Call of Courage: 7 Novels of the Galactic Frontier

by C. Gockel

  “There’s never been a right time,” he replied in the same. Expelling a ragged sigh, he dragged his hands down his face.

  “What are you saying?” Tyron demanded.

  “Ty, I have to tell you something.”

  Her moves wary, the soldier backed away. The suspicious glint in her amber eyes was entirely focused on Jon. “Tell me what?”

  “Erelah and I are Human.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Sela stormed along the common passage. The curved walls were a liquid blur. There was no destination, save to escape the crushing sensation in her chest. But each footstep seemed to give it strength.

  “Just listen for a moment, please.”

  Jon’s voice was a tether affixed to something deep within her. Sela stopped, not out of obedience, but because she had run out of hallway to storm. She faced the hatchway to the cargo hold, her image mirrored in its portal. Reflected behind her, she saw Jon.

  His hand was on her arm, turning her. The walls changed places. Then he was kissing her, full and hard. As if he would inhale her, drink in everything she was. The last kiss of a condemned man.

  Clear. I need to be clear.

  She pushed him away, curbing her strength. “Stop. Just stop.”

  His eyes held a bigger looming doubt. Whatever it was, she still felt that urge to crush it, for threatening this man. But it would crush her in return, she knew that now.

  The hall seemed too narrow. The air was flat and metallic as if the scrubbers were no longer working. The unhealthy vibration of the engines found every painful bruise and magnified the ache in her shoulder, her wrist. It all suddenly threatened to overwhelm her. Sela slid down the wall, knees drawing up.

  “Did you always know?” she asked up at him. “Even before…all of this?”

  “No.” Jon knelt before her. “I had no idea, Ty. My whole life is a lie that Uncle told us.”

  “That was the message, wasn’t it? From the avatar on Newet?”

  “Yes,” Jon said. “Uncle did it to keep us safe. He was too late to save our parents. So he raised us. Erelah and me. He hid us in plain sight to keep Seekers from killing us. We were never meant to leave Argos. Helio was doing what he thought was right.”

  “By lying to you about your own nature?”

  “He meant to tell us. Things just…happened. That’s why he left the message.”

  His gaze so full of reckless hope and devoid of guile. Sela saw a man that she would have foolishly worshiped, no matter what. Here stood someone she was expected to call her enemy.

  But that was not the source of the crushing hurt.

  “Say something.”

  “I don’t care.” Her own voice sounded small and lost to her.

  “What?”

  “I don’t care that you’re Human. I know that I should. It’s what I’ve been trained to do. But, I don’t.”

  His shoulders sagged with relief.

  “You told me so many times that you thought me more than a simple soldier. That you saw something different in me.” Her throat tightened. “Yet you kept the truth from me. Why would you not trust me? After everything that I’ve done. After everything we’ve been through. Haven’t I proven you can trust me?”

  “I know. And I’m sorry,” he said, leaning in. His forehead pressed to hers, and his warm hand cradled the back of her neck. “I didn’t know how to say it. For Miri’s sake, I didn’t even believe it myself at first. I was afraid.”

  “Afraid?” She placed her hands on his shoulders, pushing him back.

  “Of what you would think of me. Afraid to lose you.” He grabbed her left hand.

  “As opposed to what I think of you now? How is this better?” Sela pulled her hand away.

  The skin around his eyes tightened. And he sank back onto his haunches.

  “And I had always thought myself unworthy of you .” Sela rose, sliding up against the curve of the wall. Careful not to touch him as she strode away.

  It had been some time before the quiet mutter of Jon and Tyron’s hurt voices faded in the passage outside. Now there was only a heartsick silence.

  Perhaps they have forgotten me. I would like that. That would make not being so much easier.

  Erelah sat before the gutted remains of the coms array interface. This was a plaything, she realized, devoid of any useful active components to complete the system. Jon had thought of that. It was something to occupy her. The same way Old Sissa would give her trinkets and broken costume jewelry to entertain her as a child while she kneaded bread in the great warm kitchen in the house on Argos.

