by Greg Dragon
“Raf, I’m gonna die,” she cried out desperately, and the comm-piece in her ear came alive.
“Cammy, you can do it, I know you can. Focus on a way out and phase away.” He said it so matter-of-factly that it gave her pause and Ari’s las-sword nicked her thigh. It felt as if someone set off a fuse inside of her leg as the combination of fire and pain forced her to wince. Phase, phase. He told her to phase, a move that until now only he had been able to perform.
According to him, it was gifted to Phasers who used the crystals and he had asserted that she, Frank, and Tayden should be able to do it by now. She had practiced but not enough to mention. She had gotten as far as making her vision ripple but hadn’t phased successfully. Now she was desperate and the Geralos was becoming faster, so she knocked away his blade and squeezed her eyes shut, imagining the area in front of the bar.
There was a loud noise followed by a bright light in front of her and she opened her eyes to see if she had phased. She frowned with disappointment when she saw that nothing happened, but Ari Groatrath was running away and a hole had been punched into the building next to him, smoke still billowing from the rubble.
She turned around to see Val with Marika’s Lil Bit, the cruel gun she had once used to murder her marks. He ran past her quickly and the plasma pistol barked once again, putting another hole in the area where Ari ran. Too bad it wasn’t Marika shooting that thing, Camille thought. That little cruta doesn’t miss.
She ran back through the city where the fighting was still going on and cut a Crak-Ti down on her way. “Rafian!” she screamed into her comm as she raced towards the agency wall.
“I know,” he said calmly, which threw her off momentarily. “So the Crak-Ti jumped there, to Zallus? But that makes no sense. Where are they, Cammy? Near the agency or beyond?”
“They are all over Zallus city butchering everyone! Frank is dead, and I haven’t heard from Tayden. Dott is still back there, hurt but still alive. It’s bad, Raf. They caught us when we weren’t ready.”
“Frank is dead?” he said quietly. “What about Rhee, is she still fighting?”
“Not sure. It was all too fast. I was with Rhee until the main lizard chased me into the city. The recruits are here protecting the citizens but these lizards ... Rafian, what the hell are they doing with our crystals?”
“We got careless, Cammy,” he said quietly, and she could hear fighting going on around him. “Listen, lives will be lost. There's nothing we can do about that, but I know a way that we can finish it all.”
Camille felt a weight come over her suddenly. To hear Rafian so cold, even with his wife being in danger, spoke volumes on the change that had come about in his absence. “What is that, Raf?” she managed to ask as she glanced behind her to see several Crak-Ti on her heels.
“Enter the crystal room and bring me the crystals. I can jump to Helysian and take it from there.”
“So, you want me to bring the crystals to the ship? What are you going to do with them, Raf?”
“Trust me, Cammy, and keep yourself safe. We cannot allow the lizards to get any more crystals. Something tells me that they only had one, and the lizards that you're fighting mean to commandeer our base in order to get more. Bring me the crystal, that’s your top priority. Will you do it?”
“Of course I will, Raf, but you really have me worried. What do you mean ‘finish it all’, are you—,”
But he had hung up the comm and she was left talking to dead air.
21 | Breaking The Spine
CAMILLE ran into the room that housed the giant black crystal. This large warp crystal was what produced the smaller versions that the Phasers used to teleport from one place to the next.
The sounds of fists, boots, and gunfire ricocheted off of the sealed door as the angry Geralos worked to get inside. Her heart was in her throat, and her eyes burned with tears as she thought of the friends that she had lost.
The pounding got louder and a visible dent appeared, so she crossed the room to the center where the massive black crystal sat floating above the runic dais. “Oh, Raf, I hope you know what you're doing,” she whispered as she climbed the platform and stood before it, lost in its inky surface. She knelt down and scraped the tiny crystals inside of her bag and looked around carefully to make sure that none of them had escaped. “Here goes nothing,” she whispered and then reached forward to hug the crystal, squeezing her eyes shut in forced concentration.
