The Woman Who Lost Everything (The Warlord Book 3)
Page 16
A moment later, Katrina felt as though the hand touching the light-being was on fire, her every nerve ending screaming in agony.
“This is your penance,” Xavia said, as Katrina pulled her hand free and watched the steel armor that was her skin begin to melt off and pool on the deck.
She thought her entire hand would disintegrate as well, but the change stopped at her exposed muscles. She couldn’t help but flex her fingers, staring in terrified wonder at the macabre sight before her. Sinews and muscles stretching over bone, blood throbbing through veins in a slow rhythm.
“You did this once before,” Xavia said. “You turned yourself into a monster to combat monsters. Now I’m turning you back into a woman so you can live amongst humans again.”
More of the armor began to melt off Katrina’s body, and she screamed in agony as her nerves were shredded, muscles and bones exposed.
“You think you deserve this,” Xavia’s voice was like bolts of lightning in Katrina’s mind, a sharp crack followed by a thundering boom, the very sound of it shaking her body. “You’re not wrong. You have earned this, but know that this penance is not all you need. The dead cannot absolve you. I cannot absolve you. The living, the people you thought were your allies, they have exacted their punishment by sentencing you to death.
“Now you must forgive yourself.”
“I can’t!” Katrina wailed as she watched the armor-skin slough off her chest, exposing her sternum. Through thin muscle stretched across her ribs, the form of her heart was visible beneath, pushing against bone and sinew. Katrina screamed in agony, unable to close her eyes, unable to cry.
“You must!” Xavia insisted. “I chose you for this, Katrina. I chose you because I know what strength you have within you. The road ahead is going to be long and hard. More than you know—but you’ll have passed through this, the crucible.”
Katrina was lost in the agony that wracked her body. She was unable to speak, unable to form thoughts. All that remained was the pain, and Xavia’s voice, whispering into her mind, explaining what had come before, what would come to pass, and what Katrina must do.
All that Katrina could see was Xavia’s light. She had no more eyelids, nothing protected her mind and body from the being before her. The being that was ruining her to offer salvation.
Then a strange feeling came to her right hand, the hand that had touched the light. Katrina didn’t understand it at first, but then she realized what it was.
There’s no pain.
She looked down and saw skin on her hand. Perfect, unblemished skin.
It began to appear on her arm, on her chest, across her entire body. Her breasts grew back, her navel formed, soft hair on her stomach standing up in the cold air.
She held up her hand to see fingernails regrow, and then felt a tickling on her scalp and knew hair was growing out from her head.
She blinked, skin sliding over her eyes. An amazing delight—she had almost forgotten what it felt like.
“I’m me again,” Katrina whispered, running her hands across her body, tears welling in her eyes.
“You were always you,” Xavia replied. “You just forgot who that was. You touch all these things, you live in their worlds. But you are not them, and they are not you. You are Katrina.”
Katrina’s chest constricted, and she gulped a deep breath, tears streaming from her eyes.
“I am Katrina,” she whispered.
“Louder,” Xavia replied.
“I am Katrina.”
“Believe it.”
“I. Am. Katrina!”
“Good. Now go. I have work for you.”
Suddenly the light was gone, and all that lay before Katrina was the starlit expanse of space, waiting for her beyond the yawning portal of the airlock.
For a moment, Katrina wondered what would happen. Would the inner door open once more? Would she go back onto Armis’s ship?
Then something snapped, and the air exploded out into space, taking Katrina with it.
ESCAPE
STELLAR DATE: 02.09.8512 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Voyager
REGION: Regula, Midditerra System
It had taken excruciatingly precise burns to slow the ships, and then begin to crawl out of Regula’s depths. Only Troy’s extensive experience with managing long burns in adverse conditions had managed to keep the formation in shape.
Troy completed a final burn, and the ships reached the planet’s upper atmosphere, only a few-dozen kilometers below the cloud tops.
Troy was optimistic—at least about the battle’s outcome.
