards of wine.

“Are you OK, husband?” she asked finally, and he stared at her, wondering how he would reveal his identity and the happenings that had allowed him to make it to her galaxy.

He sat up, looked at her, and then began talking, despite the numerous attempts she made to stop him. “You have to hear this in its entirety, Ree. If you don’t, it won’t make any sense to you. I am Rafian VCA, a jumper, starfighter, and marine pilot for the Fourth Lance squadron of the Helysian—a military starship. My galaxy is Anstractor, and I am twenty-five years old.…I think. The Memory loss I had all this time was chemically induced by my masters so that I could come here empty, be filled with information and desperation to join the resistance, and destroy the Felitians. I am apparently out of time here, and I am being summoned to return to my masters and answer for the failed mission here.”

Marian was staring at him, wide eyed and wondering if there was a punch line coming at the end of his story. When he completed his story, she first asked him if he was sure about the Memory being real, and then she asked him how he felt about what the jumpers had done to him. He let his anger show and explained to her that he meant to exact revenge upon them. He told her about Camille, the sexual conditioning, and the way they had forced him into the chair and wiped his memories. Shame came over him upon realizing that he was now married to Marian, and Camille would again be left out in the cold. If he jumped back, he would break her heart, break his oaths, and leave a woman he loved to pick up the pieces of a life that he had helped shatter. He would rather die.

“Marian…I need you to come with me back to Anstractor.”

He was not really asking her, not wanting to lose the only person he had loved in three long years of combat and hiding. Marian looked away quickly, being that she could never look into his eyes when he was upset. She feared the unknown and was not sure whether her husband was being logical or having issues with his sanity. Jumping galaxies? Was that sort of thing even possible? She knew he had suffered traumatic Memory loss, but waking up to this was just too much. She wanted to fall back asleep and return to the world where they were victorious, and she was spending a peaceful night in her own bed with the rebel she loved.

Rafian’s mind was moving a mile a minute, and he wanted Marian to say yes so that he could move his worry solely over to Camille. How will I explain all of this when we are reunited? He didn’t want to hurt either of them, and he began rationalizing how he would keep Marian in his life while rekindling the flames with his beloved Camille Yan.

“What is to happen to my home world when you jump back to Anstractor, Rafian?” Marian asked.

He kissed her in hopes of giving her some reassurance. “The mission was to remove the Felitians from power, Mari. I believe that when we jump out, there will be a major shift in the movement to cause the Fels to finally retreat.”

She nodded to show him that she understood, and to also let him know that she trusted him. They got up, showered, and grabbed the things that meant the most to her in the world. Rafian neglected to tell her about his sterilization for fear that it would be the heaviest of blows for his new wife. She had always talked about children, but he had reasoned with her that a rebel child born during their hectic age of war would not be the best idea. They had decided to wait until the Felitians were defeated, and if it was taking too long, they would fly to a remote moon, build a cozy base, and be content with each other till the end of their days. It was romantic but unrealistic because Rafian had planned not to leave until the Felitians were gone, the resistance was on top, and he had Veece in the palm of his hands.

“Should we say good-bye to our friends?” Marian asked. Her eyes looked as if everything she loved had been wiped out by a flood.

“They would never understand,” Rafian said and tightened his lips at the overwhelming sadness he felt coming from his wife.

Marian looked around the room as if saying a mental good-bye, and Rafian reached back to his third molar, squeezed it hard, and pulled out the tiny crystal shard that was embedded within it. A jumper needed the crystal to return, and it would be his ticket back to the reality he had always known. He instructed Marian to hold him tight, and with that, he held the tiny piece aloft and thought of the light from within the crystal room. It took less than a minute for the couple to feel the power of the warp crystal. The room was suddenly consumed with a milky-white light, and before they knew it, they were in front of the stone chair and floating crystal at the jumper academy.

* * *

Rafian had expected Arn Stryker to be there with his white hair and his host of staff-wielding lackeys, but what he found was Tayden dressed in all white, a bloody blade at her side, and a couple of the other students, including Camille, staring at Marian as if she were an alien.

“How long was I gone for?” Rafian asked as he scanned the room. He noticed it was not as pristine as it was when he had last seen it.

“We were all under for about three years, Raf,” Tayden said as she stood staring at Marian, who held on to Rafian for dear life as the women and men watched her in bewilderment.

“Rafian, who is your friend? And…why are you guys married?”

This was Camille, who stepped forward to confront Marian. If his wife had been an innocent saloon girl, she would have feared for her life at Camille’s approach, but Marian steeled herself, stepped out from behind Rafian in an aggressive stance, and spoke for the first time since they had arrived.

“How about you ask me, Camille?” she said through the vocal translator that Rafian had provided her with. He had kept it with him since landing on Talula, even though he had mastered the language there after so many months in the conflict. The language she used was the common tongue, but when Camille did not respond, she turned to Rafian and spoke to him in the language and dialect of Tyhera.

“Can she understand me? I am speaking your language, right?”

Rafian nodded at her and then turned to Camille, but before he could say a word, Marian was talking again.

“Tell your girl to back down right now before I jab her with my fire-knife.”

She had brought along her deadly secret weapon, and though he worried a bit for her safety due to Camille’s reputation, he wasn’t sure if his fierce Vestalian girlfriend was a good enough match for his Tyheran wife. He reasoned with them both and asked the women to cool off, so as to prevent any bloodshed or loss of life.

“D-R-A-M-A!” Tayden muttered under her breath, and then she stuck her head outside the door to look for anyone approaching.

“How is it that you two were able to bring me back?” Rafian finally asked.

“Well, it was all Tayden,” Camille finally said. “She managed to figure out the workings of the warp crystal and summoned me back as I was imprisoned in this Karel prison center on Deval, Yce—I think it was the Flavin Galaxy.”

She had a sad look on her face as she said the prison’s name and grabbed her left arm in the way she always did and froze to let the emotions settle back within her.

Tayden finally spoke up, and she did so in a proud, boastful way. “Cammy and I were sent to the same galaxy, the tiny one known as Flavin. While my mind was wiped, it was a bit different from what I am hearing from everyone else. I wasn’t completely ignorant of who I was, but I assumed I came from Flavin. In any event, I started to get all of my Memory back within months, and that was how I knew what I needed to do for escape. Arn was happy that I had pulled off my assigned spy detail, and along with Willen and Cathe, I graduated to person.

“When you and Cam were still not back after a long time had passed, I began to worry, so I did some research on my own. I think Arn was trying to sabotage you both on purpose, since everyone else got over the Memory loss midmission.”

Rafian was visibly upset as Tayden told him this. She continued to tell him how she stayed silent for roughly a year before making a move to save them.

“I pretended to be his loyal little person for a time. That old man sent me off to several places—even Vestalia to pull off missions—and he began to trust me enough to tell me how the warp crystals worked. This was how I knew I could invade your dreams to bring you back. I tried it with Cammy first, and when she came back, I did it with you.”

Rafian looked around at all the faces of the jumpers who were with Tayden.

“So, where is Arn, Tayden? Is he good with you doing this?”

It was Valk, the Arisinian, who spoke up. “This morning, Tayden and I dropped a poisonous gas in the meeting hall and took him out along with the guards.”

Touching his heart and bowing his head in the galactic salute of respect, Rafian then walked over towards Tayden, his dark-haired heroine, and touched her gently on her cheek.

“He had it coming. I hope the poison was slow and painful. I owe you my life, Tay,” he said with much humility.

The people in the room felt a surge of happiness for their reunion, but Marian was none too pleased to hear him say those last few words.

“So you mean to tell me that I could have burnt over ten plus years of my life on this mission without any memories of who I truly was?” Rafian asked.

Marian had gone into the next room to change into a white 3B suit that Tayden handed her, and the other jumpers (Mithryl, Zevon, Willen, Valk, and Cathe) began to recite their own mission details. But Rafian wasn’t listening, as his brain was processing the situation. They would have to act fast or risk their lives being forfeited as a result of Tayden’s treason, and he needed to know whether or not Arn was truly dead. As if she knew what he was going to do, Camille handed him his las-sword and smiled at him.

“You’re going to need your fishing rod if you plan to get dinner, dear.” She said this in an eerily cute way, and he reached up to touch her cheek in the gentle way he always did—without thinking about his wife, who knew nothing of the jumper customs and was growing tired of the touching.

“Are you two finished?”

Rafian snapped to attention at Marian’s voice and was out the door in a long stride. He knew that poison was not enough to subdue a master like Arn, and he was going to be in for the fight of his life when they met. Tayden moved up to his side as they walked past jumpers, some wounded from trying to stop Tayden’s rebellion, and others looking on in awe as the nine figures marched by with Rafian VCA at the front. Arn would be angry—Rafian was going over it in his head—but he would underestimate him. It sounded as if Camille had gotten caught on her mission, so he wasn’t sure what she had picked up in terms of skill while she was there, but he had been in the thickest of wars. He had seen friends burnt, cut down, and executed by a capable enemy, and he had learned how to make them pay for it. He was a Mera Ku monk of the highest level, and his skill with a sword of any kind had been legendary on the planet of Tyhera. Arn would be dangerous, but so would he.

The group stopped outside the large, metallic door ordained with the strange glyphs of the temple and the dancing lights that were on the walls. Tayden motioned for everyone to put up their masks, but Rafian waved her off and centered himself. Looking at him as if he were crazy, Tayden shook her head and opened the doors to reveal several long tables in a beautiful red room. The jumpers who occupied the tables were all dead from the gas, except for Arn, who sat at the head meditating. Rafian stopped his friends short and asked them to stay as he approached the old man. He noticed the pictures on the wall—images of planets that he was not familiar with, and it made him anxious to remove this tyrant who lorded over them so that he could freely study all the knowledge archived within the temple.

“You didn’t expect to come in and find me an easy kill, did you?”

Arn looked up at Rafian with the same cold, judgmental eyes that he had grown to hate. Rafian did not wish to engage him in dialogue, but stood waiting for Arn to stand and fight him.

“You took longer than you were supposed to, number Zero Three. Your mission was to unify the rebels—which you did, but you were supposed to return once that happened. Instead, you joined another organization and became intoxicated with power—oh, I know.”

He began laughing hysterically at Rafian’s stoic face and then continued to tell him about himself.

“You let the meditation practice of that mystic world interfere with your brain, boy. This is why the Memory that should have triggered your return did not come back to you. Then you got married—which is a violation of our rules. Congratulations, by the way.”

Rafian felt a sharp pain in his back as he fell forward from the sudden elbow that Arn hit him with after teleporting behind him. The elbow was meant to hit his spinal column, but reflexes had caused Rafian to move, and it caught him on the side of his spine. It still felt as if he had been shot with a massive bullet.

Using his training to ignore the pain, Rafian stood up using breathing techniques. He brought the las-sword to life till its edge grew hot and the blade glowed bright white with intent. He was after Arn like a rabid dog, feinting slices to hide intended cuts, which followed after every step.

Arn was deflecting the sword using only his palms, and Rafian searched his thoughts in wonderment of how he was able to teleport and move things around with telekinesis. He wondered about the environment, being that he had never seen Arn leave the building. He wondered if he used gravitational tricks that were manipulated by his clothing and jewelry. Perhaps that was the source of this magic that only he of all the jumpers knew how to use.

Arn caught his sword swipe one last time and shattered the blade into a thousand pieces. He could hear Marian gasp as the old man countered with a palm-heel thrust to Rafian’s chest, but Rafian had centered his thoughts on the fight, and it was as if Arn moved in slow motion to him. Deflecting the strong thrust with a palm-heel of his own, Rafian kicked Arn in the testicles and followed it up with an uppercut to his chin. When the uppercut connected, he twisted on the balls of his feet to hook a punch into Arn’s soft ribs and then stood suddenly to let his built-up energy explode into a shoulder thrust that knocked the old man into the tables, causing a crunching sound to come from his broken body.

“Wait…” Arn managed to say as the young man approached him with deadly intent, and he rolled to the ground with his hand over his face as if to plead for his life. “You have exceeded everything that they told me you would.”

The blood ran fresh from his mouth and nostrils.

“What are you talking about?” Rafian asked as he kept his distance.

“We have always watched you, Rafian VCA. We have watched you from your days as a mangy dog in the slums of Basce City to your ascension to lieutenant on that tiny ship Helysian. You are meant to lead us.”

Rafian looked confused. He was a man of logic and didn’t believe in prophecies, fortune-telling, or anything like it. When he went in for training, he felt that the jumper operation had been a bit too mysterious and odd. In the back of his mind, he knew there was something bigger. But he still didn’t understand their reason for the hell they put the recruits through; their casual behavior with letting him—their supposed “chosen one”—sit on a planet risking his life for years. No, he thought, Arn was buying time—but for what? He didn’t know, but this was nonsense, and on Tyhera, this delaying tactic normally meant that a detonator was about to go off.

He looked up at Marian, who nodded at him with a fire in her eyes, and Camille, who was poised to strike if anything was to happen.

“Tayden, how much were you able to learn about this place and its history in the year that you were free?” he suddenly asked.

“I learned enough, baby, and the rest are in deep archives stored in the seventh room,” she replied playfully, as if the other women weren’t there.

Rafian managed to wink at her as he always did whenever they would revert to the relationship they had that first week of training. It was always that way between them, an odd mixture of strict military protocol and cutesy love games that made it seem that they were more than they made people believe.

