Extinction: The Will of the Protectors

by Jay Korza

  Fang cocked his head. “You would have to raise her. She would never be accepted by a Shirka family and she may never be accepted by any other Shirka as long as she lived.”

  “What?” Seth wasn’t sure whether he hadn’t heard what Fang had said or if it just hadn’t sunk in yet. “Wait. What? What are you saying about raising her?”

  “If you took her. She would be your cub, your responsibility.”

  Seth only vaguely remembered saying just seconds before that he should take her. It was an emotional outburst, not a completely coherent or well-thought-out plan.

  “Wouldn’t her parents be mad if I cub-napped their offspring? What about the Shirka government?”

  Huj’pa’ul growled back and forth with Fang for a moment before answering. “We should speak with First Son and Mother to get their opinions, but we think you could take the cub without issues. The mother would not allow her cub to live or leave the planet; yet as a mother, she naturally loves her cub. If there was a way to allow her cub to live without destroying her family’s honor or violating Shirka law, she would want that for her daughter.”

  Fang added, “You are the pack master for this mission. The Shirka Father died and named you Father, with pack witnesses; this is not contested. You have much greater power and influence within the Shirka community at this point than I think you are aware. If you took the cub as your own, you would not be breaking our laws or traditions because you are not one of us. And yet, as the pack’s Father, your decision will be viewed with respect as though you were one of us.”

  Seth thought back to his email to Emily, where he jokingly wrote that he had just become a Shirka daddy. And now, if he could, he was really going to do it.

  Jenarah and Kuruk

  The first day of school had always been fun back on Grethnar, but Kuruk knew right away that the Coalition’s colony school would be very different. It seemed no matter what species kids were, they always found a way to be cruel to one another, especially human children.

  Kuruk and his twin sister Jenarah walked arm in arm through the gate of the school, having just been dropped off by their house servant. Mom and Dad were too busy, with whatever it was that kept them busy, to take their own children to school. So the twins walked together, always and only having each other and that was enough for them.

  Jenarah kept walking when she heard the boy taunt her brother. “Hey, fin-head! Are you dating your sister? Why are you holding her hand?”

  Jenarah was only just learning Coalition basic, so she had to infer some of the words’ meaning from their context. She knew what a head was, so fin must be referring to the ridge of cartilage that every Grethnarian had that started from the bridge of their nose and ended at the base of their neck. This feature gave the Grethnarians a decidedly aquatic look, when in fact they had an aviary evolutionary history.

  Jenarah also knew what holding and hand meant; she assumed that dating had some sort of romantic meaning, possibly even sexual. She would look that word up later and then decide how mad she would be at the taunts. And because Jenarah was blind, she would have to ask her brother what the human brat looked like so she could later imagine herself punching him in the face.

  Kuruk had also just started learning basic with his sister, but being deaf, he not only had to learn the language but he had to learn how to lip-read it as well. He had no idea what the human boy was saying, but by the expression on his face and the way he postured his body, Kuruk was sure it wasn’t a pleasant human greeting.

  The twins were used to being teased by their peers but both had hoped a Coalition school would have more forgiving students. They had talked during their move from Grethnar to the colony and wondered what it would be like to live with other species. The twins told each other to not get too excited, but both secretly and deeply wished for their dreams to come true.

  Kuruk thought that a Coalition school would be so diverse in its population, that a set of blind and deaf twins wouldn’t be any more interesting than the methane-helium breathing snake creatures from Parthex. Kuruk couldn’t believe that he and his sister got more attention than the gas mask wearing snake kids that slithered by them.

  “What is he saying?” Kuruk asked.

  “Just keep walking. There’s no reason to start a fight on the first day of school.” Jenarah gave her brother a little tug to encourage him to keep moving.

  “He’s pointing to our heads and yelling something.” Kuruk probably wouldn’t have been able to read the kid’s lips even if he knew basic. The other student was so animated, he distorted his mouth as he yelled. “I think he’s talking about our crests.”

  “I think so too.” Jenarah was so familiar to Kuruk that she barely needed to look his way for him to read her lips; he could usually read them from just a side view of her face.

  “But our crests are pretty awesome. Why would he think it would be insulting to tease us about them?” Kuruk resisted the urge to touch his crest; he didn’t want the human to get the wrong idea and think he was actually getting to Kuruk.

  “I don’t know.” Jenarah tried to pick out more words from the taunts that she could understand. “Probably because he doesn’t have one, he thinks we’ll be sensitive about being different than him.”

  “He has hair, Jenarah. How can he even begin to tease us about our crests? Stupid hair-top.” Kuruk scoffed.

  Jenarah stopped in her tracks and turned fully to her brother. “Hey. You don’t need to act like him. I’m sure that silly name means as little to him as making fun of our crests matters to us. If we act like him, then both sides get angry because of our actions, not because we really even care about what was actually said. Where will that get us?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “That’s right. Nowhere. I know he can’t understand you but we still need to make sure that we act and speak the way we want others to act and speak to us.” Jenarah touched her crest to her brother’s and moved it back and forth. This wasn’t a Grethnarian thing; it was their special thing that neither remembered how it came to be in the first place.

