Anstractor (The New Phase Book 1) (2 page)

The saddest thing about this entire episode for young Rafian was that Anne Marie had never truly existed…The tainted food, malnutrition, and disease that ripped his body and mind had conjured up this symbol of hope for the young boy when all else was lost to him. He had made her the image of that lovely little girl Lendi, whom he had known in the past…he thought that she was so pretty but felt too dirty to ask her out back then. Throughout his life, Rafian would remember Anne Marie and wonder about her survival, hoping that one day they would be reunited.

The vessel was the
SSO-56 Venue
, better known as
Helysian
, an A-class cruiser built for war. The marines aboard would not be happy to see a stowaway, but Rafian was safe, warm, and at least for the time being free from a cell, filth, and the eventual processing that would have happened when
his body had finally given out.

There were times when Rafian wondered if he had been better off on Genese, ducking and dodging Cel-tocs, starving, and dealing with its various predators instead of living on this military ship being called every name in the book. It was not an ideal transition for the boy. He was taken before the ship’s commander to be drilled with questions he could barely understand, much less answer. They asked him about the Arbar Resistance on the surface, the raiding Geralos, and his involvement with either faction. They wanted to know whether he was a spy, a human bomb, or just some sort of plant who could decimate the ship and everyone onboard. They asked him if he was an Arbar agent, but he didn’t know any Arbars, and he didn’t know what they were resisting to begin with.

The worst part of the whole interrogation was that the soldiers, these tough looking men and women, had never heard of Cel-tocs or anything like them. The questions became harder and harder, and after two hours of questioning, it came down to a decision by the ship’s psychiatrist as to whether Rafian was innocent or would be ejected from an airlock into open space. The decision did not come quickly, but once it was made—that he was a starving child suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder—the airlock was still suggested!

Civilian children were not welcome aboard a military ship en route to war, so they deliberated whether or not he was worth the rations that it would cost them to keep him alive.

The situation was grave, and after three hours of discussion, the leaders decided to give Rafian a chance to earn his keep. He had to prove he could be useful to the corps within a year’s time, or they would drop him off at the nearest hub to fend for himself among the other homeless and destitute of the various planets. Living at a hub would be a death sentence, since compassion for children was in short order in those places. People fought over scraps of food. They robbed, raped, and preyed upon one another like animals. The only ones to survive were the ones strong enough or wicked enough to outsmart and get over on the others.

Rafian was taken in by Captain Samoo LES, a Vestalian farmer turned military war hero during the Seventh Invasion, known as the
Geralos Vox
. Samoo was unhappy with his assignment of babysitting a stowaway. He reminded Rafian daily that he was an annoyance by calling him names and constantly assigning him chores. Rafian’s name was “boy,” and his sleeping quarters was a tiny corner of the soldier’s apartment.

Samoo’s apartment was the same as the other 1,500 soldier-issued quarters aboard the ship. It was a ten-by-nine-foot space occupied by a bed, which flipped out from the port wall and could double as a table by selecting that option on an exterior panel. Samoo kept it as a table, not ever sleeping in the presence of Rafian, who wondered how the man could stay so sharp and clean without resting.

Samoo was a closed book on everything, including his eating and sleeping habits.

There was a tiny metal sink that protruded from the wall and a toilet and mirror, all retractable so that the room could become an empty cell with the simple touch of a button. Every day, between the hours of 0500 and 1000, the room was a cell for Rafian that was used for training.

Each morning the boy was roused, made to jog out a three-mile trek, do a number of push-ups and sit-ups, recite military doctrine, and eat a breakfast of
laucks
and
mosh
(which would be the equivalent of dry oatmeal and egg whites). This ritual continued for months, and while he hated every second of it at first, he slowly began to accept it and even liked it. The captain was given a year to make young Rafian into a prodigy. The boy was too impressive to be cast out with the rubbish, and Samoo was not going to fail, no matter how much he had to push him.