“Sounds like I have enough to start this leadership you have been meaning for me to have, then, Arn.” And with that, he knelt next to the old man and held his throat until his body stopped moving.

Memory 20 | Kept Oaths

“We have always watched you, Rafian…” The eerie words of Arn stayed with Rafian through the long months since Tayden’s coup had dethroned the old man and his followers. When Rafian won the fight and had taken Arn’s life, the old man cloned—as was expected—and was held captive until the other leaders of the organization could be summoned to chat. The leadership would not comply with the requests for a meeting, and Rafian, Camille, and Tayden learned that Arn’s temple had gone rogue a long time ago. This resulted in his organization being removed from the regular order of jumpers, so they were not considered official. This meant that the murders and treason committed by Rafian and his cohort would be their own secret, but they would have no support from their foreign guild members. They were on their own.

Rafian was primed to take over the organization—a motion set forth by Tayden—so he spent most of his days interrogating Arn and reading numerous files in order to better understand the crystals and their power. Marian and Camille found a way to work out their differences, and Camille began training the ex-baroness in the ways of the jumper so that she could assist them in any future movements. The student body was reorganized and made to keep training, and Rafian applied military protocol to their rank, status, and promotions. Tayden became his subcommander, and she kept the order going while he pulled what he could from Arn.

Due to Arn’s stubbornness and behavior, it was not going smoothly. His words “We have always watched you” frightened Rafian. There might be bigger players in the game, and he might be just a pawn moving only as he was instructed. He began to hate the temple, which had always felt like a prison to him, but he did not dare speak a word of it to anyone, as they could lose faith in his ability to lead them.

“Commander Rafian,” they would say before making any requests, even one as trivial as permission to leave. Former rivals now regarded him with respect, and he was back to people walking on eggshells around him, as they had on Helysian. Although he accepted it, he was not comfortable with it, as he felt that he didn’t know enough to lead them. For days he would drill Arn, but the old man would only provide hints and riddles, still hiding the secrets of what the jumpers true calling was. It was an exercise in patience, and though Arn felt he was leading the younger man in pointless circles, he was disclosing information without realizing it.

* * *

“It’s been several months, Rafian. Can we have that talk?”

It was Camille who entered Arn’s office—now Rafian’s—wearing a beautiful white frock, with her hair pulled back tight into a bun adorned with sparkling crystals set off by the tiny necklace that he had given her as an inseparable couple on the Helysian. It seemed that she had learned a thing or two of Marian’s fashion, because her entire outfit rang similar to the way women dressed on Tyhera. She had been trying to have this chat with him for many days, and he had managed to slip away from her every time. Now he was seated and alone—and she was absolutely beautiful.

“Seeing you makes me want to die, Cammy,” he said softly under his breath as he rubbed his forehead desperately, as if doing so could reverse the fateful trip to Tyhera that had made him swear himself to another woman. His mind was tortured with guilt, shame, and confusion. On one hand, he felt as if the fault was not his own due to the amnesia, but another part of him scolded himself for not finding some way to remember. Rising to his feet, he crossed the stark white room and held her. She cried lightly into his shoulder, and her slender, feminine figure made him excited, as he had not touched her in years.

“OVO activate locks!” he announced into the air. “Ambient lights, lounge motif, and status lockdown.” The room dimmed, and the desk descended into the floor. The lights flickered as images of a couch, ottoman, holo-projector, and plants materialized and then became solid. The white room had become crimson, and Camille watched it happen over Rafian’s shoulder and could not hide the astonishment in her voice.

“I didn’t know that rooms could do this!” she said incredulously. Rafian didn’t seem to hear her as he walked her to the couch and began to kiss her longingly.

“Marian does not yet know our way with this, Rafian,” she said as she held him away from her, staring into his eyes.

What he read in those eyes spoke differently, however, and he slipped between her arms and laid her down as he continued to work on her dress, jewelry, and Jalakian-styled boots. It was a lengthy session—lengthy, tender, and passionate. They spoke of the past—when they were between rounds—and they spoke of the future.

“I cannot go back on my vows and betray Marian, Cammy. It will be my lifelong struggle, but a man who makes vows like the ones we took and breaks them is not the kind of man I aim to be.”

Camille YAN lay back on the soft couch playing with her necklace a bit. Her hair was all over the place, and the crystals that decorated it were all over the floor. The frock was neatly folded and rested on top of the ottoman, and her boots were in a corner so far away that it made little sense how they got there.

“Marian and I spoke in length, Raf. We both love you, and she even attempted to back down so that you could divorce and I could be yours again.”

Rafian sat up, interested and a bit frightened as to the resolution that both women had come to regarding him. The last thing he wanted to do was to hurt or upset Marian, because his feelings for her were still fresh—though his love for Camille was no different.

“I told her that I am a jumper. That is what I told her.” She trailed off a bit, as if she didn’t like to hear what her lips were now saying.

“I told her that jumpers do not belong to anybody, Raf. You don’t belong to her, and I don’t belong to you. We have no connections, which of course we actually do—I can’t just very well stop loving you, now, can I? But formal relationships…none of it is for us to have. You made THAT oath before you made the one to her. Remember? Sure, it’s all a big pile of shtill, but she is going to have to share you because your position, job, and oath decree that she shares you.”

Rafian listened intently to Camille and tried to imagine what would have gone through Marian’s head upon hearing it. On Tyhera, women were raised to be extremely untrusting and jealous of their men because the way of their world was for one man to have one woman. Any change to this rule, any variation, was seen as perversion, and people would look down on couples who condoned cheating, multiple wives, or multiple husbands. Space jocks like him and old Vestalian tradition saw this differently. A man could have multiple wives if they agreed to it, and a woman could have multiple husbands. Traditions like the ones Marian had grown up with were not ones that could be easily broken through words. No, his wife would be upset, and the explanation that Camille gave him now made him understand why Marian had been so cold over the last few weeks.

“Would it be so selfish if I took you to the Warp Room and jumped to one of the remote moons of Oclus? Would it be terrible of me as a commander if all I wanted to do was make love to you, Camille YAN, and keep you happy until our bodies decide that it’s time to die? Because the world is such a confusing mess right now, babe, that I would really do it if you told me that I should.”

Rafian looked around the room as if an answer would materialize the way the furniture did, but he knew that everything he said was nonsense. Camille was compliant to rules; it was a quality that he had loved and admired in her from the days of their friendly chats all the way up until now, when she stood reciting the rules of the jumper hellhole that had broken their union.

“I love you, Cammy.”

He said it in a way that people say it before taking poison or jumping off of a structure to their death. His voice had a frightening finality to it that set Camille back in wonderment at his intent, but he wasn’t doing anything but sitting up with a hand caressing her upper thigh.

“We may not belong to anyone, like you said, but I am yours, just as I am Marian’s. This will not end us.”

Camille YAN cleaned herself up, tried her best to reset her hair, and walked out of the office happy and satisfied after their “talk.”

Rafian, however, was not happy. Their physical connection being renewed had awakened feelings for Camille within him that he had long suppressed, thinking it was out of respect for Marian. That night, he entered the apartment he shared with his wife to find her sitting on their bed next to the Mocktual fireplace waiting for him. She wore green, a color that looked so good on her that it made her even more beautiful (as if that were possible). Marian stared at him intently, but she didn’t say a word. Her intent was for him to start talking so that she could catch him in any lie he would utter.

“I made love to Camille today, Marian. I imagine I will make love to Tayden soon, as she keeps trying to book personal time with me, and we haven’t felt each other in many years. I wish I could explain.”

The Tyheran beauty kept staring without blinking, so Rafian kept talking. He hoped that what reflected on her face was actual surrender to his ways.

“We have physical relationships here. I know this sounds like the sermon of an adulterous bastard, but hear me out, please. My heart belongs to you, my heart does. We are not supposed to have attachments, as they will render us weak during wartime and create compromise if the enemy captures us, but—”

Marian tore off the ring and threw it so hard at him he could barely afford the time to step out of the way and catch it midflight. His training would not allow his reflexes to lie dormant when a precious object like Marian’s wedding band was flying towards a wall, where it could shatter, crack, or scratch. He spun and looked at Marian with a glance of desperation.

“ARE YOU SERIOUS?” he asked, anger flushing across his face at his wife who now stood up, las-sword in hand and fire in her eyes. She ignited the sword, and the edge glowed hotly as she adjusted her bare feet in an aggressive stance to face him. Rafian could not believe this was happening.

“If I have dishonored you, Marian…”

He began to reason with her, but she whipped the blade through the air so that the motors hummed to let him know that the time for talking was over. Marian’s temper was never something that was easily cooled, but Rafian had not undergone the therapy that newly jumped recruits needed to settle back in to their normal lives. Jumpers tended to come back disoriented, sometimes depressed, and without treatment, they became suicidal. In Rafian’s mind, this was the sign that it was time to check out and meet the Maker.

Kneeling on the floor to expose his neck, Rafian bowed low and began speaking under his breath.

“Mera ku gol, senus amu showel Rafian.”

It was the final words that Mera Ku monks would utter if they were lucky enough to see the death goddess face to face. Its meaning was simple: “Take your son Rafian into your arms with honor.” A good monk embraced death by a worthy adversary, which was why the Mera Ku order made for fearsome warriors. Their meditation exercises, their doctrine, and most of their oaths dealt with death and passing on to the “other realm.” It seemed like an hour as Marian struggled with herself over whether to lop off her husband’s head or accept his perverse jumper organization with their casual sex and brainwashing. Her head cooled as she decided, and she suddenly felt sorry for him.

In the months that had passed with them as husband and wife, he had told her about his history and his wonderful career that had ended up here. He was a man who knew only tragedy, and even now, she knew that taking his head would grant him a peace that he had never known throughout his life. What if she could give him that peace through love and support instead? she thought. What if she could help him rebuild the order into something better? She turned off his sword and relaxed her shoulders, then placed it back into the scabbard that leaned against their bed.

“What sort of wife threatens to kill her husband?” she asked as she knelt in front of him and began crying. Rafian got up off his knees to hold her and stroke her hair, and she bawled for a very long time that night.

Memory 21 | Guidance of Gods

The ship was shaped like a banana—this was what crossed Rafian’s mind as he saw the large starship descend upon the temple. It was all black against the beautiful orange sky of Seryac, the planet that he had figured out was home to their jumper temple. It was on an inquiry from Tayden that he had thought to look outside; apparently, the ship had always been in orbit, but due to their limited training on the outside world and the fact that they were never allowed out at night, he had not seen the blinking lights and trace energy that radiated off of the vessel.

The air was breathable but thick, so they wore their 3B masks and stayed together, remarking on who their watchers were and why they were descending to greet them. Rafian thought the old master Arn had found a way to signal for help, so he placed fifty jumpers on the exterior pillboxes to fire on their guests if things got out of hand. He closed his eyes and tried to feel out the ship, but he could not feel anything but the warm air against his face and the hilt of Marian’s sword brushing against his hand. The ship landed in front of the castle-like temple, and from the center of the banana, a doorway materialized—as if it were drawn by an invisible hand.

From the doorway floated three beings whose alien race was not one that Rafian or his comrades had seen before. Their eyes were large, and they had no nose, ears, or mouths. Their skin (if they had skin) was a royal blue color, and they had striped heads. One large cyan strip ran down the center, which took up most of their face, and the cyan was bordered with smaller white lines. They had three fingers on each hand and wore long robes made from a material that kept them rigid even in the wind. Their heads were bald, and their bug eyes held a mesh texture that appeared black from a distance. The trio floated close to the crowd, and lights began to dance across their foreheads as they clasped their hands in what appeared to be deep thought and telekinetic communication.

“OK, everyone, please go inside and await my return,” Rafian said softly as he sensed that the beings were there to see him, and if they meant to be violent, he would rather be the only one sacrificed.

Marian began to argue, but Rafian spoke to her in Tyheran, asking her to be a soldier instead of a wife. Camille too was going to object, but she knew that when it came to matters of life and death, Rafian VCA could not be swayed from words that he commanded.

Once he was alone, the alien triad motioned towards their ship. Rafian accepted and began his descent towards them.

The jumper temple sat on top of a rugged cliff, but the planet’s gravity was extremely limited, and it allowed them to make large jumps, fall from tall heights, and perform stunts that couldn’t be done on planets like Vestalia. Rafian jumped from the craggy cliff, opened up his thrusters, and glided towards the ship’s entrance, ignoring all of the chatter that came at him through his helmet from the people who loved him. They were asking why he was joining the visitors. Once he made it to the floor of the valley that held the banana, he spoke into the communication device.

“Can’t really tell you why I know this, but this meeting is important,” he said, and the chatter died down as they listened to their leader.

“If I do not exit this ship in three hours, I want you all to jump home to your ships and tell the commanders there what occurred. We are all brothers and sisters in this organization, and, as you all know, there is no leaving unless you die fully and your soul transitions on to the other realm. Subcommander Tayden will be the new leader if I die. She will know what to do to transcend this and keep us going.”

The silence of the comm was so still that he almost asked if anyone was listening as he said his last rites to them.

“Marian, if you lose me here, my wife, I want you to remember me as the man I was when I proposed to you. I would hate for this awful confusion of the last few weeks to be my legacy. I am so sorry that I brought you here into our war-torn galaxy.”

