Anstractor (The New Phase Book 1) (22 page)

He walked her to the door and told her to be prepared, because their departure would be sudden and she would need to be prepared to jump with them when it happened. Vani was in heaven with the thought of finally leaving, and as she neared the door, she turned and placed her back against it, scanned the upstairs bedroom door to see if it was still closed, and looked at Rafian with a familiar glint in her eye.

“Come here,” she said, and Rafian was puzzled at her intent.

Without much thought, he came closer to her, and she threw her arms around his neck, stuck her tongue in his mouth, and kissed him longingly.

“Tell Marian I’m sorry, Rafian, but I have been waiting three years to tell you I’m sorry and to remind you who your original betrothed was. Now you go back to her. You’re lucky, Marian! Get some sleep, and don’t forget me when you leave. I love you.”

And with that, she was out the door and gone.

Rafian stood at the door for a very long time afterwards.

“Is that going to be a problem?”

The voice made Rafian spin around and look up as Marian materialized at the edge of the balcony looking down at him. Her silken robes were blowing gently from the vent’s cool air, giving her the appearance of a powerful witch who had come to wreak havoc on anyone below her. It made him suddenly embarrassed to know that she had been watching them the whole time and probably wondering why he had allowed Vani to kiss him the way she did and more.

She didn’t appear angry, but her voice had an edge to it that let him know she was not amused with Vani’s actions or her words.

“Is she going to be a problem, or will I have to cut out that little tongue of hers and shove it up her ass?” Marian continued as she began to gracefully descend the stairs, wine glass in hand and an aloof expression on her face.

“It has been a long time, Marian. I don’t think she meant anything by it. Just emotions and being caught up in the moment, you know? Can we drop it?” Rafian asked, suddenly feeling exhausted by the drama.

Marian pushed her body against his and began to kiss him.

“I trust you, Rafian, you know this. Your body is no longer mine, but I worry for your heart, and those words that girl spoke really hurt me.” She jabbed a finger painfully into his chest and spat the words out in the harshest way.

“Your heart is mine! I don’t care who the original was, who your childhood sweetheart was, or who thinks they know you better than I do. You are mine, and if she so much as asserts anything different again, like somehow she holds claim to you, I will become extremely upset!”

She had her lips pressed against his ear as she said this, and she pushed him down on the couch and straddled him before dropping her concealed knife. She always had a knife.

“These women of yours, Rafian—they are many, and they pop up all over the damn place. I knew when we got together that it was going to be a challenge, but this is annoying. I do not want to—”

Rafian put his finger to her lips and silenced her.

“They will know their place where you are concerned, Marian. Let us drop it, OK?”

And hearing the words that she sought from her husband, she lowered herself upon him and commenced their nightly ritual.

It was the seventh season of cold when the dictator Palus Felitious took command of the planet known as Tyhera and set his palace in the center of a large city named Veece, in the country of Apun. On the surface, Palus’s doctrines seemed to be good for the people. He made sure no one went hungry, and the machines of industry were recharged and fired to again bring about technology to a world that had gotten used to making do without it. “All hail Palus” and “Long live the Felitians!” were the battle cries of those who believed in him, and they relished the idea of his new world order. Among these loyalists were a man named Vinsyn Laren and his wife, Claryn. The couple were frequent victims of the gangs who ran Tyhera prior to the Palus “cleansing,” and they were happy for the new ruler since he not only removed the gangs from power but made gory examples of them.

Vinsyn was particularly fired up by the dictator and would complain about the rule that soldiers needed to be young, because this excluded him and he wanted to take up arms and join. Their new home held a picture of Felitious, decorated to the nines with medals, titles, and the defiant smirk he always wore on his tanned, mustached face. Claryn was not as hardcore a fan of Felitious as her husband was, but she was appreciative of him for fixing the chaos and bringing about some sort of leadership that would make sure those innocents could survive. She was for revenge when it came to the thugs that the Felitian Empire was routing out day by day under heavy fire.

One of the gang’s atrocities carried out on the Laren family was the kidnapping of their daughter, Wharena, a beautiful young girl of sixteen whom they held hostage for years in order for Vinsyn to pay them monthly. When the Felitians began the war to take back the streets, Vinsyn had set out himself to rescue his daughter and found that she had become the willing wife to the gang’s leader. She not only tried to kill her father but took her own life when her captor and husband were beheaded publicly by the Felitian lord that Palus put in charge of their city. The Larens never recovered from what the gangs had done to them, and when Claryn delivered a new baby girl after a number of years, they took her to their lord, Okov Wilder, to offer her up as his betrothed.

