That turned the conversation to the bigger picture and soon they were imagining ways the Trojan could be employed, including ways to affect the command and control of the entire Kel fleet. She told them more of what the Anitran units planned to do, leaping in and using scanners to find Kel ships and then the same technology to program coordinates and leap aboard target craft. Siege boarding and hoping to take control of the starships.
Hope among the group was on the rise.
Only Zac had descended further into doubt.
CHAPTER 21: SUPER NOVA
Yamoto watched with lingering pride as a full battalion of his Astake powered armor executed coordinated maneuvers across the fields outside Osaka. They prepped for the otherworld mission, the time for which drew close, and as he watched them out there in the open, so impressive in those numbers, moving in concert and raining down death on simulated alien enemies, plasma cannons ripping the air and lighting the day, each blast competition for the sun, he oscillated between that strong sense of pride and a creeping, icy fear.
Emotions had run that way since this whole operation began. The truce with the Venatres was so new, to cast the Dominion forces so fully behind this plan, a plan that was being driven solely by their former enemies, an ardent demand that the whole world throw everything they had into an assault—on another world, no less, the concept of which was still hard to accept, even with all the evidence … Yamoto could not fully dismiss the caution his military instincts told him he should be taking.
Send his whole army off into the void?
But he’d signed off on it. Had been one of the major voices in favor of it, in fact. Nani, her passion undeniable, sold him on the urgency. As she sold her own people. If it were a trap, the Venatres were mad. For they were, even now, preparing their Skull Boy army for the same fate. Their own units would make the same leap into the void. Their officers working with his, to craft a strategy, to prepare for the fight. Even now, in this exercise taking place on the field before him, Venatres soldiers were in participation. Yamoto watched from a tower atop one of the massive city walls, surrounded by both Dominion and Venatres officers alike.
Yes, the greater part of him trusted in what was happening. Things were on track. The last of his rogue generals had at last been brought to heel, mowed down before the wave of new developments, most of his mutinous forces re-absorbed. This new era was unfolding rapidly, and though war was to be the first order of business, their first united effort … why not? Anitra had been a world at war for so long, why not, as their first action, take their brand of fighting to a united front? Free a sister world, if the girl scientist was right. Take things to a whole new scale and, if what that promised was true, make a free space for all humanity.
When those units down there on the field and all the others lined up across the globe prepared to leap into infinity, light years across space to appear on a different world and fight for that cause, he would be there to watch them go.
And he would pray for their success.
**
The shower in the little Scottish loft had two temperatures, according to Jess; ice cold and boiling hot. Zac knew this as she’d complained earlier, quite loudly, to that effect. For him it was harder to tell the extremes, but it was clear there were only two real variations. For while he could feel the temperature of the water, hot or cold, he had no good frame of reference for how hot or how cold. Apparently painfully so, at both extremes. Jessica’s curses while trying to fiddle with the basic controls were proof enough. At one point she shouted in anger: “This shower’s either boiling hot or ice frickin cold!”
Proof enough.
And so he wasn’t sure if he’d just taken a scalding shower or a warm one, but by the degree of steam in the little bathroom he had to admit it was probably quite a bit hotter than he thought.
A lot hotter, actually. It looked like a sauna in there.
He found his way to the sink and the bathroom mirror. Wiping it clear lasted all of two seconds and it was fogged again. He opened the bathroom’s little window. Steam wafted out. As it did, as the cooler evening air curled in, he was able to use a towel and wipe the glass clear enough to see his reflection. He leaned closer.
Feeling like a super nova.
Being a Kazerai always made you feel that way, just a little, but it was usually more subtle. Of late he’d been feeling like he was about to explode. At all times. Such energy, building inside him ...
He knew he’d been getting stronger but had no idea how much. There’d been no recent call for his full strength, and at times he felt like leaping into the air, finding something really big and shredding it. Rip something to pieces until he met his match. What could stop him?
The end of his term had to be near.
He studied his reflection as the glass slowly fogged again. His beard was more pronounced in the light of the dim bulb over the mirror, though it failed to make him look older. He checked the nails of one hand; for some reason his nails weren’t growing. Just the hair on his head and face. He rubbed his beard; more vigorously, unsure how he could shave even if he wanted to. The Kazerai were locked in, never changing.
Not until the end.
His eyes were the same, clear blue, maybe even brighter than before, skin charged with youthful vigor—even a little flush from the shower. His hair was wet and unkempt, adding to the youth of that image.
Who am I?
The things Jess told him. Not just Zac. Someone else, long ago. She too, and together they’d been doing more or less the same thing they were doing now, struggling to survive in a universe at war, working to preserve a secret that could free everyone.
The Codes.
Record of how to unlock native potential, of how to realize the truth, how to see what had been unseen for so long, hidden, looked away from, how to turn people’s eyes back to that reality, and the Codes were The Way; the Codex Amkradus. Jessica’s talk of them only stirred more recollections and Zac knew, at his core, that what she said was true. He knew his role in it.