With that, he silenced his comm and walked towards the ship, trying to decipher how he would open its invisible door. The trio that had summoned him had come to his side as he spoke, and he saw for the first time just how tall they were. Each of them stood eight feet tall, and they made a strange, harmonious melody when they got close to him. He felt as if he were dreaming and the beings were warrior spirits come to whisk him off to a glorious end. He felt himself smiling, the melody was so soothing and peaceful, and it was unlike any music he had ever heard before. His mind began to drift, and his vision appeared the way a vid looked when there was too much static and the picture could not come through clearly. His body felt limp, and he involuntarily walked forward and opened the ship’s door to enter.

When his thoughts had been silenced and his body made ready for the ship’s interior, Rafian awoke to find himself seated in an egg-shaped seat. The room around him was a dome with pearly white walls that appeared similar to the ones he had seen the first time he met Arn. Almost instantly, a pretty blue Cel-toc appeared next to him and began checking his vitals to make sure he had adjusted well. Seeing the Cel-toc brought up emotions from Rafian that he had never experienced before. He was frightened of it, angry, and heartbroken. It was a wash of emotions that drained him physically and made him want to destroy it. Try as he might, however, Rafian was unable to move or control his body. That in itself was frightening, as his mask and gloves had been removed.

The Cel-toc stood in front of him after completing her checkup, and her visage changed to one that looked very much like the aliens that had invited him there.

“Rafian VCA!”

The voice was synthesized, which made sense if the aliens were unable to form words that he could understand with their mouthless faces. It seemed that they used Cel-tocs to cater to and communicate with humans, which made him think that their personal appearance to collect him would have been a showing of great respect.

The android said his name in a manner that reminded him of how a father spoke to a son or daughter he was proud of.

“We have watched your career and ascent with admiration. We are Neeraki Sentients, and we travel from a far place. Four hundred years have passed as we watched your race teeter on the precipice of endangerment to this juncture, where the Geralos are set to control Anstractor. You are one of many hopefuls for your race, Rafian, but we choose you to be the guardian of the crystals that we have allowed Anstractor to possess.”

The Cel-toc grew silent, and Rafian found that he could again control his mouth—he tested this by moving his tongue to lick his lips and mouth silent words into the air.

“Are you gods?” he managed to ask. “Are you beings that are bigger than this galaxy—the universe even—and is this a game for you?”

He was shouting it angrily now, because he felt that the aliens were responsible for the Geralos scourge and possibly the Felitian threat that held Marian’s galaxy of Luca in its iron grip. Why would he be chosen? he wondered. His career was commendable, yes, but so were the careers of people like Tayden, Val, Camille, and even the Helysian’s own commander. Why him, and why now? If his introduction to warp crystals and the jumper fellowship was the extra to put him over, then why not choose Camille or Tayden to be this guardian of the crystals? If they said anything like prophecy, destiny, or any of that foolishness, he would not hear it. He needed concrete proof of something to verify he truly was some special person to be selected by these beings.

The Cel-toc came to life again, this time with a smile on her face, which Rafian knew was an attempt to relax him. Before she could speak, he started in again.

“Those of you who watch, do you not realize that this is one of the disgusting androids that killed my young friends on Genese and starved me within an inch of my life as a boy? Did you pick this thing as your avatar and weaken my mind and body to torture me, or is it mere ignorance that you put a former prisoner in front of his captor?”

The Cel-toc put a finger to her lips to shush him and began talking as if nothing he said had gotten through to the aliens.

“Our plan is above you, too large for you to fathom and too complex for your organic brain to comprehend. We are above games, but Anstractor and specifically Vestalia is important to us. We chose you to be the one to represent our philosophy to the human race. The Geralos are not to take Anstractor, and they are not to get a hold of the warp crystals or anything related to them in any form. You are to move your people, destroy this temple in its entirety, and secure the knowledge so that the crystals are never compromised.”

Rafian looked around. His head was finally his to control now, and he was surprised to find the three beings standing behind him, light dancing across their faces as they puppeted the Cel-toc to say the things it was saying.

“What if I were to refuse you?” Rafian asked.

“You are not permitted to refuse us. If you let your hubris allow you to make a series of decisions that compromises us, then we would be forced to destroy the crystals and the planets that are a threat to our race. This would mean the entire Anstractor galaxy would be removed, Rafian, because it is here that the taint resides. It is here that the crystals were lent to humans in order to right the genetic mistake that is the Geralos and stop their plague from spreading to other worlds.”

Rafian was going over it in his head, and he understood. The planet Geral had once been an abandoned husk of nothing for thousands of years, but it had developed life after a time, and that life became the vicious lizards that took their aggressive conquering to the other planets. He had read about the Makers when he was a cadet. They were mythic beings that came from a distant galaxy that held a million suns and a solitary planet. The Makers were the ones who gave technology, rewards, and charity to ancient civilizations when they risked genocide or irrecoverable collapse. Their primary goal was balance and peace, though their strange laws disallowed them from directly assisting anyone.

He couldn’t believe that he was meeting them, let alone talking and shouting at them. They were gods, as much as gods are described, and they had chosen him to do the very thing he had always aimed to do in the first place. Who was he to refuse assistance in destroying Geral?

“What would you have me do outside of what has been told to me already?” he asked. “Will you be giving me any help for my charge? Will I be receiving a magical sword that never breaks, or a suit of armor that deflects blasts back whenever I’m shot at?”

He was being sarcastic, but he wondered if they understood sarcasm or if his ridiculous requests would be met somehow.

“We have given you a charge, young Rafian. This charge is to lead and to succeed in your leadership. The gift we give you is an understanding of the crystals and the power that they hold. You do not have to take them with you when you jump—this is a misunderstanding. You simply have to know when it is time to return and will yourself back with all of your heart. The technology is beyond your understanding, and it isn’t covered in any of your recorded archives or people. Arn Stryker was charged with this same task that we are giving you, and he let the power consume him into worthlessness. You killed him once. When you return, you are to remove the gift of resurrection from him and end his life. We will not meet you again in this lifetime, Rafian, just as we did not seek out Arn for the seventy years that he has led this order.

“You asked about the android that imprisoned you as a boy, but we bring her here to clear the distractions and remind you of your history. Everything you love has been taken by the Geralos, and your home planet along with your race is almost lost to them. What will you do, Rafian? What will you do in this last hour of your galaxy?”

Rafian thought about the question, and it upset him that he had allowed Tyhera’s situation to make him forget his goals.

“I’ll tell you what I will do. I will lead my people to victory and the destruction of the Geralese horde.”

They kept him there for a span of a month after allowing him to radio the temple to let them know that he would be fine. When Rafian VCA emerged again from that ship, it was on a dead, cloudless night. He was the same man who had entered a month past, but he was a man who could now see the entire forest of potential beyond the large trees that stood in his way to reaching it.

When he had walked a few yards from the ship, it began to rise quickly into the sky, and he watched it go for a long time before setting foot towards the temple to carry out the instructions he had for his lieutenants. It would be a different set of missions for his jumpers, and he would have to retrain them properly. No matter how long this all would take, he was happy that for the first time in his life, fate was on his side.

Memory 22 | Homecoming

The tiny ship was coming towards the Helysian at a rate that could be easily mistaken as hostile, and the commander scrambled the gunners to man their stations as they tried their best to communicate with the pilot rocketing towards their position. The Helysian was in a panic. Never before had the Geralos done something so bold as to attempt a kamikaze run on their hyper drive. It was one of the surest ways to sink the vessel, and they wondered what sort of explosives they had onboard and whether the ship alone, or whether there a squadron waiting to jump in.

The soldiers on the Helysian were on edge, but Aurora SYN flashed a beautiful white smile and screamed at the commander to hold fire because the ship belonged to their lost lieutenant, Rafian VCA. It had been three years since she had seen him last, and the rumors persisted that both he and Camille had met their demise by way of the spy network that took them in. She refused to believe it. Having made the soul bond with Rafian so long ago, she felt as if she could feel his life force, and when the ship appeared, she knew that it was he who was onboard.

She could hardly contain her excitement. She was bouncing in front of the gun that she was meant to man, and the commander looked at her quizzically, wondering if there was any chance that she could be right and that the ship belonged to Helysian’s prodigal son, Rafian VCA.

When the first gunner opened fire, the comm finally came to life, and a deep voice asked them to cease fire, as the vessel was indeed friendly.

“This is Commander Rafian VCA of the Network, former marine of the Helysian and forever a son of Vestalia.”

The ship breathed a collective sigh of relief, and it was as if every marine onboard found his or her way to the dock in order to see whether it was truly Rafian onboard the ship. When the vessel docked, it was of an alien design that none of the pilots had ever seen before. It was large enough to be a cruiser, but the shape of the wings, the slick thrusters, and the proton cannons that seemed to be everywhere let them know that this was a fighter, and one that was strong enough to take on the Helysian if there had really been an enemy onboard.

The back hatch opened with a mist of detox steam pouring out, and several dangerous-looking men and women hopped out and formed a path as Rafian emerged with Marian—now a jumper herself—in tow. Aurora clasped a hand over her mouth. He was bigger now than she last remembered and seemed meaner. She looked at his entourage and at his uniform—dark blue with white highlights decorated with badges, medals, and what seemed to be las-sword burns. He removed his helmet to reveal his trademark bald head and thick chin beard that started up into a mustache but stopped at the crease of his lips. His ebony skin glistened with sweat from the humidity of the steam, and his boots were spiked and cruel.

The woman next to him looked like nobody she had ever seen before. She was human, but her thick crop of ebony hair plaited into a long ponytail revealed a face that seemed unique, and her beauty was striking! So much so she could see that every Helysian man was already under her spell.

Rafian walked past his men and smiled widely at Aurora—he had missed her a lot during his days at the jumper temple. He walked past the commander, saluted him and the crew, and nodded at the gunners. He found his way to his sister, lifted her from the floor, upon which she had collapsed, and hugged her long and hard.

“Is it really you, Rafian? Is it really you? Please don’t tell me that this is some dream or trick being played on me, because my heart will not be able to take it!”

She was crying and clung to him for dear life as Rafian fought back his own tears and let himself surrender into her arms the way he did with Marian. He took her hand and walked her over to Marian, where he introduced them, and then he did the same with the commander and the friends who had come out to see him. Surprisingly, Vani was also there. She had the stripes of a colonel, and he felt a strange wave of pride for her accomplishment. The old scars and anger were removed, and he hugged her they way he had Aurora, causing her to bawl out loud and kiss his face happily, whispering apologies and letting him know how worried she had been. This ritual went on for a time as everyone who knew Rafian rushed out to meet him. Some inquired about Camille and were elated to hear that she was fine. Others, such as Kim, kept their distance and watched with admiration.

The jumpers had been restructured under the leadership of Rafian, Camille, and Tayden. They had changed their name to the Network and made themselves known with the destruction of a major Geralese starship by the name of the Vestal.

Rafian needed Helysian as a temporary base for attempting the liberation of a base on Vestalia, where he planned to set up their formal headquarters. His return to Helysian was more than a homecoming for him, as he knew that his face would inspire the men and women, along with putting the necessary fire in their belly for the violence and destruction that was to come.

He had also come back to get Aurora. She was his sister, and he didn’t like to have her so far away from him, where his influence couldn’t keep her safe.

He took Marian on a grand tour and spoke of his troubled youth, his ascent to first grade, and his rocky relationships with women who broke his heart.

“Though you had no Memory of your past in Tyhera, Raf. I could sense a deep sadness within you when we first met…Well, the meeting that occurred after our fight.”

She could not resist a little smile at the thought of getting over on the mighty Rafian VCA, and she thought about how foreign and far away Tyhera felt now that her husband had taken her away.

After the tour, Rafian and Marian sat in his old apartment, sharing a bottle of brandy and reminiscing on their union and everything that had transpired since then. Camille did not want to come to the Helysian, embarrassed about what she had gone through and not wanting to deal with the questioning eyes and the judgment about her disappearance. The temple’s destruction was left up to her, and Rafian knew that she would obliterate it satisfactorily. Tayden had reformed her rangers within the Network’s ranks, renamed them the Crystal Thorns, and started reconnaissance runs on the area of Vestalia that they had picked out to become their headquarters.

“If you had it all to do over again, husband, and you knew the end result of everything that would come, would you join the jumpers, or would you have run off with Camille to dodge their recruitment?”

Rafian sipped slowly at his drink and ran his finger over the sword scar near his right eye as he thought deeply about Marian’s question. Ironically, Marian cherished the scar he had given her on their first meeting, but it had been repaired when she took a bullet through her cheek during one of her training exercises. The Kelpor healing system had the ability to obliterate wounds and scars, and unless you had someone manually operating it, you were not able to pick and choose what it mended. Marian’s beautiful face was now flawless, but Rafian kept the slice Arn had given him near his right eye when he gave him his true death, as was promised to the Makers so many months back.

“I went through so much to have you, Ree, even crossing galaxies to meet you, the woman who would become my wife. I am convinced that you are my destiny, and I am not meant to love another woman. That being said, the only thing I would change about my history is that whatever happened to Cammy when we were training did not happen.”

He seemed suddenly lost in thought, and he shook his head slowly as he spoke.

“She hasn’t been whole since then, and it wounds me to see her suffer silently without the ability to fix it. But the amnesia, the fight to liberate your planet, our spat, our marriage, you! You! Being here in my arms, where I can smell you, taste you, and know that I am yours as much as you are mine? I would do it a hundred times over if I had to. The loss of friends, family, and lovers is a pain that has become a part of me and I cannot ever shake it, but you are the goddess at my back, baby. There is absolutely no way I would change any of that.”

