Warrior Heart
Page 33
“Then I hope you find your peace, Dorinda. We’ll arrive at Earth in about three weeks.” Coty turned to leave, but stalled when Dorinda touched his arm.
“Michael, there is something I don’t understand, a ... gesture Vesarius once used. I’m sure it meant something.”
Coty raised his brow at her. “What?”
Dorinda grimaced at the awkwardness of explaining. “It was while we were in the transport. He had to suture my plasma burn.” Absently she touched the still tender spot. “He called it my first warrior blaze.” Dorinda blinked back from the memory to confess, “I insisted that he turn the transport around first. Before he did, though, he laid his hand over my heart and held it there.” Dorinda’s palm briefly rested upon Coty’s sternum in echoed gesture. Twisting her crown in uncertainty, she posed her query. “Was it another Vesar sign of honor?”
A slight smile traced the captain’s mouth. His eyebrows arched in some private irony. “No.” She saw him swallow as if the explanation abruptly possessed a sour taste. He poked his chest for emphasis. “A Vesar’s crest is ... uh … a sensitive area of skin.” Then Coty bit his lower lip in indecision. “He was giving you a kiss.”
Dorinda’s brow creased. “A kiss?”
“Yes.” Coty abruptly averted his eyes. “I’m sure he’d be more embarrassed to speak of it than I, and it’s awkward for me.” The captain returned his gaze, a deep sobriety behind its jasper hardness. “The chest ridges are a private matter to a warrior, part of Vesar courtship. Opposite of their shoulder crests which are for ritual display and rival confrontation.”
“If it’s private, how do you know about it?” Dorinda’s heart was thumping with a mixture of curiosity and growing revelation.
In answer, Coty nodded once and accounted, “A few years ago, Vesarius was moving some equipment for Jonas down in engineering. A tower of heavy crates collapsed by accident, pinning him under them. One of the crates had landed on his chest, and he was in severe pain.” Dorinda cringed in shared agony. “Because of the dangerous materials inside,” Coty continued, “Sarius was lucky the containers hadn’t ruptured. But it took careful maneuvering and over an hour to right them. Afterwards, Sheradon examined Vesarius and found that two of his chest ridges had fractured. Sarius couldn’t even wear a shirt for over a week, he was in such discomfort. He hid in his cabin as if unfit to be seen.” Coty reached for her hand. “Dori, a Vesar kiss is very special. Besides his mother, you may be the only other woman he’s honored in this way.”
Dorinda retrieved her hand. “No other?”
Coty shook his head firmly. “His life as an only son required that he learn the warrior code in order to defend his family. It was Vesarius’ duty. When he broke from that tradition, through negligence his parents died.”
“Now,” Dorinda mused, eyes drifting back out through the starry portal, “he’s gone to join them.”
“Yes,” Coty agreed with visible regret. “And with his mother’s honor intact. He guarded that reputation and her name by not taking a mate.” The captain sighed. “The Tankawankanyi name’s extinct now. His mother was the last of her matrilineal line, Vesarius her only progeny.” Coty’s sight was distant when he spoke again. “He died in battle, a true warrior.”
“Michael?” Dorinda wavered with her rollercoaster emotions. “Could he have loved me? Were we so different that it would have been ... wrong? Alien?”
Coty grasped her arms gently. “Dorinda, Vesarius’ feelings were genuine, even if they contradicted his conscience.” He hesitated before continuing. “Because of Tanoki’s betrayal, his own honor was tarnished. But to uphold his family’s honor, Vesarius had to remain celibate. That’s why he was so cold toward you. His matriarch’s nobility was at stake if he faltered.”
“But you knew about this, Michael,” Dorinda countered with a jerk of her shoulders within his grasp. Her cheeks were suddenly flushed at his previous silence. “Why did you encourage me to get close to him if you knew he’d only reject me?” Dori’s eyes burned with betrayal.
“There was a possibility Vesarius would accept you, even love you ... if he was given the chance.” Coty squeezed her arms until she winced. “Can’t you see? I had to give him that chance. He was my friend. I couldn’t have him lead the same secluded life I’ve endured as an Alliance fleet captain.”
“Michael, my arm.”
