Legacy

My First Quest

Written by

Andrew (B.) Goodwin

Edited by

Andrew (B.) Goodwin

Thought up, written, and published in the U.S. of A.

Copyright © 2009

To Emily Heather Chourm. As Shakespeare said, she is my muse, the patron of my paper, and the reason for ink.

Thank you.

Section 1

Aquinis

Chapter 1, The First Meeting

The Restless, an E.O.V. destroyer, trailed behind a Transport, named the Maryland. The Maryland was identified as a U.S. Man O' War, but compared to the Restless it was more of a tug boat than a naval vessel. The decks of both ships were deserted. In fact, if you took away the storm, no sound could be heard but the sirens. The Restless had its guns trained upon the smaller but quicker Maryland. However, even though the Maryland was faster, it was performing erratic maneuvers, which slowed its progress. And so, the chase ran on into the night.

During the night, the wind picked up. This was not unexpected, and naturally, it was not surprising that the waves began to get higher. Then it began to rain, and the waves got even higher. Soon, the storm became a typhoon. The clouds became thick and grey as the downpour increased. The sun was visible for a minute or two as it peaked over the horizon, but it was soon blotted out by the continuous downpour.

Sanya looked out the window onto the town in Aquinis (ah-KEY-nis). She looked over the capital city with bright blue eyes, brushing a wisp of dark-brown hair out of her face. Then she turned towards the sunrise, which was only marred by a small, but concentrated rainstorm far out to sea.

I love getting up this early," she thought to herself, "it's so pretty when the sun comes up. Sanya looked over at her brother's door. I would never have believed he could miss all this and not care. What's an hour or two of sleep compared to all this beauty? How can Rocky just sleep his life away like that? Sanya shrugged. Well, who can understand boys anyway? Sanya sighed and went back into her room.

Sanya turned and gathered up all of her homework. "Oh, no!" Sanya moaned. "That's the last of Revelation! That means," Sanya let out another groan, "we have to review the Neo Exodus…again!" Sanya grumbled, "If I reviewed that section once, I most likely have reviewed it an inestimable number of times!" She looked over at the Good Book on her dresser. Sanya sighed. "Sorry, Iam, (I-um)" She said, as she rolled her eyes upward. "I know I fail to be the best Christian in the world…or the best Christian in Aquinis…but…" Sanya's shoulders tensed and she clenched her fists, but then relaxed. A faint smile came to her face and she shrugged as she said, "I guess I just need a change of pace. Amen." Sanya took a deep breath, straitened her papers, and placed them in her canvas bag. She slung the bag over her shoulder. As she descended the staircase, a whisper, hardly audible echoed in the back of her mind. It said Iam has a sense of humor.

The Maryland was slowly but surely plowing through the raging sea. The ship was pitching and rocking back and forth. It was nearly lying on one side one minute and then nearly riding up on its prow the next.

Rolling around in the cargo hold was a boy in his teens. He had blue eyes, light brown hair, and a green tint to his face. As he tumbled, tennis shoes over head, he reached out on both sides to try to stop his tumble. He managed to grab a hold of one of the rope nets keeping the wooden crates from sliding around. He got his feet under him and stood up, panting heavily. After he wiped his mouth, he took a deep breath. What a way to go, he mused as a crazed grin came to his face. I was a soldier by fifteen, a veteran of the black squad by sixteen and a seasick deck hand by seventeen. Now I don't think I'll even get one of those wooden boards with Buck Goodwin across the top. He paused for a second or two, and then threw up again. Without looking, he touched a lump under his shirt. "I'm sorry I couldn't do more," Buck said out loud, "but I did try, didn't I? That has to count for something." The ship lurched, and Buck swore as his head slammed once more against the hull. "Shaz! Why don't you just kill us and get it over with!" Buck yelled, as he rubbed the growing number of eggs on his head.

