by J. N. Chaney
“That’s about what the doctor said to expect. Pretty blurry is totally normal with how badly your eyes were damaged.” She paused, and Magnus sensed she wanted to say more but restrained herself.
“How badly were they damaged?”
Valerie lowered her head.
“What’s—what’s wrong, Mrs. Stone?” he asked.
“Valerie, please,” she said, placing a hand on his forearm. It was the first time he’d been touched by a woman like that in… How long has it been, Magnus?
“Your face was badly burned. But the skin reconstruction was fairly straightforward. Your eyes, however, were much worse.”
“They’re totally bioteknia now,” Piper said.
“Piper!”
Magnus swallowed. “What?”
“They’ll just be blurry until they take,” Piper continued.
“Young lady, back to your quarters right this instant!”
“Yes, Mama.” Her voice was sullen. “Goodbye, Mr. Lieutenant Magnus, sir.”
Magnus tried to speak, but he was too stunned by this news—assuming it was true, of course. No sense getting worked up over a misunderstanding. He listened as Piper’s footfalls faded away.
As far as Magnus could tell, he and Valerie were alone in what appeared to be some sort of makeshift recovery room. He heard people talking somewhere else in whatever building they were in, and the strange smells of medical cleaning solution and skiff fuel mixed in his nostrils.
“You’ll have to pardon her. She’s—”
“Is she right?” He swallowed. “Did they go bioteknia on me? For my eyes, I mean? Is she right?”
“Yes, Lieutenant,” Valerie said without hesitating.
Magnus looked down. Blood rushed to his head, his pulse quickening. Adrenaline, something he’d spent years learning to subdue, punched into his system unabated.
“Lieutenant, I understand that—”
“No, you don’t understand, Mrs. Stone.”
“I understand that you will never be allowed back in the service, Lieutenant.”
Magnus looked up at her. She did understand. “I’m sorry,” he replied.
“So am I.”
Magnus felt his breaths coming in short bursts, like the staccato blaster fire of his MAR30 on high frequency. He was having trouble staying in control. This was the end. Not of his life, of course. He supposed he would eventually be grateful for that. To never serve in the Republic Marines again, however, was just as bad as being dead, at least as far as he was concerned.
It didn’t feel real. None of it did. Maybe he was still dreaming, still shaken from the orbital. He’d wake up soon. This was all just a bad dream.
“Lieutenant? You, okay?”
Magnus looked up. Her features were still a mess of fuzzy shapes. “I just need a second.”
Her hand moved along his arm, rubbing it gently. It felt good, comforting. Loving.
Get a grip, Magnus. You have to pull yourself together, Hunter. Own the field… but only Recon Marines truly OTF. Now that I’m not Recon, what will I own?
This was all splick. He’d talk to Colonel Caldwell and get a release to go back downrange. He shouldn’t be panicking like this. He wasn’t some noob—he was a Midnight Hunter with the 79th Reconnaissance Battalion.
But he knew the regs. Human tissue couldn’t be hacked, but bioteknia could. No one had ever done it, but it didn’t mean that some alien species wouldn’t jeopardize an entire battalion of modified Marines and win a major victory all because they had superior code splicers. There were no exceptions to the regulations. Ever.
“Who made the call?” Magnus asked.
“I did,” Valerie replied without hesitation.
Magnus blinked several times, tears welling in his eyes. From the pain. She knew what it meant for him, yet she’d still made the call. This woman he’d only just met. She had forever altered the course of his life without even consulting him. That was what the rich did, wasn’t it? They controlled whatever they wanted to and made all the decisions, no matter how or whom their decisions affected. He’d seen it play out a thousand times in worlds all over the galaxy. He’d just never thought it would happen to him. Though it seems fitting payback for your past sins, doesn’t it, Magnus?
“Neural cohesion to the optic nerve was deteriorating in both eyes,” Valerie said.
“I don’t want to hear about it,” he replied, waving her off. He couldn’t take her reasoning. There was nothing she could say that would explain it away.
“The cellular tissue was dying, Lieutenant. Faster than we could regenerate it.”
