by Taki Drake
It seemed to Ruth that the world had stopped moving. Everything except her mate. Her awareness narrowed down into a spiral area that included his face but filtered out everything else. He had eyes only for her, she for him. Hunter moved quickly out of the Lord’s path as Pawlik reached Ruth and clutched her to his chest, murmuring, “I thought I was going to lose you!”
The Mage could feel the pounding of his heart and could almost taste the fear that had risen when he saw her under attack. She shook in reaction, almost crawling into the safety of his arms.
After a moment, Ruth laughed. When Hunter stared at her and Pawlik turned his head to look down into her face, the woman commented shakily, “I am not sure what it says about me that I feel safe in arms that are covered with blood, but I don’t really care. Thank you for coming to our aid.”
<< <> >>
Signs of the battle had stirred the castle guard into a quick response. Even before Ruth’s jangled nerves had time to come down, a response team from the Outer keep forces were there. When the situation was commed back to the Castle, Jenna and three of the inner keep guards responded immediately.
Ruth stood watching the activity from the encircling warmth of Pawlik’s arms, her back leaning against his chest. After a while, she asked, “What are all of these people doing?”
Pawlik answered, “some of them will be tasked with cleaning up the mess. Others will gather information about the attacker so we can determine who sent him and if this type of threat will reappear.”
“I wonder if he was after me or just trying to get anyone from the castle. If Hunter had not been with me, I would be dead. If he had attacked the children or one of the villagers, they would have been gone without a trace. We might never have known what had happened to them.”
“Yes, that is true, and we need to get some time to plan. We cannot just keep reacting to other’s actions. Instead, a better strategy would be proactive and reasoned. We are too vulnerable as we are.”
The two, Mage and Anchor, stood silently for another interval. Ruth was watching Hunter and Jenna as they bent over the weapon that the assassin had used. The female guard had pulled out her AI gun, and the Mage knew that Jack was using his senses to analyze the situation also.
Pawlik took a deep breath and spun Ruth around, placing his hands on her shoulders. He grinned and asked, “How would you like to go and stay for a few days at the Force X Bar? The rooms are comfortable, and it would be a good change of scenery.”
“Why would you want to do that now? I created a huge mess that has to be cleaned up, and there are thousand and one decisions that will have to be made about the repair and decorating of the South Wing and Tower.”
“Why? Just because there’s a huge mess that needs to be cleaned up and we shouldn’t have to do it. Others can do the cleanup, that’s why we employ them. You need to rest. We stayed at the Force X Bar before, and you’re comfortable there. We have plenty of protection when we stay there, and it will keep us out of the Castle and the guest rooms that would make us feel like we were camping out.”
“I have to say it does sound attractive. I am not very energetic, and I would love just to be lazy.”
“Great. Let’s go back to the Castle and get moving. There is no reason to hang around. People can bring us drawings and samples to look at just as easily in Arrken Port as they would here.”
Ruth smiled at his enthusiasm and realized that getting away from the flurry of activity that would have to go on would be a relief. Giving in, she said, “Will the children be all right? Should we take them with us? Somehow, I don’t see staying in a bar as something I want to do with children, but I hate leaving them here by themselves.”
“By themselves? Oh, you mean leaving them here with only 400 people to watch them, right?”
“When you say it like that, I realize I'm silly. But at some point, we should take them to explore the city. Perhaps next time.”
“If you want to do that, we can always stay at the Borach townhome. It has enough room to accommodate the children and all the other people that you would want to bring along.”
Ruth paused and said, “Townhome? When were you going to tell me about that?”
“Oops. There are just so many things that we haven’t been able to catch up on.”
The Mage laughed at her embarrassed mate, leaning close to him once again and murmuring, “Perhaps this will give us some time to do that catching up.”
Pawlik flushed slightly before saying wickedly in return, “There is another, very urgent reason that we have to go to Arkken Port. You, my Lady, can honestly say you have absolutely nothing to wear.”
When Ruth looked up in shock, Pawlik roared with relieved laughter and reminded her, “Remember? You blew up the whole wing. That included all of your clothes.”
Chapter 18 – Memory Paths
Cargo shuttle Alpha Six, en route to Seer’s Rock
Gwilliam sat in the passenger couch, banished by his long-term companion, Zorand. Finada, his preferred co-pilot was in the pilot chair, and the mercenary commander had started the trip occupying the secondary pilot position. However, when his friend had recognized the system map, Gwilliam had been abruptly maneuvered out of the flight seat and into the bench in the back.
Zorand was right to keep me out of the pilot seat, even the copilot one. I never thought I would have to come back here. Emotions and sensations that he had spent years burying ripped through his body and Gwilliam could feel the tension that hummed like a spring under pressure.
In all of his calculations, the mercenary commander had assumed that going back to Seer’s Rock would hammer him with the discomfort and pain of the time that he and Zorand had lived there. What he hadn’t expected was that it would not be just those echoes that would claw their way free of the containment he had placed around them.
