by E L Strife
She hung in the moment, proud of both sides as if a piece of her were whole again. Half of her life, she’d survived with Azure in testing, half she’d spent on Earth as a shepherd. Looking at him, a perimeter guard becoming a Universal Protector, for the first time, she felt she had someone who could understand her nightmares, the ghost pains, and the battles she fought within.
“We are all equal, united as one,” Azure stated. “We are the Universal Protectors.”
The Coordinator nodded tersely. “Azure of Vioras and Semilath Agutra Sector One Three Seven, by the power invested in me as given by the Command of the Universal Protectors organization of planet Earth, you are hereby inducted into our shepherds union as an R3 Team Leader, responsible for the safety, security, and efficacy of your team as deemed fit by Command.”
He stepped back and set the tablet on the table. The room applauded along with the entire auditorium of gaggled shepherds below. The screen filled with Agutra survivors, looking on in shocked wonder, some appearing confused.
Atana took Azure’s wrist in hand and raised it. Say your native motto, so Agutra understands.
“Yanir sim niveriia vehr, ria’ii nux alatus dak giat’ii.”
“Until my dying breath, we fight together for each other,” Atana translated.
The fields erupted with celebration.
The Coordinator stuck his hand out, and Azure took it, both men unable to help a fraction of a smile.
Chapter 22
IN SHOCK, AZURE studied the Coordinator’s eyes, glowing like his wristband. The man wasn’t hiding what he was in front of him. It was so unlike any member of Command when they expressed such desire for secrecy. The Coordinator nodded with a knowing grin, making Azure want to puff his chest out a little more.
“Quite the show. Not something we’ve ever done before. I’m sorry if we came across as less than willing. We need a clear reason before changing rules which have kept us safe for so long.”
“I understand,” Azure replied. “It is difficult to stop using a tactic that works. New things mean trial and error. No one likes error.”
“How true.” The Coordinator returned to his seat. “While you’re here though, you are in our world. Please review the Codes of Appropriate Action as now filed on your wristband. Sign it and send the file back. Atana can show you how. You are excused from the serum mandate as is everyone from the Agutra mission. We discussed it with Rio, and he confirmed it would be wisest to keep you all off. However, counseling will require check-ins from you more often.”
The pilot straightened in his seat. “If you need anything, Sahara, Azure, my name is Hyras. This is Miskaht.” He gestured to the woman writing beside him. “She is Mirramor. You may come find either of us any time, for any reason.”
Libesh, the woman with the bright white braid, folded her hands and leaned onto the glass table. “We have been considering the use of these Linoan collectors in this battle with the Kyra ships. We heard, Azure, you’d modified your M45, which is why you landed successfully on the planet.”
“From who?” Atana asked.
Krett hummed to himself. “Sergeant Tanner is a chatty young man when it comes to technology. Considering how fast you trained him, Azure, we want you to focus your efforts on figuring out what modifications might assist us in using the collectors for the upcoming battle.”
“We’re making you a Technical Integration Specialist, like Atana and Tanner,” The Coordinator added. “You now have all appropriate security clearances for your position and can access almost any anything within Home Station.”
The man with saffron eyes and hair like clouds sat forward from his place between Libesh and Nephma. “I saw a Simmaro enter. His name?”
“Teek,” Azure responded.
“Ah. I am Vimno. He may come to me. I am as he is.”
Azure nodded. “Understood, thank you.”
The Coordinator sat rigid in his seat. “We are looking into the classifications issue as we have received a few reports of strange sightings of well—us—you know what I mean—in multiple zones. We realize we need to act now if we are to deflect a serious problem. If either of you have any further ideas, please let us know.”
Azure lifted a finger. “Most Linétens are members of Verros. If there are, in fact, some living on your planet, you must prepare for them to try everything they can to get to the mother ship. They believe it is their free-ride to the future. Not to mention they’re jealous of their cousin species, the Linoans, for being chosen by Suanoa to be the slave masters and assassins.”
