Her moody reverie was suddenly broken by a polite knock at the door, hesitant but also slightly too energetic. Runner, undoubtedly. Kirby stood from the chair and walked to the door, pressing a button on the console to activate the door mic.
She paused in brief consideration. “Uh, lemme put somethin’ on, Runner hon.”
Moments later she donned a purple sports bra and a creased pair of khaki capris pants she rarely wore. She unlocked the door and allowed Runner to come inside. He smelled of a subtle, earthy cologne, and wore a gray tank top and black shorts. Kirby chuckled inwardly at the difference in effect a tank top had on each of them—she noted that with his oh-so-thoroughly defined musculature and v-shaped torso, tank tops looked like sacks on her body by comparison.
He smiled at her briefly as he walked inside, uncertain how he should greet her. She sat back in her massage chair after closing the door behind him. “What’s goin’ on, Runner?”
He sniffed. “Uh, so … are y-y-you okay?”
She smiled, then shrugged. Runner stared at her for a moment, processing the motion. “Yeah, I’m fine,” she said.
Bryluen sat at the end of the meeting room table in her bathrobe and her pair of near-sinfully comfortable woolen pajama pants. In one hand she held a tumbler of her favorite whisky, and in the other she held a paperback book before her eyes. Her data tab sat on the table top, and she was still smiling from a message she’d recently received. There were several bruises on her legs and arms, and more were on her back and stomach from various impacts during the battle.
She glanced up as Nicadzim entered the room wearing a navy t-shirt and shorts. Beneath one sleeve, the auto-med had pasted a thin burn treatment pad over his wound that made a gentle fizzing sound. He sat in a chair next to Bryluen, his scalp carrying the soft scent of shaving cream. Bryluen glanced up from her book and chatted with him as the others filed in.
Vort arrived next, complaining about how boring it was to walk everywhere as he clambered up into his scoop-shaped stool. With the tip of his one functioning wing he pushed his chair around to the end of the table, settling across from Nicadzim. The auto-med had bound his wing joint in a web-like cast to hold it still as it healed. The flesh beneath was overlaid in burn treatment materials like Nicadzim’s shoulder.
Kirby and Runner entered next, the Jockey’s bared midriff showing the filmy patch of gauze surrounded by the colorful sea of her swirling tattoos. Runner bore a few bruises, but the darkness of his skin masked them.
As they each sat at the table next to Vort and Nicadzim, respectively, Runner’s eyes passed across Kirby’s tattoos. “I kn-now Marines can-n get tattoos, bu-ut are there restric-c-ctions?”
Kirby looked down at the body art that covered a great deal of her body. “Yeah, no bad words, no sexual depictions, nothin’ disrespectful to your superiors, all that good stuff. Didn’t stop me from getting’ a big ole ’Fuck’ tattooed under my arm, though!”
Kirby raised her left arm and pulled down the side of her sports bra slightly. There, the word was emblazoned in cartoonish orange and yellow letters. “So if I get blown to shit, that’ll still be there to make the coroner smile.”
The group laughed. Kirby then pointed to Bryluen. “You’ve got a pretty tattoo on your leg, by the way. What’s that about? You seem the type to only get meaningful shit.”
The Operative smiled, then turned her chair and placed her foot on the table. Pulling up her pants leg, she revealed the twin designs winding up to her hip. “It’s for me and my wife—one design for each of us, intertwined.”
Runner smiled. “That’s sweet. You’re the ai-i-ir des-sign, sh-he’s the sea?”
“You got it.”
“The hell’d you know that?” Kirby raised her palms.
“O-oh, well, Bryl’s last name m-means Raven—or C-crow. S-so she lives at Raven’s Landing.” Kirby grunted in surprise.
“You have spoken little about your wife to us,” Nicadzim noted. “Will there be a reason for that?”
“Well,” Bryluen said as she pushed her pants leg back down and took her foot from the table. “I don’t like to brag, mostly. Also her job involves a fair degree of secrecy. Not to mention I think the secrecy of her identity grants her a certain mystery she would appreciate.”