“Well, we’re seconds away from an altitude where we can pick up comm traffic, so we’ll know soon enough,” Captain Jordan spoke over the open channel.
Troy was ready to pore through every signal out there, searching for whatever he could find about Katrina. When he tapped into the traffic a minute later, it turned out to be easier than he thought.
“What the hell?” Norm asked. “She’s the one who saved the day! I assume she saved the day, right? It’s not the Bollers we’re talking about, right?”
“What in the stars are they trying her for?” Jordan asked.
“ ‘President’?”
It sounded to Troy like Jordan was going to choke.
“How far are they?” Jordan asked. “Max burn, give me max burn!”
Suddenly a voice came into Troy’s mind, one he didn’t recognize.
Troy couldn’t identify the origin of the signal; it seemed to be coming from a half-dozen locations at once. After the words, coordinates came—a location on the starboard side of a ship listed as the Talisman.
Troy said to the commanders, not caring who was helping, so much as that they were.
“How do you know?” Jordan asked, and Troy could see doubt on her face through the Castigation’s bridge optics.
Jordan gave a cold laugh. “True, good to have a goal for our suicide run.”
Katrina’s fleet—as Troy now thought of it—burst from Regula’s cloud tops, thrusting at over ten gs toward Armis’s vessel.
It was a sizable cruiser, nearly as big as the Castigation, but it was dwarfed by the closely grouped ships on approach. Troy expected to see the Talisman’s weapons come online and begin to target Cavalry One, but the enemy ship wasn’t responding to their approach at all.
“What the…?” Carl muttered from his seat in the Voyager’s cockpit. “It’s like they don’t see us.”
“The other ships, too,” Norm joined the conversation. “No one has activated weapons, that I
can see, no course alterations to intercept us. This is weird.”
Sam announced.
“She?” Jordan asked.
Jordan frowned and glanced up at the optical pickups on her bridge. “So it was a human?”
“Good point.”
The ships crossed the half a light second of space between Regula and the Talisman, and Troy readied an opening in the shield bubble, preparing to use an a-grav beam to pull Katrina in.
“If the airlock is open, where is she?” Carl asked.
“I bet they’re tormenting her with a shield over the door.” Rama sounded angry, more than Troy would have expected. He wondered if someone had once done something like that to her in the past.
“Suck her right out of their ship.” Carl nodded in approval. “I like it.”
No one spoke for the next minute as they continued to boost toward the Talisman. Then, ten seconds before Troy was ready to reach out and grab Katrina, he saw a puff of atmosphere explode from the airlock, followed by a body.
Troy fed the grav beam through the shield bubble, carefully grabbing Katrina’s body and pulling it toward the ship. The relative velocity of the Voyager and the other ships in the formation was such that he had to take great care not to crush her body.
Somehow, through a skill Troy did not know he possessed, he succeeded.
Then she was through the shield and inside the Voyager’s bay.
Troy wished he had lungs—it felt like he’d just held his breath for the entire maneuver, and he wanted to gasp with relief.
Then the connection was gone, and Troy was left only with supposition.
“We’re getting out of this system,” Jordan announced. “All ships, coordinate burns with Sam. Midditerra is in our past.”
Troy wondered if the MDF and canton captains would argue with Jordan, but none did. Over the last three days, the humans had formed a camaraderie built around Katrina. One that he didn’t understand, but was glad worked in his favor.
Jordan laughed and shook her head. “First star on the left and straight on ‘til morning.”
“New Eden, Sam. Take us to New Eden.”
KATRINA
STELLAR DATE: 02.09.8512 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Voyager
REGION: Edge of the Midditerra System
Katrina woke with a start, sitting bolt upright in her bed.
“What the…?” she asked, looking around at her surroundings, taking a moment to identify it as her cabin aboard the Voyager.
She drew a deep, pain-free breath and held up her hand, marveling at seeing soft, pink skin, and flexing her fingers without any discomfort.
The joy at seeing her own body pure and unmarred brought tears to her eyes, and Katrina couldn’t stop a sob from breaking free from her throat.
