Shadow Call

by Michael Miller

  “Everything is a lesson, unless you know everything. You don’t, I’m afraid, and you’re being a poor student.” Anger laced the older man’s words. “Please listen to me carefully. Solara is already taking steps that are leading to a massive destabilization. War is not far behind. The consequences of her actions are irrelevant to her; all she cares about is securing more power for herself. She is violently crushing any dissent, and the governor she is sending to oversee Alaxak is a perfectly loathsome specimen. And there are other, more disturbing things afoot.”

  “You think I don’t know this?” I snapped. “When will people realize that knowing something is bad doesn’t mean you have the power to do anything about it?”

  “You have let your grief disembowel you. There is nothing you can do about the pain, but you can do everything in your power—which is still considerable—to protect others.” Devrak’s insight was as deft as his bladework, and I fell silent. He was kneeling at my side before I could register it, his dark brown eyes, flecked with gold, boring into mine. “If you only love something enough to defend it only when you can win, that is no love at all.”

  The words took my breath away as they hit home, at once eye-opening and achingly familiar. Qole. She was the only other person who talked to me this way. As though what was more important were the choices I made, rather than the immediate results. And now, to have heard the same thing from the two people I admired most…it was an experience akin to waking up to a startling vista I had nearly forgotten.

  “Moreover, you haven’t even examined your options,” Devrak continued, his keen gaze no doubt detecting my shift in expression. “Half the generals chafe under Solara’s rule, and would embrace you if you take the Forging. They’re mostly on Aaltos, where Marsius is by your sister’s order. She thinks I’m there with him. These generals are keeping Marsius safe and my true whereabouts a secret. And it’s not only them you might sway to your cause. There are other families whose support you could gather.”

  I stared back at him, my mind spinning.

  “Nevarian,” Devrak pressed, “you are a prince, and you should be a king. How you feel about that is irrelevant, because the fact is that you now have a level of power and influence of which billions can only dream. I know you are grieving, but circumstances have given you the ability—nay, the duty to effect change, not the luxury of inaction.”

  He was right. Just because I didn’t want this power did not mean I should not use it to do the best I could, to the best of my ability. It was a duty, a burden, that I thought I’d set aside forever, but now it was time to pick it back up. It was frightening, honestly, bearing such responsibility in the face of overwhelming odds. Knowing the risks, the losses we would take, the people who would die, even if we won.

  I thought of Qole, holding herself together at the meeting hall, not only facing down Hiat but challenging the will of a queen, with merely her crew arrayed behind her. Her defiance was courage, and I drew on that. “All right.”

  Devrak stood and stepped back, the lines on his face easing. “You will come with me to Aaltos?”

  I nodded. “I suppose if I don’t have the decency to be assassinated, I can’t simply fade away.”

  Devrak’s answering smile was as brilliant as a sunrise. “Then I am yours to command.”

  Grim determination settled into my bones. “First, we need to find Qole. I have to tell her.”

  “What are you going to do about Eton?” Devrak was already in motion, gathering what we needed to depart.

  “I don’t know. This isn’t the first time he’s tried to kill me, and I’d be happy to never see him again. But I don’t really know how Qole is going to react to any of this.”

  Eton aside, I was about to declare myself king. I tried to imagine the look on her face, and didn’t like any of the possibilities.

  “Eton wasn’t always that fanatical. But I don’t know if he can be reasoned with any longer.” Devrak’s tone was thoughtful, and it occurred to me that if anybody would know about Eton’s past, it would be him. “Having connections to such men as Suvis is reckless at best, psychotic at worst.”

  “Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me that Eton might be acquainted with my parents’ murderer.”

  Devrak stopped. “That was who killed the king and queen?” I nodded. “I suspected as much, but to hear it confirmed…Nevarian, this man Suvis is extremely well trained, well positioned, and also pursuing an agenda I don’t entirely understand. I’m not even sure Solara does. He’s not…right…for lack of a better word.”

