Outcaste

by Fletcher DeLancey

  They went into each other’s arms at the same moment.

  “We were so worried. It was Fahla’s own nightmare, knowing you were fighting those abominations. Every tick could have been your last and we would never have known.” Sharro tucked her face into Rahel’s throat, the echoes of fear coming through her skin.

  “They weren’t abominations. Just machines.”

  “Machines that destroyed our city. Have you seen the damage? We almost couldn’t get the skimmer out of my neighborhood. The central streets are impassable and the builder caste house is a pile of rubble. Eight hundred cycles of history crumbled to dust in one morning.”

  Rahel had learned that on the flight to Brasalara. The Voloth had dropped more ground pounders on Whitesun than anywhere else except Blacksun, which was hit with three hundred of them. But Captain Serrado had kept her promise, and the Caphenon had shot nearly every one of them out of the sky before they could even unfold their legs. Blacksun had incurred almost no damage at all. Whitesun, without such a protector, had been bombarded.

  “I only saw a little of it as we flew out,” she said. “Then I came here and saw Brasalara.”

  Sharro kissed her cheek and withdrew. “How bad is it?”

  “Half the town is gone.”

  “Goddess above.”

  “It’s going to be a long cleanup. I’m not sure Mother will have any bodies to burn.”

  “That won’t make it any easier. Let’s hope—” Sharro stopped and looked past Rahel’s shoulder.

  As the familiar presence hit her senses, Rahel turned around.

  Ravenel stood in the doorway, staring at her with haunted eyes. Then she strode forward and pulled her into a desperate warmron.

  “I’m all right, Mother.”

  “I know. That’s why I’m still sane.”

  “I thought you were dead.” Rahel’s voice was roughened by the constriction in her throat. “I thought I’d lost you, and it was like losing half of my heart. When Sharro said you were with her . . .” She pulled back and looked into her eyes. “You couldn’t have saved them. But you saved Sharro and me.”

  Tears slipped down Ravenel’s cheeks. Without speaking, she slid one hand around the back of Rahel’s neck and positioned the other alongside her jaw. Then she waited.

  Rahel had Shared only once in her life: with Mouse on the day they joined. She had always wondered if that deep empathic connection had something to do with her certain knowledge of his death.

  Sharing—the joining of empathic centers, rendering the partner’s emotions as clear as one’s own—was most often done between bondmates, lovers, close friends, or sometimes siblings. Occasionally, it was used as part of mental healing. It rarely occurred between parents and children.

  She did not hesitate before mirroring the hand positions and lowering her head.

  When their forehead ridges aligned, she dropped into a bleak landscape of grief and guilt, still shivering with remembered terror. Around its edges, keeping the looming darkness at bay, was a blazing light of love and gratitude.

  She hoped her own love and gratitude could fight back more of that darkness, but worried that the horrors she harbored from the battle might make it worse. Then she had an idea.

  “Sharro? Will you?” she asked without opening her eyes. Ravenel’s surprise reverberated through her.

  “Only if I’m welcome.”

  The darkness pulsed with additional guilt and the pain of hurting a loved one. Her mother wanted that connection, but could not bring herself to ask.

  “You are,” Rahel said.

  Sharro’s hand settled on the back of her neck, just above Ravenel’s. A moment later her emotional presence joined them, full and rich and complex as Rahel had always known it would be.

  Sharro had her own dark spaces, but for the most part she was a brilliant force of love and understanding. It was her understanding that undid Ravenel, who took in a great gulp of air and began to weep.

  The three of them stood together for a very long time, two supporting the third and all supporting each other.

  It was not a cure for the grief.

  But it was a start.

  43

  RETURN

  Even if Brasalara’s small temple had survived, its pyre grounds would have been woefully insufficient for two hundred and eleven pyres. A producer who lived on the western edge of town volunteered one of her recently harvested fields.

