Chapter 1

The crowd’s roar was near-deafening as Danaraz Ho’kura stepped on to the circular dais at the top of the staircase. She smoothed her thick mane of gray hair and accepted the voice-amplification box one of her fellow high-ranking officers offered her. The mesh box looked small in her massive leathery hands, and even smaller as her large snout reached towards it and she rumbled, “I have decided to retire from military duty.”

Danaraz waited for the crowd to digest the announcement and nodded appreciatively when the roaring began a steady shift towards outraged cries. Her large blue lips stretched into a firm smile. “But worry not, my brothers and sisters,” she said into the box, “for my colleagues in the Broggat military force are working hard to keep the peace on our glorious planet. I was not the one who saved our way of life from the Usk invaders, it was your entire fleet! Men and women, much like yourselves, piloting Broggat craft in the contested regions of space!”

The outrage had died only slightly, so she continued, “When I am gone you will see there are many more like me, brothers and sisters, children and elders. I leave because I have done all that I can for our great race. It is time for others to shine!”

With that she turned on her heel and began marching back down the stairs, the sounds of her people’s thunderous shouts following her away from the giant arena the Broggat military was using as an announcement hall. She felt a hand light on her shoulder, and one of the high-ranking officers fell into pace beside her.

“There is still much to be done, Captain Ho’kura,” she said, her small eyes boring into Danaraz’s. “I trust you haven’t forgotten about the Usk nobles your force took into custody? They speak a higher form of the language; we know they’ve surrendered, but our translators can’t even begin to relay our terms! And then there’s the paperwork, Dana! We borrowed and scrounged for this war, we commandeered supplies and shelter from our people, there are medals to be handed out and families to be consoled!”

“Beshri,” the captain said with a sigh, “look at me.”

Beshri stared sullenly at her superior’s deep gray hue, her long, wide snout, and her lengthy head of hair: all signs of advancing age in the Broggat race. Danaraz was, by all means, at the age when retirement was acceptable and even expected.

“You are still very fair, Beshri,” the older woman said. “When you get to be my age you start to think smaller. I was not the only one giving orders out there, I am merely the most famous. My sister’s death saw to that.”

Beshri lowered her head and scratched awkwardly at her thick neck. “I will admit that it afforded you…a certain amount of publicity, captain,” she murmured.

“Now she was a hero,” Danaraz said decisively. “A mother for fifteen years, a widow for ten, and a damned fool for flying into a battle she knew she wouldn’t win.”

“May the ground nourish her soul,” Beshri said quickly, performing a quick religious sign.

“May the ground nourish her soul,” Danaraz muttered, signing as well.

They had been traveling along a skyway leading from the arena to the capitol building, and came now to the entrance of the latter. Beshri, chastised to some degree, graciously opened the door for the older woman. She received a short grunt in thanks. They continued into a stairwell and arrived on the ground floor, where both of them flashed their various medals of office for a man at the entry to the off-limits area of the building.

“Now Beshri,” Danaraz said once they had been granted access, “I know there is still much work to be done, so I am willing to help with the Usk nobles. Everything else is your matter entirely once I take care of this one thing, do you understand?”

“You don’t suppose you could just—”

“Maybe you didn’t hear me correctly,” she growled, towering over the younger woman. “I’m being generously lending you my time after I have announced my retirement to the better part of our planet’s population. When I leave this building I’m going to pick up my niece because, as both of her parents are dead, I am now her legal guardian. You will not keep me from my duties as an aunt after I’m through here.”

Beshri felt it best not to push the subject any further. “Shall we go to the prisoners, then?” she suggested.

“A splendid idea. Lead the way.”

The containment area was several stories underneath the capitol building, small amidst the large military base that thrived around it. Complex circuitry did for their race what cold steel bars did for many others. Prisoners were trapped behind a strong electrical force field that only those outside the cell could see through. The captured Usks had been sorted and contained according to the ships they had operated. The nobles Beshri spoke of had been in charge of one of the keystones of their invading fleet, a massive craft that dwarfed all but the largest Broggat ships. They had been given a special wing of the prison complex reserved for only the most important prisoners.

The two women marched down a corridor lined with cells on both sides. Tall, muscular Usk officials occupied most of them, looking deflated, their wide, spade-like heads lowered in defeat. Danaraz watched them pass, disinterested for the most part, until her eyes fell on the occupant of a cell not far from their destination.

She grabbed Beshri’s arm to stop her. “What is that,” she asked in disbelief, gesturing to the man in question.

Beshri’s blinked, looking confused. After a moment she said, “Let me call a guard, I’m sure they can tell us. She trundled over to a call box a little ways away, leaving Danaraz to study what she had discovered.

She squinted her small eyes, rubbed them, looked away and back again, and walked back and forth in front of the force field separating her and what was certainly not an Uskian. He was much smaller, much thinner, and had a head full of short brownish hair. Where the Usks had large, flat, narrow nostrils and almond-shaped eyes, he had a small protruding nose and round eyes, though one was covered with a great deal of medical tape. His skin was pinkish where Usk skin was normally dark blue, and his hands were practically tiny compared to their bulky claw-like appendages. No matter how she looked at the man, she could only come to one conclusion: he was a Human. How a Human had come to be with high-ranking Uskian military officials was beyond her at the moment. She could only wait until Beshri’s guards arrived to give them answers.

