Keryn smiled as she stood. “So we’re leaving?”
“You’ll be departing tomorrow,” the Oterian replied. “Good luck.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Yen sat in the cramped confines of the engine compartment on board one of the Cair transport ships. A series of tools lay strewn across the floor next to him, mostly forgotten. For over three hours, Yen had been tinkering with the new warp generators that the High Council had installed on all the ships in his Squadron. He couldn’t shake the sense of distrust both toward the generators and the Council, but found solace sitting and analyzing the new machines. Even so, his interest in the generators had waned nearly an hour before and, since that time, he had remained in the engine compartment, lost in thought.
Focused on his own thoughts, Yen didn’t hear the hatch door on the Cair open, nor did he notice the soft, quiet steps as someone approached the back of the ship where Yen sat huddled. He had left the engine compartment door open and was clearly visible to anyone inside the ship.
“Is this a private party or can anyone join?”
Yen looked over as Iana stooped lower, examining the engine and trying to deduce what caught Yen’s attention so intently. With a brush of his hand, Yen pushed the tools aside. Sliding over, Yen made room for Iana to squeeze into the engine compartment and take a confined seat beside him.
“You’ve been in here for hours with this thing,” she said, reaching out and running a finger along the top of the newly installed black cylinder. “Since it’s still in one piece, I can only assume that you didn’t find anything interesting. I mean, to keep your attention for all this time, I would expect the generator to be doing tricks.”
“No, nothing interesting,” Yen responded flatly.
Iana shrugged. “From that sour expression, I’m guessing you heard the news.”
Yen picked up a wrench and turned it back and forth absently, letting it draw in his attention. Eventually, he sighed heavily. “I knew she’d be leaving soon, so I shouldn’t be surprised. Somehow, I just thought we’d have more time together. After all this time, I feel like I’m finally connecting with Keryn in ways I didn’t even know were possible. But instead of us getting the chance to explore our relationship and see where it could lead, she’s going to be heading off on her mission.”
“When I was young,” Iana said softly, placing a hand on Yen’s arm, “my father always told me that it is not the decisions we make, but rather the decisions that are made for us, that define who we become.”
Yen looked up, confused. “I don’t follow.”
“Would you agree that you’re at a pretty important crossroad in your life?”
Yen nodded.
“Well, right now you can choose one of two paths. Either you can pine away for Keryn and hope day after day that both you and she will survive your missions, find one another, and convince the High Council not to separate you for missions ever again…”
Yen frowned. “Or?”
“Or you accept that you don’t get to make a decision this time. She’s leaving, no matter what you choose to do about it. But right now we need a Squadron Commander who is focused on the mission ahead instead of being focused on the girl he’s leaving behind.”
“When did you suddenly become full of sage wisdom?” Yen asked moodily.
“Didn’t you know? Big surprises; little packages. I think the better question is: why do I get the feeling this is not the last time you and I are going to have this conversation?”
Yen smiled, but the mirth didn’t erase the sadness in his eyes. Iana squeezed his arm gently, her own face filled with genuine concern.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Yen said, nodding. “I guess I just didn’t expect to be so affected by Keryn leaving.” Sighing, he rubbed his face with his hands. “But you’re right; I do need to focus on something else for a while.”
At Yen’s urging, Iana climbed out of the cramped engine compartment and left the Cair ship with Yen close behind. Finally in a more spacious area, Yen stretched and groaned as he tried to loosen stiff muscles.
“So what’s the first bit of business we need to take care of?” he asked, glad to have Iana close by to change the subject.
“Well, you do have an entire ground assault team still waiting to find out exactly what they’ll be doing once you land on the surface.”
Yen frowned. He had been intentionally avoiding the ground assault team. Though he was perfectly aware of how important the mission was to their successful invasion, Yen also knew that he would have to face Buren. The idea of working so closely with a former teammate who so blatantly disliked Yen did not excite him.
“Later,” Yen muttered. “What else do you have?”
Iana shrugged. “So long as we’re on the topic of the invasion force, you still haven’t picked a pilot who’s going to take you down to the planet.” She batted her eyes suggestively, to which Yen had no choice but laugh. “Laugh if you want, but I’m serious. You’re not going to find a better pilot than me.”
“I couldn’t agree more. Unfortunately, that’s the exact reason why I can’t pick you to be my pilot. You’re the best pilot I have, but you’re also a Duun pilot. I need you in the air protecting my butt. Without you, I won’t stand much of a chance of making it to the surface.”
“Well,” Iana conceded, “as long as we’re clear that it’s because I’m too good for you. So if you’re not going to pick me to be your pilot, who are you going to pick?”
Yen began leading Iana away from the ship and toward the exit to the hangar bay. Whether he liked it or not, he needed to head down to the briefing room and start working on the ground assault mission. “I think I’m going to go with Warrant Pelasi.”
Iana stopped in mid-step. “The Uligart? The pilot who just got here? You don’t even know him.”
“You’re right, I don’t know him. But his former Squadron Commander gives him some glowing recommendations. I have no doubt that he’s going to be a capable pilot.”
