Phasers of Anstractor

by Greg Dragon

  “Oh, be serious, silly! Come on, name it. I won’t fly us to the temple until you do.”

  “Okay, Rhee. Let’s call it Phasing.”

  “How original,” she said and rolled her eyes, but the name was out and she had to accept it. The couple got into the car and sped off to the old Aygis temple, where Rafian was intent on finding out what had gone wrong to cause the Felitians to find out about the location of the resistance fighters.

  ~*~*~*~

  When Julienna finished the cybernetic adjustments to Maes’s body, she sat down next to the corpses of the former engineers and Maes pulled his fingers from his throat and stood up. Everything was so painful that he almost passed out, but upon pulling the breathing apparatus up to affix it to his face and activating the drug-filled needles that ran into his veins, he felt very much like himself. He looked like a terrible green and silver monster, but he was alive and that was all that mattered. Julienna had stolen a heavy black cloak and 3B suit from a supply closet, so he dressed in them now and stretched his limbs to make sure he was as mobile as he hoped to be. He was still dying, but the enhancements would be enough to keep him alive for a few years.

  He smiled at the body of the unconscious Julienna, who would be dead within the hour and blamed for aiding the escape of a “Geralos spy.” Finding his way out into the hallway, Maes stole a hover bike and made his way to his old apartment. The confusion of the battle was still too raw for the marines and they would not have cleaned out his place, thinking that he was still in the brig. He collected his belongings and then flew out to the Helysian’s lower cafeteria area. The blast doors had sealed off access to the kitchens, where a large hole had been torn out from a Geralos missile. There was a large collection of repair droids working on the damage, so Maes followed them through the airtight portal to access the kitchen and the vacuum of space. He was sucked out of Helysian immediately, but he quickly signaled his ship and the cloaked, black vessel floated over to him. They pulled him inside and sealed itself shut. Two of the destroyers had been obliterated by Helysian and Aqnaqak, and the third was in bad shape. There were no Geralos fighters defending the ship and he knew that trying to board it would mean his death.

  Maes knew that his string of good luck had run out and without an FTL jump drive on his tiny ship, he would have to land somewhere. They were not too far from Meluvia and with the Alliance winning the hour with their battleships, he could not trust sending a signal to another Geralos ship. He looked into his backup supplies for medicine and found enough to carry him for a time. On Meluvia, he could lie to his command about his motives and they would send him help.

  He cloaked the ship and slipped away from the battle towards Meluvia. He would find a quiet city and go silent for a time. This mission had been a failure, but he had seen what the Phasers looked like and what they could do, and he no longer feared them. He would take the time to think of a way to destroy them and then exact his revenge.

  ~*~*~*~

  The city of Veece had been reduced to rubble and the VCAs flew over it towards Aygis. The mood became melancholy as they recalled the times when Veece was the leading city in fashion, commerce and government. The rebels had eventually taken the city and the Felitians, seeing the city as a lost cause, had sent in battle cruisers to level it all to the ground. The air was cold and the skies overcast, and Rafian thought he could feel the dead souls of his friends in the musty air.

  “Such a waste,” Rafian said, but Marian was crying and barely able to steer the car straight.

  “Everything I have seen so far makes me so sad that we left, Rafian. So many lives lost, so much ground lost. What can we do to stop the Fels now?”

  “You and Marika removed their king and his heir, so they will be in turmoil for a while. At the same time, if the resistance does what we discussed this morning, the Fels will be too busy defending territories to elect a proper leader. We lost a lot, Rhee, but at the same time we now have hope. Your assassination has started a proper revolution, whereas before, the things that we were doing would not have made that much difference.”

  He expected Marian to say something back but she remained quiet and dried her face. “I’ve cried enough, Raf. My heart is broken for Tyhera, but like you said, we now have a proper revolution. I will burn scented stones for our friends once we are back home, and I will make sure they are never forgotten.”

