Captive Embers (The Wardens' Game Book 1)

by Brian Mansur

  “I feel beaten up,” she said. Her back, ribs, and limbs all ached from the repeated blows she’d taken aboard the Feni.

  Sean winced and said, “I have something to help with that.” Sarah heard the crinkle of an unseen plastic wrapper. Sean emerged from the lock with a pill and zero gravity cup filled with something brown, steaming, and liquid. He placed both items into her hands.

  She popped the anti-inflammatory into her mouth and took a cautious sip.

  “This is good,” she breathed. “Thank you.” She excused herself to the airlock and relieved her pulsing bladder. She traced the peppermint scent to an open bag of chalk-white candies. They weren't a toothbrush and toothpaste, but one made her cough on its fresh potency. A wet-nap served to clean the oils from her face. Someone had left one of her uniforms and set of underwear, which she eagerly changed into.

  Emerging from the compartment with her coffee, she said, “My head still feels logy from that sleeping pill. How long have I been out?”

  Sean drifted over to her. “About ten hours. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t felt this sore since basic training.”

  Sarah’s face glimmered with a smile then fell as thoughts of home tugged at her.

  “Hey,” Sean said as her eyes turned sad. “I’m trying to cheer you up. I could order you to be happy, you know.”

  A wan smile pushed up Sarah’s cheeks.

  Softly, she said, “Thank you. I should be doing that for you. It’s my job.”

  “You saved me from my darkest moment. It’s the least I can do.”

  Sarah’s dimples grew deeper. For a long beat, she stared at Sean’s face, entranced by his handsome features. Then her emotional pain came rushing back in, and the twinkle fled from her eyes.

  “Yesterday really happened, didn’t it?” she said.

  “Yes,” he replied, somber.

  A spurt of anxiety injected into Sarah’s throat. “Does my family know I’m okay?” She couldn’t believe she hadn’t considered them sooner. “Can I send them a message? Are they safe?”

  “Mykon’s fine,” Sean said. “And the Fleet will have told your family by now you’re alive.”

  Sarah knew her parents wouldn’t be much comforted until they got word straight from her. “I have to vid them, right away.”

  Sean shook his head. “The ship’s on security lockdown. Nothing in or out except essentials. I’m sorry.”

  Sarah’s innards constricted with anxiety for her loved ones.

  “Hey,” Sean said, placing a hand on Sarah’s shoulder. “You’re all right. They’re all right.”

  Sarah exhaled a long breath. “I haven’t been this jittery since I thought my mother was going to die,” she said.

  “It’s normal,” Sean assured her. “I was pretty on edge after my first time in combat. The shock wears off after a while. Remember your resiliency training, right? Hunt the good stuff.”

  “Yeah,” Sarah said, rubbing both palms over her eyes. “What about you?” she asked.

  One corner of Sean’s lips twitched. “I’ve been through this sort of hell before back on Lakshmi,” he said. “The Feni was worse in some ways. Not as bad in others.”

  “At least you didn’t make any mistakes you could have avoided,” Sarah said.

  “Hey,” Sean said, gently clasping Sarah’s other shoulder. He squared her to him. “It won’t do you any good to think like that.”

  Sarah’s gaze fell. “I hesitated at the cargo hold. I was ahead of Sergeant Holtz. If I had only gone straight in to get the wounded, Watson would have made it through the door before the grenade blew off his legs. I didn’t go because I was afraid."

  "That’s good," Sean said with conviction. "Your place is behind the lines. You can’t help anyone if you’re dead.”

  "I feel like a coward," she said, tears forming.

  "You're no coward,” Sean replied. “You faced down that mech. A coward would have left in the escape pod without being told.”

  She took several seconds to consider his words. “I can’t decide if you’re right or being nice.”

  Breaking through her reticence, Sean said, “You are a brave person, Sarah Riley. Nothing of what happened on the Feni was your fault. Believe me.”

  She looked into his eyes and tried to get the words out in her mind. What happened to Watson wasn’t your fault. You’re a brave person.

  The thoughts echoed back and forth inside of her psyche.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Sean said with gentle emphasis.