“I am aware.” Krett nodded solemnly. “We will discuss this. When we’re through the meat of the issue, we’ll contact you for Agutra specifics.”
“Are you honoring those lost?” Atana asked.
The Coordinator pulled up a map on the main screen. “Yes, tomorrow, in a small village north of Ocean Base Thirty-Five’s remains. The Unveiling, we’ll call the species truth speech, will need a few more days to be organized.
“Tomorrow is a press conference with a flyover because we can’t spare the resources now,” Hyras said.
“We can take her and Bennett as security,” Krett offered. “They are our best pair.”
Best pair? Azure couldn’t stop the gasp from slipping through his lips. “I can hear things Bennett cannot. I don’t want Atana going on another mission without me. She almost died the last time he was assigned to her.”
The room erupted in chatter over what the plan was if something happened and who they could spare from which department. There were no remarks regarding Azure being reassigned.
“That wasn’t his fault,” Atana said, tilting toward him.
Stifling his grumbles, Azure looked down at her. “It doesn’t matter. None of the Warruks or Linoans were our fault. But we succeeded in protecting the fields.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Atana swayed her head and raised her voice above the others. “We can take my brother. He’s assisting Dr. Tieshna in the bays. Got picked up by a collector.”
Brother? How did she find him?
How long has she known?
He’s working for us?
The storm of thoughts in the room exposed Command’s disarray. They weren’t prepared to hear such a statement amidst their current upheaval.
The salt to tip the barrel, Azure thought while watching them argue across the table. But he was in that mess with them. Azure couldn’t understand why she was defending Bennett. He wanted to know what she’d meant.
Atana lifted her hands to beg for silence. “Figured it out today. He’s a Mirramor healer.”
Her eyes lifted to Miskaht.
“All right, decided,” the Coordinator stated, without seeming to listen for other opinions. “Azure, you will be most useful in the maintenance bays. Please get your team prepared and on task as soon as possible.”
“I want to be with Atana. I need to protect her,” Azure countered. The rush of heated pride he’d felt seconds ago was tamped out in an instant. In his mind, the Universal Protectors’ rules frayed the threads holding the universe together, the pieces of hope every form of life needed—to endure. He should’ve expected as much from Command. Azure kicked himself inside for letting the mirth of bonding Agutra and Earth blind him to the rules he’d be sworn to after.
“That is Sergeant Bennett’s job.” Miskaht’s pencil stopped. “Lavrion will heal her if need be. There’s a lot we have to accomplish in a short time. You must understand this.”
“Yes, but I—” On second thought, he conceded. Rebelling so soon after joining wouldn’t be good for Earth-Agutra relations, no matter what familial code of honor Xahu’ré lived by. “Yes, Command.”
When they turned to leave, Atana paused in the doorway as if sensing his change in heart. “Will you consider presenting him up front with the rest of us, when you unveil Earth?”
The Coordinator scanned each of the rows of Command then nodded. “Please have Azure review the Code and sign as soon as you can
. For now, we’d like you both helping with the collectors.”
“Yes, Command,” Atana’s reply was prompt, Azure’s a moment delayed.
She escorted him out into the hall, heading for the main hangar, acting like a machine, like the history between them meant nothing.
Yesterday, she’d kissed him deep and slow amidst ripping flames while they melted the abaddon deck together. Today, only her eyes would smile at him. She barely touched him except the occasional brush or squeeze of his arm. He wasn’t certain if they were sleeping together or if he was staying in the group room with the others.
“Sahara, please, we can’t be separated like this.” Azure knew he was asking with the wrong part of his body, but he couldn’t fight his desires or the notion that he was being rejected.
“Command has rules. We’ve pushed it enough. Come on.”
Azure made a desperate call out to Hyras as she tugged him to the open stairwell. This isn’t right. You must know why we can’t be separated. Please!
He got no response.
