Plato's Cave During the Slicer Wars and other short stories

by Terri Kouba

“She’s been here for ten hours, just staring out at the stars,” Bazat whispered to Gare. “It’s like she’s afraid that if she looks away they will disappear. I can’t even get her to eat anything. While she was in quarantine I ran some scans. She’s rather healthy, considering the length of time she has been on the planet. But she’s malnourished and dehydrated. We have to get some food in her. And fresh water.”

  Gare held up an orange box. “Instead of making her leave the stars to get food, I brought the food to her. I’ll stay with her for a couple of hours. You can fetch your soil samples from the shuttle.”

  "I was able to run a couple scans from in here," Bazat whispered. "That thing which she called fog? It's actually an elemental."

  "A life form?" Captain Jolen asked, surprised.

  "It's the reason why the bones of the dead are stripped clean but not otherwise disturbed. And why no other life forms have survived on the planet; elementals consume everything."

  "How did she survive?"

  "That's the mystery question, now isn't it. It appears that not only did the elemental not consume her, the elemental cared for her. It deposited water, it's own blood, into her bowl every morning. It let her grow meager tubers to eat, watering them again with its own blood. From what I can gather from the scans, it even mended her broken bones and sealed her open wounds when she was injured."

  "Does she know?"

  Bazat shook her head. "I don't think so. And at this point, until she regains more of her strength, I don't recommend we tell her, either."

  Gare nodded. He wondered if Bazat meant Milial's physical strength or her mental strength. Gare was more concerned about the latter. "I'm inclined to agree with you, at least for now."

  Bazat put her hand on Gare's forearm. "I've never heard of an elemental not killing another life form before. There are stories, myths, about elementals saving the lives of someone, but no one in science takes them seriously."

  Bazat raised her eyebrows and left the room in silence.

  “Come join me, Milial,” Gare said after he had laid the food out on a small patch of grass.

  Milial turned in surprise.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you come in.” She looked around. “Where’s Bazat?”

  “She had to go. Come sit down and eat. You can still see the stars from here.”

  Milial walked to where Gare sat, swinging her head back and forth to make sure she could still see the stars. She settled on the grass and ran her fingers through it.

  “That feels nice. There was no grass on the planet.”

  “Ever?” Gare asked. “What did you eat?” He put a cup of milk in her hand.

  “I learned how to grow some tubers and some grain. I had to build my garden inside a metal foundation or else the plants wouldn't grow. Then I had to build sides on it because the wicked wind would tear the plants from their shallow roots.”

  She took a sip of milk. “I had to cover the plants with a tarp before noon or else the sun would burn all the moisture out of the dirt. The fog would leave enough morning dew on the plants to grow them into tough little things that had to cook for three days before they were edible.”

  She reached for a large red berry.

  “Eat, but eat slowly. Your stomach isn’t used to this type of food.”

  She stared at the stars, rubbed her bare feet over the grass and nibbled on food. “It’s hard to believe this is real, but it appears it is.”

  She turned and looked at Gare. “I cannot thank you enough for returning me to the stars. I can never repay you in full but please let me know if there is ever anything I can do. I owe you.”

  Gare shook his head. “You don’t owe me anything. We just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Anyone would have done the same.”

  Milial shook her head.

  “Not everyone. What do you call this?” She pointed but didn't touch.

  “It’s called a grape.” Gare popped one in his mouth. “You can eat the entire thing. Except some kinds, which have tiny seeds inside.” Gare pulled one off the vine and placed it in her hand. His fingers touched her palm. Her palm darkened and the base of her wrist turned a dark purple.

  Milial pulled her sleeve down over her wrist to cover her coloring. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s been a long time since I touched another living being. Not in combat,” she added.

  Gare held out his hand, palm up. “Go ahead. It’s OK.” He smiled and tried to catch her eye on her bowed head.

  Milial’s finger snaked out and slowly came to rest against the tip of Gare’s middle finger.

  “Hmm.”

  She moved her finger across his until three of her fingertips rested on his middle finger. Her breathing became shallow. She inspected the base of his wrist, her fingertips tracing his bluish veins.

  Suddenly, she pulled her hand away.

  “What is that?”

  She pushed herself a foot away from Gare.

  “What?” Gare looked at his wrist.

  “There,” she pointed at his wrist. “Something moved under your skin.”

  Gare looked at his wrist for a moment and then smiled. “We call it a pulse.” He moved closer to Milial and took her hand in his. “It won’t hurt.”

  He placed her fingers on the inside of his wrist and applied pressure. “It’s my heartbeat.”

  Milial snorted. “Your heart is in your wrist?”

