by Celeste Raye
Stand or fall.
The halls were quiet. The sound of machinery whirring and chirping to itself sounded through the empty corridors of Tralam. The wind blew in through shattered windows and heaps of leaves and other debris rustled together, lending a ghostly sighing noise to the tune played out by the machinery and the wind.
The sound of footsteps, soft and muted, moving along the old and broken floors sent tiny vermin scattering away from their nests within the piles of debris and toward the shelter of deeper shadows and cracks within the walls and floors.
A sour smell rose heavily from outside and blew in through the window, which rattled brokenly within a frame that held ancient writing in a language long since forgotten. The wind picked up, and its mournful wail grew louder as it careened into blind intersections and found itself trapped there.
They came: the weapon, the assassin, the thief, the healer, the warrior, the captain, and the one whose mind could turn the machine on full tilt again for the first time in untold ages. The wind beat harder against the windows and walls and roof, as if it sought to break through and level warning upon those that lay waiting.
Leading them all forward was the betrayer, his footsteps steady and certain as he led his accomplices toward their fate.
And last but certainly not least, and still a babe in the making, was the half-human creature whose voice would tell its mother what to do when they breached the sacred inner chamber that would be either the tomb for all of them or the crucible for a dead universe.
Tara sat up, one hand clutching at her throat as the dream shredded and broke all around her. Her hands flew out and banged into empty space. She blinked, letting her eyes adjust to the dimness as she looked around for Blade, but he was gone. She stood, her naked body glowing in the dimness. She hastily donned her clothes and made her way to the small doorway of the shelter. She pulled it open and peered outside. Blade stood under the moon, his head tilted back in his hair blowing slightly around his face. She walked up behind him and placed one hand on his shoulder. The dream had left her feeling sick and dazed, and she wasn’t sure if it had been just a dream or something else. The solid contact of his skin under her hand helped her to ground herself into reality again.
The night lay soft and gentle; the wind bore a faint floral scent now that all of the pyres had finally stopped burning and the rubble below the city had caved in over the fires burning below it and trapped the fire there.
She asked, “Can’t sleep?”
His smile was rueful. “It seems you cannot either.”
She wanted to tell him about the dream because it felt important, but at the same time, it was just a dream. Her imagination had always been overeager. She had been thinking of those books that she had pilfered and read from the library, and many of them had the same eerie setting as the one she had just dreamed up.
It would do no good to tell them about it. It meant nothing. She cleared her throat, “It’s hard to sleep knowing that tomorrow we go to find a place that people say doesn’t exist, but somehow does.”
His laugh was real. “True. But I was just too hungry to sleep.”
She sighed. “There’s not enough food. I don’t know how the people are going to survive without some assistance.”
He said, “They are coming in from the places that escaped being bombed so terribly and still have food; they are bringing with them supplies. They should arrive tomorrow. And the ships still have printers. They’re able to put out just enough to keep people from starving until they can have better.”
She said, “What will we do for food on the journey?”
He tilted his chin toward the sky. “There are planets outside the fight zone who are well-equipped to supply the ship. We will stop by a few of them, I’m sure.”
There were too few outside the fighting zone now. The Federation, like an animal cornered and trapped, had begun killing off planets it thought might hold alliance with the rebels. It was the worst thing that they could have done because now planets and systems who had sworn to stand with them found themselves outraged and horrified and afraid that they would be next. Their only protection had been to join with the rebels, and so they had.
The Federation, the dictatorship that was so willing to kill everything rather than lose its hold, was the one thing that could not be allowed to stand. If that meant going to a place shrouded in myth and secrecy, if it meant dying while trying to use whatever was there that might stop the Federation, then that was what they would do.
There was no choice at all, and maybe there never had been a choice.
Maybe fate was real, and maybe fate had put all of them in each other’s path just so they could go to Tralam and find whatever was there.
So be it.
The dream came back to her, and she shook it off again, telling herself it was just her imagination running wild on her and that now was not the time to let that happen.
She wound her fingers into his, and they leaned together, shoulder to shoulder and their heads meeting. Overhead the sky was prickled with stars and the full moon. The silence, still as the grave she was sure she would soon find herself in, became too much to bear. She said, “Do you know what I was just thinking?”
He said, “No. Tell me.”
She said, “I was just thinking that until I met you, my life was flat and stale. I had no idea that I wasn’t even alive. Oh, I was drawing breath, and I was eating and sleeping going about my job as was my duty. I was enjoying what I had, but what I had wasn’t real life. It was just a shadow of it.”
He turned to her, and his hands rested on her shoulders as he turned her to face him. His lips came down on hers, and he gave her a soft short kiss that he broke off far too soon.
He said, “I would die for you. If it comes down to it, I will die for you, and I would hope that you would have enough sense to go if we find ourselves in a situation where only one of us can survive. I can die knowing that I saved your life but I can’t die knowing that you died because you would not leave me. Swear to me that if we find ourselves in a situation where only one of us can live, you will go.”