  Sarah blinked and wiped her nose.

  "Thank you," she said, forcing herself to smile for him. "I needed to hear that."

  She found with the admission that part of her roiling anxiety lessened. Exhaling, she angled her forehead against Sean’s chest. He responded to her unspoken request by drawing her shivering form flush against him.

  “Please talk to me,” she whispered.

  “It’s better if you make yourself talk,” he said.

  Her finger thunked his chest in irritation. “I know what’s in the recovery manual. Now, are you going to make the girl in your arms feel better or not?”

  For a beat, she felt Sean peering down at her. Then his torso heaved with a singular burst of mirth. She quickly joined him in a brief fit of giggles.

  “Frail flower, you aren’t,” he said.

  But as quickly as it came, the laughter passed. Sarah flicked a hand in agitation. “I’m frightened out of my wits.” She peered up at him. “You toured at Lakshmi, right? Tell me more about it. Maybe understanding them will help make fighting Lilith less scary.”

  Sean hesitated. A crease appeared in his brow. Then she realized how remembering anything about a place he’d fought in might be painful.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, ashamed. “If you don’t like to talk about it—”

  “No, it’s all right,” he said with an easy tone that didn’t match his expression. “Have you seen the colony’s cultural brief?”

  Sarah shook her head, sending wisps of pink flicking across her cheeks.

  “Alright then. I’ll give you the quick tour-guide version. Lakshmi was Belian Empire’s jewel before the Grand Revolt. Real old Earth feel to it. The colony is very colorful, from the clothes to the food to the architecture. Even their personalities.”

  Sean smirked at his comment. “They’re so quick-tempered. A Lakshmian can go from flattery to threats to inviting you to dinner in the same minute. Everything about their world is a dance. They have a special way of moving their heads and hands. Traffic is always frantic. Even the children won’t stop running around.”

  “They sound full of life,” Sarah observed.

  “They love to laugh. They’ll meet at cafés and tell jokes for an hour. They’re reverent to a fault with their elders and ancestors.

  Sean drew a breath and in a rueful voice said, “There is much to admire about them. They’ll do anything for their families. Once I saw a child no older than ten carry his little sister on his back across an entire colony segment. A lot of Mykonians can’t ruck march ten klicks.”

  He looked away, his brow creasing with distress. Sarah said, “You cared for them, didn’t you?”

  Sean’s jaw muscles pulsed for a beat. “They’re human like us, with plenty of good and bad about them. But ever since my first tour, they’ve made it hard for me to like them.”

  “How so?” Sarah asked.

  “A lot of it you already know from the mission briefing. There are so many desperate, poor people there. Since they destroyed almost all of their A.I.s to help overthrow the empire, their police network is crippled. The irony is that while the Belian emperors gave their subjects no privacy, they at least kept common people honest. Now, you can’t get anything done on Lakshmi without a bribe. Even the kids will steal whatever you don’t have locked down.

  The worst have turned to human trafficking to make ends meet. I’ve seen factories and farms where people are working off what began as a tiny debt that went out
of control thanks to an interest rate of five hundred percent.”

  Sarah flinched at that, remembering the indentured crewman she’d interviewed.

  “The colony’s run by cartels now,” Sean said, his cheeks taking on a hard edge. “They traffic drugs, weapons and people to fuel the ethnic wars on other colonies. It’s been a perverse boon to their economy. The cartel bosses are local heroes, funding schools and clinics, running basic services and creating jobs. But it’s all based on preying on others. They’ve crawled to the top of a hill built on many destroyed lives.”

  Sarah frowned and asked, “I thought we’d done a lot to help rebuild things after the Belian Revolt.”

  “We did,” Sean replied. “I was on one of the last advisory teams to Lakshmi before the reconstruction program ended earlier this year. I like to think we left it better than we found it.”

  “Oh,” Sarah mused. Sensing he’d exhausted the safer topics to discuss about their new enemy, she released him and brushed her hair back over both ears. She wanted to ask him more about his experience there, to help him through whatever about it continued to haunt him. It didn’t seem the time.