  The car stopped outside of a ruined temple and it was Rafian’s turn to feel sad and angry at the loss of something he’d held close to heart. The order of Mera Ku monks on Tyhera had taken him in and made him a member, back when he had been a hotheaded resistance fighter. Through their teaching, he had learned the healing meditation and the way of the sword, and he had graduated to the level of master. It was his charge to start the Aygis temple and through it the resistance had a well-concealed base of operations. Now as they parked, he hopped out to observe the fallen walls and broken statues that lay about in the tall grass.

  “I’m sorry, Raf,” Marian said. She walked up to rub his back as he scanned the empty landscape.

  “Do you feel the spirits?” he asked her and she nodded sadly. “I need some time alone,” he finally said and she kissed his cheek and got back into the car to return to Veece. “I’ll call you via nano comm whenever I’m ready.”

  Marian nodded and sped off into the dusky horizon.

  When he knew that he was truly alone, Rafian removed his shirt, knelt in front of the temple, and started his meditation. He stayed that way for a long time and in his mind he probed for answers. They came to him through a series of images. The Fels had bombed the entire landscape of Veece and the surrounding cities. The loss of life was unreal and many Felitians lost their lives along with the rebels. The Mera Ku monks, in an attempt to save the people, brought many of them into the underground temple, but the bombs collapsed the entrance and sealed them inside and the temple became a tomb for several hundred people. Rafian was the last of the Mera Ku monks and this fact weighed heavily on him, as he remembered his time with his master, Lucci.

  “Are you ready, Rafian?” a distant voice said.

  When he opened his eyes, it was dark and the beautiful star-filled Tyheran sky was all around him. Marian handed him his cloak as he pulled on his shirt and stood up.

  “I’m ready. I have seen what I came here to see. I think it’s time to return home to Anstractor, so that we don’t lose it there like we have managed to lose it here.”

  “I agree.”

  Memory 9

  Following the success of Rafian’s takeover on Vestalia, a number of other military units tried to do the same without contacting him, and many soldiers were killed in the attempt. This prompted the leaders of the Vestalian Alliance to seek an audience with the Supreme Leader, to see if he would assist them in their ambitions and aid them in finding land on Vestalia. Rafian did not like that they had moved on the planet without coordination and saw it as another greedy attempt at power by the Vestalians. Instead of meeting with the commanders of these various ships, he organized his own meeting—inviting only the men and women he knew he could trust. What he hoped to accomplish from this meeting was an agreement on strategy that would see an end to the Geralos on Vestalia.

  Rafian stroked Marian’s arm gently as she lifted her head up off his shoulder. She had been sleeping during their flight to the city. They were inside of a sleek, pod-like vessel that floated alongside several other ships of varying shapes and sizes. With them on the craft were the Phaser aces: this included Camille, Tayden, Yuth, and Frank. The only Ace missing was Marika Tsuno, who had volunteered to stay behind in case Zallus needed her.

  They flew over the remnants of an old city, which held a bizarre contrast in technology to the one they were headed to. As if he could read the thoughts that went through everyone’s mind, the Meluvian guide began to explain why.

  “The city that we are flying over is known as Garse and the one that we are heading to is Dystalis. I am sur
e that many of you are wondering why the buildings are made out of stones and the rooftops, mud and leaves. Well, we have a tribe of Meluvians known as the Cynetari and they are against anything that hints at modern technology. Garse is their city and no outsiders are allowed within its gates.”

  Marian sat up upon hearing this. She tousled her hair roughly to shake off her grogginess as she peered through the translucent floor of the ship. They were flying over an expanse of green and the houses were primitive and beautiful in their own right. She saw many things that she had only seen in classic vids, like windmills, rope bridges and houses built alongside trees. When she looked at the city they were flying towards, the contrast was very alarming. Unlike Garse, Dystalis had buildings so tall they pierced the clouds. Instead of greens, browns and olives, the city was whites, blues and the metallic silver of industry.

