He sat facing them with a plate of food in front of him. It was hard to tell how tall he was from his sitting position, but he was muscular with short dark hair and tan skin. His facial hair wasn’t quite a full beard but more than few days of stubble began to add together.
His uniform was also black and purple with an emblem of an ancient helmet in the middle of two wings that sat on the right side of his chest. The vambraces he wore glowed softy with warm purple energy. He looked kind enough, but as Emma approached, she could tell he was thinking about something. A furrow of his brow told Emma all was not well.
When he looked up, his dark brown eyes found the girls. The expression of worry and sadness faded as a boyish grin touched his lips. He stood with the smile on his face and worked his way around the table.
“He’s a god,” Jeba said under her breath.
“You must be Emma Jackson. I’m Frank Wolffe.” Frank extended his hand. “It looks like we have a lot in common.”
Emma swallowed hard.
Play it cool, play it cool, she repeated like a mantra in her own mind. The feeling of talking to the most popular kid in high school filled her as she tried not to stumble over her own words.
“Hi,” Emma managed as she shook his hand. “It’s—it’s so great to meet you.”
“Ehum, Ehum.” Jeba coughed hard into her hand, not trying to mask her intentions whatsoever.
“Oh, right.” Emma released Frank’s hand and introduced her friends. “This is Layga and Jeba. They’re some of the best recruits the Academy has. They also helped me fight off the Shay when they invaded Earth.”
“Hello.” Layga’s hand enveloped Frank’s like an adult holding a child’s hand.
“Hi.” Frank smiled, looking from Layga to Jeba. “Any friend of the Arilion protecting my home planet is a friend of mine.”
“Are you wed?” Jeba asked as Frank removed his hand from Layga’s and shook Jeba’s.
“What?” Frank asked, sniffing the air. “Does anyone else smell bar-b-que?”
“Don’t avoid the question.” Jeba smiled as she released Frank’s hand and smoothed down her wild red hair. “Are you betrothed?”
“I’m not married, but I have a girlfriend if that’s what you mean,” Frank answered Jeba, still sniffing the air he turned his head this way and that. “I swear I smell cooked meat. Do they serve that here for breakfast?”
Emma took a half step back to try and carry the smell with her. She just couldn’t bring herself to admit that she had sprayed meat perfume on herself before meeting him.
“Good, girlfriends I can work around.” Jeba wagged her eyebrows at Frank. “So how long will you be with us at the Academy?”
Things were going downhill fast. Emma knew she had to lasso in Jeba before she made an awkward first impression worse.
“Layga.” Emma looked over to her friend for help. “Maybe you and Jeba want to grab some food before your day of classes starts.”
“Huh?” Layga looked to Emma, then to googly-eyed Jeba. “Oh, right, yes.”
Layga went over to Jeba and ushered her along with her.
“Excuse us, Frank,” Layga said, practically pushing Jeba along. “We should grab a bite to eat of whatever delicious meat they have cooking. It smells wonderful.” Layga gave Emma a huge wink, Frank was sure to see.
“Oh man,” Emma said under her breath.
“So, they seem nice,” Frank said, redirecting Emma’s attention back to the table. He motioned for her to take a seat. “Do you want to grab anything to eat while we talk? They have an assortment of—of strange alien food that I’ve never seen before, but hey, it beats an MRE.”
“No, no. I’m good,” Emma said, taking a seat on the opposite side of a small circular table where Frank sat. In all honesty, she wasn’t sure if her stomach could take introducing anything into it at that moment. Old habits of anxiety touched her like unwanted advances.
Emma knew it was all in her head, but that didn’t help. So far, Frank had been nothing but friendly. Still, her anxious nature and old habits didn’t take that into consideration.
“So the good General Fox has told me all about you. He gave me a file and everything,” Frank said, taking a seat across from Emma. “Not that I read it. I figured I was going to meet you anyway. But if he asks you, I read every word of that report.”
Emma felt a smile and a small chuckle escape her. “Deal, I won’t say anything.”