The E.O.V.S. Restless did nothing but follow the Maryland, as it careened on the furious waves. The captain stood upon the deck, a spyglass in his hand, held behind his back. His first officer looked at him questioningly.

"What are your orders, captain?" he asked, his eyes shifting nervously. "Shall we load the long guns? We have enough EMP rounds to put its engines out of commission."

"No, Mr. Hajime," The captain said, trying to peer through the curtain of rain. "We don't know what kind of weapon systems they might have. They may have some anti-targeting software onboard, which would result in all our EMPs being wasted." The captain started pacing up and down the bridge. "No, we wait and follow."

And so, the Restless continued following the Maryland as the sun rose higher in the sky before them

Over in Sanya's home, the boy in the next room was sleeping soundly, with the sheets covering his head and leaving his feet exposed. Then Sanya came into the room and yelled, "Alright, Rocky, your time's up. School will commence with or without you in approximately one half hour." He remained motionless. Sanya sighed, "Fine. I'll wake you up the uncivilized way." So saying, Sanya began to shake Rocky.

Rocky was only vaguely aware that he was being shaken violently by someone.

"Wake up," that someone was saying, "It's time for us to break fast."

He let out something between a moan and a groan. All right, he said in his mind, I know that I need to get up, but do you have to do that? I hate it when you rattle me so.

Sanya only shook harder and pulled the sheets of woolly bully wool off the bed.

"Grumble, Mumble, Grumble," Rocky muttered.

Sanya grinned, "What did you say?" Rocky just pulled the sheets over his head again. Sanya frowned. "Get up already!" Rocky just rolled over. Sanya jumped and sat on him.

"OOF!" was the sound of the air being knocked out of his lungs, just before she started tickling Rocky.

"This is what happens to people who are loud-snoring and lazy bums!"

Rocky, after realizing it was just his sister, rolled on top of her. "Muff with fat," he grumbled. "Stop it, I'm up…" Alright, he said mentally, if not actually, I'm ready. Do what you will with me, I don't care. Rocky looked around. "Sanya?" he said weakly, "where did you go?"

"Gerrof off muff," she told him.

Well, I guess I'm not going back to bed, so I'd best get out of it before she calls for mom. "Fine!" he barked as he tumbled out of bed and off of Sanya. "I'm up, I'm up."

Sanya moaned as she rolled off the bed and onto Rocky. She sat up, still on top of Rocky, and massaged her back. "I wish I didn't have to wake you up every morning."

Rocky shoved Sanya off and shuffled over to the coat rack and the door as he wiped the sleepy dust from his eyes. "Don't worry," Rocky mumbled, "you'll be sleeping in as soon as you get to be my age."

"Hey, remember I'm only about nine months younger than you, Shorty."

"I can't help it if I take after Mom. Besides, I'm not supposed to have my growth spurt until I reach eighteen."

"Well, if you don't grow at all in three years, I don't think growing will be possible at that stage at all."

Rocky shrugged as he pulled on his brown-stained cotton vest. Incidentally, it was almost identical to Sanya's. "Well, if I don't, I suppose I can hold onto the bed posts and you can stretch me out when you drag me out of bed."

"Ha ha, very funny," Sanya said as she pushed him faster down the stairs. "Well, I hope I don't have to do this for much longer."

"Good morning sleepy heads," An older man said, as he turned to Rocky and Sanya. "You better hurry up. If you don't eat quickly, all the good part-time jobs will be taken for the day, perhaps even for the week." He grinned, "Perhaps you should just skip the meal and go straight to the notice board."

"Daddy!" Sanya and Rocky moaned in unison. Before them on the table was a skillet filled to the brim with scrambled eggs mixed with mushrooms and chopped scallops.

"You know very well that eggs are my favorite," Sanya huffed as she crossed her arms. Rocky shuffled to a chair at the table.

"How come your favorite things are always expensive?"

"My favorite things are not always expensive!"

"Give me one thing that you like that isn't expensive, besides the sun and the stars and all those sorts of things."

