by S. L. Viehl
“Yes. Her friend, the Oenrallian Dhreen, also accompanied us.” I knew Jorenians were notoriously possessive about their lifemates, and chose my next words carefully. “I was not aware that she had Chosen you until after we arrived. I accept her Choice.” No, I didn’t, but I could make a show of it. “I would not have accompanied her, had I known.”
“A Jorenian female would never have accompanied you alone, but Cherijo is still … unused to the ways of my kind.” He made a fluid gesture with his hands. “That is not why I am here.”
I tensed as he drew an ornate dagger, but he only offered it to me. “Why do you give me this?”
“The Oenrallian told me how you protected her at the resort. I wish to express gratitude for that.” He placed the hilt in my hand. “My thanks for your care of my Chosen, warrior.”
I studied the blade. It was beautifully worked, honed to a razor’s edge. I could bury it in his chest with a simple sweep of my arm. I also knew many ways to dispose of a body. I do not require thanks.”
“It is difficult for rivals to exchange gifts, is it not?” He smiled a little. “Perhaps you will wish to keep it after you hear what I ask of you in return.”
Only a Jorenian would have the spine to do that. “What?”
“You know that war is coming.”
Suddenly I felt very tired. I went to my console, and saw the reflection of the blade in my hand. “Yes. Very soon.”
“It will not be a simple act of aggression. It will be the League against the Hsktskt. Their battles will consume whole systems, quadrants. The conflict will divert many paths—particularly among those of us who serve in space.” His voice took on a strange note. “It is not my war, but I suspect I will fight it—and I may perish in it.”
I spun the dagger like a top. “Death comes to us all.”
“I do not fear it. That is not the way of my people.” He went on to describe the traditional Jorenian preparations for a death ritual, and finally asked, “Duncan Reever, when I embrace the stars, will you serve as my Speaker?”
His request made me catch the dagger in midspin. From what he had told me, a Jorenian’s Speaker brought the deceased’s last wishes to his kin. It was a task given only to a trusted family member or close friend. “Why ask me?”
“You honor her as much as I.”
I flipped the blade into my palm, made it dance over my fingers. “I could kill you.”
He nodded. “And I you.”
Yet we would not, for her sake. It seemed we understood each other perfectly.
“Yes. I will Speak for you.”
“When the time comes, I will send for you.” He bowed and departed.
I did not want to admit it, but I liked Kao Torin. He was not Cherijo’s balance, but I suspected he would give her a great deal of happiness. Since I could not do that, and I could not kill him, I would have to be content with that.
Slowly I emerged from the link. I was in my husband’s arms, and he was carrying me into our sleeping chamber. I felt exhausted.
“That is enough for now,” he told me.
Now that I knew why he had been so jealous of Kao, I had to make him understand what had happened on Akkabarr.
“I never coupled with Teulon or Resa,” I told him. “Our involvement was of mutual affection. There was a night when I might have, when Resa and I went to him, but after Teulon woke I chose to leave them. Teulon had no desire for two women, as Iisleg men do. I knew if he and Resa could be alone together, they might heal each other.”
Reever sighed. “You did not have to tell me this.”
“We must be open to each other.” I had sensed something more waiting beyond the memory of Duncan’s first meeting with Kao Torin. “I can feel you. You are still holding back something from me. Show me the rest.”
Reever placed me on our sleeping platform and stretched out beside me. For the first time he looked hesitant. “It may make you angry.”
“I think I have to know.”
He nodded, and bent his head to mine, and kissed me.
As I was bandaging my self-inflicted wound, I received a summons to the FreeClinic. It was not from Cherijo, but from her Jorenian pilot. Kao Torin wished to see his Speaker.
I encountered Cherijo on my way to see him. She strode out of the back entrance of the facility and hurried past me. I went after her.
“Get away from me, Reever.”
I couldn’t, not without speaking to her. “Cherijo, stop.”