“I gues-s-ss it makes sense you wouldn’t end up m-m-married to just anyone. What book are you reading, by the way?”
Bryluen reflexively glanced at the cover. “Oh, ʻTyo’Han, Mistress of the Liminal Stars’. My wife suggested it, actually.”
Kirby gasped. “Oh, I love that book. Raunchy as shit!”
“Yeah, I can see a few parts of this that would explain why the missus has read it six or seven times. This could also have contributed to her love of pirate hats.”
“She must have quite a thing for aliens, then. Have ya got to the Ly Aulth robo-brothel shoot out yet?”
“You ... could certainly say she is. I figured that shoot-out was coming, but not quite, no.” Bryluen grinned.
“I’m gonna’ be honest, that book is most of what I know about the Ly Aulth. And most of what I know about Qixing bits and parts, actually.”
Bryl’s grin vanished. “God, that’s horrifying. We ever run afoul of a Cartel Toll Patrol, you keep your damn mouth shut.”
Kirby laughed. Runner sat back and crossed his arms. “G-g-good author, but I thought ’M-memoirs of My T’hròstag Bondage’ was more creativ-ve.”
Bryluen, Kirby, and Nicadzim all looked at him. Vort wheeled his eyes about at each of his companions, missing the broader implications of the literary genre being discussed. Bryluen shook her head. “Yeah, I can imagine that’s true given that just the blurb was enough to let me know it was way out of my wheelhouse.”
“To e-each their own,” the vigilante chuckled.
A tiny, barely visible insect appeared in the air near Nicadzim. Its diminutive size failed to lessen the surprisingly loud, irritating tone it generated. Runner silenced it with a quick clap. Nicadzim nodded his thanks, then turned toward Bryluen. “Bryl, was there something you wanted discuss?”
Bryluen snapped her fingers, signaling a group of drones to enter and place plates and dinnerware on the table. “We just got away from a hell of a fight, I don’t need to tell you that. We’re banged up, but we made it and we’ve finally got a damn Stone. CSOE is gonna be by to pick it up, and from there we can finally get the Qixing to give us a real hand, maybe send out some more feelers to the T’hròstag, even. I know nabbing a rock in return for some injuries doesn’t sound like much, but today was big and I want you all to know that. So I figured we could all sit down to a good meal together and just celebrate.”
Dread Naught nodded, and Vort’s skin pulsed in a rich platinum tone. “This is a good idea I am grateful to be alive and that we are helping so many people! Thank you for giving me a purpose. I love to learn, but I was lost. I am unable to return home, but here I have found companions as willing to learn as I.”
Smiles shone all around the table. Bryluen raised her tumbler as the drones returned with each Dread Naught member’s favorite drink. “When I was asked to start Dread Naught, two things were true: One, I wasn’t wearing pants, and two, I did not want this to just be a Marine unit because I didn’t truly know what this mission would take. I went through about…four hundred eleven candidates that could have done a good enough job. But I wasn’t looking for marksmanship, or discipline, or even a military history at all. I wanted the absolutely extraordinary. CSOE work is hard—it asks more of you than blood, or sweat, or tears. I have survived things that would claim most anyone, accomplished tasks that combat training could never prepare you for, and seen things both beautiful and terrible that I will never forget.
“Because of that, I wanted individuals who were not driven by training or discipline. I wanted those who were driven by their heart and their ideals—those two things can survive any trial. My superiors trusted me to build a team that could meet the challenge, but they certainly had th
eir concerns. I had every piece of possible information at my fingertips and weighed every option and variable, but at the end of the day, when nothing else was certain, I went with my heart.
“I’ve put you all through a lot, and we have only just begun our journey together. But I thank you, from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for joining me, thank you for the good you’ve already done, and thank you for the much greater good you will continue to do.”
After a moment Nicadzim lifted his glass. Dread Naught toasted, then laughed and smiled the rest of the evening. As the night dragged on, the tired members of the strike team retired one by one to bed, leaving Bryluen awake last. She stood on the landing pad as the CSOE lifter arrived to transport the Stone to a secure facility. The runners piloting the lift came out to meet her, honored to make her acquaintance and talking about how jealous their family members were going to be to know they had spoken with the Valkyrie of Roth’s World. She breathed in the cool night air as the lifter flew away, and felt another message from her wife register on the pad in her pocket. Smiling, she went inside to finish her reports and research for the evening.
