part0062

The runner was a welcome sight, abused-looking though it was. It graced the field in the riot of rust-colored dust kicked up by its engines. Nearby, a single stryker flitted down like a fragile insect. It had also seen better days.

Sela helped Valen carry Atilio up the ramp, the bag sagging into a boneless crescent under his lifeless weight.

He had been such a tiny infant . She ground her molars.

The runner’s interior was jammed. The craft was meant to hold far fewer personnel and their gear. Gaining altitude would prove interesting.

Why just one runner for a nearly complete team? It didn’t add up, but exhaustion told her to be grateful.

Sela turned to Valen and shouted over the roar of the engines. “Overfull. I’ll take the jump seat on the stryker.”

“Stay, sir.” Her sergeant nudged her back up the ramp of the runner. “I’ll go. You need to be with them.”

He was right, of course. Valen was always good at reading such things. The team still needed her, as impossible as that felt at the moment.

She nodded. Her sergeant disappeared into a swirl of dust.

Exhausted, she slogged back up the ramp into the belly of the runner. It felt as if the gravity of this hot, dusty world had increased ten-fold and would not permit her to leave. The ramp whined closed behind her. She rounded the corner past the ops station and gave the pilot a quick nod. All set.

Turning, she collided with Captain Jonvenlish Veradin. The deck lurched with the runner’s burdened ascent. He grabbed her by the upper arms to steady them both.

“Captain,” her voice pulled into a low warning. He shouldn’t be there. It was not protocol. Having him personally oversee an extraction was too dangerous. She would never have allowed it, and he knew it.

“Sorry I’m late,” he replied with a lopsided smirk. “Got distracted.” It was his attempt at a joke.

Sela’s scowl was half-hearted. “Here just the same, sir.”

Another jolt shook the runner. He reached for the frame of an equipment bin to steady himself as she collided with his chest.

Sela righted herself and grabbed a handful of cargo webbing for support. He extended his hand, and she clasped his forearm, holding on perhaps a little too tightly.

“The casualty…” he began.

“Atilio, our meditech,” she said, barely audible over the protest of the engines.

“I’m sorry.” He squeezed her forearm once and let his hand drop. Of course, Veradin did not know. To Sela’s captain, the young meditech was one of many under his command.

“It’s worse than we know. Isn’t it, sir?”

There was a final lurch as the runner escaped the grip of Tasemar’s grav.

“That’s the unofficial motto, right?” Veradin allowed his lopsided smirk to re-emerge. He had a way of looking proud of himself and guilty at once.

Valen had said the vox code was an old one. The Storm King had sent only one troop runner and one stryker for air support. Things had gone wrong, vastly, if Veradin chanced his own life in this overloaded runner.

“What did you do, sir?” Sela pressed.

“I did what I had to, Ty.”

The moment the runner alit on the Storm King ’s hangar floor, the ramp unfolded to reveal two waiting officers: a lieutenant colonel and some Fleet skew. Sela had never seen either of them before. As they led Veradin away to the XO’s office, he gave Sela a glance over his shoulder. She sighed and shook her head.

She had gotten the story from Veradin—or his version of it— on the brief flight back on the runner. He had told her that the Hester , the Storm King ’s sister ship, had been delayed for an engagement in the Denor system. The Storm King ’s captain, a crester skew named Silva, had decided to abandon his post at Tasemar in favor of glory-seeking at Denor. After all, delivering breeders to take care of half-assed rebellions among the primitives of a fringe world was not going to carve his name in victory and raise his station. Silva had gauged, incorrectly, that the ground detachment he had essentially abandoned there could hold its own while the ‘King attended to this new, more interesting call.

But Veradin had refused to leave them. Her captain had “borrowed” a troop transport and a stryker to effect their retrieval. Of course, he’d had help. Quadra team, his security escort during his initial extraction, had taken control of the flight deck while Veradin and some Volunteers had commandeered the craft. It was impossible for a carrier to spool up with a hangar bay still active. So Veradin made sure it stayed that way.

Captain Silva then had no choice but to delay the departure of the Storm King . It would have been tantamount to political suicide for Silva to jeopardize a fellow crester, even a peasant Kindred like Veradin.

It explained why everyone on the flight deck seemed so enthralled with her team’s arrival. Yet even after Veradin and his escorts had disappeared into the bustle of the hangar, Sela realized they were still watching her.

She and her team had been given up for dead. Yet there they stood, immortal as the Fates. She didn’t feel like one, standing stiffly at attention as Atilio’s body was rolled out of the bay.