  Gare chuckled and pointed to his chest. “No, my heart is right here. But you can feel my pulse in my wrist, as my heart pushes the blood through my arteries.” He moved her fingers to his neck. “And here.”

  Her eyes lightened to a dazzling violet.

  Gare moved her hand and placed it against his chest. “And here.”

  Milial closed her eyes and she sat still for a moment. When she opened her eyes, they were almost completely white. She pulled her hand away and cleared her throat. “I have waited a long time to feel someone else’s heartbeat.” Her eyes regained their color.

  “I used to wake up in the middle of the night, screaming. I’d frantically check for my own heartbeat, just to make sure I hadn’t died in my sleep.”

  She reached out and placed her hand against Gare’s heart. “You have a strong heartbeat. It makes very solid thumps.”

  Gare chuckled. Years ago, back when he was in the academy, one of his courses was how to deal with sensory depravation for short periods of time. They had placed him in a sensory depravation chamber filled with water the same temperature as his body. They closed the door to seal him inside and turned off the inner lights. Lights flashed in the absolute darkness but Gare knew it was only his eyes playing tricks on him.

  After a while he became bored and fell asleep. When he woke he was disoriented and had a moment of panic until he remembered where he was. For years afterwards the thing he remembered about the sensory depravation chamber was that when he couldn’t feel or hear anything else, he could feel, hear and even see his own heartbeat. His heartbeat was all that had existed. There was nothing else.

  Gare couldn’t imagine living like that for fifteen years.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce me to our new guest?” Vyr, the Security Officer, entered the solarium.

  Milial jumped to her feet. She grabbed the food knife and ran toward Vyr with a scream.

  “A Teggan!”

  She held the knife in her right hand above her head. Vyr grabbed her elbow and spun sideways, using her own momentum to push her past him. She rolled across the floor and jumped to her feet. She kicked at Vyr with her left foot, planting it solidly in his stomach. He doubled over and she brought her elbow down across his shoulders.

  Vyr rolled away and jumped to his feet. He blocked her blow with his left forearm and kicked at her knee with his right foot. She blocked it with her left foot and spun, swiping the knife across the middle of his body. He bowed his back and the knife sliced through his clothing but missed his skin. She overextended herself in the lighter gravity a
nd Vyr reached forward and grabbed both of her forearms with his hands. She struggled but could not release herself from his vice-like grip. She kicked at him and he blocked each kick with his feet.

  She moved her tongue inside her mouth, pulled her head back and prepared to spit.

  “Stop that,” Gare said, moving in between the two fighters. He shoved his hand between their faces.

  Milial spat her silver needle at the Teggan. Instead, it punctured Gare’s hand. Gare watched as it changed from a straight piece of metal into a squiggly wormlike thing. It bored into his hand, expanded in size and started to move through his flesh toward his wrist. It hurt worse than a straight silver needle should.

  “Crudinski,” he cursed in surprise.

  “No,” Milial shouted. She twisted her left hand out of Vyr’s grip and clamped it onto Gare’s forearm above the wrist.

  “Shellan gaol,” she spoke. The metal device stopped moving and returned to its thin, needle-like size. It punctured Gare’s skin from the inside and squirmed out of his flesh. It wiggled to where Milial’s hand rested on Gare’s arm, punctured Milial’s hand and settled under the skin, growing hard and straight again.

  “I am so very sorry, Captain Jolen. The Piercer was not meant for you.” She pulled her right hand from Vyr’s loosened grip and punched the Teggan in the face. “It was meant for that evil piece of slime.”

  Gare moved his body between the two, with his back to Milial. “Vyr, leave us,” he commanded.

  “But sir, she is a danger.”

  “Apparently only to you. Leave us.”

  “Let me kill him.” Milial reached over Gare’s shoulder. He turned his head. “Stop that,” he shouted.

  Milial looked at him and slightly nodded her head. She backed away, her eyes burning hatred at Vyr.

  “As you wish,” Vyr said, leaving the solarium.

  “What was that all about?” Gare said, his voice louder than he intended. He pressed a napkin against his bleeding forearm.

  “I am sorry to repay your hospitality with violence, but I was unaware you had a Teggan on your ship.”

  “Vyr is my Security Officer and a damn fine one I might add.”

  “He is a vile Teggan and he must die,” Milial responded.

  Gare pointed to the grass. “Sit down and give me that weapon. What did you call it? A Piercer?”

  Milial sat on the grass but stared at the stars. “I am sorry, but I cannot give you my Piercer.”

  Gare held out his hand. “Give it to me.”

  “I apologize deeply, but I cannot. It is my only form of protection and without it, I would have been dead many years ago.”

  “You have nothing to fear on this ship. You are under my protection now. You don’t need it.”

  Milial was silent.

