Shrouded Loyalties

by Reese Hogan

  She cut the thoughts off brutally. As crazy as it was, Blackwood’s unexplained power wasn’t her biggest problem at the moment. Nor, amazingly, was her decision to leave Andrew Blackwood alive. With the attack going on, she had no idea whether Leuftkernel Lyanirus would still be at the meeting site. Still, she had to show up ready to face him.

  As she reached the L.T. Karlan Theater, a dark form detached itself from the gaudy gilt framing the old building and ran toward her. Cu Zanthus was dressed in a long ragged coat, maybe trying to appear as some vagabond with nowhere to go during the raging battle. His usually perfect hair was mussed. He grabbed her by the arm.

  “Where in Vo Hina’s slag have you been?” he hissed.

  “Got caught up.”

  “Got caught up? It’s almost the Bright Cycle! By Shon Aha’s justice, the leuftkernel is here! Come on!” Cursing, he pulled her through the battered front door and into a dingy lobby hanging with posters barely reflecting the light of outside fires.

  Normally Cu Zanthus wouldn’t have been this upset. He would have understood that escaping for a rendezvous was sometimes beyond their control. Normally, she would have been irritated he hadn’t asked about the in-depth questioning he’d forced her to face. But they both knew that getting on Leuftkernel Lyanirus’s bad side wasn’t only career suicide, but quite possibly real suicide. If he decided her intel wasn’t reliable, or that they were doing their jobs wrong, he’d pull them from the field in a second. And unreliable spies weren’t sent back home, or even to labor camps. They were shot. And that’s if I’m lucky enough not to be discovered as a woman first.

  Cu Zanthus dragged her down two flights of stairs and through a hallway lit by dim, galvanized bulbs, though the empty arphanium globes around them were in decent condition. The whole place stank of mold and smoke. They stepped around bodies shoved against the walls. Probably people who’d tried to shelter in the wrong building when the air strike hit.

  Her partner stopped before a closed door and paused to glare at her. “Stand up straighter. And wipe that dirt off your face.”

  “I went through an air raid,” she said tightly. “He’ll understand.” Cu Zanthus gave her a sharp look. He’d told her long ago to ditch the ‘sirs’ and treat him as a partner rather than a superior, but he clearly wasn’t in the mood for informality right now.

  Klara Yana grimaced, swiping a hand halfheartedly across her face. “Sorry. I just need to get back. I’m pushing my luck being gone even this long.”

  He nodded, his face still pinched in displeasure, and pushed open the door. Klara Yana strode in. Her eyes flicked over the large underground room, the mirrors bordered by dark bulbs, the racks of costumes, the trunks and stand lamps. It didn’t take her long to spot the waiting team.

  There were three of them. A heavyset man, a woman – a woman? – and… Her stomach heaved as she laid eyes on the infamous leuftkernel. He sat at a round table shoved to the back of the room. His wavy hair had been dyed almost as dark as hers, and he wore plain clothes rather than the uniform, medals, and gold shoulder cord she’d once seen him in from afar, but there was no mistaking his self-assured posture or severe profile. He held a leatherbound book, and was tapping at it as he talked to the man seated across the table.

  The woman sat on a chair nearby, pretending to knit a hat. It was obvious she was pretending, because her eyes were on Lyanirus’s book more than on her work, and she looked up at Klara Yana’s approach before anyone else. They locked eyes. Larin Vron Lyanirus looked up, and Klara Yana pulled herself quickly to attention, breaking the woman’s gaze. She loosely clasped her gloved hands and touched them to her eyes, mouth, and heart.

  He smiled, not at all warmly. “You must be Leuftent Hollanelea.”

  “I apologize for the delay, sir. I don’t know if Kommandir Ayaterossi mentioned the–”

  Lyanirus held up a hand. “Stop talking.”

  “Right, sir.” She almost apologized again, but no; Leuftent Hollanelea wasn’t nervous. He was confident, maybe even a little impatient. He was here to make his report and get back to his mission as quickly as possible.

  “Take a seat.” Lyanirus gestured to a chair behind her.

  “Thank you, sir.” She pulled the chair forward and sat, her elbows on her knees and her hands clasped before her.