Ignoring Dorinda’s plea, Coty leaned toward her distressed face. “Vesarius found out what I already knew, you see. The stars are seductive, Dorinda. They’re a siren’s song enticing you to a cold death. I didn’t want him to be like me, out here alone.”
“Michael.” Dorinda tried to wriggle free. “Stop.”
Locking eyes with her, Coty relaxed his grip. “In his own way he did love you.” With velvety regret he added, “Just like I’m beginning to.” Releasing her then, Coty winced awkwardly and turned away, his guilty grimace set to the earthy ground. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that.”
Cradling her newly healed arm, Dorinda blinked back the ache and moved to confront him. “Why not? Because you don’t wish to dishonor Vesarius?” She straightened her spine, her entire frame in defiance. “Is there something wrong with me?”
Michael still avoided her gaze. Instead he spoke softly. “It’s too late to save me, Dorinda. I’m ... old. My feelings are displaced. Confused. I’m not thinking straight.” Coty’s eyes rose, brushed past hers. Tersely he added, “If you’ll excuse me ...” The Pompeii’s captain marched back through the glen. Dorinda heard the magnetic doors release him from her awkward company.
Dorinda huffed. “I don’t understand,” she exclaimed waving at the air. “Why does life have to be so complicated?” Turning back toward the star-studded portal she released her tensed lungs. “Tundra, you and Noah have it so simple.” She flopped down onto the grass and hugged her friends. “I do hope in my next life I come back as a bird. Something humble, like a jenny wren.”
Chapter 13: Fostering Alliances
On Earth, the mid-September weather was chilly beyond Vesarius’ comfort. Yet even in 2105, the Adirondack Park of upstate New York was a place out of time – far simpler a life than to what the warrior was accustomed.
Below his little rental cottage, bordering Eighth Lake, he had been making use of an ancient technology – soaking daily in the glacial water to heal his injured ribcage. The Alliance doctor, from New York City, had insisted the cold would help reduce the pain and swelling if alternated with warm compresses. Yet his daily dips into the pristine basin, for two weeks now, had done little to bolster the Vesar’s simmering ambiguity. His isolation here would not last much longer.
Vesarius shivered in the icy liquid. “Huaj´im,” he cursed then opened his eyes. The trees around the tea-tinted lake were a vibrant blend of greens, browns, reds, and oranges. No wonder she had loved it here. With a scowl the Vesar shivered again. “Why did I not just fall on my head?” He reimagined his harrowing plunge through the Orthop’s Arch followed by his ungainly crash against Mytok’s stone plaza. “Doctor’s orders,” he grumbled and continued to soak. Vesarius adjusted his seat on the sandy bottom, wriggling his ridged toes more deeply into the slippery water grass. Overhead an osprey circled, searching for fish.
In another week the Pompeii would arrive in orbit. The realization filled Vesarius with dread, and he swatted at the icy water around his submerged torso. I am dead to them. I should stay dead. He could hide even from Tundra. The Alaskan malamute was bonded to Dorinda now and could no longer sense his picture words.
Circling above him, the osprey chirped into the chilled autumn air. Vesarius watched the fish hawk tighten its arc then pivot in midair and hover over the lake, talons extended. Suddenly the bird dropped with a splash. It emerged, flapping awkwardly and shaking its head of water. After a moment, the osprey beat its wings and bounced from the liquid, a silvery fish impaled by its nubby, taloned feet.
Vesarius smirked. If only a Vesar’s life were so simple. Did this fish hawk k
now of honor and obligation? Vesarius thought of Sologin. The Vesar raptor had understood. Yet, despite the Vesar’s duty to protect his Kinpanion, Sologin was dead. Perhaps it was best that he follow her example.
Sologin’s spirit still rode the wind, however. It was alive before him. Vesarius slipped a sardonic smile as he watched the osprey disappear among the treetops along the opposite bank. Very soon the migrating raptor would move on in its travels, leaving the advancing winter for warmer climes further south.