“No.” Magnus shook his head.
“It was bioteknia or—”
“No!”
“Or you would be blind forever.”
“You had no right to choose for me!”
Silence fell in the room like a heavy snowfall. Magnus’s heartbeat thumped in his ears. His skin was hot, sweat beading on his forehead. But you know all about choosing for others, don’t you, Magnus?
“You had no right to choose for me,” he repeated, softer now.
“You’re right.”
“Huh?” Magnus looked up at her. Was she wiping away tears?
“You’re right. I didn’t have the right to choose for you. But I had a responsibility to fight for you.” She pinched her nose then wiped it with the back of her hand. “Fighting is… well, it’s—”
“It’s ugly.”
Valerie huffed. “Yeah. It’s ugly. And you’re just making the best call you can with the information you have. Either I let a Marine go blind for the rest of his life, or I give him a shot at seeing again. Either way, you were out. I just chose to give you a chance to stay downrange somewhere else in some other way.”
Valerie took a deep breath, and Magnus could see her shoulders sag. She moved away from him and sat down on a stool. The woman was shaken up.
Magnus sniffed and shoved his upper lip beneath his nose, fighting back tears. He looked down at his hands folded in his lap, bandages wrapping select fingers, knuckles, and both wrists. He flexed his hands, balled them into fists, then opened them again.
He wanted to be mad at her, whoever she really was. Valerie clearly knew what she was talking about medically. And based on the way she’d handled his MZ25 outside the village, she had military training too. This couldn’t be easy for her, and he’d been too hard on her. Were he in the same position, he would have picked the same course of action. And she would probably be just as pissed as he was if she were a career Marine.
The proverbial snowfall in the room continued to swallow all the sound save her soft sniffs.
“Thank you,” Magnus finally said.
Valerie looked up. “What?”
“Thank you. For choosing for me to see again.”
She stood up and walked over to him, her hands reaching down for his. “You’re welcome. And thank you for saving our lives.”
“You’re welcome. I only wish that I could’ve saved your—”
“There was nothing you could have done,” Valerie said.
Magnus’s mind flashed back to Piper and the burst of energy that had exploded from her pod on the Bull Wraith. Then he remembered pulling back the blood-splattered canopy on her father’s capsule and burying his body in the wastes of Oorajee.
“Your daughter… is she…?”
“Not now,” Valerie whispered. “Another time. When it’s safer.”
Heavy footsteps fell in the corridor outside the recovery room, and Valerie pulled her hands from Magnus’s. A large shadow filled the room, and Magnus was aware that a man stood over Valerie.
“The gods smile favorably on you, buckethead,” said the deep-bass voice that Magnus remembered from his last stop on the desert planet.
“Abimbola,” Magnus said, squinting.
“He has not lost his memory, I see,” Abimbola said.
“No, he has not.” Valerie pulled a data pad from a countertop. “All vitals look stable, brain activity n
ormal. The bioteknia eyes are taking and should be fully integrated within the next few hours.”
“Just in time, then.”
“In time for what?” Magnus asked.
Abimbola waved a hand, ignoring the question. “Can you believe how our paths have crossed again, and so soon? First, I save you from the Jujari and bombs, and now, I save you from more Jujari and an orbital strike from your own Republic. The gods either want you dead or want me to protect you.”
“Let’s hope it’s the latter,” Magnus said.
“Yet you continue to surround yourself with beautiful women.” Abimbola gestured at Valerie. “Where do you find them? What could you possibly possess that makes them fawn after you?”
“There’s no fawning going on here,” Valerie protested.
“First, the Luma princess of Elonia, and now this epiphany from Capriana.” The black giant of a man leaned away and regarded Valerie. Then he waved a heavy finger at Magnus and stepped closer to him. Magnus could smell the metal from the grenades in the bandolier Abimbola wore across his chest. He could also make out a long facial scar that ran to the giant black man’s collarbone. “You know, I second-guessed my decision not to kill you,” he said, flipping something—one of his poker chips—in the air and catching it. “My wall needed one more bucket. But I have never seen a man fail so miserably yet attract so many females as you. I think you are a marvel worth permitting to live, at least for a little while longer until I figure you out. I would do it for the fair dau Lothlinium alone.”
