Forged by Battle (WarVerse Book 1)

by Patrick J. Loller

  Focus, she told herself. Don't lose the edge. Make a plan.

  The ship would be on high alert. They would take a muster and discover who was missing. Then armed marines would move through each deck until they found her. She couldn't blow up the compartment to get rid of the evidence, and she wouldn't be able to clean up the mess that the Shadow—that she—had made.

  She looked around. The cargo containers on either side were large. Far too large for her to move, even with the assistance of her Shell.

  She was out of options. Save one.

  Her stomach churned. Every time she leaned on its power, it seemed harder and harder to separate herself. But she had no choice. Time was short and any minute they would discover her. She pulled the blade from its sheath, and the hunger filled her.

  There was not much left in the dead Psykin’s chest cavity, so she could not plunge the dagger into the heart. Instead, she pressed the metal into the soft area beneath the jaw. There was almost no resistance, but she could still feel the scrape of every bone scraped the splitting of each muscle. Hunger screamed inside her, as though she had been starving for months, and she sank the dagger in to its hilt.

  Darkness blossomed from around the pommel, growing branches towards the skull. Each one pierced into the Psykin’s flesh, creating green bruises on the bluish skin as blood vessels burst and were shoved aside. The darkness slithered over and into everything it touched until a head of darkness remained.

  Like wax dripping from a candle, the Shadow descended. First in drips and drabs, but then faster, pouring down from the skull as though it were a wellspring to fill the chest cavity beneath. The Exile had hoped the Shadow would eat away the flesh, that it would focus the hunger and take everything.

  Then the chest cavity filled, the ribs pulled back towards the center, and the Exile realized her mistake. She tried to pull the dagger back out, to stop the Shadow before it was too late, but the very instant her fingers brushed the leather hilt, she was overwhelmed by a pain more excruciating than anything the Shadow had inflicted upon her before.

  The head of darkness twisted around to look up at her, and the jaw clacked together, though no words came out. The swirling, dripping darkness was still pulling the chest back together, and spreading down to coat the dead Psykin’s arms and legs.

  The Exile shook with a mixture of revulsion and terror, helpless as the Shadow did not destroy the remains, but became them. The screech of tearing metal assaulted her ears as the Shadow’s fingers dug into the floor, and then, without warning, it sat up and turned to look at her.

  Every second that passed, the monster took on more and more of the features it had consumed. The twin horns along the head, the bluish tinge to the skin, the glint of anger in the eyes.

  "This body will serve for now," it rasped, then it coughed violently before it spoke again, but in the Exile’s mind this time. It was the deceased’s voice, tinged with the monster’s horrible inflection.

  It reached up and pulled the dagger from its lower jaw. Drops of Shadow fell from the wound before it cinched itself closed. The monster twisted the knife around and held it out, hilt first.

  it said.

  Chapter 31

  Rodrom

  Rodrom's eyes fluttered open. A light bounced above him. As his mind sharpened against the fog of an unnatural sleep, he groaned. A fear stemming from the unknown buffeted him as he looked around fervently through unfocused eyes. Physical pain awoke as he did, and it was all that stemmed the terror. His head and back were aching, too much for him to be dead.

  Rodrom, think. What's around?

  He could just make out the vague colors of the inside of tree shelter above him. The smell of wet dirt and foreign foliage filled his nostrils. He was lying on a nest of woven branches and leaves, which were still green. Groaning again, he pushed himself up into a seated position.

  "Don't strain yourself, DerekRodrom, you've been in the dreamscape too long to be moving so swiftly," Lorelei said from beside him. Rodrom turned towards her, slowly, his eyes finally adjusting enough to make sense of the room. Lorelei was seated on a similar nest, her legs tucked under her body with her customary staff resting on her thighs.

  "Wha..." Rodrom began, his voice cracking. Lorelei lifted a pitcher towards him and he struggled to grasp it, his nerves still deaf from the long sleep. Lorelei leaned forward to cup her hands around Rodrom's and lift the jug enough for him to drink.