She thought of the dark metal floors of Helysian and the crude interior of the barracks that housed so many soldiers. More tears poured out and she couldn't think. All that occupied her mind was how she missed those days of just being a soldier in the Alliance.
You were given orders and sometimes they were hard, but life had structure and you knew what it was that you were fighting for. More than that, you had your comrades watching your back in all situations, even when you were knee deep in Geralos schtill. Phasers, she thought, what are we really doing? We've been given the greatest responsibility in the world. Raf disappears, everyone dies, and now I have to take our greatest artifact away from its secure home.
She'd spent the days since the explosion hanging out at the various bars. There were colorful characters within their city, and it felt good to get on their level, to hear their individual stories, and to be among the people. It had brought home the feeling that they had made a difference. Here were people who once occupied hubs where they lived in cardboard boxes, drinking and raising hell in a city of their own making. It was beautifully poetic, and the Phasers had made it possible.
But it was Geralos-run Vestalia, and they had the audacity to build this tiny paradise right inside of their territory. That was Rafian VCA, brazen to a fault, but finding a way to make it work, despite the odds. He was the same teenager who defied his superiors to sneak aboard a ship to rescue a stranger. This was the man she loved but could never have due to an unfortunate twist of fate.
The door exploded and the Crak-Ti poured in and Camille was brought back to the present. She thought of Helysian, of the hangar that she and Rafian practically lived in, and as the Geralos ran around to shoot her in the side, she and the crystal vanished.
She found herself in her old apartment where she once lived with Rafian. She had the bag but the large crystal was missing and her heart sank painfully when she realized that it hadn’t come with her. Of course it didn’t come with you, silly girl. You can’t jump the main crystal, she thought. But then she realized that it also meant that the Geralos wouldn’t be able to take it. “We better win down there,” she said defiantly, then walked over to a locker box where she secured the bag of crystals.
An old photograph caught her eye. It was her graduation picture from her days as a cadet. She walked over to it, lifted it up and sighed. “If I could go back, I would warn you about falling for tall, dark, space jocks, girl.” She laughed when she said this and rolled her eyes. “As if that would have changed your mind.”
She jumped on the bed and stared up, laughing. “Yeah, no regrets at all.” Suddenly, her comm lit up and Marian’s face hovered before her, grimacing and covered with blood. Quickly, she answered and triggered the vid, so that Marian could see where she was. “Rhee, what happened, are you okay?”
“Not my blood,” she gasped, “if that’s what you’re thinking. Thyping lizards, got several of them with my detonator—” She stopped to laugh and it sounded sinister, and Camille began to wonder if she had lost her mind. “Is that Helysian? How are you there? I swore that I saw you fighting with us.”
“I called up Rafian while I fought that animal, the one who got Dott and Frank—”
“You spoke to Raf? I’m glad that he calls his wife last. Where the hell is he, and why is he hiding from us?” she said.
Camille sat up and inhaled slowly. “Marian, calm down. I only reached him because I was about to die and so I dialed his comm to issue my last rites. I think he has remained dark to stay away from the Geralos spies. He did it to protect u
s and was hoping that one of us would make the attempt to call him. I did, and he gave me a mission to get our crystals out of Zallus.”
Marian calmed down, and she moved deeper into the darkness, looking around as if she had heard something approaching. The vid showed her spin and a white line cut through the darkness as her las-sword cut into a Geralos and killed him instantly. “Sorry, Cammy, I don’t mean to be like that. Stressful times, y’know, and I miss my man.”
“Are you safe, Rhee? I don’t recognize your surroundings.”
“I’m in the basement of a house in the middle of Za—” The white light cut a series of cross slashes, followed by a blood-curdling scream as several Crak-Ti fell in front of Marian. “I’m in Zallus, trapped, letting them come to me. They are endless, sister. Maybe it’s time I called up Raf to give my last rites, as well.”
“No, he has a plan, and I’ve done as he asked. I am coming back down with reinforcements and we’re going to clean up our house. How’s everyone else? Where is Tayden?”