She walked blindly on. We entered a dead-end alley, but she kept going until she reached the back wall. Then she shouted, “No!”
I caught up to her, and reached for her.
She turned and nearly went to her knees, her hands curled and pressed against either side of her brow. “I can’t stop it! I can’t!”
“No, you can’t.” I didn’t know what else to say. I was going to see her dying lover, to receive his last wishes. I should have felt it like a victory, but all I felt was her pain.
He was dying because she had injected him with her own blood, and it was poisoning him.
She lunged at me and knocked me to the ground, screaming in my face. I did not defend myself as she struck me, over and over. She was wild, sobbing, completely out of control.
I linked with her. Cherijo, stop.
No! I will not! Let me go!
It felt as if my chest was torn in two. Cherijo. Stop fighting me. Let me help you.
Pure hatred poured into my mind from hers. I never wanted you. Never wanted this. Get out, just get out of me!
Let me help you. I showed her everything she denied—her own memories. The epidemic. Its aftermath. Alun Karas’s innocent mistake. The thousands who had become infected, and would have died. I took her back to the groves, made her watch the exudation, made her see the dying as they recovered. The colony lives. The Core lives. Your gift to them.
I brought her into my own memories, made her see the Core attack as I had experienced it. How it felt to be unable to stop them. How we had both been raped. How I had nearly died in the darkness that had followed. How she had saved me despite what I had done. I live. Your gift to me.
I made her see Kao Torin, dying on the ward where she had left him. Then further back in time, to the moment just before she had injected him with her own blood. He had died. She had brought him back to life. Kao Torin lives. He has the time to bid farewell to those he honors. To you. Your gift to him.
I can’t bear it. All the rage left her, leaving only grief and self-loathing. Oh, God, Duncan, I can’t. I can’t.
I ended the link, and held her until she stopped shaking. Then I helped her to her feet.
“Duncan.” She tried to touch my face, then snatched her hand back. “Oh, no, what have I done?”
“I will recover.” I wiped some blood from my nose and mouth with the back of my sleeve. “Be at peace, Cherijo. Be at peace with yourself.” I let her go, and moved away.
“Duncan.”
I stopped.
“I’m … I’m sorry.”
So was I.
I was weeping as we both emerged from the link, and Reever kissed away each tear. I took a moment to steady myself, and then I looked into his eyes. They were wet. He was waiting for my permission to go into the last, worst memory. “I’m ready.”
I was not prepared to see the Jorenian as he was. His body looked wasted, his face gray with pain and fatigue. Yet when I drew a chair up beside his berth, he opened his eyes and made a gesture of welcome.
“I thank you for coming.” He studied my face. “You are injured?”
“A small accident. It’s nothing.” Hopefully my eyes would not swell shut from the beating Cherijo had given me in her grief before we were finished, or I would need assistance returning to my quarters. “Are you sure you want to do this now?”
“I am dying.” He smiled. “When my House is before you, will you Speak for me?”
“Yes.”
He drew in a shallow breath, then made his for
mal requests. When he had finished, he asked, “Do you still have the dagger?”
I produced the blade, and handed it to him.
He turned it slowly in his hand. “This is not part of my Speaking, but I must also ask this of you.” He gazed at me. “After I embrace the stars, I would ask that you Choose Cherijo.”
“I will look after her—”
“No. That is not enough. You must Choose her.”
I wanted to bury the blade in my own chest this time. “I can’t. You don’t know … you don’t know what I am. What I have done.”
“There is no one for her but you. No one else is strong enough to protect her. No one else honors her more. This is all that matters to me.” His hand shook as he drew the blade down the center of his palm, making a shallow cut. Green blood oozed from the gash. “Warriors of different Houses seal their vows with blood.” He handed me the blade. “Once made, they cannot be broken.”
Slowly I made the same cut in my own palm, and we clasped our hands together.
“I entrust you with my Chosen, Duncan Reever.”
