by Celeste Raye
His smile was pained. “I spent a lot of time thinking that it was her that I mourned the most, but now I know better. It was the loss of my belief in the Federation that caused me so much pain. Oh, it hurt, that loss. I loved her, and I turned that love into a catalyst for revenge and death, and I wish I could say I regret it, but I don’t because I do see the Federation for what it is. It is a cancer on the world and one we have to excise now before it kills off everything still healthy and good.”
She swallowed hard. The feel of his skin against hers was so right and so real, and she wished they did not have to talk about war, but they did.
“We go to war soon.”
“Sooner than we planned. The people of Meridia have begun firing on Fed ships this very morning. It was premature, yes, but they had the perfect advantage, and they took it. They slaughtered an entire armada because they had the element of surprise on their side. The Feds have always believed their chokehold of that planet and its outlying systems so complete that they relaxed their grip and forgot that the Meridians were once one of the most war-like planets in the entire universe.”
Dread roiled up. “So what now?”
He said, “I have to go to Meridia. The planet’s not celebrating; they are waiting for the Fed to strike back, and when they do, it will be hard. They know that, and they will need help to battle off the next wave.”
She took a deep breath. “I can help on the ground. I can help with the wounded and the supplies and so on. And…” her voice trembled, “I can count the dead so that they are remembered. That was my job, you know. To log the dead.”
His eyes stared into hers. “You’re brave, and I wish I could leave you here, but everyone is needed. All across the universe, the planets are firing on the Federation. The people of Meridia set off the chain reaction we set in motion by placing warships and armies throughout the universe.”
She was afraid. So very afraid but there was no going back now. This war had been coming for centuries, and now it was at hand. She gave him her best smile even though it shook on the corners and fear stabbed its way into her heart. “You better not die on me.”
His fingers traced her jaw. “I was about to say the same thing to you.”
She whispered, “When do we go?”
“The ships are already loading.”
No. Not this soon! She shrank back from that, but she knew there was no choice. She had known the day he had told her what he was going to do that war was inevitable and that if she was to stay with him, she would be caught up in it.
The truth was that even if she had not stayed aboard that ship, she would have been caught up in that war.
“Then we should get dressed.”
He nodded, and then he kissed her again. But that time his kiss felt like a kiss given to say goodbye.
Tara ran across burning land and earth. The thick coils of fire from the bomb that had dropped a hundred yards from where she had been standing shot upward toward the sky. She coughed and pulled the top of her tunic over her mouth and nose as she cowered back against a wall just in time to avoid being cut down by laser weapons being aimed at the troops fighting on that side of the street, the rebel troops on whose side she stood.
The battle was pitched and violent. Bodies lay everywhere. She knew Blade was somewhere in the mass of bodies engaging in brutal combat right behind her. She felt the force of Jenny gathering her inner ability, and then soldiers dressed in Federation garb dropped to the ground screaming in agony. Their cries beat against Tara’s ears and heart and soul. She pitied them even as she knew their deaths were necessary.
Jessica’s body shot in front of hers just as a jagged lance of weapon burst struck. Jessica was already on the ground, taking her down too. Tara gasped out, “Thanks.”
Jessica, her face streaked with blood and ash, snapped, “Keep your goddamn head down and your ass covered.”
Then she was gone. Tara crawled onward, trying to get out of the center of the fighting. She knew Jessica had not meant for her words to be unkind, so she ignored the tone of them and took the very good advice, ducking behind a low wall formed of a broken craft and a partial remnant of a stone wall.
She heard death cries and shouts. The rattle of blades as laser weapons lost power and surge and failed and the fighting got even grimmer and even more volatile. The rebels wanted freedom. The Federation wanted everything else.
It was a battle that had to be won, and she crawled onward, her hands stinging from the heat rising up from the ground below her knees and palms.
A body lay nearby, and she recognized the plain clothing as belonging to a citizen of the planet. She turned the body over to see a young man staring at her. Blood ran from his nose and lips, but he was smiling even as his eyes began to cloud over in the first throes of death.
He wheezed out, “We got those bastards, didn’t we? Fuck the Federation. Freedom!”
She ran her hands over his tunic. He had a massive chest wound that he could not survive even if she got him to help right then, and she knew it. She took his hand and said, “You fought like a warrior.”
He grinned again. Blood coated every single tooth. His eyes went wide and stared at her. He garbled out, “Freedom. I’ll die for that.”
He would. He was. There was no way around it. Tears came up, but she held them back.
He whispered, “What’s your name?”
“Tara.” She let her fingers wind around his and impart a little warmth to his chilling flesh. “What’s yours?”
“Gregor. I’m seventeen today. It’s my birthday.” His smile held everything. “I won’t live, will I?”
“No.”
He tried to nod but could not manage it. “We did it. We beat those bast…” he coughed, sending more blood running down his chin. He asked in a voice gone child-like. “Is it over? Did we win?”
“Yes, it is over, and yes we won. The Federation is no more.”
