by C. C. Ekeke
“[Every. Korvenite. Life. Is valuable. Never forget that lesson, Atanos,]” he whispered, rising to his feet. “[You all know your tasks. Get to them.]” Maelstrom turned back to the viewport that watched over the Retributionaries training. He sensed Isar and Thrace gather up Atanos as they left. Oreis, however, lingered behind. The other llyriac’s discontent hung in the air, further souring Maelstrom’s mood.
[I know what Bimnorii significance is to you, Maelstrom. But to take it out on Atanos—]
“[Get out.]” Maelstrom snapped. Oreis stood stock-still, before bowing reverently and departing.
The Korvenite leader closed his eyes and basked in the silence. Bimnorii was important to him. The last of his family died on that world. It was his obligation to free any Korvenite that still drew breath. None would suffer the way he and his kin did on that parched excuse for a planet. He wouldn’t accept it.
Maelstrom sucked in a deep breath. Brushing what just happened from his mind, he dove back into the sea of thought that was the Unilink. In particular, Maelstrom focused on the Korvenites training to better their use of Korvan’s gifts. Their enthusiasm to learn soothed him.
[Sollus will be ours again, my brethren,] he sent the encouragement out in faint, gentle waves through the Unilink. [Trust in me, trust in Korvan and we’ll all see home soon.]
9.
Rhyne splashed streams of warm light through the viewport in Habraum Nwosu’s bedroom, spotlighting the sable Star Brigade captain’s uniform he hoisted up. Just five days ago, the Cercidalean had never honestly thought he would ever wear the outfit again. That was until yesterday when Habraum had donned it on his trip to Conuropolis’ Diktat District.
“Back in the saddle, yea?” Habraum muttered with a taut grin, packing the outfit into a large suitcase on his bed with the utmost care. The press of a small button slid the suitcase’s sealing flap tightly over the items it contained.
In Conuropolis yesterday, Habraum had met with Admiral Hollienurax and other chiefs of the Union Command Joint Special Operations Group to sanction Star Brigade’s reactivation and his reenlistment as Brigade Executive Officer. Habraum had played his part well, a role he’d learned years ago under the harsh glare of post-war fame. His conversant banter and cache of Cerc-folksy quips seemed to charm the daylights off these UComm higher-ups, all of whom had been fans since his past days as a hero of the Ferronos Sector War. The years had not quieted Habraum’s discomfort with being a minor luminary in others’ eyes. However, his ‘star power’ combined with his pre-Beridaas track record was enough to convince these seasoned JSOG chiefs that he could turn Star Brigade around; at least that’s what their pats on the back and pleased expressions had alleged. Best I not prove them wrong, or that fekwit Greystone might have their ears again.
Today was looking like the start of a fruitful morning in Terra Sollus’ British-peopled nation Albion. The Cerc’s outlook was bolstered by his view of central Albion’s Covingshire, a verdant sun-dappled countryside with rising and falling hills that sprawled on for miles. Too bad Habraum could not fully embrace his outlook, try as he might. He was operating on little sleep, jarred awake in the middle of the night dripping with beads of ice-cold sweat. A toxic blend of strange dreams and noxious doubts had been the culprit, denying him any further slumber. Before he had known it, first light had caught him unaware. A foul parting gift from Beridaas, Habraum scowled, silently cursing these erratic panic attacks as he had gone to ready Jeremy for school. Since he had decided to return to Star Brigade, panic attacks had become a far too familiar occupant in his bed.
On the morrow, he would be moving with Jeremy from his Covingshire home to Star Brigade’s headquarters on the military starbase Hollus Maddrone. News of the move had excited his son; especially when Habraum had told Jeremy of Hollus’s location inside of the gas giant Zeid, Terra Sollus’s neighboring planet. “We get to live inside a gas giant?! I can’t wait to tell my mates at school!” his son had cried, that adorable collision of Albion-British and Cercidalean accents always more pronounced whenever the boy fancied something. At least one of them was pleased by the transition.
Thankfully Habraum had pulled a few strings to get his son a two-orv roundtrip to and from Terra Sollus. That way Jeremy could remain in Poseidon Prep. Habraum had spared no expense to make the transition less jarring and Jeremy more at ease in his new, albeit temporary home.
