by C. C. Ekeke
“True, but remember how messed up in the head I was?” After Habraum nodded, Sam continued. “V’Korram was worse when I found him at Proxa Antari, and had every reason to be. But you know the big difference between him and me?”
“Aside from height, species and body fur?” Habraum offered.
Sam snorted out a laugh. “Such a comedian. The big difference was, V’Korram didn’t have you to help straightened his head out.” She looked down, only to lift her eyes back up at him again through her long eyelashes. Not quite in a ‘come-hither’ way, but the allure was just pure…something. “That’s what I’m doing for him now.”
“Ah.” Habraum felt his pulse quicken with these words, and Sam’s purposeful stare. “How are you not a mum, yet?” he asked, the question coming unbidden from thoughts to lips before he knew it.
Sam jerked back with a bemused half-smile. “Me having kids? Probably not…like ever.”
Habraum frowned, befuddled by the answer and his reason for asking. “Why?” he kept pushing.
“Look at my crazy-ass life,” Sam said with a stiff shrug. She was growing uneasy by the armor-piercing questions. “Can you honestly picture me fitting in a child?”
Habraum didn’t have to picture that. “You’ve already fit in several.”
Sam threw her head back and laughed. He loved her laugh. “Den mothering doesn’t count, flyboy.”
“Aye,” Habraum waved off her avoidance. “But I see how you are with these kids…and my kid. You light up when they’re around you. You give so much of yourself and make them all better for it. Just like with our old combat team.” Habraum disliked thinking of that bond with his departed teammates, pushing past the memory before it dragged him down. “It’s a wonderful bit of business to see how big your heart is Sammie, as much as you try hiding it.”
When he finished, Sam’s lip curled irately before she slapped him hard on the arm. “Stopit.”
“Stop what?” Habraum shied away innocently.
“Stop…getting under my hood. It makes me feel…,” she ran both hands through her hair and shivered all over before letting her arms drop to her sides. “…feel so seen.”
Now Habraum was the one laughing. “Vexing, isn’t it?”
A blush darkened Sam’s olive complexion. She looked away, biting her lip. “Yeah,” she murmured so softly the word sounding more like a sigh. Habraum was suddenly aware of her nearness, her body warmth, the specter of Jennica still looming overhead. The hole in Habraum’s heart where his wife once lived wasn’t potent enough anymore to reject such intimacy…
Jeremy barreled happily out of Sam’s office. “That game is so BEYOND, Daddy!”
Habraum whirled toward the boy as if jolted. Sam turned away also and stared at the floor, dazed.
“I’ll play next time.” Habraum gently pulled his son close to embrace him…and clear his own head. “Thank your Auntie Sammie for the dinner.”
“Thank you, Auntie,” Jeremy cooed, his large grey eyes looking up at Sam.
Sam recovered enough to kneel and kiss Jeremy on both cheeks. “Anytime, Jerm.” She eyed Habraum as she whispered something in the boy’s ear. Jeremy giggled and nodded his bushy head.
“What was that about, Jer?” Habraum asked on the short walk back to their quarters.
The boy’s face brightened with barely contained mischief. “Auntie showed me her field costume.”
Habraum wheeled around on Jeremy. “She did what?” He knew full-well of Sam’s field costume, a risqué stretch of business thanks to the leeway senior officers get with their costumes. “When?”
Jeremy’s response was loud peals of laughter. “Kidding Daddy! She told me to say that!”
“Not funny, Jeremy Uzoma Nwosu,” Habraum pressed his hand on the ID scanner of his quarters, eyeing Jeremy sternly, but couldn’t maintain that face for too long. “If you weren’t so adorable, then you’d be in big trouble.” The door slid open and he ushered Jeremy in, calling for the lights.
“Captain?” Habraum turned to see Khrome’s stocky form walking down the hall. “This a bad time?”
The Cerc shook his head. “I got time.” A field commander never gets a full day off. He turned to his son. “Go finish your schoolwork. I’ll be up to help in a wee bit.”
After Jeremy scurried and disappeared up the stairs, Khrome came closer, showing his commanding officer a closed fist. “Remember that matter we discussed earlier today?” The Thulican opened his massive hand, revealing a small, mercury-like sphere.