  Rahel kept herself busy building pyres. Ravenel and Sharro helped with the relief effort, supplying food, shelter, and clothing to those who had lost their homes. Rahel thought it odd that her mother would be handing out what she herself needed, but Sharro said she still had a home, along with quite a bit of clothing.

  “I know she still has a home,” Rahel said. “But does she feel that way?”

  Sharro smiled. “She does.”

  That was all Rahel needed to know.

  When the pyres were ready—some with remains, many with life-size facsimiles—the entire village turned out for the mass burning, along with journalists and family members from all over Alsea. Rahel’s pilot friend brought her a new dress uniform and formal cape, and told her that the Whitesun fleet had volunteered to perform the Flight of the Return over the field. It would not be the massive production of the state funerals, which had used the fleets of all four major cities, but it would show respect for and solidarity with the Alseans who had suffered so greatly.

  A local band played the traditional ballad. Rahel stood back with Sharro and watched her mother, who held the torch and waited for the right moment. Next to them were several members of the extended family, people Rahel barely remembered and didn’t know how to talk to now.

  The music built into a crescendo and then dropped away, making room for the deep, chest-throbbing tone of a long bell.

  Every torchbearer on the field moved at the same time, setting their pyres alight. Ravenel lit the first of her three pyres, then the second.

  Nothing had been found of Rahel’s siblings. This was a representation burning of facsimiles. Her father was downstairs in the shop when the fighter crashed; his remains had been pulled out just two days earlier.

  Ravenel paused, watching the flames climb the pyres of her children. Then she stepped to her bondmate’s pyre, turned, and held out the torch for Rahel.

  “I don’t—” Have the right, was what Rahel had meant to say, but Sharro interrupted.

  “Do it for her.”

  Rahel accepted the torch.

  There were so many things she wished she could have said to him, so many things she had wanted to hear. Now he would never speak again, and she couldn’t think of a thing to say. She stepped forward, lit the pyre, and thumped her fist to her chest in a warrior’s salute.

  Her mother took the torch from her hand and returned it to its stand, then stood so close that their shoulders touched. Sharro joined them, standing on Ravenel’s other side.

  Three pyres crackled and flamed in front of them. All around them burned two hundred and eight more. The air turned wavy with heat.

  “It was never the same for us after you ran away.” Ravenel stared straight ahead, watching the flames. “But it really changed when I got the call from the Whitemoon Detention Center and realized that he’d filed that theft report. I didn’t have a bondmate after that. I had a partner in the shop and a father for my other two children.”

  Rahel didn’t know what to say. She slipped an arm around her mother’s waist and rested their heads together.

  “We should have dissolved the bond a long time ago. But I wanted to build a future for my children. I wanted the shop to succeed and for them to be well established in their crafting careers. I was so divided, Rahel. But the truth is—” She stopped, took a breath, and tried again. “The truth is that of my three children, you were the one who needed me the least. Once we got you into the warrior caste, you just . . . took off, like a bird taking flight. Your brother and sister, they . . . they needed more guidance.”
She sniffed and wiped tears from her face. “You never needed guidance; you just needed me to sign the right forms so you could get where you wanted to go. So I stayed. I helped them, and I kept building that future . . . and look at it now. Gone.” The tears flowed faster than she could wipe them away.

  Sharro turned and pulled her into a warmron, instantly advertising to anyone watching that they were lovers.

  She would not have done that had she not been given prior consent. Sharro never did anything without considering it beforehand. Rahel’s heart warmed at the knowledge that they must have discussed this and agreed that it was time . . . and then broke at the sound of her mother’s sobs.

  The band played on, accompanied by a talented singer whose voice soared with the flames. Right on cue came the rumble of transport engines, which turned into a thundering roar as every surviving military transport in the Whitesun fleet flew over the field. The last transports had barely passed overhead before the first were sweeping around in the distance, catching the sun as they banked and began their aerial dance. With their wings bleeding red smoke to signify the lost lives, the transports formed a tight circle and looped around the burning pyres, climbing higher and higher as the pace of the music increased. The Flight of the Return was a salute to warriors who had made the ultimate sacrifice, but today the warriors of Whitesun were honoring members of all six castes.

