Stars & Ashes (The Saoirse Saga Book 1)

by Teagan Kearney

  The pair had become close during the recent three and a half weeks of training and tests where a regular schedule had kept the candidates busy. Morning lectures included everything from learning how to detect and counteract various poisons to etiquette at state banquets. Afterward came physical drills, martial arts, marathon runs, and team contests leaving afternoons for weapons practice, both real and simulated.

  After her hapless beginning, Kia had thrown herself into learning everything Nagavi taught. Despite preparing for a position within Rial’s personal guards, she pushed him out of her thoughts most of the time and rarely saw him except for the occasional brief visits he made to observe their progress. To Kia’s relief, he never stayed long.

  Three quick siren blasts notified them it was time to board.

  Red handed Kia her helmet, winked, and put her own on.

  Kia followed Red out into the vast hangar where two gokas hung suspended in the air.

  “Has a force field ever failed?” Kia whispered as they walked along the gangway to the cockpit and gunner’s positions. When in space, access was from inside the spacecraft to pods where the gokas sat prepared for takeoff, but here a gangway wide enough to reach both sections had been erected.

  “Not that I’m aware of," Red replied, nodding to the two helmeted candidates approaching the other ship. “That’s our boy,” she said to Kia. “That strut of his is recognizable. Well, we are going to bring him down today.”

  As if he’d heard, Tamaiko gave them a nod.

  “Who’s his partner?” Red asked.

  “That’s Keji. He’s got the widest shoulders. They’re a good pairing.”

  “We’re still gonna beat them.”

  Kia couldn’t see Red’s face, but was sure her friend sported an ear to ear victory grin.

  Once in position, Kia flicked the weapons check button and watched the control panel for the kinetic kill rods, aka KKRs, pulse lasers, and the particle beam light up one after another. She smiled, a predatory look in her eye as the rival vessel came up on the vidscreen. Besides defeating the others in hand-to-hand combat, whether with a blade or any combination of the martial arts Nagavi had introduced them to, she got a real kick out of shooting down her competitors. Once she’d acknowledged the nanobots contribution to the improved speed of her reactions, she took full advantage of the enhancements. At least here, she was in control.

  “Pilot to gunner, all systems ready?” Red tried to sound authoritarian—the pilot was the senior officer—but her delight in the thrill of battle leaked through. Communications between a pilot and the gunner activated as soon as internal sensors registered their presence.

  “Gunner to pilot, all systems are ready.”

  “Kill zone here we come.” Red’s laugh was infectious and Kia breathed deep, pacifying her skittish mind, preparing for the battle ahead.

  The hangar vanished, and the vastness of the cosmos surrounded her. The booth simulators were good for honing responses to attack, but they didn’t compare with this experience. Stars, tiny twinkling dots of light, spread across the darkness as if a wealthy householder had tossed a handful of glows to illuminate a garden. The gokas’s vibrations were subtle and amplified the simulation. They would increase according to the speed and missiles she chose.

  A shiver ran through Kia as the ship announced, “Enemy vessel approaching.”

  “Boosting shields,” Red responded, “and taking evasive action. Fire at your discretion, gunner.”

  Hearing the pilot’s official order for the shooter to take down their opponent, Kia glanced at Tamaiko’s craft, registering on her screen as an approaching small silver sliver. She shook her hands out and checked the blinking lights that indicated her weapons were ready to fire. Yes, she was all set to go.

  Once the gunner had locked onto a position, the shields dropped when the gunner pressed the fire button. When the defense system detected an incoming missile, the shields remained in place until the ship had shifted its position and was no longer in danger. The pilot’s job was to maneuver out of danger, while the gunner kept their opponent engaged, enabling them to slip into the kill zone. Most simulated battles were remarkably brief.

  Nagavi had warned them that even this simulation was far from the real thing. The chance of fighting an adversary of equal size and weaponry was unlikely. Gokas were hit-and-run fighter ships, and a more powerful weapon from a larger spaceship could take them out if they weren’t fast enough.