Older memories that were even harder to control crowded close behind the recent ones, making him realize how vulnerable his sense of self was to both the light and dark aspects of his history. Flashes of childhood, snapshots of his youth, his passage to adulthood. Echoes of life that had been stored in his brain but locked behind walls of confinement broke free and crashed down on Gwilliam.
Sweat started beading on his forehead as shadowy memories reached out to him, enveloping him in the immediacy of times and places that were burned into his soul. He ached with longing, shook with rage, and relived moments of desperation. The onslaught of his repressed feelings shook him like a slender branch in a gale.
His earliest images were vague, the crisp certainty of clarity stripped from them. The stony mountains and hills of his early life brought with them the scent of green, growing things and traces of sharp, clean air. A vision of a primitive brick house filled with loving people made him ache with longing as his eyes stung with tears, even as those faces slipped into blurry phantoms under the relentless erosion of time.
He could almost hear their voices, bright with joy and love. It was from a time where he felt safe, the ignorance of a child. These fragmented mementos were the only traces he had left of his family, and he clutched them to his heart with desperation, determined not to lose them.
Although Gwilliam and Zorand had started their adult travels and plans on the asteroid they were approaching, that stage of their life had begun only fifteen years ago. The two of them had been friends since their youth. A friendship that had been hammered into steel and forged by the fires of their shared experience.
As the shuttle left the main ship and began the hour-long trip to the rogue asteroid, the mercenary commander was inundated by memories of a time that he had rejected. These were not treasured memories but were those that he had long wanted to forget.
These other memories were closer and sharper than his early life in the mountains. Pain had deeply etched each one into his soul. Each scar of his youth had built the shape of the man and formed many of the aspects of his personality. Unable to eradicate the pain, Gwilliam had used it to make him the adul
t he was today.
Every one of those experiences had woven the fabric of his life. Even though confusion and fear shrouded some of them, the mercenary commander had accepted lessons learned from each. The young child ripped from his family and placed with those that saw him as nothing more than a weapon had been determined to survive.
Gwilliam knew that he had been too young to understand how the men that controlled him for most of his youth had discovered his talent. Perhaps, it had been exposed by one of the small fights the children had. Whether alerted by that or by some measurement or tool, the fanatics from the Order of the Just had taken him away, never to let him find his home again.
Verbally abused by many of its members, the Order had done it’s best to remind the young Gwilliam that he existed on their charity. Venomously, they told him he was a freak, who would never have amounted to anything more than a curiosity. They told him proudly that he had been taken from his family to be raised into his talents. The child felt abandoned and discarded.
So great was the pain from what they had told him, that Gwilliam had almost not noticed the physical punishment that had followed. Although he still carried those scars, the worst damage was not visible. Instead, it was buried in the recesses of his mind.
The fear and sadness of the child had hidden under the lash of years of harsh discipline. He remembered being punished for failure to learn anything that was demanded of him. There were endless hours of daily physical training that required every effort his young and growing body could deliver.
Many times cold and hungry, the young boy had wrestled with despair. Searching deep inside of himself, Gwilliam had found echoes of his family on which to build a stubborn faith and sense of self.
As Gwilliam got older, his training had increased in difficulty and intensity. Other students had broken and been destroyed while he continued to survive. Forbidden to form friendships, he and Zorand had managed to eke out tendrils of caring that kept them both sane.
Instead of becoming more manageable, the level of training and testing became even more complicated and less survivable. Many of the students succumbed to the unfeeling, rigorous torture that the Order’s instructors put them through.
Gwilliam and Zorand lived despite the odds. They continued to develop their talents, Zorand with his ship handling skills and Gwilliam with his ability, both expanding under a desperate drive to survive.
The discovery of the depth and power of Gwilliam’s combat foresight had somehow convinced his trainers that a variety of twisted tortures were justified any time that he failed to listen to those twinging notices of changing combat situations. The youth had known that unless he complied with the Order’s demands, even the uniqueness of his talent would not save him.
He had been an experimental lab animal to them. No consideration for him as a person existed in their worldview or plan. Even to this day, echoes of experiences from those desperate years kicked off unexpected phantom pain, as his muscle memory echoed the agony that had resulted when the Order had used illegal gene therapies and cybernetic enhancements to transform him into a better tool for their needs.
Desperately trying to gain control over the bombardment of old memories, Gwilliam closed his eyes and began relaxation breathing. How long has it been since I had to use this technique to calm myself down? I have tried so hard not to go back, but here I am, risking so much in the name of a greater good.
Tears prickled behind his closed eyelids as more than the ache of remembered pain rushed through his body. There were oceans of feelings that he had never faced, rising up behind the more immediate souvenirs of trauma. Instead of accepting them, he had stuffed them into the iron chest of his mind and chained them securely.
I thought I had conquered them, destroyed them. All this time, they have been waiting to ambush me. Despair flared up, insidious in its ability to form in the center of his balance.
Oh, how he remembered feeling that dark cling of energy-sucking emotion that had followed a death in the training hall. If it had been in a typical combat situation, he would’ve been praised or at least not punished.