  “I cannot have you wandering around my ship, endangering my crew. I must insist,” Gare said.

  “I give you my word that I will not hurt any of your crew who is not a Teggan.”

  “Vyr is a Teggan and he is a valued member of my crew. If you want to stay aboard my ship, you must relinquish the Piercer,” Gare demanded.

  “Very well.” Milial swallowed thickly. “When do I return to the planet?” Her voice broke but her eyes never left the wall of windows and stars beyond.

  Gare rose. He stood with his arms crossed and his feet placed shoulder width apart. “I’ll take you back now.”

  Milial shook her head sadly. “Remind me never to play a game of bluff with you, Captain Gare Jolen.” She pulled the silver needle from her mouth and set it on a plate. “Shellan Giet.”

  The silver needle pulled its ends together to form a hollow metal cube.

  “It has been deactivated.”

  Gare knelt near Milial. “You are just as good at a game of bluff as I; I just had a better hand to play.”

  He looked at his still-bleeding wound. He was silently impressed with how she made her voice break in the middle of the sentence. It was very effective.

  He cleared his throat, smiled at her and rose to his feet. “Now come with me to see the doctor and then you can tell me how you came to be stranded on a planet a hundred light-years from any civilization and why you want to kill my Teggan.”

  Milial put her hand into Gare’s offered one and let him pull her upright. She slipped, fell slightly and then pulled herself up to stand next to him. “I guess I’m not accustomed to this gravity.” She smiled at Gare and slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow as they walked toward the door of the solarium.

  Gare held his free hand in front of her, palm upward. “I’ll take that.”

  “I’m sorry. What will you take?” Milial asked, her face a jumble of confusion.

  Gare smiled. “Give it to me, or we’ll just take a left turn when we exit this door and go to the docking bay.” The woman was good. She was very good. He doubted anyone else on his crew except for Vyr would have noticed.

  Milial sighed. She tugged the hollow metal cube out of her sleeve and set it in Gare’s upturned palm. She had surreptitiously palmed it when she pretended to slip earlier.

  Gare set it on the edge of a nearby bench. “If I’m going to let you wander around my ship, I have to be sure that my crew will be safe.”

  She opened her mouth.

  “All of my crew, including Vyr,” Gare added before she could say anything. “Promise me you won’t activate that again.”

  With resignation heavy on her face, Milial nodded. “I give you my word that the Piercer will remain inactive while aboard this ship. Until, that is, your ship is swarmed by depraved Teggans, which it will be, soon enough. They will come, you know.”

  Gare nodded. “I expect someone will.”

  They had seen the satellite orbiting above the planet. Poular found that it transmitted images but she couldn't follow the transmission any further than eight light years. Whoever was monitoring the planet was doing so from a very long distance.

  Gare pushed the button to the left of the door and it opened. Vyr pushed himself back from the wall, where he had been leaning, waiting for his captain.

  Milial spun away from Gare and pulled another picnic knife from her sleeve. She rushed at Vyr. Vyr spun and pushed Milial forward but not before the knife sliced along the outside of his forearm. Milial circled and came at Vyr again, bringing the knife downward from above his head. Vyr caught her arm and held it at the wrist. She tugged against his grip but Vyr was twice as strong as she was in her malnourished condition.

  She swept her leg outward, trying to clip Vyr’s heel to unsettle his balance, but Vyr held firm. Vyr slammed her hand against the bulkhead two times until she dropped the knife. It clattered across the hallway floor. Vyr spun Milial around like a tattered piece of cloth and entrapped her in his strong arms, pressing her back against his chest, his biceps pinning her shoulders to his body.

  “Stop that!” Gare shouted.

  “She has been subdued,” Vyr told him, tilting his head forward slightly.

  Milial was panting from the exertion while Vyr hadn’t even broken a sweat.

  Gare stomped to where Milial struggled in vain against Vyr’s tight embrace.

  “You will stop attacking Vyr. Do you hear me?” His face was red with exasperation.

  “He is a Teggan.”

  “Give me your word or you’re going back to the planet.”

  Vyr scoffed but quieted under Gare’s glare. Gare watched Milial chew on the inside of her cheek in indecision.

  “Very well.” She nodded once. “I will die here on your ship, killed by this filthy Teggan, left defenseless by my vow to you.” She exhaled. “I will not kill your Teggan.”

  Vyr released his grip and she fell forward onto the floor. She gingerly poked her wrist and winced.

  “Did you have to break her wrist?” Gare asked.

  “She tried to kill me,” Vyr objected.

  Gare shook his head. “Looks like all three of us are going to the infirmary, now.” Gare helped Milial to her
feet. “Let’s try to not injure ourselves any more on the trip there, all right?”

