by Tana Stone
I rolled over to face her, sitting up so fast she nearly stumbled back. “What?”
Juliette stood beside my bed, her arms crossed and her usually placid blue eyes narrowed at me. Her cheeks were flushed from exertion, and strands of her pale hair fell into her face. “You heard me. The Zagrath ship arrived, and the fighters are assembling outside the village square.”
I swung my feet over the side of the bed as I rubbed sleep from my eyes. Although I hadn’t allowed myself to cry last night, my eyes still felt puffy and raw. “I don’t understand. Were the Zagrath supposed to arrive so soon?”
Juliette huffed out an impatient breath. This time she sounded like me instead of our mother, and the rapid tapping of her toes as she watched me only made the similarity more disturbing.
“Am I truly like this?” I asked her.
“Like what?” Her tapping toe paused for a moment.
I fluttered a hand at her. “Do I really act this impatient when I want something?”
“Yes, you do.” She grabbed my hand and tugged me to my feet. “Now are you coming, or what?”
I shook my hand from her grip. “You said the fighters are assembling right? Well, I have news for you, sister, I’m not one of those fighters.” As Corvak had made abundantly clear the night before.
Juliette groaned. “Now you decide to play by the rules? I know about your secret training sessions, remember? I also know that you’re an excellent fighter, so stop being a stubborn jackass and go do your thing.”
I eyed her. It was odd to hear my favorite slang—and curse words--coming from my sister’s lips. I also wasn’t used to my baby sister being so assertive with me or anyone. The way her eyes flashed and her lips pressed together in determination gave me hope that maybe Juliette wasn’t the fragile girl I always thought she was. Maybe she’d be able to make it without me someday.
“Sienna! Are you even listening to me?”
“I’m listening.” I spotted my boots kicked off in two different spots on the floor and snatched them up, jamming my feet into them as I hopped toward the doorway. “But I’m not used to you yelling at me.”
“Well,” she said, her voice lowered, “I’m not used to imperial ships making unexpected visits to our planet. Or a Vandar leading a bunch of fighters out to meet it.”
I hesitated in the doorway, shoving my last foot into the boot. “Corvak is down there? You saw him?”
She nodded, biting her lower lip. “He’s the one who asked Kerl to assemble all the fighters. The Zagrath ship landed on the other side of the shallows, because it didn’t get authorization to land on our landing pad.”
“How do you know so much?”
She picked up her basket, which had been sitting on the floor. “Early-morning deliveries to the square.”
I noticed that the cloth still billowed high above mounds of rolls I could smell from steps away. “Which you didn’t make.”
She shrugged. “It seemed more important to come get you and tell you what’s happening.”
“I don’t know why.” Doubt crept into my mind again, along with embarrassment about how far things had gone with Corvak before he’d sent me away. “It isn’t like they’ll let me join the fight.”
Juliette shook her head, flipped back the cloth on her basket, and plucked out a brown, crusty roll dotted with black carley seeds. She shoved it into my hands as she shook her head. “Since when have you ever listened to what anyone else has said you could or couldn’t do? Never,” she answered for me. “Now is not the time to start worrying about what other people in the village might think. This is what you’ve been working for, Sienna. This is an actual fight.”
I stared at the roll in my hand, warm and soft, and then at my sister with a steely glint in her eyes. She was right. I’d always wanted a way to put my talents to use, which was almost impossible on a peaceful planet that didn’t allow females to fight. If there was ever a time, this was it.
For a moment, I thought about Corvak and how much I didn’t want to see him, but then I brushed that aside. No way was I letting some arrogant, moody alien warrior keep me from the fight. If he wanted to go hot and cold, that was his problem. I’d trained every night for something just like this—and had the bruises to show for it—and I wasn’t going to let my anger at the jerk who’d taught me ruin it.