Incredible.
He took a deep breath and stood tall. Too tall for the mirror, and he lost the reflection of his face above the top. The old loft was made for short people, it seemed, and while he was certainly tall he’d never considered himself inconveniently so. Here, in this place, he was. Ducking through doorways, bending to look in mirrors. Standing straight he could see only his chest and part of his stomach. Even his shoulders were too wide.
He reached and rubbed the towel across his head.
Despite their festering disagreement he and Jess made love that afternoon. As soon as the door to the loft closed. A sort of angry love, their desire for each other not about to be waylaid by an inconvenient argument, no matter how significant. Their session of passion was sensational. She was sensational; amazing, and, as with each other time, when she was in his arms, he in hers …
Indescribable. He never wanted that feeling to end.
He loved her so much. In fact, when he reflected on it, he loved her so much that, in a sense, it actually hurt. With her in his arms it was bearable. She was there. Love had promise. Immediate hope. But there was always the thought that it couldn’t last. It could never last. And when she wasn’t there …
An impossible ache, and he felt it now. Though at that very moment she was in the other room, asleep on the bed, just steps away, she was, in some indescribable way that made no sense and yet was so real, far from him.
He turned the towel to his body and finished drying himself off. The bathroom had cooled and the steam continued to evaporate out the open window into the crisp evening.
The loft over the pub was temporary accommodations. They’d been given it by Drake after a night on the floor in the safe house. The room that never slept. No one else had real quarters, but considering who Zac was, who Jess promised to be and what they meant to each other, no one had complained when one of the few available spaces was offered. Now it was evening, and Zac felt the weight of eve
rything bearing down with it.
Earlier he got up after Jess fell asleep, afraid to drift off himself. And so he stood at the window a while, alternating between watching her and looking out the cracked and peeling panes at the slow-moving Scottish town two floors below. After a bit of that he decided to take another shower. It felt good in the spray, no matter the temp, and it relaxed him.
He finished toweling off and hung the towel back on the peg. Turned off the light and stood there, staring into space.
Slowly he’d been coming to grips with their shared fate, making himself hold to the idea that it would all work out. It was easy to remind himself of all they’d made it through so far, all the impossible things they’d done; to believe those successes must surely mean they could continue to do impossible things. It allowed him to imagine a sort of carefree disregard for the dangers ahead. After all, there was no reason they couldn’t make it through these new challenges the same way they had everything else, right?
My job is to protect her.
How could he do that if he wasn’t with her?
It was gloomy in the bathroom. Gray clouds covered the slice of the world visible through the small window, blocking off any sunset that might’ve added its promise to the end of a long day.
Gloom.
And as he stared out at that leaden sky, feeling the hopelessness of everything facing them, enhanced by the dreary outside and the darkened, dingy bathroom … it hit him.
He was Jessica’s guardian.
I’m her guardian.
And what that meant … What that truly meant …
Until that moment all it had ever meant was being there, safeguarding her, physically; standing in the way of anything that might harm her. Of course that was what being a guardian meant.
But of a sudden he realized it meant more. A ray of understanding struck him and he saw it; a seeming brilliance in the gloom, and though nothing changed in the world outside things for him shifted dramatically.
And it was suddenly clear.
A true guardian, a true protector, would shield Jessica in all ways. Not just the physical. A true guardian would be there for the emotional, the mental.
The everything.
It was as she said; she needed his support. A guardian meant being there completely, and that meant …
He wasn’t being there for her at all.
I’m hurting her.
He was part of the problem. Giving her more difficulties not less. He was making things worse. She was doing what she had to do, what she knew she had to do; Jess was being strong though she didn’t want to do this any more than him and …
He was fighting her.
Something so big, a mission to save them all, the gravity of it tremendous beyond belief, squarely on her tiny shoulders—taken on by her own decision because she was convinced she was the only one that could—needing all the support she could possibly get, needing Zac, needing him more than anyone, his love, his unwavering belief, and he, her guardian, her protector and her supposed champion, was fighting her.
No. He wasn’t being there for her at all.
His heart sank, emotion going out to her like it never had, and with that fresh perspective driving him he came into sharper focus, left the bathroom and went quietly back out to where she lay.
It was even more gloomy in the bedroom. The last, gray dregs of daylight shone through the smudged panes of the single window. Jess was curled on the old bed, resting soundly, back to the shower. Zac went to her, debated climbing in beside her and did, as gently as he could, not wanting to wake her but dying to talk. To tell her what he’d just realized. He needed to share this epiphany. To make her understand, to apologize and give her the strength she so desperately needed.
To be her guardian.
He propped himself on an elbow and looked down the length of her, legs and one arm sticking out of the blanket, the rest wrapped around her torso, hugged to her chest as she lay on her side facing away. Her breathing was quiet; steady. Her scent …
Heaven.
