Trae’Toh [capital city], Gavilun [dwarf planet], Etrah [star system]
12 May; 16:15:47 Hours
A loud hiss let out and compressed air shot out of the shocks of the rear ramp that was closing on the zip-cruiser, Sara and Drake rushed down the hall toward the cockpit while she panicked, “H-how? How could he do that? He, no, he couldn’t have! D-Drake! Drake, please, please tell me I didn’t just see what my eyes are telling me I did! Please!”
Drake plopped down in the pilot’s chair where he looked to Sara, who sat down beside him, saying to her, “Sara, I, I, um, let’s, we just gotta get the hell outta here!”
“B-but he just slaughtered them!”
“Sara…”
“He slaughtered them, Drake! Thom, Weston, Norman, Demetry - He just slaughtered the—”
“Sara!” Drake yelled and slammed his hands off the control wheel.
“And they cried his name!” she whispered.
“It, it doesn’t matter…”
Her eyes grew three times and sunk deep into her skull as she looked at her husband.
“…We have to get off-world and, and draw the Union after us!”
“Draw the Union after us?”
Drake pinched the bridge of his nose and winced. “Yes. Yes, Sara, we have to draw the attention after us - Klaus, Gabe, and Theo all have to make clean jumps now.”
“Because,” her brow scrunched before finishing, “they have Hae’Lektaes?”
“Yeah—”
“And not because Theo has the Shim Princess?”
“Come on, Sara.”
“No, don’t ‘come on’ me - Are we covering his ass because he has it, or because of HER?”
Red lights flashed in the cockpit and broke their tension as a warning sensor began going off, “Possible and multiple threats detected: Cruiser locked on by radar; Several fighter-cruisers entering air space; Ground forces encroaching on location!”
“Sara… please!”
Her nostrils were flared and her lip quivered, but she quickly spun around in her chair and began flipping multiple switches and sliding various sensors with the cruiser’s engines kicking online. Drake then turned to his left where he activated numerous defense measures, then returned to the front where he grabbed the control wheel with his golden robotic hand and the accelerator with his right, gradually moving it forward.
The cruiser began to lift off the ground before it subtly shook and another warning sensor went off, indicating they were taking fire, “Ground forces have engaged - Initiate defensive maneuvers?”
“Yes!” Drake snapped. “Return fire!”
“Drake,” Sara said as she buckled herself in, “where are we going?”
“Now’s not the time!”
The cruiser shook again as the Union soldiers continued their fire on them, only for the mini-blasters mounted under the cruiser’s wings to lock onto and return fire. Though Sara got louder as she could see the fighter-cruisers were less than two minutes out, “Drake! Where to?”
“I have a contact in the Sigma system,” he said while pushing the accelerator forward even harder.
“A contact? For what?”
“It doesn’t matter right now!”
“The hell it doesn’t!” she yelled as they shot down the runway and off into the sky, as the radar indicated six fighter-cruisers were on their tail.
“Not if we don’t survive this!”
“Drake!”
“Sara,” he looked at her and lowered his voice to a subtle whisper, “please just trust me on this - Please.”
***
Omu [city], Vectir [planet], Sigma [star system]
16 August; 12:09:10 Hours
The main street of Omu was packed, vendors were set up and lined down either side for the harvest festival, selling everything from food to clothes and nearly everything in between. Music was playing from several directions as there were live bands, while the thunderous sound of everyone talking and laughing and yelling was like an eternal white noise. Pushing their way through the crowd, Drake and Sara were heading toward the square, when a young girl bumped into Sara and stopped them with a smile.
The girl, who was thirteen and her skin was light purple with shoulder-length wavy white hair, crossed her arms behind her back and giggled, “<Oh, I’m sorry! Forgive me!>”
“It’s okay,” Sara softly said as she tilted her head to the right and smiled at the girl.
Bowing her head, the girl smiled again while slowly backing away from Sara but before she could get two steps, Drake’s golden hand grabbed her by the arm. The girl’s eyes opened wide and she let out a yelp when he growled, “Hand it over!”
“Ahhhhh!” the girl cried.
“Drake!” Sara gasped, “What are you doing?”
“Hand it over!” he barked.
“<Let me go!>”
“Drake, let her go!”
“Girl,” he got down on his knee, looking her in the eyes as he again demanded, “Hand it over.”