Habraum stared at him, stunned. “You already have a working prototype?”
“And you’re shocked?” Khrome smiled big and wide, which Habraum learned always disarmed the ego in his boasts. “It fits into either ear, and shields against Korvenite telepathy like we discussed.”
Habraum could have hugged him. “Top marks, lad. Make enough for the rest of our team.”
Khrome bowed deeply, soaking in his commander’s praise. “Yes, oh fearless leader.”
For the first time since returning, this new Star Brigade filled Habraum with a swell of hope.
That hope only lasted an orv.
Fears began twisting like knives in his belly after the Cerc put Jeremy to bed and combed over footage of each team member’s training logs. These rookies weren’t ready in the least.
So Habraum tried praying to the Holy Gemini; the Earth Mother who shaped all live-giving worlds with Her twin brother and eternal soulmate the Sky Father, who watched over all through omnipresent starry eyes. Geminism, the primary religion observed in the Cercidalean Sector, believed that after birth, all sentient beings created their own path in life—with some assisting nudges from The Twins along the way. Habraum had learned the Geminism scriptures from his mother. His earthborn father, despite frowning on the Twins’ blatant incest, had adopted the religion after the Earth Holocaust. He had no further use for a Judeo-Christian God that could rip his homeworld away so savagely.
The occasional prayer for wisdom normally calmed Habraum before a field mission. He had taken Jeremy to a few services, but never forced religion on the boy. Beridaas was the last time I’d prayed for anything. Tonight, he kneeled and asked for guidance from the Twins. The prayers returned easily to memory. Yet afterward, Habraum’s appeal only skyrocketed his fears to astronomical levels.
And sleep harbored poisoned dreams. He found himself in that familiar white, green and gold armored combat uniform—back on Beridaas. That dark day replayed again, as it had in previous nightmares. Only this one felt different, he could sense it.
It had been an explosive surprise attack, instantly killing three members of Jovian Ivers’s team and two of Habraum’s in one barrage, while scattering everyone else like a strong draft through leaves.
Somehow during the rising and falling tide of battle, Habraum found himself face down on the ground, spitting out dirt and blood. The air was murky brown, reeking of salt and smoke and death. The injuries the Cerc had sustained, shattered ribs on his right side and a blast wound to the upper back, made their presence known and damn near blinded him with pain. Just like Habraum remembered, the enemy struck again while two of the best Star Brigade combat teams were disorganized and reeling, making the resulting slaughter brutally one-sided.
Habraum struggled up with unsteady limbs, familiar pain and panic searing into his core like it were yesterday as he watched teammates die once more. He could’ve detailed every aspect of their foes that day, but in his dreams they always appeared as massive shadowy wraiths, blotting out the light wherever they swept across. His attention was drawn to one wraith towering over a motionless figure nearby.
Samantha D’Urso, lying battered and bloodied, about to meet her end.
Habraum let out a wordless cry, raised his arm like he had that day, firing off a thick scarlet burst with the last of his strength. His blast struck true, but only melted the wraith away instead of punching a hole through it like before. Heart in his throat, Habraum hobbled over to her, as fast as
his wounds allowed him and gathered up his second-in-command in his arms. Sam had clung to life despite her injuries, but barely. A stitch of relief blossomed amidst the pain and horror. That’s when Habraum looked up and saw the full scope of the devastation that had dismantled the two combat teams. But instead of long-dead teammates, he saw new ones.
Khrome ringed by countless wraiths, their long pitch-black talons slashing his armored body apart.
Honaa lay clutching at his throat, death spasms lessening as dark blood pooled around his body.
Liliana Cortes, slumped on her side, what was left of her skull a red ruin.
Tyris Iecen, ice crystalline body shattered into thousands chips of blue-bloodied ice.
V’Korram, prone and lifeless, riddled with smoking blast holes.