18. Press and Pasts
Bryluen spent the remainder of the evening in her office, poring over additional reports of skirmishes against The Dreaded on two systems, as well as a second and third attack on Gru’Thiall, each taking a course toward an uncertain point in the mountains from different directions. The Qixing had dispatched a number of drones, and a unit of Astral Marine Rangers were searching the area in their own fashion. Though they had found nothing as of yet, the Sentinels had established a number of anti-air emplacements to ward off landings close to whatever goal The Dreaded pursued. The habitually unforthcoming T’hròstag even acknowledged repulsing an attack near a fortified city center.
She also had been sent a number of media stories covering Dread Naught’s appearance on Democritus. Reporters of the Pisistratus Herald had remained on the docks during the evacuation, and took some good shots of Dread Naught departing the Atet.
Many questions were raised regarding the identities of members of the task force, in particular that of Vort and Kirby. An investigation by the Center-Star Gazette identified Bryluen’s armor and correctly surmised a link to the canceled Marduk project, while the paranoid Blue Sun asked more than a few wild questions regarding the Atet and Vort. Mainly they questioned whether the Atet was the result of technology from an unknown alien race.
An amusingly vague article in Thebes Star-Watch focused almost all of its time analyzing a photo of Runner that had been making the rounds. As he ran down the Atet’s ramp, he had turned partially back toward the crowd in a particularly photogenic way. The article tantalizingly wondered if the musculature of the armor at all reflected the man beneath—it did, to the detail, and Bryluen grinned at how excited Star-Watch would be once they learned who he was.
Lieutenant Lapahie had briefly confirmed with the Herald reporters that the group was a CSOE task force, which settled some questions and raised others. Comments and quotes from civilians who had been on the docks when Dread Naught landed were telling—most of them were simply thankful Dread Naught arrived when it did. The furious battle at the barrier was heard by all of the people on the docks, each of them waiting in terror for the enemy to breach the line and chase them down. As quoted in the Pisistratus Herald, “[Dread Naught] prevented [the monsters] from getting to us, so whoever they are, they deserve immense thanks.”
Most followup questions were later addressed by a CSOE spokesperson who identified Bryluen as the leader of Dread Naught, and presented The Dreaded as a burgeoning threat to the border colonies. Qixing press covered the attacks in great detail, spurring increasing pressure for both races’ respective military forces to move assets closer to afflicted colonies. The spokesperson smoothly avoided answering questions regarding the nature of the enemy, and simply stated Dread Naught and the CSOE were investigating the matter and formulating plans of action. While true the spokesperson omitted the Stones, the inability to track enemy movements, and the intel that led the CSOE to assume the threat would continue to worsen. No need to cause panic at this stage.
Bryluen had received requests for interviews from reporters who had each been screened and cleared long before their queries reached her. She admitted one Human and one Qixing reporter, both scheduled for the following day. She then left her office and padded to her bedroom, proceeding to her wardrobe to sort out an outfit for the interviews in the morning. Discarding her pants and slipping under her thick blankets, she lifted a picture of her wife from her nightstand and kissed it.
She felt a distinct pang in her heart—it felt like forever since she had been able to spend time with her wife. In reality it had been about four months since they last saw each other in person, and longer since they had spent a real amount of time alone. Recent experiences triggered the distinctly bitter feelings of loneliness built in the absence of her spouse. Bryluen was not accustomed to making close friends—in her line of work, she most often would move off to another distant assignment and rarely saw the same individuals many times in the course of her career. So while the members of the task force were good people for whom she held a growing feeling of fondness, the only person who would forever be an emotional constant in her life remained the woman she married.
Both of them had incredibly active jobs that often entailed large amounts of travel, fair measures of security, and plenty of danger. Most of the time their constantly shifting work distracted from each others’ absence, but the sustained stability of Dread Naught cast their separation in a stark light.
