Chapter One #2
When the Axis won, they outlawed the coats and even the use of the color red, restricting it from Earth’s use, along with their Alliance allies, reclaiming the color red for themselves.
That’s the level of petty they could be.
That was why the Imperial guards had adopted that shade of red for their uniforms, I’d heard.
The unfortunate former Alliance soldiers had to dye their old coats black if they wanted to keep them—because they were mostly kept too poor and downtrodden by the oppressors to buy new coats.
I’d had found this one in the very back of Luc’s closet, and it was pretty old and shabby—still the original color, though faded now.
It was all I’d ever need, if stayed on Moravia.
And I didn’t care what the Tygerians thought about it and the red color.
As Luc would say, in their face. (I wasn’t totally sure what that meant, but again I kind of liked the sound of it)
Anyway, I was glad I’d borrowed it, because it was winter here on Moravia now and damn cold, so I needed to cover up a little.
On Laltana, we went around half naked most of the time out of sheer necessity—since we had no tilt to our axis on Laltana, the temperatures were unchanging though to me it seemed every day was hotter than the one before.
As a result, nobody cared much about nudity.
Larz had already told me that I’d probably have to change the way I dressed on most other planets.
Especially if I ever spent time on Tygeria or if I was around any Tygerians.
I figured I’d just tell them to mind their own damn business.
But I wondered why they were such prudes about their bodies?
They were just bodies and everybody had the same parts mostly.
I asked Larz to explain, but his face just got red, and he said he’d tell me later, when I was older.
I think he still thought of me as that dumb little nine-year-old kid he’d first met.
Anyway, Vannos sent me some trousers and a few shirts to wear that his eldest son, Bryos, had outgrown.
Even though some of these Moravian princes had been born without the doctors’ interference in their DNA, they had a huge father on both sides, so they were much larger than I was now.
Bryos’s old things were of fine quality and fit me well enough, and I had the coat to wear over them.
Like I said, Herkon soldiers wore very little as a rule, with their arms, legs and torsos bare to the elements, leaving us completely bare in the back with only a strip of cloth that went up and tied around the waist. It was all colored a bright red, which was King Janos’s color.
Once we arrived, I put on Bryos’s clothes, consisting of a pair of what Vannos called “tights” and a warm shirt that was a bit too small and only came down to my waist. It was still warm though, so I left it and wore the coat over it.
Still feeling restless, and wanting to explore, I went downstairs and out the front door.
I wanted to get a closer look at that huge chasm in front of the palace.
Right away, I saw Larz standing on the front steps, looking out over the mountains too.
He turned as he saw me and motioned me to come over and stand beside him.
“Am I interrupting?” I asked him.
He turned to smile at me. “Of course, not. I was just admiring the view and thinking about when I last spent time here on Moravia. It wasn’t long before I left to go for my training.
My omak and my younger brother spent a whole summer here with Vannos, and he taught me and my brother Nicarr to ride arrizes.
It was a good memory, and I thought about it a lot after I first got taken. ”
He meant kidnapped, and I stepped closer to put a hand on his shoulder.
He’d been just a kid on his way to a training camp when the Farlians had attacked their ship.
The slavers had killed all the adults and taken the young boys for sex trafficking.
I’d heard a little about how scared and traumatized he’d been, and about how some of those boys—all of whom were his good friends—mostly had never been found, not even their bodies, though Larz had dedicated a lot of time and effort into looking for all of them and bringing as many as he could find back home.
Since he’d been the Governor of Laltana, he’d found more than twenty bodies and had them all taken back home to Tygeria.
He found a few of the boys still alive. Some—a very few—were still able to be reunited with their parents. Larz had been one of the lucky ones, to have landed on Laltana and been treated fairly well. He hadn’t been abused, but almost none of the others had been as lucky.
“Are you thinking of going riding later on?” I asked, mostly to change the subject, which I thought he still brooded about a little too often to be good for him.
“Maybe I will. Would you like to go with me?”
“I’d love it.”
Larz turned to smile down at me. “I love how fearless you’ve always been.” He suddenly hugged me to him so hard that he pulled me up off my feet. He hadn’t done that in a long time, and I laughed as he swung me around, like he used to do when I’d first come to Herkos.
“I’m starving. Let’s go in and find something to eat. Janos will be coming down in a minute, and I want to be on hand to meet him. He’s nervous about being here, though he’d die before he’d admit it.”
He slung his arm around my neck then like he always did and kissed my cheek, and we went inside to find some food.
****
Colonel Kirstos Vargarra of the Imperial Guards
We had arrived late in the evening, almost two full days ahead of schedule and began orbiting the planet of Moravia.
We had remained cloaked, however, as Prince Mikos wanted to keep his presence a secret just yet from the residents of Moravia.
His fathers were on the way from a different location, and they’d be arriving soon as well.
The old technology on the planet would be unable to detect us in any way, which would allow us to eavesdrop on their transmissions and communications if we wanted to, as well as giving us the advantage of surprise if we needed it.