Young Writers Society

Chapter 1

The arrival of the newest customer was announced by the icy wind which chased the potential buyer through the now open stone doorway. Garett spared a glance up from his work long enough to recognise the woman. It was the elderly Thelonian who had never successfully bargained a price down, yet tried again every week. She wore a blue robe-like dress that had a hair lined collar, Wulve hair by the looks of it. A common liner for the clothing on the rocky ice planet. Being a Thelonian she had a matching pale blue tint to her skin, which he knew from past experience with thelonians would be cold to the touch. Their outer layers of flesh were capable of great transformation in terms of temperature and form based on their surroundings.

One might question the usefulness of a jacket in such a situation but it was probably more for comfort than necessity. It could’ve been for the sake of fashion even, but a Thelonian was ugly to everything but another Thelonian. Their bluish bruised looking skin looked bad enough, but it was also semi-transparent and riddled with veins and capillaries that almost seemed to be sentient in of themselves. It was said that the veins would rearrange around any flesh wounds instead of having clotting blood. Having known her for a long time however Garett knew the worst part of her was her personality, selfish. She had an self centred arrogance typical of Thelonians, proven by the fact that she’d left the door open once again.

“Mrs Zaire, would you mind shutting the door?” She threw him a look almost as cold as the wind she’d so carelessly let in.

“I can ensure you Mr Garett,” she paused to shut the door before continuing “that I enjoy the cold no more than you do,” She said in a thick but well enunciated Thelo accent, it was deep and bassy in sound, but a muted bass as opposed to a loud thrum.

“You’ve been looking worse for wear these past months Mr Garett” She remarked as she entered the workshop. Garett noted this was a peculiarly considerate thing for her to say, she must want something.

“Yes well perhaps I’m sick” He replied after a second of consideration. He was sick, but not with any disease. He was sick of living.

No sooner than had she finished speaking she started to rummage around, sifting through the various bits and pieces. He opened his mouth to speak before deciding better of it, and looked back down to the solder he’d been doing. He was fixing an old AI-221 motherboard, a task that had proven more challenging than rewarding. Some called him a scrapper but he preferred to think of himself as a technician, he did requested repairs from time to time. He gave up on the little motherboard, placing it on the pile of scrap. The AI-221 was pretty much worthless anyway. Mrs Zaire seemed to have finally settled on an odd little piece of metal. She began to dawdle over to him, still clasping it firmly in her rather disgusting hands.

“What’re you trying to swindle me out of this time?” He said, his eyes trying to peer between her tightly knit fingers, he caught naught but a glimpse of a dull metal. She unclasped her hands to reveal the old lithium repeater battery.

“Thirty plats,” she said before he could so much as open his mouth. This was what she called negotiation.

“Now Mrs Zaire, I think you’re jumping the gun a little, we both know the standard price for a 240 volt lithium repeater b-ba-battery unit is fifty plats, even if it is a little beaten up” He said with his stalwart and tenacious anti bargaining voice. He had to sound like he would give no ground back, to hide the slightest hint of uncertainty, such was the business.

She admitted defeat, maybe even a little prematurely. Handing over the fifty plats and turning to walk out. He smirked as he returned to his seat, another small victory. He pocketed the money and sat down. She came around to his small albeit well stocked parts shop on a bi weekly basis, from the parts she bought he would’ve guessed she was perhaps building or upgrading a propellant engine of some kind. To those not educated about Thelonian biology (which he reckoned he now had considerable firsthand experience with) she would’ve looked young. Most beings got smaller or more decrepit in appearance with age, but Thelonians simply stayed the same. The only way for one to die was if it was killed, and if the myths held any water that was notoriously hard to do, nothing short of a direct hit from a plasma beam. As the door closed behind her, the room fell silent once more. The wind’s distant whistling could not compensate for the little shop’s vacancy.

He decided to turn on the tachyon-transmitter to try and fix the silence. It crackled into life, it was tuned to a strange audio channel he’d never heard before. The sound coming through the speaker was tinny and metallic,it was distorted in the same way it often was after being converted from audio into tachyons and back. The varying voices of the galaxy were available through a tachyon transmitter, and Garett often relied on them to find sleep in the restless night. He didn’t like the silence.

Since the discovery of the faster than light particle a few hundred years ago interstellar travel and communication had become foreseeably faster. As for what the channel was broadcasting, it was an alien language he’d never heard before, one that sounded quite similar to the screeching highs and grumbly lows of Tertian or Cossundri, it almost sounded like music. He somehow didn’t think it was though, over the years he’d learned that every species out there had a very different idea of what music was supposed to be. Many could even hear and speak in frequencies too high for humans. In the famous Golari opera performances only about half the sounds were auditory to humans. He remembered being utterly disappointed after being told of the amazing singing performances, he’d arrived to the equivalent watching a broadcast while randomly muting and unmuting it. And the parts he could hear were painful to hear.

