by Greg Dragon
“Hey, lizard, I bet you want to tell me your name now, don’t you? That’s okay; there’s no need. We are about to become really close, even without your permission. You see, my mother had a gift that a few Vestalian women had, where she would at times get glimpses of the future. Vestalians remember this gift as a curse that brought your lot down on us, ravaging the minds of our women, slaughtering our men and kidnapping our children. We were nothing to you but batteries for a power that your leaders deem divine. Well guess what?”
Rafian removed his gloves and mask, then stood rigid in front of the seated Geralos with his hand on the other’s scalp and his eyes closed. The Geralos was frightened at what Rafian was capable of due to the various things he had already done, which defied everything he knew about humans.
“It was about four years ago when I was visited by the Neeraki Sentients—both of our races refer to them as ‘the makers’.” Rafian waited to see the spark of fear and surprise reflect in the Geralos’ eyes, and then smiled as he continued. “The makers gave me a new education. They named me guardian of a new power that would help us win back our home and remove the threat that had grown within the galaxy. That threat is you, but since my original plans to destroy every living thing on your planet was a bit…shortsighted, I think it would be best to get to know you on a more intimate level. That way, I can understand your motivation and devise a better way to stop your need to conquer planets.”
Rafian’s eyes shot open suddenly and his pupils were dilated as he held his hand in place and continued to lecture the helpless Geralos.
“The makers educated me, lizard, and they gave me tools that only the son of a gifted seeker like my mother would be able to use. You bite into our brains, hoping that you will get the gift, but I need only touch you to get the answers that I seek. Like, there!”
And reality fell away like petals from Rafian as his mind found itself on another plane of existence. He saw fields of white metal, bordered by mountains textured with bolts and digital wires, all shining brightly beneath an immense sun without clouds to interfere. He walked the length of the field and he looked down and noticed that he was not himself. He was pure light, shimmering, too bright to look at, though his steps felt heavy and he could feel the cold metal beneath his toes. The place was so foreign that it frightened him, but he had experienced it once before, when he’d entered the mind of the Cel-toc at the behest of the makers, as they taught him how to use his power. When he got to an area of the plane that had a bit of shimmering in the atmosphere, he reached up and touched it. It opened a doorway leading to darkness. With some hesitation, he stepped inside of it.
The darkness removed everything. He no longer had a body, he no longer had a memory and he no longer had any recollection as to why he was there. All he seemed to be was an invisible entity within the memories of a Geralos. He began to see what the childhood and life of a privileged lizard was like, and why they did a number of the things that they did. He grew to like what they stood for, admire their quest for growth and innovation, even though some of their leaders went as far as using the lives of what they deemed inferior alien races to alter their genetics. The Geralos sought immortality above everything else, and through their quest for this, they developed many impressive things. However, they had no talent for fighting, as violence was primitive and low class. The prisoners, lower caste and the poor became soldiers and militiamen. Disgraced scientists, fallen diplomats, or outcasts that had an admiration for military motives normally led them. Occupation of planets was the ultimate way to grow the race and in time—they thought—the Geralos would be able to travel to any environment, see the future, and conquer the lower planets of Anstractor.
The memories went on for hours and while they seemed in real time to Rafian’s mind, they were being played at such a rapid rate that he had absorbed all of the Geralos’s thoughts within a short period of time. When he had finished pulling out all the information he could, he fell through the darkness and reappeared above the metal landscape, where he found himself falling without the means of stopping it. As he hit the floor, the pain shocked him back into his own plane of existence and he was on a bed within a clinic. Tayden Lark was holding his hand, a look of panic in her eyes.
“Rafian, are you back?”
“Yeah, I guess,” he said, looking around at the machines and then at Tayden. “Why am I in here and what’s with all the wires?”
“You were found inside the cell with that thing. You were poisoned from the environmental gas, weak from not eating, and in a coma.”
“Where’s the Geralos?”
“He was dead. It was very strange, Rafian. You had your hand stuck on his head and you were standing like a statue. It took several Phasers to pry your hand off of him and you were barely breathing.”
Dead? He repeated the word in his head and tried to remember what had happened and how he had managed to hurt himself. The journey into his mind was vivid, but the moments before when he had confronted the lizard was hazy.
“I was inside of his head.”
“What!”
“You are the only one that knows about this, Tayden. You understand what I am saying to you, right? It is an ability given to me, but it comes at a great price. Jumping planes is the most unnatural of things a human being can do and for non-seekers, it is suicidal. I lived, but my body feels like a train hit me. I hurt, everywhere.” He closed his eyes briefly, then reopened them and focused on her. “There is also confusion, because my body thinks I am undergoing a ton of poison so it is fighting me back—making me nauseous. I am also depressed. There are so many ill feelings going through my head and it hurts, Tayden. I think the best thing to do is to put me into stasis for a couple of weeks and let me dream myself back into normalcy somehow.”
“Whatever you say, Raf. I want to be mad at you right now because you again did something rash without telling me, but I know it’s not the time. I just want you to be okay.”
“Does Marian know?”
