Through the Never

by J. A. Culican

  “Why do you have his blood on you?” Ipe demanded.

  “Because I was doing what your comrade is doing now, trying to determine if he was still alive.” The man kept his hands raised, his head slightly bowed, and his gaze on the ground.

  “And if he was alive, what were you going to do?” asked Ipe.

  “I was going to bring him to a place where he could receive assistance. My family and I are hiding in a building nearby. I was going to take him there for help.”

  Rodan looked at the man. He was old, at least sixty annums. He was shorter than all of them and did not appear to be very muscular.

  “How were you going to move him? He is much larger than you?” Rodan stepped closer to the man. She did not know what, but something did not feel right.

  “Oh, I was not going to move him. I was going to go back to my hiding place and get help to bring him back.”

  Before she could ask the man another question, Ipe asked Yeter about Nels’ condition.

  “His heart rate is weak, but it is there. We will need to get help for him immediately.”

  Rodan looked down at Nels’ body and was wracked with guilt. She had left him alone while she continued on. She should never have listened to him when he had commanded her to leave.

  “Well, we are here now. We can carry him to your hiding spot if you lead the way,” said Kada.

  Kada holstered his weapon, and he and Yeter picked Nels up from the ground. Kada held him under his arms trying his best to steer clear of Nels’ injured left shoulder. Yetter carried his legs.

  “This way,” the man said, and they followed.

  As they walked, Rodan and Ipe kept watch on their surroundings. Rodan made sure to be especially alert because she felt uneasy. After taking a few steps, Nels mumbled something they could not understand.

  “Maybe we should stop and see what he is saying,” said Rodan.

  “No, we should continue moving. It is not safe out in the open like this,” said the man.

  Rodan was about to say something to him when she noticed his hands were covered in blood. And not just his hands. There was blood on his shirt and some on his neck. She looked back at Nels and saw blood was smeared all over his neck, and his weapon was missing.

  “Excuse me. In our rush to get help, I do not believe we asked your name. And who did you say was hiding with you?” Rodan asked these questions as she moved closer to the unknown man they were following.

  He turned to answer her. As soon as he twisted his upper body to look behind and respond to her, she dove on him, tackling him to the ground.

  “Search him. Nels’ weapon is missing,” she shouted as she lay on top of the struggling man.

  Ipe came over and easily found Nels’ weapon where the man had stuffed it into his pants. In fact, he found two small kinetic weapons and a knife hidden on the man’s body. With his treachery discovered, the man stopped struggling and cried, begging for mercy.

  “How did you know?” Ipe asked as Rodan got off of the man and stood.

  “I did not. Not for certain. But something did not feel right about him. And, he was covered in too much blood to have been simply checking to see if Nels was dead or alive.”

  “A feeling? And what if you had been wrong?”

  “Acting and being wrong was the better alternative to not acting and being right.” Rodan sighed thinking back to the helio her encampment was attacked. She had met a fighter in the forest who had made her feel uneasy, and she had ignored her feeling. She would never make the same mistake again.

  Yeter and Kada sat Nels’ barely conscious body on the ground again.

  “Now what do we do?” asked Kada as he and Yeter walked over to where Ipe and Rodan stood.

  Rodan looked at the old man on the ground. She took out her weapon, kneeled beside him, and held it to his head.

  “You have one chance to tell us the truth. If I feel you are being untruthful with me, I will shoot you. Do you understand?”

  He nodded, still whimpering.

  “Where were you taking us?”

  “To a building not far from here.”

  “And what was going to happen at this building?”

  “You have to understand. They have my family. They told me they would kill them if I did not do what they said.”

  Rodan ignored this answer, shot into the air, and asked her question again. “And what was going to happen at this building?”

  “I do not know. I do not know. But. But there are fighters loyal to The Keepers who would be waiting for you there.” The man’s sobbing became so intense he could not form any words.

  Rodan stood. “I believe he is telling the truth. So what should we do Ipe?”

