Soulless

by Kate Rudolph

  But maybe the emotionless thing meant that Raze didn’t sense those boundaries. He was quiet for a moment before speaking, his tone even and unbothered as it always was. “Yes, I felt emotion until I turned thirty. Two years ago. I made the choice of my own free will. There is nothing to regret about it. It simply now is.”

  She tried to imagine what it would be like to feel nothing and couldn’t. But pity would be wasted on Raze. “Why did you need to do it? You said something about lengthening your life?” Lifespans differed among species, but given what she could see, Raze didn’t look like he was on the verge of keeling over.

  “It isn’t something to be spoken of.”

  Of course not, not when she got to the interesting bits. “Got it.” The dim lights of the village at night were becoming clearer and brought the conversation to a natural end. “We’ll cover more ground if we split up. How about I come in from the west, you from the east. We’ll meet in the middle before dawn and find a place to hole up once activity gets too much for us to do any more searching. Sound good?”

  Raze looked at her like he wanted to open her up and scan her to see if she was being honest. She was sure he was going to nix the idea, and as the seconds marched on, it got harder and harder not to fidget. A full minute passed and he finally nodded. “Very well. Good hunting.”

  Sierra took off without giving him a chance to have second thoughts.

  ***

  It was unwise to let Sierra go alone. Raze didn’t doubt her ability to take care of herself, she’d more than proved capable against him. But as she trotted off, he knew that she could easily disappear and he’d never see her again. Toran might say that was for the best. She brought something out in him that he couldn’t understand. He’d spoken more to her in an hour than he had to most of his fellow Detyens in the past two years.

  And every moment he spent by her side hurt. It was a soul deep ache that he shouldn’t be able to feel, and yet it was there, ripping him in two as surely as a finely-honed blade. If there was any sense in the universe, the pain would let up the more distance they put between themselves, instead, it only transformed into a harsh pull, urging his feet west towards her. In two years, he hadn’t felt any urges, and he’d forgotten how hard they were to deny, when his body screamed at him to do one thing and his mind knew he must do another.

  He needed his control back, needed to stabilize before he found Toran and Kayde. They couldn’t know about Sierra and what she did to him. What if Kayde had the same response, these strange, impossible pseudo-feelings and excruciating pleasure and agony from physical contact? He’d cut off Kayde’s hand before he let him touch Sierra. And if Toran saw her as a threat to the legion, he needed to protect her, to keep her hidden before some other warrior hunted her down and took her out before she could weaken any others.

  He knew. He knew that these responses were irrational. Knew that if he chose not to take the human out, he should at least keep his distance. But that wasn’t going to happen. There were a few hours until sunrise and anticipation licked through him, excitement thrumming at the thought of seeing her again.

  A human denya.

  He recalled the wonder in Toran’s voice as he relayed the story. Was that what Sierra was? The denya of some unknown Detyen? He’d never reacted this way to the denyai at headquarters, but none of them were human. Perhaps he’d react this way to any of the alleged human denyai.

  Or perhaps she is yours.

  That way led to madness far beyond instability, and Raze refused to consider it. Whatever pull he felt towards Sier—the woman, it was because of the abnormal situation and had nothing to do with her. He set aside thoughts of why he’d reacted so poorly to her touch and why a part of him longed to reach out and see if a second round would be just as painful. He wasn’t even certain whether he wanted it to hurt or not.

  Want. No, he could not want anything. He had his mission and his people. That was enough, it had to be.

  As agreed, he entered the village from the east. There wasn’t much to the place. Three roads ran more or less parallel and were crossed by another three roads. Housing was a mix of poorly constructed buildings and broken down space ships that had been recycled into houses. A few pirates still caroused, but given the late hour, they paid him little mind, more focused on mind-numbing substances and sex. But the woman with one of those carousing pirates caught his eye. She studied him for several long seconds, watching him walk in the shadows. She wasn’t there by choice. Her clothes were threadbare and torn, her hair dirty and knotted. A bruise covered half of her face. But her eyes had a hint of defiance he’d seen in survivors.

  And she looked at him like she knew he didn’t belong. He stared right back at her, practically daring her to raise the alarm. But the pirate dragged her into one of the buildings and the moment was lost. At another time, on another mission, he would have followed after to stop whatever was about to happen. But he had no place to hide her, no way to save her. And saving her would only hurt whatever other women they’d captured and decided to keep. Raze didn’t need intel from home to tell him that the slavers brought the women here for… entertainment. It was what slavers did, and Raze found some measure of satisfaction in destroying them out in the black of space.

  But on Fenryr 1, the slavers’ home turf, with no team and only a small ship, Raze could do nothing to help. Not yet.

  Was that why Sierra was here? He’d told her nothing of his mission, and she’d done the same. She had no reason to be after the data on the Lyrden, but the woman he’d seen was human. Maybe the humans were doing something about it. Or perhaps she was some sort of mercenary on a rescue mission. It doesn’t matter, he told himself. Find Toran and Kayde and get out.