No. She could not do that. She could not live without him. She searched his face. His expression told her that he needed this promise to be made. That this promise was what would bolster him. She said, “I swear.”
Not to leave you. To be there with you in your final moments. To love you forever even if it means I die beside you. That’s what I swear to.
Overhead, the sun began to peek above the horizon, casting a golden nimbus of light along the outer edges of the world. Morning had come, and with it had come the burden that was the quest they had agreed to take on.
Birds began to sing. They stood there not moving as the others slowly made their way out of their shelters and stepped up beside them. None of them spoke. There was no need to. The ship was a hundred yards to the right, and their duty also lay in that direction.
Tara realized then that Blade wore the same skin-hugging suit that he had worn the first time she had met him. That he wore his armor told her everything she needed to know about just how dangerous this thing that they were going up against was.
Sun broke and spilled sunlight tinged with an ominous red light across the people who gathered there. Shivers broke out and ran up and down Tara’s skin at the sight.
As one, they turned and began walking toward the ship, still silent. Margie held Jeval’s hand tightly. Talon and Jessica checked each other’s weapons. Marik and Jenny carried bags filled with medicines and as Tara watched Marik lifted a hand and placed it on the back of Jenny’s neck for just a brief second.
Renall had stayed behind in order to help get the city’s shattered systems backup in place so that the survival of its citizens would be more assured. Drake was there, though. He strode directly ahead of all of them. Tara studied him covertly. He was taller than Blade, and slightly less broad of shoulder and chest, but equally lean of hip and waist. His hair was the same jet-black color, a
nd his face bore a striking resemblance to Blade’s, but there was a sense of aloofness and reserve about Drake that was not present in Blade.
Blade did not trust his brother.
Drake trusted none of them.
How she knew that, she was not sure, but every instinct told her that this was a thing that was not based on trust, but on duty, and that if anyone was the betrayer she had dreamed of, it would be Drake.
That made her shiver again, and she swore a silent vow. If Drake did anything to harm Blade, she would kill him herself and do it without a shred of guilt.
They reached the ship. They walked up the short steps through the bay doors. Tara paused and turned around. Death and destruction was everywhere, but there were also survivors there, all of them eager and willing to continue the fight. All of them eager and willing to rebuild the city and to make it into something better than what it had been before. That gave her hope and a determination that she had not known she could have. She would not fail these people. She could not fail them.
The bay doors closed and the ship shuddered and then began to lift upward off the ground, its engines vibrating and its outer walls tightening into place as the shields went up.
Blade’s arm went around her waist and pulled her closer. They stood there together at the windows watching as the planet fell away into the distance and the darkness of space surrounded them.
The ship zoomed into the first of a series of wormholes as it headed toward its uncertain destination.
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Tredorphen
Dragons of Dobromia
By Celeste Raye
Chapter 1:
Marina
“We’re making an emergency landing. I repeat, an emergency landing is imminent.”
The voice of my ship’s captain hummed over the loudspeaker of the spacecraft and seemed to echo through every empty corridor. My eyes immediately twitched up to my sister, Athena, from across the common lounge. That’s right. Our parents named us Marina and Athena. ‘It’s cute,’ they insisted. All it was to me, really, was a headache.
Teachers would refer to us as though we were twins because of our ridiculous rhyming names, even though at 29 I was three years her senior.
“Did he really just say that?” my sister called from across the room with a cocked brow. She was busied in a game of cards with some of the other scientists aboard.
“Landing,” I repeated unenthusiastically.
“Landing now?” she asked with no small form of impatience.
“That’s generally what landing implies,” I said.
“Not really!” she called back.
I rolled my eyes and shook my head at the comment. If she wanted to talk to me, why didn’t she just walk up and start a conversation? No, ever the extrovert, Athena had to shout it across the entire room so that her voice rang like a bell and everyone would be forced to show her attention.
With a huff and a grumble, she threw her cards down to the table and whispered something in her playmate’s ear before sitting across from me in an old upholstered chair that was bolted to the floor.
“You worried?” she asked nonchalantly as she set her tanned arms on the table between us. I was always jealous of how easily my sister tanned. I was pale as a ghost, like our mother. But she was an Australian beauty, like our father; all golden blonde hair and deeply shaded skin.
I shook my head. “Not especially. I heard we were having problems with the ship.”
She stared at me, stone-faced. “And yet you invited me to come aboard? Your own sister? Your own flesh and blood you would risk on a possible deathtrap?”
Her anger was a put-on, of course. That would be the day, when Athena Livingstone wasn’t dissatisfied with the unknown.
“And here I thought you loved adventure,” I teased.
“Yes,” she flung her long blonde hair carelessly behind her back. “I also quite enjoy living, too.”
My eyes fluttered across the lounge and watched as concerned expressions ghosted over the faces of our fellow crewmates. We were on a secret mission: scientists and few security members. Some of the crew scuttled around the common room in a panic, while others barely looked up from their games. We had a very competent pilot. So much so that I didn’t even feel a need to go bunker down and prep for landing.
