***
Raist was sitting at a porthole of his ship, rolling Philira’s bloody knife in his remaining hand, occasionally blinking the accumulating tears away. The large ship was once lively. Now it lay completely quiet, with only the soft hum of the Jump-Drive to break complete silence. He sat there in a complicated set of emotions from all his various thoughts. A floor down, a synth-vat was warming up, its hum one of the few sounds piercing the quiet. He would lie unconscious in there for a while as his arm was reconstructed yet again.
Agrest’s letter he would give to the broken-hearted girl sat on a table, waiting for a poor girl’s tears to cover it. He would tell her of the hero Agrest had been to the very end, as if that is any compensation to the mourning.
Thinking about Leio and her constant boisterous attitude made the ship seem even quieter now that she was gone. Murdered. Never again would she fill Raist with energy with her love for life attitude.
He stopped rolling the knife, looking at the yellow star Philira had decided to decorate her knife with. She had mentioned a brother, but she was AGEd, and thus had no biologic relative; it was a mystery he would never know about the young woman. He was thinking about the valiant sacrifice the Scout had made, and it only made him cry harder. Raist envisioned her prideful face with her slight tears as she was trying to hide her pain, as her death was so close. He gritted his teeth hard, shaking his head softly. It hurt him he could only tell her his feelings when she was about to die.
***
A while later he was watching the last of the star’s light of the Reiko system and the planet he had lost so much on before the ship grav-jumped away. Somewhere on the planet his arrogance that all Leaders possessed died. It was probably along with Philira or Leio, but in exchange had a new wisdom.
His eyes were still tearing, but he had a strange confidence with him now. It would be a long time before he ever went down in battle, and until then he hoped he would find another team as good as this one. Especially the Scouts. He liked that type the best, he now realized. The universe declared an affinity for them he was happy to have.
He pulled up a screen, wiping the tears away, but in the soft reflection could still see all the blood on his face. He was connected to a team acquisition number.
“I am going to need four replacement members. Raist, L4437 L-Class 743,” he stated professionally.
“What Classes?” The man on the other end eye’s went wide at Raist’s face for a moment before he started pulling up pictures and profiles of the typical soldier within each Class. “Typical mix: Scout, Assault, Support, and a Sniper? Or how about the new batch of Intel just graduated…”
“No. Four Scouts.”
“Ha, are you joking, or you got a thing for those pink-haired girls?” The man on the other end had a sly look on. “They are more than a bit crazy. I heard they are thinking about discontinuing that style, or at least making less. Assault seems to be all the rage now. You sure you want those whack girls? Heard they are more trouble than they are worth.”
“Yes, I owe my life to them,” Raist stated with complete conviction.
“Alright, a round of training is just about done. You should have four reporting for duty pretty soon.” The guy on the other line shook his head, laughing, “Damn, a Leader with four Scouts. Sounds hot. And dangerous.”
“Naturally.”
Afterword
First, thank you for reading this story, and if you’d like more please subscribe to my mailing list where you can get a free story; I give a once a month update on new stories and special access to readers. I hope you enjoyed this story, when I wrote AKRA I set out to write a heavy military-style action story that had some deep philosophic underpinnings beneath the story. This was written during a break from VayneLine and I was working on tight narratives in a shorter format. Unlike some of the others stories, I wanted to demonstrate the technology, drive and will of the elite Solarian soldiers. The story came out better than I would have thought. I was surprised at many of my earlier readers how much the Philira scene touched them and was inspiring that my writing could actually have an effect on people.
Like all of my stories, there are hidden things in the plot that reading again I hope would be a ‘now I see!’ kind of revelation that might make a re-read fun. In this there were many, from Laiun being the one in the beginning and pulling the strings behind the scenes to help the man she once served with; to Ziko’s sabotage; to Raist/Laiun’s past and its many implication on her and him; or Philira’s promise to survive no matter what for Raist’s joke to her. Lastly, we have not seen the last of Raist and Philira’s ‘brothers’ knife, and Raist will be a character that plays a major role in the main VayneLine books.
Visit www.vayneline.com for more information on Project: AKRA as well as all other stories. The website is built as an encyclopedia of information regarding the expansive universe and a blog to stay up to date on new stories. Feel free to check it out, or to email me at
[email protected] as I plan to be hand-ons with my readers. Thanks for reading!
-Eric
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