“You’re right.” I took a bite of the roll, the combination of the savory yeast bread and the tang of the carley seeds making me almost moan out loud. I swallowed as I snagged my cloak from the hook beside the door and threw it over my shoulders. “I’ve gotta run.”
“Be careful,” she called after me with a tinge of worry in her voice, sounding much more like the sister I knew.
“You know it.” I ran through the living area where my father lay crumpled under a blanket and out the door. The suns were higher now and the village square was filling up below, a reminder that I’d wasted precious time arguing with my sister.
Hurrying down the stone path, I had to push past cloaked humans and Kimitherians who were also heading down to the square. It was clear from the snatches of whispered conversation I heard as I passed that everyone already knew about the Zagrath ship. Although some people sounded curious, no one seemed frightened, which told me they had no idea why the empire was here or what it could mean to our planet.
When I got stuck behind a large cluster of old Kimitherian females, I was forced to slow my pace. Glancing over the rock ledge, I scoured the square for any signs of Corvak, my heart beating nervously at the thought of seeing him again.
You should be nervous about the imperial soldiers, not some kiss, I told myself.
But it wasn’t just some kiss. It had been more than that, and it had almost been a lot more than that. Memories of Corvak grinding his cock into me had my cheeks burning, but I took another bite of my sister’s roll and scooted around the old ladies, breaking into a near run as I reached the bottom of the path and heard loud voices and nervous murmurs.
A crowd had assembled in the village square, but I could tell from the raised voices that something was happening outside the village. As I tried to push my way through to the other side the loud voices became shouts and then the crowd surged back, some people turning and running for the cave dwellings.
I managed to reach the obelisk, stepping up onto the slightly raised platform. I could still only see the tops of heads, but I did spot a glimpse of Corvak’s dark hair over the shorter fighters holding wooden shields. Then a shot of blaster fire tore through the air, followed by screams. More people rushed past me going away from the fight, but I ran forward—and straight into Donal.
He stared at me, his eyes ringed with purple and his nose covered in a brown bandage. For a second I thought he was going to have it out with me for kicking him in the face, but he only cast a terrifying look over his shoulder.
“They killed the Vandar,” he said, before stumbling away from me and running toward the path.
My stomach lurched, but I thought he was lying. I’d just seen Corvak standing at the front. Forcing my way through the panicking crowd, I finally reached the open space where a pair of soldiers in smoke-blue uniforms lay sprawled on the ground, blood seeping into the dusty ground around them.
And in front of them, lying on his stomach as if he was sleeping, was Corvak.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ch 23
Sienna
My knees buckled, and I fell to the ground. He couldn’t be dead. He was a Vandar raider, and the toughest individual I’d ever met. It wasn’t possible that he’d been killed by a stupid imperial scout. I pressed a hand to my mouth as the roll I’d so quickly eaten threatened to come back up.
Around me, people were still screaming and running but a few of the fighters with wooden shields gathered around Corvak, who lay unmoving. No blood pooled around him, but he was deathly still, and a black scorch mark covered one of his shoulders. His chest did not rise and fall, but his face was almost peaceful, his eyes closed and his
scar nearly invisible. Our planet might provide long life, but it could not bring anyone back from the dead, or save them from being shot. Death, if it came in the form of an accident or violence, was still just as final.
I jerked my gaze away, unable to look upon him anymore without remembering him very alive, his heart thudding and his breath heavy as he’d pressed me against the wall the night before. I closed my eyes, forcing those memories away. It seemed almost silly that I’d been worried about being embarrassed when I saw him. Right now I’d give anything to feel embarrassment instead of the regret that threatened to swallow me whole.
I opened my eyes again, shifting my gaze to the other bodies splayed across the hardpacked dirt. The two nearest him were without helmets and one was without a head. I tasted the tang of bile in the back of my throat as I spotted a disembodied head that had rolled to one side, dirt caking the bloody neck stump. Farther away was another imperial soldier wearing his black helmet, Corvak’s battle axe impaled deep in his chest as he lay face up, although to me, he was faceless.
