Triorion Omnibus

by L. J. Hachmeister

  She kept the lights in her quarters to the level of gloaming, preferring the mood that darkness brought as she reviewed the holographic files. The Motti ship is still wreaking havoc on the unprotected outerworlds, she thought. With each projected report and casualty count, the muscles in her neck and shoulders tightened. Entire planets stripped, left barren.

  But the planets and systems under Victor’s banner stood protected. From the latest count, Trigos, the central Homeworld, was the only Alliance affiliate that was still divided on pledging its allegiance to the new Republic.

  Victor’s face popped up on a news report brief, and Jetta muted the sound before she heard his voice. Even through close captioning she could feel the dark pull of his words, the way each subtle laugh and lilt jangled her nerves.

  He’s still pushing his agenda that the Alliance is impotent and corrupt, she noticed, reading the intelligence analysis of his speeches superimposed over the news brief. Not that she needed the report to know that. Victor never masked his delight in exposing the top secret and controversial programs once headed by the Military Minister Tidas Razar and undersigned by Chancellor Reamon of the General Assembly, as well as painting the Kyron twins as psychologically unstable weapons of the Alliance.

  Jetta watched the video footage but found herself increasingly detached. As much as she disliked the discomfiting reels of her post-war breakdown and her sister’s collapse, the sordid details of the Command Development Program, or the Motti ship closing in on Trigos, more pressing issues demanded her focus.

  I need to know more about Victor’s counter-weapon. That’s the key.

  A heavy, unsettling feeling slid into her belly when she read the scouting reports, much like when she thought of Victor, his carefully manicured, tailored veneer at odds with the beast within.

  Bracing her stomach, Jetta pushed herself away from the terminal. It was getting harder and harder to fight the protests and agitations of her body, and the stress of conflict only made it worse.

  “What am I doing?” she muttered after the pain subsided, running a hand through her tangled hair and retying it behind her head. “It shouldn’t have come to this. I should have been there. I’m—I’m—”

  I am no Commander.

  (I abandoned my post)

  I am least of all a sister.

  (I hurt Jaeia. She is afraid of me—)

  (I left Jahx—)

  I am weak against the darkness inside me.

  I am not worthy of my own skin.

  Grabbing her armrests, she pulled them clean off their bolted plating. She wanted to throw them against the wall, but she knew better than to alert the guards. Instead she pressed the broken edges against her thighs and slowly pushed down, releasing her anger in the pain. Her pants stained red as she concentrated on the sensation, submitting to it, with every breath digging a little deeper.

  As her thighs shrieked with pain, she suddenly remembered her trial in the Temple of Exxuthus, the words spoken by the entity imitating the Grand Oblin: “Who stands accused in your heart?”

  It didn’t entirely make sense to her then, but as the pain washed her tortured thoughts away, she saw the truth with a new clarity.

  (Me.)

  She looked down in horror at the metal bars she had dug into her flesh. “It’s me that’s doing this...”

  The door chime rang three times before she noticed it. Quickly, she stashed the metal bars underneath her desk and hobbled over to her closet to change her pants.

  “Just give me a sec!” she said, struggling to get the second pant leg on. She kicked the bloodied uniform into her closet just as the Healer walked in.

  Jetta’s heart dropped to her stomach. Of course it had to be her.

  Hiding her self-inflicted injuries from the Healer was like hiding a scream in an empty room.

  “Hey,” Jetta said, rounding behind the couch and using the protection of the furniture to hide her quickly soaking second pair of tactical pants.

  “Hey back,” Triel said, frowning. “What’s going on?”

  “Was reviewing the sitrep.”

  “A little dark in here, isn’t it?”

  Jetta shrugged. “It helps me concentrate on my objective.”

  Before Triel could ask anything else about her, she tried to redirect the conversation. “How are you feeling?”

  Triel never took her eyes off her as she slowly approached the couch. Jetta felt the psionic radiance field around her growing in intensity as she neared, like the air charging before a lightning strike. “Fine, thanks. I came to check on you. I know your latest health report wasn’t good. I want to see if you wanted to talk about it.”

