by Hana Starr
The warriors were all hitched onto something, including Tulk, who had crammed himself into her co-pilots seat. Jade ignored them all as she struggled to first get the rocket up off the sand, and then higher and higher up through the thick atmosphere.
It was just as easy as it always had been to pilot the craft, and so impossibly hard. Her heart was screaming.
A soft voice broke through her internal mourning. “We aren’t going back to get him, are we?”
Jade turned to look at Tulk. She hadn’t been aware of starting to cry again until she felt the tears dampen her cheeks.
“No. We’re not.”
“I understand,” he said, and that was all.
She didn’t want to. Every part of her screamed for her not to do this, but just before breaking away from Vallorus, she brought the rocket swinging around and did a pass over the small battlefield far below.
That one enemy ship was not alone. There were more bearing down from a further distance away but it didn’t seem like they would be needed, as the wreckage was smoking.
Her heart jammed in her throat. Sorlo, no…
Then, a beam of light pierced it straight through, and the Peace Bearer wreckage exploded with Sorlo still inside.
Jade yanked upwards on the controls, and the rocket lost sight of the planet beneath them.
She had nearly escaped entirely from this are until she remembered exactly what else they had come all the way out here to do. It didn’t feel like she should, but she had been doing so many of those types of things within the past few minutes. Why stop now?
With numb fingers, she accessed a very specific section of the controls and gave the command for a hatch in the very rear of the rocket to open up. A probe, circular and bland, emerged from the rear and suspended itself into space.
Jade closed her eyes and pressed the designated button on her console, and that was all. The probe marked out that anything before it was designated as Federation territory. Maps at every single base, in every ship, at every home and business, would all be adjusted as the border realigned itself to compensate for the new addition.
I did it for you, Sorlo, she thought.
Then, that was it. The mission was over. There was nothing to do but resume the trip home, and she did so with an incredibly heavy heart. She couldn’t stop thinking about him; actually, she didn’t know when she would ever be able to stop.
The young alien warriors she was stuck with were unfamiliar and annoying. They had their own dynamic which she was not a part of, and nor did she wish to be. For the most part they left her alone, as she did them.
Sleeping in her cot was impossible, so she slept in the chair.
Food was brought to her by Tulk, and she ate in the chair. Sometimes he stayed in the cockpit, thankfully without speaking, but other times he was elsewhere in the rocket with his companions.
That left Jade plenty of time to cry and revel in her misery, and she did.
That foolish man, had he any idea what he’d done to her? He had given her so much, but with everything he gave, everything she accepted, he had also been taking away the self-assured peace that she once knew. He had ruined her for the life she once knew; now all she could think about was everything she wouldn’t be able to do, because it was too close to a memory of him.
“Damn you,” she whispered through tears, picturing that stupid grin on his beautiful face.
Was this love, then? She didn’t like it one bit.
Chapter Twelve
And so they arrived at the colony. The young warriors were bustling and impatient as Jade brought the rocket down to a somewhat-less-than-smooth landing on the runway. Strangely, no voice had greeted her over communications.
She quickly found out why, though. The airlock of her choosing was opened without a sound, and when it was safe, she opened her cockpit door and stepped out onto the floor while fully expecting to be put through all that checklist business.
Instead, the door to the garage before them opened immediately. There was a solitary figure standing there, his hair grey rather than silver in the dull interior lighting.
Of course.
“Byron,” Jade said in greeting, her voice dull.
His eyes glanced across her. “Assassin,” he said, not exactly sounding happy to see her. If he had noticed that Sorlo wasn’t in attendance, he gave no sign of it.
And then there were ten young warriors clambering down out of the rocket behind her, and she stood back as they lined up in a row and saluted their chief with somber eyes, but happy bodies. Looking at them, she shook her head a little and marveled at it all. So young. They were in their twenties or younger, and they would recover from this in no time. They were simply glad to be home, to be somewhere familiar where the recovery from their disaster of a mission could begin.
One by one, Byron stood before each warrior and saluted them all in the same manner. It was a great honor for them all.
And then he stood in front of Jade. There was no salute. “It would have been nice,” he started, “for you to have sent some sort of communications or even a single report on your way back.”