“A ‘capable’ pilot,” Iana chided. “Remind me not to ask you for a letter of recommendation in the future.”
“Joke if you want to, but I also picked him because if he turns out to be useless as a pilot, I’ll always be there to take over. I’d rather have him under adult supervision than out there in a Duun by himself.”
Nodding, Iana rejoined him as they walked toward the doorway. When they passed through the hangar bay’s exit doors, Iana reached out and put a comforting hand on Yen’s shoulder.
“You know,” she said, “I’m sure we can take care of the maintenance checks for the rest of today. Why don’t you spend the rest of the day with your lady?”
“I still have a lot of work to do…”
“All of which will still be here tomorrow,” Iana interjected. “We’re just now at the Demilitarized Zone. We still have, what, almost a month until we reach our launch coordinates? We’ll have everything done well before then. Take the time off now, while you still can.”
“You really are a lifesaver, Iana,” Yen said, smiling. “Thank you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered. “Do me a favor, won’t you? Tell her bye. I’m going to be so busy here with the ships, I won’t get a chance to be there when she leaves.”
“I will,” Yen agreed.
Iana smiled. “Good. Now get going.”
Though he continued smiling as he walked away, Yen couldn’t erase the sharp stab of regret in his chest, knowing that after tomorrow Keryn would be gone from his life.
The next morning, Yen carried Keryn’s bags as they approached the airlock. The Cair Ilmun had already been launched from the hangar bay and was now docked to the exterior of the Revolution, ready for its departure. Though the night before had been filled with a myriad of passionate emotions, the morning felt stale. The pair walked in silence with an air of professionalism floating nearly palpably between them. Keryn had changed out of her Fleet uniform, instead donnin
g a pair of sturdy hide pants, a loose blue shirt, and a thin brown jacket. Jutting from beneath the coat as she moved, Yen could see the pistol strapped to her hip. Even simply dressed and with her hair halfheartedly pinned up, Yen found her increasingly irresistible. Watching her walk calmly toward their inevitable separation, his heart pounded painfully in his chest.
As they exited the last lift that would bring them to the airlock, Yen found himself among a small group of soldiers, dressed in attire similar to that of Keryn’s. A few other members of the Revolution were present as though saying farewell to the departing crew, but there were significantly less present than what Yen would have assumed. Frowning, Yen realized why. Most had other pressing tasks to accomplish with the pending assault on Earth only a month away. To everyone else on board, Keryn’s mission was insignificant. Yen had to concede that her mission was pretty insignificant to him as well. It was the fact that she was leading the mission that drew him inexorably to the airlock.
The rest of Keryn’s crew met her with warm smiles and friendly waves. A large Oterian with a dangerous scar running the length of his face took Keryn’s bags from Yen and disappeared through the hatch, loading the bags onto the Cair Ilmun. The other members of her team went back to the minimalistic farewells that they were sharing with loved ones and friends. Even those were brief and slowly, one by one, her team loaded on the ship, ready to depart.
From the far side of the vestibule, Penchant walked through the thinning crowd. Not surprising to Yen, there wasn’t anyone around sharing their goodbyes with the aloof Lithid. Adam, noticing Penchant walking past, broke away from the woman with whom he was saying intimate farewells and approached the pair as well. Reaching out, the Pilgrim shook Yen’s hand before giving Keryn a hug.
“You ready for this?” Adam asked Keryn, his excitement undisguised.
“I don’t think we really have much of a choice,” Keryn said. Yen could detect a hint of nervousness behind her words.
“How about you, Yen?” Adam asked, turning toward the psychic. “You’ve got way more responsibility than we do. How are you holding up?”
“You know,” Yen replied. “The entire fate of the Alliance military is resting on my shoulders. What’s there to be nervous about? You know, I really wish I had all three of you coming with me.”
“Adam might have served you well on Earth,” Penchant replied in his gravelly voice, “but I was never cut out for large scale assaults. I am better suited for the espionage mission.”
Adam shrugged. “I don’t think Earth’s sun would have complimented my complexion.”
For the first time that morning, Keryn cracked a smile. “Why don’t you two go load up the last of our gear and I’ll meet you on board. We have a lot of flying ahead of us, so the sooner we depart the sooner we’ll get there.”
“Take care, Yen,” Adam said, shaking his hand before turning away. Penchant nodded, his featureless face betraying none of his emotions.
When they had both passed through the airlock and the crowds had thinned to only a few crewmen working around the area, Yen turned to Keryn. A storm of emotions brewed behind her violet eyes.
“It’s not too late for you to stay with me,” Yen offered. “We could always find an excuse why you couldn’t lead the mission.”
“It became too late after I agreed to lead this mission. Now that I have so many people relying on me, there’s no way I could possibly let them all down. I have to go.”
“I don’t want you to leave me,” Yen admitted.
Keryn sighed and looked away. “I told you once before that this wasn’t about you and me. This has always been about the mission and what’s best for the Alliance. It doesn’t matter what we feel for each other.”
“And how do we feel about each other? You know I love you, but every time I say it you find a way to avoid saying it back.”
“Please don’t,” Keryn pleaded, shaking her head.
