by Cheree Alsop
“No.” His reluctant tone stopped her hand on the door. “I guess I don’t know, myself. I didn’t think it would feel like this.”
“Like what?” she asked softly.
After a moment, he replied, “Like home.” He fell silent for a few more seconds before he said, “I didn’t know if I would ever feel that again. It hit me a bit harder than I thought.”
“It’s been a long time.”
Tariq nodded. “Maybe I was avoiding it because I was afraid it would feel like this.” He looked at the floor beneath his bare feet. “I told myself that when Dannan was killed, I wouldn’t live a normal life. I didn’t want to, not without her.” His voice dropped to almost a whisper. “She was my everything. I lost my sanity when I lost her. Instead of living, I was surviving.”
“Is there a difference?” Liora asked without looking at him.
“There’s a huge difference,” Tariq replied.
Liora made herself ask into the following silence, “So what about Kiari?”
She could hear the begrudging smile in Tariq’s voice when he answered, “It’s that obvious, huh?”
“You looked pretty happy with her.” The words tasted bad. She kept her face carefully expressionless.
“She’s in love with who I used to be.”
Liora thought about that. “Are you so different?”
Tariq let out a small breath. “You know that feeling when you kill someone and you watch the light fade from their eyes.” He met her gaze. “You feel like a part of your soul dies with them.”
Liora had told herself long ago that she had lost whatever part of herself had a soul when her clan was killed, but there was no denying the truth of Tariq’s words. When she killed someone, anyone, there was a price. Obruo never understood that. Perhaps the Damaclan side had no conscience when it came to taking a life. It certainly appeared that way. Yet human kind had a history of killing without remorse. Perhaps it was all a front.
She realized Tariq was waiting for an answer. She nodded. “I know what you mean.” Admitting it before she had received her tattoos would have been another nail in the coffin Obruo had created for her. She didn’t know how she should feel about the answer. Not being impacted by the lives she took would have been much easier.
“Losing the person who completes you makes a hole inside so deep, I feel like there’s no way out.” He glanced at her and then lowered his gaze as though what he was about to say was difficult. “Is it bad that sometimes I relish killing because it makes me feel something, even if it that something is less than I was before?”
Liora knew exactly what he meant. The thought that someone else understood made her feel strange. She was used to thinking herself the only supposedly mindless killer with a conscience. It was unsettling.
“I have lost far too much of my soul to burden Kiari with a man who isn’t whole.” Tariq’s words were quiet but firm as though he had made up his mind. “She might love the man I was when I lived here, but that man died when Dannan and Lissy were taken from me.” He shook his head. “Home will never be mine to have.”
Liora studied the bandages across her hand. Her wound hadn’t bled through Mrs. Metis’ careful work, yet she felt the pain of the gaping flesh beneath. It echoed how she felt when she looked at Tariq. He gave an outward appearance of being strong and whole, yet when he let down his walls and spoke to her away from the others, she saw the pain that simmered beneath the surface. They were more similar than she wanted to admit.
“Why does that happen?”
Liora looked up at Tariq’s question.
He gave a shake of his head with an incredulous expression. “Why is it that you can break me down? You’re the one person who reminds me of why I lost everything that was my life.”
Liora sucked in a breath at his words to push down the pain they brought.
She barely heard him say, “So why do I trust you?”
She met his gaze. His light blue eyes searched her face. She forced a casual smile that felt foreign on her lips. “Keep your enemies close?”
Tariq chuckled. He tipped his head to one side and gave her a look she found unnerving.
“What about you, Liora. Could you be happy here?”
Surprised by his question, she shook her head. “I just got out of one cage. Why trade it for another?”
That brought a smile to Tariq’s face. Liora found an answering one spreading across hers.
“So, a wanderer forever, then?” he asked.
“Something like that,” she replied. “Endless stars to explore; bad guys to fight; a crew to protect. Not to mention dodging death at the hands of my psychotic father figure. It should keep me pretty busy.”
He nodded. “Liora Day, the girl without a planet; the girl from the stars.”