She swallowed, struggling to keep her emotions under control. “Stars…what…was that all a dream?”
A laugh escaped Katrina’s throat, but she couldn’t bring herself to speak the question in her mind.
Or the part where I fell in love with an amazing woman and then lost her through my own actions…?
After a moment, she replied aloud. “I guess…based on your question, that it was all real. Even the part with her.”
< ‘Her’? The one who helped us?> Troy asked.
“How do you know about her?” Katrina asked.
“Stars…she was something. Something else. A being of light.”
Katrina laughed at the thought, reveling in the ability to laugh without pain.
No physical pain, at least.
She swung her legs over the edge of her bed and rose carefully, reveling in the feeling of her bare feet pressing into the deck, feeling the small ridges of the surface.
Katrina scrunched her toes, almost crying out for joy at how good it felt to just move.
She turned toward the door to her cabin, not sure where she was going, but wanting to be with people—to feel human around them once more.
“Yeah?”
Katrina looked down at herself and laughed. “Whoops! You know, other than a coat, I haven’t worn clothes in months.”
Katrina laughed again, still loving the feel of it. Loving the sound of it. Bit by bit, the pain of what she’d been through was lessening. Not going away, but lessening.
“I could laugh all day,” she said quietly to herself as she turned to her closet and selected a simple shipsuit with the Intrepid’s logo emblazoned over her heart.
“Just a minute,” Katrina replied as she stood in the middle of her cabin and stretched her arms above her head.
After holding the stretch for a few seconds, she began her mantra.
“I am Katrina,” she whispered. “Daughter of the despot Yusuf, friend of the Noctus, liberator of the Hyperion, wife of Markus, president of Victoria, searcher in the dark. I am the lover of Juasa, the survivor of the fields, despot of Midditerra…. And once again, searcher in the dark.”
She breathed out, closed her eyes, and breathed in once more. “I am all of those things, together they are me. They form my foundation, they give me purpose, my memories are my strength, the proof of my convictions.”
She bowed her head, touching her chin to her sternum and continued her recitation.
“I am the soft reed that grows along the shore. One foot in the river, one on land. I bend in the wind, I weather the flood, I persist, I survive. I touch all these things, I live in their worlds, but they are not me, and I am not them. My beliefs and persistence are my absolution. I am still Katrina.”
As she spoke, Katrina placed her legs together and stretched her arms overhead, imagining herself as the flexible, unbroken reed. She bent over backward, arching her back more and more until her hands reached her ankles, then
the floor.
“And even though my world may so often seem upside down,” she kicked her right leg out and up, followed by her left, now standing on her hands, “it does not change who I am. I will continue to be Katrina. I am always myself; nothing less, nothing more.”
She held the pose for a minute, concentrating on her breathing, before flexing her arms and pushing off, flipping through the air and landing on her feet.
She walked to the door and palmed it open.
“Now I’m ready.”
THE END
* * * * *
Katrina’s journey continues for many years, she continues to search in the darkness, and eventually finds that which she has sought for so long.
Katrina makes a brief appearance in Orion Rising, and eventually comes home in Attack on Thebes.
If you’ve not read The Orion War series, you can start with Destiny Lost, and see how Tanis and Katrina’s paths—though separate for many years—weave back together.
THANK YOU
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M. D. Cooper
THE BOOKS OF AEON 14
Keep up to date with what is releasing in Aeon 14 with the free Aeon 14 Reading Guide.
The Intrepid Saga (The Age of Terra)
- Book 1: Outsystem
- Book 2: A Path in the Darkness
- Book 3: Building Victoria
- The Intrepid Saga Omnibus – Also contains Destiny Lost, book 1 of the Orion War series
- Destiny Rising – Special Author’s Extended Edition comprised of both Outsystem and A Path in the Darkness with over 100 pages of new content.
The Orion War
- Book 1: Destiny Lost
- Book 2: New Canaan
- Book 3: Orion Rising
- Book 4: The Scipio Alliance