The Alorian Wars Box Set

by Drew Avera

  “No,” she said flatly. “I don’t have much reason to believe, though. If any kind of god exists, then why wouldn’t they save my people?”

  Brendle winced at the question, but fought the urge to answer it, not wanting to deviate from the questions burning in his heart. “What about love?” The question was only three words, but felt much heavier as they fell from his lips. “What about the concept of forever belonging to someone else?”

  Anki sat quietly for a moment, contemplating his words. He could see how uneasiness burned at her as she wrapped her arms around herself, a psychological need for shelter when she felt exposed. Brendle saw a look of contempt on her face, but he didn’t know if it was because of the line of questioning or if it was something else. Perhaps it was him. “I don’t know,” she answered, her words barely carried across the short distance from her lips to his ears before signs of her defensiveness built up. “Why do you ask me such things?” Her voice was louder now, more accusatory. Their eyes met; the hurt of his and the fragile stare of her own beating back at him for a burden she was obviously carrying beneath the surface. He watched her as her gaze softened and something like regret was etched upon her face, starting with her eyes and moving to her pouty lips. “I’m sorry,” she said. A collision of relief emanated from both of them and the tension seemed to die down a bit.

  “No, I’m sorry,” Brendle said. “I―” His words were cut short by an explosion next to the cargo bay door. Anki stood quickly and moved towards the damage in hopes of repairing it. “I just wanted to tell you I want to be your forever,” he said, drawing her attention back to him instead of the danger piercing the hull of the Replicade. Her eyes were wide as she stared at him. She looked like she was holding back words, or tears, or something else. Before she could say anything the cargo bay door was ripped away and all of the air was sucked out of the room. The change in pressure yanked Anki from her feet and drove her into the dark expanse of vacuum, and Brendle watched in horror as the woman he was beginning to fall for was torn away from him.

  Without a second thought, Brendle grabbed a tie-down strap and clipped it to his belt. It was designed to hold down crates as a ship accelerated and decelerated through space. Surly it would hold me and keep me from drifting too far away from the ship. He was about to execute the dumbest plan in his short life, but he hoped it would pay off. Running in vacuum was like sitting underwater and fighting the currents as they tried to drift you away. Muscular control was negligible and you couldn’t breathe. Luckily, there was an EVA floating nearby, he could only hope the thrusters worked and could propel him fast enough to catch Anki.

  For Brendle, the lack of air evoked a feeling of panic, but he pressed on. He could still see Anki, her black hair floating around her face exaggerating the expression of a silent scream. She was running out of time, they both were, death was at the cusp of each second as it ticked past. Brendle leaped into the void, igniting the thruster and feeling the surge pushing him forward to where the woman who could have just as easily killed him when they first met, waited with open arms. The drift of falling up and into her arms seemed to take forever, but eventually their oxygen-deprived bodies touched. The tether holding them to the ship, attached to Brendle’s belt, ratcheted to a stop as he caught her in time for the auto-spool to engage and begin to drag them back inside.

  Brendle pulled her close, noticing her body heat was already starting to drop even as the spool wound tighter, hauling them back towards the Replicade. He could feel the cold of space already attacking the exposed flesh of his body, the chill of it burning in a way he had not expected. Anki pulled her head away to look at him, the cloud of black hair wrapping around the lower half of her face. He looked into those eyes, the cold freezing her tears as they formed and breaking away with each blink. The look she gave him said a thousand things at once, none of them even having to be uttered by her tongue. He craved to hear those words, brought to life by her voice and the smooth soft texture of perfect lips. He knew then, more than at any other time, that he loved her. But even such love couldn’t keep his eyes open as his body faded and his heart stopped beating.