Okov was a warrior who had been given his station due to his outstanding record of military service. Unlike his peers of noble birth who held similar stations, he found this ritual of marrying off babies to grown men to be odd. What he promised the Larens instead of marriage was that their daughter would be a baroness within his city. She would be the first of her line, and due to Vinsyn’s commitment and loyalty to their now-emperor Palus, her offspring would be regarded as nobles just as she was with her newly appointed title. Little Rienne Laren was therefore born into privilege and immense love, a Felitian gem to be cared for by the military and their lord. She was given the best education, including fencing lessons by a private tutor, and when she was old enough to enlist, she did so to make her father proud and rose in its ranks to become a captain.

She was fierce and one-dimensional in her focus, and it led to her being given the nickname Rienne the Rapier, as her fencing arm had impaled many rebels, and her direction was always straight to the point, very much like her blade. For someone this focused and brainwashed within a system, only a devastating situation could break her from the path in order for her to see why their otherwise peaceful country would have rebels in the first place. Rienne’s doubts about the empire she was a part of came when she turned twenty-one and was enlightened to the actions of her superiors.

* * *

“Genocide?”

Rienne was in shock as she looked over the tablet that she held in front of her, scanning the various names and belongings of the people who had been “cleansed” by what was being called a patriot army. General Qeran Kyle had acquired these “patriots” to remove refugees who were living within Tyhera. She could not understand the need for so cruel a command—unless the refugees posed a threat to the very fabric of Felitian life. She could not even fathom where the refugees came from, and she wondered if they really deserved to be treated so cruelly.

“Why are we doing this, Celene? How long has this been going on?”

The question was thrown at the heavyset corporal who had brought her the tablet. She was standing at attention, looking at the ceiling the way soldiers were commanded to stand when facing a noble.

“Oh, for Maker’s sake, at ease, girl! How many times do I have to tell you that the formal codes need not apply to me?”

The corporal relaxed and looked at her with exasperation. Though the pair had practically grown up together, Rienne did not know the amount of scolding and punishment Celene had withstood for behaving casually with the young baroness. They were alone in the office for a time, though, so she felt comfortable in speaking freely with Rienne Laren. She walked behind the desk where Rienne’s combat boots were sitting neatly to the side, a habit the soldiers made fun of without her knowing it. Rienne hated boots. As a young girl she would always be scolded for running about in bare feet because a baroness must have a perfect outward appearance, and dirty feet was a privilege afforded only to the poor and those without title. She hated the rules that were placed on her due to title. She found them to be sexist and archaic in their construct and saw no need to follow them.

Celene leaned over and whispered into her ear. “It was Red Kyle. He says that refugees will bring a vicious race called the Geralos here, and that if we allow them to live and breed within our society, their mystic ways will put us into a galactic war that will destroy the progress that we have worked for.”

The Felitians feared outsiders, and the thought of a foreign military organizing to come into their galaxy to harvest humans was all the excuse they needed to vilify and destroy the refugees. Over a hundred thousand people had traveled light speed to the galaxy of Luca when the Geralos scourge took over Ceronika Prime. A large number of them emigrated to the planet of Tyhera and started families. It was very easy to spot them due to the pigment of their skin, the Qyeran in their pupils (diamond-like spots), and their foreign speech.

When the refugees originally jumped to take up homes in this new galaxy, their story touched many inhabitants of the various planets. However, when people such as Qeran Kyle and Palus Felitious heard it, their deepest worries were piqued, and before long, the outsiders were disappearing from their homes. A process of removing the mystic properties from the captives and changing the blood to be more like that of Lucan natives led to many people dying or living out miserable lives as blind cripples. One of these cripples was a man named Jeonah RAE, an ex-soldier from Cholde, Ceronika, who had fled with his wife after she convinced him that life would be better for their children.

Jeonah witnessed his wife and four children sacrificed to the “process” and started a rebellion with aims to overthrow the Felitian power structure. It was this rebellion that Rienne was enlisted to stop, and when she finally learned the reason the people of her world would want to rebel against their leaders, she felt confusion and betrayal, along with other emotions such as shame.

“I feel like I need to throw up!”

Rienne was staring at the tablet as if it were a bomb, and Celene had told her they had ten minutes before it destroyed the entire planet. She hopped to her feet and threw it against the wall. The mercurial particles exploded like a grenade, and Celene ducked and rolled off to the side in order to avoid the fragments flying everywhere.

“We are going to pay for these atrocities, Celene. Do you understand that we will be the bad guys when our history is read to our youth?”

Celene stood still, not knowing what to do about her angry baroness or what to say to make her calm down. Rienne was on her feet with her palms planted on the desk. She was looking down at the surface, processing what she could do in her lowly position to end the evil that her emperor was making them fight for. She had been in thought for roughly fifteen minutes when she turned to Celene.