“For the love of God, Drake - Let her guh—” Sara was saying when the girl held her hand out with Sara’s coin pouch.
Drake took it from the girl, slightly tossing it in the air several times before he shooed her away. He then stood up and turned to his wife, giving it back to her. “Here.”
“H-how? How did she take it?”
“Sara, she’s probably been pickpocketing since she was able to walk.”
“How did you know?”
“Several days ago, I said—” he went to answer but Sara cut him off.
“White hair, purple complexion - You glimpsed her.”
He shrugged with a subtle smile.
Sara chuckled. “She’s good.”
“She’s damn good,” he said, but then his face went stone cold.
“Drake? Drake, what’s wrong?”
His right hand slowly moved behind his back to the hilt of Namagun, his tantō blade, when he froze and that smirk crept back. “It’s been a while, Cole.”
“Hey, Midas,” a man’s voice called from behind Drake, as he held what appeared to be a completely silver pistol to the back of Drake’s head.
Sara quickly pulled her collapsed bow from her thigh holster while reaching to get an arrow from her back quiver, but then she noticed Drake was still smiling. She hesitated to act further and instead uttered, “Cole? Who, who’s Cole?”
“A ruthless war dog.”
“Ouch,” Cole chuckled, “that hurt just a tiny bit.”
Drake brought his hand forward from behind his back and turned around to Cole, who was wearing Mars orange survival-mail. Cole cracked a big smile of his own as he lowered his spark pistol - a device that is completely steel, designed to help the wielder channel their soul into energy. There came what felt like a long pause between the two before they lunged at each other, giving a massive bear hug as they laughed and rocked back and forth.
Sara’s face contorted with her mouth opening and eyes squinting. “What? I, I’m confused - What the hell is going on, Drake?”
“Cole, he’s a ruthless war dog, alright,” Drake laughed as he turned back to his wife. “But he’s a good guy.”
“Hey, hey, hey now!” Cole chuckled, patting Drake on the shoulder, “You’re a damn war dog yourself!”
“Drake, come on, what’s going on? How do you know him?”
“Cole joined KOG as an attachment during our initial formation.”
“Yeah, and it was probably the best time I ever had working for the Union,” Cole added.
“But he wasn’t apart of KOG when we started,” Sara said and her head clocked to the
side.
“Nah,” Drake said, “this was the initial formation, actually, it was before we took on the moniker of KOG - We were all green; Theo, Klaus, Gabe, Amelia, Helena, and I.”
“Okay, so what’s he doing here now?”
Drake’s eyes now squinted and he turned back to Cole. “Yeah, what are you doing here on Vectir? Hell, how’d you find us?”
“You really need me to answer that?” Cole smirked.
“Theo,” Drake breathily said as he scanned the crowd around them.
“Theo?” Sara looked around with the blood draining from her face, as she asked, “Theo’s here? Where?”
“Ohhhh, Sara,” a deep and gravelly voice whispered, causing Sara to spin around and find Theo standing several feet from her, “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost… Heh, or something much worse.”
Her lip quivered as her nostrils flared and she just stared at him, into his blackened eyes.
“Brother,” Drake said, walking up to Theo where they first grabbed each other’s forearm and then hugged tightly.
“I’m glad to see you two are alive,” Theo told Drake.
“I’m glad,” Drake chuckled, “to see that YOU are still alive.”
“Where’s the Shim Princess?” Sara quipped.
Theo slowly looked at her, with his eyes shrinking pinpoint small and his brow furrowed, but Cole was the one to answer her, “Theo woke up one morning, and well, she was gone.”
Sara folded her arms. “Gone? Just woke up and she was gone?”
“Yeah,” Theo confirmed.
“You’re not going to tell me that she got off Talon without you, OR Edmund knowing -
Hell, she didn’t try to kill ya’? She just, up and left?”
“Did I stutter?”
“Look, Theo,” Sara wasn’t having what she felt was a story being spun and she rolled her eyes while saying, “I just find it difficult to believe that the Heiress of Wendale just vanished off your cruiser in the middle of the night while you slept - That’s all.”
“Sara, stop,” Drake butted in, grabbing his wife by the shoulders when Theo chuckled.
“I don’t care if you find it hard to believe, or not - That’s what happened.”
