Anstractor (The New Phase Book 1)

by Greg Dragon

  “Vani, we were never actually going out! Why the sudden attitude over me and Kim?” Rafian asked when she finally confronted him.

  Vani flinched visibly at the confrontation as she stood in her doorway barring his entrance. She unloaded a reply to end all replies. “Ohhh, now he cares to ask! What were we, Raf? Just buddies like you and Val? Don’t even pretend we weren’t together just because you dumped me for some whore who—by the way—has slept with every guy on the ship. Yup, uh huh—even some of the men! I am no longer your friend, and I no longer want to see you!”

  And with that, she pressed her lock switch and let the hard glass slide loudly in his face, almost taking a few of his fingers with it. Rafian felt a strange twinge of vindication over being told off by “the shrew” who only wanted him as an accessory. He now felt he had closure and could pursue a real future with his beloved Kim. He thought of her body then, and the familiar electric shocks of lust ran through him as he stopped to reflect on her.

  Kim was a tall, tan brunette who needed no makeup to be considered pretty. She had smoky gray eyes that always seemed sleepy and a set of full, red lips that were often held in a sneer, as if the world was not impressive to her. She kept her dark-brown hair braided in standard military fashion. Though he knew she had a history, Rafian was not deterred. He too had an imperfect past, which had made him into the fractured person he was today.

  No, to him, Kim was perfect in all of her scandalous glory, and she knew how to touch him in ways that made the pain retreat into the recesses of the night. Their affair was wild, crazy, and uninhibited, as teens their age tend to be when unchecked. The military only cared about young Rafian’s future as a pilot and young Kim’s future as an officer, so the two were left alone to be completely careless with their love life. They threw every care to the wind, including the need for birth control. They utilized sex as a means to everything, not limited to argument resolution, sleeping aid, and, of course, motivation.

  It was three months into their relationship when Kim approached Rafian with some alarming news. He was with his friends—Marce COI, Velman TOR, and Zennel OBO—when she stopped short in front of them. When he attempted to kiss her, she told him quite loudly that she was pregnant. With his naiveté and love for Kim, Rafian was excited at the news and grinned ear to ear at the thought.

  Kim seemed determined and upset, so the smile faded in lieu of concern. It was then that she stated the baby was not his, but was in fact his friend Marce’s. The embarrassment was too much for the young soldier to bear, and he beat a hasty retreat towards his room to be alone.

  As he neared his door, Vani was leaving her apartment and was about to shoot him her customary look of disapproval, but she was stopped short by the tears in his eyes and his desperate dash for escape as he ran inside his apartment and attempted to lock the door. But Vani was quick. She barred his door with her body and slid behind him. She locked it behind her and began inquiring as to what was going on.

  “I don’t do well with betrayal,” he admitted to her after her incessant pleading. He switched his disheveled bed into table mode, and Vani sat with him to discuss what had happened.

  “You do know this is karma, right, asshole?” she asked him in a very matter-of-fact way, and he nodded despite himself and apologized to her.

  “You were using me, Vee…” he said silently as he picked up the old pistol Samoo had given him and took it apart as he always did when he felt alone.

  The room went silent after he said that, and she sat there as still as a rock, staring at him quizzically.

  “Can we try again, Raf?” she asked after what seemed like an hour. He snapped the barrel pieces of the gun in place, laid it on the table, and muttered, “Why would you want to?”

  Vani walked over to his refrigerator and helped herself to a vial of milk and then plopped down with it by the wall, staring at him as she batted her big brown eyes in a way that she knew he would notice. She was in civilian clothing and had probably been on her way to the mess hall when he had come dashing in. So her entire look was very natural, innocent, and beautiful. It made him feel low for stepping out on her with Kim.

  “I know that nobody likes me, Raf,” she finally admitted. “I know the boys only want one thing, and the girls want to string me up. I know these things, but you genuinely liked me—we were a thing, and losing that…well, it’s killing me, OK?”

  She let her words sink in, and the room stayed silent with nothing but the clicking of his gun being reassembled. She took a deep breath and then uttered, “Please.” She said the word so silently that had Rafian not been looking at her, he would have missed it. But he did see, and all of a sudden, all he wanted to do was to take her off the ship and disappear into forever after.

  “You will stay faithful to me, and you will never leave me unless it is mutual, OK? Say that you promise!”

  It was already 3:00 a.m., and Rafian was being drilled by Vani to take her vows so that they could be together.

  “Yes Vani, I swear. Do you think I want to go through this again? Gods, I mean, I can’t even show my face out there now after how Kim made me look to those guys.”

  Vani was in one of her Cultin button-down shirts, socks, and tiny shorts, and she sat with him on the bed with her tiny hands grasping his. “I don’t want to hear the name of that dirty girl anymore either.”

  “OK, Vani. I will forget her.”

  “We will wait until we are older for sex, and we will always take precautions.”

  This last bit seemed a bit much for a boy whose last girlfriend did it every single day, but this was Vani. Despite himself, Rafian finally promised, and they fell asleep together as he tried to forget the events of the day.

