Authors: Gun Brooke
“Computer, set to evasive pattern delta-zero-zero-one. Maximum shields.”
The computer confirmed the precautions.
“Good. That’ll save us from denting the prototype’s features,” Rae commented dryly from the navigator’s seat. “We don’t want to return and let everyone know we scratched the boat.”
Kellen was now more used to her wife’s slightly warped sense of humor, and also to the fact that the more trouble Rae was in, the more frequent and sharp her sarcastic comments became. “Doing my best to not damage your ride, Admiral.” Kellen tried to reciprocate and was rewarded by a light chuckle.
“Much obliged.”
They flew along a precalculated trajectory until they approached the window of opportunity they needed to reach Gantharat’s atmosphere on a path that hid them from Onotharian sensors. Kellen engaged the cloaking device newly constructed for these smaller vessels, which were made from the specs taken from the Onotharian ships in custody, but altered enough that the Onotharians would be unable to break the code and decloak them.
“Trajectory for the Merealian Mountains laid in.” Rae’s voice came through distinctly across the comm system. “We’ve got a clear path.”
Kellen was grateful for the computer system, which made her job of navigating among the space debris so much easier. The small nuggets around them might seem harmless, but if a ship hit them at high speed, they could eat away at the shielding little by little and jeopardize an entire mission that had no margin for error.
They planned to set down using coordinates from Paladin, and Kellen couldn’t wait to get on the ground and familiarize herself with the situation at hand. If she could actually see and listen to her friend, everything would become more tangible, more real. The thought of Paladin and the way she’d come through for Kellen after her father’s death made Kellen vow again to do everything she could to help.
“How long have you known this Paladin?” Rae asked, unknowingly tapping into Kellen’s thoughts.
“Since I was eighteen. She took me under her wing when I joined my father’s resistance cell after he died. I had to wait until Tereya and I joined the academy so my absence from the farm wouldn’t cause concern.” Kellen leaned back farther into her seat, as if trying to get closer to Rae. “I owe her so much. She saved my life several times when I was a rookie. And she brought my father’s dead body to the farm, instead of merely dumping it anonymously at a hospital.”
“Darling.” Just one word, but uttered with such tenderness and love, it helped clean old wounds every time they talked about haunting matters of the past.
“Thank you,” Kellen murmured. “So you see, not only do I owe her, but this is my ultimate duty—keeping Armeo and his heritage safe.”
“I understand. And when you can help Paladin and her crew by doing so…”
For the first time Kellen knew in her heart that Rae understood where she was coming from. Rae always tried her best to understand her, but Kellen knew that her alien world’s customs and unwritten rules, which focused so much on honor and tradition, were difficult to grasp.
“Submitting new course. The others are on track behind us.” Rae sounded official again, but her soft words earlier made Kellen feel they also understood one another on a personal level.
She’s in this for practically the same reasons I am.
Fighting for the freedom of her people was just a start, Kellen realized. She knew that if the SC didn’t confront the Onotharian oppression, it would spread to other worlds. The Onotharian Empire was eyeing several less-developed planets, rich in natural resources. They needed to be stopped by any means necessary.
Or am I no better than them to think that way?
Kellen watched the computer screen to the left of her field of vision and saw it would soon be time for a little hands-on flying. When they hit the Gantharian atmosphere, they’d be in for a rough ride, and she preferred to handle that part of the trip herself.
“O’Dal to D’Artansis. Switch to manual override in eighty seconds.”
“Affirmative.”
“Stay low and close to my tail. Less turbulence, smaller risk of detection.”
“Read you, O’Dal.”
“Here we go. O’Dal out.” Kellen gripped the controls with years of confidence and prepared to enter the atmosphere. A white blanket of clouds waited for her below. Kellen felt her lips pull into a broad and, she guessed, feral grin as she pierced the cumulus clouds. Turbulence rocked the assault craft, and she pulled and pushed the levers, her body one with the ship. This was her true element, just as she was one with the Ruby Red Gan’thet suit during fights to the death. As Kellen indulged in the feeling of riding the element of air like a maesha saddled for the first time, she glimpsed the green and maroon formations of the Merealian Mountains in the distance. Soon she’d be home.