  27

  Anki

  The weight of losing her home world felt heavy on Anki’s chest. She had no more than succumbed to a ray of hope of saving Luthia before it was dashed away by the war the Telran carried with it. What made her think she had a chance to stop an empire? Her thoughts were all the more clouded by the fact an enemy of her people was seated next to her, so close their skin radiated heat off each other. The fact she hadn’t slit his throat and watched him bleed out before her eyes would be hard to explain to any superiors in the Luthian Navy. But alas, none of Luthia existed any more. Now the burden of her seeming betrayal was hers alone to carry and she was already weary of it. She didn’t have the heart to carry out such an act of violence, though. If anything, she was grateful for Brendle. He was an unlikely hero, as hard as it was to draw that conclusion knowing what little she knew of him. The fact he was a Greshian had been an enormous thing for her to overcome, yet it seemed that fact was what allowed them to survive. It was ironic when she thought about it, when thoughts of Luthia erupting in flames didn’t fill her mind with horror.

  In the cargo bay, where Brendle had brought her to talk, she sat expressionless. She knew something was on his mind; perhaps his own betrayal was heavy on his mind. There was a lot of that going around lately. She assumed it might be an apology for how he reacted on the bridge, ordering the others around, ordering her around in order to gain access to the ship. She could hardly blame him for wanting to take control of the situation, to save his own life. The fact he saved her and the rest of the ragtag crew of the Replicade might have been a happy accident, but she knew looking into his eyes that it was more than that. It was that knowledge that scared her.

  Trapped in her own thoughts, a misery of sorts, Brendle interrupted with a hushed question. “Do you believe in the gods, or a god?” she was put off slightly by how he could think of a deity at a time like this. She felt indignation well up inside of her before she even answered.

  “No, I don’t have much reason to believe, though. If any kind of god exists, then why wouldn’t they save my people?” it was a simple enough explanation for the tears she fought to hide. She didn’t wish to share her emotional turmoil with someone who knew who killed her world. Every time she thought of her world she saw only her father’s face. It wasn’t that Luthia died, it was that she would never see him again or hear his voice. If there was a god, then she knew whose fault it was that Luthia was no more. The Greshian Empire was a good scapegoat for the blame, but whatever sentient being allowed that empire to rise was also to blame.

  “What about love?” He asked. She felt him looking at her expectantly. The pause lasted a moment longer before he rephrased the question. “What about the concept of forever belonging to someone else?”

  Suddenly more uncomfortable with where the conversation was going she wrapped her arms around herself. She wanted to be somewhere safe, not from the war, but from the feeling welling up inside her chest. It was fear and sadness, but it was also something else. “I don’t know,” she answered, frustration filling the space between the two of them. “Why do you ask me such things?” she asked, her voice rising. She wanted nothing more than to blame everything on the man sitting next to her. It would be so easy to take all of her anger and pain out on him, but each time the thought crossed her mind she could see something in his eyes, something that drew her towards being compassionate. She hated it. “I’m sorry,” she said. Regret painted her voice in a way she didn’t like, but it was appropriate, she thought.

  “No, I’m sorry,” Brendle said. “I―” An explosion behind her cut him off. Anki turned and ran towards the damaged hull next to the cargo bay door. She didn’t know what to do, but knew something, anything had to be done to save the ship. “I just wanted to tell you I want to be your forever,” he finished. His words were unsettling in a way that made h
er think they were the ones she had wanted to hear all along. Anki looked at Brendle, the rush of atmosphere escaping the Replicade behind her. She watched the movement of his throat as he swallowed hard, nervous that he said the wrong thing when it had been the right thing all along. She wanted to respond, to give into the moment and disregard the danger lurking behind her. Her eyes widened as they met his again. She licked her lips as she prepared her response. And then she was ripped out of the cargo bay and thrust into the dark, her eyes watching Brendle as he looked at her in horror.

  The involuntary muscles in her body caused Anki to try to breathe, but there was no oxygen to be savored by her lungs. Each attempt exhaled more stale air from her lungs until the pain in her chest rose, forcing her to gasp harder. The frigid vacuum of space engulfed her, and every part of her body reacted to it in kind. She tried to cry out from the pain, but with no air and nowhere for the sound to travel, she was met with only the silent scream of desperation. Ice began to form over her eyes as tears forced their way from her tear ducts. Each blink broke off more bits of ice and she watched as the tiny flecks of frozen tears departed her bodily vessel and reached out towards unknown places. Her eyes also saw Brendle jumping out for her. She would have thought he was an idiot, but the desperation of being starved of oxygen wasn’t letting her think clearly. Instead, she watched him descend on her like a silent predator as the Replicade faded behind him, her vision narrowing on his eyes.