  The fact that the cities bordered one another made it even more bizarre, and upon close inspection, she saw that the refuse that came from Dystalis was running out of sewer lines into a toxic lake that surrounded Garse. She flipped out a memtocflo bot that she had brought along with her and opened up a window to let it out. The tiny, fly-like machine began to flap its wings, then with its camera primed and Marian’s guidance, it took a full panoramic shot of the area and then flew back through the window, where Marian held it up to inspect the holographic image that it had captured.

  “See there.” The guide pointed at the giant sewer lines that emptied into the lake. “The inhabitants of Garse tend to look a little different from the people of Dystalis and it is due to them using the toxic run-off from the city.”

  Tayden Lark made eye contact with Rafian and frowned because she knew that he would expect her to comment on how terrible it was. She kept her mouth shut and the vessel took them past many high-rises until it settled down on the surface of a floating platform.

  “Welcome to the ‘first step of peace,’” the guide said.

  As the Phasers stepped out onto the platform, they realized that it had no foundation or support. It simply floated and spanned the length of a field for sports. The Phaser Aces loved it but Yuth hesitated. It was translucent like an ice cube and he was not sure about its stability.

  “How is this possible?” he intoned as he looked at their guide, who stood grinning next to the parked vessel.

  “Meluvian secret, Commander. It is one of the twenty wonders of Meluvia. The plans were to make one hundred of these, all connected, and leading up towards our atmosphere. We were hoping that in impressing the makers with our ingenuity, they would one day visit us and bestow upon us their great favor.”

  “We have nothing like this on Louine,” Yuth said. “But I am sure that upon seeing this, many of our architects and engineers would get to working on something equally as impressive.”

  “Competition is good, my Louine friend, but unfortunately in this climate we are too busy fending off those invaders instead of working on things of beauty and ingenuity.”

  In the center of the circular platform was an assortment of chairs and tables, each translucent like the platform, and the Phasers were led to take their seats as the other delegates made their way to the party.

  “I’m not sure why I am so nervous about this,” said Camille, who had not spoken much during the trip. She was dressed to the nines in her Phaser reds and Rafian had a hard time keeping his eyes off her. The remaining shuttles landed and various men and women from across the galaxy came together to meet in the heart of Meluvia. When they had all taken their seats, after exchanging greetings and introducing themselves, Rafian took the center and began to speak.

  “Thank you all for agreeing to meet with us on such short notice. You are all people we know and trust from our dealings in this war. Some of you, I’ve fought with on this very planet—or on its moons. Others have dealt with Yuth Varience, Camille YAN, or Tayden Lark. You are trusted, and this is why we sent for you and not your so-called leaders of the Alliance.”

  The collection of twelve individuals that had joined the Phasers at the platform either nodded at Rafian to continue, or smiled at him in memory of times past. They all wanted to hear what he had to say, and none wanted to speak until he did. After a few seconds of pause, Rafian paced the center of the circle and began.

  “Many of your commanders asked to meet with me, but I refused. Actually, Cilas MEC, who is seated right over there, is one of the only men of the old guard that I would not refuse to meet. Look, this is not out of disrespect; I know what it looks like. Quite the opposite actually, it is out of respect – for time, the one resource that we all value. I did not want to meet with men and women that view power and position as being more important than the survival of our race. I did not want to meet with men and women who—once we have all of Vestalia reclaimed—will rush to positions of control over our people instead of positions of support. As a Phaser, sworn to the quest of winning our planet back, I have nothing to discuss with people like that. We all grew up with their ilk.” The people listening could see a very visible look of disgust on his face as he said the word ‘ilk’ and it became obvious that Rafian knew something they would not like hearing.

  “We grew up with their kind on board the military ships, didn’t we? The exploiters of the weak, the runners of the poor and destitute. We watched them grow to positions of power, break bread with the Geralos, and engage in meaningless skirmishes with no movement towards ending the war. Humans, Meluvians, Genesians and Louines are dying by the hour. Why? So petty commanders can fly large luxury cruisers disguised as battleships and send the children of their lessers out to die? No, I’ve seen enough—and I have seen plenty. What I would like for us to do today is talk. I want us to talk, listen and respect one another’s opinions. To see what we can do to get back fully on our planet and keep the lizards from ever trying it again.”

