*****
Each morning was the same routine. Ikanya gave me a huge kiss, handed me my lunch, and I went out to catch an aging space bus. These ancient flying contraptions from earlier days rattled in flight when full of people, and took us all far away to the planet of Tory, where we had managed to relocate the raging war between our peoples. Over the course of immeasurable time, we had lost many brave and lusty warriors, including our Captain, our Troop Commander, and my dear friend Ikonor. His loss grieved my heart most greatly.
Our new Troop Commander, Zykor the Magnificent, named me our new
Captain, assigning me the job of piloting one of the old space buses. Its controls were written in ancient Kellian, and were difficult to read, but I slowly eked out their meaning; the lettering looked like scribbles, scrawls, and loop-de-loops, which Ikanya translated from my hasty scrawls, brought home at the end of the day. Ikanya was always my lifesaver, my guide to everything mysterious and Kel.
As the weeks wore on, the battles became high-pitched and feverish. I was forced to crawl on my belly through a mucky and brackish swamp, swarming mud flies eating me alive, worse than the sweat bees of old Earth. They would sting me right in the eyes, big and mean things that they were, just like the damn Draconians.
Thoughts of Ikanya flooded my mind constantly. She was more holy and pure than a church’s sanctuary, a true womanly vessel of sacred honour and right. In spite of the pressing need for battle, we attended church regularly, once a week, for the Kels were a very religious race. I often thought of mortality and what it meant, seeing and experiencing death every day of my sure to be brief life. I thanked Yahway each second for my wife and continued existence, day after tiresomely lengthy day, night after serenely blessed night.
One typically sweat-drenched, mind-numbing afternoon, I heard a peculiar grinding noise, and froze like a naked statue. An odd-looking machine was making its way towards me; I finally recognized it as a remote recon ‘droid of the Dracs. I shot it down, realizing there must be more Dracs nearby. I brought my squad together in a huddle, and told them, “Men, the Dracs sent their toys out to do their dirty work; keep your eyes open, and be alert!”
Out of nowhere, thousands of Dracs arrived. My men were being cut to pieces, and after an hour of heavy fighting, most of us were wounded or dead. Moans and screams of the lost dying filled the air. This was duly recorded as the famed Battle of Carmoosh, where many valiant warriors died, including my Troop Commander Zykor. Right there on the field, I was summarily named new Troop Commander.
A raw recruit, a mere twelve-year-old boy, as we needed even these youngsters in our hard-pitched battles, told me right there on the red-soaked battlefield that he wanted to bag his ten Dracs, so he could get a wife before he died. Dripping sweat, looking over a nearby ridge, I saw a swarm of at least three large oncoming “bugs.”
“Can I take ‘em?” asked the boy. “Have at them!” I screamed. “But be sure you know what you’re aiming at, not our men!” As he shot his ray rifle, far away to the horizon, black clouds of dusky smoke filled the sky with an odor of burning rubber. Firing their lasers, the Dracs blinded the boy in one eye.
He screamed out his rage and protest. It got even harder to see, as the smoke from distant fires blocked even my vision. “Do you have a pair of binoculars?” I begged of the boy, having lost mine. “Of course I do! I’m just like anyone else!” But the faded, fuzzy images on his nightscope could have been anything…disregarding my feverish precautions, as the voluminous smoke cleared, the boy fired.
I heard his abject screams of horror, frozen in time and space, too late. He had exploded the chests of three of our best men.
We carried his limp body over to an instant military tribunal, where it was decided that although he had meant no harm, an example needed to be made of him. He was found guilty, and executed very painfully by firing squad. This was indeed a dark day for the Kels. But a new boy was instantly sent out to replace him, a much nicer and more cautious lad, of twelve years also.
I felt a swiftly growing concern that so many youngsters were dying in this hideously prolonged war against the Dracs. But the new kid only told me the same thing: he wanted to kill his ten Dracs quickly, and snag his promised wife. So I decided to give him tips and tricks on how to fight the beasts.
“Dracs wear invisibility suits, so you have to scout out signs of their presence. Look for bending blades of grass, large dirt and mud trails. And remember, Dracs always travel in threes, so if you shoot one, shoot all around it for the other two. It’s the only way you’ll survive. Finally, Dracs use chemicals and lasers, so remain behind your head shield at all times, no matter how hot it gets. You can see infra-red around a live Drac when it’s turned on.”
After this speech, and several weeks later, the new kid, whose name was Virkon, had slaughtered his ten Dracs. Ecstatic, he jumped up and down, hugging me with a man’s strength. His fortitude had paid off well. The Kel Central Command gave him a beautiful, innocent little twelve-year-old girl, who wore dazzling, virginally white silken robes, with her golden hair flowing freely over her narrow shoulders. She had smoothly pearl-white skin, flawlessly glowing teeth, berry-plump ruby lips, and starkly pure blue eyes that radiated kindness and virtue. She was an absolute angel, almost as lovely as my Ikanya.
Her name was Bellayette. She strode bravely up to Virkon and breathed with words like pure air, “I am so fortunate, for I get to marry a courageous warrior.” Virkon simply and boldly said, “I am surely the lucky one, here.” When he came back from his one-month honeymoon, he was not the little boy I’d known before. He was truly a man, respectfully full of “Yes, Sir!” and “No, Sir!” but expecting to be treated the same as any other man. He told me, “I thought being married would be wonderful, but I had no idea how magnificent it was until I kissed my Bellayette. She is the kindest, sweetest person in the entire endless universe.”
I pounded him soundly on his back, and cried, “Welcome aboard, proud warrior!” He asked me, a broad grin stretched across his face, “How’s it going with your wife, Commander?” I replied, “I have to be honest with you. There is no one who will ever come close to her, for everything she does is the best. For example, she performed an ancient medieval Japanese flower arrangement ceremony yesterday that almost rivaled herself in its beauty and modest perfection. You should have seen it.”
Virkon cried out, “Come by our place sometime, and we’ll see what my wife does!”