She started whispering to Drake, “He killed them, Drake. He killed them. He killed them for her. And now, now he’s trying to tell us that he doesn’t know what happened to her, or where she is - Come on.”
Drake gritted his teeth. “He’s still Theo.”
“You think it was easy for me, Sara?” Theo said as he tilted his head slightly to his right, looking around Drake and directly into her eyes.
“Excuse me?” she barked and tried to lunge at him.
“I said: Do you think that was easy for me? For me to kill people who I treated like family!”
“FAMILY?” Sara screamed, struggling even harder to break away from her husband and to go after Theo.
“Come on, you two,” Drake said as he held his wife by the arms and glanced back at Theo. “Now is NOT the time for this!”
“Yeah, Theo, calm down,” Cole agreed, and started to walk toward Theo.
“I’m sorry for this,” she whispered to Drake before her body folded in on itself in a bright blue haze.
“Sara, no!”
Theo smirked as he slowly turned to his left, finding Sara now standing several feet from him with an arrow drawn back on her bow, aimed at his heart as he was only wearing his black mail. His crimson cape subtly swayed behind him while the crowd began to push back from the four, shrieks erupted from the women and children while they looked at the standoff between the two. Sara’s face was growing red as her eyes welled up with tears and she hissed, “Family? You dare call them family after you slaughtered them? You, you—”
“Monster?” he chuckled in her face.
Cole now had two spark pistols aimed at Sara, but he let out a sigh as he felt the cold steel of Namagun against his throat. Drake glanced at him with a stern face before looking at Sara and Theo, yelling, “This is enough!”
“Drake, he needs to pay for what he’s done!” Sara yelled, refusing to ease her aim.
“This place is going to be crawling with GDC if you two keep this shit up, Sara!”
“Let it!”
“Dammit, Sara!”
“No dammits, Drake! I’m not going to just act like he didn’t commit an atrocity!”
“Atrocity?” Theo calmly said at first before he roared so loud everyone around him went silent, “They tried to kill ME when I refused to draw Gaerlus on HER! When I ordered them to stand down, they never let up! They were willing to take ME out if I didn’t take them out first!”
The tension that had consumed the air like a whipping static, dissipated as Sara eased the arrow upon her bow and Drake removed his saber from Cole’s throat. Everyone looked to Theo and Sara with building suspense as he was nearly panting with his frustration having blown. Then once she lowered her bow completely with the arrow in hand, Sara glanced away from Theo for a moment before she looked back at him.
“I, I didn’t,” she struggled to get out, “I didn’t know, Theo. I… didn’t.”
“I didn’t want anyone to - I’m perfectly fine being the monster everyone believes I am.”
“Come on, brother,” Drake walked up beside him, resting his hand upon Theo’s shoulder as he said, “We all know that you’re not that monster.”
“Well, you are,” Cole rubbed the back of his neck as he tried to articulate, “but not at the same time, you know?”
“Will you shut up?” Drake laughed as he nudged Cole.
Sara stopped in front of Theo where she placed her hand on his chest. “Theo, why don’t we tell Helena what had happened? I’m sure she’d understand and come around!”
His head was bowed as he looked at Sara with solely his eyes, saying, “She was there - Helena breached the King’s Quarter with me, Sara. Who do you think Demetry and Thom looked to for orders when I ordered them to stand down?”
“That bitch,” Sara breathily said.
“And now you can all see why I pulled the chute when I did,” Cole noted.
Sara glanced around at the three. “Well, then we really are on our own out here?”
“The mission hasn’t changed,” Theo said.
“Hae’Lektaes?” Drake said as he folded his arms.
Theo nodded his head.
“Whoa, whoa, hold on a minute,” Sara stuttered with her eyes fluttering. “What about Gabe? What about Klaus - He’s your brother, Theo!”
“I never said it was gonna be easy, Sara.”
“Oh God, we’re really going to do this?”
“Now is the time to back out,” he softly said to her.
Sara looked at the scar over his right eye, knowing exactly how he got it now and what lengths Theo had been willing to go for them. She then looked at Cole before her husband, who had his head slightly tilted toward her with his eyebrows raised and a subtle smirk. Sara couldn’t help herself but become overwhelmed by a nostalgic feeling, and before she knew it, she was smiling ear to ear.
“Alright,” she said, “KOG might be cracked, but we’re not shattered.”