Call of Courage: 7 Novels of the Galactic Frontier

by C. Gockel

  Muscles ached as if she had been running for days. It was a good soreness, reinforcing that sense of being whole. Her fear, once a constant companion, had become a blur on a dim horizon. That the dank place in her head where Tristic had once thrived was gone.

  Most importantly, she felt safe .

  When Jon smiled, his expression seemed lost. “You had me so scared.”

  “I’m sorry.” She looked down, tracing an intricate woven pattern in the bedclothes. “I wasn’t in control. The things she made me say…do. I’m so sorry. Jon, I don’t expect you to understand. You thought I was mad and I guess I was. That is what Tristic did to me.”

  “Tell me she’s gone for good.”

  She nodded. “Gone for good.”

  He embraced her.

  Erelah gently pushed him back. “As long as Tristic is alive, I’m not safe. And if you are with me, you’re not either.”

  “Then we run. We keep running until she’s dead. Ty was right. We can wait Tristic out in the Reaches where she can’t touch you. I’ve found a place: Hadelia. There’s a large Eugenes population. It’ll be easy to blend in—”

  “You still don’t get it, do you? What makes you think she won’t follow us there ?” she said. “She has the plans to the j-drive. Think of it— vessels that can travel anywhere with no reliance on flex points. And not just strykers. Carriers. Freighters. If she’s not done it already, she soon will.”

  “Then what? What are you saying?”

  “We end this all. Now. On our terms.”

  “How, Erelah?” His expression was a mix of frustration and astonishment. “We have one ship, a busted antique at that.”

  “Two ships,” she corrected. “We have the Jocosta .”

  “Are you listening to yourself? One stryker against Ravstar. That’s just—”

  She sighed, irritated. “Hear me out.”

  “No.” Jon rose, turning for the doorway. “We’re going into the Reaches. Just as soon as you’re good to travel. In this, you don’t get a say. You’re in no condition to make a decision like that.”

  “Jon, please listen.” She sat up from the bedding. Perhaps she stood too quickly. The room tilted as she took an unsteady step. Jon caught her just as her knees folded.

  “See?” he admonished. “You want to go on the offensive, and you can barely make it across the room.” He settled her back on the bed. “Get some rest, baby sister. We have some traveling to do.”

  Erelah watched him stride from the room.

  “Forgive me, Jon. But I tried,” she said under her breath.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Sela paced the small room Lineao had provided for sleeping quarters. Not long ago, he had appeared with his message: Erelah had recovered. The Sceeloid had succeeded in ending Tristic’s possession.

  She received this news with bitter relief. It had been easy to heal the girl, but Atilio had never benefited from the same attention.

  Where was Lineao’s convenient healing Sceeloid then?

  A tepid guilt came just as quickly on the tail of that thought.

  It is done. Now Jon will have his sister.

  It made Sela’s decision that much easier.

  “She’s going to be all right,” Jon announced from the doorway.

  She looked up, and he was suddenly next to her, pulling her into a warm embrace.

  “Yes. Lineao told me.”

  His hands settled on her hips. He spoke in an elated rush. “She’s good. I mean. She’s a little beat up, but back to normal. Thank you, Ty.”

  Before she could react, he gathered a lingering kiss. Under it, she felt her resolve begin to melt.

  She maneuvered out of his embrace. “For what? Returning us to hostile territory? Or having you divulge an identity that is best hidden?”

  “Well. Since you put it that way. All of it I guess,” he said with a low chuckle. It sounded so normal. It was the sound of old things that could never return to them.

  “You thought to come here. It was genius.” He stepped closer. His hands slipped under the hem of her jacket and settled with distracting warmth against her waist.

  She was very much aware of the soft slope of the bed at the back of her knees.

  No. That wasn’t going to happen again.

  “It was a tactical risk that paid off,” she said, pulling away. “We were fortunate.”

  “Fates, I love it when you act terse and practical.” He cocked his head, hands on his hips. “It turns me on.”

  Sela frowned, realizing his sarcasm.