  They started walking in the direction of the infirmary. Gare supported Milial, with Vyr applying close vigilance from behind.

  “Why do you hate me so, when we have never even met?” Vyr asked as they turned a corner.

  “I do not hate you,” Milial objected. “I fear you.” Gare felt her body shiver.

  “Fear me?” Vyr laughed. “I will not hurt you.”

  Milial lifted her limp wrist and raised her eyebrows. As she turned and caught a glimpse of Vyr out of the corner of her eye, she could not suppress the scowl he brought to her lips.

  “Unless you pose a threat to us,” Vyr added, returning the scowl.

  They opened the door to the infirmary. “Bazat, you have some patients.” Gare helped Milial up onto a cushioned table. “Start with her.”

  Milial shook her head. “This wrist has been broken before by a Teggan. More than once. It can wait until your wound has been wrapped.”

  Milial turned to Bazat. “He was impaled by a Piercer. It’s a silver needle when it's in stasis. Upon command, it enters flesh, expands to a three inch long rod, half an inch in diameter. It sprouts jagged edges and bores a wide path through the flesh. It acts as an awl digging through flesh until it reaches the heart, then it turns into a tiller that mauls the heart muscle. It returns to its stasis form of a silver needle for its path home to its keeper.”

  “Lovely,” Vyr said, sitting on a hydraulic gurney.

  “It penetrated Captain Jolen’s forearm at the wrist and traveled three inches before I deactivated it,” Milial continued. She turned up her lip in a sneer at the Teggan.

  “If you don’t have the means for mending his flesh, I can command the Piercer to stitch his flesh together from the inside,” she offered.

  She nodded in Gare’s direction. "With the Captain's permission, of course."

  Bazat held a medical device above Gare’s wound and studied the readout on a nearby screen. “It came close to your nerves but it doesn’t look like it damaged anything beyond muscle,” Bazat told her captain.

  She pulled another device out of a drawer and handed it to him. “Press this against your wound and hold it in place for two minutes. It will mend your muscle.”

  Bazat walked over to Vyr and pulled away the towel he held against his forearm. “Knife wound, courtesy of our new guest,” he said, barely keeping the growl out of his voice.

  “You’re just lucky it sliced your arm and not your side, where I was aiming,” Milial retorted.

  “I am a Teggan warrior. Luck had nothing to do with it.” His eyes narrowed at the edges as he glared at her.

  “Tell that to the Teggan skeletons littering the planet.” Milial looked like she wanted to fly off the table and strangle Vyr. Her knuckles turned white as she gripped the edge with one hand.

  “Enough!” Captain Jolen shouted. “You two are like Kazian rats. Stop it already.”

  “Hold that still,” Bazat reminded Gare.

  Bazat pushed Vyr’s chin with her finger to direct his gaze away from Milial. Her finger became the same color as his chin up to her middle knuckle. She ran another device down his forearm and his skin healed under its reddish glow.

  “Just a scratch,” she said when it was all mended.

  “And now for you,” Bazat said, turning toward Milial. She scanned Milial’s wrist with a device which showed her bones on a nearby screen. “You’ve broken this wrist before.”

  “Despicable Teggans broke my wrist,” she corrected the doctor. “Twice before. Three times now.” She glowered at Vyr.

  Bazat put her finger under Milial’s chin and turned her eyes away from Vyr. Her finger changed color again.

  “Tell me why the Teggans broke your wrist,” Bazat said.

  Milial looked at her knees.

  She glanced at Gare and quickly returned her gaze to the floor in front of her.

  “The first time they came, they surprised me.” She winced as Bazat picked up her wrist and slid a cool plate under it.

  “I had just buried my wingman and had been on the planet four days. I thought they were coming to rescue me. Or imprison me. Or kill me. But I never expected them to…” Milial broke off. She looked up at Vyr.

  “I had never met a Teggan before. I had seen pictures and vids of them, of course, but I never saw one in person before.” Her eyes bore into Vyr’s. “The Teggans are a savage, brutal people. There were five male Teggans. My leg was broken from the crash. I was still bleeding from a gash along my side. Five of them came. They tortured me in unimaginable ways, then they….”

  Milial shook her head. Her jaw muscles contracted and heaved.

  “The second time they came, two months later, I ran. I ran and hid and ran some more. But they had sensors to find me. And they were better fed. And I was still recovering from their brutality during their first visit.”

  Bazat put another plate over Milial’s wrist and connected the two plates together with a clasp.

  “The third time the Teggans came, I was ready. It was then that I learned that the planet’s dust masked my life signs from their sensors. I spent the next decade and a half covered in dust. On purpose.” Her chuckle with filled with melancholy. "My mother would have been mortified seeing her space daughter covered in soil from a planet." She took a deep breath. “One of the dead had a computer which taught me much about the contemptible Teggans, including how to command the Piercers, which I took from their corpses.”