“Celene, could you please bring me all of the records that we have on this genocide and everyone who is involved with it. I would also like you to swear me a blood oath that our conversation here, the actions that you have seen me perform and my obvious disappointment in our military, is to stay between the two of us.”

Looking up from the desk to stare coolly at her friend, Rienne then uttered, “If it were not for our relationship, Celene, I would have to kill you. Please appreciate that our friendship stays my hand, and do not let me regret trusting you with this secret.”

Celene quickly nodded and swore the oath before asking Rienne if there was anything else she could do for her. Rienne waved her off with a little smile to let her know that she appreciated her. She then sat as Celene hurriedly exited the office, stepping past the tablet fragments as she did. When Rienne went home to her Veece apartment that evening, she thought about the situation and solutions that would help her right the wrong of the movement that she was now an officer of.

How do you stop a speeding cruiser aimed at destroying humanity when you yourself are on it?

She asked this of herself over and over as she sat in the office, slowly sipping her red wine. She couldn’t tell her father. To him, Palus was a god, and her mother was just as indoctrinated as he was, though her loyalty was more towards not disappointing her husband. It was then that she heard the commotion, and her front door flew open as a large, dark-skinned man burst in, wearing the uniform and colors of a resistance commander.

That chance meeting with Rafian VCA was one that she always felt was fated, because it was at a time when her trust in the Felitian rule was greatly diminished and her heart was hungry for a way to make it right.

* * *

Marian VCA sat up in the bed staring at her ring and examining it longingly as she thought back on her home. She missed her parents, but she had turned out to be a great disappointment to them. Here she was married to a man who was both a resistance commander and a Vestalian refugee, and she was now a weapon to threaten their precious Palus and his rule over their galaxy.

“Trouble sleeping, Ree?”

It was Aurora who asked it; she had passed out as well, a result of the three soldiers sharing Genese gin and taking part in board games and storytelling.

“Ya…you can say that, Aurora. I haven’t truly slept in a long time. I am just still taking all of this in, you know? Rafian’s reality, all of you wonderful people in his life…Anstractor.”

She trailed off as if she had said too much.

“You know, Marian, none of us know you. I don’t think your husband even knows who you are. You were brought here into our problematic galaxy and forced to make new friends who already had lives of their own.”

“That’s very good, Aurora, and you’re right. This transition hasn’t been easy for me.”

“We’re the same in that, girl. I grew up on the
Helysian
, but since I got left for dead and rescued, it is as if I am a stranger to everyone. Girls stare and give me awkward smiles. The guys seem intimidated by me, and I feel as if I am constantly watching my back for people who wish to take advantage of me in one way or another. Rafian may have done me a huge favor by saving me, but sometimes I wonder if I would have been better off as plant food on that ship.”

Marian reached over and touched Aurora’s hand gently and looked at her. “You belong here, Aury. It doesn’t matter what any of the people on this ship think. You belong here. Let’s get out of here so that Rafian can sleep.”

The women slipped out of the bedroom and down the stairs towards the lounge, Marian wearing the silken, flowing red nightgown that she favored and Aurora in soft,
Helysian
-issue pajama pants and a massive shirt, with her hair wrapped up with fabric. As they sat, Marian sent an android off to bring them tea, and she turned on the vid screen, muted it, and turned to face her new friend. The vid had a scene going of a planet being bombed by Geralese ships—another reminder of the war that consumed their lives. Aurora quickly changed it to what appeared to be a romance opera of some sort, took a deep breath, and relaxed.

“My real name is Rienne Laren, and I am partly responsible for an ongoing genocide on my planet in the galaxy of Luca. I believe many of those who are being sought out and killed came from this galaxy—from the planet Vestalia.”

Marian watched the reaction in Aurora as she said this, and it felt extremely liberating to finally come out of the closet about her history to someone. Rafian knew her past; they had exchanged stories many times, but with Aurora, it felt different and exciting because unlike Rafian, she didn’t know how she would react to hearing the truth.

“Whoa, that’s a pretty bad joke to make, Marian.”

Aurora said this as she searched Marian’s dusky face for any sign of laughter that would follow her absurd statement. Of course the laughter never came, and Aurora stood silent for a moment, wondering if she should burst up the stairs to tell Rafian or find a way to keep her cool and tell him later. Marian, a master at reading faces, picked up on her intent and moved to settle the air.

“Rafian knows, Aurora. You and he are the only ones who know.…I would like to keep it that way.”

Aurora nodded but looked at Marian with a completely different level of respect than she had before.
Suddenly this woman seems dangerous; she is beautiful and a sister now that she has married Rafian—probably receiving the same looks and prejudice from women that I faced—but there is something else about her.