“You would be very afraid,” Sharla added. “We are seven races to their one. Even if the Olympians did not fill them with lies about us, they know we are the winners of a recent genocidal war.”
“Our only chance to save the crew of the Blackbird,” said Telisan, “is to get there first, before they become suspicious, before our information becomes obsolete, before they ready their defenses and before they seek to bury the evidence. But we have to go now.”
“Look,” Mmok said, “I sympathize. I’m no friend of Fenaday’s, but I know he loved his wife. There’s a larger issue here, the security of the Confederacy and the member worlds.”
“The Confederacy has a huge military to look after itself,” Telisan growled, “Lisa and the Blackbird’s crew have only us. You served as a front line soldier in the war, Mmok. Did you not see enough of the ‘big picture’ there? Did you not see enough of us sent to death by those who remained safe in the rear echelon? You’re a soldier. So is Lisa.
“For myself, I have served the Confederacy faithfully in all manner of hell. I owe no apologies to you or any being for my service. I serve the Confederacy still. I go to save three valuable officers. I warn you. Get from my path.”
“Sorry, no sale,” Mmok said. “Please don’t think that you have a chance against my HCRs or that I’ll hesitate to use them.”
“Do you know what my fiancé asked of me?” Arpen asked.
Everyone turned to face her.
“While I was treating you, while you were in my trust, he asked me to implant a means by which we might disable you. I refused.”
“That may have been a mistake,” Mmok said, his face drawn and sad.
Arpen smiled gently, a small pistol appearing in her hand. “You are, I am sure, fast enough to kill me before I sight in on you. Or they are.”
“Arpen, please,” Mmok said, looking alarmed for the first time. “Don’t do anything foolish.”
Telisan started forward, flanked by Sharla.
“No,” Arpen shouted, stopping them in their tracks.
Mmok looked her in the eyes, pleading in his voice. “I know what you did. I know what it cost you. It means a lot to me, but I have a duty to do. Don’t make me do this.”
She shook her head, her face still gentle. “I am sorry to do this to you, Kyle, but you see I must. I have endangered the ship and my loved ones. I must remove that danger, or at least offer to die trying.
“You must surrender to us,” she said slowly, bringing the weapon up, “or you must kill me. There are no other choices.”
Telisan and Sharla crouched, hands on their weapons, teeth showing. The instinctive urge to defend the female of their species almost overpowering them. Arpen’s weapon came up and sighted on Mmok. The HCRs did not move. Mmok stared at Arpen, his bone-white face intense and unreadable.
“Decide,” Arpen said.
Mmok looked down, strength visibly draining out of him. “No,” he said, as if to himself, “I just can’t do it.” He turned from Arpen’s gun to face Cobalt. “Deactivate. Eject your power cores.” Animation faded from the robots as battery cells in their armored chests fell to the carpeted deck. He turned to Arpen, “The bridge is yours, ma’am.”
Telisan remembered to breathe. He and Sharla slowly stood up from their gun-fighter crouches.
Arpen put her small weapon away and walked forward to put a hand on Mmok’s arm. He gave her a wan half smile and a shrug. He looked at Telisan, his cold sardonic expression restored. “You are the luckiest person I know. Don’t screw it up any further.”
Trying to control his shaking, Telisan nodded and turned to the wall communicator, fumbling the switch open. “Bridge crew to stations. Standby to resume burn.” He turned to Arpen. “What must we do with this one?” he asked. “Till we jump he must be kept confined.”
“Leave him in Sickbay with me,” Arpen said. “I will keep watch.”
“Very well,” Telisan said, “it will be as you wish. But there must be an additional guard. I will assign Li.”
She nodded.
“Arpen,” he said softly, “thank you.”
She looked at him for a long measuring moment. Her face had been closed to him from the night of their argument. It was not open now, but something yielded in her, at least a little. She leaned close and spoke softly in Denleni, “Arel, thee are still my intended.”
He ducked his head and whispered back in the same language. “This is good to know. One has been unsure. Now one is only unsure of deserving the honor.”
