​The stone figures appeared overnight, looming over the farmland like sentinels. The farmer whose field the figures appeared in sent word to the nearest village that someone invaded his land. Word of the appearance of the stone figures spread quickly, and villagers from the surrounding countryside arrived to see the statues. 

Afraid, the elders of the villagers vowed to stay with the statures deeming them gods. Eza Clayman, an inspector with the Galactic Security Force, materialized along the edge of a field, watching the scene unfold. 

He waited. Predictably, the natives settled down for the night, and Clayman made his way to the statues of being careful not to wake anyone. It would be difficult to explain what he was doing here and harder yet to explain to the people that someone stole the statues they  now worshiped from a nearby planet. As a non-technological person, the Primary Protectorate Act prevented contact.

He inspected the stone artifacts and confirmed that they were the lost statues stolen from Allma. He contacted his ship to send a cargo carrier to begin loading the figures. As the tractor beam latched onto the last statue, an elder woke up and, seeing Clayman began to scream. His translator quickly interpreted what the native said. He had called him a god. That was unfortunate. 

 He attempted to calm the native down. But it only made him angry. He pulled his photon pistol set to stun and was about to quiet the elder when he heard a voice behind him. It was Lakeman, his green-skinned quarry. The elder fainted at the sight of the new creature who had materialized out of nowhere. Clayman pulled a small device from his belt and fired a restraining field around Lakeman.

His antennae waving wildly, Lakeman laughed. “You are good Clayman, not sure how you tracked me, but you got here before I could get back for my loot. They were too heavy for the little cruiser. Had to get a bigger ship.” 

“By now, my crew already has your ship in a tractor beam. You are not going anywhere.”

 “You got me, but you just violated the protectorate agreement. They’ve seen the statues and you. If you disappear without correcting this, you alter their timeline. You’re stuck here. You can’t leave.”

Clayman glanced at the last statute and sighed. As much as he hated it, Linkman was right. If he’d only been a little faster getting them and not awakened the elder, he’d be back on his ship with the one criminal he wanted more than any. As it was, he now stuck on this god-forsaken planet with an ugly stature only the people who built it could love.

He spoke into this com and told his crew to leave the last statue and transport Lakeman onboard. Then asked them to report his transgression to the High Command.

As Lakeman disappeared, he turned to look toward the gathered elders, now on their knees before him. Great, going to be a long wait before the First Contact team arrived and got him out of this mess. A very long wait.

​​Ray fled to his favorite coastal village to hide, but he won’t escape from me this time. He’d gotten away, but a little bird named Rita whispered in my ear and told me where I might find him.

And find him, I would. The coastal village was home to a long line of nefarious characters, and Ray was only the latest.

I head for the café that Carlos owned. While he ran a respectable cafe in the front, what went on in the back rooms was less than upstanding. I found Carlos sitting behind his favorite table in the far corner of the room. 

 I slid my revolver from its holster as I sat down across from him. He barely nodded at my arrival. “Ray and Laura ?”  

I ignored the shot of whiskey that appeared in front of me. I was an old regular, and the bartender knew my poison of choice. 

“Haven’t seen them in months.” Carlos was very good at looking innocent. He looked at my revolver now pointed at him. “You plan on using that?”

“Only if you’re stupid.”

Carlos grinned from ear to ear. “Then I shall attempt not to be stupid.” 

“Rita.” I prompted.

“Haven’t seen her in ages either.”

I knew better but didn’t question him. “What was your cut of the bank job?”

His eyes widened as he tried to look surprised. “My cut?”

“We both know very little goes on around here, without you knowing about it or having a cut of it.” I took a drink of whiskey.

“That was an unfortunate incident, which I had nothing to do with.” 

“Ray killed a guard and a bystander, and Laura was seen there too.”   

Carlos sipped his whisky. “So was another man, I hear.”

“Red is dead.”  I let it lay there as I also sipped my whiskey.

His eyebrows raised. “He tried to outdraw a leveled gun?”

“One too many times.” We both knew of Red’s obsession with his draw and speed. He was fast and pretty good, but it was known not to try to draw on a leveled gun. Red had managed to do it a couple of times, but he’d been lucky, and the other guy missed or misfired. “He’d thought he could do it against a shotgun.” 

 “Ray?” I reminded Carlos.

Carlos leaned back in his chair and shrugged. A movement from the curtain in the door behind him caught my attention.

“You looking for me?”  Ray appeared out of the back room, and my hand went to the revolver on the table. Ray grinned as Laura came out to stand next to him.

“Yeah, I’m looking for both of you.”

“Figured Rita would let you know where we came to hide.”

