RABAN (The Rabanian Book 2)

by Dan Haronian

  I stood up and walked to the bed then fell onto it. My head was spinning from those few steps. I closed my eyes and fell immediately asleep.

  Suddenly the door opened and Daio, Naan, my father, and my mother walked in laughing. I sat up on the bed and looked at them. They said it was all a joke and that I should get up and leave the shuttle because it's ready to leave. I am in the shuttle? I asked them but they didn't reply. The expressions on their faces shifted from giggles to laughter that went on and on. Finally the pressure that had been building in my ears from my dive into this grave, balanced. Dive? I wondered…I am not in the shuttle, I told them. Their laughter suddenly became clear, but nothing made sense. Was it all real? I thought so. Their laughter grew, and pressed in on my head so hard that I opened my eyes. They disappeared abruptly, and the sight of the dark room frightened me. For a few moments I stared at different details around me until I fell asleep again.

  I woke up sometime later. It took a while for me to remember where I was. I remembered Naan's words and wondered why he hadn’t just killed me on the spot. When I was in the pressure cell he only needed to press one button and watch my face twist in suffocation. His hate filled eyes would have greatly enjoyed this sight. Why send me to the rebels for scrambling services? Did he need money? Why would he risk all he had for these rebels? He was going to be the president of Naan one day soon, and with his relations in Mampas he could get anything he wanted.

  These thoughts and others kept me awake for hours. They probably also saved me. As I lay on the bed a sudden explosion threw me across the room. The air filled with dust and I started coughing. Adrenaline ran through my veins. It was as if the limitations of gravity had disappeared. I crawled towards the door, but it wasn't there anymore. I found myself in the corridor. The light was still on, but the dust completely blurred it.

  I tried to remember the shape of the place. I recalled the elevators and the corridors leading away from them in three directions. I was in a room along one of those corridors but I didn't remember which way I needed to go to reach them. I picked a direction and started to crawl. From time to time I felt suffocated by the dust and coughed heavily. Suddenly I heard people moaning and calling for help. A few people appeared swaying from side to side, and then another explosion shook me. The corridor completely collapsed and I felt concrete blocks tumbling down on top of me. My throat locked up completely and my calls for help turned into faint moans. Another explosion lifted me up along with the concrete wreckage and for a moment I was weightless, as if I was floating in air.

  Sosi sat in the main hall of the Shuttle and gave his regular morning lecture. The Doctor sat at the back of the hall listening carefully. They’d spent most of the previous night together trying to figure out how Raban was to reach the greatness the prophecy predicted for him. They knew it wouldn’t be easy to convince him to leave all that he’d worked for behind and assume the leadership of the Chosen. And besides, they didn't want to interfere too much with his way of life.

  In addition, given the philosophical differences between the Chosen and Mampas it was far from clear how he was ever going to become the leader of both nations. Their only theory was that some enormous catastrophe would be required. Sosi had explained to the Doctor that this was why he had worked so hard to hide the eighth Book.

  Suddenly a big hovercraft broke through the clouds and burst into the sky over the Shuttle. It was not typical of those seen in the Chosen; the roar of its engines was much deeper than usual. Sosi waited for the noise to fade, but that hovercraft did not pull away. Soon it was obvious that it was maneuvering to land at the nearby landing site. Sosi stopped the lesson and went outside followed by the Doctor and most of the students.

  Sosi restricted takeoff and landing at the Shuttle to early morning or late at night. As he followed the path to the landing site, he wondered who would be rude enough to ignore such a basic requirement. The Doctor froze when he saw the white stripes on the hovercraft’s door. The panel slid open and Daio and Dug stepped out. Sosi’s steps were hesitant when he saw his brothers but he stopped completely when Naan and Heneg suddenly appeared from behind them.

  "Do you know anything about this?" he asked when the Doctor materialized next to him.

  "No."

  "Maybe they want you back."

