The Rokshai

Many moons pass in the starship with Jora floating through the liquid of space like a feverish embryo in the womb. He has no way of knowing which direction the humans had blasted off to next, but he sets the course of the starship for the closest planet, Ibridia, thousands of miles away.

He keeps images of his demolished home planet from invading his thoughts by training his body to perfection. There isn't much space in the starship. It is only 30 meters long from nose to tail. With a self sufficient pod attached, in the event that he desires to go exploring. But Jora manages to use the cramped confinements to his advantage.

Thousands of push ups. Millions of sit ups. He runs in place. He punches walls until his knuckles bleed. He eats little. He sleeps even less. Sleeping is the worst. His dreams scream and bleed. They cry for mercy. They beg him to sweep in and rescue them. He is wired. He becomes a frenetic ball of high powered energy. He watches his facial features harden in the mirror. Become more gaunt. More severe. He watches himself age. His muscles bulging. His mind sharp. He's doing his best to hold back the demons until it's time to set them free.

Jora has completely lost count of the seconds, minutes, hours days that he's been traveling when he spies a strange mass dangling in the path of his ship, suspended between the stars like a yo-yo. He gazes out one of the little windows, astonished. It's been a long time since he's seen anything around him save for stars and the occasional meteor jettisoning through the blackness like an angel with an assignment to hurry to. Although at that moment he has no idea what the foreign object is, the vastness of space seems a little less lonely.

Jora hurries to the control panel and takes a seat. He kills the auto piloting function that had been carrying him languidly towards his destination and manually drags the ship alongside the floating object. He forces one of the doors in the body of the ship open and the cold hands of space reach into the cabin, threading their fingers through the ship's air.

A Tarnanite's lungs are equipped with little need for oxygen but Jora is wary of floating freely into the black jaws of space. He dons one of the clunky white suits left behind by the ship's previous owner and unwinds the umbilical cord-like tether from the belly. He plugs it into a port at the control panel and then flings himself through the open door of the ship.

As he half swim half walks with awkward bounding strides through the thick air , the details of the floating object come into view. It's a body. Clad in a suit not unlike the one Jora has shuffled into. The arms and legs are useless noodles. Motionless. He can't make out the face behind the bubble helmet.

When he hadn't been training his body, Jora had been thoroughly investigating every aspect of the starship. All the equipment. All the nodules and buttons and things that glowed and buzzed. The white suits left stacked in a closet. The energy grenades that had been used to blow every Tarnanite apart sleeping on their shelves as docile as stones now. He takes one look at the stranger's suit and can see the beeping lights that signify a severe lack of oxygen. Any race trapped inside of it might be dying. A human might already be dead. Jora's heart is shrieking in his chest.

Jora hooks one mighty arm casually around the neck of the stranger's suit, he grabs firmly onto the tether with his other and begins dragging himself and the body back towards the ship. The process is agonizingly slow. Made more so by his crazed thoughts. He doesn't know what he's going to do if the body inside the suit belongs to a human. Part of him hopes the rescued creature is already dead.

He pulls the body into the ship and shuts the door. He walks over to the control panel to unplug the tether, watching the suit for motion from the corner of his eye, but there's nothing. Jora removes his own helmet and forces his hair from his eyes. He walks over to the occupied suit spread-eagled on the floor and bends down to peer into it's face. He can't see anything through the helmet. Gingerly. he removes it.

The human jack knifes upright, his eyes bulging, gasping for air. Despite himself Jora leaps back, pressing his spine into the wall. He feels something that he instantly begins to despise once he recognizes it for what it is: Fear. His arms shoot out to the sides of him clamoring for the nearest weapon. As the human pulls himself to his knees, he gasps and gasps, greedily sucking the oxygen filling the chamber into his wilting lungs, his hands at his throat. Jora's fingers fumble wildly, finally closing around an energy grenade. He raises it high above his head, ready to throw.

The human screams, his eyes wide with fright. He yells in a human language that Jora can't understand, raising his hands with the palms exposed pleadingly.

"Give me one reason why I shouldn't blow us both away right now," says Jora in his own tongue. The human seems stunned at these words. Jora flinches, losing his resolve to throw the grenade as he ponders whether or not the human had understood. Still he refuses to lower his arm, refuses to allow himself a moment of weakness.

