by Bailey Dark
Alpha Jase was sitting separately from everyone, that strange little box in his hand, not looking at it, just rubbing it, playing with the many surfaces, like a worrystone… was he worried…? That made me feel a lot more worried… I wondered again what he kept in that little box. There were rumors around what he kept inside the multi-colored wooden dodecahedron case, no bigger than a clementine orange. His baby hair. The teeth of his enemies. A talisman from another planet. A cursed flower. A potion that gave him his power. Who knew?
I evaded Jase’s eyes as he looked my way and reached up to pluck Aimer’s knife from the air. It resisted my hand at first, and I tugged hard on it before it released with a swift jerk to the side as Aimer’s hand fell, her permission given to release it from its sealed place in space.
“Throw it at me now,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. Stop it in the air before it gets to me.”
“What if I can’t?”
“Then I will catch it.”
I shrugged and flicked the six-inch throwing knife straight toward her chest, well-practiced, and then put the little pluck of emotion that Aimer had been instructing me to pay attention to, into the intention on the knife. I welled up that emotion and gave all its Will into the direction of the knife as if I were pulsing that emotion as a physical piece of air into the metal shard flying through the air between us.
It stilled in the air, slowed, stopped, dropped a few feet, then veered off away from Aimer’s chest and fell to the floor as I pumped my fist triumphantly in the air.
Aimer signaled her hand in a little swoop, and the knife leaped up from the floor of the transport to her hand, in time with a bump of turbulence that made us both tumble a couple steps to the side. She still caught the knife without slicing her hand. Artful, I thought. That’s what she is. Weaponry is her craft, and she is a skilled artisan.
I looked around the small transport. They all were. These twelve of Jase’s Crew, including himself, were hand-picked and the best at what they did: which was fighting, strategizing, leading, bleeding, and killing.
They were warriors.
What was I?
I shook my head slightly and hid my fear. I can do this. I can do this. I can earn a place here.
“You know how you are always feeling things, even when you compartmentalize and use only logic and your brain? From what I’ve heard, humans lead from their heart more than most species, anyway. Telekinesis should come easy for you, especially with King Kajo’s magic flowing in you. Just key into that emotion you’re feeling and use it to direct action. That’s it. That’s your Will. That’s the truth of the connection to the telepathic and telekinetic mysticism in our world.”
“I don’t know why Aimer is bothering with the alien,” one of the other Commanders, a man named Criper said behind me. “Even if she learns the skill, she’ll never use it with the same loyalty to us. She should be placed in the Queen’s guard if she’s to be a soldier. That’s the only place she’ll ever have true allegiance: to her own kind.”
“Jase says we give her a chance,” another man, named Lyal, said with a shrug. I flexed my fists but didn’t give them any other sign that I had heard them. They weren’t whispering very carefully; they didn’t care if I heard their doubt.
“… will be best if you keep practicing,” Aimer had continued to speak while I eavesdropped.
As she finished the sentence, she whipped the knife at me again. It seemed to fly at me even faster this time, and a quick leap of fear closed my throat, but I grasped that fear and focused on the sheen of the tip of the blade lasered at my head, then directed the blade to whip around, mid-flight, and head straight back to Aimer.
“Fantastic!” she shouted. She pointed downward, and the blade slowed to a gentle flow so she could catch it in her hand and smiled at me. “That was perfect! I think if you can—”
A wicked hole was ripped through the side of the transport right where Criper and Lyal were sitting, and they were sucked out the side, metal bending out, equipment flushing through the sudden hole, cargo ropes flicking at the sudden space, out into the air, the transport veering off wildly in that direction, diving into a spiral.
Aimer grabbed my body with telekinesis and slammed me up into the transport's winding roof, and I grabbed onto the bending pipes and ropes, saved from being sucked out into the open air and free-fall. I gasped quickly to catch my breath, whispered thanks, and clung for my life to bare pipes as cries of command echoed in my brain, and warning lights flared.
