Allies and Enemies: Fallen

by Amy J. Murphy

  “I guess that’s a no,” she muttered, kicking the useless kit away. Her anger was indiscriminate: At Lineao, at the stupid inadequate kit, at the nameless faceless bastard who had taken out Atilio.

  It was moments like this when she could understand why she existed. Sela suspected that she was made this way on purpose: easy to provoke to physical shows of anger. Her first impulse was often to rend and tear. But there was nothing here that had earned it.

  And so she breathed deeply, slowly. She counted to a hundred. She did all the things Veradin had taught her to do. Sometimes it worked. But not in this instance.

  Guess it’s just not my night.

  Sela stretched her neck, flexed and released her shoulders. The heat of Tasemar was damning. Hours ago she had shed the upper portion of her field armor. It was a move that was not protocol. She had earned yet another disapproving frown from Valen. He could be too protective at times. But he had kept his argument to himself and sauntered off to check on the fortifications.

  “The Fates may protect your boy yet,” Lineao offered, turning his gaze to the pictograph of the three women spanning the entire wall.

  Sela sloshed the hydration matrix in her canteen thoughtfully. “Good thing he can’t hear you call him a boy.”

  Atilio could be prideful, bordering on arrogant. In many ways he was still a booter with much to prove. He had put up a lot of swag at first, but she’d let the others in his team take care of that. The young meditech was good at what he did. He just needed to learn his place. It was an initiation of sorts; any soldier on her team had faced similar treatment.

  “You regard him as such, like your child,” Lineao replied.

  Sela did not care for how he watched her as he said it.

  “My strength is the soldier beside me. I shall not abandon him,” Sela recited Decca. Eyes narrowing, she turned to focus on Lineao. “Your brothers don’t seem to feel the same, priest. Abandoning you here.”

  “And your Kindred masters do not hold the same sentiment,” he shot back. “They have yet to reclaim you.”

  “He will.” Sela jerked her chin in the direction of the Storm King. “They will.”

  She knew it as surely as the breath that filled her lungs. Somewhere aboard that ship, her home for a large portion of her adult life, was an agitated Captain Jonvenlish Veradin. She pictured him storming the corridors, bellowing at anyone foolish enough to get in his way. That same familiar warmth filled her. For a moment, the worry about Atilio dulled.

  “How long ago did you forsake us?” she asked the cleric in Regimental.

  In the half-light, Lineao stiffened.

  “I know you understand me. No need to keep pretending,” Sela pressed. “I doubt they teach clerics Regimental.”

  “The years do not matter,” he answered after a thoughtful silence.

  She tipped her canteen in his direction in a casual salute. “I never get tired of being right.”

  “I imagine you have not told your men.” He cast a wary glance around. True enough, Rheg would have made a special point of rendering pain on a deserter.

  “Relax. You’re no good to me or Atilio dead.”

  “I have done little to help him. And I fail to see what intelligence I can offer you, Commander. I am but a novice, a student of the Fates now.”

  “I’m not an Intelligence Officer, Lineao. And I’m not the torturing type. My job is to keep my people alive and get them back home.”

  “Then we wish the same things, Commander. I serve the Fates and seek to end what hostilities I can toward my people.”

  “Your… people,” Sela said with a dry chuckle. He had deserted an enemy to the populace of this back-birth world. Now they were his people. “Then tell me… satisfy my curiosity about your people. All the intel I’ve seen indicates they lack the resources or training to organize insurrection. Did they have assistance, then? Some breakaway colony looking for a foothold in this sector?”

  Lineao shook his head. “I know nothing of these matters, Commander. I live the simple life of a priest now.”

  “Uh-huh,” she muttered, unconvinced. “Then at least tell me why no one has advanced on our position yet. They must’ve figured we’re here by now. Why not?”

  Lineao raised his eyebrows. “You know what this place is, Tyron. It is sacred to them, to us. They hesitate to perform a warring act on this soil, for it would be a desecration.”

