“I don’t care; I’m not leaving you.”
The walls shook, the floor rumbled. Something—someone—was coming.
“Please, go,” Jahx said, tears streaming down his face.
Cam put his arm around him and held the boy close. He understood pain, loss, and death, the bleakness of his own existence—but seeing Jahx, so tiny and fragile, all alone in his own insufferable world, pulled down whatever barriers he erected within himself, and muted the dark voice inside him.
“I’ll stay,” he said, squeezing the boy tight to his chest as someone beat on the front door, rattling it on its hinges. A howl followed, and a sick laugh.
Jahx pressed his head into his chest, tears soaking through Cam’s shirt. “I’m sorry,” the boy whispered, shaking from fear.
For what? Cam didn’t understand. For being small, helpless, and afraid? Or for Cam seeing the most furtive places in the boy’s life, for the unbearable hurt that shaped his fears and elicited his deepest compassions.
As the plastic cracked and door broke open, Cam closed his eyes and buried his face into the boy’s hair. “I’m sorry, too.”
I should have believed your trust.
I’m so, so sorry, Jahx.
(I love you.)
A gigantic force barreled toward him, but Cam kept his arms around Jahx, shielding him with what little protection he could offer.
I won’t let go. I won’t let go—
When gruff hands pulled at the collar of his neck, he dared open his eyes. Death, red-eyed and reeking of booze, stared back.
Cam screamed.
Batting his hands and kicking his legs, Cam tried to ward off his attacker, but the mess of sheets restrained his efforts. He couldn’t get away from the clobbering fists or the sharp snap of the belt against his back, but it didn’t matter.
“Jahx…” he mumbled, “…run…”
Get away, he thought. It’s not too late—
A hand rested on his back. The screams and the pain faded, receding back into the nightmarish depths.
“Thank you,” a voice whispered.
Still emerging, Cam couldn’t decipher reality from dream; if the hand that moved from his back to his shoulder, or the lips that pressed against his cheek in a soft, sweet kiss, originated from the same dark place.
Jahx?
He turned over, his eyes adjusting to the a.m. barrack lights, catching only a glimpse of spiky black hair and a flash of blue.
“Hey, wait—” Rubbing his face, he looked again, but found only the usual crop of kids milling around, some getting ready for class, others playing on their datapads.
“Jahx?” He swung his head and torso over his bunk and looked to the empty bed below.
“He left for the gaming strategy final. Aren’t you in that class, too?” one of the kids said as he passed by, toothbrush sticking out of his mouth. When Cam looked at him, he hurried off.
Dazed, he didn’t realize someone had folded and placed his uniform top at the end of the bed.
“Chak,” he muttered, seeing the sleeve flashing in red. At the end of his bed, the datapad, sticking out of its slot, blinked the same warning of a priority message.
Cam took out the datapad and opened the main menu. Forty-seven emails popped up, flagged for immediate notice. Words like delinquent, failure to appear to class, test results under review, stood out, but he didn’t care to open any of them, even the priority message from the Commandant addressing his enrollment status. But as he thought to toss the datapad and lay back down and wait for his inevitable arrest and removal, he noticed the most recent email, no flags or notifications attached—and without any school tags.
An external email? Something like wasn’t supposed to get through the filters. At first, he dismissed it as a prank, but then he saw the title: BLUE SKY TOMORROWS.
Breath caught in his chest, he stared at the email, not believing what he saw.
Not possible—
But he couldn’t help himself. Checking left and right, he made sure that no other kid was watching as he lay back on his side facing the wall and clicked on the message. All of his excitement turned to confusion as he opened nothing but a blank page.
What is this? He looked at the sender, but the random numbers and letters didn’t make any sense. Still, the email had to come from outside the academy. But who would send me anything like this?
“Move aside. Move!”
Cam flipped over as two soldiers, dressed head to toe in full battle gear, tromped down the barrack aisles, guns pressed to their chest. The other cadets stopped whatever they were doing, terrified or captivated. With black-faced helmets, mounted cameras, body armor and weapons strapped to each limb, their intimidating presence could only mean one thing.
Arrest.
The two soldiers stopped at the end of the aisle, by his bed. Speaking through the helmet mic, one of the soldiers addressed him: “Camzen Ferros—come with us.”
This is it.
I’m finished.
He followed behind, shirtless, half-dressed in his uniform pants and boots.
“Finally,” Stempton snickered as he walked past. He flashed a datachip in his hand and added: “getting rid of the trash.”
Cam thought about popping him, about getting one good last lick in, but the idea dissolved as fast as it appeared. No, a bully like Stempton would get his. And violence, as much as it shaped and warped his world, could not save him now.
Rogman waited for him at the barrack entrance, talking with Professor Rotu in hushed tones.
“Please, Commandant—we should reexamine these results—”
But as Cam approached, Rogman raised his arm to silence the professor. “You are dismissed.”
Rotu walked away, but not after offering Cam a pained smile.
“Ferros,” Rogman said, upturning his lips in a sneer.
When he didn’t answer right away, one of the soldiers grabbed him by the upper arm until he stood up straight and addressed the Commandant. “Sir.”