Fire flared from the pilot’s cabin as another surface-to-air-missile rocketed through our transport. The explosion was deafening, my ears ringing, the flash blinding. Smoke billowed, and fear strangled my heart, sharp pangs of breathlessness in my chest. We had thought we were flying below their radar: we were wrong.
Smoke was swept away as we whipped around in circles. I blinked against its thickness and the black spots I still saw from the blinding explosion. Alpha Jase was standing strong in the blown hole anchored by Cassala and LeiLei’s telekinesis Will, as his hands wove demands out into the spinning world, cushioning the fall for Lyal and Criper in some magical dance with destiny. His blonde hair curled wildly in the wind, his cloak flashing around him, sand rushing in, framing him with a strange glow, and I could see the desert hills rushing up at us from below in quick whips of spinning abandon as the transport spiraled out of control toward the ground.
Another rocket tore through the starboard and ripped all the way through the cabin and out the other side. We began to spin further off-kilter, and my head slammed into one of the pipes I was clinging to, my legs dangling and swinging into the open cabin below, struggling to find a tether on the side of the roof. Lights burst in my brain and then I realized lights were also blinking wildly in the cabin and buzzers were going off.
“We are going to crash. Hold tightly to where you are braced. Prepare for battle. They will be coming for us.” Aimer’s words were telepathic, a message I was still uncomfortable receiving at this point, but their even pace helped calm the erratic flight of my pulse’s rampant beat and my sharp breathing.
The scream ripped from my chest was guttural and animal and irresistible as the transport smashed into the surface of the planet. Smoke obscured everything for a moment, and sand pelted my face as the horrible grating grinding sound of metal being thrashed apart filled my ears. Others were yelling, too. My head smacked the pipe again, and I blacked out for a moment, then there was blood everywhere in my eyes, and I was smearing my face with my sleeve to clear it.
The smoke and sand cleared. The floor I was staring at from my secure place on the ceiling was crumpled, the jumpseats smashing like tin cans torn into ribbons. Sand had flooded in the tangled mess of holes in the floor and sides. We were smashed into the ground sideways.
I tried to assess the situation from where I hung in the pipes up above the others on the uneven floorboards, fire flickering from the pilot’s pit, walls shredded of the transport, two of our Crew somewhere outside the ship, hopefully alive, two others laying smashed into unearthly contortions being checked by the Trio and seeming to be deemed dead.
That left nine of us. Cassala waved me hurriedly down as Jase peered out the ragged wall to see if there were enemies upon us yet. I slithered into a hanging position from the pipes and Cassala waved her hand to float me down from the ceiling, rather than the dreaded twelve-foot drop.
Still, as I landed, I gasped in pain and crumpled to my right knee. I stared at my right thigh and placed my hand on it, smearing away blood and shredded pant lining. Blood was gushing from a gash in the meat of my quad, torn apart by jagged metal or perhaps by the passing rocket’s fins. I hadn’t registered the pain during all the commotion, but as soon as I placed weight on that leg, knives of radiating agony shot all the way down to my toes and up through my back from tender nerves.
I looked around for something to brace myself with as I stood and saw, just to the right of my han
d where I had crashed to my knees, was Jase’s little box. The wooden case of the dodecahedron had been crushed, and I could see a little ring peeking from the inside out of the sawdust. It was pure black, made from stone, winding around, wraithlike, a half dozen halos of carbon metal winding in and out of each other. I reached for it and slipped it from its little cushion and put it on my left middle finger, grimacing as blood smeared on its surface. It was a ring. Just a ring. I wondered where it was from, or if it was indeed cursed. Or magic in any way. Regardless, I was certain he would want it kept safe.
“Are you hurt already?” Cassala called over to me.
I groaned at her but didn’t answer. I reached into one of the medic packs tacked to the wall of our disabled transport and unwound a bandage. I secured it quickly, deftly, as if I had done it a ton of times before, around my leg to stop the bleeding. It reminded me of wrapping pulled muscles on High School soccer fields, but the red sheen soaking my hands and making my every move slick and slimy was something far different.
