by Greg Dragon
“This is major, Marian. Tayden may have to go herself, or have you go with her.”
“That’s the thing, sis. I am about to jump to Genese with Rafian for the diplomacy mission—remember?”
“That does put us in a bind. What if we send a few agents to scour the city for the spy? They should be able to snuff him out in less than a week’s time. Let’s hear what Frank and Tayden have to say, whenever they come back online.” The two women exchanged knowing glances at one another, as if they knew what it was that Frank and Tayden were doing. “When is Rafian expected back, Marian?”
“I’m not sure, but we fly out in a few days, so I was hoping he’d be back home tonight. The decision falls on you then, Camille. What do you think we need to do about this Meluvian thing?”
“Call up Val Tracker and tell him that we need his Marines for a recon mission. I also need twenty Phaser Agents front and center at 0600 so that we can make plans to back them up.”
“You got it,” Dott said and Camille looked at her as if she had not seen her there the whole time.
“Dott, I have another mission for you, sister, but it will start only after the Phasers have jumped to Meluvia.”
“A solo mission?”
“Yup, this will be your first Jump as an Ace. I don’t have to tell you that it won’t be an easy task, so make sure you are sharp and rested when I call on you in a few weeks.”
“Of course.”
The three women grabbed forearms and hugged one another before separating. Marian headed off to find Tayden Lark. Camille, exhausted, entered her apartment and climbed the steps laboriously and then fell facedown into her bed and fell asleep.
Three days later, after the Phasers had made a plan to seek out the Geralos spy, Rafian and Marian stood inside of the crystal room and bid their farewells to Tayden, Frank, Dott and Camille Yan. Marian’s smile was warm and genuine as she stood near her husband. He glanced at her and squeezed her hand and she looked up at him and nodded. He didn’t have to say it but they were good and he saw the evidence in her eyes as the lights were dim—the sign of a happy Tyheran.
“We all have tough missions to embark on, but something tells me that yours will be the hardest,” Tayden said, her voice shaking as she saw them off. “I hope that your corruption games don’t hurt you permanently, Raf and that you come back to me—us—safe and secure. Marian, please watch out for our commander and let me know if you need backup.”
“He’s in good hands, Tayden. I won’t lose him; I promise you.”
Rafian kept his mouth shut and nodded at Frank, before smiling at the other three women and squeezing Marian’s hand. “Please save your concerns and worry for my friend Vallen. His mission is one that worries me the most because he cannot clone—we can. Make sure you all take care of yourselves, as well. There are a lot of unknown dangers right now and a chance that we may even have a Geralos spy within our walls. Stay cold and aware and Marian and I will make sure that we fix our alliances on Genese. We are Phasers and we will finish the mission.”
Then he activated the large black crystal and he and Marian were gone in the blink of an eye.
Memory 11
The streets of Genese were still the same as Rafian remembered them. Filthy, dark and mostly barren. They were slick and wet from a storm that was floating through the area, and it made the smell of garbage even stronger as the five shadowy figures made their way to a small pub called The Arc. Marian and Rafian were holding hands, and a Genesian diplomat dressed in a suit and tie accompanied them. He wore a wide brimmed hat that kept him dry despite the rain.
“Those outfits you Phasers have are quite revealing, Rafian. So I hope you don’t mind me saying that your wife is quite the specimen. One of the most beautiful women I have ever seen in all my years,” Cero said to Rafian. He spoke in the Genesian dialect, a language he knew Marian could not understand.
The other men in suits all made noises of agreement and Rafian swallowed hard on his cynicism. Memories flooded back into his mind of Genese and the massive chasm that separated the rich from the poor. Here they were, walking the dirty, neglected streets of Basce city, with its slum housing, orphans peering through dark alleyways, and starving citizens looking on in wonderment. He and Marian were dressed in heavy Phaser trench coats with an umbrella droid floating above them, but the upper caste men in their company wore suits—that were getting soaked—which cost as much as a year’s worth of food for any family there. He used to be one of those scavengers watching the elite stroll through. Back then, it was a dream to catch one alone, rob him and then sneak into the city to purchase things that were essential for one’s survival.
