Excerpt

The Halden Army

Alternative version

Manderian year 2456

Draken entered the training grounds at the Command Training Centre on the Tarula outpost with a heavy heart. The final exam to become an officer in the Halden army loomed over the cadets, although no one knew when it would take place. But instead of being focused, he had all kinds of distractions. By night, his recurring nightmare with its inescapable flames plagued his sleep and, by day, the sight of Zamal tormented his loins.

His mind told him only the exam mattered, but his body thought otherwise, craving for her. While at sixteen most of his companions, including her, had reached their sexual maturity, he still hadn't. Not until now. Any other time it wouldn't matter—cadets, and students all over the Manderian Halden, were mating with each other when the time came. But, right now, his sudden desire for her meant trouble. He had no time for growing up and giving in to his instincts. However, asking for a hormonal suppressant would only get him reprimanded. Sexual initiation was meant to be part of their training. It just came at the wrong time for him.

Meal break arrived in a blur—between sparring sessions, digging fences.

Draken took his place at the long table in the mess hall and blended his voice with those of all the Halden Military Academy's cadets. 'I, Draken Kosset, citizen of the Manderian Halden, do hereby take the oath of allegiance and solemnly vow to be a brave, disciplined, and vigilant fighter. To guard strictly all military and Halden secrets, to obey without question all army regulations and orders of my superiors.

'I pledge to study the duties of a soldier conscientiously and to safeguard the Halden.

'I fully swear to protect the Halden obediently, skilfully, and honourably, without sparing my blood and my very life to achieve complete victory over the enemy. And, if through evil intent I break this solemn oath, then let the stern punishment of Manderian law fall upon me.' Hundreds of voices spoke as one, stirring his spirit every time Draken repeated the ritual, thrice a day before his meals, every day for the last thirteen years.

At the end of the litany, as they all sat down in unison, silence fell in the mess hall, broken only by the sound of cutlery on their plates.

One by one, students whispered to each other until all the voices joined the buzz.

Zamal sat in front of him, her golden facial scales gleamed with captivating shades under the artificial lights. Her auburn hair was plaited into a complicated twist and gave an attractive highlight to her pronounced eyeridges. The tight black uniform displayed the slick movement of her muscles.

Draken's pulse quickened.

'Draken?' Derrin nudged his elbow.

Derrin and Zamal were the closest things he had to friends, but in the last two days, they both were getting under his scales. And now the turmoil inside his body disturbed him.

Distracted by her sultry beauty, he spun around with a snarl. 'What?'

Zamal groaned. 'You weren't paying attention.'

He turned his focus to the plate and grunted. 'I'm eating.'

'I know when the final test will take place,' Derrin said.

Draken laughed, but his eyes showed no sign of amusement. 'So, when is it, according to your source?' he snapped, trying to get away from his worries and shut Derrin up.

'Whoa, now he wants to know.' His friend pursed his lips. 'In six days, and it's gonna be tough.'

Draken leered at Zamal for a millisecond, then lowered his eyes to his plate. 'We already knew it would be tough.' The main course—a bathai stew with ammok sauce—tasted stale, but Draken was used to that. After all, field rations didn't taste any better.

Draken finished the stew and attacked the dessert, thankful for the same bad flavour because it gave him something other than Zamal to think about. He kept his eyes on the plate. Perhaps, if he ignored her, the lust exploding down his loins would go away.

'The Black Squad will examine us. I know that for sure,' Derrin said.

Draken wanted to leave the rest of his meal, but he couldn't. As a cadet, they would punish him; leaving uneaten food led to smaller and weaker bodies. Not to mention, it was rude in civilian culture where there was never enough food.

He suppressed an urge to vomit and said, 'I wouldn't expect any less.'

Derrin stood and picked up his tray. 'I'll be training at the gym until curfew.'

'We'll meet you there as soon as we're done here,' Zamal replied.

A quick glance at her plate revealed it was empty. Why wasn't she leaving with Derrin?