More at ease…. The words stuck in Habraum’s head like glue. How at ease will a young boy stay living on a starbase? The Cerc let out a bark of humorless laughter despite himself. He dreaded the day when Jeremy would start hating it. All their progress over the past year, annihilated. Habraum reassured himself in just a few months, this would be home again. He took a long look around his bedroom and nodded approvingly. Seven suitcases of clothes and two hefty cases of portable items should be enough. “CM-Tao,” Habraum called out. In nanoclics, a bulky-looking carriermech zoomed to his door, awaiting commands. “Except for the bed, these ones are good to go.” The mech zipped into the room, snatched up the specified cases as ordered and then zipped away. Habraum strolled out of his room and into Jeremy’s down the hall, which was empty. With Jeremy at school, the Cerc had packed up every last thing in the boy’s room.
The seven-bedroom estate, nestled deep in the Covingshire town Redgrave, had been Habraum’s way to give his family a great home despite his many job-related absences. He’d had it built during his fourth year as a Brigadier, after Jenn and Jeremy had lived both on Hollus a few years and then Cercidale for one. Besides the estate’s nearness to Jeremy’s school in Albion’s capital Sheffield, it was a hemisphere away from the overcrowded political monstrosity that was Conuropolis. This past year was the longest Habraum had ever spent in Covingshire, and he had adored every moment of it. The simplicity and peace with the right proximity to the city-state Sheffield had been just what he needed. Plus, Albion’s human residents spoke with funny ‘British’ accents similar to his own kind, especially in Sheffield and Covingshire. It explained the various communities of Habraum’s fellow crimsonborn sprinkled throughout the Terra Sollan nation. So despite relocating to Hollus, Habraum was keeping the house.
After yesterday’s reenlistment, Habraum had revealed his return to Star Brigade to a few close friends and family members. The response mirrored his own; wildly mixed. Lt. Cmdr. Rukk Rigeff, a boyhood friend and former flight mate still in AeroFleet, had been positively elated. “That’s right royal news, lad! Glad you’re back where you belong, as the boss, too!”
His family back on Cercidale, while expectedly concerned, merely wished for him to do whatever made him happy. “Thanks for the expounding advice there, guys.” Habraum had wanted to say. Instead the Cerc reassured them that it was what he wanted, despite him still being unsure himself. Most of his friends expressed their support, while some voiced strident disapproval. One former friend, Mirräe Ivers, had been so startlingly furious that she washed her hands of Habraum in protest. “I refuse to wait for you to be killed, just because you had to help that rumpy-pumped whore!” she had spat.
That extreme incident notwithstanding, Habraum’s mind was made up, even if the choice might not be the right one for himself. Going back to lead a Star Brigade combat team would have been simple enough. In fact, it was the one thing the Cerc knew he wanted to come back and do better this time. Beridaas would not define his seven-year tenure with Star Brigade.
But leading a combat team and being Brigadier Executive Officer? His private fears had reasonably intensified when rifling through the organizational the mess that was Star Brigade’s currently. No active combat teams. The Operations department had been absorbed into that of Hollus Maddrone’s general administrative staff given that there were no field missions to handle. Most of the senior leadership was gone, with no experienced Brigadiers to fill those openings other than Honaa or Sam. And adding to the experience dearth, Habraum knew none of the rookies he was supposed to command. “A skittery mess!” he exclaimed in frus
tration to Sam two days ago.
Someone has to right the ship, he told himself once more to keep his fears from deepening to nightmarish levels. Habraum was still mystified by how things had grown so calamitous. Would this have happened if he had stayed? Habraum pushed away the ‘coulda, woulda’ suppositions, as they wouldn’t matter after he’d fixed things and went on his way.
The Cerc still revealed to no one of his intentions to leave once the Brigade was back on its feet. Not Honaa. Certainly not Sam. Habraum hadn’t even written it in his latest journal entries to Jennica since reenlisting. He didn’t want to make another promise to his late wife until seeing it through. What had been in his entries to Jennica—four in a row much to his chagrin, had been apology after apology for breaking his earlier promise to be a more present parent. Yet those letters had been a useless salve for the gaping wound in his chest—one that might never fully heal.
