by Gun Brooke
The sound of her pursuer’s hoverbike was closer, and Roshan feared whatever help Boyoda sent would arrive too late. She clasped the laser-knife in her right hand. She was good at hand-to-hand combat and had often spearheaded the units that moved in on Onotharian military installations. Still, it disgusted her to have to resort to such measures. At night, the faces of some of the people she’d killed haunted her. Young Onotharian men and women, whose duties as guards clashed with the resistance’s goals, walked in her dreams and made sure she never forgot the price they’d paid or her guilt for ending their lives. Roshan squeezed her eyes shut. This isn’t the time for regrets. Focus, damn it!
The sudden surge in the hoverbike engine put Roshan on alert. Sweat poured down between her breasts as she crawled backward, her eyes locked on the undergrowth west of her. Expecting her assailant to come charging through it, laser-pulse weapon ablaze, Roshan slid under the dense fern bushes to the right and hid. Her heart thudded like ancient skin drums in her ears. She had to be prepared if he spotted her. The knife was heavy in her hand. Remember to breathe.
With a deep roar, the bushes divided and produced a hoverbike—without its driver. Roshan stared as the vehicle slowly somersaulted, only to slam into the tree she’d just left in a cloud of sparkling debris. The propulsion system erupted, and Roshan curled into a ball to protect herself from the blast. The sound nearly tore her eardrums, and Roshan lay still, rocking slowly, until only an echo remained.
“Paladin!” a voice called from afar. “Paladin?”
“Here,” Roshan croaked, trying to clear her lungs of dust. “Paladin here.” She coughed repeatedly.
“I’m on my way. Are you injured?”
Was the voice female? Roshan grimaced. “I have no clue,” she huffed. She didn’t. Her entire body ached, and her ears still rang, but otherwise she was oddly numb. Her already injured foot should’ve burned since she’d landed on it after being tossed off the bike. “I’m all right.” She was. She was still alive. Stars, I’m getting too old for this.
Another hoverbike entered the small clearing, and Roshan stared up at the sleek, state-of-the-art revelation. Black and shiny, it looked like a live entity, barely skimming the ground.
The driver jumped off and bent over her, as she stared up at her rescuer through the night-vision visor. Tinted in green, and illuminated from behind by the rising sun, the person seemed overwhelming.
“How are you doing?” a female voice asked, muffled by a scarf that covered everything but her eyes.
“I’ll live.” Roshan coughed and tried to not inhale too much of the dust. “You were just in time.” She glanced suspiciously at the stranger. How could she be sure of this individual’s true allegiance? For all she knew, this could be a sixth OECS agent masking as her savior. “Who sent you? How did you find me?”
“Can you stand up?” The stranger tugged at Roshan’s arm. “We don’t have much time. I imagine the OECS will miss these fellows sooner rather than later. They won’t be too happy that we’ve incinerated half of them and crushed the others. Come on!”
“Answer my question.” Roshan rose unsteadily and grimaced as her ankle swelled inside her combat boot. “I’m not going anywhere with you until you do.” The knife was still in her hand. Heavy. All set.
Gesturing impatiently with her chin, the woman placed both hands on her hips. She was much shorter than Roshan had first thought, perhaps because of her powerful persona. “Very well. Boyoda sent me. I have the coordinates.” She rattled off the numbers Roshan had sent to the rebel leader. “Don’t worry. I’m not an Onotharian spy.”
Something in the stranger’s voice, now less husky than Roshan remembered, puzzled her. She flipped up her visor and blinked as the day’s first sunbeams almost blinded her. “Well, you know my call sign. What’s yours?”
No reply. The woman’s widening dark amber eyes scrutinized Roshan’s face, and her narrow pupils grew until they seemed to fill the irises completely.
“H’rea deasav’h,” the woman cursed. “It’s…impossible.”
Roshan knew this woman recognized her, and the knowledge robbed her of all oxygen. She slowly raised her knife and felt it vibrate and hum. “You know me.”
“Yes. Or…I used to.”
