From the Ashes Read online

  The substance imbued in the cotton seeped deeper into the wound. It sent a hissing wave of pain throughout Yosh’s skin that left behind only numbness.

  “Oh, they don’t hate me? I see, sure, Skrill seems fond of me.” Yosh crossed his arms over his chest. “You always say things like that. And why are you putting yourself in the same lot as me? They seem to fear you. I can’t believe they just left. I’ve never seen Skrill in such a hurry. What did you say to them?”

  A twinkle came to life in his grandfather’s eyes. “Oh, the usual. That I’d call the guards and whatnot.”

  “Really? The usual? They didn’t care much about the guards when they ganged up on me.”

  His grandfather shrugged. “I guess being the Spokesman has its perks.”

  “I’m pretty sure Skrill doesn’t care.” Yosh pointed at his grandfather. “They fear you. I know it. I want them to fear me too.”

  “Having others fear you has its price, Yosh,” he said, tossing the cotton in a small disposal bin six feet away without looking. His grandfather had extraordinary aim, Yosh noticed, not for the first time.

  “Strive to make people love and respect you, Yosh, not fear you. Fear is not the path your life should follow. Remember that.” He sighed and cupped the wrinkled skin around his eyes in one large leathery hand. A full head of snow white hair stared Yosh in the face. “You’re fine now,” his grandfather said, dismissing him with a wave of his other hand. “It was only a scratch. It’ll close on its own soon. Go, eat and rest, we will visit Obelyn tomorrow after you finish your duties.”

  Yosh frowned and touched the wound with the tip of his finger. The swelling had receded, and it didn’t sting anymore. He still felt a dull, throbbing pain, but it was fading. “Only a scratch? I’m sure something cracked. Skrill’s blow was—wait, what about my hand? It felt like punching durasteel. I could barely move my fingers.” He brought up the bandaged hand, flexing each finger individually.

  The creases on his grandfather’s face deepened. He looked Yosh straight in the eyes. A white, broom-shaped mustache hung beneath his nose, going all the way past the corners of his mouth. As trimmed and neat as his mustache was, the thick milk-white hair on his cheeks was the very embodiment of chaos, growing wild in all directions.

  “Guess you got lucky,” his grandfather finally said, shrugging. “Don’t bet on luck next time, all right?”

  Yosh nodded and cradled his wrist and bruised knuckles. He had hit Skrill with all his strength. The blow was solid but hit at an awkward angle. I’m sure I felt the bones in my hand crack. I know I did. Yosh wanted to pursue the subject, but his grandfather had that look on his face again—the look that said ‘stop asking questions and leave me alone’.

  Yosh attributed it to exhaustion. His grandfather was an old man, and he needed his rest, so he rose and headed for the door. He looked back as his weary grandfather sat behind the neat desk. He seemed so small now. How did he scare off Skrill? The old man’s bed sat against the wall, a few feet from his desk, but Yosh knew his grandfather wouldn’t be sleeping for a while. He always heard sounds coming from his room late at night when both Yosh and his grandfather were supposed to be asleep. What did his grandfather do in there?

  Yosh said goodnight and exited into the hallway. The steel door shut behind him and locked automatically with a soft click and a metallic beep—something else Yosh found odd. What was all the security for? Yosh had seen nothing valuable inside, just old books, ledgers, and documents. There wasn’t even much furniture, a desk, a bed, a file cabinet and two chairs. Great Void, who’d steal those?

  And where had his grandfather gotten a locking mechanism like that? Had Obelyn sold it to him? He was the only official source of tech in Shacktown. If so, his grandfather and Obelyn would get in serious trouble if the arkanians found out. The arkanians didn’t care about the knickknacks and technological baubles Obelyn usually sold. They were harmless contraptions that entertained and made life bearable for the slaves. But locking mechanisms more complex than what the arkanians themselves deployed on Mandessa were a different matter. They considered it a serious crime against the Empire.

  Yosh stood dumbfounded in the small, bleak hallway separating his room from his grandfather’s. Perhaps it was the blow to his head, but he realized just now that the locking mechanism wasn’t the only illegal item they possessed. Most their belongings would get them summarily executed by the arkanians if ever discovered. So how come they were still alive?