  Bazat turned on a machine and it turned the plates orange with a low hum.

  “Now they come every five or six months. It has turned into a ritual, a rite of passage for military personnel about to become officers.”

  Bazat turned the machine off and the orange glow began to dissipate.

  “They come to fight me in groups of five or ten. If they survive, apparently they return and rise in the Teggan military ranks." Milial narrowed her eyes. "But not all of them return.”

  Bazat nodded. “We counted over a hundred Teggan bodies on the planet. Some were recent and were still decomposing, most were years old.”

  “A hundred,” Vyr exclaimed. He quickly looked away.

  “There was one,” Milial continued. “The Coward. He begged for his life, pleaded on his knees. He slobbered all over my feet. He’s the one who told me why the Teggans came. Why they tried to kill me one-on-one and yet would never just blast me from space. They wanted to kill me individually but as a culture they wanted me alive, to remember. He promised me that if I let him go he would return and make sure no one ever came again. He said they would turn off the satellite camera and they would leave me to die in peace.” Milial swallowed sourly. “That was more than five years ago.”

  Bazat gave Milial a glass of water and she drank it with a shaking hand.

  “The Coward told me they have a satellite in space to beam images of me to the Teggan home planet. School children watch me to learn the face of their enemy. The foul Teggans show them my picture so children can learn how to hate.”

  She swallowed thickly. "And when the hunters come they position the satellite camera on the other side of the planet so the Teggans back home don't see what the barbarians do to me."

  Bazat unclasped the plates and removed them from around Milial’s wrist.

  Milial flexed it. “I wish I would have had one of those on the planet. I can’t tell you how many broken bones I’ve had.”

  Bazat pointed to the monitor which still showed Milial’s skeleton. “I can.”

  Milial shook her head. “No, I don’t want to know. It was rhetorical.”

  Bazat smiled. “I figured as much.”

  “And what did you do to earn such a revered status from people you had never even met?” Vyr’s lip curled but Gare heard respect in his security officer’s voice.

  “I am Doxial,” she replied. “Apparently that was enough.”

  “And?” Vyr pried.

  Milial
shrugged. “Is there anything I could say that could rationalize the Teggan’s atrocious actions?” She glared at Vyr. “They brutalized me, left me on an uninhabitable planet and then, when I wouldn’t die, they sent hunting groups after me. What tale could I weave that would make that acceptable behavior?”

  Milial flexed her wrist.

  “Probably none,” Vyr acquiesced. “But humor me never-the-less.”

  Milial snarled at the Teggan. “I am a Doxial,” she began, looking like she'd rather kill him than speak to him. “I was born on a space station seven light years from here, in the Doran sector. My family had lived on space stations for fifty generations. Space station Doxials never held slaves, but planetarian Doxials did. The planetarian Doxials enslaved the Teggans with Piercers for a thousand years. The Piercers respond only to a Doxial voice. Once implanted, they replicate themselves in the fetuses and Teggans are born with their own Piercers. Within two hundred years, there wasn't a Teggan in the sector who wasn't bound to a Piercer, and, through it, to a master.”

  “We didn’t agree with what the planetary Doxials were doing but we weren’t willing to start a civil war over it either, Doxials killing Doxials, even if they were planetarian Doxials. So my great-great-grandfather's generation moved to the Doran sector where we could live the way to wanted to, with the societal norms we believed in. We moved not only ourselves but our space stations, too. We almost went to war over that, us taking the space stations, but apparently the planetarian Doxials weren't willing to start a civil war over losing their space stations any more than we wanted a war over slavery.”

  She pulled up her knees and hugged them. “Little did we know the slaves were planning a secession of their own: a secession through annihilation. They had secretly developed a biological weapon which sought out and attacked only Doxial DNA. Very advanced. It disintegrated our flesh and from what I've seen, it was very painful. Very effective. Very deadly.”

  She turned her eyes from Vyr and rested her forehead on her arms. “The gel swept across their home planet in two days, disintegrating four billion Doxials. It wiped out 300 million Doxials on twenty-one space stations within the week. We fled. There were other species living on our space stations and to stay would have meant their certain death. As it was, thousands of members of other species died just in the initial hull breaches. We weren't about to commit them to our fate. We evacuated to a spaceship and fled. The Teggans chased us. Their ships were faster than ours and they caught up to us just as we reached this sector. We fought them, but they outnumbered us fifty to one. They shot their bioengineered gel and it covered our ships. It ate through the hull before we could safely land, causing hull breaches just as we entered the planet’s atmosphere. The ships crumbled. Almost everyone burned up during entry. Only two of us survived the landing. Two. Two Doxials out of more than one hundred thousand. And Damel’s injuries were too great. He didn’t last three days.”

