My Kingdom Come book 1: The Saints We See

660 standard years after the signing of the Alliance treaty

Galor was straddling Mikhail’s hips leaning forward to wrap his hands around the boy’s neck. Mikhail shoved his hips up hard causing Galor to lose his balance. Galor’s hands slammed down on the floor on either side of Mikhail’s head, catching his weight. Mikhail was already wrapping his hands around one of Galor’s elbows and jerking backwards, forcing it to collapse. He yanked Galor’s forearm towards his center of gravity, at the same time lifting and twisting his hips, forcing Galor to either land on his face, or roll. Galor rolled over and Mikhail was now on top.

Galor had locked his legs around Mikhail’s waist as they rolled. He grabbed the boy’s collar with his free hand and using Mikhail’s grip on his arm he jerked the boy’s arms sideways, pulling his upper body in the same direction, twisting his hips and legs to add to the momentum. He slammed Mikhail down onto his back again. He continued the motion, rolling his weight up over his knee, trying to get back up over the boy, but Mikhail pulled an arm free and pressed his hand to Galor’s hip, locking his elbow and using Galor’s momentum to shove himself away from the older man.

A gentle tone sounded through the cargo bay and both of their taut bodies relaxed. Galor let himself fall back on the floor next to Mikhail. “It’s time to get ready, Miha. You’d better go on.” The ‘h’ in Galor’s nickname for Mikhail was a harsh guttural sound in the back of Galor’s throat.

“Yes, sir.” Mikhail rolled quickly to his feet and padded out of the cargo bay. He went into the ship’s small bathroom and stripped out of his training clothes. He rubbed his entire body down with a stain that turned his translucent, silvery skin blue, then he took a quick shower. He used a liberal amount of the coloring shampoo that turned his short white hair blue as well. When he was finished he dried himself and carefully put on the contacts that turned his eyes from silver to indigo. He gave himself a quick look over in the mirror to be sure his disguise was complete. Even though he was now twelve standard years old he still had the face and build of a child.

Galor assured Mikhail that puberty would hit him soon enough, but Mikhail couldn’t help wishing that it would happen sooner rather than later. He had a half formed idea in the back of his mind that once he was older, he would find a way to rescue his mum. He would buy her a little home on the edge of a green meadow where the sun shone bright everyday. They would be free. Living there together, forever. They could enjoy life without having to ever look over their shoulder again, watching for bounty hunters and cruel masters.

Galor had explained to Mikhail that both the boy and his mother were artificially lab created creatures. Because of that they could never legally have freedom or any other sentient right. According to Alliance law, Mikhail and Brenhala were simply objects to be used however their masters pleased. In spite of this, Mikhail couldn’t let go of the idea that somehow, he would find a way around Alliance law, around the greed of the monsters who had created him and his mother. He would find a way to live as a free man.

Mikhail scooped his sweaty clothes off the bathroom floor and walked naked back to his room, focussing on his connection with his mother. The familiar cherishing warmth that pulsed in his chest came sharply into focus; it seemed to reassure him that one day his dreams would come true.

Mikhail tossed his clothes into the corner on top of a pile of dirty laundry, noting that he would need to do some washing soon because he was getting dangerously close to running out of things to wear. He pulled on a loose fitting golden orange tunic and black pants, then pulled on a pair of his black work coveralls over that.

He passed the bathroom on his way to the cockpit; the gentle hiss of water moving through pipes and the fresh scent of Galor having walked through the area recently told him that Galor was taking a shower. Once he reached the cockpit Mikhail sat in the copilots seat and began to file the electronic paperwork for landing with their cargo. By the time Galor joined him, smelling of soap and fresh clothes, Mikhail was getting ready to put the ship into orbit in preparation for the final approach to the landing platform docks.

Galor took his seat in the pilot’s chair without comment. He scanned through Mikhail’s work, adding his electronic signature then leaned back in his seat and rubbed his face. “Is the client going to meet us on landing?”

“No. They wont be there for another five hours.” Mikhail carefully followed the flight path that had been sent to them, inserting their ship into orbit around the average sized planet. Its glowing blue surface was dotted with several large continent islands.