Currently Habraum sighed in relief after checking the rooms in his house for one last sanity check. Everything he planned on taking to Hollus was packed. Except one thing. The notion stopped the Cerc in mid-stride. Something was missing now that he thought about it. The forgotten something popped up into his mind like bread from a toaster.
“Rogguts, how’d I miss that?” Habraum ran back to his room, almost crashing into a carriermech.
Against the wall to the right of his bed was a space shot of his homeworld Cercidale. Habraum had it there for years. He placed his hand on the image and it flashed while reading his palm print.
The picture slid away, revealing a small section behind it. Habraum’s hazel eyes lit up. A small octagonal disk laid inside. He plucked it up and turned the disk over in his fingers. Hundreds of micro-thin circuitry lines appeared on its surface, shimmering and interweaving in angular fashion under Rhyne’s light. Habraum smiled. The disk was a souvenir from the Ferronos Sector War— a gift from the Cybernarr who had once been his jailer.
Memories of battles from years past rose from the recesses of Habraum’s mind, cybernetic horrors that had to be seen to believed, death-defying dogfights with his Special Aerospace Combat Operations Squadron flight mates that lit up the vast black of space—all to force the Cybernarr Technoarchy out of the Ferronos Sector and free the technorg Thulican race from their fifty-year internment. The Kedri Imperium, their ‘Eternal War’ with the Technoarchy spanning millennia, had joined the Ferronos Sector War to commence another crusade, yet refused to assist the Union. Habraum wasn’t the only being to feel smug satisfaction after the mighty Kedri had suffered a crushing defeat trying to conquer the Thulican twin planets, only to have their retreat ensnared between Cybernarr forces at the Shining Host Cluster. The Imperium had wisely swallowed its collective ego and allied with the Union after UComm’s intervention prevented a third loss at the Warrior’s Heart Nebula.
Habraum had been in his early 20s then, brash and cocky and feeling invincible. And for good reason, after playing a role in the Warrior’s Heart victory. Plus, his joint flight group of AeroFleet SACOS and Kedri Skyrazors—UComm AeroFleet and Kedri Imperial Star Fleet’s top fighter pilots—had been assigned to destroy a Technoarchy slipstream hub at the Ferronos Sector’s Kyrn Rift. If activated, this hub would’ve allowed the Cybernarr access into the nucleus of Union Space.
By the Twin Makers, those were the days, Habraum reminisced fondly, the Battle at Kyrn Rift being both his favorite and most hated skirmish.
It had been a glorious, dizzying firefight with death at every turn. Adrenaline had surged through Habraum’s veins at the group’s extremely narrow escape window before Technoarchy reinforcements arrived. Narrow but possible for the whole group to get out by the skin of their teeth, just the way Habraum had preferred it then. Except— one AeroFleet pilot, a stormborn human girl with a proclivity for risks and some Kedri aviator full of typical Imperium warrior arrogance had hung back to fire some final licks in on the already decimated slipstream hub. Habraum, taking up the rear, had been presented with a decision; drag those lackwits back to the main flight group or stay in formation and continue escaping. The latter choice made had made sense from a battle perspective, and no one had ordered him to rescue those two. Both SACOS and Skyrazors, while losing no pilots, had all sustained varying degrees of damage from the raid. Even worse, Technoarchy Goliaths, a gigantic dreadnought breed of Cybernarr, had arrived ready to unleash merciless retribution.
But those two pilots had been on Habraum’s team—the woman a close friend since AeroFleet Academy. He couldn’t abandon his team…despite their stupidity. So Habraum, with a prayer to the Sacred Gemini that he still recalled, had banked hard to star board and rocketed back over thunderous protests from the rest of his group, covering the pair’s escape …only to get himself captured.
The Cerc had thought he knew what pain was. Once in the Cybernarr’s clutches, he immediately realized that his gentle definition of pain had been an outright lie. Not once had the Cybernarr ever asked any questions. They just kept up round after vicious round of torment, always finding innovative ways to send white-hot agony through every nerve-ending in his body—all at once.
