by Greg Dragon
Illi was still smiling, but Marian could see that something had changed in his demeanor. He regarded her with a strange look in his eye and then surrendered to her bravado by nodding and smiling. “Alright, alright, girl, you’re not so soft. But, let’s not waste any more time exchanging niceties out here. Come inside the tent so that we can plan the rescue of our friends and bring some hell to the Felitian ranks.”
Memory 17
Rafian VCA touched the large, black crystal, lost consciousness, and appeared in Luca, outside of Veece, deep in the same forest where Marika had killed the two troopers. He lifted up a tracking device to his face and scanned for crystal residue. He saw the telltale traces of them in areas of the forest, and when he sent the scanning further out, he saw that a few jumps had been made within Veece city.
Sighing loudly, he started walking, trying to work the situation out in his mind of how he would get Marian to come back. It was night time and the frogs were singing songs of mating while Talula hid behind a cloudy sky.
Marian had been gone for two weeks from Anstractor. The time difference was very different between the two galaxies, and he knew that to Marian it would have felt like a month had passed since she left him. He recalled how upset she was with him, but she had left his ring on her finger, even when she said she wanted a divorce.
He recalled the night vividly, especially how upset she was. He had apologized like he always did, but it had done nothing to help. Then she ran off, to come here, to Luca. With two weeks gone, he knew she would have felt neglected, as if he didn’t care for her and was content with leaving her alone.
He touched his forehead and tried to massage away the worry. How had he not thought about this? Yes, the war was at full boil in Anstractor, but that was no excuse for neglecting her. No, he had let it pass, and he had relished the freedom of her absence. Why couldn’t he act on the immense love that he felt for her? Was it so hard to stay loyal but for the few times that a mission required seduction?
That was all she had asked, yet he wasn’t willing to do it. He felt small and immature for the way he’d behaved, but it strengthened his resolve to seek her out for an apology.
He spat and touched the bark of a large tree, looking out at the open field that ran the length of the area in front of him. In the distance stood the tall walls of Veece, and there were numerous cruisers flying over it, like flies at a trash dump.
“What have you done, Marika?” he asked out loud, and smiled with guilty pride.
His jump into Luca was miscalculated, and instead of ending up in Dearin, Talula—which was a city he knew well—he had ended up near Veece, in the heart of the beast. He crossed the plain to the large, looming gates, and two troopers that were seated on the walls pointed rifles at him as he got close.
“Identify yourself, stranger, and show proof of who you are,” one of them announced.
Rafian vanished and appeared next to him, driving a fist into his helmeted jaw. The move was so sudden that the other man couldn’t react and all he could do was drop his rifle and hold up his hands as Rafian kicked the fallen man in the stomach and turned to face him. He didn’t know how it was that the stranger could vanish the way he did, but it was frightening, so he backed up slowly, begging for his life.
“You all aren’t true believers,” Rafian said. “Well that’s a relief. Seems like Kyle’s lackadaisical recruitment practices will be the undoing of Palus. But don’t feel bad, boys, you’re no traitors. You’re probably up here playing sentry in order to feed your families, right? A good, honest job where you get the added bonus of a bird’s eye view of a few plump, Primian bosoms. Right?”
The men nodded slowly. Rafian helped the first one up and took his rifle.
“Listen, I’m not from around here – which you probably realize by now. I’m not here to make trouble, but I do need to visit a friend in the city, and I really don’t want any of you toy soldiers giving me problems. Give me the all-clear so that I can walk the street in peace, and I promise you that I won’t hurt anybody,” he said.
The guards nodded and turned away from him, and Rafian hopped down to the nearest curb inside of Veece. He walked down the main street, away from the gates. A brown-skinned Tyheran woman stumbled across his path, forcing him to stop. She looked over her shoulders and then into the sky, then placed her palm on his chest.
“We’re all going to die,” she said under her breath. “Those resistance bastards are everywhere. Get inside and cover yourself up, man. You look as if you have no clothes on.”