  Lyanirus took his time closing the book and tucking it into a pocket. Then he sat back, studying her for several long moments. His gaze lingered briefly on her eyes. She had to resist the sudden urge to look down and hide her face. But that was something a woman would do, not a soldier. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Cu Zanthus watching, his arms folded in front of him. The heavyset man Lyanirus had been talking to had his chin in one hand and a scowl on his face. The woman’s gaze darted between all of them, like she didn’t know who would move next. The distant sounds of warfare were the only intrusion in the suddenly quiet room.

  Lyanirus leaned forward in his seat and, before she could react, backhanded her across the face. She rocked from the force of it, and barely caught herself before falling to the floor. Warm blood streamed down her cheekbone as the gash at her temple opened up and soaked the bandage. Her vision blurred. She forgot to breathe.

  “That’s for looking at my wife,” said Lyanirus.

  His wife? She’d never heard of an officer taking his wife into the field. Was this related to those rumors? Did he want a child so badly he didn’t want to leave her at home? Was it a trust thing, to keep her in line? Stop. All that matters right now is that a regular soldier wouldn’t have been caught dead staring at an officer’s wife. Stupid. Stupid!

  She caught a glimpse of Cu Zanthus standing with his hand over his eyes, as if too ashamed of her to watch. She let her breath out slowly, then clenched her jaw to harden her face before looking up. Not flustered. Not scared. Just a soldier put in his place.

  “Nothing meant by it, sir,” she said.

  “As long as we’re understood.” Lyanirus settled back in his chair, crossing his arms. “I got your intel from the Desert Crab.”

  “Glad it reached you, sir,” she said. “I hope it was helpful?”

  “Very, as a matter of fact. Your discovery of arphanium as a driving factor for the way they travel has been, frankly, revolutionary. The dekatite we’d started to figure out, but we hadn’t connected the gutting of arphanium to the enhancement of war technology. Everything we’ve attempted to capture on our side has been rigged with suicide explosives.”

  “As it happens,” Klara Yana said, “that’s the first thing I took care of.”

  Lyanirus’s eyes narrowed. “You what?”

  She knew immediately she’d said something wrong. She hastened to explain.

  “Sabotaged the self-destruct system, sir,” she said, keeping her eyebrows slightly raised and her voice steady. “But I made it look like a frayed wire had snapped, rather than been cut. And I didn’t do it from the control room, where I would have been noticed. I went down to where the explosives were connected, in the lower power flats.”

  “Do you know how careless that was?” Lyanirus said, his voice edged in steel. “Your only job was to observe! What if you’d been discovered?”

  Klara Yana barely held back a cringe. The damnedest thing was, he had a point. That last time, when she’d been brought to the captain’s office, had been too close a call. But still. She was confident she’d made the right decision, if he would just hear her out.

  “A valid concern, sir,” she said. “But I knew it was a risk worth taking, since there might never be another chance–”

  Lyanirus shot to his feet and wrapped a hand around her throat. She gasped as he hauled her out of her chair. “Since when do you decide what risks are worth taking?” he said sharply. “Do you make it a habit to show off by doing more than you’re ordered to? Because it sounds like a pretty damn big liability to me!”

  She tried to choke out an answer, but he’d completely cut off her airway. Silver stars exploded at the edges of her
vision. She clutched Lyanirus’s arm. Her toes scraped at the floor, trying desperately to find solid ground again.

  The bigger soldier came up alongside Lyanirus. He jerked his head toward her. “Could be worth using, sir.”

  “What could, Telchimaris?” Lyanirus growled, tightening his grip. “The incapacitated self-destruct, sir. We could pass it along to Captain Jerleromens.”

  Dark spots were bleeding into Klara Yana’s vision now. She hissed through her teeth, frantic for air. Any moment now, he’d let her go… Gods, he’d made his point…!

  “Which one is he again?” said Lyanirus.

  “Combatant’s Carnage, sir. The submarine patrolling the stretch between Kheppra Isle and Qosmya Canal.”

  Sheer panic pulsed through Klara Yana’s oxygen-deprived brain as she realized Lyanirus had no intention of letting go. The rumors of him murdering those wives ran through her head, and she wished she could scream. But no. Impossible without air. Her fingers faltered and lost their grip on his arm. Her eyelids fluttered. The room was going black around her.