  Devrak had dealt with royals, warriors, and politicians across the moral spectrum. To see him so unsettled made me feel the same.

  But before I could ask more about Suvis, or tell him about the assassin’s strange questions regarding my family’s drones, the distinct sounds of ion and photon blasts echoed through the walls from the cliffs around us, growing in frequency with every passing second. Both of us were through the door and outside in an instant.

  “Firefight,” I breathed.

  The sounds came from the direction of the meeting hall. Qole.

  * * *

  I wasn’t prepared for the sight that greeted me at the meeting hall. The structure was damaged; part of the roof had simply vanished. Charred and mutilated bodies, almost all of whom I recognized, littered the ground. The rich, heavy scent of blood hung in the air, and in conjunction with the smell of ozone from the aftermath of ion weapons and burnt synthetics it almost made me gag. The hulking ruin of a mechbot gave testimony to what had happened, and my blood ran cold. I couldn’t imagine anyone would survive being trapped in a warehouse with one of those.

  But no one living was there any longer. No Qole. I sensed the vibration in the ground first, and then the entire building began to shake. Girders creaked in protest as the air filled with a steadily building roar.

  I ran outside to see hundreds of Shadow-fishing vessels erupt from the harbor, engines ablaze, rocketing into the atmosphere. I stared, trying to catch sight of the Kaitan…in vain.

  Devrak tried to raise the Kaitan on his wrist-comm as we ran to where he had docked his ship, but was equally unsuccessful. I knew there were myriad reasons that might be the case: Qole and the crew might be busy on other channels, there might have been an error in the comm-relay system, it might have been overloaded with other messages—or they were under attack.

  The slaughtered fishermen in the meeting hall were the stark reminder that no one was safe, that anyone on the crew could be hurt or gone.

  Gravel sprayed around my feet as I slid to a stop. Six uniformed peace officers, no doubt part of the advance team sent by the new governor, were jogging across the street in front of us, rifles up, clearly in a hurry. Their armor was dirtied and pocked with blasts; they had been in combat.

  Devrak never slowed. With one hand, he unsheathed his blade, and it glowed to life with a whine. The other hand flicked four glowing disks into the middle of the group with a whine that matched his Disruption Blade. Their trajectories bent in midair, connecting to the nearest photon rifles with a metallic ring. Electricity arced and streaked between each disk, tendrils of energy licking weapon and soldiers alike.

  Two rifles shut down, their indicators winking out. Two breached with sharp flashes that left their owners clutching their arms in agony, and the last pair of functioning weapons were brought to bear much too late.

  The easy grace with which Devrak moved through them was terrifying. He passed each one as if it were an Academy demonstration, his blade dipping down, cutting across, rolling over and thrusting with a minimum of effort. Only in his finishing strikes did a sudden ferocity display itself, unleashing with deadly power. His left hand held a plasma pistol; anyone who remained moving was dispatched with a single well-placed shot.

  He turned in a circle at the end, surveying the area, which was when I noticed the group of loc
als staring at us. They were a good-sized crowd, armed with industrial tools and a variety of more functional weaponry. Alaxak, it seemed, had wasted no time in forming a militia.

  Devrak nodded at them. “Good day. There will be more, I’m sure. I suggest you scavenge the weapons and armor here and then set up guard stations throughout the city. Nev, with me, if you please.” He uncharacteristically used my shortened name, no doubt to keep up my disguise for a little longer. His friendly tone—and his extreme display of force, in service of Alaxak—was enough to keep the crowd from trying to stop us.

  Devrak led me to the public starport in Chorda, a series of blastpads designed to dock with the transports and freighters that brought people and trade from off-planet. Most vessels on Alaxak typically docked on water, since most of the planet was ocean, but ships in the rest of the systems needed land. Chorda was the only starport on the planet. There were signs of a struggle there as well, but it had evidently moved on, and now all that remained were the rows of abandoned shuttles.