“I will Choose her,” I told him as I watched our blood mingle and fall in red-and-green-streaked droplets to the linens on his berth. “And I will protect her with my life.”
“My thanks.” He closed his eyes, and slipped into unconsciousness.
“The Jorenians came for him that day,” Reever told me as I opened my eyes. “I helped them smuggle him out of the FreeClinic and to their ship. I asked for a position on the crew so that I could be close to you.”
“So that you could keep your promise to Kao,” I said, feeling wretched. “You never told her.”
“No. I never did.”
How much of this man’s life had Cherijo inadvertently ruined, all for that promise he made to her dying lover? “I understand.”
“No, you do not,” Reever said. “I did not follow you to Varallan to keep my oath. It was not merely to fulfill the vow I made to Kao Torin. I wished to be near you. You were the other half of me. I could feel it in the balance of everything when we were together. I wanted to be near you always. I knew that being near might be all we would ever have together, but I thought it would be enough.”
“Do you believe that Cherijo loved you, Duncan?”
He nodded. “In her way. She loved medicine, and devoting herself to her calling. I did not mind. I only wanted to share part of her life.”
“Well, I hope you have some happy memories of that love, for it is over.” Before his eyes could grow cold, I wrapped myself around him. “My love cannot be a thing of convenience, to be indulged in when I am not busy. I want you too much for that. Yes, I can love you, Duncan Reever, but you had better think on what that means. Nothing will come between us. Not my work, not the Hsktskt, not the Jorenians, nothing. I will love you with all that I am, and all that I will be. More than anything. More than my life.”
“How can you feel that way?” He didn’t believe me.
“You were not her first love, but you are mine, and I have chosen you.” I smiled slowly. “Will it be enough for you?”
“Jarn,” he said just before he kissed me, “that is more than I ever dreamed.”
TWENTY
I spent the night with the man I loved, and for the first time since I had agreed to become his woman, we truly explored that love. We talked and we laughed and we gave each other pleasure. We shared memories and fears. We slept as if welded together. Not once in all those long hours did I feel guilt or shame for being with him when I could have been in Medical. I needed this time for us, to prove to my husband that he was the center of my life, and to prove to myself that I was his.
No more was I to be Cherijo’s ghost.
I left Reever sleeping when I rose early the next morning to report for duty. As I walked alone to the lift outside our quarters, I felt a strange tingling sensation in my head.
“That would be my fault,” Maggie said. “I have to leave you now.”
I stopped and braced myself against one wall. Why?
“Duncan’s memories of you two lovebirds and all I have stored won’t fit in the one functioning implant you have left” she told me. “One of us has to stop imprinting you, and I figure you need him right now more than you need me.”
I didn’t like the red-haired woman, so I felt little regret at the thought of her disappearing. Where will you go? Will you be contacting me again?
“I go to merge with what is left of the Jxin. We keep each other company in the void. By the time you need me again, Jarn, you’ll know how to make the connection.”
The tingling sensation disappeared, and after a moment I sighed and continued on to Medical.
ChoVa remained closeted in the lab, and Squilyp was busy performing rounds. I apologized to the Senior Healer for my absence, but did not bother to make excuses.
“I will relieve ChoVa once I have checked PyrsVar’s vitals,” I promised as I picked up the renegade Jorenian’s chart. I looked over at the view panel into his isolation room, saw his form huddled under the berth linens, and frowned. “He has not yet risen this morning?”
“No, I told the nurses to keep him sedated.” He looked around. “The night shift charge nurse didn’t leave a report for me before she went off duty.”
“Perhaps she left it in his room.” I went back and unlocked the door. The room was a disordered mess, and I sighed as I reached to draw back the berth linens covering the outlaw’s head—and uncovered the head of the unconscious, gagged charge nurse instead. “Squilyp,” I called, dropping down to look under the berth. “Squilyp, PyrsVar has escaped.”
