[The Defector] T o k u m e i
N o
S a k u s h a
They say monarchy will never work on a civilized world, yet it does on Ra. That is because we are not civilized. I am Jyk Bek, first princess of the Aro’Ra High Castle. This desolate, arid, tidally locked planet’s government is oppressive and degrading to our people, and I wish not to have any part of it. But I am Jyk Bek, first princess of the Aro’Ra High Castle, and I must be the oppressor, it is in my blood. It is my job to ‘hear the voices of the people’ but the people do not speak for if they do, they must -by law- only speak the truth. And the truth is this system is a terrible insidious trap that no one has escaped for a millenia. I am Jyk Bek, first princess of the Aro’Ra High Castle. I hate my name. The royal family name of ‘Bek’ is Old World for ‘superior’ and ‘Jyk’ translates to ‘destiny’. Destined to be superior, a stupid name. I must escape. I must escape this evil planet. A war is in the making, a war between Ra and Terra, and my father is stirring the pot. My father, the ‘honorable’ king of our world. There is nothing honorable about that narcissistic pseudo-messiah, he is no more fit to lead a country than president Rodger A. Jesterson on Terra. There is nothing ‘honorable’ about me either, as I am a member of the resistance. “Ah, would you look at that! Our Flamely Queen has returned!” spoke a boy in a sleeveless black jumpsuit, “How may we serve you today, on this dank and desolate night?” He asked with a grandiose gesture of his left paw, a paw so beaten from retreat it is a wonder it is still operational. This very battle-worn boy has an annoying tendency to ‘welcome’ me each time I return to the claustrophobic, nyctophobic, trypophobic cave that is the home of his resistance cell, though over the course of our four-year allyship I have become 132
