Primary Healing Complex, Maggar, Eriuman Republic.
Sang prepared for what would happen next.
Barely two hours later, Bellona strode into the room Riordon had lent to Max to use as an office until the fleet’s departure. There had been a steady stream of military personnel in and out of the office since Max had sat behind the desk. Bellona’s arrival was noticed only by Sang, where they stood behind the desk. She had changed out of the dress. Her trousers and boots were plain and simple. Her hair was down once more, the curls shoved back over her shoulder. She was scowling.
Through the open door, Sang could see Khalil leaning on the stone parapet that separated the central courtyard from the deep verandah.
The moment Sang had anticipated had arrived.
Bellona stopped in front of the desk. “Your officer…Henley. He tells me Khalil is denied passage on the Decimus.”
Max dismissed the screen in front of him. “He’s a free-stater with questionable loyalties, Bellona. I can’t let him aboard an Eriuman military cruiser.”
“I don’t question his loyalties.”
“You’re not Navy, either.”
Bellona’s scowl deepened. “You and Father made sure of that, didn’t you?”
Max got to his feet. “You’re being unreasonable.”
Sang moved around the desk and stepped out of the door. Khalil straightened as Sang moved over to him.
“Do you want passage to Cardenas?” Sang asked quietly. Behind them, Bellona’s and Max’s voices rose, the tones strident.
Khalil glanced through the open doorway once more. “Bellona wants me with her. That is reason enough to go.”
Sang nodded. “We must take the ship we purchased to Cardenas, for Reynard to decide what must be done with it. We have already begun jump preparations. You can travel with us.”
Khalil narrowed his eyes. “Max won’t like that.”
Sang pushed away the troubling thought. “Possibly.”
“So why do it?”
Sang considered. “Until Bellona is presented to her father, our task is not complete. We must work to ensure that meeting happens. If that means catering to her wishes, then we will.”
Khalil’s mouth turned up. There was a warm glow in his eyes. “Or you could say you’re doing it for Bellona. I won’t tell anyone.”
Sang stared at him, confusion making their thoughts churn. “We…belong to Max.”
“Yes, you do,” Khalil agreed. “I accept your offer of passage to Cardenas, Sang. Thank you.”
* * * * *
Sang spoke to Bellona after she emerged from Max’s office, her jaw set.
She received the news with growing calm. “Why didn’t you interrupt us and tell us this? Why wait until now?”
Sang hesitated. “Max would not appreciate what we have done.”
“I’ll tell him it was my idea,” Bellona said. “He’s already furious with me. Nothing changes, does it Sang? Max always hated being the younger.”
“He loves you,” Sang said quickly.
“He loved the memory of me more.” Her smile was rueful. “Now I am back, he is determined to be a perfect Eriuman to make me look bad.” She rested her hand on Sang’s arm. “While you are in-transit, could you do something for me?”
“We?”
It was her turn to look doubtful. “Do you mind? I won’t have access to a terminal on Max’s ship. I’ll be locked up in a hastily cleared-out stateroom with nothing to do but look pretty and charm the officers.”
Sang suspected it was an accurate estimation. Navy ships were not used to civilian passengers. They wouldn’t know what to do with her. It was only because Bellona was the Cardenas’ daughter and Max’s sister that the rare privilege had been offered.
“We do not mind,” Sang told her. “We will have little to do, too.” The as-yet-unnamed yacht was just as fast as the lumbering Decimus, which had to match its pace with the slowest convoyer in the fleet, yet the jump would still take days.
Bellona half-closed her eyes. “Remember these names. Aideen, Fontana, Hayes, Thecla, Hero, Retha, Vang.” She opened her eyes again. “Do you have them?”
“Yes. What should we do with them?”
“Research them. They are as I was, Sang. They’re still in there. Still being used. I think.” She grimaced and touched her temple. “Perhaps I have imagined them all.”