  The human bully saw the intimate moment and revved up his ranting. “Ooohh, are you gonna kiss now?! Why don’t you kiss your sister, you stupid fin-head?”

  Kuruk still had no idea what the kid said but he felt something as the bully yelled at them. Kuruk had a tingling in his brain, almost as though he could hear what the kid said, but not quite. It was more of an emotion that he was hearing. It made no sense to him but it did dictate what happened next.

  Kuruk felt the tingle grow in his mind until the sound of the emotion made him lash out. Kuruk wiggled out of his sister’s embrace and shot forward towards the other boy. Kuruk made solid contact with the human, wrapped his arms around the boy’s chest and took them both to the ground.

  Kuruk swung twice; each blow landed square in the bully’s face and blood erupted from his nose and a cut on his cheek.

  Jenarah felt her brother leave her arms and she knew what he was going to do. She could feel it; she felt it before even he probably knew he was going to do it. Jenarah let her brother go: not because she wanted him to attack the human, but she knew that if she tried to stop him, she would only get in the way and maybe cause her brother to lose the fight.

  Jenarah heard the two blows to the human’s face and didn’t hear any retaliation strikes from him. She knew he was done, either physically, mentally, or both, but he wasn’t going to fight back. It was time to pull her brother away before he did any more damage.

  Jenarah turned and listened her way over to where her brother straddled the now-silent bully. “Get off, Kuruk. Come on, let him breathe. It’s over now.”

  Reluctantly, Kuruk stood and looked down at his fallen victim. He immediately regretted his actions and knelt down again to check on the boy. “Hey, can you hear me?”

  The boy moaned and opened one eye; he looked at his attacker as blood ran from his cheek and into the other eye. He had no idea what Kuruk said because Kuruk didn’t speak
basic. Kuruk’s native tongue was harsh-sounding to humans even when the words were kind, so naturally the kid thought he was now being verbally attacked after having already been thoroughly pommeled by the fin-head. He cried; the crying turned into wailing and that devolved into terrified screaming.

  Teachers arrived on scene and immediately plucked Kuruk from the other boy’s side and walked him to the principal’s office. Jenarah was left standing alone, on the steps to the front entrance of the school.

  “Wait! Don’t take my brother!” she called after them. “He’s deaf!”

  Jenarah wasn’t sure whether she used the correct words, but she did the best she could with the basic she knew. “Please. Please don’t leave me alone. I’m blind.” The last sentence was barely a whisper.

  For the first time Jenarah could remember, she actually felt disabled. Lost on a planet she didn’t know, surrounded by species who spoke different languages than her, unable to even find her way into the school to get an adult to help her. And worst of all, her brother was gone. Even if they were both thrown into a deep dark pit devoid of all light and sound, so both were equally disabled, she would still feel whole; she would still feel safe, as long as they were together.

  “Excuse me.” Jenarah heard broken basic to her right as a gentle webbed hand touched her bare forearm. “Help, please. Go to I do not know where.”

  Jenarah smiled. It wasn’t her brother, but at least she wasn’t in the pit alone anymore. “Are you a student?”

  There was a pause before the answer with a questioning voice. “Never have seen a Trizite before? I do not look adult.”

  Jenarah’s smile turned into a laugh. “I am blind, so I did not even know you were a Trizite.”

  “Oh.” The Trizite gurgled a giggle. “Can you help, though?”

  “How about we make a deal.” Jenarah felt her way up the Trizite’s arm until she was able to interlock their arms together. “You lead and I will do the talking for us. I need to find the office, and there we should both be able to get what we need.”

  “Acceptable.”

  ~

  “I cannot believe that it has been nine years already.” Kuruk ate his lunch while they sat on the athletic field in the warmth of the sun.

  “It will be so great to graduate so we can leave this planet.” Jenarah lay in the grass with her head propped up on her brother’s lap.

  “I will miss both of you very much,” their Trizite friend added.

  Her name was not pronounceable by any other species so Kuruk and Jenarah had given the Trizite the nickname Nightingale. Being empathic, Nightingale could always sense the twins’ moods and those of the beings around her. She helped the two to avoid fights and then gave them first aid when they weren’t avoidable—which was a lot.

  Trizites were asexual, so Nightingale wasn’t really a she, but they tended not to care whether other beings gave them gender assignments. Both Kuruk and Jenarah felt Nightingale exuded a more feminine aura and so they gave her a nickname from human history that suited her nurturing nature.

  “I’m sorry, Nightingale.” Jenarah put her hand out for her friend to take. “But Kuruk and I need to go home. We’re still different from other Grethnarians but they never treated us like the colonists here do.”

  “You know, I actually used to want to be an officer in the Coalition Marine Corps, but not now.” Kuruk felt disheartened as he spoke his feelings aloud. “I don’t think I could stand to be around these humans for much longer.”

  “What will you two study?”

  “Well, I still want to be an officer, but I want to be one in the Grethnar militia.” Kuruk finished his sandwich and packed up his things. “They will probably make me have a hearing device implanted but I guess I can deal with that if I have to. I get along fine without one but the military might not see it that way.”