“This is not how warriors fight,” Azure contended, resisting her pull on his arm when they reached the auditorium floor. “We stick together, especially when there’s—” he hesitated. “More between us.”
Releasing him, she banked left and marched to the elevators, her tone cold and impassive. “Shepherds serve where they are needed. Sometimes, it means doing things alone. You’re a lead perimeter guard. You understand this. Why are you resisting?”
Azure gave one last glance up through the transparent walls of Command’s conference room, framed in steel, before reluctantly following her. Thirteen years he’d held on without her.
Now, she walked in front of him, and it seemed nothing had changed.
Chapter 23
ATANA RAKED the loose strands of hair from her tired eyes. For hours, they’d been waking Earthlings, corralling them into zones, carrying the ones too weak to walk, mopping up blood from the injured, and yelling themselves hoarse over the rumbling of collector engines.
She grabbed two extra protein bars and bottles of water from the self-serve table set up in the farthest bay and slunk to the deepest internal wall to rest. Atana dropped beside a sleeping Bennett and scanned for Azure, finding him giving directions to a few of the doku pilots in Xahu’ré.
Setting the snacks down, she braced her head against the concrete at her back. The air in the hangars hung thick with the bitter scent of ionized plasma slag from the radiating engine heat, staving off the cooler night. Her ears rang with shepherds’ shouting, the confused sobs of civilians waiting for a ride home, and the whir of hydraulic emergency stop systems lifting the floor panels as collectors rushed in and out of the main terminal.
The noise didn’t matter. She could sleep anywhere. Any shepherd could. The hard surface beneath was always a relief to weary legs.
Her eyes closed without worry. If she needed to wake, she would, or someone would do it for her.
She drifted aimlessly, tired of searching for answers and fighting for control. Wandering through the empty gray space of Ether, she enjoyed the surrounding nothingness. It brought her a moment of peace, like the golden sunset on the dunes by Sand Base Eight, the post she’d been assigned to the longest.
The colors reminded her of Bennett, sprouting concern in her heart.
Her Ether lurched, throwing her into a room with pastel bice walls to stare at a nautical buoy lamp on a driftwood nightstand. Hearing a groan to her left, she pivoted. Bennett lay on his stomach, passed out on a large bed in his brown rag clothes.
She smiled and sat beside him. Finding others in the Ether was easier with every drift.
Combing her fingers through his gravity-defying umber hair, the edges of her vision burnished with amber light. Her hands lifted in shock at the surrounding blaze.
Bennett?
“Cutter’s worn out, hiding something. Why won’t you tell me, father? Universe? Whoever or whatever you are. I want to help him, but I don’t know how. He’s so closed off.”
Atana tilted her head and listened. It was Bennett’s voice. In his fiery Ether, a window flickered into existence, a glimmering view-screen displaying a younger Sergeant Cutter leaning into a warehouse, a hand to the C4 charges clipped to his belt. She pondered the angle and clarity of the perspective. Atana could see Cutter, so she wasn’t in his head. She was someone else, watching him.
Get in, confirm the warehouse has illegal munitions, set a charge, get out, and blow it. Cutter repeated the order to himself as his four team members scouted the building.
A redheaded sergeant shouted as bullets rained down, showering the industrial equipment around them. The nametape on his vest read: Fox. “Set up! Pull back!”
Their Team Leader took a hit when he circled a massive reel of hose to clear a path for the others.
“Lyle!” With the first shot, Cutter took out the combatant. “Hart, cover me!”
A man with a scraggly brown beard from too many months in the field shouted, “Go!”
Cutter charged inside toward the fallen shepherd. With a grunt, Cutter hauled his Team Leader up over his shoulders.
Hart laid down fire as a hit to the shoulder then the chest silenced Fox, sending him crumpling to the ground. The blond shepherd beside him, “Mika” on his chest, ducked behind a reel.