Habraum had no desire to relive that past cruelty. Eight years later, and just thinking of how creatively the Technoarchy could torture someone sent a searing shudder through him. His thoughts gratefully moved on to how the torture stopped. One lone Cybernarr had been his savior, a humanoid infiltrooper type—female evidently despite her emotionless mechanical cadence. ‘She’ had been exceedingly tall and femininely slender with skin bearing a golden metal sheen, resembling the humanoid Cybernarr hunter-troopers but more advanced, far more intelligent and a thousand times deadlier. The tapestry of sinuous, dark red cybernetics flowed into her skin below her shoulders with perfect harmony. Her face and head were hairless, only several short crimson nodules jutting out of a gleaming golden skull. What drew all of his attention were the pupil-less cerulean eyes staring at him, so inorganic, so emotionless that they stabbed through his soul like icy blades. Part of him could only marvel at this Cybernarr’s terrible beauty, a perfect union of organic and cybernetic.
The female Cybernarr who had shown him mercy in the face of war, offered him social sustenance after weeks of no communication with anyone, gave him food instead of just the fluids barely sustaining him. She asked questions, but not to interrogate. His first reaction to finally seeing a face to his unending torment had been an ungovernable loathing. But the craving for companionship with even an emotionally vacant Cybernarr clung to Habraum like addiction to a stardust junkie. So he had indulged the physical exemplification of his captors, and the torture stopped altogether. Over time their profound conversations had softened his once blanket stance on all Cybernarr being soulless automaton butchers. Well—at least in reference to her. And in time this softening had become the start of an actual rapport between jailer and prisoner. It was all he had left.
At the end of the war when the Technoarchy had withdrawn from the Ferronos Sector and released the Thulicans from their internment, they could have disposed of Habraum or imprisoned him indefinitely. To the Union at large Habraum Nwosu had been dead for five months. But his Cybernarr savior had insisted on returning him to his homeworld, to his friends and family. It was then that she had had given him this disk…a communication device meant to keep in touch. Habraum had used it every so often for years. Situate the device in your earlobe, focus on it, and you connect to me directly,” she had instructed him, her tone was as cold and sharp as her knife-like gaze. “There is much that I have learned from you Habraum Nwosu, about the emotions and temperament of other sentients, and I wish to sustain those conversations.
This Cybernarr female had revealed her name once, which sounded like a series of digital noises Habraum never had any hope of enunciating. So he had given her a nickname, that of a character with intense blue eyes from one of Habraum’s favorite holonovels, Skydancer Swift—Marguliese.
Since that time, ‘Marguliese’ had been the Cerc’s secret confidante w
henever he needed to vent or unload in ways he could with no one else, not even Sam. The Cybernarr was actually the one who helped him better his hand-to-hand skills in the early going of his Brigade training. No one in UComm knew of this friendship. No one in the Technoarchy knew either. Marguliese assured him their exchanges were masked from their overall Technoarchy’s Connectivity that networked all Cybernarr together. The risk was enormous, could have ruined him if discovered. Yet Habraum, maybe because of the danger or the need to interface with someone outside of his life, stayed in touch for seven years. He never even told Jennica. Habraum had rationalized long ago that she wouldn’t understand.
Only Sam knew. He told her about Marguliese five years ago. Of course she had verbally flayed him over the risks and stupidity, but still kept his secret. Sam more than anyone understood the need for discretion. Or was it just another excuse to choose her again over my wife. Staring at the disk now, Habraum realized that he hadn’t talked to Marguliese in months, not since his life imploded. He should reach out, would reach out when time permitted.
The loud beeping of the estate’s comm system jarred Habraum back into the present.
An incoming call. Habraum immediately stuffed the disk into his pant pocket, like a thief not wanting to be caught in the act. “Yes?” he asked sharply.
“Incoming TriTran from classified sender,” the comm system replied.
It’s time for that already? Habraum grimaced. His first senior staff meeting was today. He made a mental note to pack the communication disk in one of his smaller suitcases. “Send it to my study.” Habraum strode briskly out of his room, downstairs past some more carriermechs and into an arched, two-tier room. Surrounding him were shelves stacked with trinkets from his many travels throughout Union Space; a tangled insectoid sculpture of indigo blue wood from Kheldoroth, a constantly shifting polygon made of magnetic omber-ore filings from Monaskoa to name a few. Habraum stopped near a lounge chair in the room’s midpoint and braced himself. “Receive call.” His comm system had options of either audio only, sending to viewscreen or having the caller appear in a full-sized holoimage. He choose the latter.