  He couldn’t recall ever being so distracted before. He took a deep breath and brought his mind to a sharp point of focus, imagining his meditation chamber back at headquarters and the equilibrium he could find there. When he opened his eyes back up, the world righted itself, the colors more muted and sounds tamer. He could breathe again, even if now he was conscious of some missing piece he’d never before noticed. It didn’t matter. This was what he was supposed to be. Temperate, focused, alone.

  Given the layout of the settlement, he took the streets methodically. The shadows were long in the bright moonlight and there were nothing like streetlights to illuminate his path. Some of the ships and houses had lights attached to the outside, but this late, most of them were extinguished. He could almost imagine that this was a simple traveler settlement without the dark underbelly of rot, but the occasional pained moan or scream disabused him of that notion.

  They deserved to be burned to the ground.

  That wasn’t why Raze was here and he pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind. The first street he crossed yielded no clues to the whereabouts of his men. He doubled back to make sure and ended up where he’d begun with no more information. On the second street, he heard a group of pirates talking and stood in the shadows to listen, but they spoke of a past raid on a faraway planet and made no mention of two captured Detyen soldiers.

  He’d just passed one of the cross streets when something caught his attention. A larger space ship that didn’t look as decrepit as the rest stood ringed in light with two guards at the entrance. That seemed to have potential. From the shadows, Raze couldn’t make out much, but he couldn’t get a closer look from the ground without being seen. He surveyed the surrounding area and made a choice.

  There were no men on the roof, so if he couldn’t go on the ground, he’d go through the air.

  He scaled the side of an adjacent building, slipping twice as the shadows played tricks with the hand and footholds that he could make. His arms began to burn as he pulled himself up onto the roof of the building and he walked with light feet to the other edge, feeling exposed by the openness of the roof. But none of the guards were looking up and he crouched low to try and keep the attention away from himself.

  The structures sat close together and a
few running steps and a jump saw him on top of the old ship. He could hear sounds coming from the inside and for a moment he let himself believe that he would find Toran and Kayde, barely worse for wear. He took a moment to steady himself before entering and pushing all expectations aside. This was the job, it was time to do it.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The amount of sleeping pirates and slavers that Sierra snuck past had her on edge. From the way the buildings were set up, she got the idea that most of the activity, whatever passed for entertainment around here, happened at the center of the settlement. Most of the residents lived on the outskirts. Though outskirts was a misnomer. She could sprint from one end of the village to the other without running out of breath. The place was little more than a way station, a place where these terrible people could take some time to rest and re-energize before heading back out to terrorize innocent people out in space.

  A few old-fashioned torches serve as the light sources for some of the more dilapidated huts and her fingers itched to tip them over and burn this place to the ground. But that would only send them fleeing, rats scurrying for survival. She and the agency would lose the lead they had on the abducted women and the way things worked out here, those women would never be found again. So she left the fires burning and didn’t stab anyone in their sleep, no matter how much she knew they deserved it.

  Now would be a good time for her to check in with Mindy and catch her up on the situation, but Sierra remained silent. She didn’t want to risk making any unnecessary noise while she was so close to so many potential hostiles. And, if she were being honest, she didn’t want to listen to Mindy telling her to run away or take Raze out. Mindy couldn’t order her to do it, but there would be a notation about it in the mission log and that could complicate things. And things in Sierra’s head were already complicated enough, she didn’t need to add job troubles to the list.

  She cleared her half of the town with no sign of the men that Raze was looking for and too much evidence of the women. She hadn’t found where they were being kept, but she could hear their screams and see them sleeping beside some of the pirates, dirty and unkempt. Her soul lurched and ached with every one that she walked past, but saving one now would doom the rest and Sierra wouldn’t do that. They were getting everyone out of this mess. Soon.

  Dawn threatened on the horizon with no new clues. She’d used her journey to get a more accurate map of the town, but she’d need to return the next night to find the women. The longer she and her team stayed here, the longer it would be before the abducted women could be rescued by an extraction unit. Sierra promised herself that she’d find what she needed tomorrow and be done with this place. She’d stick the strange encounter with Raze into a box in the back of her mind and never think of it again. Or, well, maybe if she wanted to fantasize about what ifs, she’d think on it from her own place on Earth, many light years between them, which seemed like it was probably a safe distance.

  They hadn’t specified the rendezvous point, but Sierra found Raze waiting for her at nearly the exact center of the town. His face gave away nothing, but his body thrummed with energy and she would have called him excited if he hadn’t said that thing about not feeling emotions. They slipped out of town in silence and she let Raze take the lead. She knew of a few places that would serve as decent hiding spots during the day, but she didn’t want to give them away if she didn’t have to.

  But great minds clearly thought alike, as he led her past two hills and into a little cave that was obscured by bushes and moss. It was at the top of her list for potential hiding places. She was glad to see no signs of life on the inside; it didn’t seem like the pirates knew about the place and there weren’t any droppings or remains of animals. She might actually get a few hours of almost pleasant sleep, despite the company.

  Or because of it.

