Chapter 1: The Speaker By Rick L 02/08/2016

Sometimes things just are the way they are. Jake’s father used to tell him that, whenever something happened that couldn’t seem to be explained. Things like that used to happen often, Jake thought, his legs straddling the branch, looking down at the ground about 30 feet below him. He enjoyed it up here, high above the landscape, the smell of the pinac needles tingling his nose. He looked out into the distance and imagined what it would be like to fly away from here on a julip cruiser and off into the sky above. He would watch the pilots talk at the rest pit, and dream of what it would be like to be one of them. Sometimes things just are the way they are. That’s why he was always running away from the Big Yard, from the master and his cane, and from his sisters. They would always yell at him to stop, and the master would always send one of the clunky old guard bots to chase after him. He would always get away though, and he’d laugh once the outdated old machines were left far behind his heels. They could never catch him, just like they could never find him before he could sneak back into the Yard under the hole in the fence by the old culvert ditch. He would always bite his lip when the master brought down his cane on his wrists, and he knew that today would be no different. He looked out again, and saw the vapor trail of a julip void cruiser stream off above the horizon and disappear into the blue of the sky. It was always daytime on Harth. Jake knew that it was because of the twin radial stars, just outside of the system’s gravitational pull. This system was unique, he heard an old man at the rest pit say, because two stars balanced the planets perfectly between their gravity fields. The pull of the two stars had nearly split the planet in two, almost ten thousand years ago in The Rendering. Nearly every living thing on Harth had died in the following earthquakes and acid storms. “But Harthessians are made of hard grit, skin and bone.” Jake’s father had told him. The planet’s people survived and fought against the torn wasteland, and eventually Harth had become a hub of intergalactic commerce and trade. “We tamed the planet.” His father had said. Staring out across the tops of smaller pinac trees, Jake thought about his father. He remembered the pits of his rugged face, and the long scar across his cheek running down to his jaw. His father had told him the scar was from a mining accident, but Jake had heard many rumors at the rest pit. His father was a fighter, people said. A true warrior of Harth. Jake brushed his hand through his thick crop of dark brown hair, and gazed out again from atop his perch into the distance. Everyone always told him it was strange to have dark hair on a planet that was bleached by the constant sunlight beating down. Even his sisters had light golden blonde hair, but he never asked any questions as to why he was any different. He remembered his father’s dark hair and beard, and that was explanation enough. Suddenly, the branch snapped. Jake’s stomach rushed into his throat as gravity pulled him down. He grasped desperately out at the trunk of the pinac tree, his fingernails ripping on the coarse bark as he whipped faster towards the hard packed ground. He turned his head in time to see a branch flying up towards his face and his world went black.

Jake felt a cold breeze against his cheek. He tried opening his eyes, but only blackness greeted him. It sounded like hammers pounded on titansteel in his head and his whole body ached. He couldn’t see anything. Groaning in pain, he leaned forward, grasping blindly to find anything to steady him as he tried to sit up. His skull felt like it was split in two, but when he touched his forehead and couldn’t feel any blood, and winced in pain finding a lump the size of his fist above his right eye. Finally, he sat up, groping around him for anything firm to stop the painful spinning behind his eyes. Why can’t I see?! His mind raced desperately. It was always daytime on Harth, and the darkest place he had ever been was the master’s cellar. Even there, cracks of sunlight made their way under the floorboards, falling like dusty jet streams. His hands touched the ground around him. It was cold. It felt… odd. This was not the hard packed clay that surrounded the woods behind the Big Yard. It felt coarse, and gritty. He dug his nails into the rough surface, but couldn’t pull bits of it up between his fingers. He groped around him in a circle, but his hands found nothing but the pitted, flat surface. Laying on his stomach, he crawled his aching body forward, putting one hand in front of the other, barely able to lift his knees as he struggled over a few inches with each effort. He reached out to put his hand down, but only air greeted it this time. The ground had fallen away, and each time Jake put his hand down where the smooth floor should have been, it touched nothing but empty space. He had come to the edge of a sheer cliff falling away into pitch black nothingness. He reeled back, and carefully felt his hand around the edge of the precipice. After a few minutes of painful movement, he realized that he was at the center of a small circle about 10 paces in diameter, surrounded on each side by darkness. He yelled out into the blackness, but his voice fell muffled without an echo. Jake’s throat tightened, and a suffocating dread began to creep into his heart. He whimpered, tears of terror welling in his eyes. “Father!” He cried, his voice stifled in the darkness. “Help me Father!” A blinding white light forced him to cover his eyes. He fell to his back, both hands shielding his face from the luminescent beam shining on him from an unknown source. A thundering voice filled the void. “HEAR ME!” the voice boomed. Jake froze, stunned by the sheer volume and power of the unknown speaker. It was neither a man nor a woman, but an indescribable depth followed behind each word. “YOU WILL LEAD THEM OUT FROM THE DARKNESS.”