  “Desecration.” She arched an eyebrow at the room. Fragments of pottery peppered the floor. Broken furniture lay in heaps. Atilio’s blood soaked the altar cloth. “I’m glad we’ve preserved the site thus far.”

  “Humor. Interesting in a breeder like you,” Lineao said, canting his head. It was the way he said the word, “breeder”, like a term for diagnosing an illness. He made it sound forgiving and damning in the same breath. The accepted term for the soldiers like Sela, who were specifically bred in the kennels, was Volunteer. She suspected the term was used to make their existence more palatable to the cresters. Oddly, she had no recollection of anyone offering her a choice. Not that she or anyone of her team would have chosen differently.

  “Use that word again and I’ll tell the others our little secret, Lineao.” She held his gaze. It was the stare she reserved for intimidation of quaking villagers. “They won’t be nice like me.”

  But he wasn’t buying.

  Lineao nodded. “Why are you here, Commander?”

  Sela gave a derisive snort. He seemed to oscillate between amusing and annoying. “I have my orders. You remember what those are, don’t you?”

  “Ah. Yes. Orders,” he mocked. “How would you know what to do without your orders?”

  “First knows what’s best.”

  “I doubt that, Tyron. I think you do too.”

  “Be quiet,” she hissed, gesturing at Atilio. “He needs rest.”

  Sela rose quickly, rocking the bench, and went to Atilio’s side. She watched the agonizing rise and fall of his chest in the uncertain light.

  “Will your boy’s death be worth their orders?”

  “Shut it!” She whirled, jabbing a finger at him. “You don’t want to piss me off.”

  Lineao uttered an observant grunt and folded his hands inside his cloak. Another long stretch of silence rolled past, yet she still felt him watching her.

  “The others have no idea, do they? Why you care for the boy as you do?” he asked.

  Sela glared at him, feeling the blood build in her face. Who did he think he was?

  “The boy… he’s yours, isn’t he? You may treat them all as your charges, but you know for certain that this one, Atilio, he is your flesh and blood. Your son.”

  She cleared the space between them in two great strides. Leaning down into his face, she planted her hands on the wall to either side of his head.

  “You don’t know a damned thing, priest.” She said, teeth clenched.

  But he did. He had ripped the secret Sela carried out into the hot, listless air for anyone to see. None of her team knew, not Veradin, not even Atilio.

  Lineao made a placating gesture. “The bonds of a mother and child are great. It is unnatural to sever them the way First does.”

  Sela straightened but continued to loom over him. And still he did not recoil. He was on a mission now. Perhaps he thought he would manipulate her into freeing him, or, save her eternal spark, what they called a soul.

  “Imagine, Tyron. In an army so vast, and the Council of First with powers so great, they cannot keep the Fates from reuniting you with your son.”

  The Council of First was not genuinely loved out here on the frayed edges. Anyone knew that. Sela was not a wide-eyed innocent. But First, and the power of the Regime and Fleet, were the thin lines that kept the citizens of the Known Worlds safe. The Regime kept the monsters away. The Council of First kept the lights from going out. Yet the farther from Origin, the less gratitude was shown for this.

  “Valen!” she shouted, still staring down at Lineao. This time the prie
st did flinch. Good.

  Her sergeant was instantly in the room. She realized that, in all likelihood, he had probably been in the corridor just outside.

  “Watch him. I need air.” Sela stormed from the chamber without waiting for a reply.

  ---

  When Sela threw open the heavy doors that lead to the courtyard, the cool night air greeted her burning face. She nodded to the sentry.

  Simirya rose. “All quiet here, sir. No movement.”

  “Spell you,” Sela said. “Go eat. Rest.”

  As the gunner turned to leave, she paused. “Sir, how is Atilio?”

  Of course, she would ask after him. Sela had suspected the two had shared down time more than once. Not that it was any business of hers. They were same rank. It didn’t violate Decca.

  Sela gave her a brittle smile. The word held all the trappings of a lie. “Fighting.”