It was a lie, but what did that matter? They were winning, at least for the moment, or so it seemed, but how could she possibly know?
One of his hands went into the air and formed a fist. He screamed then, screamed in a mixture of both pain and victory. “Freedom! Fre…”
He died before he got the word out the second time. His life ended abruptly and without a second of pause. Tara crawled away from him, her heart breaking at the waste. She got back to the wall and looked over it.
Meridia was aflame. The Federation had been furious at the sudden open rebellion against it that was playing out across the universe, and it had sent its warships to every planet that was firing upon it.
Meridia was the epicenter, and the Federation had spared nothing.
Tara saw the bombs falling again, and her heart shook with rage as she realized that that time they were bombing the hospital and the shelter where the eldest and youngest had all taken refuge.
“You bastards!” her scream was one of utter fury, and she was up and moving before she even registered that fact.
Bombs whistled all around as Tara ran for a building, her hands clawing at falling rubble to yank an older man and a terrified woman from the falling debris. Tara’s fingernails were broken and bloody from that and from other rescues.
Laser fire hit the wall right over her head, and she screamed and ducked then rolled along the ground, pressing up hard against a wall that promptly began to topple onto her.
Hands yanked her forward and out. Blade shouted, “Come on! We’re fighting too short on the ground!”
They were short everywhere. Talon and his crews had had to go to the outlying planets above Meridia to try to battle back a massive wave of warships and Meridia had lost too many of its fighter pilots that day. The wreckage of downed ships was everywhere, burning on the streets and on the crushed roofs of the buildings upon which they had landed.
Blade stopped running. She did too. His head went up and back. He tracked a ship, so large its shadow blotted out the sun above them. His lips formed two words that se
nt horror and fear right into her. “Neutron bombs.”
The bombs that could destroy entire planets. The bombs that could wipe out everything and everyone. The bombs that there was no escape from.
Blade yanked her forward again. Her feet skimmed across the burning ground. Her body was loose with fright, and her brain had gone so numb she could not even fathom what was happening anymore as he pulled her toward a ship that was hastily loading people from the planet onto it.
Bombs everywhere. Federation and rebel ships, locked in lethal combat, blew to bits ahead and the sky was lit with the flaming wreckage. The world had gone upside down somehow, and she was in the center of a war she had never wanted to take part in, but believed in.
Blade’s hands gripped her arms. Tears poured down her face as he said, “Go. Go now, Tara.”
Her heart was like a stone in her chest. Fear, so real and vital she could feel it clawing at her internal organs, rocketed through her and made her entire body take on a high thin trembling that made it hard to keep standing so she leaned against him, feeling the strength of his body, his warm and living body, against her own. “No, not without you. I won’t.”
Blade sucked in a breath. “There’s about two seconds before they blow the entire world we stand on to bits. Goddammit, go. Now.”
Tara knew he was right. She took his hands. Her voice trembled. “If I’m going to die, I want to do it here and now. I don’t want to spend whatever’s left running. Please.”
He whispered, “What are you saying?”
“I’m not running. There’s nowhere to go anyway. You know that. The bombs are hitting everywhere. Everything’s falling. No matter what I won’t get off the surface and if I do what then? The Fed ships will blow whatever ship I’m on to bits. I’m not dying without you.”
They were going to die. Period. Full stop. There was no way around that fact, and she accepted that at that moment. There was nowhere to go and running might prolong it for a few more minutes, but death was inevitable. This was her death, and she would damn well choose how it happened, and she was choosing to be with him.
Blade said, “I love you, Tara.”
Tears streamed down her face. The ground shook below her feet. The Fed ships dropped another bomb, and the earth split and fissured not far from where they stood. Buildings fell. The screams of the wounded rose high in the air and the sound of more ships crashing, bringing flame and death with them, drowned those screams out.
“I love you,” she whispered, “With all my heart and soul, I love you.”
Ash, thick and greasy, rolled over them in a choking wave. Blade drew her into his arms. His mouth came down on hers, his lips holding fast to hers. More bombs whistled down, and the sound of weapon fire rose yet again.
The wind blew the rank smell of scorched earth and the dead to her nose, but she forgot about that; everything faded away as his mouth took hers captive and then plundered it. She could feel the hammering of his heart below his stained and ripped tunic. She could feel the press and thrust of his body against hers and the beat of blood in her veins and the tender and yet demanding feel of his tongue against hers.
The world, the entire universe, was ending. But love was forever, and she gave in to all the things she felt for him, for the strong and proud and sometimes impossible man who had saved her life and then showed her things she had never thought she would see.
That this was the end was not something to fear anymore.
They would be together in this life and the next: she just knew it.
The kiss broke off. The smoke and ash blew harder. Blade’s head tilted back. His eyes, shining bright in his dirty face, suddenly widened. He said, “Oh my God! It’s Talon and his army!”