“Some things came up,” Jade replied.
Byron raised an eyebrow. “Your communications portal was open this whole time. We’ve been trying to reach you constantly, and you couldn’t even spare a single moment to tell us not to?”
Honestly, Jade hadn’t even been aware of all the calls that were trying to patch through to the rocket’s frequency. She had been at first, but then she had just instructed the computers to stop notifying her. She just didn’t want to talk about this. Sooner or later she would have to, but she had put it off as long as she possibly could first.
After seeing that she wasn’t going to reply, Byron sighed and shook his head. “All of you warriors, you are dismissed. Get something to eat and then return to your quarters. You will all be debriefed at a point in the near future so do not speak of this until then.”
Jade waited politely until all the young warriors were out of earshot. And then she said, “You’re going to have rumors all over the place before they even talk to anyone. You know that, don’t you?”
Byron huffed a soft little laugh. “Yes. I heard things myself when I was running to get here in time for you to show up.”
“You don’t look like a man who’s been running anywhere.”
“That is because I keep in shape, like I said to you before I left. In any case, some of these rumors could have been diverted had you simply reported back once or twice. Where is Sorlo?”
The question sent a jab of pain spearing her straight through. It wasn’t just her heart that hurt, but her stomach and her thoughts, and every single bone in her body. The world spun dizzyingly even though she wasn’t about to faint; it was just her mind that was reeling.
When everything finally righted itself, she found that nothing had changed but for Byron’s expression. His mouth dragged down at the corners and he sighed. But still he didn’t speak, perhaps wanting her to be the first to say it.
“Sorlo didn’t make it back,” she croaked out, earning another wrack of pain.
“I figured as much,” the chief sighed. He looked very much his years in that moment, exhausted and worn down.
For the first time, Jade wondered whether the chief retired when they were done, or simply carried on until something took them out. And she wondered which was the way an assassin was supposed to go.
Byron looked up again, and gestured to the open door behind him. “We need to talk, then. Let us get this over with and then be done, shall we? Don’t worry about the ship. Someone else will be along to take it where it needs to be.”
They passed by her Falcon on the way through; she had so been looking forward to being reunited with it but now it hurt to see.
Slowly, each of them walking with dragging footsteps, the pair made their way to the central tower and then all the way up to Byron’s office. With the door shut behind them, they took the same seats as last t
ime. And Jade told the story.
The chief listened to it all without so much as a single word, though he did periodically make a note of something on his monitor. Jade didn’t care, didn’t want to see what he was doing. She wasn’t even really seeing anything at all but her own memories, all of them focusing upon the one she had lost without ever truly having had him.
When it was over and there was nothing more to tell, they sat in the silence for a long while and let her words simply hang in the air until all trace of them was gone. Then and only then, did Byron speak.
“He went out a hero.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
The chief sighed and nodded. “I will have to gather information from those warriors but I think I know enough at this point to be able to say that a ceremony will be held for each and every lost member. We will cast away mementos to stand for each, and Sorlo will be in a position of honor. Will you stay long enough to be present for it?”
And Jade hesitated. Her heart felt like it was in a thousand pieces, ten million little slivers of glass just spread out across the darkened floor of her soul. Yet, she was an assassin. Emotions could not get in the way of such things.
Taking a deep breath to clear her thoughts, she said, “I would be honored to.”
The ceremony was held in four days, during which she didn’t leave her room. Perhaps Byron noticed this, or some other kind-hearted alien noticed her door never opened, but an occasional tray of food was placed in front of her door. She ate as much as she could stomach from each, though that tended to be only a few mouthfuls, and later it would be taken away again.
As for the actual ceremony itself, Jade hated that she had to be part of it. She cared not a bit for any of the others who had lost their lives. She hadn’t known them, hadn’t had sex with them, spent weeks with them, or fallen in love with them.
And when the part to honor Sorlo came around, she knotted her hands into fists against her lap and endeavored to hear as little as possible. Still, she ended up knowing that he was given a post-honorary elevation in ranking, and an award for his sacrifices; the award was handed off to the person who had been closest to him…which was her.
She accepted it publicly, silently. And then that night, she tossed it in the incinerator.
The next day, she got in her Falcon and left.
