She stared at him, unblinking.
“Am I clear, Commander Tyron?”
“Crystal. Sir.” She spat the words.
“You were never in this room, Tyron.” He turned his back on her, returning to his chair. “You will never return to this room. Or speak of this again.”
She did not wait for Trinculo to dismiss her.
---
Count to ten. Count to a hundred. Breathe.
Not working!
The shower’s icy stream pelted her scalp. Sela leaned her forehead against the blissfully cool tile. The water cut tiny valleys into the collected grime that covered her body. Around her feet small puddles of mud collected, another memento of Tasemar that refused to leave her.
The showers were abandoned at this time in the Storm King’s duty cycle. It was one of the few places she could be alone to think.
A quiet, formless sobbing tried to escape her throat. It had been a very long time since she had done this. Last time she had cried, or the closest to it, was back in the kennels, after what had happened with Stelvick. And for the first time in a very long time she felt just as powerless as she had then.
---
Sela had hated Jonvenlish Veradin at first. She specifically remembered wishing him ill from the moment she had heard of his assignment as the new battalion leader. She had not yet seen the man, but already fantasized a less-than-charming end to his career.
When the former captain, an ancient bastard named Ithrall, had kicked it in his sleep, Sela had been granted probationary command over the three platoons of D Company. Field promotions like this were not unprecedented. They were often temporary and made out of necessity. Their battlegroup had been engaged in a conscription sweep near the Allights, with trained reinforcements from Origin delayed by nearly a year. With Ithrall’s death, Sela was the most senior among the platoon commanders.
She had grown accustomed to the role and made the mistake of thinking of it as her own when Jonvenlish Veradin appeared out of nowhere, brandishing his crester status to claim her command.
A typical Kindred. Typical crester.
Clearly still, she could remember standing at attention, wronged and full of righteous fury, in what was now his ops room. Veradin practically lounged in the room’s only chair. He propped his glossy black boots at the edge of what was now his logistics table. The collar of his jacket was undone, tunic belt loosened. Distractedly, he raked his fingers through his short dark brown hair while reading Sela’s file, the summary of her life. He yawned.
Does my life bore you, crester?
“Sela Tyron, Commander. Eight campaigns. As many commendations for bravery. Six for valor. Field promotion over Deinde. Held that what? Over a year now?”
It was evident he did not expect her to reply as he continued to read from the handheld’s screen.
“The other platoon commanders sing your praises. Incredibly, you have made not one entry for discipline or corrections for any of the one hundred and eight soldiers under you. Why’s that?”
This time he was expecting an answer. She stared holes through the Great Seal in the wall over his head. Her hands balled into fists. But he did not notice. “Never had cause, sir.”
Do you think me incompetent? Perhaps I let my soldiers run rampant, like the breeders we are?
Veradin was oblivious. “They say mixed companies are harder. But D Company, not a conscript to be found, all Volunteers.”
Sela had no idea who the Sceelah “they” were, but it was insightful. There had been an occasional conscript come through. They never lasted long. Sela had never bothered to figure out why. Interesting how he chose the polite word: Volunteers, as if he were afraid he would offend. She had heard far worse from cresters.
But Veradin addressed her as if he were speaking to another crester. She suspected he was trying to confuse her and play at some sort of psy-analytic to trip her up.
Then Veradin frowned at something he read in her file.
“You declined advancement into Special Ops Elite. Any Volunteer would jump at such an opportunity. Why?”
“I was needed here, sir,” she answered stiffly. It was a half-truth.
Mere months after she had assumed temporary command of Deinde, she had received the trans from Origin. It was the first time in her life that she had ever received any sort of communication from outside of her battlegroup. The invitation to join SOE had been another surprise, but by then she knew her answer. Atilio had resurfaced in her life and she knew that she was not going anywhere.
She tore her gaze from the seal to look at Veradin. He gave her a lopsided smile. Sela guessed it was meant to be charming or affable. It really just made her want to punch him.
For the first time he demonstrated his uncanny ability to guess her thoughts. “Tyron, I’m not your enemy here. Can’t you get to know me before you hate me?”
She did not answer, only watched him. He didn’t need a response as he seemed to do the talking for both of them.
“I know what you think: here’s some ignorant crester… that’s what you call a Kindred like me, right?”
She watched him. Is that what someone told him? Use their words, their slang, and you’ll fit in.
“So here I am, some ignorant crester. I took what you deserve. I took your command.”
Bricky bastard, I’ll give him that.
“But you don’t deserve to command an infantry cache,” he added, flopping the datfile onto the table. Her career quantified, neatly encompassed and apparently dismissed.
“Sir, I—”
“I think you deserve better,” he said. “You deserve more. You’re not some simple grunt, Tyron. Don’t think like one.”
Veradin pushed away from the desk. He rose, seemed to consider pulling his tunic back into more orderly lines, and gave up.
Sela frowned. Certainly, he was testing her or, worse, mocking her. This was entrapment.
“Sir?”
“Tyron, I am selfish. I need a second with your skills and your strengths. You know the soldiers under you. It makes little sense to start over with an entirely new second. I know why you made no discipline entries: loyalty. No one commands that. It’s earned. You’ve already earned it from this company; I have a long way to go to get it.”
