The Exiled Earthborn

by Paul Tassi

  After cramming in a precious few hours of cryo, Lucas had to wait until dinner the next day to find Alpha. Still drenched after a marathon session in the water tank, he made liquid footprints as he trudged to the CIC on legs that would barely support him. Alpha sat flipping through star maps and signal patterns in the central chair. His eyes widened when Lucas showed him the glass square.

  “You got this from a covert compartment in Omicron’s quarters?” he repeated, still skeptical of Lucas’s detective abilities.

  “Yes,” Lucas said, suddenly chilled from being damp. “The only other things in there were trophies from the colonies. Preserved period weapons the Soran civilizations wiped out there.”

  Alpha nodded.

  “Depending on their age and who owned them, they are likely invaluable artifacts. It is no wonder he kept them secure.”

  “But what is this?” Lucas said as he jabbed his finger into the glass square. It left no fingerprint.

  “A [garbled]. Again, I am not sure of the translation. A personal … log, perhaps?”

  “A journal?” Lucas said helpfully.

  “That may be an apt description. Though the [garbled] is no simple scroll or book.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It only responds to the biological signature of the person who ordered its creation, without exception. There is no amount of hacking or decrypting I could possibly do to activate it. And any trace amounts of Omicron’s DNA would not be sufficient either. A substantive sample is required.”

  “That means …” Lucas said warily.

  “We would have to wait until we return to Sora to extract Omicron’s body out of storage. I would likely have to reanimate some of his cells to get the [garbled] to recognize his presence.”

  “Well shit,” Lucas said, disappointed that his treasure hunt had yielded a dead end. But at least Alpha seemed to think it was possible to unlock at some point, provided they survived the trip.

  On the way back to the makeshift mess hall, Lucas saw a battered Asha talking to Maston in the hallway. Lucas shoved the glass square into his pocket so Maston wouldn’t ask about it. He’d decided it would be best to keep its existence secret from the Sorans, should they confiscate it before he got a chance to see what was on it. Asha smiled painfully as he approached, her chin bruised. Maston wore a familiar scowl.

  “How’s Alpha?” she asked, seeing where he’d just come from.

  “Fine,” Lucas nodded. Her face looked how his felt, and it was clear they weren’t going any easier on her. “Calibrations. The usual.”

  “The bond you have with that creature is … disturbing,” Maston said piously.

  “That creature, as you call him, has advanced your tactical military knowledge of Xala more than anyone in your history,” Lucas countered. “What are you doing here anyway?”

  “Maston is heading up my training squad now,” Asha replied.

  “That’s Watchman Maston to you,” he corrected.

  Asha rolled her eyes.

  Maston was training Asha now?

  “Why?” Lucas blurted out.

  Maston considered the question.

  “Your … companion shows promise,” he said. “I cannot say the same for you.”

  Mind games. It was almost too obvious. Was Maston really going to try to pit them against each other like this? Lucas had to repress laughter.

  “Yeah, I bet she does. She’s killed more Xalans than you, I reckon.”

  Maston looked amused.

  “I very much doubt that.”

  Lucas pressed.

  “You’re training her now, huh? Did you do that?” he motioned toward her purple bruises.

  “She failed to correctly block a number of my strikes.”

  “Or maybe you just like beating on women?”

  Maston turned red and stepped toward Lucas who met his gaze and didn’t back away.

  “Training is over for the day, boys. At ease,” Asha said, parting the two of them. Maston turned and stormed off without a word. Lucas couldn’t stand this new version of Maston, which was, in effect, the old version of Maston. He’d completely shut down the side of him mourning for Corinthia. At least publicly.

  As he rounded the hallway corner, Lucas turned to Asha.

  “Seriously?”

  Asha rested her head against the wall.

  “Yeah, yeah. Well, it wasn’t my call. And besides, he may be a dick, but he knows his shit, that’s for sure. After seeing him fight, I’m glad he’s on our side.”

  “I’m not so sure he is,” Lucas said. “I don’t trust him.”

  Asha cocked her head.