There was a new mission on her monitors, messages recorded that she needed to listen to, coordinates to which she needed to fly; ignoring all of it, she turned the nose of her ship deeper into the stars and simply began to travel. Alternating between bursts of fuel and simple drifting, she just headed away. There was no destination, no purposes to it but for the act of putting distance between herself and the universe.
Planets passed her by. She counted rings, made up her own constellations with the ever-present stars. Other ships passing by her made notice of the fact that she was of Dark Peace and not cloaked; kindly, they tried to connect to her frequency to see if she needed any sort of assistance, but she simply never answered. And they never pressed it. After all, she was just an assassin.
Reaching an area of asteroid belt, she simply flew straight through it without correcting her course even once. If she was hit, that would simply be her end. But, she was not hit, and emerged safely out the side to continue her wandering.
Her food supplies barely dwindled, as she hardly touched them. Her uniform began to hang loose on her already slender frame, and she began to feel dizzy more often than not, but starvation was the least of her concerns.
The only thing she cared about was the heartbreak. She couldn’t bear it and so she just sought to leave it behind, but it followed her.
Eventually she went past a Federation boundary and entered the uncharted areas beyond. It was where a member of Dark Peace like her belonged, but for all intents and purposes she had gone rogue.
No one would try to track her down, she knew. It was simply better to just let her…exist.
Lying in her cot one night, curled up in the thin sheet that was the only cover she ever needed, Jade half-closed her eyes and watched one of the steady, dim lights on the far wall. That light never went out, one of only a few which provided just enough for her to be able to navigate the interior of her Falcon.
A soft little smile of remembrance formed on her lips as she thought of Sorlo annoying her so badly with his playing with the lights, though she understood now that that was simply how he had been. So playful and full of light, and life. How had she not seen it earlier that fate had brought him to her so that she could have that experience?
How did I not see earlier that I love him? I would have told him.
Time had somewhat dulled the agony, as she had spent a great deal of days coming all the way out here. Wrapped up in a cocoon of nothingness, she prodded at the memories and was surprised to find that she might have begun healing without having realized it.
Still, she didn’t want to push her luck with this, and receded a little inside herself again. Back to watching the blinking light, thinking tender thoughts of his body upon hers, and his scent. He always smelled so sweet, like sun-dried grasses. And the sight of his pale body laid out against hers, arms and legs entangled, the musky scents of their passion surrounding her.
The little smile grew bigger by a fraction as she recalled the first time they had sex together, when he grabbed the lights and dimmed them down.
Like he thought he had a chance at actually seeming romantic…
And then her eyes flew wide.
Blinking light?
No light aboard the Falcon blinked! They were all steady! The very one she’d been staring at for ages was a steady light.
But it was steady no longer. It was, in fact blinking.
And then every single light she had was blinking.
“Sorlo?” she whispered, picturing him sitting beside her with the stolen light and energy wrapped up in his fingertips. He would laugh at her and then release it, triumphant that he had managed to get a reaction out of her.
The moment his name fell from her lips, she knew what this was.
He was alive!
Relief and belief rocketed through her body so fast that she gasped, clutching at her chest with both hands. Emotions were flooding through her too fast for her to understand, crashing into her like waves upon a beach.
He had to be alive somewhere! That was the only explanation. He was alive, reaching out to her, contacting her somehow.
“Sorlo!” she cried, and leapt out of bed as the lights continued to sputter on and off. Hands shaking, she checked her monitor and found no technical issue to cause this. It was true. It was real!
The Illurian was letting her know that he was still alive. It was a call, a summons. And this one, she would answer.
Shaking and crying with relief and hurt and joy, Jade punched in the coordinates for Vallorus and turned her Falcon around. It would take ages to get there but she was going to do it –for him.
The moment her ship was pointing in the right direction, the flickering stopped. The lights were steady once again, as though the anomaly never happened. But by then, Jade was already committed to her path.
She would find the man she loved again, tracking him down with all the skills at her disposal; then, once she found him, she would beat him over the head until his common sense returned.
When it had, Jade would kiss him, and never let him go again.
The End
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About the Author
Hana Starr is a romance author living in the Pacific Northwest. She spends her day at tech startups and at night
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