“I love you, Keryn. I’ve loved you for a long time now. I am willing to wait for you, no matter how long it takes us to be reunited. We were meant to be together. If you feel the same way, then there’s no reason why you can’t look me in the eyes and tell me that we’ll be together again someday.”
“I can’t promise that, Yen,” Keryn replied sternly. “We are both getting ready to depart on long, dangerous missions. Even, by some fluke, we both manage to survive, we are still going to be apart for months, even as long as a year. Who knows what’s going to happen to us in that time. Just in the few months that we’ve been together, I’ve changed drastically. Things… happened in my life that will forever change who I am. I don’t know what else might happen while I’m away. By the time we meet again, I may not even be the same person you remembered and loved.”
“Keryn…”
“Please, let me finish,” she interrupted. “If we had met at another time, in a different place, things might have been different between us. You truly do make me happy, Yen, and there is a part of me that loves you. But fate is conspiring against us. I’m not happy about leaving you, but you have to understand something about me.
“I sacrificed everything I knew in order to join the Fleet. My parents and friends threatened to disown me if I joined. But I joined anyway, against their wishes, because of a sense of duty and honor. I still keenly feel that loyalty to the Alliance. My feelings for you are secondary to my mission. I look in your eyes and I know you’re trying to understand that, but I can also see that you don’t. You’re an idealist. To you, it’s as simple as ‘we want to be together, so we will’. I’m a realist. I know that there’s only a slim chance of us ever seeing each other again. Because of that, I know it’s best if we part today as friends and nothing more.”
Yen shook his head. “As long as there’s a chance that we’ll be together again, I won’t give up that hope.”
Keryn smiled warmly, her eyes watering with gentle emotion. Reaching up, she placed a hand on his cheek. “You’re a dreamer, Yen. It’s one of the things that drew me to you. But every dreamer eventually has to wake up.”
Leaning in, she kissed him firmly on the mouth. Yen could taste the sweetness of her lips mixing with the saltiness of her tears. Slowly, she pulled away, wiping her eyes on the back of her sleeve.
“Goodbye, Yen,” she said quietly before turning and disappearing through the airlock. The door slid closed, sealing only moments before he heard the hiss of the area beyond depressurizing. Moving a little further down the wall, Yen found one of the viewports, through which he watched the Cair Ilmun pull free of the vestibule and, with its engines burning brightly, begin flying away from the Revolution.
Yen continued to watch until long after the Cair Ilmun carried away the woman he loved.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Keryn stood up from the pilot’s chair and stretched as best she could in the low-ceilinged cockpit of the Cair Ilmun. Everything ached in her body and she knew that the one-piece flight suit she was wearing was far from clean. Reaching up in mid stretch, Keryn brushed some of her oily silver hair out of her face. Sighing in defeat, she pulled an elastic band free from one of the front pockets of her coveralls and used it to hold her thin hair back into a ponytail. During the month since their departure from the Revolution, she had worn her hair pulled back so many times that it was starting to form a natural crease from the tight elastic band. At this point in their trip, she would have gladly killed someone for a comfortable bed and a long, hot shower.
Setting the autopilot, Keryn turned away from the controls and opened the door that led into the modified crew quarters of the Cair transport ship. The normal interior for a Cair ship had been a long, open bay lined with trooper seats on either side, while still leaving plenty of space for excess equipment in the middle of the compartment. The Cair Ilmun, thanks to the foresight of the High Council, had been modified to appear almost like a civilian transport.
Stepping through the doorway, she entered a wide room filled with plush couches and reclining chairs.
A series of tables were strewn about, most covered with consoles that would allow the team to play an assortment of games to pass the time. Even now, Keeling and Rombard were engaged in an intense game of Jach’tar. Similar to the three dimensional simulations that Keryn had gone through at the Fleet Academy, Jach’tar was an Avalon strategy game that pitted two opposing fleets against one another. The victor was decided by a series of rules determined at the beginning of play, many of which Keryn quickly forgot. After repeated losses at the game, she had forgone any further challenges from the team.
The Uligart and Oterian looked relaxed while they played, but Keryn could see the strain behind their eyes. She had seen the same strain on all of them. For a month, they had been traveling at faster than light speed. Though the Cair Ilmun had been retrofitted with inhibitors much like those found on a Cruiser, the inhibitors were still unable to compensate for all the excessive gravities that were created from such high speed travel. The crew was being exposed to nearly one and a half gravities, but it was punishment on bodies not used to the increased pressure on their systems. Only Penchant seemed unaffected, though Keryn wasn’t sure how much of that was due to his physiology and how much was just because she had no idea on how to read his different moods. She had never realized how much she relied on facial expressions to betray attitudes until she befriended someone without a face.
On top of the increased gravity, the Cair Ilmun just didn’t offer enough alternative escapes from one another. Though they all considered one another as friends, it was still difficult to be in such close confines with each other for such extended periods of time. Keryn found her escape in the cockpit, though even that was unnecessary. They were traveling between star systems, covering such an expansive area of open space that she could have left the pilot’s controls unattended for over a week and still not feared running into something. Still, it was time away from people, and she was coming to cherish her quiet time more and more.
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