“Ms. O’Landha is here to see you, ma’am,” Rix M’Isitor, Andreia’s assistant, announced, and stepped back from the doorway to let Roshan pass him. Both women had spent four days maintaining appearances, while preparing for the expected SC assistance.
As Roshan approached her desk, Andreia felt a stab of anticipation. Dressed entirely in black, Roshan possessed a darkish beauty, emphasized by her hair, almost silver when illuminated by the muted ceiling lights in the old Center Hall building.
Andreia stared greedily at Roshan’s toned body. The form-fitted clothes left very little to the imagination. Remembering how the softness of Roshan’s lips felt on her own, Andreia gripped the desk so hard she was afraid she might dent it. “How did you know where to find me?”
“Nice to see you, too.” Roshan shrugged, a nonchalant twitch of her right shoulder, which stretched the silky fabric over her breasts and made Andreia forget the slightly sarcastic words. “I tried to page you, but there was only a forwarding message at your office. I figured that you might have had to conduct your…business elsewhere, since your offices were compromised last week.” With a glance back at the open door, Roshan walked closer to the desk. “I felt like seeing you. It wasn’t very difficult to figure out where the new provisional Onotharian offices were located. This was a logical choice. Not many structures in Ganath can host the Onotharian administrative workforce.” She leaned closer and brushed her lips over Andreia’s forehead. “Hello, you.”
Though she knew Roshan was acting for the one-man audience able to hear and see them through the open door, Andreia realized the small caress left an exciting tingle on her skin. Very little went on in her office that Rix M’Isitor didn’t report back to his father.
I bet the little weasel would report the size of my underwear if he figured it out!
Andreia knew she had to play along, to justify Roshan’s bold presence inside enemy headquarters. “Hello back,” she murmured, and hooked her hand gently around Roshan’s neck. “Sorry I was rude. I’ve missed you.” It was startlingly true, and Andreia pressed her lips against Roshan’s, shocked at the sudden revelation. It felt like more than four days since she’d seen Roshan, and it occurred to her only now how empty those days had been.
The kiss lasted a little longer than Andreia had planned, which she blamed on the way Roshan responded to it. She towered over Andreia and filled her hands with curls, murmuring inaudible words into her mouth. Eventually she pulled back and left Andreia breathless, speechless, for a few seconds.
“Anything important going on, or can you get out of here for today?” Roshan asked, looking pointedly at Andreia.
“Of course. Let me just clear my schedule for the next few hours.”
“I may need you longer than that,” Roshan said, and Andreia envisioned Rix sharpening his hearing.
“Oh, yes?” she replied, trying to sound playful. She was curious now, and hopeful that there had been a new development in their plans.
“Oh, yes.” There was nothing teasing in the way Roshan spoke.
“Just a minute, then.” Andreia walked out to her assistant where he sat by his desk. When Andreia informed him of her altered plans, being his usual pompous self, Rix nodded approvingly.
“Very well, ma’am. If you stay in regular touch with me, I’ll make sure you don’t miss a thing at this end. Ms. O’Landha is an important contact. Enjoy yourself.”
Andreia wanted to smack the impertinent brat. She would’ve assumed that the rank of an assistant was not one the son of an Onotharian dignitary would accept, but this appeared to be a coveted job, judging from how Rix acted around her. Andreia had always suspected that Dixmon M’Isitor placed people he trusted implicitly in positions like these, to stretch his tentacles everywhere. The fact that Rix didn’t seem to suspect anything about Boyoda, as far as she could tell, was reassuring.
“Thank you. Take the afternoon off. I won’t need you anymore today.”
“Are you sure you don’t need me to—”
“Yes. I’m sure,” Andreia snapped, annoyed at his patronizing tone. “That’ll be all.”
