by C. Gockel
Broken. He’s been broken.
Sela was struck with the undeniable feeling that although he did not appear injured, Jonvenlish Veradin had been seriously damaged. She stood over him and triggered the hatch to cycle shut. Hesitantly, she placed a hand on his shoulder. “Sir?”
He flinched as if startled. Suddenly, he pitched forward to his knees. His arms encircled her legs in a clinging embrace. He rested his head against her stomach.
Sela froze. Her hand cradled the top of his head in a reflex. She had never touched him before like this. She had never seen him this way.
“What is it, sir? Are you injured?”
Outside, the winds howled like spike hounds baying after their quarry.
His voice was muffled against the fabric of her uniform. “Forgive me. I didn’t know, Ty.”
“Forgive what? What’s happened, sir?”
She gazed down at the top of his head. Her heart stammered in time with her brain: Broken. He’s broken.
He pulled away so sharply, she staggered.
“Captain?”
Climbing to his feet, he retreated to the command loft without answering.
As Sela pulled up the small ladder with her good arm, the deck lurched. The engines roared in protest as he forced the Cass into a rapid ascent.
His back was to her as he quickly entered commands into the interface.
“I don’t understand. What’s happened, sir? Where are we going?”
He did not turn. “Stop calling me that.”
“Captain?”
“That! Stop it!”
It stung. A sudden swell of anger eroded her trepidation.
“Then answer me!”
But still, he did not face her.
“I didn’t know. I couldn’t have known.”
“Known what? What did that…thing say to you, sir?” Sela jostled his shoulder.
Finally, Veradin turned. His eyes were red-rimmed. He drew in a breath, hesitated. “Ty, you have to understand. I didn’t know. Uncle never told me—”
The proximity alert split the air. Another ship was on approach.
No.
Sela dove for the sens-con, colliding with her captain.
Not now.
She frowned at the specs on the newly arrived vessel that was just approaching the outer reaches of Newet’s thin atmo. The craft was too small. A ship that size would not be so far from conduit space on its own. It needed a carrier or a base for support. There was nothing like that out here. No way would either have escaped their notice.
“That can’t be right.” Veradin echoed Sela’s thoughts, reaching past her for the controls.
“It’s reading right…sir.” Sela swatted his hand away.
“A ship that small has no range, has no support.”
“Another crester come to look at their dead relatives?”
“I doubt it, Ty.”
Sela studied the specs again. The signature matched a non-velo drive vessel, but the energy reads were enormous.
“Let’s get the mains back on. Fast.” He seemed to have surfaced from whatever crisis had seized him.
Sela flipped to the enginesys and grimaced at what she saw. The smuggler who owned this bucket had been a brave one indeed. The Cass needed serious dry dock time. The velo drives had so far proven reliable, but the sub-light burners were another story. It was as fast a ship as any self-respecting blockade runner would want, but the non-reg upgrades were problems waiting to happen.
“This is going to be ugly,” she muttered. At least if we explode, there will be nothing left to capture.
Veradin ran a hand through his hair, mussing it further. It made him look even more crazed. Perhaps that was why she was not surprised at his next order.
“Do a pass. Five hundred.”
Sela gaped. “So we can do what…wave at them, sir? Our weapons are antiques.”
This was irrational. They needed to leave. Now. One stryker could mean a carrier on its way. They needed to evade, not go on the offensive in a poorly armed rust bucket with a cancerous cesium manifold.
“Ty, trust me,” he said.
I did. I do. But her trust was being seriously tested now.
“Call it a hunch, Commander.” A pleading note entered his voice.
A hunch.
She hated it when he used that word. It meant he was guessing. And it often meant Sela Tyron got to be mop-up.
With an impatient growl, she made the change.
They waited in silence as the Cass glided in closer to the new vessel. Their attention was split between the reads and the forward display on the screen.
The tiny ship seemed to coalesce out of the dim gray of low orbit. It was a very familiar shape, yet there was something different about it.
Veradin muttered something in High Eugenes, his tone sounding incredulous.
Then she saw why.
It was a stryker. The jutting nose and forward arch of the wings were unmistakable. But instead of the customary flat black with green-and-yellow markings, the craft was an uneven silver.
He studied the reads. “The engine signature is…different.”
“No weapons.” Sela found it hard to believe the sens-con. Who would neuter a warship like that? Why?
“A trap. Has to be.” But even as she said it, Sela realized it was absurd. The Regime did not spring traps like this. Even a moderately resourceful Enforcement agent would have long ago made their position and moved in for the kill.
“Vox?” Veradin asked.
“And tell them what, sir?” Sela snapped. “That we’re pathetic?”
He ignored her and reached across her to open a channel.
As the vox flipped in rapid succession through the known Fleet coms, they watched the image relayed by the forward cameras.
“There. The hull markings.” He tapped the screen. The isolated image was enlarged. The red and black standard of Ravstar stood out like a warning. The tiny hairs on Sela’s arms stood on end. In her life as a soldier of the Regime, Sela had never encountered a single Ravstar soldier. The entire division was intrigue and myth. Now the damned emblem was popping up everywhere.
Why here? Why now?
“Erelah,” he whispered.
