Lazan Kylad (Technical Support)
“Where were you going anyway?” I asked my brother with a sigh. “I hope it was worth getting lost for three weeks.”
Ever since our ship had crash-landed on this horrific prison planet, full of wild and malicious life of all kinds throughout the galaxy, my brother had been walking around with a sour expression on his face. I could hardly blame him, and yet I couldn’t help but hope that I didn’t look quite as severe as Kerglan when I was angry.
“Not that it’s any of your business, Lazan, but I was hoping to get away from the crew for a while. I didn’t realize this gredding planet was so big!”
“Neither did I, or I wouldn’t have followed you,” I said, sighing deeply to myself.
“Nobody asked you to come with me, brother,” Kerglan said, glowering at me. “I wanted some time alone anyway.”
“I couldn’t just let you come out here alone! Do you realize how terrifying it was when I thought the Jorgan was going to crush you? I am not letting you meet an uncertain fate on this planet alone. You may have a death wish, but you are my family. I would never allow you to stay out here by yourself.”
“Father would never forgive you for that, would he?” Kerglan said, his eyes cold and full of mirth.
He never let me forget that our father had always favored him. Our father, who was a proud commander of the Raither fleet. He had always been my idol, and in fact, I had been inspired to grow into a powerful mechanic because of his influence. The Raither spacecraft were my passion, and I had been beside myself with rage as I attempted to repair the ship that had crash-landed on the fearsome planet Hexa. But the power source was completely gone, and unless we found it in mint condition, we weren’t going anywhere.
“No,” I said grimly. “I would be ostracized were I to let his favorite son die on this horrible planet.”
“Don’t worry,” Kerglan said, slapping my back good-naturedly. My complicated relationship with my father and the shame etched on my face seemed to put him in a better mood. “We’ll get back to the ship eventually.”
“You should have let me mark the trail,” I said, another sigh aching to be released. But my brother seemed to have a sixth sense for weakness. I could not let him see that I was distressed. “At least we would have found our way back by now. I am getting hungry.”
“You are always hungry, Lazan. It is lucky that you took after father so much. You were able to utilize all that food you ate into muscle mass. If you had taken after mother, you would not have been so lucky.”
I frowned. My brother had always despised our mother. She had been imprisoned long ago, exiled by the Raither people for committing adultery. The Raithers were a proud people, with a very strict set of rules. One of the most important sects of law concerned mating and claims. Once you claimed a female, she was yours for life. Nothing was allowed to get in the way of that, and should she be found guilty of an affair with another man, then the law would be acted upon quickly and swiftly. Both the female and the man she was with would be persecuted.
Personally, despite her flaws, I had always loved my mother. My brother had less fond memories of her, as he was the oldest and seemed only to remember my birth as being what took her attention away from him. From there his impression of her only grew worse as she became distant from our family, only coming home to care for me after a long day of suspicious behavior. My memories of her were few, but what was there was pure and simple love. Something I had not experienced since her affair was discovered and she had been banished.
“It is lucky that there are so many orchards on this planet,” I said, hoping to change the subject from our mother so that my brother might leave me be. I wanted only to be sure that he was safe on this dangerous planet. Why couldn’t he just give me the benefit of the doubt for once?
“It isn’t lucky at all,” Kerglan said, glaring at me from over his shoulder. “The whole planet was designed by the Resha Federation. They have those gredding giants come out here to tend to it on occasion. Or did you not know even that?”
I frowned. “Why would I have reason to know that?”
“Well, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that I am more well-read than you are,” Kerglan said with a burdened sigh, as if my ignorance only proved what a saint he was to put up with me tagging along on his quest of getting himself lost on the prison planet. “It just so happens that the prison planets are of great interest to me, considering our mother is living on one of them.”
I pursed my lips. Frankly, I had always tried to avoid the subject whenever it came up. I was afraid of what I might learn about my mother’s fate. There was no telling what had ever become of her. All we knew was that she was confined to the planet Jexa, and whether she lived or died, we would never know for sure what her fate had been. I was just grateful that she hadn’t been placed on Hexa, where we had already encountered some of the most horrifying creatures I had ever read about.
“Our mother’s imprisonment holds no interest to me,” I lied, trying to keep my voice steady. The last thing Kerglan needed was to know of my weakness. He already sensed that I cared more than I was willing to admit for the woman that he had been so hurt by. Perhaps our father did as well, and that was why he had always preferred Kerglan over me.
“Sure it doesn’t,” Kerglan said dismissively, waving his hand in the air. “Come, I see a fruit tree. I am getting tired of hearing your stomach rumble.”