  Jetta forced a laugh. “I’ll worry about that when I’m dead. Right now I have to figure out how to stop Victor before Li’s army crushes the last of us.”

  “How’s Jahx?” the Healer asked, her eyes drifting to the level of Jetta’s thighs. She was still shielded by the couch, but it didn’t matter if she was behind a reinforced superstructure; Triel was too attuned not to discover her secret.

  Jetta ground her fists into the leather upholstery. “He’s the same. Nobody knows how to help him. I don’t know how to help him. I guess that’s some of the reason I ran off. Part of me was hoping that I would just stumble across the answer. It beat waiting around.”

  “Have you seen him?”

  Jetta shook her head. “Not yet. Jaeia said she would get us the clearance to see him after the meeting. I’m hoping it’s not goodbye. I don’t know if I could lose him a second time.”

  “You should have more faith, Jetta Kyron,” Triel said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Sometimes you can’t do it all. Sometimes you’ll just have to trust that a person can come through.”

  Jetta’s face soured. “I hope you didn’t come here just to lecture me.”

  “No,” Triel said, uncrossing her arms and letting them hang by her sides. Putting one knee on the couch, she leaned closer to Jetta. “I also came here to talk with you about what I experienced in the Temple of Exxuthus.”

  Jetta could feel the blood running down her legs and pressed her thighs harder into the back of the couch. “Okay, tell me.”

  Triel reached for Jetta’s hand. Although her first inclination was to pull away, she held her breath and allowed her to take it. “I’ve had many visions about you and me since we’ve first met. Some promising, hopeful. Some that have made me...”

  Pausing, she turned her eyes away, searching for the right term. But she didn’t have to put her thoughts into words. Jetta sensed the complexity of a terror that could never be conceptualized with the limitations of a spoken language.

  “...afraid for you,” the Healer continued. “But in the Temple of Exxuthus, I had the most powerful one of all. And it was—it was—”

  Sublime, Jetta thought, her eyes growing wide, feeling the floodgates of Triel’s hope and joy bathing her in vibrant psionic melodies. Suddenly love, unconditional and endless, was possible. She couldn’t experience the vision itself, but she felt its essence, an ineffable level of harmonic coexistence and tranquility.

  Triel withdrew her hand. The wonderful sensations stopped. The look in the Healer’s eyes changed to one of distance and caution. “But I was warned that preserving my life would come at a great cost. One that I’m not willing to risk. I just thought you should know.”

  Jetta frowned. “Why would you tell me such a thing?” she asked, trying to take back her hand, “and not expect me to do something about it?”

  Triel lowered her gaze and placed her other hand over Jetta’s. “Prodgy legend and prophecy has always been abstruse and somewhat allusive. It tests the will and the unconscious desires, manifesting from the power of suggestion and interpretation. I refuse to be told who I am, or what must be done in order to fulfill some ancient writ. I choose to seek my own path and decide my own fate.”

  Jetta found herself speechless as blood continued to trickle down her legs, despite their compression against the couc
h. “H-how do you do that?” she stuttered.

  “What?” the Healer said.

  “You accept yourself—all of yourself—with all that you are, good and bad,” Jetta said, touching Triel’s cheek with her fingertips.

  “You accept me as I am,” Triel whispered, blue eyes locking in with hers.

  Jetta withdrew her hand. “Yes, I do. But you push forward, you don’t look back. You don’t hate yourself. You don’t fight what you are. You are so much stronger than me.”

  “I embrace my talents, Jetta,” Triel said, “and, most importantly, I draw my strength from a place of synchronicity and love.”

  Jetta shifted her weight uncomfortably. “I can’t seem to do that very well...”

  “That’s because you fight everyone off.”

  Grumbling, Jetta turned away.

  “Jetta, I care so much about you,” the Healer whispered. “It bothers me that you don’t believe me.”

  Jetta froze in place, fearful of where the conversation was headed. Barely audibly, she replied: “I just don’t understand why...”

  Triel ran her slender fingers up Jetta’s arm and gently held onto the back of her neck. “Because you are so beautiful, Jetta, and yet you only see your scars. You are filled with the most wonderful light—brighter than sunshine—but you fight so hard to conceal it from everyone, especially me, because you think that makes you tough and more able to protect the ones you love.”

