‘Renaei!’ he cried. ‘Renaei! Save me!’
She appeared so suddenly that he nearly fell off the boulder. Moving to stand beside him, she wrapped an arm around his shoulders and shouted into the night, ‘No, Fayay, he is mine! He’s under my protection! Now shoo!’
Grudgingly, the rain eased — not by much, but just enough. For hours they stood together, the goddess shielding Lorne as the flood waters spun dizzyingly around them. She even conjured a cocoon of moss that wrapped around his entire body, warming him from head to toe and smothering his fear. He’d heard that she could instantly teleport people to safety, but somehow she knew he didn’t want that. Somehow she knew he needed to do this, to see the whole night through.
Renaei stayed by his side until the red dawn broke and the water began to recede.
‘R — Renaei,’ he said through trembling lips. ‘Y — you can go now. I’ll be okay.’
She gave him a radiant smile. ‘Yes, I think you will be. Do you know what else I think?’
‘N — no?’ He was mystified.
‘I think you’re going to be a very handsome man one day,’ she said.
And then she was gone, along with the moss that had embraced him.
Lorne fell to his knees and praised her, removing his gloves to press his bare hands to the very place where her feet had been mere moments ago. When his fingers began to ache, he stood and ran for the safety and warmth of his home.
His mother fussed over him, so worried, so frightened — and then the scolding started. Lorne wished his father was home instead of halfway across the galaxy on some interplanetary freighting job. No one else would believe that Lorne had met their goddess. No one. He knew this for certain.
Because his father was the only one who believed Lorne when he said he wasn’t a girl.
• • •
The strip lighting overhead blasted away the last vestiges of Lorne’s dream and the memories it contained. He fumbled for the techpad he’d dropped when he’d fallen asleep the previous night and checked the time. His eyebrows bunched together. He’d never slept his long while at the Agency. It was well past dawn and he needed to wake the others for their training.
But his Guards of the Goddess weren’t exactly GLEA — they hadn’t even been around for six full months yet. And they hadn’t seen a single day of action. He’d styled himself as their captain, a rank that GLEA no longer used because they wanted to avoid any association with the numerous starship captains running around the galaxy. Renaei had also told Lorne that GLEA’s ranking system was only a pale imitation of the ones that had been used by military groups millennia ago, so he’d decided it really didn’t matter what he did with his own rank.
Lorne’s eyelids snapped shut and refused to budge when he commanded them to open. He cursed. ‘Stark! Someone turn the lights down — it’s too starking bright.’
‘Is that an order, Captain?’ chortled Merryn Lee from the bunk above him. He’d never given anyone a proper rank in the group, mostly because no one else had his level of power or experience, but everyone knew she was his Second. They’d served together during their time at GLEA.
‘Or you could ask Renaei to do it for you,’ Merryn added, a smirk tainting her words. ‘She’s the one closest to the panel right now.’
Lorne shot out of bed, his head narrowly avoiding a collision with Merryn’s bunk — then he remembered that he was only wearing boxers. He snagged the sheet from his bed and twisted it around himself, ignoring the snickers of the fourteen men and women who shared the sleeping quarters inside the grounded vessel.
They’d make fun of his sudden shyness later, probably even suggest he had a crush on his boss. Lorne had spent years toning and building up muscle so he wasn’t ashamed to show off his hard work in the showers. But this was different. He’d had no warning, no chance to prepare himself for the goddess’ arrival. No time to hide his obvious reaction to her presence.
Renaei, his powerful patron, was in her usual form-hugging dress and its thin fabric left very little to the imagination. She seemed unaware — or simply didn’t care — that this was the sort of dress favoured by a woman several sizes smaller.
Lorne swallowed. He was unable to suppress the heat that had gathered inside his abdomen. The lift of her eyebrow suggested she’d read his desire straight from him.
‘Captain, come outside so I can speak to you privately,’ Renaei invited.
Lorne cleared his throat. ‘Can I get some clothes on first?’
