by Nick Webb
The door to my quarters swooshes open, the sudden flash of light from the passageway temporarily blinding me.
Someone shouts, “Take him!”
The sounds of scuffling, fighting, bodies pounding into the walls of the corridor echo. In the distance, I hear weapons fire.
I bolt to my feet, bringing up my internal defensive systems. The bitter tang of blood registers in my nose.
I face another intruder, this one silhouetted in the doorway. Kendall.
“What’s happened?” I asked.
“I’m sorry, Fallan.” Kendall’s soft voice barely registers over the advancing sounds of fighting in the hallway. “If only you’d listened and stayed on the planet. Your father’s going to ruin everything. I can’t let that happen.”
I shake my head in confusion. “What are you talking about? What’s going on?
He mutters to himself before looking back at me. “She said we had to stop him. This was the only way. I promised her I’d save you . . .” His voice trails off, and a sob escapes his lips.
“Kendall?” I reach for him. “Please, tell me—”
Fury contorts his face. “I tried, but it’s too late.” Something metal glints in his hand. He lunges.
I step aside, barely escaping the swing of his knife. Before I can pivot, the dark form explodes from the corner. He and Kendall go down brawling. Light flashes and flesh sizzles.
I scramble out of the room and fumble with the security panel embedded in the corridor wall, attempting to close and seal the door.
A hand touches my shoulder. “We’re not here to hurt you.”
I wheel around until our faces are only inches apart—a guy about my age, wearing a stained and rumpled black and white ambassadorial staff uniform.
I back away from him while glancing up and down the corridor that is now eerily silent. “Who are you?”
“My name is Alden Hendrix, and that’s my brother, Finn.” He gestures at the guy now standing over Kendall’s body. He wears the black vest and body armor emblazoned with the Jin-Dahl crest. The blade Kendall thrust at me now dangles in his long-fingered grasp.
They are both tall and broad-shouldered, strong-looking young men, one light, one dark—like mirrors of each other.
My chest tightens and my breath goes shallow.
Alden leans forward. “Do you need to sit down?”
I look at Kendall’s body. “Is he dead?”
Finn nudges him with his foot. “Don’t think so, but it’s always hard to get the stun settings just right, so I can’t make any guarantee.” He shrugs.
I remember the smell of burning flesh.
My stomach lurches, and I bolt down the corridor.
“Wait,” one of them shouts.
I run for the safe room tucked behind the schoolroom at the end of the hall. Footsteps pound behind me.
I shout the emergency word and press my thumb against the security panel and squeeze through the door and seal it without waiting for the protocols to complete.
I lean against the door, breathing heavily.
The cool metal thuds beneath my shoulder blades. “Fallan, it’s Alden,” he shouts from the other side. “We don’t want to hurt you, I promise.”
“Yeah? Tell that to Kendall.”
“The guy who tried to kill you? I think you’ve got things backward.”
I still at his words, remembering the creepy mix of regret and anger in Kendall’s voice when he’d said, I tried, but it’s too late before trying to sink a knife in my chest.
Alden pounds on the door again. “We’re here to help you. Please let me in.”
It’s hard to think straight. Who was Kendall? The kindly steward who’d always covered for me when I snitched an extra piece of cake, the friend who’d clued me in on what had happened to Paladin, the man who’d conspired with my mother against my father, the man who’d tried to kill me.
My mother and I might not have the best of relationships, but never would I believe she’d authorize my death.
Or had Kendall been acting without her knowledge? Had he fooled her, as well?
Strange young men I’ve never seen before managed to evade the ship’s security scans, steal uniforms and save my life while the loyal steward who’d signed on to serve my family for the millennium had betrayed us. . .
Nothing made sense.
But one of those young men had been searching my room.
I key the all-clear sequence and open the door.
“What was your brother looking for?”
Alden utters a word I don’t understand, which is unusual because I know thirty-eight languages.
“It’s a figure of a man about this high.” His hands sketch the distance.
“Paladin.”
“That’s what you call it?”
“It’s his name. It’s just a toy. I can’t imagine what you’d want with it. It has no value. That’s why my mother tried to get rid of it with the cultural exchange.”
“We know.” Alden drags a hand through his white-blond hair. “We also know you brought—” he says the strange name again “—back to the ship. Where is it?”
I fold my arms across my chest. “Well, you could ask Kendall, but you killed him.”
Alden swears under his breath. “I don’t think he’s dead.”
I follow him back to my quarters.
When we arrive, I see that Finn has lifted Kendall onto the bed. The steward is trussed at the wrist, knees and ankles with flexible ties and gagged with one of my scarves.
Paladin, clean and shiny as the day my father first put him in my hands, stands next to the bed.
“Where did you find him?” I ask Finn, indicating Paladin.
“When I got done with him,” Finn nods at Kendall, “I looked up and there it was. It wasn’t there earlier when I scanned the room. I don’t know how it got there.” He and Alden exchange a look.
Alden walks over to the door and sticks his head out, looking right and left. “It’s clear for now, but we need to get out of here.”