"Are you a Tarnanite?" the human asks then, in heavily accented Tarnanian. Jora doesn't answer.

"I thought your people had been wiped out."

"That would have made your heart glad, would it not?" he snarls, fresh anger rising up in him. Then, he clenches his fist around the grenade, sure now that he will throw it.

"No no no! No! please! Don't kill me, please! My name is Zenith. I am a linguist...a scholar! Not... a soldier. I have no blood on my hands. I did not wipe your people out."

"You're a human," says Jora. "There are no differences among you."

"I am alone and stranded in space just as you are. A convoy of soldiers brought me along to interpret between them and the peoples they would colonize, I admit. But I had no choice and I have no interest in violence. I...I tried to strike up a mutiny and was cast out of the ship...and and and and I am so sorry...about what has happened to...an entire race...to you."

Jora stares at the man. He's slight as most humans are said to be. Brown with a tangle of long dark locs bundled up at the back of his head. His eyes are creased worry lines. They look sincere. So sincere. And yet.

"Don't apologize merely because you think it will force me to spare you," say Jora, resolutely. He cocks back on the arm still clinging to the energy grenade. "Because it will not."

"I can be of use to you!" Zenith almost whimpers, bowing his head, his arms raised weakly above it. "Please, let me be of use."

"How?" Jora snaps, hating himself for his own curiosity.

"You want to kill them. Don't you? Us? You want to kill us?"

Jora doesn't respond, but the look on his face assures the man that he's hit a tender spot. Zenith goes on, his voice growing more confident.

"I know how to make it easy for you. I am the Oracle of the gods."

"There are no gods."

"Not believing in them doesn't make them nonexistent."

Jora remembers the way Cardiminia looked lying in the dirt. The unholy twist of her neck. "The Oracle of the gods perished on Tarnan."

"Which is why they chose a new one," says Zenith climbing to his feet.

"A human?" Jora scowls incredulously.

"I didn't ask to be chosen."

"Show me the mark," demands Jora

Zenith pries up the sleeve of his suit, exposing the white eyeball imprinted on his wrist. Jora is silent.

"There is a power...far beyond anything you could ever imagine. And I can tell you how to make it belong solely to you. I can make you the most powerful being in the entire galaxy...no, in the entire universe." Zenith says slowly, his chest still heaving.

"But?" asks Jora.

"But," says Zenith. "If I tell you, you must let me go". He nods towards the self sufficient pod in the back of the ship. "Let me take that vessel and enough food to hold me for a few moons and be on my way."

Jora watches his face as if trying to decode a cryptic puzzle with his gaze.

"And you would betray your own race? You would leave them to be wiped out of existence?"

Zenith sighs. His dark eyes look very sad. They're clear, glass windows through which Jora can see that his soul is like a two ton weight on his back. "We deserve what we have given to others. Destruction. Death. Man is greedy and evil. Man will stop at nothing to preserve himself, even if it means becoming the only being left in the Adinfinus galaxy."

Jora looks down at the grenade in his hand. "Tell me."

Zenith begins talking immediately. "Every race holds dear the tale of the gods' rokshai".

Jora raises a hand, cutting him off. "It's a myth".

Zenith shakes his head hard. "I assure you. It is not. This generation's rokshai was born. She lives on a farm on planet Ibridia. Bearing the mark of the gods. A red birthmark in the shape of a lightning bolt on the back of her neck. Whosoever kills her and drinks the spilt blood will absorb all of her power. Whosoever does this thing will become an unstoppable force. And will raise an army with a fleet of 1000 ships to reign over the galaxy for many years".

"How do you know?"

"I am the Oracle. The gods have shown me in a vision. "

For a moment, Jora can't speak. The hairs on his arms are erect. His tongue feels like a brick in his mouth. He believes the Oracle's words.

"Tell me truthfully," he demands of the man at last. "Do I seem ready? To take on such a fearsome warrior? Could I fell her in combat?"

Zenith gives him a weary smile. "The rokshai is not a fearsome warrior. At this present time she is but a girl. About 6 winters of age."