  "But why would they bring Naan and Heneg?!"

  The four guests whispered among themselves for a few seconds and then walked towards them. From a distance Sosi saw the gloomy look on Daio's face. As he got closer he thought he saw tears in his eyes.

  "What has happened?"

  Daio hesitated for a moment. He cleared his throat, "Bad news," he said. He paused and cleared his throat again. It seemed he was having a hard time finding the right words. Sosi looked at Dug.

  "Raban was killed," said Dug

  The Doctor hurried up from behind.

  "We don't know the circumstances," continued Dug. "There are several possible explanations but in any case it seems that his shuttle crashed on Mampas. I am sorry but there were no survivors."

  "Our shuttle?" mumbled Sosi. "It's supposed to launch tomorrow."

  "It took off last night," said Heneg from behind his father and uncle.

  Sosi looked at Daio. "This must be a mistake. He would have told us if there were changes in the plan."

  "It launched. It crashed in the desert of Mampas and we are certain that he was on board," said Heneg decisively.

  "No. That can’t be," mumbled Sosi.

  "Shuttles don't just crash," said the Doctor. "This shuttle in particular was fully renovated. How could it crash?"

  "We don't know," said Dug.

  "I'm so sorry," said Daio. Tears were streaming down his face. "I loved him like a son. Although I had few opportunities to..." He choked.

  Heneg stepped forward. "Do you know if he had any connection to the rebels?"

  Sosi shook his head. "Rebels? What rebels?"

  "The Desertians," said Heneg.

  "He has no connection with any rebels," said Sosi.

  "I’m only asking because it seems the shuttle was caught up in an assault by the Mampasian Army on one of the rebels bases," said Heneg. "The base was completely destroyed. We’re not sure if the shuttle was there before the attack, or was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. In any case it was far off course."

  "Off course?!" screamed Sosi. "It was not supposed to take off at all!”

  "I mean it didn't follow any authorized flight paths," Heneg corrected himself.

  "What are you implying?" asked the Doctor.

  "I'm not implying anything," said Heneg. "It’s my job is to check out all possibilities."

  "Yes of course, but I would think this can wait," said the Doctor.

  Heneg nodded and backed off to stand behind Dug.

  "Where is he?" asked Sosi.

  "Naan is working on that," said Daio. "He sent a search party to look for him, but…" He lingered and shook his head. "He doesn’t think they'll find anything."

  "The Mampasian Army destroyed everything in the area," put in Heneg. "They used depth bombs and fire waves. There was nothing left of the base. Everything was vaporized."

  Sosi shook his head and the Doctor took his arm.

  "That shuttle was like any other shuttle. Shuttles don't crash," said Sosi completely discouraged. "Maybe this is some kind of mistake," he mumbled.

  "We found the shuttle's tail. It bore your symbol," said Heneg.

  "The symbol," said Sosi despairingly. He turned away from the group and started walking towards the Shuttle.

  "Let us know what we can do," Daio told the Doctor. "We'll help in any way we can." The Doctor nodded then hurried after Sosi.

  Sosi’s heart was racing. He felt like he couldn’t breathe. He stopped at the entrance and leaned on the door, trying to catch his breath. The doctor rushed over to him. He took his arm and supported him into the Shuttle, to a nearby chair.

  "It can't be," said Sosi as he sat down heavily.
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  "You must relax," said the Doctor. Sosi took a deep breath and let it out.

  "It's not possible," he said, "how…” He took another deep breath. "Su-Thor. How am I going to tell her?” Tears welled up in his eyes.

  The Doctor shook his head. He refused to believe it. After thirty years of mistakenly believing that Daio was the Chosen he’d left the City of Naan to join Sosi. He’d wanted to stand beside him as Raban rose to glory. The Doctor had longed to see the young man take up his rightful role and to finally know that he had not wasted the last two hundred years.