After several minutes, two men in uniform arrived to answer their questions. “He was detained aboard the same ship as the Usks around us, Captain Ho’kura. We can only assume he was a mercenary or a servant. He speaks the same high language as the Usks, and does not appear proficient in any Broggat tongue.”

“Have you tried the common language with him?” she asked, rubbing her chin. “They tend to speak common, as far as I know.”

“We haven’t had the time to question him thoroughly. The Usks are our greatest concern for the time being,” one of the guards informed her, looking apologetic.

She waved away the apology. “Fair enough. Let me speak with him, I know common well enough.”

“But captain, what about the nobles!” Beshri protested.

“We know he speaks high Uskian, Beshri. If he speaks common as well, we’ll have ourselves a translator!” She grinned and motioned for the guards to let her into the cell.

A wide break appeared in the force field, and she stepped into the cell, accompanied by one of the guards. Their sudden appearance startled the Human, who jumped off the single bed all the cells contained and flattened himself against the back wall. The jail scrubs he had been outfitted with were much too large for him, and he fought to free his feet from the long pant legs as he tried to figure out what was going on. Danaraz spread her arms in what she hoped he’d recognize as a gesture of peace, and bid the guard to do the same. The Human blinked at them several times and then smiled a bright, wide smile, forgetting his tangled clothing immediately. He bowed and proclaimed what was probably a greeting in high Uskian, looking immensely pleased as he did so.

The guard nudged Danaraz. “Some of the others think he’s a little wrong in the head, captain,” he hissed. “He won’t stop smiling whenever somebody’s around.”

She nodded, feeling put off by the friendly yet glazed look the Human had fixed on her. “You speak common?” she grunted, secretly embarrassed by the coarseness of her skill with the language.

For a brief moment, the smile disappeared entirely. He stared at her as if looking at something he couldn’t quite comprehend. Danaraz repeated the question. “You! You a Human? Speak common?” she tried again.

“…Y-yes?” he said, looking uncertain while the smile crept back into the corners of his mouth, producing a rather weird facial expression. And then, more forcefully, “Yes!” as if he’d just remembered something on the edge of his memory. “Yes I do!”

“Good, good!” She motioned for him to sit down on the bed. He obeyed without hesitation, convincing her that he had been a servant, not a mercenary.

“Oh dear,” he exclaimed to himself, as she sat down heavily next to him. “Oh it’s been such a…such a while since…What time of the day is it?”

Danaraz struggled to remember her common vocabulary. “After…noon?”

“Well a good afternoon to you!” he beamed, taking her large gray hand in his smaller ones and shaking it with some effort. She saw the guard tense out of the corner of her eye and discretely told him off.

“You too,” she replied, carefully patting his back. She felt his hands suddenly clenched around her own and his smile became strained. Danaraz frowned. “You hurt?”

“Oh…someone was a little mad when you fine folks took control of the ship,” he said airily, waving away the comment.

“Guards not hurt you, yes?”

“Dear me, no! They’ve been very civil, haven’t they, buddy?” he addressed the guard by the force field, who nervously averted his eyes and nodded. “Outstanding personnel you’ve got here, ma’am. Simply outstanding! Why, I spilled some of my food the other day and they acted as if nothing had happened!” He looked completely astonished, if not manic, as he said it. “I mean that…that’s generosity for you.”

Danaraz had never been a mother, but a deep part of her could always tell when something was wrong. The man sitting next to her was causing her mother’s intuition to run haywire. “Has anything been done to him?” she asked the guard.

“Captain, I assure you that we’ve treated him with the utmost care,” he protested.

“No, no, no. I mean, you didn’t notice anything amiss? Anything the Usks could have done to him?”

“His eye’s been gouged out,” he said with a grimace. “That’s as much as I know without his medical file on hand.”

Danaraz turned back to the Human, who was still smiling at her, unable to understand the Broggat language. Because she had never been a mother, she didn’t know how to field such a delicate matter. But she had been in the military most of her life. She decided to get back to business. “You speak high Uskian?” she demanded, trying to be less casual in hopes that he would drop the expression.

“You mean what the others speak?”

“Yes, the big Usks. The important Usks.”

“Sure do! They don’t like the common language very much, to tell you the truth. I had to learn it pretty quickly, but it took me years to get some of the syllables right.”

“Years.” She felt something sink inside of her, but quickly brushed the feeling away. “We need you translate high Uskian. You do that?”

His eye twitched. “O-of course, ma’am! I’d love to,” he said, his eyes becoming glassy. He raised a hand to scratch at the bandages covering what Danaraz now knew to be an empty socket.

“Good. You come with us.” She stood him up and steered him towards the guard, who handcuffed him and led him through the force field. He seemed harmless enough, but there was something very unsettling about him, and handcuffs were a reassuring precaution.

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A/N: Oh jeeze it's been a while, hasn't it? I've already deleted most of my stories off this site! This is the first chapter of my NaNoWriMo novel for 2008. Let's hope I can keep it up all November. Haha. There's probably a bunch of grammar and continuity mistakes, but they'll get edited out once I go through it again. I'm just putting this up here to show I still write every once in a while. :P

-Mad