  “So, what happens next?” she asked.

  “Captain already has a counter-attack in the works. Once our time is up, I’ll be joined at the hip with the XO to help flesh the plan out.”

  “Can we beat Lilith?” Sarah’s voice carried a hint of desperate hope.

  Sean nodded. “Immunity or not, we have an idea. Sorry, but I can’t talk about it.”

  “I understand,” she said. For a few seconds, they hung in the doc’s office, cognizant that their twelve hours of rest were almost up. Sarah reflected on how much she appreciated his company: how she liked what she’d seen of him. He wasn’t perfect. He had an edge. But once they’d gotten out of danger, he was tender and considerate. A good man.

  “May I ask you something?” Sean said.

  Sarah blinked, not realizing she’d been staring at him. Suddenly, she perceived a certain interest in the way his eyes traced her face.

  “Okay,” she said, an unaccountable flush rising through her.

  “I don’t know about you,” Sean ventured, “but it always helps me to have good things to look forward to before I deal with something awful. How would you like to go on a date with me when this is all over? Good food. Nice conversation. See the sights. What do you say?”

  In spite of herself and everything they’d been through, Sarah blushed. “I’d like that, Sean,” she said. “I’d like that very much.”

  20

  Location: Zeus Lifeboat 19_

  Karen and Anna spent their first day out of Zeus strapped next to each other in a pill-induced sleep. Nightmares poisoned their dreams, and the girls woke up whimpering. During the unwelcome hours of consciousness, the pair alternated between quietly crying to themselves and staring off blank-faced.

  Karen spent much of her time curled up. In addition to grief, shock, and a sore body, various stenches compounded her misery. Many of the passengers had spewed vomit into the cabin. Everyone smelled of muck sweat. As the first day blurred into the second, the reek of excrement and urine rose from the bathroom facilities.

  In the time between pills, Karen fidgeted for something to do. She tried one of the meaningless distractions offered by a touch-pad but quickly put it aside. The normalcy it simulated repelled her. Mother was dead. Home was in ashes. She didn’t know if her father still lived or where he might be. It seemed pointless to behave as though anything would ever be all right again.

  Even so, her hands couldn’t stay still. She found them reaching for Anna’s long, dark tresses. Without thinking, she undid the ribbon holding Anna’s pony-tail together and started braiding the way their mother had taught them.

  She had been at it for only a minute when the younger girl began crying. Alarmed, Karen paused to ask, “Does that hurt?”

  Anna shook her head but kept sobbing.

  “Do you want me to stop?” Her tone exhibited a level of concern that would have felt forced a few days before.

  Anna jerked her head left and right. In a flash, Karen understood. Hairdressing was one of the precious few echoes of their mother they had left. Karen resumed working one strand over the next as best she could manage in the zero gravity. Eventually, the slow, rhythmic tugging at the scalp settled Anna down.

  Unfortunately, it also made the child queasy. They had been at it for half an hour when Anna suddenly said, "Karen."

  Something about the girl’s quavering tone brought the elder sibling up short. She watched for a breathless moment as Anna put a hand to her mouth.

  Karen scrambled for a vomit bag, but too late. Gray and yellow chunks erupted onto the chair in front of them, splashing off of it into their faces.

  "I'm sorry," Anna said with a squeak.

  Karen wanted to snap at her. Take care of your sister, her mother’s voice chided.

  "It's fine," Karen said. She took the blanket she’d wrapped about Anna’s skirted legs and tried to wipe her clean. "It’s okay, Anna. I'll just write this down in my list."

  "Your list?" Anna asked, worry etching her pasty forehead.

  "Yeah," Karen said in deadpan. "The list of all the things you owe me for cleaning up."

  "Is it a long list?"

  "Oh, pages and pages." She patted Anna's cheek and added with a whisper. "You can pay me back when you get older."

  A small frown crossed Anna's tired face.

  "I'm kidding.”

  Anna mouthed a quiet "Oh." She closed her eyes while Karen tried to pick vomit out of the little girl’s hair.