“Ah, well that means we have some time to spend before we meet them. What do you want to do while we wait?”

One corner of Mikhail’s mouth pulled up. “”Do you even have to ask? It’s always the same. I want to feel the sun on my skin and go to the temple.”

He felt Galor’s emotions shift and glanced over at him to find Galor quickly looking away. Mikhail frowned slightly. “I’d be happy to do something else.”

“No.” Galor felt frustrated or angry but Mikhail couldn’t tell exactly what the focus of his emotions were.

“Do you want to try piloting the landing this time? You’ve been hitting all your scores on the simulator.”

Mikhail’s eyebrows went up in surprise. “Do you really think I’m ready for that? I took out half the landing docks on Pedrorix in that simulation just last month.”

Galor laughed. “I still don’t know how you pulled that one off, Miha. There had to have been a glitch in the program. Even if you set off a thermal explosive on a landing platform that size you couldn’t do that much damage.

“You’ll do fine. These docks don’t have a whole lot of traffic, it’s perfect for your first landing.”

Mikhail grinned. “Alright, I’d like to try.”

The landing went perfectly. Mikhail let out a whoop of achievement as the ship touched down. Even though Galor didn’t say anything, Mikhail could feel Galor’s satisfaction blending in with his excitement.

Galor had started giving Mikhail landing duties when he was five, now the long list of things that needed to be done to finish shutting down the ship and for scheduling maintenance and refueling, was split evenly between them. They each ran quickly through their assigned duties, eager to get off the ship and breathe fresh air again.

Galor set the ship’s computer to pick up the latest batch of non-urgent Jurverian assignments. Urgent assignments were sent out daily, but the expense of sending assignments to all ships made it more cost effective to send non-urgent assignments to landing platforms for pick up.

“What do you want to do first?” Galor asked Mikhail as they stripped off their coveralls and left them hanging on hooks near the hatch before they stepped out of the ship.

Mikhail let out a breath of pleasure as he stepped into the sunlight. Galor had installed grow lights in his room on the ship, but it wasn’t the same as feeling real sunlight on his skin. “Let’s go to the temple first.”

“You sure? Last time we did that, the client called for an early pick up and we didn’t get to go sunbathing till the next day.”

Mikhail let out a soft huff of amusement. “Yes, I remember. But let’s go to the temple first anyway.”

“Alright.”

They made their way through the landing docks and the large sprawling market set up outside. Mikhail let his senses soak in the feel and scent of sentients and all their various emotions as they teemed around him. He savored the smell of warm earth, fresh air, and the various animals in the marketplace along with the exotic aroma of the local cuisine. He always enjoyed the feeling of so much life swarming and weaving around him every time they went planet side.

Most of the sentients Galor and Mikhail passed sent negative emotions towards them, as sentients did on every planet. Jurverian were feared assassins and bounty hunters throughout the galaxy, and no one wanted to attract negative attention from them, even Jurverians who were clearly half breeds, like Galor. The negativity used to bother Mikhail. Galor had told him to be grateful for their fear. It was another layer of protection. No one would ask too many questions or look too closely at an odd looking boy traveling with a Jurverian.

They found the local wheel temple and went inside just as the ritual service for the hour was ending. Sentients blessed each other and dispersed, leaving the community of the circle in the center of the temple to go back to their various positions in life.

Galor stopped just inside the doorway of the temple. “You go on. I’ll wait.”

Mikhail nodded and went to the back of the temple where a stone carving of a wheel stood. Galor’s relationship with religion was something that Mikhail didn’t really understand. Galor performed all the normal daily wheel rituals on his ship. He always made time to visit the local temple whenever he went planet side. He would participate in the ritual service if he arrived in time for it, but coming to the temple made him feel very uncomfortable and he never performed any other rituals there.

Mikhail knelt in front of the wheel and raised his open palms to chest hight. “Gods, I am grateful for your provision, your watchful eyes and your eternal love.” He said quietly. “Thank you for my freedom and for giving me a place to be useful and loved. Please, watch over my mother. Give her peace and health. Watch over Galor. Give him prosperity and satisfaction in his work. Guide me so that I might always be of service to those I meet.”