  Jetta wanted to step back, but Triel kept hold of her, kneeling on two legs now, meeting her eye to eye, the backrest of the couch the only thing between them. “But it doesn’t. I love you because you are a good person with a good soul. You care so much about others that it literally destroys you.”

  Jetta tried to look someplace, anyplace else, but Triel’s eyes, even bluer than she remembered, like the open sky against a vast icescape, would not let her pull away.

  “I’m sorry I’m not stronger, I’m sorry I’m not—”

  Bringing her closer, the Healer made her bend over the back of the couch. “Why are you so afraid to love me back?”

  Jetta held onto Triel’s wrists. “I’m not afraid of loving you,” she whispered. A smile tugged at the corners of her lips but vanished when she admitted the truth. “You had my heart the moment we met.”

  “Then why?”

  Unable to find the right words, what came forth felt rushed and raw. “I don’t feel worthy of your love.”

  Triel drew in closer, their faces only centimeters apart, her breath hot on her cheek as she lowered her voice. “You’re just going have to take a risk, Commander Kyron.”

  “That almost sounds like an order, Triel of Algardrien,” Jetta said, forcing a chuckle.

  Triel’s lips brushed against hers, her breath faster and heavier as she pulled at her collar. “Fall into me.”

  Jetta didn’t have a choice; Triel’s opposing weight and her awkward stance gave her no leverage as the Healer fell back onto the couch. When she tried to roll away, Triel held her tightly to her chest.

  “Wait, Triel, I—”

  “I know,” Triel said, reaching underneath her shirt with warm hands and closing her eyes. The wounds on Jetta’s thighs tingled and buzzed as the Healer augmented the repairs. Jetta held herself up and watched the Healer’s facial expressions change from pinched to contorted, then finally relaxing as the wound knitted shut. “It probably seemed necessary at the time. But you don’t have to do that anymore. I will always be there for you.”

  “You see all this in me... and you still love me?” Jetta asked.

  There was no hesitation, the answer spoken with a broad, beaming smile. “Yes.”

  Jetta leaned forward and kissed her, melting into Triel’s sweet lips and relishing the softness of her skin. Their first encounter on Old Earth felt real enough, but Jetta found this one stronger even than before, like there was an invisible force pulling them together. Each touch felt exaggerated, lighting up every nerve fiber from toes to fingertips.

  “I’ve never told you how stunning you are,” Jetta said, tucking a loose strand of the Healer’s dark hair behind her ear. She ran her finger along Triel’s markings on her forehead and neckline. “You seem more gorgeous to me every day.”

  Giggling shyly, the Healer pressed into her, slipping her tongue into her mouth and kissing her more intensely than ever before. At that moment, all of Jetta’s inhibitions vanished, and she surprised herself at her own aggression as she pulled apart the Healer’s uniform top.

  “Do you ever feel like—no, it’s dumb,” Jetta said.

  “No, tell me,” Triel said, working on removing Jetta’s chest protector.

  “Do you ever feel like we’re supposed to be together—like it was meant to be? I know you don’t believe in that stuff—neither do I—but sometimes I can’t help but—”

  The pained look in Triel’s eyes confused Jetta. “What?”

  Did I say something wrong? she wondered, sensing a sudden apprehension pervading the Healer’s emotions.

  Triel only held onto her more tightly. “It’s nothing.”

  As she geared up to contest her assertion, Triel pulled her back on top of her and reached under her chest protector. For a moment, Jetta stopped kissing her to relish the feeling as Triel’s fingers grazed lower, finding the old wound on her abdomen, still ragged and inflamed, though they didn’t linger long. Her hands moved to her hips and gently caressed the tender skin just above the waistline of her pants.

  “No,” Jetta said, pinning Triel’s hands back. “Let me, this time.”

  Jetta removed the last of Triel’s top and took in the sight of her. Fair skin, unblemished by age or scars, intricately decorated with Algardrien tribal markings, seemed perfect in the glowing backlight of the terminal holograms. Although she found her beauty intimidating, breathtaking, Jetta’s desires lead her to step outside the restraints of fear.