  Chapter Two

  Yosh scrambled to get himself cleaned. He grabbed soap and a raggedy towel and rushed out of his room, bumping into every hard corner and steel edge he encountered along the way. The bathroom was right off the hallway between his room and his grandfather’s. It was very basic: a small toilet, a sink the size of a shoe, and a hose sticking out from the wall standing for a shower. Yosh relished the sting of hot water. Its bite purified his blemished skin in his imagination. He felt guilty for enjoying it so much. The other slaves had nothing similar; They relied on the small stream outside Shacktown for hygiene.

  Why did his grandfather always say strange things like earlier? That Yosh should make people love him and not fear him. How could Yosh interpret that? He had enjoyed the flash of fear in Merril and Sarla’s eyes when Skrill fell to his knees; had felt strong and confident; had been too confident. Was that his grandfather’s point? Was he warning Yosh against being too confident?

  Yosh dried off as little as possible. He didn’t have the patience for it. Water dried on its own. Skrill and his two thugs had used violence first, but Yosh intuition nagged him. Something bad had set into motion. The other Shacktown inhabitants showed the same signs of fear and hate. Their strange alien eyes: big, small, blue, red, golden, fish eyes, cat eyes, all of them cold—hostile. Yosh often caught them staring and frowning. Until Skrill and the other two arrived in Shacktown, he assumed the boils covering his skin caused it, but it didn’t make sense. He always wore overalls two sizes larger to keep the big, puss filled, ugly things covered.

  “Blast me to space, I forgot again,” Yosh crawled to his knees and reached under his small bed. He scrounged through the junkyard there, books and boots, discarded clothes and things he didn’t remember having. Most of the books covered Earth. His grandfather had bought them illegally from Obelyn. The arkanians hunted and destroyed any knowledge of Earth or humanity. His grandfather once told him it was because they were afraid. Books with pictures, movies, holo-pictures and more existed, but those weren’t available on a slave colony—especially those about Earth.

  He learned much from those books, even if not all stories in them were true. He enjoyed the tales about the legendary order called Protectors of the Earth the most. On the nights when he didn’t sneak out, he fell asleep reading about their adventures and dreamed of the lithe, tall Protectors wearing their black and white assault suits, sailing through the cosmos and fighting arkanian injustice and oppression. Exploding ships, sword duels, and gun fights swam through his head. Some nights, he dreamed of something different, something that seemed important, though Yosh was unsure why. He dreamed of a blue planet. Those were the best dreams, even though there were no adventures, no guns firing, no swords clashing, and no Protectors. He recognized the blue world with swirls of white clouds. Even though he’d never seen it, Yosh knew it was Earth.

  He found his ointment in a large, gray tube and spread it across his bumpy skin. It cooled the coarse bumps and pleasant prickles shot across his body. The boils were ugly even in the dark—red bulbous things, big as Yosh’s thumb. They spread across Yosh’s entire body, even his feet and toes. They had first popped into existence at an early age. Yosh didn’t remember when—after his father’s accident for sure. His grandfather said it began after Yosh fell into a lair of Mandessan dung-worms, but he had searched for the lair countless times and found nothing. Yosh thanked the stars that the boils stopped just above the neckline of his tunic, sparing his face.

  When done, Yosh hurl
ed the tube back into the chaos under his bed, and grabbed the vial of eye drops. He was sick of the ointment and sick of the eye drops. Nothing seemed to help. Without his glasses he was as blind as a gillobian. His grandfather always apologized for not being able to afford better medicines and surgery to cure his nearsightedness. No respectable surgeons visited Mandessa anyway. Yosh never blamed his grandfather for his ailments; he was doing his best. They lived better than the other slaves, thanks in no small measure to him, but his grandfather had grown old. Fear and envy will turn the slaves against us. Today was just the beginning, Yosh thought. I don’t know why they fear us, but I have to do something. They needed to leave, to escape. Something bad would happen soon, and it would involve the aliens. The arkanian guards wouldn’t care if a mob tore them apart. They hate us more, he thought. They’ll just reassign the dog herds and the role of Spokesman to someone else.