  I woke up into a complete darkness. Running water was the first thing I noticed. I was soaked. Sparks erupted sporadically from a broken cable dangling in the darkness off to my left. I stared at the sparks in terror. In their flickering flashes I noticed a metal bar above me. My breathing was labored and every move increased the pressure on my chest. Slowly I pushed the cement blocks from my body. My fingers started to bleed as I dug them into the rubble I was trapped beneath. Slowly the pressure on my chest receded, and my breathing became more regular.

  Then came a sharp whistle and an explosion. The blast lifted me into the air. I hung weightless for a moment surrounded by debris. It was comforting, a feeling of being released. I knew it was only a brief interlude in my pain, that everything would fall back down and that I probably wouldn’t be as lucky. I bumped into the metal bar and held on tightly. A moment passed and everything started to fall back into the abyss. The metal bar got stuck on its way down. I hung on for dear life as cement blocks rained down around me, some hitting me on their way down. A wave of dust rose into the air and I couldn't breathe. I tried to lift my legs up to tighten my grip, but my hands slipped and I fell. I landed on the jagged concrete below and lost consciousness again.

  When next I woke a breeze was caressing my face. I open my eyes and saw bright stripes of color streaming above me. I wasn't sure I understood what I was seeing. The soothing wind played over my face and those colorful stripes hung high above. I wondered if I was dead and this was the reception in heaven? But if that were the case I shouldn't be hurting so much.

  I looked at the space around me, but everything there was black. I looked up again and realized the colorful show above me was the rings of Aesder. I closed my eyes thinking I was in a deep grave waiting only for the undertaker to cover me. Lying there on my back gazing at the rings I wondered if I had the strength to climb out. The dark skies matched the darkness around me and I couldn't tell how far I was from the surface. It could have been a few steps or maybe dozens. It didn’t matter. If I wanted to live I had to get there. I rolled over and started to climb.

  The rubble under me was sometimes soft and sometimes hard. When the slope became steep I almost despaired. I had to push myself to ignore the pain that burned through my body. At one point Naan’s sneering face came to mind and sucked away all my strength. I tried to shake away the image, but the contempt in his eyes burned it into my brain. The thought that I was going to die with his distasteful visage burned into my head was worse than the thought of death itself.

  The noise of passing hovercrafts helped clear my head. I pushed myself to climb again but the pain was too much. I tried to convince myself I wasn’t hurt, that the pain and difficulty of the climb were because I wasn’t used to the gravity of Mampas. I knew I was lying to myself, but as easily as everyone else had cheated me I decided that I was either blind to deception or was too accepting of it. Either way, I decided, I might as well use it to my advantage.

  The movement of the air around me became more frequent and the slope became shallower until I realized I was crawling over a thin layer of fragile glass. Before long this changed to soft sand. I collapsed onto it and tried to position my body to minimize my pain. I took several deep, slow breaths. My chest was burning. The pain intensified when I started to crawl again. I tried to stand up but my knees failed me. After the third attempt I gave up and lay helplessly on the sand.

  Someone will come, someone will save me, I thought to myself, but then I heard the hovercrafts. I knew they were not coming to save me so I pushed myself to my knees and crawled until the pain in my chest overwhelmed me. I tried to stand up again, and after several attempts finally made it to my feet. I was wobbly and my knees were on fire but I ignored the pain. I stumbled along like a beaten drunk. When a small bump rose up in my path I lost my balance and fell to the sand again.

  A point of light suddenly appeared to my right. As it came closer I heard the whistle of hovercraft. I scrambled up the hill in a desperate attempt to escape. The hovercraft stopped above me just as I tumbled over the crest and rolled down the other side. A bright ray of light sliced through the night and the ground shook. Rolling thunder shattered the night and a miniature volcanic eruption burst from the ground. A shockwave followed and blasted me into the burning sky. The oxygen was sucked out of the air. I felt my skin burning and I could not breathe. A column of fire erupted from the crater I’d only just crawled from a few moments before. The desert was suddenly as bright as if it was the middle of the day. The ground around me started to collapse back into the pit. Cracks appeared beneath me and I thought the ground was about to swallow me again. With my face on fire, and gasping for breath, I crawled, walked, and rolled away from there. My body was wracked with pain. My mind on the other hand was completely clear. I could think of nothing but Naan's laughter.