“Everyone knows. The Phasers that eventually opened the doors—despite your order not to— thought you were being corrupted and rushed in to aid you. They thought you were dead and the news spread fast. I’ve told them that you were merely sick, but every day someone has come here inquiring to see you. Marian was here every day the first week, but I commanded her to go home and take care of herself since she seemed so damned intent on joining you in the afterlife. Frank, Camille and the others have been popping in, and Camille spends the night sometimes. You know how much we all love you, Commander. This is why I have always asked you to tell me first.”
Rafian turned his head away from her to feel the cold surface of the bed against his cheek, but Tayden took it to mean he didn’t want to hear any more from her. Their last conversation had been a fight, and she knew that it was not good for them to be at odds with one another.
“You know, Raf, I’ve been thinking … I was a little rough with you that day in my office. Who am I to judge you when I do the same things you do and…”
He stopped her. “We’re good. You don’t ever have to back down from me or my feelings. We will have fights and we will get over them. I’m just—my head just feels like it’s the size of a planet. I am being serious about the stasis. Freeze me, disallow visitation and prepare our Phasers for war. I have seen the motivation of the Geralos and I know which of their order is funding a galactic takeover. I also know which leaders will need to die to stop it. We no longer have to look at this as a defensive fight that will last a millennium. The sight has given me real targets. Let me rest and get better, and then we can start working on bringing the Geralos to heel within this very lifetime.”
Memory 5
Yuth Varience was several levels deep into his meditation when he received the call from Rafian to move on the Geralos. He had not expected the commander to call so soon, but was ready nonetheless and headed out from the basement of the abandoned building in which he was hiding. The da
y was bright for Geral as the sun tried in vain to pierce the dark clouds that inhabited the sky. He wore a hooded cloak to conceal his mask and did his best to keep to the alleyways of the city. When he encountered curious Geralos, he dispatched them quietly and kept on moving. Unlike Rafian, Yuth did not feel the need to kill every single Geralos that he came across and so he chose stealth whenever he could slip past them. He knew that once he reached the tower, he would be required to destroy it, along with many Geralos warriors. But in the city he saw the lizards as civilians who did not deserve the wrath of a well-trained Phaser.
By the time he reached the dark back-alley of the Geralos headquarters, he had put several homeless Geralos to sleep and killed three police officers that were on patrol. When Yuth entered the back door of the building, he found himself in a bit of a confusing situation. The building opened up to a room with immense white light and the walls made it appear circular and much larger than he expected. Several Geralos sat facing inward wearing nothing but yellow loincloths, and in the center was a set of spiral staircases that ascended until they vanished into a bright white light. The Geralos’ eyes found him as the door opened and a woman let out an ear-shattering scream that sent fifty warriors rushing at Yuth to subdue him.
Yuth tossed his hooded cloak up into the air and vanished as the first Geralos got to him. He appeared within his cloak several feet above the confused lizards and then fell hard to the ground with his las-sword pointing down. The blade impaled the Geralos beneath him and he withdrew it to continue cutting swaths through his remaining attackers as they tried in vain to invade his mind. A few of them retreated up the stairs as he turned the room into a slaughterhouse.
From the exterior of the building where he emerged from a large crystal tear in the atmosphere, Rafian VCA, Laern Cobo and a young Phaser recruit named Dott Toga, charged the door where they heard the familiar hum of a las-sword inside. Laern and Dott ran inside to join the fight while Rafian began to scale the exterior of the building. The fight—if you could call it that—was a massacre and before long Yuth and the two younger Phasers were running up the spiral staircase as armed Geralos hidden beyond the light shot down at them. Yuth increased his pace as the others tried to keep up with him and the shots that hit him bounced against the glass of his COREX mask.
Laern laughed at how absurd it was that the Geralos still used kinetic weapons, but his happiness was gone in an instant when a Geralos mind-mesher got into his head and began to control him. Yuth knew it would happen eventually and was prepared, so when Laern suddenly caught Dott by her throat and threw her from the stairs to her death, Yuth turned and ran him through with his sword, then tossed his body off the edge and continued his ascent of the staircase.
“The two of you were too inexperienced to be here,” he said. “Go with the Makers. I will see you on the other side.”
“Co-Commander, I am okay!” Dott yelled as she struggled to pull herself back up onto the staircase. She had caught the railing as she fell and had survived the betrayal.
“Good job, girl! Climb back up and join me at the top.”
He was gone before she could answer, but she counted her blessings as she looked down at Laern’s broken body. He would clone and be back on Vestalia to whine about it, but she was not yet an agent—this being part of her trial—and did not have the luxury of cloning. Rafian had asked for volunteers for this mission and she thought it a good idea to join him to elevate her position. However, as she gained the stairs and the shots continued to rain down upon her, she wondered if it had been a good decision. She had come so close to a true death.
“I’m right on your six, Commander Yuth!” she yelled up at him, but he was already in a fight with several other Geralos and wasn’t paying attention to her.
How could stairs climb endlessly into the air without floors and beams to support them? She wondered. She marveled at the Geralos’ ingenuity in building what looked like an ethereal temple.