He closed his eyes and sat quietly for a moment. The priests taught that it was important to end every prayer with a moment of silence in case the gods had something they wanted to communicate back. Mikhail had never heard anything from them, but he always experienced a feeling of acceptance and well being.

When he was finished praying he made a contribution to the temple out of his percentage of the earnings he and Galor made from hauling freight, and he met Galor back at the entrance of the temple.

“You ready to eat?” Galor asked as they stepped back into the sunlight.

Mikhail nodded. It was something of a ritual for them to sample local dishes when they went planet side. They rarely visited the same planet twice, so there was always something new to try.

They wandered through the market place, following their noses. Galor stopped at a stall where an old T’Odea had three Kaylor slaves grilling kabobs over a fire contained in a large metal, drum-like receptacle with a grate over the top. The smell layered over the cooking meat was a little sweet and a little spicy. They had sampled kabobs like this on other planets, but the flavors were never the same. Each locale seemed to have its own variation on seasoning.

Galor pushed into the jostling crowd of sentients around the stall who were buying kabobs from the stoic T’odea as fast as he could run the transactions. Mikhail followed Galor and they each ordered three sticks of meat, covered in a thick sticky sauce. Galor passed the metal cuff on his wrist over the T’Odea’s scanner to pay for their meal, then he and Mikhail resumed walking through the market, enjoying on their food.

Mikhail bought himself some fresh fruit and several packages of dried fruit to eat on their next trip between planets. He stopped at a Kaylor vendor’s table filled with jewelry made out of colorful natural stones. Minerals and stones carried an imprint of the life essence of their home worlds which Mikhail found comforting while he and Galor traveled the dark spaces between planets. The feeling inside rocks wasn’t as good as being planet side, breathing living air and feeling the sun on his skin, but it made those memories feel more vivid in his mind.

Galor disappeared deeper into the market while Mikhail browsed the jewelry. He had decided on a bracelet of tiny polished purple stones when Galor reappeared with a couple of packages wrapped in plain brown paper.

“Are you about finished shopping? I found a place for you to sunbathe.”

Mikhail passed his metal cuff over the vendor’s scanner. “Yes, I’m ready to go.”

Galor nodded and led the way towards the edge of the marketplace. “I rented us a hover craft. We’ll be going a bit of ways out of town.”

“Do I get to try piloting it?” Mikhail asked enthusiastically.

“No.” Galor snorted. “Minimum age for piloting anything bigger than a scooter on this planet is sixteen.”

“I landed our ship on this planet without blowing anything up.” Mikhail pointed out in a wheedling tone.

Galor laughed. “Don’t tempt me to get us arrested, Miha.”

Galor flew the hovercraft twenty minutes outside the city, then left the main flow of traffic and flew over a large wooded space. After another fifteen minutes he dropped down into a small meadow and parked the hover craft on the grass.

Mikhail pushed open his door and climbed out. He stared around the meadow with wide eyes. It was quiet and full of growing life. He was surrounded only by the scents of nature. No one else had been there for a long time. It reminded him of the meadow he and his mother had lived in for a while when he was just a tiny thing, toddling around on pudgy legs. Mikhail swallowed down the emotions that made tears spring up in his eyes.

“What d’you think?” Galor asked coming up to stand beside him.

“It’s amazing. Thank you, Galor.”

Galor nodded, and though the emotion didn’t show on his face Mikhail could feel his satisfaction.

Mikhail stripped out of his clothes and dropped them in a pile on the ground next to the hovercraft then he walked a little further out into the meadow and lay in the grass on his stomach. He hadn’t had any intention to root into the soil, but his skin tingled with longing where it was in contact with the ground and Mikhail felt a hunger in his body that he didn’t usually feel. He closed his eyes and relaxed, wondering if he could still drink out of the earth. He hadn’t done it since his mother had left.