“Good.” Frank looked down at his tray of oatmeal-like porridge. “Do they have anything like coffee here?”
“I wish.” Emma shook her head. “I could really go for a unicorn Frappuccino right now.”
“You and me both.” Frank grinned from across the table. “So I’m going to be as honest as I can with you. The truth is I’m new to this whole Arilion thing too. But anything I can share, if there’s any way I can help you, I’ve got your back. We’re not only Arilion, but we’re the only two Arilion humans, so our bond goes deep.”
“Right, thank—thank you,” Emma said with a heavy exhale. She took a moment to look around the room. As soon as she did, everyone who was staring at them immediately turned their heads away.
“It’s weird, right?” Frank leaned back in his seat, examining the mess hall. “It’s like we’re the cool kids in high school now, but the high school is the universe.”
“It’s super weird,” Emma agreed, trying to figure out how she felt about being the one with all the attention. “High school on Earth, I mean, just regular high school wasn’t going too well for me.”
“I hear that.” Frank nodded along with her words. “I grew up dirt poor. My experience before I joined the military wasn’t exactly glamorous either.”
“I stuttered a lot. I mean, I still do, but it was worse before,” Emma admitted. She pulled back a lock of her blonde hair and pointed to her ears that came up at a point due to the fact she was half Halyna. “These didn’t help either.”
Frank smiled, placing a boot on the table. He rolled up his pant leg, pointing to a deep scar on his left shin. “Courtesy of a bully named Liam Tatum. I know, right? Who names their kid Liam Tatum? Anyway, I got beat up all the time. I rarely had money, but I think I just made a good target for bullies. I was small as a kid, always wore second hand clothes too big or too small, funky cheap haircuts—the whole nine yards.”
Emma’s anxiety began to fade as she realized the thirty-something-year-old man in front of her shared more in common with Emma than anyone she had ever met.
“Maybe that’s why the vambraces chose us,” Emma said, thinking out loud.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, we’ve been beaten down, bullied, made fun of, put through the wringer, and here we are,” Emma said as she had a moment of self-realization. “Wow, sorry for getting so deep on you. I’m usually not like this.”
“It’s a special occasion when a Jarhead and the savior of Earth get together.” Frank looked around, making everyone staring at them immediately turn back to what they were doing at their own tables. “Hey, let’s get out of here. I know a place.”
16
“Do you think we’re going to get in trouble for being in here?” Emma asked, looking wide-eyed around the training room that was still under construction. “I mean, I know this level of the Academy is being repurposed for the Arilion Knights, but that sign on the door clearly said to keep out.”
“Naw, we’re fine. I checked it out this morning.” Frank walked to the far side of the room. “Besides, what are they going to do? Fire us?”
Emma looked around the wide open circular room. The level set aside for the Arilion Knights was the uppermost of the Academy. The center room had a glass roof that opened up to the universe beyond. Construction supplies and building tech alien to Emma’s eyes lay strewn along the side of the walls. A half completed control console sat on the right side of the room.
“Is this—is this going to be like our danger room?” Emma asked out loud as she envisioned w
hat the room would look like when finished.
“Did you just throw out an X-Men reference?” Frank looked up from fiddling with something on a tall box. “Nice.”
A moment later, music Emma recognized but didn’t know the name of filled the half-finished room. The repeating lyrics were “Whoa, black betty, bam-la-lam.”
“I think better with music most days.” Frank approached her, bobbing his head and stretching his arms. “I know you’ve already been training here at the Academy. How are your constructs holding up?”
“Pretty good, I think.” Emma channeled her Will, imagining her sword in her right hand, then transitioned to a knife, then a circular shield.
“Not too shabby, Jackson. Check this out.” Frank lifted off the ground, floating in midair before a purple Tyrannosaurus Rex construct took shape around him. Frank drifted in the middle of the monstrous beast as if he were in a suit of armor. “I’ve been working on this one since I watched Jurassic Park for the hundredth time. Pretty cool, right?”