Draken's groin quivered. His mind imagined their bodies intertwined, covered with the blood of their lust.

As the other students left to complete their daily tasks, all he could think of was Zamal's body.

A slick movement distracted him from his lustful thinking as her left hand clutched his right one, boosting his blood pressure. He glued his eyes to the well-hidden cleavage, his heart exploding inside his ribcage.

A pocket knife appeared in her hand out of nowhere. The swift movement woke Draken from the spell.

He yanked his hand free just in time to avoid the blade cutting through it from side to side. Tiny drops of blood fell on the table from the minor cut on his thumb.

Glaring, he gave her an aggressive nod as a sign of acceptance of her sexual challenge, a promise of pleasure and pain.

An erotic wave of lust wrapped around his body, an anticipation of the fight to come. He clenched his jaw to resist the urge to throw the table aside and wrestle with her here and now. That wouldn't be appropriate, but resisting the temptation was hard. Come to think of it, there wasn't any part of his body that didn't feel sturdaniumhard.

He straightened his tense shoulders and tidied their empty trays in a hurry, then followed her down the corridor to the training barracks, which included holorooms with thousands of different settings for the cadets' training. They also had the benefit of being private and perfect to get through their primal mating rituals and become of age.

Her hips swayed left and right, right and left, in a rhythmic, supple movement that made him want to either tear her head off or pound her. Or both.

When they entered an available holoroom, Zamal's eyes met his. 'The Witary Wastelands,' she commanded. A hot desert with flat, black sand as far as the eye could see replaced the holonet.

Zamal's wild beauty stood out even more with her hands on her gorgeous hips against the flat, barren land.

Draken tilted his head to one side and leered at the clean lines of her body. It screamed strength, and it made the blood burn in his veins.

He dropped into a fighting stance, arms gathered close to his chest, fists clenched, while she circled him with careful steps. Draken didn't move but paid careful attention to the soft sound of her boots on the sand while she moved out of his peripheral vision. When she appeared again, the gap between them had shortened.

She lunged for his collar.

He spun, sweeping her leg out, expecting to see her drop to the sand.

She surprised him by diving. He hit nothing but air.

They grinned at each other.

'Nice move.'

A flurry of punches rained at his head. Draken caged his arms to protect it. But Zamal moved her attention to his torso, landing several blows to his ribcage. With a swift move, he grabbed her head and lifted his knee, striking her face. A solid crunch confirmed his hit had connected with flesh and bone. Zamal grunted and stepped back. She wiped her right eyeridge with her sleeve and cracked her knuckles before taking a combat crouch again.

Somewhere in their foreplay, her collar had been torn. Draken admired her cleavage showing the top curve of one suggestive scaly breast. Soon this ritual would be over, he would prove his dominance, and she would gleefully submit.

She spat to one side and took a long, slow gaze at him. 'If you think I'm just going to lie down and spread my legs for you, think again.' But the light in her fiery forest-green eyes and her dilated pupils transformed her words' meaning into an invitation. She wanted him as much as he wanted her.

'Nice to know you're considering it.' He cracked a grin.

A quick intake of her breath suggested another wave of punches. He dived first; she stumbled and lost her balance, moved behind her in a forced chokehold. Then he kicked the back of her knees, and pushed her down. 'Surrender. You're mine.'

She wiggled in a feeble pretence of resistance, her breath went in and out in gasps. 'Is that … all you have, Draken Kosset?'

He grinned, kept his firm grip on her neck, and kneeled, leaning over her to whisper in her ear. 'I could kill you with my bare hands.'

Her wiggle subsided. He let go of her throat to grab her chin and turn her head to him. Her dilated pupils gazed at him, twinkling with desire.

'You talk too much,' she said as confirmation of her intentions, and the buckle of her uniform fell on the floor with a thud.

+++

As Draken lay alone in his bed, his mind lingered on Zamal's golden scaly limbs entwined with his red-and-orange-hued ones. His heart palpitated, his muscles sore from his most recent encounter with her.