He let his mind drift while he focussed on the hunger pulsing inside him. The aching need sharpened, pushed through his body and down into the dirt. Mikhail gasped softly as his reformed body began to pull nutrients up out of the soil into his cells. The thirst in his skin for the sun also sharpened. He felt like he was wrapped in a thin blanket that was shielding him from the warm energy he desperately needed to drink in. He felt a brief confused moment inside himself then he could feel a resistance in his skin that he pressed against. There was a slight burn that covered the surface of his skin, then relief as the sun penetrated his skin and filled his body with nourishing light.

For a brief moment Mikhail felt a deeply fulfilling contentment, then he began to feel thousands of tiny pricks of pain throughout his body, like the pins and needles of a limb that had fallen asleep and was waking up. He grunted in pain and tried to pull his body back from being rooted into the earth, but his body resisted. Despite the discomfort there was a deep aching need inside him that was being soothed away.

Galor’s gruff voice interrupted Mikhail’s internal struggle between satisfaction and discomfort. “Are you okay, Miha?”

Mikhail managed to grunt out an affirmative before his mind relaxed back into the flow of energy swirling inside his body and the connection between himself and the earth and the growing things around him in the meadow.

It seemed like just a few minutes later that the warmth on Mikhail’s skin began to slowly cool and his body’s hold on the earth relaxed. As Mikhail slowly returned to his normal state his senses began to to take in the sounds and scents of the meadow again. A nagging worry that Mikhail realized had been pulsing at the back of his mind for some time suddenly pushed to the forefront of his consciousness. Galor was gone and the position of the sun was wrong. His eyes snapped open. The sun was setting beyond the trees. The sky was lit up orange and purple.

Mikhail’s cuff vibrated softly against his wrist. He sat up and quickly tapped his cuff with two fingers. “Yes?”

Galor’s amused voice floated up out of the cuff. “Finally awake, hm?”

“What happened? Where are you?” Mikhail tried to calm the wild beating of his heart.

“I’m on my way back to you. You were really out of it, I figured you needed more time to…do whatever your body was doing so I went and met with the client and got the cargo unloaded. Are you hungry?” There was a hint of strain at the edges of Galor’s voice.

“Was there a problem?”

Galor let out a deep sigh. “We’ll talk when I get there, I’m just a few minutes away.”

Mikhail frowned. “Alright.”

Galor disconnected the call and Mikhail wrapped his arms around his knees. Galor had to be pretty worried for his concern to show up in his voice. Mikhail noticed his clothes folded in a neat pile next to him. He got up and pulled them on, then he laid back in the grass, watching for Galor. The sky slowly darkened.

A hover craft floated out over the meadow. Its running lights were off. Mikhail frowned and rolled onto his stomach watching. It looked like the hovercraft they had rented, but he couldn’t be positive. The hovercraft landed close to where Galor had parked earlier. The driver’s side door was quickly pushed opened and Galor’s burly form stepped out. “Miha?” He called out softly.

Mikhail let out a breath, got to his feet and lightly jogged over to Galor.

Galor remained standing next to his open door. His eyes scanned Mikhail up and down then he let out a relieved huff.

Something was very wrong. Mikhail hadn’t felt Galor this concerned and stressed since his mum had left, nine standard years ago. “What happened?”

Galor let out a disgruntled grunt and reached back inside of the hovercraft. He took out a package wrapped in paper that smelled delicious. He shut the hovercraft. “You hungry?”

Mikhail looked at him for a moment before nodding.

They settled in the grass and Galor unpacked two bowls of hot grilled meat and vegetables. He pushed the vegetables from one of the paper bowls onto the pile of vegetables in the other bowl. He handed the bowl with extra vegetables to Mikhail along with a fork.

“What happened?” Mikhail asked again.

Galor didn’t answer. He looked down into his bowl and pushed the meat around with his fork for a moment then he clenched his jaw, placed his bowl on the ground next to his knee and looked up at Mikhail. “You were in the non-urgent assignments”

Mikhail’s fingers tightened around his bowl. “What?”

Galor let out a deep sigh. “There’s a warrant out for your capture in the non-urgent Jurverian assignments I picked up today. It was put out a few days ago and it’s not marked urgent, so it will take time for all the others to see it, but they’ll be looking. The reward is…” he sighed and looked away for a moment. “It’s a pretty large reward, Mikhail.”

