by Thomas Locke
. . . You there?
Sean leaned his head against the balcony door and concentrated as hard as he possibly could. The process required him to bond directly with the point in his gut where the transit force originated. He fashioned a terse reply, wrapped the energy around it, and sent back his own thought-bomb. Talk to me.
Dillon’s message was tattered and unraveled around the edges.
. . . Use a little help here.
Where are you?
Dillon’s response was just out of reach. It felt to Sean like he was trying to hear his brother over the howl of a mental hurricane.
He put everything he could into clamping a message into place, then shot out, Say again.
Aldwyn. Outer rim . . . Ask Cylian.
Sean asked because otherwise he wouldn’t sleep nights. Are you in danger?
Dillon managed to add a chuckle to his frayed response. No idea. Need gold.
How much?
There was a long pause, then, Call it fifty pounds. Coins.
One of the remarkable oddities of the planets occupied by humans was the scarcity of certain elements. Gold was among them. More than half the planets had none at all. A hundred and nineteen systems, and gold remained one of the most precious commodities. It formed a language all its own.
Sean asked, When and where?
There was another pause. My arrival point. Cylian knows. Ten hours.
Sean both fashioned the response and spoke the words aloud. “On my way.”
29
When Sean reported the contact with Dillon, Cylian needed a few moments to accept that an action she’d thought impossible had happened. Then she left and returned with Carver, whose own set of questions pretty much matched Cylian’s.
Sean did not mind their interrogation, not even with the clock ticking in the background. He needed to fit his experience into the realm of possible. Carver then described for Cylian the events leading up to the alien invasion and the role those thought-bombs had played. She had heard it all before, but this was different. This was not some past improbability. This was now.
After Carver left to obtain the gold, Cylian insisted on preparing Sean and Aldo a meal. The senior Messenger who had deposited Dillon on the rogue planet was sent to her balcony. Cylian asked Sean to join her in the kitchen. She set him to washing and chopping vegetables, then said, “Your brother is a complete and utter rogue.”
“No argument there,” Sean replied. “Is that why you like him?”
“I never said . . .” She bit her lip. “You are every bit as much a rogue as he. Handsome adventurers with cavalier spirits.”
“No one has ever called me handsome before,” Sean said.
“It’s true nonetheless.” Her voice carried a new undercurrent, a soft music that rushed electric currents through his gut.
Sean asked, “How old are you?”
“Almost thirty in Serenese years.”
Which made her twenty-four in Earth years. He said, “Dillon and I are twenty-five Serenese, almost twenty-six.”
She stirred a sauce on the stove, her eyes fastened on her work. “You appear much older.”
Abruptly Sean realized the discussion was no longer about Dillon. And Sean found it necessary to focus hard on the knife and the veggies. “Thanks, I guess.”
“I am told high levels of danger and peril will do that,” Cylian went on. “Not to mention a broken heart.”
He turned around and stared at her back. “You know about Elenya?”
“I am now assigned to her father’s staff. I made it my business to know.” She paused, then asked, “Do you consider her a bad woman?”
He watched her reach into the shelves for a glass vial and sprinkle some spice into the sauce. A new fragrance filled the air, one he didn’t recognize. “No. Causing a bad end to our relationship doesn’t change her nature.”
“Will you survive?”
“I don’t understand the question. I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Some strong people who are crushed by love, they see the world through rage and a need for vengeance on the innocents who pass their way.”
Sean hesitated, then asked, “Is that what happened to you?”
When she turned around, he was half expecting to confront the frigid mask, the hyper-intelligence, the blank gaze. Instead, she said, “My story will come another time. If you like. Right now I am asking about you.”
“The challenge is not to survive,” Sean replied. “What I need to do is grow into something better.”
The tip of her tongue emerged and touched her upper lip. But whatever she was about to say was halted by the Messenger entering the kitchen and demanding, “How much longer will you be? Whatever you’re making smells both ready and fabulous, and I’m famished.”
They ate on Cylian’s veranda, a broad outdoor parlor that overlooked Serena’s placid sea. During the meal, she and Aldo gave Sean an overview of the Cygneus system. They dined on a grain very similar to brown rice and vegetables cooked in a spicy sauce. When the table was cleared, Cylian asked if Sean had any questions.
“Most of what you’ve said, I already learned for class,” Sean replied. “But I didn’t mind hearing it a second time.”
Carver arrived then, dressed in his formal Praetorian officer’s uniform. He set a leather satchel on the veranda floor, listened as Cylian recapped their discussion, then said, “The Ambassador is waiting for me. The evening reception is under way.” He nodded to Sean. “Stay safe. Return with the evidence we require.” And he was gone.
The hour of their departure was fast approaching. Over a final mug of tea, the Messenger nervously described the chaos of their arrival. “Your brother was as calm as a seasoned general.” He hesitated, then confessed, “I fell apart.”
“The first time I was in a live-fire exercise,” Sean replied, “I froze.”
“I don’t believe that,” Cylian said. “Not for an instant.”
“I lay flat on this massive pillar and tried to dig my fingernails into the stone,” Sean recalled. “Dillon was singing. And laughing. I hated him.”
