by Drew Briney
Blaze noticed her use of contractions and tried to ignore them but they still grated his nerves from time to time. He governed his feelings and said nothing but they kept him from internalizing her words of encouragement.
Like Blaze, Evelia had been feeling quite ill and considered herself lucky that she was able to attend Blaze’s training sessions at all. After an exam, Aria informed her that she had apparently caught the virus from Blaze but she was only slowly feeling its effects. She would probably spend the first few weeks back home subjected to bed rest unless her body defeated the virus entirely, a prospect that Aria had suggested was a real possibility. Evelia wasn’t sure whether or not that was good news. Part of her wanted to escape the possibility of being genetically manipulated. Another part of her didn’t want to get left behind if Blaze passed her up in intelligence. Yet another part of her thought that a partial modification – a real possibility with this particular virus – might be a welcome change. Only time would tell. For now, Evelia just felt tired a lot and needed much more rest than she felt was reasonable.
Noticing that Blaze wasn’t in a fiercefully playful mood yet, Evelia offered a slightly pouty look to see if a little tease might cheer him up. Blaze responded with an offhanded look that drove her to another degree of playfulness. “Come on Blaze, it’s written all over your eyes. 17% speed increase … what? 500 pounds this time? Really? … and if I didn’t know any better, I would bet that you modified your own weight as well to make the simulation even tougher.” She waited patiently for him to respond but all she received was a small grin and a slight rolling of his eyes as Blaze looked away from her. “It is no wonder you lost though …” she continued but left her voice trailing as if she wasn’t going to say anything further.
“No wonder?” Blaze repeated, his tone of voice pressing for a response. After all of her jesting, Evelia wondered whether or not now was really the proper time to offer a legitimate critique.
“You have at least three factors against you in any simulation,” she began, giving Blaze a look that showed she was changing the mood of the conversation a little and offering some legitimate help. “First, the amount of energy inside an artificial environment is going to be less saturated than it would be in a live situation …”
“English please,” Blaze interrupted. The young warrior’s vocabulary was decent but Evelia’s comment passed by too quickly to grasp the meaning.
“There isn’t very much energy to manipulate in the simulator,” she explained. “There are no plants, no earthy objects, no fresh air coming from anything … I suppose that this makes good training for fighting in the corridor of a space ship but in most situations, you will have access to more energy than you do in a simulator. Second, you are still pretty new at this and third …” Blaze was beginning to think that Evelia had been reading up on how to outline an argument – she was never this methodical. “… your protective clothing is too bulky. It is very hard to manipulate energy when you are wearing so much clothing – and almost none of it is organic so that slows the energy flow even further.”
“Well, one cannot battle alien beasts with sharp spikes on their bodies dressed like you do,” Blaze countered, gesturing towards Evelia’s ruffled swimming clothes. I would end up a lacerated mess,” he said.
“Maybe,” Evelia answered, “or maybe the enhanced strength and speed generated from your increased ability to manipulate the energy around you would protect you more than your clothing. You trust too much in what it has done for you in the past. Perhaps you haven’t seriously considered the possibility that you may not need it any longer.” Her comment was so matter-of-fact that Blaze considered that she actually believed what she was saying. It seemed laughable. At the same time, he knew she had been learning about these things for weeks and she knew much more about the potential benefits of what he was just barely beginning to learn. Perhaps he would give the comment more consideration later. Perhaps not. Or, perhaps out of curiosity, he would discretely give it a try in private simulations where a humiliating losses wouldn’t be advertised all over the ship.
ONLY A FEW HOURS LEFT, Blaze thought to himself. To be precise, it would be another five hours before they entered earth’s atmosphere but time seemed to be rolling along quite quickly. Blaze walked down the corridor towards the main deck of the ship. No one had anything to report the last time he spent any time there and he didn’t expect things would be any different now. The ship was running like clockwork and Blaze was beginning to feel tolerably familiar with most of the workings of the crew. He probably wasn’t even needed on deck but the symbolic value of having the captain in the captain’s seat was an important one – at any rate, it was a duty he wouldn’t slough.
As he passed a few crew members that he only barely recognized, Blaze noticed that it seemed the mood of the ship had turned brighter since their departure from Moon 514. In fact, he found the development so remarkable that he pondered over it frequently. Was the crew simply adjusting to their new life better or was there really something to separating them from crewmen with bad energy? It was too early to tell but Blaze found himself hopeful that the aliens’ guidance in this matter would prove correct. Perhaps life back on earth could return to the near utopia he had experienced as a child. Perhaps this new group of people could advance culturally, intellectually, physically – and perhaps in other ways as well.
Aria had suggested that genetic enhancements could be made available to every member of the crew who was interested and that would allow everyone to advance at an even faster rate than what one would normally expect … but Blaze remained respectfully cautious over her proposal. He had heard stories of popular enhancements going afoul during his history classes and his recent experience with Toka left a bitter taste in his mouth.
