Stars Forever Black: Book I of the Star Lion Saga

by A. L. Bruno

  “Wow, that struck a nerve,” Chatura said, her voice bringing Roberts back from his memory to the broadcast room. She settled back into her seat, satisfied.

  “Several,” Roberts replied quietly. The word was out before he realized he was speaking.

  “Really?” Chatura asked, delighted. “Do tell!”

  Roberts fixed her with a bitter look, then pointed at the scar on his face. “When I got this, there was a chance I’d have permanent nerve damage.” He could hear the heat in his voice, but he didn’t care. “The doctor in the field hospital had to make a call: a scar or feeling. He chose the second.”

  “And how does that make you feel?” Chatura asked, leaning in, delighted at her own turn of words.

  “Determined,” Roberts replied. His hands shook and his cheeks flushed, but he pressed on. “This scar reminds me of choices I made, and of people I lost. And I’m determined, Ms. Chatura, that no one on this planet has to make the same choices I’ve been forced to face in the past.”

  Chatura’s delight flickered, then faded.

  “So, go ahead and call me “Scar Guy”,” Roberts continued. “Coming from you, I take that as a compliment.”

  Roberts reached down, yanked the microphone off his lapel, and strode towards the door.

  “So, are you the Aditali or not?” Chatura called after him.

  Roberts didn’t hear her. He was already out the door.

  “Do you have any idea what kind of mess you just caused?” Nashita said, rubbing her temples. She sat at Agrath’s desk, her eyes squeezed with a combination of anger and pain.

  Nashita had caught up with Roberts only moments after he’d stormed out and immediately escorted him back to Agrath’s room. No sooner had she closed the door than she collapsed into the chair, her fingers working on pains both external and internal.

  Do I care? Roberts thought, but he just sighed. “Made your day a little more difficult?” he asked.

  “A little?” Nashita snapped, looking up at him, her hands falling to the black lacquered desktop. “You made people wonder why you’re here, what you want, and what you’re hiding, all in under an hour! It’s…” her voice trailed off and finally she shrugged expansively. “You fucked this up so badly that it’s almost impressive.”

  Roberts chuckled, but it sounded like a death rattle. He pointed at his hard-sided dark blue duffle by the entrance. “I suppose I shouldn’t bother unpacking that?”

  “No, no,” Nashita said, one hand waving away the notion like an annoying fly. “We’ll work it out. But please, going forward, work with me, okay?”

  Roberts regarded Nashita, and in an instant he saw Malley on board Hyperion asking for another chance. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. She’s just doing her job, he thought. That doesn’t give you the right to be a prick.

  Roberts opened his eyes and smiled at her. “Of course—” he began.

  Without warning, the door to Agrath’s room swung open and Adelisa stormed in. She slammed the door behind her and whirled on Roberts, trembling with anger.

  “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” she yelled. None of the poise from earlier in the day survived. In its absence was fury and disbelief.

  “We were just discussing that,” Nashita offered so calmly that Roberts realized with a start that these displays were par for the course when dealing with Adelisa.

  “Yep,” Roberts added, smiling confidently. “It’s totally covered. Nashita’s got my back.”

  Nashita’s eyebrows raised in amusement. Adelisa, however, was not placated.

  “I hope so,” she snarled. “Because of what you said, I just spent the last fifteen minutes reassuring Aldita and Harmmani that you’re not giving us advanced weapons, and that you are interested in a dialogue with every nation.” She threw her hands up, exasperated. “Were you trying to piss everybody off or is that just some special spaceman skill?”

  Roberts knew the right thing to do was to calm Adelisa down. He realized that the wise course was to reassure her that it had all been a mistake, and that he would be happy to resolve it all.

  That, however, was not what came out of his mouth.

  “He was Kalinteli,” Roberts said by way of reply.

  Adelisa’s brow bunched so tightly that he thought she might sneeze. “What?!”

  “Malgarth,” Roberts continued, indicating the room around them. “You know, the guy who formed his own Kionelaite? Who caused the war of the two Kionels and had to be ousted by the Anatinian line of Kionels?”