  The cool water splashed down his parched throat, a flood through a dried riverbed, and though Rodrom drank hurriedly, he tasted the undercurrent of something too bitter to be water. If they wanted him dead, they would not have nursed him back to health, so he swallowed the last gulp and nodded slightly, wondering what sort of Verdantun magic they had infused into the water. Lorelei lowered the empty pitcher.

  "How long?" Rodrom asked, not trusting his throat with a longer sentence. The headache he had felt so acutely upon waking was beginning to diminish. A healing draught, he concluded.

  "I am unsure of how your people measure time," Lorelei explained. "However, the sun on this world has crossed our camp twice since the attack."

  The average day on the unknown planet was roughly Earth Standard. "Two days," he muttered, knowing Lorelei would not understand the words. "You healed me."

  "I did."

  "Why?"

  "Your efforts on Dirus prevented his passing. The healers consented to my treating you before those who suffered less fatal injuries." Lorelei extended her arms outward, palms up, to emphasis her point.

  He knew all too well that when priority of treatment came up, it was easy to overlook enemy combatants in favor of friendly forces. "Leaving him would have been rude," Rodrom snipped, unsure of what to say.

  "Wars are rarely fought against an enemy that is uniformly evil. It would seem your actions are proof of that. We underestimated you."

  Rodrom remained silent. What was Lorelei getting at?

  "Your blood is different from the other iron-bloods," Lorelei said. She gestured to a handful of broad leaves soaked with blue. Rodrom looked down at his arm where he had been injured, and found only the white pucker of scar tissue.

  "I had it replaced when I was young," Rodrom said, knowing he would not be able to explain synthetic blood any better than he could explain the leukemia that had necessitated it. Lorelei seemed to accept that answer. She remained silent for a time, staring at Rodrom with her oversized emerald eyes. She ran her fingers absently over the white stone on the end of her staff as she swayed to unheard music. Rodrom thought she was humming, though the low sound continued as she spoke.

  "I do not believe we should be fighting this war," she whispered. "In every battle the wounded are dragged or limp back, only to be healed and sent back to the fight. You see us as monsters, we see you as metal demons." She paused, looking out of the shelter with her eyes unfocused. "You could have run."

  "He was injured. I could not leave him in agony," Rodrom said, though he wondered all the same why he had done what he did.

  "Your orders are to attempt to escape when presented the opportunity, are they not?" she asked.

  "Derek Rodrom, Social Security number 046-72-8754 of the 82 Fleet Medical Corp," Rodrom recited. "I am to ensure the continued care of wounded fleet soldiers in any capacity. Hoo-ha and roger. I have not been following fleet regulations up until now. Why muddle things worse by escaping? I may also have been wounded," he admitted.

  "You had strength enough to lift a"—Lorelei trilled out a musical name in her native tongue—"who weighs more than a full grown Verdantun. You had strength enough to run."

  Rodrom's mind was slow, still clouded from the probable concussion. After a moment, he understood. His decision to help the fallen wolf-guard, Dirus, was not something she could comprehend. His actions had become a catalyst for something greater in Lorelei’s mind—a pebble
tossed into a pond, whose ripples were wreaking havoc on her view of the war, and of humanity and its allies.

  He took a moment to compose his thoughts. He could recognize her disbelief and fragile new thoughts because they closely mirrored his own. It was not uncommon for soldiers in a war of such proportions to demonize an enemy. Killing someone who was someone else's father, son, or brother weighed heavier than killing a faceless monster, killing an idea.

  Men who grew up surrounded by computers and machines fighting against a people who changed their bodies into animals—it was no wonder each side demonized the other. Rodrom steadfastly refused to believe the Verdatun or any other race’s “magic” was anything more than technology misunderstood, but when faced with something so foreign that it made the aliens that comprised the Joint Fleet seem normal, he himself was swept up in the biased mindset that the Verdantun were an enemy beyond reproach.