That voice. Roshan tried to think away the huskiness. Flashbacks engulfed her, but she still couldn’t make a connection. “Perhaps you should remove your scarf so we can be on equal ground.”
The woman folded her arms and stared down at her boots. Somehow it registered with Roshan that her rescuer wore blue and black tights and a hooded jacket, unconventional clothes for a rescue mission, and not very warm. Nothing about this operation seemed done by the book.
After the woman lowered her scarf, she pushed off her hood. “I wasn’t going to tell Paladin the whole truth. But since I know you, or thought I did...” She removed her hand, and the rising sun illuminated her face. “All call signs aside, you know me as—”
“Andreia.” Roshan stared in disbelief, finding it difficult to draw the next breath. “Andreia?” What the hell’s going on? She looked pale, with the exception of two red spots on her cheeks, and her expression was completely different than when she represented the occupiers and spoke the language of an enemy.
“Yes. And I’m sure you have a lot of questions, but we have to get out of here.” Andreia jerked Roshan’s arm as she mounted her hoverbike. “It’ll be a snug fit, but climb aboard. They’re probably just minutes away.”
Startled out of her shock, Roshan jumped on the bike behind Andreia. “Let’s go.”
Andreia took the first two curves carefully until they emerged onto the wider path that Roshan had followed before. It was easier to maneuver in the daylight, but their increased speed made branches and twigs almost derail them. Roshan had to cling to Andreia’s waist to stay on the bike, and being glued to her rescuer was oddly disturbing. Andreia felt firm, well trained, yet soft. Where the hell is my mind going? This doesn’t change the fact that I’ve hated her for so long.
“Anything on sensors?” Roshan yelled.
“Nothing. Wait. Yes. Ten minutes from here, four hovercraft heading this way. Hold on!” Their hovercraft skidded sideways for a moment before it accelerated.
“All right!” Roshan leaned forward to shout against the wind. “When you clear the trees, take a right and drive through the low bushes toward the east section of my estate. The gate’s located at the far end of the wall. Once inside, we’ll be fine. Hurry, and they’ll lose us on sensors.”
Something dawned on Roshan. For skies and stars…It’s really her. How can she possibly be here…and now she knows my identity. Gods of Gantharat, I screwed up tonight!
“Pull the ultraviolet lights out of my carrier.” Andreia let go with one hand and gestured toward her back.
Roshan opened the small, flat bag and was delighted to see the weapons. Tucking her knife inside her coveralls she pulled out a plasma-pulse handgun and two thin silver-glass tubes. Now that she understood better, she had to hand it to Andreia for her quick thinking. The ultra-violet light, filled with ionized sensor-scramblers, would hide them from the enemy and help them escape. However, Andreia and Roshan wouldn’t be able to use their instruments either.
The first silver-glass tube broke easily and engulfed them in a cloud that was invisible to them, but tasted like ionized particles. Roshan knew these things existed, and the resistance had even got their hands on a few, but primarily the Onotharians had been using them to make life difficult for the rebels.
“Hold on, bushes up ahead!” Andreia shouted.
The hoverbike tore through the bushes, and Roshan couldn’t hold back a moan when thin branches whipped her legs. She told herself this was why she was clinging so tight.
Chapter Six
Andreia drove along the well-kept garden paths up to the main house on the O’Landha estate and parked in front of the two-story mansion. Originally built two hundred years earlier, of red marble, it and its tall w
indows glimmered in the light of the rising sun.
Roshan stepped off the bike first, and Andreia automatically steadied her when she stumbled. “You’re injured.”
“I am fine.” Roshan emphasized every syllable.
“And stubborn as usual. Here.” Andreia stood next to Roshan. “Lean on me so we can get you inside. We need to take a look at your—”
“We don’t need to look at anything. You need to explain what the hell’s going on, and how you knew I was in trouble and where I was.” There was poison in Roshan’s voice, and Andreia realized not much had changed. At least not yet.
“All right, enough of that right now,” she commanded with a calm resilience that seemed to surprise Roshan.