  Ipe stared at Rodan. “We’re going to split up. Yeter, you are going to remain here with Nels. Kada, you and Rodan are coming with me. Get the man up from the ground. He needs to take us to this building.”

  After threatening to kill the man as he lay on the ground, he finally regained enough composure to lead them to the location of the planned ambush. The four of them approached the door. The old man led them, and Kada leaned on Rodan as if he was injured. Ipe brought up the rear with his hand on his weapon but pointing it to the ground. The old man’s hand shook as he reached out for the door. He placed his hand on the knob, turned it, and pushed the door wide open. Then he jumped to the side as Ipe had instructed, and the battle was on.

  With freshly reloaded weapons in hand, Ipe went to the left of the door, while Rodan and Kada went to the right. All three of them fired into the room.

  Soon weapons fire was coming at them, hitting the space in front of the open door but not hitting them as they stayed angled on each side.

  As Ipe and Rodan concentrated their weapons fire through the door, Kada walked back along the building from the direction in which they had come and broke out a window. From this third position, he shot into the room.

  The skirmish ended just as suddenly as it started. When the sound of weapons fire coming from inside the building had ceased, Ipe looked at Rodan and said, “Be prepared to shoot. I am going in to check.”

  Kada came back to where Rodan was positioned. “No. We need you to remain on your side of the door. Let me go in. You two should watch my back.”

  Without any hesitation, Kada took a deep breath and jumped into the room. He looked around. From Rodan’s vantage point she could not see anything beyond what little light poured in from the open doorway. So she had to trust that if Kada was not crying out for help, he was safe.

  “It is all clear,” Kada called out.

  Rodan looked at Ipe. He threw his head towards the door. She nodded and walked into the room.

  Kada was standing in the middle of the room. The bodies of at least eight Keepers’ fighters were scattered throughout the room in various awkward positions.

  “Check to make sure they are dead,” said Rodan holding her weapon in the ready to fire position.

  “Check them? Do you think that if any of them were alive they would have allowed me to enter?”

  “Just check them,” commanded Rodan.

  Kada exhaled loudly, but did as Rodan had ordered. At each body, he first kicked it. Then he bent over to check for a heartbeat. When he made it to the fourth body and kicked it, his eyes grew wide. Before he could aim his weapon, the fighter sat up and aimed a weapon at him.

  Rodan shot the fighter. However not before he could get off a shot.

  Kada collapsed.

  Rodan ran over to Kada’s body slumped on the floor. “No! No! No! Please do not leave me. You cannot leave me, too.”

  While she searched him to determine where he had been shot, Kada’s eyes fluttered open.

  “Where are you hit?”

  “My leg,” he said through a clenched jaw. “Oh, it hurts.”

  She looked down at his leg and saw the blood as it spread, darkening the material of his pants. Rodan had no idea what she should do. Kada could not die. She could not lose him, too.

>   Suddenly, outside, she heard the sound of Ipe shouting and of people running toward their position. She reached for her weapon in its holster only to touch air. Searching, she realized she had dropped it to get to Kada. And he was lying on his. She looked at him. If this was going to be the end for them...

  “Rodan, where are you?” Ipe asked as he entered the room and interrupted her thought.

  “I am back here beside several overturned tables. Kada has been shot in his leg.”

  “Well, help has arrived. I will make sure someone comes for him as soon as we get Nels to safety.”

  “Okay,” she replied with a strangled cry. They had survived.

  “Help is coming, Kada. Help is coming,” she repeated over and over as she held his hand.

  He nodded and squeezed her hand. This skirmish was finally over, and they had both managed to live.

  Rodan stood beside the Tau faction skyship as Kada, Nels, and the other injured Gamma fighters were loaded on.

  “Our fighters will sweep the encampment once more to make sure there are not any Keepers’ fighters hiding anywhere. So your fighters can wait here to board our skyship. We will evacuate you back to your compound,” said a Tau fighter to Fabic.

  Rodan watched as over thirty Tau fighters fanned out in numerous directions to search the encampment. There were so many present she had lost count.

  “How did you know to come here?” Rodan asked the Tau faction fighter as she waited to board.