“The girl without a soul,” a voice whispered in the back of her mind.
A chill ran down Liora’s spine. She reached for the doorknob.
“Goodnight, Tariq.”
“Goodnight, Liora.”
She stepped through the door.
When she reached to pull it shut behind her, Tariq said, “Leave it open. Please.”
Liora thought the request was odd, but she did so and walked back to her room, her footsteps quiet and mind filled with the whispered words of the nameless ones who had killed her clan and foreshadowed that she would be the one to end it all.
Chapter 7
At dinner the next evening, Liora was about to take a seat across from Tariq when the pub’s door flew open. Officer Straham looked around, his eyes wide and chest heaving. His gaze locked on them.
“Oh, thank goodness,” he gasped. “We need you. The Scavs and Coalition followed us. It’s a war!”
“Count us in,” Sveth said. The rest of Tariq’s friends rose.
“It’s about time the fight came to us,” another man called.
“Why is the Coalition after you?” a woman with dreadlocks asked.
“There’s a lot that I haven’t told you,” Tariq replied, heading toward the door with a look of anticipation on his face. “But I can guarantee one heck of a fight.”
“Echo against the Macrocosm,” the woman yelled.
“Echo against the Macrocosm,” the others took up the shout.
Everyone rushed out the door after Liora and Tariq.
Liora drew her knife. Tariq held a pistol in each hand. They followed Straham to the Kratos’ Gull sitting skewed in a swath cut from the jungle. Its sides were battered as though it had barely survived the landing. The crew fired at Coalition officers through the trees. Other, unmarked enemies shot from the south. Liora wondered how far away their ships had landed.
“If we can disable their crafts, they won’t be able to retreat,” she shouted at Tariq as they ran down the road.
“They’ll be at our mercy,” Tariq replied. He called over his shoulder, “Sveth, Gerand, head to the ships. We need to block their escape.”
“My kind of fight,” Sveth said with a light of reckless savagery in his gaze. He motioned to several of the men behind him. “Come with me.”
Devren shot from the cover of two fallen trees. Nearby, Hyrin and Shathryn returned fire from behind a glowing boulder. Shathryn’s purple hair was flattened on one side and she shot at Coalition officers with a continuous outburst of angry dialogue.
“Teach you to shoot at my friends,” she shouted, clipping an officer in the shoulder. “What ever happened to manners and being innocent before proven guilty?” She shot another in the chest. “I thought we were all on the same side, and now I’m dodging metal like some merc caught up on the wrong side of a Zamarian’s temper.” She hit another in the face. “It’s not right, I tell you! It’s just not right!”
Closer to the Gull, O’Tule and Lieutenant Argyle protected each other’s backs from a nest of salvagers. O’Tule’s green skin had black grease stains across it as though she had been helping the Salamandon with repairs. The rest of the Kratos crew looked tattered and worn as they
returned shot for shot, but they didn’t give up in the face of the tremendous odds that fired upon them; nobody would ever say the crew of the Kratos contained cowards.
Tariq and Liora slid into cover on either side of Devren.
He stared at them. “Where did you come from?”
“We’ve been waiting for you,” Tariq replied. He fired two shots and two salvagers fell. “Took you long enough.”
“We were busy,” Devren said dryly. He clipped an officer in the leg. Tariq finished the man with a shot to the chest. “We’re in way over our heads here.”
“That’s alright,” Tariq replied. “We brought you an army.”
Devren glanced back and Liora followed his gaze. A smile touched her lips at the sight of the citizens of Echo storming the trees. Someone must have gone to rally the others. A sound caught her ears. She realized that the horn in the middle of Echo had been activated. Tariq really had brought an army.
An explosion sounded to the right. Cries of pain followed. Liora peered over the logs just long enough to confirm that the Coalition officers had brought cannons. She made out four of the hovering machines through the trees. Another ball flew above them and landed with a blast of shrapnel that cut through trees and Echo citizens. Shots were returned, but nobody could fire through the shields that protected the cannons. Another missile soared through the air and a huge swath of ground exploded, sending Verdan body parts into the air.