For now, he couldn’t discern much difference in his own mental abilities so one might have expected that he would be less risk averse over the possibility of crew-wide genetic enhancements. His memory seemed about the same, his ability to problem solve seemed no different, his thought process seemed untouched. Everything seemed pretty much the same as it had always been … other than perhaps little changes that he chalked up to his nerves or his recent illness from Aria’s virus. It seemed Doctor Boyd’s experiment with Blaze was little better than a flopped attempt to see whether or not increased mental capacities could drastically affect human evolution. It seemed a complete waste of time and energy.
Nothing has changed, he inwardly considered.
But time would prove him wrong.
Other than the initial sickness resulting from his newest genetic enhancement, the rest of the trip back to earth had been relatively uneventful for Blaze. Evelia hadn’t been much more sick than he had been but she was also more frail than Blaze so she had spent more time relaxing and recovering than he took the luxury to enjoy. Instead, he practiced the few new skills he had been learning in earnest. Hitting the simulator no less than twice a day, sometimes for several engagements before taking a break, Blaze had given all of his extraneous attention to improving his fighting talents. It never occurred to him that what Evelia had been learning might prove more beneficial in a real battle than what he was doing. But that was, after all, the natural result of being born, raised, and trained as a warrior.
Every species on every planet needs a protectorate, he remembered Master Xun teaching him as a boy. Regardless of the high degree of sophistication that any civilization might have achieved, there were always outsiders who presented a legitimate physical threat to the enlightened. Even superior technology couldn’t be relied upon – alien species might have greater technology and therefore the ability to render even what seemed to be vastly advanced technologies functionless. Whether or not that was a real threat had been only theoretical when Master Xun had taught Blaze. Things were different now. Theory was reality – Blaze knew this could happen – and next time, perhaps the technology would even dwarf those he had so recently observed.
Long periods withou
t warfare leaves enlightened species unprepared for battle if they do not continually and diligently prepare for it. Blaze had seen this on the battlefield just before leaving earth. Some of the troops he fought with had been well trained. Others seemed so ill prepared that Blaze wondered what they were doing on the battlefield at all. And even then, some of the best fighters were not mentally prepared for what they had experienced. They were perhaps good martial artists and good soldiers but that hadn’t made them good warriors. Watching your comrades die for real on the battlefield is a skill difficult to simulate. When deaths occurred in the simulator, combatants still knew everyone would be hanging out later that day. This differentiating factor made reality much harder to face. In short, while everyone wants peace, times of peace inherently breed weakness in a society. This teaching from Master Xun had been difficult for Blaze to understand as a youth but he thought he understood it now. It had been easy to see from history books but somehow, one always hopes that their own generation is beyond the foibles of the past. This was a lesson that Blaze now understood very deeply and this stark truth would haunt him from time to time for the rest of his days.
Though Blaze rarely told anyone about it, he heard Master Xun’s teachings in his mind quite regularly. He pondered them. He absorbed them. They were part of his primeval makeup now. Perhaps they were no longer Master Xun’s teachings – perhaps they had become Blaze’s own thoughts. One way or another, they molded the way Blaze approached life and they affected his leadership style as well. Although he was generally good natured and occasionally jovial, he retained an alertness and a somewhat tense approach to life that rarely dissipated.
Lost in his own mental meanderings, Blaze was barely aware of his surroundings as he started to turn the corner. That’s when it happened. Impulsively, Blaze absorbed energy around him as he did a back handspring, landing in a defensive posture and quickly assessing the danger with his hands only slightly opened so that he could respond to whatever situation might be developing in front of him.
A practice bo staff crashed against the wall where Blaze would have been standing if he hadn’t moved backwards so quickly. In quick progression, Jazz came running around the corner, followed by a youth Blaze hadn’t seen before. As the second boy picked up the staff, Jazz looked up at Blaze with blushed cheeks and eyes that betrayed an arresting embarrassment.
“Uh … sorry, Blaze,” Jazz mumbled, eyeing his mentor as he relaxed out of his defensive posture and back into a regular standing position. The second boy continued to plow through the corridor, slightly pushing Jazz out of his way and laughing as he rushed along his path. Blaze nodded his head diagonally towards the escaping youth, gesturing for Jazz to follow as he briefly ruffled the young boy’s hair. Relieved, Jazz smiled and raced after his friend – one of his few friends on ship that was of similar age – if a four year age gap could count as a similar age.
The young warrior briefly mused over his gut response to what wouldn’t have been a particularly dangerous situation but what could have caused him some minimal pain. The practice staff was made of a synthetic compound that minimized any real bruising but it usually left significant welts and a sting that wouldn’t soon be forgotten. Perfect for youth practice, they wouldn’t cause any real damage but that only magnified the noteworthiness of this brief encounter. Perhaps his instincts really were improving.
“Open,” he commanded the door leading onto the main deck. Fleetingly, he wondered whether or not it was really necessary to have a door separating the main deck from the rest of the ship. He supposed that it was but he distinctly remembered the dearth of doors on the alien ship. Perhaps that only works when you have great mental talents, he mused. But he wasn’t really certain.