“Who are you, if not the vicious killer?” he said, hands clasped behind his back.
Cam looked down, at his boots.
“Have you vetted any leeches? Have you anything to keep me from sending you to Plaly IV?”
The Labor Locks?! He thought he’d just be sent back to Cerka, to some overcrowded orphanage—not thrown into slavery on a desolate planet in the middle of nowhere.
“Yes, now you understand. Cheating on the biochem test is enough to get you expelled—as is putting Tran Su in the ICU. But conspiring with leeches is a criminal offense,” Rogman said, mustache twitching. “So—what you have to say for yourself?”
A lifetime of forced labor. A sentence of pain and isolation, worse than death itself.
“I saw you at my side, boy, conquering worlds, slaying savages, bringing order to all that are beneath us,” Rogman said, bending down to meet him at eye level. “You are a disappointment to me. Another gutter rat, wretched and disposable. You are nothing.”
The hand on his upper arm tightened, shook, but Cam didn’t give any indication of how much it hurt him. Instead, he looked Rogman in the eye, letting go of whatever anger and pain he’d clung to over the last few months. “No leeches, sir. I was wrong.”
“You were wrong?”
He lowered his head again.
“Then you are useless. Take him away.”
After cuffing his hands behind his back, the soldier holding his arm redirected him to a lift hovering in the hallway, waiting to take them away.
No one spoke to him, the soldiers staying close as they traveled down one long hallway after the next. Some part of him hoped to see a familiar face—
Iggie. Tomia.
(Jahx—)
—one last time.
“Where are you taking me?” he asked as they exited the student-accessible areas.
“Keep quiet,” the soldier holding his arm ordered. Cam didn’t suspect anything at first, but as they bypassed into the security zones, the soldiers f
lashing their passkeys into the scanners, something nettled at his conscious mind. One of the soldiers shifted back and forth between his feet. The other, checking behind them at regular intervals.
Something’s not right.
Cam tried to look back, but one of the soldiers pressed his gun into his back. “Mind yourself.”
As they approached a security checkpoint station in front of red-painted hangar doors, his stomach knotted.
This is happening so fast—
Flight information ran across digital departure and arrival boards, as engines rumbled in the distance. But as he looked for which ship would carry him to Plaly IV, the checkpoint guard motioned them to his location.
“What are you doing with this one?” the checkpoint guard asked, looking Cam up and down as their lift slowed in front of his station. “Iced out?”
“Immediate transfer.”
“Did he go through checkout?” the guard asked, pointing at his bare chest. “He should be in a jumpsuit.”
“This is an immediate transfer,” the soldier repeated.
The checkpoint guard accessed he terminal embedded in his semi-circular control station. “I don’t have any transfers on my list today. What’s his name?”
Behind him, the second soldier muttered, “now, Rex.”
“I’m going to call this in,” the checkpoint guard said, but as he moved his hand over the com, his eyes shot wide open.
What’s happening to him?
Eyes bugging out of his head, the guard hunched over, a half-smile propping up one side of his drooping mouth.
“Thanks for your help,” the soldier holding his arm said as the other prompted the lift forward.
The guard muttered something unintelligible as the second soldier leaned over and typed in the commands for the hangar doors to part.
What just happened? Cam thought, unable to reconcile why the checkpoint guard giggled and purred, pawing at some imaginary thing in front of him as they passed into the docks without proper clearance.
“We’re almost there,” the soldier holding him said as the second steered the lift around a docking bay full of mid-sized Dominion starships.
We’re almost where? The soldier’s tone and inflection sounded less like a command and more like an affirmation.
As they came upon the last starship in the bay, a beat-up transport with a faded Dominion insignia and a rusted com dish, he pulled at the handcuffs, trying to slide them off his wrists.
“Calm down, it’s going to be okay,” the soldier holding him said, loosening his grip on his arm.
“No—this isn’t right,” he said, fighting his grip.
“Cam-cam. It’s going to be okay,” the soldier repeated.
Cam-cam? Only his sister ever called him that. The soldier flipped up his visor. Familiar eyes, blue as glacier lake, stared back, even offering him a wink.
Are these assinos chakking with me?
But as he thought to fight, he remembered those eyes, attached to a handsome face with a serious expression—
The man standing underneath the rectangular window in the utility room basement of the apartment complex, a canvas backpack slung over his shoulder, holding one of the straps with a fingerless glove—
The one from the alleyway, conversing with his sister—
“…James?” he whispered.
“Go on,” the soldier holding him said, thrusting his gun in his back to get him off the lift and onto the weathered transport. Cam stumbled up the ramp, confused and scared, not sure if he should run or—
“Jeez, you didn’t have to keep him in cuffs.” A dark-haired woman in an old Dominion uniform stood at the top of the ramp, opening her arms in welcome as she admonished the soldiers following right behind him. She also looked familiar, but it was her voice, calm and soothing, that sparked some memory just beyond his grasp.
As soon as the ramp came up and the seal secured, both soldiers removed their helmets.
“Get us out of here,” the blonde-haired man said, calling up to the pilot in the front.
“You are James,” Cam said as the second soldier released his handcuffs.