She dry-heaved and Rafian flinched, but with her hand still on his chest, she walked off into the darkness. He looked down at himself and at his 3B suit, and saw that he stuck out like a man’s first grey hair. More people stumbled past him as he walked: some were drunk and others were just curious. Most of them were looking over their backs, but others looked up in the hills as if rebels were up there, looking to pick them off.
He noticed that much hadn’t changed since the time he was there, but he wouldn’t allow himself to become too nostalgic about it. For him, Veece was Marian VCA. It was here that he had met her, fought her, made love to her, and married her. Everything else about the city was pain and loss. He did notice the wall, which was new, and that there were more aliens on the streets now than he remembered in the old Veece.
He strode down a steep hill lined with shops, and past a gathering of prostitutes who reached out to gently touch the front of his 3B suit. There were four Primians and a couple of Tyherans, and behind them on the top floor of the house that they stood in front of them was a mean Deijen woman, watching him curiously. Rafian winked at them and pressed on through the city.
When he had been walking for a time, he decided to stop inside a bar. The neighborhood was rundown, sleazy, and stunk of a mineral that hinted of old, Ranalos blood. He’d grown weary of watching his back as he passed the shadowy houses and the bar had lights and music, which drew him to it.
A shower of stringed beads hit his face as he walked inside, and he saw that they were hung at the entrance for decoration. Inside of the bar, the atmosphere was smoky. There was a sweet smell that reminded him of cinnamon combined with the perfume of Tyheran ladies. He walked forward and the smell changed to the rank odor of men who had spent the entire day face down in their own vomit.
The lights were so dim that he could barely make out the face of the bartender. He could see that she was a Daltak, a tiny thing, and the numerous plaits that were all over her head complemented her quirky sense of dress.
“Tuwoll, dark and handsome, he is, and smells of off-worlder. You a brave one stepping inside Cecille’s with the twoopas on a rampage like this,” she said to him, speaking not in Tyheran but the basic language of the Anstractor galaxy.
It took Rafian a second to realize that he still wore the decoder chip behind his ear and it was distorting the woman’s Daltese into a strange accent that made him smile. He put up his hand to tell her to wait and then reached up and tugged it off.
“Let me get a shot of whiskey and a little information, doll,” he said to her, and she nodded and spun to commence the pouring.
“What type of information you looking for, tall, dark, and handsome? Listen, I’ll keep calling you that until you give me your name,” she said, stopping the pour to look back at him.
He noticed that she kept a shotgun near the credit-slide machine, and she had a pair of needles jutting out of her ear lobes. She had trooper-issue leather boots, and a skirt that was too short for the temperature, accentuating a pair of shapely legs wrapped in stockings.
“You flirt with everyone? You’re quite the sight,” he said.
She placed a glass of murky black liquid in front of him. When he didn’t drink it immediately, she leaned on the bar top, revealing cleavage that Rafian found magnetic—as if his eyes were metal—and waited.
“Tell me if it’s okay,” she said in a cute, nasally way, and he lifted the glass and knocked it back before slamming it down. It felt like he wa
s drinking the runoff from a spicy offering of meat. It burned so much that water came from his eyes, and when the liquor touched his stomach, the dark room lightened a bit, and the cute bartender was looking even better than when he had first regarded her.
“Take a shot, lady. The next one’s on me,” he said, and she turned around and poured herself a glass and stayed in position so that the thick liquid could take its time coming out. Rafian stared at her nice, narrow waist and plump posterior. Even when she turned a bit to smile as she waited, he kept his eyes on her body.
Never made it with a Daltak before, he thought, wondering If he pursued his urges, would it pose a problem for the reunion with his wife? Or would it be him just doing a bit more of what she was upset with him for doing anyway?
A smile crossed the Daltak’s lips slightly as she looked at his empty glass. She walked back over to him and raised her own glass and then sucked it down. A few drops fell from her dark, full lips and landed on her chest. “Oops,” she remarked and licked her lips.