“Aren’t we around Ceylara, anyway?” my sister asked.
I nodded. “Yep.”
“And that’s the planet we’re supposed to go to?”
I offered her another nod. “Bingo.”
“So what’s the big deal?” Athena shrugged. “Basically, we’re landing a week early, if nothing else. We should be cheering, not worrying!”
“Well,” I frowned comically. My sister always had an interesting way of looking at things. “We are severely off-course. We’re nowhere near the research site.”
“So we find another way around the planet. Big whoop.”
I blinked in surprise and gave a bemused laugh. “Okay. How do you propose we do this? We have one rover, and it’ll barely hold three people, let alone our whole crew.”
We had 59 on board. I knew this would be an impossibility, but Athena gave an over-exaggerated yawn and waved me off as though I weren’t trying hard enough to remedy the situation.
“We’ll fix the ship, and everything will be peachy. Okay?” she said with a breath.
“Okay,” I agreed half-heartedly. “And you’ll be staying put, I assume?”
She gave me a playful wink. “’Course.”
“You girls nervous?” came a familiar voice.
I turned in my chair to see the source of the tone and watched the red-haired guard waltz over to our chairs, quite literally dancing his way over to us with exaggerated movements. Peter. He was a silly guy who had been trying to get my attention for months now.
“Hello, handsome,” I greeted in our familiar way, smiling at him as he neared us with his contagious spirit.
He held a laser rifle lazily over his shoulder as he spun the top of the chair so that he was sitting with the chair back to his chest, his feet placed firmly on either side of the stool.
“I’m always nervous when you’re around,” Athena said in the most un-flirtatious tone I’d ever heard.
“Because I make you weak in the knees?” he teased.
My sister gave a full, heady laugh. “More like I don’t trust you with this thing,” she mocked as she tipped his rifle back off his shoulder and stood from our company.
“Hey!” he said with a deep frown, watching her walk out of the room. “I ranked first in my squad!”
I laughed at the meager attempt to defend himself and crossed my legs in my chair. “Smooth,” I grinned.
“You think?”
I raised my brows, and we both let out a small laugh. “No.”
“So what do we make of this here, our broken ship?” he asked in his boyish tone. In truth, Peter was exactly my age, but his fair red hair, smooth skin, and freckled face gave him a younger appearance that I found immensely charming. The disturbing thing was that with our fair hair and freckles, we could have been cousins.
He even had the same heart-shaped face that I did. The shape was both endearing and somewhat odd on a man’s frame.
I smiled as he continued talking about the system failure in the ship and slowly I rolled my wrist in expectation of his next words.
“Do you think its aliens?” he asked enthusiastically.
“You always say its aliens,” I scoffed. “You’ve been saying this for four missions. That’s two years now!”
“Yeah, and that one time it was!”
“Um,” I deadpanned. “I think you’re rewriting history a little there, buddy.”
“I think not,” he defended. “When we were on Noxuvis, did we not break down because of an alien attack?”
I slapped my hand on the table and giggled profusely. “It wasn’t exactly an ‘it’s
on the wing’ situation, Pete. It was an electric current that gave us a blackout.”
“An electric current caused by…?” he tempted.
“By an alien life form,” I admitted reluctantly. “But it was so cute!”
He shook his head with a smirk, crossing his arms in disapproval. “It doesn’t ‘not count’ because it was cute.”
“Look, all I’m saying is that I’ve heard you tell that story to other people and you treat it like it was a dinosaur that attacked us or something. It was a little baby!”
“Yeah,” he said forcefully. “And it managed to take us out for a month. We had to contact headquarters and request emergency rations rocketed in. You know, the more I think about it, the more it seems like you’re the one who isn’t remembering things clearly.”
I waved him off with humor, and he rolled his eyes with a perfectly straight smile.
“You know that the captain wants us to be in our quarters for landing, right?” he said after a moment of uncomfortable silence. Peter and I had edged on the cusp of flirtation for so long now that we hadn’t quite crossed over into friendship, nor hopped the line into dating. This made silences incredibly awkward, like we weren’t sure how to read it, or each other, yet.
I inhaled with a breath that asked, “So?” and he chuckled.
“Why, Pete? You inviting me to your room?” I teased almost seductively, knowing I was great at riding the line of impropriety with my coworker.
“No,” he said almost too quickly. “I was being a gentleman and offering to walk you to yours.”
“So be it,” I said, smiling as I stood from the table; then the sudden thrust of the engine knocked me to the side. I slammed my foot on the ground to balance myself and then brushed my breasts off as though some imaginary substance had fallen on them during the wave.
I watched his eyes trail my shirt with delight and I couldn’t help but smirk. “Well,” I breathed, reaching for his hand. “I’ll remember this!”
“Remember what?” he asked in a panic.