  “Any luck?” she asked as she settled herself into a little corner, trying to get comfortable.

  Raze didn’t need to fidget like she did. He swept an area large enough for him to lay down and sat still as a statue. “Why are you here?” he asked in lieu of an answer.

  “Why are you?” He didn’t get to know without a little quid pro quo.

  “I found Toran and Kayde,” he said instead.

  He hadn’t said their names before, but there were only two people he could be talking about. “Do you need help to get them out?” Now why did she have to go and offer that? She’d offered recon assistance, that was it. She couldn’t afford to get even more side tracked. Mindy wasn’t going to be silent for long.

  “They’re being kept with about a dozen human women at the center of the settlement,” he said. “I can get them out by myself. But if I do…”

  If he did, he risked the women. And if he did, the women wouldn’t be there for long. “They’ve been taking women from Earth,” she said, no longer playing games. “They finally nabbed someone important enough for the government to give a damn. I’m here to get the information we need to send in a team to get them out.”

  “That seems like a lot of work for twelve abductees.”

  “I thought there would be more.” Anyone saved was worth it, but space bound missions cost money, a lot of money. And part of her assignment was to confirm that the senator’s niece was among those held captive here. Sierra had been trying to ignore what that meant, but she knew. If the girl wasn’t here, these twelve women would be abandoned to whatever fate the slavers had in store for them.

  “You are concerned for these women.” It wasn’t a question, thankfully. She might have slapped him if it was.

  “If…” Sierra shook her head. “Every day they’re here is another day they suffer. And if—when—I leave them here, I’ll feel… complicit in this whole thing. I can’t guarantee that the follow up mission will be approved. I can’t guarantee that they’ll still be here if it is. The only thing that I can be sure of is that they’ll be abused every day until someone intervenes. And I want that someone to be me so bad that it hurts.”

  ***

  Those psuedo feelings were getting to him again. Raze was torn between leaving this little cave to go and slay every pirate and slaver out there in Sierra’s name and closing the small distance between them to wrap her up in his strong arms and give her the support that she seemed to need so desperately. Her arms had started to cross in front of her, like some sad imitation of a hug.

  He needed to stay where he was, needed to keep his distance. He’d found Toran and Kayde, and when the time was right he would retrieve them. He could not deviate to rescue the human women and he could not offer them a place on his ship if transportation was an issue for Sierra. But there was a flicker deep inside of him, one he’d extinguished so long ago that now relit, it burned like an inferno. He shifted to his feet and closed the distance between them, slinging an arm over her shoulders and pulling her close, careful to avoid contact with her skin.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, not pulling away. In fact, she leaned in closer, letting her cheek rest against his chest where his heart pounded faster than the occasion called for.

  That abnormal bodily reaction was one he should have noted in his log for further investigation of destabilization later, but sitting beside Sierra, he’d never felt more whole. He tried to come up with the proper thing to say, the words that would make this connection between them make sense. But nothing in his experience could explain it, and nothing short of immediate attack could make him let her go. “You need comfort,” he finally murmured, her hair soft against his lips.

  Her own fingers danced across his stomach until she had a hand wrapped around his side. “How do you know that if you can’t feel anything?”

  With you, I can. He didn’t say it, couldn’t quite believe it was true. This had to be some anomaly or some sign of degradation to himself. “You’re from Earth?” he asked, instead of going down the path of questions he couldn’t answer.

  Sierra seemed to sense the conflict within him and accepted the change i
n topic. “Born and raised. Where do you call home?”

  “That’s not something I can answer.” The location of the legion was one of the most closely guarded secrets they held. That, and the process to make the soulless. But Sierra stiffened in his embrace and he could sense she was about to pull away. To stop that, he had to say something. “It is not my home planet. I was born and raised there, but we have no home.”

  She tilted her head up to look at him and their cheeks almost brushed. He pulled back enough to give them space, but that impossible part of him wanted to lean forward and see what would happen if they touched once more. What would she do to him? How would she change him? Would he survive it? Could he be whole?

  “No home?” she prompted after several seconds.

  “My race, Detyens, are originally from a planet called Detya. A little more than a hundred years ago it was destroyed, completely uninhabitable. Now there are survivors scattered throughout the stars. But there is no place that can really compete with where we’re supposed to be.” He’d seen the images of the planet in the run up to the final day, and he’d seen footage of what happened. An entire planet gone in minutes, with no explanation or foe to fight.

  “Were you at war?” She settled back against him and something in Raze’s chest eased at her acceptance of the contact.

  If he didn’t know better, he’d say that she was comforting him as much as he comforted her. But that was impossible. “No, it had been a long time since my people made an effort at anything besides peaceful exploration. Our military existed to protect our ships and our home, nothing more. Then one day a weapon was dropped from space. It incinerated the land, boiled the oceans. And whoever dropped it never claimed credit, never left any evidence of where they’d come from. And as far as we know, no one has ever used such a weapon again. News of a planet killer would have spread fast, and yet almost no one has heard of Detya or what happened to us.”