“I did not realize that it was rumbling,” I said with a sigh. Still, I was grateful for the change of topic and followed my brother through an empty grove to a single tree standing in the clearing.
“Climb up there and toss me down enough for both of us to eat,” Kerglan ordered.
It made me prickle, how he always thought that he was in charge of me. He had been that way since we were young. I supposed that was what often happened in sibling dynamics. The eldest tended to assume responsibility. Whether that was in a controlling and oppressive way seemed to depend on the personality of the sibling. Mine certainly was both of those things.
“All right,” I said, knowing that it was easier to acquiesce than to argue.
Fights with my brother tended to drone on and on and on. He seemed incapable of admitting that he was wrong, and would rather create unbearable chaos until whomever he was fighting with submitted to his ideas. It really wasn’t worth the hassle. Now that I was grown, my warrior blood would ultimately become ignited. The last thing I wanted to do was to kill my brother in a pointless feud over whether or not I climbed the tree to retrieve our dinner. And so it was that I followed his orders. He was my superior, and my elder, and that was all there was to it.
“I want the ripe one in the middle of this branch!” Kerglan called up to me as I hefted myself up the round, yellowed trunk of the fruit tree.
“All right,” I grunted, gritting my teeth in an effort not to snap at him over his needless pickiness. “I will get that one first. It is the only ripe fruit on that branch.”
I could almost feel Kerglan smirking up at me as I extended my body onto the thin branch, balancing my weight carefully to keep from destroying the poor tree entirely. With a grunt of exertion, I managed to reach out and brush my fingers against the fruit just firmly enough that it fell to the ground. Kerglan caught it easily, and I felt a small surge of pride toward my race.
The Raithers were not to be messed with. We were a proud line of warriors, and the entire universe knew they were better off not to anger our people. We were the only planet in our galaxy that hadn’t had a war touch us in 600 years, because the last time a stranger race decided to invade our planet, we had obliterated them beyond recognition. The race was extinct now, thanks to our strategic warrior mindset, and that was a fate that no other race wanted to replicate.
I sighed as I batted a few more ripe fruits down and climbed down the tree, listening to the obnoxious sounds of my brother slurping down the fruit. After we had eaten, I turned to Kerglan and pursed my lips together.
“I think we should go left from here. We may find our way back to the camp.”
I don’t know why I said it. I knew exactly the reaction my brother would have. He refused to take orders from me. Despite having held my own in training and battle, he still viewed me as inferior. Any suggestions I made would be immediately discarded in lieu of his own superior wisdom.
“We are not going left. We just came from that direction.”
“But we–”
“I said no! I recognize that tree over there!”
Kerglan cast his arm out toward a large tree that I was certain we had never seen before. He would say just about anything to get his way. I shook my head and sighed, resigning myself to keeping my mouth shut. If it weren’t for our ranks, I would have stood up for myself more, but he could have me imprisoned for refusing to heed orders from a superior. It was completely unfair.
“Fine. We will go your way.”
Kerglan seemed pleased by this. “Good,” he said. “Let’s go.”
***
We had been walking for what seemed like an eternity in a direction I was certain was the wrong one. It took all of my self-control not to snap at my brother, who was leading this journey more with spite than with his head. And yet, in a way, I was pleased with the way that the unfortunate situation of being lost allowed for me to explore this strange planet. There was something darkly beautiful about it.
Hexa was lush with beautiful green foliage, a lot like the areas of my own home planet of Yala where the rain fell plentifully and provided the soil with enough nourishment to grow beautiful groves of plant life. Some planets had no plant life at all, and I felt very fortunate to be able to witness the different varieties for myself.
It was rare for a Raither to settle on any planet but Yala for long. Because of this, I had never been away from my home planet for longer than a couple of days at a time. We never slept on planets that were not our own, unless we were stationed there on a base to keep an eye on things throughout the universe. Most races thought of us as quiet, maybe even harmless, but there was a sinister edge to the Raither army. Everyone knew that, although we were fair, we were in charge of much of the galaxy.
“How much longer until we arrive at the base?” I asked, unable to keep the bitter edge out of my voice. “I feel as if we have been walking quite a long time.”
“We will arrive soon, I am sure. We shall use the tracking skills taught to us in training to re-trace our footsteps.”
I frowned. Kerglan knew as well as I did that tracking was not among the skills that were highly encouraged among the fighter classes: particularly those who were trained for air combat. Sure, we had the basic training just as everybody else had, but in a world like this where the ground was covered in thick piles of dead leaves and lush growing grasses, and the wind was constantly blowing through the trees, it seemed unlikely that our primitive tracking skills would make any difference. In fact, they hadn’t as of yet. We were still hopelessly lost.