"Well… let me think for a minute."

Without waiting for Sanya to continue, Rocky asked, "Where's mom?"

"I think she left for work," their father said, "probably while you were still in bed."

"Yeah," Sanya whispered, "Lazy bum."

"What? Why are you guys picking on me, I haven't done anything."

"Exactly," Sanya said, poking Rocky's arm with a finger. "And I know what I like that doesn't cost a thing; water."

"So, water doesn't cost anything, not with a thousand cubic foot well in the middle of Lester square. It couldn't cost anything unless some idiot merchant decided to put it in jars. Then the only reason why anyone would buy it would be for the jars."

"So? If it doesn't cost anything, it isn't expensive. Still, do you know if they sell jarred water? That sounds intriguing. Perhaps I'd even get some!"

Rocky just shook his head as his father laughed and Sanya started eating again.

Minutes later, they made their way along the coast, toward the center of town, and a colossal building in the center. It had a dome roof resting upon another dome. The upper dome was ten meters above the lower, supported by columns approximately three meters in width. Situated upon columns five meters or so in length, the lower dome was about seventy- five meters in length. Because of the immense weight, an inner row as well as an outer row of columns ran around the bottom dome. In the morning light, the mother of pearl tiles were tinted cyan, while the marble columns looked as if they were made out of the purest of pearl.

"The House of Knowledge always seems to make you happy to live here, does it not?" Sanya asked Rocky, grinning from ear to ear.

"No," Rocky replied, a dour expression on his face.

"Why not?" Sanya asked, her grin disappearing.

"It just means I have to memorize some more facts I'll never use."

Sanya stopped and swatted Rocky, sending his knitted, woolen cap flying. "You are so unappreciative of the immense amount of knowledge you can put to use. Why, with all the knowledge of science, and the wisdom of the Good Book, we can solve all the problems in the world."

"I'm not being unappreciative." Rocky said in his tired tone of voice. "I like being smart…"(Sanya snorted at this part) …but I'm not going to memorize a lot of useless facts." He walked over to his hat, bent down, and scooped it off. He looked his hat over and wiped the dirt off as he said, "Face it Sanya, I'm going to be a fisherman, just like my father, and his father before him. You may become a teacher, but I'm not going to be using half of the information I have to memorize."

"Why do they always say 'like my father and his father before him'?" Sanya wondered, a dreamy look in her eye and a smile playing upon her countenance. "I mean, would it be better if we just said, 'like my father and my grandfather'? …or perhaps something like 'as my father was doing and his father, my grandfather, was doing even before his son, my father was doing what I, his son and grandson would be doing'? I suppose that might be a little long, but at least it gets the gist of what you really mean… I'm not sure, what do you think?"

Rocky smacked his forehead, let his palm drop over one eye and shook his head. "No, I don't think so. If you were to teach everyone here, they'd give up trying to learn at all…" Rocky paused and stared off into space.

"And what does that mean, Rocky…Rocky? Answer me Rocky!"

Rocky hadn't responded to her calls. He was too interested by what he saw what was directly behind Sanya. A crowd of people were gathered around by a heap of scrap metal that looked like it had once been a ship. However, rare as a metal ship was in Aquinas, that was not what had attracted so much attention. The crowd seemed to be gathered around one point of the beach a few meters south of the junk heap.

"Rocky! Look at me when I talk to you!" Sanya reached out to spin Rocky around, but stopped as soon as she saw what he saw on the sea shore. "Could that be…?" Sanya started to say.

"…Castaways." Rocky finished. "I'll try to see if I can find anyone who knows about…"

Before Rocky could finish his sentence, Sanya had nearly bowled Rocky base over apex. She started running toward the crowd, shouting, "Yay! Somebody crashed! Hello new classmates!"

"Oh…dear," Rocky groaned as he pulled himself up. "I hope she doesn't say anything stupid…well, I hope she doesn't say anything else."