  Ravenel raised her tearstained face in wonder. “I didn’t know,” she said.

  “No one did. It was meant to be a surprise gift to all of us.” And it had been effective, Rahel thought. Tears still slid down her mother’s face, but the sobs had stopped and she now stood straight as she watched the dancing transports.

  Rahel leaned in to kiss her cheek. “You did everything you could. It’s your turn now. Build your own future.”

  44

  SLIDING

  Over the course of the next cycle, Ravenel did build her future. She left Brasalara with barely a backward glance, stating that there was nothing left for her there, and settled permanently with Sharro.

  Within half a moon, she found a space to rent near the bayfront. By the end of the moon, she had shipped in equipment and set up a new workshop. Then she threw herself into her craft and churned out sculptures that were hauntingly evocative of both her grief and her hope.

  They found willing buyers in Alseans who had seen their planet invaded and damaged, who had lost loved ones or taken part in the terrible battle. The sculptures filled a need and sold as fast as her mother could make them. Rahel thought the income might be secondary to the comfort of knowing that so many people understood.

  She herself did not do nearly as well. When she returned to Blacksun and resumed her normal life, the nightmares began.

  The first time, she woke up terrified because it had been her, not Pria, who had lost her legs. No one had been there to offer paincounters. She had lain on the hillside in agony, until she put her disruptor to her head to end it. But it would not fire, and she knew she would suffer like that forever.

  A few nights later, she dreamed that she was leading her scholars toward another ground pounder and realized that they were no longer following. When she stopped and turned, all four of them looked at her with that focused expression. For a moment she didn’t understand what they were doing. Then she screamed as their claws tore into her mind.

  She dreamed that she set her father’s pyre alight and then watched in horror as he sat upright, his clothes and hair in flames, and howled in agony. “Why did you come back now?” he raged as his face began to melt. “Why now, only to burn me?”

  She dreamed of being chased by ground pounders that always knew where she was, no matter how well she was hidden. She dreamed of watching scholars break the Voloth, only to have all of the Voloth converge on her and tear her apart. She dreamed of Voloth imbued with the powers of high empaths, staring at her from beneath a ground pounder and breaking her mind.

  Worst of all were the nights when she dreamed of lying on a couch, her head in Sharro’s lap, her eyes closed while she luxuriated in the familiar touch of those gentle fingers brushing back her hair. Then the touch stopped, and she opened her eyes. It was not Sharro who looked down at her, but the empathic rapist.

  Sleep never returned once she awoke.

  She discovered that a gulp of Whitesun Rise before bed kept the nightmares away—for a while. Then it wasn’t enough, so she tried two. Then three.

  Her consumption of grain spirits rose, while her hanticks of sleep continued to decline. Over time, both took their toll.

  Three and a half moons after the Battle of Alsea, the Council voted to allow the Voloth survivors to settle on Alsea. These were the soldiers who had been turned after Lancer Tal’s new battle plan, whose minds had not been shattered. They included the four from the ground pounder that Rahel’s team had captured.

  Rahel was stunned by this betrayal. She could not believe that these soldiers, who had brought death and destruction to Alsea with no provocation, were being rewarded by a life of leisure on the very planet they had tried to enslave.

  Shantu agreed with her. “It was Lancer Tal,” he growled. “She convinced the High Council, and they convinced the Council. She was a great war leader, but this—!”

  Her nightmares worsened. It was as if the knowledge of those Voloth living on Alsea permeated her subconscious, releasing the terrors more frequently. She had respected Lancer Tal for her brilliance during the Battle of Alsea, but now she associated that name with betrayal.

  In an effort to get the sleep she so desperately needed, she tried drinking not only before she went to bed, but also when she awoke from a nightmare. This, too, was effective at first. Then she needed more to make it work.