Had he killed them all himself? Guilt gnawed at me. I should have been here sooner. I should have been fighting by his side. Maybe if I’d been with him instead of his useless fighting unit, he wouldn’t be dead himself. A rumble of anger bubbled up in my chest—anger at myself for not arriving faster, and anger at the stupid rules on my planet which had deprived the Vandar of someone who would have had his back.
I pushed myself up to my feet even though my legs trembled. I needed to get away before I lost it and made a scene that I’d live to regret. Now that Corvak was gone, life would return to normal for me. No late-night training sessions. No sneaking bundles of bread onto his windowsill. No quickening of my pulse when I heard him tramp through the woods toward me. Everything would return to the normal drudgery that had defined my life before the Vandar had arrived.
I flicked a quick glance at the dead Zagrath. Well, maybe life wouldn’t be completely normal. Someone would have to answer for them, and now we had no Vandar to defend us from the empire.
Walking forward on jerky feet, I reached the helmeted soldier and stared down at him. Even in death, he clutched a blaster in his hand, the finger on the trigger. He’d been the one to shoot Corvak, I realized. He’d shot the Vandar in the back.
“Like a coward,” I whispered.
After our training sessions and while we’d eaten the bread I’d snuck from my sister, Corvak had told me many tales of the horrors the empire had inflicted on other planets and especially what they’d done to the Vandar millennia ago. They were vicious cowards driven by greed and a disregard for those they deemed beneath them, which was everyone who wasn’t one of the privileged Zagrath.
Even I knew that the Zagrath were also humans, but they’d been what had been referred to as the “one-percenters” when the human home world, Earth, had been all but abandoned after its resources had been stripped and it had fallen into poverty and chaos. The humans who’d been wealthy enough to escape had left and started colonies elsewhere, using their top scientists and vast wealth to increase their lifespans and improve their biology to be more resistant to the illnesses that had plagued their former planet. They’d called themselves Zagrath to distance themselves even further from the rest of us humans, who finally made it off Earth, and had been attempting to rule the galaxy ever since.
I’d heard the barely suppressed rage in Corvak’s voice when he’d spoken of the atrocities he’d seen at their hand. Now I felt that same fury as I looked down at the soldier who had shot him in the back.
Bracing one foot on the soldier’s chest, I gripped the long handle of the axe and jerked it up and out. Blood seeped into the coarse fabric of the imperial uniform, staining the smoky blue material and turning it black. Scarlet droplets slid off the curved blade and speckled the dirt at my feet.
The soldier was dead. There was no question about that. Somehow, Corvak had managed to throw his axe before he fell, and his aim had been perfect. I choked back a sob as tears stung the backs of my eyelids.
“Don’t you dare cry,” I ordered myself, clenching the handle of the axe so tight my fingers hurt. I needed to be able to see clearly to do what needed to be done. What I had to do.
Even though the Vandar axe was incredibly heavy, I heaved it over my head, holding it high as my arms shook from the effort. I thought about the stories Corvak had told me about the Vandar raiding missions, and the rich mythology of his people.
According to Vandar lore, Corvak should be warmly welcomed into their afterlife—Zedna, he’d called it—where he would drink and share tales of battles with the gods of old. It didn’t sound so bad, if you believed that kind of thing. And right now, I needed to believe that he’d been reunited with his people. I needed to believe his death hadn’t been for nothing.
“For Lokken,” I whispered as I swung the battle axe through the air and took off the imperial soldier’s head. The blade sliced cleanly through the man’s neck and hit the ground hard, sending a hard jolt up through my arms. I watched with satisfaction as the helmet rolled away from the body, and I leaned on the axe handle to keep from collapsing to the ground again.
As Corvak would have said, it was done.
Turning, I saw that no one had witnessed my act. Everyone was gathered around Corvak’s body, the whispers and excited murmurs finally reaching my ears.
