Phasers of Anstractor

by Greg Dragon

  “Let me get this straight, men and women of Vestalia. I have here the husk of a woman that once held the same beliefs as you do but now taken over by the mind of the enemy. And you want me to make her good and send her home? Is that what I am hearing from you all?” She let out a little laugh as she put her arms akimbo and shook her head in disbelief. “What about Colonel Alline? Do you think she could live with herself after all of this? Do you think she would be able to look into the faces of people onboard as they judge her, knowing that she caused the death of their sisters, brothers, children and parents? You all know better, and as the commanding officer of a ship that carries hundreds of thousands of people, she would accept a warrior’s death instead of a life of dishonor.”

  “So you want to just murder her in cold blood? Is that what you Phasers do?” said a guard who was standing near her with his rifle cocked.

  “It is not my call. We will take her back to the agency to stand before Rafian VCA and Tayden Lark. If they see fit to let her loose, she will be coming back to you. But if they ask my opinion and choose to take it without question, I will shoot her in the head again. And this time, it will be a live round. The Geralos are not to be trifled with, Vestalians. I am not sure if it’s the peaceful living that you have been afforded for so long aboard this ship that has made you all so thyping soft, or the cozy bridge you get to push buttons on to take out the enemy from a distance. The war I know and fight is up close and ugly. As a Vestalian, I risk death, being eaten, getting my mind invaded and torture. Therefore, I have no sympathy for the lizards, not like you lot. I am going to take your XO and leave this ship. You can thank us when that destroyer out there goes down easily, since its little spy is no longer here to tell it when to hit your shields as they recharge.”

  Maes looked up at his commander, Abe Rus and as he did so, Dott vanished and appeared behind him. She drove her knife into his back and slashed his Achilles tendons in two quick motions, causing him to fall and vomit bile all over the deck. She smiled and mounted him to deliver the coup de grâce.

  “DOTT, STOP!” Camille yelled, and then walked over and pulled the false flesh off Maes’s face.

  The bridge erupted into a panic and it took all of Abe Rus’s power to settle them down as they surrounded the Phasers, curious to see what their infiltrator looked like. Most of them had never seen a Geralos that close before and the sight and smell of the vomit, combined with the alien features of Maes’s face, was too much for many of them to accept.

  “I ATE CHOW WITH IT!” One of the men yelled out in horror and several others that had slept with the soldier they knew as Sako went through a variety of emotions.

  “Nobody saw this coming, Marines; you shouldn’t feel bad about it,” Camille said. “Listen to me: I want every single one of you to swear an oath of silence right now about what you saw happen here today. We do not want the entire ship in a state of panic, and we do not want other ships panicking, either.” She looked at the commander and he nodded at her to let her know that it would be under control. She wished that Rafian were there. This was an unprecedented move by the Geralos and it hinted at greater dangers to the Alliance than they could have imagined possible.

  “We need him for questioning,” Abe RUS said to her.

  Several soldiers had rushed in to tend to their fallen XO while others moved to collect Maes to take him to the brig.

  “This is your ship, Commander, but I hope that I don’t have to stress how volatile this enemy is and the threat he poses just by remaining on Helysian.”

  “Girl, I was knee deep in Geral swamp piss while you were a baby cadet learning how to count. How about a little trust and respect, eh?”

  “Forgive me, Commander,” Camille said, feeling properly chastised. “You know my heart and my intent is not to undermine. I’m just… I just want you to be careful. This is my home, after all, and to see it attacked like this—“

  “Cammy, we’ve got it under control. Look outside at those destroyers. Does that look like your home is any danger to you?” As he said it, she saw a trace laser from the Aqnaqak split a Geralos destroyer in two and change focus to one of the other two. She sighed in relief and then turned to face the frightened marines who stood like statues, looking at their commander for answers.