  At one point, worried about her consumption levels, she tried sleep meds. But they gummed up her brain so badly that the increased sleep was not worth it. She would wake after a full night of dreamless sleep feeling as if half of her intellect had vanished during the night. It returned only gradually over the course of the day, reaching normal levels just before she took another dose. When Shantu noticed and commented on her lack of sharpness, she threw away the sleep meds and returned to drinking. It wasn’t as effective for combating nightmares, but it didn’t destroy her ability to perform her job.

  She refused to work with high empaths. Shantu was the only one she could tolerate. She had never been comfortable around them, not since the age of seventeen, but now she would make every effort, take any path, if it meant she could keep them away from her.

  Five and a half moons after the battle, the test facility for the new fusion reactors lost containment and exploded. It had been built with Protectorate technology acquired in the treaty Alsea had signed. Conspiracy theories abounded, but Shantu dismissed them all.

  “If the Protectorate wanted to destroy us, it wouldn’t be through giving us faulty blueprints for fusion reactors,” he said. “Those idiots screaming about the Protectorate are missing the real problem. Our true crisis is much closer at hand.”

  “What is that?” Rahel asked. She was sitting in his home office, a glass of very fine grain spirits in her hand. It was one of the nicer benefits of meeting with Shantu.

  “Lancer Tal. I supported her when she used her emergency powers to bypass the government, but that power went to her head. She stood in front of the Council today and treated us like children. Told us that she would decide when to release the Protectorate’s matter printers, not us. Not the Council. Her.”

  “She’s overriding the Council?”

  Shantu nodded. “Those matter printers are the most transformative technology our world may ever see. Instantly creating anything we want without worrying about scarce resources? There is nothing more important than handling that tech properly. And she’s sitting on it. The same woman who let the Voloth settle here!” His voice rose. “Who gave away our sovereignty to the aliens who abandoned us and then said, ‘Hoi, you have something we want, let us help you after all.’ We
saved ourselves from the Voloth. We didn’t need Protectorate help. She’s drunk on power and endangering our future.”

  “I don’t understand. You engineered a caste coup to throw out Tordax, and he wasn’t half this bad. Why aren’t you getting rid of her?”

  He looked as if he had tasted something sour. “Her approval ratings are still sky high. People haven’t forgotten that she saved Alsea during the invasion.”

  “She didn’t do it by herself. Your ratings are sky high as well.”

  Shantu had been a brilliant commander for the Pallea forces and was personally responsible for the destruction of eleven ground pounders before the battle had turned. His reputation was stronger than ever, and he had forced Lancer Tal to accept several of his demands while she forged a treaty with the Protectorate.

  “Not high enough.” He leaned back in his chair and gazed at her across his desk. “But I’m working on it. Lancer Tal assigned me to work with Parser on corruption in the merchant caste—”

  “She assigned you? Like an instructor assigns a student?”

  The sour look returned. “Yes, and that will come back to bite her. It gives Parser and me the perfect cover for long-term planning. There will be a caste coup, have no doubt. But the current political climate requires careful maneuvering.”

  “You’re working on a caste coup with the Prime Merchant? That man would sell you three-day-old fish and charge you extra for the flies.”

  Shantu laughed. “True words. But he’s also predictable and very well connected. I won’t succeed with Tal the way I did with Tordax. It needs to be a subtle attack.”

  Rahel thought about that as she sipped her drink. Shantu was many things; subtle was not one of them. This was a radical departure from his normal methods.

  “Are you really that worried about her?” she asked.

  He shifted to rest his forearms on the desk and fixed her with a serious stare. “Lancer Tal is the greatest threat Alsea has ever known. She’s worse than the Voloth. They were at least a clear enemy to be recognized and repelled. Tal is insidious. She’s selling our future and weakening us at precisely the time when we need to be stronger than ever. She must be stopped.”