by S King
“Does it have to do with Somsang?” Completely ignoring Emric and I, he brushed past us and headed for the military base.
“Why do you need to know that?” Emric left me to close the door as he followed the other man down the stairs and through the winding corridors out of the domicile district.
“Because we came together and if he’s causing more problems than he already has, then I need to know. So, is it about him or not?”
Thanks to their extra-long legs, I had to jog in order to catch up to them; why would the officials call a meeting in regard to Somsang? It wasn’t like he was a necessity for the society and if he were causing problems then the matter would’ve been handled discreetly. The top officials of the military thrived for discretion, especially with outside problems, so ordering a meeting that demanded the presence of Emric and myself meant that things had just taken a turn for the worse.
It didn’t take us long to fall silent as we entered the official’s offices; all of the officers, both high and low ranking were standing to attention and stared ahead as if waiting for orders to be handed down.
“This isn’t good,” Emric whispered to me, looking around at the other warriors waiting, “Aubbie.” He veered to the right, going over to the officer that had trained with us for over twelve years.
“Stay here,” I whispered to Eikko before following Emric over to Aubbie.
Aubbie was something of a demigod when it came to being in the military. His ice blonde hair and dark garnet eyes were the giveaway of his Padrieg lineage; like me, he thrived in the military and made rank in an impressive amount of time. He was the one that knew everything that had to do with anything.
“What’s going on?” Emric nodded to the official’s offices.
Aubbie shook his head and frowned, “someone found out that Eynos are trying to penetrate the blue sun. Also, something about a Parlan guy crossing into the red sun.”
“What?” Emric and I said in unison.
“Freyer, Shaye!” Fauve stood at the top of the stairs and looked down on all of us, causing all conversation to stop.
Emric grabbed my wrist, dragging me up the stairs, “the Parlan Playboy is in deep shit if his friend crossed over in Pya territory.”
“Somehow I get the feeling that he did,” I mumbled, glancing over my shoulder in time to see Eikko pushing his way through the waiting warriors and out of the official offices and toward the airbase. Toward the front line of the battlefield.
Chapter 16 Boiling Point
“That is not the point!” Kendrick hollered in the Major General’s face as Fauve led Emric and I into the meeting room and motioned for us to take our seats.
“That is the point, Colonel. Had Captain Freyer been paying attention to his duties, this wouldn’t have happened!”
I grabbed Emric’s wrist under the table, subtly shaking my head at him not to get on the defense until Kendrick, or someone, clarified what they were arguing about. Looking around the room, I could tell that tensions and tempers were running on overload.
“Captain Freyer did what was required of him!” Kendrick snapped, “he protected his ward to the best of his ability while also handling the responsibilities of the society. It wasn’t his fault that he wasn’t able to watch what his ward was doing all of the time.”
The major general smirked and crossed his arms over his chest, “tell me something Colonel, how is it that Major Shaye is able to manage her duties as well as guard her own ward without incident? She has more responsibilities and obligations to the society than Captain Freyer and managed to keep that young man in line.”
I bit the inside of my cheek as I glanced at my grandmother across the table. Her facial expression was neutral and didn’t give away any indication about what was happening right now. The same went for the other ranking officials; all eyes were glued to the debacle of a situation between Kendrick and the major general. Surely, they couldn’t be talking about demoting Emric…right?
Panic rushed through my veins as I processed what was happening. I’d never seen Kendrick go to bat for anyone and not only that but if the vein in his forehead was any indication to what was about happen if the major general didn’t stop with his sarcastic nature then he was going to explode. He wasn’t the only one, however, glancing at Emric from the corner of my eye, I knew that my right hand was on the brink of jumping into the screaming match with no regard to the repercussions. But even with all of this going on, why was I still thinking about Eikko and the danger that he was putting himself in?
“Her ward wasn’t a part of the crash!” Kendrick boomed as he slammed his fist on the table to drive his point home.
My thoughts halted on the admission from our commander and forced me to put all thoughts of Eikko on the back burner for the time being.
Kendrick had just confirmed that Somsang was involved in the wreck and now I just needed to figure out how much of a part the Parlan jerk had in it.
“So, that gives Freyer the right to be slack in his duties? Because he didn’t know that the person, he was supposed to be guarding had a hand in this situation?” Major General fired back.
Emric went pale, staying silent as Kendrick got into the other man’s face.
“Are you questioning Freyer’s loyalty to the military? To the society?”
“One would wonder why he didn’t report the disappearance of his ward as soon as he noticed it. Why was it that the tracker had to inform us of the disappearance?”
My head snapped around to Emric in question. Why hadn’t he reported it to the upper officials? He knew the proper protocols and procedures of the military to the point that he could recite them verbatim with his eyes closed. So, why not tell Kendrick at the very least?
Still, Emric remained silent and didn’t try to cower away from the accusation. Instead, he simply looked to Kendrick for help as if our commanding officer knew more than what he was leading onto.