  “I spoke harshly to all of you just now, but it was necessary to stall this piece of schtill. Use this situation as an indicator that this war is not one that will allow us to let our hair down and play complacent. The lizards are always plotting and they are always trying to get inside of us. Please give Colonel ROS my sincerest apologies.”

  Then she reached down and offered Dott a hand for her to stand up.

  Maes managed to laugh despite his poor health and he smiled at Dott with an ounce of respect. “We will figure you out in time, Phaser. We will figure out why you can do those amazing tricks that you do. We Geralos are smarter than you are, we adapt better, we learn faster and in time—“ His words were cut short as Camille’s heel found his forehead as she stepped on his face to silent his threat.

  ~*~*~*~

  When Camille and Dott reached the long hallway and were out of sight of everyone, Dott opened a crystal-tear in the space before them and they stepped through to emerge inside a dark corner of the docks where they could see Aurora waiting by the phantom.

  “Well, that was new,” Camille said as they walked towards her.

  “I heard that something happened to Sako,” Aurora said as soon as they got her to the ship.

  “He messed around and got himself shanked,” Dott said with a smile on her face.

  “That isn’t funny,” Aurora said to her. She squared up on the tall, dusky, brunette, with Ian asleep in one arm and her other hand balled up in a fist.

  “That guy was a Geralos made to look like us here on Helysian,” Dott said, ignoring Aurora’s attempt at taking an aggressive stance.

  “Get off it,” Aurora said, not wanting to believe what she was hearing.

  “No worries. My ranger knife found him before he could do any more damage.” Dott smiled at her in the way one does when you see a pathetic animal trying to defend itself.

  This only served to infuriate Aurora even more as she got closer to her. “I’m not afraid of you, Phaser cruta, and I will not have you talk about my friend like that.”

  “Alright girl, bring it down a notch,” Camille said. She was amused at Aurora’s brazen disregard for taking on a woman as dangerous as Dott Toga. “Dott speaks the truth. You had a Geralos spy as a friend and this attack happened because of him. Now shake hands or hug it out, you two. There’s a long flight ahead and I don’t want to deal with the tense air in my ship.”

  “So, Sako was—“Aurora had tears in her eyes at the thought of the violation.

  “Maker, girl. You didn’t sleep with him, did you?” Camille chuckled and the two women stared at her in anticipation of an answer.

  “Not funny, Cammy!” Aurora shouted, annoyed and ready to lash out at her, as well.

  “Oh, Aurora, you’re a kitten,” Cammy said, bored at the exchange and ready to leave. “Now, granted, you’re a kitten with a lot of heart, but if YOU got hurt, Rafian would find a way to blow the entire planet of Geral to pieces. Nobody messes with his baby sister. So with that in mind, let us fly you to safety before this place explodes and I end up having to explain to Commander Hard-ass why we didn’t get you out in time.

  ~*~*~*~

  The Marines threw Maes Van Senthyn into a secure cell on the lowest level of the brig. It was a level for the most vicious of criminals, and Maes was the only inhabitant. This level was a circular room with a transparent glass wall that ran around all of the individual cells. On the other side of the glass were three guards, who walked around it looking at him, curious to see what he was and what he would do. The pain he felt was unbearable, but while his body wanted him to give up, his rage wanted revenge, and he would not have it if he died dishonorably.

  As h
e looked out at his captors, a portion of the wall exploded. It happen so fast that Maes covered his face and when he recovered from his panic, he noticed that blast doors had covered the hole as the shields repaired it. His guards were dead—sucked out into space—and the alarms were going off. He looked around to see if there was anything to pry open his bars. He was too weak even if there was, and he could no longer feel his legs.

  He cursed Dott and cursed the Phasers, vowing that if he were given the chance, he would make them pay. Several hours passed and he closed his eyes, wondering if his luck was up and he would die alone in the large, empty room.

