by C. Gockel
The other members of her team had dispersed throughout the structure. Their shouts punctuated the heavy perfumed air. So far, it was all clear. There were no priests or worshippers here. If Deinde Company’s presence in this place angered the Tasemarin, eventually they might summon the courage to attack. But for right now, this would do.
Small arms fire popped in the distance, echoing in the valley of the tiny ruined hamlet outside. Valen and Sela turned to each other with the unspoken question hanging between them: If we’re all here…then who was that?
Everything had gone skew so quickly. The moment their boots hit the ground that morning, air support was withdrawn. “Sandstorms,” came the terse response to her inquiry over vox. Strykers were vulnerable in denser atmo and Fleet was not willing to risk the resource. Right off, the four teams deployed to government center had begun to fall victim to guerrilla attacks that separated them in the unfamiliar terrain.
A nagging thought weighed on Sela: Tasemarin were being aided somehow and had been prepared for the Regime’s arrival. There was organization here, something remarkable in a settlement that had, according to intel, few armaments and a negligible populace with no military training.
Whatever the reason, before the first of Tasemar’s dwarf suns had slipped into the horizon of the stagnant red sky, her team had been forced into street-to-street fighting with no hope of gaining control of their target, the government complex.
She felt Valen’s silent stare. He was waiting for orders.
“Get the lay of it. Check on other wounded.”
“On it, boss.”
“Munitions check too,” she called after him, although she could have guessed the response on that: not good .
In the distance and conveyed by her vox, she heard him relay the orders to Simirya, one of the two heavy-gunners.
On the table, Atilio coughed. It was a weak sound. His eyes were open again. A thin froth of blood seeped from the corner of his mouth. She grabbed the depleted medistat kit. She had watched him employ its contents three times today on lesser injuries to his fellow soldiers, before becoming a casualty himself.
“Here.” She leaned down, trying to keep her voice even. It wouldn’t do to have him sense the panic that threatened to overwhelm her. “I have the medistat. Tell me what you need.”
“You worry…too much.” The young man gave a feeble grin, teeth bloody. It set off more coughing. He shut his eyes.
Stubborn, too much like me.
“Look at me. Look.”
After what seemed an eternity, he did. His eyes glazed with agony.
“Good. That’s good,” she said. “You feel pain? That’s good. That means you’re still alive. You’re afraid, right? Use it. It’s fuel. Stay alive.”
He shook his head, slowly. Then, once more he shut his eyes.
“Atilio,” she whispered, watching the uneven rise and fall of his chest.
But he did not stir.
She slammed the kit onto the counter. The noise was explosive in the oppressive silence of the sanctuary.
“Sela.”
Valen had returned. His hand squeezed her shoulder. The closest thing Sela had ever had to a friend, he had been her sergeant for six campaigns. In all that time, he had never touched her or used her name in such a familiar way within earshot of the others, until now.
Things were bad, steadily falling away to irrevocably skew.
With arms as thick as runner bulkheads, Valen easily stood a full head taller than Sela. Although he looked lumbering and slow, his reflexes had saved her life more than once. He granted her a staggering level of loyalty that, at times like this, made her feel so unworthy. She had always suspected he harbored some sort of misguided romantic attraction to her. To her relief, he had never acted on it. Decca prevented it: the list of rules all breeders like Sela lived and died by. The cresters and commoners had the Fates. Breeders had Decca. Every booter knew Decca by heart. Every conscript had the rules drilled into place.
“Something is wrong.” His voice was quiet, strained. “We should have done something by now. Fleet had to have a reason to just…withdraw.” He did not say the words, but she shared his fear. Sela, having survived through many campaigns, had come to develop a trust in her instincts for danger. That sense now told her something dire.
We have been abandoned .
When they’d reached the extraction coordinates, they had found only an empty field. Her team had been exposed there and had no choice but to withdraw. The hump up the hill to find their present shelter had cost Atilio along the way when he set off a jury-rigged trigger wire near a doorway.