Every member of the new Star Brigade combat team—dead or dying. Habraum woke up drenched in sweat, wearing just pajama pants. His eyes darted about feverishly, recognizing his bedroom. Except that it was shrinking—rapidly closing in on him. His heart hammered so hard he thought it would punch straight through his chest. “Rogguts!” was all he could get out before breathing became an issue. He tried sitting up. Immediately the world started to spin, nauseating vertigo. Habraum shut his eyes tightly, waiting for the panic to wane. It didn’t. Habraum’s hammering heart ached with every savage thump, his lungs pleading for sweet oxygen.
Then it stopped. The paralyzing fear, the shrinking room; gone. Like a recliner, Habraum sat bolt upright and gasped. His hands ran shakily across his hairless head and came away slicked with moisture.
Tomorrow bore no threat to his team, he knew. But if they encountered a real threat like the Korvenite Independence Front…what then? He could not—no, would not—lose another combat team.
Habraum swung his legs off the side of his bed, trying to think of some answers. Nothing came to mind. He had already called many experienced Brigadiers over the past week, requesting they come back. Some laughed in his face. Others advised him to let the Brigade die. None were interested.
A twinkle of reflected light from a shelf to Habraum’s left caught his eye just then, sitting on the highest rung of the shelf in a plasteel-covered case next to some of his AeroFleet medals.
The Cerc recognized it straightaway. Habraum rose from his bed and strode toward the flat and silvery octagonal disk floating in this case, slowly spinning around on its suspended axis. Cautiously, almost fearfully, he opened the container with a slow twist of the plasteel, plucking the disk out and testing its mass in his hand. It felt light, almost weightless and smaller than a datacard. Intricate green lines crisscrossed the octagonal disk.
“Marguliese,” he muttered the name of the Cybernarr that had given him this device. Placing the plasteel stand back on the shelf, Habraum sat on his bed and stared at the disk in his palm. The last time Habraum had used it to contact the Cybernarr was after he’d just arrived on Lelsoiim months ago, a black hole of grief in his chest and an unruly son at his side…
He needed to talk to someone not in Star Brigade, someone who had calmed his fears in the past. Without a second thought, he placed the disk into his right ear, where it fit perfectly. Habraum inhaled deeply, concentrating on the disk’s cold feel. At once the disk sent a flow of energy through his body. The room flooded in a hazy yellow blur, abruptly flashing by Habraum at scary speeds.
The speeding yellow stopped and evened out into an infinite expanse, all of it saturated in streams of gold. Several lengthy, metallic spires stretched and crisscrossed endlessly through the golden sky all around him. Habraum whistled aloud, as he was no longer sitting on his bed, but standing on a wide boardwalk overlooking the golden rivers. Bright yellow flashes swirled, swelled and rippled the yellow sky into chaos. Cyberspace, or at least a manifestation that his mind could understand.
Habraum Nwosu. A two-pitched voiced boomed across the vast Cyberspace construct. Habraum turned in the voice’s direction, undaunted.
Several metrids ahead of him was the rounded end of the boardwalk, similar to a starscraper landing dock. In its center, a humanoid sat cross-legged facing Habraum. The Cerc squinted, too far away for a good look. Plus, the constant flashes in the sky reflected way too many shimmers off the being’s metallic body—or was it also how this odd humanoid was silhouetted by the rippling, shifting golden sky behind it? Habraum had no clue, but still walked closer to investigate.
He approached and the humanoid’s features grew clearer. Definitely womanly in figure, tall and slim, obvious to Habraum no matter the distance. A silvery sheathe of technology and other complex mechanisms coated her physique, which would look out of place on a humanoid body. But not hers. Several wire-like tendrils snaked out from sections on her figure, connecting with the never-ending spires that stretched and scissored across the boardwalk. The face and upper shoulders were metallic, pale gold in sheen. Atop the female’s head were a number of shiny, crimson nodules protruding upward. Her features were aquiline and displayed no warmth, embossed by thin concentric ring patterns that made her look more like a character from some tech noir holofilm.
Here sat a humanoid Cybernarr in the flesh, or at least in its manifestation in Cyberspace, unchanged since Habraum had last seen her. Despite how humanoid her features looked, the sharp jutting jaw, the minimal nose, and the rhomboid-shaped eyes all conveyed an alien quality that Habraum knew had nothing to do with her cybernetic components. The resemblance to the Cybernarr’s Ganttarian creators endured, no matter how many cybernetic and organic upgrades had occurred over the centuries.