  Devrak headed toward a series of small private vessels intended for governance busywork. I was surprised—I would have thought he’d been in a Xiaolan starfighter.

  “I’ll fly,” he informed me on his way up the ladder to the cockpit. “Get on the comms and see if you can raise the Kaitan with your identifier.”

  I couldn’t, but I didn’t need to. Soon after takeoff, skirting an asteroid, we found Qole’s ship hunkered behind one of Alaxak’s moons.

  We also found the entire mismatched fleet of fishermen with her, hundreds of them, comms and engines quiet in the shadows. I saw what they were doing—using the interference of the moon and its debris to mask their signals and to sneak up on the governor’s forces. They still had a short wait before they could move. Good—I had time to talk to Qole.

  Suddenly, I felt nervous. She had been so angry at me when I last saw her; I knew I’d never be forgiven. And how was I going to talk to her about Eton, whom she considered adopted family?

  Breathe. I realized the person who had constantly repeated that calming refrain was sitting right next to me, and some measure of strength crept back into my bones.

  * * *

  Our welcoming party when we docked with the Kaitan was not friendly. We stepped onto the bridge to find the entire crew arrayed in a semicircle around the airlock, bristling with weapons. The sweeping viewport silhouetted them, the blackness of space a stark backdrop accenting their grim expressions. Seeing them as an outsider might, it occurred to me that they were a distinctly menacing outfit.

  Basra eyed Devrak heavily—and for that matter, so did Eton. I hadn’t thought the burly man capable of growing pale, his eyes fixed with an intensity I couldn’t place. He definitely recognized my instructor. And Basra knew it, glancing between the two as if something might happen.

  Several things clicked for me at once. Somehow, Basra must have known who Eton was, about his past. I’d thought that it was a remarkable coincidence that they had both ended up on the Kaitan. Clearly, the extraordinary captain had factored into Basra’s reasoning, and the fact that such a ship afforded someone of his remarkable position anonymity. But with Eton on board, a weapons master who had been a legend in his own right, he would have some of the best protection available. To a calculating mind, it was a perfect place for a base of operations. Funny that Basra’s relationship with Arjan, the person here who’d ended up mattering most to him, had been a total accident.

  That was the type of thing one couldn’t control. My eyes went back to Qole, who looked utterly stricken.

  “I thought it had to be a trick, but…it is you,” Qole breathed, relief washing over her face, her voice disbelieving. She lowered her weapon, though no one else followed suit.

  “In the flesh,” I confirmed, confused.

  “But…Eton saw you.” She glanced at him. His expression was stony now. “He said you gave yourself up, an assassin…” She paused, blinking back tears. I had rarely seen her so off-balance in front of the crew.

  Realization dawned on me, and I felt stupid for not putting it together sooner. Eton had cleverly used most of the truth to avoid any uncomfortable conversations about figurative daggers in literal backs. He’d told her I was dead.

  I had to get Qole away from him before she put the pieces together herself. Not that I wouldn’t have necessarily minded seeing Eton torched to a pile of ash, but if the governor’s forces were any indication, he was more useful alive. We needed all the help we could get.

  “I’m fine. I got away, with the help of Devrak. He’s an ally.” Qole and Arjan had both met him before, but the others hadn’t—at least, not in my presence. Eton was obviously a different story. “Qole, I need to speak with you in private immediately. It’s important.”

  She nodded, visibly pulling herself back together. “My quarters. Arjan, you have the bridge. Keep us next to any interference you can find. Basra, stay in touch with the other captains.” Her voice gained strength as she spoke. “Telu, get back to finding a way to get past the jam they’re putting out on long-range comms. And Eton, you and Devrak can keep one another company in the hold until I find out what’s going on.” She pointed a finger to the floor, indicating they should head down to the cargo level. She obviously didn’t want Devrak on the bridge—she didn’t trust him. But really, it was the man she’d set to guard him that she shouldn’t be trusting.