“You don’t know that,” Sela said.
“Commander. They’re overdue—”
“Shut it.” She grabbed the yoke of his armor.
“Yes, Commander.”
She released her grip.
“Maybe we can rally up with another team that’s been cut off too. Is there anything at all on vox? Other chatter?” she asked, removing her helm. She ran a hand through her short, sweat-damp hair. Valen frowned his disapproval at this, but her skull felt like it was baking.
He leaned against her, pulling the throat mic away from his neck so the others would not hear.
“Vox is a mess. Insurgents got some kinda scrambler, can’t make out a thing. I think Tertius and Quadra teams got extracted. Captain Veradin and his detail were first out.”
“So it’s just us, then.”
At least Veradin was safe. There was a flutter of relief to know that, although Sela had been the one to point out to him his strategically unsound decision to join a ground attachment at all. Protocol dictated he should have used the remote command node, the RCD, on the Storm King , their Fleet transport carrier. But Veradin could be incredibly stubborn. All cresters were like that. Sela surmised it granted them a certain level of cred among the other higher ups to be seen throwing themselves into the fray. But not Veradin; Sela knew him too well for that. He had come onplanet because he did not want to put others at risk, even if they were just breeders, while he called orders from the safety of the ‘King .
Valen shrugged. “If we hold out till nightfall, we should be able to see if our ride’s still in low orbit.”
“Of course he’s still there.” She didn’t remark on his lack of faith. Although protocols for subordinate-superior interaction were drilled into any breeder from day one, Sela seldom curbed the speech of those serving under her.
In her time as a platoon commander, she had developed her own philosophies of leadership. There were no parade grounds or inspections out here. There was life and death. The line between the two was only as good as your trust in the others that racked in the squadbay around you at night, and their trust of you. The cresters never seemed to grasp that.
“They’ll come for us.” She hoped Valen could not hear the unevenness in her voice. “Veradin is up there. He won’t forget us.”
“You believe that, boss?”
Her smile was grim. “As if there’s a choice.”
Chapter Two
“Commander.”
Sela glanced up from her vigil at Atilio’s side. He had stopped grimacing. Perhaps that meant the pain pharms were working.
Rheg shoved a robed figure into the center of the altar room. The amber lights shone on the shaven head and sun-ravaged skin of his prisoner.
“Found him hiding in a chamber on the spinward side. Says he’s a priest.”
“I’m not a priest.” The newcomer grimaced under Rheg’s heavy grip, actually managing to sound appalled. “I’m a minor sacerdos . I’ve not been joined in the Order yet.”
“Imagine my embarrassment,” muttered Rheg.
“Sacerdos?” Sela viewed the newcomer skeptically. “You have a designation then, Citizen?”
“Citizen!” he scoffed, plainly insulted. “I am a free man. Not a slave for your Council of First.”
The man’s accent was slight but evident to Sela. The stranger used Commonspeak, the exp
ected standard language for any Citizen of the Known Worlds, but his intonations were those of someone who had grown up speaking Regimental Standard. Much like a soldier. Sela had developed an ear for it. On a nearly daily basis, she listened to crester officers slaughter Common and Regimental with their sing-song, affected Eugenes accents.
Rheg clamped down more tightly on the priest’s shoulder. “Commander Tyron wants your name!”
“Lineao…Jarryd Lineao,” he grunted.
“Where are the others?” she said. “There must be others here.”
Lineao drew his chin up and drew his shoulders back. “I volunteered to remain and care for the sanctuary. My brothers have fled to safety.”
“Bricky.” She snorted. “I’ll give you cred for that.”
He had to be lying. Only one remaining priest for a compound that seemed to sprawl well past the sanctuary? Whatever his reason to lie, she would deal with it later. For now, there were more pressing matters.
“We have no directive for prisoners.” Valen reached for his sidearm. He spoke now in Regimental to Sela, as was protocol in hostile presence. “He’s a liability.”