  “The Teggans wiped out my people and left me on that planet. And even that wasn’t enough for them.”

  Bazat rested her hand on Milial’s shoulder. Bazat's hand and forearm took on the color of Milial’s clothes.

  "There was something on the planet, maybe the dust, I don't know, that ate the gel, otherwise I would never have lasted this long. The gel should have killed me, too."

  Bazat and Gare shared a glance, both remembering the elemental Milial called the fog.

  A red warning light began to blink in the corner.

  “Captain to the bridge,” Poular spoke over the intercom. “We have visitors.”

  “The Teggans have arrived.” Milial’s voice was cold as ice. Her tongue poked at her cheek where she used to keep the Piercer.

  “Bazat, stay with Milial,” Gare commanded.

  He jumped from his gurney. “Vyr, you’re with me.”

  They rushed from the room to the bridge. The image covering the screen showed a very large warship sitting off Vega One’s bow. The image changed to a Teggan dressed in military regalia with a nasty scar across his right cheek.

  “Surrender or die,” the Teggan commanded. “The choice is yours. You have one minute.” The screen went blank.

  Poular replaced the image with that of the warship. “He’s not in the mood to chat,” she stated dryly.

  “What’s his firepower?” Gare asked.

  “It would be an even fight,” Vyr replied after checking the screen.

  The screen flashed back to the Teggan commander’s scarred face. “What is your answer?”

  “I’m Captain Gare Jolen of the Association of Planetary Systems,” Gare began.

  The other ship’s captain cut him off. “I don’t care who you are. You have taken our property. Surrender and return it or you will all die.” The Teggan lifted his chin slightly.

  “Incoming,” Poular shouted. The torpedo shook Vega One slightly.

  The Teggan on the screen peered closer at the image in front of him. “Who are you?” he asked, pointing over Gare’s shoulder.

  “I am Vyr, eldest son of the Phoenix clan, from the planet Xixi.”

  “You are a Teggan and yet I have never heard of your clans or your planet. Show me.” The Teggan crossed his arms across his massive chest.

  Gare nodded to Poular. She transmitted their star map.

  The Teggan paled considerably. He staggered and caught himself by resting his hand on the back of a nearby chair.

  “There are many Teggans in your system?” His voice shook slightly.

  Vyr nodded. “Hundreds of millions.”

  “And are you this one’s slave?”

  Vyr growled. “We are slaves to none but our own fate.”

  The Teggan commander looked to his second in command. “None of the Teggans in your system are slaves?”

  “None are slaves and none have ever been slaves. Teggans in my system would die before we would serve another.”

  "How far back can you trace your line?" The Teggan captain's hand trembled slightly.

  "Over fifty thousand centuries," Vyr responded, jutting his chin outward. "There are old, old legends of how Teggans came to the Fife sector to find a better life, to leave behind a sector devoid of life and joy. But those are myths, not to be believed."

  The Teggan captain looked like he believed them. "We have legends of those who escaped, but we, too, thought they were just myths to give hope to the young, not to be believed."

  Milial, escorted by Revva, entered the bridge, walked down the far aisle and came to stand next to Gare.

  Gare turned to nod his approval and gaped.

  “Kill her. Kill her immediately,” the Teggan captain said.

  Gare barely heard the other ship’s captain. Milial had donned a flowing lavender gown, held at her shoulders with thin pearl straps. She had covered herself demurely in the solarium but she clearly wanted to face the Teggans in all her Doxialian glory.

  She had a deep purple patch at the base of her throat. It spread into two lines, following her collar bone, across her shoulders, down the back of her biceps, around the inside of her elbows to her wrists where a deep purple pool faded into a light lavender on her palms. Her eyes, as purple as her markings, slid over his and firmly settled onto the Teggan’s image on the screen. Gare saw her tension as her jaw clenched but her face was a blank slate, calm as the night sky.

  “Commodore.” Her voice was calm and strong. She nodded her head slightly.

  “I demand you kill this, this thing immediately.”

  Gare blinked at the Teggan. He held a polite look on his face but said nothing.

  The commodore pointed over Gare’s shoulder at Vyr. “You are a Teggan. It is your duty to kill her.”

  Vyr started to respond but Gare cut him off with a curt shake of his head.

  “I am Milial, formerly of Space Station Seventeen. And you are?”