There was silence for a moment as Mikhail digested this information. “Why now?” He finally asked.

Galor shrugged lightly. “Your mum wasn’t the sharpest sentient I ever met, but she was pretty crafty when it came to keeping you safe. Somehow she must have kept them from knowing you were still alive till now. Have you…” Galor examined one of his knuckles. “Has the connection with your mum changed at all?”

Mikhail shook his head. “I can’t feel her emotions or well being. I just feel…her love I suppose.”

Galor nodded.

“Was there a warrant out for you as well?”

Galor shook his head. “Either your mum managed to keep me off their radar, or they sent it directly to a select few.”

Mikhail looked down at his bowl then back up at Galor. “What do we do?”

Galor let out a slow breath. “They’ll find us. The Jurverian always find their prey. But I think that if we move out to the edge of the galaxy somewhere, take on longer hauls, hit planet side less, we can make their hunt last longer.”

Affection and sadness suddenly surged from Galor. “I know that’s going to be hard for you, to see the suns less. I can tell it takes a toll on you to be in space as long as we already are for these short hauls, but…I think that’s our best chance.” His voice was rough.

Mikhail took a deep breath. “I can deal with it, Galor.”

Galor reached over and tousled Mikhail hair affectionately. “Eat now, before your food gets cold.”

They ate their food in silence then Galor pulled a bottle of Mikhail’s blue skin stain out of his pocket. “You’d better put this back on, you ah, did something to the color in your skin.”

Mikhail frowned in confusion. He turned the light function on his cuff on and shone it on his arm. It was back to its normal color, translucent silver.

* * *

(Four months later)

Brehala nuzzled at Mikhail’s cheek. “Little one.”

Mikhail let out a sleepy grumble and turned away.

“Mikhail.”

Mikhail opened his eyes. Something was out of place.

“Good morning my little sunshine.” Brenhala kissed Mikhail’s cheek softly.

Mikhail yawned and stretched. The sun was just coming up outside. “It’s too early to be up, mummy.” He rolled back towards her and cuddled into her side.

“I know. But it’s time for me to go. Forever, this time.”

Mikhail stilled. His fingers tightened around a fistful of his mum’s shirt. “Please-”

“I’m so sorry, my love. I stayed as long as I could.” There were tears in her voice and her arms tightened around Mikhail. “No matter what happens I will never, ever stop loving you.”

The connection between Mikhail and Brenhala suddenly expanded and brightened almost unbearably. Every nerve ending in Mikhail’s body was overwhelmed with light and love, he was drowning, dissolving in pure bliss.

Abruptly the light vanished and a tearing pain ripped through Mikhail’s chest. He woke up screaming, his hands clutching at his blankets. There was a dark emptiness inside him that he had never felt before. Mikhail reached for the connection between himself and his mother, the source of comfort that had never failed him. It was gone.

Mikhail’s door burst open. Light spilled into Mikhail’s room from the corridor outside. Galor was bending over him. His hands gripped Mikhail’s shoulders. He looked Mikhail over with frantic eyes. “What is it, Miha? What’s wrong?”

Mikhail tried to swallow down his uncontrollable sobs. “My-my mum she…she’s gone.”

Galor let out a little sigh of relief. He sat on the bed and pulled Mikhail to his chest. His heart was beating hard, as if he and Mikhail had been working in the training room he’d set up in the extra space in the cargo bay. He ran a soothing hand over Mikhail’s hair. “Did you have a bad dream?”

Mikhail pressed into Galor’s comforting embrace and nodded.

“I’m sorry.” He sat silently, concern and affection emanating from him, his arms wrapped comfortingly snug around Mikhail.

Mikhail clutched at Galor’s shirt with shaking hands. He pressed his face into Galor and screamed into his chest. The lonely absence inside him where his mother’s warmth had lived his entire life, was unbearable.

“It’s alright,” Galor soothed. His hand gently cradled the back of Mikhail’s head. “Feel for your connection to your mum. She’s still there, just far away.”

Mikhail shook his head. “No, Galor. It’s gone. She’s gone.”