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
Chart of Memories
Memory 1
Memory 2
Memory 3
Memory 4
Memory 5
Memory 6
Memory 7
Memory 8
Memory 9
Memory 10
Memory 11
Memory 12
About The Author
Memory 1
Warp crystals came in a variety of sizes, shapes and colors, but they all did the same thing – they teleported their masters from one place to another. What the dark education taught Phasers was that life as they knew it was only the structured half of the plane of existence. There are two sides to life’s canvas. There is the painted side—the one we all experience in life—and then there is the back of the canvas—the void that only a select few can access. The crystals give us access to the void; through it we can travel speeds that are faster than light. Transcend death, and explore the Multiverse.
Using a crystal is akin to ripping a hole into life’s canvas and walking through it to the back, only to re-emerge through another hole in another section of the paint. This movement, or “jump,” to the non-detailed back of the canvas is beyond mortal understanding. But for the Phasers, it is the galaxies’ deepest secret, a secret that grants them immortality.
– Aurora SYN, Biographer
It was a bright afternoon in Zallus, Vestalia and Rafian VCA was darting through the city’s streets, hopping from rooftop to rooftop, chasing his wife, Marian, in order to apologize. For the residents of the city of Zallus, it would have looked like a black shadow whisking by, but Rafian was more concerned with reaching his wife than to worry about spooking anyone. Before Marian could reach the exterior gates, Rafian, jumped off a particularly tall structure, somersaulted several times, and landed in front of her with his hands resting on her light hover-bike, preventing it from continuing forward.
Marian had known that someone was trailing her, but was unaware it was her husband. Therefore, when he sprung, she was ready and flew off the bike with her las-sword free. The wind produced a thick cloud of dust from the road, forcing her to shield her eyes as she moved in on her attacker. But she stopped short when she recognized the form of her husband, as he stood with his hands on her hover bike.
“I could have killed you Rafian! WHAT…THE…HELL?”
“I’m sorry.”
Rafian used his hand to fan away the dust as he approached the battle-ready Marian and hugged her tightly. She stayed rigid, and he knew that his earlier words were still on her mind.
She looked up at his dark brown face. It was slightly obscured by the sand, but his teeth gleamed through, annoying her even more. She pushed him off and his handsome features contorted into a mask of pure disappointment.
“Why would you say such a cold and calloused thing to me, Rafian? The Lucan galaxy is my home; I have blood relatives on Tyhera. Why would you say there is nothing left for me there?”
She was screaming at him as she powered down her sword and re-sheathed it. A crowd of onlookers came around to investigate the source of the yelling. As the citizens of Zallus approached the couple, Rafian felt embarrassed.
“I didn’t mean for it to come out that way,” he said. “All I could think about was the great progress we’ve made here, and how much it would hurt our cause if we were to lose you.”
Staring at him with disbelief, Marian walked up close to his tall frame so that only he could hear what she had to say. “It’s funny how life works,” she said. She crossed her arms defensively, looking off to the side. “I used to have a husband who adored me. I married a man who placed me above his war, his quest for revenge and his organization. I had a husband who cared about saving people – all people – not just those from his beloved Vestalia. I HAD a husband, who came into my world, my Lucan world, and helped a revolution grow so strong, that it could take out a well-established Empire. That husband would have heard me when I asked to return to my world, to check in on things. And he would have supported me. What happened to that man, Rafian?”
As she fought back the tears, Marian hopped back onto the hover-bike, then sped away towards their home.
What the hell is wrong with me? Rafian asked himself, as he dusted off his clothes and ran after her.
~*~*~*~
While Rafian VCA was on Vestalia chasing his wife, the marines of the Missio-tral were about to have major problems in deep space. A large Geralos destroyer drifted silently towards the area where the battle cruiser Missio-tral was located. After losing Zynec Prime on Vestalia to the Phasers, the Geralos leaders had decided to stay quiet for a time. Their plan: let the humans settle in before making a move against the fleet.
Missio-tral was a ship built exclusively for war. It had seen numerous battles, and was able to fight and jump away easily whenever things got too hot. Therefore, the Geralos wanted to sneak up on them and disable their jump drive, so that the humans would be forced to stand and fight.
When the Geralos were close enough to see the Missio-tral on their jump-radar, they began firing missiles and plasma rockets into its hull. Feeling desperate and overly exposed to the Geralos, the Missio-tral fired back at the battleship and sent out a distress signal to another Alliance battleship known as the Rendron.
~*~*~*~
By the time Rafian made it home it was evening, and he found his wife inside an erected watchtower that stood outside of their cavern home. She looked beautiful. Her dress was a silken, sand-colored thing made from a single piece of material. It was draped to keep things modest while being supported solely by a jeweled cord, loosely tied at the waist. Her hair was blowing wildly in the wind as she looked down upon the force field and lights that bordered their little city. She had seen her husband walking up the hill towards her, but she paid him no mind and stood with her hands akimbo, like a powerful goddess overlooking a civilization that worshipped her.
Climbing the steps to where Marian stood on the tower, Rafian placed his hands on her hips and spun her around. He touched his nose to hers in the standard greeting of Tyheran lovers. Marian allowed him to kiss her, but then she backed away to watch the disappointment in his eyes.
“You’re dusty and dirty, Raf. I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
Laughing and nodding at the rejection, Rafian countered, “Dirty? I can fix that in fifteen minutes if you promise to stay up here, just like you are now, so that I can come back and ravage you.”
Marian did not seem very interested and as he made to leave, she caught his arm and shook her head for him not to go. “Rafian, we’re alone, so I have to ask.”
He tensed up in anticipation of her saying that she was leaving him or something equally devastating.
“Where is Camille YAN?” she asked. “Ever since we discussed what to do about your relationship with her, she has gone off the grid completely. No one is saying anything and your dark, erratic mood has me thinking that the worst has happened.”
Marian had managed to slip out of his hands and stood with her arms crossed. Her eyes watched h
im 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. The
y 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.