She stepped between them. “No. We need him.”
Valen gaped. “Commander?”
But Sela was watching the expression on Lineao’s face. He understood Regimental. Had to. Yet there was no call for a common Citizen to speak Regimental. Her suspicions flared.
“If you’re a priest, you must have healer’s training.” Sela returned to Commonspeak, continuing this newcomer’s ruse.
Lineao’s stare bounced between Valen and Sela. When he noticed Atilio’s body on the altar, his eyes widened. “Yes…some.”
“My meditech took a hit. Lost a lot of blood.” Sela shoved the medistat kit against Lineao’s chest. “Help him.”
Valen snarled in protest. “Boss, you’ve got to be—”
“Sergeant, if you’ve discovered a miraculous means to restore Atilio, produce it now,” Sela snapped.
Valen squared his shoulders and sneered at Lineao.
“I’ve sworn an oath to help those that the Fates guide into my Path,” the priest said quietly as he took the kit from her.
“Well. They’ve dropped this one on your lap.”
The altar room, although it had appeared primitive at first glance, was constructed with a holo-clear ceiling. As the light of the powerful suns sank below the horizon, Sela could now see the purple shimmer of the night sky through its electric scrim. A single bright star hung heavier than the rest. Solid, unblinking, it drew a slow, graceful arc. The Storm King . Still there. Veradin would not leave us. The knot of her heart loosened the slightest bit.
Lineao closed the case of the medistat kit and made another inspection of the bandages covering Atilio’s torso. Much of the bleeding had stopped. The young man continued to breathe in ragged hitches. But breathe nonetheless.
The priest shuffled over to her and extended the case. When Sela did not move to accept it, he left it at her feet like an offering.
“Well?” she asked. Will he live? Please let him live.
Lineao ran a grimy hand over his face. Without invitation, he collapsed beside her on the bench.
“I’ve done all I can,” he sighed. “His injuries are too great for the supplies you have here. I am only one. Another healer might do better.”
“I guess that’s a no,” she muttered, kicking the useless kit away. Her anger was indiscriminate: At Lineao, at the stupid, inadequate kit, at the nameless, faceless bastard who had taken out Atilio.
It was moments like this when she could understand why she existed. Sela suspected that she was made this way on purpose: easy to provoke to physical shows of anger. Her first impulse was often to rend and tear. There was nothing here that had earned it.
And so she breathed deeply, slowly. She counted to a hundred. She did all the things Veradin had taught her to do. Sometimes it worked. Not now, though.
Guess it’s just not my night.
Sela stretched her neck, flexed and released her shoulders. The heat of Tasemar was damning. Hours ago, she had shed the upper portion of her field armor. It was a move that was not protocol. She had earned yet another disapproving frown from Valen. He could be too protective at times. He had kept his argument to himself and sauntered off to check on the fortifications.
“The Fates may protect your boy yet,” Lineao offered, turning his gaze to the pictograph of the three women spanning the entire wall.
Sela sloshed the hydration matrix in her canteen thoughtfully. “Good thing he can’t hear you call him a boy.”
Atilio could be prideful, bordering on arrogant. In many ways, he was still a booter with much to prove. He had put up a lot of swag at first, but she’d let the others in his team take care of that. The young meditech was good at what he did. He just needed to learn his place. It was an initiation of sorts; any soldier on her team had faced similar treatment.
“You regard him as such, like your child,” Lineao replied.
Sela did not care for how he watched her as he said it.
“My strength is the soldier beside me. I shall not abandon him,” Sela recited Decca. Eyes narrowing, she turned to focus on Lineao. “Your brothers don’t seem to feel the same, priest. Abandoning you here.”
“And your Kindred masters do not hold the same sentiment,” he shot back. “They have yet to reclaim you.”
“He will.” Sela jerked her chin in the direction of the Storm King . “They will.”
