by Vi Voxley
Grothan pointed to the other warrior, who for some reason seemed familiar to Isolde. “And this is Narath.”
The face finally registered. “You’re the one who saved my life,” she said quietly. “Thank you.”
The Brion nodded. “I am glad to have been able to serve the Commander,” he replied. His voice was so deep Isolde could barely make out the words, but somehow they put her at ease. Where Grothan’s voice excited her, brought her every sense live, Narath’s voice seemed to match his presence. He was the strong, silent type. Isolde had to admit that she felt better about her circumstances than she had before.
“That was far beyond service,” Grothan almost growled at him. “You came to save my gesha. I do not forget this.”
Now Narath looked like Christmas had come early. The warriors hung on his every word, Isolde noticed, and no wonder, she couldn’t help but do the same herself.
Grothan sent them both to their posts, staying behind to kiss her once more. No beeping came to bother them this time, but the world that insisted on revolving around them would not be kept waiting. The general pulled away, holding Isolde’s face in his strong hands, with gentleness she hadn’t thought he could show.
“Sleep,” he said. “I will deal with my brother generals.”
The sense of peace she had had for a moment was banished in an instant. “They are coming to kill you. Because of me,” she whispered.
Grothan’s valor squares flashed to life, filling the room with an otherworldly glow. It literally became the reflection of his will to fight, and win.
“They will try,” he said.
“What if they…” Isolde began.
Grothan shook his head, a vicious snarl pulling back his lips, reminding Isolde in one swift moment she was still in the presence of a killer.
“I’ve had many enemies in my life,” Diego Grothan said. “They are nothing but grief to their mothers now.”
Fear should have kept Isolde awake, but sheer exhaustion won out. Her last conscious thought was of his eyes when he’d sworn he would keep her safe. Then, after what was surely a lifetime worth of experience crammed into a single day, she finally got to sleep.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Diego
Diego had called his fellow generals brothers, denoting the fact that they were all Brions and shared a purpose in life. In Brion culture, nearly everything came down to the things one had in common with others. Warriors felt a stronger connection with others of their kind and less, for example, with politicians.
Men shared an understanding with other men and women with women, although the distance between the sexes was diminished by other factors. Diego counted Deliya as one of the closest to him even though she was a woman. But she was also a warrior, a formidable and dependable one at that, not to mention they had fought together for years and shared a bed more than once.
All that had something to do with what Brions were like in general, but Diego’s knowledge of that was fairly lacking. Not that anyone could tell for sure. The Elders made no secret of their shame in this.
Briolina was a model planet for the rapid evolution of a proper species, just like Terra, habitable and kind. The Brions, however, were not. The Elders told tales of bloody wars and terrible deeds the Brions had committed amongst themselves. In the darker days of their people, it was not unheard of for the Elders to call the raging armies to order by asking them if they wanted to bear the burden of being the only species in existence to blur the meaning between genocide and collective suicide. Implying that with all the killing it wouldn’t have made a difference in the outcome if all the warring parties just killed themselves. To hear them tell of it, it was apt to compare the two, because the Brions had come very close to destroying themselves and wiping the race off the face of the galaxy forever.
For all the good and evil it brought, the Elders had searched for an answer to quell the blood thirst of their warlords. The answer was found in science now long lost, and they had never looked back, even if the Elders thought mistakes had been made.
The Brions took nature into their own hands, starting to genetically alter themselves with technology no one could replicate in the present. The Elders in those days – now myth as much as history – thought it was better to forget about their violent past and the tricks it took to bring them back from the edge of extinction. In the present, the Elders raged in futile anger at the custom of purposefully removing the knowledge from living memory that had held for, to the best of their guesses, centuries. They had no written history before some thousand years back. Everything they knew of themselves came from oral tradition, passed down from Elder to Elder. As technology caught up with them, scientists slowly started the process of cracking their genetic code, tracing back the paths it had taken. It was like walking in a snow storm, trying to discern whether the footprints they followed were natural or artificial.
As much as anything could be said, the scientists were almost positive most of the changes had been neurological. The ferocity of the Brions had not been removed, theorized to have made them defenseless, but… harnessed. It made them fiercely protective of their species and strengthened the bonds they shared between themselves. It had also enhanced their senses, although not everyone got a similar share. The lives of the Brions were fairly determined from a young age when it became obvious what was intended for them. Warriors and heavy workers grew stronger, their senses sharpened and their bodies achieved natural perfection easily. Scientists, politicians, technicians – their minds seemed to work on another level, easily passing for telepathy or an implanted AI to the untrained eye. Even if it was impossible to say which came first – the alterations or the strict order of their society – they worked together now.
All in all, the Brions saw the world through the concept of being a Brion. The closer someone was to their self-image, the closer they felt to them. Scientists thought it was designed to ensure the purity of the species.