‘No, the goddess wants you go out naked and freeze to death,’ Merryn said with a snort as she dropped down from her bunk. ‘So while you’re off doing secret Captain-y things, d’you want us to hit the showers then practice the Trip and Rush?’
She was referring to a drill which began with them using their goddess-given abilities to turn rock and moss and anything else from their surroundings into snares. This would then be followed by the Guards of the Goddess racing in with their lasguns to subdue their fallen opponents. The manoeuvre lacked finesse, but Lorne hoped it would provide enough of a surprise to give them an advantage in battle. His guards would also be carrying personal shielding devices to protect themselves from lasbolts or any debris a sub-level god might hurl their way.
‘Sounds good, Second,’ he said, keeping his voice even. ‘Now can you all fuck off and give me a few moments to myself?’
Lorne waited for Renaei to slip out and for his people to start filing off to the large shower bay before reaching for his clothes. It wasn’t a uniform but he’d had enough of those to last a lifetime. He preferred jeans these days, even though he always cursed under his breath as he pulled on the cotton stockings he had to wear underneath them in colder climates.
He didn’t think it was a bad thing to have an extra layer separating him from the goddess he couldn’t stop thinking about. And in ways that were entirely inappropriate.
Stark. She had to know how often he did that.
• • •
The starship was parked in a gully that shivered each time a breath of air passed through the blood-red grasses that grew there. Despite the ship’s impressive size — squeezed inside the hull were sleeping quarters, showers, toilets, an armoury and even a kitchen with tables and chairs — it was dwarfed by the ridges rising up around it.
Renaei was waiting on top of one of these ridges, peering off into the distance. Lorne wasn’t sure what she could see in that horizon. He only saw an unfamiliar blue sky (he still couldn’t pronounce the planet’s name, so hadn’t bothered remembering it) and though he knew that most worlds were terraformed to look this way, it seemed glaringly bright and overly optimistic.
Lorne jogged up to Renaei, deliberately taking his time and wondering — with no small amount of dread — if this was the day she would finally order them to leave their temporary base and head for enemy territory. When he reached the ridge, she turned to him and smiled. He tried to tell himself it was the run that had taken his breath away.
But he knew he wasn’t that unfit. It was all her.
‘Are my Guards of the Goddess ready?’ Renaei asked him.
Lorne slicked his tongue around inside his mouth, moistening it. ‘To fight? Sure. To win? I don’t know. Chippers take years to reach their full potential. You only gave me six months to find people, convince them to join us and then train them to use their new powers.’
Lorne had remained in contact with a few agents who’d left GLEA for one reason or another — they’d been the easy ones to track down and trust. Finding other people who could wield a lasgun and weren’t complete crooks — that had been slightly more difficult.
The mind-reading abilities Renaei had given Lorne had helped him ascertain the likelihood of a person betraying them. It was also a lot easier to spot a negative reaction when he casually mentioned some childhood incident that revealed how he’d spent his earlier years. Though Lorne knew that his family was the exception and not the rule, he’d wanted to avoid recruiting anyone who would ref
use to take orders from him.
Some of the guards he had picked because they were worshippers of Renaei already. Even though they weren’t particularly good shots to start with, they had the right amount of awe and respect for their goddess. The coin-chips Renaei spirited in from somewhere (Lorne suspected they were stolen) to pay the guards certainly helped to curate loyalty. In addition to this, the Guards of the Goddess enjoyed powers that gave them control over tundra-based terrain.
So far none of Lorne’s choices had let him down. All of them were decent people, even if their jokes were crude and they didn’t seem to feel ashamed about cracking them in front of their goddess.
Renaei, for her part, always seemed to laugh the loudest. Once she even mentioned a sexual escapade which had impressed several of the guards, mostly because that incident had involved a public location and a fair amount of risk. They’d laughed and congratulated her. But Lorne had needed to leave the room.
He didn’t like the swell of jealousy in his gut when she spoke of things like that.
Renaei sighed. ‘Lorne, I can’t give you more time. I need you and the others to travel to New Sydney within the week.’