“If you did not, there would be traces,” Sang said. “Images, footage, reports. If even one other name appears somewhere, it would confirm they are not your imagination.”
“I want to know if those memories are real.”
“Ari is real.”
Bellona drew in a breath and let it out. “He gives me hope that the rest is just as real. Find out for me, Sang. I would be grateful.”
* * * * *
Xindaria (Xindar III), Free Space City State.
Ferid perched on the polished tabletop, staring down at the body and the blood soaking into the handwoven rug beneath, darkening the pleasing pattern and disturbing the symmetry.
He had grabbed the man right off the quiet, tree-lined street and pulled him into the nearest little house, obeying an instinct that said to act at once, for it would be unpredictable and unexpected.
Ferid had obeyed the instinct. No one had seen him. No one had noticed a thing.
He had followed the man for four days, using scans from low orbit. In this bucolic place, with its unenhanced humans and peasant lifestyle, Ferid would have been noticed. His implants would have drawn attention. Instead, he had stayed on his ship and scanned. The scans had made the task challenging.
Ferid couldn’t remember the name of the man now. He had run Arany’s navigation systems for years, until shrapnel had taken off his left leg below the knee. Arany had set the man up with a house on this maddeningly simple planet. Ferid did not understand why. The man was no longer useful and should have been killed once a replacement had been found. Arany’s failure to remove him was a weakness Ferid had exploited.
Only the man had proved to be as stubborn and closed-mouth as the girl on Pushyan.
Now Ferid was staring at another lifeless form, wondering if he needed to reconsider his tactics. Was there a way to make these people talk that he had failed to consider?
His brooding gaze drifted over the arrangement of images on the cupboard front, next to the table. Children. Gap-toothed, ugly, noisy.
Families.
Ferid stirred, as his mind moved in dusty areas of knowledge.
The people he had spoken to were ferociously loyal to Arany. They had easily given up their lives to protect Arany. What if they were given a different alternative? What if they were faced with a choice of talking or losing not their lives, but the life of someone closer to them than Arany himself?
Ferid jumped off the table, happy once more and also vexed he had not thought of this weeks ago. Although, he was a vastly talented, highly tuned artist who required unsullied thought to do his work. Yes, that was why the emotional baggage of free-state unenhanced humans had not entered his mind.
He was flexible, though. He would adapt.
* * * * *
Karassian Luxury Yacht, Maggar-Cardenas, Null-Space.
There was ample spare time on the jump to Cardenas to dig into the war archives to see if any of the names on Bellona’s list were to be found there. The yacht was Karassian so the archives on the exploits of their war heroes would be more complete than any Eriuman databases. Sang occupied themselves with the research, while Khalil took advantage of the yacht’s adequate movement room.
On the third and last day of the jump, Khalil dropped onto the bench opposite Sang and looked at the screen Sang had displayed.
“I know him,” Khalil said. “That’s Hayes.”
“So I have discerned,” Sang said in agreement.
Khalil studied the image. Hayes was an enhanced monster, a head higher than the tallest Eriuman soldier in the unit he was destroying, with a heavy forehead over ferocious eyes, powerful shoulders and metal hands that deflected the beams from ghostmakers back at the firer. The image was a still one, showing Hayes in mid-air, just after launching himself at the remains of the unit, one hand up to deflect a beam, the other reaching for the nearest neck. The caption was an excited recitation of the numbers of Eriuman he had killed before the image had been captured and how many more he killed after that, as he took control of a grounded Eriuman convoyer.
“Hayes thought his hands were for gardening, to let him dig the earth barehanded,” Khalil said. “He spent hours, kneeling in dirt. He was proud of the pine-lilies most of all.”
Sang looked at the monster, at the hands reaching out. “Bellona’s memories are real, then. She was not imagining her friends.”
Khalil grimaced. “They, on the other hand, do not even realize she has gone.”
“It is better so.”
“Is it?”
Sang closed down the screen. “For now. You wish to speak with us?”