  “Baeya,” Jetta whispered in her native tongue, touching her cheek.

  Despite the thousands of years of lovemaking she had inadvertently stolen in her gleanings, she chose to rely on what came naturally. Kissing down her neck, Jetta descended to the upper curves of her chest, where she teased the skin lightly with her tongue until Triel arched her back and extended her toes, moving her body in a synchronous rhythm. Jetta’s hand found her other breast and kept her touch gentle only until the Healer pressed into her, needing more.

  “Di galo ke’o–” Triel cried in her native tongue, pulling off her pants and pushing Jetta down towards her undulating hips. With a mixture of fear and intense desire, Jetta dipped down and explored the warmth between her legs. The Healer quivered as she tasted her for the first time. It was unusual at first, but the tangy saltiness of her made Jetta feel closer to Triel, as if it were a secret only she could know.

  Something inside her awakened in the heat, and Jetta found herself barely able to restrain herself, especially when Triel cried out her name. Gripping the Healer’s legs, she steadied herself as the Healer’s vocalizations became louder and more intense. The fair-skinned woman’s hands clenched and unclenched as she beckoned Jetta in whispers and moans.

  “Jetta—oh Gods—”

  Fear and doubt, once dominating and silencing, fell away, replaced by an intense desire that fueled her passion. Moving back on top of the Healer so she could kiss her again, Jetta simultaneously entered her warmth.

  “Take me—”

  Jetta bit her neck and wrapped her free arm around her tightly as her hand worked inside her. Each time she drew back and plunged deeper, she felt the Healer’s body go taut, ever closer to reaching her peak.

  A psionic wavelength appeared in the farthest reaches of Jetta’s awareness, pulsating, expanding, blue steel ribbons fanning across a kaleidoscope plane of timeless space. Triel reached back for her across a different realm, connecting the physical with the psionic, linking them in both body and mind. Jetta felt herself both on top of and inside the Healer in dual perspectives, and for the first time in her
life she could not differentiate between the two.

  As she moved her hand in and out, she rested her head on Triel’s forehead and allowed her mind to roam free in the vast expanse of these parallel planes. It was a closeness she had never thought possible, pulling her toward perfection with every breath and every stroke. Finally, on both a physical and psionic level she surged into the Healer, both of them straining with exquisite release.

  “Oh, Jetta...” Triel sighed, putting her arms around her and squeezing with all her might. “I love you. So much.”

  Jetta smiled. She didn’t want to move and she didn’t want any of it to end. She wanted to close her eyes and lock herself into this moment, forever in the embrace of Triel of Algardrien.

  “I love you too,” Jetta said, holding her close. “I always have, and I always will.”

  AS TRIEL LEFT JETTA’S quarters, escorts falling in step behind her, she couldn’t help but fixate on what Jetta had said: “Do you ever feel like we’re supposed to be together—like it was meant to be?”

  Even Jetta senses our destiny, she thought.

  Triel wiped the tears from her eyes as inconspicuously as she could so as not to alert the other crewman. If they saw her worry or her fear, they would probably think she was about to Fall. She tried to think of something—anything—else, but the memory of Arpethea’s words still rang in her ears:

  “She is not ready for what she must do. She will try and stop you.”

  Quickening her pace, Triel rounded the corner to her own quarters and politely thanked the guards before sealing the doors behind her. She stood there a moment, then turned her back and slid down to the ground.

  “Do not hesitate to end her life to save your own. End her life to save our people. It is destined.”

  “Arpethea, how can you ask me to do such an awful thing? I can’t possibly hurt Jetta,” she wept into her hands.

  Something in empty room heard her pain and whispered back the awful truth: “You must kill the Apparax.”

  Triel looked at her hands, turning them over, marveling at the weave of dark markings that had taken years to develop. She thought of her father and how disappointed he had always been in her, the way he argued through endless nights with her mother over her defiance. Maybe she had been wrong to leave him. Maybe she had been wrong about all of her beliefs, especially where she chosen to place her faith. Where had it led her, after all? A lone Solitary prone to Falling, in love with the Triorion, while her people—her father—suffered, trapped in the Motti ship.