  She barely heard Telchimaris’s gruff voice. “You know you haven’t debriefed him yet, sir.”

  Lyanirus made a noise of disgust. Abruptly, Klara Yana landed hard in her chair, nauseous and dizzy as oxygen suddenly rushed back into her brain. She would have fallen if a hand hadn’t steadied her shoulder at the last moment. She gasped in huge lungfuls of air, her head spinning with fear and disorientation. A split second. That’s all it had taken. A second. She’d never felt so completely powerless in her life.

  Lyanirus’s voice was a far-off echo. “Is that the same submarine that’s been intercepting communications between the Kheppra Isle research station and the Marldox Base?”

  “Yes, sir,” Telchimaris answered. “As of yesterday, there was still no sign the Belzenes knew the research station had been compromised.”

  Compromised? The Dhavnaks had taken Kheppra Isle? Her half-fogged brain grabbed on to the intel, as if she could restore control of this situation by falling back on routines. But it was hard to focus beyond the pounding in her head and the wheezing of her breath.

  “Good,” said Lyanirus. “Yes, mayora. Get this information about the self-destruct to Captain Jerleromens as soon as possible.”

  “Yes, sir.” Telchimaris walked back into the shadows, where Klara Yana could just make out a radio set up on a small table.

  Klara Yana could hear Cu Zanthus breathing unevenly behind her. Lyanirus’s sudden assault had rattled him too. He had let go of her shoulder, but she didn’t dare look back to thank him. Instead, she looked straight ahead, painfully conscious of her heaving chest as she got air back into her lungs. She had to fight the urge to snatch her concealed pistol and kill the leuftkernel, before he ever touched her again.

  But doing so would wipe out everything she’d worked so hard for. It wasn’t an option. No matter how bad this got.

  Lyanirus settled back into his seat, contemplating her with thinned lips and a lingering glint of anger in his eyes. “As far as we know, you’re the only Dhavnak who’s been inside this… this form of travel.” He paused. “Do the Belzenes have a name for it?”

  “Yes, sir.” Her voice came out hoarse, but she forced the words through it. “They call it shrouding, sir.”

  “You mentioned creatures,” said Lyanirus.

  “Sir. I don’t know whether the dekatite mines lead through the center of the planet or go through another dimension entirely, but something lives there.” She couldn’t help it; she had to stop and cough harshly into the crook of her elbow. Her throat burned like fury.

  Lyanirus’s lip curled, and he turned his head. “Dela Savene!” he barked. “Water!”

  The woman stood, gave a quick curtsy, and hurried away.

  Lyanirus turned back to Klara Yana. “You reported that, under no circumstances, should one attempt to travel through carrying dekatite.”

  “Sir.”

  “Why not?”

  “The creatures are drawn to dekatite, sir.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “We were attacked by one.”

  He blinked, leaning forward in sudden interest. It was all she could do not to shove her chair back, where he couldn’t reach her again. “And you didn’t put that in your report?”

  “There hasn’t been time for a report, sir. I’ve hardly been free of CSO Blackwood since it happened. Even now, she’s waiting on me.”

  “So if the crew already knew the dangers of carrying dekatite,” Lyanirus said, “who brought it onboard? Was it you? Was it another risk you considered worth taking?”

  She coughed again, panic fluttering through her breast. “I had been insufficiently briefed beforehand,” she answered, “because the intel wasn’t available at that point. I would never have brought it on if I’d known.”

  “Do your Belzene comrades know it was you?”

  “No, sir. I planted the item on another sailor. He was arrested shortly afterward.”

  His jaw tightened. “Tell me about the attack.”

  She twitched her shoulders in a shrug. “I never even saw the creature. But it tore a hole through the submarine. We fixed it and got back to shore without casualties. The mission was aborted.”

  Lyanirus pursed his lips thoughtfully. Dela Savene returned, and lowered her head as she offered a tin cup of water to Klara Yana. Klara Yana took it, keeping her eyes straight ahead. She was just raising the cup to drink when Lyanirus spoke again.

  “Is there any relationship between their shrouding technology and the freak lightning attack that struck our plane from the air last night?”