The mention of Awen brought a sudden pang to Magnus’s heart. Since waking, he hadn’t thought of her once, yet only a few short days before, she was all he’d been concerned with. Her delicate face and violet eyes evoked a longing that made him—uncomfortable. She represented everything he was not. He knew she didn’t understand why he pulled his trigger, and he certainly couldn’t understand why she put so much faith in seeking peace with killers. Still, he felt something for her, perhaps more than he cared to admit.
“What am I in time for?” Magnus asked, hoping to redirect the conversation.
“Sharp, this one,” Abimbola said to Valerie. “You were most likely right to save him and let him see again.”
“In time for…?” Magnus prompted a third time.
“Your friends are alive,” Abimbola said. “Well, at least some of them, we think.”
Magnus blinked, hope rising. “Dutch?” His mind raced to remember the others again—things were still a little foggy. He looked at Valerie for confirmation. “Gilder, Haney, and Nolan?”
“Ha!” Abimbola clapped. The sound made Magnus see stars. “No, they are resting already. Seems they will make full recoveries. I do not mean those friends.”
“I don’t understand,” Magnus replied, trying to will his new eyes to focus on the warlord.
“Of course you don’t. Your friends—your fellow bucketheads. My Marauders think some of them survived the ambush in the mwadim’s palace.”
“Wait. You’re saying my Hunters are alive?”
38
“Where am I?” In a panic, Awen tried to sit up.
“Easy, love. Easy,” a woman’s voice said.
Awen felt a hand on her shoulder and another behind her head. She looked up and saw Sootriman’s tan face and consoling eyes. “Sootriman?”
“Yes, love. It’s me.”
“You’re—you’re alive.”
“No small thanks to you,” Sootriman said, stroking the top of Awen’s head.
Awen let out a sigh. “The last thing I remember was…”
They’d been in the rotunda, separated from Sootriman and a man. Kane… and the other being. A chill ran down Awen’s spine. The memory summoned a sense of fear she’d never known before.
She fought to distance herself from the dark face while trying to piece together the events in the rotunda. Awen had rescued Sootriman and blown apart the rocks blocking the archway. She’d done something in the Unity that she’d never attempted before. It had spent her. And it had scared her. He’d scared her.
Then Awen remembered TO-96 picking her up. He carried her away from the light of a thousand suns and from the black-eyed monster.
“The rotunda—it exploded.”
“It did, yes,” Sootriman said. “But we managed to get clear. Something shielded us from the blast until we could find shelter.”
“Shielded us?”
“We thought maybe you had something to do with it.”
“No, I…” Awen thought back. She didn’t remember putting up a wall. She’d been too exhausted. Maybe the memory was slow in coming, however. Or maybe it was… a reflex. “I don’t know.”
“No need to worry, love. We’re all safe now, including you, and that’s what counts.”
“Ezo and TO-96 too?”
“Ezo and Tee-Oh too,” Sootriman replied. Her smile was warm and her eyes friendly, in stark contrast to the ruthless though beautiful warlord Awen had met on Ki Nar Four.
“I’m so thirsty. Can I sit up?”
“Slowly, yes.” Sootriman helped Awen sit up.
She looked around the room. Along two sides of the room, large windows lunged away from the dusty floor and connected with the ceiling at an angle farther out. Purplish early-morning—or maybe evening—light poured through, giving way to a panoramic view of the jungle-covered city below.
Awen felt like she was in a large corner office in some exotic administrative building. It smelled musty. Spiral floral designs covered the marble-like floors, and the ceiling was a patchwork of recessed honeycombs that had probably once housed lights. Strange-looking furniture was arranged along the walls, faded and dusty from ages of neglect. Awen was lying on some sort of cushions stacked on a desk in a makeshift bed. Her blanket and pillow looked like they were from the Indomitable—the ship that had brought them to the metaverse. She wore an oversized captain’s jacket, a tattered T-shirt, and green cargo pants, all surely holdovers from the Indomitable. Suddenly, Awen reached for the necklace around her throat, fearing it was gone.