What made it very hard for young Rafian, however, was the fact that there were other children on the ship. They were called cadets, and they dressed and acted the part well enough. Rafian realized that he was being made to prove himself worthy of becoming one of their number, but he knew that they had not been required to do the same daily ritual as he. They were lucky, chosen from healthy, happy homes—the sons and daughters of military fathers and mothers. He expected that he would pass, and when he did, he would have the new hell of dealing with the constant ridicule and bullying from them, his would-be peers. It placed his mind in a dark place and made him very defensive and aware.

“Look at you now, boy, all fire and no weakness” was what the captain had to say after he had completed the eleventh month of training. He was nicer to Rafian now, offering him real chow from the dining halls when he could and telling him war stories from the past whenever they had time together. Rafian had grown fond of the captain and had developed a real love for training and military logic.

Samoo had given him a tiny las-gun a while back—a gift for being quiet and doing as he was told. The pistol had a fried ejection rod, so there was no way that he could shoot himself. Samoo had noticed that Rafian had nothing of his own, and with the importance of high morale in addition to Rafian’s diligence in his duties, he felt it was safe enough to hand it over to the boy. Without toys, vids, or any of the things that children his age played with, Rafian made the gun his favorite toy. At first he was content with playing starfighter and aliens by himself when things were quiet, but out of boredom one day, he dismantled the gun piece by piece, only to panic and scramble to rebuild it in fear of making Samoo upset.

As providence would prove, he was unable to fix it and was punished harshly by being hung with straps on his wrist, alone in the empty room. He was left to hang for a long time and made to run more miles the next day. When his temper had cooled, Samoo took the opportunity to show Rafian how to reassemble his broken weapon. This was typical of their relationship. Samoo would dish out hard penalties but would turn it into a teaching moment afterwards.

When it was time for Rafian’s big test, the two were actually sad that they would be going their separate ways. The test was nothing special to Rafian. Six different officers took him on a series of physical courses with obstacles—all of which he passed with flying colors. He was given a verbal exam on military history, the Anstractor galaxy, and the history of the Geralos occupation of Vestalia. He impressed them all with his skill, knowledge, and intensity, so it was decided he was worthy enough to join the Galactic Cadet Corps (GC2).

Rafian was given the rank of twelfth grade, the equivalent of where a nine-year-old would be in the standard system used for cadets. He was given a bed in the military bunk hall for the GC2 and was introduced to his commanding officer—a tall, skinny fourteen-year-old boy named Weine, who had brown skin and curly hair.

Once the adults had left and he was alone with Weine to go over his duties, the boy barked at him: “Come with me, char,” which was a derogatory slur for dark-skinned people on Vestalia, a carry-over from its fractured past. Rafian realized Weine was going to be a problem, as he nodded and trailed after the older boy, who was describing what his duties would be every day. Rafian had known he would be bullied, but if it was going to be at the hand of the top boy, it was not something he was willing to deal with.

The boys walked around to the sleeping area, and Weine showed him where the bathroom was. He then showed him the girls’ sleeping area and bathroom, while reminding him that it was off limits. He then showed him the gym, the mess hall, and finally, the flight-simulation deck.

The deck looked very much like the arcades on Genese, with its hollowed-out shooters set-up to give the users the virtual experience of starfighting and controlling a space vessel. It was love at first sight for Rafian, and he couldn’t wait to hop into one of them and master the controls. Weine interrupted his thoughts, reminding him the flight deck was reserved for third-grade cadets and below (the lower the number, the higher the rank).

Rafian’s first few days at the camp were rough, due to the various cliques and exclusionary attitudes of the children there. It was not that big a deal to a boy who was used to that sort of treatment, so he kept to himself, stayed out of trouble, and did what he could to fit in.

One little girl who caught his eye was a cute cadet named Vani. She was Rafian’s age, eleven, only she was a fifth-grade cadet who excelled in the academic areas of their military life. She came from military royalty (her dad was a colonel), and she acted very much like it. Even though she had the reputation of being a brat, she was beautiful to Rafian. It did not matter to him how unpopular she was with the other children. He wanted to get to know her.