“We’ll have a chance if we can stop the cannons,” Devren said. “Otherwise—Liora!”
Liora leaped the logs and ran through the trees. She ducked, dodging behind trunks and mossy rocks to avoid the bullets that followed her path. Part of her wondered with a separation unaffected by the battle if she could help the others without killing anyone. The other part of her watched with helpless rage when another cannon tore through Cason, one of Tariq’s friends from the bar. A man nearby yelled his name. Sorrow and despair tightened the man’s voice; he had just lost somebody he cared about.
The anger took over. Red colored Liora’s vision and everything else fell away but the enemies in front of her. They sought to kill the Kratos crew and the citizens of Echo who had done nothing wrong except bravely risen to the call of battle protect their own. They didn’t deserve to die.
Liora’s grip on her knife tightened. She leaped a log and drove the blade into the heart of a Coalition officer. Ripping the knife free, Liora spun to the next man, a huge Gaul with blades attached to his horns. She jumped back before a sweep of the horns opened her stomach, then leaped forward and slammed the knife through the top of his skull.
Ordinary metal would have broken against the Gaul’s thick bones, but the knife Branson had given her from the Kratos’ armory didn’t falter. The Gaul slumped to the ground at her feet.
Two Arachnians with swords in each of their four hands barred her way. Liora flipped her knife over and threw it point first. It stuck deep into the first Arachnian’s throat. He dropped his swords and clawed at the blade.
The second Arachnian charged with a growl. His swords moved so fast she could barely keep track of them. Each sweep of the blades she dodged cut through the air with an angry hiss. She had no way to block them. Her left foot slipped on a root and she twisted to the side. A sword tip sliced into her thigh before she could maneuver away. Liora grabbed a handful of moss and threw it at the Arachnian.
When he lifted a hand to shield his face from the debris, Liora dove and rolled up behind him. She pulled the blade from the other Arachnian’s throat and spun in time to block two thrusts. The Arachnian’s fast sword work demanded every grain of her skill. Liora blocked, stabbed, ducked, blocked again, and managed to nick the Arachnian’s second left arm with her blade. He grimaced and doubled his efforts. It was exactly what Liora had anticipated.
She watched for the second right. His skill far surpassed hers, but like any swordsman, no matter how hard he had practiced, there was one hand with a slight lag behind the others. She countered each blow and barely felt the few times a blade made it past to mark her arms and once across her chest. She waited with the patience of a thousand Damaclan training bouts. Despite the chaos of bullets and screams around her, the explosions of the cannons that were her goal, and Devren’s orders to protect her advance, Liora kept her focus on the center of the Arachnian’s chest and the slight lag of his lower right hand.
She saw it the moment the Arachnian pressed forward. He had successfully landed a sword across her cheek. She felt the warm blood coat her skin and knew pain would follow, but she didn’t flinch or falter. Taking the blood as a sign of victory, the Arachnian gave a triumphant grin and pressed what he felt was his advantage.
His first right sword came up in a sideways sweep Liora knocked away with a blow of the knife that made her ears ring. His first left stabbed upward in an attempt to drive his blade through the base of her jaw to her brain. She countered with a block and spin just in time to catch the lower left’s sweep for her stomach. Liora moved her knife with the direction of the sword, guiding it away just inches from her skin.
The lower right followed in a secondary sweep after the left. With the tilt of his hand, the Arachnian also stepped forward to maintain the balance of the sword. It was the step that threw him off. It slowed the sweep and also gave the slightest opening before he brought his upper right hand back up. It was Liora’s only chance. She knew it was going to hurt, but pain meant survival; she would rather suffer pain than die at the hand of an Arachnian mercenary.
Liora lunged forward. Her knife sunk deep into the Arachnian’s abdominal cavity where his heart throbbed. At the same time, his upper right sword stabbed deep into Liora’s right arm where it met her shoulder. She bit back a gasp at the pain and pressed her advantage, shoving the knife through the Arachnian’s exoskeleton and into the fleshy tissue beneath.