‘I was afraid of that.’
‘I know. Are they able to protect me?’
‘They’d do a better job if you’d give the telekinesis to all of us, not just me,’ Lorne pointed out. ‘That way we could link up like the Chippers do and create a shield big enough for all of us.’
‘I’ll take that into consideration,’ Renaei said.
‘Will you.’
The frown added shadows to her face. ‘Lorne, you are my chosen leader. I wanted your gifts to match how special you are to me. The telekinesis and mind-reading abilities — they are for you alone. You deserve them.’
Lorne looked away. ‘I don’t know what it is you think you see…’
‘Read my thoughts and you’ll know,’ she interrupted. ‘See through my eyes. See how much I admire you.’
‘I can’t do that, Renaei,’ he said, pained.
‘Why not?’
‘Because…’ He groaned in frustration and managed not to kick a nearby stone down into the gully. ‘Because I’m a mortal, a piece of shit compared to you. I can’t look into your mind. It would be wrong. Disrespectful.’
‘I understand,’ she said after a moment. ‘So I will say it instead.’
‘Renaei, I’m not sure you…’
She rested her hands on his shoulders, her eyes boring into his. ‘What you have been through has made you into this remarkable man I see before me. I can trust no one else with my innermost thoughts. I know you’ll never betray me, no matter what happens to you, because you can endure anything.’
‘I’m not sure I can endure any more of Merryn’s sarcasm,’ Lorne commented, relieved when his voice didn’t waver.
Renaei’s lips quirked into a short-lived smile. ‘I am not the one who chose her, so the blame for that lies with you. But listen. I’m not embarrassed by your thoughts. There’s no need to feel embarrassed about mine. All you’d discover is that your goddess adores you as much as you do her.’
Moments later, she vanished inside a swirl of burgundy-streaked moss, teleporting away and leaving him alone on the ridge. Lorne stood there, frozen in place, unable to fight the tears gathering in his eyes. If she’d stayed, he would have demanded that she retract her words or explain them. A part of him was glad that he hadn’t had the chance.
Lorne crushed his eyelids together and cursed.
CHAPTER THREE
There was a sharp pain inside her chest, as though one of her ribs had torn right into her heart. Renaei clasped a palm over the affected area and felt the steady beat of the organ beneath her skin, but how could that be when it was broken? How could Isabis still refuse to speak to her, even after all this time? How could her beautiful little sister hate her so much?
‘You’re sure?’ she whispered.
Finara, her oldest sister and the goddess of fire, grimaced. ‘Yes. Isabis means to kill you when she gets the chance. It wasn’t an empty threat.’
‘I will continue to avoid her, since that is her wish,’ Renaei murmured. She had promised her mortal-born mother millennia ago that she would look after Isabis and help the savannah goddess with the unusually strong mind-reading abilities that hurt her so much.
But their mother was gone. And so was any chance that Renaei might have had of keeping her promise.
‘There’s more,’ the third woman inside the cave said, stepping forward. Her silver prosthetic leg glinted in the firelight. This was Grace, Finara’s eternal wife. ‘Isabis has joined Fayay’s side. Part of the agreement binding them is his promise to help her end your life. You need to be careful.’
Renaei lifted her chin. ‘I am a goddess. I can take care of myself.’
‘Renaei…’ Finara hesitated.
‘You think I failed her, don’t you?’ Renaei demanded, letting her anger stitch its way through her words. ‘I know I did! But it’s not as though you ever helped me. You never even tried!’
Renaei flattened herself to the ground, shed her human form and tore across countless worlds in a single heartbeat. Her silent screams shook uninhabited mountains, dislodging rocks and causing destructive avalanches. She tried to find comfort in helping her people and answering their prayers, but they gave nothing in return, only asked and asked and asked. She was a goddess to them, not a person. They might love her from afar but it wasn’t enough. It never would be.
No one was truly there for her, to hold her, to wipe away the tears she shed when she was alone.
