Anstractor (The New Phase Book 1) (4 page)

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.

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.