  When a few hours had passed by, a young guard came inside the room to change places with one of her fellow soldiers and Maes thanked the makers for his luck. The young girl looked around as if confused, her blonde ponytail whipping this way and that as she touched the handle of her pistol and ran around the outside of the glass, looking for the soldiers. When she couldn’t find them, she took a look at Maes and wondered to herself if the Geralos had managed to kill them.

  “Help me, please,” Maes whined, hoping that he could get her to come inside of the glass area and near his cell.

  “Where are the guards that were watching you, lizard?” she asked. He could tell by her body language that she was unsure how to handle the situation, so he pretended to cry and cleared his throat to try a pathetic voice.

  “I … am … in … so much pain, sister. Help.”

  The young guard wanted him to tell her what he did with her fellow guards so she slid the glass door up and entered. She marched over to Maes’s cell, crossed her arms and looked down at him. “Talk, lizard. Tell me where the men are or I will make you tell me.”

  Maes despised the act of corrupting a human mind, but in his desperate state, he would do anything and he thanked the gods that they’d given him a young female guard. He knew that she would be unprepared for one like him, so he started the ritual by thrusting his fingers into his mouth.

  Julienna Varennes fought back with all her heart; but he had her under his control within an hour. He was in her mind and able to control her, happy to be walking around—even in a strange body—than to be restricted to his own broken form.

  While posing as a recruit aboard the ship, he had bitten into the heads of three young cadets. He had hidden their corpses and lied to their commanding officers that they had not come back inside after their flight exercises. His biting into them was to prepare for the moment when he had to do this despicable act—mold his mind with one of theirs—but he had prepared well and as Julienna Varennes opened his cell, he thanked the gods for granting him perseverance.

  Julienna lifted his body into her arms and closed his cell, listening for anybody coming down the stairs and keeping to the shadows of the walls. The brig had been one of the areas of Helysian that had been hit severely, so many of the lights were out and the guards were tending to their families, leaving the prisoners to sit in panic. She climbed the steps with Maes’s body and when she found a fuel disposal bin, she placed him gently inside of it and upon activating its hover mechanism, walked with it out and made her way to the robotics lab.

  ~*~*~*~

  It was the day before they were supposed to jump back to Anstractor when Rafian and Marian decided to take a trip to the city of Veece, Tyhera. Marian was still packing and Rafian was exploring the woods. He was thinking of the meetings they had been attending for the last week and he’d taken the morning to mull things over away from his wife.

  On the way back to their camp, Rafian stopped and clenched his fists, trying to see if he could will himself to jump. It was a futile exercise that he had always tried since learning how to jump using the crystals. He held his legs firm and clenched his muscles, trying to will himself to jump back to Anstractor. He closed his eyes tightly, then opened them, hoping to be at his destination. Nothing happened and he relaxed his muscles, laughing internally at his futile attempts. He tried it again, but this time he kept his muscles relaxed and his eyes open, focusing on his destination and the details of the place that he wanted to jump to. He imagined his bedroom and the thin, soft, glass bed that sat at its center and though his brain kept trying to place his beautiful wife on top of it, he focused on the room itself and how badly he wanted to be there.

  As if an earthquake occurred in his brain, Rafian’s vision began to shake and he lost focus of where he was. When he regained focus he grew excited, because the fact that he had experienced something meant that there was a chance that his attempt at crystal-free jumping was not out of the question. He tried again, but this time he tried to jump to the area that was beyond the woods and near the camp. He relaxed and focused, using his mastery of meditation to help settle his mind. The shaking occurred, but he didn’t lose focus. What happened instead was that he felt himself moving, out of body and invisible. When he stopped and his body reformed, he was in the area that he’d wanted to teleport to. He patted himself down and looked around, making sure that he had indeed jumped and there were no complications with him doing it.

  He was so happy that he wanted to jump for joy. He kept on teleporting, doing less each time to activate it. He wanted to master it, so he tried for different lengths and places. But he realized that without the crystals, he could only jump to places visible and under a hundred yards or so. He teleported to the camp and dusted himself off and looked around. He felt like a child that had been given a new, popular toy. This is a game changer, he said to himself, then looked over at Marian.