When they were younger, Roshan had been the dominant one. Her blue eyes sparkling with mischief, she’d taken Andreia on hikes and other wildlife adventures. While on breaks from medical school, Andreia, usually serious and withdrawn, had found an unexpected serenity in watching the sun set over the Merealian Mountains with her friend. Before she met Roshan, her whole life had revolved around her family, her domineering mother the hub. Everything centered on serious matters, and the family focused on future personal success. Andreia loved her parents, and adored her brother, but they shared little laughter and rarely had time for games or fun.
Now Andreia saw no trace of the fun-loving, exuberant young woman she had once known. Instead, as Roshan pulled her helmet off, Andreia noticed sharp lines between her eyebrows and a wary hardness radiating from her brilliant blue eyes.
“Let’s go inside. I need to sit down. I’ve been up all night also, two nights, actually, and I’m not seventeen anymore,” Andreia continued. “Come on.” She slipped her shoulder under Roshan’s arm and knew that she accepted it with reluctance. Still, the physical closeness was strangely familiar, and Andreia remembered doing the same thing once when Roshan had slipped off a fallen tree trunk in the woods and hurt her hip.
Inside, Roshan directed Andreia to the library, where she closed the doors after them. “You can let go now. I’m fine.” Despite her words, Roshan limped badly as she moved to one of the red leather-mix couches. “Sit down and start talking, Andreia.”
“Why don’t you ask specific questions,” Andreia sighed. “It’ll obviously take a while to convince you that I’m here to help, and we don’t have much time because I have to get back. So, what do you want to know?”
Roshan pushed her fingers through her hair with jerky, angry movements. “How do you know Boyoda?”
Andreia scrambled to find the right words, still shell-shocked to find that Paladin was the same woman she’d despised for so long, and decided to be blunt. If Roshan was anything like the no-nonsense girl she was a long time ago, there was no other way. “I am Boyoda. I’ve been part of the same organization as you for the last twenty-three years.”
Roshan blinked. “What?”
“I couldn’t be more surprised than you. I was convinced that you’d fight the Onotharians to the death, so when you collaborated with them, and made a lot of money too, I…despised you for it. I hated that we weren’t on the same side.” Andreia’s throat hurt. Old feelings surfaced, and she recognized her immense disappointment in Roshan’s actions, her perceived treachery. “And now I find out, almost by accident, that you are Paladin. A folk hero. A legend.”
“If you’re who you say you are, you’re beyond a folk hero,” Roshan murmured and leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “You’re a damn myth. Some people even debate if Boyoda really exists, or if our most heroic and beloved champion is made up of several individuals.” Roshan grimaced and rubbed her temples. “Somehow, it all makes sense. You have access to all that information that we need so badly to turn this ongoing war around. You’ve given us valuable intel, last-minute sometimes, but always accurate, and you’ve saved operations doomed to fail. But even if this makes sense in a weird way, can you prove that you’re Boyoda?”
Andreia thought quickly. “Yes. Do you agree that you saw Boyoda at the view-screen conference last night?”
“Yes.” Roshan looked reluctant as she nodded slowly.
“Then you know I watched Jubinor have a fit over our cardinal rule about avoiding soft targets at all costs. He wanted blood to avenge the missing rebels.”
Roshan’s face changed so gradually that the transformation was hard to trace.
“Andreia…How can this be?” she whispered huskily. “You’re Onotharian. You’re an undercover agent working for us, for their enemy.”
“I’m working for peace between our people, for sovereignty for my home planet, which happens to be Gantharat.” Andreia knew her voice showed no mercy and too much emotion, but couldn’t relent. “I don’t wish the Onotharian people any harm, but the butchers and dictators that starve Gantharat and rape its resources in the name of the Onotharian Empire...I want to see them punished. Remember, they’re also the ones that depleted the Onotharian Empire, a situation that created this whole mess to begin with. I hate them!”
“Does that include your parents?”