  It always made Jenarah sad to hear her brother talk about the military. Medical technology could make her brother hear if he wanted to, but there wasn’t a cure or device that would allow Jenarah to see. There was no way the military would allow her to join up.

  “I think we would make great scientists if we worked together.” Jenarah never missed an opportunity to push her private agenda.

  Kuruk rolled his eyes and shook his head. “I want to explore the galaxy, not look at it through a microscope.”

  “We could do both!” Jenarah was convinced they would make great scientific discoveries together. “Look, we both know that our senses are enhanced when we are with each other. We don’t know how or why, but they are. I hear better when you’re with me and you see better. And it’s not the usual sensory enhancement that is common with blind and deaf people. It goes way beyond that and you know it.”

  “Look, I already told you I would take any class you want me to our first year, and then at least one class together each semester after that. You have five semesters to convince me. No more.” Kuruk leaned down and gave his sister a peck on the forehead and then rubbed their crests together.

  The conversation lightened up after that and the three friends talked about anything but the future.

  At one point, several Coalition soldiers walked out onto the field and talked with one of the school teachers. Kuruk didn’t recognize the teacher other than he must also be one of the track coaches based on what he wore.

  The teacher waved several of his athletes over and they ran and did things on the track. When the display was all over, the teacher and the athletes who had been able to keep up talked with the soldier some more.

  The soldier handed something to each of them and then the teacher walked off with one of the soldiers; three other soldiers stayed behind. Kuruk realized that the soldiers must be Coalition recruiters.

  As Kuruk tossed around the idea of going to talk to one of the recruiters, a dark shadow eclipsed his sitting area. Kuruk looked up to see Bruce and his pack of idiot friends standing over the lunch trio.

  “What do you want, Bruce?” Jenarah had heard his approach and could smell his awful and unique body odor.

  “What? Can’t we have lunch out here too if we want?” Bruce snatched up the twins’ lunchbox and rummaged through it. “What’s this? The fin-heads don’t like tuna? Is that like eating a cousin or something?”

  “No, it’s like eating their gay fish friend over there,” one of the cronies piped up, talking about Nightingale.

  “I cannot be gay. I have no sexual orientation at all.” Nightingale defended herself. “I understand that other species feel the need to assign gender roles to my species; it makes you feel better for some reason. And for that same odd reason, human males tend to view my species as male. I postulate that you also see Trizites as males and since my friends feel I am more feminine and have given me a female name, you think it is an insult to call me gay.”

  “Well, you’re just a, I mean…” Bruce stammered.

  “What is even more curious to me is the use of the word gay to insult me.” Nightingale continued. “As I understand it, humans no longer view gayness as anything different than two people having different color eyes. They are different from each other but not in a way that matters to anyone.”

  Bruce didn’t know where to direct his anger and he couldn’t find the words to express himself, so he did what any bully would do in that situation: he hit someone.

  “Screw you, you losers!” Bruce yelled as he swung at Jenarah.

  Kuruk wasn’t close enough to defend his sister and he looked on with horror and rage as Bruce’s fist connected with Jenarah’s face. The initial crack of fist hitting jaw was followed by a softer and wetter sound as Jenarah’s cheek opened up and blood sprayed out.

  Kuruk was up and moved towards his sister when he felt two sets of hands angrily grab him and pull him to the ground. He tried to fight back but even his anger wasn’t enough to help him break free of the bullies’ grip.

  Bruce stood over the fallen Jenarah and looked to Kuruk. “Stay put, fin-head. You’ll get your chance after I
finish with your sister.”

  Jenarah lay on the ground and tried to get her knees under her so she could stand up. Her arms trembled and she could feel blood flowing freely on both sides of her cheek that had been torn completely through by the punch. Her face touched the ground while she tried to summon the courage and strength to get up.

  Had she not been blind, all of these things put together would have made it impossible for her to see anyway.

  But she wasn’t blind, at least not in the way she had become accustomed to for her entire life. Since Jenarah had been born, her entire world had been dark: not a single photon of light had ever stimulated her ocular nerves to produce an image of any sort in her brain.

  But now, something started as a tingle deep inside her brain and it quickly expanded to fill her mind completely. Jenarah didn’t know what it was like to have sight, but she was sure this wasn’t what everyone else saw. This was something different, something special.

  She could see emotion shaped as the objects around her. She had felt a person’s body before and understood its dimensions and proportions, and now she could directly correlate those concepts with the emotional images being sent to her. The feeling she had about these shapes were sent to her from her brother, she knew that above all else.

  It was hard for Jenarah to orient herself to the images she received as they came from her brother’s perspective. She knew that Kuruk was to her right and she used that to guide her understanding of this new world blossoming in her head.

  She could see herself on the ground; a soft and loving emotion represented her form through her brother’s eyes. Standing around her were harsher emotions: dark shapes of hate waved their arms at her and cheered Bruce on.

  Jenarah’s hearing had always been sensitive because she was blind, and now with her superior hearing coupled with the emotional sight she received from her brother, she had the strength and willpower to stand again. Jenarah moved her hands beneath her chest and pushed against the ground. She raised her body into a semi-pushup position so she could gather her knees below her.