Sharla looked at them both anxiously. Now she understood the distance between her beloveds. What Telisan asked of Arpen appalled her, though she could understand it. Stuck in the middle again, she thought bitterly, the fate of demi-females throughout history.
Telisan caught her look and sighed. He knew there would be, as the humans put it, a few licks from that quarter before the morning watch.
Chapter Twenty One
Shasti Rainhell was reborn into a world of pain. The unfairness of it made her scream. Where was the kindness of God the priests told of? Perhaps she now faced divine judgment. She remembered startled faces, unarmed men and women, even a young boy, dying at her hand. She had dealt death without mercy. Now came judgment, now fire.
Her eyes snapped open, lights swimming in her vision. She heard a soft voice. The fires seemed to be receding for now. A face hung before her eyes, alien and strange, somehow comforting. The eyes were enormous pools, seeming to promise understanding, sympathy, even benediction. She realized her arms were under restraints.
“Hello,” the alien said. Its voice, like the face, was warm. For a moment she thought she might be in one of the idle fantasies she sometimes daydreamed, where she actually had a mother instead of an aching emptiness. Then the background came more into focus.
“The Sidhe?” she croaked.
“Yes,” the alien said.
She recognized it now as a Denlenn, though it looked different from any she had seen before. Female?
“I am Dr. Arpen,” she said. “You know my fiancé, Telisan.”
It came back in a rush. “Where is Robert?” she gasped, starting to struggle.
“Stop, stop,” Arpen said. “He lives. He is in the next bay, though not yet conscious. He is not made so strongly as you. His injuries are serious, but I believe he will recover fully.”
“I want to see him,” she said. “Undo the restraints.”
“Better for you to wait,” Arpen said gently. “You have been close to death yourself.”
Shasti threw herself at the restraints. They creaked but held.
“You are as stubborn as I have heard,” Arpen smiled. “Very well, but only for a moment.” Arpen undid the restraints. “Orderly.” A human Shasti did not recognize leaned in. “Help here,” Arpen gestured. “She is too tall to lean on me.”
“I need no help,” Shasti growled. She rose to a sitting position and nearly blacked out. Blinding pain drove out sense, forcing her to cling to the bed rail. It frightened her. Her body was designed for self-repair and pain control. That she felt so bad despite proper medical care meant she had been far-gone indeed. Arpen’s face greeted her again when her vision cleared. Behind it she saw another familiar face, Shizuyo Mourner.
“What’s this,” Shasti murmured through the pain, “an Enshar reunion?”
Mourner smiled. “Just about. Only this time I have help to patch up all you wild-eyed hero types. Good thing too. You and Fenaday did the best imitations of dead people I ever saw. I wanted to bust you up for spare parts. Dr. Arpen insisted on trying.”
“She jests,” Arpen said reassuringly, “but now you must promise to do what I say. You are not strong yet, and we have little time to restore you to health before your strength may again be called on.”
“What’s going on?” Shasti demanded. “Where are we bound for?”
“I will call for Telisan later, after you rest again,” Arpen said. “He will explain as much of the situation as can be. Some
of the news must wait till another receives word first.”
“I hate mysteries,” Shasti said.
“I’m sure,” Arpen sympathized. The comment, which might have enraged Shasti had it come from Mourner, did not irritate Shasti, to her surprise.
“I begin to see what Telisan sees in you,” Shasti said. “How is he?”
“Troubled,” Arpen said, a shadow crossing her face. “He bears many concerns.”
“Wait,” Shasti said, as more of her memory came flooding back. “Dan Rigg is still alive...”
“He is aboard, resting in his quarters,” Mourner said, “as is Leda Jenner. We felt that Olympia might be too hot to hold her for now and brought her with us.”
“Good,” she said relieved. “Now take me to Robert.”
Mourner waved to the orderly. He approached, looking somewhat nervously at Shasti. The Olympian stood nearly a foot taller than him. Shasti slipped an arm over his shoulder and struggled to her feet, swaying. She found Dr. Arpen under her other arm. They slowly made their way to the next bay.