“You are so poetic, Rafian,” Marian replied in Tyheran—the way she always did whenever she spoke lightly from the heart. “You know, I never asked you if you wanted me to become a jumper here, or if it would bother you that I want to fight.” She had moved over to his seat to sit on his lap, and she began to slowly take her hair down.

“When I met you, you were a soldier, babe. When I brought you back, I expected that you would continue to be one. We are warriors. I am no working husband, and you are no meek housewife. We are meant to kill and liberate, to command men and women who follow our charge, and to protect the crystals that were gifted to us by the Watchers.”

The brandy bottle was empty, and Marian’s thick, dark curls were out, enveloping her perfect breasts while tickling Rafian’s nose as she leaned in.

“You forgot one other thing that we warriors are meant to do while we are here, my husband.”

Rafian kissed her lips hard and let his arms envelope her naked waist as she dropped the last of her armor on the floor.

“Thype!” she said with a devilish grin on her face. “We are here to thype, so…Commander, if I may speak freely, shut up with the poetry and make love to your wife!”

* * *

The knock on the door was light and barely audible. Marian was fast asleep, and she had her arms and legs wrapped so tightly around Rafian that it was as if she meant to entrap him there until she awoke. Rafian tickled her nose so that she would react and free him from her clutches, and then he donned a robe and answered the door.

“Hi!”

It was Vani; her big, beautiful brown eyes were distracting as Rafian stared at her, wondering what it was she wanted at this late hour. Pulling her inside, he motioned to the upstairs room to let her know Marian was sleeping and walked her to the kitchen, where his and Marian’s armor was everywhere—evidence of their passionate strip and lovemaking session, which he knew that Vani was quite aware of. She was absolutely stunning, wearing a red 3B suit that revealed every curve of her perfect body and silken flats with the letter H for Helysian woven in gold on the tops of them. He sat with her on the couch and offered her a drink, which she promptly took and gulped quickly.

“What’s on your mind, Vee?” he asked as he sat down next to her.

She looked at him as if wondering if she should tell him.

“When we last left off, it was horrible, Raf, absolutely horrible. You were my first love.…I cried over you for a month after we split, and I was too upset and angry to even talk to you about it, so I avoided you. Do you know how it feels to harbor those feelings and then, when you get over them and want to go make up with your friend, you learn that he disappeared and may have even been killed?”

Her admission took him a moment to absorb. He got up to get a napkin for her to dry her tears, which were running freely. Vani kept on talking as she nodded and fanned herself rapidly to try to calm down.

“I shouldn’t be here. I know that it’s late, and it’s extremely inappropriate to your wife, but it’s me…and it’s you, so it should be OK! And oh, Raf, I’m so sorry!”

She hugged him as she did before, as if she would never let go.

“I don’t even know what we were fighting over, Vee.…I just know that you were my girl, and I loved you more than the world. You were there for me when Kim crushed me, and you were a good, loyal girlfriend. You do have a temper…heh! But you are still the stunning beauty whom I thought was an angel when I first came onboard this ship.”

Vani was blushing and held his hand in hers as she breathed deeply and savored the moment, as if she never wanted it to end. It was beginning to get uncomfortable, so Rafian quickly complimented her and snatched his hand back from her soft palms.

“So…congratulations on your rank, Vee! You were always a brilliant strategist, and I am glad they finally gave you some of the props you deserve.”

Vani took on a different expression—one of anger and hurt. There was a silence that followed before she replied, and when she did, there was trembling in her voice.

“Hell ya, Rafian.…They finally gave me my damn stripes after I got us out of a Geralos ambush near the Merudian moon. It took that sort of craziness for them to finally acknowledge me, and it makes me so angry!”

Her voice trailed off, and she slumped into the couch and took another drink.

“So, any kids? Husband?” Rafian asked, changing the subject quickly to avert the awkward air.

Vani shook her head as if the thought were absurd. “You were probably the only guy I would have considered the family thing with, Rafian. It hasn’t been easy on the ship. To be quite honest, I am thinking about transferring somewhere else.”

“How about you come join us on Vestalia?”

She looked at him as if he had lost his mind. “Join you where?”

She was doing one of her funny faces, and Rafian laughed despite himself. It was such a real laugh that it got back to her, and she too began laughing. He explained to her that he led a new order of fighters and that she was welcome to join them when they raided Vestalia. She was very much onboard with the idea of touching a planet after spending a lifetime onboard the ship.

He walked her to the door and told her to be prepared, because their departure would be sudden and she would need to be prepared to jump with them when it happened. Vani was in heaven with the thought of finally leaving, and as she neared the door, she turned and placed her back against it, scanned the upstairs bedroom door to see if it was still closed, and looked at Rafian with a familiar glint in her eye.

“Come here,” she said, and Rafian was puzzled at her intent.

Without much thought, he came closer to her, and she threw her arms around his neck, stuck her tongue in his mouth, and kissed him longingly.

“Tell Marian I’m sorry, Rafian, but I have been waiting three years to tell you I’m sorry and to remind you who your original betrothed was. Now you go back to her. You’re lucky, Marian! Get some sleep, and don’t forget me when you leave. I love you.”

And with that, she was out the door and gone.

Rafian stood at the door for a very long time afterwards.

“Is that going to be a problem?”

The voice made Rafian spin around and look up as Marian materialized at the edge of the balcony looking down at him. Her silken robes were blowing gently from the vent’s cool air, giving her the appearance of a powerful witch who had come to wreak havoc on anyone below her. It made him suddenly embarrassed to know that she had been watching them the whole time and probably wondering why he had allowed Vani to kiss him the way she did and more.

She didn’t appear angry, but her voice had an edge to it that let him know she was not amused with Vani’s actions or her words.

“Is she going to be a problem, or will I have to cut out that little tongue of hers and shove it up her ass?” Marian continued as she began to gracefully descend the stairs, wine glass in hand and an aloof expression on her face.

“It has been a long time, Marian. I don’t think she meant anything by it. Just emotions and being caught up in the moment, you know? Can we drop it?” Rafian asked, suddenly feeling exhausted by the drama.

Marian pushed her body against his and began to kiss him.

“I trust you, Rafian, you know this. Your body is no longer mine, but I worry for your heart, and those words that girl spoke really hurt me.” She jabbed a finger painfully into his chest and spat the words out in the harshest way.

“Your heart is mine! I don’t care who the original was, who your childhood sweetheart was, or who thinks they know you better than I do. You are mine, and if she so much as asserts anything different again, like somehow she holds claim to you, I will become extremely upset!”

She had her lips pressed against his ear as she said this, and she pushed him down on the couch and straddled him before dropping her concealed knife. She always had a knife.

“These women of yours, Rafian—they are many, and they pop up all over the damn place. I knew when we got together that it was going to be a challenge, but this is annoying. I do not want to—”

Rafian put his finger to her lips and silenced her.

“They will know their place where you are concerned, Marian. Let us drop it, OK?”

And hearing the words that she sought from her husband, she lowered herself upon him and commenced their nightly ritual.

Memory 23 | Genocide

It was the seventh season of cold when the dictator Palus Felitious took command of the planet known as Tyhera and set his palace in the center of a large city named Veece, in the country of Apun. On the surface, Palus’s doctrines seemed to be good for the people. He made sure no one went hungry, and the machines of industry were recharged and fired to again bring about technology to a world that had gotten used to making do without it. “All hail Palus” and “Long live the Felitians!” were the battle cries of those who believed in him, and they relished the idea of his new world order. Among these loyalists were a man named Vinsyn Laren and his wife, Claryn. The couple were frequent victims of the gangs who ran Tyhera prior to the Palus “cleansing,” and they were happy for the new ruler since he not only removed the gangs from power but made gory examples of them.

Vinsyn was particularly fired up by the dictator and would complain about the rule that soldiers needed to be young, because this excluded him and he wanted to take up arms and join. Their new home held a picture of Felitious, decorated to the nines with medals, titles, and the defiant smirk he always wore on his tanned, mustached face. Claryn was not as hardcore a fan of Felitious as her husband was, but she was appreciative of him for fixing the chaos and bringing about some sort of leadership that would make sure those innocents could survive. She was for revenge when it came to the thugs that the Felitian Empire was routing out day by day under heavy fire.

One of the gang’s atrocities carried out on the Laren family was the kidnapping of their daughter, Wharena, a beautiful young girl of sixteen whom they held hostage for years in order for Vinsyn to pay them monthly. When the Felitians began the war to take back the streets, Vinsyn had set out himself to rescue his daughter and found that she had become the willing wife to the gang’s leader. She not only tried to kill her father but took her own life when her captor and husband were beheaded publicly by the Felitian lord that Palus put in charge of their city. The Larens never recovered from what the gangs had done to them, and when Claryn delivered a new baby girl after a number of years, they took her to their lord, Okov Wilder, to offer her up as his betrothed.

Okov was a warrior who had been given his station due to his outstanding record of military service. Unlike his peers of noble birth who held similar stations, he found this ritual of marrying off babies to grown men to be odd. What he promised the Larens instead of marriage was that their daughter would be a baroness within his city. She would be the first of her line, and due to Vinsyn’s commitment and loyalty to their now-emperor Palus, her offspring would be regarded as nobles just as she was with her newly appointed title. Little Rienne Laren was therefore born into privilege and immense love, a Felitian gem to be cared for by the military and their lord. She was given the best education, including fencing lessons by a private tutor, and when she was old enough to enlist, she did so to make her father proud and rose in its ranks to become a captain.

She was fierce and one-dimensional in her focus, and it led to her being given the nickname Rienne the Rapier, as her fencing arm had impaled many rebels, and her direction was always straight to the point, very much like her blade. For someone this focused and brainwashed within a system, only a devastating situation could break her from the path in order for her to see why their otherwise peaceful country would have rebels in the first place. Rienne’s doubts about the empire she was a part of came when she turned twenty-one and was enlightened to the actions of her superiors.

* * *

“Genocide?”

Rienne was in shock as she looked over the tablet that she held in front of her, scanning the various names and belongings of the people who had been “cleansed” by what was being called a patriot army. General Qeran Kyle had acquired these “patriots” to remove refugees who were living within Tyhera. She could not understand the need for so cruel a command—unless the refugees posed a threat to the very fabric of Felitian life. She could not even fathom where the refugees came from, and she wondered if they really deserved to be treated so cruelly.

“Why are we doing this, Celene? How long has this been going on?”

The question was thrown at the heavyset corporal who had brought her the tablet. She was standing at attention, looking at the ceiling the way soldiers were commanded to stand when facing a noble.

“Oh, for Maker’s sake, at ease, girl! How many times do I have to tell you that the formal codes need not apply to me?”

The corporal relaxed and looked at her with exasperation. Though the pair had practically grown up together, Rienne did not know the amount of scolding and punishment Celene had withstood for behaving casually with the young baroness. They were alone in the office for a time, though, so she felt comfortable in speaking freely with Rienne Laren. She walked behind the desk where Rienne’s combat boots were sitting neatly to the side, a habit the soldiers made fun of without her knowing it. Rienne hated boots. As a young girl she would always be scolded for running about in bare feet because a baroness must have a perfect outward appearance, and dirty feet was a privilege afforded only to the poor and those without title. She hated the rules that were placed on her due to title. She found them to be sexist and archaic in their construct and saw no need to follow them.

Celene leaned over and whispered into her ear. “It was Red Kyle. He says that refugees will bring a vicious race called the Geralos here, and that if we allow them to live and breed within our society, their mystic ways will put us into a galactic war that will destroy the progress that we have worked for.”

The Felitians feared outsiders, and the thought of a foreign military organizing to come into their galaxy to harvest humans was all the excuse they needed to vilify and destroy the refugees. Over a hundred thousand people had traveled light speed to the galaxy of Luca when the Geralos scourge took over Ceronika Prime. A large number of them emigrated to the planet of Tyhera and started families. It was very easy to spot them due to the pigment of their skin, the Qyeran in their pupils (diamond-like spots), and their foreign speech.

When the refugees originally jumped to take up homes in this new galaxy, their story touched many inhabitants of the various planets. However, when people such as Qeran Kyle and Palus Felitious heard it, their deepest worries were piqued, and before long, the outsiders were disappearing from their homes. A process of removing the mystic properties from the captives and changing the blood to be more like that of Lucan natives led to many people dying or living out miserable lives as blind cripples. One of these cripples was a man named Jeonah RAE, an ex-soldier from Cholde, Ceronika, who had fled with his wife after she convinced him that life would be better for their children.

Jeonah witnessed his wife and four children sacrificed to the “process” and started a rebellion with aims to overthrow the Felitian power structure. It was this rebellion that Rienne was enlisted to stop, and when she finally learned the reason the people of her world would want to rebel against their leaders, she felt confusion and betrayal, along with other emotions such as shame.

“I feel like I need to throw up!”

Rienne was staring at the tablet as if it were a bomb, and Celene had told her they had ten minutes before it destroyed the entire planet. She hopped to her feet and threw it against the wall. The mercurial particles exploded like a grenade, and Celene ducked and rolled off to the side in order to avoid the fragments flying everywhere.

“We are going to pay for these atrocities, Celene. Do you understand that we will be the bad guys when our history is read to our youth?”

