All I ever wanted was to be part of something special. A team that accomplished great things. I’ve dreamed about it my entire life, but the opportunity has never presented itself. Not yet, anyway. I think that, even though I’ve waited nineteen years already, I could easily wait for another nineteen if I knew that at the end of those years, my dream would come true. Then I could do everything I’ve ever wanted and not have to be stuck in this mundane life forever.
I won’t say that I haven’t had it okay so far. Life here on Anglicanis is okay. As a newly settled world, well, settled like 300 years ago, so that’s new, there’s a lot here to be thankful for. Resources here are plentiful, there’s space for everyone, and the Empire pretty much leaves us alone. One day when we’re a contributing member, they’ll come to collect tariffs from us, but until then, we’re on our own.
We don’t need their influence here, anyway. This far out on the spiral arm, we’re just fine by ourselves. No corrupt over-governance. No inner-system disputes. No strange alien races - not that anyone has ever seen any. Humanity is all alone in this part of the galaxy, and we’ve done just fine, spreading out over a thousand light-years from Albion, the center of our Empire. We’ve made it pretty far, so far, traveling in our longships at half the speed of light.
Well, this is what I learned in the rudimentary school system anyway. Albion doesn’t mean anything to me. It’s just some word in a text that was fairly dull to read. Someone could have made it up, and we wouldn’t even know. Really, the only proof that there are humans out there is the monthly supply ship that arrives with requested parts and machines that we can’t make here. Now that I’ve graduated, I’ve occasionally thought about getting on it, but as I’ve said, I’m waiting for something big.
So are my friends, I think. Well, Grady is. Him definitely, though I worry he’ll give up waiting and get on that ship without me. Heck, Grady could probably build his own ship. Both of his parents are high-level technologists. That’s good for him and bad for him, though. He got all of his brainpower from good old mom and dad, but they already expect him to be doing great things. He just graduated. Shouldn’t they give him at least a little break? For the summer, at least? But no, he’s already doing interviews at all the top companies. I’m secretly hoping that they all turn him down, and then he can go to trade school with me.
“Grady!” I call up to his window at the side of his domicile block. I could have easily gone to the front portal, but I like doing this better. It seems more covert this way, and it’s good practice. We have to be ready for our big chance.
Mutsumaji O’Grady Sugiyama pops his head out the window and looks down. It takes him a moment to find me because I’m hiding a bit in the shadow. I’ve got to keep my cool persona going on. That way, no fool tries to mess with me. If you look tough and mysterious, you’ve always got the upper hand. That is until someone who is actually tough comes by. I try to avoid guys like that.
“Rance, hey, be right down! Did you bring it?” He asks in his high-pitched voice.
“Of course,” I call back up, though I deliberately make my voice deeper.
Grady pumps both fists at my answer, and he slides back into his room. He’ll be down in a minute, but in the meantime, I’ll vid Parrish. He’s probably at practice. He’s always at practice. Honestly, I don’t know how he finds time to hang out with us. I’m glad he does, though. He’s got one of the best collections of star-tables I’ve ever seen, and he doesn’t let anyone but us see them. Parrish says his teammates wouldn’t get it. Fine by me. It’s more for us.
Parrish doesn’t pick up my call, not that I was expecting him to, but he chats me back and says he’ll see me in ten. Some people you’d never believe that from, but if Parrish says he’ll be here, He’ll be here. Parrish’s favorite quote is ‘Never let a teammate down,’
I hear a hiss, and Grady steps out of the front portal, all grins. “What’s up, dude?”
I’m chill. I don’t move from my spot under the tree. I just give him a nod.
“Hey, by the way, is it cool if Surela hangs with us?” He asks.
“Yeah, but call her that name to her face, and she’s gonna kick your skinny arse all the way to downtown Freya.”
“That’s on the other side of the globe,” Grady states matter-of-factly.
“Exactly,” I reply.
Grady is skinny. Especially compared to most people on the planet. Skinny legs, skinny arms, and a skinny body that is as straight as a ruler. All it ended at his mop-top hair that was dark brown like mine, though his was straight, while mine has a little wave to it. He was almost always smiling, which made him look like he was squinting all the time - blame it on his heritage, I guess. Again, ‘heritage’ is something I learned from a text, not actual real-life experience. Wouldn’t mind getting some of that one of these days.
Grady shrugs. “It’s a nice name, plus you know, she’s totally into her heritage. I’m just trying to respect that.”
“Better respect your own body and call her Afton. I’d hate to see her break you like a twig.”
He dodges my last comment and changes the subject. “Okay, so, like, let’s see it already!”
I swing my pack around and take out the old wooden box that I found in my NaiNai’s basement. She said she got it from her grandmother, who got it from her grandmother, and so on. It might actually be from one of the old colony ships. That could make it like, a thousand years old. Maybe more.
The box has some old writing on it. NaiNai says it was hand-written, but she can’t read it. It looks pretty complex to figure out how to read, and totally a pain in the ass if you wanted to write it by hand. It’s an ancient art that I’ve only seen one person ever practice. He’s willing to teach you, but you’d need to pay him way too much for such a useless skill.
So anyway, the box. I open for Grady, and he peers inside with eyes opened wide. In it is a strange-looking thing that’s heavy on one side and has these plastic feather-shaped things on the other. NaiNai says it's part of a game, but who’d want to play with this ancient thing? Maybe people back then didn’t have any good entertainment, so all they had to do is look at some weird object in a box. What a life.