Shasti’s breath caught when she saw Robert Fenaday. He rested on his stomach, surrounded by monitors and machines. The surgeries to repair the stab wound to his spine looked fresh. Regenerators had linked the material of the cord and sealed the wound. His leg looked badly swollen and black from where Pard struck him with several times the strength of an ordinary man. Weight had melted off Fenaday despite the IVs of nutrients and glucose hung around him. He looked far older than his thirty-six years. They helped her to a chair, where Shasti could lay a hand on his arm.
“He is still in an induced coma,” Mourner said. “We are keeping him under so we can maximize the repairs using regenerators. We have to get him back on his feet.”
“When will he wake?” Shasti demanded, unsettled by the sight of Fenaday looking so corpselike. Standards humans are so fragile, she thought, so short-lived.
“In another day, but only briefly so we can check his neurological status,” Mourner said. “All the tissue and nerve damage will be repaired by then. We plan to put him back under for perhaps another day if we can. We’d have kept you under longer, but your system fights coma too well.”
“I would like to be here when he awakens,” Shasti said.
“If you get back to bed now,” Arpen said, “I think we can arrange that.”
Shasti suffered their hands on her, leading her back to her bed. Once there, she refused to rest until Mourner and Arpen filled her in on at least some of what had happened on Olympia. News of the dead alien on Olympia did not shock her as much as it did the others. The appearance of the ninth species had been inevitable, a fact to be faced, not flinched from. Satisfied for now, she lay back. The pillow felt good under her head. Everyone important to me is alive, she thought. Sleep struck her down in an unguarded instant.
When she awakened again, she felt more her normal self. Awareness came in a flash. She saw Telisan at the foot of her bed. He grinned at her. “Hello, Telisan. It’s good to see you.”
“And you,” he replied. “We have gone through much to get sight of you.”
“Yes, thank you. I’m sure I owe you a great deal.”
Telisan shook his head. “You are my friend,” he said.
Shasti looked away for a second. “Heaven save you from friends such as me. Thank you all the same.
“What’s the situation?” she asked. “Arpen and Mourner are holding something back from me. They told me what happened after Pard’s death, but no more. Where are we going?”
Telisan looked her steadily in the eye. “This is difficult. I fear I will cause you pain.”
She shrugged. “Life is pain.”
“It is also news that should be first told to Robert, but they wish to keep him down several more hours at least.” He mulled her question over for a few seconds, rubbing a hand across his face. “Very well, it is not fair to leave you in the dark. You know of the alien race Pard allied with, to whom he sold armaments. We captured one of the aliens and Pard’s records. The creature is on board, confined to the iso-lab. Only the command crew know of its existence.”
She nodded, surprised both by the story and Telisan’s audacity in pulling it off.
“These aliens captured a Confederation vessel and crew over eight years ago. From this source they learned of the Confederacy and its makeup. They elected to make contact with Olympia in the hope of securing allies and trade. The vessel was the CSS Blackbird under command of Lisa Fenaday. She and two others of the crew still lived as of six months ago.” Telisan paused. “We are on our way to that system now in hope of effecting a rescue.”
Shasti sat stunned, not knowing what to feel. She’d never believed in Fenaday’s search for his lost wife, sometimes regarding it as a mild insanity. People did not return from ships lost in deep space. A ship contained only so much air. Sidhe had been just another privateer to her and Lisa an abstraction. She hadn’t cared about Fenaday’s motivations. At least, not until she had learned to care about him. She’d told him little of those feelings, nascent as they were, even in those happy months together in New Eire. Only days ago, she’d first understood that she felt the beginning of something deeper, though she could neither explain nor understand it. Unfamiliar feelings tore at Shasti, strange, wild mixes of relief, grief and disappointment. She felt as if she were sliding out of control. With the discipline of a brutal lifetime, she choked down all her feelings, retreating back into the comforting numbness in which she lived.