Celene stood still, not knowing what to do about her angry baroness or what to say to make her calm down. Rienne was on her feet with her palms planted on the desk. She was looking down at the surface, processing what she could do in her lowly position to end the evil that her emperor was making them fight for. She had been in thought for roughly fifteen minutes when she turned to Celene.

“Celene, could you please bring me all of the records that we have on this genocide and everyone who is involved with it. I would also like you to swear me a blood oath that our conversation here, the actions that you have seen me perform and my obvious disappointment in our military, is to stay between the two of us.”

Looking up from the desk to stare coolly at her friend, Rienne then uttered, “If it were not for our relationship, Celene, I would have to kill you. Please appreciate that our friendship stays my hand, and do not let me regret trusting you with this secret.”

Celene quickly nodded and swore the oath before asking Rienne if there was anything else she could do for her. Rienne waved her off with a little smile to let her know that she appreciated her. She then sat as Celene hurriedly exited the office, stepping past the tablet fragments as she did. When Rienne went home to her Veece apartment that evening, she thought about the situation and solutions that would help her right the wrong of the movement that she was now an officer of.

How do you stop a speeding cruiser aimed at destroying humanity when you yourself are on it?

She asked this of herself over and over as she sat in the office, slowly sipping her red wine. She couldn’t tell her father. To him, Palus was a god, and her mother was just as indoctrinated as he was, though her loyalty was more towards not disappointing her husband. It was then that she heard the commotion, and her front door flew open as a large, dark-skinned man burst in, wearing the uniform and colors of a resistance commander.

That chance meeting with Rafian VCA was one that she always felt was fated, because it was at a time when her trust in the Felitian rule was greatly diminished and her heart was hungry for a way to make it right.

* * *

Marian VCA sat up in the bed staring at her ring and examining it longingly as she thought back on her home. She missed her parents, but she had turned out to be a great disappointment to them. Here she was married to a man who was both a resistance commander and a Vestalian refugee, and she was now a weapon to threaten their precious Palus and his rule over their galaxy.

“Trouble sleeping, Ree?”

It was Aurora who asked it; she had passed out as well, a result of the three soldiers sharing Genese gin and taking part in board games and storytelling.

“Ya…you can say that, Aurora. I haven’t truly slept in a long time. I am just still taking all of this in, you know? Rafian’s reality, all of you wonderful people in his life…Anstractor.”

She trailed off as if she had said too much.

“You know, Marian, none of us know you. I don’t think your husband even knows who you are. You were brought here into our problematic galaxy and forced to make new friends who already had lives of their own.”

“That’s very good, Aurora, and you’re right. This transition hasn’t been easy for me.”

“We’re the same in that, girl. I grew up on the Helysian, but since I got left for dead and rescued, it is as if I am a stranger to everyone. Girls stare and give me awkward smiles. The guys seem intimidated by me, and I feel as if I am constantly watching my back for people who wish to take advantage of me in one way or another. Rafian may have done me a huge favor by saving me, but sometimes I wonder if I would have been better off as plant food on that ship.”

Marian reached over and touched Aurora’s hand gently and looked at her. “You belong here, Aury. It doesn’t matter what any of the people on this ship think. You belong here. Let’s get out of here so that Rafian can sleep.”

The women slipped out of the bedroom and down the stairs towards the lounge, Marian wearing the silken, flowing red nightgown that she favored and Aurora in soft, Helysian-issue pajama pants and a massive shirt, with her hair wrapped up with fabric. As they sat, Marian sent an android off to bring them tea, and she turned on the vid screen, muted it, and turned to face her new friend. The vid had a scene going of a planet being bombed by Geralese ships—another reminder of the war that consumed their lives. Aurora quickly changed it to what appeared to be a romance opera of some sort, took a deep breath, and relaxed.

“My real name is Rienne Laren, and I am partly responsible for an ongoing genocide on my planet in the galaxy of Luca. I believe many of those who are being sought out and killed came from this galaxy—from the planet Vestalia.”

Marian watched the reaction in Aurora as she said this, and it felt extremely liberating to finally come out of the closet about her history to someone. Rafian knew her past; they had exchanged stories many times, but with Aurora, it felt different and exciting because unlike Rafian, she didn’t know how she would react to hearing the truth.

“Whoa, that’s a pretty bad joke to make, Marian.”

Aurora said this as she searched Marian’s dusky face for any sign of laughter that would follow her absurd statement. Of course the laughter never came, and Aurora stood silent for a moment, wondering if she should burst up the stairs to tell Rafian or find a way to keep her cool and tell him later. Marian, a master at reading faces, picked up on her intent and moved to settle the air.

“Rafian knows, Aurora. You and he are the only ones who know.…I would like to keep it that way.”

Aurora nodded but looked at Marian with a completely different level of respect than she had before. Suddenly this woman seems dangerous; she is beautiful and a sister now that she has married Rafian—probably receiving the same looks and prejudice from women that I faced—but there is something else about her.

“Predatory eyes!” Aurora exclaimed to break the awkward silence. “I know this is not the first time you are hearing it, Marian! You are one scary cruta. You are beautiful, but you look like you’re capable of a lot of really, really mean things. Oops! Did I just say that out loud? I’m so sorry—must still be the gin—heh—but you are so interesting! I should have held my tongue.”

Marian finally laughed. It was an uncomfortable laugh that made Aurora realize that she had offended her, and she searched her mind for a way to let Marian know that she meant it as an observation and nothing more. The tea had arrived, and they took their mugs and began to drink in order to get past the awkward faux pas.

“You’re family, Aurora. You’re probably the only family I have now, since the Fels would have rounded up my parents for questioning, processing, and worse when they learned I defected to the resistance. Things are so much easier to deal with when there isn’t any uncertainty. These last few months have been a whirlwind of doubts, disappointments, and regret. Please don’t fear me—I grew up with handmaidens, servants, and a city that feared me just because of my title. I am not Baroness Laren here, that confused, blunt instrument of the Fel Empire. I am Marian VCA, a jumper agent and loving wife. That is all I want to be.”

Aurora smiled at Marian. “I didn’t aim to offend you, Ree. You are my new sister—that is who you are to me. I don’t care if you’re a queen, a baroness, or any other fancy title. To me, you are Marian, and I want you to feel comfortable talking to me. I don’t gossip.…I don’t have people to gossip with! Unless it is something that can hurt my Rafian, you can rely on me.”

It was words that put Marian’s mind at ease, and though she could not push aside the reservations she felt to trust, she could appreciate Aurora’s attempt at loyalty and wanted to return the favor in some way. She had not spent much time away from her husband since arriving on the Helysian. He guarded her from everyone as if she were a fragile creature, and she understood why: those piercing looks from women and hungry eyes from men. But it felt odd, being that he had never felt the need to behave that way back when they were on Tyhera. Here she found herself with an actual girlfriend. It had been a childhood dream of hers that she thought impossible due to title and duty. Now she was a young woman, barely twenty, and she had met other strong women whom she could call sister despite their different backgrounds, histories, and motivations.

Camille was always quiet and kept to herself, but the time Marian spent with her at the temple learning the jumper way led to some of the most soul-searching moments she had ever experienced. As she thought of Camille’s sad eyes and her strange golden hair, a wave of sadness crossed her mood. Try as she did with the woman, Marian’s heart was a tiny metal safe, accessible only to her husband Rafian, which served as a reminder that to Camille she was an unfortunate discovery. She had returned with the one person whom the blonde loved and was bonded to him by marriage and ceremony, forever leaving Camille to stand as the woman who got left behind.

She wondered if Camille hated her. It was more than a few nights that she slept with her knife close, worried that Camille would find her way to her quarters and slit her throat, forcing the man she loved to be freed from his nuptials. Now here was Aurora, so different in her persona and spirit. Unlike the ice that Camille radiated, Aurora was all warmth, love, and happiness. She couldn’t imagine her hurting an insect, much less being deceitful to her in any capacity, so when the tea had grown cold and their conversation began to be broken up with yawns, she reached out awkwardly and hugged her tight, allowing herself to display vulnerability. This was in hopes of Aurora understanding that for her, it was the most difficult thing to do. Aurora took gesture as it was intended and held her for a long time.

Memory 24 | Forever Love

Camille YAN had not been herself for months. She felt out of body most days, and she was extremely depressed. The standard procedure for soldiers who felt the way she did was a trip to the psychiatrist, who would provide treatment and therapy to stabilize her mood. Part of her problem with seeing a psych, however, had to do with her fear of facing up to the terrible things she had done as a jumper hopeful. Rafian had become her life, and though she knew that he had no idea how important he was to her, she could not hide the feelings she had for him. She had known that their induction into the program would find a way to tear them apart, but it had never dawned on her that he would find another wife, that she would be made to sleep with random men, and that her stability as a soldier—no, as a person—would suffer in the way it did now.

How dare he not see the pain I am going through?

Perhaps he did, she thought. The time they snuck off and made love in his office was the first time she had gotten close to him in years, yet it felt so casual, so loveless, and every bit the act that the former jumper commander wanted it to be. For her, lovemaking was a sacred bond. It had always been that way for many of the races in the Anstractor universe, and only the Meluvians felt differently about it. So why was no one as outraged as she was?

The days got lonelier and lonelier for Camille. She spent most of her time in the armory, priming weapons, upgrading her favorites, and, in her mind, reminiscing about past times when it was just she and her fighter ship. The happiest days preceded Rafian and the whole jumper fiasco. The happy days were when she was “the Golden Chameleon” scourge of any enemy foolish enough to face her in air-to-air combat. She liked being respected, and while the juniors in the new wave of jumpers respected her as one of their leaders, it only paled to the respect she got as a fighter jock.

She snapped herself out of the mental journey and looked around at the barracks. There were weapons lining the gray walls of the ship, and the skylights shone down like miniature suns, giving each weapon a spectacular look, as if it were all a holo-vid.

She was alone, and she felt depressed. Although Rafian had left her over thirty personal messages, she answered only the ones related to military business and deleted the others. He was always apologizing, and it felt as if he was patronizing her. She hated the feeling of being someone’s afterthought, so she had remained on the jumper ship voluntarily when they made plans to rejoin Helysian. This was a very lonely ship, and she would never admit to anyone that she had cried to herself several times.

Her comm lit up, and there he was—Rafian, the man responsible for her misery. She stared at his face on the screen as he waited for her to answer.

“Hey, Raf.” She got past her funk long enough to touch the icon that would connect the call and breathed the greeting as if it were a sigh.

“What can I do to help, Cammy? I’m worried about you. You haven’t been yourself since our first jump.…”

Camille reached to hang up the comm, but for the first time in a while, she hesitated. He was being genuine, and to an outsider looking in, she was probably being unfair. Would her cold shoulder win him back, or would it hurt him enough to let him feel even a little of what she was going through? She mulled it over as she fought back the tears and the embarrassment she felt whenever he looked at her.

When she made to speak again, he had disconnected. That last move confused her. Rafian had no reason to be upset with her, and he was not the type to let his emotions spill over into petty actions like disconnecting a comm. She sent a call back to him, but there was no answer. No connection and no sign of connectivity.

Something was wrong. She removed the heavy jacket she wore for warmth, tightened the straps on her tank top, placed a heavy las-gun in her left holster, and pushed open the barracks door to make her way to the bridge. The lights in the hallway were blinking rapidly, and she couldn’t understand why the loud siren had not reached her ears while she sat there fiddling with guns, worrying about her love life. Racing down the hallway now towards the door leading to the bridge, she felt a frightening bump that let her know that her little ship was being boarded.

She was still frazzled. The whole episode with Rafian was fresh in her mind, and the cut comm from him meant that whoever was boarding her ship had disabled her satellite. She had slipped, and whoever was coming aboard knew that she had slipped and was now en route to violate her ship, the jumper archives that it held, and everything that her fellow soldiers had left for her to take care of while they were aboard the Helysian.

No, no, no, no, no! she kept saying to herself, and then the blast doors flew open from the invaders. She burst through the facing door, which connected the hallway, and let several shots fly towards them. It did not matter to her who was coming through those doors. The comm sabotage, the boarding without hailing the ship’s captain, and the outline of what appeared to be a Seryac pirate ship let her know that the invasion was not going to be a friendly one. Multiple blasts volleyed back at her, and she fell to her stomach in order to avoid being hit while returning fire rapidly. Her shots shredded the reinforced darsteel walls around the door and thumped against the armor of the four figures that were trying to gain entry. Her shots were not hurting them, and this caused a wave of panic to wash over her as she lay exposed.

With skin and clothes, she was protected only by her aggressive fire, which wouldn’t hold up for long once the intruders realized their armor was working. Rolling to the side and then springing up to flee, Camille YAN placed the gun back into her holster and dashed towards her room, where she hurriedly stripped. Nerves like steel to avoid fumbling her clips, Camille put on a 3B suit and mask and grabbed an old las-sword gifted to her by Rafian and a plasma detonator that she synched to her heartbeat (which meant that it would explode if she died). She knelt in the corner and evoked her last rites. She forgave herself and Rafian, swearing to get over it all if she made it alive out of this situation.

Once she was finished with her rituals, she cloaked into nothingness, hoping the invaders did not bother to track stealthers. She slipped back into the hallway and back to where they were boarding. The pirates were talking among themselves. It was a language she barely remembered learning in cadet class, but from what she could make out, they were surprised at her attack, since the ship looked like a standard cruiser.