The Senior Healer hopped over, took in the scene with a single glance, and went to the nearest console to signal the captain. Xonea replied with the news that the launch bay crew had been found gagged, bound, and drugged a few minutes ago, and that a launch was missing.
I scanned the nurse, who had been given a massive dose of sedative, and released her bonds before the ward nurses came to transfer her out of the isolation room. ChoVa had not yet emerged from the lab, so I went to tell her what had happened, and found the lab in worse condition than PyrsVar’s room.
An infuser that had been used to administer a sedative for a large female Hsktskt lay on the deck next to ChoVa’s empty seat. Subsequent signals to her quarters and the captain revealed that the female Hsktskt was no longer on the ship.
“He must have abducted her and taken her with him,” I told Squilyp as we searched the lab.
He went to the analyzer that had been left running and pulled up the last of ChoVa’s tests. “Jarn, come here.”
I went to look at the data. Beneath the long list of tests on the bone dust and PyrsVar’s biopsy tissue were the same results: positive.
“She found the cure.” I checked the components of the compound that had been used for the test. “We have everything we need to synthesize a countermeasure. Enough for the entire population of Vtaga.” I looked up at him. “Do you think she tested it on PyrsVar?”
“We cannot know. I will have the nurses begin processing,” the Omorr said. “You and I have been ordered to report to command.”
We left the staff busily producing the necessary medicine and hurried to command for an emergency meeting with the captain and his officers.
“How much worse were PyrsVar’s symptoms last night?” I asked Squilyp.
“He threatened to blow up the ship and everyone on it if we did not release him,” the Omorr told me, and then lifted a hand. “I have already signaled engineering and environmental services. As far as we can tell, he did not have the opportunity or the means to plant any explosive device or sabotage the star drive or the power systems. I do not believe in his state that he could have done much damage. He was too unsteady.”
“That may have changed.” I could not believe ChoVa would wait to administer the compound. “If she tested him with the successful enzyme, and he reverted to what he was before being exposed to the bone dust …”
“L
et us deal with facts,” the Senior Healer suggested. “Of which we have few.”
Reever met us at the command center. After he gave me a brief, warm embrace, he nodded toward the helm. “We have located the launch. PyrsVar left it in the desert. We think he may have taken ChoVa with him to his final destination.”
Perhaps she had not given him the compound. “Why would he take her? And where?”
“ChoVa understands this epidemic as well as Jarn does,” Reever said. “She is also the daughter of the ruling Akade. There was no one more valuable on this ship to him than her, except perhaps you.”
We went in and briefed the captain and his officers with what we knew. They in turn filled in some of the gaps.
“Before he left the upper atmosphere, PyrsVar sent a signal to this location in the mountains,” Salo said, pointing out one of the tallest peaks in the range being holoprojected over the conference, table. “This is approximately three hours due north of the desert.”
“SrrokVar’s stronghold,” I said. “That must be where he was taking her.” I shuddered to think of my friend at the mercy of that madman. Would he expose her to more of the dust? “Have we informed the Akade of what has happened?”
“TssVar acknowledged our signal, but did not respond,” Salo said. “The rioters are massing around the Palace. He believes his security grid will be overwhelmed sometime today, unless help from Tingal arrives.”
“Will the Tingaleans arrive in time?” I asked the captain.
“We do not know,” Xonea admitted. “The last signal they sent indicated they would send assistance, but with their usual reticence, they did not specify when, or how much.”
“Then the responsibility rests on us.” I looked at my husband. “We must go to the planet and find ChoVa, and do what we can to help TssVar until reinforcements arrive.”
“We cannot fight an entire population of Hsktskt gone insane,” Xonea said, very gently.
“I am not proposing that we do.” I turned to Naln, the chief of engineering, who sat beside me. “I can synthesize a large amount of the enzyme that will end this epidemic, but it will be impossible to administer it in the traditional fashion. Is there some way we can put it into the water or food supply?”
