Anstractor (The New Phase Book 1)

by Greg Dragon

  Rafian was taken in by Captain Samoo LES, a Vestalian farmer turned military war hero during the Seventh Invasion, known as the Geralos Vox. Samoo was unhappy with his assignment of babysitting a stowaway. He reminded Rafian daily that he was an annoyance by calling him names and constantly assigning him chores. Rafian’s name was “boy,” and his sleeping quarters was a tiny corner of the soldier’s apartment.

  Samoo’s apartment was the same as the other 1,500 soldier-issued quarters aboard the ship. It was a ten-by-nine-foot space occupied by a bed, which flipped out from the port wall and could double as a table by selecting that option on an exterior panel. Samoo kept it as a table, not ever sleeping in the presence of Rafian, who wondered how the man could stay so sharp and clean without resting.

  Samoo was a closed book on everything, including his eating and sleeping habits.

  There was a tiny metal sink that protruded from the wall and a toilet and mirror, all retractable so that the room could become an empty cell with the simple touch of a button. Every day, between the hours of 0500 and 1000, the room was a cell for Rafian that was used for training.

  Each morning the boy was roused, made to jog out a three-mile trek, do a number of push-ups and sit-ups, recite military doctrine, and eat a breakfast of laucks and mosh (which would be the equivalent of dry oatmeal and egg whites). This ritual continued for months, and while he hated every second of it at first, he slowly began to accept it and even liked it. The captain was given a year to make young Rafian into a prodigy. The boy was too impressive to be cast out with the rubbish, and Samoo was not going to fail, no matter how much he had to push him.

  What made it very hard for young Rafian, however, was the fact that there were other children on the ship. They were called cadets, and they dressed and acted the part well enough. Rafian realized that he was being made to prove himself worthy of becoming one of their number, but he knew that they had not been required to do the same daily ritual as he. They were lucky, chosen from healthy, happy homes—the sons and daughters of military fathers and mothers. He expected that he would pass, and when he did, he would have the new hell of dealing with the constant ridicule and bullying from them, his would-be peers. It placed his mind in a dark place and made him very defensive and aware.

  “Look at you now, boy, all fire and no weakness” was what the captain had to say after he had completed the eleventh month of training. He was nicer to Rafian now, offering him real chow from the dining halls when he could and telling him war stories from the past whenever they had time together. Rafian had grown fond of the captain and had developed a real love for training and military logic.

  Samoo had given him a tiny las-gun a while back—a gift for being quiet and doing as he was told. The pistol had a fried ejection rod, so there was no way that he could shoot himself. Samoo had noticed that Rafian had nothing of his own, and with the importance of high morale in addition to Rafian’s diligence in his duties, he felt it was safe enough to hand it over to the boy. Without toys, vids, or any of the things that children his age played with, Rafian made the gun his favorite toy. At first he was content with playing starfighter and aliens by himself when things were quiet, but out of boredom one day, he dismantled the gun piece by piece, only to panic and scramble to rebuild it in fear of making Samoo upset.

  As providence would prove, he was unable to fix it and was punished harshly by being hung with straps on his wrist, alone in the empty room. He was left to hang for a long time and made to run more miles the next day. When his temper had cooled, Samoo took the opportunity to show Rafian how to reassemble his broken weapon. This was typical of their relationship. Samoo would dish out hard penalties but would turn it into a teaching moment afterwards.

  When it was time for Rafian’s big test, the two were actually sad that they would be going their separate ways. The test was nothing special to Rafian. Six different officers took him on a series of physical courses with obstacles—all of which he passed with flying colors. He was given a verbal exam on military history, the Anstractor galaxy, and the history of the Geralos occupation of Vestalia. He impressed them all with his skill, knowledge, and intensity, so it was decided he was worthy enough to join the Galactic Cadet Corps (GC2).

