Allies and Enemies: Exiles, Book 3

by Amy J. Murphy

  I should be used to this by now, having strangers tell me who I am or ought to be.

  It was frustrating, infuriating at times.

  But on this man, Jonvenlish Veradin, it was unnervingly intimate. He spoke to her as if he were asking her to fulfill some wish or grant a miracle. There was no way to make him understand that the person he was looking for simply did not exist, at least not the way he wanted her to.

  When Veradin looked at her, he seemed so stricken, so lost. That deeply instilled part of her that was made to obey a Kindred officer—any superior, for that matter—itched to make that right, no matter how ludicrous the circumstances.

  He spoke to her gently, as if he feared she was broken. He never said the word, but it was understood. Perhaps he felt that there was something wrong with her and therefore she must be fixed, set to rights.

  It was also admitting a fault she refused to believe.

  If the person she was from Before were real, then it also meant that she, Sela Tyron, a soldier of the Regime, was a traitor to her brothers and sisters. To her, it was an unimaginable sin. It made no sense.

  So she sat with patience that astonished even her and listened to his story, which was their story. She asked few questions, and he seemed to take this as encouragement, but the whole while her brain bubbled with the wrongness of it. It made her feel strange. As if she’d sat outside of herself, watching this.

  When Veradin finished, he settled back on the cargo box across from her, resting his hands on his knees as if he ached to touch her.

  “Sir, if what you tell me is true….” She watched him cringe again at the sir.

  He sounded hurt. “Of course it’s true—”

  She held a hand up.

  He stopped, leaning back. Nodded.

  “If it’s true, then it means I am a deserter. I’ll never see my squad again.” She licked her lips, pausing to pick through her words as if they were made of glass. “Or my son.”

  She watched his face for his reaction. This was a dangerous admission, a clear violation of Decca. His story made it clear that they’d both apparently dropped all pretense at following its strictures, but it still felt wrong to say such things aloud.

  Veradin slumped. He shut his eyes, scrubbed his chin with the back of his hand. Defeat and sorrow filled his voice. “Ty, they’re gone.”

  “Gone?” She heard herself say it, felt her stomach drop. “How?”

  Again his hands twitched as if he wanted very badly to touch her. She was grateful that he did not. “I didn’t tell you all of it. Not about Atilio or Sergeant Valen. I didn’t want to hurt you—”

  “How.” She put her teeth into the word.

  “There was a deployment. Before we…left the Storm King.” He tilted his head as if weaving around the ugly word: deserted. “You never told me the whole story, not details anyway. But Atilio was killed.”

  She nodded, chewing the inside of her mouth until she tasted blood. They sat quietly for a long time. “And Valen?”

  “This isn’t the best—”

  “If you want me to remember, you have to tell me it all.” She gnawed through the words, choking through them like a bitter taste. “You can’t protect me from the past and get me back at the same time. I doubt it works like that.”

  He breathed out the words. “No, I guess not.”

  “Maybe this isn’t the way, then.”

  She stood, pulling her jacket on as she made for the hatch. She looked back at his hurt and bewildered expression. “Aren’t you coming?”

  “I’d follow you anywhere.” Veradin stood. He made that lopsided grin again as if this were part of some private joke. “Where is that?”

  “To go get my memory back, of course.”

  Eighty-Eight

  “Might as well put up a damned sign out front.” The old woman glowered at them as Sela shoved her way inside the squalid den composed of disused freight containers. Jon followed. The interior of the room was a ramshackle assortment of medical equipment. Grow-vats lined one corner, filled with murky shapes floating in liquid. Metal trunks competed with overburdened shelving for floor space.

  Then he realized: “You’re the splicer. Techyan.”

  “Nothin’ getting past you, ain’t it?” She regarded him with a wizened sneer. “Got a name, handsome?”

  Jon began to speak, stopped as Sela put a hand on his chest. “None of your damned business,” she answered for him.

  The two women squared off. It was clear she knew Sela and didn’t like her very much. And Sela seemed to enjoy antagonizing the woman. “When I was here last, you said you could get the implant out of my head and restore my memory.”

  But Techyan ignored her, and renewed her attention on Jon, sizing him up. Her thin lips split with a fraudulent smile. She waggled a crooked finger at him. “Ah. You’re the Human.”

  She studied him like a nearsighted tinkerer. “I can see why you like him, girl. Pretty to look at.”

  “Ty, you told her?” Jon asked.

  “Not very bright, though.” Techyan hummed, circling him. He felt a painful twinge against his backside. He whirled, catching the coy grin as the ancient woman stepped away. “Real shame you’re not Eugenes. The things I could do with such good stock.”

  Techyan meandered off to a cluttered workbench and busied herself with a pile of rust-spotted instruments.

  Sela stormed after her. “You told me you can fix my memory.”

  “Brain don’t work like that, my girl.” Something like sympathy entered her voice. She shrugged. “I take that tech out of your skull and no telling what’d happen, really. Curious myself. Might turn you into a turnip.”

  “You made it sound like it would work.”