Sanya elbowed her way through the crowd, stopping once when her satchel got caught between two people. "Hold on…excuse me…I'm coming…pardon me…sorry…I seem to be almost there…please be careful, that's my hair, mister!"

Sanya broke through the crowd as Rocky began to enter it. "Sanya!" Rocky shouted after her. He sighed. She's either out of hearing range, ignoring me, or both. He slowed down long enough to ask a few people, "What's happened here?"

"A ship crashed!" One man said.

"You mean beached," Another argued.

"No, I mean crashed. She rode up on a wave and crashed on the beach. Don't know what she was carrying, but she exploded in a big ball of flame!"

"No it wasn't! It was more of a ball of lighting. What is it with you and balls of fire? Are you a pyromaniac or something?"

"What if I am, what are you going to do about it?"

"Nothing, but wasn't it kind of stupid to move onto a small strip of land surrounded by water?"

Rocky moved on as the two men started arguing again.

From what he could see through the crowd, there were two survivors of the wreckage, a man and a boy. A pile of grey matter to the North cluttered the beach. Rocky instantly shuddered. He could imagine what the grey masses were.

Sanya didn't move past the small fence/tape that had been erected by a few Healers. "Hurry up!" Sanya mumbled impatiently. "I know you want to check them for pathogenic viruses, but Healers don't have to move slower than anyone and everyone else…"

The Healer next to the older survivor stood up and said, "He's alright. Any illnesses he may possess are non-contagious bacterium. However, I'd like some of you to help me take this man to the infirmary; He seems to have some bad bruises which might need to be monitored…"

As soon as the words had left the man's mouth, the crowd swarmed the captain. They started spouting questions left and right until a moderate hum arose from the mass of human bodies.

Buck couldn't help smiling from one side of his mouth. Strange, he thought to himself, as he looked from the crowd of living people next to the grey, lifeless flesh heap that had been the crew. What separates the two, I wonder. What's the difference between the two? Why did the crew have to die, while all these people just sat back and watched? Buck listened to the hum of the crowd as he sat sprawled out on the beach. Buck looked up and the man hovering above him. Who are you anyway? The man took out a wooden spike and put it in Buck's ear. What's he doing with that chopstick? Oh, I get it. He's checking me out for any foreign diseases. He's a medic I'll bet, and soon I'll have someone in my face asking me where I've been and who I am, well, I'm not going to be caught unaware.

"This man's clean of any…" he started, turning to face the crowd, "…Oh… It seems like no one's listening… Well, in any case," the medic said, turning back to Buck, "You're free to go anywhere you want now."

Oh? Buck thought, Is that it? You're letting me go that easily? No questions whosoever? That's kinda fishy, don't you think?

"Of course," the man continued, "It would be nice if you would go to the governor's house or even to the House of Knowledge to tell your story to the council of Aquinis, otherwise known as the Elders."

Aha! Now you start with the threats if I decline, right? Buck stood up and wiped the sand off of his cargo pants. "I think I'll do what I think is best. Now, where's the Captain?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, if the 'Captain's' the other man, who was shipwrecked with you, he's being taken to the infirmary. He apparently sustained more than a few bruises and perhaps even a broken bone or two in this unfortunate accident."

Yeah, you've started threatening me, but you've gotten a head start on the captain, haven't you? "What happened, did he decline too?"

"Oddly enough, yes," the medic said, "How did you know?"

"I don't know, I suppose I guessed." Buck said sarcastically. "I think I'll see him later, right now I'm leaving before some 'accident' happens to me."

"Well, in case you change your mind, the House of Knowledge is the largest building on the Island. You can't miss it. The governor's house is nearby to the House of Knowledge, and they're both made from imported stone. Just drop by either of those two buildings, and I'm sure you'd be ushered inside right away."

Yeah, I'll bet. Buck thought to himself, Now, you'll probably put a tail on me. I'd better watch out for anyone who starts following me.