Evelia was already relaxing in her seat, Elayuh cradled in her arms, moving her tiny appendages in random patterns as she practiced the exciting art of controlling her new little body. Something about having a baby on board a spaceship continued to strike Blaze as odd. But then again, it now seemed natural somehow and no one seemed to notice her presence at all. I suppose if she cried a lot, she would be noticed more, he considered. If that happened, Blaze would send her away from the deck but for now, he happily tolerated her presence. Children had been rare in all of the Orders – but that fact endowed them with great symbolism: new life, fresh perspective, and most significantly, hope for the future.
Despite the usual languishing feelings that come from long waits, the time it took to prepare for landing seemed to pass quickly. The whole crew shared his excitement to some degree but Blaze’s electrifying expectations dwarfed any of their hopes or aspirations. Sure, it seemed like it would be duldrumous to begin constructing new homes and more clearly organizing a new government for his fellow crewmen. Going through the necessary steps to ensure the safety of his people in a new environment could be challenging as well but something told him more great adventures awaited – perhaps, adventures that would not be so disheartening as the ones he had recently experienced.
“Let’s take a tour around the globe,” Blaze instructed Vardn as they approached the earth’s surface. “I want to see whether or not life is thriving on other continents,” he continued. “I did some calculations before we left. I really believe that radiation levels should not be high and that there may yet be other colonies of people who survived.” Blaze remembered the magic woman’s statement that there were about twenty thousand people on earth – well, before their last war, he corrected himself. She had said that most of them were on “the other side of the planet” … “sort of.” Her alien captain counterpart had said something similarly mysterious. Blaze was hoping a tour of the planet might offer some understanding as to where he might find these people.
“Greydon,” Blaze said in a commanding tone. He knew Greydon preferred things that way.
“Yes sir,” he snapped back.
“Scan the surface for life forms and keep record of what you observe. Let me know if we pass any place that is especially dense with animal life.”
“Yes sir.”
As time passed, it seemed that Greydon was about to speak up several times but instead, he remained relatively quiet. As they neared the area once labeled southeast Asia, Greydon couldn’t keep to himself any longer.
“Sir,” he said.
“Yes, Greydon.”
“Sir, it seems that most everywhere we pass has a healthy amount of animal life. There were some places that seemed a little dense but mostly, life seems surprisingly uniform all over the planet. However, ahead, I’m getting very faint signals of a dramatic increase in the number of life forms.” He seemed a little perplexed but Blaze welcomed the news regardless of whatever technical issue was bothering the enthusiastic soldier.
“Bank left.” Blaze barely thought about what he said before it escaped his mouth. He looked over at Evelia and recognized that she had felt it as well. Something ahead was pulling him in a slightly different direction than he had intended. Soon, he was looking at a massive billowing gathering of clouds that dodged and weaved in and out of one other. By the look in her eyes, he could see that Evelia was observing the same thing.
Do you think they can see it? she asked silently.
Blaze was puzzled. It hadn’t occurred to him that the rest of the crew couldn’t see what he was seeing.
Those are not water clouds, Evelia taught him. Those are energy clouds. I would never have imagined anything like it! Blaze! These are white energy clouds – this all very positive energy. It’s huge!
We should go check it out, Blaze interrupted. Evelia said nothing but the look in her eyes confirmed her agreement.
“Vardn,” Blaze said out loud.
“Yes sir.” His response was energetic but it always seemed a little flat compared to Greydon’s replies.
“Do you see that mountain range off to the left?” Blaze was pointing at the only mountain range within view. Only a moron could have missed it.
“Yes sir.”
“Look for a
large field to the east of those mountains and prepare to land us there.”
“Yes … sir,” he said. Surprise was more than a little evident in Vardn’s response. They had planned on landing not far north of where the Orders had been. Although some crewmen were concerned about going back to their previous location – because of the mutant creatures – most yearned for that familiar feeling they called home. And even though the buildings were decimated, there had been thoughtful reasons why they had been built upon that specific spot of the globe.
Blaze didn’t announce any intentions of building a new colony at this new location but something about the enthusiasm in his voice and the intensity of his orders left crew members suspicious that he was going to do something different than what they had tacitly planned.
Twenty minutes later, the ship was resting on a large field not far from a gargantuan and cavernous opening in the earth. Dissimilar in many ways from the Grand Canyon, this area nonetheless promised very steep falls into whatever might lay below. Blaze and Evelia watched as billows of swirling white energy oozed out from below like some magical mist threatening to overrun the land. They exchanged knowing glances and Evelia’s eyes sparkled with excitement.
“Vardn.”
“Yes sir.”
“I want you, Greydon, and a crew of no more than five to meet me at the main hanger in T-minus ten minutes. I’m leaving you in charge of making an announcement to the crew that we are sending out an initial search party to make sure the area is safe and secure before we set up camp.”