“It’s still there,” Sootriman said. “Don’t worry.”
Awen breathed a sigh of relief. The Luma medallion offered her some sense of assuredness to this otherwise chaotic existence. “Where are we?”
“Tee-Oh eventually found a way out of the rotunda’s tunnels and got us situated in this space. Ezo and I thought it would be more comfortable for you as you slept. Here,” Sootriman said, offering Awen a canteen of water. “Drink this.”
“Thanks.” Awen sipped slowly. The canteen looked like it was from the Indomitable too. “How long have I been sleeping, then?”
Sootriman took the canteen and capped it. “About a week.”
“A week?”
“Tee-Oh will have the exact duration, of course. The days are about nine hours longer here, so that takes some getting used to. We’re still trying to use common time so we don’t hurt our bodies.”
“A week?” Awen repeated, looking at her surroundings again.
“Seems you expended a lot of energy to do what you did for me.”
Awen blinked at Sootriman. Was the effort to save Sootriman’s life really so costly to my body and soul? Did I hurt myself somehow?
Sootriman reached out and held Awen’s hand with her own warm, strong one. “Thank you, Awen. Thank you for saving my life. Thank you for saving all of our lives.”
Awen looked up at the woman, whose wavy brown hair glistened in the lavender sunlight. “You’re welcome.” She swallowed. “So, where are they now—Ezo and Ninety-Six? And why didn’t you just take me back to the ship if it’s been a week?”
Sootriman pulled a tall stool over and sat, finding the appropriate piece of furniture for her generous figure. She’d ditched the red-and-gold dress Awen remembered from Ki Nar Four, but she still opted to keep her legs bare. Now she wore a pair of green shorts cut from military pants, a black shirt that she’d pulled the sleeves from, and a pair of black trek boots—all items that
seemed to have been pulled from the Indomitable.
Sootriman brushed strands of hair over her ear and took Awen’s hand again. “The Indomitable was disabled.”
“Disabled?”
“The boys salvaged what they could, but we couldn’t go back.”
“Who? Who would have…?” Awen’s mind filled in the blanks. “Kane.”
“That’s what the recovered holo-footage showed.”
“You said Ezo and Ninety-Six were able to salvage some things,” Awen said. “Why didn’t they just blow it up?”
“If it were me?” Sootriman put a hand to her chest. “I would have done it to insult my victims.”
Awen stared at her for a beat. “Remind me never to cross you.”
Sootriman nodded and winked. “You’re beautiful and smart. My kind of woman.”
She thinks I’m beautiful? Awen thought, astonished. Sootriman wasn’t exactly the type of person to dole out compliments haphazardly, so that was high praise coming from the likes of her. That, or Sootriman felt sorry for her.
Either way, I’ll take it right now, Awen thought. Then the deeper implications of the Indomitable’s condition hit her. “Wait a second. That means we’re stranded.”
“It does.” Sootriman took a deep breath. “That it does.”
“Do they—do we—have a plan, then?”
“Not yet. The boys are out exploring the city for that very reason. Hoping to find solutions. They had to wait a little bit at first. Seems that Kane and his troopers were wandering the city, too, looking for who knows what. But after a few days, we watched their dropships leave, and then their starships left the system—most likely went back to our universe.”
“So they didn’t suspect we survived the explosions in the rotunda?”
“It’s doubtful. TO-96 said that madman put enough trinitex in that tunnel to punch a small hole in a Goliath-class destroyer. Even if we survived, they probably figured we wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon without the Indomitable and would live out our days here.”
“We’ll get back,” Awen said, clenching her fists. “We have to get back.” She thought of Willowood and the rest of the Luma, wondering how many had remained loyal to the order and how many had been seduced by So-Elku. Then she thought of Kane and shivered. There was no telling what that man was capable of. Clearly, he was looking for something here in Itheliana that he needed—that he wanted for some destructive purpose. He knew about this place, but how?