The death had not occurred in the usual fights. Instead, Gwilliam had killed one of the hated instructors in a practice bout within the Order’s sacrosanct training hall. Still lanky with the slender form created by rapid growth, the youth had found a personal use for his talent of foresight when the older man’s sadistic nature had elevated into an attempt to kill.
Stunned, the other instructors had not known what to do. Gwilliam had been imprisoned in a holding cell pending their decision, his wounds untended. The youth had been still vibrating from the adrenaline that had carried him through the fight when the door to his cell creaked open.
Shocked at the violation of the Orders rules, Gwilliam was only slightly surprised to see Zorand’s determined face. Hearing another voice, the injured youth was shaken to his core.
“Zor, move! I have to treat his wounds or risk him falling over in the middle of the escape!”
It was another of the students, a slightly older youth called Menir. Gwilliam had wondered how the mild-mannered student had survived so long, but apparently, the Order valued his healing talent and did not subject the frailer boy to the same torture that was inflicted on those that were being trained to fight.
Menir had quickly treated Gwilliam’s injuries while Zorand kept watch.
Gwilliam had asked, “What is going on? Do you realize how much trouble you’re going to be in when they find out you did this?”
Menir had grimaced but held his silence. Instead, it was Zorand who answered, saying, “He listened in on the Order’s discussion. They are talking about doing all sorts of horrible things to you in retaliation but are still trying to find some way to harvest the parts of you that maintain your talent. He told me all about it, and we came up with a plan.”
The healer looked down at his feet and murmured softly, “Please take me with you. I can’t live like this any longer.”
When Gwilliam let his confusion show on his face, Zorand gave a sharp, short laugh and said, “You rattled them so badly that they didn’t follow their normal procedures. I had been on a practice flight, and the creep of an instructor failed to reclaim the ship controls from me when he left. He probably thought I was too cowed to do anything, but this is the best chance we have.”
The wounded youth remembered exclaiming, “You have the keys to a ship? We have to seize this moment!”
In wordless agreement, the three youths had fled. Almost daring not to hope, they had reached the airfield before encountering any of the other full members of the Order. Desperation had driven the boys, as their erstwhile instructors had reacted with extreme prejudice.
It became a running battle, the two fighters struggling to protect Menir and members of the Order attempting to kill or capture them all. Just short of the parked shuttles, the fleeing young men were pinned down by their enemies. When the desperate situation was clear, Menir had found a part of him that he had long searched for.
Gwilliam still remembered his voice, clear and somehow free, saying, “Long life to you and freedom. I was honored to know you. Please, remember me kindly.”
Zorand grabbed for the healer but was too slow. Pulling a flash grenade out of the bag on the ground by Gwilliam’s feet, Menir ran back toward the growing group of instructors, yelling, “Help me! They kidnapped me!”
Confused, the attackers hesitated long enough for the healer to come to a sliding halt in their midst. A split second later, a towering flame rose in a blast of destruction, destroying many of the shuttles and vehicles on the field and obliterating the attackers.
Chapter 19 – Escaping the Past
Cargo shuttle Alpha Six, en route to Seer’s Rock
The memory of that time raised a tidal wave of regret and sadness in Gwilliam’s chest. Even his much-vaunted combat foresight had not been enough to save the gentle healer. He remembered riding his shock and desperation into action. Carried by the
intensity of his emotion, Gwilliam and Zorand had acted quickly.
The heart-pounding fear and excitement that it spun around his core as he and Zorand had made their terrifying escape to Seer’s Rock in a damaged shuttle still made his heart pound. At least they had been free of pursuit since the explosion had destroyed all but the one shuttle that they had taken.
Once on the asteroid, the two of them had found kinder people to help them. It took him a while to figure out that he was still being used. Once people knew of his abilities, their benevolence had changed into something else. His value to these people was then based on his talent of foresight, rather than pure compassion for another being.
Zorand had no such ability to be exploited. Although he was an excellent fighter and pilot, the inhabitants of Seer’s Rock saw no value in those skills. All that Gwilliam could do was protect his friend as much as possible, leveraging others desires for his talents to provide protection for his friend.
That strategy was useful to a point. It solved immediate problems but left the young men vulnerable to being manipulated by threats to one of the few people alive that they cared about. Each time Gwilliam was forced into acquiescing to an action that he didn’t feel comfortable with, his resentment and cynical view of the world grew.
The Order’s abuse had stopped, but the grooming of Gwilliam as a tool continued. The tactics of punishment and minor rewards were still there but hidden under a veneer of respectability. That mask became thinner and thinner as Zorand and he learned to recognize manipulation and greed.
When the Seer’s Council decided to throw Zorand off the asteroid, Gwilliam fought for his friend. His refusal was seen as a negotiating tactic by the Council, and they responded with a threat of exile for both the young men. Refusing to back down from his position and adamant that he would not desert a friend, the Council sentenced both of them to exile for nine years and nine days.
Banished with limited resources, the two friends had only the damaged courier boat they possessed on arrival. As a gesture of spurious generosity, it was loaded with two months of supplies from what Gwilliam and Zorand had saved. Their only arms were a handful of old, cheap weapons with which to start a new life.
