Enchanted By The Alien Warrior

Chapter  1

Gylar

“We’re almost there,” I pant. “Just — let’s stop for a minute. I need to bandage you again.”

Tam’s blood is spilling everywhere, sticking my clothes to my skin. He lets out a hoarse laugh as I lower him to the ground and kneel.

“Come on, Gylar,” he mutters through clenched teeth. “This isn’t something a new bandage can fix.”

He’s right, and we both know it. Still, I can’t just let him bleed out without trying to stop it. Tam’s got to make it home, at least. He has kids, for the Ancestors’ sake! They deserve to say goodbye to their father, and Tam deserves one last glimpse of his children’s faces.

“Whatever. Stay still for two seconds,” I growl under my breath, as I pull aside the existing bandage to look at my friend’s wound. It’s deep, the flesh riven clean apart by a droid’s scythe arm. Not for the first time, I curse the fragility of human beings.

Tam is even a formidable one, among humankind. His head comes up nearly to my chin, and he’s as strong as some of the stripling Kraaj boys I let train with our unit. He’s a hell of a warrior, too, one of the quickest fighters I’ve ever seen.

All that doesn’t matter in the end, though. Not when a droid ambush caught us off guard, and Tam was mortally wounded before he’d even fired his blaster once. A Kraaj warrior like me might survive this wound, given proper medical care. But a human?

The only thing that can be done is to make sure he rests peacefully.

Not bothering to take off the old bandage, I wrap a new strip of fabric tightly around Tam’s middle. He doesn’t have much time left, so there’s no point in me doing a good job.

Silently cursing the droids for blowing up all of our hovercraft, I heft Tam back onto my shoulder as carefully as possible. I could carry him flat-out, but the man has too much pride. I have to respect that, in his final moments.

“Yevi isn’t too far,” I tell my friend. “One foot in front of the other, my friend. That’s all.”

Tam coughs, and I hear the telltale sound of blood bubbling deep in his lungs. It’s incredible to me that he’s managing to limp on ahead at all.

“At least we crushed those fucking lumps of metal,” he croaks. “Artificial not-so-intelligent bastards.”

I manage a chuckle, although privately I’m thinking that the droids nearly had us. Weeks of both my unit and a second one searching for them, without finding a single bolt. Then in the middle of the night, they attack when we’re least expecting it.

I blame that failure on Luvon’s intelligence, and I’ll be having words with the higher ups in on-planet security about. Both my team and the other unit did our jobs. We destroyed the droids, every single one of them — but at a terrible cost.

It’s been twenty years since the Alliance War ended, easing tensions throughout the galaxy. But even before that, Kraaj and Human had begun working together. 

It’s been fifteen years since Luvon declared itself a Free Planet, and both races began to cooperate together after having gone through so much.

Many millions had died throughout the decades. But nowadays, humans and Kraaj fought side by side to protect their homes on Luvon from the outside galaxy. 

Yet at times, our superiors were just as ignorant today as they had been before. I vowed revenge. 

Tam’s kids weren’t the only ones who would find themselves fatherless today.

Dawn is cresting over the horizon when we finally stumble into the human settlement of Yevi. I’ve never been to Tam’s home, but he gives me instructions. With each turn, his voice gets quieter and weaker. I hurry.

“This is it,” grunts Tam, as we reach a nondescript door in the nicer part of Yevi. “Gy, I don’t look too rough. Do I?”

I stare down at this human who’s fought beside me for so long. To my eyes, he looked like what he was: at death’s door. Too pale, gaze cloudy, blood-drenched uniform.

“Your kids won’t care,” I tell him. “But here. Put on my jacket for now.”

Right as we manage to get my jacket around Tam’s gory clothes, the door swings open. A pale-faced boy of 9 or 10 (not that I’m great with human ages) stands in the frame.

“Dad,” he whispers. “What happened?”

“Fenix, kiddo, get your sister,” replies Tam, not answering the question. “Right now, wake her up if you have to.”

The boy doesn’t argue. His brown eyes, so like his father’s, fill with fear, and he runs into a side room.

“Gylar.” Tam’s voice is suddenly urgent, stronger than it was. “You know about the human traffickers around here. In all the human settlements. Don’t you?”

“Don’t worry about that right now,” I soothe. “Tracking those bastards down is on the security team’s list already.”

“No, no, it’s important,” hisses Tam. “They take kids. Heard they’re always on the lookouts for orphans.”

Oh.

I open my mouth to try to calm Tam’s worries — how, I have no idea — but the boy has returned, now tugging a little girl with him. She’s maybe 2 years younger than he is. Again I curse the droids to every hell I can imagine for forcing this kid to see her father likes this.

“Layne, baby.” I set Tam down on the floor, deciding there’s no point in getting him to a chair. He opens his arms for the little girl and she rushes into them.

“Dad,” she sobs. “Are you hurt? What’s happening?”

“Fenix, you come here too,” insists Tam. The boy hesitates, and then follows his sister into his father’s embrace.

I move as if to go outside, to give the family some privacy, but Tam calls my name.

“Gylar. You have to stay. I need you…. Meet Fenix. Layne.”

Unsure of why this is suddenly important to my friend, but not wanting to upset him, I crouch down. 

“Hi,” I say lamely to the sniffling human children. “I’m Gylar.”

Naturally, they can’t manifest much more of a response than a head nod. The girl doesn’t even manage that much, and I can’t blame her in the slightest.

“I love you both, so much.” Tam’s eyes too shine with unshed tears. “But I’m not going to be here much longer.”

“What?” The boy pulls back, with a horrified expression. “Dad what does that mean?”

“You know what it means, Fenix.” With great effort, Tam lifts his arm and puts his hand on his son’s shoulder. “I’m dying.”

Layne wails, as a tear slides down her brother’s face. Again I feel the urge to give them space, but then Tam turns to me.

“Promise me you’ll take care of them,” he says, slowly and painfully. “If I name you their guardian, will you promise to protect them?”

Panic explodes in my throat. Me, the guardian of two human children? I’ve never even spent any time with Kraaj children!

But now I understand what Tam was trying to say about the human traffickers. He’s worried for his kids’s safety… and I know damn well they have no one else to take them in.

I can’t let my friend down.

“I promise,” I tell him, bowing my head. “I will protect your children, always.”