  “Because he’ll try to kill me, or try to sleep with me?”

  Lucas was surprised to hear her correctly vocalize his thoughts.

  “Either. Both. Who knows with him? He’s got a past so dark it’s illegal to even talk about it.”

  Lucas relayed what he knew about Vitalla to her, and she listened intently.

  “Interesting,” she said. “I’ll see what I can dig out of him when he’s not yelling at his henchmen to beat the shit out of me. Or doing it himself.”

  “Say the word and I’ll knock that smug smile off of him.”

  Asha looked at him sternly.

  “I can handle myself, thank you very much. And I’d be careful with how many of his buttons you press. Earthborn or not, I can see him trying to take your head off someday soon.”

  “He can try.”

  Lucas couldn’t focus his vision as he drifted in and out of consciousness. He was being carried somewhere, and he could hear voices around him.

  “What the hell, Wrev? You weren’t supposed to kill him.”

  “He told us to go as hard as we could.”

  “Which would obviously kill him!”

  Lucas felt liquid dripping down from his ear. He couldn’t move.

  “Those were the orders,” came another voice. Axon.

  “You do realize he’s not tank-grown like us, right? There’s no way he could keep up with one of us going full tilt, much less two.”

  Lucas was trying to remember what had just happened. His memory was jumping around like a skipping record.

  “He’s tougher than he looks,” came the first voice.

  “I don’t care. It’s my job to ensure he’s alive and that’s pretty damn hard to do when I have to deal with bullshit like this. And you can tell the Watchman I said that!”

  It was Kiati, her shrill voice raised in a yell Lucas had never heard before. Images began to swirl in his head. The ring. Two opponents coming at him with furious, terrifying intensity. They were out for blood, and lots of it.

  Lucas tried to speak, but could barely move his lips.

  “Shut up,” Kiati said sharply, recognizing the gesture. “It’s too dangerous for you to even be awake right now.” She turned a dial and Lucas blacked out entirely.

  A dream found him. A familiar scene buried in his mind. Everything was hazy with the colors distorted and constantly shifting. This was no pod vision, but a memory nonetheless.

  He was lying on a tile floor, clad only in a towel, several inches shorter and a few dozen pounds lighter. His head was throbbing. When he sat up, he felt the blood drain quickly downward, threatening unconsciousness. Looking around he saw lockers, showers, and her. He blinked.

  “Wh-what just happened?”

  The girl before him was slowly coming into focus. She had wavy blond hair with bright blue eyes. Her lips parted to reveal an ivory smile.

  “You are alive. That’s good. The nurse should be coming down soon.”

  Lucas rubbed his forehead with a skinny arm. He realized that he was naked under the towel draped over him and quickly wrapped the end of it around his backside.

  “The nurse? What happened?” he said, disoriented.

  The girl laughed.

  “Yeah, that would be a moment to forget, I’d say.” She swept a dangling strand of hair over her ear as she knelt next to him. She wore a crim
son-and-white Salem Sun Devils cheerleading uniform and had similarly colored ribbons in her hair.

  “What are you doing in our locker room?” he asked, looking around.

  “Nope,” she said, slowly moving her head from side to side.

  Lucas saw a curious absence of urinals and began to scramble to his feet.

  “Oh shit.”

  “Whoa there,” she said, holding her hands out as she rose with him. “I don’t think you should be walking yet. That was quite a hit.”

  Lucas felt the lump on his head. The girl realized he needed a full explanation.

  “The football guys ran in here and tossed you on the ground,” she recounted. “You tried to sprint out of here, but you slipped on the wet floor and rammed your head into that locker.”

  She pointed to one nearby with a large dent in it.

  “The other girls all ran out of here screaming, but I figured someone should make sure you weren’t dead.”

  “Uh, thanks,” Lucas said, uncontrollably red from embarrassment. As soon as she said it, it all came flooding back to him. The yelling, the struggling, and him being thrown naked into a room full of cheerleaders who were about to head out for practice. This was literally his worst nightmare.