The Arachnian let out a scream of pain and tried to struggle. Liora stepped into the thrust. The sword cut deeper into her shoulder as she shoved and twisted her own blade in a mortal wound to her enemy.
The Arachnian’s swords fell from his hands. He took a step back, dislodging her blade from his heart. His gaze searched hers with surprise and pain while he attempted to hold in the blood that spilled from his abdomen. His knees buckled and he fell backwards. Liora grabbed his sword carefully with both hands and pulled it free from her shoulder. She switched the knife to her left hand and reached the cannon with both blades swinging.
As soon as the three officers manning the machine fell to the ground, Liora ran to the next. Bullets peppered the trees around her, but Liora felt nothing as she opened throats and bellies to the vibrant forest floor. Thunder rumbled above and lights sparked all around. Green and blue flowed beneath her feet when she reached the third cannon and attacked. Light warred with darkness. Liora decapitated a Ventican soldier and sliced off the hand of a human who attempted to shoot her despite the close quarters. Liora finished him with a thrust angled upward from his stomach to his heart that ended his shouts of pain.
She glanced over her shoulder. With one cannon left, the Echo citizens and Kratos crew advanced on the mercenaries and Coalition troops. A missile hit a tree, sending shrapnel and wood into those who fought. A woman cried in pain. Others shouted for help.
Liora glanced over the final shield. Bullets sped past. They knew she was coming. She checked the sword. The grip was slick with blood from her shoulder wound. It would be more of a hindrance than a help. Liora tossed the sword to the ground. She spun the knife in her left hand so the weapon lay along her forearm with the blade outward.
Her plan was to vault the shield and dart for the left where the trees lay heaviest. Liora’s hope was to reach the cannon before the bullets stopped her completely. She had to admit that it wasn’t the best plan she had ever had, but Echo citizens were being killed and she would do everything in her power to keep the Coalition from the Omne Occasus. She set a hand on the shield.
“Liora, wait!”
Tariq’
s voice caught her attention. She glanced around the other side of the shield and stared at the sight of Devren and Tariq loading lightning canisters into a padded mat. The mat was tied with two lengths of stretched cord attached to separate trees. The men pulled the pouch back as far as they could, then let it fly. Just before the canisters hit the final shield, Tariq and Devren drew their pistols and fired.
The canisters exploded with a percussion that knocked everyone backwards. Liora’s ears rang. She pushed to her feet and leaped the shield. The daze from the explosion made her stumble, but she kept her footing. She reached the cannon shield, vaulted it, and cut down the three lizard-like Hennonites before they could regain their senses enough to raise their guns.
The fourth, a Zamarian with metal rings in his gray and blue skin, raised two knives as long as his forearms. Bladed gauntlets protected his hands and arms. Thick black leather armor covered his neck and chest. His eyes narrowed. Liora raised her own blade. She gritted her teeth, prepared to fight for her life.
A yowl reverberated through the trees and a gray and blue form leaped over the shield. The gray felis she had saved tore into the throat of the Zamarian mercenary. The animal’s long claws made quick work of the man’s thick leather armor. The cat’s fangs slashed, and the Zamarian’s struggles stilled.
With the cannons down, the Echo citizens and Kratos crew members rushed forward. Liora and the felis led the charge through the trees. Each enemy they came to was ended swiftly and without mercy. They were threats, and as such, they deserved no mercy. Killing them protected the lives of the Echo citizens, people she had never met, but families with children, hopes, and plans for the future. Somehow, fighting for them felt more right than anything else she had ever done.
Liora fought until the scavengers and Coalition troops ran from both her and the felis in terror. She didn’t know if the blood coating her body was theirs or her own. She ghosted through the trees like a wraith, slicing hamstrings and opening bowels to run onto the next threat while the felis ended those she dropped. The screams drove her own, pounding with her heartbeat, propelling her forward with a thirst that she could recall only seeing matched by the nameless ones who had slain her clan.