The Drellic Saga: Books One, Two and Three

by Mike Marlinski

  Chapter Eleven

  Drellic awoke to find himself pinned beneath the body of the technician who had last spoken to him. He was dead, as were three other members of the crew, lying beside him in the icy snow.

  As he slowly pushed the technician’s body to the side, he saw the frozen face of the last female science officer he had spoken to. The protective glass on her face mask had shattered, causing her to almost instantly freeze to death.

  Luckily for the survivors of the crash, the science vessel had been gliding just a few feet above the surface, before it was ambushed and shot down by insurgents.

  But from the looks of things, the nearby members of the insurgency weren’t much better off. As Drellic got to his feet and turned to see the wreckage of the science vessel, shimmering in the blinding sun overhead, he saw a similar crash site just a few hundred feet behind it.

  As he looked more closely, he saw the smoking remains of an outdated commercial liner. It was of a design more than fifty years old and had undoubtedly been stolen from a salvage yard; indicative of the insurgency’s presence.

  Confused by the misfortune of his attackers, Drellic searched the area for some sign of a third party that might have intervened. To his relief, he spotted a squadron of Enforcer jets, rocketing over their position, a moment later.

  “They must’ve been followed and shot down before they had the chance to finish us off,” Drellic thought to himself.

  Then amidst the murmurs of his shipmates, writhing in pain at his feet, Drellic heard a familiar female voice from behind him say, “You like being left out in the cold, don’t you?”

  Drellic turned away from the wreckage to see Moya Fen smiling at him. Bewildered and slightly disoriented from the crash, he took a step back and nearly tripped over his own feet.

  “It’s really you, isn’t it?” he asked. “I never would’ve guessed this line of work for you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she snapped. “I’ll have you know, I just saved your life, Mr. Greatest Scientific Mind in the World.”

  Without uttering another word, Drellic ran to her and held her, as if it would once again be his last chance. Both his heart and mind were racing and it was only getting more intense with each passing moment.

  Moya was dressed in dark blue overalls and a glass plated face mask, similar to the protective gear worn by Drellic and his fellow explorers. But embroidered on her chest, was the emblem of Siren’s Enforcers; a distinctive glowing white shield. She also had an energy pistol holstered at her side and an energy rifle strapped to her back.

  Drellic held her for as long as he could, before the other members of her unit arrived on site. From that moment on, Drellic had the pleasure of observing Moya, as a boldly assertive Enforcer leader.

  Curiously enough, once the surviving insurgents were rounded up and placed in government custody, a final sweep of the area, revealed that the Emerald Flies, as the mysterious insects were referred to, had deserted the South Pole region.

  An overhead visual scan and deep surface scan, showed that the crevice that had hours earlier been home to millions of the Emeralds, had been voided of every last trace of life.

  Furthermore, reports of similar creatures had been filed on Tyrran, but were never revealed to Siren’s government until months later; the Emeralds having never been seen anywhere on either planet again.

  The mysterious night terror related deaths had also come to an end, and the Emeralds became nothing more than a footnote in the worlds’ histories.

  Three months after Moya had saved Drellic’s life at the pole, they rekindled their romantic relationship, after over a decade of being apart. During that time, Drellic had only seen two women come and go from his life. Moya had always been first in his heart, but instead of attempting to move on with someone else, he simply focused on his academics and work. Drellic felt it was out of necessity; having to excel at everything he set out to do, in order to keep the rather aggressive critics of his past, at bay.

  Moya on the other hand, had been in a brief marriage that ended as a result of domestic violence. After a peaceful, initial two years, Moya was savagely beaten, nearly to death, by her ex-husband, while he was high on a mind numbing substance called, “Sull”; a dangerous and illegal drug, he had been using and selling for years, without her knowledge.

  The injuries she sustained and the lives he ruined were what initially inspired her to become one of Siren’s elite officers of the law. It also explained why her family had suddenly decided to move to Siren when she was sixteen.

  The Fen family was running out of money in the deteriorating Tyrran economy, and it was her ex-husband’s family who reached out a helping hand and offered to take care of them until they could support themselves again; the one condition being that they would have to move to Siren.

  Unbeknownst to Moya’s family the entire time, the money that had saved them had come from the distribution of Sull to Siren’s youths. And it was Moya herself who brought her former in-laws to justice, shortly after becoming an enforcer.

  Her story captivated Drellic in a way he never thought possible. It was as if her troubles grounded him. While he was off trying to save the human race from extinction, Moya’s problems, while on a smaller scale, seemed much more impactful.

  But in the midst of the troubles that had been surrounding them both for some time, and their journey toward rediscovering one another, Drellic was still faced with a matter of far greater importance to him. Morn Kail was dying and there was very little that could be done about it, other than remaining by his side and helping him manage his pain with sedatives.

  Both Drellic and Moya believed that the fates wanted nothing more than for them to spend the rest of their lives together. They felt they had been reunited too many times under the most random of circumstances, to ignore the signs. And so it was decided that on one of Morn’s better health days, they would enter Kail House hand in hand and announce their intentions to be wed.