“Your sister? How? Why here?”
“Jon.” The breathy whisper could have been any errant noise from the vox. More words came through coated in static, this time in High Eugenes.
He reached in front of her again, barring her view of the controls. Sela shouldered him back, capturing his hand against the console. He had triggered something, but she could not tell what.
“What’re you doing, sir?”
“Erelah. That’s Erelah. That’s her voice.”
“What? You have no idea who that is, sir!”
An alert chirped. The Cass’s androgynous voice asked for confirmation to deploy the docking web. That’s what he had triggered.
“If it were Enforcement, Ty, they would have moved in. We’d be dead, and you know it.”
Sela studied his face. The fit that had engulfed him when he returned to the ship had evaporated, but the red-rimmed gaze and desperation it left behind were no better.
She sighed. “Sir, this is—”
“Strategically unsound.” He finished her sentence, mocking her tone.
He placed a hand on her good shoulder. Sela shrank away.
“Please trust me.” He stepped closer. “We have to take her on board.”
“I do trust you, sir. Every day. Every second. With my life.” It was her turn to sound desperate. A new thought gripped her. “But this is madness, sir. Is she why they arrested you? Erelah?”
Again, the Cass prodded the tense air with a series of off-tune chimes. The docking web was ready. Neither of them moved.
“I’d explain this if I could, but I don’t have your answers. But that was her voice. You heard it too.”
“I don’t know what I heard.”
Sela wanted her captain back, the one who made
sense. There was real danger here. Could he not feel it? It flooded the room with an undeniable current.
He placed his hands on both her shoulders. Weariness came off him like radiation.
“We don’t have a lot of options out here. I can’t tell you what’s going to happen next.”
“Run. Fight. But think. Always think.” Her voice sounded thick, drugged. His closeness did that to her. “You taught me that, sir.”
“I know. And what I did to you wasn’t fair. Bringing you here without a chance to choose. Now you have to trust me. Do you trust me?” The plea in his voice was a rusted hook in her heart. “I need to know that there’s one thing left that makes sense. And that is that you trust me. Do you trust me?”
Squeezing her eyes shut, she released a long held breath. “Always, sir.”
“That’s my girl.”
Chapter Sixteen
“This whole damn thing is skew,” Sela said unhappily.
She stood at the hatch to the cargo hold and studied the stryker through the small portal. Her fingers worried the webbing of the holster slung around her hips. The pistol’s charge light was a baleful red.
“Understood, Commander,” Veradin replied as he peered over her shoulder through the thick glass.
Their view of the space was limited. The internal cameras to monitor it were non-functioning, something that posed little surprise to Sela. The cargo bay was designed to be large enough to host two troop runners at a time. The ship’s docking web had deposited the stryker closer to the center of the bay. She was glad to see that tactically there was room to maneuver around the vessel.
The voice of the Cass declared hangar pressurization in Regimental. Veradin’s hand hovered over the palm interface to cycle open the lock.
“Be ready, Ty.”
Her nerves were long, tense wires plucked by every sound and sudden movement. She could be no more ready.
The lock opened. The cold air of the hangar swirled past their ankles as it met the warmer air of the companionway. Sela was swift to move. Weapon trained on the canopy of the stryker, she stepped in front of Veradin and led the way down the steps to the hangar floor. She put out a staying hand as they approached the strange vessel. He sidestepped her with an exasperated grunt. Her protectiveness was often an irritant to him. But it was her duty.
Veradin stepped up on the rung just beneath the swooped silver wing of the vessel.
“Sir! First contact dictates—”
“Not now.” He gestured for her to approach the craft’s other side.
Sela ducked beneath the wing and took a position opposite him along the stryker’s canopy. Frost had collected on the darkened slits of glass, obscuring the interior.
Veradin rapped the glass. The sound shattered the tense silence of the bay. There was no reaction from the pilot within. Sela adjusted her grip on the weapon.
Abruptly he hopped back to the hangar deck. He disappeared beneath the low arch of the wing. She realized he was looking for the emergency override for the canopy access. He must have found it because she soon heard his victorious shout.
They were treated to the hiss of escaping heated air from the cockpit. Ice fractured and fell to the hangar deck, and a column of steam snaked upward. The smell of charred circuits and burning plasteel filled the bay.
Sela climbed up on the stryker’s wing then recoiled. A baking heat emanated from the darkened interior. “Careful, sir!”
As the steam cleared, Sela could see within. Coiled in the close confines of the cockpit was the pilot, chest pitched forward against the yoked flight column. Veradin reached into the space and righted the body against the seat. The pilot’s head rolled limply. Long dark hair, the same shade as Veradin’s, obscured the pilot’s features. Sela felt her heart constrict into a cold knot even as the heat threatened to suck air from her lungs.
Veradin carefully brushed the hair back from the pilot’s face, but Sela knew already what she would see. The young woman’s peculiar jade green eyes gazed sightlessly up at the overhead lights.
Her. Erelah .
The captain dove into the cockpit, ignoring Sela’s cautionary shout. He straddled Erelah’s form, snapping open the safety harness that held her in place. He cradled her face in his hands.
“Erelah! Erelah! Wake up!”