  Klara Yana blinked, her lips frozen on the rim of the cup. She hadn’t expected him to make the connection, and hadn’t even considered what she might share of it. If anything. The creature left a mark on my CSO. It left the Broken Eye burned into my palm. It might have given us strange powers. She knew kidnapping Blackwood might very well be the next step of this operation. If she gave the word, Cu Zanthus would follow her back that second.

  But Blackwood, under question, would divulge Klara Yana’s own mark. And the last thing Klara Yana wanted was to be an object of interest to Lyanirus, in any capacity. No. Safer to play this out as an intelligence gatherer rather than a scientific experiment, as Blackwood’s own government had proven.

  She took a long gulp of the stale water, hoping the action would cover her initial delay. The liquid burned going down. She drained the cup anyway, then set it on the floor by her chair.

  “Complicated,” she answered. “The short answer is, maybe. But I can’t back that up yet.”

  Lyanirus frowned. “Give me what you have, then.”

  “There was something about unnatural lightning in the early testing phases of shrouding. As far as I know, it never happened again until yesterday.”

  “If this is the next step of their technology,” said Lyanirus, “it could bode even worse for us than the shrouding. Are you in a position to learn more about it?”

  “Yes, sir. Blackwood and I are working with a team.” At least, they had been.

  “Good.” Lyanirus glanced to his right as Telchimaris came back from the radio.

  “I’ve passed the word, sir,” said the large soldier. “I told him to capture the Desert Crab’s crew alive, if at all possible.”

  “Very good.” Lyanirus rolled his neck, stretching it. He pinned his gaze on Klara Yana again as she prepared to get up. “Hollanelea, have we worked together before?”

  She paused halfway out of her chair. “No, sir. Never.”

  “You look familiar.”

  She finished standing, but her heart was pounding fiercely again. What was he thinking? One of his former wives, maybe? Or was it just the familiarity of a female in a man’s outfit that was bothering him?

  “I know what it is,” Telchimaris rumbled. “Resemblance to Ambassador Talgeron.”

  Lyanirus studied her for several moments. “You’re right. The eyes.”

 
; Vo Hina’s mercy! He’d connected her to her ama. If he got it in his head they were related, and knew she’d never had a son… No. Her eyes might be memorable, but that didn’t make them completely unique. Read his cues! Adjust my character.

  “Ambassador?” She forced a laugh through her raw throat. “Hardly. More like Terana Perro, I always thought.”

  Lyanirus raised an eyebrow. “The ice diver?”

  “Same shade, sir. Gold flecks and all.”

  “I wasn’t aware.” A small smile quirked Lyanirus’s lips. “A sports fan, huh, Hollanelea? Never would’ve guessed.”

  “Oh yes, sir. I follow most of ’em.”

  But her mouth was dry. Lyanirus had known her ama. What else did he know? Was he one of the ones responsible for not negotiating her release? Did he know which country had her? Saying anything was a risk, but regardless of what Lyanirus thought, some risks had to be taken. Intelligence not seized in the moment might never be offered again.

  As casually as possible, she said, “Which ambassador was that again, sir?”

  “Talgeron.” Just like that, the smile was gone from Lyanirus’s face. “Have you heard of her, leuftent?”

  “I think so, sir. Before her disappearance, she helped negotiate the treaty with Jasterus, right?”

  “Look at that. The soldier’s done his research,” said Lyanirus. “Yes, Hollanelea, she helped with Jasterus. But compared to some of the other countries she helped with, it was hardly enough to redeem her.”

  Klara Yana blinked uncertainly. Before she could answer, Telchimaris spoke up behind her, his deep voice resonating throughout the large space.

  “She would have bled out the entire system if we hadn’t stopped her, leuftkernel.”

  Lyanirus nodded grimly. “She’s a classic example of what happens when you give a woman too much freedom. The problem is they can’t help it, the wretched souls. They’re all Vo Hina-cursed, every last one. Driven by greed. Greed for power, wealth, equality. But that greed drives them to take unnecessary risks. If a woman is killed doing a man’s work, she doesn’t just take her own life, but those of her potential offspring, and those of their potential offspring. Countless lives that could have contributed to our efforts, wasted on one foolish woman’s whim. If not for us, they would throw away Dhavnakir’s entire future.” He cast a look at the woman who’d gone quietly back to her chair. “Dela Savene. Even with me watching, you still feel Vo Hina’s curse, don’t you? The drive toward greed?”