“What do you think about that, Rhee? Cero says that you have beauty beyond comparison,” Rafian said to her in Tyheran. “I’m not sure how to take it, being that he hasn’t stopped staring at you since we got out of the taxi.”
“Let him stare; I’m used to it.” She looked up at her husband to make eye contact and then continued. “I am yours, remember? He can do nothing but envy you and I am proud to be your wife.” She stepped in closer to him and hugged him close, so that her head was touching his shoulder. “I am beyond sad seeing the state of this place and knowing that you had to grow up here, Rafian. How does one go from this to where you are now?”
“You can thank the soldier that gave his life to get me onboard the Helysian, kitten. If he had not grabbed me when he did, I would be just another casualty of the war.”
Cero, who was still staring at Marian, continued to ask about her, not knowing that Rafian’s patience was rapidly declining. “I love that sing-songy language of hers, too. I have never heard such a dialect in all my travels. Is that one of the languages from your home planet of Vestalia?”
“Actually it is, Cero,” Rafian lied while wishing to himself that the Genesian had come alone. It would only take a moment for him to jump into his head and take the Geralos inside to task. He would punish him for invading a friend’s mind and for sizing up Marian the way he was.
They marched on through the wet streets until they came to the pub they were looking for. Cero pushed open the door and they stepped inside and hung their wet coats on a rack. A cel-toc maiden strode over to them and began asking about their drink orders, then turned around to take them to a private room with soft, comfortable orange seats and a music player screaming out tunes from a Genesian pop star. Traumatic memories of the past flooded Rafian’s mind and he remembered vividly how he had been at the mercy of one of those androids when he was too young to fight back. I should find the factory that builds these things while I’m here and plant a sizable bomb at its foundation, he thought. His dark thoughts were interrupted by the sounds of approval coming from his company as the cel-toc parted a curtain to reveal a large table. The scene was very old-world and cheesy to Rafian, but for Marian, it was surreal and extremely alien.
“We should open up a Phaser charity here to help the children of Genese, Rafian,” Marian whispered to him as they walked into the room. “We could have an apartment above it and visit often. I love how low-tech and real it feels here. They have gas-run vehicles, wooden houses – like, look at this!” She touched the walls of the room, not realizing that as she did this, her round posterior was on display for the three men who accompanied her husband.
“I take it your wife has never seen wooden buildings before, eh, Raf?” said Cilas as he took the cider the cel-toc had brought him.
Marian sat next to Rafian and brought her tea up to her nose to smell its aromas. She scanned the room for cameras and the men for weapons, sizing them up for what she knew was about to take place. As she drank the delicious, hot liquid, she thought about the meeting they’d had the day before. Rafian had masterfully brokered peace with the Genesians over Rend’s slight and was reassured that there would be no complications with the alliance. Cero liked Rafian a lot and it didn’t take much to forgive him. Once the formalities were over with the council, the pair
had begun telling war stories, sharing drinks and watching vids. It was Rafian’s idea to search the ghettos for a good pub and while Cero hated the idea, he knew that Rafian wanted to reminisce. As an extra precaution against what he called the “savages of the street,” Cero had insisted on bringing two secret service agents to keep them safe as they walked. So here they were.
Marian began to like Cero as they hung out, drinking and chatting and she wondered if there was a way to remove the Geralos that was influencing his thoughts without killing him. She had spoken to Rafian at length about it—in Tyheran, of course, in case of any spies—and he had promised to see if saving the diplomat was realistic.
“What’s good here?” Cero asked the cel-toc and the droid began her routine of talking about what dishes were popular and which ones she preferred personally. Rafian finished the countdown that he started in his head and Marian did the same, since it was her move.