Andreia almost doubled over at the unexpectedly cruel question, though she caught herself in time and managed to remain unfazed. “Yes. My parents overstepped the boundaries of criminal neglect and political megalomania years ago. I always thought I could never harm them, but after this latest atrocity, when only a handful of people at the top knew about the raid, I can no longer overlook their methods. I can’t prove it yet, but I’m certain my mother used her contacts with the OECS and helped plan the surprise attacks. It has her signature, trust me.”
“So that’s why they were so successful. They kept you in the dark.” Roshan raised an eyebrow. “More raids like that, and they’ll start to put the puzzle together. They’ll realize that they were successful only when you weren’t in the loop.”
Roshan’s words echoed Andreia’s worst fears. Lately, she’d felt as if she was operating on borrowed time. “Yes.” Suddenly hot and a little nauseous, Andreia pulled off her jacket. “That’s my conclusion too,” she said quietly. “But we have this chance to do something, and even if we weren’t supposed to meet in person, now we have. We need to forget our personal differences and work together to get the information to the right people.”
“You look as pale as I feel. Why don’t we eat something while we plan?”
“Food sounds good.” Andreia watched Roshan reach over the backrest of the couch and press something. “It’ll have to be quick, though. Besides, you need someone to look at that injury.”
Roshan alerted her butler to arrange a light breakfast for them.
Andreia allowed a few moments to pass. “I have questions too.”
“I bet you do.”
It wasn’t exactly an invitation, but Andreia didn’t allow the standoffish tone to discourage her. “You’ve done a good job with your smoke screens, Roshan. And you’ve risked a lot by passing yourself off as a collaborator. How have you used all the money you’ve made from your government contracts?”
She could see that her question angered Roshan, but she wanted her former friend to drop her shields quickly. It was easier to reach an unsettled Roshan, if she hadn’t changed.
“What I couldn’t launder to use for our quest, I used to expand the business, so no one would be suspicious.” Her eyes, now piercing blue slits, flashed with rage as she hissed, “Are you suggesting I used any of it for personal gain?”
“No.”
“I have enough scars to prove my allegiance.” Roshan sounded both upset and exhausted. “You, with all your privileges, wouldn’t know what it’s like for the Gantharians who suffer every single day.”
“You’re talking to me, Roshan,” Andreia reminded her mildly. “And I do know, more than you realize, how our people suffer. I also know how often you’ve risked your life. But my assignments to collect documents and transfer them to the rebel leaders have been just as dangerous. If the truth about me was revealed—” Andreia interrupted herself at the blue-
tinted paleness in Roshan’s cheeks. “You okay?”
“Damn it, Andreia.” Roshan’s voice sounded hollow. “That’d be high treason, punishable by death by starvation. Their favorite trick.”
“That’s why we have to stick to our images as Onotharian-friendly, cooperating women of power.” Andreia stopped talking as the butler arrived with a small trolley. She couldn’t take her eyes off the stricken expression on Roshan’s face. Does my fate actually matter to her? I’m sure she’s only concerned about losing the advantage Boyoda gave the resistance.
“Thank you, Wellter,” Roshan said. “We’ll help ourselves.”
As Wellter nodded and left the room, Andreia surmised he was used to his employer coming and going at odd hours, even looking as disheveled as she did. It was hard to hide anything from a loyal servant. Andreia remembered Wellter from her girlhood. He was obviously beyond loyal to Roshan, just as he’d been to her parents.
“Do you think we have a chance to make this relationship, I mean working relationship, viable?” Andreia bit the inside of her lip at how she stuttered. Trying to cover up, she reached for a hand sanitizer sitting on the trolley and let the blue beam clean her hands.
Roshan used it as well before she poured Yasyam tea, not seeming to notice Andreia’s discomfort, or not caring. “We have to. We have to get our senior officers back, or we’ll lose the fight before the Supreme Constellations gets here.”
Andreia sipped her tea and followed Roshan’s strong, slender hands. A little scarred, they moved with certainty across the tray she pulled from the trolley and placed on the low table between them. Fruit, besa-bee honey bread, cheese, and hot porridge; it looked wonderful, but Andreia’s stomach was in a knot.
