My people are not safe.
I tense, trying to ignite my fading Inferno.
There are more ships! I must stop them!
But my monster is tired from his first rampage in years. My desperation has no effect on him.
An electric green missile races across the sky as I fall. It smashes into the Talhuskin mothership, shattering what’s left ofit. Soon, it will fall to the surface like I am: busted, scorched, and trailing smoke as a dying husk.
A fleet of curvy primordial ships surges out from flashing portals all across the sky, and I know my Drathious family will be okay.
Amphirans have come to save us.
Finally.
I can rest. They will win. Amphirans win every battle they fight because they were the first species to travel this galaxy.
Aura has not forgotten me.
I fold myself up inside of my leather casket of wings and limbs and accept my fate. I am too tired to fight. And no one will care when I die. It’s just part of the job. There is no mate to miss me, no Inferno that will cool because mine is dark.
Finally, I fulfill my oath to my Pyraforce brothers. They took me in when I had no one. I helped us break free of Talhuskins. Then I started the war all over again.
I pray guilt cannot follow me to Magmium.
I slam into the mud and sink deep inside the smoldering planet, burying myself.
As the light fades, I imagine what my female would’ve looked like, felt like in my arms, the kind of smile she’d have, and the way she would care for our hatchlings, just so I can die thinking of something different.
I envision her dark hair swaying in the sunlight and what it would feel like to fly with her at my side.
The heat fades from my chest, and I know my time closes in. I have nothing left but eternal damnation.See you in Magmium, Osiris.
2: Brynna
When I started my little farm in the stars, I thought being surrounded by blossoms and admiring the stars beyond the windows would heal the emptiness in my heart. Instead, I’m stuck negotiating with a sour, fish-scented Xaethziol with double-lidded eyes and a catfish-shaped head over a single credit difference in the fertilizer needed for the whabuskel weed I’ve grown for their new-to-space colony.
The cost to grow my seedlings has increased beyond what customers want to pay. With the Nebulous Empire wrecking worlds and stealing supplies, the colonies that flee into space don’t have much. So I keep my prices as low as I can. I don’t want anyone to starve to death. But fewer resources mean higher prices.
The Nebs are destroying my business just like the government did to our farm back on Earth. Commercialize or die.Be the biggest or be nothing. Why does this keep happening to me?
I wanted to help others, to explore, and to do what I love: grow little things into big beautiful things without some government breathing down my neck, nitpicking my tactics.
I know what it’s like to wonder where the next meal will come from and if it even will. Farm life on Earth was not glamorous. People didn’t want to pay higher prices for food, but the cost to grow the food is what it is. I cannot simply grow an apple without water or fertilizer. It takes years for the trees to grow large enough to start producing fruit. That meansyearsthat I must care for the tree before I get paid. I never thought of farmers as financial planning experts, but now that I’ve been on my own, I realize how much time I have to put into it.
Some days, I just want to quit.
The irony of the bowl of water on the Xaethziol’s head doesn’t escape me. He speaks a strange, bubbly language that my Intergalactic translator thankfully has in the database. Stars, if he only knew he was famous in old movies from centuries ago, we wouldn’t be here fighting over a stupid credit.
“We can’t afford that.”
“I know it’s a bit more up front, and no one likes to pay more or get paid less. But if I can’t cover my costs, I can’t return.”
A young Xaethzion swims up to the glass and looks in at me and then KingBlaugamomor some shit I still can’t pronounce. The translator built into the chest of my space suit always starts to form his name, then beeps like it can’t quite compute it either. But it relays to me what the King says to the child.
The boy is hungry.
And my heart is back in the game again.