  Rafian was given the rank of twelfth grade, the equivalent of where a nine-year-old would be in the standard system used for cadets. He was given a bed in the military bunk hall for the GC2 and was introduced to his commanding officer—a tall, skinny fourteen-year-old boy named Weine, who had brown skin and curly hair.

  Once the adults had left and he was alone with Weine to go over his duties, the boy barked at him: “Come with me, char,” which was a derogatory slur for dark-skinned people on Vestalia, a carry-over from its fractured past. Rafian realized Weine was going to be a problem, as he nodded and trailed after the older boy, who was describing what his duties would be every day. Rafian had known he would be bullied, but if it was going to be at the hand of the top boy, it was not something he was willing to deal with.

  The boys walked around to the sleeping area, and Weine showed him where the bathroom was. He then showed him the girls’ sleeping area and bathroom, while reminding him that it was off limits. He then showed him the gym, the mess hall, and finally, the flight-simulation deck.

  The deck looked very much like the arcades on Genese, with its hollowed-out shooters set-up to give the users the virtual experience of starfighting and controlling a space vessel. It was love at first sight for Rafian, and he couldn’t wait to hop into one of them and master the controls. Weine interrupted his thoughts, reminding him the flight deck was reserved for third-grade cadets and below (the lower the number, the higher the rank).

  Rafian’s first few days at the camp were rough, due to the various cliques and exclusionary attitudes of the children there. It was not that big a deal to a boy who was used to that sort of treatment, so he kept to himself, stayed out of trouble, and did what he could to fit in.

  One little girl who caught his eye was a cute cadet named Vani. She was Rafian’s age, eleven, only she was a fifth-grade cadet who excelled in the academic areas of their military life. She came from military royalty (her dad was a colonel), and she acted very much like it. Even though she had the reputation of being a brat, she was beautiful to Rafian. It did not matter to him how unpopular she was with the other children. He wanted to get to know her.

  Weine, however, was exactly as Rafian assumed he would be—a bully in fancy clothes. The way he was introduced to the others, the use of a racial slur, and the reminder to Rafian that he was not worthy of flight training, was him at his nicest. He would routinely prank the younger boys and make their lives a living hell while showing a face of great potential to the adults who supervised them.

  To Weine, Rafian was fair game because he had no caring parents, and he anticipated making him his punching bag for as long as he could. The cadets looked down on Rafian, whom they saw as getting a lucky ticket into the academy. They made fun of him for having a low rank for someone of his age.

  After a year had passed and Rafian proved himself worthy by acquiring a few more ranks, he decided he had had enough of Weine and his antics.

  Now at twelve years old and as tall as his commanding officers, Rafian had become quite a soldier. With nothing else but the pride that Samoo had given him, he studied the books and principles of the standard space marine even more than was expected of a cadet his rank. His focus for the year was to get bigger, stronger, and smarter, and he accomplished this beyond his natural gifts.

  Weine had this thing that he would do: he would grab a few other officers and kidnap a small boy to lock him away in a locker for the night. He knew that the trauma would make the kid struggle the next day with his exercises. Whenever Weine would nab a victim, he and the other officers would drill him extra hard the next day and then laugh when the child failed.

  With one eye closed and the other intently watching as they were targeting a quiet boy named Levi, Rafian snuck o
ut of his bunk and silently followed the three bullies to the area with the lockers. Here Levi was gagged and trapped for the night.

  Earlier in the day, Rafian had sneaked a metal pipe into his room and hid it under his bunk in anticipation of this very moment. He armed himself with it, holding it to his back as he pressed to the side of the door and peered inside. The boys had just imprisoned Levi despite his pleas and cries.

  Rafian walked into the room, pressed the lock switch to freeze the door closed behind him, and forced the three boys to face him with no hope of reinforcement or escape.

  “What are you doing here, char?” Weine asked with a look of worry in his eye.

  The answer he received was a shot to the face from the pistol that Rafian had fixed to shoot nonlethal rubber bullets. However, on the basis of the results, no one would know that the bullet was false. The boy’s face erupted into a bloody mess as he fell to the floor, screaming loudly from the pain.