Ignoring the obvious stares of the Fleet skews, she made sure her two other wounded personnel were herded off to medical, despite their protests. The entire time, she sensed a nearly electric charge in the air. It was as if a storm had blown through, leaving not destruction, but disorder and edginess in the carrier. She sensed Veradin had been the harbinger of that storm.

“Valen!” Sela bellowed, staring down the few remaining onlookers, consisting of mostly Fleet techs. It worked. They went back to their duties and found less obvious means to stare.

She saw her sergeant turn away from what seemed to be an intense conversation with a female Fleet tech. He jogged around a pallet lifter laden with the munitions crates that had never made it to Tasemar’s surface.

“Who’s the tech?” she asked.

“Cade.” Valen canted his chin. “Our stryker escort. She’s actually a deck pilot, sir.”

“Incredible,” Sela muttered in disbelief. Veradin had somehow convinced or coerced a Fleet tech with rudimentary skills into piloting a stryker to land on Tasemar. Were it not so risky or stupid, she would have been impressed.

There was going to be fallout, she guessed. How bad and how far it reached was up to Veradin and his seemingly unparalleled ability to talk his way out of trouble.

Around them, the flurry of the hangar bay was increasing. The Storm King was prepping for spool-up. Velo drive spool-ups were big maneuvers, often requiring hours of prep time. Fleet relied on mapped flex points– specific locations, invisible to the naked eye, where the fabric of space stretched thin over a conduit passage– for travel between planetary systems governed by First. At flex points, velo drives enabled ships like the Storm King to punch a hole through that thinness and propel itself along the conduit. It required a great deal of energy, but reduced travel between systems to days or hours, instead of decades. It was a tedious and dangerous business. Calculations had to be perfect, with everything in precise order. Otherwise, the vessel could end up on the other side as so much debris.

Fleet techs and other support personnel were buttoning up in the hangar and in a hurry to make up for the delay. Infantry was definitely unwelcome to linger here.

She turned back to Valen. “Make sure D Company get some rack time. Once the captain is done getting jawed at, we’ll debrief with the team leaders. I’ve no doubt there’s going to be mop-up on this one.”

Valen shifted, raking a hand over the back of his bare head. “Sir, about that…”

“Captain Veradin mandated down time…for everybody. Next twenty hours. No exceptions.”

“He did what?” She glowered at Valen. The captain had said nothing to her before he was led away. Why would he subvert the chain of command? But she knew the answer. “When?”

“Just before…you know.” He jerked his chin in the direction of the XO’s office. It was plain Valen found the reaction to the captain’s stunt just as worrisome.

Her hand went to her vox: “Captain Veradin. Acknowledge.”

There was a long pause, then Veradin’s voice answered: “You need a break, Ty. Not just your team. You too.”

The vox line went silent.

Sela roamed the Storm King for nearly three hours—an easy thing to do on so large a carrier. Her course took her through the hab levels meant for infantry. The outer sections were the realm of tactical, engineering—places she had seldom needed to venture. A soldier could spend entire tours and never see anything more than the hab level and the hangars.

She did not exactly disobey Veradin’s order to take down time. After all, the captain had never specified how she was to take it. In truth, she was reluctant to return to the squadbay that she shared with her team, no matter how badly her body needed the rack time. She would not be able to bear their attention, feeling—despite their calls of gratitude and praise—that she had somehow failed them.

Of course, if she were actually hungry, she could eat. The commissary would mean more stares or worse, blatant questions from the other platoon commanders. It would mean talking about Veradin’s stunt, or about Atilio. She could seal herself in a rec suite to sleep. But she knew the moment she lay down and shut her eyes she would see Atilio’s face, or hear the priest’s voice.

Finally, Sela found herself lingering in the passage that led to the officer’s hab level. It was as close as she dared get to the restricted area that belonged to the cresters. She leaned against the wall of a shadowed alcove. Absently, she worried the sets of tarnished ident tags strung about her neck and very specifically avoided thinking about what had happened on Tasemar.

Two techs passed. They granted her a wide berth, but she did not miss their secretive, awe-struck expressions. One of them had the nerve to stare too long.

Sela drew her shoulders up and glowered back. He quickened his pace and looked away. The techs were frail things: pale with shaven heads, large dark eyes. Never had she witnessed a Fleet tech set foot planetside. It was rumored they were forbidden to do so, for fear of ‘tamination from simple air and soil.