He decided a channel change was definitely in order, he flicked through a few that he didn’t like the sound of before coming upon one in common-speak, which was the agreed language for interspecies communication. The accent was odd but he couldn’t quite pinpoint it. It was something of a news report, he was only half listening until he heard mention of the Starshade militia. He remembered just last week Zaire herself had been prattling on about how the Starshade militia would spell doom for the galaxy, their unexpected and swift assaults on peaceful planets, their month long crusades. He knew the whole thing would never really escalate, the media were just being sensationalist. Nothing would ever reach their little corner of the galaxy.

“The terrorist group known as the Starshade militia has threatened attacks on the Kolamkar festivals taking place on Hyridia, where president Coreil of ISPC is due to attend. As a result security has been heightened and ISPC troops are being pulled in from where they aren’t as needed to ensure the safety of president Coreil.”

He breathed in a huge sigh of relief upon hearing how far away the potential danger was. Hyridia was on the other side of the galaxy, and he very much doubted any conflict which could happen there would reach this little corner of the galaxy. The militia themselves were known for their brutal executions of members of the Interstellar Peace Coalition or the ISPC. The group had risen from the ashes of the Cobalt wars, claiming vengeance for one thing or another. The way he saw it, war was war and any casualties along the way were collateral damage for their respective governments, if you were to engage in war you should expect no less.

At twenty-seven his outlook was still abnormally cynical, and had been since he was twelve. He’d been so low he couldn’t fall any further. He had ran from his abusive parents whose alcohol driven beatings were administered weekly and without fail. He decided it was enough one night and he was gone by morning. He had packed up what he little he owned and made away for an Interstellar Freighter on which he stowed away for a few days.

Getting off on the on the Ferdina port of the icy planet called Yujar. The planetscape was dominated by vast expanses of water and ice, rocky mesas and plateaus jutted up from the southern plains, and in the north solid mountains of sharp stone dotted the landscape of cavernous valleys and crenelated ranges.

His first months here had been hard, working for the previous owner of the shop, who at the time had been a elderly Crendow with short horns named Pekson. Pekson was someone who believed in just reward for success, but a fair punishment for failure. He had been adopted into the ramshackle business when he was found begging. Pekson would later remark that it would’ve been a waste of a pair of working hands, and he was inclined to agree there. At first he had been suspicious of the old man’s motives, he later grew to understand that Pek (as he was nicknamed) had no living family members and no inheritor for the dusty old shop. Perhaps it had been matter of passing on his legacy, or perhaps he couldn’t bear to think of the old place demolished after his passing. Whatever the reasons they hadn’t been in spite of Garett. The old man himself had passed only two years prior. To the many that “knew” him, he was a stern, selfish and cold hearted old thing, to the few who really knew him, he was a fair but firm person with a mild temperament and little patience for fools.

They had developed an almost father-son relationship in the almost thirteen years they’d known each other. In the more recent years his age had started to take effect on his work, his hands were sometimes too shaky to weld the smaller circuits, he couldn’t always read the fine print even with visual aid. He had sat beside him on his final day, they had both known what was coming, but he was endearing til his last breath. They had both agreed it would be better not to feel, so Garett waited until he had passed to show any signs of grief.

There was a part of him which wanted to cry, but he couldn’t summon even the smallest of tears to his eyes. The loneliness was the hardest part now, he felt hollow without the daily interaction. If he were to go without a customer for an entire day he doubted he would speak at all. And what little conversation he could drum up with a customer was bland or subversively hostile. Garett wasn’t a person who needed social interaction to thrive, but he felt as if he was going slowly insane without it.

While lost in thought he hadn’t noticed the silence was back. The tachyon-transmitter’s channel had gone dull, a very slight fuzzy static. Intrigued he changed the channel a few times only to find all the channels broadcasting the same light static. At random single words would become audible through the white noise, or only part of words. He couldn’t really make any single word out but on the channel that had been broadcasting the news, a single sentence was repeating. While it was in common-speak it was too distorted to be made out clearly, and the words were too infrequent. It was slightly unnerving to listen to.

He guessed it must’ve been a problem with the audio output. Upon opening the back panel and gazing over the wiring and circuit boards with his keen eye, he could find no fault with the output or the signal receiver. The problem seemed to be with the system itself, which would be a more than concerning development. If it was broken here it would likely be broken planetwide. Yujar was no corporate giant of a planet but it was resource rich, it was a big entity in the interstellar mineral trading and any local communications breakdown could be a disaster. He decided it might be for the best to shut down the shop and go for a brief walk. He needed to restock on solder metal and probably some food too.

He pocketed forty plats of change and headed for the door feeling the metallic chips rattle in his pocket, this would be enough for a few weeks of food and a good metre of solder.

He donned his favourite brown thermophobic jacket to keep him warm in the below zero temperatures that awaited him outside the door. His shoes and pant bottoms however would provide little protection from the stinging air, but he could manage. He stepped out onto the thermic tiled road, the tiles were heated once a day from underneath and would retain that heat for hours. Now however they had cooled off faster than normal, still warmer than the surrounding air but too cold for comfort.