“He’s alive!” Terel cried, standing up from the huddled group. “The Vandar is alive!”
I held my breath, not believing his words for a moment. Then more cheers went up around Corvak, and my heart raced at the impossible news, the blood deafening in my ears. He was alive. The sob I’d been desperately holding back escaped my lips. Then the axe handle slipped from my fingers, and I joined it in sinking to the dirt.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Ch 24
Corvak
Tvek. The last time my head had ached so much had been the day after I’d put away almost an entire bottle of Parnithian gin by myself. I lifted a sluggish hand to touch my temple, but my shoulder twinged with pain.
“He’s waking.”
The hushed voice made me still, blinking slowly as I opened my eyes and registered Kerl and Terel standing by my side, along with a Kimitherian male I’d never seen before. The last thing I remembered was being outside the village after I’d taken out the two imperial soldiers. Then my memories became fuzzy. What had happened, and where was I?
I swiveled my head slowly. I was in the bed chamber of my quarters, lying on the bed. My battle kilt and boots were in a small pile in the far corner, which meant I was naked under the blanket. It didn’t bother me, but it was unusual, considering how little skin the people on the planet exposed.
“Our apologies, Vandar,” the unfamiliar Kimitherian said, his yellow eyes appraising me with care. “It was necessary to remove your garments to treat you.”
I pushed myself onto one elbow but stopped there when my head swam. “Treat me? Why did you need to treat me?”
The three males exchanged glances.
“You do not remember?” Kerl asked, tilting his scaled face at me.
I bit back the urge to shake all three males. I was not a patient Vandar, nor was I a good patient. “Tell me.”
The Kimitherian I didn’t know cleared his throat, which sounded much like a croak. “You were shot by a Zagrath blaster. At first, we assumed you were dead, but the shot appears to have gone wide, hitting your shoulder and not any vital organs. You were seriously injured, though, and stunned for a considerable amount of time. That is why we needed to treat you with some of our planet’s healing plant compounds. Your body needed assistance to restore itself fully.”
I glanced down at my bare chest. There were no scars or marks. “And am I fully restored?”
“Lerek healed you,” Kerl said, bobbing his head up and down. “You have made a miraculous recovery.”
The other Kimitherian touched a webbed hand to his chest, bowing his head slightly. “I am Lerek. The
planet’s healer. Your injuries were severe enough to summon me from my village on the other side of the planet.”
I hadn’t known the planet had a healer. In a place where everyone lived forever—or close to it—the concept of healers hadn’t occurred to me. Then again, it sounded like there was only one, and he didn’t live close, so he clearly wasn’t in high demand.
Lerek let out a bubbly laugh as if reading my expression. “Yes, there is a need for a healer even on a planet such as Kimithion III. We might be immortal, but we are not invincible.” He inclined his head at me. “A fact you should keep in mind the next time you go up against an imperial soldier. It might not take long for me to traverse the distance across the planet, but the next time the Zagrath’s aim might be better.”
I slowly pushed myself up until I was leaning against the bed’s wooden headboard. “But I killed both of the imperial soldiers. Unless…”
“There was a third,” Terel said. “You couldn’t have known.”
I stiffened. “So, there is still a Zagrath soldier on the planet?”
“No,” Terel said quickly. “You managed to kill him with your weapon before you fell. From what I hear, it was quite a feat. Then we checked the imperial ship to be sure there were no more soldiers.”
I had no memory of that, but my muscles uncoiled. At least they were dead.
“And then the female…” Kerl started to say, before Terel elbowed him in the side.
“We should allow you to continue to rest,” Lerek said, patting my blanketed leg. “Your body is healed, but you might feel drowsy from the compounds I used. It will wear off soon enough, and I suspect sooner because of your size.”
I rubbed a hand to my head. “But the Zagrath. They will not give up so easily, especially when they don’t hear from their scout ship. I should help prepare—"
“You do not need to worry about that now,” Terel said. “Your bravery has bought us time and —"