by Unknown
I closed the case again, putting it beside me and taking a deep, shuddering breath. I wondered if my friends knew how precious these few little things were to me, because they reminded me of my duty to Corvi - she had wanted me to finish what she started with the insurrection, wanted me to essentially take her place. That meant she had to have known I would need to assume her position, and that she approved of it, and that was all the approval I needed.
I stood up, my mind slowly focussing on what I needed to do.
“Lev, Kalin, you two will know better - what’s the process for a change in command?”
“Normally there’d be a formal hand over by the former commander,” he answered slowly, recalling what he knew of the matter. “But in the cases such as this, where the previous commander is...no longer with us, there’s normally a vote by the rest of the command staff on who takes over.”
“There actually hasn’t been a situation exactly like this for the past century,” Lev added. “Not locally, anyway, and I can’t really speak for other regions. In this instance, I believe you do actually inherit command, and only a unanimous vote from the command staff can force you to step down.”
“Which will not happen, because Lev and I are on the command staff,” Kalin said with a genuine smile.
“And so is Lorelei, who has been informed of the situation - sorry if you wanted that kept quiet, D.” Lev actually sounded quite apologetic, but I shook my head.
“No, it’s fine - I don’t think I could have handled that conversation myself, to be honest. Right then, I need to make an address to the base at some point then - and with Ops in ruin, I’ll need to do it the old-fashioned way. Lev, can you arrange a gathering of Omega Company sometime this evening?”
“Sure. What do you need?”
“As many of the rank and file as we can get, because I don’t want them kept out of the loop. I want all officers to attend though, no excuses - any who don’t attend can explain to me personally why.”
Lev grinned and nodded, pulling out her phone and making notes on it.
“Kalin, I’ll need to know everything we have at this base - personnel numbers, vehicles, weapons, supplies, all of it. I’d better get acquainted with the bureaucracy of command if I’m going to run this place.”
“As you will it,” he told me, something else that would take some getting used to. Another thought hit me and I pulled out my own phone, dialling a number and switching it to speaker mode. I intended to make sure all of my people knew what was going on wherever possible, starting with the three closest to me.
“Yo,” Lorelei answered, in her usual laconic drawl.
“Lorelei, it’s me,” I said, and I could almost detect the change in her tone.
“Hi boss,” she said without hesitation. “I’m...I’m sorry for you’re loss.”
“Thank you, but we’ll discuss that later, if that’s okay. With Ops down over here we’re going to be relying on you for a while, can you handle that?”
She snorted humourlessly.
“The last thing I want is to be telling you ‘no’,” she said with a slight chuckle. “What you want, I can make happen. Except necromancy.”
Lev winced, clearly expecting me to take offence at the joke, or at the very least take it quite hard.
Instead I laughed it off, able to see it for her own peculiar brand of humour.
“I’ll settle for your technical wizardry, thanks. Have you found anything new from the data Tis pulled?”
“Hell yes I have,” she said with undisguised self-satisfaction. “I’ve managed to find info on the manufacturing plant for that chemical, some stuff on a potential counter-agent for it - all the chemical stuff I’ve already mailed to our lab rats, for them to test.”
That was some initiative I was pleased with, and I knew she would be a valuable asset.
“Excellent work. Anything else?”
“Locations. Contacts. The kind of shit they really don’t want falling into our hands. Basically, we have them by the small and danglies.”
“Nice one. Send all the locations and contacts to every base you can get in touch with - the more we spread that information around, the harder it will be to kill it.”
“Sure thing, boss. And...sir?”
I wasn’t sure what I heard in her tone. Trepidation? Pride? It was hard to tell with her.
“Yes?”
“Corvi may have been my friend for longer, but the bonds of marriage over-ride everything. I know it must be agony for you right now, but if there’s anything I can do for you, just ask. Corvi chose you for a reason - I have faith in her choice, and I have faith in you.
“Be safe, boss.”
She hung up without giving me chance to respond, not that I could have anyway. The support being offered by the people around me was overwhelming, and I found myself forcing back the emotion, before I started choking up again.
“What about me?” Tis asked once the phonecall ended. “What can I do?”
I had no answer for her, so I shrugged instead.
“I don’t know, Tis,” I told her honestly. “Like you said, it’s been two and a half years since I saw you last - I don’t know what skills you have, beyond being a damn good hacker - which we need to have a serious discussion about, young lady.”
Tis simply stuck her tongue out at me, and I sighed at her. She never could take me seriously when I tried telling her off. It didn’t help I was only two years older than her.
“You could always make her your aide?” Kalin suggested. “Corvina’s aide was a traitor, but I think we could all trust Tisiphone.”
“Thanks, but I don’t intend to make my sister a glorified P.A., thank you kindly.”
“Actually,” Lev said thoughfully, “I think Tavoy wanted to recruit her as an NCO. That could be an option - although if she got hurt, I’d string him up by his balls.”