“So cool!” Emma laughed out loud. “I didn’t know we could fly.”
Frank touched down, allowing his construct to fade. “Yeah, apparently, we’re all predisposed to certain physical attributes like speed, flight, strength, durability, and so on. I still can’t really fly, more like float. I need more time to practice.”
“You don’t have time to practice now?” Emma asked innocently. “That’s all they make me do here.”
As soon as Emma asked the question, she knew she had pushed a button. The same worried, sad expression came over Frank’s eyes. He stood quiet for a moment, trapped in his own thoughts.
“I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk about training or time or anything if you don’t want to,” Emma said, trying to recapture the levity of the moment. “We can keep training.”
“No, it’s nothing you’ve done.” Frank shook his head, freeing himself from the thoughts that haunted him. “There’s a friend; she’s in trouble. When I get back to the Den, I have to find a way to save her.”
Emma was surprised Frank had said so much. He didn’t seem like the type to spill his guts. In all honesty, Emma didn’t know what to say. Instead of trying to offer a solution, she did the only thing she knew how to do.
“I’m here for you if there’s any way I can help,” Emma said, hoping this would be enough to cheer up her new friend. “We’re Arilion Knights; we have to stick together.”
“Oohrah to that,” Frank said as he transitioned from thoughtful to cheerful once more. “How do your long-range constructs look? I know you’ve got the bladed weapons down, but what do you do when you need to take out an enemy at range?”
“Honestly, I haven’t gotten that far yet.” Emma thought back to her fight with the Vilmar and his turned. “I used throwing knives or a rope.”
“No guns?” Frank asked.
“I haven’t trained with any. The instructors leading my drills aren’t exactly familiar with them themselves,” Emma admitted. “Can you teach me?”
“For sure.” Frank approached her, constructing a medium-length rifle in his hands. It looked sturdy with a long barrel and a magazine at the bottom. “It’s an M16A4. It’s reliable and comfortable for me to construct because I’m so familiar with it. The more knowledge and time you’ve had with a construct, the easier it is to build and the longer you can hold it. Do you have any kind of familiarity with a long-ranged weapon? Even if it’s not rifle or handgun?”
“My dad owns a revolver, but he keeps it in the safe,” Emma thought out loud. She didn’t want to disappoint Frank. “I’ve been to the shooting range with him a few times, but—”
A light bulb went off in her head.
“I used to take archery lessons when I was a kid,” Emma said excitedly. “I was pretty good at it too.”
“There we go.” Frank extended his right arm, creating a round target for Emma to shoot. He pushed the construct out a good thirty yards and looked over at her expectantly. “Let’s go, Jackson. Let’s see what you got.”
Emma concentrated, bringing the familiar shape of a recurve bow into her hands. The bow was nearly as tall as she was. A purple arrow appeared between the string of the bow and the bent wood itself.
She pulled back on the string with her right hand. Her left hand out straight provided the anchor for the act. She took a deep breath in and slowly let it out. Her right hand came up to her right cheek, holding the taut bow string and the feathered end of her arrow.
Aim small miss small, aim small miss small. She repeated the mantra her archery instructor had taught her.
She released the arrow with an audible thrumbing sound. It sailed through the air too fast for the eye to track and buried itself just to the right of the bullseye on Frank’s construct.
“Not bad, Jackson, not bad at all.” Frank grinned, looking at her handiwork. “With a few hundred hours of practice, you’ll be an ace.”
Emma’s smile faded to disbelief. “Did you say a ‘few hundred’ hours?”
“Practice, Jackson, practice, practice, and more practice until you can form constructs in your sleep and you’re just as deadly with them,” Frank preached. “If the Corps instilled anything in me… okay, they instilled a lot in me, but one of the things we always did was practice. Day in and day out.”
As Frank was going on about the importance of practice, Emma caught movement by the doors to the training room. She turned to look, noticing Jace lurking by the entrance to the room.