  This time when he paused, Cilas “Rend” MEC spoke up. At fifty-three years of age, he was the oldest person there, but he was one of the most dangerous and they knew it. Rend was a soldier who had fought since the time of the Sixth Expanse and they revered him because he’d lived when any other man would have died.

  “Rafian – son, I am surprised to hear you say ‘keep them from trying to do it again.’ I thought that our collective aim as refugee fighters was to wipe them all out. It’s the way Helga saw it, it’s the way I see it, and it’s the only way to get the galaxy back to what it was before they started pillaging.” With that, he sat back down and crossed his legs. He looked like an old, coiled cobra, ready to strike at a moment’s notice. Rafian tried to imagine what he would have looked like as a younger man. Had he developed that aura of danger as he’d gotten older, or had he always been that imposing?

  “Commander, you dealt with the Jumpers in the time of Hellgate, right?”

  “Yes, sir. I had a friend named Arn that was in charge of them. The same one who taught you, I believe, before you took over,” Rend said.

  “Knowing Arn, you know that we possess power unlike anyone else in the Universe.”

  “I know that you all can come and go as you please and use those swords like the Gerries do.”

  “What if I was to tell you that beyond these powers, I have the ability to steal the mind of a Geralos, just like they do to us?”

  There was a chorus of gasps and shocked looks. The seventeen guests looked at Rafian as if he had said the most ridiculous thing in the world. He looked around, letting his eyes meet each and every one of them to show that he was telling the truth and that there was no joke or illusion to it. The faces of the three women he loved were the most interesting. Marian looked worried, Camille looked betrayed and Tayden, having known before any of the rest, smiled like a child on a gift-giving holiday.

  “I’ve corrupted a Geralos that we captured, when I rescued one of our own from them. It took years off of my life, and I now have terrible nightmares, but I saw things that have given me clarity. Believe it or not, they don’t all want our brains t
o suck on and steal for seeker sight. A major governing body does. So what we have with the Geralos is a situation very much like that of my wife’s galaxy. You have a group of animals ruling over regular people, and it will take brave men and women to kill these animals in order to bring about peace.”

  Rend had begun smiling where he had looked puzzled before. “Like I said, we wipe them out. Manufacture a bomb that can cover hundreds of miles, drop our Aces and your Phasers. One, two, three, boom, boom, boom. Crispy lizard for dinner, ladies and gentlemen. The Rendron will happily serve the first course.”

  “This is why I brought you all here together, Cilas, to discuss this very thing. Once upon a time we thought that the Geralos were a parasitic, wicked, monster race, whose lot in life was just to bring about war and pain to anyone that didn’t look like them. After I looked into the mind of the one I held, I saw them to be people: vulnerable, regular people whose military and governing body are hell-bent on the genocide of our race. Is it our prerogative to do the exact same thing that they aim to do to us, or should we be better than them and wipe out the rotten portions of their civilization?”

  Everyone then began talking to one another and Rafian walked out of the center to meet with Rend to discuss the fate of the Geralos.

  ~*~*~*~

  As the tiny shuttle flew away from Dystalis, Rafian and Marian retired to their room to make an attempt at falling asleep for the trip. Rafian laid face down on the soft, half-circle shaped bed and Marian sat next to him, gently massaging his back. Five minutes into this ritual, he looked up at his wife and noticed her smiling with a strange look on her face.

  “What’s going on, Rhee?”

  “Oh, nothing. I’m just proud of you.”

  “Proud? You mean for putting together the summit, or is it something else?”

  “Its several things, Raf, but the summit was amazing. Meluvia takes my breath away; its people are so courteous and polite. The buildings are so impressively built and they all seem to view you as a hero, even though I never hear you talking about them.”