Turning, she caught her ghost-like reflection in the darkened glass of the portal. Little wonder the tech had stared. Her dark blonde hair stood up in unruly spikes. Dirt coated her utilities. Her son’s blood had dried on her hands in maroon patches. She supposed that to them she appeared as some battlefield wraith.

She had already heard what the Fleet personnel had taken to calling her: Sela the Immortal. If she had not found it so pitiful, she would have laughed. As if she were some kind of legend. Hardly. A legend is supposed to take care of her soldiers. A hero would not watch her son die. Or have these alien thoughts swimming in her head.

Every soldier longed to be a hero, but the incident at Tasemar had brought her unwelcome attention. The stories of the daring retrieval launched by Captain Jonvenlish Veradin for his lowly breeder soldiers had spread quickly through the carrier. And now, just has she had predicted in the hangar, Sela waded through the fallout. There were whispers and stolen glances. There would be the inevitable rumors to circle about her taking rec with her captain. But they were just that—rumors. Decca forbade the pairing between soldier and commander and specifically against breeder and crester.

Sela was beginning to lose her resolve. The niggling voice of doubt had spread further, feeding her exhaustion and grief. She moved away from the wall, ready to slink back to the squadbay. Then she saw Veradin round the corner to the habs. Incredibly, he did not present like a man who had just gotten the reaming of his career. In fact, he looked almost proud of himself. She knew from experience that this most likely meant one thing—he had managed once more to talk his way out of a near-catastrophe.

“You have downtime for the next eighteen hours,” he said. “Are you planning to spend it wandering the hallways, Commander Tyron?”

“Captain.” She saluted. “A word?”

“Is it your turn to reprimand me?” he said with a brief chuckle, returning a lazy version of her salute.

Sela did not do well with his jokes, not often. He had poor timing, used analogies or terms only another crester would have understood. It didn’t stop him from trying. Cresters were difficult for her to gauge. They joked, told falsehoods and embellished. It was the same with conscripts, the non-breeders who sometimes found themselves forced into service with the Regime.

Weary and raw, she had lost whatever patience she could sometimes call upon. “As your second, it is my duty to point out actions which are deemed strategically unsound, sir.”

“Oh, Fates. You too?” He rolled his eyes. Veradin had once pointed out that strategically unsound was her favorite thing to say and went so far as to suggest she have it tattooed somewhere on her body. An observation that, had it been delivered by anyone else, would have resulted in bodily harm.

“Captain, our extraction from Tasemar—”

“I’ve already been formally reprimanded by the fleet XO. But he came down on my side. Silva was wrong to make the call for infantry. He never had formal orders to withdraw—”

“Captain,” Sela blurted. “I don’t care.”

Veradin gaped. He seemed startled that she had interrupted him. “Then speak, Commander.”

“You put yourself at great risk, sir. No other Kindred would have done what you did today.”

“Ty….” He put up his hands in a staying gesture.

“You challenged a Fleet Captain. And we are not even conscripts…we’re only—”

“Essential members of my team that I would never be able to replace.” He forestalled the word she was going to use. Breeders. Sela had never heard him use that word around her or her team. It was as if he found it offensive.

Veradin stepped closer. “Commander—”

“If you do a foolish thing like that again...sir.” Her voice threatened to break. She jabbed at his sternum with an accusing finger. “I will shoot you myself if just to teach you a lesson.”

Veradin gave her a bemused grin. Somewhere beneath the heavy, dull ache heaped upon her by the past twenty hours, she felt that lovely glimmer of warmth.

She stepped closer, peering into his brown eyes. “There are those who would find losing you a great tragedy. There are those of us who could not bear it. Do you understand me, sir?”

His grin disappeared. “I would never want to disappoint those people.”

She allowed her shoulders to sag.

“What’s happened, Sela?” Veradin asked quietly. He could always seem to read her mind, guess her moods.

“Atilio. I failed him.”

“You aren’t responsible. There is a limit. You have to leave some of it to the Fates.”

Her next words seemed to travel from far away. She had no intention of uttering them, but they appeared nonetheless:

“Captain, have you ever known one of my kind to become a Citizen?”

The question seemed to catch him completely off guard. He hesitated, dragged a hand across the back of his neck. “I’m not going to lie to you...”

Somewhere, Lineao was probably smiling with smug satisfaction.

“Why did you ask me that?”