She was still too unfamiliar with his mannerisms and facial features to tell for certain, but he didn’t look like he was eavesdropping. He had an unsure expression across his long snout as if he were deciding whether to come in or not.
“You can come in if—”
“Give the fur ball some time,” Frank said to Emma, not looking over at Jace. “He’ll join us when he’s ready.”
“How do you know?” Emma asked with curiosity in her eyes. “Have you spoken with him?”
“No, but I’ve seen enough Marines with the same look.” Frank’s own expression went solemn. “You get familiar with it after a while when you’ve been with guys who’ve seen serious action. They get stuck in their own heads. The fur ball is an Arilion Knight chosen by the Light and given the vambraces. He’s one of us. He’ll be fine.”
“The Light?” Emma asked, repeating the word. She had heard mention of it before from books and her own instructors at the Academy, but Frank said the word as if it were a person, not a thing.
“There’s a balance in everything,” Frank told Emma as she stared on wide-eyed. “The Light’s with us and fights the darkness. I’ve experienced it first hand while I was playing a game of ‘beat the crap out of each other’ with the Lord of Chaos. We’re not alone, Jackson. Everything that has happened to us has happened for a reason. Man, listen to me. I don’t even sound like myself anymore.”
Emma wanted to ask more questions. She was stopped from furthering the conversation as Jace walked into the room. He wore the same black and purple uniform she had seen him in earlier that day with his sleeves ripped off. His vambraces shone the same as hers. He stopped just inside the doorway.
“Look who decided to come in and stop playing stalker.” Frank grinned at the Arilion from across the room. “I thought you were about to offer me free candy and puppies, maybe a ride in your van.”
Jace skewered up his face. “Why would I offer you treats and small animals? What is a van?”
“Never mind. It’s a bad human joke.” Frank went with it. “I’m Frank Wolffe.”
“Jace Hunter,” Jace said, folding his arms awkwardly over his chest. “What’s that noise?”
Emma stopped to listen. Frank’s playlist had moved down the line a couple of songs. At the moment, it was playing a tune she had heard before but couldn’t name.
“Oh, that’s ZZ Top, ‘Le Grange,’” Frank answered, bobbing his head to the beat. “Good stuff, right?”
“Z Tops,” Jace repeated, nodding along
with the beat. “I’ve never heard anything like it.”
“Oh, we’ve got plenty more where that comes from.” Frank motioned to Emma. “We were practicing our archery skills. Do you have bows on your planet?”
“Not bows,” Jace said, opening his arms and constructing an axe with a sharp half-moon edge on one side and a hammer on the other. In the middle of the two sides was a rifle muzzle.
“My man.” Frank grinned. “I think I’d like your planet.”
“Probably not,” Jace said, approaching Emma and Frank. He didn’t offer more explanation to his words.
“Cool.” Emma broke the growing silence. “Let’s see what we can do.”
The next hour was spent honing their skills with the weapons they had chosen. Emma and Jace took down targets Frank constructed and did the same for him when it was his turn.
Seeing Frank transition from his own constructs was like watching a musician play his favorite instrument. Without hesitation, Frank flowed from one weapon to the next, sending a few bursts of his purple construct into his target before deconstructing and reconstructing and doing it again. In this way, he moved from handguns to rifles and even a heavy hand blade.
For his part, Jace was mostly quiet, but Emma saw it as a huge improvement that he was even there.
Just when Emma’s throat was telling her it was time to grab a drink, her holo band went off. It was a message from Slain that read, “Please meet us in my office. Director Trueart and General Fox would like to have a word.”
At the same time Emma received her transmission, Frank walked a few steps to his right, speaking to someone over a channel only he could hear. “Yes, sir. On our way.”
Frank looked at Emma and Jace with a grim smile. “I think it’s time to go on the offensive.”
17
“Frank, Emma, Jace.” Director Trueart stood from his seat on one of the dark couches in Slain’s office. He said the last name with a hint of surprise. “It’s great to see you all. Major Frank Wolffe, it’s a privilege to meet you for the first time.”
Burn the Night Page 10