  Kia forgot everything except taking down the small fighter closing in on them. Red slewed their craft to the side and flew at full speed toward Tamaiko’s ship. Kia took a chance and fired the pulse laser, aiming to hit the cockpit, but Tamaiko raised his shields and rolled his vessel, her pulse laser beam missing them by a fraction. As Red took them through a series of feints, rolls, dives, and left and right evasive shifts, Kia sighted, aimed, and fired repeatedly. Her favorites were the kinetic kill rods, especially when fired in disperse mode. The slender missiles streaked through space and peppered the enemy, allowing a pilot to conceal the next move.

  After the first rush of attacks, both vessels retreated as their crews assessed the damage. Although Tamaiko would have routed them if Kia had been piloting, he and Red were equal and neither had the advantage.

  “How’s the weapons stock?” Red sounded breathy.

  “Low on KKRs, but if you can get us into position for a frontal attack, I can use the laser to take him out.”

  “Okay.” Red accelerated fast. “Going straight in for the kill shot.”

  “Ready.” Kia aimed the pulse laser. She could feel Tamaiko’s disbelief and panic as they hurtled toward him.

  “Entering the kill zone,” Kia murmured, bringing her hand down fast and firing the particle beam. No matter what move he tried, he’d wouldn’t be fast enough to evade the beam. Victory would be sweet. She smiled, eyeing her vidscreen for the instant she vaporized her opponent, but instead, she heard a sharp crack and a short gasp from Red, then darkness.

  “Red?” No answer. “Red?” Kia spoke louder, tightly controlling the panic waiting to rise. That gasp was horribly familiar. When the people of Sestris had stood in silence and watched their Electorate slaughtered, the crowd had uttered a gasp of horror. She’d heard it twice more while in the mines. Once an emaciated man working nearby had given a similar gasp and keeled over stone dead. In the refectory a few days later, another man sitting opposite her had sighed and slumped forward into his soup. The woman next to him had lifted his head, grabbed his plate and let his head thump to the table again.

  A nanosec later, the siren emitted a single continuous wail, the simulated intergalactic background vanished, and the hangar reappeared. Kia could see several technicians running across the floor below.

  Every light on her control panel was dark. “Red, what’s going on? Speak to me, are you okay?” She blew out a breath and pressed the emergency button on the entry panel. Nothing. The simulation had crashed. Swinging her chair around, she raised her feet and rammed her boots against the panel. I hope it’s not that easy to open in space, flashed through her mind, as she scrambled out. Ignoring Tamaiko’s horrified face staring at her from his cockpit, she was at Red’s door kicking it open. “Red?”

  Red’s body sagged sideways. Her eyes, sightless and empty of life, were open. A small hole gaped in the middle of her forehead, and she lay unmoving as a thin line of blood trickled from the corner of her mouth across the smooth curve of her cheek, and a dark cherry stain grew on the collar of her flight suit.

  Kia put her fingers to Red’s neck. No pulse. She kneeled and lifted her friend’s head, cradling it against her chest, as tears rolled down her cheeks.

  “Kia!” Nagavi gripped her shoulder. “Stand down and move away.”

  A great howl rose in her gut, coursed up through her belly and chest, and she felt the first flickers of a familiar pain at the base of her skull, but this time, she shoved the anguish behind the same wall as the rest of her grief and misery.
She would not end up in restraints in the hospital again. That lesson she’d learned well. Tenderly releasing her friend, she did as Nagavi ordered.

  “Please exit your stations. Please exit your stations,” the tannoy announced as several medics ran along the gangway toward them. Tamaiko and Keji stood on their gangway, their eyes wide and questioning.

  “You three,” Nagavi raised his voice, instructing all of them. “Wait in my office.” Turning to Kia, he added, “that's an order. Go.”

  Before the empire’s soldiers had arrived on Sestris, Kia would have stood her ground, querying why. Even her srilao teacher had occasionally lost his temper with her constant need to understand the reason why she had to do something. They hadn’t broken her—but she was learning the hard lesson of submission.

  She met Tamaiko and Keji outside the hangar.