  Vani was quite different after their relationship vows. She was much more physical in her affection and very loving. Rafian’s hesitation to face his comrades died after they realized that he had “upgraded” his relationship status, but it was still something he refused to talk about with anyone. He pretended that Kim did not exist and spoke very bluntly and directly with Marce whenever he was forced to speak to him. Marce felt terrible about the entire affair and tried no fewer than seven times to reconcile with Rafian, who had an eerie way of pretending he was over it while avoiding any gestures of friendship with the boy he had once called friend.

  Although he knew the entire planet system and was doing very well in his studies, Rafian knew he would have to take an actual flight test before he was given his wings. This was tough for the teen as he desperately tried to fit Vani into his life. Yet the times that he was with her, he wished he were spending them in the simulator.

  Sometimes he would make up a lie to get a few hours to himself before seeing her, but he was worried that one of the other simulator regulars would tell her where he was, and it became a tricky cat-and-mouse game, which he felt silly for playing.

  “I hear that the final exam is extremely dangerous, Raf,” said Vani—whom he playfully called Vee. They were sitting at one of the circular tables in the mess hall, which was a massive collection of tables with food dispensers lining the north wall. The selection of food was actually good, so it was the popular spot for cadets when they were not doing their particular duties for the corps.

  “I looked into it, Vee, and it is—which is why I’ve had to start doing some simulation time after classes.”

  He glanced at her as he snuck in the admission, and he noticed the twitch in her eyebrow at receiving the information. But he continued quickly in order to move past the subject.

  “From what I understand about a pilot’s exam, they put a few of us into broken ships and force us to fix them and fly. The thing is, the ships are drifting in space when they place us in them, and the controls are normally alien. The danger comes with accidentally turning on a self-destruct or an eject switch, firing at another person, or doing any number of other things that can go wrong. It also becomes our first ship for sorties as a recruit.”

  Rafian was rambling, but
Vani looked petrified. “And why does this not concern you, Rafian? All of you guys going out are friends. Well, Marce used to be, but what if someone gets shot or blown up?”

  “We’re a galaxy at war, Vee. People are going to die. I stopped being a kid after I went to Geral, and to be honest, I don’t expect to die on my exam. I expect to become a pilot and fly us off of this ship. I never told you…but what we have to do for this exam is exactly what I had to do to get off of that planet.”

  Vani wanted to say something, but she knew that it wouldn’t make a difference.

  “I will visit the temple for you…” she said silently, and he smiled at her and squeezed the finger that held the ring he had given her a week ago.

  * * *

  The graduation ceremony for the future pilots of the Helysian was typically a sad one that spoke of promise. It was up to the cadets to study the language and customs of the galaxy in order to help them adapt to any situation. The problem was the number of languages, which were in the thousands. Even Vestalia had over a hundred.

  When the boys and girls of the Helysian had donned their pressure suits and boots to fly, they were transported to an area in space that held twenty-five discarded ships. The cadets were ejected into space and had to use the boosters on their 3B suits to glide to a ship, open it, seal it, fix it, and bring it home. 3B suits were black and oily in appearance, and they clung tightly to the body so that they looked like a second skin. The masks were very tight fitting, and the goggles were large and bug-like in appearance. However, the pilots loved to wear them leisurely around the ship to show off their perfect bodies, the results of years of combat and training.

  Now in space, the time for fashion and games was past, and the teens gained a new appreciation for their suits as they glided towards their destiny, propelled by their boots. This mission rang similar to the one Rafian had done in order to get to first-class status. He found out that as a first class, he was permitted to skip this exercise, but he argued to participate in order to be sure that he was ready. When he did this, Vani had gone ballistic and punched him in the chest before he left. The girl had the nastiest temper and would get physical whenever she couldn’t get her way. He could still feel the ache on his left pectoral from that last blowout.

  When the pilots neared the cluster of ships for the exercise, things took a turn for the worse when two people went for the same ship and decided to fight over it. One of the boys’ thrusters accidentally caught the other during their struggle, and a hole was burnt through the material, freezing and killing him instantly.

  Another girl triggered the wrong switch, and her ship shot off into deep space on a predestined path back to its original owner. The problem was that its owner would more than likely be the enemy, and with no light-speed technology working in the vessel, there was no way that she would make it out alive. The rest fumbled along fixing their individual ships, but a few misfired weapons caused five more future pilots to lose their lives. It was nerve-racking, but Rafian pulled his together in good time to fly out of their stalled circle of death.

  Upon docking his ship (a Casanian model), he stood on the deck and waited to see who else would return from the exercise. Vani snuck in under his arm to hug him tearfully, and he kissed her on the top of her head as he squeezed her close. The end of the day resulted in only five of the twenty-five cadets returning with their ships, and twelve had to be rescued before their oxygen depleted.

  The ceremony was conducted that night to a crowd filled with a mixture of tearful young faces and the stoic but proud stares of older space jocks who had been through the same thing in the past. Marce was one of the five pilots who made it, and he came over to shake Rafian’s hand and congratulate him. It was a grand ceremony, and of all the things that went on, the one thing that stuck with Rafian the most was the smile from Kim. She was standing in the crowd, holding a cute newborn and looking proudly up at him.