“Maker!” Rafian said and squeezed his eyes shut to resist. He took the napkin from below his glass and leaned forward to dab the droplets that had landed on her breasts.
When he had finished cleaning her up, he reached in the pouch and pulled out two credits that he had brought along. They were classic coins that he’d kept as keepsakes from the last time he had visited Tyhera. He placed them on the bar and the girl winked, then he brought out a third and slid the change over to her.
“You expecting something more for that third hundred?” she asked him, and he made an audible grunt when he saw the amount of money that he had laid down.
“Just information, if you have any for me. My name is … Anstractor, and I need a private charter to take me to Talula,” he said.
“Talula? What you going up there for?” she asked, focusing in on his eyes as if she didn’t expect any other customers for the night. The place seemed more lounge than dive bar, and the number of pillows thrown about on the tiled floor numbered in the hundreds. As his eyes grew accustomed to the low light, Rafian began to see lovers of all shapes, sizes, species and genders, parlaying—along with other things—with one another. There were illegal spices being smoked, and two seedy underworld types were brokering deals out in the open.
He looked at her and shrugged, and she turned her head slightly. The low bulb that sat on the bar illuminated a tattoo she had behind her ear. It was a stylized word, written in old Tyheran, and it stood for Palus Felitious. Smashing the word was a three-fingered fist, a symbol of Daltak defiance. She pulled the collar of her tiny vest up to hide it again and then placed her hands on the counter to gauge his reaction.
“How did you know?” he asked quietly and she took his glass and pushed the coins back to him.
“After you have been fighting for as long as I have, you start to know your friends from your enemies just by looks alone. No one that looks like you would be loyal to them, not unless you were a lord, a baron, or some sort of big-shot trooper, and none of those types would swallow mud with me. So you could consider it a test that I served you mud instead of your whiskey. But, you aced it. So, welcome to Cecille’s, brother,” she said.
“What is your name, Daltak?” he asked again.
“Jelline, Mister Made-Up Name. Care to tell me what they really call you, or are you still trying to pretend that you aren’t one of us?” she said, staring up at him.
“Don’t say my name around too many people or both you and I will regret it,” he said. “My name is Rafian. I have a bit of a reputation.”
“No way you’re Rafian,” she said with a smile. “Aren’t you supposed to be dead or something? The boys still talk about you as if you were a folk hero or something. You gotta let me do it,” she said suddenly and Rafian raised an eyebrow at her.
“Do what, exactly?” Rafian asked, and she jumped up and grabbed him by the ears, then planted a wet, sugary, liquor tasting kiss on his lips.
Their tongues touched and he found it pleasant, so he threw care to the winds and brought his hands up to caress her slender shoulders. She sucked on his bottom lip and held him steady. This went on for a few, long seconds before she released him. Rafian stood stunned as the place grew silent, and he stared at the tiny, horned beauty.
“It’s not every day that a girl gets to make out with one of the most wanted men in the galaxy,” she said. “I can strike that off my list of goals. Thank you, Rafian … or should I say, Anstractor. Hold up a sec, will you? It’s closing time. Don’t get any ideas of running off when I lock up, either. I know a guy that can charter you, but I have to take you when I get outta here,” she said.
Jelline then got on top of the bar and slammed two glasses together. They didn’t shatter but made a loud crashing noise as if they had. The people inside of the bar didn’t seem to pay much attention to it, but then one by one they got up, waved their goodbyes, and exited the door.
By the time the last patron left the building, Jelline had the bar cleaned off and was placing chairs on top of the tables. Rafian volunteered to help and she handed him a wet cloth. He proceeded to wipe off the beer-stained tables and pick up food that was on the floor. When he saw her lifting more chairs to get them off the floor, he playfully threw the rag at her and they decided to swap duties.
“I think that looks good and clean,” Jelline said after mopping up the floor and locking the front door.