  “We received a distress call from the encampment.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. We received a call for assistance, and we answered it.”

  Anger began to boil up inside of her. “I am from Lewu encampment. I made a distress call to you the helio we were attacked. And not only did I not receive a response, you never came to help us.”

  The Tau fighter’s eyes grew big momentarily. Then he recovered his former demeanor.

  “We are deployed based on an assessment our Head of Security receives from Tau faction’s second-in-command. And while it was an unfortunate situation, when your distress call came in, our second-in-command, Terk, determined,” he took a deep breath, “determined responding to your call for assistance would not be the best strategic decision to make.

  “And what makes this a better strategic decision.”

  The fighter’s shoulders sagged, and he exhaled again. “This encampment is closer to our territory. The Keepers’ fighters have been attacking and partially destroying encampments near our territories so they can come back later and move their supporters in. Terk determined it would be very dangerous for us to have The Keepers this close to our territory.”

  “Terk determined.” Rodan got in the fighter’s face as she shouted.

  He stepped back, doing his best to avoid a direct confrontation.

  “Someone named Terk, determined helping Lewu would not be a strategic decision. But saving this encampment is. But his decision likely caused the death of some of my people. When Gamma arrived, they were able to save seventeen of us. Only seventeen! Tau was closer. Think of how many more lives could have been spared if you had come to our assistance!”

  Someone grabbed her from behind and held her tightly.

  “It is over, Rodan. There is nothing more that can be done,” said Fabic as he immobilized her.

  She struggled against his hold crying out and still shouting at the Tau fighter.

  Fabic continued to hold her. He never tried to calm her or ask her to be quiet. Instead, he carried her onto the skyship, and everyone around her acted as if there was nothing to see.

  Rodan stood in the doorway of the simple one-room structure wondering what her future would hold. Her back was turned to the center of what was formerly Lewu encampment. The surviving residents of Lewu had been allowed to visit one last time to gather belongings they wanted to keep because the settlement was going to be completely razed to the ground. Gamma thought it best not to leave it partially standing for fear The Keepers would move people loyal to them into what remained.

  Kada was still recovering from his injury. So, this time, she was on her own to face her past. And that was how it should have been. She gripped the two bonding ceremony rings in her hand and stared at the dress she would have worn as she would have pledged to stay with Jabok for as long as she drew breath.

  According to Lewu tradition, when a man asked a woman to be his mate, he gave her a ring, and he had one for himself. In the annum leading up to the bonding ceremony, each person would wear their ring every helio. The rings were thought to have absorbed a portion of the wearer’s essence over the annum. Then, at the ceremony, each person would exchange their ring. Wearing the exchanged rings symbolized each person carrying a little of their mate with them at all times.

  Rodan squeezed the ring taken from Jabok’s lifeless body and tried to feel his presence. She allowed herself one more vision of the life she might have had with him.

  Their fully built home.

  The bonding ceremony in front of their parents and the rest of Lewu’s residents.

  The child they would have had. Maybe a boy who had Jabok’s easy-going nature and her stubbornness.

  And finally, the two of them old and gray, sitting by their hearth’s fire wondering if their son would be able to stop by and visit with his family.

  Through watery vision, she lit her dress on fire and backed out of the room. She turned her back on the growing flames as they destroyed the life she had always dreamed of and walked into her new life. The life of a fighter.

  The End

  Find out what happens to Rodan and her fight against The Keepers in The Conscious Dreamer Series. The story begins in The Heaviness of Knowing, Book 1 of The Conscious Dreamer Series where we find out who The Keepers are and whether they’re as evil as Rodan thinks.

  www.sharolyngbrown.com/dreamer-series

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  About the Author

  Sharolyn G. Brown is a lifelong science fiction and fantasy fan who decided the best way to deal with all of the characters in her head was to give them stories and put them in books. She lives with her husband in Houston, Texas, where she divides her time between working, writing, and spending time with him.

  For more information about Sharolyn, check out her website: www.sharolyngbrown.com