Episode #1 - "Torn": Star Chasers (Volume 1) Read Free

and become only memories. His eyes fell on Phaylio as he cleared the hall with the crowd. He could see Phaylio was also relieved that the waiting and worrying were over.
         Most townsfolk moved from the hall to the pub. Ty followed. All the trimmings for a feast were in order, with Aehrone the guest of honor. Drink flowed without objection to all who would partake of it. Songs broke out and the hours faded away. Soon the new day arrived then the afternoon. Aehrone was just about to take another bite of candied ham—his favorite—when his time came. His last words were a chuckle. The laughter and songs stopped almost immediately. Many hands cradled Aehrone as he fell. Tears of lament followed, most predominately from Phaylio. As life faded from Aehrone’s eyes, Ty reached out to him with the power of his mind and Aehrone said in thought “She is your charge now.”
         Ty took Shilastar’s hand and lead her away while the others cared for Aehrone. He intended to walk her back to her house; but as he rounded the path, he turned right instead of left, heading to the edge of the village and beyond. They walked toward the hills in the distance. He held his arm around her and neither said a word. A light cloud cover obscured the view overhead, but the stars came out that night, one by one.

Chapter 2
     
     
     
     
     
    Ty ran across an open plain, making for the small settlement just beyond his line of sight over a small rise. A noise swift and sharp like gunfire caused him to stop suddenly and sink to the ground. He glared up at the Alderian starship, which had just arrived in the sky overhead. Its telltale displacement marked it as a third-generation craft and its size told him it was perhaps a first- or second-rate scout ship, small by any comparison.
         Ty rose to his knees, still staring heavenward. He knew his chances for remaining undetected if the ship’s master ran a full analysis of the planet were less then one tenth of one percent, but he gambled on the odds and against technology anyway. He remained motionless for some time, watching for the scanners to be deployed. When they weren’t, he continued on his way, only occasionally glancing upward.
         He knew Alderian tactics well enough to know if they had not deployed in the first minutes upon reaching the system, they probably would not. Twelve seasons of Rhalean combat school had taught him that much, although he had never mastered the final test and still had not earned his accreditation. He did not run now, instead he walked, moving at a slow methodical pace, which when staggered would not trigger the scout ship’s constant motion detectors.
         He ambled on, occasionally stopping to look toward the dark grey form more often than he knew he should. He mumbled a curse in his thoughts. Unfortunately, he was born under the sign of the closing and as such, he was a second, even though his father had been much to the contrary. He had been cast down, driven to rift schools and hidden away for most of his life. The academy had been a gift, a token for forgiveness and repent, but Ty had not accepted it. In the end, however, he had been forced to attend and had not done well, his second mark. His third and last grew closer by the minute.
         Ty considered himself an outcast and he liked to dwell among them. They were those who had been born without. Because he didn’t have the power of the first, they could not tell, and he was always accepted as one of their own. A smile rose to his lips as he spotted the small, time-spoiled structures of the typical Paliy village. He knew this particular settlement well, because he came here often, though he never stayed long. As a matter of fact, he never delayed long anywhere. He never knew when the others would come in search of him again. They came often as of late, seven times in the past year, but he always evaded them and made the jump to the next planet undetected. He remained one