  Time was meaningless as she waited for him to reach her. It could have been mere seconds, but it felt like so much more as ragged gasps tormented her lungs with the pains of desperation. When he finally caught her, she felt warmth like the sun and then that warmth began to drizzle into the frigidness she had grown accustomed to. This is what it’s like to die, she thought, as Brendle pulled her close. Anki felt their outward drift lurch to a stop, but she couldn’t understand what was happening. She could only assume it was Brendle’s doing. She looked into his eyes, as he looked into hers, her black hair tickling his cooling flesh as if they were underwater. The gentle pull of the Replicade took her attention for a moment, but nothing more. She hoped for salvation, to breathe again, but even hope felt out of reach as the dark fingers of space tugged at her soul.

  Anki looked at the man who had risked his life for her more than once. He wore the face of the people who had destroyed her world, but he was as much a part of her world as anyone else now. His selflessness showed her what kind of man was under his Greshian skin. He was the kind of man her father was. Their blood might be different, but their hearts were molded by the same kind of compassion. She could see it now, as his last word echoed in her mind, the only sound in vacuum was the sound of “forever”. Their eyes met with longing, the need to live and to say what the other was thinking because it was important to both of them now, and then the darkness took them.

  28

  Brendle

  We are broken people from severely broken worlds, Brendle thought as he stood at the foot of Anki’s bed in the medical bay. She had been torn from the ship so quickly that he didn’t have time to do anything but react. He had saved her, held her close until they could be reeled in. It was an idiotic move, but one which proved fruitful because here he stood watching her sleep off the effects of medically induced slumber. Her body heat was restored and any tissue damage she had experienced was on the mend. He was thankful for that much, at least.

  But even with the good news of her being able to pull through, he was conflicted. He cherished the fact that he had done the right thing for the right reason, but he had a gnawing feeling that the wool was about to be pulled from his eyes and everything he thought was about to be revealed as fantasy. If he was truthful with himself he would say he thought he might love her, but thinking it made him question it. Wouldn’t questioning it mean there were feelings, though? He tried not to think about it too much, but it was all he thought about.

  Even with his internal conflict, he had a lot to be thankful for. His life was preserved due to the swift action of Malikea and Deis. Had they not responded to the breached hull and reeled Brendle and Anki in, then there would be a very different outcome right now. It was a chilling thought and it reminded him of the cold of the dark as it crept over his skin. He felt what it would be like to freeze to death and suffocate at the same time. it was a realization that he thought might haunt him in the days to come. Luckily, his exposure had been minimal. Anki, on the other hand had been exposed longer and needed to be carried to the medical bay for resuscitation. It had been a harrowing experience to say the least.

  “How is she,” Malikea asked as he stepped into the medical bay, pulling Brendle from his thoughts. He had changed clothes. Gone were the robes of his religious attire and now he was dressed in coveralls not unlike the ones Brendle’s previous shipmates wore on the Telran. There were no nametags on these coveralls, though, so he doubted they were military uniforms.

  “She’s sleeping off the effects right now, but according to the medical cart she’s going to pull through,” Brendle answered. “How is Deis holding up?”

  “He’s is doing much better now. He’s mending the breach in the airlock with a temporary patch. Luckily it’s the kind of work he grew up doing, but he thinks it’s best to port for a permanent repair at our earliest convenience. Of course, the cargo bay will be secured until we find a more permanent solution,” he said, his eyes on Anki for a moment before looking up to Brendle. “Thank you for saving him,” Malikea said as he placed his hand on Brendle’s shoulder.

  Brendle looked at him, their eyes locked onto each other and Brendle realized the man was sincere. “If not for me then he wouldn’t have been hurt in the first place.” It was the truth no matter how much he wished it wasn’t.