  Nashita’s eyes widened, while Adelisa’s nostrils flared. Roberts saw both, smiled, and continued.

  “But you already know that, just like I know that you’re of the Urmah line, which is the last with direct links to Anatin the First.” Roberts closed the distance to Adelisa step by step, his voice rising with each pace. “You would have known that if you’d asked me anything after I arrived, just like I would have known what I should have avoided when I spoke to those reporters today had you bothered to inform me.” Roberts’ voice hardened to a tone he usually reserved for his worst troops. “It’s called “communication”, and for being the Adishta to the Kionel, it’s something I shouldn’t have to remind you about!”

  Roberts only realized that he’d yelled when his voice rang off the ceiling of Agrath’s quarters. Adelisa glared at him, furious, while Nashita sat speechless—looking from Roberts to Adelisa, her eyes wide, mouth hanging open.

  I’ll be back on orbit by tomorrow night. The thought brought a wave of relief that almost made up for the dressing down he’d receive at Boothe’s hands upon his return.

  Adelisa suddenly straightened, and within the space of a breath she was poised and still. Only the deep flush of her cheeks betrayed her indignation. She favored Roberts with a wrathful stare, then offered a glance towards Nashita. With that she was gone, a whirl of violet and gold, striding gracefully out the door.

  Nashita sagged, laying her forehead on an upright palm, her elbow on the desk. “Do you have any idea how miserable you just made my life?” she asked. Roberts didn’t get to answer. A moment later she was out the door too, leaving him alone with his thoughts.

  Roberts dropped heavily into the desk chair Nashita had vacated and leaned back, his eyes closed. For a long moment there was only the rattle of the air conditioning system kicking in, the slightly sweet smell of the wood, and shadows of the slowly rotating ceiling fan playing on the floor. Roberts sighed.

  “Yeah,” he muttered, “I should really take up yoga.”

  Roberts’ wristcom buzzed and he realized with a start that things were about to become far worse.

  15

  Worker Housing Unit 813C

  Prayad, Kalintel

  Vyzia stopped Gishkim’s vid tape just as the Kionel Aetna’s flaming sword stabbed Khagika, Master of the Shade Fiends, in the chest. The hand-drawn blade had barely impacted Khagika’s bone-plate armor, sending crudely animated sparks into a swirl of colors when the video abruptly halted, the combat replaced by monochromatic snow.

  “Time’s up,” Vyzia said as he popped another cigarette into his thin-lipped mouth. He yanked the battered plastic tape from the video player and tossed it carelessly at Gishkim.

  Gishkim lunged forward from his cramped lower bunk and caught the tape mid-flight, only breathing again when it was safely in his hands.

  “B-be careful w-with t-that!” Gishkim stammered.

  “O-o-o-r w-w-what?” Vyzia mocked, blowing smoke towards him. A thin, pale man from the northern plains of Kalintel, he’d told Gishkim time and again he’d moved to Prayad to make a better life than what he could find in the agricultural belt. As far as Gishkim could tell, that “better life” had consisted of a mindless factory job, long nights drinking himself into a stupor with cheap bottles of aria, and the occasional dalliance with whomever was drunk enough to look past his pockmarked cheeks and yellowed teeth. “Y-y-you’ll c-call the K-kionel?”

  The other two bunkmates in the cramped
room chortled. Gishkim barely knew them. They usually worked opposite shifts from he and Vyzia, which had given them remarkable privacy in the crowded four-family flat. The other bunkmates were off today. Their administrator had sent his staff home when the news of the spaceship hit the airwaves. Now they huddled on their top bunks, speaking an unfamiliar rapid-fire Kalinteli dialect to each other between long swigs from a stained bottle of mewtla.

  Gishkim gave the tape’s casing a once-over, making sure it was undamaged. It had taken him months to find a supplier, and even longer to get it past authorities. More work than he cared to admit had gone into getting his hands on the Tenastan Entertainment Network’s twenty-year-old animated series, but to Gishkim the effort was worth every moment.