“Or, we could talk to Tis before deciding things for her,” I said firmly, and looked at my sister.
“I’ll speak to the good Lieutenant,” she said after a moment’s thought. “The Omega Company guys are a pretty good bunch, and I’d get to shout at people.”
“I think there’s-”
“Yes, I know there’s more to it than that, Deimos, thank you,” she replied before I’d finished. “I was joking. But yes, I’d like to see what Tavoy has planned.”
“Right,” I said. “Two last things. First, I need someone to arrange for me to meet with Sharriana - I need to have words with our esteemed leader.”
“And the second thing?” Lev asked, and I pulled up the bottom of my shirt, exposing the dressing over the knife wound in my gut.
“How exactly am I still here? I don’t remember a lot, but I remember that. I’m sure it must have been a treated blade, so how am I still alive?”
Lev’s expression became troubled.
“That’s the thing, D - no-one knows. Apparently there’s no trace of any foreign chemicals in your blood, although your blood’s temperature was raised significantly. The docs think it’s entirely plausible that you managed to burn the chemical out of your own system - somehow - but they can’t say with any certainty.”
I pulled the dressing off, and sure enough the damage had healed, leaving only a pale scar behind.
“Well...that’s useful,” I said. “Right then guys, get to it - I think...I think I still need a little time to get my head straight.”
“You know where we are if you need us,” Kalin told me, placing a reassuring hand on my shoulder.
“I do. And thank you, all of you. This-” I gestured to the items Lev had brought in for me. “-helps a lot.”
It was a lie - it had h
elped, true enough, but nowhere near as much as I implied. The photograph only made the loss that much harder to bear.
“We’ll get things under way,” Lev said, unaware of my inner turmoil, but I think Tis knew - having grown up with me, she always knew when I was hurting. Before she left, she gave me a tight hug, squeezing my arm gently before following the other two out of the room.
Once they’d left, I poured myself another glass of Corvi’s favoured drink, and for the first time wished like hell I could be drunk.
CHAPTER 17
Demands and confrontations
“What do you mean ‘she won’t see me’?” I snapped, mildly apologetic towards the person on the receiving end of my ire.
It had taken a week for me to get any response to my request for an audience with Sharriana, and when it came through it had been, quite simply, ‘no’. So I had tried to contact her directly, but the call was taken by her aide, and it was him who bore the brunt of my annoyance.
“With all due respect, Mister Black, I am not given extensive insight into Her Ladyship’s decisions,” he told me, and I snorted derisively.
“Yeah, she’s good at that,” I told him, but he continued as if I hadn’t spoken.
“To that end, I simply have not got an answer for you. She has told me she has no desire to see you until you are summoned, and I am simply relaying that message.”
I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose, unconsciously echoing Corvi’s exasperated gesture.
“You’re right, Markus, forgive me,” I told him. “I shouldn’t shoot the messenger. Please relay my respects to Her Ladyship.”
“Of course. Good day, Mister Black.”
Lev entered the office, which I had slowly began to think of as mine, and raised an eyebrow.
“Your ‘respects’? Seriously?”
“Fuck, no, I couldn’t care less if the woman died in a vat of acid,” I told her, then corrected myself.
“Actually I would, but only because I want the satisfaction of taking her head off myself.”
“So what’s the plan now?”
“Arrange an Osprey to get me to H.Q. Don’t file a flight plan, don’t send any warning. I’m going anyway, and I want to see what happens when someone antagonises her for once. Besides, I have a theory to test.”
“A dangerous way to test a theory, isn’t it?” she asked, concern marking her features.
“So is flying a kite in a lightning storm, but it does the trick.”
“Maybe so, but Faraday was an idiot. Here’s the department reports,” she announced, dropping a folder on the desk in front of me. I pulled it closer and opened it, scanning through the various bits of information within.
“No update on the work in Ops?” I asked, and Lev lifted her tablet and keyed it live.
“They said that the damage was extensive and will require a complete overhaul, but if you wanted to sign off on the additional expense we can actually wrangle an upgrade out of the bean-counters at H.Q. The work would take longer, because it would require a total reworking of the electricals, and some other techno-gibberish that those guys always slip into when they forget who they’re talking to, but they think it’s the better option.”
“Fine, tell them to bring me the relevant paperwork and I’ll sign off on it, and let Lorelei know we may be needing her over there longer than expected.”
“I doubt she’ll mind,” Lev chuckled, making a note on her tablet. “I think she quite likes the quiet over there.”
“She isn’t staying there, whatever she thinks - she’s too valuable to us. I don’t want to be reaching for the phone every time I want some technical black magic performed.”
“I don’t think she’d take too kindly to being referred to as a witch, D,” Lev chided.
“Of course she would, she’s Wiccan.”