  “I’ll check him,” Simirya offered before fading into the dark. Her moves were quiet with trained stealth.

  With a weary sigh, Sela sank to her haunches against the wall. Eyes blurring with tears, she studied the darkness of the street below for movement.

  Lineao had spoken the truth. But how could this stranger have known?

  Was I not careful enough?

  3

  Atilio was her son, the same mewling pink life that had been torn from her body eighteen years ago. The medic had presented her with a cursory glimpse and a glib rehearsed speech of praise before carrying the infant away.

  A male. Sound body. Good infantry build for sure, Cadet Tyron. Well done.

  It had been a relief. Not that the pain was of particular notice; she had been well-trained to deal with that. But it was a relief the boy was born whole. Because of the unregulated nature of his conception, she had heard rumors the child would be born skew, defective. This had been her punishment for a non-reg breeding and for refusing to name the father. Sanctioned breeding was a careful selection process. It was a nearly sacred art to the kennel wardens. In the end, the fear and rumors Sela had endured for the four weeks of the accelerated pregnancy had proved hollow.

  She had not bothered to ask the designation that they had assigned to the child. Best not to know. Yet in the years after the boy’s birth, she wondered about him. Sometimes she found herself studying the faces of young men who would be close to his age and wondering, Could that be him? My son? Does he live and thrive? Does he ever wonder about me?

  Over time her curiosity faded, driven to the back. It was something to conceal. It was a liability. Nothing good would come from knowing. She could not have revealed herself to him without facing reassignment or punishment. The child might have been of her body, but he was not hers. He belonged to the Regime, as did Sela. On that, Decca was quite clear.

  Sela’s memory had always been solid. Things came to her like pictures, filed away for safekeeping. It mattered little as to the subject: numbers, coordinates, schematics. Everything got locked in. It never ceased to amaze her that others could not do the same. She had learned to use this to her advantage, but this was an occasion when she considered it a curse.

  When the string of seven numbers was called out carelessly by one of the medics as they marked the infant boy with his ident, they became etched in her memory. And eighteen years later, those same seven numbers appeared on the index of Atilio’s file.

  The young man had appeared across the logistics table from her one morning as she made her way through the hateful, yet unavoidable documentation expected of her rank.

  “Atilio, Brin. Meditech class three. Reporting for assignment, Officer Tyron.”

  “Commander.” Sela corrected, not looking up from her tasks on the logistics table. “You’ll address me as ‘sir’ or ‘commander’.”

  She sensed him fidget before he replied. “Apologies. Commander.”

  “Manners, even. I am impressed—” She looked up, finally tearing her attention away from the work. Her heart stammered.

  Stelvick, in the flesh, stood across from her. But it couldn’t be. That man was long dead, a harsh memory from her past. Yet this could have been his twin.

  His coloring was different, more like hers. Dark blonde hair. Clever amber eyes taking in everything. But the line of the jaw, that same patrician nose. Stelvick’s ghost.

  Her eyes flitted over the ident number as her pulse raced. Not his ghost, but his son. The boy he fathered on her.

  “Commander?” Atilio asked. He must have noticed something change, but did not move from his rigid stance of attention.

  “Assembly at 0400. Report to Sergeant Valen for team assignment.” She looked back down at the table and feigned absorption with the notes there. Her throat grew tight. “Dismissed.”

  “I just wanted to say, sir.” Atilio began. “It is an honor—”

  “Honor. Got it. Try not to get killed,” she said quickly, gesturing at the doorway. Still she could not look up. She was afraid of what she might do. “Dismissed, sub-officer.”

  He hesitated.

  “Are you skew, booter? Go!” Sela shouted, practically running him out of the office.

  The moment he stepped across the threshold, she triggered the door closed and cycled the lock. She slumped against the doorframe, heart pounding, not sure what she was feeling. But whatever the strange feeling, it could be a problem.

  She raced back to the table to examine his file. The numbers, those same seven numbers, identical. The birth date. The location. The kennel information was redacted, of course. That was always the case for personnel records. But had she the access, she knew what she would have found. Brin Atilio was her son.