I wiped my blood on a nearby shop towel and limped my way closer to Aimer. I couldn’t believe I was injured already. I seemed to be able to limp all right. I wish I had mastered floating. I had messed around with flight a little. There were those Curans who were skilled at using their telekinesis in such a way that they could pretty much fly. Even the slightest aid in that way would make me more nimble as we likely would be fleeing for our lives shortly.
“Any sign of Tarsine’s soldiers out there?” I asked.
“Just on the other side of the rise. A speeder came over that hill and then looped back.”
“Let’s get out of here. We need to get up to those caves on the far side of that clearing,” Jase said. “Get to high ground.”
“Can we teleport?”
“There’s a grounding bubble over the area. I already tested it,” he said with a sharp, aggravated wave of his hand. "We are grounded for now. But I have relayed our coordinates, and a transport should be on the way to pick us up."
“They will take at least four hours to get here,” Aimer said.
“Then we will stay alive at least that long,” Jase grumbled.
“Look!” I shouted. Two speeders crested a hill, guns aimed our direction.
“Get out of the ship!” Jase grabbed my arm and flung me through the hole on the starboard side of the crashed ship, and I plummeted five feet into a sand dune, tucking into a roll to protect my face, and scrambling down further away as fast as I could, as the ship behind us exploded. The others of our Crew had scattered through various holes and open doors in the transport. Jase had followed me out the same hole and was a step behind me, grabbing me and throwing me ahead of him occasionally, as the smoke and flames from the exploded transport shielded our escape. “Head for those termite hills! We can find some cover behind them as we make our way to the caves.”
“What about the others?”
"They will meet us there. What is wrong with you? Move!" Jase grabbed my arm and shoved me forward again, and I winced in pain but struggled to move forward faster, dragging my bleeding and profoundly screaming leg behind me. Rockets fired again behind us and the speeders swept by over our heads, strafing fire into the exploding transport, but the little valley where we crash-landed was so full of smoke and flame that the pilots couldn't see us escaping. They were blindly firing, as much as we were blindly fleeing.
I ran and limped as fast as I could around the towering pillars of termite hills and Jase led me forward more, frowning as we escaped from the smoke and flame. I looked back behind us to see four speeders now, floating in the air above our smoldering aircraft, searching the little valley for survivors. He pulled at my arm and pushed me up a game trail through a small crevice in the rocky landscape, limestone hills with small scrub bushes, up rolling, craggy hills, lined with huge boulders where I just knew something worse than a rattlesnake waited to bite me.
“There will be caves up near the top of this game trail.”
“Yeah, but what kind of game is it?”
“Just small deer. Hopefully the kind we can eat for dinner. We may be here awhile while we wait for reinforcements.”
“You don’t think they will search these caves?”
“Hopefully we will be able to defend them.”
“Won’t they just blow them up the same way they blew up the transport?”
Jase was silent, then cursed under his breath. He stopped and looked back behind us. "That's a good point, Earthling." He stared at me, and his brown eyes were hard to read. The fire of the craft behind me danced in his eyes, the blonde of his hair tinged red with the reflection of the far off flames. He looked down at my leg, then up at the mountain we had to climb. He looked at the drag marks I had left behind us. He cursed again and ran his hands through his hair. We were safely hidden behind the termite hills, for the moment. He looked to the left, and I followed his regard. There was another trail, a harder one, over craggy rocks, that led down to a river. I probably couldn’t make it very quickly, so out in the open. Not quickly enough, at least. But the river would be a good access point afterward.
Wait—is he going to leave me behind?
My heart leapt into my throat as I realized that that was exactly what he was contemplating and I realized, even more seriously, that it was my duty, as a soldier in his army, to protect him, my Alpha.
Jase took a step toward the river, his hand on his blade. One of the speeders was turning toward us.
“Here, Alpha Jase,” I said, and pulled his ring off my finger. “The box was crushed, I’m sorry. But I know this is important to you. I’ve heard you keep it safe. I saw it in the flames. You can go. Take the river route. I will try to make it up to the caves. Please send word to Queen Daphne that I am there. I know I can’t make that path, but you must stay safe. I’m sorry I’m not strong enough right now to go with you and protect you.”