As soon as Buck had made this mental note, Sanya started for him. "Hi!" she shouted as she ran over, waving wildly. Well, he's a boy, but oh, dear, he does look very solemn and serious. I wonder, will he be any fun at all, or will I have to prod him?

Buck looked around to see who had spoken. Oh, so this is the torturer slash interrogator. He eyed this new girl, looking her up and down. She doesn't look like much, but I can't afford to underestimate her. "Hey."

Sanya frowned. Hey? What kind of greeting is that? "Hay?" She asked, sincerely, "Is that how you greet each other in your country?"

Buck raised an eyebrow. Well, this is a different approach. What does that mean? Obviously, she's admitting to being from another nation, which is completely opposite from the 'we're the same as you' strategy. She must be employing another sort of strategy, but what is it?

Sanya continued, "Because…to me that phrase is somewhat confusing. Where did that phrase come from? Did it start out as a blessing like 'may the hay always be in your manger' or 'may hay be sweet for your horses'? If it was either way, I fail to see how it would the proper way to start off with an island dweller like myself. You see, we have little hay around here. True, there are a few orchards to the south on some of the larger Aquinian Islands, but that's about it.

Either that or she's a complete moron, Buck added, rolling his eyes as he considered this thought.

"So, where do you think the phrase originated?"

Damn! Buck swore I'll bet that she's trying to read me right now. That also would explain why she's so frigging happy! Crap! She's good. I can't tell what she's thinking or what kind of strategy to employ. Those Commies are sure crafty. Well, two can play at that game. I just have to try to be as happy as her. "I think it came about from Hey-low or something like that."

He's so nervous, Sanya thought, her eyebrows knitting together for a moment or two. Oh, I'm so stupid, he's just lost his friends and he's lost in a foreign land. I'm going to have to try to cheer him up. Her smile broadened. "Well, as long as you have to be here, why not come and stay at my house?"

"Well…I don't know…" Buck said as he scratched his chin. Oh, so this is the girl-next-door strategy, is it? This is going to be tough. I mean, she may not be the prettiest girl I know, and she's probably not the best these commies have to offer in the way of sex appeal… but she's nothing to spit at either… Well, I'm out of practice anyway… "I mean, wouldn't your parents object?" Now she'll try to entice me, I'll bet.

"No, I'm sure they would be happy to have you stay at our house."

Just what I thought she'd say. "I don't know…"

"Aw, come on over. Please?"

"Um…" Next she'll insist.

"I insist."

See?

"Please?" Sanya asked in a high pitched whine as she gave Buck puppy-dog eyes.

Well, why not? I suppose going with her won't hurt anything. "I guess if it's alright with your mom and dad, I could… Sure, why not?"

"Oh, thank you!" Sanya squealed, almost jumping in place. Yes! He's coming to my house! That should teach P.J.! I soon shall have a new friend, and P.J. can just…stew in his jealousy. "Alright, you see that cottage down there?" She pointed to the south-eastern edge of the island. "That's my house. I suppose I should ask my parents when I see them. Until then, how about you accompany my brother, Rocky, and myself?"

Hmm…Rocky…Rocky…must be scraping the bottom of the barrel to get a name like Rocky. Very un-original. "Sure."

"Alright," Sanya said grinning and turning around. Finally, things are turning around for me.

"Wait!"

Sanya turned around, her smile drooped. "Oh…have you…have you changed your mind?"

"No, but," Buck couldn't help chuckling, "haven't you forgotten something?"

"Forgotten what?"

"Like, for one thing, who the heck are you?"

"Oh, I'm Sanya. Did I forget that?" Sanya laughed awkwardly as she scratched the back of her head.

"Well, yeah." What kind of foreign agent is she? Perhaps I was mistaken, or I underestimated her, or… I don't know.

"And how would you like to be called?"

"Eh? What?" Buck snapped suddenly out of his musings.

"What's your name?"

"Oh yeah, my name's Buck. Buck Goodwin."