  He looked around for any additional clothes he could throw on to cover his bony frame, but there weren’t any. This wasn’t his locker room after all.

  “Why’d they do that anyway?” she asked. “Aren’t you on the team?”

  “Yeah,” Lucas said, shifting uncomfortably. “But I’m a freshman, so … you know.”

  “On varsity?” she said, taken aback. “Puh, you’d think you’d be their hero. None of their sorry asses ever made varsity their first year, I’ll tell you that. They’re just jealous.”

  “I doubt that,” Lucas said. He could hear water dripping in the shower stalls behind her. She put her finger to her lip, considering something.

  “If you want, I can get my brother to kick their asses for you.”

  “Your brother?” Lucas asked.

  “Captain of the hockey team, could bench press any one of them.”

  Lucas smiled sheepishly.

  “Nah, that’s okay. I can fight my own battles.”

  The girl put her foot on a nearby bench and retied one of her shoes.

  “Then you should. They won’t stop. Not unless you stand up to them.”

  Lucas scoffed, but found he was surprisingly at ease talking to this girl, despite the present circumstances.

  “They’re all twice my size, what am I supposed to do?”

  “Hit the biggest one as hard as you can. That should be enough.”

  Lucas smiled and looked down at the pattern of the tile.

  “Alright, but if I die, I’m blaming you.”

  She looked over at him.

  “You know, you better go get suited up or you’re going to be late,” she said.

  “Oh right,” Lucas said, forgetting he still had a full day of practice with those miserable assholes ahead of him. He turned to leave, then stopped himself.

  “Thanks, uh, for staying,” he said.

  “No problem. What’s your name, anyway?”

  “Lucas.”

  “Sonya.”

  When he opened the door, it wasn’t the hallway of Salem High. It was a vacant abyss that forcefully pulled him from the entryway like he was being sucked into a black hole. He was flung out into the darkness, which brightened until it was a blinding white.

  10

  He shuddered as he woke. Though he was no longer sleeping in the Xalan pods, they seemed to have altered his unconscious state long after the fact. He’d had a few dreams like that one recently, memories real yet unreal, but almost verbatim how they’d happened in his own life, no matter how many years it had been. That was the first time he ever met Sonya, and he found tears in his eyes when he blinked. It was strange to see her so young again, the girl he fell in love with who years later would be his wife. Who years after that would be dust in a crater in Portland. He shivered again.

  Lucas could hear yelling, though it felt like his ears were stuffed with cotton. As the room came into focus, it was Asha screaming at Kiati, who in turn was screaming at the sorry-looking pair of Wrev and Axon, still coated in much of his blood. Lucas saw a three-clawed hand pass over his face and, mustering all his strength to turn his head, found Alpha working on his wounds, beads of sweat dripping down his tough gray skin.

  Maston. Maston had done this. To teach him a lesson, to send a message, or some combination of the two. It was Lucas’s last thought as he drifted back into blackness. He would pay.

  He would pay.

  The next day, Lucas waved away the narcotic medication that was keeping him in a constant haze. He was tired of a fogged head and wanted to embrace the pain that plagued him. He never wanted to forget how this moment felt, as he lay in complete and utter agony. Every muscle and bone screamed from underneath his skin. Through careful breathing and almost zen-like focus, Lucas pushed away his body’s cries. Asha, Alpha, and even Kiati pleaded with him to accept more painkillers, but he refused. He could feel the scratches of the microscopic nanobots sewing his bones back together and mending torn tissue. His blood ran rich with healing compounds that would bring him back from the brink. In tune with every fiber of his body, through the constant pain, he felt himself healing, hour by hour, day by day.

  After hearing the laundry list of his injuries read out by Alpha with scientific precision, Lucas was sure if this were back on Earth, he would have never made it back to his former state. But here? There seemed to be no such thing as an irreversible injury. Silo showed up to visit one day and talked him through the time he’d had his arm blown off by a proto-nade. There was a thin line running down his shoulder where they grafted on a new one, grown from his own cells in a matter of weeks. By comparison, Lucas’s healing process looked downright simple.