  Gare turned slightly away from the screen so the Teggan wouldn’t see Gare's smile broaden. Milial’s voice left no doubt that she was in command of the si
tuation. On the side panel, Gare watched the Teggan’s face turn a bright yellow. The scar running down the side of his face pulsed in an orange glow. Gare could see hatred in the Teggan’s eyes, but he also saw fear dancing at the corners and heard a strange sort of reverence hidden under his gruff tone.

  “I am Commodore Forty-Eight and I demand your surrender. We will board your paltry ship and escort this abomination to her death chamber.”

  The image on the screen widened and Gare could see the Teggan’s bridge and crew.

  Milial raised her arm and pointed over Commodore Forty-eight’s shoulder. “I know you.” Her purple lines turned darker, almost as black as the night sky. “You are a coward and a liar.” She moved forward and dug her fingers into the railing. Her breaths came in gulps.

  Gare placed his hand on her elbow to calm her.

  After a moment, her dark lines lightened to a deep purple.

  “Impossible,” the Commodore said. “You are as insane as you are evil. My First Officer was still a youngster when we escorted you to the planet.”

  His crew laughed with derision.

  Milial’s fingers dug into the railing as she bristled at his description of the crash that reduced the entire Doxial species to one. Her gaze never left the First Officer’s panic-stricken face.

  “You promised me that you would stop the hunts,” she said. “You groveled on your hands and knees. You begged for your life and I gave it to you. And you broke your vow.”

  The commodore’s head turned from Milial to his First Officer, clearly more confused by his officer’s reaction than by the Doxial’s words.

  “You crawled to the shuttle, sputtering and slobbering, snot running down your chin,” she continued. “You closed the doors, even though you saw your friends running towards you. They called your name. They were close enough for you to see the green of their eyes.”

  “She’s insane,” the First Officer objected. His face told a different tale.

  “Don’t listen to a Doxial.” His hands shook violently.

  “They sighed in relief when you turned the ship around. They thought you were returning for them."

  Milial's jaw muscle twitched.

  "But instead you opened fire on your own kind. You shredded their bodies, leaving no credible witnesses. You are a coward and a murderer. You are without honor. May your family never learn of your shame.”

  "She is a ghost. Is she real?" he asked no one in particular. The First Officer began to cry. “You were never supposed to get off the planet alive,” he wailed. “You were supposed to die down there. Alone.” He wiped at his running nose. “You did die down there. I killed you with the same finger missiles that killed my crew. Your body was as mangled as theirs.”

  Gare remembered Bazat telling him that the elemental which Milial thought was fog had saved her life. Apparently it had resuscitated her as well. Gare wondered if Milial was aware she had died and an elemental had brought her back to life.

  Commodore Forty-Eight grabbed his crewman by his throat. “What are you babbling about?” He shook his First Officer and slapped him across his face, but the man had collapsed in convulsions.

  Commodore Forty-Eight spun to face the screen. “What lies is she spreading?”

  “My lines are solid. I speak no lies,” Milial replied. She held her head high so he could see her neck coloring clearly.

  “Scan the surface. You will find the bones of Teggans. Those who came to hunt me and failed.”

  The commodore flicked his hand at one of his crew. “Hunt her? We would never hunt her." The commodore refused to address Milial directly and instead spoke to Captain Jolen.

  "We already had her trapped. We kept her there as a symbol of our victory, our dominance. The last Doxial in existence.” His eye slits grew in pride.

  “We agreed not to kill her, but to allow her to live, to exist as a living memory of what her people did to us. We would bring our school children and have them watch her from space, like an animal in a zoo exhibit. But our people were forbidden from stepping foot on the planet.”

  “And yet you sent assassination squads,” Vyr accused.

  “No, no. The planet is forbidden. No one is allowed to land there – they must stay in orbit and observe her only.”

  Gare watched Milial study the old Teggan’s eyes. He saw her lines turn a softer shade of purple.

  “Shellan Giet, et ack so meil.”

  “No!” Vyr shouted and lunged toward the Doxial.

  Gare turned to the screen in time to see every Teggan crew member clutch his chest and fall to his knees. Screams of pain filled the air.

  Vyr grabbed Milial from behind and clamped his hand over her mouth to prevent her from speaking. He was too late. Her command had been issued.

  The cries of pain lessened to sobbing and were interspersed with exclamations of surprise.

  Vyr removed his hand as the Teggan crew members climbed to their feet.

  “I am Milial, whose name means 'of the stars', and I have set you free.”

  Milial’s lines were almost the same color as her light lavender gown.

  “You have the recording of my voice, the last Doxial voice. You can now free all of your people. You have my word. The Piercers will remain inert and no Teggan will be born with a Piercer again.”

  Milial shrugged out of Vyr’s grip.

  Vyr grabbed her hand gently. "Why did you release them? After what they had done to you? You had the power to kill all of them with a single command."