  However, Drellic was also keeping a troubling secret from Moya. By the time they decided to marry, Drellic was already well aware that the weight of the Salvation mission had been placed on his shoulders. Fearful that revealing the truth to her about his impending two year absence would ruin everything they had just re-established, he decided to wait until the night he had planned to formally propose to her, to tell her about Salvation.

  Drellic knew that keeping the truth from her, for as long as he already had was wrong, but since he had already taken things as far as he had, he felt he needed to share every aspect of his duties with her, before asking for her hand. Drellic knew that if Moya would still be willing to marry a man about to fall under such risk, while traveling so far away for so long, they would undoubtedly be together for the rest of their days.

  On the day he decided to share that unfortunate part of his life with her, he took her by the hand on the front steps of Kail House, looked into her eyes and asked, “What if it were me dying and not my father?”

  “What? What are you saying?” she nervously asked in return.

  Drellic then hesitantly replied, “What I’m asking is…if you thought you were going to lose me soon, would you still be my wife?”

  “Of course I would,” Moya answered with a smile. “Because I’d know I really wasn’t going to lose you anytime soon.”

  “How can you be so sure?” asked Drellic.

  Moya then caressed his cheek, smiled again and said, “Because you would have no choice but to come back to me. Our fate has already been decided by powers greater than us. We’re connected and we always have been.”

  After a long pause, Moya finally asked Drellic why he was acting so strangely. To which, Drellic responded with a full explanation for his new role with Salvation. Moya’s tears followed the news, followed by the most natural of questions.

  “Why does it have to be you?” she sobbingly asked.

  “You know why,” Drellic answered. “I’ve worked my entire l
ife to be an authority in these matters. This is the price for my efforts.”

  In the end, more tears would follow, but Moya ultimately stood by her initial beliefs about a higher power that would see their love through to the end.

  Then, with one last kiss and a somber silence that seemed to last a lifetime, they entered the house to stand before Morn and Syll Kail as a couple, reborn; completely committed to each other, despite the hardships that awaited them.

  They entered the master bedroom, to see Syll sitting by her husband’s side, as she had always done. Morn was covered by several thermal blankets, but shivered in the fetal position beneath them, while soaking his pillow in gobs of his own sweat and drool.

  His skin had taken on a dull gray tone and he had lost a considerable amount of weight, since his son had last seen him.

  When Drellic tried speaking to him, he responded with a quiet grunt and then fell silent.

  “He hasn’t said a word in days,” Syll said, her voice cracking a little from stress. “He hasn’t had an attack in weeks. We thought he was getting better. Now, he just tosses and turns, looking as though he’s seen a ghost. I don’t know what to do.”

  Drellic held his mother close, as she got to her feet and began to cry. Syll then noticed Moya standing in the doorway from over Drellic’s shoulder and walked to her.

  At first, Moya was uncertain as to Syll’s intentions because of her emotional state, but to both Drellic and Moya’s relief, she simply placed her hands on Moya’s shoulders and said, “You don’t have to say a word. I know why you’re here. You’ve always been there for my son and I cast you out during a much darker time for this family. For that, I will always be sorry.”

  Syll then hugged Moya and added, “You have the blessing of this house and you have always been a part of this family. Welcome.”

  Drellic breathed a sigh of relief then suggested that his mother take Moya out into the family room, to leave him alone with his father. He knew it would be the last time he would see him before leaving for Kier-en, aboard the Salvation.

  Once his fiancé and mother left the room, he sat beside his father and placed his hand on his shoulder. The tormented old man finally stopped shaking once he felt his son’s touch.

  “Father?” Drellic asked, surprised by Morn’s sudden look of coherence.

  “You don’t know what I’ve seen,” Morn whispered with a look of sheer terror.

  “What is it?” Drellic asked. “What have you seen?”

  Morn then sat up, coughed a few times while projecting droplets of blood onto his pillow and uttered the words, “When you leave this place, take your warrior’s instincts with you. Remember the rage from your youth.”

  “I always do,” Drellic replied with a smile. “I’ll be fine, father. You know I will be.”

  A look of rage then came over Morn’s face as he angrily rasped, “This is not a game. Our future is not at stake, merely because of the poisons seeping into the veins of our worlds.”

  Then hopelessly confused, Drellic leaned in closer to his father and asked, “What are you trying to say? What is it you haven’t told me?”

  “There’s someone else out there; in the stars,” Morn stuttered, pointing out the window, into the night sky.

  “There is a presence out in space; an unknown force that is going to try to take everything we have,” Morn continued.

  As his father mumbled on, Drellic was becoming noticeably less receptive. This enraged Morn, causing him to climb out of bed for the first time in weeks. He then kicked the legs of Drellic’s chair out from beneath him, causing him to fall onto his back.

  Startled, Drellic scrambled to get up, but Morn quickly tackled him and pinned up to the floor.

  “Your days of arrogance are over, you foolish boy!” Morn shouted. “Now, listen to my words and listen well.”

  “Alright!” Drellic screamed. “I’m listening! What is it you want from me?!”

  “It is not what I want,” answered Morn. “It is what they want from all of us! Listen to me, boy! Listen to me when I say, they are out there. They are out there and they will be stopped. Because you are going to stop them!”

  Part Two: The Architects