  “Well…” Techyan pretended to ponder the ceiling. “Lucky thing I have your bio-profile and tissue specimens from the first time you were here. Be somewhat easier to find the damage.”

  “You kept those? Why?” Sela looked from Techyan to the organ vats. Her eyes widened. “You were going to use me to grow parts. To what…sell?”

  “Why shouldn’t I? Prime Volunteer stock like you would make for good organs, replacement tissue. No sense to let it go to waste.”

  Sela grabbed a fistful of the woman’s clothes. “It’s not yours to keep.”

  “Not yours either, breeder,” Techyan replied defiantly. “You, your kind were always just property.”

  Jon regarded the dust-coated grow tanks clustered in the corner. They might have lived once in a trauma station or the medical bay of a troop carrier, but these were over-engineered and seemed to have more components than basic tissue printers.

  “You know it will work. Don’t you?” Jon asked. He knew a grift when he saw one. This was orchestrated. This ancient shyster wanted something.

  “What do you want? Money?”

  “Heh.” She spat. “What use is that if you’re not around to spend it?”

  “Then what?” Sela challenged.

  “I want passage off this ball of mud. Ain’t safe for old Techyan here.” She turned away from the bench. “I’m getting a little too popular if you know what I mean.”

  “I’m sure I don’t,” Sela murmured.

  “I have a counter offer,” said Jon. “Do this. And I won’t expose you for what you are—a collaborator of the worse kind.”

  He pushed close, staring down at her. Techyan’s shoulders folded together as she cowered. An affected warble entered her voice. “Expose me? I’m just trying to scratch out a living, same as you. Why would anyone care about a frail old woman living on her own?”

  But he was not convinced by the act. This wasn’t some desperate old mother. She was a crafty swindler, working an angle. There was a reason she’d survived this long. People like Techyan would outlive the virtuous every time.

  “You informed on dozens of refugees to Poisoncry,” Sela said. “You told them where to send the culler-mechs to find subjects for the Resource Center.”

  “I may not be too bright,
” said Jon. “But I know that people in Brojos will come looking for revenge eventually. And I promise to make sure they know where to find you.”

  Techyan’s scowl deepened. Jon got the sense he was seeing the true soul behind the wizened recluse.

  “If’n I do this, how do I know you leave me be?” Techyan lifted her chin, challenging.

  Sela said, “Jon’s a man of his word.”

  He looked at her. Then he realized, it was the first time since he’d found her that she’d used his familiar name. Not sir. Not Veradin. Not Captain. He felt something loosen in his chest, by degrees. Sela noticed his attention. Her brow knitted.

  Techyan grumbled under her breath and slammed the pile of metal instruments down onto the table. She took a long measure of Jon, never granting Sela her back. Finally, she nodded to herself, stepping back. Techyan spat into her hand and extended it to Jon. “Done.”

  Epilogue

  “You getting enough sleep there, mom?” Rachel asked. She wore the same expression she used when she knew the answer and was trying to get Erelah to confess to a falsehood. It seldom worked.

  “What new mother ever does?” Erelah replied with a shrug. She lifted the steaming cup of chick-spice tea and took a long sip.

  It was a non-answer. Rachel did not call her on it, only chuckled lightly. She was not there as Erelah’s personal physician, anyway. She was there to say goodbye. Only it had not been said yet.

  It was not surprising but evoked an edgeless ache in Erelah all the same. The doctor had done everything she’d promised—helped deliver her daughter, Ravinia, into this world safely. After that Rachel seemed to drift away, a blurry memory of a friend. She spent more time with Maeve, who despite her feral spirit, became a sort of protective shadow after the events at Yasu’s villa.

  Silence hung between them as they watched the expansive view from the terrace of the Nirro government complex. For now, home was the middle two floors there, an expansive vault of glass and metal. There were no more opulent gardens. The rooms made up for the lack of green space by commanding a place in the new center of power for the Reaches.

  Squinting, Erelah picked out tiny silver shapes in the distance, like flocks of graceful metal birds congregating under the arc of the dome. The vessels landing and departing in the shipyards were her creation—their engines, at least. Each day the installation turned out more vessels to power the nascent fleet, all outfitted with modified versions of the jdrive—and all equally commanded by Splitdawn and Ironvale. It was the birthplace of the Consolidated Guild.

  “Mother of the Fleet,” the Ironvale media called her, a title she abhorred as much the one Hirano had bestowed upon her of Defensor.

  Erelah loathed it, but the irony suited. It was a penance of a sort, she told herself.

  Some of the things that you earn, you do not always want.

  “It feels weird if you think about it. I’ve been spending so much time looking over my shoulder and playing mob doctor, I’m not sure how to be around civilized folk,” Rachel said with a laugh. “Good thing I only need to impress Maeve.”

  “She’s lucky to have you.” Erelah forced a smile. She did not blame Rachel for seeking a life of her own now with Maeve. There was jealousy of a sort too.

  To be free to leave and slip off into a quiet life with someone who cares for you. To forget the Known Worlds and the Reaches and hope that it forgets you. That would be bliss.

