They started the morning with a rare treat; a family breakfast. His father had peeled himself away from work for two entire days and seemed determined to make the most of it. He’d run into Savros’ room that morning, opening the door in mid-sentence, rattling on about the emerald sands and crystal waters of Faetrell as he tossed him his trunks. His father already had the terrapod loaded for a day at the beach.

Around the kitchen table, they ate a breakfast of local fruits and biscuits with dried meat as his mother and uncle told him funny childhood stories from when they were young. Apparently, growing up with a sibling your own age meant always having a partner in crime. And someone to blame it on when you got caught.

After eating, they sent Savros off to gather anything he wanted to take. Running off to his room, Savros grabbed a small jar with a lid and the scanner his mother made for him. He could use it to identify plants and insects. He also grabbed a second pair of shorts. Stuffing it all into his treksac, he ran back down to the kitchen door.

 The three of them had their backs to him and discussed something quietly. He thought they looked kind of worried, but when they turned to him, they were all smiles. They took the last of the picnic supplies to the pod. He tossed his treksac in with the food and his parents’ extra clothing, and the four of them climbed in.

 They spent the entire day running around in the sand. The whole beach shimmered with an emerald hue. His father had told him it was algae living in the sand that gave the shore its dazzling display of color. And the waters lived up to their name of crystal as well. Even at depths he couldn’t reach, the water was so clear, he could make out individual pebbles on the seafloor. He’d scanned and cataloged four new insects that he’d never seen before. He also found a little flower of unknown species. At least that’s what the scanner said.

They all enjoyed the warm sunlight and the cool breeze well into the afternoon. It was rare that they were all together like this, especially when they weren’t working. As the sun started getting closer to the horizon, they packed up the terrapod to head home.

After a day like this, they were all in good spirits, but the day wasn’t quite over yet. They made one more detour on the way back. His father stopped at a local trader’s house and disappeared into the hut. He returned a few seconds later with a huge cheesy smile and carrying a large side of fresh meat wrapped in paper and burlap. He’d given Savros a wink as he tossed the package to him to hold while they made the quick trip home.

They arrived at the house a little before dinner time, so he and his uncle set about building a fire in the garden while his mother and father prepared the vegetables. As they sat around the fire laughing, they each took turns stirring the pot of veggies and turning the meat. Reliving the events of the day, everyone was happy and hungry. On top of having the best meal he’d ever had, Savros couldn’t remember the last time they had a whole day together like that.

After they had put everything away, and while his uncle and father were dousing the fire, Savros headed up the stairs, passed his parents’ room on the left, around the corner to the right, and down the hall to his own room. He pulled the small glass jar from his treksac and held it up to examine its contents. It had one small, bizarre-looking flower in it. Tomorrow, he would press it between the pages of a book and preserve it the best way he could. Strange that the scanner couldn’t identify it.

He gave the jar on his desk one more glance and tossed his treksac to the floor in the corner. It was late. He knew he should get some rest, but all the excitement was making the idea of sleep sound absurd.

Savros let out a sigh as he fell backward, landing on his bed. He pictured different festivities they could have planned and tried to practice feigning surprise. He lay in his bed quietly and made faces of shock and astonishment as he imagined everyone jumping from behind cover to surprise him.

He and his uncle had been planning a camping trip for several months and were ready to set out on a grand adventure through the countryside. They were heading out first thing in the morning. His uncle’s birthday and his were only a few days apart, and they fell on the second week of their three-week trip. He and his uncle would return brand new men.

That was exciting enough by itself, but for the last few days, his mother and father had been acting secretive. He kept catching them huddled up, whispering to each other, but then acting nonchalant when they noticed him—walking off whistling or smiling and asking if he was ready for his big trip.

Then there was the sneaking out at night. He had been having trouble sleeping the last few nights, which he accounted for as the excitement of his upcoming camping trip with his uncle.

 The night before last night, sitting at his bedroom window, he saw something strange; his mother and father were sneaking out through the garden behind the house. And last night, he saw his father go out again, alone this time. He could only conclude that they were planning a surprise party for him and didn’t want him to overhear them or see the preparations. 

He knew not to expect a lot. His mother and father weren’t particularly wealthy, neither were they poor. When his mother was younger, she held a position at the Galactic Center of Knowledge, where she made a reputation for herself as a skilled TekDev processor. She spent her days sorting through failed tek, blueprints, and devices.

When she found one, she felt was worth developing. She would gather all available notes and research on the topic and develop a workaround to the known issues. She created the first reliable tryptic energy detector, a small sensor. And later, she developed it into a scanner, tunable to all known energy types and sources.

When he was younger, his father had explained that his mother’s work was so important that you’d have a hard time finding a ship, vessel, or transport without one of his mother’s scanners in it. He’d said that to this day, people came to her with ideas and half-formed plans for something, asking her advice, even occasionally offering to pay her to develop their projects into a working device. She always provided free advice but would never take a job or accept money from anyone. His mother believed the risk was too great. With tek in the wrong hands, they could turn most things into weapons. She had no desire to add to the conflict and destruction that already appears everywhere.

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On the other hand, his father would take nearly any job offered to him. But then again, that was the business his father started. He ran a delivery service. In the beginning, it was primarily running goods delivered by transport to the neighboring villages and towns. He prided himself on delivering anything to anyone on the planet by the next day.