The next six days passed by in a blur between the daily routine: meals, theoretical studies and classes covering historical battles, successful defences, stellar cartography, weaponry, exobiology, exopsychology, and strategy, alternated with days in the field digging fences, defending and attacking structures in different setups.

The nights, though! His nocturnal encounters with the intoxicating Zamal, became an entirely different kind of blur.

Finally, he closed his eyes. A fussy slumber captured his mind and deprived him of the pleasure of daydreaming about her.

In his sleep, he happily sat with his family in a hover-car, dashing through the night. But screams soon replaced laughter, and the world tumbled upside-down. Fire beat at his body with hot red fingers. Pain and the weight of the world kept his body grounded, unable to get away from the fire. A shrill scream of fear echoed in the night, ripping him away from his recurring nightmare.

Breathless, he covered his mouth with his hand, fearing others may hear him. The light of Tarula's moons shone through the open window and added an eerie atmosphere to his dormitory. His eyes flicked back and forth, but the only noise in the dormitory was the chorus of cadets breathing in their sleep. The scream must have been inside his head.

Still shaking, he tidied the sheets and headed to the common refresher. The wristband marked 0300 when he finished with his personal hygiene and left the barracks. He had slept one hour and had still three to recover before everyone would be about.

With his heart still pounding in his chest, he crossed a quadrangle and stopped to drink from the communal water fountain, admiring the heavens. No moonlight obscured the night sky now. Both Tarula's moons must have set, and he gave his eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness.

Sunneth—Mander Prime's star—glowed at a distance of hundreds of light-years. While Narhatat—the scout constellation used by their long-gone ancestors to find true south—shone brightest. Narhatat system and its green habitable planets, Agnars I, II, and III, were part of the Halden, too.

Stargazing calmed Draken's heart rate. He had been careful never to talk to anyone about his pyrophobia. Not even his father. Still, his words echoed in Draken's mind like an old-fashioned time bomb. A coward is not the one who is afraid. It's what we do about fear that makes the difference. Was he a coward for never acting to tame it?

This was not the time for such doubts, though. The final test got closer and closer, and, if the Black Squad were in charge of it, he may be in trouble. They said the Secret Service knew everything about everyone. But Draken didn't believe it. He would pass the test and become a prestigious commanding officer of the Halden army.

His wrist comms vibrated, alerting him to an incoming recorded message. He sat down on a bench and checked the sender's name: Rotima, his fiancée. She was older than him. A stunning brown-scaled specimen of Manderian female promised to him when he was just three and she was five. Her round figure with generous breasts and sides guaranteed fertility, and Draken looked forward to having a large family with her. But aside from that common desire in the Manderian population, he didn't see her as an excellent partner. There was something about her that didn't feel right. Zamal instead … But he couldn't call off the wedding. That part of his life was already written.

My dearest husband to be,

You are in my thoughts continuously. I know your test is chiming and I have faith in your success.

I can't imagine another Manderian more suited than you for leadership and for me.

Ever yours.

Draken stared at the screen for a time, lost in thoughts about his future with this woman he cared nothing about.

A shadow approached from his left.

'You never lose the habit of sleeping for a couple of hours per night,' Zamal said.

He turned and got a glimpse of her green eyes and her dilated pupils. 'Your stealth technique is improving, but I saw your shadow out of the corner of my eye.'

She squared her shoulders and shrugged. The movement lifted her breasts. Having her so close made it difficult to focus on coherent thoughts.

Draken straightened his uniform, resolved to resist the temptation this time. 'In battle, there will be little time to sleep. What are you doing out so early?'

Zamal bit her lower lip and broke eye contact. 'I'm nervous. Derrin said the test is today.'

What did Derrin know? He was a student like them.

Draken shrugged it off, but deep down … No, I'm a true Manderian. We fear nothing. He said to himself, knowing it was a lie. But a lie everyone believed in.

A coward is not the one who is afraid. It's what we do about fear that makes the difference.