  Malikea smiled and rubbed Brendle’s shoulder before placing his hand back in his pocket. “That might be true, but another truth is that without you we would all be dead. You did a brave thing and I think Deis would agree that a bump on the head is a small price to pay for living another day. I think she would agree as well,” he said, nodding towards Anki, her shallow breaths causing her chest to rise and fall.

  Brendle smiled at a thought, “I’m sorry for pulling my gun on you,” he said, the hopeful smile still etched on his face. He liked Malikea, despite what his previous actions might have indicated, and he thought Malikea might feel the same way towards him. Escaping the Telran was a tricky situation and add to that the fact that no one on board knew one another or built trust in one another made things more difficult than they would have been otherwise. Brendle just hoped the process of building a friendship was fully intact, now that the heat of the moment had passed. It was a safe bet, considering Malikea had been the one to reel them back onto the Replicade and secure the airlock. Brendle felt he owed him his life, and had said so when they brought an unconscious Anki into the med bay. Malikea had brushed it off, but it was a debt Brendle fully expected to pay back.

  Malikea laughed and nudged Brendle with his elbow. “I think I might have had that coming. It’s not every day I attack someone, so please forgive me as well.” His smile matched Brendle’s and they both laughed. It was easier to be at peace with the past now that they were out of danger, but still remembering, it vividly played on Brendle’s mind in a way that made him question whether or not he was the kind of man he wanted to be, or if he was the kind of man the Greshians expected him to be. He would have shot Malikea had things progressed towards that necessity, but he was thankful they hadn’t.

  “Why don’t you boys just kiss already?” Anki said, wincing as she opened her eyes. The color had returned to her cheeks.

  Brendle stepped close to her, wanting to reach for her hand, but he pulled back. “How are you?” he asked. He craned over to read the medical cart, but it was all gibberish to him. As long as it isn’t beeping to an alarm and flashing, then I won’t go into panic mode.

  Anki tried to sit up, but it was hard trying to do so when she had one hand trying to block the
light shining in her eyes. “I’d be doing better if you could turn down the lights,” she groaned.

  Malikea moved over to dim the lights, “The medical cart must have dilated her eyes. Deis had the same issue when he came to. It will pass soon, though.”

  The lights faded to a more comfortable level as Anki sat upright on the medical cart. “Thank you,” Anki said. She was finally looking comfortable, or as comfortable as the medical cart allowed.

  “I kind of owed you one for not killing me when you had the chance. Thank you for that,” he said. Brendle’s hand touched hers. It was a delicate touch, but one to let her know he was there. She didn’t move her hand which was a good sign in his eyes. She looked at him and their eyes met, his emerald green eyes getting lost in her dark amber eyes. He was mesmerized by her. Lost in the sea of her beauty, but it was temporary.

  “Where do we go next?” Malikea asked, ruining the moment Brendle had lost himself in. He reluctantly pulled his hand away and looked at Malikea.

  “I don’t know, I guess that depends on you and Deis. It’s your ship,” Brendle replied.

  “You are a much more proficient pilot than either of us. Surly you have the skill set worthy to captain this vessel.” Malikea wasn’t smiling when he said this which prodded Brendle with a reluctant question.

  “You would have a Greshian captain your ship?” It was a reasonable question in Brendle’s eyes. Greshia wasn’t held in much esteem with the other sectors, even the ones which claimed loyalty to Greshia. Sometimes politics swayed in the direction that kept you alive, at least for some worlds. Others apparently didn’t get the memo.

  Malikea looked him in the eye, no humor in his gaze at all. “Brendle, your actions showed us that you are no more Greshian than any of us are. You may have been born on Greshia, but your exile proceeded where your heart truly lies. For all our faults and distrust when we first met you, there is none with our decision to grant you the title of captain of the Replicade if you are willing to accept it. It is our ship, and we want to count you amongst us” he said, nodding to Anki, who he seemed to consider as part of the crew as well.