  “Erelah.”

  Instinctively her shoulders drew up toward her ears, fearful that Tristic had returned, full of admonishment. The evil queen had come so close, only to have her prize snatched away. And she knew that Erelah had been talking about her, telling secrets.

  Not there. Not there.

  She reached a quivering hand for the circuit node, then withdrew, uncertain. Jon would not let her have the soldering iron. Nothing that could cut or burn.

  “Erelah.”

  She flinched. But she said nothing and wiped her chin against the collar of her rumpled clothes.

  “Erelah. What is it?”

  And Jon was standing across the table from her.

  She looked up at him. “Oh. It was you.”

  He seemed so lost, hurt. It was written in the slope of his shoulders and the red-rimmed eyes.

  You’ve come to the right place, brother. This is where broken things congregate.

  “Who else would it be?” His forehead wrinkled. “Tristic? You can hear her?”

  “Mostly all the time now. But right now, she’s quiet. I think she got hurt at the station. Good.”

  Erelah’s gaze slipped away, looking over his shoulder to watch the shadow traipse past him: dark hood, stooped, a flash of pale skin. She focused with such intensity that Jon even turned to look.

  She knew he would not see.

  Jon rounded the table, taking a seat at her side. He grabbed her hands. Erelah quickly slipped them from his reach and drew them back inside the cuffs of her shirt.

  “What is it? Tell me, and I’ll help you,” Jon said.

  Tears blurred her vision. Once more, the darkness over his shoulder drew her attention.

  She looked down and whispered through clenched teeth. “Make her stop.”

  “Who?”

  “Tristic.”

  She was taking a chance even saying the name. After all, she could hear everything.

  “How do we make it stop, baby sister?”

  Erelah slid back along the bench. “I’ve said too much.”

  “There’s no one else here.” His face clouded with doubt.

  He thinks I’m mad. Oh. If only it were that simple. She shrugged, a jerky, hitched motion.

  She looked up at him, feeling her eyes fill with tears. “I don’t know. I try to be strong. But I can’t fight forever.”

  Jon propped an elbow on the table and rested his forehead in his hand. “I’m failing everyone.”

  After a long silence, Erelah turned her focus back to the remains of the coms array. It felt better to watch her hands work.

  “You hurt her, you hurt your Ty…but she knows what to do with pain. Like when she hurt her wrist. ‘You turn it into something else.’ Just like the drillers would teach,” she said quietly, pulling a nest of tangled wires from the casing. “I wish someone had taught me that.”

  “The drillers?” Jon asked, frowning. “Did Sela tell you that?”

  “Like she would ever talk to me .” Erelah rolled her eyes. “Just something I saw in her head.”

  She was vaguely aware of his expectant silence before she withdrew inward, fingers nimbly tracing the circuits of the damaged beacon. It felt better to focus on this than on the thing at the other side of her brain, scratching and digging for a way in.

  Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.

  Sela grunted, trying to stretch the clinging mesh of the cell
seal across her shoulder. It was hopeless, awkward. She had used a pain dampener from the stolen medikit on her injured wrist. Already the swelling had receded as it set to work fixing the sprain, but it had temporarily deadened the sensation in her right hand. She gave up, and the free end of the binding flopped uselessly against her skin.

  The remaining contents of the kit lay scattered across the bunk beside her. There were meds and supplies that would have cared for her team on Tasemar. Not to mention a field surgery kit that could have kept Atilio alive.

  Possibly Valen. In the hands of the right person.

  That thought was black and bitter. She lashed out with her free arm. Vials and metal clamps scattered across the room. A tincture bottle cracked, spilling the smell of antiseptic into the small space.

  There was no breathing or counting to ten. Not for this.

  Perhaps that was a story Veradin made up too.

  Her breath came in angry hitches.

  Nothing made sense. There was no goal, nor glory. There was only running and hiding and secrets.

