by May Sage
Nalini froze, eyes wide open, as her door was kicked open.
Her surprise didn’t last long. The next second, the hilt of her whip floated to her extended hand. The instant the object touched her palm, the whip flashed red, her power coursing through it, coating it in something far deadlier than the energy it had been built to contain.
“Trust me when I say you don’t want to do this, boys,” she roared darkly.
Nalini wasn’t one for violence, given a choice. She detested war, and there were always alternatives to fighting, as far as she was concerned. But these men had entered her home armed and without an invitation. So, yes, responding with a whip in hand seemed appropriate.
“You’re mage.”
Yurik was confused for an instant. It didn’t compute. He’d imagined that she had some loyalist intel, but loyalists, the old warlord’s supporters still fighting against Kai in every system, were firmly anti-magic. He might have made a mistake here.
He took a step forward, hand up. “Look—”
The female cracked her whip. “Come closer, I dare you.”
He was no coward. Lord Kai himself had remarked upon his courage in the past. But that female made him freeze and want to turn back.
He was about to explain he’d just assumed she was an insurgent, and maybe even apologize, when something hit him from the side. Something fast and powerful. Yurik’s finger automatically pulled the trigger of his blaster, aiming and shooting at the threat.
The threat stopped and fell. A long silent second passed as what he’d done sank in.
It was a boy. Just a little boy, not even a teenager. And he’d shot him right between the eyes.
He felt it from worlds away. Heard the scream like she was right next to him. The hole forming in her bright, soft, loving heart hurt his, practically bringing him to his knees. He couldn’t breathe.
Nalini was hurting like she’d never hurt before. And for the first time, he was the one who instinctively travelled to her.
He took in the scene before his eyes.
Nalini was on the floor, crying over the body of a child. The boy she’d saved from Enlil. Kai recognized him from the recordings he’d watched, although he was much older now. And dead.
Yurik stood speechless and trembling at his own action. “Lord—”
He didn’t let him finish that sentiment. Kai lifted his hand, and the commander fell, screaming in pain.
He took in her simple, large, one-room dwelling in one glance. It was disorderly; she hadn’t made her small bed, on one side, or the smaller one tucked away next to it. Dark clothing hung behind a chair. His eyes settled on her bedding. It smelled like her, no doubt. He hooked his hands together, behind his back, to fight against his compulsion to make things just right.
Kai advanced toward Nalini carefully, slowly. He crouched close to her and put his hand on her back.
“You did this.”
Her spiteful accusation didn’t faze him. He hadn’t, and yet he had. Everything his enforcers did was a reflection of his rule. Instinctively, Kai just ran his palm up and down her back in a comforting motion that soothed them both. He’d never done that to a living soul, not even Sky.
Finally, he dared to look directly at the boy. Nalini loved him, that much was clear. He was her child, in a way. In another world, Kai might have cared for him, too.
Kai put his free hand on the boy’s forehead, covering the wound he didn’t want to see, and moved it down to close his eyes.
As his hand caressed the still-warm skin of the dead boy, Kai felt something. Something pulling at him, tugging at the edge of his mind.
Frowning, he gave into his instinct and pushed energy through his mind. Nalini turned her glare on him, a protest ready on her lips, no doubt. Kai saw her open her mouth from the corner of his eye. Whatever colorful words she’d planned to say, they never crossed her lips. A faint light lit up inside Kai’s palm, and transferred to the boy’s body.
He felt it being absorbed, taken in by the lifeless child.
After a few instants, they felt it; the child’s presence was back. He wasn’t breathing, not yet. But there was a spark of life inside this body; as mage, they could decipherer the presence of a life form.
“That’s not possible,” Nalini breathed next to him. “He is dead.”
Kai shut her out and kept on pushing everything he had, everything he was. Back on Vratis, his nose bled blue and his body shook.
“Fuck.” Nalini rushed to place her own hand on top of his. Without hesitation, she trusted him and relinquished all of her strength to him.
He’d never felt power like this before. The instant he let her in, he truly, physically, felt connected to every part of the universe. Each flower, animal, each dying star, each crying mother birthing daughters and sons, and each old couple dying hand in hand were part of him. He saw them all, past and future forever interlinked. And he felt her love for it all. The pureness of her beautiful soul.
Kai had the power to make the earth beneath him shake, reduce worlds to cinder, and Nalini was light to his dark. Life to his destruction.
But right now, they were together, finishing the circle that should never have been broken. His body stopped struggling in his cold, dark chamber. Right then, everything was effortless. Golden energy coated their intertwined fingers. Life and death, that they could mold like gods. The strands of translucent matter entered the child’s broken body and lit it up before fading.
The boy’s chest rose and fell. And again. Kai moved his hand, still coated in blood. There wasn’t so much as a scratch or a scar where the child had been shot.
“Kronos,” she whispered through her tears.
The boy blinked. “Wow. Talk about trippy.”
She laughed, cried, and pulled him to her arms, holding him close.