Both guys stare at me like they’re waiting for something. “So go ahead, leave. I won’t stop you.”
Alden checks a device on his wrist. “You can’t stay here. It’s not safe.”
“He’s right,” Finn adds. “We’re running out of time.”
“For what?”
“If you come with us,” Finn says in a gentle voice that shreds my last nerve, “we’ll explain later. But we need to go. Now.”
“No!” I’m fighting tears that make no sense.
“We’re not going to leave you here alone.”
“I’m not alone. My father is the ambassador and—”
Alden shakes his head. “Not anymore.”
I remember the fighting, the tang of blood in the air.
Before either of them can stop me, I sprint for my parent’s quarters.
When I get there, the security panel is jammed and won’t open with the emergency word or my retinal scan. I tear open the panel and disable critical circuits. I’m madly ripping wires when Finn and Alden come up behind me. Without words, they help. Even then, it takes all three of us to manually push the door wide enough to enter.
The sitting area, normally light and bright, is dark, the furniture tumbled and my mother’s treasures in disarray. My hand curls around the armrest of an antique Terran chair. French and very old. My parents had argued over bringing it with us, but my mother had won that battle.
I creep toward the bedroom, my pace slowed by rising nausea. I keep telling myself silently that everything is going to be all right. My parents wouldn’t have been in their quarters, anyway. At the first sign of trouble, they would have escaped to the safe room.
“Mother?”
I pass through the doorway into the bedroom.
The stench of blood and feces hits me, and dread claws at my stomach.
My mother lies curled on her side on the bed, motionless, her head turned at an imposs
ible angle. The black hair she always keeps immaculately styled spills across her face. Red lights flash on and off above the bed.
I want to believe she’s asleep. I want to believe I’m having a terrible dream from which I’ll awaken any minute.
“Mom?” I approach the bed.
Tears stream down my cheeks. I push her hair away from her too pale face.
The pressure of a hand on my shoulder pulls me backward. I jerk away from the touch.
“You don’t want to see this.” I don’t know if the voice is Finn or Alden. I don’t care.
I turn, half-blind with tears. “We can save her. There’s a way if we can get her to the infirmary.”
I roll my mother onto her back. Her torso gapes open like the lapels of a flesh-toned dressing gown from where she was sliced from sternum to crotch with brutal efficiency. Whoever killed her knew what they were doing. They used the one sure and certain way to kill an ambassadorial body.
Ropes of pink guts spill onto the bedding.
Strong hands drag me away from the bed, off the ship and down to the surface of Lakhish Alpha.
* * *
It could have been days or even weeks later in the way we measured time aboard the Stanhope, but Terran standard time didn’t matter because the rebels—the Tengay faction—had blown the ship not long after Finn, Alden and I escaped. All I’d taken with me were the clothes on my back and Paladin.
My mother is dead, my father missing and presumed dead, and I am the guest of the people of Lakhish Alpha.
Sort of.
They tolerate me because of Paladin. Apparently, we were a matched set, like peanut butter and chocolate; can’t have one without the other.
That was one of the things I learned from Alden Hendrix on his frequent visits to the small house I’d been given. At least to my face they call it a house; it feels more like a prison. The guards stationed at every entrance don’t help, but considering what happened to my family, I can’t complain.
Although, if I had any way of knowing the facts of my situation, it would have helped considerably. Had Kendall been working with the Tengay terrorists? Or were his actions part of some plan he and my mother had hatched in opposition to my father? The only way I could find out for sure would be to talk to my father, but first, I’d have to find him.
On one of his visits, I ask Alden, “You knew they were going to destroy the ship, didn’t you?”
We sit on the porch on chairs fashioned from the ever-present reeds they seem to use for everything on the planet. I drag a finger over the sleeve of the shirt I wear. It’s blue and made from (guess what?) the same plant material, except that they’d found a way to process the fibers, making them soft and pliable.
“We suspected, but didn’t know for sure. All we had to go on were rumors that the ambassador,” he hesitates, the pulse at the base of his throat quickening, “that your father had secret orders he would not hesitate to follow if an agreement could not be achieved between the Lakhishan elders and the rebels.”
He’s told me this story about my father many times. As if it would take multiple tellings to convince me that the ambassador ordered to unilaterally enforce peace had been about to engage the Stanhope’s powerful laser cannons and eliminate the problem altogether. Along with what passed for civilization in this sector.
That scenario sounded more like a plan my mother would back.
No matter how many times I heard the story, I didn’t want to believe it. If destroying the planet had been on my father’s agenda, why had he remained in orbit so long? Why had he worked so hard to bring the warring parties to the peace table?
Without my father, I have only questions.
After Alden checks the hour about fifteen times, I stand. “I’m ready.”
Finn waits for us in the street, and with one brother on either side, I walk to the Hall of Justice.
* * *
I don’t know what I expect. Wait, yes I do. I suspected the hearing should look like something out of the old vids: a simple courtroom in a frame building with lots of windows to let in light. The justice should be a tall male dressed in somber robes. Maybe he will address those gathered to listen to his words of wisdom.