To ensure the variability the species also needed there were geshas and gerions – the female and the male part of their sacred binding. The Elders were positive of two things. One, that they still didn’t understand what provoked the binding, which made it very easy for it to turn into a religious or spiritual matter. After all, did they not call geshas the fated mates? Two, that unlike everything else in Brion culture, geshas and gerions didn’t need to be similar. On the contrary, more often than not the pair were opposites in some aspects, which made Diego feel slightly better about Isolde, although even he had to admit that a gesha from another species might stir up the discussion.
Still, there was no stronger bond than that of a gesha and her gerion. Whether it was an evolutionary trick to mold a species –why the Brions were generally physically fit and rarely ill as their bodies naturally searched for the best match for their genes, breeding weakness out generation by generation – or fate doing the same, it had become unquestionable.
Now Diego was about to match the strongest against the second strongest bond.
He had named his fellow generals brothers, but they were only brothers to him by being Brions.
They were, however, brothers to each other. Faren, Commander of the Unbroken and Gawen, Commander of the Fearless. They were twins, both warriors, both Brion generals, great commanders, nigh unmatched in combat prowess… In the eyes of Brions, they were almost the same. In fact, many treated them as two bodies with one mind, or two aspects of a whole, at least. And Diego would get one of them to betray the other. Even though brothers, they were not the same.
Space still stretched wide between them, and even with Brion tech, it would take some time for his presumed apprehenders to arrive. Diego was intent on using that time to put his own house in order. With Isolde as safe as she could be without him personally in the room – safeguards in place in addition to the reassuring presence of his two best warriors – Diego could focus on the immediate matters. Duty called to him, even if his heart ached for Isolde’s presence, never to be
let out of his sight and his arms.
News moved fast on a Brion ship. He had made no attempt to stop the information from flowing freely. Other than confidential matters, he ran the ship under the premise that his warriors and staff were able to handle the same things he did and refrained from keeping them in the dark. So they knew about Isolde, the mission to Rhea, about the kill order and his refusal.
Brion warriors seldom stooped to simple pride. Pride in its simplest forms was similar to being lucky, as if a warrior didn’t know their own worth without constant reminders. No, the Brions knew their worth and their shortcomings. There was no honor in false reputation. Deep, well-earned pride still had its place, though.
Diego felt that kind of pride as his officers filed into the main arena. Brion commanders always held their meetings in arenas, a sign that they allowed all officers of rank to speak their mind and, if need be, fight for their opinions. It also showed they were always ready to accept challenges, proving every day they were worthy of their position.
His expression never wavered, but as one by one the officers heeded his call and took their places in a rough circle around him, for the second time that day he felt elation at something he should have taken for granted but didn’t. He took for granted that his warriors would follow him to battle and death, if need be, but he had been uncertain they would defy the senators. There was little precedent for it, after all, as usually the Brions were of one mind.
Not that day.
Diego’s eyes narrowed as his true purpose came to him, painful as it was. He took a moment to slowly take in the faces of the officers present. Most wore valor squares, signifying them as warriors, the fiercest of all the Brions. A smaller part did not – his bridge staff, technicians, healers, and so on. They held their ground among the warriors, although some towered a full head and shoulders over them.
“The Fearless and the Unbroken are en route to us,” Diego said, hands clasped behind his back. He took a moment to take in the reactions, most of them so diminutive as to barely exist. They could have been glaring for the difference it made to him – the thinker classes got most of the sense enhancements, but warriors had a use for them as well. “They do not concern me.”
Some laughed, others looked concerned, Diego dismissed both. The ones who remained quiet were his interest. Amongst them were his most and least loyal, after all. He wasn’t overly surprised by the results, just very, very insulted. He wondered if the traitors knew by this point they were dead, even if they still drew breath.
His voice dropped to a deep, feral growl. Down from the dark and twisted paths of their evolution, his violent core crawled forward. “My concern is what happened earlier,” he snarled. In the near darkness, valor squares lit up his face and several others. Some showed fear, some anger. He could hear several hands itch for their spears to support him… and not. “You know by now,” he continued, “of the traitor Ensha, whose name from this day forward shall be synonymous with disobedience to his commander.”
No one said a word. No one moved. They knew of him.
“I know all of you,” Diego said. His words echoed in the vast arena. Nothing else dared to make a sound. “Out of respect for the battles I have fought with each of you at my side, I ask only once for someone here to explain to me how Senator Eren knew to send the kill order to Ensha.”
It had bothered him from the moment he had stepped into Isolde’s room after the attack. Seeing his gesha safe and sound brought his senses back to him. Ensha was dead on the ground, but why? While Isolde wept her terror into his jacket, Diego raged internally. He had at least two traitors on his ship who would take a snake’s order over his. On his ship. The insult was too terrible to properly comprehend. All Brions belonged to Briolina, to their brothers and sisters, and all Brion warriors belonged to their commander, their leader, their alpha. They were one. They were his, were him. It hurt as if one of Diego’s own hands had tried to punch a spear through Isolde’s stomach.
Ensha was dead, which left the one who had let the senator’s kill order through to the ship’s inner comm systems. At least, Diego hoped there would be only one.