  “What’s going on? Talk to me.”

  “How long do Humans live, Jon? Do you know?”

  “What?” he exhaled, irritation growing. “I don’t know. Ninety years maybe.”

  “Eugenes live to be twice that, unaltered. My metabolism was engineered to replace my cells more efficiently to facilitate healing. If I were not a soldier, I could live to be two hundred, perhaps.”

  “So?” He moved closer. “You honestly think that either of us will even make it to ninety? We’ll be lucky to make it to next year.”

  “That’s not what I’m trying to say.”

  “Then let’s hear it.”

  “I’m afraid,” she said. “No…I’m terrified .”

  “And you think I’m not?” he countered. “That doesn’t change how I feel about you. I love you.”

  “Don’t say that. You don’t get to say that. Not to me,” she said, suddenly furious. “Can’t you see? What purpose would it serve but disaster? I loved my son. I watched him die. I could do nothing to save him. I loved my friend. And he is gone too. And you? How can I keep you safe when I failed so many already? I could not bear to lose you.”

  He pulled her close and rested his forehead against hers. “Sela, I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, or five minutes from now. But you’re not responsible for me. How can I make you understand?”

  “You are my vulnerability. My weakness. And I am yours. How can you actually believe we could survive that?” She slipped free of his embrace.

  He had to see that. They both acted irrationally where the other was concerned.

  “We can try,” he offered. “Please.”

  “This…us…whatever it is. It can’t happen anymore. There is too much at stake. It can’t continue…not like this.”

  It had been impossible for Sela to sleep. Her last encounter with Jon replayed in the annoying clarity of her memory. In the middle of the night, she found herself in the empty courtyard. A dry wind from the desert kicked up, blowing sparks from the torches into the air. She watched the dance of these embers as they were lofted on the winds and snuffed out.

  She heard the crunch of pebbles underfoot near the weathered pagoda that marked the yard’s entrance. The sounds were careless and loud. This was no one with training for stealth. A slender dark shape disengaged from the shadows. A civilian. Perhaps one of the monks. But definitely no one that had business in this space at night.

  Sela tensed, her hand settling on the A6. She snapped the fastener open on its holster.

  The figure reached the center of the courtyard. The light of the sputtering torches carved the graceful arc of pale shoulders under long dark hair.

  She released an irritated sigh. Erelah.

  A secret part of Sela wished it had been Jon. She forced the thought away.

  “Commander Tyron?” Erelah called out. The girl turned, scanning the courtyard.

  Sela retreated into the shadows, certain the girl had not discovered her. She toyed with the idea of waiting her out. She was in no danger of being observed. The night was moonless. The light of the torches did not reach this far.

  “Commander? Are you out here?”

  Sela rolled her eyes. Why did the smartest people seem to lack common sense?

  Not the best way to keep your presence secret when essentially a whole planet had declared the Regime an enemy. She doubted the Tasemarin would discern between some renegade cresters and the enemy they re
presented.

  “Keep your voice down,” Sela said in a normal tone. “Not everyone here is your ally.”

  Erelah startled, whirled to face Sela’s black corner of the yard.

  She disengaged from her spot and strode forward, ignoring the itch between her shoulder blades that open spaces like this seemed to provoke. It was as if a marksman hovered nearby, real or imagined, with his sights on that very spot, ready to pull the trigger. More evidence of battle burn. Even when there was no threat, you still imagined it.

  As Erelah moved toward her, Sela was struck by the dramatic change in the girl.

  The once-tangled dark hair was arranged into a tight plait at the base of her neck. Distress no longer pinched the younger woman’s face. Her posture seemed formal, almost regal.

  This was a different person entirely. Except for the borrowed Tasemarin garb, she could have been any high- ranking Regime officer, cool and polished. Had Sela not known Erelah’s true nature, she would have obeyed her orders without pause, and perhaps even regarded her with envy.

