Three Suns

by S King

  Eikko jumped as my grandmother came into the room and eyed him, “are you ready to see where you’ll be staying?”

  “Finally,” Eikko grabbed my grandmother by the back of her neck and kissed both of her cheeks before leaving the office.

  I rested my cheek on my knuckles and considered his retreating back.

  “Did he just do what I think he did?” Othala looked at me in shock.

  “I would say so,” I hid my smirk behind a yawn.

  “Don’t get cute,” she pointed at me before walking out of the office and showing Eikko where he was going to be staying when sun fell under the horizon.

  Taking in a deep breath, I gathered all of my paperwork from the desk and got up; I liked doing paperwork only when I was injured, or I was bored. I didn’t like doing paperwork when it was the only option because my aircrafts were demolished to ash.

  “This is going to be a long journey,” I mumbled turning on the document locator and rubbing my forehead.

  Once all of the reports and approvals were sent, I shut down the locator as well as made sure all of the drone lights were off and the doors were locked. In Padrieg there wasn’t any need to worry about locked doors or windows, especially in the military district, but old habits were hard to break.

  When I was satisfied that my domicile was ready for the nakti, I trudged my tired body to my room and collapsed on my bed in exhaustion. Sleep. I just needed to go to sleep and when I woke up in the jutro, everything would be as if it were a nightmare.

  Chapter 3 Breakfast and Facials

  I didn’t need an alarm to wake me up; my body knew when to rise and when to go to sleep. Taking in a deep breath, I stared at the plain ceiling hoping that last night was nothing more than a bad dream. However, my wishful thinking was only shot to the red sun and back when my body protested against the movement of sitting up.

  “Not a dream, a reality,” I grumbled, frowning at the pain that soared through my body.

  Thanks to the healing properties of the protein drink that came with every meal, the bruises that should’ve been covering me were now nothing more than slight blemishes on my ivory skin. The internal bruising would take another sati, or two, before I could freely move again but that was better than what I could’ve been facing had I been on earth. Whatever that was.

  Pushing off my hard bedding, I grabbed my soft wrap and tied the sash before checking my time piece and document locator. Half past rise, breakfast would be delivered soon and then Eikko could stop whining about being starved.

  I rolled my eyes at the thought, watching the pages of reports for dana shift coming through the document holographic machine. The airstrikes I had approved sinoć were already executed, causing the Eynos to fall back to the red sun territory and cease fire for the time being.

  I breathed a sigh of relief, organizing the documents and shoving them into the assigned folder before grabbing my door.

  Reacting first, my fist flung out to connect with the man standing in front of my door.

  “Ow!” Eikko held his cheek, bracing a hand on the wall.

  “What are you doing?” I snapped, clutching the folder to cover my chest.

  He rubbed his cheek, cutting his rose-pink eyes at me, “what do you use to wash your face?”

  “What?” I closed my eyes for a second and shook my head, “I don’t have time for this.” I pushed past him, going to my office to file my unit’s reports.

  “As crappy as I’d slept last night, the least you can do is show me where you wash your face, Ostana.”

  I shoved the folder into the cabinet and spun on him, pointing past his shoulder, “down the corridor to your left.”

  “Thank you!” He stormed from the office, not happy with me that I wasn’t playing into his early dawn tantrum.

  I rubbed my forehead, falling into the chair.

  “Rough jutro already?” My grandmother came into the office with her own folder of information and smirked at me.

  I tapped my fingers against my chin, “I need to get him back to the entertainment district or better yet, the blue sun.”

  She filed her papers in the respective slot and turned to me, “and how do you plan to do that?”

  I twisted my mouth, “I haven’t—”

  “What is this?” Eikko came into the office holding the cleanser container.

  “Soap,” frowning at him, I got up from the chair and looked at my grandmother.

  She shrugged, not wanting to deal with Eikko anymore than I did, “I have meetings to tend to. Pleasant skies.”

  “Pleasant skies,” I mumbled and turned to face the man that hadn’t done anything but cause me problems since we met.

  “Good blessings to you, Ms. Othala,” Eikko smiled at my grandmother and held the door for her. When she was gone, so was his handsome smile. A sneer covered his face as he jabbed the bottle at me again, “this is not soap this is a concoction that does not belong on the skin!”

  “Then don’t use it,” I pushed past him, going back to my room.

  “Where is your derma roller? Or skin softening lotion? Pore compressor? Wrinkle diminisher? Don’t you have a decent skin care routine that I can use while I’m stuck here?” Like last night he followed me from the office and into my bedroom.

  “What are you talking about?”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed, “no wonder you look so lifeless and ashen.”

  I narrowed my eyes, trying not to lose my temper, “excuse you?”