Silence lingered.
Then, a warrior stepped forward. Diego faced him, hands still behind his back. The warrior’s squares showed his readiness to fight, but no fear. No irrational fury either.
“Commander,” the warrior asked in a booming voice, “if this human was not your gesha, would you kill her?”
A ridiculous question, but Diego knew he was building up to something else. “Yes,” he said.
“Is she the reason we will fight our brothers?”
“Yes and no. I will fight for her. You will fight for all Brions.”
Some understanding dawned on the face of the warrior and many others. A few hands relaxed, a few lights dimmed, several lit up. The warrior continued, “Are you a traitor to the Brions like Senator Eren says, Commander?”
“No.”
It would have seemed odd to others, but Diego knew why he’d had to ask. Lying at this moment would have been a great dishonor and possibly his death sentence. Powerful as he was, were they all of one mind, he wouldn’t walk away alive.
He had not been afraid for a moment.
“Is Senator Eren a traitor to the Brions?” the warrior asked.
“Yes.”
Three warriors moved out of the circle so fast a human eye couldn’t have registered it. Diego ducked under the first spear, grabbed hold of the shaft and ripped it out of the man’s grasp with such strength he heard the warrior’s wrist snap. He didn’t have time to voice his pain before Diego put the spear through his throat, blocking the next warrior’s blow with the shaft. The spear came out of the first attacker spraying red, coating the still motionless circle in the man’s hot blood. No one had moved a step. It would have been a horrible offense to suggest Diego Grothan needed help dealing with three traitors.
The second died as quickly as the first when Diego speared him through his heart. The third, a female warrior, had stopped a little away, eyeing him tensely. While stepping forward with slow steps, Diego shook the spear clean of the blood that had just flown through the veins of her companions. He could see she had made peace with her death. Good. She would die a Brion, at least, even if she was a traitor.
Left, right, left, left, the stabs came at his head, but Diego dodged them easily, dropping under the spear’s whirling blade, only to arise like an avatar of death, cutting her head from her shoulders with a swift motion, sending it rolling on the floor. He hadn’t even drawn his own weapon. As his officers looked on calmly, Diego’s only thought was the first warrior should never have been elevated to his ranks if he’d let himself be disarmed so easily, even by him.
The warrior with the booming voice who’d questioned him hadn’t moved either, although he was covered with fresh blood more than the rest. Now he merely nodded and retreated into the ranks.
Diego leaned the butt of the spear on the ground, his eyes cast down, looking at the dead with mild curiosity.
“I do not have my answer. Just bad blood.”
Still no movement, and in the darkness, Diego stood in the aura of steaming red light.
“Very well,” he said then, “I see a quick death does not appeal to you.”
From the moment they’d gathered and even before, Diego had narrowed the possibilities down; he knew his officers. Access to comm links, the amount of ambition, distance from him during the hologram call as to hide his actions from Diego’s sight, and most importantly, petrified eyes and the shaking he couldn’t completely still had all given the guilty away.
The traitor had time to draw in a shocked breath before Diego’s spear nailed him to the arena’s wall fifteen meters away. It was aimed to make him bleed out agonizingly slowly. His hands tried to clutch the spear and pull it out of him, not to escape but to die, but without a warrior’s strength it might have been a wall he tried to lift. Frightened, pained sobs escaped his lips. The others turned their
backs on him in disgust.
Diego looked around him, pleased. They were his.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Isolde
Isolde woke. The first few seconds of only partial consciousness had never been kind to her.
Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap. I’m on a space ship. The wrong space ship! I’m with Brions and they’re so hot and their stupid sexy commander wants to marry me and…
Biting her pillow, Isolde took a moment to snicker away at the absurdity of her life without feeling too weird about laughing alone like a maniac. Then she remembered someone had tried to kill her and others might try yet. Even that seemed an oddly distant concern in the soothingly humming room. She was half certain the room didn’t really have to hum, but did it so she’d feel more at ease. When she’d taken a walk in the rest of the ship, there had been no noise, made by the ship, at least.
Either something in her room detected she was awake, or the Brions had hidden being psychic from the GU, because her door started beeping with Deliya’s image. Isolde stifled a smile when she noticed the beeping was less… annoying. The sound seemed to have been altered to a more pleasant tune, which didn’t make her think of smoke detectors. The same ugly knot in her stomach that had made an appearance the day before twisted again, but Isolde ignored it. Deliya hadn’t tried to kill her in her sleep, which had to count for something.
“Good morning,” Isolde said politely when the Brion stepped in. As the warrior gave the room a customary sweep-over glance, she hurried to ask, “Is it… morning? I don’t know what time it is on the ship.”
“It is,” the woman said. “Do you require something? I have alerted the Commander you are awake, but he cannot join you immediately. He has instructed I accompany you until he arrives. We have understood humans enjoy company while they eat. However, if you wish, I can return to my post.”
“Food would be great, thank you,” Isolde said, “and stay, please.”