She was desperate for a companion, someone who would treat her as an equal instead of an object to be worshipped. Finara had Grace. Kuja had Fei. Renaei’s other siblings were beginning to find and marry those mortals who completed them.
But where was her equal? Did such a person even exist?
And then she heard him. The boy she had once saved was now a man, a man who still thought of her with longing when he knew he shouldn’t.
‘Merryn, we didn’t betray Renaei by joining GLEA and serving the Creator God,’ Major Lorne Lavine insisted. His stool listed alarmingly beneath him as he leaned forward to make himself heard over the screeching noise emanating from the band. ‘We’re protecting those who don’t worship Renaei, those who don’t know to call her name. We’re helping our goddess look after the galaxy, don’t you see? We’re sharing her burden.’
Sergeant Merryn Lee rolled her eyes. ‘Next you’ll tell me Renaei is just like us and hangs around in bars with her friends. Fuck that. You can’t assume the gods think like us, Lorne. You just can’t.’ She flicked a hand at the bartender. ‘Get me a Minty Madness.’
‘You’ll put your chip out for a day if you have any alcohol,’ Lorne warned her.
Merryn yanked her hair over her temple, hiding the chip that connected her to her powers. ‘I’m off duty. And you have no starking right to lecture me. You’re not perfect. If GLEA knew you still worshipped a sub-level god…’ Merryn didn’t finish her sentence. Drink in hand, she slapped Lorne’s shoulder and headed for the back of the bar.
Now alone at the counter, Lorne murmured, ‘I hope I’m helping you, Renaei. It’s the least I can do after what you did for me.’
Renaei didn’t think about what she was doing; she just did it. She assumed human form in the bathroom and teleported wigs and prosthetic enhancements into her hands. Once she had created a look she was comfortable with, she left the bathroom and approached the counter, her heart thudding erratically. She slid onto the stool beside Lorne, then quickly used her powers to break the lamp swinging overhead, just in case her disguise wasn’t enough.
When Lorne glanced sideways at Renaei, he didn’t recognise her but there was a brief hesitation before he acknowledged her with a nod. Renaei wasn’t offended when she saw that he was already thinking of a way to escape her presence. He was too tired to spend the night trying to find the best time to tell a prospective date about his
past. Most people in the galaxy didn’t care, but there was always a chance she was someone who’d grown up on a backwater planet like Velde, someone who had blindly accepted what they’d been told.
‘Will you buy me a drink, Major?’ she asked before he could leave. ‘Something without alcohol. You might need your chip working if this crowd becomes any rowdier.’
Lorne stared at her, then his lips slowly curled. ‘I hope you like jenz water.’
The band played for hours, unheeded and unheard while Renaei and Lorne drank and talked about many things — Atsan politics, their mutual love of the planet he now owned a house on, and his reluctance to leave GLEA because being an agent allowed him to help people. With a pang, she realised that he would never speak so candidly with his goddess. She kept her name to herself.
When the music faded and the band began to pack up their instruments, Renaei leaned in and kissed Lorne, the muscles beneath her abdomen clenching when she felt his desire to take it further.
‘I want to walk you home,’ he told her. ‘But there’s something I haven’t…’
Renaei curled her hand around his neck, pulling him closer and stilling his lips with her own. She drew back to smile at him. ‘I have my own secrets. Let us part now before we have to share them. Just know this…when you eventually do leave GLEA, I will come find you.’
‘I’ll be waiting,’ he whispered against her neck.
Even now, nearly a full year later, Renaei still shivered whenever she remembered his words.
• • •
Renaei had meant to rejoin Lorne and his subordinates on New Sydney, but it was a rare for her to sleep and rarer still to dream, especially about the past. She found Lorne alone in the cockpit, watching the distorted stars dance across the viewport while the rest of the guards passed the leapspace journey in slumber. With his leg leaning against the console and his elbow propped up on his knee, he looked thoughtful, almost brooding.
Lorne glanced over at her the moment she appeared. He remained where he was, tiredness and familiarity deciding for him that standing and bowing was unnecessary.
The Galactic Pantheon Novellas Page 20