“Of course…ma’am.” Andreia didn’t miss the slight delay in the way he spoke and wondered if Rix himself knew how such rudeness gave him away. He wasn’t very mature, or clever, after all.
“Everything set, Andreia?” Roshan asked, and joined them.
“Yes. Let’s go.”
They entered the elevator that took them down six floors, the door opening to the large obsidian glass hall. This impressive structure had once been a symbol of the proud Gantharian sovereignty. It was close to heresy for the Onotharians to claim the beautiful building as a mere backup facility. Andreia knew Roshan must feel the same way, yet she looked at Andreia with nothing but an appreciative light in her eyes. The fact that nobody was so close that they had to pretend anymore made Andreia’s palms tingle. She wanted to take Roshan’s hand, feel the warmth of the assertive touch against her, but it was impossible for her to escalate the pretence to that level in public.
And yet I had no problem kissing her in private just now.
“We have to move fast,” Roshan said, and even if there was nothing hostile in her words, there was no kindness either. This was obviously just business. “I’ve received information that gives me new hope. We might have the answers to some of our immediate problems.”
“And what makes you think that?” Andreia spoke in staccato, a part of her exasperatingly disappointed by the abrupt change in Roshan’s demeanor.
As they walked down the wide stairs outside the building, she held her head high and kept the regal pose her mother had groomed her to use.
“Our mountain camp received a brief transmission on an encrypted subspace band that said that two SC vessels will set down close by,” Roshan said. “Granted, this could be a trap, but we don’t believe it is, since the message carried a genuine SC signature tag.” She pointed across the square in front of the building. “My hovercraft is over there. We can change at the mansion. Can you make up some lie why you have to be away for a while, perhaps a few days?”
“Yes. I’m supposed to go on a planet-wide tour soon. I can tell everyone that I need time to polish my speeches, and that I’m staying with my…good friend in the meantime.” Andreia jumped into the hovercraft and felt herself blush faintly at how she stumbled over the last words. “Well, we can’t waste any time. We have to set plans into motion. I sincerely hope whoever’s here to help us has more than two vessels.” Andreia meant it as a joke, but felt rather humorless. So much rode on freeing their missing resistance fighters.
“If it’s who I hope it is, we’ll have an advantage over the Onotharians—” Roshan stopped in mid-sentence, her eyes dark and brooding. “Damn it, it bothers me to talk about them, about your heritage, about people
like you
, with such hatred. You’re Onotharian, but you’re nothing like
them
. You’re not a heartless, slaughtering—”
“—neither are your regular Onotharians, who just want to live with their families and see their children grow up to be happy, contributing citizens! Instead, the Onotharian chairmen make laws that say they have to join the armed forces, go to alien worlds, and carry out the politicians’ greedy plans there. And perhaps they’ll break their parents’ hearts by never coming back.” Andreia became breathless, gasping for air.
Her face pale, with a faint blue tinge to her cheeks, Roshan stared at Andreia as if seeing her for the first time. “I know. I know all these things. But I’ve experienced so much. Too much.” She punched in commands to the autopilot steering, and the hovercraft left the square with a low hum. It soon lined up along one of the busiest land-air corridors five meters above ground.
Andreia averted her eyes and looked out the windows, unable to witness the torment on Roshan’s face. “I know,” she whispered. “So have I. I have to live with the fact that I stem from a greedy, callous species, whose most senior and high-ranking citizens want to conquer every world that may be even remotely beneficial. They don’t hesitate to use their young men and women as laser-fodder, if that’s what it takes.”
“Such greed takes on a life of its own after a while.” Roshan’s voice was now calm, thoughtful. “That’s the danger of a society set on expanding at all cost, no
matter
the cost. The growth and hunger for power becomes a purpose in itself.”
Andreia looked at Roshan, but couldn’t make out her expression.
There was a time when I knew that face as well as I did my own.
Andreia remembered when she
could look at Roshan forever, when she sat at her computer, studying. “And it’s addictive. I don’t mean the greed,” Andreia explained. “I mean the power. Greed is a way to monetary wealth, which in turn leads to power.”