'I need a distraction.' She challenged him with a lascivious gaze.

Draken licked his lips, anticipating a chance to have her. But not this time. That would be his special reward. 'Another time.'

Zamal gritted her teeth and growled. She didn't appreciate being denied what she craved, but he enjoyed her reaction and the probability of the joining they would have after the exam.

+++

Draken and his forty-nine classmates sat in a classroom after leaving the mess hall. By the electricity in the air, he wasn't the only one dreading this moment. No one would admit their fear, and Draken despised himself for being so weak, but as his father always told him, a coward is not the one who is afraid. It's what we do about fear that makes the difference. Was he a coward? He had never faced his worst fear, so how could he be so sure?

He gritted his teeth, shooing away that idea with annoyance.

The instructor entered the classroom. Draken stood with the other cadets. In unison, they screamed, 'For the Halden,' and straightened their left arms above their heads, then sat down.

The instructor paced before them in silence, which set Draken's nerves on edge with anticipation.

'Collecting information is an art that follows scientific rules,' he said, pausing his stride and taking his time to roam his gaze across the room before moving on. 'Today, you'll learn what that means. Before you can become a collector yourselves, you must understand what it feels like to be broken.'

Despite the threat, a glimmer of excitement shook his body. One more test. Once I pass, my candidacy as an officer is assured.

Since his military training had begun when he was three years old, Draken had never failed his missions and tests. Nothing would stop him from getting the prestige and honour of command. He was born to lead. Even Rotima understood that.

'You all understand the rules of behaviour during questioning,' the instructor continued, pacing again to one side of the room to fix a student with a stern look.

'Draken? Are you afraid?' Zamal whispered to him.

He stiffened. Admitting his fear? No, never. 'Of course not,' he whispered, his fists clenched.

'They will weaken you physically and attack you psychologically. The test will last as long as the collectors see fit. It's like a game of polika to them,' the instructor said. 'I'm interested in your reactions because the result of this test will make you a superb leader or a dead recruit. Don't fail me!'

A superb leader or a dead recruit. Draken didn't intend to die. Failure wasn't part of his plan.

A team of five clad in black, wearing black balaclavas and dark goggles over their eyes, entered the room and ordered them out. One led them to a basement. The door closed behind the last student to enter.

No one spoke. They barely breathed.

A group of students, with Zamal and Derrin among them, sat down. It appalled Draken. How could they show so much slack? During their last exam, no less. He stood there, keeping his senses on high alert, expecting anything.

When a deafening sound trumpeted, mauling Draken's ears, he plugged them with his hands, but that didn't stop the piercing sound from hurting his eardrums. Then he smelled it, the sweet scent of a korilis flower. The psychotropic substance extracted from the pistil was also a powerful sleeping drug.

Before Draken knew it, he lost consciousness.

He woke as something solid connected with his stomach. He opened his eyes a bleary crack. A steel-toed boot moved, ready to strike again, but Draken grabbed it and sent its black-clad owner to the floor.

He jumped to his feet, eyes darting back and forth to take in his new surroundings: a grey room much smaller than the one he was in before. No furniture or windows gave away where they were. Or what time of day it was. Just nine lights on the ceiling and a door to the left.

The curves on the body lying down betrayed her gender. Of course they choose a woman to break me the easy way. But it's not gonna happen.

A noise behind his back distracted him from his thoughts. He spun around.

Three broad-shouldered, muscular figures surrounded him in a semi-circle, holding wooden clubs.

Three men and a woman.

Draken moved away from the woman, monitoring the other three who followed him.

All three attacked in unison. A club struck a blow to his right knee, another sank into his stomach, sending him down. He doubled over, breathless. The drug had slowed his reflexes more than he thought when he decked the woman.

Two men grabbed him and forced him onto his back. The steel-toed boot crunched into his nose. Blood dripped down his face.

Draken couldn't deny the pain, but he kept his lips sealed and tried to shake the fog out of his head. Something whacked his right temple and knocked him out again.