  Done with the eyedrops, Yosh entered the hallway, and pressed his ear against the door to his grandfather’s room. The icy steel numbed his ear as the seconds passed and no sound came. His grandfather had to be asleep. Time to sneak out again. If smugglers could get merchandise on and off Mandessa, they could get Yosh and his grandfather away. He slid the door to the outside open and padded out.

  Yosh gazed at Shacktown, a mile down and up the hill and to the west. The shacks clustered around a large landing pad close to the fields and herds tended by the slaves, small fires blinking in between them. The arkanians had built the original infrastructure hundreds of years ago for the first race of intelligent beings they enslaved. They were all gone now, dead, no one even remembered what they were called. The slave quarters had sprawled farther in the old days, but now were decayed and crumbling. Shacktown was what Yosh called the main gathering of shacks for obvious reasons. There were over two hundred shacks still standing on the hill, most not in use, hugging the landing pad, the main hall, and several storage depots. Yosh thought the name was clever.

  It took two hours to reach the smugglers’s hideout, but it was worth it. When their ship came into sight, Yosh sighed at the image of moonlight hugging the metal surface of the old smuggler ship like blue mist.

  ◆◆◆

  Yosh wondered when the hull had last seen a coat of paint. Scorch marks blackened the dented durasteel hull—more than there were a few days ago. Laser bursts had passed through the ship’s shields recently. The scrappy surface contorted in sharp angles and edges, some sections of it dark as the night and others illuminated in the dull-gray moonlight. Essa’s pale light had a hard time reflecting off the dark-brown, five hundred foot-long hull. Yosh stood and gaped at it for at least ten minutes, as always. He knew better looking ships existed—more elegant, shinier, larger, better equipped—but Yosh liked this one. It felt familiar and safe, a second home. And Assai was on board.

  The smugglers had returned precisely when they said they would. They vowed to conduct most of their ‘business’ in detriment to arkanian authorities, since most of the crew were human. Perhaps that was why Yosh liked them so much. He didn’t condone stealing or piracy, but the smugglers ran their own private rebellion against the arkanians and that, as far as Yosh was concerned, excused them of any mishaps they caused. Yosh found sneaking around and making trouble for the lizards terribly appealing. His heart pumped faster just thinking about it. He grinned. What sort of trouble had the smugglers caused this time? Something big, judging by the scorch marks. They usually escaped without being noticed.

  Yosh descended along a steep slope into the dry riverbed where the smuggler ship hid. Two sacks of foodstuffs slumped over his shoulders and banged against his back all the way to the bottom. The small crevasse was seven miles from Shacktown. The other slaves avoided the area, as it had nothing useful, only rocks and snakes and small gnarled trees that were always dry.

  Yosh reached the bottom with a severe ache in his shoulders. The ship loomed above him now, a dark shadow, long and bulky with metal bits sticking out of the hull every here and there. The scorch marks were even more visible this close and the air still smelled of melted alloy. They had taken serious fire. Yosh strolled between the steel legs supporting the ship’s bulk, when the exit ramp creaked open and lowered from the ship’s underbelly. It settled on the crusty ground with a thud.

  “Small-fry,” a gruff voice rang from inside the ship. “Good to see ya! Come to spar with our pretty kitty?” Miles strutted out from the cargo bay, grinning, his hands on his hips.

  A flush spread from Yosh’s neck to his face at the words. Miles’s grin turned into a cackle. He was a big man, bulky and bald, an inch or two shorter than Yosh and an X-shaped scar on his forehead. Miles always told a different story about its origins. The first time, Miles had blamed his marriage to a Belth woman. He called his scar ‘the goodbye kiss’ she gave him during their ‘divorce by force’. Yosh believed him, but a few months later the scar came up again, and Miles changed the story. He said he got it when young, fighting in a Death Pit on Samara 3. He offered other versions over the years, all entertaining, but after the second, Yosh didn’t believe him and he didn’t remember them.

  Miles strolled over to Yosh, a big rifle, half as long as Yosh’s arm, strapped to his back. He patted Yosh on the shoulder and snatched one of the heavy sacks as if filled with nothing but grass. “Come on then, we’ve been waiting for you.”