  He wondered at the smile but put it out of his mind just as quickly as it had come, realizing how lucky he was, because it could have gone very badly for him. Kim had missed her chance when she ended up pregnant, and at this moment, he would have felt tremendous guilt if the baby were his. He looked over at Marce, who wasn’t paying her any attention, and felt a twinge of regret for her situation.

  Above all, however, of the other thoughts that ran through his head as he got congratulated, medaled, and promoted, was the fact that he had now realized his dream of being an actual starfighter. He had not skipped the final test, and he had not panicked during the worst. It made him feel enormous and worthy. As a reward for his service, Rafian was immediately given the rank of lieutenant and allowed to take leave for a week. Before he could leave to start his break, he was summoned to the ship commander’s office for debriefing.

  “Rafian, take a seat, young man,” the commander offered. “Before we begin, I am going to have to ask you to select a surname, soldier. I have heard your history and witnessed your rise, and I don’t think it would be right for a man like you to go any further without a surname to stamp your legacy.”

  Rafian felt a strange heaviness come about him at the inference, because this was something that had bothered him since he was first allowed into the academy. He had no legacy name—none! His parents had only taught him his first name before they left him, and it was something that the other children never let him forget. He recalled the most hurtful of heckles, which came from Weine at the time. A new officer had witnessed an exercise in which Rafian outperformed the other cadets at martial arts and asked, “What is your name, Cadet?”

  “Rafian, sir!”

  “Rafian what? What’s the family name of a cadet who shows so much hope?”

  And Weine had burst out laughing with the words, “What family? He’s Rafian-Rafian, a boy from nowhere!”

  Such a hurtful Memory, he thought, but the commander would not back down from this.

  Rafian thought of the planet his people were from—Vestalia. The allied military on the planet had chosen to use initials to symbolize their family names in order to transcend language, race, or heritage. It was the reason so many children on the ship at the cadet level had last names such as OBI, VAL, and things like that. Their parents were soldiers from the old planet, so they were blessed with the legacy of an honorable surname.

  “Sir, my surname will be VCA,” Rafian said after some thought.

  The commander regarded him and nodded in approval. “You honor our home world, I see. I was expecting you to name some powerful beast or god, but you again surprise by going with tradition. What does VCA stand for, Rafian?” he said, seeming to be genuinely interested.

  “Well, sir, the V is for Vanguard because that is where I will be in all matters of service. And though I hate it, the cadets gave me the call sign Centuri, so I will own it. A is my commitment to fight for our galaxy, Anstractor. So it is VCA. That will be my name.”

  Commander Abe RUS walked from behind his desk and shook Rafian’s hand firmly with a grin. He was an older man whose hair had gone completely white. His skin was as dark as Rafian’s, and his voice sounded like a ship’s engine. Everyone respected the commander because of his lengthy history of war and strategy, but as a man, he had a presence that stayed with you. His large nose flared as he spoke during the handshake, and to Rafian, it felt as if he were saying good-bye.

  “We weren’t very nice to you when you came aboard, were we?” he stated with regret in his eyes. “I think these slights against you may have been something that stayed with you throughout these years and has driven you like some sort of vengeful spirit. Hell, son, you probably hate my guts for the events of that day—though I suppose many people have let you down in your young life, haven’t they? You are our best young soldier, Rafian VCA, and I imagine it won’t be long before you’re commanding your own armada to unleash holy fire upon the Geralos for what they’ve done to Vestalia. But for now, I am proud to have you as one of our weapons in this war, son. The VCA name suits you bec
ause you will very much be the vanguard in this fight.”

  Pausing, the commander handed Rafian a glass of whiskey and nodded at him to knock it back. Then he walked him to the door with some final words. “I would like for you to take a short break.”

  This was the most that Rafian had ever heard the big man say, and though it wasn’t an apology, he took it as one and left the office to see about his shrine to Captain Samoo LES. His mentor had not returned after a ground skirmish on Vestalia a year ago, and Rafian had built a memorial to him. He could see Samoo’s dark pupils and silver-streaked hair in his mind’s eye, as if the man were in front of him issuing congratulations.

  On Vestalia, Samoo was from a long line of warriors in a culture of immense discipline. He was nothing like the other soldiers, and that part of him had stayed with Rafian—his final student.

  “Where do you want to go?” Vani asked, startling him as he knelt with eyes closed.

  He turned quickly to see her standing there, eyes on fire the way they always were whenever she smelled opportunity. It took everything within him to keep his cool rather than lay into her for the disrespectful interruption.

  “You’re not going to like my answer, Vee,” he said quietly.

  “OK, so out with it then, Commander Rafian!” she teased.

  “Cute…but it’s lieutenant, and before I take any sort of leave, I want to go look for the cadet whose ship went into autopilot. It has only been a day, and I think I can find her.”

  Vani wanted to argue but knew her boyfriend well enough not to bother. She kissed him and hugged him longingly. Then she asked whether he planned to actually go on vacation, to which he answered: “If there’s time.”