His hand took hers, and they ran. Her legs pumped fast, and her breath stroked in and out of her lungs like an engine on overtime. The row of hills stood stark and nude; the grass burned to nothing and the sky still dark. The Fed ships fell back, their pilots already wearied by the battle and the losses suddenly more than they were willing to endure as the Revant co-leader of the rebellion zoomed in, his ships armed and his captains fresh and eager for Fed blood.
The battle became a battle in the sky. The bombs stopped falling. The military on the ground began to mobilize.
Blade shouted, “Tara, go help the wounded and get the kids and elderly somewhere out of the range of the weapon fire, help as many as you can!”
She wanted to kiss him again, but there was no time. He was already turning away, his weapons drawn once more and his shouts rallying the ground forces to him, and then he was gone, lost from her sight as they moved forward, determined to end this oppression of the Federation for once and for all.
She might still die but hope had sprung anew, and Tara was galvanized by it. She ran, her arms and legs moving in tandem and her dirty hair flying out behind her. The smoke made breathing difficult. She spotted a small child sitting on a broken pile of rubble, and she ran for the boy, his coughs telling her just how dire his predicament was. She snatched him up into her arms and raced away from the building he had been atop just as it crumbled and fell away into its own basement.
The boy let out a high thin scream and she wanted to comfort him, but she knew that was hardly possible right then. She spotted a small column of people fleeing from the epicenter of the destruction and headed for them.
She called out, “Wait! Wait! I need anyone able to help me get those who aren’t out!”
A man, tall but thin, stepped forward. His hand rested on the head of a small girl. He said, “I can help. Is that your boy?”
Tara set the boy down. He immediately collapsed into a screaming and shaking heap. Several women ran forward to take him. Tara shook her head, “No, I found him. I don’t know where his parents are, but there are a lot of people who are wounded and who need to be moved. We also need to get these kids to safety.”
She was joined by a half-dozen. Many refused, determined to get themselves as far from the battle as possible; they were not willing to risk going back to the war zone. Tara did not blame them for that; she did not want to do it either, but she had to.
Somebody had to do it.
She and the others who had volunteered began trying to find the ones who were still alive and might make it. The hospital had been reduced to smoking rubble and ash and the scent of burned bodies and the soot hung thick around where it had stood. Tara did not even bother going there; she already knew that nobody could have survived that bombing.
Instead, they began in the buildings that had taken the outer rings of the blast fields, and they found many wounded and some who were just dazed and too scared to move. It was slow going, and her eyes kept going to the skies to see the rebel ships led by Talon and his crew beating the Fed ships back.
She could not tell who was winning on the ground. The dead lay everywhere and the two sides had given up on any kind of dividing line between themselves and were now embroiled in a brutal combat that raged for miles in either direction.
She could not let her mind wander to Blade. If she did, she would lose all hope. She had to believe he was all right and that he was not hurt or dead and so she just plowed onward, dragging the wounded to the tops of the hills and then into the valleys just beyond where the bombing had not yet hit, and there was a long river that could give them water. Those who were able there began to try to help save the wounded using whatever they had on hand.
A small ship set down, and to her relief, she saw the bay door swing open to reveal rebels, Jenny and Marik among them.
She called out, “Healers have come! Help them any way you can!”
Then she went back up the hill and down it again, back into the battlefield, trying to find those who needed the most help and those who could walk.
Her body was exhausted. The terrible sights all around her were too much for her mind to take and so it shut down, encasing her in numbness. She could think only of the task she had been set and that she had to accomplish i
t or go mad, and she knew that.
She found a wounded rebel, his leg broken and a bloody wound in his side. She helped him, walking him up the hill while he leaned against her heavily, and then she laid him down below a stunted tree before moving on from him and on to the next person who needed her assistance.
It went on that way for what felt like an eternity. She walked so much her legs became stiff and sore. Her body was covered with blood not her own. Her hair, stiffened by smoke and ash and blood and dirt, tangled around her hair. Thirst came, but she didn’t stop to drink until she absolutely had to and she could not go on without a precious swallow or two of water.
Night came. The Fed ship in the air began to retreat, and the ground troops fell until their number was so small that those left surrendered just before dawn. The rebel ships landed in groups as their captains took to the ground for fuel and rest.
The wind had picked up again, and the entire city smoldered. The flames had been mostly quenched, but the fires still burned below the rubble and Tara, completely wiped out, stood on the hill, looking down with tears rolling silently down her face.
A hand fell on her shoulder. Jenny spoke softly. “You need sleep.”
Tara’s hands came up and yanked at the stiff and stinking mass of her hair. “I know.”
Jenny stepped up beside her. Like Tara, she was dirty and tired, her clothes ripped here and there where she had yanked strips of it away to make bandages. “You will be no good to anyone if you don’t rest. Come on.”
“I’m…” She could not say the rest of it. She didn’t have to either because just then, Jenny said, “Hoping to see Blade. I know. I hope to see him too, but for now, you have to be strong enough to care for yourself.”
Jenny’s strong but gentle hands turned her away from the sight of the ruined city. Tara staggered along beside her, her eyes so gritty with fatigue that she could barely see.