  At that moment, Sela understood why First thought Humans to be such a threat. They were the narrow end of the wedge. They looked and sounded like any Eugenes. But a weakness dwelled within them to be exploited by the Sceeloid. Just one sight-jacked Human infiltrator in command would mean the end of a campaign. An entire battlegroup could be compromised.

  “I was afraid you had left, Commander.”

  “Shouldn’t you be resting?” Sela asked, studying her. Erelah seemed to radiate control. But beneath it was an edginess. The girl would never seek her out for a social visit. She wanted something.

  “There’s no time for that. I think you would agree,” Erelah responded in Commonspeak under her arched High Eugenes accent. This was someone used to giving orders to servants and attendants. It brought an acrid roil to Sela’s gut. Her captain had been raised in the same house, but he had never used Erelah’s imperious tone. He spoke with ease in Common, not Erelah’s strained pretense: a high-born deigning to speak in a gutter tongue.

  “Would I?” Sela replied. “You reading my mind now?”

  “No.” Erelah faltered. “That’s not what I meant…”

  “You want something. What.” Sela moved closer in an unconscious move to intimidate. Oddly, the girl seemed taller than she recalled.

  “Only for you to hear me out.” To her surprise, Erelah stepped closer, challenging. The frenetic, unbalanced energy was gone. Where had that wild-looking wraith gone? Was she wedged somewhere beneath this refined glossy surface, scratching and pawing for freedom? Sela fought the urge to take a wary step back. Instead, she turned her body at an angle, rested her forearm on the grip of the A6.

  “You have every right to feel betrayed and angry considering everything that has happened. We have all lost so much.”

  “Lost?” Sela spat. “Do you know what I have lost?”

  Erelah recoiled. The move was slight but still satisfying. In response, Sela drew closer.

  “Valen, Pollus. Sergeant. Medals for valor, marksmanship. Six campaigns with him. Known him since the kennels. My only friend. And dead because of you .”

  “I did not take your sergeant’s life,” Erelah replied evenly.

  “All the same. He died for you.” Sela jabbed a finger into the girl’s shoulder. She allowed herself to be jostled but held firm.

  “Not for me,” Erelah answered. “To the Defensor, he was another tool, a piece at play in her game. A means to manipulate.”

  “I don’t think this is a game.”

  “To the Defensor, it is. You, Jon, and your sergeant. All parts of a game.” Her tone was matter of fact.

  “Oh? Then what does that make you ?” Sela countered, willing her to look away. But to her credit, Erelah did not.

  “I am the prize, the end game. Through me, she can live on, cheat death to recreate herself again and again.”

  “How?”

  “Why stop with just me when I am capable of bringing more life?” Her gaze drifted to the gravel at her feet. She folded her arms over her stomach. Sela felt a glimmer of pity for her as she imagined some bizarre gestation Tristic had planned for her. No one deserved that. She’d suffered a worse monster than Stelvick.

  “I don’t expect your forgiveness or pity. Nor do I deserve it,” Erelah said with a steely evenness. “But Jon…he needs you. He—”

  “You said you wanted something. What.” Jon. His name was a rusty hook in Sela’s heart. Pulling away would drag out the damage and pain, just as much as allowing it to stay in place. She stood at a precipice, unable to pick which pain to serve.

  Erelah moved closer, the way one approaches an unfamiliar animal, uncertain if it will bite or sting. “I come to you as an ally. And to ask your help.”

  “Tristic.”

  The girl flinched at the name as if speaking it aloud would conjure a poisonous god. “Even without her bond to me, she can still find me. She has eyes and ears everywhere. She controls her own army, her own fleet. She won’t stop until one of us is destroyed. Tyron, we can fix this. We can defeat her.”

  Sela swelled with rage at the very suggestion in the girl’s condescending Eugenes accent that they were somehow co-conspirators in this whole bloody adventure.

  Byproduct. That’s what Phex had called me.

  It was true. Everything that had happened so far was all because of Erelah. She and Jon were trapped in her disastrous wake.

  This was all her doing. Her fault.

  The answer was simple: End Erelah. Everything can end with her, here and now.