“That she did. Did you think you could escape me?”

“Nah, wasn’t trying to escape you. Just trying to hide from the honest lawmen.”

“What makes you think I’m not honest?”

Ray laughed. “Because you’re the one who shot the guard, not me.”

I moved my hand back from my revolver. “That was me, wasn’t it?”

Ray nodded and sat across from me. “You want your cut?”

“Why, yes, I do.”

​They were strangers, drawn together on the shore by a force they didn’t understand. Jason Rogers searched the faces of the dozen or so other people with him but knew none of them, and they didn’t recognize each other. A woman standing next to him asked him where they were. He didn’t have a clue. All he knew was that the early morning sun broke on the horizon as they stood in knee-deep waves on a beach. 

A beach that wasn’t acting like any beach he’d ever visited. The sand was rolling under their feet as if it were alive. A man a few feet from him yelped as he stumbled on the moving stand. Panic set in, and the entire group rushed out of the surf only to find the sand, warm even in the weak dawn light, was moving as well.

“Hurry.” A woman waved frantically to them. “There’s a solid ground up here. Looks like a parking lot or something.” 

Jason hurried to join them, noticing the seagrass on the dune looked blue, not green as it should. What the hell, where were they? 

Once on what looked and felt like asphalt but was squishing, the group began talking. Jason was shocked, they were from various places in the United States, and the last thing any of them remembered was going to bed. No one remembered how they got to the beach. 

A man named Arlo from Brooklyn pointed to the sky, “Oh my god, there’s another sun coming up.” 

Jason’s heart began to race. He was supposed to be in class this morning, not here. His parents would be frantic. He searched the area around them, but there was nothing but flat land and strange vegetation. There was nowhere to go for help.

The strangers stood huddled together, frightened, for about twenty minutes, watching the twin suns rise in the sky. Jason was about to look for help when the ground beneath them began to vibrate. They ran in unison back onto the beach as a whining sound of a revved engine blasted their ears.

A large silver object, Jason thought the metal tube looked like a train car, winked into sight. No one moved, transfixed on the tube. When a door slid open, revealing a brightly lit chamber, they moved further away. 

A man with thick white hair and a huge forehead stepped onto the solid ground. “Greetings, my fellow travelers. I trust you have enjoyed the twin sunrise here on the most beautiful beach in the universe. It’s time to embark on the next segment of your adventure. Our next port of call is the planet Lorea where you will have breakfast under the planet’s glittery diamond rings. You will find a wide variety of delights to keep you amused, and this will be your first chance to shop. Please have your credentials ready as you board the transport.” 

Credentials? They looked at each other, stunned. Jason felt something in his jeans pocket and pulled out a crystal disk that flashed ‘admit one.’ Not knowing what else to do, he got on the transport, and the others followed him.

As the beach winked out, stars replaced the view from the transport window. Jason scoffed. This was either one hell of a dream or one hell of an adventure.

​Finnian Payne turned seventeen on the Winter Solstice, and his life changed forever. Through the centuries, the Winter Solstice had become occasions whereby the child officially became an adult in the eyes of the community. 

For centuries in villages of the valley, the tradition was that a child became an adult in their seventeenth Winter Solstice year. His birthday had landed on the exact date of the winter Solstice that year, making his passage even more special. 

The majority of the region’s population was well past working in the fields or doing manual labor, leaving most of the work to the few still able-bodied citizens. The Winter Solstice ceremony brought more of the population old enough to do the adult work.

The ceremony was grand and lasted well into the night. The children of the surrounding villages had gathered together with their families to honor their passing into adulthood. Finnian had attended many ceremonies in the past, but this was different. There seems to be a sense of urgency about the whole thing. 

While never saying anything, the elders seemed eager to end the ceremony quicker than in the past. Many had reached their seventeenth-year milestones, more so than in the past, and the abrupt ceremony was a surprise. 

The following morning, the elders informed the newly “ recognized” adults what the hurry was the day before.

“Finnian, you have proved yourself to be an able leader, dependable, and our best hunter. That is not to say that any of the others are less able or dependable but, there must be a new leader. The council had decided  that you are to lead this group into battle tomorrow morning.”

The small group stood in stunned silence. The elder continued. “There have been no new adults in several years. The elders and the council have been preparing you for this day. We are aging and need young, hearty men to fight.” He paused. “What the village doesn’t know is that we have been under threat of attack for a long time. Tomorrow, you must defend the village and our way of life.” The elder paused to let them think for several minutes.

Finnian spoke up first. “What or who are we fighting?”
Before the elder could answer, the sky darkened, and the light shining through the windows dimmed to as though twilight had fallen. The elders exchanged glances, and the chief elder pointed out the window. “Them.” 