Cresters don’t talk to breeders like this. It just doesn’t happen.
“So, Commander, I will make you a deal.” He stepped around the desk. Sela was surprised to see that he stood nearly a half-head taller than she. Cresters were always shorter.
“A deal… sir?” This had to be a test.
“I can learn from you, Tyron. I’ve never commanded Volunteers.” He paused, making a nebulous conjuring gesture at her, as if she were some mysterious entity instead of blood and bone. “And there are the… refinements of command I can teach you. You need to know how to deal with conscripts and Kindred, if you’re to succeed. Call it a trade.”
Confused, Sela really looked at him for the first time. He was a recruitment vid for planetside conscripts: Brand new tunic, although misaligned, boots polished to a high shine. Tall, well-muscled. Perfect brown Eugenes hair and eyes. Veradin could have been purpose-bred like her. But looking deeper, she saw anxiousness in him bordering on fear. He had no clue what he was doing.
And she made him nervous.
This could be entertaining.
“Is this a test, sir?”
“No test.” He smiled, this one broader, more genuine. “Give me half a year as my second. Then you can go wherever you want, if you wish. Reassignment, transfer. You name it. All with my commendation. You’ve my word. Agreed?”
Sela stared, stunned.
He started to fidget. “Your answer, Commander?” There was nothing in his voice to suggest he was mocking her.
“Yes, sir. Agreed.”
Veradin stuck out his right hand. She looked at it, stupidly. When she did not move, he stepped forward and grasped her right hand in his own. She had no idea what that gesture meant, but
had witnessed cresters greeting each other in a similar manner.
“Thank you, Ty. You don’t mind if I call you that? Do you?”
Why would he be thanking her, she had no idea. She fully intended to make his life as difficult as possible over the next half-year.
“No, Captain,” she replied. “That is your prerogative.”
“Ty” was truncation of her patronymic, as perfunctory as that was. Breeder names are randomly selected and applied to newly born booters. The names were meant to honor fallen heroes. Sela had been named for Selanid Tyronis, liberator of who-knows-what of the year too-dead-to-matter. She had never cared about military history or famous ancient generals. They were dead, she reasoned. Couldn’t have been that good at their jobs, then.
No one had called her “Ty” since her time in the kennels. Somehow Veradin had tuned into that. It was indicative of what this man did to her. Something about him threw her off balance. This man, who was as new as his command tunic, made her feel like a novice. But at the same time, he possessed this nameless something that was wise beyond his experience or years.
She was only able to sense this after her initial anger toward him cooled and her distrust quieted. There was something different about Jonvenlish Veradin. The rumors about him were abundant. Sela saw first-hand how he was treated as an outsider among the other cresters. The term “pauper lord” was thrown out at him a lot. Although Sela received the impression it was meant to be disparaging, she failed to grasp it. As a solider of the Regime, Sela had never possessed or needed currency. It was a vague concept that often seemed arbitrary (and more than a little ridiculous) to her.
But the stories she heard, though probably embellished greatly, indicated that the Veradin Kindred was the subject of some dishonoring in the recent past. Though her new captain had not been implicit, he suffered this reduced status nonetheless. The nature of this dishonor varied wildly depending upon who told the story. Fleet techs said it was because the patriarch of his Kindred had refused to offer conscripts to the Regime. Infantry said it was because the Veradin Kindred were against aiding the Fleet armada.
Whatever the cause, Veradin’s behavior alone would have explained why he was considered an outsider. He did not act the same as other crester captains. He spoke to her, not at her.
And at times, he asked her the oddest, most pointless questions: How are you today? Have you eaten yet? What do you do on downtime? Bizarre. At first, Sela was wary to answer them, fearing some sort of ploy. But eventually she realized it just made Veradin… well, Veradin.
For all of his perceived faults, she started to see his merits. He could read situations with an innate ease that often provoked jealously in Sela. The man could talk his way into or out of just about any situation. He commanded with a firm, but fair hand. He was casual almost to a fault and she found it necessary to correct him on protocol and Decca almost daily. That was one way Veradin had taught her patience.
But never did he stop acting as though she were his equal.
The allotted time of their “deal” passed and neither of them pointed this out. Sela did not mind, did not even notice, in all honesty. Four years later and she could not envision her life without him.
---
Resting against the hard cold tiles of the stall, Sela realized she had to get Jonvenlish Veradin off the Storm King and as far away from the Council of First as possible.
Lineao, did your Fates know about this? Do they know what’s in my heart before even I do?
6
Sela had assumed it was a matter of her basic chemistry, but she was a creature of action. Stimulus. Response. And her response was to act. She felt it like a deep-seated itch in a healing wound. It was a surge of energy felt through every cell. In battle, where the threat was clear, this trait served her well. But when the threat was nebulous with no apparent means of attack, acting rashly was a disadvantage. Veradin had seen that in Sela within moments. He had attempted to teach her to control that rashness and look beyond the immediate.