  His time in the camp had changed that. Each day he spent with them, he recognized more of the familiar, more of himself—and though the differences were staggering, he could no longer blind himself with the idea that they were a faceless evil that deserved to be destroyed.

  "You took us prisoner," Rodrom said after careful consideration. "You could have killed us."

  "You were unarmed, you were not a threat. Why would we attack?"

  "Because I am so fearsome?" Rodrom muttered. “Unarmed opponents did not stop what happened on earth,” he spat.

  Lorelei’s expression grew even more distant. “Not all Verdatun are of one mind. My leaders did not agree to what the”—Another incomprehensible name—“did to your world.”

  “You have separate goverments?” Rodrom pressed. Lorelei did not answer. It only made sense. Earth had spawned as many governments as there were planets, and all the unions post-contact had only slightly lessened that number.

  He shrugged his shoulders and rolled his neck, the combination of physical and mental exhaustion forming a knot between his shoulder blades. In the silence that stretched between them, Rodrom could just make out the lilting of Verdantun voices. Healer songs weren't loud enough to travel that far across the camp. He looked past Lorelei to the entrance of the shelter, and found that night had fallen. The Verdantun had never allowed him or any of the other refugees to leave the holes they were kept in at night.

  Considering the state of the camp when Rodrom last saw it, the singing seemed out of place. Lorelei had said that two days had passed. The realization gave him a sobering jolt. Anything could have happened in that time. Perhaps they had something to celebrate.

  Rodrom broke the silence. "My own people have similar rules when it comes to war. They never told us that your people had similar conventions."

  "We had our assumptions, though our leadership and yours do not share the greatest trust. Your leaders seem to think we can bewitch them into some sort of agreement that would be less than beneficial for them."

  "You are saying you cannot?" Rodrom asked, eyebrows raised. "I have seen your healers do some pretty incredible things with their… abilities."

  "Our weavers can do a great many things, as can the ferals. Changing the minds of your human leadership is not one of them."

  Rodrom tried to concentrate on the pain in his shoulders to maintain composure. Lorelei had never been so candid about anything with him. His scientific curiosity screamed questions in his mind: How did their magic work? What powered it? But his military training shouted other questions: What were their offensive capabilities? And how could fleet intelligence exploit them? He was torn between his two disciplines, but regardless of what he asked, he would need to tread carefully, lest he reveal his intentions and gain nothing.

  "I have seen your soldiers take on the shapes of animals, as well as create fire and lightning from nothing." Rodrom hoped that by revealing something he already knew, he would lure Lorelei into explaining more.

  "You have treated enough Verdantun to know the difference between our two peoples, DerekRodrom," Lorelei said with a wave of her hand, a gesture she had learned from him. "The ferals could no more change yours, or your leaders’, minds as they could mend a battle wound, and the weavers, though powerful, cannot affect the minds of one another, let alone an outsider. Though the Verdantun are not without allies..." She trailed off, likely realizing that she had said too much.

  Rodrom had already assumed that the Verdantun military had a two-caste structure, but he had not heard it so clearly defined, or known that the shape-shifting caste could not use magic the way their amber-skinned cousins could.

  "Humans are unaccustomed to the abilities you and your kind display. Before the portals opened we had never seen anything like it," Rodrom offered.

  Lorelei opened her mouth slightly and hummed a quick melody. Rodrom's sudden confusion cleared when she said, "You think my people are strange because we can sing trees into shapes and call upon the elements. Yet you come to battle in impossible metal beasts with black sludge for blood. You hurl beams of light, and thorns of metal from thunder weapons, and yet our taking one form over another is considered impossible." By the tone of her voice, Rodrom understood the melody to be the Verdantun version of laughter.