  Sela knew she should have reported the oversight and moved to have him reassigned. Or she could have simply rejected him as a candidate. Sela did neither. Her choice to keep Atilio with the team was born of selfish curiosity, she told herself.

  For the first few weeks of his assignment, Sela watched Atilio for that connection, that thing that made knowing him so dangerous and forbidden by Decca. She chose to be harder on him in particular and resolved not to show him favor.

  Yet, every engagement or exercise, she felt compelled to cast a careful eye on him. She told herself she was protecting the valuable asset of a meditech—a role that was hardly savored by other breeders when the emphasis from day one was on combat skills. It meant in addition to being shot at, they got the privilege of lugging around fifteen kilos of crap no one hoped they would need. They gave battle pharms to ward off fatigue and dispel pain; they patched new unwanted holes in you. They did things that kept your ass alive and let you fight on. It took the right kind of soldier to fill that role: Temperament. Compassion. Intelligence. Atilio’s father had none of those. A part of Sela feared what his son may have inherited from him.

  Her fears were soon dispelled. Atilio proved well-balanced and so quick to adapt. He assessed a situation and moved with decisiveness. His actions seemed deft and well-practiced – as though he possessed skills well beyond this novice posting.

  Breaking her own self-imposed rules of limited interaction with him, Sela once asked him about this as he carefully arranged the contents of his medistat kit during a mission prep.

  “I just sort of … remember, sir.” Atilio grinned slightly, tapping his temple. “Like a habit. Show me something once. It just seems to get stuck in here.”

  His smile faltered when he looked up at her. She could only guess what expression she wore. But in that moment something within her seemed to change. It was like walking out of cool shadow into a patch of warm sunlight. It was the moment that marked the difference between knowing Atilio was her son and truly feeling it. He was a part of her. He was hers, pure and simple.

  And what good did that indulgent possessiveness serve? Or her protectiveness over him?

  It did not matter now. Mother or commander, she should be with him. She pressed thumbs against her shut eyelids, forcing back tears. Sighing, Sela got to her feet and went back inside.

  ---

/>   “I am only a novice, but I can hear your transgressions,” Lineao said.

  Sela frowned, turning away from Atilio. The sanctuary had been so quiet when she returned from the courtyard that she had honestly thought the priest had fallen asleep sitting upright on the bench.

  He just didn’t know when to give up, did he?

  “My trans-whats?”

  “The wrongs you have committed to offend the Fates.”

  She snorted. He had to be joking. But Lineao only granted her his back and then somberly knelt before the depiction of the Fates on the wall. In a low voice he muttered a meaningless pattern of words.

  Prayer, she guessed.

  After making sure Valen was not nearby, she moved closer.

  “Why?” she asked. She was standing over him now, staring at the top of his shaven head.

  “It’s my duty to the Fates to guide all pilgrims along their Path.”

  “I’m not a pilgrim.”

  “That is something that you do not decide.”

  “No, I mean…why abandon your post? To become a priest, of all things?”

  “Because it is my Path.”

  “Your Path? You were a soldier of the Regime. That is what I’d call a Path.”

  “One of many possible for me.”

  “That’s incredibly convenient, isn’t it?”

  Lineao shook his head and sighed. His voice took on a tone as if he were teaching a child.

  “Commander, with each decision, you choose a Path. Each decision along the way is much like charting the course of one of your carriers. I was like you. I was a soldier. I had never made a decision for myself that really mattered. Kill here. March there. The Regime had always commanded my Path.” He thrust his palms out to the ruined room. “Then the Fates intervened. They brought me here, to where I was truly needed.”

  “You abandoned your post. That’s a violation of Decca.”

  Why even listen to his nonsense of Paths and decisions?

  “Decca,” he spat the word. “Belief in Decca is where uncertainty lives. Your Council of First knows this. It is about control. Their control over you. Decca is merely a list of rules to keep you like a child, to keep you ignorant of the worlds beyond their reach.”