When Draken came around, he lay naked on the floor, hands bound in front of him with a tight cutting rope and a blindfold over his head.

A cold liquid wet his face, and he instinctively licked it.

Blood.

Was it his own? He couldn't tell. Dizziness messed with his head. Was he still on drugs, or had they beat him that badly?

While he tried to get a grip on himself, the temperature of the room dropped.

Draken shivered, but at least the reeling sensation in his head decreased.

Silence surrounded him, broken only by breathing, but if he held his, he could detect four other distinct breathing patterns in the room. The same people he had met before or perhaps others. It didn't matter. His task now was to withstand the pain, the humiliations, the cold, the insults, the beating, and everything they could throw at him.

The scent of one of them unmistakably identified it as a female.

'Your lack of stamina is disappointing. Rotima deserves more,' the woman said.

She wanted to get under his scales, but insulting his manhood now was the worst mistake she could make. Zamal lusted after him, and Rotima would be his wife after graduation. No doubt he wouldn't disappoint his bride.

Two hands grabbed him by the armpits and dragged him to a wall.

Someone spat on his blindfold. 'Stand and stretch your arms above your head,' a man's voice yelled the words.

Draken complied but kept his lips sealed. No matter the pain they put him through, he didn't intend to make a sound.

'Your mate … what was her name? Ah yes, Zamal Dortal, she confessed you didn't impress her when she tried me,' the same man said.

Draken clenched his jaw but didn't reply. Zamal's sexual maturation had happened months before. Of course she had mated with others before him. But after? Either way, it didn't matter. Her physical reactions to him hadn't been faked. She craved him as much as he did her.

After what seemed a lifetime spent standing in the cold in the same position, his limbs hurt. Every time he tried to move to ease the pain, they hit him with a club and yelled at him to hold his position. Some ribs broke. Breathing was agony, but holding his breath didn't help either.

The pummelling went on until he lost consciousness.

'Isn't it cold in here, soldier?' the woman asked when he woke up again from the torpor of the beating.

He sat leaning against the wall. His spread legs stretched ahead, his hands on his lap, still tied with the same cutting rope.

'I'm definitely cold. Why don't we light up a fire?' she insisted, chuckling.

Draken stiffened. Of course, they wanted to play with his sensitivity to cold, but did they know about his fear of fire?

The men laughed.

With a blindfold, Draken couldn't see the light, but the heat increased and the crackling noise deafened him.

His body shook, and he fell, drowning in memory, lost in a whirl of colours. An echo of laughter hung in the air, jokes told, company enjoyed. He sat in a hover with his father, his three-year-old brother, his aunt, and his uncle. Excitement for his brother's acceptance into military school filled the air.

Outside, the daylight faded as they travelled through a dark road lit only by the headlights of the hover-car.

The roar of the engine silenced the laughter as a powerful sensation at Draken's stomach took away his breath. G-force gripped him, but sturdy adult hands wrapped around him and his brother.

Draken squeezed his eyes shut. Gravity shifted and changed, accompanied by the appalling screaming of his brother. Sickening crunches reached his ears as the hover rolled several times. The bumps tore him from the protective grasp. He flew through the air to strike something hard.

When he came around, thick smoke filled the shattered cabin, making him cough. The once familiar shapes looked like black smudges.

Something wet and heavy pressed against his legs. The comforting lights of the hover no longer worked, and the darkness swallowed the sense of merriment.

A noise to the left attracted his attention, but he couldn't move. However, he spotted the flames' reflection in a piece of metal. The heat increased as the light pierced the darkness. The black smears turned red, and the noxious smell of burning blood assaulted his nostrils. He tried to move, but he couldn't untangle himself from whatever weighed down his legs. Smouldering flames licked at them.

Just when he thought he was doomed, powerful hands reached through the shattered window for him. They pulled him into the blessed cool air of the night.

Two bodies lay inside the hover. Draken recognised his aunt. Her head turned at an impossible angle.