  Perhaps it would be better to find a Eugenes colony before they traveled much deeper into the Reaches. She could go there, make up whatever story she wanted.

  And what? Wind up like Lineao? Studying to be a priestess to the Fates? The thought of living in celibate purity on the same little world wedged in the asscrack of nowhere made her cringe.

  “Here. Let me.” Jon was there, kneeling before her.

  His hands were warm and firm as he pressed the filament to the tender flesh of her shoulder. She felt the mild stinging of the pharms and binding agents. Their warmth spread down into her arm. With it, her fury subsided as well.

  “Better?” he asked.

  Her answer was a terse nod, her gaze trained on a dark corner of the room. She started to insert her arm back into the sleeve of her ruined shirt. Jon stopped her. He made a quieting noise even as she drew in a breath to protest.

  “You’ll just…undo everything,” he cautioned. He helped her tug the sleeve back over her arm and closed the shirt’s fasteners for her.

  Sela prodded the ruined kit with her toe. A glass vial rolled across the floor to strike the doorframe. A sick feeling seeped in around her edges. Trashing the kit had been a childish thing to do.

  “This kit is newly manufactured. Something D Company would never have been issued. There are things in it I don’t even know how to use. But Atilio…he might have. Perhaps even things that could have helped Valen,” she said, head bowed, knowing the uselessness of the thought.

  Jon stepped over the spilled bottles and bandages, purposefully ignoring to the evidence of her rage. He sat on the edge of the bunk across from her. “Valen was a good soldier.”

  “He was my friend. I could trust him.” She looked at him, unflinching. “With anything. And he trusted me.”

  His pained expression was rewarding, in a petty way. But it felt just as wrong as what she had done to the kit. She leaned against the metal frame of the bunk and experimentally stretched her shoulders, flexed her neck. The throb in her shoulder was subsiding.

  Things were always so clear when she was angry or in pain. The cooling aftermath was so much more nebulous and difficult to navigate.

  The Cass thrummed around them in its uneven, aged timing.

  “The refueling wasn’t complete,” Jon said. “But we can stretch what we have for some time if we’re careful.”

  She shut her eyes at the refreshed rage his words provoked. He was talking around everything that had just happened.

  “Don’t do that. Don’t confess this enormous truth and then pretend it never happened.” It was a struggle to make her voice even.

  “I hurt you. And I’m sorry. Forgive me,” he said.

  Sela felt him watching her expectantly. She finally turned to him.

  “Hurt. Pain. I know how to deal with those. That’s one of the first things the drillers teach you in the kennels.” She gave a humorless smile. “This hurt is…different. But all wounds heal, Jon. Even this one. And at a moment like this, I can understand why there are rules for interaction, why there is Decca. It would be easier to say that I wish I had never met Jonvenlish Veradin.”

  Eyes shut and head bowed, Jon blew out a sigh. “Ty—”

  “But then,” Sela leaned across the space to him. Hesitantly, she reached out. Her fingers moved under his chin, tilting his face up. She held his eyes with her own. Her voice was barely above a whisper. “I would have never known all the times with you that aren’t like this. I would not give those moments up for anything.”

  The bunks were narrow, not meant for two. Afterward, Sela lay in one, Jon lay in another, separated by the slender passage into the room. She watched the quiet, regular rise and fall of his bare chest picked out by the dim light from the corridor and decided he was asleep. She reached into the darkness of the floor between the bunks, seeking her discarded clothes.

  His hand seized her forearm.

  “What’re you doing?” His voice was drowsy.

  “Getting dressed. If we’re done here—”

  “Done?” His voice flared with annoyance. “Ty, this isn’t a rec suite. And I’m not some random grunt.”

  “I know. And I’ve never been in a rec suite with a random grunt,” Sela shot back. She felt foolish and exposed. This wasn’t how this was supposed to have happened. In fact, it was never supposed to happen.

  “That’s not what I meant. Just…” He raked a hand through his hair and blew out an exasperated sigh. Sitting up, he tugged her trousers away from her, tucked them under his pillow and lay back down.