Her eyelids fluttered. The girl’s lips moved in an inaudible muttering. He pulled her up. Righting himself, he looped her over one shoulder to climb from the cockpit. Beneath the bulky flight suit she appeared tiny; nothing more than a skeletal frame.
He collapsed to the deck and pulled her into a clumsy embrace. Sela stood over their awkward family reunion with her weapon still drawn.
“Help me,” he panted. “Get the medistat, Ty.”
Despite the cloying heat of the hangar, Sela felt that icy kernel in her heart grow.
All the time Erelah continued to mutter. The words made no sense to Sela, but she recognized their meter and inflection. Lineao had repeated the same prayer to the Fates relentlessly as he worked on Atilio’s body.
Sela stepped quietly across the threshold with the spare set of clothes, a disposable single suit found in one of the crew lockers. The garment was about three sizes too big for the waif-like Erelah but served as Sela’s excuse for explaining her presence if the captain appeared. Her real reason was not compassion, but curiosity.
Erelah slept curled into a tight ball. Her back was thrust against the wall, her knees clasped to her chest. She had made herself into a small, dense point. Even the light and clarity of the room seemed to disperse in proximity to this strange young woman. Kneeling beside her, Sela placed the clothes on the bunk and studied the still, pale features of Lady Erelah, Last Daughter of Veradin. The soft shape of the face echoed that of Sela’s captain. High cheekbones, a delicately sculpted nose. The family resemblance was obvious, but the brother and sister could not be more different. Jon had said she was his junior by a few years, making her twenty-something standard. But she was so much younger, like a girl. And nothing but a frail tech.
The Kindred ladies that Sela had briefly glimpsed on Victory days were aloof, gliding visages draped in gossamer and full of refined grace. If Jonvenlish Veradin was a brilliant guiding star then this one, Erelah, was a collapsed one.
“Your purpose. Identify yourself.” The voice was hoarse, but the challenge in it was plain. It came from beneath the snarl of dark hair.
“Commander Tyron.”
A sliver of pale face appeared above Erelah’s tucked-in knees. There was a surety to her voice that surprised Sela. “You came to stare, Commander?”
She stiffened. “The Captain is concerned.”
There was a frigid silence. Then: “Jonvenlish, the caring, dedicated brother.”
Since being taken onship, Erelah had spent most of her time asleep. Occasionally she would wake to utter a string of nonsense in Eugenes. This was her most coherent round of conversation yet. A shame Veradin had chosen now for rack time. But it was Sela’s opportunity to question her without his brotherly hovering.
How had she known to find us? That question was her priority.
“How did you—”
“How long have I been in this location?” Erelah’s jade green stare looked past Sela’s shoulder into the corridor. She resisted the urge to follow the girl’s gaze.
“Slightly over sixteen hours onship. I don’t know how long you were adrift.”
The girl studied Sela.
She decided to prod again. “How did you get here in a stryker? There must be a support carrier—”
“The stryker…” Her eyes narrowed. “Where is it?”
“Safe,” Sela replied. Something was not right here.
“Where are we now?”
“Safe.”
Who was doing the interrogating? A sense of warning chilled Sela. It told her to keep the answers from this woman.
Perhaps Erelah had received more damage than they could surmise, but this was not how Sela had expected th
is conversation to go. A dark intent seemed to radiate from the girl. It was in the unblinking stare and in the quiet, incongruously patient voice.
“Commander Sela Tyron.” Erelah’s eyes shifted back. Her pale lips stretched into a mocking smile. “Ty.”
A chill danced along Sela’s spine. She had not told Erelah her familiar name. Perhaps the captain had told her, but she doubted this.
Another unsettling silence stretched between them in which Sela felt studied, marked.
Then a tremor shook Erelah’s body. Her face sank beneath the mass of dark hair.
Had she lost consciousness once more? Cautiously, Sela touched the damp skin. The girl was like a furnace.
With a sharp gasp, Erelah crabbed back, pressing into the wall. She looked around the room frantically. “Don’t touch me!”
Sela fell back onto her haunches, surprised.
Her captain’s voice erupted from the doorway: “What the Fates! Ty!”
“What do you want?” Erelah sobbed as if seeing Sela for the first time. “Who are you?”
She sneered. Was she truly that damaged? “I just told you—”
“What’s going on?” Veradin demanded, stomping into the room. He tossed ration wafers and a water packet on the foot of the bunk and frowned at Sela in accusatory silence.
“I was checking on her,” she blurted, climbing to her feet.
No way was she going to take the blame for Erelah’s theatrics. As if she would want to provoke this.
“Please don’t touch me!” Erelah begged up at both of them. “You don’t know! Just don’t touch me!”
This was not the same woman who had spoken to Sela moments ago. This was a panic-stricken waif. Erelah wedged herself into the corner and braced her arms against the walls. The confused expression on the girl’s face told her this was a person in control of nothing, not even her own mind, it seemed. If it was an act, she could not see the motivation for it.
Sela stepped back. “Did you tell her my name? My full name?”
“What?” he answered distractedly. “No. She’s barely been conscious.”
She knew my whole name. She knows what Jon calls me.