  “Is Red okay?” Tamaiko asked as they trooped along the corridor to Nagavi’s office.

  Kia didn’t answer. She couldn’t. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault. Like a little ditty that children sang in a game, the chant choked her mind as she replayed the image of Red’s limp body and the blank surprised expression on her face.

  Kia paced back and forward in front of Nagavi’s desk. My fault. My fault. My fault, she berated herself, the words cutting into and opening wounds she thought had begun to heal. If she’d never agreed to Red’s madcap scheme, her friend would still be alive—though it would be her own corpse lying in the morgue. With her personal goal always paramount, she’d thrown herself into learning everything Nagavi taught and ignored the deeper implications of being trained as a killer. Philosophical discussions about the moral consequences of any actions they might take in the future hadn’t been on the syllabus. Or maybe she didn’t want to consider them? She wondered how many lives Nagavi had taken in his career. She only wanted to end one.

  Tamaiko stood by the window, while Keji sat, tense and upright on the chair facing the desk. Conversation had been non-existent.

  When Nagavi opened the door, Kia held her breath.

  “Mejara Lianghao, Red to you, has passed over into the next world,” he announced, his voice flat. “I’m sorry.”

  “What happened?” It was Tamaiko who asked.

  “An investigation is in progress.”

  “Can I see her?” Kia had seen a lot of death this year. In Sestris, at the mines.

  “Not until we have the results of the autopsy. This is a lesson you’re learning early. If you join any military branch of the empire’s forces, and especially if you join the Chenjerai, you will lose comrades who’ve fought by your side, and whose friendship you value.” He betrayed no emotion, but, without doubt, he was speaking from experience. “You’re relieved from duty for the afternoon, but tomorrow is the last day of training, and I expect to see you there, trying with every ounce of determination you’ve got. Another lesson, war doesn’t stop for anyone or anything.”

  Lying on her bunk later, Kia gazed at the tree outside the window, watching the day fade into twilight. She’d returned to the room where they slept, refusing Keji and Tamaiko’s offer of company, and an offer to escort her to the dining room. Jalux had asked if she was okay, but she hadn’t answered. She didn’t want to speak to anyone. All she wanted to do was relive the all too fleeting memories she had of the bright, cheerful young woman who’d freely offered her friendship, who had taken her place in the simulator and died instead of her.

  Chapter Eleven: The Finals

  Lord Rial moved the Finals back a day to give time for a commemoration ceremony where they would pay tribute to Red.

  Despite several requests, Nagavi had refused to let Kia see Red’s body as she’d wanted to say goodbye privately. “No special privileges here,” he’d said. “Look, I understand you pair struck up a friendship, and I asked, but I don’t have the power to counteract Lord Rial’s instructions.”

  She’d looked at him, schooling her features into the bland expression she was learning to wear and thanked him for trying. The feelings of slaves weren’t a consideration that counted for anything. She cried into her pillow that night.

  The following morning, the candidates, somber and wearing crisp gray dress uniforms, gathered for a special ceremony to honor Red. Lord Rial, Nagavi, Annen, Cheydii, and the Chenjerai were all present, their green dress uniforms decorated with medals of various kinds.

  A row of parallel sunbeams striped the hall, bathing it in bright sunshine. Red lay in an elaborate coffin, clothed in a Chenjerai uniform, and looking as if she were taking a nap. There wasn’t a mark on her face to show what had killed her, and any results from the investigation hadn't been made public.

  “Although Mejara Lianghao did not become one of my elite guards, she was one of the ablest nominees we have seen in a long while.” Lord Rial’s deep mellow voice, tinged with regret, filled the hall. “If she had lived and fulfilled her potential, she had every chance of being selected. Therefore, I have awarded her family the same distinctions as if she had been picked. Candidates, let us hear your words of praise for Mejara Lianghao whose star was extinguished too early.”

  Nagavi began followed by his lieutenants and Red’s fellow contestants.