  She didn’t wait for anyone to respond, and I hurried after her.

  * * *

  “Nev, I thought you were dead,” Qole repeated as I closed the door to her quarters. “That you gave yourself up for me, that Solara assassinated you.”

  I shook my head. “She tried. And if it hadn’t been for Devrak, I would be dead. But, Qole, I—”

  “How could you?” she interrupted before I could finish. Her voice was pitched low, and it was husky with the effort of keeping it under control. Fury permeated her words. “First, what you did to me in the meeting hall, and now this? Even if you didn’t think Solara would send an assassin and that she would just take you prisoner, or that you would somehow outsmart her in the end—whatever it was, I don’t care! Don’t you know how reckless that was? How much danger that put you in, letting her know where you are—how much danger that still puts us all in?”

  I had hoped that Qole, after thinking I was dead, would have forgotten most of her anger after I’d misguidedly tried to turn the fishermen’s vote against her. But she was still angry at me not only for that, but also for supposedly endangering the crew with my attempt to turn myself over to Solara. Meanwhile, protecting the crew was my goal, with every breath I took.

  “You can’t be serious,” I replied, staring at her. “You are. I barely survived to make it back to you, and you’re mad at me for it?” A scowl crept across my face. “Well, you know, I’m kind of mad myself.”

  “No, I’m angry you left in the first place,” Qole retorted. “You didn’t tell me, or anyone, what you were planning. One minute you were a member of my crew, and the next you decide to abandon us.”

  A stab of anger ran through me, and the empty ache that had been eating at me receded a little. It felt good, shockingly good, to feel something else, and I let it grow.

  “Me, abandon you? You threw me under the grav-lifts back there in the meeting hall! I assumed I wouldn’t be back on the crew after that. You all but said I murder babies at night for sport.” I waved my hands in the air. “ ‘Let’s not listen to the monstrous offworlder! He’s just talking sense, for a change!’ You know, things haven’t turned out very well for anyone, but it hasn’t been for my lack of loyalty to the crew.” I bit off the words. “So if that’s why you’re angry, I guess you’ll have to be angry.”

  Qole sighed in frustration. “No, that’s not what I meant. I…”

  “Well, then what? If you’re mad at me for putting us at risk by letting Solara know I was alive,
then you should know—”

  “No!” Once again, she cut me off before I could say what needed to be said. “I mean yes, but…Damn it.” Her voice caught, and she took another deep breath. “Nev, I thought you had given yourself up. Left us…and I don’t just mean the crew. I couldn’t believe you would just throw away…” She stopped talking again, and my breath caught as I waited for her to continue. Throw away what?

  But she changed her mind, backtracking. “You have to know I wasn’t kicking you off the crew. I had to say what I said in the meeting hall in order to keep everything we’ve built here alive. It might make you mad, and you might disagree, but that’s not me pushing you away. There’s a difference.”

  “I know.” My anger dissipated. “I wasn’t truly turning on you at the meeting, either. I was trying to help you. But I failed,” I said, before she could tell me I had. “And I’m here to make up for it.”

  Qole shook her head, and something halfway between a laugh and a sob hitched in her throat. “We kind of implode at this. Shoving each other away, thinking it’s for the best. A fine pair we make…but I’m so glad you’re back. You’re alive.”

  Pair. Back. However much we “imploded” at this, we were on the same side again, here, together, on the Kaitan. At least for now.

  I didn’t respond, her last words lingering. She met my gaze fully, directly, and the world contracted to just the warm brown of her eyes.

  Something let loose inside me. It wasn’t conscious thought that made me step forward. Conscious thought would have said this wasn’t the time, or that it was a bad idea. But I moved to her, and she didn’t move away, our arms wrapping around one another as tightly as though we were saving each other from a hull breach. Her body folded against me, and nothing had ever felt more right.

  Our mouths found one another, and her hands were in my hair, insistent, and I pulled her to me tighter, lifting her against me, losing myself to the wildfire.