He screamed and screamed again until a bat smashed into his side.

'Stop screaming, krola face,' a man's voice barked into his ears.

Darkness wrapped him around. Again, he dreamt about the night he lost most of his family in that hover accident.

'Are you afraid of fire, krola face?' the woman asked, waking him up again.

He screamed until something hard hit his head, sending him into oblivion again.

He woke up to the foul odour of puke, blood, perspiration, and excrement. Still blindfolded, he couldn't see but perceived the heat of the torch swinging in front of him. Closer, and closer, and closer. And he screamed. Again, and again, and again …

+++

After being dismissed from the hospital, Draken didn't return to his barracks but went straight to the instructor's office as ordered. The implications of the summons weren't lost on him. Had he failed the test? Would he get his much-craved promotion and become an officer? I deserve it. Everyone expected it, but most of all he did. However, he had lost his self-control during the exam, screaming like a weak, alien child. Fire had beaten him.

He breathed in and out, focused on the stabbing pains in the left knee and chest that came with moving and respiration. But he forced himself to walk straight down the corridor's monotonous broken doors left and right and a swarm of low-ranking military personnel. The ghost of dismissal from command duty haunted him. His boots beat the time towards an inexorable doom.

Draken entered the antechamber and waited for the instructor's secretary to allow him in. The sparsely furnished room of the instructor contained a desk and two chairs, one on either side of the desk. The instructor sat behind it.

Draken stood at attention and saluted. A black bag with his name on it lay at the feet of the other chair. A simple message about the results of the exam.

Fire beat me. He lost the battle. He would never be an officer, dismissed from the school, but he could still be a soldier.

'As you were,' the instructor said and waved his hand at the other chair.

Draken stood at ease and slowly lowered himself into the chair, his jaw clenched to hide a grimace of pain.

'The glory of the Halden is in our hands. We instructors have a heavy task. To shape the cadets into leaders,' the man said. They stared at each other across the desk. 'But leaders must be fearless, unbreakable, and you're none of that, Cadet Kosset.'

A suffocating tightness wrapped around his chest. It caused a pain more intense than the one he experienced every time he breathed.

'As you may imagine, you didn't pass the final exam. For this reason, you are dismissed from active duty.'

Dismissed from active duty. The words played over and over inside his head. They expelled him from the military, condemning him, his family, and Rotima to live in dishonour and poverty for the rest of their lives.

All because he feared fire.

Years and years of learning how to lead, wasted because he had never faced his fear before.

Being afraid doesn't show cowardice. It's what we do about it that makes the difference.

His father's words almost echoed the instructor's. His eyes gazed at him in silence, spacing from head to toes with a smirk of disgust.

'Here's your discharge letter,' he said, handing him a tablet.

Draken grabbed it and gazed down at the text without seeing it. 'Yes, sir.'

The instructor stood and turned his back to him, watching outside.

'I must admit I'm disappointed in you, citizen Draken Kosset.' The word citizen cut through him like the sharpest of knives. Only non-military personnel were addressed that way in the Halden.

Draken couldn't believe they dismissed him like that. 'Yes, sir.'

'Get out of my office!'

He clutched his bag to leave as if carrying the weight of the entire Halden inside it.

On the way to the primary gate, Draken stopped by the training barracks.

Unexpectedly, Zamal left the premises at the same time, meeting him in front of the communal fountain. Had she been waiting for him?

She sported a brand new brown uniform. No pins shone on the collar yet, but the clothes themselves explained she had passed the exam.

She has, but I haven't.

She eyed his bag, then gazed up at him, amazed. 'What will you do?'

'Get married as planned,' he replied, tasting bile. His career was over, his life would be a struggle from now, but he squared his shoulders and stood tall. No way he would show his emotions to anyone, especially to Zamal.

She nodded, gazing one last time at him before saying, 'Goodbye, Draken.' She turned on her heels and swayed her hips as the last remnant of everything he had lost.