  Six days. That’s all it took for Lucas to pluck the wires from his body, stand up in the med bay, and demand to start training again. Maston hadn’t come at all the past week to witness his handiwork, and Lucas was determined not to let him win. Accompanied by his training contingent, the eleven of them marched with Lucas to the CIC where Maston stood gazing out the viewscreen. He turned with that same sickly smile he always wore when attempting to make Lucas’s life hell.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “After your recent … training accident, you wish to be put in cryosleep for the remainder of the journey?”

  Lucas had to suppress a burst of rage when he’d heard the words “training accident,” but managed to speak calmly.

  “Actually,” he said, keeping a civil tone that mirrored Maston’s, “I look forward to completing the program.”

  It very obviously caught Maston off guard.

  “There is no way you would be physically able to continue after your ordeal.”

  Alpha spoke from a few feet away near the commander’s chair.

  “You underestimate both the healing regimen I prescribed, and the tenacity of the individual in question.”

  Matson pretended not to hear him.

  “In your absence, your companion has made great strides in her training. You are behind.”

  “I’ll catch up,” Lucas said, his blood starting to boil.

  “You can’t,” Maston sneered. “Axon, prove my point.”

  “Excuse me, Watchman?” Axon said confused.

  “Show the Earthborn that he is not ready for Phase Two.”

  “But sir, he just got out of the med bay minutes ago.”

  “And he and his … doctor,” he jerked his head toward Alpha, “claim he’s all put back together again. Now show me or I’ll put you out an airlock for insubordination.”

  Axon looked uneasily at Lucas as the rest of the group spread out around them. His eyes apologized in advance, but Lucas didn’t care. His blood had dropped in temperature about forty degrees. He flexed his hands and clenched them into fists. Tiny wounds where tubin
g had entered his veins were still red between his tendons. He’d been fighting Axon long enough to know what his opening would be. A calamitous swing from the right followed by sharp uppercut with his left. Lucas had been floored by either blow many times. But not today.

  “Hit the biggest one as hard as you can.”

  The behemoth lunged at him with the familiar combo. Lucas ducked under the haymaker and immediately shifted right to avoid the incoming uppercut. He then dodged three lightning quick jabs that pummeled the empty spaces over each of his shoulders and avoided the heel kick at the tail end of the pattern. As Axon wound up for another punch, Lucas shifted to his back foot. The swing missed his nose by a quarter inch and was so forceful that Axon stumbled two steps forward in its wake. That was all Lucas needed.

  Lucas pushed off his legs and drove a straight right directly into Axon’s jaw. His eyes were vacant before his feet left the ground and he crashed to the deck with a thud, all three hundred-plus pounds of him almost leaving a crater. Every pair of eyes around them widened, including Maston’s. Axon didn’t stir. Lucas’s hand was on fire, and he was fairly certain he’d rebroken a pair of fingers. He walked to stand over Axon who was now blinking his eyes, unsure of what had just happened. Extending his left hand downward, Lucas helped pull him back to his feet.

  Maston’s voice wasn’t so gleefully malevolent now.

  “Report to the training chamber tomorrow,” he said coldly. “Perhaps you’ll be of some use to this unit yet.”

  Lucas turned and walked out of the CIC, leaving the other Guardians to marvel at his handiwork. A small smile crept across his lips.

  Phase Two was far more instructive than destructive. With his body now forged into metal on the backs of countless Fight and Survival Days, it was time to learn what exactly to do with it. Fight Days were no longer mindless assaults. He ran through a variety of actual tactics from modern and ancient Soran fighting styles. Kal M’so. Jartanne. Baali-stanno. Words Lucas didn’t know, but each came with a set of deadly techniques that would allow him to dominate his opponent, no matter their size. In his training, Lucas heard the story of Sha’len, the Baali monk who defended his mining vessel from a Xalan raiding party using only his bare hands. He would later rise to become a field general in the SDI. There was a power in these schools of martial arts that would take a lifetime to truly unlock, but even the highlights were shaping Lucas into a deadly weapon.