Life Lessons

The drop point was meant to be a mystery, which only fueled Corvan’s rabid curiosity.  He kept asking for hints but his parents were tight-lipped about it.  It was a training exercise for himself and his siblings, and that meant that it was supposed to be a surprise.  Still, it didn’t stop him from prying.  

“It’s a desert, isn’t it?” he asked, squirming as he looked up at his dad.

Garik Sharn smirked, ruffling the boy’s buzzed hair roughly as he leaned over from the pilot’s seat. 

“You’ll have to wait and see, Cor’ika.  Be patient.”

It was just him, Dad, and Corvan’s younger brother and older sister on the ship.  Mom and the other two siblings had been appointed an assignment by Vizsla himself!  It made sense why they weren’t with them seeing that they had more important things to do.  Corvan just hoped they could talk about it this time when they came back.

The ship was still hurtling through hyperspace, but the chrono countdown was indicating that they would be at their destination shortly.  Dad got up from the seat to wave the kids over, pulling out three strips of black cloth from one of his belt pouches.

“I need to make sure that you all go in blind,” he said, lowering to a knee as the three crowded around him. “It’s imperative that you don’t know where you are until the last minute.”

The three children nodded their heads, eyes on him and bright with curiosity.  He bandaged the head of the youngest first, nine-year-old Lornne.  The dark-skinned human boy squirmed slightly as the bandage covered his eyes but he didn’t argue.  Next was Yallrae.  She was a year older than Corvan at fifteen but just as feisty.  The pink tendrils on the mikkian’s head twitched ever so slightly when the bandage came on.

“How long do we have to wear these?” she asked as Dad moved onto Corvan.  

Corvan caught his dad smirk before he was unable to see anything else.

“Not very long, Yallrae.  Only until you’re on the planet.  I set all your chronos to count down so that you’ll all remove the wraps at the same time.  Then it’s up to you.  Now put your buy’cese on, the lot of you.”

The three did as they were instructed, pulling their helmets over their heads to help keep them from being tempted to take the wraps off.

The exercise had been explained to them a few days ago: they were to be dropped onto a small moon and were expected to survive for a week before they were picked up.  They needed to make it to the location that was set in their holo maps that had been given to them where Dad would be waiting to pick them up.  It was easy enough...save for the addition of another clan that was doing the same thing on the same moon.  Dad had warned them that these other kids were ruthless.  The Sharn kids needed to be careful not to run into them unless they wanted a fight.  So they had to be stealthy and quick about getting to the rendezvous point.

It was common knowledge how much infighting there was within Death Watch, which meant that clans often pitted their families members against each other to claw their way up the ranks.  Having to go up against another set of kids was just an added obstacle that they needed to overcome.  Corvan had high hopes for himself and his siblings.  The three of them were very fast and good at hiding.

He felt the ship jolt beneath the soles of his boots as they jumped out of hyperspace and began to make their descent upon the moon.  The hair on the back of his neck prickled in anticipation.  They hit atmosphere from the sound of the shields and were dropping rapidly.  The ship’s repulsors kicked in sooner than Corvan expected, whining as they blew against the ground before the landing struts settled and the ship lurched, causing all three children to stumble against each other.  The hold door opened and their dad took Yallrae by the hand to lead her and the rest of them down the ramp.  Corvan immediately knew that his assumptions had been wrong when he felt the coldness seeping in past his flight suit.

His boots crunched on what he assumed was snow before Dad drew them all to a halt.

“K’oyacyi,” the man said, then turned and left for the ship.  

The ramp closed and all three of the kids braced against the thrust of icy snow that blew their way.  It wasn’t until the hum of the ship had died away that the chronos beeped for them to remove their buy’cese and the bandages around their eyes.  As soon as Corvan took his helmet off he was very aware of the chill that bit at his face.  He blinked, squinting his eyes at his surroundings.  It was all very white and stark save for some dark grey and chalky mountains on the horizon.  If he looked up above, he could just see the twin glow of the drives of the ship rapidly distancing itself from the moon.

Corvan breathed out so that his breath could be seen on the air.  He caught Lornne looking up at him and mimicking him with a grin, creating his own miniature cloud.  Yallrae had her mouth formed into a line as she looked over the landscape with calculating violet eyes.  Corvan tried to tap the holoemitter embedded in his armor but nothing popped up.  Lornne did the same with similar results.  Yallrae tapped her kom’rk and the map sprang to life.  Corvan found himself squirming at the glowing blue map.  Dad had said all three of them were supposed to have it.  Either he had been mistaken or this was another test to see if they could follow the leader.

“We should find shelter for now,” Yallrae said breezily. “We won’t be able to get very far today.  There’s only three hours of light left and the meetup point is two days away on foot--Cor!”

Corvan had been bending down to scoop up some of the snow into a ball, quietly patting it and forming it and intending on chucking it directly at the back of his sister’s head.  The glare she shot him made him drop it back to the ground and straighten up.  She whirled on him with a stony expression that made him think of Mom.

“Pay attention!” she growled, snapping her gloved fingers in front of him. “Or you’ll find yourself dead, got that?  If you twist an ankle or get yourself hurt I’m not stopping for you.  You’re own your own, di’kut.”

“You’re not Mom,” he shot back. “Stop acting like it.  You’re not good at it.”

Corvan made a face that Yallrae chose not to verbally respond to as she huffed and looked away, placing her buy’ce back over her tendrils and covering her face.  Lornne stuck his fingers in the corners of his mouth to waggle his tongue at the back of Yallrae’s head before he put his helmet on too.  Corvan followed suit.

They only had what they had brought with them on them, which meant that if they wanted to eat, they needed to ration the packs of nutrient bars in their belts or hunt whatever it was that was native to the moon.  The animals must have been hiding because Corvan didn’t see anything in the sky or scuttling across the landscape as far as the eye could see.  It would have been easier to shoot anything they came across, but Dad made it a point that they were to only bring knives and vibroblades with them.  Blasters, he said, were to be used later for more refined kills.  They didn’t need to be wasting packs on animals.

Yallrae started out towards the mountains on the horizon line, the map projected over her forearm.  Corvan patted Lornne on the head as the two dropped in line behind her, Lornne reaching out to hold onto Corvan’s fingers as he stumbled around in the snow.