“On the planet, there was a cleric to the Fates…”

Sela stopped abruptly as if realizing her surroundings. She perceived a subtle movement in the darkness beyond her captain’s shoulder. There at the junction of wall and doorframe nested a crawler, an automated unit used for ship-wide surveillance.

She had wanted to tell Veradin about the deserter-turned-priest, about watching the Storm King from planetside, about the warring jangle of doubts now taking root in her mind. And about the anguish of watching her son die without ever being able to tell him that his mother had known him, was proud of him.

“I apologize, sir.” Sela lowered her head. “I’ve already taken too much of your time.”

“No apology necessary.” He studied her, his gaze questioning.

She glanced up. A second crawler had appeared on the ceiling above them.

“I should go, sir.”

He returned Sela’s salute. As she turned, he pressed a hand on her shoulder. “No.”

She looked down at his hand, then up at him. “Sir?”

“What did you want to tell me?”

“This was wrong of me, sir. I shouldn’t even be here uninvited.” Her voice was barely audible above the rustle of fabric and the whisper of the environmentals. “It’s not Decca—”

“I know Decca. The fleet XO just spent the past three hours reminding me of it. And right now, Nyxa can have it.” He squeezed her shoulder. “You came here to tell me something. I want to know what’s bothering you.”

Sela was intensely aware of the crawlers now but did not pull away.

“Captain,” she warned, casting a wary glance around. He could be so careless, and nearly contemptuous, toward Decca. He had never been raised as a breeder.

“Sela, what is it? You can tell me.”

Can I tell you? Would you understand? Trust was not the question. She bore it wholeheartedly for this man.

“Atilio—” she began.

Heavy footfalls echoed from the corridor. Sela pulled away from him and straightened her shoulders.

“Captain Veradin.”

Two troopers tromped into the corridor, shattering the strange tension. From the gleaming black of their lowered visors and heavy, oversized armor, it was easy to tell they were SSDs: suppression and surveillance deployment for internal lawgiving and infractions.

Sela licked her lips. Something was wrong. The crawlers had only just appeared, and she and Veradin had committed no real transgression in their interaction. Although she had danced tantalizingly close.

Her hand moved to the spot on her thigh where her sidearm would be, had she not surrendered it to the armory tech.

“Speak,” Sela demanded and took a half-step forward, barring the path between the SSDs and her captain.

“Captain Veradin, come with us.” The guard ignored Sela, who stiffened at the slight.

“Why?” Veradin asked.

“You’re under arrest, sir.”

“What charges, sub-officer?” Sela blurted. “Under whose authority?”

The smaller trooper seemed to regard her for the first time. Although it was impossible to see her expression under her lowered visor, Sela detected the slightest tone of reverence in the woman’s voice. “Stand aside, Commander Tyron. Please.”

“Whose orders?” Sela repeated.

The SSDs shared a look before the female one answered. “Officer Trinculo.”

“The Information Officer? Silva pulled the Information Officer into this?” Veradin said, astonished. “I’ve had assurances from the XO that the issue had been resolved.”

It was absurd, even by crester standards. Silva had wrangled Veradin’s arrest for what amounted to a conflict of egos. This was not something to appear even briefly on the radar of someone as powerful as Trinculo. His authority superseded even the battlegroup’s commander.

“On what charges?” Veradin demanded.

“Sir, the IO gave explicit instructions—”

“You’re not taking him,” Sela growled, filled with challenge.

“Commander Tyron, our orders are from the IO. If you do not comply, you will be punished.”

“Fine. Punish away,” she snapped.

“Ty, stand down.” Veradin grabbed her arm.

“You heard me. Stand down.”

He kept his eyes on the two SSDs, but his expression told her something else. He saw it too. This was far more serious than a pissing match with an over-inflated ship’s captain. The two officers showing up in the bay to lead Veradin to the XO had been for theatrics, drama for everyone to see. It sent a message of discipline being served out, even among the cresters. This action was secretive. Not the way Regime did things. This was wrong .

Sela realized that the two crawlers had disappeared. Incredibly, this scene was not being recorded.

She turned her focus back on the two troopers and gauged her odds. With a little luck, she might be able to disarm the one on the left before…

“No. You can’t, Ty. Think,” Veradin whispered as he stepped past her. He turned his back to the troopers and clasped his hands behind his head. “Breathe. Count to ten.”

Panic washed over Sela as she watched them place the restraints on him, like some common criminal.

“Ty,” he said, facing her. His expression was stony, jaw set. “Do nothing. This is not your fight. I order you to stand down. I’m going to take care of this. Do you hear me?”