Finnian and the others turned to look out the window. Outside on the edge of town was an army of soldiers on horseback, led by the legendary  General Akitia, a warlord from a distant empire. The young men had not thought to be a threat to this region. Finnian now realized the talk of the village’s resources and their value he had heard over the years was real. 

He turned to his peers, and Finnian realized the years of sword fighting, hunting, and tracking they endured was for a reason. He took a breath and addressed his men. 

“We have an enemy to fight, and we are ready.”

​The garden was tranquil, but she realized harmony was a momentary matter. Within a few minutes, the reality would return. The sounds of planes and gunfire were deafening, but it was the sounds of drying soldiers that cut to the bone.

 She’d volunteered to be a nurse early in the war. Within a month of beginning to serve,  she had held severed hands and looked deep into a young boy’s guts and not blinked. How much blood had she washed from her hair? Far too much, but nothing ripped her heard up as sounds of the dying soldiers. The garden became her sanctuary where she came after another one died. The sounds of the pond and the smell of fresh flowers, and even the buzz of flies, were peaceful. She could compose herself and remembered there was life beyond the blood, guts, and dying.

Today had been horrible.

Three young men and a female driver of an ambulance were involved in a rollover accident. They managed to save one young boy but lost the others. She cried, the drone of a bee nearby and the plop of a frog in the pond her only companions. 

She sensed someone in the garden and whipped her head around. 

 “You okay?” Her commanding officer stood before her. 

She stood and faced her CO. “No… yes, I’m fine.”

“Linda, I know. You did the best you could.”

Linda straightened her apron and pulled herself together.

 “Thank you, sir. I’ll get back to work now.” She saluted as she walked past him.

 The war in the east against the Japanese had been fierce and devastating. It seemed the only space that either side avoided was the small gardens and resting places dotted through the country. A fire could destroy the land and buildings surrounding the gardens, but the gardens were sacred. It was in these small patches of nature that she kept her soul together. 

She retired from the Army Nursing Corps, a colonel, and taught nursing for the army and other medical schools. Now, fifty years later, each night, she came to sit in her small Japanese garden at her home in California.

Through the large glass door behind her, her service medals and awards in the war hung on the wall. But she took little comfort from the medals, as she tried to forget all the men she couldn’t save.

​The boy waited patiently on the path, knowing they would have to return home eventually. The army had blocked the main road, including the main gate, which was the only other way into the estate. Most of the locals knew about the old service path to the estate but rarely used by anyone. They feared the army would find out about the back gate and path but not locate the tunnel as Lord Stanley was essential to their cause. 

He had a message to deliver to the Lord, but when he arrived, he’d found the gate ajar. He decided to backtrack out of sight and wait.

He leaned on his bike and remembered the day the invading army had come through the town. The soldiers destroyed or damaged the town’s buildings and rounded up anyone who remotely looked as if they could be a threat. Some died at the hands of the soldiers, with the rest held hostage until the region’s elders agreed to surrender the town to them. A few citizens held out, waging a guerilla war from the hills.

Several wealthy landowners were either killed or captured and placed under House arrest, and the army used the estates as headquarters with armed guards patrolling the grounds. The army chose Lord Stanley’s estate as their main headquarters because of its location on the side of a hill facing the ocean. They hadn’t counted on the estate having tunnels from the second great war and the back gates hidden from the main grounds, behind a wall of evergreen trees and brush that made passage difficult. However, a tunnel that from the back gate to the house. For several weeks they had been sneaking out one at a time to get messages and supplies. So far, the soldiers had not caught them, but it was risky. 

Lord Stanley had the tunnels cleared out and made plans that were underway. The risk the soldiers would discover someone missing from the house or caught at the entrance to the tunnel or in the hidden basement area was always present, but they ignored the risk and prepared to fight the enemy.

After a long wait, Lord Stanley showed up and stopped short when he saw him leaning against the bike.

‘Michael? Is everything ok?

“I have a message for you from the resistance. The army suspects you and others are part of the resistance, and tomorrow planes come from over the mountains. They are planning to bomb the estate. Hide in the tunnels by six a.m. The resistance will come for you when the bombing stops.” The boy jumped on his bicycle and rode down the path,  leaving Lord Stanley saying a prayer to himself as he slipped in the gate and down the tunnel.

By six the following morning, Lord Stanley huddled in the tunnel with his family and a few servants as the ground shook and bombs and artillery destroyed his family home. But they were alive, and Lord Stanley and the others would carry on for as long as it took. 

They would defeat their enemy, and freedom would be theirs again.