“Your brother pushed me down and saved my life in the process,” Aldo said. His smile was slightly canted. “I hated him as well.”
As the final minutes counted down, Aldo started sweating so hard he stained his uniform collar. He fretted, “We don’t even know if your brother is alive, and here we are risking another life, carrying more gold—”
“Give me a minute alone with Sean, please,” Cylian said. When Aldo remained standing in her parlor, she walked over, gripped him by the arm, and led him back onto the veranda. She shut the door, swept drapes over the glass, then turned to Sean and declared softly, “Time is not our friend today.”
He didn’t know what to say to that.
She closed the distance between them. “I will be direct with you out of necessity. Your brother is nice, and I’m sure he is a very fine Praetorian. But he does not interest me. Not emotionally.”
“Sure, I get that,” Sean replied. “I figure Dillon does too. Flirting is just his way—” He stopped in mid-flow because she reached out and pressed one finger into the center of his chest.
“You, on the other hand, most certainly do.”
Sean had no idea how to respond.
“I have been attracted to you since I watched you in court. Perhaps even before then. In the prison great room you were completely in charge of our conversation. Under such pressure, your freedom at stake, you defied the Assembly’s might and made a mockery of Kaviti’s authority.”
Sean just stood there, a stone statue entitled Man with Gaping Mouth.
“I know Elenya personally,” Cylian went on. “Would you like to hear why I think she left you?”
Sean managed a nod.
“She saw in you what I do. You are born to lead.” Her voice lowered to a rich burr. “But I think Elenya wants to be the leader in her family. The only leader. She spent her early years fighting her father’s authority. She did n
ot want to play that same role in her own family. I don’t think she realized this until your relationship began to mature.”
Sean was close enough to see gold flecks in Cylian’s smoky gaze. Close enough to catch a hint of some exotic fragrance. He managed, “What do you want in a relationship?”
She smiled, clearly approving of his question. She whispered, “Come back and find out.”
Then she kissed him.
30
The arrival point was a dingy hut, empty now of everything but litter and Dillon and a small woman hiding in the shadows. Dillon greeted Sean with his patented lopsided grin. “Good to see you, bro.”
“I brought your gold,” Sean replied.
“I knew you’d come through.” He pointed to the woman leaning against the back wall. “This is Sidra. She’s one of the local ghost-walkers, which is their word for transiters.”
Sean sketched a hello, then turned to Aldo and said, “Tell Cylian contact has been made. I’ll be in touch as soon as there’s something to report.”
Dillon translated for Sidra, then told Sean, “It’s important we only speak their tongue.”
“Will do,” Sean said. “Is there word of the weapon?”
“That’s what the gold is for,” Dillon replied. He waved a farewell to the Messenger, then asked, “Did they give you any trouble over the request?”
“We could have asked for ten times as much.” Sean shared Dillon’s grin. “Soon as I passed on your message, Carver bounced into high gear.”
They transited to an almost empty market square. Only two of perhaps a dozen stalls were open. The seven intersecting lanes were all but void of life. Some doglike animal skittered across the stones, snarled at them, and disappeared.
Dillon gave Sean a moment to rubberneck, then pointed up. “Check this out.”
Straight overhead was an empty void. An almost perfect circle, perhaps a quarter mile across, opened to a vast array of starlight. “Whoa.”
“They say this planet survived its sun going nova,” Dillon explained. “Blasted it from orbit and melted parts of the crust to diamond crystal maybe twenty feet thick.”
Sean dragged his gaze away from the sky and studied the market. The ceiling was high enough to be considered a false sky. Strip lighting was embedded into the stone, long ribbons of palest gold. The market had to be five miles across. Bigger.
He asked, “That’s what they mine here, diamonds?”
“Not that I know of.” He nudged Sean. “Come on, Sidra’s getting impatient.”
“Just a second.” Sean did not have any idea what was coming next. But he was fairly certain it would fling him into a fast-flowing rush of events. He did his best to ignore Sidra’s presence and said, “It’s about Cylian.”
Dillon grinned again. “What, she’s sent a message?”
“Not exactly.” Sean swallowed. There was no telling how his brother would respond, given everything he’d been through on the romance front. “She’s apparently into me. And the more time I spend with her, I think I’m into her as well.”
Dillon studied him a moment, then asked, “What about Elenya?”
Sean nodded. That issue had dominated his thoughts since Cylian’s farewell. “You and I both know it’s definitely over.”
“Roger that.”
“Accepting it has been hard. And I don’t know if I’m ready, you know . . .”
“For whatever comes next.”
“Right.” Telling his brother was harder than he had expected. Not because of Dillon. Because it meant accepting things himself. “But I want to try.”
“With Cylian.”
“Yes. Are you okay with that?”
Dillon’s response was cut off by Sidra barking a laugh. “This twin of yours stole your woman?”
“He didn’t steal, and she wasn’t mine.” Dillon kept his gaze on Sean. “Bro, if you think you can handle that one, go for it.” He asked Sidra, “What’s the worst kind of beast your planet has to offer?”
“Legends claim there once were dragons.”