With the hum of a vilo-sword and a move so fast that even the android was caught off guard, Marian hit the two guards simultaneously with the black edge of her blade and the men fell forward, toppling their drinks—stunned and out of commission. As she did this, Rafian slipped next to Cero and jammed a syringe into his neck. Marian was on the table in an instant. She slid across to the stunned cel-toc to bop her with the hilt of the sword, causing her to fall over, useless and out of commission. The entire attack took no more than three seconds and Marian secured the door to their room and stood guard, her vilo-sword now switched from stun baton to deadly serrated edge.
“Hurry up, babe. We don’t know how long before they begin to miss the droid,” Marian said.
Rafian nodded at her quickly as he took Cero’s head into his hands and commenced the ritual to enter the plane of thought that was his brain. He found himself falling once again, but this time there was no plane; it was a dense forest with crimson leaves and a sky of swirling black clouds. The nightmarish vision of Cero’s mental reality was enough to concern the Phaser, who looked around for the presence of the Geralos that was hiding, leaking back intelligence to his masters.
When Rafian landed, it was painful, as he broke a number of tree limbs falling towards the floor of the forest. The ground sank beneath his feet like a sponge and he stood up and dusted himself off, a move, which did nothing to his formless shape. His corruption of Cero was much different than when he had done it to the Geralos. He wondered if all species held different planes in their brains, or perhaps it was different people, each reflecting something of their reality and maybe a bit of his. He began to feel his head throbbing from a headache as he searched the forest for the Geralos.
Marian watched her husband drift off into his head as his pupils disappeared. He stood erect with his hands on Cero’s head, but was mentally gone from her, in a mysterious ritual that she couldn’t understand. After ten minutes had passed, she took out a set of stasis strips and bound the men’s hands as she sat them up on their chairs. She took the cloth napkins that were on the table and placed them in their mouths as gags. She then lifted the cel-toc to her feet and shook her awake as she walked out with her, closing the door behind them. She didn’t know what to make of the cel-toc maiden. She knew that Rafian hated her species and she didn’t know how much of it was machine and how much was organic. Would she need to kill her, or could she be coerced into silence?
The cel-toc came back to consciousness with a start, then struggled out of the hands of Marian and stared at her with her mouth open. “Assassi—.” Before she could sound the alarm, Marian had her hand on her mouth and a knife at her abdomen.
“Make a scene, girl. I dare you,” she whispered to the cel-toc as she looked past her to see if anyone had noticed them.
The room they were in was tucked back behind a series of empty tables, so no one had noticed the scuffle that had occurred between the two women. Marian saw other cel-tocs serving patrons, so she felt confident that theirs wouldn’t be missed for quite some time. She pulled her back into the room, secured the door and then locked her into stasis strips. She gagged the cel-toc and then sat her next to the other men. Breathing a sigh of relief, she took her place once again near the door and set her clock to thirty minutes, so that she could wake up Rafian in what she assumed was a good amount of time.
It felt like a whole day that Rafian searched for the Geralos, and he began to think that he would never find him within the forest. Suddenly, he saw another figure of light take off running away from him and he raced after it, his feet no longer heavy as he increased his speed. As he ran, he began to imagine that he could fly and instinctively he jumped and flattened out, knowing he would stay aloft, floating towards his target. He shot past trees, hills and depressions as the other figure ran, eventually catching up to it and slamming it to the ground. When he touched the light of the other figure, he blacked out and found himself on the floor of a temple very much like the one he had destroyed in Geral. Several Geralos were seated with him in a circle, looking on for answers. He opened his mouth and the words he spoke were from their language.
“Where am I?”
“High lord, you are in the temple of Ri. Do you need Sapra water to reduce the confusion?”
“No, but I need to rest. My head is pounding and I am not sure what is going on. Why am I in the company of lizards?”
“Lizards? Where do you see lizards, great one?”