“Dude! This is so totally ancient!” Grady says. He’s excited by anything old. Not old as in you should throw it away, but like in having a lot of history. Like I said, we’ve only 300 years of history here on Angelcanis, which barely fills up a semester. We have to steal other histories from around the arm, so we can have a proper historical foundation.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch a pair of long dark legs walking our way. It’s Afton. She’s got this fast, athletic walk that I can always pick out. It’s really hard to keep up with her when she’s moving fast. Even Parrish, who’s more built for long-distance, can’t outrun her.
As Afton approaches us, she presses both hands together, fingers upright, and bows slightly.
“What the heck are you doing?” I ask. “Saying hello and wishing you peace in the ancient way, dumbass.” Afton wrinkles her nose at me. That’s about par for the course with her.
Afton is tall. Taller than me, actually. Only Parrish is taller. She’s a total athlete; her body is all about strength. It’s great that she’s got mental muscles, too. We would never let her hang otherwise. Then again, she probably wouldn’t be interested in us if she couldn’t speak our language.
“Hey Afton! Whatssup!” Grady says and walks up to her, hand held high. They’ve got some kind of crazy handshake greeting thing that I’ve only ever seen the two of them do. I wouldn’t do it. I’m too legit for that.
“So what kind of rubbish you brought today, Rance?” Afton asks.
“It’s not. Grady, tell her!”
Afton waves a hand at me like I’m full of nonsense. I give her the street-sign for “go take a piss,” and she throws it right back at me. We’re both joking, of course, but I can’t let her get away with that. Ms. Jee, the bully, will never stop if I don’t stick up for myself. She’s always testing me, but I think that’s because she’s training me to keep my guard up.
“Hey, Parrish and Kayley,” Grady says, waving his hand at them. Afton and I turn at the same time. It’s the same person we want to see, and as much as I like the dude, Parrish isn’t that person. He’s one of my best friends, but I’m looking at my oldest friend. We’ve known each other since we were babies, but we haven’t always hung out. Kayley got in with the popular kids, including Parrish, and our friendship kinda took a back seat. Lately, though, she’s been hanging around my house a lot. Not really sure why. Maybe Parrish is too busy with his sports to take her out. Maybe that means she’ll want to go out with me, instead. I kinda got a thing for my oldest friend, though I’ve never told her that.
“Hey! Have you guys heard?” Kayley says, rushing up to us. “We’re at war!”
“Bad joke, Kayley, but thanks for playing,” I say. Kayley frowns like she said something wrong, and taps a finger between her collarbones. There have been some rumors, though. Fights breaking out along the frontier. Aliens, some say.
“No, it’s no joke,” Parrish says, supporting Kayley’s claim. His voice is serious, and that makes me nervous. Parrish doesn’t joke like that. He whips out his tablet and pops on Angel-1, the world-wide information ‘cast. Sure enough, there it is. Shots of the Imperial Parliament, ministers in an uproar, then a switch to a scene from the ‘Reaches, some ship, smashed to pieces, suspended in space like trash in the water.
“That’s an Imperial cruiser!” Grady exclaims. I can’t tell whether he’s excited that he’s seeing a real shot of something that his parents helped design or if he’s freaking out that someone blew it up.
“Wow, it’s destroyed. Who could do that?” Afton asks, peering over Kayley’s shoulder.
“Nobody,” Parrish says. “We wouldn’t do that to our own ship. No way any bad guys could sabotage a ship like that either. Way too much security on it for anyone to get on it without someone knowing.”
“Well, somebody had to do it,” I say. It would be cool if it was aliens, but there’s no way it was aliens. Like I said before, humanity is alone. “It’s probably just some angry terrorists.”
“Terrorists?” Kayley asks in that innocent way of hers. Honestly, she could say everything that way, her right shoulder coming up just slightly as she puts her hands together. I think it’s totally cute, but I’m totally biased.
A siren starts to wail across the street. It’s the same one they test every day at noon, which it isn’t right now, so maybe this whole war thing is legit. Everyone on the street turns their attention to the sky, and we hear this noise that’s like air rushing through a big tube, getting louder and louder.
“What is that?” Asks Parrish, looking around.
“Doesn’t sound good, Dude,” Grady replies, clenching and unclenching his fists.
Down the street, a woman shrieks as two craft streak by overhead. They’re huge, much larger than any ships that I know of, and built of stuff so dark that it almost looks like a pair of black holes just flew by. I think they also dropped something as they went by, too. Not sure what, but…
We see the blast before we feel it’s concussive effects. A light so bright that I have to turn away. It’s a good thing, too, because the detonation’s pressure wave shoves out from ground zero and whips everything in front of it like it was cream in a blender.
I’m trying to get up from the ground, but my head is spinning so much I can’t tell which way is up. My eyesight is all screwed up, and it feels like I just got tackled by one of Parrish’s teammates. I can’t get any sense of what just happened. I was standing, I saw the explosion, and now I’m on the ground with blood dripping down my forehead from where it must have gotten stopped by the pavement. At least I can breathe okay.
“Oh, help! Help, guys, I can’t see!” I hear Kayley cry. All of us try to go to her at once. That’s when I catch a glimpse of my friends. We all look like ghosts, covered in powdered concrete. Some of us have streaks of red through the powder, but Grady is completely fine. Another explosion detonates nearby, and we feel the ground shake and the air rip through us once again. It’s not as bad as the first one, but it does tell us exactly where each of our bruises and cuts is. I hear Kayley whimper, but at least now Afton’s got her, and Parrish is there, too. Though he’s also got a cut on his head. He catches my glance and shakes his head.
“We’re in trouble now, Rance. Someone messed with the wrong bees’ nest.”