  He motioned to my face, “your skin isn’t dewy or have the glow of a woman your age because you don’t take care of your skin, Ostana.”

  “I’m warning you,” white flames began to wrap their way around my hands and wrists, “either use what is offered or don’t. Either way I have things to get done and don’t have time to deal with your melodramatic, Parlan pretty boy routines.”

  Grabbing my things from the closet, I side stepped out of the way and punched the sustenance delivery processor, “your breakfast is on its way.” I didn’t give him a chance to argue with me as I let the domicile entrance close hard.

  “Pleasant skies, Captain Shaye,” the holographic Parlan woman appeared next to the entrance and smiled at my back.

  The formal departure saying was only used during the dana and usually I didn’t mind hearing it, but right now? I wanted nothing more than to go to the training arena and kill a squadron of Eynos in place of Eikko.

  “Ana,” I glanced behind me as I took the stairs to the shower stalls and found Xerminara jogging toward me.

  “What’s wrong, Nara?” She fell into step beside me and sighed.

  “Nothing’s wrong, so to speak, but I never thought of the day that Eynos would actually call for a cease fire. What are we supposed to do with ourselves? We weren’t supposed to be off rotation for another tjedan.”

  I swiped my wrist in front of the holographic entry point for the shower center, “train and try to relax, I guess.”

  “Welcome Ostana Shaye,” another Parlan holograph appeared.

  Xerminara frowned after swiping her own identification band, “what’s wrong?”

  When both of our paths lit up, we walked into the shower room together with me shaking my head.

  “Do you think that I have dull skin?” It was petty of me to ask my best friend for conformation for something that an outsider said, but at the same time. As much as I hated to admit it, Eikko’s words hurt me. I didn’t think I was ugly or something not worth looking at but, still. The words still hurt all the same.

  “What does that even mean?” She got into her shower after giving me a squirrely look.

  Stripping out of my noćenje clothes and stepping under the hot spray of the water, I shook my head, “nothing. I was just…I don’t know.”

  “Ana, have you been staring too long at those fake women in the holographs?”

  “Have you noticed that their skin is…dewy?” I retched on repeating Eikko’s word, but I couldn’t think of any oth
er description that would convey the message.

  Our showers cut off, letting us lower our voices, “I…well,” she breathed heavily as she got frustrated with herself, “if I knew what dewy was then I’d tell you, but I’m going to assume that you mean how smooth and prefect it looks. Right?”

  I quickly burst my way from the shower room to stare at her, “exactly.”

  “I think it’s their water, they couldn’t have been born like that.”

  “You think so?”

  She nodded, “what else could it be? I mean, I guess it could be their food or—”

  “Skincare routines,” I mumbled following her back to the domicile units.

  Xerminara stopped in the middle of the iron staircase and stared at me, “what is that?”

  “Really?” I shook my head, walking past her and pushed my hair out of my face.

  “No seriously,” she caught up with me in a matter of seconds and followed by me as we closed in on my domicile, “what’s a,” she lowered her voice so only I could hear her, “a skincare routine?”

  We fell silent as two soldiers passed us and waited for them to disappear around the corner before I looked at her.

  “I don’t know it’s just something that I heard of from…” I trailed off as my front entrance welcomed me home, thanks to my close proximity.

  “Welcome home, Captain Shaye,” the holographic woman appeared with a genuine smile on her face as her baby pink eyes looked through me.

  The door popped open to reveal the foyer to my domicile and Eikko standing in the hallway, staring at the holographic woman on the other side of the door.

  “Who is that?” Xerminara whispered, staring at the mountain of a man in front of us.

  Grabbing her arm, I shoved her into the hallway and closed my front door.

  “I’m Eikko, and you are?” The man in question smiled brightly at my best friend and looked her up and down before resting his eyes on hers.

  “Xerminara,” she said slowly. I couldn’t blame her for being awestruck by him, but I needed her on my side and that meant I needed to get her to focus on something other than how attractive Eikko was. Even if I didn’t want to admit it to myself.

  “May I call you X or Nara for short?” He had an easy way about himself that seemed to exude confidence and knew just as well as the next one that he could bring any woman, or man, to their knees with just a smile or glance their way. The jerk.

  “Nara is fine,” Xerminara was smiling a little too much for my comfort and I was beginning to think she’d lost a few screws by the way she was jutting her hip out and sizing him up.

  Her and Claud weren’t exactly in an engagement agreement, but they weren’t necessarily keeping their options open either. I wondered how he was going to react when he found out about Eikko. After all, I couldn’t keep the Parlan native locked away in my domicile for the entire time that he was here. No matter how much I loved the idea.

  “Explain to her what a skincare routine is,” I snapped, going around him to deposit my things into my room before my breakfast was served.