  Miles led Yosh through cargo bay, through a corridor, regaling him with the tale of their latest scuffle. They had raided an arkanian military depot from Astos 4—only twenty parsecs away. The lizards didn’t even seen them coming. They got in and out before anyone realized they were there.

  “We jammed their hangar doors and set charges in the ventilation system,” Miles said, chuckling. “I didn’t think the blasted lizards slept, but they must have been. We barely met any guards while there. To be honest, I was disappointed, but it wasn’t a total bore. The arkanians didn’t give chase, we made sure they couldn’t, but two parsecs away we caught the attention of pirates. Ah, now that was fun,” he said as they approached a bifurcation in the corridor where two others waited, “I must have shot ten of them myself.” Then he continued in a louder tone as the other two came into hearing range. “Capn’ should give bonuses for the pirates we took down.”

  The taller of the two stepped forward. “You did good, Mister Crosby, but we are not mercenaries or bounty hunters.” The man turned to Yosh and offered him his hand. “Yosh Farmer. It is good to see a friendly face.”

  Yosh smiled and shook his hand. “Captain Dupont, I’m glad you made it. Miles told me about the pirates and how they boarded the ship. Was anyone hurt?”

  Captain Alain Arkan Dupont was taller than Yosh and brawnier than Miles, but his face possessed a gentleness Miles’s lacked. He had ebony skin and black hair turned a dark gray from temples to the back of his head. A short trimmed black beard surrounded his mouth and covered his chin, but his pockmarked cheeks were as devoid of hair as Miles’s head. He wore simple brown trousers with empty holsters strapped to each thigh; the captain always felt safe and at ease on his own ship. His shirt was white and above it he wore a black leather vest.

  “A few minor injuries, nothing to worry about,” Dupont said, his deep eyes smiling at Yosh. “We had a lucky break, considering the pirates were sylosian.”

  Yosh touched the swollen skin above his left eye. “Yeah, I’ve had some sylosian trouble too.”

  “Are you all right, Yosh?” Assai stepped gracefully from behind Captain Dupont, concern written all over her small face. She spoke and looked him in the eyes and Yosh was lost.

  ◆◆◆

  “Assai, hi! I—Yes, I’m all right.” He nodded and bit his lower lip. “Hi.” He tried not to smile too broadly, gazed at the floor, and struggled to act normal.

  Miles chuckled and swiped the other bulky sack from Yosh’s shoulder. “I guess it’s time for me to get busy. I’ll take these to a storage unit and have myself a party.” He grinned back at Yosh as he walked away. “Thanks a
gain, Small-fry. What’s it this time? Dog?”

  Yosh nodded, not taking his eyes away from Assai. “Yes, the new shipment’s almost ready for processing. These were ‘misplaced’ during storage a few months ago. No one’ll miss them—”

  Assai’s nimble fingers touched the side of his face and turned his head slightly to the right. Yosh had prepared something clever to say to Miles, but it all whooshed away now. Assai studied the cut on Yosh’s brow, her vertical pupils dilated inside the golden haloes of her eyes. The concern vanished from her face after seeing it wasn’t serious, and she smiled at Yosh. Yosh hoped he smiled back, but he didn’t know for sure and had no idea how he could find out.

  “Thank you, Yosh Farmer,” Captain Dupont said, his voice seeming far away. “Those will fetch a good price.” He turned on his heels toward the corridor on the left. “I’ll be on the bridge. Come to me when you finish your training session with Miss Virgen. I know you will have more questions for me.”

  “Yes, captain.” Yosh listened to his fading footsteps, his eyes still on Assai, trying to think of what to say. She wore a black jumpsuit, as always, tight around her slim, strong legs and thin waist. Assai was kohiri. She looked so much like a human that sometimes Yosh had to see her eyes or her four-foot long tail to remember. Her skin, the color of faded gold and covered in small, barely visible hairs; her tiny cat ears, set high on her head; the sharp claws on her hands and feet that she could hide anytime, were the only noticeable differences between her and a human. Her lips were thin and pink and her nose round and short.

  She smiled, showing straight white teeth—her incisors twice as long and sharp as the rest. “So, Yosh, is this why I am teaching you hand-to-hand combat? To challenge sylosians? I did not realize you were so bold.”