Then, Nalini’s glare lifted to him. Cold. Unforgiving.
“I’m sorry.”
No response crossed her lips.
“We don’t shoot children, Nalini. This was visibly an accident. The party responsible has already paid for it.” He waved toward the dead male in her foyer.
“Get out.”
Everything in him rebelled against it, but right then, he had no hopes of getting through to her, he knew it. With time, she’d forgive him. She’d be grateful for his help, too. But now all she knew was that her child had died because of his troops.
He tilted his head, and his stunned enforcers rushed out the door.
How he wished Nalini would just come home, where she’d be safe. Today, it had been his side. Next time, it could be insurgents or Imperials. She could take care of herself, but he didn’t want her to have to.
“Thank you, mister,” the boy called out as he disappeared, returning to his body.
He found it in himself to smile. “Take care of her.”
The moment he regained consciousness, reentering his body crouched on the floor and immobile, he went to his command board and checked on Yurik Grans’s placement.
The Val. A little village in the outback of the most irrelevant county of Itri, the principal planet in the system. He pulled up his map and marked it with a red pin. If he was right, Nalini and the boy would be gone by morning. He recorded the intel, nonetheless. He’d purposefully look for similar locations in the future. Remote, yet close enough to a consequential system for her to have access to every type of technology and recent news. The sort of place those who were running from something preferred.
And she was running. From him.
Kai could have had her trailed, but that seemed counterproductive now. She wouldn’t be receptive to anything he had to offer today.
He had to do better. Be better. Represent something she’d approve of. He’d do his very best, and then soon, she’d be by his side.
That, he refused to doubt for one instant.
Seventeen
Uncloaked
Why do we have to go?”
Nalini groaned. “I thought you hated Fruja.”
>
“Sure, I hate Fruja. But running in the middle of the night without even packing my stuff isn’t what I had in mind.”
“Then pack! You have two minutes.”
Nothing she owned held any sentimental value to her. Before getting to Itri, she’d managed to sell her healing skills to some people willing to pay a fair amount for a decent healer who didn’t ask questions. She’d used most of what she’d made to buy her ship, but she still had a little money hidden here and there. She picked it up from under their chest of drawers, behind their sofas, and under their mattresses as Kronos kept on fussing over his meager possessions.
“Okay, ready?” she asked.
“Yep.”
For all his fussing, the kid was quick at least.
“Let’s go.”
He trotted along, following her as she jogged down to the swamp where she’d hidden her ship.
The Whistle hadn’t been a modern model when she’d bought it seven years ago; now, it was dreadfully outdated, but it ran. She’d kept her fueled up just in case. It seemed she was fated to have the most powerful male in their sector looking for her.
“Come on. In.”
“Where are we even going?” the boy moaned as the trapdoor closed behind them.
She ruffled his wavy hair. He could moan as much as he wanted today. He was alive. That was all that mattered.
“I’ll let you know when we get there.”
“Who was that officer? He wore a white uniform. I’ve never seen one like that. Looked so cool!”
“I doubt it was a uniform.”
“Well, it wasn’t an exosuit, but it was cut like the—”
“Get your stuff in your cabin and meet me in command. I need a copilot.”
He was too busy yelling in delight to keep talking of Kai. Good thing, too. Nalini couldn’t bear to think of him right now. If she could help it, she’d never think of him again.
She fired up the Whistle before opening up a holographic map of the galaxy. The known universe lit up in blue, calculating routes from her location to any of the inhabitable planets. There were so many. Millions of planets, hundreds of thousands of systems. She could go anywhere. She wanted to run to the end of the galaxy.
Hands shaking, Nalini opened up the Ratna Belt. Nine systems. Thirty planets.
Kai had found her on Itri. He’d guess that she’d pick another hideout like her small village next. That was her first instinct, but she repressed it. Instead, she pulled up the very last system where anyone would think to look for her.
“Vratis?”
Kronos was quick.
“We’re going to Vratis?” half incredulous, half ecstatic, the boy yelled, “Wicked!”
She quickly ran through the job calls recently sent through the most boring parts of the system.
“Don’t get excited. We’re headed to Maul, in the farisles, east of the torrent. They’re calling for cargo transporters. At least this old bucket of rust is big enough for that. But that’s pretty quiet.”
“And still a hundred million times better than Fruja,” he argued.
The boy wasn’t wrong. She pulled up the job, and commed in to the station noted as the job coordinator. No one really applied as a transporter; they didn’t need qualifications, just a decent ship with enough room for the load. Thieves knew better than to attempt to take official cargos; they generally had trackers hidden inside the load.
As long as no one had called before her, the job would be hers. As it had only been posted a few minutes ago, she had a fair chance of getting it.
Surprisingly, the communication, went through.
“Nali Black of The Whistle, a Cn-1771,” she introduced herself, “answering call 471 in the Ratna database. You need pilots, I hear?”
She didn’t expect an immediate answer; who knew what time it was over there? She hadn’t checked.