  “Our history reads that the days of people being chars, ashes, swirls, or any other stupid name passed the day we all united to save Vestalia, Weine. I never bothered you, disobeyed commands, or called you names. But people like you don’t need provocation to lock small kids into lockers, molest them, and abuse them, do you?

  “This is why I am going to beat you and these two cowards you have with you.”

  One of the other kids named Lenny pleaded, “Come on, Raf, it’s just fun. It was Weine’s idea, I swear!”

  But the other was feeling lucky with their numbers. “Let’s just kick his ass and lock him up for a week,” he said.

  To which Rafian answered, “Thank you, Mav. You will make me feel no conscience in doing this…”

  Captain Samoo LES was a war hero on Vestalia. He was a war hero because he was captured by the enemy for two years, tortured and beaten within an inch of his life, and managed to escape through hand-to-hand combat. Samoo knew how to destroy people with and without a weapon, and his compassion for young Rafian led him to teach the boy some of these very skills during their time together. Though Samoo would not be proud of what his student did to these three boys, he would have been proud to know that beyond the tears, the anger, and the misunderstanding, his lessons had stuck, and his young student had soaked it up like a sponge.

  When it was time for exercise, breakfast, and the typical events of the morning, Weine and two other officers were with the ship’s nurse getting treated for permanent injuries. Young Levi was well rested and feeling safe. Rafian was in front of the cadet commander explaining his actions and why he had felt he had to intervene. It was a situation the cadet commander could not fathom how to fix because the wounded boys were in leadership positions, and many kids had come forward to admit they had been tortured in hopes of helping Rafian—their savior—get a pardon.

  A large-scale investigation that spanned the better part of six weeks was launched. Many outsiders, including parents and the new Vestalian government, were involved. It was a messy ordeal, and while the marine vessel drifted in deep space, the brass worked out the cadet massacre (as it was playfully dubbed) and what to do with the boys who were involved.

  In the end, the three bullies were given the harsh sentence of expulsion from the cadet academy, and Rafian was given anger-management courses in addition to three weeks in solitary confinement. It was the best result that he could have hoped for, but unbeknown to him, his status was elevated among many in command, who saw him as having the potential for greatness as a marine.

  * * *

  By the time he was fifteen, Rafian was the textbook cadet. All “yes sirs” and discipline in action. He was now a second-grade major but disallowed from graduating to colonel due to the violent episode with Weine and the boys so many years ago. Still, the other children looked to him as a leader, and he carried himself as one—not an easy thing for the adults to miss. In the life of a cadet, you are given military ranks along with your grades. At sixteen, a child would need to be a cadet colonel in order to graduate into the actual Marine Corps as a private. The grade numbers denote skills, with the lowest being the best.

  So a sixteen-year-old who managed to be a third or second grade along with the rank of colonel was normally considered so advanced that he or she could get a special assignment to attend a college of leadership aboard the ship. The advantage of all this was that after two years, he could emerge as an officer and leader of men.

  Rafian didn’t care for any of the leadership ambitions of his less talented peers, but he desperately wanted to become a pilot—one of the privileged space jocks who got to fly spaceships, participate in dogfights, and get deployed on dangerous missions.

  Life aboard the ship and its routine had become the norm for him, but he would throw it all away just to have a chance at flying his own vessel into battle. Since making third grade, he practically lived in the simulation booth. He had won all the top awards for simulated flight because of the number of days he logged in on the simulation. So in his mind he was already an ace.

  One day Rafian was called into the office of the cadet commander to talk. It had been years since he had spoken with her directly. Thinking back, she seemed afraid of him when he shot and beat the three boys for locking Levi in the locker.

  “You are a very special young man, Rafian. Do you realize that?”

  It was nothing he had expected to hear from her, but he kept his eyes looking ahead, his hands at attention, and shook his head.