  Karen asked, “Do you need me to get you some water?”

  It took a few moments before the younger sibling said, “You haven’t been this nice to me for a while. It’s weird.”

  Emotions raw, Karen giggled and sobbed in the same breath. She’d been far kinder once, but hitting adolescence had sharpened her moods.

  Embarrassed by her shortcomings, Karen busied herself by flattening out Anna’s gray school uniform skirt. It kept billowing up in the null gravity. It wasn’t lost on the elder sister that Anna shouldn’t have had to worry about that indignity. If only I’d helped her change first thing after school like I was supposed to.

  A sad, frightful realization dawned on Karen: she was Mother now. Before, she had been a coddled princess, used to getting her way. That life was gone. What are we going to do now? Hugging Anna close, she waited for sleep to claim her again.

  She woke sometime later to a whirling mess. People screamed as the lifeboat’s maneuvering jets knocked everyone first one way and then the other. A second later, the craft’s engines fired, hurtling the aft bulkhead into those who’d been caught in the center aisle without restraints. Karen winced as several passengers thumped painfully by.

  The ship rattled for almost a minute before the rockets cut out. The sudden shift back to zero gravity left Karen nauseous and disoriented. Somewhere behind her, men and women groaned. She heard frightened voices forward. People shouted questions about a course change.

  Before anyone could explain matters calmly, a hysterical woman the next row over repeated a name. Karen remembered it from the Warden broadcast when they’d first escaped Zeus. The name filled Karen with fear.

  “Lakshmi!” the lady screeched. “Gods help us! We’re going to Lakshmi!”

  Location: Warden orbital space lane, Cervantes system_

  “Your irritant will be waking aboard the Tsunami soon,” Cef noted in his mental correspondence to Len. “You were clever to make Mr. Hastings and any ship he boarded immune to Arbiters. That sent Lilith into quite the tizzy. Still, my redirecting the escape shuttles to Lakshmi will help nullify that threat.”

  Cef had drained much of his command points to make the move. Len had, of course, anticipated it. To be an effective ploy, however, Cef needed to issue one more override. Len quelled a nervous writhing in his tentacles. The lines of probability had collapsed into an obvious path. Len kn
ew what would come next.

  Cef said, “Little Karen Hastings really should have obeyed her parents. Foolish child. I should thank her. Without her mischief on the social net, Lilith might never have found out about Rafe’s family. They might have boarded another lifeboat that could not have reached Lakshmi in time to be of use. More to the point, his daughters wouldn’t be headed for Lilith. And so, I wouldn’t be able to do this.”

  Cef executed his override command. At an opportune moment, Claire would inform Rafe that he held control over the Tsunami. It created the perfect dilemma. If Rafe commandeered the ship to go after his girls, Lilith could pick off the gathering Mykonian fleet. If he let his daughters fall into the Empress’s hands, that too presented a subtle, but potentially disastrous opportunity for Lilith to claim victory. Len doubted the Mykonians would see the danger.

  Cef asked, “Which course of action do you think Mr. Hastings will choose? He can only pick one.”

  At last, Len spoke, “He will choose the right thing to do based on what he knows. He understands what is at stake.”

  “Really? I suspect his wife would have divorced him for not going to their children when he had the opportunity. A pity she’s in no position to help him make this decision.”

  His digital tone bursting with agitation, Len messaged, “There will be a reckoning for what you are doing. You could have given these people a paradise. Instead, you are putting them through hell.”

  “Stop being pedantic,” Cef said with an air of long-suffering. “It isn’t as if there is anyone to stop me. Your chances of winning have fallen to less than ten percent.”

  Len said, “We will see, won’t we.”

  To this, Cef laughed.

  Len, on the other hand, knew how badly Cef had miscalculated how far he was willing to go to make sure the humans lived free.

  Location: Sickbay, MSV Tsunami _

  The moment Rafe Hastings staggered aboard the Warden courier, the enforcer placed him into a medical pod. Given their low regard for human life, it always surprised him that the Wardens bothered with tools of healing. Not that he complained as an anesthetic erased his grief and pain-ridden world.