  “Please tell me you have more than that soap the evil queen uses.” I heard Eikko nearly beg Nara.

  Evil queen my butt, I thought to myself as I made sure no other reports came in from the dana squad. If it were true that the Eynos really did call for a cease fire, then maybe their pea sized brains were finally coming to realize that they were out of their leagues and dealing with the wrong ones.

  My communicator beeped once in my ear to tell me that Emric was trying to get ahold of me. I glanced over my shoulder out into the hall at Xerminara and Eikko before answering.

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you know what a derma therapy thing is?”

  I snorted and leaned against my book safe, “I take it Somsang is asking for a skincare routine from you too?”

  “I don’t even know what that is!” He hissed, “I wash my face of dirt and grim and that’s it. Is there supposed to be something else that I’m not doing?”

  “I think it’s a Parlan thing.”

  “It sounds awful,” he grumbled before pulling himself together, “so you don’t have it?”

  “No, I don’t. Sorry,” I stared out the solitary window wondering just how we were going to get these two back to where they belonged.

  Emric sighed defeatedly, “the Citlail and Magdolonian are still being ran through diagnostics for all of the problems and won’t be able to get worked on for another tjedan.”

  “What?” I stood upright as if he could see the smoldering of my flames wrapping around my hands. “What do you mean another tjedan?”

  “Exactly that and the techs think it’s going to be longer than that because the Citlail took too much heavy damage from whatever these two were flying. With their impact from the Eynos attack coupled with hitting us. It’s not looking good.”

  I refrained from throwing a massive fire ball into the shatterproof window and snuffed out the flames before I did something that I’d regret having to explain later.

  “So, what? We’re supposed to just babysit these two for how long?”

  “I wish I could tell you,” again he sighed, “I’ll let you know when the reports come in.”

  “Thanks,” we disconnected our communication, leaving me to stare numbly out the solitary window.

  I didn’t know how much longer I could deal with Eikko and his high maintenance needs. Derma therapy. I scoffed at the notion, pulling myself together; I could not let my emotions get the better of me.

  “Ana,” Xerminara came into my room looking like a star struck giddy girl.

  I glanced at her, “what?” My document locator beeped with new reports coming in from the battlefield.

  “He’s a god,” she fell into my window seat and sighed happily. “I can’t believe he’s so talented!”

  I stopped reading the report and stared at her, “what’re you talking about?”

  “He sings! Like actually sings, that’s why he was headed to the entertainment district.”

  I grunted, going back to my report; according to the popodne shift, the Eynos had, in fact, fallen back and all was silent. There was no exchange of fire or attacks since Xerminara and Claud’s squadron unit made their move. Along with the air strikes, the Eynos were being held at bay and weren’t forcing me to light someone on fire to move more quickly on repairing my aircrafts.

  “Ana?” Nara’s voice pulled me from plotting my next move in the war zone.

  “What?” I signed the reports for confirmation of receipt and sent them to Kendrick.

  “Do you think he’s single?”

  I balked at her, “what? Why would you ask that? I thought things were going great for you and Claud.”

  She waved a dismissive hand in the air, pushing her strawberry blonde hair from her face.

  “He’s great but I’m not getting any younger and my parents are harping on an engagement agreement. I need to do something because I can’t stay on the battlefield forever with no one to come home to.”

  I felt bad for her, but at the same time she knew as well as I did that getting into any kind of union with someone outside of Padrieg society was out of the question. Completely out of the question, especially with Eikko or anyone else from Parlan.

  “Don’t even think about it, find someone else. But not him.” I finished sending the reports to Kendrick and leaned against the shelf, watching the locator send the reports one by one.

  “You like him, don’t you?”

  “No,” I checked my time piece, thankful that it was almost time to eat doručak. I wanted to go to the military officials’ offices and find out what was being done in order to get Eikko and Somsang back to where they belonged. That couldn’t happen if I were standing her with Xerminara talking about Eikko’s marital status.

  Nara sighed and got up from the window seat, “I guess you’re blind, Ana, because that man has the eyes of an angel and the voice of a sinner. He can make water melt.”

&n
bsp; “As in an ice cube? He can turn ice into water.” I quipped, gathering my documents from the locater, and walking to my office.

  “No,” she hissed, following closely behind me, “as in water that’s already liquified. He can make a lake melt.”

  “Nice metaphors,” grumbling I filed the paperwork in its respectful folder and hid it away in the cabinet.

  “Ana be serious,” Xerminara grabbed my arm tightly, pulling me close to her side as she caught sight of Eikko coming out of his room, rubbing his face like there was sand littering his pores. “You can’t tell me that he doesn’t look like something out of a dream.”