  “Don’t be modest, Major! You have excelled with relative ease at everything we offer, and you know it as well as everyone here. Cadets with your smarts and talents are normally first-grade colonels in this academy. You do know this, right?”

  “Yes ma’am, I do.”

  “But you do understand why you are where you are?”

  “Yes ma’am, I do.”

  “Do you regret what you did to those young men and their careers, Major?”

  He looked at her and replied, “No ma’am. But if I have permission to explain, I can and will.”

  “Go ahead, Rafian,” she remarked and took a seat as if expecting a long, drawn-out answer.

  But Rafian’s reply was not long, and he explained how his past had given him enough experience with people like Weine to know that he was not going to stop or change. The adults would never believe him, and something had to be done sooner or later.

  By the time the meeting was over, Rafian was given the rank of colonel and clearance to take part in the planetary drop he needed to be considered first grade.

  It was the rarest of honors. This drop was an insane test of resilience and knowledge for a young marine. The honors that came from doing it were so high that they had to be sure that the person getting it was much more than a well-trained bookworm. To become first grade was to become a member of a fraternity of galactic elite who could easily become officers. It was a privilege one had to earn, and the final exam was extremely dangerous. This was why a cadet was asked over ten times whether or not he or she was willing to participate.

  For Rafian, a child rushed into adulthood by experiencing life’s worst circumstances, the first-Grade test was a no-brainer. He often felt as if he had died when he was imprisoned on Genese. He imagined that he had found his angel in Anne Marie and she had whisked his soul away to some unknown hell when the fiery explosion shook their world into a deadly inferno of flames. If he wasn’t dead and this wasn’t some cruel, twisted afterlife, then the worst had already happened. Dying in the middle of a test to grant him equal footing in a world that continued to remind him of his orphancy would be good, sweet death, so he happily signed up for the drop.

  Memory 03 | First Grade

  The Teradac-11 cruised low and silent above the stormy jungles of Qyeran—a city in the country of Flisx. This was a colony on the planet Geral, home of the lizard people—the same lizard people who had murdered Rafian’s father in their attempt to capture and eat his mother’s brain so many years ago.

  This operation was an unusual one.
Rafian was to be dropped into enemy territory and find a way out, then rendezvous with the ship, which would stay cloaked in orbit awaiting his return. The mission was to be completed within a week, or he would be left behind since they would have jumped to faster-than-light speed by then.

  Rafian was more excited than afraid as he sat aboard the vessel, decked out in an all-black 3B suit with the Adaptus facemask firmly locked into his nostrils, ears, and mouth (to keep the Geralese atmosphere out). He was armed with an assortment of weapons, liquid-form food, and fluids that would keep him nourished for up to a week. The ship drifted in silently to avoid detection (a practice that many recon marines had mastered over the years), and with Qyeran being one of the low-tech countries on the planet, it was nothing for a skilled pilot to plant a young cadet onto her surface without any of the locals noticing.

  Rafian nodded at his commander and Samoo, who had come along to wish his boy an extra bit of luck. Though they couldn’t see his face through the mask, Rafian shed a tear in appreciation of his teacher’s making the trip to see him off. The nod also told the pilot that he was ready to deploy as he folded his arms across his chest.

  A hatch dropped from beneath him, and in an instant, he was falling rapidly towards the lush, green expanse of the planet. Rafian hoped this would be the beginning of an eventless adventure. The pilots had told him at his briefing that the way to remain undetected by the lizards was to delay deploying the chute until he was a few hundred feet above the trees.

  The Geralos considered Vestalians to be an extremely tasty meal, so on discovery, they would not hesitate to tear him apart to snack on his innards. Rafian also had the seeker blood of his mother, and upon that discovery, his remains would probably be shipped to the top authorities for consumption—which may or may not happen while he remained alive and screaming in pain. After hearing all of this, Rafian decided he would eat his gun before risking capture by the Geralos. But until then, he would do what he was told to do and deploy his chute at the last possible second.