  Vyzia stabbed the backlit “Play” button on their well-worn vid player and a washed-out copy of some brightly lit Tenastan comedy wavered into view. Vyzia stood, grunting with the effort and gestured towards the plate-sized video screen parked in the farthest corner of their windowless room.

  “Now this? This is worth watching!” Vyzia said. He grabbed his half-filled bottle of aria and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the screen. “Real people, real problems. Not stinking propaganda.”

  “I-it’s not p-propaganda,” Gishkim said. “It’s a s-story b-based o-on—”

  Vyzia whirled, his jaundiced eyes aflame, a nicotine-stained finger pointing at the reservation sheet. “Be quiet!” Vyzia snarled. “Now is my time.”

  The bunkmate’s indecipherable chatter filled the room again, followed by rapid-fire laughter. It was only when Gishkim heard the squeak of his tape’s plastic casing that he realized he was squeezing it with a vise-like grip. He rolled off his bunk—carefully avoiding Vyzia on the floor—pulled his footlocker out from under his bunk, and gently stored the tape within, making sure to lock it afterwards. He didn’t trust Vyzia not to steal the tape to resell it, his hatred of the program notwithstanding.

  The studio audience on Vyzia’s program guffawed boisterously. A male cast member was dressed as a woman, makeup smeared across his face as if applied by a toddler, and the audience howled with joy. That was enough for Gishkim. He stood, carefully slipping his bulk between the two sets of bunk beds that dominated their shared living space and squeezed towards the door to the apartment’s common area.

  The top-bunkmates chattered again just as Gishkim opened the door. The word “Kionel” floated down, its pronunciation mangled by their dialect, followed by more raucous laughter.

  “Quiet!” Vyzia yelled, then huddled around his bottle like a child around its favorite toy as Gishkim closed the door behind him.

  Things hadn’t always been this way. In the days before the Nirneta Conflict, Gishkim’s life had been better. Sure, his father had been a drunk, smacking him for the slightest provocation before passing out in front of a vid screen every night, but he was hardly alone in that. Yes, his mother spent her nights out on the town, prompting more than a few schoolyard fights about her numerous indiscretions, but that was hardly unique, either. As far as Gishkim was concerned, everyone had a terrible childhood. Whining about it wouldn’t help. All anyone could do was find a way around it.

  It was inevitable that Gishkim would end up in the military. His marks in school were too low for anything else. Even then, he had to get a special waiver from a doctor proving that he was mentally fit to serve. His parents greeted the news of his enlistment with barely contained glee. He was no longer their burden. They didn’t see him off at the airport, nor had they bothered to pick up the phone when he called home on his first night of training. Gishkim had dutifully delivered his required contact information to an empty line, too embarrassed to admit that he’d been ignored again. He never bothered to reach out to them after that.

  For a time, Gishkim had been happy about his parent’s neglect. The challenges of the service were nothing compared to the minefield that had been his home life. Better, his silence was appreciated, not criticized, as was his strength. Only his Kionel Aetna tattoo caused some issues in the shower at first. By the time he finished training, however, he’d convinced half his squad to try the show when they were able.

  Gishkim spent his first three-year tour traveling around H’Tanzia, dealing with one disaster after another. Be it a city devastated by flood or a quake-ravaged settlement, the military put him where he was needed. As a child raised on cartoons dedicated to courage, honor, and nobility in the face of annihilation, it could not have been a more perfect fit.

  Then Kalintel invaded Nirneta and Gishkim’s life had gone to shit.

  Gishkim didn’t pretend to understand the reason for Kalintel’s invasion. All he knew was that one spring night the Kalinteli navy started shelling the civilian port city of Nirneta before sending in troops. He and his team—his friends if he were honest, the first he’d had since early childhood—were pulled from another river flood, sent south, and told to protect their country at all costs.

  Gishkim lost his friends on their first night in the combat zone. They were gunned down protecting a crossroads, killed by a special operations team sent far behind enemy lines. Gishkim didn’t remember much after that. One moment he was standing over his friend’s headless corpse, and the next his commanding officer was talking him down as he squeezed the life out of camouflaged Kalinteli troop. After that he’d been shipped far behind the lines for evaluation, his CO not wanting to meet his eyes as they loaded him on the troop transport. He learned later that he’d wiped out an entire Kalinteli squad without a firearm. That he couldn’t remember the act bothered him. That he’d avenged his friends didn’t.