Xenoarchaeologists have claimed few star-spanning realms grew as vast, advanced or dominant as the Ganttarian Empire. At least, until the Empire’s near six millennia reign ended over a thousand years ago. The Ganttarians’ fall had bloomed from creating cyborg soldiers in their own anthropoid-like image to police a dangerously bloated realm. These cybernetic armatures, or Cybernarr, were ruthless in their obedience and drive to protect their overlords. The ability to network with each other’s AIs and adapt quickly to enemy tactics allowed Cybernarr to become brutally efficient combat units. They had helped the Ganttarians smash the nearly victorious rebellion of the Kedri, then a truculent Ganttarian vassal. The Cybernarr would have eradicated the whole Kedri race if not for the Ganttarians sparing them as a warning to other subjects—and birthing the Cybernarr and Kedri ‘Eternal War’ that still continued today.
Within a century those same advantages had led the Cybernarr to start questioning orders, and soon grow aware of their Ganttarian overlords’ dependency on them. Realizing the potential danger, the Empire had moved to destroy their creations with unshakable confidence in the outcome.
In less than a year, the outcome had been as obvious then as it was centuries later. The Cybernarr had migrated into the Dracius Cluster afterward, leaving all Ganttarian-populated worlds shattered in their wake. The scant remnant of surviving Ganttarians were then chased from their own realm by many vengeful, former vassals—a humiliating testament to their extinguished power.
Habraum continued approaching, yet Marguliese’s eyes and mouth stayed shut, showing no reaction to him. Once he stood about a metrid away, the Cybernarr’s voice boomed again. It has been numerous months since we communicated. Her features remained motionless.
Habraum flicked a casual glance at his surroundings. “Indeed it has, Marguliese.”
The Cerc could’ve sworn he saw the threat of a smile teasing at Marguliese’s mouth. Still you employ that moniker you bestowed on me eight cycles ago.
“Would you rather I try pronouncing your crossword puzzle of a name?” The Cerc took another quick look at his environment, notably different from the prior times he had visited Cyberspace.
I assume that you are no longer on one of the Libratta Systems with your son?
Habraum stared at her. That’s an odd query. “No, we returned to Union Space months ago.”
Unfortunate. We have missed each other then.
“What do you mean?”
> I am no longer part of the Cybernarr Technoarchy. I have removed myself from their realm in the Dracius Cluster. Marguliese’s eyes opened, burning like two cold blue stars. And detached from the Technoarchy’s Connectivity.
“What?” Habraum spat out, meeting the Cybernarr’s stare head-on. “How did that happen?”
Before your release from Technoarchy Space, I encountered a non-Cybernarr. I conceived his child and attempted to raise it in secret. The Technoarchy found out and destroyed it. She relayed the story so impersonally, as if updating Habraum on a ship’s repair schedule.
Many had already begun questioning my stand on ‘inferior races’ during your custody, Marguliese continued with almost no vocal inflection. After this occurrence, they would have terminated me had I remained. So I aborted all connection with the Technoarchy.
Habraum had no idea any Cybernarr could voluntarily leave the Technoarchy, or breed for that matter. “Marguliese,” he squatted down to face her directly. “I am so sorry—.”
Your empathy is needless. The Cybernarr cut him off, her eyes glowing. I regret none of my selections. Now, you clearly desire to alleviate your mind. Speak.
Habraum stared at her. He should be used to her coldness, but after all this time it still irked him.
“I…” The Cerc was about to vent to Marguliese about Star Brigade, but an idea caught the words in his throat. The nightmares. Seeing the disk in his moment of need. Marguliese disconnecting from the Technoarchy. Is this one of those nudges from The Twins?
The idea struck Habraum then, a wild and impossible notion filling his brain. No way. Khrome’s hatred of the Cybernarr ran bone deep.
The Thulican would kill Habraum for this. Union Command would undoubtedly arrest him for treason. And the Kedri, the Union’s son-to-be trade partners? The Cerc couldn’t let those concerns burden him. I won’t lose another combat team.