  Many related an experience with Red or spoke of her talents as a fighter and pilot, but Kia’s feelings for her friend were private, and she didn’t want to share them. She’d lain awake late into the night pondering what to say after Nagavi informed them of the ceremony. Red had been the first person she felt safe enough to forge a real connection with in a long time, and their friendship had been warm and genuine. When Kia spoke her voice was firm, her emotions tightly controlled. “Red was my friend, and I shall miss her,” was all she said.

  As they walked to the dining hall for the feast in Red’s honor, she heard a few people muttering that rewarding Red’s family as if she’d joined the Chenjerai was unheard of and would grant them unexpected wealth and prestige. Red’s body would be cremated, as was the custom among her people, and her ashes sent to her family.

  Lord Rial sat at the head of the gleaming pale wood table with Nagavi at his right. The Chenjerai and the candidates sat on opposite sides.

  Kia sat as far from the Heir as possible but found herself unable to stop glancing at him. He’d given orders she wasn’t to see Red’s body, but yet had done something unheard of to respect her memory. Guilt because she should have died instead of Red warred with gratefulness to the Heir for his treatment of her friend. He confused her, and when the feast ended, she escaped, relieved to avoid his attention.

  Like most of the group, she spent the afternoon in the gymnasium, but unlike the others, she stayed away from the simulators—the memory of Red was still too raw, and instead she worked on perfecting her sword moves.

  As she went to sleep that night, she meditated on the challenge facing her. To exact her revenge, she had to join the Heir’s elite guards, and that meant succeeding in the coming trials. The Chenjerai lived and traveled with the Heir, guarding him day and night. But how was she going to do that if she kept avoiding him? More to the point, why did he make her feel uncomfortable? What was it about the weight of his intent toward her that bothered her? She drifted off to sleep, questioning if she should sabotage her own efforts tomorrow, then wondering what the consequences would be because she’d never fool Nagavi.

  She needn’t have worried. When she woke the next morning her mind was clear. The possibility of throwing away what was her best chance of avenging her family’s deaths was something she couldn’t live with. Always try your best, one wizened srilao mentor had instructed. Even if you fail to achieve your ambition, you’ll be closer than if you never tried at all, and in the trying, who knows what will change. As Lord Rial said, she had to adjust to her situation.

  The Finals were held in the Chenjerai training and practice arena and took place in the mornings; afternoons were for fine-tuning drills and preparation for the subsequent day’s examinations. Lord Rial attended each session along with his sixteen
elite guards who, Nagavi informed them, would also have a say in the decision about who joined their ranks.

  After breakfast, where she was too wound up to eat, Kia stood to attention with her fellow contenders in the center of a large indoor gymnasium at the Heir’s palace. A small balcony for Lord Rial and the Chenjerai to oversee the contests was at one end of the arena, and as soon as the Heir arrived the trials would start.

  Tremors of anticipation flicked through Kia’s body. She no longer looked emaciated, having regained the weight she’d lost in the mines, thanks to the nutritious food provided during the training. The constant workouts had extended her abilities and restored the satisfaction she’d always experienced in pushing herself to the limit.

  Every day several entrants would be eliminated, and by day five, six would remain. The four destined for the Chenjerai would come from these six. Plus, they’d learned, on the transport to the palace, that on day six of the trials, the Heir would grant one of the new guards the honor of dueling with him. Although the Heir practiced daily, a display of his skill was rare.

  “Not that any of you have the tiniest chance in hell of defeating him, but this is a mark of respect rarely offered,” Nagavi told them. He'd killed too many sons of ambitious aristocratic families and visiting dignitaries over the years that the Emperor had forbidden any more challenges. Or perhaps he was fearful that his enemies would train their sons as assassins and thus eliminate his heir.

  Kia kept her eyes down, going over her strategies and sending an honor-bound prayer of thankfulness to her former teachers. Preparation, preparation, and more preparation they’d drilled into her. She stood a little straighter as the doors opened and a sudden rustle of tension rippled through the room.

  Eight of the Chenjerai marched in—without their helmets—followed by Lord Rial, and the second group of eight who closed the doors behind them. All wore their plain unadorned olive green uniforms, the Heir’s gold insignia, the only difference, glinting on his chest.