  The conflict—not war, he was reminded, because neither Kalintel nor H’Tanzia had formalized the engagement—lasted three brutal months. Wounded several times under fire, Gishkim was awarded an embarrassing number of medals. He hated war, despised the ugliness it revealed in what he thought were civilized people, but he thrived in its chaos. Someone had to be strong enough to bear the burden. Luckily, Gishkim was a strong man. This work, it seemed, was what he was made to do.

  Three months into the conflict a cease fire was reached. The treaty—signed under the glowering golden eyes of Tenasta’s Kionel—returned Nirneta to H’Tanzia, with trade concessions being offered up to Kalintel to avoid more violence. H’Tanzia celebrated the victory by voting out Canyaka Aniesem for the wildly popular Shasja Aldita. Gishkim barely noticed at first. What did politics really mean to him? But Aldita’s policies soon struck him where it hurt.

  H’Tanzia’s military budget was slashed in half, thanks in part to a new military alliance with Tenasta—again brokered by the man calling himself “Kionel”—and with it the number of troops needed in its military. Within weeks of the election Gishkim was mustered out, given one final paycheck, and sent on his way.

  Gishkim may have been willing to die for his country, but he quickly learned that his country couldn’t be bothered with him. No one wanted to hire combat veterans, let alone one with few skills beyond those needed in the service. He drifted from job to job, never making enough to afford rent in any of the cities where he traveled. Eventually even those day labor jobs dried up—another victim of Aldita’s more progressive policies. Within months, Gishkim was homeless, jobless, and hungry, discarded by the very country he’d helped to save.

  It was a trip to a new homeless shelter in Nirneta that saved Gishkim’s life. Set up by the Kalinteli government, it advertised itself as a helping hand to the very veterans it had so gravely injured with their latest conflict. Gishkim couldn’t have cared less about their reasons for being there. He was cold, hungry, and exhausted. All he wanted was a hot meal and a warm bunk. It galled him that he had to turn to his enemies for help, but the people in the shelter had been kind and caring. They even put him to work helping other, more desperate veterans.

  When the shelter was eventually forced to close—another political reaction by Aldita—the Kalinteli government made he and the other veterans an offer: come to Kalintel. There
they would always be fed, always have a roof over their heads, and they would always have a purpose.

  Gishkim didn’t have to hear the offer twice.

  Within days Gishkim found himself on Kalinteli shores, being processed into the Central Authority as another Kalinteli worker. He didn’t care that the all the buildings looked the same, or that there were more police than he had ever seen in his life. All that mattered to him was that he wouldn’t starve again. That, in the end, was all it took to turn his back on his own country in the same way that it had turned its back on him.

  “They picking on you again, sweetie?” Backya Umier asked as Gishkim eased his way into the apartment’s shared kitchen. Like every wall in the apartment—and, if he was honest, the entire building—the kitchen was a depressing gray in the dishwater light from the too-small main windows. Covered in a miserly layer of primer over sheet rock—another Central Authority cost-saving measure—it made the space feel unfinished and forgotten. Even the appliances were mismatched relics of a bygone era. Gishkim knew better than to complain, though. The water ran, and he could keep his food cold in his corner of the groaning refrigerator. It still beat starving on the street.

  Backya Umier smiled up at him with watery gray eyes, her scarred skin a constant reminder of the nuclear warheads that pummeled Kalintel’s east coast thirty years earlier. No matter the temperature inside or out, she always wore a brightly colored scarf over her bald head and covered her skin from neck to ankles. She never spoke of her experience, but her clothing said more than enough for Gishkim to understand.

  “T-they don’t a-appreciate it,” Gishkim answered, smiling down at the diminutive woman. He squeezed by her and reached up to his assigned cabinet, spinning the tumbler on his state-issued padlock.