He’d been in a few close calls, but, in the end, he’d always met his deadline and maintained his pride. A few years ago, he started getting regular delivery jobs for off-world. Thanks to his father’s integrity and work ethic, the business grew pretty fast, and now he was the go-to man for deliveries anywhere in the system.

His father truly enjoyed his work, and it had provided enough for a nice living for him and his family. He could afford to live a much more lavish life, but he always said that what they had was enough. Any other profits went back into the business as his father grew and expanded it. He was in the process of purchasing a vacant station from the EdenFire Empire. They had once used it as one of their storage depots, and it’s already set up to meet his needs. With that, his father would expand into the neighboring systems.

His uncle had come from his longtime mining job to help at his father’s request. In the early years of the business, he had needed help and couldn’t afford to pay anyone directly. He enlisted his brother-in-law’s help, and together they had weathered the storm of the first few years. For two solid years, only his uncle and father worked the business. They were up before the sun rose and usually out well after sunset. But in the end, it paid off.

His father continually put everything extra he had back into growing his business. Now that the company had taken off, his uncle mostly ran food and dry goods to the next town over. Savros was pretty sure his uncle had met someone special to him, but he’d mentioned no one, and Savros never asked.

 On the weekends, he and Savros would go hunting. His uncle had taught him how to survive on the land. As well as teaching him about typical plants and insects that appear on lots of planets. His uncle had also shown him how to identify poisonous plants by sight before he could use any tek to get the answer. He loved learning tek from his mother and occasionally taking off-world trips with his father. But he loved learning about nature and life from his uncle the most. He couldn’t have asked for more. His father had even offered him a job next year, meaning in a few years, he would pilot a ship to other worlds on his own. 

He was sure that they would have a surprise party tomorrow morning, and after they ate, he and his uncle would head out on their trip. Sleep eventually started catching up to him, and his eyelids grew heavy, so he gave in and closed them. As he lay there drifting, he thought he heard a thud like a door slamming, but there was nothing else. After listening for a moment longer and only hearing silence, he didn’t pay it any more attention as he drifted off to sleep.

As Savros slept, his uncle sprinted down the hallway towards his room. His heart was racing in his chest. In the darkness, the state of his cloak wasn’t apparent. Neither was the blood. He was just about at Savros’ door and was going full speed when he collided with it.

The door to his room exploded inward, waking Savros with a terrifying start. He sat bolt upright in bed as splinters of door scattered across his chest and face. A dark figure was getting to its feet just inside the entrance. He could feel a scream rushing up from the pit of his stomach, but just before it reached his lips, he heard his uncle’s voice.

“Savros. Savros? Savros!” His uncle grabbed him and snatched him out of bed. And Savros found himself suddenly on his feet as something else hit him in the chest.

“Hurry and get dressed. Don’t think, or-or-or ask questions, just get dressed as fast as you can.” He was sputtering in hushed tones, but the undeniable sense of urgency in his voice had Savros dressing as he was still finishing his sentence. His uncle grabbed a lump of something off the floor and turned to Savros just as he pulled on his second boot.

“Good boy, Okay, grab your treksac and your snares” His uncle was already heading out the door. As he disappeared around the corner, Savros couldn’t help but wonder what could be happening. He grabbed his treksac and snares and headed for the door. The splinters and pieces of door crunched under his feet. He wasn’t sure what to make of it.

“PSST,” his uncle hissed, poking his head back in the doorway.

“Savros, I’m sorry, but we have to go right now, let’s go, lad.” They ran back down the hallway, the way his uncle had just come. They approached the corner, heading toward the staircase, just past his mother’s room. A million questions were forming in Savros’ mind. Was this part of the surprise? Why the urgency? Where were they going…? He never got to finish the thought.

With his next step, something exploded through the wall with extreme force, leaving a jagged hole in the wall. Dust filled the air as debris scattered across the landing at the top of the stairs, falling through the railing on his left to the foyer below. Whatever came through the wall was in a heap, a few paces in front of him.

He and his uncle came to a complete stop, stumbling while trying to make sense of the scene laid out before them. His mind just couldn’t process it. What was happening?! Then he saw movement in two places, first to his right, a few paces in front of him. A very sinister and determined-looking man was on the other side of the new hole in the wall. Second, whatever this guy had just thrown through the wall, just moved. As the man lifted his foot to step through the hole, his eyes remained locked on whatever was on the floor. 

Savros’ mind raced in a panic. Then, as the stranger’s first boot hit the floor, the pile moved again. Just as it occurred to Savros, whose room was on the other side of that wall, time slowed to a near stop. As she lifted her head just enough to make eye contact with him, his mind finally made sense of the images he saw. The heap on the floor in front of him was his mother’s mangled and broken body. As he stared into his mother’s eyes, he could see what was happening, but he couldn’t believe it. He could see the guy who had done this to his mother in his periphery, but he could not break eye contact with her. As time accelerated back to normal speed, Savros watched in horror and disbelief as the man grabbed his mother’s hair, lifted her head, and cut her throat, all in one fluid motion. 

If time had stopped before, this time, all of existence shattered. Savros was alone in a void. Darkness surrounded him on all sides. He felt a tug on his arm from somewhere, but it somehow felt very far away, and he could see nothing in the darkness. He thought he could almost make out the silhouette of the man standing over his mother. And then he felt his hand lift above his head. He heard a strange sound, and there was an explosion of light. It filled every corner of the darkness until all that he could see was a brilliant white light. As the light faded, so did his consciousness. The last thing he saw before returning to darkness was his mother’s face.