  “You can come visit us on Hull. Are Defensors allowed to do that?” she asked. It sounded hollow, like she knew the truth, but pretended not to.

  In the end, there had been no other way than to take Hirano’s offer to afford Ironvale the jdrive tech. But there were concessions. Erelah demanded that Splitdawn be given a chance at peace even if Poisoncry obviously did not wish for it.

  And, as if Miri herself had guided it, a deal was made. Splitdawn and Ironvale joined forces to free the Reaches of Poisoncry’s stranglehold. It was easier still once they realized the power that access to something like the jdrive would bring.

  Ironvale had already absorbed much of Poisoncry’s territories, Hadelia the first to fall. The rest of it—three worlds in all—crumbled by the day. Splitdawn had quelled an internal rebellion. Maxim was slaughtered by the very hands of the Conclave that served him, like the plot of some ancient gruesome drama.

  It still meant they dwelled under the constant threat of conflict. This was a delicate time. Poisoncry was not entirely extinguished. There were factions still within Splitdawn that were not so eager to give up their seats of power. Ironvale’s houses had their own elite families that were just as reluctant—but it came from a place of entrenched isolationism.

  The truce was only as strong as the parties’ resolve to keep it. That seemed to change by the day. There were times when she’d wished that she’d paid more attention to Uncle, had tried to learn something from him.

  She did not like to think about it. During the day it was easy. There was always something, some task to shove it to the back of her brain. But once she’d settled Ravinia for the night, the worry was there.

  Should I have fought harder? What else was there to do?

  She liked to imagine Asher there, lying beside her.

  Whispering against the cool, smooth fabric, she’d ask him if what she was doing was right, if he was proud of their daughter. His answers were his usual irreverence. A trait that in life he’d often used to annoy her, but she now wished to hear again with all her desolate heart.

  As a weekly ritual, Kelta sent news of Narasmina and not-so-subtle hints about Erelah’s return there. Ravinia was a robust child, already struggling to take her first steps; naturally, the better place for her was the quiet harbor-side villa and not the metal box that was their home, she’d say.

  But it was not yet time to leave. Hirano had yet to release her as he’d promised. Perhaps that day would never come. On those long restless nights, that worry filled her thoughts too.

  “You hear from Jon?” Rachel prodded, looking distrustfully at the food on her plate. The woman could be absurdly cautious about “alien cuisine” served to her.

  “Nothing new. Only that Captain Utaemon discharged him from his contract with Ironvale.”

  Erelah had opened the trans from Utaemon with the expectation of learning that her brother was dead, the result of something risky and stupid. Instead, she learned that he’d left their mission and disappeared into the rubble of that failing world. That was nearly six months ago.

  “I’m sure he’s okay.”

  “I know he is.” And she did, somehow. It was not a lingering vestige of the Sight or some errant memory of another that she’d absorbed that told her this. There’d always been that part of her that knew she’d feel it, bone deep if anything happened to Jon. She clung to it.

  Of course, she could use her influence with Hirano. Have him send people to search him out. But Jon would be found when he wanted to be.

  Mr. Thonn strode up to their table, his chest thrust out against the red and purple pattern of her house’s colors. Erelah had bucked tradition when she selected her household staff from among candidates sent to her by Kelta, not the youth of the elite houses of the Ironvale Conclave. The dour man seldom spoke, but she had come to rely on him as her eyes and ears. Asher had trusted him, a rare thing, and so would she.

  He handed the trans-screen to her. “From your private channel. Red-bannered, my lady.”

  Rachel made a face. “Super top secret special decoder ring stuff there?”

  Another odd Human expression. Erelah gave her a perplexed sigh then opened the screen.

  It was a simple text missive. Jon had not bothered with High Eugenes or sophisticated encryption, for everything about her life was scrutinized. Jon likely realized that too.

  Erelah knew she would spend the morning in an oscillating state between jealousy and joy for him, for what he was able to reclaim.

  “I got Sela back.”

  Free short story

&nbs
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  About the Author

  Photo by Emily Jarvis

  Amy J. Murphy is not a Jedi. (Although she’s married to this Scottish guy that claims to be one.) Nor is she a powerful mutant with adamantium claws and super-fast healing, or leader of the human resistance battling to overthrow cyborgs.

  But, she is a fantastic liar.

  She discovered this power at an early age and chose to wield it for good instead of evil (even though the evil part remains highly tempting). With this power, Amy writes books about space opera featuring kickass heroines. These books are sometimes confused for military science fiction which is an easy mistake to make. She’s ok with this as her debut novel, Allies and Enemies: Fallen, was a finalist for the 2016 Dragon Award for Best Military Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel. At some point, she infiltrated the ranks of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) and refuses to return the cool membership card they sent her when they figured things out.

  When not geeking out at science fiction conventions, she’s hunkered down in an isolated farmhouse in the maple syrup guzzling state of Vermont with the aforementioned Scotsman/Jedi and two canines that possess the ability to speak.

  Contact Amy

  @selatyron

  www.amyjmurphy.com

  me@amyjmurphy.com