Marian’s face drooped with sadness and she shook her head slowly. “Tayden didn’t make it. When she saw Frank in the mud, there was nothing we could say, and she charged them, guns blazing … it was insane. Those lizard thypes set her on fire … it was a horrible way to die. The cloner’s back online, but it needs the signature of the Supreme Leader. I don’t know how long a dead body has before cloning doesn’t work. I think that we’ve lost them forever.”
Camille was speechless and her voice caught in her throat. She looked around at the room and felt guilty for being there. “You hold tight, Phaser. I’m on my way. Call your husband and tell him to get his butt home so that we can get those cloners back on line.”
She hung up the comm and walked over to a mirror, where she looked at herself for a long time before noticing her eyes. Just like Rafian’s, she noticed the changes, as a pair of milky grey crystalline pupils stared back at her. “I’m transformed,” she whispered. She closed her eyes, then opened them with the thought of the passageway beyond. Instantly she phased and appeared outside of her room. She looked around excitedly and checked her body to make sure it had really happened.
The crystals were all locked away, and none were on her person so she knew for a fact that she had truly phased. “Oh, Maker,” she whispered, then put her hand on the door panel to enter her room. She crossed to the lock box and pulled out three of the crystals and placed them in the hidden compartment on the belt of her 3B suit. She clutched a fourth one, locked the box, and hid it away, then took one last look at the room and jumped back to Zallus.
The grounds of the Phaser agency was littered with Phaser bodies, and a number of Crak-Ti were dragging out a Meluvian recruit by her hair. Camille unclipped her pistol and sent a barrage of shots into their midst. Three fell with their face masks smoking and the fourth turned to run at her which she met with her las-sword blazing.
They crossed swords but she stepped to the side, running away from him towards the girl. He turned to chase but she sprang backwards, knocking him off balance with enough time for her to grab his arm and break it. “Wrong time to thype with us,” she said to the Geralos, then spun an elbow into the back of his mask and ran him through with the blade. All of a sudden a group of Crak-Ti was bearing down on her location, so she made to phase back to the stairs when a rain of bullets cut into them.
Glancing back to find the source, she widened her eyes at what she saw. Aurora, with baby Ian strapped to her back, was behind a stargun, raining hell down on the invaders. She had never seen Rafian’s sister in this light and a newfound respect took over her. Next to her with his sniper rifle going was her husband, Velman TOR. He dropped the ones that broke ahead of the others while the majority tried to find cover from Aurora’s barrage. But then Aurora went down screaming, bracing her fall to protect her baby, and Velman snatched her up and dragged her inside as more bullets hit the agency.
A new set of Phaser recruits ran from out of a hidden hatch near the stairs. They clashed with the Crak-Ti, and Camille found her feet and ran into their midst to help. She cut into them with precise strikes borne of the Mera-Ku style that Rafian had taught her. The Geralos, unfamiliar with the Mera-Ku technique, tried to defend as best he could, but Camille was enraged after seeing Aurora and she killed him quickly before moving on to another.
Meanwhile, Val Tracker pursued Ari Groatrath. He had already killed the last of the Geralos elite. He didn’t know who Ari was and why he was feared, but he knew that his girl was in recovery and unconscious in the agency. The thought of them capturing her or torturing her like Camille gave him a single purpose to kill their leader.
Old skills in reconnaissance came back to him fresh, and he slipped through the shadows with his knife close to his chest. His shots had clipped the lizard and his blood had stunk, so he followed the stench slowly, tracking him into the woods that surrounded the city. He slipped past the trees and missed a key clue. Ari jumped from out of a tree and bore him down on the ground. But he misunderstood the strength of “The Vestalian Vin’yn” and Val let him get a scaly arm around his throat. Ari made to bite into the back of his head, but Val fell forward and broke Ari’s arm, rolling free of his clutches to get to his knees.