The first thing he noticed was the complete lack of ISPC soldiers outside the outpost. The ISPC soldiers had outposts on every planet that was part of the coalition. And Ferdina port was one of the larger spaceport towns in the southern expanse, and it was conveniently central to the surrounding gas mining towns, making it somewhat of a hub of activity. Normally the ISPC soldiers would be stationed outside the outpost itself in the tens, now it was single figures. He remembered the announcement on the tachyon-receiver before it broke, that a lot of soldiers were being temporarily repositioned to protect the ISPC president from the suspected terrorist attacks. It only took him a second to count all five of the ISPC soldiers who stood outside the outpost.

They stood huddled in the cold, their armour apparently not designed for the cold. From the his twenty metre vantage point he couldn’t make out their individual features, but from their disparity in heights and sizes some looked to be human and the others were close to human if not.

Losing interest he turned and started his steady brisk paced walk to the market in the centre of town. During these foggy windy weeks people seldom made unnecessary journeys through the jeering cold which nipped at the extremities of the body. Garett was no exception, it didn’t take him long after starting the walk to start regretting not investing in more insulated shoes.

As he arrived at the little market square it started to feel warmer. In the cold with even less insulation than him stood the elderly lady whom he felt he’d become an acquainted with, she was a deaf-mute. Since he’d first arrived she had been hospitable and welcoming, in his younger years giving him the occasional free fruit or canned good. Which may not seem much to an outsider but in this part of this planet kindness wasn’t often favoured over profit. Now around her stood an array of multicoloured fruit and vegetables, behind her on the shelves of her stall there were canned meals of all varieties.

She had always been deaf-mute, and she hadn’t aged a single day in the thirteen years they’d been acquainted, her grey hair and wrinkled skin hadn’t gotten any greyer or wrinklier. Her skin was mottled with spots of age, her hair was unkempt and frizzy. She had hair typical of the human hair on Yujar, it had seen many a freezing gale and was often curled by the cold. He, unlike her, had jet black hair that was curled at slight, not like her grey rolling locks. He didn’t know her name, he doubted anyone knew her name including her. Pekson had said that she had always been deaf-mute and there wasn’t much point in her having a name if she couldn’t respond to it. Now he was greeted with one of her toothless smiles which said all that needed to be said. He reached into his pockets and rummaged, his hand coming up with exactly twenty plats grasped tight. It was in two five plat chips and one ten plat chip. At his first introduction to the currency he found it hard to tell them apart in his pocket, but soon he learned to distinguish them by weight alone. The haggard old lady examined the plats in his hand with her scrutinous gaze for a few seconds before taking handing him the bag of goods. He checked the contents of the bag briefly before paying.

They exchanged a nod before he continued his walk deeper into the market. His attendance to the near empty market square had not gone un-noticed by the vendors of all trades that were sparsely littered about the square. When setting up their temporary stands they had obviously decided that being closer together would decrease their revenue, so they had spaced themselves as far as possible from one another. He muttered under his breath, probably more concerned about the mild inconvenience than he should’ve been. He didn’t need to check the contents of the bag to know what would be inside it, it felt the right weight in his hands. It was his food for the week, and he had a set arrangement with the old lady. It had been incredibly hard to orchestrate, seeing as they had no real means of communication other than poorly acted miming which had garnered some laughter.

His vision shifted northwards towards the now rapidly clearing sky. The fog was lifting and already the distant mountain peaks were visible, the sun had penetrated the haze and was already creating glare from the snowcapped mountains. Already he felt all the warmer for it. He glanced back at the old lady, to perhaps try and gauge her reaction, maybe catch a smile which was always pleasant. Instead he saw that she was surveying the sky with a puzzled look etched onto her age riddled face. A rapid clearing of the sky wasn’t that unusual, not such as to justify a manner of bewilderment such as that. He noticed fast that she was staring at something in particular. Trying to guess where she was looking by instinct, he turned and reviewed the horizon. At first it was hard to register, made no easier by the remainder of the fog that still clung to the now static air. If you looked northwest to the more distant peaks you could spot several dozen black dots silhouetted against the late morning sunshine.

Heads turned in the square as those who had been meandering among the stalls and indeed the sellers themselves noticed the ominous dots. People had started coming out of their homes in appraisal of the now sunny and clear weather only to notice the far more interesting sight. The real chatter began as someone yelled out that they were growing closer. Indeed they had increased noticeably in size since their discovery only a few seconds before.

“What hell are those?” an old Tertian man grumbled to Garett’s left.

“Probably more of the bloody ISPC come to tax us” replied a human man from next to him. Now a real crowd had formed. A dozen more appeared over the horizon.

“Mummy, why are all those spaceships coming?” a little boy said tugging on his mother’s blue dress ahead of Garett. The mother’s response was made inaudible by the surrounding chatter.

The foremost ships did something strange, they started a rapid ascent almost vertically into the clouds where they were lost from sight. At this point a slow realisation was dawning on Garett and the crowd alike. The black ships came soaring down on their visibly large glider wings and faster than ever. To the few who had seen the news, the ships were now easily recognisable. This type of gliding high speed velocity based craft was infamous galaxywide, The Starshade militia were here.