Rafian took a look around and observed how old and dark the place was. It still smelled of sweat, old perfume, and cheap liquor, but there was now an added scent to this vile mélange. It smelled of putrid, disgusting water.
“It’s too dark to tell how clean you got it, don’t you think?” he asked, and she rolled her eyes and took his arm as she walked to the back of the building. Jelline opened the door and looked one way and then the other, then pulled out a pistol and held it by her leg. She grimaced as she looked around, but soon the taut muscles in her face relaxed and she skipped across the back alley towards a fence.
Rafian followed, keeping his eyes on her and looking for anything out of the ordinary beneath the dark blue sky. The lights of the city were out as the morning crept in, and it seemed as if all of the citizens within Veece City had finally gone to bed.
As Jelline worked at unlocking the gate, Rafian saw two figures materialize from out of the shadows. They had not seen him as he slunk behind, and the first of these shadow slipped in behind Jelline, clasped her mouth shut and simultaneously disarmed her. The other had a shiny instrument in his hand and was approaching her slowly. But as soon as he got close enough to inflict any harm, Rafian twisted the hilt of the las-sword, triggering the laser’s edge, and rushed at the armed man while swinging the sword down.
The blinding speed of his maneuver caught the man off guard and when the blade took his hands off at the wrist, he paused for a moment before screaming. Rafian spun effortlessly and removed his head, and then dove at Jelline, knocking her and her abductor down. The shocked man tried to retaliate but he wasn’t fast enough. Rafian began to hit him repeatedly in the face with the pommel of the sword.
When the bloody work had been completed and the las-sword was placed back into its sheath, Rafian helped his Daltak friend to her feet. She collected her gun and after a few more tries at the lock, she managed to get the fence open and pulled him through. Locking it behind them and hugging him tightly, she kissed him on the cheek and then released him and bowed.
“Daltak’s respect the life debt, and now I owe you,” she said with a strangely calm tone to her voice. “This is my apartment up here.”
Rafian looked at the tiny flat that sat by itself on the other side of the fenced-in bar. “So you live by your bar? Well, this is convenient,” he said as she turned to unlock her door. “Jelline, listen, you don’t owe me a life debt. When I get to Talula we’re square on any deals – plus what sort of rebel would I be to run off and let those thugs rob you?”
“Thanks, Rafian. I am normally rea
dy for those sorts of things. Guess I was distracted and they got the jump on me before I could show them my gun.”
“Don’t beat yourself up about it. They were in the dark,” Rafian said.
“And that cool sword of yours; it was a wicked looking thing. How does it glow in the dark like that?” she asked.
“Too long a story to tell you just yet,” he replied.
“Well, my friend will come by tomorrow near midday. That gives us a lot of time to talk. You can tell me about your strange outfit, the device you took off your ear, and that extraordinary sword. I will fix you a Daltak drink that will blow your mind and force you to tell everyone about the bar. It will be my thanks for saving my skin out there, and who knows … I may actually take you to bed with me.”
Memory 18
The next morning Rafian woke up on the couch inside of Jelline’s living room with a blanket thrown over him. He lifted it slowly to see what he was wearing, and he was still in his 3B suit and boots. He had no idea how long he had been sleeping, but it was still a bit dark inside of the house and through an open window he could see that it was daytime.
There was a lot of hustle and bustle outside as merchants got ready for the day, and the troopers that worked the late shift were able to go home. He got up and checked his weapons and pack, then looked around the tiny house for Jelline. All the doors were open inside of the house, and her tidy arrangement of crimson upholstered chairs gave it all a regal look. He stopped at her bedroom door and looked in at her four post bed. She was not inside the house.
He moved back to the couch and sat down, but a noise on the outside brought him to his feet with his las-sword in hand. Something about that noise was alarming, and he slid next to one of the windows and then behind one of Jelline’s tall curtains. There were whispers now and the door opened to two silhouettes. One was Jelline, and the other looked to be a taller, male Daltak. She walked over to a panel and typed in a code. The entire house seemed to shudder as all five windows closed and the door locked.