Jase looked at me sharply and took a step toward me, almost aggressively, as he saw his ring extended. Then his look softened, and his fingers touched mine gently as he took it from me.
A burst of electricity coursed through us both and bright red sparks burst from the ring as I handed it back to him. I collapsed against the termite hill, my breath knocked from me, blinking rapidly against swollen vision, and light auras circled Jase’s visage. He tumbled backward a little as well and doubled over, breathing heavily, hands on his knees. I tasted the iron bite of blood in my mouth and coughed against it. My hand buzzed and tingled as if I had been shocked by an outlet and there was a sizzling sound coming from the ring in Jase’s hand. It wasn’t only my hand that tingled… There was an intense buzzing inside my chest, my heart was fluttering, my mouth was suddenly dry and yet I felt like licking my lips would be all too obvious.
He looked at it and then at me again as he straightened up, eyes wide, mouth slightly open, in awe.
“I can’t believe you’re still alive.”
“What do you mean?” I gasped out, spitting, surprised there wasn’t actually any blood in the spit. I felt like I might vomit and I was lightheaded. “What is that thing?”
“That’s a story for another time. Right now, we need to get to those caves.”
Without another word, Jase lifted me up with his telekinesis and floated me before him, a few feet off the ground, and he paced me as he sprinted up the game trail. My arms brushed against the tight cliff walls occasionally, but otherwise, it was expertly done, in my opinion. My leg screamed in pain, but much less than when I was putting pressure on it. I was appreciative of floating in the steadily dimming light above him, for it gave me a chance to cry in hidden silence. Something about the ring had changed his mind… he hadn't left me behind, and that was only one of the reasons I was moved to tears.
A small opening appeared, and he set me down. I wiped my eyes while he was digging in his pack. He cracked a flash rock, a type of geode with luminescent properties when agitated that came from their planet’s crust. It started to glow. He tossed it
back into the tunnel.
“Can you crawl back in there?”
“How do you know it will open up?”
“A guess.”
“We are set upon!” The cry echoed through our minds from Aimer’s telepathic connection “We found their camp and were trying to steal a transport. We are fighting. I will update. Stay safe.”
Jase slammed his fist into his hand, cursing, and then pointed into the tunnel. So, I crawled, back into the dimness. The geode was right before me. Every time I reached it, I threw it back further.
I was mainly dragging my leg, and I had started to cry silent tears again, trying not to choke or sniffle too much, but the gash was gushing blood down my leg, the bandage bled through, my pants were soaked, and I was lightheaded from more than the mysterious spark of the ring from Jase’s little box.
I threw the rock, and then it lit up an entire cavern, flaring its glow into life around a huge cave, stalactites and mites glowing with mineral qualities never seen on Earth and colors I had only dreamt about. I rolled over onto my back as I reached the center of the cave, seeming to see stars up above me on the roof.
“I can see the sky…” I looked at Jase as he stood over me, the stars framing his blonde head like a halo. His eyes glowed, pinpoints of light. I reached for his gorgeous face and brushed his finely groomed and sharply defined jawline with my fingertips. “I can see your sky.” I tapped his lips and giggled. He stopped my hand, and I giggled again, feeling far too lightheaded, my thoughts fleeing away, like the stars on the ceiling of the sky, and things were spinning, and I couldn’t grasp at the earth beneath me… at the Farian beneath me? Can I use the word like that…? But this is a teacup ride… It is spinning away, too… why are we on a rollercoaster when there were people chasing us… Would the bad guys find us here at Disneyland?
Jase pushed my hand away. “Those aren’t stars. That’s just bat shit and you’re delirious from blood loss.”
“It’s beautiful, but I think the monsters will eat them.” Then a spike of pain echoed so harshly through my body, that I grabbed my leg, buckled forward, clenched my teeth to stop from screaming, then collapsed back to the ground, and passed out.