With another shiver, Vesarius decided he needed to warm his bones. Stiffly he rose, the translucent liquid dripping from his braid and bare arms. His chest ridges shone a dark ochre as the blood coursed more rapidly there. Striding through the shallows, Vesarius stepped onto the lake’s thin strip of beach. He could see the cottage just up the rise, fenced in by the centennial blue spruce Michael Tanner had planted with his new wife, Dorinda.
As he padded, barefoot, through the thick trees with their stiff needled carpet, he bent to tug at a branch of late fruiting blueberries. The wild fruits were tiny, no bigger than half his pinky tip. But they were fragrantly sweet and full of juice. The low, sprawling bushes had been allowed to spread naturally over time. They now dotted the surrounding woods with their enticing sweetness. The deer would return tonight, Vesarius knew and smiled. Henry David Thoreau would not have felt out of place here. This small Adirondack lake was much like the author’s Walden Pond, even after three centuries of engulfing industrialization, colonization, and technological growth.
The birds serenaded as Vesarius tromped to the renovated cottage. An open verandah now perched against the cottage’s lake side, and the Vesar climbed the three steps to the twin Adirondack chairs where he had draped his leather clothes. He toweled himself dry before wrapping his injured ribs. Vesarius pulled the elasticized gauze around his torso, tightening the fabric until his side ached and his lungs could not fully inflate. After securing the bandage with a self-stick strip, he then bent to retrieve his sleeveless tunic. Gingerly he slipped the garment over his head and tugged free his still dripping braid. After tightening the shirt’s side lacings, Vesarius drew on his leather pants. He finished by heaving his boots on with a grunt.
The effort still made him grimace, and Vesarius frowned at his difficulty. The New York doctor had explained why: When a bone was broken twice within a short period of time, healing took over twice as long. Vesarius understood all too well the implications for his creed. A warrior was lucky the first time in battle, dead the second. A careless Vesar had no right passing his genes on to the next generation. Such a man had no right to live at all.
Cursing softly again at his own inadequacy, Vesarius checked his wrist chrono. Oh-six hundred hours. Time to head into Old Forge to pick up the special order he had placed, upon his arrival two weeks earlier, at the Howard General Store.
Opening the side door to the cottage, Vesarius strode through the kitchen to the bedroom beyond the living area. Still the same he noticed yet again. Time had eaten away at the original cottage, but the restoration had maintained the now quaint and cozy floor plan.
In the bedroom, Vesarius acknowledged last night’s restlessness with a flip of the disheveled blankets. Then he grabbed his pack, slid it onto one shoulder, and strode out the front door keying the electronic lock. As he ascended the granite strewn path that led to the now paved Uncas Road, Vesarius tried to remember the disturbing dream which had startled him from sleep sometime before dawn.
Though he closed his lids to recapture the images, the Vesar could only recall emotional impressions, nothing that might have helped explain his cold sweat and racing heart. Had he been awakened by a wolf howling in the woods last night? There were a few packs roaming the park. Perhaps the animal had been prowling within his dream, warning him of danger. He remembered only its glowing, golden eyes.
Vesarius stepped out onto the lonely roadway and turned left toward Old Forge. He estimated it would take him just over four hours to walk the twenty-six kilometers to town. Pacing himself, he watched his bootsteps to avoid jarring his injured ribs. His thoughts, however, continued to drift. The anxiety he had experienced last night was too vivid to have been just an overactive imagination. Vesarius searched his memory for the last time he had been that frightened.
As a child he had often climbed the jagged mountain behind his mother’s expansive homestead on Vesahran-dani. Once, after a heavy storm, Vesarius had ascended to a deep ledge nearly half the distance to the summit. Suddenly a rock fall had dislodged his tack and pushed him over the edge. The tumble had nearly ended him, and the young Vesar had had to spend the night awaiting rescue.
The fear, then, had been of a predator cat which had stalked nearby, hunting tarlorabbits. Young Vesarius had been certain the cat would smell his blood and slay him. The entire ordeal had tested his Vesar hearing as he lay straining for any sound of the predator’s return. That uncertainty had kept him conscious, kept him alive, until his father found him cold and battered with three broken ribs, a punctured lung, and a concussion the next morning.
“My ribs,” Vesarius murmured instinctively rubbing his left side. Vesarius glanced up in midstep to regard the rotund and variegated peak of Black Bear Mountain. Perhaps the dream had been a repeat performance of his childhood accident, no doubt triggered by circumstantial similarities.