The blast doors shut with eight humanoids onboard, and they scanned every corner of the deck with their large, hip-mounted guns. Camille tested their visuals by walking across the doorway in plain view, but with no stealth detection technology, she was invisible to the pirates, and this made her happy.

Slipping past them to gain the bridge, Camille hopped into the pilot’s chair and with a number of hacks, overrides, and lucky guesses removed the comm lock on the ship along with the other blocks that prevented her from defending herself. With the ship back to form and at her disposal, she first detached their bridge from the airlock, pulled up the brakes so that she began to drift, and killed the internal lights to trap them all in darkness. The invaders went ballistic and charged onto the bridge and into adjoining rooms trying to find the ones responsible.

Camille killed the onboard oxygen last and then slipped into a corner to remove the cloak and allow her suit to recharge. On several occasions, she had witnessed the demise of marines who had planned poorly, relying too heavily on cloaking only to get killed when it malfunctioned or cut off due to lack of power.

The invaders were throwing out flares, and one of them was in the pilot’s seat doing his best to repower the vessel and turn on the lights and oxygen. Noticing that he was alone, she slid behind him with her las-sword and cut the rubber that molded his helmet to his chest plate. There was nothing a las-sword couldn’t cut, and the rubber evaporated like paper when held to a flame. Black ichor spattered across the ship’s dashboard and glass as he died, and she dragged the body back to her corner and out of sight.

The other seven pirates were tearing the ship apart looking for her, and she let the body lie in a way that left his arm visible to anyone who came onto the bridge. Camille climbed to the ceiling and wedged herself in the corner to wait for the next invader who would come to check on the progress. She didn’t have long to wait, as an impatient pirate burst onto the bridge cursing, and upon seeing the pilot’s seat empty, he scanned the room and noticed the hand.

“Zola! Vas e rojan!” he announced loudly.

Camille heard the stomping footsteps coming and realized that she was about to be flushed out. The biggest invader produced a canister, which he started to unscrew, eyes set on the area where she hung. She knew that it would be her end if he got a chance to throw it. Pulling the gun from her holster in one smooth motion, Camille fell from the ceiling while firing off two precise shots. One hit the canister, causing it to explode, and the contents melted the armor of the female pirate standing too close. The second shot hit the neck of the large male who commanded them. It produced a spray of black blood, which shot out as he fell dead on top of the pilot’s chair.

Camille recloaked and dashed past them silently, her jumper training coming into action now as the other five pirates shouted angrily while looking for her. With the discovery of their necks being the vulnerable part of their suits—a common flaw in the modern design of spacer armor—Camille felt for the first time that she would make it. She knew that in time they would find a way to get out, cut their losses, and burn the ship, and she could not risk that happening. So when the pirates began anew to look for her, she slipped back onto the bridge and aimed a torpedo at the open bay port of their ship. It would be the only place that was not protected by a shield.

The torpedo did wonders, causing an explosion within the bowels of the ship. She didn’t hang around long to admire her successful destruction because as three of the remaining invaders ran out to the lock that connected their ships, they were sucked into deep space by the hole that had resulted from the other ship’s destruction. Blast doors quickly sealed off the hole, and the ship took on an eerie silence afterwards that dared not be broken.

They forced my hand! Camille Yan reassured herself as she watched the magenta flames finish off the ship with an angry implosion. The remaining pirates burst onto the bridge in disbelief, and she held up her las-gun to place them under arrest. The smaller one made the mistake of reaching for his weapon, and she let the fire loose into his throat, causing him to fall and retch about violently before dying. The other raised her hands, and Camille placed her inside a tiny holding cell at the rear of the ship.

The girl was human and had short-cropped blue hair and a scar across her eye. She watched Camille like a hawk, waiting for her to slip, but the Golden Chameleon would not give her an inch.

Jumping back into the pilot’s seat, she sat there for a time, thinking about what she had done and how absolutely crazy and impossible it was. Rafian would be proud of her, she thought. It was one of the things they shared and loved about each other. When backed against the wall, they were always at their best. She smiled a bit, thinking of her prisoner and how amazing it was that she managed to take one alive. She exhaled slowly.

“Wow!”

When the adrenaline subsided and she was back to her normal, sullen self again, she fired up the radio and dialed in the Helysian. The military guard wanted Camille to bring the pirate to them for interrogation, and while she hated having to see Rafian so soon, she knew that the girl would have to be placed inside a real jail somewhere.

“I should have just shot her,” Camille whispered coolly. Then she set the coordinates to the mother ship and sat back with a mug of Finian spice tea to let its hallucinogenic aroma bring down the adrenaline that felt like it would make her heart explode.

When she docked and brought out the blue-haired thief to turn over to the marines, Camille was met with thunderous applause and numerous accolades for what she had done. Had the pirates taken the ship, they would have been able to use its signature to dock at military posts, rob them, commandeer them—and worse! It would have meant heavy losses in supplies to the ships such as Helysian that were on the frontlines.

She appreciated the honors, and it took her back to her early years as a pilot, when praise such as this was a common occurrence whenever she would land her fighter after a good mission. Rafian was nowhere to be seen, and she wondered if he had heard about what she had done. While docking, she had steeled herself to deal with him and Marian looking at her, smiling, as they tended to do. She imagined Marian with those dark, sparkly, untrusting eyes of hers and Rafian by her side like some lost, lovesick puppy. Now she felt a bit cheated, since she had spent the time to make sure that she would play nice and they hadn’t bothered to show up at all.

She gave up the prisoner, whose name turned out to be Rhet LeFau. She was wanted on several systems for war crimes that were as scary as they were brutal. The way the intelligence read, it sounded as if Camille had stopped a crew of some of the most wanted criminals in the galaxy. She accepted the Honor Medal but turned down the invitation to party with the Helysian marines. All she wanted was a long mineral bath, one of those ice-cold ones that made pain a distant Memory, and then she would retire to a couch with a tall bottle of port and the pleasant company of herself.

When she arrived at the executive room that was given to her, Camille turned off all the lights, set the bath going, lit several aroma candles, and removed her clothes to submerse herself into the olive liquid. After she had soaked for ten minutes or so, a shadowy figure stepped out of the corner and stood next to her.

“Hello, love of my life,” Camille said calmly.

She didn’t need to look at Rafian to know it was he. She could always feel him. The Filan blood that was part of her ancestry gave her the gift of attachment to people she had been intimate with. It was the reason Filans rarely slept with more than one person in their life. When Filans chose a mate, it was normally a mate for life, but this was not something she had ever shared with him. The men she had killed in the jumper training had been unworthy of her body. They were aggressive with her, and she could not bear the thought of staying attached to them for a lifetime. Filans were an old race from Vestalia. They were fair-skinned, bright-haired, light-eyed people. Her looks should have given her away to other Vestalians, but given the rarity of a Filan being around in this day and age, many just took her to be a regular Vestalian descendant or of mixed race with Vestalian and Meluvian.

“Is this going to be a problem, Cammy?” Rafian asked as he removed the 3B mask and sat on the edge of her bath looking at her.

“What problem?” Camille asked nonchalantly, her tone hinting she didn’t care for an answer because she knew what it would be, but she wanted to hear it from him anyway.

When he replied with “Us,” she couldn’t help but laugh out loud. But it came out as a small “Hmph,” as she wished he would walk away and leave.

“I hurt you, Cammy. I can keep on saying that it was unintentional due to my amnesia, but I brought back Mari when I got my Memory back, not thinking that I already had a wife-to-be waiting for me here. A wife-to-be who gave up her body and her everything to join an organization at my behest. I get it, and I am sorry.”

He lifted one of her shapely legs out of the bath water and washed it gently with the sponge, admiring how perfectly shaped her tiny feet were. She watched him as he did it and would have been lying to herself if she had said that she didn’t like it.

“I never told you my heritage, Rafian, but I am an old race, just like you.”

She was beginning to feel sorry for him, as he seemed genuinely tortured, and she wanted him to know the reason behind her obsession.

“So, you’re a Seeker too?”

“No. Look at me. Like, really look at me, Raf.…I have blond hair, dancing crystal eyes, and fair, slightly golden skin. How many girls around here do you see who look anything like me?”

Rafian took a look at Camille again, this time observing her racial uniqueness. Then it dawned on him that she was indeed a one-of-a-kind on the ship. Sure, there were many blondes and dark and pale skin types, but Camille had a complexion that stuck out from all of them, and her eyes were also freaky. They looked as if she had no pupils in certain lights. It was due to the color, a gray that was so light it appeared to be silver. Camille was also one of the only soldiers who could detect him even when cloaked. She triggered uncontrollable urges within him whenever she was close, and she felt like his, no matter how much he shielded his feelings with the thought of his love for Marian.

“Get out! Camille, are you a Filan descendant?”

He knew the answer as he asked, and the thought of it frightened him.

“So how in the hell did you get through the jumper class? Sex outside of your chosen is supposed to be like torture to…”

He stopped himself as he put it all together—the murders, Camille’s sudden cold nature, her refusal to let him drift away. He realized that the night he made love to her on the mercenary ship so many years ago had fulfilled the Filan bonding ritual of matrimony.

“Why in the hell did you not warn me back then, Cammy?”

“I didn’t think we would go that far, Rafian! I was stupid and lonely—there we were! Two decorated fighter jocks with no one in our lives but each other. You cannot tell me that you did not see me as your soul mate and life partner back when we were cleaning ships together. You were—are—everything to me, do you not understand? We lived together, we made love every night; it was perfect before all of this jumper nonsense.”

Rafian knew that she was right, and he looked at the Executive Room wall as he pondered this. He had been fully committed to Camille all the way up to his first jump and the chemical Memory loss that made him find Marian. He still had strong feelings for her and knew it went beyond the draw that her Filan nature had on him when he was near her. There would be no “moving on” for Camille, and the only way they would be rid of each other was probably through death.

“Do you love me, Rafian?”

She broke his thoughts with the question. It was asked so quietly that he wondered if she really wanted to hear his answer.

The jumper leader stood up and began pacing the room in thought. “I can’t stop thinking about you, Cammy.”

He had finally admitted it, and he inhaled angrily as he let it sink in that the admission made him a terrible husband to Marian.

“I love you to death, baby, but I will not divorce my wife. Our lusty decision on that ship has bound us permanently, but Marian and I are connected in a different but similarly deep way. What would you have me do? Should I consider suicide to release you, or should I return to Tyhera with Marian so as to spare you the connection trauma whenever I am near?”

Camille motioned Rafian over and emerged from the mineral bath to stand in front of him naked, the water pooling around her feet on the shiny black floor.

“Look, it would be easy to choose either, but that is not our way, is it, Commander? I think you should find a way for Marian to accept that I am in your life…forever. Accept that I had you first, and accept that if I want you, then I am going to have you.”

She had a serious and dangerous look in her eye that reflected a person who was settled on a direction. She touched the sides of his face with her wet hands and kissed him gently on his lips. She smelled and tasted like heaven.

“I’ve experienced and survived some really traumatic things for you, Rafian. I know that you know this. I am sick of crying and curling up in pain trying to get past what I cannot physically get past. So tell that to the woman you married, or don’t tell her. But accept that you cannot shun me and be rid of me. I think you owe me that at least.”

Rafian nodded in agreement.

“You got it, baby. I will talk to Marian.”

With those words, he slipped off the 3B suit, drew her naked body near, and gave her a welcome to the Helysian that made the medals and praise offered up earlier seem like nothing.

Memory 25 | No Quarter

Rafian sat in his favorite café on Helysian, slowly sipping on the tea he had ordered to calm him. He sat in his regular seat, which was in the back, behind one of the large columns that held a mock Vestalian ceiling in place. The café was supposed to help patrons immerse themselves in the music and forget for a few minutes that they were on a military ship.

Everyone in the café knew Commander VCA, but more importantly, they knew not to bother him or alert other patrons that he was in attendance. Most days he was there, he would be calming his nerves from a mission or seeking escape from the political arguing that men of his position seemed to gravitate towards. Rafian was still very much a soldier, and he felt more comfortable going into action than filling his stomach with exotic liquors and bartering for the planetary scraps that fell from the Geralese table of galactic domination.

Today, he had come to the café to escape the sarcastic wrath of his beloved wife Marian. He didn’t know why he thought that the conversation about Camille would be easy. For Marian, the old Tyheran ways were hard to break, and even though she herself was part of their new order, she could not find it in herself to allow her husband to have an open relationship or to accommodate another woman outside of herself.

After a heated argument, Rafian removed himself from Marian’s wrath when he realized how bad an idea it was to ask her about it. In his mind, he silently decided that he would still be with Camille, but in a very secretive way. He drank the tea thinking about the inevitable future when they would be caught, the fight that would ensue, and the disappointment that would be reflected in Marian’s eyes. He couldn’t help but smile at the thought of the two women fighting. He didn’t know which of them would win, but he knew that it would be an epic battle. He also knew that it could end up being deadly, and he didn’t want either of them to go off the deep end. He would have to make sure that both he and Camille were never caught. He had to make sure they kept it high, tight, and professional.

The entire thing made him sigh with a heavy chest; life had always been an adventure for him, so he didn’t know why he invited drama into his life with this new issue. Better had he left his new wife on Tyhera and jumped to her every weekend or so, but that was unrealistic. After what he had done to her life, her becoming a traitor and starting a fire under the revolution, it would have made more sense for him to live there with her and jump back to Camille whenever he could. There was no easy way to avoid this, and it led him to even more irrational thoughts, such as, what if he could just leave them both for a new start somewhere else?