Rafian had seen the interior of a Geralos psych headquarters before—through his invasion of the Geralos doctor’s memory—so he knew that all of the “enlightened” were stationed at its apex, at the top of the so-called “eternal staircase.” His thruster pack and 3B suit helped him scale the building like a speedy spider and within an hour, he was on the rooftop, high above the Geralos metropolis. He looked down through a thick pane of glass at the high-level psionic Geralos scrambling to figure out who was attacking them. At the base of the building was a thick crowd of Geralos military officers, pouring into the building and setting up a perimeter to prevent the intruders from escaping.
Rafian took out his sword and powered it on and the las-tech edge of the blade hummed and turned into white-hot fire. He cut a circle into the roof and dropped down quietly as the Geralos scattered and looked at him as if he were some sort of demon.
“Tar cap shah!” he yelled mockingly and began to laugh. In Geralos his words meant “hello” and they were some of the only words he knew from his younger years as a cadet, when he’d studied the planet of Geral. The head Geralos was in a bright red robe and he quickly pressed two fingers into his mouth as he tried to occupy Rafian’s mind to control him. Rafian feigned the movements of someone that had been occupied and then began laughing again as he paced the room, looking at the frightened Geralos as he swung his sword menacingly at them to mock them.
“You can’t get into my head, lizard. You don’t get to play with this seeker like you do the rest of the human race. Let me see if I can get into your head, though. Maybe I can learn a thing or two.” Rafian walked over to him and placed him in a headlock before gouging out his eyes with his fingers. The enraged Geralos fell upon him with their swords out and as he dropped their screaming leader, he dodged their attacks effortlessly and began to summarily kill them one at a time.
Yuth noticed that the shooting had stopped and that he and Dott were able to climb the stairs easily. He wondered why they had stopped firing on them. The light that gave the room the illusion of nothingness was soon below them as they reached the top floor, and the stairs opened up into a scene from the most horrific horror vid. There were over twenty dead Geralos on the floor and in the corner stood Rafian VCA, pasting a tiny bomb on the wall.
“You did good. Yuth. Thanks for prepping the crystal so that we could plant the bomb.”
“Thank you, Commander, but what is our next move for this operation?”
“The entire Geralos military and police force is outside and some are inside right now, climbing the stairs to get to us. Flying around above us are a number of drones and drop ships. They plan to take us from both ends but they will have a nice surprise in a few minutes.”
“What’s the plan, Commander?” This time it was Dott who spoke, but Rafian acted as if he did not notice her there.
“Where’s Laern?” he asked.
“He got corrupted and died from my las-sword,” Yuth said and Rafian shook his head at the disappointment he felt in Laern.
“They take the minds of the weak and the vulnerable. I don’t see Laern as either, but he was probably so caught up in looking at Dott’s body that he let himself be taken over. I didn’t think he was ready for this when we gave him the agent rank and I still think it was a mistake. Will you be a mistake, Dott?” Then he gave the muscular, tanned woman a look that made her flinch.
She thought on the question, which hinted on her getting a promotion. As planned, this mission would see her graduate into an agent. After all, only an agent could disappoint a commander, not a mere recruit. It took everything within her not to jump for joy.
“I have faced death sir,” she told him. “You can ask Commander Yuth. I am ready for it!”
“Good, because it will be you who will deploy the bomb. When they come in, you start the countdown and you blink out in the way we have taught you. Do you understand me?”
Dott was mortified at the mission he was giving her, but it was a rare honor for the Supreme Leader to giv
e out a mission to a recruit. She knew he believed in her and that made her believe in herself.
“We finish the mission, Commander!” she said and clicked her heels in a salute.
“Okay, Phaser, we will see you back at the agency in a few hours. But if we don’t, then it has been an honor.”
He saluted her and then grabbed Yuth as they stepped through a portal that Rafian had deployed from crystal dust. It was one of the most advanced techniques of their order and Dott marveled at how he was able to do it so effortlessly. She suddenly felt alone as she listened in on the Geralos’ approach and thought up different scenarios for her escape. She didn’t have even a quarter of the skill that Yuth Varience had with a sword—and even Yuth was a mere amateur compared to Rafian VCA—so she gripped her pistol and hoped it would be enough against the lizards.
The breech that occurred from the ceiling was so sudden that Dott fell to the ground to cover her head as a number of armored Geralos appeared through a large hole they made to eclipse the one that Rafian had made. She didn’t wait to recover or think on what her next move would be. Before her Phaser training she had been a ranger and her military instinct kicked in as she triggered the five-second countdown on the bomb and then dashed down the stairs where a number of other Geralos were ascending. She grabbed the railing and fumbled for the crystal that was in her pocket as several shots caught her in her chest and shoulder. The pain was immense, but the crystal was in her hand and she threw it over the side as she slapped away the hand of the nearest Geralos. She threw herself off the side of the stairs, hoping she had calculated her jump right. As she plummeted to her death, the roof of the building disintegrated with the boom of a loud explosion. The debris followed her as she fell and she panicked, since the tear she expected from the crystal did not open immediately below her.