  Milial snorted. "What would you have me do? Continue this? I am the last of my kind. What is there left to fight about?”

  She tilted her chin to look up at the tall Teggan. “Do you understand, I am the very last Doxial." She pulled her hand out from under Vyr's.

  "They could have restricted it to their planet,” she continued. “We wouldn't have retaliated. It was a planetarian issue. They are the ones who brought their hatred to the stars. It is time for it to end. And I have ended it."

  She nodded to Revva, placed her hand on top of his and walked next to him as he escorted her off the bridge.

  “You were supposed to die down there,” the First Officer shouted. He pushed two buttons and the Teggan ship let loose a volley of projectiles. Commodore Forty-Eight pulled out his weapon and shot a laser beam at his First Officer’s heart. The man’s body slid to the floor, dead.

  Vega One shuddered under the assault.

  “Shields are holding,” Poular stated after checking the panels.

  “Hold fire,” Gare commanded his crew. He wasn’t going to go to war because of one guilt-ridden Teggan.

  They heard a crackling sound, like firecrackers behind a closed door. Vyr checked his panel. “Shields are failing.”

  “They fired some gooey gel at us,” Poular said.

  “It will breach our hull in…” Vyr check the panel. “Hull breach on deck twenty-eight, section Omega. Sealing it now.” He punched at his panel, tension growing in his fingertips. “The seal is broken. The hull breach is spreading.”

  “What in the hell did you shoot at me?” Gare asked.

  “I apologize, Captain Jolen. You need to abandon your vessel, while you can. There is no protection from the gel. It will eat away at your hull until it finds and kills the Doxial on board. Then and only then will it turn inert and harmless.”

  The lights flickered.

  Milial stopped Revva in the hallway and sucked in her breath. "The Teggans have fired the gel." Her eyes turned black in memory. "Take me to the nearest docking port."

  Revva started to object but Milial cut him off. "Quickly, or your ship will join mine on that blasted planet. And I am not going back there."

  They turned left and walked a few feet. "There must be another way, my little butterfly." Revva opened the docking port door.

  Milial turned to look at the priest. "At first, I thought you were my imagination but now I understand why the fates brought you here." Milial rested the inside of her wr
ist against Revva's. "It was to deliver me to the stars. You have done your task. I have done part of my task by freeing the Teggans. Now it is time to finish it." She stepped inside. Revva helped her into the space suit.

  "Please disconnect the communications device," she requested. "The gel was specifically designed to be very painful."

  Revva nodded and turned a switch on the space suit's panel to receive incoming communications only.

  He slid the helmet over her head and it sealed with a hiss. He made the sign of his order over her nose with his finger; he drew a circle in the air and cut it in half with a squiggly line.

  “Your species may cease to exist today, but you will not be forgotten. The Teggans will remember the Doxial who freed them. They inflicted a thousand years of revenge upon one Doxial and still you released them from their imprisonment.”

  He bowed deeply. “My heart will remember you forever, my little butterfly."

  He stepped out of the docking port into the hallway and closed the door behind him. He punched in the code to open the docking port. His body unconsciously moved backwards, away from the imagined hiss of the vacuum of space.

  Milial placed one foot on the doorjamb and thrust her body away from the ship, sending her body floating into space without a tether. She used the suit's tiny directional jets so she faced away from both ships and away from the planet. Her view of her stars was unobstructed. In her mind she looked past them, all the way to the Doran sector, to the stars of her grandparents.

  “What have you done to my ship?” Gare shouted at the Commodore on the Teggan ship.

  “Hull failure on decks twenty-eight through twenty.” Vyr’s voice was tight. “There were over a thousand people in those sections.”

  “Issue the order to evacuate.” Gare spoke the lockdown command and confirmation.

  “We will do everything we can to help,” Commodore Forty-eight said. “I will send rescue ships for your…” he listened as his crewman spoke. “…seven thousand personnel.”

  “Captain, it appears the hull failures are slowing,” Poular said, bending closer to read the panel. “The gel…it’s still moving through the ship but it’s not causing any damage.”

  “My Doxial is no longer on board your ship,” the Commodore told them.

  “No longer on board? Where is she?” Gare asked.

  Vyr scanned the area and brought an image onto the screen.

  A body in a space suit drifted through space. A line of gel flowed in globs from Vega One to the figure.

  Gare watched as the green gel latched onto her ankle, covered her foot, then her entire calf. He saw the gel breach the suit and the suit depressurize. Soon, the entire suit was covered in green gel. Milial's body disintegrated and the gel spread outwards, as if she had sprouted wings along her back. The gel, going inert with her death, turned purple. Revva's purple butterfly floated amongst the stars.

  The End