  “What’re you doing?”

  “Sleeping. So are you. Lay down.”

  He pulled her toward his bunk and rolled onto his side, making room.

  “But the nav—”

  “Can wait. Sleep. Now.”

  Stiffly, she climbed in beside him. His hand pulled against her hips, forcing her to lean back into his chest. His breath stirred the hair on the top of her head.

  They lay in silence until Jon broke it. “The moment I first saw you, I never thought this would happen. I mean us here…like this. I had just arrived on the Storm King . You were some name on a list until then. There was a briefing to meet all the platoon leaders.”

  “Command orientation and reassessment,” Sela corrected. “You were eight minutes late.”

  “Of course you remember that,” he returned. She nudged him, realizing he was teasing her.

  “Throughout most of it, you made a very specific point of not looking at me. Like I didn’t exist.”

  “Protocol dictates…” she began.

  “Oh don’t try that, Ty. You were pissed. Admit it.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “But that was fine by me because what do you say to a goddess when they look right at you? Especially one that’s pissed that you’re taking their job.”

  “I never meant to—”

  “Of course you did. Liar.” He laughed softly. “You were talking to Valen and ignoring me. And I remember watching you, just wishing I could stop everything, freeze it right there. Because it was perfect. You looked so…perfect. That cramped briefing room that was always too warm, the chairs designed by a sadist, all of it. Perfect. Because you were there.”

  “Perfect?” she laughed. “Hardly.”

  His voice seemed to fold slightly when he added, “I know it sounds silly to you.”

  “It doesn’t sound silly.”

  She turned, granting him her profile. Sela had never thought an ordinary moment could be filled with beauty or mystery. She would have certainly never thought anyone would describe her as a goddess.

  What do you say to that?

  She could tell him of the hot, incense-ridden air of Tasemar and watching the Storm King draw its ponderous arc across the night sky and wishing him there at her side. Her thoughts drifted to Atilio, who had also rested in that same room, dying.

  The words came out before she could stop the
m: “When I saw Atilio, I knew he was my son.”

  Veradin drew in a quiet breath. But he said nothing. His hand flexed on her waist. He kissed her shoulder.

  “I was a just booter when I had him. Fifteen standard.”

  “Fifteen?” he asked. But he had to have known. “That’s young for an assigned breeding.”

  “It wasn’t. It was an…error.”

  He shifted against her.

  “Ty, you don’t have to talk about—”

  “In the kennels, we were given pharms: caps, jectors. I don’t know what all. Vaxes. Meds to combat fatigue. It was just something that was done. We never asked. There was even this thing implanted under the skin. Right here.” She shifted, pointing to an area just below her navel. “Like a tracer, but just the females. The thing made me puke all the time. One day when the drillers weren’t watching our cluster, I dug it out.”

  “Cluster?”

  “The drillers called us that. It fit, I think. A cluster. Not yet deserving of the term troop or platoon.”

  They had been nothing but a mass of gangly limbs and unmolded minds, just starting to reach adult height, which for Sela was tall compared to the others. It made her stand out, as did the light amber of her eyes and the fine symmetry of her features. In a kennel, standing out was not often a good thing. It could bring the wrong sort of attention.

  “I was selected as cluster leader for drills and special ops mock-ups. Sometimes I was a fumbling skew, but more often I did well.”

  “I could see that,” he offered. “That you did well from the start.”

  Sela recalled a driller telling her in a half-mocking tone of her natural talent to lead. Something a booter should never take seriously. The drillers alternated insults and encouragements from rack out until rack in.

  “Except Stelvick, an alpha in my cluster. He saw me as a threat, I think. He had the heart of a killer without the soul of a soldier’s discipline to temper it.”

  “Stelvick?” His tone incredulous, damning. “They named one of you after that beast?”

  Sela nodded. “Fitting, if you knew him. It’s like they know sometimes what we’ll become when they name us.”