“All right,” I said, despite my presentiment.
Kerglan continued to move ahead, and I followed silently, vastly aware of how miserable I was in having to always follow my brother’s orders. It had been like this since childhood, and the way my father had favored him after our mother’s betrayal solidified an unspoken rivalry between us. It always seemed to be Kerglan and our father versus myself, in all matters.
The only time I had ever felt like our father valued me as a son was when he would wake me up in the middle of the night to secretly show me the bunker where he worked on the Raither fleet of ships. Our spacecraft were some of the most advanced in the galaxy and had been crafted to move quickly through the stars. Raithers were very loyal to the planet Yala, and the less time spent traveling between planets, the better.
Night began to fall, and I cast a glance at Kerglan. We had found out the hard way that night on the prison planet had proven to be much more dangerous than the day. Kerglan seemed to have the same thought on his mind, and halted.
“We will make camp here,” he said decidedly. “Come and help me fetch the supplies. There is much work to be done.”
I nodded and followed my brother into the darkness of the forest.
***
We had taken cover beneath the thick trunk of a fallen tree. It was already propped up on another tree and made for a good source of cover. It was large enough that both Kerglan and I could have a divider, providing two makeshift little rooms. We had learned long ago that we both thrive with a significant amount of space from each other.
It had just become about time to snuff out the little fire that we had been using for light when a heavy thump vibrated the ground beneath us. I poked my head into Kerglan’s side of the shelter, and we exchanged worried looks. It sounded as if one of the vicious creatures of the night was nearby.
Kerglan and I both drew our weapons and crept to the doorway of our shelter, snuffing out the meager light. I wished more than anything that the protective aura of the prison planet’s security system wouldn’t cause our laser weapons to misfire. It would have been much easier to defend ourselves with a proper arsenal. Fortunately, the Raithers were warriors and always found a way to fight and a way to win. We had managed to fashion relatively effective spears out of the resources available to us on the planet’s terrain, and so far, coupled with our physical skill, they had been more than sufficient to keep us alive.
“Should we go to it?” I whispered.
Kerglan shook his head no, and we waited, on edge, for the monster appear.
Soon, it did, and a look of horror contorted my brother’s face. I turned to view the creature for myself, a mirror image of his shock and disgust appearing upon mine as well.
“It’s a Yeshaa!” Kerglan hissed.
And indeed, it was. Being among the strongest warriors in existence, the Raithers had a deep knowledge of most races throughout the universe. Some of the most twisted and barbaric creatures known to roam the stars had scarred our childhoods, appearing in books and dreams of the most nightmarish quality. I happened to know for a fact that the Yeshaa was Kerglan’s most feared monster of all, and it was going to be difficult for him to keep his head.
“It’s going to be all right,” I whispered, not believing my own words.
I might have, were it not for the creature I was seeing before me. It was oversized, just like nearly all of the creatures on Hexa. Of the three prison planets, Hexa was made to have the highest security, which meant the beasts we encountered here were excessively vicious.
It was grotesque, in a way, wandering around mostly naked, its skin an ugly deep pink. The Yeshaa’s somewhat humanoid head stretched disturbingly as it opened its mouth, its round eyes wide as it scanned the area for prey. Even though it walked with a slouch, its rounded shoulders reached nearly the top of the tall fruit trees. A small patch of coarse brown hair jutted from the top of its head.
“Help!”
The blood-curdling cry made me narrow my eyes, and I scanned my field of vision quickly in search of the source of the cry. I was shocked to find that the horrific creature was staring down with its dull, unwavering gaze at a human.
She was tiny, even by human standards, with long light brown hair cascading down her back and a pale, terrified face. She was staring up at the Yeshaa, her petite features tense as she contemplated whether or not she would survive this encounter. The odds did not look to be in her favor.
“What the gred?” I exclaimed, shoving forward and rushing impulsively toward her.
“Lazan! No!”
I ignored my brother's cautions. All I could think was to save the human. She didn’t even seem to see me there; her breathtaking green eyes were focused on the horrific creature that was reaching down to pin her to the ground with his monstrous hand.
Without a second thought, I launched my spear up, impaling him through the neck, just as our books had taught us to do. The Yeshaa froze in place, its already unsettling eyes bulging, and it let out a strangled gasp of breath.
I lost sight of the human when the creature fell; he brought a tree down with him, and all was chaos.
When I ran around the carnage in search of the human, my chest tightened. There was Kerglan, with his arms around the human’s waist as he helped her up. For some reason, this sent a jolt of nausea coursing through my body. Did he have to touch her like that?
“Come, brother,” he barked. “Let us return to the shelter. We have much to discuss.”