And it was then that Rafian realized what was going on. Looking around at his surroundings, he knew it to be a high temple for the Order of Tancha, the religious sect of Geralos that had begun the crusade to take over Vestalia. In the distance he could see other Geralos seated like he was, controlling important Genesians, Vestalians and whoever else they could. He wanted to drop a bomb in the building and let it kill them, but even if he had one, the corruption from the Geralos would kill the hosts and many battleships, countries and squadrons would lose their leaders in one instance. He wondered what he could do to get them to stop. What was the secret to breaking the minds without risking lunacy and death for the poor souls being made into puppets? He was inside a high official, one of the unquestioned leaders of their cause. Who would question him if he started exhibiting strange behavior? So why not ask?
“Tell me, man, what is our secret to leaving a host’s mind without killing them?”
“Is this a test, my lord?”
“What do you think it is?”
“Sorry, lord, it’s just unlike you. Well, sir, I suppose you could just stop. If the host dies, we die, but we have the ability to enter and exit the mind of a weakling at our leisure. I hope that was the answer you were looking for.”
Rafian stood up and the circle of Geralos stood up with him in unison.
“Get the rest of them up and at attention. I have something to say.”
The Geralos complied and before long he had over thirty sleepy monks staring at him, wondering what great words of wisdom he would bestow upon them. The entire episode almost made him smile, but he kept his composure, despite his throbbing head, and took a deep breath to address them.
“I am not your high lord.”
He waited for his words to settle in. They all looked at him, puzzled. Some wondered if he were about to tell a joke—like they were used to—while some took it as another one of the tests needed to promote them. Rafian studied their scaled faces for reactions and when they all stood waiting for him to continue, he walked over to a table and picked up a curved knife.
“You came out of nowhere – the whole lot of you. Caught us sleeping peacefully, after we made nice with the neighbors. You robbed us, ate us and took our only home, forcing us to live unnaturally in space aboard vessels of iron and oxygen.”
One Geralos was elated. “Master is offering up one of his ironic poems! He has taken to the role of a Vestalian dirt-sucker. Please continue, master. This is a welcome break from work. Yes, indeed!”
The crowd joined in on his elation and began to nudge one another with glee as t
hey awaited even more of the performance from their lord.
“You do not know me but you will know my name. I am Rafian VCA and like you, I can ride the planes of the mind. Yes, you heard me right. I possess the one thing that you all have been biting into the heads of our women to possess. I am a Seeker.”
The Geralos were now well aware that what was happening was not a joke, or an act of irony on their master’s part. They began to approach him carefully. He held the knife at the ready and continued to smirk at their bewildered faces. Rafian felt slow and lethargic in the body, but he knew that at any time Marian would snatch him out. He only needed to survive long enough for them to panic and once the timer on her clock went off, she would pull him out. He assumed that he would get out unscathed and would shake Cero back to consciousness. His friend would understand why he had to do what was done, and they would find a way to prevent further corruption of their government. The Geralos rushed him as a unit and as he adjusted to his host’s lack of speed, he cut through two of their necks. They fell to the grown flailing, black ichor pouring all over the floor.
“Listen to me, you fools! If I can dislodge an old master priest from the mind of one of my own, what is to stop me from taking over your planet?”
With that, the body of the old priest slumped over as the rest of the Geralos rushed at him to beat him. Rafian was pulled through the fissure of time, back into the crimson forest. The light being he had tackled was now beneath him as a pile of ash. He began to hear Marian’s sweet voice yelling at him to come back. Looking down at his shimmering body, Rafian jumped and took flight. He aimed high into the center of the spiraling clouds and accelerated in velocity as he climbed higher and higher towards an alien atmosphere that he assumed would set him free. As he broke the glass of the bubble that contained him, his light body dissipated and he saw nothing but blackness as he began to fall. His fall was shocking and he struggled despite himself to regain flight. When he crashed back through the clouds of Cero’s mind, he was back in the pub and Marian was holding him steady, shouting at him to come back to her.