“Do you want to be the one to tell him?” asked Telisan. “You are close to him and of the same species.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think that would be wise.”
“I think I understand,” Telisan replied. “I will tell him after he is awake. I am doing all he would have me do in the meanwhile.”
Shasti recovered rapidly from the emotional shock. If anything her brain seemed more cool and analytic than it had been in a long while. Pard lay dead in a gorge. She knew Robert well enough to understand that the rumor of Lisa’s capture would invoke the obsessive demon that drove him to the stars searching for her. It might be best if she shelved her feelings about Robert for now. Shasti even felt a small, guilty relief about it. It might be cowardice, she thought, but I have only now shed my own demon. With Pard dead, my life, for once, does not revolve around some urgent passionate core. I am free. What do I want?
She shook free of her reverie. “The Confederacy would never approve this. What force do you have on board?”
Telisan grimaced uncomfortably, a gesture he shared with humans. “They might not. I left the ambassador with the idea that I am under Mandela’s orders to pull out. I commandeered a platoon of Marines. With the ASATs and embassy troops we have aboard, and our surviving LEAFs, we boast a short company of mixed ground troops. We also have Mmok and what’s left of his cyber-company.”
“Mmok?” Shasti said in surprise. “I thought he was dead.”
“He recovered from his injuries and led the attack on Pard’s compound. It is the main reason we succeeded.”
“You never fooled him.”
“No,” Telisan said. “It is complicated, but he is confined to sickbay, his cyber-troops inactive.”
Shasti nodded. “Very impressive.”
Mourner’s head appeared around the corner. “Fenaday is coming out of it early. He is asking for you both.”
Shasti slid to her feet with only a slight wobble. “You go see him. I want him to hear it from you. Tell him…tell him, that I’m in my quarters asleep and that I’ll be by later.”
“If that what you wish,” Telisan said.
Shasti threw on a robe. “It is.”
“Shasti,” Telisan said, “I have a question.”
She looked back at the Denlenn curiously, “Yes?”
“One hesitates, though we are friends, to ask this question.”
“After all this?” she said, “all you have done? Ask anything.”
“I asked Robert why he
led the landing on Enshar. He said Mandela ordered it, fearing someone might sabotage a shuttle with just Duna and me aboard in hope of canceling the mission. Apparently it was you he feared, trained assassin that you are.”
“It was before I knew you and Duna,” she answered, without embarrassment.
“Ah,” he said, shaken and trying to conceal it.
“Nothing personal,” she added, as if to reassure.
Telisan looked into her cool, green eyes. They reflected light back at him, nothing more. “Please rest, my friend, there may be little chance in the future.” She smiled at him. He remembered how she kept her face closed to almost everyone and took it for the rare concession it was.
Despite Mourner’s protests, Shasti left sick bay. She passed curious crewmembers. Only the Enshar veterans knew her. Some greeted her by name. Their relief at her survival would have warmed even her cool heart under other circumstances. She brushed aside any questions on the pretext of fatigue and made it to her cabin. As the door opened, noisy barks and a very happy dog greeted her. Risky looked much the worse for wear, bandaged and moving slowly. He’d been watered, fed and attended to, but clearly missed her.
She sat on the floor next to the dog with a sigh and pulled the battered shepherd close. “Well, it looks like it is you and me again.”
*****
In the sickbay, a frail and fretful Robert Fenaday looked up as Telisan walked in. “Where’s Shasti?” he demanded, “Is she all right?”
“Yes,” Telisan replied, “she’s in her cabin resting. She promises to be by later.
“First, there is something you need to hear.” He sat down by his friend’s bedside, putting a hand on the human’s. “It’s about your wife.”
The End
Was Once A Hero, on Sale now
http://www.amazon.com/Was-Once-A-Hero-ebook
Edward McKeown
http://www.sfreader.com/authors/edward-mckeown/
Fearful Symmetry (The Robert Fenaday and Shasti Rainhell Chronicle Book 2) Page 29