“So am I to be replaced by food and drink now, Rafian?”

The question came from an unexpected Marian, who plopped down next to him with a concerned look on her face.

“Did you really think it would be easy with me?”

She was obviously trying to continue the earlier discussion that he was trying so desperately to get away from. His immediate urge was to get up and leave, but this was his wife, a woman whom he had vowed to stay with for life. Vows were to be taken seriously, and although he hated verbal arguments, he owed Marian the conversation.

“There isn’t much to talk about, Marian. The reality of the matter is that for Camille, someone I hold dear to my heart, our bond is chemical, and if I push her away, it may become suicidal for her.”

Marian punched in the code for her standard order of coffee with milk and let it materialize fully before picking it up and sipping away at it. Rafian was fully aware of her tactic of letting him simmer before she answered, but he focused his attention on the holographic dancer who shook her body in front of the kitchen. The silence was nerve wracking, but he set his mind elsewhere, not expecting an answer. He missed Aurora. She was so easy to talk to during situations like this. The few times he had argued with her, they would find a way to talk it out, and within minutes, they were back to joking with each other and enjoying each other’s company. With Marian, the fights had a way of becoming lengthy sieges. Here, she was invading his quiet time, but he knew she wanted closure as much as he did.

Marian was a woman whose livelihood and belief structure had been uprooted in his rebellion. He had tried to take her life and then stole her away to marry her. Next he took her away from her home, her country, her planet, and her galaxy, and took her to a strange world where he was promised to another woman. She in turn played along nicely the entire time and then joined his insane jumper organization in order to stay with him. Reflecting on all of this made him feel like an ass.

“You know what, Marian? You don’t deserve any of this. I apologize. Let me figure out this thing with Camille. You need not concern yourself further.”

He stared at her to read how she was taking it. He did not want an argument, and he most certainly did not want her upset and disappointed in him.

She looked up from her coffee, smiled slightly, and then said, “Thank you, husband.”

The pair continued their time together with happier topics, and after another thirty minutes of talking, Marian got up, kissed Rafian on the top of his head, and left. Rafian sat there in a daze afterwards, not willing to follow her. Just then his comm flared alive with an incoming call. The face of Tayden Lark hovered above it and began to speak.

“Hey, Commander, our scouts on Vestalia have found vulnerability at a massive Geralese compound known as Zynec Prime. The marine command would like for our jumpers to investigate this place, destroy as much of it as we can, and occupy it as our Alpha location for retaking our home planet.”

Rafian sighed with relief at the chance at doing something else. It was of the highest honors that his command was being asked to do this mission. He quickly thanked Tayden for the update and resisted the urge to leap to his feet and yell with excitement. Instead, he stood up, took a deep breath, and swallowed the last of his tea. Rafian made his way out of the café and towards his rented office. He called Camille to let her know the news, but the call wasn’t answered. This made him stop in his tracks! What sort of jumper did not answer a direct call from the commander? He looked at the comm as if it had the answer and then took a detour to the Helysian command in order to investigate.

* * *

Camille YAN was not a woman who was used to being on the wrong side of military command. She was the girl scout who could only do right and an enforcer of the rules. After her chat with Rafian about her feelings and his surprising acceptance of both his guilt and his unwillingness to let her go, she decided that a few drinks were in order. However, the celebration went a bit too far when she took too many shots of Cenelagine, and before she knew it, she was waking up in a puddle of her own vomit. A flirty crewman who had tried to get too close to her was lying on the floor next to her with a smoking hole in his chest from her side arm. Camille was arrested and taken to the brig, but after some evaluation, she was immediately released to a psych ship in order to be treated for her mental condition.

Upon learning all of this, Rafian felt as if he had been punched in the stomach. He had so many questions about the process. Why hadn’t he or Tayden been alerted? What sort of treatments was she to receive, and was she going to get prison time? He didn’t know what to do, especially after learning that she was not allowed to have visitors. He stood at attention in front of the brig warden, his only show of emotion being his knitted brows from being upset and confused.

He knew she had not been herself since the jumper situation, but he assumed that with time and healing, the old Camille would be back to defeat her demons and rejoin the world, as she smiled defiantly at her doubters. He was wrong, of course, and he knew that the doctors would help her. But the question about the shooting still remained, and he had to have an answer.

Wheeling around to march out of the jail, Rafian noticed a young cadet running his direction. Upon catching up with him, the boy bowed deeply and took a knee, and Rafian swallowed some saliva to moisturize his dry throat before addressing him.

“What is it, Cadet?”

“Sir, first let me say it is an honor to speak directly to the commander, sir! I apologize for disturbing the commander’s stroll but wanted to let him know that Subcommander Camille YAN will be scheduled for release after getting an all clear from the psych ship Lauren. The unfortunate death of crewman Sole Sirn is ruled a result of the subcommander’s poor medical condition, and he will be air locked with high military honors as a soldier of war.”

Rafian regarded the young man closely and then looked around to see who might have sent him.

“Thanks, Cadet,” he managed to say, but as he nodded at the boy in gratitude for the tip and searched his senses, he realized that it was the brig warden who had saved Camille, shipped her off, and then sent the messenger to discreetly let him know the fate of his fellow jumper officer. He made an oath to reward the man for looking out for her, but first he needed to take care of much more pressing matters. Rafian summoned the twenty jumpers onboard—including Marian—and they assembled on the dock. He told them of the situation with Zynec Prime and then lied about Camille, telling them that she had been shipped off on a private jump.

Rafian unilaterally changed the name of their organization, referring to them as phasers instead of jumpers. He had always hated the term “jumper” and preferred his old military designations instead of the abstract titles of the former jumpers, such as numbered call signs and “person” for fully lethal warriors. His command was simple. They were to send one solitary ship into the hell zone and have it infiltrate Zynec Prime to decimate her defenses. Once the defenses were down within the war zone, the pilot would drop a crystal for the other phasers to teleport onto the ground and commandeer the area from within. They would quickly set up a base city and then silently operate from behind enemy lines.

Upon hearing this, the phasers were excited. They could finally test their mettle at home instead of jumping off to other galaxies. High spirits were all around until they learned that the pilot volunteering for the drop was none other than their commander, Rafian VCA. Marian looked ready to object when he announced it, but she saw the look in his eye and knew that after their argument and the sudden disappearance of Camille, there had to be bigger schemes beneath Rafian’s command. It made her wonder if there was a motive behind his volunteering. Could it be a rendezvous with Camille, who had possibly jumped there? Or, perhaps, given his dark mood as of late, was he was contemplating suicide?

She was uncomfortable with it, but if her assumptions were right, confronting him would be the worst thing she could do. She let it play out and prepped herself to be one of the “boots on the ground” when the crystal beckoned. Her husband and whatever he was planning to do would remain a mystery, and she would just have to trust him to tell her whenever he was ready.

When Rafian dismissed his men and women to enjoy their last night before deploying, he avoided Marian and chose instead to do the one activity he always did to clear his head. It was late in the hour when she found him atop his Zero fighter, polishing it as if he were going to be presenting it in an aerial show.

“I brought you some Vlorian ice cake,” she said, smiling at him through the side of her face, the way she always did, hoping a friendly demeanor, a tasty dessert—which he always seemed to order—and some civil conversation would walk him back from the dark precipice she assumed he was teetering upon.

“You’re a sweetheart,” he said in a dry, aloof manner.

“Look, Rafian, this mission…” she began, and she could see him preparing to dismiss her as if he did not want to hear anything she had to say.

“I know that your mind is made up, babe, but why you? You’re the top commander. This is crazy! The only time people do things like this is when they feel no confidence in their people to get a job done successfully, or when they want to go out in a blaze of glory on an important mission! I’m not going to bite my tongue now by saying this, but I feel for you it is the latter. Why you?”

Rafian hopped down from his ship, threw the dirty cloth under its front wheel, and walked towards Marian.

“So I’m suicidal now? How many of these phasers do you know to be trained as ace pilots? Outside of Camille YAN, how many other war-proven ace pilots do we have in our number, Ree?”

Marian knew the answer but pretended to think about it at length. She got the point. There was no other pilot like Rafian VCA to fly the crystal drop. They had pilots who were good enough to be drafted in as phasers, but none as good as the man and woman who commanded them. Tayden was in decompression after completing some sort of top-secret mission, and Camille was missing in action. Rafian had to be the one to do it, and though it hurt her to see the man she loved attempt a mission so dangerous, she knew that as a soldier and a wife, she had a duty to support him.

“Well, husband, tomorrow is the day of your lethal mission, and I will be watching you from a holo-vid somewhere up here, biting my nails and wishing upon every god’s name that I know that you will make it through, drop the crystal, land, and join me with the other jump…I mean phasers…in taking that strip of land.”

Their last week of painful conversation about Camille had dismantled what seemed like a lifetime of love between them, and it all flooded her mind and made her extremely tired and worn out. How had they fallen apart so quickly? And why is he so angry?

“I know you have been avoiding me, Raf. For a girl with no friends to not have her husband, it makes me feel unattractive in a way, y’know? Am I so ugly that my beloved starfighter would rather spend time cleaning an already-spotless ship instead of being in my arms? Is my unwillingness to share you—my entire world—with Camille a reason to hate me? Was our journey through hell, Talula, Veece—everything—so trivial that one other woman can sever us? You are all I have, and you are out here on your ship polishing it while I sit by myself contemplating the fact that after tonight I might not see you again. Rafian, IT IS ME!”

She stood staring at him, her beautiful brown eyes welling up with tears and her fists clenched, ready to fight as the anger and hurt came to the surface as she stood there trembling. Rafian’s mouth fell open as he processed everything she said, and his heart melted from the realization of how selfish he had been. Camille’s arrest had soured his mood, and while he felt no different towards Marian than the day he had proposed to her on Tyhera, he had allowed his temper to punish her for something that she had no knowledge of.

“I am such a thyping fool,” he said under his breath.

With a lump the size of a moon swelling in his throat and tears trying to make their way to his eyes, Rafian walked over to his wife, kissed her passionately, and then scooped her up into his powerful arms and took her home.

Memory 26 | The Final Phase

When Rafian awoke to the alarm, which was set for early Vestalian time, he could see the dried tears on Marian’s face as she slept soundly on his chest. For some strange reason, it strengthened his resolve as he arose, prepped his uniform and mission details, and then stopped by the same cafeteria for a shot of espresso and some friendly conversation. An hour later, he walked out to his ship and was very surprised to find all of the phasers there, assembled in two long lines leading to the stairs that ran up to the cockpit of his fighter.

The soldiers were standing at attention, saluting, and a few had faces filled with emotion. It felt as if time had slowed down for him as he walked towards his ship, and the flashbacks of that first mission to Geral came to him. Back in those days, he was unknown, unproven, and largely disrespected. Now he was a commander, and as he glanced around at all of the men and women he had trained, he felt a certain accomplishment that made him know that if death was his fate, he would be ready for it.

Marian swung down from his cockpit in a red 3B suit, his las-sword strapped to her back and war paint streaked across her features, trying hard but failing to mask her beautiful face. She ran into his arms and kissed him before giving him a long hug. The phasers all looked away in respect and allowed him time to say good-bye to his wife.

Marian leaned into Rafian’s ear and whispered, “Come back to me.”

It was a Tyheran custom that the wives of the enlisted would do on the day that they feared their husbands would die. What it meant was that in the afterlife, the husband was to still come back so that they could truly be together forever. It was a morbid farewell but very Tyheran. Rafian nodded at her with the promise in his eyes as he recognized its double meaning. He then swung up into the seat of his ship with one arm—a trick he and Camille had mastered back when they spent all of their time on that very dock.

The engines of the Zero Tolerance Phantom came to life, and Rafian’s vessel rose above the cheering phasers before launching out of the port towards the planet of Vestalia and what would be the beginning of the first assault on the planet.

* * *

The Phantom shuddered as Rafian broke the atmosphere of Vestalia and triggered the cooling mechanisms to keep the ship online. Almost immediately, the Geralese defense drones were on him. They did not ask him to identify himself, and they did not fire any warning shots. They came at him in the dozens, machine gun fire tearing the sky apart, but Rafian VCA was too focused, too ready to die, and too aware of their reaction. He cut through the defenses easily. His entry cleared once again, and he was able to pull up the navigation and find the country of Cerium and what was identified as the Zynec compound. The Phantom was outfitted with advanced cloaking mechanisms, and he made sure to go off the grid as soon as the last of the defenders were downed.

Zynec would take some time to reach, as he had chosen to drop onto the planet in a different area from the one previously selected for the mission. Geralese planes were beginning to lift into the sky, desperately trying to find him and put an end to what they probably assumed was an invasion. Rafian wondered to what length they would go to stop him after realizing there was no host ship that was launching fighters, no wingmen to his Phantom, and no real sign of anything that would be considered an invasion force. They kept launching ships, however, and his initial attack, as precise and deadly as it was, was being taken very seriously. Still, no matter how many defense drones they sent looking for him, they posed no problem for the invisible ship that was zipping along at low altitude over the beautiful azure waters of Vestalia.

“To think that we all used to live here in relative peace,” Rafian uttered to himself as he cruised along.