Weine, however, was exactly as Rafian assumed he would be—a bully in fancy clothes. The way he was introduced to the others, the use of a racial slur, and the reminder to Rafian that he was not worthy of flight training, was him at his nicest. He would routinely prank the younger boys and make their lives a living hell while showing a face of great potential to the adults who supervised them.

To Weine, Rafian was fair game because he had no caring parents, and he anticipated making him his punching bag for as long as he could. The cadets looked down on Rafian, whom they saw as getting a lucky ticket into the academy. They made fun of him for having a low rank for someone of his age.

After a year had passed and Rafian proved himself worthy by acquiring a few more ranks, he decided he had had enough of Weine and his antics.

Now at twelve years old and as tall as his commanding officers, Rafian had become quite a soldier. With nothing else but the pride that Samoo had given him, he studied the books and principles of the standard space marine even more than was expected of a cadet his rank. His focus for the year was to get bigger, stronger, and smarter, and he accomplished this beyond his natural gifts.

Weine had this thing that he would do: he would grab a few other officers and kidnap a small boy to lock him away in a locker for the night. He knew that the trauma would make the kid struggle the next day with his exercises. Whenever Weine would nab a victim, he and the other officers would drill him extra hard the next day and then laugh when the child failed.

With one eye closed and the other intently watching as they were targeting a quiet boy named Levi, Rafian snuck out of his bunk and silently followed the three bullies to the area with the lockers. Here Levi was gagged and trapped for the night.

Earlier in the day, Rafian had sneaked a metal pipe into his room and hid it under his bunk in anticipation of this very moment. He armed himself with it, holding it to his back as he pressed to the side of the door and peered inside. The boys had just imprisoned Levi despite his pleas and cries.

Rafian walked into the room, pressed the lock switch to freeze the door closed behind him, and forced the three boys to face him with no hope of reinforcement or escape.

“What are you doing here, char?” Weine asked with a look of worry in his eye.

The answer he received was a shot to the face from the pistol that Rafian had fixed to shoot nonlethal rubber bullets. However, on the basis of the results, no one would know that the bullet was false. The boy’s face erupted into a bloody mess as he fell to the floor, screaming loudly from the pain.

“Our history reads that the days of people being chars, ashes, swirls, or any other stupid name passed the day we all united to save Vestalia, Weine. I never bothered you, disobeyed commands, or called you names. But people like you don’t need provocation to lock small kids into lockers, molest them, and abuse them, do you?

“This is why I am going to beat you and these two cowards you have with you.”

One of the other kids named Lenny pleaded, “Come on, Raf, it’s just fun. It was Weine’s idea, I swear!”

But the other was feeling lucky with their numbers. “Let’s just kick his ass and lock him up for a week,” he said.

To which Rafian answered, “Thank you, Mav. You will make me feel no conscience in doing this…”

Captain Samoo LES was a war hero on Vestalia. He was a war hero because he was captured by the enemy for two years, tortured and beaten within an inch of his life, and managed to escape through hand-to-hand combat. Samoo knew how to destroy people with and without a weapon, and his compassion for young Rafian led him to teach the boy some of these very skills during their time together. Though Samoo would not be proud of what his student did to these three boys, he would have been proud to know that beyond the tears, the anger, and the misunderstanding, his lessons had stuck, and his young student had soaked it up like a sponge.

When it was time for exercise, breakfast, and the typical events of the morning, Weine and two other officers were with the ship’s nurse getting treated for permanent injuries. Young Levi was well rested and feeling safe. Rafian was in front of the cadet commander explaining his actions and why he had felt he had to intervene. It was a situation the cadet commander could not fathom how to fix because the wounded boys were in leadership positions, and many kids had come forward to admit they had been tortured in hopes of helping Rafian—their savior—get a pardon.

A large-scale investigation that spanned the better part of six weeks was launched. Many outsiders, including parents and the new Vestalian government, were involved. It was a messy ordeal, and while the marine vessel drifted in deep space, the brass worked out the cadet massacre (as it was playfully dubbed) and what to do with the boys who were involved.