“Yeah, that sounds about right.” Dillon’s smile was slightly canted now. “You want to wrestle the mythical beast, she’s all yours. You really think you can handle her?”
Sean let out a shaky breath. “Probably not.”
31
When Dillon offered to take the leather bag containing the gold, Sean did not object. Sean allowed himself to be swept along beneath a stone sky, down a central avenue broad as a six-lane highway. Their destination was a building set into the market’s side wall, squat and solid as a bunker. Two troopers stood on relaxed guard by the massive double doors. Inside was a single vast room of stone and airy space. Sean wondered if the original builders designed their structures so large in order to ignore the fact that they lived permanently underground.
Within minutes of entering, they were surrounded by curious troopers. Sean tried to tell the difference between the so-called ghost-walkers and the regular soldiers, and failed. He took this as a very good sign. There was no sense of separation that he could detect, no superiority, no special status because of their singular gift.
Dillon drew him around with, “This is Commander Logan. My brother, Sean.”
Logan demanded, “You understand our tongue?”
“Some. Yes sir.”
The leader of Dillon’s allies was scarcely older than Sean, mid-twenties at the most. But he bore a general’s severity, calm and distant and constantly calculating. He was an inch or so taller than Sean, with a three-day growth over cavernous cheeks. His eyes were surrounded by plum-colored bruises. Logan looked as though he had not slept in weeks.
He asked Dillon, “You will let me try this language crown?”
“Whenever you like,” Dillon said.
Logan nodded and said to Sean, “So you’re the thinker. Does the fighter obey you?”
“Sometimes,” Dillon said, continuing to play their spokesman. “When I have to.”
Logan liked that enough to reveal an officer’s smile. Tight, quick, and very angular. “You brought the gold?”
“Enough to make the satchel a burden.” Dillon kicked the leather bag, and the coins inside clinked softly. “Somebody else can take it from here.”
“So let’s see what our turncoat has to offer,” Logan said. As they headed for the back room, he added, “I like a man who guards his counsel. Welcome aboard.”
Logan directed them into the office formerly belonging to the chief militia officer. When the gold was spread across the desk, Logan stepped back into the corridor and motioned for Dillon and Sean to stay inside the room. Isolated now with Sidra and his two officers, Logan said, “Tell me what you think.”
Vance was uncharacteristically silent. Nicolette said, “I asked Dillon what his brother was like. He said people used to be unable to tell them apart. No longer.”
Logan liked that. It indicated an honesty that went beyond simply fulfilling his duty to his allies. “Anything else?”
“I like the fighter,” Nicolette admitted. “I was ready to dismiss him out of hand. But he has made himself part of the team.”
Logan nodded, then asked Sidra, “Did they say anything I need to hear?”
She revealed a street urchin’s laugh, raspy and edged by old pain. “The thinker has taken the fighter’s woman.”
“Tell me what they said, word for word.”
When Sidra had related the exchange, Nicolette said, “They hide nothing.”
Logan nodded again. He had been thinking the same thing. But Vance continued to frown. “Something bothering you?”
“You want to know if we should join with them when the battle starts.”
Nicolette countered, “The battle is almost over. The market’s ours.”
Vance shook his head. “The turncoat’s news changes everything.”
“If what he says is true,” Nicolette said.
“Confirming the rumors that brought the off-worlder here is warning enough,” Logan said. H
e asked Vance, “Well?”
“I would have Dillon at my side. Willingly,” Vance replied. “But the other? I think he is weak.”
Nicolette said, “Dillon claims Sean is the better strategist.”
Vance shrugged. “Thinkers hesitate. If we are facing a real enemy, that instant of hesitation could get us killed.”
Nicolette studied the floor at her feet, then decided, “Give Vance the warrior. I will see if the thinker can also be a man of action.”
Logan nodded. It was the response he had hoped for. He said to Vance, “Bring us the turncoat and let’s see if the off-worlders’ enemy is truly out there.”
32
Dillon allowed himself to be separated from Sean, such that his brother was at the far end of the group. He liked having this opportunity to observe Sean. His brother was changing. Dillon had noticed it before, both in the prison and in the courtroom. But today was different. They were going into battle. Dillon had been certain of it from the instant he heard that a captive was willing to sell the information Dillon had been sent to obtain. He knew Sean would not shirk conflict. Yet he could also see that his brother was taking on the Diplomat’s mantle of reserve. Sean was most comfortable with silence. He was the professional observer, the one who kept a tight rein until he had firmly established his compass heading. Dillon liked this, mostly because he knew he needed it.
Dillon lived for action. He liked the danger high. But he ran the risk of flying off in the wrong direction, lured by a false lead. He knew he could trust Sean to hold him back. He hoped the others would recognize this when the time came.
Sean asked, “This building was headquarters of the local constabulary?”
“Market militia, they’re called,” Nicolette replied.
“How many stayed to give battle?”
“Not a single solitary one,” Logan replied.
“Scattered like rats, the lot,” Nicolette said. “Why do you ask?”
“Were they under the pay of your foes, whatever they’re called?”
“Clan Havoc,” Logan replied. “And that is an excellent question.”