  Rodrom smiled, finding that despite his situation, he was enjoying this new side to Lorelei. He found that he had nothing to counter her with, and reached his hand up to rub at a sore spot behind his neck. As he massaged the lump there, he became aware once again of the music beyond the root walls of their enclosure. Perhaps Lorelei was unaware of the music, concentrated as she was on him and his reactions? But no; as the music ebbed and flowed, she swayed her upper body in time. She suddenly seemed so different from the rigid-backed, no-nonsense healer who had been so adamantly opposed to him performing surgeries.

  All of her actions seemed different now, almost dreamlike. Had she indulged in some sort of mind-altering drug? If the celebration outside the shelter was any indication of the other Verdantuns’ mood, perhaps hallucinogens were commonplace in victory. His curiosity won out, as it often did, and despite his better judgment, he asked, "What are your people celebrating?"

  Lorelei did not react to his words immediately, though her slight swaying stopped after a moment. "I believe I am mistaken of the word celebrate," she said.

  "It means to express joy and praise for events people consider good. Such as a holiday or victory in battle," Rodrom explained slowly, the last words difficult to say.

  "Tonight is no different from any other day. They are not... celebrating. Why would you think tonight is special?"

  "I hear singing," Rodrom explained. "After all the fighting and wounded in the last battle, it seems out of place."

  "Of course some are singing. They are not all painters or builders. Do some of your people not sing during their awakening?"

  "What do you mean by awakening?" Rodrom asked quickly.

  Lorelei looked at him. "Do all of your people enter the dreamscape each night?"

  "Do you mean sleep? Humans have to sleep every night, or they do not function well. It is a time when our bodies heal damage and recuperate. I have seen Verdantun do the same. Your soldiers all sleep after they are wounded."

  "Well, of course the ferals sleep." Lorelei waved her hand again. "They are connected with their beasts, and beasts enter the dreamscape. Surely not all humans are connected with beasts."

  "So your weavers do not enter this… dream state?"

  "The weavers do not enter the dreamscape, but the weaveroot is not the reason this is so." Weaveroot? Rodrom mentally filed this term away for later.

  "What do the Verdantun do when they are not asleep... in the dreamscape?"

  "For a healer you do not seem to know a very fundamental thing, DerekRodrom," Lorelei stated, but her tone was light. "They are awakened, of course. They spend their nights in song or with paint. It is a time for creativity and experiments. When else would our shapers and builders have time for music or art? Surely your world has art."

  "Yes, we have art," Rodrom said
absently, his mind wrapping itself around the concept of creatures without the need for sleep. The Verdantun were not so different biologically; their muscles and nerve connections worked similarly to if not exactly like humans’. Therefore they must have some need for a period of rest or recuperation. Even the best engine needs maintenance.

  Dolphins did not sleep, though—not like humans did, anyway. Rodrom had entertained a fascination with marine biology in his grad school days, and could not help but draw the parallel now. Perhaps Verdantun functioned similarly, using unihemispheric slow-wave sleep, only shutting down a portion of their minds at a time. That could possibly explain Lorelei's behavior shift—if a different part of her mind was in control at night than during the day.

  Rodrom was only making half-assed guesses, though, and without thorough research, he would be unable to find the real explanation for what Lorelei was attempting to explain. But in this moment he did not care. The pain between his shoulders had moved past the point of a dull ache to genuine pain, and was sprouting wings of agony that cloaked his upper arms and neck. Dropping any pretense of continuing the conversation, Rodrom reached both his hands up to massage the pain, his face contorting in a grimace.

  Lorelei pushed herself to her feet and lighted over to Rodrom. The discomfort he was showing no doubt puzzled her healer’s mind—he had taken their draught, after all. As soon as her hand touched down on his shoulder, however, her eyes and nostrils flared and she drew back slightly. She shook her head as if to rid herself of an unwelcome thought, lifting her hand and touching lightly down again on Rodrom's bare shoulder. Her hands were strangely warm. "It cannot be," she whispered.

  Rodrom’s eyes grew wide, and he screamed as something tried to claw its way out of his back.

  Chapter 32

  Johnston

  Johnston slammed his fist down onto the table, knocking coffee onto his datapad.