“Warris Bair of Maul, Vratis. Damn, a Cn? Are they even making those anymore?”
“Not these last two decades, I don’t think. If she’s suitable for what you need, I’ll head over to your post right now.”
“She’ll do. We’re just trying to move belongings, and people, from this sector to the Empire. With what’s happening, bunch of folks have started to migrate. Great time to get into real estate, if you ask me.”
Nalini hesitated. Did she want to go anywhere near the Imperials at all?
But at least, Imperials weren’t actively looking for her.
“I’ll be there at 0612 according to my flight plan. Clearance codes would help.”
“You got it, Whistle. Bair, out.”
She stopped the communication, removed the comm device at her jaw, and passed over a series of numbers to Kronos.
“There, enter the coordinates.”
She purposefully left him to it without hovering; checking after his work in a few minutes wouldn’t hurt. The kid did good, entering each number accurately. Good thing, too, or they might have found themselves at the other end of the galaxy.
“What’s next?” she asked.
Kronos’s little face crunched up in concentration, then he activated all their shields, their artificial gravity, and air dispensers before saying, “Time for warp.”
Nali smiled, grateful for the distraction. She undid her belt and got up from the captain’s chair. “Come on, you do it. You’ve earned it.”
The boy seamlessly got their ship to light speed.
Now that they were safely on their way, reality hit like a thousand punches. Suddenly, she was very, very tired. And just as afraid to sleep.
“Well done. You wanna go get some rest? We’ll have to pass through customs in five hours.”
“Okay, but wake me up for landing!”
“I promise.”
They weren’t an affectionate pair, but she still pulled him to her as he passed her by. He didn’t even complain.
Too soon, though, he was gone, and she was alone.
Truly alone.
She’d shut the connection, that bond, that link that had been so much of a constant it was almost a part of her. Now there was a wall firmly in place between Kai and her. For good reasons.
She was afraid. Petrified. Not because of what Kai’s enforcer had done to Kronos, although that would have been enough to make just about anyone panic. Not because she’d seen Kai bring the child back to life, an impossibility which made it clear just how powerful the male really was.
She was afraid because the moment when their hands touched, she’d finally seen it. The future, and the past that had eluded her for over a decade. The reasons why she had been inherently terrified of him from the start.
She’d seen it as clearly as she saw the console flashing before her eyes to indicate that their sensor didn’t discern any threat ahead.
The goldish, misty matter created out of nowhere by Kai’s hand. She’d seen it destroy ships. Thousands of ships, gone after one single deadly blow.
It was Starfire. She’d touched it. Felt it. Tonight it had been soft and warm, unthreatening, and used for good. Used to ignite a spark in the broken, lifeless body of a boy.
But her vision showed a cloaked creature—a woman, she thought—using it in the past, lighting up the skies and crushing all those ships into nothing. And then, clearly, she saw it again, used by Kai, this time. Against a star.
He would destroy a star.
That wouldn’t have petrified her as much, had she not seen herself standing right next to him.
No. That wasn’t who she was. She couldn’t be.
Nalini wasn’t one to turn her nose up at those who killed to live. That simple equation, she understood. In this world, sometimes one had to pull the trigger to survive. She could live with the guilt of ending a life for self-preservation. Most people did it every day when they ate another living organism to survive. But destroying a star? Condemning an entire system—various planets, everyone and everything on them?
She closed her eyes.
It wasn’t going to happen.
It just wasn’t.
But how often had her clear, specific visions been wrong?
Eighteen
An Old Man
Piloting cargo was boring, but it paid well, well enough for them to be able to get a place within a month; good thing, too, as sleeping in the Whistle blew. That leaky old thing smelled damp.
Nalini returned to her habits soon, growing her plants and making a mess in the lounge. Adaptable as ever, Kronos found simulation games to amuse himself.
The one thing that truly changed was the sense of Kai’s presence. For years, she’d felt it there, but it had seemed entirely ignorant of her. Now, it watched. Listened. She was sure that if she ever reached into it, so much as said his name, he’d be there.
She never did.
One day, at the market, she saw it. The most beautiful beast she’d ever seen; white and blue fur, a presence that was entirely out of place around people. It was huge, close to the size of a pony. The wolf didn’t snap his jaw at anyone, but it certainly acted like it wanted to.
Unable to resist the desire to greet the magnificent creature, Nalini remained still and held out her hand, inviting him to check it out.
“Hello, handsome one,” she called.
The beast approached slowly and sniffed. Then it huffed, but, as it didn’t snap its jaw, she took it as a win.
“Well, look at this!”
She lifted her gaze and immediately tensed, her smile disappearing. She knew that man.
He was in his prime, with salt and pepper hair and a well-trimmed beard. His imposing frame, working hands, sun-kissed skin, and common cloak didn’t fool her.
She’d never seen him before. But she knew him. Who—what—he was.
“I know how to use my blaster and my knife,” she practically growled, low and threateningly.