  Suddenly I noticed the shuttle tail. My legs locked up and my will to save myself flickered out like the flames. I fell to my knees, staring up at the tail section buried in the sand in an odd angle. The sign was twisted and sooty, dancing in the red light. I fell over once again and fainted.

  I woke up gradually. As I became aware of my surroundings I tried to open my eyes, but they refused. It was as if tiny weights hung from my eyelids. My bruised body was visible through my torn clothes. The skin of my face was on fire. Every inch of me was screaming with pain. Eventually I opened my eyes and noticed the shadow of the tail, but I couldn’t see the sign. The fire from the blast had almost died out. I was filled with despair thinking about my shuttle and the dreams that the flames had consumed. Suddenly I thought of my parents. Tears welled up in my eyes. They burned when they spilled over and rolled down my cheeks.

  A faint point of light appeared on the horizon. I stood up and started to walk towards it. I don't know where the strength to stand came from. Nor do I know how long I walked. I think I was hallucinating part of the time. The pain suddenly disappeared. It was as if someone had severed my nerves. Maybe that was why the damn light never seemed to come any closer. I began to wonder if it existed at all, or if I was even really walking, and then everything went black.

  I woke up to sound of voices. My face was so swollen I couldn't open my eyes. Beyond the narrow slits that remained I noticed two people standing over me. A face with big eyes that almost completely filled it came close.

  "He's waking up," said an odd yet familiar Mampasian accent.

  I thought I was dreaming. He backed up. "Hello, can you hear me?"

  I tried to answer, but my throat was so dry that the words wouldn’t come out. He bent over again, held my neck and brought something to my mouth. I felt the water and drank greedily. A metallic taste filled my mouth.

  "I wouldn't waste any effort on him," said the other silhouette. "He's done," he said decisively. He too had big eyes.

  "What's your name?" asked the man above me.

  "Rrr…nnn aaaa," I wheezed, but my power left me completely, and the words fell out of my mouth to the sand as if they too weren't used to the gravity.

  "What's your position?"

  I got confused. My position? Suddenly I wasn't sure what I was even doing there. I tried to remember everything that had happened to me, but they came to my mind so scrambled that I couldn't put them in any coherent order.

  They laid me on a stretcher then lifted me and carried me for a while. Finally they stopped next to a large dune. The sand suddenly moved and a cylindric
al door opened to the surface. A small space appeared behind it. The two men walked me into the space and squeezed inside with me. It brought back memories of the shaft I was squeezed into before and I tried to shout but the door closed and the ground dropped from beneath us. Acceleration overwhelmed over me and took my breath away.

  I woke up in something that looked like a hospital. Someone was watching me when I awoke and immediately summoned a nurse with a rolling cart stacked with medicines and bandages. She told me that I’d been there for ten days already. I was still very weak. In addition to the burns, and countless bruises all over my body, three of my ribs and my left leg were broken. It seemed impossible that I’d crawled out of the pit and that I’d been able to walk away. Even now, ten days later, my every movement brought pain and required great effort. My face was bandaged but the nurse said she was there to remove the bandages and replace them with a paste. My face as well as my arms and neck were a mixture of black and red flesh. Only the bright spots under my nose and my eyes testified the true color of my skin.

  Everything that I’d endured came back to me when I finally had the strength to think about them. At first I couldn't believe it had all been real. The reality around me was blurred by painkillers. Every time I woke up I would deny what I’d been through and convince myself I was hallucinating. Yet the truth was all around me. The windowless room, the bandages covering my wounds, the dark skinned people passing by my bed from time to time.