“Is she?” I was surprised I knew that after a week of being charge, and Lev didn’t know it after serving with Lorelei for half a century.
“Yeah, quite openly.” I had been about to continue when I spotted something in the reports that caught my eye.
“Wow...Tis seems to be making an impact in her training already.”
After talking with Lieutenant Tavoy, Tisiphone had agreed to join Omega Company, on the understanding that she would be an Acting NCO until she had gained enough experience to hold the rank officially.
“You seem surprised.”
“No, just never took my sister for a fighter - we both put a lot of effort into getting her out of the hunter’s life, and yet here she is, throwing herself into a life which is very similar.”
“I guess you two are cut from the same kind of cloth,” Lev said, smiling at me.
“I guess we are, much to my father’s disappointment.” I closed the folder and sighed, rubbing at my eyes.
“How soon can you get that Osprey here?”
“How about I book you in as ‘cargo’ on the next supply flight that heads back out? That at least minimises the risk of your flight being blown out of the sky by over-zealous patrol flights who won’t take crap excuses.”
I had to admit, she raised an excellent point.
“Good thinking. If you do it that way, when will I fly out?”
“Midnight tomorrow night,” she said, and I rolled my eyes.
“Typical. Well, at least it’ll lull her into a false sense of security. Make it happen, I’m sure this place can keep me busy before then.”
Lev nodded, and made some extra notes.
“Right, if that’s everything boss, I think you should join me for a meal before you pass out. You’ve barely had anything all day.”
“I already ate,” I lied. I knew what she was planning - she intended to get me to talk about Corvi. I had been fairly silent about my late wife the entire week, because I had been doing all of my grieving privately. My burden of pain was my own to bear; the others didn’t need me crying on their shoulder.
“Really? What did you have?” she replied, her tone clearly suspicious.
“Some girl from the I.T. team - there’s just something about the mixture of coffee and Doritos in the blood that I can’t resist.”
“See, now I know you’re bull-shitting, although someone should remind you we don’t have an ‘I.T team’ right now. You’re coming with me, and that’s final.”
I took a seat in the mess hall, leafing through some more hard-copy records that Kalin had brought to me shortly after our talk a week previously. Lev took the seat opposite me, placing a glass of blood in front of me. The sudden hunger that hit me as soon as I smelled it was a bad sign - it showed I had been neglecting my feeding.
I drank it as slowly as I could, but eventually my need won out and I downed it hungrily.
“We need to talk, Deimos.” Lev’s use of my full name was strange enough to gain my attention, but her serious tone had me worried.
“No we don’t,” I told her, turning back to my reports.
“Fine. Then you can listen.” She was very serious. She also seemed to be extremely pissed off.
“Everyone on this base knows how close you and Corvi were, how much you two loved each other. Your relationship had become almost legendary, your marriage the talk of the barracks.”
“So?” I asked stiffly, not raising my eyes to look at her.
“So, when you aren’t talking about her, a week after her death, people worry.”
“Is it really any of business of theirs?”
“Yes, you fucking idiot,” she almost snapped, her patience rapidly running thin. “They begin to worry that your feelings weren’t genuine, and that in turn makes them worry about putting their faith in you. And thos
e who don’t doubt your feelings doubt your ability to continue in this fashion...and so do I.”
She reached across the table and took hold of my hand, unwittingly mirroring the gesture Corvi had made, what felt like a lifetime before.
“I’m worried about you, D,” she told me in a softer tone. “You need to talk about it, let yourself grieve.”
“I’ve been grieving in private,” I told her after a moment, seeing no sense in trying to keep up the charade in front of her. “You guys don’t need me crying on your shoulder.”
Lev sighed in exasperation.
“D, Kalin and I were Vithenai at your wedding, it’s our duty to look out for you. If you need to talk, we’re here.”
“Neither of you would understand,” I told her, slowly pulling my hand away and trying to remain defensive.
“I would,” she said, and I looked at her doubtfully. “I’m a shade over five hundred, D, I’ve lost my share of friends and lovers.”
“Have you ever been Blood-Sworn to any of them, Lev?” I said heatedly. “Have you lived, day after day with their voice echoing in your mind, being connected to them on the most intimate of levels? Being shown, not told but shown, their love for you?”
Lev shook her head slowly.
“No,” she finally said, her voice quiet with shame. “No, I haven’t.”
“You see?” I said, ignoring the tears that rolled down my cheeks. “You don’t understand. You can’t understand, because you have the barest comprehension of what it’s like. You can comfort the physical loss, sure...but nothing can heal the wound in my mind, the emptiness I feel every minute without her.”
I didn’t even realise I was crying again until Lev placed a friendly hand on my cheek, wiping some of the moisture away.
“I’m sorry, D, it’s just...we’re all concerned about you, okay? You need to take better care of yourself. Promise me that much, at least.”