He thought about the Helysian, and he felt disappointed in himself for not finding Aurora to tell her good-bye. His sister had found herself a beau and was usually occupied with him whenever Rafian was trying to grab her to talk. Aurora would gladly have told her man to wait while she spent time with her brother, but Rafian was very careful not to disturb her whenever she was out with him. This meant he barely if ever saw her. When he had sought her out to tell her of the mission, he learned she was on Meruda with her lover, taking a short vacation.

He had managed to say good-bye to Vani. It was an emotionally draining departure, as she was the queen of melodrama. But he felt himself missing her antics more than he felt comfortable to admit. Vani had taken a holo-shot of him to keep on her mantle in case things went south on the mission. She also told him that she would write his biography and asked permission to edit her parts to make her seem more loving to him back when they were kids. It was amusing, but Vani was a character. Her crazy requests and antics were the medicine he needed to laugh off the serious tone of his departure. Now he flew through the mountains of south Cerium and could see the Geralese base that he was directed to destroy.

Coming out of cloak to arm his guns, Rafian entered Zynec Prime like a bat out of hell. Barracks, buildings, and bases were lased and burnt under his deadly fire, and though the Geralos launched ships and surface-to-air attacks at him, the Phantom was too fast, too seasoned, and always a step ahead. Rafian’s mind was working overtime. He knew that by now, the Geralos would have called in reinforcements to stop his onslaught. But he wanted to be done and at the drop zone a lot quicker than any incoming rescue.

The wing of the Phantom got nicked about thirty minutes into his raid, and he felt as though that would end his flight. He took emergency measures to make sure the ship would stay deadly, and he was happy to see that the damage was nothing major. He set the Phantom right and continued to rain death upon any structure that came across his path. One of the biggest obstacles he faced up to this point was literally a flying fortress. The behemoth delivered so many angles of attack that he found himself actually sweating as he dodged and darted, having the ship’s AI assist and adapt to the patterns, as through all of this, he was continually scouting for a weakness.

It was a frightening experience to have what appeared like a large flying city drifting to intercept your course, shooting everything that it had at you. The way Rafian flew that morning was nothing short of legendary even among aces, and though the fortress slowed his progress and forced him to fight, it was soon rocked from a well-timed series of shots into each of its air vents, and before long, the Zynec landscape erupted into flames as the fortress crashed into the ground.

On Helysian, some of the phasers stood about while others sat within the ship. This was the same ship Camille had been flying when she was attacked by pirates. The group was watching the glitchy holo-update of Rafian’s ship as he made his way through the bombing run. Marian was having a hard time watching, so she let the cheers, oohs, and ahhs of the others cue her in on when to look up from the floor at the action that was unfolding. Phasers had begun to use microrecorders on missions that were high level enough to warrant rescues. A microrecorder was no bigger than a mosquito and had a built-in cloaking device, so it stayed out of sight as it followed the phaser around. It transmitted the recording back to the command center, where an officer would watch closely, ready to send in the troops as it became necessary.

With the uproar on Cerium, the only way the phasers would be able to help their commander now was through the crystal. As he neared the drop point, they witnessed another fortress appear before him, and they knew the Geralos were getting desperate. One of the men, Frank OTA, whom Tayden had personally recruited and trained to become a phaser, had assumed command. He stepped in front of the holo-video, straightened his jacket, and addressed the group.

“Our commander was not given enough time to plan this drop, and he is relying on his talents to get it done. Instead of sitting here admiring his dance with death like old wives at a coliseum, why don’t we send another ship in to distract the incoming Geralese air force? For all they know, there is only one desperate, rogue ship doing immense damage on their base. Now, if they see two, they will likely overthink this whole thing and start slipping.”

Yuth Varience, a Lyrian ace who stood listening, countered Frank. He wanted to make sure nothing was going to be done outside the commander’s orders.

“Frank, the crystal and our drop will be confusing enough for our enemies. The main reason we sent in a sole bird was to minimize their panic, so that we can come out of the backdoor firing and take that city silently. Drop in another bird now, and they will assume it’s an invasion, possibly coming from a cloaked destroyer in orbit near Vestalia. This would ruin everything our commander is fighting for.”

Frank sat back down and cursed. Of course Yuth was right in what he said, and though he wanted to help his commander, he didn’t want to jeopardize the plan and be the cause of a failed mission. He also didn’t want to be the cause of their missing this rare chance at winning the planet back.

Marian, who had been listening silently to the conversation, stepped up to the spot where Frank had stood and asked the men and women to ready their battle gear. She also asked the pilots to hop into their fighter cockpits and await the signal of the crystal that Rafian would be dropping soon. Surprisingly, the phasers did not object. They scattered to their respective corners to ready their equipment. Marian, who was already dressed and ready, stared at the holo-vid as the second fortress went down in a ball of flames and Rafian shot through the debris like a bullet.

Finally, when Rafian shot down a would-be ace Geralos pilot and cruised into the valley that sat behind the Zynec structure, the assault ceased, as if his attackers were giving up. Slowing the Phantom Zero to a hover, he opened up the cockpit and threw the baseball-sized crystal into the sandy earth. As soon as he did this, a column of light erupted from it skyward, and six heavy fighters roared from the light towards the area that he had just entered. In a matter of minutes, Marian and the other thirteen phasers were through the light, armed and ready to fight.

Rafian felt his heart swell with happiness to see his wife, and it was the first time he had allowed himself to accept the weight of the situation. Knowing that the mission was not yet completed, he landed, ran to her, and touched his helmet to hers. She was happy to see him make it and impressed at his skill, since she had never seen him fly. With the phasers all around him, Rafian pulled out his las-gun and led them back into the compound to clean up any survivors.

* * *

The shift from aerial warfare to ground was one that took some getting used to for Rafian VCA, as he lay prone on top of a hollowed-out building that used to be a radio tower. On the roof of the ruins, he could see the phasers carrying out the operation. It wasn’t fair for the Geralos, fighting phasers instead of marines. His men and women had tools that beings in most galaxies were absolutely clueless about, and phasers were trained to carry out one-man operations that could easily see death tolls in the hundreds. Having over ten phasers in one area working in concert was akin to magma pouring into a city after a volcanic explosion. There was no way to halt it, and if you were not evacuating when it came, the only certainty left for you was death.

Rafian fired a few head shots at some Geralos soldiers, more to see if he still had a deadeye aim than to actually help anyone. It wasn’t as if the soldiers on the ground needed him. When the entire city was cleared of Geralese occupation, the phaser agents scanned the air and moved to escort in a host of marines from the Helysian. They were deployed to execute search-and-destroy missions on the rest of the country. With agreement that this was now a phaser operation, the marines would do what they needed to do and then join with Rafian’s people in order to build a proper military base outside of what would be a sizable civilian city.

This had been Rafian’s dream—for Vestalia to start over. After planning the invasion and eliminating and occupying the Geralos with aid from the top brass of the Marine Space Corps, he was finally granted his wish. Now that he had flown this dangerous mission to clear the vermin, he could move on to the next phase, which would rely on the architects and engineers being flown in.

He helped the aces bring the marines down to land, and he provided personal cover for them as they scraped the landscape for any remaining Geralos. The entire operation had taken the better half of a day, and its success was due to the amazing intelligence that had been gathered on the country of Cerium, in coordination with the superior technology of the phasers. The country had been taken so fast the marines had time to erect a shield above the area that would be the city and barracks. The entire compound sat on 1600 acres of land, and the first of the military structures, the Phaser Agency, was ported in using the warp crystals.

A week later, the phaser base of operations and training facility were erected, and a small ceremony was held to commemorate the new start. New uniforms—which were extremely sharp—were issued to the men and women who had aided in taking Zynec Prime. The phaser colors were red and black, with the flag now displaying a shattered white crystal on top of a black planet, cracked to display its imperfection, and the entire thing rested on a crimson field.

The uniforms consisted of black boots and black pants, with red stripes running the length of the sides. The stripe was actually the pattern of a long las-sword. The tops started with a red tank-top with the insignia on the left breast. A black shirt went over it, armored (as were the pants and boots) with Solark leather, a material that deflected shots of any kind and could be penetrated only by plasma technology, las-swords, or heavy lasers. The shirts were unmarked but impressive in their own way. Going over the shirt was the cherished white military jacket of a phaser graduate. Hats varied based on specialty, but most wore shaded glasses that had intelligence readouts for operations on the inside.

Rafian again walked through a line of saluting peers—now decked out in their colors. He climbed the tall steps leading up to the entrance, approached the podium, and looked down upon the expanse of people cheering for him and smiling as if Vestalia had already been conquered. The view from the podium, his podium, was breathtaking, and he could imagine that after the city was built, he would be able to look out over it from where he stood. It was a good idea to put Phaser Base Alpha on the highest hill in the country, but he did not realize the strategic advantage it would serve if anyone were to infiltrate their ranks. The sky was a clear cyan, giving the illusion of purity and new beginnings, but it was nature’s irony at work, showing a clear day of life as if the last week hadn’t been filled with blood and death.

Rafian’s observation lasted at most two seconds as he regarded his soldiers and moved on to speak. “This is only the beginning.”

He said this in a firm and direct manner, his deep voice booming from the sound system. The crowd erupted in chants of something unintelligible, but it sounded affirming, so Rafian continued.

“This has been a long, painful road for many of us. Hell, the training almost destroyed a dear friend of mine who even now is locked in battle with the demons in the head to overcome the trauma. Many of you are strong, but you are battling the same demons that I myself fight mentally. We were made immoral, inhumane, and calloused because of a few old fools who thought that was the only way members of this galaxy could adequately guard our home. We, the few who liberated the free thinkers from the atrocity that was once known as the jumpers, have torn out the beating heart of those same old fools and reinvented ourselves as phaser agents!”

The crowd went ballistic, and Rafian felt a painful lump in his throat as he thought of Camille and how much she needed to be there, breaking open the new base with him. To his right stood Tayden. She looked impressive, decorated with every medal that she had ever been granted as a pilot and wearing a personally designed beret that matched her suit and jacket. She did not move the entire time while he made his speech, and he felt an enormous amount of respect for everything she had done leading up to this, including rescuing him from the amnesia and that first jump.

“I will be supreme commander of this organization until you vote me incapable or I retire to live on a freed Vestalia.…I reserve the right to identify a country of my own to settle down on.”

He paused to let the laughter build up from his ridiculous joke and winked at Marian.

“Or permanent death finds me and returns me to the life-force. Camille YAN will remain as subcommander, and she will be my eyes, ears, and brain in times of my absence. Your base commander and my fellow lead will be Colonel Tayden Lark. I will be absent often in the field. She will command this structure, oversee the training of our recruits, and be first contact whenever defense of this city is needed, or when backup is required on any mission. It is an honor to be your leader, my fellow marines, starfighters, and spies. Let us not forget that each one of us was deemed special within our respective military ranks, so do not let that fade from your minds as you go forth on your missions.”

With that, Rafian turned the announcement chip over to Tayden and stood where she was standing as she delivered a powerful speech of her own. The speech would be remembered as the Phoenix Eye Address due to being borrowed by the military for repeating to soldiers who were about to embark on a dangerous mission.

Tayden was a short woman, but when she took the podium and spoke, she seemed very much the giant that her heart demanded the world see her as. Rafian looked at her with admiration, having seen her grow from the angry young woman who lashed out at Arn for shooting her to a composed and dangerous professional who had not only saved his life but expanded their organization with over a hundred new recruits. Thirteen fully graduated phasers stood at the front of the crowd to hear the address, their white coats contrasted against the sea of black, red, and blue that was the recruits and the attending space marines from the Helysian. Tayden tapped the floating mic droid as it centered itself in front of her, and without any hesitation, she began her legendary speech.

“Warriors, conquerors, defenders, and lovers. We all have our own selfish motivations for why we fight. Many of us don’t know said motivation as of yet because we have buried it deep as we mask it with words such as, ‘I fight for Vestalia my home.’

“Rafian and I couldn’t care less why you fight, ladies and gentlemen. What we do care about is that in any skirmish that you are involved in—be it a bar fight or a single-pilot drop into a war zone—you fight as if it were your last chance to show your supreme quality.

“Fight as if all the holo-vids of the known galaxies were keyed in on you and you only had one chance to get it right.

“Fight as if your family, your friends, and your lovers all depended on it to continue to live out their lives.

“As phasers, you are branded as the best chance for humanity. This is a heavy charge, I know. But the training you have endured, the loss of what could be deemed as a happy, regular, human existence, and lastly, the fate of the galaxy demand that you represent us in the way that you are expected to.

“Phasers don’t fail. We do the mission. When we fall, we get up, dust ourselves off, and finish the mission. When we have doubt, we steel ourselves, remember the details, and finish the mission. When we die, we clone and return, like a ghost that was wronged in its mortal life, or like a phoenix whose fire refuses to be tamed, and we finish the mission.

“We finish the mission, phasers, and we do it with class. Please join me in giving ourselves the first of many cheers for a mission well done, and to the letter.”

With that, the crowd erupted. One hundred and twenty phasers were present from all corners of the galaxy, having come in to see their new command. They were excited, and for good reason. They were finally on Vestalia with a solid base of operations, no longer hiding in the clouds of a planet that nobody wanted.

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.

Read on for an excerpt from:

PHASERS OF ANSTRACTOR

Phasers of Anstractor | Excerpt

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.

Phasers of Anstractor is available on Amazon.com