They conversed as often as possible via messaging and video calls, but Bryluen missed the lovable curve of her wife’s stomach, the feel of her skin, the sound of her gait, the strength of her calloused hands, the short exhalation through her nose when she poorly repressed a laugh, the way she snored, how her hair misbehaved to a startling degree in the morning, how much of a giggly lightweight drinker she was, and a thousand other things that made her wife the most wonderful person Bryluen would ever know. Bryluen hesitated as she was about to put the picture of her smiling wife back on the nightstand. Instead, she pulled the picture close to her chest and drifted off to sleep holding it, secure for now in the thought her separation from her beloved would not last forever.
In the morning, the Operative rose and put on a red blouse with a collar embroidered in a tasteful silver floral design. Over it she placed the jacket she wore when the Qixing delegation visited. She noted her hair had grown out slightly longer than she usually permitted, and therefore opted to use a small amount of styling gel to keep it moving in roughly the same direction. Heading out of her bedroom to drink her morning coffee, she found Vort and Runner already sitting at the bar. She pulled up next to them and greeted the pair.
Runner stared at her a moment, then glanced down and back up. “Ma’am, y-y-y-you aren’t wearing pants.”
“You are correct.” She sipped from the coffee cup that had been delivered to her hand. “It’s my tradition to go pants-less for waist-up video conference interviews.”
The vigilante’s face was blank. “... why?”
“Why do you lose your shirt every three minutes, mister pull-up?”
The subtle beginning of a smile crossed his face. “Bec-cause sweating is gr-r-ross and I don’t like doing lau-undry.”
Bryluen grunted sarcastically as she sipped her coffee. “Then I’m going without pants because I’m a chronic purveyor of hilarious japes.”
“You choose to eschew pants because you gain confidence from defying a social taboo.”
She motioned with her mug toward Vort, whose skin was currently a cool lavender. “Point for you, Vort! Time to go defy a social taboo!”
Bryluen stood from her stool and walked back into the lobby, passing the exercise room to reach her office where she was to take the reporter’s questions. Kirby was just stumbling out from the living quarters corridor, and sleepily whistled at Bryluen as sh
e passed. She turned and responded to the sardonic catcall with a haughty parade wave as she closed the door behind her.
Runner and Vort had moved to the comfortably dim library. Outside a light mist filled the air, casting the miles of trees visible through the outer wall of the library in a slight gray haze. The subtle glow of the data consoles and low lamp-light helped heighten the effect of the moist stillness outside, as if the entirety of Aves Prime was drifting off into a nap. Runner had his arms across the back of one of the couches, and had one leg crossed over his knee. He wore an athletic-wear top with thick cotton pants, and had been intently reading a book on T’hròstag Legal depositions.
He looked up from the faded pages and gazed over Vort’s bandaged wing. “Have y-you ever had an inj-j-jury like that before?”
Vort’s eyes looked backwards at his wing before returning to Runner. “I have had a number of injuries in the past for various reasons during my travels, but this is a fairly nasty wound by my reckoning. What about yourself?”
Whenever asked a personal question, Runner exhibited a split second hesitation as if he couldn’t imagine why someone would be asking him about him. “U-uh ... yeah. Taken a c-c-couple bullets, but, uh, wor-rst was probably when I w-was youn-ng.”
Vort turned a shade of yellowish-green. “You never talk about yourself much. I can guess this has to do with you being a vigilante. Same reason we do not know your name.”
Runner nervously scratched a thumbnail on a couch seam. “Y-yeah, I, uh…I guess…I’ve t-told Kirby a little bit. Bryl knows, but I’m … I-I-I’m actually dead.”
Were Vort’s eyes capable of blinking, he would have done so. Instead he simply became still and regarded Runner with the swirling gray hemispheres of his three eyes. Runner shifted in his seat, feeling he owed some small explanation to his various compatriots while also suffering a rising anxious heart rate at the thought of sharing personal information. “Off-f-ficially, I’m dead. I want to k-keep it that way. Until ... until I’ve got something done that I, uh ... something I’ve wanted to do a long time.”
The Shadow Among The Stars Page 20