Utter nonsense.
Or wishful thinking.
I studied the various iterations of the Rule of Law, as it’s known and practiced in the Terran system. The Seeded worlds were free of such notions, radically free, because they could do as they pleased as long as their actions didn’t harm anyone else. That meant there was no standard Rule of Law across the universe.
The Lakhishan elders took pains to point out that they had not destroyed my family and the Stanhope. The blame fell on the mysterious Tengay faction, the same rebels who threatened Lakhish Alpha.
I would have had some idea of what to do or say if my wishful thinking about trust in the Rule of Law and my father’s power had any basis in reality. I let go of my fantasies when I say goodbye to Finn and Alden and walk up the stone steps of the Hall of Justice.
An attendant ushers me into an antechamber. Thickly woven carpets cover the planked floor and soft, brightly colored textiles flank the windows. Three of the walls are lined with low couches layered with a multitude of embroidered cushions.
A round pouf of a seat commands the center of the room. The attendant indicates I am to sit there.
Curtains flutter though there’s no breeze. A section of the wall panel slides apart and an old, old woman hobbles through the opening. She supports her weight with a cane that looks as if it has been carved from a thicker, heavier variety of reed. A cloud of silver-white hair haloes her face.
It seems to take an eternity, but she finally makes her way to the bank of cushions in the middle of the wall and lowers herself with great pain and ceremony.
Behind me, the main door swings open. Finn and Alden enter, taking posts on either side of the entrance with their legs spread wide, hands clasped before them, like sentries or soldiers.
Do they fear I’m going to harm the old woman?
I try to make eye contact, but the brothers ignore me, keeping their gazes trained on the invisible horizon.
I turn back to the woman I suppose is my judge, jury, and executioner.
“I am the—” she utters a word I can’t make out, “But you may call me Merin.” She reaches into the depths of her red robe, pulling out a knotted bundle of cloth. Slowly, reverently, she unfolds the layers of cloth.
Paladin.
She sets the figure on a low, round table. The moment her fingers release him, Paladin begins to glow, his color gradually shifting from a dark, solid bronze color, moving through the light spectrum until he beams a clear, rosy light.
She leans back and folds her hands in her lap. “As you can see, we have followed your wishes and taken good care of your friend.”
“Thank you.” I’m ridiculously happy to see Paladin again.
Merin is the chief elder of the Lakhishan people and today she will decide my fate. Despite that knowledge, all I can think about when I stare at Paladin is the day my father pressed the toy into my hands. Where is my father now? Is he still alive? Tears well. I have to blink and swallow several times to regain my composure.
“Do you have anything to say in your defense?” Merin asks.
This is what Finn and Alden and I have discussed for weeks. What I knew of the terrorist plot in which Kendall, and possibly my mother, had been deeply embedded, when I knew it, the extent to which I’d been involved, how much my mother had known, including an entire line of questioning where it was clear she was suspected of funding and supporting the terrorists.
I knew almost nothing. My answers satisfied neither Finn nor Alden. There was no reason to think this day and this hearing would be any different.
“I can only tell you that I did not have any knowledge of my mother’s plans. I was not aware and remain unconvinced she was allied with the terrorists. I believe the ship’s steward, Kendall, took advantage
of his relationship with her.” I took a breath and gathered my courage. “If you truly believe my mother would have turned the Stanhope’s weapons on the people of Lakhish Alpha, I hope your belief is based in fact, not rumors. I would like to see your evidence—if you have any.”
The old woman laughs. “Child, child, we are not here to discuss your mother or your missing father, for that matter.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Ambassador Jin-Dahl did, indeed, bring a weapon to Lakhish Alpha aboard his great ship. We knew this from the start.” Her expression grows serious. “The Tengay knew this secret, as well. They wanted the weapon, as did we. Despite the efforts of the Tengay to alter the balance of power, the weapon was not destroyed with the ship nor did it fall into their hands.”
“Finn and Alden were hunting for the weapon that night.”
Merin nods. “Your father alerted us to the possibility of the attack. It is my regret we failed to intervene in time to save your mother. The Tengay blew the ship because they did not want anyone else to possess the weapon.”
For a long moment, grief rises in my throat until I cannot bear to think of all I’ve lost.
Merin sighs heavily and gestures with her cane at Paladin. “You think this thing is a toy. You even gave it a name.”
I swipe at the corners of my eyes. “What does a toy have to do with anything?”
She waves the cane in the air again impatiently. “Pick it up. Now.”
When I’m seated again with the Paladin in my lap, she says, “Alden tells me you are able to use Paladin to make the stars dance.”
“If that’s what you want to call it. It makes for a pretty show.”
“More than a show. It is a weapon, my girl, one of the most powerful weapons ever created. It links to one user and one user alone. In case you were wondering, that would be you.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She pounds her cane on the floor. “It is hot in here. Open the window.”
I start to rise.
She pounds the cane on the floor again, louder this time. “No, with the weapon. Use it. Use the energy of the weapon and open the window.” While she had been speaking, the light coming from Paladin has brightened considerably. He’s translucent now.