“Maybe I just want company.”
Sang did not dignify the response with an answer.
Khalil smiled, showing his very white teeth. “You are combat trained.”
“We have monitored three years of combat training, but we are not trained.”
“Whose training?”
Sang hesitated, weighing up conflicting privacy concerns. “The training was arranged for Max, which is why we monitored, yet Bellona also trained.”
Khalil smiled. “Were you a monitor or a benign sentry? I have a feeling that Bellona’s family would not have approved of her training.”
“They did not.” Sang shut up.
Khalil stroked his beard thoughtfully. “You realize that her training was probably why the Karassians used her as an app instead of parading her around as a useless Eriuman hostage before publicly executing her?”
Sang drew in a breath and let it out. “The thought had occurred to me.” It was not an easy thought.
“Combat training,” Khalil said, pulling the subject back. “You’re trained well enough to be useful. I want you to train me.”
“You are not a warrior.”
“Neither was Max, or Bellona, once.”
Sang considered him. “You have survived without combat skills until now. Does your arrival in Eriuman space have something to do with the sudden need to be able to defend yourself?”
Khalil didn’t move. “I do not fool myself that I will be welcome there. In a room full of Eriuman primary clan members, only Bellona will consider me a friend.”
“We consider you an ally.”
Khalil grimaced. “But not a friend. As long as I am useful, Sang, you will tolerate me. You have learned the biases of your family well.”
Sang did not deny it. “Family intrigues are usually political in nature. They prefer that blood only be shed for reasons of war.”
“The politics, I can handle. It’s the exceptions I must prepare for. Why did Bellona consider it prudent to learn combat skills?”
“For many reasons. Because Max was training and she was not. Because she wished to go to war. Because her father said she could not.”
“Ah.”
Sang tilted their head the way that Khalil sometimes did, when he was assessing a situation. “You risk much, simply because Bellona wishes you nearby.”
“Yes,” Khalil said flatly. His gaze met Sang’s, steady and frank.
“Why?” Sang demanded.
Khalil’s gaze dropped to his hands. “Did you know that Xenia, when she was in Ledan, thought she was a dancer? She loved the idea that she was pleasing others with her dancing, even though she couldn’t actually remember a performance. She didn’t mind the aches and pains, the casts, the injuries. She considered them part of her work. The Xenia that I knew—that Ari knew—was gentle. Creative. They took that away from her, the Karassians, in their effort to forge a hero.” His gaze flickered up to meet Sang’s. “Her family are doing the same thing.”
“You don’t know that,” Sang protested. “You have only met Max.”
“There is a reason she left Erium ten years ago, Sang. Do you know what it is?”
“No one does, except for Bellona.”
“She does not know either. I asked her.” Khalil looked at Sang directly once more. “She remembers fighting the Karassians when they boarded the Hathaway. She remembers killing at least one of them, bare-handed. She also remembers Max getting her on the freeship, while everything before that is gone.”
“Trauma,” Sang breathed. “Yet the memory must be buried or she would not be so reluctant to return.”
Khalil nodded. “Therefore, I find it prudent to acquire combat skills.”
“There is only a day left before we arrive at Cardenas.”
“I do not expect to learn what I must in one day,” Khalil said, his smile brief.
“We only mention the remaining time because there is more urgent need you must address, first.”
Khalil lifted his brow. “Oh?”
“From our long experience with the Scordini family, we guess that Bellona’s return will generate much…pomp.”
Khalil ran a hand down the neutral black tunic over trousers that he favored. They were bereft of any ornamentation. “I will be at the back wall with you, Sang. This will do.”
Sang shook their head. “It is not a chance you should take. If you are included in the ceremony, then you must appear to be one of them. An equal. Such things matter to the family.”
“I won’t dress up in colors and gilt just to make them happy.”
“You should not,” Sang agreed. “Instead, you should make your own mark.”
Khalil let his hand drop. “You have an idea, then.”
“We do.”