a.k.a. Katana

Chapter One:

"Why not? You're taking their women, we're taking their shit. How is that any different?" Kokin asked flippantly. His brother glared at him angrily for a long moment before responding. "We're not 'taking their women'. We're rescuing them. Which is legal. You're stealing, which is illegal." Kokin rolled his eyes and flicked the ash from his cigarette, "Nah, you got it all wrong. These guys are assholes. They stole those women from their families and we're teaching them a lesson by stealing from them."

This was a losing battle and both men knew it would go nowhere. But Kokin also knew that he would get the last word in because J'Adok would not argue with him while he was in uniform. "Well, you have to return it...all of it." J'Adok told his brother. "Sure, consider it done." Kokin answered with no intentions of returning any of it.

Kokin walked across the grassy clearing and disappeared behind the line of trees and shrubs into the woods where he had left his friends. They were diligently packing as much as they could into sacks and placing them into Kokin's truck. The three men worked in silence, hurrying from one place to another with a rehearsed knowledge.

They looked up and nodded at Kokin as he approached them. "Hurry up and go. I told him we were going to put it back-we're not. I'll go back out there and say that you left already and catch a ride back with my brother. I'll meet you at S'Nekka and we'll divvy up there." Kokin whispered to Getty. Getty nodded and squeezed Kokin's shoulder before the two men parted ways.

Kokin strode confidently back into the clearing and around to the other side of the giant space ship that sat refueling, for free, in the river that ran through the clearing and off into the wilderness.

He couldn't understand J'Adok. Here was a bunch of people who made profit off of the loss of others. They traded women, children, drugs, anything. J'Adok was part of the Protective Services. They intercepted these ships at refueling stations, took any people who were on-board and "rehabilitated" them back into society or sent them back home. J'Adok, no doubt thought this was an honorable endeavor and had chosen to do such a thing because he was the "good" twin. No matter, only their mother really believed that crap and Kokin knew how to play that situation, too.

Kokin on the other hand, was not part of the protective services. He had taken a different path in life. One he believed to be honorable, but many perceived it differently. While on his way to becoming a doctor he had done some work for a tiny group of people who were practically a tribe. They had so little and were so friendly. He couldn't forget them. All throughout his schooling his mind travelled back to the people who were so happy to live off of so little. He eventually quit his schooling and went back to help them, to be their doctor and help them in any way he could.

Today, he was raiding slave ships for supplies to take back to the tribe. The things they took would sustain them for nearly a year. Medicine, food staples, clothes, shoes, reading materials, toiletries, tools... Giving them back might mean someone's death, or worse, the death of a child. Kokin couldn't see how J'Adok could possibly understand. He never watched a child die in its mother's arms from a simple fever; and Kokin didn't necessarily want him to have to. It wasn't something he wanted to explain to his brother, either. J'Adok had seen his own haunting images.

He turned the corner, around the side of the ship and watched J'Adok and his Z'Den, Pete, conferring with men from another En about which women would go where. These women were called Litas. They came from all over the galaxy and they each had a story. They were sold by their desperate families or simply taken and forced into slavery. Most of them would be used for sex. A few would be used for labor of different sorts. None of them would be free. Until today, that is.