Carefully he stroked her hair, unsure if she was asleep; pushed it gently over her ear, wondering if he should disturb her. He pushed a little more back, exposing the tender slope of her neck and, with it, the angel choker. The tough leather band added an extra dimension of appeal to her wonderful form, the only thing she wore in her nakedness. She hadn’t taken it off since he gave it to her. Gently, so gently, he ran the back of his hand over it, down her neck and the slope of her shoulder, over her smooth skin.
Then noticed she was awake.
From the side he saw the white of an open eye, staring blankly at the far wall. And there, glistening in the half-light, the track of a tiny tear.
“What’s wrong?” he asked softly. But, of course, what wasn’t wrong? There were a million things wrong.
At first she didn’t speak. After a few long seconds he wondered if she would, then: “Nothing.” Her voice was practically a whisper.
Nothing couldn’t be further from the truth. But he didn’t know exactly what to say so, instead of saying anything, simply stroked her hair.
After a few more minutes she spoke, a little louder this time.
“Did you have a good shower?”
“I did.” He paused, thinking of the right words. “I realized something,” he said. He shifted his hand to her hip. She remained distant.
Somehow his great revelation was threatening to lose significance. And as he looked more closely he noticed she looked utterly lost. This here, this new sadness, was not about their argument. She would’ve been stewing or pouting or something else, not laying there quietly shedding tears. Something else held her in its grip.
He pressed on.
“I realized I was wrong.” He let that sit. “It’s like you said. You need my support. My belief. I realized my role is to support you, not just protect you, and instead I’ve been fighting you.”
It wasn’t going over the way he imagined. The epiphany of a moment before had been eye-opening for him. This should be coming across impactful; it should be fixing everything and restoring her happiness.
But when she rolled to face him, pupils dimly yellow in the gloom, hair dark and luxurious in that lighting; face so young, so incredibly beautiful ...
She wasn’t just harboring a little sadness, she was filled with it.
“How can we bring a child into this?” Her voice was husky. Instinctively he laid a hand on her tummy. She shook her head. Then, her real fear: “How long do you have? Will you even live to see him grow up?”
He was surprised by how the question stung. She was back to his mortality, and the insufferable heartache that brought. The news that he had an expiration date, that he might actually change, was too much for her and, in a sense, it had ruined everything.
“I don’t know,” he said.
She was staring right through him.
He laid a hand on her shoulder. “We all die, Jess. You and I know that more than anyone.” He hoped the reference to their clear immortality, the continuum of selves they both knew was true, would snap her out of it.
It didn’t.
“We live in the moment.” He sighed. “That’s what we do. We’re human. We live, we die. But we can’t forget to live because we’re worried about the end. We know it’s all temporary,” he forged on, “none of this lasts, but we do. We go on, Jess. None of this—”
“You’re not supposed to die,” she whispered, more to herself than him.
He tucked his head a little to look directly into her eyes. Nose to nose, bringing her focus back from the beyond.
“Neither are you.”
For an instant her eyes searched his in that proximity, finding nothing to reassure her. She lost focus again quickly and they lay like that, face to face but not seeing, naked on the old bed with no headboards, musty blankets and pillows, lost in thought, hers somewhere far, far away, Zac watching her, worried. Listening to her breathe.
“Tell me something you
remember,” he said, desperate to engage her. “About me. What was I like? Back then.”
Her gaze remained distant but he could see her mind shift to their long-ago past. “You were tall,” she said quietly. “Strong,” she almost seemed to reminisce. “A warrior. We were Kel.” Her eyes came into focus, fixing his. “You were handsome.”
He reached and stroked her hair.
“What about you?” he asked, glad to have her attention. “Were you as beautiful then as you are now? The great priestess?”
It didn’t get the smile he was after.
“I guess,” she said. It looked like she was seeing images of herself in her mind’s eye. “I was about the same size as now. So weird. Because of that the armor fit. I don’t think I ever saw that coming.” And she was lost again, drifting along the waves of impossibilities.
He spoke to keep her in the present. “So you’re saying,” he mused, “I was a tall warrior, and you were a not-so-tall girl.” He turned up one corner of his mouth. “We’ve changed so much.”
That got the smile he wanted. Just a tiny one, but he grasped at the fleeting joy in it.
“Tell me more.”
“You were my champion,” she seemed to relax a little. “Just like now. It’s almost like we’ve recreated everything. Somehow. Like we’ve given ourselves one more chance to get it right.”
He watched her closely, those amazing, golden orbs, drifting in and out—so anxious to keep her from the utter despair he saw hedging in.
“What was I like? Was I … harsh? It seems the Kel, at least the current ones, are harsh.”
“You were you, Zac. Same as you are now, same as you were then. An actor, playing a role, but still you. People change, and in a thousand years we’ve definitely changed. But we’re still us. Our identities, our true selves, who we are … it’s still us. As far as I can recall you were mostly the same then as you are now. Different time, different culture, different … body, different set of circumstances. But you …
Star Angel: Prophecy Page 26