  “Rhee, take a look at this,” Rafian said as he stood in front of their hover car with a big smile on his face.

  She walked over to where he stood, curious as to what he had discovered.

  “Now you see, I have no crystals on me.”

  “Okay, no crystals. I’m watching.”

  He vanished and appeared behind her, where he grabbed her butt, causing her to drop her bag and spill Zerillian wine all over the soil.

  “What in the—how are you able to do that?”

  “Do you remember my fight with Arn, back when we had jumped back to Anstractor?”

  “Yeah, I can remember it quite well, actually. It scared the life out of me.”

  “Arn was able to teleport and I never understood it. Once I got educated, I assumed he had his rooms laced with crystals and utilized them to perform his tricks. After all, we had never seen the old man outside of the temple, so I thought he was tricking us and it was this thought that made it possible for me to beat him.”

  Rafian knelt down to pick up Marian’s items, but she was still trying to figure out how it was that he could do a jump without the crystals. When he got up and handed them back to her, she touched him on the shoulder and asked him to continue.

  “Nobody has been saying anything to me about it, but my pupils have changed, along with Tayden’s, Camille’s and many of the other first generation Phasers. I’m not sure about yours, since you are Tyheran and your physiology is a little different, but the change has happened.”

  “Your pupils? Let me see,” Marian said. She opened his eyes with her fingers and looked into them to see what Rafian meant. The shock on her face let him know that she recognized it. She looked at him with a questioning look and he smiled at her with reassurance.

  “Marian, the crystals are becoming a part of us,” he told her. “That mechanical pattern inside of my pupils are due to heavy crystal use, and this is why I am able to do minor jumps without a crystal.”

  Marian beamed upon hearing this and her next thought was as to whether she would be able to do it. Rafian had been using the crystals a lot more than anyone else in the Phaser agency and this was the first time that he had discovered his ability. “So, can you blink back to Anstractor from here without a crystal?” Marian asked, her eyes bright with anticipation.

  “I tried earlier, but it gave me a tremendous headache. I think that for dramatic jumps like that, a crystal will always be necessary. But how is
this for motivation for our membership, Rhee? The fact that with experience, we will eventually become stronger in the way of the crystal.”

  “This is unprecedented, babe,” Marian said. “Especially when it comes to combat. Now one more question. How do you feel after a jump without a crystal? Do you feel drained, tired, or can you do it freely?”

  “I feel a little disoriented, so it does take something out of you. But I recall the Makers telling me that too much use of the gifts we’re given will at first change us and then become detrimental if exploited. When I fought Arn, he used it a few times and I was able to run him through. A part of me feels that he weakened himself trying to get the jump on me—considering his old age and it cost him his life. I will continue to use the crystals on major jumps, but this trick will be a bonus for those tight situations.”

  “I want to try it!”

  “Okay. Now, you can only jump short distances to places that you can see. So focus on an area, clear your mind like I taught you to, and release yourself to teleport there.”

  Marian stood still for a time and then she looked at Rafian, her eyes wide and frightened, as if she had seen something horrible.

  “I think I almost had it! My eyes shook a little and my body tensed up. Is that what you feel?”

  “Yes, you’ve almost got it, but I don’t think you’ve had enough of the crystal taint to activate it fully.”

  “Aww, that sucks! Oh, well. This will inspire me to do more missions.”

  “Keep this between the two of us for now, Rhee. I don’t want Phasers abusing the crystals in some foolish attempt to get this ability through exploitation.”

  Marian placed her items into the car and primed the engines for their trip. She stopped, nodded, and then spoke again. “Hey, we need to name it! This is a brand new skill for our Phasers, so as the founder, you need to give it a name. Let’s hear it, Commander. What do you call it when a Phaser jumps without a crystal?”

  “Sorcery!”