A bullet shattered Hart’s right tibia. He dropped to a knee, shielding Cutter, yelling he was on his six.
Cutter wove through piles of scrap metal and hose as he hustled out of the warehouse aiming for the riverside dock.
Atana pulled back. Whoever was observing was telepathic. But something else was off. Hart’s eyes weren’t looking at Cutter when he shouted. She tracked his gaze to Mika.
Mika didn’t look as focused as the others or as wary. She paused a frame of Cutter’s dream and circled around in front of the man. His eyes were pinned on an assailant. She reversed the memory and studied Hart and Fox’s eyes: frantic, scanning.
“Mika knew where his targets were.” Atana cursed under her breath. There had been a few occurrences of treason in the Universal Protectors, usually associated with Kronos.
Atana squinted as a sun flare blurred out the top right corner of the vision. “Definitely watching through a lens.”
She let the dream speed forward.
Lyle groaned as he bobbed atop Cutter’s shoulders. “Leave me. You’re too good a man to get killed. You know what a gut shot in the field means.”
“No shepherd left behind, sir,” Cutter rasped under the man’s weight.
The vision shook with a resounding crack, and a stranger fell to the concrete behind Cutter, exposing a clean headshot.
Cutter glanced with a subtle twist and then kept moving. A shockwave flew past them, knocking them down and crumbling the concrete. He flipped over, staring back at where they had come from.
There was nothing except a collapsed pit where the warehouse had stood. Dust clouded the air as small bits of flaming debris fell around them.
The vision burst like a popped water balloon, and Atana sat beside Bennett on his bed again. She knew sometimes Command sent a sniper team in as a backup for recon-infiltration assignments in case things got out of hand. Bennett wasn’t a sniper so he couldn’t be part of Cutter’s memory; he was in someone else’s, someone observing Cutter’s team.
He mumbled. She leaned over and listened. His back muscles quaked and tensed. His body was drenched in sweat. “Not my own life. Want—own.”
Enough. Atana sucked in a breath and summoned herself awake.
She whispered to the side of his face a simple, “Hey.”
Bennett’s sleepy eyes popped open. “Wha-what?” He straightened, planting his hands to push himself up. “I heard a sound. What’s going on?”
“It’s nothing. Relax.” Atana stared at him, assessing his condition. He had dark circles under his eyes, fine lines between his brows, and a shadow forming a beard on his face, a curious thing she wanted to touch.
&
nbsp; Atana lifted a protein bar and water.
“Oh, thanks. I’m starving.” Scanning the people awaiting transports home, Bennett froze. “I mean, not literally, just hungry.”
“What did you dream about?”
“No idea. Too much going on. Too stressed out.” He shook his head. “I know when I’m in there.” He sighed and glanced askance her. “When I wake, it’s all gone.”
Atana tore open her protein bar and took a bite, the dried blueberries and crunchy whey kernels tasting particularly sweet. “We’ll get you to lucid level soon enough.”
“You?”
“Fragments of a lot of things. Like always.” Seeing Azure headed their way, she lifted the last one, gesturing it to him. “How are you holding up?”
He rested beside them eagerly taking the food in hand. “Tired of explaining what I am to everyone.”
…
Cutter’s eyelids lifted in the dark. He scanned their bunk room, his brain tingling with fear. Relieved to find he hadn’t made enough noise to rouse Tanner, he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. His wristband flashed in the darkness.
Adrenaline Saturation: 94% of Upper Tolerable Limit
Thank God for ‘silent mode.’
Three flights into space—the void, as the Agutra slaves kept calling it—to pick up more Earthlings and bring them back was all Tanner could muster.
He was thankful. Cutter was worn out and growing concerned about his throbbing thigh. It wasn’t healing as it should be.
Another deep breath and he watched the saturation level drop.
He closed his eyes, his left arm flopping over his chest, the fingers of his right hand raking through his black hair, under his ball cap. The pressure helped awaken his mind to the real world, and he sat up.