Dismissing the nightmare with his next stride toward town, Vesarius strove to cut his time by a quarter hour. He increased his pace. During the trek south along Route 28, only a score or so hovercraft hummed by. None slowed nor stopped to offer the warrior a ride. Was it his imagination, or did a few speed up quick to pass him? Were violent memories of the Colonial War still alive and well in this wilderness? Was a Vesar such an oddity here? Perhaps a driver thought him some aboriginal phantom.
Eventually Vesarius’ legs carried him past the outlying houses that marked the boundary of Old Forge. Politely he nodded at the folks who stared at him as they collected their morning papers or walked their dogs. A woman out puttering in her dew glistening garden gasped at his passage then apologized nervously for her alarm, murmuring something about a blue moon and twenty years ago. Vesarius smiled calmly back then nodded his understanding before continuing down the main street to the general store. He hefted his pack higher on his right shoulder and stepped up into the doorway. There he bowed his hello at the old man who was the owner.
“Come to get your books, young man?” the elderly gentleman croaked from his hover chair.
“Yes, Sir. The young lady said my order would be in today. Is she here?” Vesarius moved aside as the owner hummed by.
“Majel,” the man called hoarsely. “You have a customer out here.”
“Coming Mr. Howard,” came a woman’s voice from the back room. Vesarius watched with amusement as a dark haired teen emerged from the heavy curtain shoving loose strands back from her forehead. The young woman’s bright lipstick was smeared around her mouth, and her cheeks were a deep flush. When she saw who her customer was, the girl froze for a moment, eyes transfixed and uncertain.
Vesarius straightened and gave Majel his most encouraging grin. “I came to see about my order. It has been two weeks.”
“Yes, of course, Sir,” Majel stammered. “Your order arrived yesterday.” She straightened her dress and ran a finger around her mouth to do the same to the lipstick smudge. “I’ll bring it out to you.” Turning back to the storage room, the young woman seemed to be mumbling to herself. Vesarius’ sensitive ears picked up the low reply of Majel’s beau. Obviously the young man had to leave and wanted one last goodbye kiss.
The Vesar stood by patiently awaiting the human’s return. Finally there was a murmuring of ‘see-you-laters’, and Majel reappeared carrying a biocrate between her arms. “Here you are, Sir.” She set the container down on the front counter by the electronic credit pad. “Which CredCo do you use?”
“My credit is based on Tlonnis. Alliance Galax Company. I can provide my account number.”
“Yes, Miss. I am an officer on an Alliance fleet vessel. I am … on vacation here.”
“For two months,” Majel interrupted. “My boyfriend told me.”
“Yes, well, I do want to get some reading in. And I have a long walk back to my cottage.”
“Oh, of course, Sir.” The girl busied herself at totaling up the order from the invoice attached to the biocrate’s flap.
“Majel, you forgot something,” Mr. Howard announced, bringing his hover chair around to the end of the counter. He must have beckoned her to him, for Majel moved to kneel, disappearing behind the display boxes of candy and impulse items stacked on top of the antique glass case counter.
Vesarius smirked when the owner whispered to her that she needed to open the crate and verify its contents. An Earth term dipped through his subconscious: busybody. The warrior harrumphed to himself. In an emergency, his Vesar hearing could save his and his team’s lives. At times like this, however, Vesarius was only an innocent eavesdropper.
The young woman, blushing again, returned to the credit pad and the Vesar’s container. With the pocketknife Mr. Howard had handed her, Majel split the taped seal and popped the flaps. Next she reached in to brush aside the biodegradable packing material in search of the order’s contents. Setting two books on the counter, she then retrieved a small white box.
“I will open that one,” Vesarius said a bit too hastily. Majel almost dropped the fist-sized carton to him. Vesarius was aware of her apprehensive stare as he lifted the lid of the eight centimeter long, hinged case. “Do not worry, Miss. It is not dangerous. Check the invoice.” Satisfied that the item was what he had ordered from the electronic catalog two weeks earlier, Vesarius set the case down on the counter beside the books.