He coughed up blood, thinking it was from Ari’s choke since he hadn’t realized that his claws had found their way into his abdomen. Roaring in anger, he struggled to his feet and the Geralos did the same, holding his right arm against the numbing pain. He reached for his las-sword but Val was too quick and he grabbed it as he embraced his body, tossing it into the bushes. “No, you don’t,” he whispered and locked his forearms into a bear hug. He lifted the Geralos minister off the ground as he moved to squeeze the life out of him.
But the wound in his abdomen got the better of him, and when he was almost to the point of snapping his spine he dropped him and backed up. He coughed up more blood and backed away, struggling to stay conscious as he reached for his pistol. Gaining a chance, Ari dashed into the bushes and Val was a second too slow in picking up the chase. Blood had been spilled, and the thought of what would happen because of it made Val even more determined to finish the job.
“Run, you bloody coward, that is what you all do,” he said, and slapped himself hard as he pushed through the bush. He was losing blood and consciousness when he remembered his time with Marika and that he still carried the pills that he was administering to her. He grabbed a handful of these and chewed them quickly, then swallowed them in hopes that it wasn’t too much.
The world spun at a tilt, and he touched a tree for balance. Then all of a sudden the pain was gone, and everything seemed to shrink before him, as if he had grown to the size of a giant. Now he could move, and he seemed to be faster. His heightened senses picked up the smell and he could hear Ari whimpering. He pushed on through the jungle, picking up the trail, and his thoughts shifted to Marika, who he knew he would never see again.
“One last ride,” he whispered to himself, “Come on, big man. Finish this lizard thype, and make your girl proud.” He pushed through the forest until it opened up to a beach and there he saw Ari limping off in the distance. He raised his pistol and fired, missing him by a hair, then he fired again and clipped him in his unbroken arm. The Geralos was strong and kept moving away, but his suit had been punctured and he slowed down from the atmosphere that was now touching his skin.
Val picked up the pace and tore off his shirt. He didn’t know if it was the pills that had made it feel heavy but he needed to move faster and so it had to go. The Geralos slowed and then spun around defiantly, as if he realized that he could only run so far. As Val grew close to him he saw something glimmer in his hand, and he wondered if it was a knife or a personal gun. He slowed his run to a walk as he approached his enemy, and began to laugh when he saw that it was a sizable crystal.
“Oh, so it was you,” Val said. “You’re the one that ported them here. Do you think that you can blink out before I get a chance to put you down?”
&
nbsp; Ari raised the crystal into the air and closed his eyes, and Val watched him to see if he would really escape. The crystal didn’t change but he still didn’t move, and Val realized that it was no longer obeying his command. He rushed forward with a burst of speed that he had preserved for this moment and caught Ari in a hug that knocked the crystal from his hand. He locked the lizard in the bear hug and was able to maintain the hold. Now that Ari’s arm was raised, his body was exposed on that side. Val could hear his ribs and spine crack as he locked in the hold and bore him down.
The Geralos minister, Ari Groatrath, breathed his last breath on the shores of the same Vestalia that he had spent a lifetime hating. His death to this human, a man who wasn’t a Phaser, was the most shameful of deaths, especially after the genocide he had ordered on the beaches of his own home planet. Val fell to his knees as the Geralos’ body went limp, and he pulled him in close, folding his supine body into his. Blood seeped red from the wound in his side and the pills—which had run their course—gave way to the pain.
He rolled away from Ari and fell on the wet sand where the sun shone brilliantly down on him as he looked up into the sky. There were no clouds visible, save for a few wispy splotches, but all he could see was his Casanian’s face looking down at him from above. He coughed up blood, but spit it out defiantly as his consciousness faded into darkness.
22 | Honor and Respect
“RAFY?” the small voice said to Rafian as he stood on the burned-out husk of a Geralos tanker. They had taken the beach and butchered the rest of the Crak-Ti, and he had just gotten word that over thirty Geralos cities were on fire. In the skies, Helysian had paired up with the Aqnaqak and as a tandem they had taken out a number of Geralos warships.