She knew it as surely as the breath that filled her lungs. Somewhere aboard that ship, her home for a large portion of her adult life, was an agitated Captain Jonvenlish Veradin. She pictured him storming the corridors, bellowing at anyone foolish enough to get in his way. That same familiar warmth filled her. For a moment, the worry about Atilio dulled.
“How long ago did you forsake us?” she asked the cleric in Regimental.
In the half-light, Lineao stiffened.
“I know you understand me. No need to keep pretending,” Sela pressed. “I doubt they teach clerics Regimental.”
“The years do not matter,” he answered after a thoughtful silence.
She tipped her canteen in his direction in a casual salute. “I never get tired of being right.”
“I imagine you have not told your men.” He cast a wary glance around. True enough, Rheg would have made a special point of rendering pain on a deserter.
“Relax. You’re no good to me or Atilio dead.”
“I have done little to help him. I fail to see what intelligence I can offer you, Commander. I am but a novice, a student of the Fates now.”
“I’m not an Intelligence Officer, Lineao. And I’m not the torturing type. My job is to keep my people alive and get them back home.”
“Then we wish the same things, Commander. I serve the Fates and seek to end what hostilities I can toward my people.”
“Your…people ,” Sela said with a dry chuckle. He had deserted an enemy to the populace of this back-birth world. Now they were his people . “Then tell me…satisfy my curiosity about your people . All the intel I’ve seen indicates they lack the resources or training to organize an insurrection. Did they have assistance, then? Someone with a soldier’s training?”
Lineao shook his head. “That is no longer my way, Commander. I live the simple life of a priest now.”
“Uh-huh,” she muttered, unconvinced. “Then at least tell me why no one has advanced on our position yet. They must’ve figured we’re here by now. Why not?”
Lineao raised his eyebrows. “You know what this place is, Tyron. It is sacred to them, to us. They hesitate to perform a warring act on this soil, for it would be a desecration.”
“Desecration.” She arched an eyebrow at the room. Fragments of pottery peppered the floor. Broken furniture lay in heaps. Atilio’s blood soaked the altar cloth. “I’m glad we’ve preserved the site thus far.”
“Humor. Interesting in a breeder like you,” Lineao said, can
ting his head. It was the way he said the word, “breeder,” like a term for diagnosing an illness. He made it sound forgiving and damning in the same breath.
The accepted term for the soldiers like Sela, who were specifically bred in the kennels, was Volunteer . She suspected the term made their existence more palatable to the cresters. Oddly, she had no recollection of anyone offering her a choice. Not that she or anyone of her team would have chosen differently.
“Call me breeder again, and I’ll tell the others our little secret, Lineao.” She held his gaze. It was the stare she reserved for the intimidation of quaking villagers. “They won’t be nice like me.”
But he wasn’t buying.
Lineao nodded. “Why are you here, Commander?”
Sela gave a derisive snort. He seemed to oscillate between amusing and annoying. “I have my orders. You remember what those are, don’t you?”
“Ah. Yes. Orders ,” he mocked. “How would you know what to do without your orders ?”
“First knows what’s best.”
“I doubt that, Tyron. I think you do too.”
“Be quiet,” she hissed, gesturing at Atilio. “He needs rest.”
Sela rose quickly, rocking the bench, and went to Atilio’s side. She watched the agonizing rise and fall of his chest in the uncertain light.
“Will your boy’s death be worth their orders?”
“Shut it!” She whirled, jabbing a finger at him. “You don’t want to piss me off.”
Lineao uttered an observant grunt and folded his hands inside his cloak. Another long stretch of silence rolled past, yet she still felt him watching her.
“The others have no idea, do they? Why you care for the boy as you do?” he asked.
Sela glared at him, feeling the blood build in her face. Who did he think he was?
“The boy…he’s yours, isn’t he? You may treat them all as your charges, but you know for certain that this one, Atilio, he is your flesh and blood. Your son.”
