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Chapter Four

Zark

“What happened to you?” my Uncle Thar’kein growled in his native language.

I kicked a stone out of my way, continued up the path, and plopped my sack down on a bench. My uncle continued working on the building project which was probably some fixture for one of the newer podhouses. He was always busy doing something, but then being occupied usually kept him out of trouble. And off the battlefields. Except for my cousin, Thar’kein was the only blood relative I had left on Zunator. If anything happened to him…well, let’s just say I needed him more than he knew.

“Scouting for the King. For new settlements.” I picked up one of the pieces and admired his craft.

“Nope. That’s not what I meant. There’s talk of you in the village about ditching your post on the spaceship.” He put down his tool, leaned against a table, and crossed his arms over his chest. His red ǔre awakened, reminding me that he was easily angered, which reminded me of someone else like him. His brother—my biological father. I saw them both as father figures…

Maybe my father would still be here, if I hadn’t fucked that up too.

When I was eleven, I started a blaze while practicing with a fire sword. I destroyed my parents home and the fire spread to the crop of our neighbors, wiping out their entire winter stock and harvest. It wasn’t the first time that I’d caused an accident of that magnitude. The winter before that when some miners from another settlement were working in a crystal cave, I hid to watch them. One of them discovered me and chased me as I ran off. I tripped on some equipment and caused a chain reaction which sent a mound of tailings crashing into the cave. To this day, there’s still a sinkhole where it happened. But to my King’s benefit, the sinkhole made it easier for our miners to dig for some of the best crystals we’d ever found. And they happened to be crystals that actually healed some serious ailments. It became clear that I wasn’t just a klutz. My silver aura wasn’t designated for healing. I was a destroyer.

But the blaze I set while learning to use a fire sword confirmed my fate for me. The neighbor who lost his crop was still disgruntled and it led to aggressive tension between my father, who had already offered to pay for the damage, and the farmer. They even went to the King to help settle the dispute and my father and I were told to work on their farms for two winters or until the harvest that was lost was replaced. And so that’s what we did, but the farmer couldn’t control his anger. After I damaged one too many seedlings, he decided to reprimand me himself by grabbing my neck in a chokehold and throwing me up against a tree. I couldn’t get up to defend myself. My leg was broken in the fall.

My father saw the whole thing from the barn, picked up an ax, and challenged the farmer to a fight to end the dispute once and for all. We weren’t farmers. We didn’t belong on a farm. The farmer agreed. My father badly injured the farmer who succumbed to his injuries that night. When the King got word about the incident, he exiled my father from Zunator. I wanted to go with him but my father told me to never abandon my King. I’ve kept my word all this time. At the time, my oldest blood relative, who was just ten years older than me, Uncle Thar’kein, was away in battle. I spent a good amount of time, almost a year—parentless—at the orphanage until he returned. My father settled with the Aurraks—they needed more skilled builders anyway. He died in battle against space pirates shortly after that.

After my father left, I somehow got into the good graces of the King again after I befriended his sons while training to be a warrior. It didn’t take long for my trainers to understand that while I could work with a unit, that I worked better alone. The King hired me as one of his personal scouts and assassins to track down bad actors and either end them or bring them back to be locked up in marti lurtuǔng, the bloody cave—a prison filled with alien convicts. The worst of the worse.

When I wasn’t scouting, bounty hunting or assassinating, I destroyed Barb dens…and that was always fun. After all, I wasn’t like my father or uncle. I didn’t build. I destructed things for a living, thwarting even the best laid plans. In order to track down beasts and berserkers, I had to think like one. I’d been clawed at and almost succumbed to injuries so many times while in pursuit of the Barbs that the people are always left wondering about my sanity. It wasn’t long before they abandoned my nickname as the destroyer and labeled me feral instead. People left me alone. Parted a clear path whenever they saw me. I was okay with that.

“Well, what of your fate for ditching your post?” my uncle asked.

I pulled out my blade and then sat down on the bench to start sharpening it with my uncle’s tools. “It seems my plan to escape my fate didn’t work. I am to be mated to one of the humans.”

“That’s good for you.” My uncle started working again. “You need a mate. It’s been years and I’ve been telling you that it’s time.”

“Why? So I can pass our name on.”

“Not my name. Your father’s name. Your name.” He placed his hand on my shoulder briefly as he spoke. “Don’t you wish for a son like all the other warriors?”

“You didn’t have a son and you’ve turned out just fine.”

“I have a daughter,” he reminded me. “She’s already promised to a warrior. I have no doubt she will bear me many grandchildren.”

“Where is my cousin Lesa, anyway?”

“She’s at the university. She didn’t want to sit around wringing her hands together until her warrior came back. That’s what she said anyway. She’s off my nerves. She’s being fed. She’s safe. Works for me. She’ll be back soon though. They’re close to a cure, you know?”

“I know. Maybe then they won’t bring over anymore of the humans.”

“What do you have against the humans?”

I shrugged. “Nothing at all. I often wondered how so many of them are willing to stay. Is it just a plan to retaliate later on?”

“Of course they won’t retaliate. Besides, if you had went to Earth, you would have seen her pitiful state. It will probably take a hundred more years for that planet to recover. But now, you will never see.”

“Why would I want to see Earth at its worse time?”

“A change of scenery is good sometimes.”

“I get plenty of that. Many warriors have never been to the edge of Zuna. I have.”

“Hmmm. True. But you’ve never been to a human planet,” he teased, nudging me in the arm.

My uncle was one of the first warriors to be sent to Earth long ago back when the only thing we raided for were material things and knowledge, not women for breeding. But even back then that didn’t stop some of the warriors from abducting a few women, becoming seduced by their looks and then claiming them as mates. Now, we actually relied on them to ensure our survival.