  Sela’s moves were automatic. The A6 was in her hand before she realized her actions. She gripped the sleek bundle of Erelah’s hair, pressing the weapon’s muzzle against the hatefully flawless skin of her white throat.

  “What if I end this all right now?” Sela asked. “You begged me to do it before.”

  Erelah gave an edgeless gasp but did not move or struggle. There was no satisfying fearful response from her. It was as if she knew Sela was acting in hollow rage with no real intent.

  “You won’t. As much as you may hate me. It won’t bring Valen back.”

  She was right, of course. With a dissatisfied grunt, Sela released her. She had slipped into letting her anger control her and felt a wave of regret, grateful Jon had not witnessed this.

  Erelah staggered back. The glossy composure faltered. She righted her clothes. Her hands were trembling. “What if I could offer you a chance at revenge against Tristic?”

  Sela dropped the A6 back into its holster. “Jon would never go along with whatever it is you’re selling. This is why you’ve come to me.”

  “It’s true.” Erelah gave a slight nod. “He refused to hear me out. He wants us to flee to the Reaches and hide.”

  “There’s no dishonor in that,” Sela said. “Not when you are outnumbered, outmatched.”

  “It won’t work,” Erelah insisted. “Tristic was willing to destroy an entire station for one person. Hundreds dead. She won’t stop there.”

  The girl was right. After Merx, Tristic would no longer care about keeping her operation quiet. She had moved beyond that. Somewhere in the deep black of the skies she was searching, ready to bring the full brunt of Ravstar down upon anything that stood in her way.

  “And?”

  Erelah shifted, a brief flash of surprise on her face. “The stryker I arrived in is special. It houses a modified singularity that can dramatically destabilize the energy field displacement caused by large velo engines.”

  “Like on a carrier.”

  “Or a vessel the size of Tristic’s ship, the Questic . Yes.”

  “Dramatically destabilize? You mean…”

  “With great violence and force,” Erelah said. “Tristic trusts no one. She keeps all research and materials on the Questic . We destroy it, we can destroy her…in more ways than one.”

  “Great violence and force . I just love the sound of that.” Sela arched an eyebrow. “But I just can’t hel
p but think there’s a catch. Where are we in relation to this ‘great violence and force’?”

  The girl bit her lip. “There is some risk involved, yes. But—”

  “And Jon…does he know of this risk?”

  “He doesn’t even want to try.”

  “You think nothing of asking me to betray my captain,” Sela snapped. “Do you think I would just…go along?

  “If you knew it was a means to keep him safe, yes. As a soldier, you understand sacrifice and duty. Perhaps in time Jon would—”

  “You don’t know a thing about me.” Sela stalked away, leaving Erelah to the growing shadows of the courtyard.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Sela stretched her neck, trying to work the stiffness out of it as she watched the slow progression of priests weave into the main altar room of the temple. She had spent the night curled in the grav bench on the command loft of the Cassandra, her frame too long to stretch out comfortably. Her neck now felt like a fist full of knots. Of course, she could have used the empty bunkroom. But the pleasant memory it held for her had turned bitter at its edges. She needed none of that softness. And would confess, if confronted, that she felt somehow she did not deserve it.

  She had never really had a space of her own before. She had always been housed with others in a squadbay. Her sleep cycles were filled with the sounds of them snoring or talking in the restful dark. Being in the unnerving quiet of planetside, without the background mutter of engines rumbling underfoot, put her on edge. At least the interior of the Cass was familiar terrain. However, her sleep was shallow, restless. And in it, something quite odd had happened.

  Sela had dreamed.

  Not an unusual occurrence in itself. But her dreams were always a rehashing of memory, a recall of the day’s events. This one had been very different.

  In it, she sat beside Atilio on the battered grav couch. He was healthy and whole, radiating such peace as if he were painted with light. He knew her as his mother.

  “There are places I was never meant to see,” he explained with the perfect logic of dreams. He picked through the screens of the navsys, finally settling on one. But the destination was odd. It was not an ordinary FP, but a dead node. “You can be free. You never failed me, Sela.”