Until she had met Veradin, her personal vision of the future had always been vague. She imagined survival from engagement to engagement, nothing more. But it was as if he could see a future for her beyond the now. She had committed the sin of believing him.
Yet in moments like this, it was so easy for her to fall back on old habits.
Count to ten. Breathe.
As she returned to the command hab level, Sela continued to count under her breath without realizing it. This time she stepped across the wide yellow line on the floor. Breeders were never allowed past this point. For a moment, she stood there in the subdued light of the corridor, facing what she assumed was the direction of Veradin’s quarters.
Expecting what? A siren? SSD troopers to descend on her? Nothing happened.
She took it in. There were no crawlers here. No motion sensors. It seemed Trinculo and his ilk were less interested in monitoring the cresters. The walls were a muted brown unmarred by graffiti or scrapes from the crush of heavily armored bodies pushing past each other in a confined space. The ceiling felt higher. Recessed lights shone down in a soft amber color. It was nearly palatial in comparison to the squadbays.
No guards waited outside Veradin’s chamber. Of course not. He was not there; he was in stockade. The lock on his door was easy to disarm. It opened with a thick metallic clunk. Without waiting to see if the noise brought anyone to investigate, Sela stepped inside.
The room’s lights popped on, sensing her presence. Pulse roaring in her ears, she approached the simple single bed, impossibly neat. Impossible, if one knew Captain Veradin of the mussed hair and rumpled command tunic.
She found the space vaguely disappointing. There had been moments of weakness when she had imagined being here, in this room with him. What did he do in his hours away from her? Did he entertain visitors? Browse the holoweb? This might as well be a non-reg world.
There were things about Jonvenlish Veradin that were a complete mystery still. However to Sela, there were a million other details she found commonplace and endearing. He ran his hand through his hair, over the right temple when he was agitated. His laugh was honest and perhaps too loud. He chewed the pad of his thumb when distracted. But these were things a stranger would know after an hour.
What do I know of him, really? Why would First want him dead or call him traitor?
Above the bed’s smooth surface, medals for valor lay in a simple row on the small shelf. An image capture glowed from the wall. She tabbed through the images on the device. Smiling faces of strangers looked out from a world Sela Tyron would never know. The last image slid a jealous barb into her heart.
Veradin, in the gray lapels of a cadet’s jacket. He appeared years younger and a million worlds from that of the Regime, grinned happily under an alien sun. His arm was thrown around a refined-looking young woman with dark hair, striking green eyes and pensive smile. She was wrapped in a swathe of purple, the color of the Veradin Kindred. Who was she? Cresters had mates, even those from a smaller Kindred like the Veradin. Does my captain have a wife?
Sela sagged to the bed, dimpling the once-perfect surface. Then, after a brief hesitation, she flopped onto her side to push her face into the cushion. She inhaled his scent. Rolling onto her back, Sela gazed up at the flat expanse of ceiling. Doubt coiled in her gut.
The ship’s chrono above the jamb ticked away precious time. Soon the level would be alive again with the changing shift. If she were to act, it had to be now.
Sela rose, plunking the gear bag open on the bunk. Blindly she shoved clothes, gear, and after a long thoughtful pause, the image capture into the bag. Moments later she was another set of shoulders weaving through the mass of bodies in the middle of the duty shift.
---
“What are you doing… sir?”
Valen. He followed me.
Sela stiffened.
But she could not look at him.
“You’re on downtime, Valen. Go back to the squadbay.�
�� She kept her eyes on the closed door of the level risers, willing them to open, waiting for escape. Why are they so damned slow?
“I’m not leaving, boss. Not until you tell me what you’re doing.”
It was the defiance in his voice that made her turn to face him. Towering, reliable and oddly baby-faced Valen. There was a bitter pull to the bow of his mouth. His deep brown eyes held a muted anger. Was it for her?
“They’re going to kill him,” Sela said quietly.
Wordlessly, Valen took her elbow. No one noticed them in the crush of dutifully-bustling personnel. They were ignorant of, or uncaring about, this little drama as Valen tugged her into the nearest rec suite.
As soon as they crossed the threshold, Sela wrenched her arm from his grasp.
“Have you lost your mind, Sergeant?”
As she reached for the door control, he cycled it to lock. “Have you, boss?”
Sela exhaled a plosive sigh, allowing her shoulders to sag.
“I don’t know. But I have to do something.” With that she slumped to the rec bunk, not caring about what acts might have graced its surface in the past. She planted her face in her hands and propped her elbows on her knees.
There was a rustle of fabric in the dim ugly light as Valen moved closer. Then, after a very obvious hesitation, he sat beside her.
There was a long silence filled with the sound of the atmo scrubbers and some balefully sweet music the suite’s previous users had inexplicably found enticing. Valen slapped a thick palm over the interface in the wall beside him. The music snapped off and the brightness of the room increased.
“I have to do something,” she repeated.
“I heard they arrested him for going up against Silva—“
“No. Not for that. For treason.”
“Treason? Why would they arrest the cap’n for treason?” Valen regarded her profile. But she continued to stare at the far wall.
“I don’t know. But I do know the charges against him are false.”
Allies and Enemies: Fallen Page 5