“I am.”
“You assino,” he screamed, charging at the Dominion soldier.
“It’s not what you think,” James said, holding him off with the help from the other two.
“You betrayer! You killed my sister!” he said, clawing at his face.
“He’s too strong,” the woman shouted as Cam bucked against their hold.
“Gods, I can’t hold him—”
Cam wrenched forward, but James ducked his swing. The sudden movement off-balanced the other two holding on to him, and he pitched forward, head-first into the grated floor.
“Cam? Cam? Come on, buddy—stay awake.”
He tried to push himself up, but the strength left him as he sunk lower, black motes crowding his vision.
“Chak, Niks—”
Niks. He’d heard that name before.
But as he tried to keep hold of himself, to stay conscious as someone applied pressure to the fresh split across his forehead, he realized something terrible: Is there a reason to fight?
Not anymore.
Not with everything lost, with all hope vanquished.
Still, he couldn’t help but hold on to his one truth: I didn’t give you up, Jahx.
And with a bittersweet smile, he closed his eyes.
Chapter 27
Cam woke in the bottom bunk of a four-person sleeping compartment dressed in gray sleepwear. Lights, dimmed to their minimal setting, illuminated the other empty beds.
Where am I? He remembered being boarded onto an old Dominion transport, and the two strangers that looked and sounded all-too familiar. As he pushed himself up, he noticed his hands, the cuts healed, and even the deformity on his right hand smoothed out into normal bone.
No—
Touching his forehead, his fingers brushed the unblemished skin near his hairline. How is that possible? None of his injuries should have healed that quickly—
Unless I’ve been out for weeks—
Panicked, he rushed to the door and furiously tapped the control panel until it slid open. As he ran into the main chamber of the transport, he came to a halt. The two soldiers, the woman he’d seen in the Dominion uniform, and several others sat around the circular conference table, going over internal schematics. At first, he recognized the schematics—
The Academy—
Incomplete, but showing parts he recognized, including some of the student areas and the teacher’s wing.
Then, he realized that none of them wore Dominion uniforms anymore. Instead, they wore a mix of civilian clothing and USC fatigues.
The blonde-haired man cleared his throat and addressed both Cam, and the woman that sat to his right.
“I thought he wasn’t going to be up for a while.”
“He shouldn’t be,” she muttered, then got up. “Hello, Cam. I’m sure you have a lot of questions.”
“Who the hell are you people?”
She continued, gentle and unrushed. “What’s most important is that you’re safe. We’re friends. We came to rescue you. We got your message.”
“My message?” He shook his head. “What are you talking about?”
“Let’s start from the beginning. My name is Niks, I’m one of the medical staff on the rescue team,” the woman said, introducing herself, and then turning to the others. “This is James, our lead.”
The blonde-haired man gave him salute. “I’m a friend of Kara’s,” he affirmed.
But when Cam tried to argue, Niks continued:
“Rex, part of medical team and support staff,” she said, pointing to the tattooed woman sitting in a relaxed fashion in her chair. Her eyes, a striking orange-fire, jolted an old memory.
“You… You were on Cerka,” Cam said, touching the old break in his arm. “You helped me when I was hurt.”
“Both Niks and I,” she answered back coolly.
“Azzi, our pilot,” Niks said, nodding to the mammoth, broad-shouldered man peeking out of the cockpit. He gave a friendly wave before resuming his duty.
“And that’s Almos, one of our special mission ops members and consultant,” she said, pointing to the other man sitting on a flipped-around chair. The craggily-faced soldier gave him a nod, then went back to working a toothpick between the gaps in his teeth.
“Who are you with?” he asked, eyeing for any potential weapons in his reach.
“The United Starways Coalition,” Niks replied.
“But this is a Dominion ship—”
“Stolen Dominion ship. Along with everything else,” James said, pointing to a row of opened lockers with the battle gear and armor hanging on the hooks at the far end of the main chamber.
“I promise we’re USC,” Niks said. “Same as your sister.”
Cam scoffed. “My sister wasn’t part of the…” He stopped, unsure of himself, then shook his head. “No, Kara wouldn’t join with the enemy.”
“Enemy? Who do you think your enemy is in all this?” Rex said.
Cam didn’t know what to say. After his experiences in the Dominion Academy, he understood true terror, violation—but the USC harbored and protected telepaths, his ultimate enemy—
Then it struck him. “What was this message you got?”
“A coded email from inside the Academy net letting us know you’d survived Cerka,” James explained. “Not many details. Just these schematics,” he said, pointing to the holographic display in the center of the table, “and your student signature so we could track your status.”
“Well, and one more thing,” Niks added, pulling up the original file.
Cam looked it over, noting the brevity of the alert, but at the very bottom, an attached image of a blue sky and a yellow sun shining in the middle.
“Blue skies…” he whispered.
“Yes, that’s how we knew it was real,” Niks said.
“What do you mean?”
“Sometimes the Dominion will dispense out false information, but we were able to tie the image to something personal about you.”
“You knew about that stupid song?”
The others looked back and forth at each other.
“What? Tell me!”
Blue Sky Tomorrows Page 27