I turned my attention back to Kendrick and, like everyone else in the room, waited for him to respond. But no one, not even Fauve, was expecting what came out of his mouth next.
“He did, to me. I made the choice not to report the disappearance.”
A resounding, “what?” Filled the room as we looked at him.
“Freyer did report the disappearance of his ward as soon as it happened. However, when I saw that the ward was able to freely return to the blue sun society, I found that the matter was mute and ended the search.”
The room became eerily silent as we all processed what Kendrick just said. Emric had done what he was supposed to; he reported Somsang to Kendrick and our superior officer chose to do nothing about it. Now that the air was cleared the only question left unanswered was, why?
“You what?” Fauve finally spoke up, commanding the attention of the room by his deadly tone.
Kendrick visibly shrank back from the five-star general as he met the other man’s burning amber eyes. “I…I found that since Somsang was able to freely return to the blue sun,” he adjusted his tie as if the thing were cutting off his airway. “There was no reason to pursue the matter any further.”
“And who gave you that authority?”
“Sir—”
Fauve raised a silencing hand and stood from his seat at the end of the table, “a member of the Parlan society not only came into the purple sun, but was somehow,” he pointedly looked at Kendrick, “was able to return without any of our knowledge. Now, that same member has gone AWOL to fuck knows where!” He erupted, “and you’re telling me that you knew and chose to do nothing about it?”
Emric and I pressed ourselves back into our seats, keeping our mouths shut. Neither of us had ever seen Lèas Fauve lose his temper to the degree that he was now. The general was the very embodiment of a calm and calculated nature, but looking at him now, he was everything but his normal calm.
“Sir,” Kendrick started again.
“Dismissed,” Fauve waved off Kendrick’s pathetic excuse of an explanation and stared
at the table as if the wood held all of the answers that were missing from the situation. “Major Shaye.”
I bolted out of my seat as the top official of the military called my name, “yes sir?”
He waited until Kendrick left the room before looking at me with his heated gaze, “what’s the status of your ward?”
Now it was my turn to get my ass chewed out. With a steadying breath I bared the weight of the stares around the room and said, “he left the debriefing lobby as we were coming up the stairs.”
He cocked his head to the side, narrowing his eyes in a menacing way, “he what?”
“When you called Freyer and I into the meeting, I looked behind me and saw that Mr. Kangho left the debriefing base. As of right now,” I swallowed the bile in my throat, “his location is unknown.”
Again, the room fell silent and no one, not one damn soul, made a sound as we all watched Fauve turn from somewhat calm to enraged all over again.
“Are you saying that your ward has gone AWOL as well?”
“Yes sir.”
His jaw flexed and his hands became fists as he stared at me, “how did that happen?”
I don’t know, I wanted to say but knew better than to give him a piss poor excuse like Kendrick had done. My superior officer’s position was still unclear and when Fauve had said dismissed, none of us knew if that meant from the room or the military in its entirety.
“Well?” He questioned.
“Given the nature of his relationship with Keon, I’m under the impression that he went to find him.” It wasn’t as bad as I don’t know but it wasn’t the best either. I was flying by the seat of my pants, trying to tell the official members that, in an essence, I was at just as much at fault as Emric and Kendrick.
Fauve rubbed a hand over his face before looking around the room, “here my orders.”
It didn’t take long for the remainder of the meeting to come to a close and for Emric and I to gather our squadron in order to find Eikko and Somsang.
Now we were at the airbase, going through the motions to prepare to go on the hunt for the Parlan jerks that had turned our lives upside down and inside out.
“What do you think is going to happen to Kendrick?” I mumbled as I strapped myself into the pilot seat of the ceremonial Citlail and checked the controls.
Emric shook his head, “your guess is as good as mine at this point. I do know that Fauve was about to blow a vein if he kept losing his temper.”
I snorted in agreement as my mechanic came over my communicator and told me that everything was ready for takeoff.
Thanks to Eikko taking off to wherever, Orrie had been promoted from basic tracker to a warrant officer. In turn, his hands were full with managing all of our locations from the base as well as trying to pinpoint just where Somsang and Eikko had disappeared to. If he couldn’t find either man in the battlefield close to Pya then it was to be assumed that they had returned to Parlan; if the latter were the case then the borders between the three suns were going to be sealed off indefinitely and we’d all wash our hands of the entire situation. If it were the former, then a bigger war was about to ensue.
There was no way on this sun, or the next, that I’d allow the inhabitants of the red sun to keep Eikko for themselves. That wasn’t going to happen as long as I had air in my lungs and if I died in the process of bringing him back, then so be it. With a resolving breath, I allowed the Citlail to rise from the ground and took off from the airbase.
“Was I interrupting something when I came to get you?” Emric asked offhandedly as we rose above the squall line of the clouds and focused on the holographic map between us.
“What do you mean?” I glanced out the window for any Eynos in their own aircraft before looking at him.
“Between you and Eikko?”
I clenched my teeth together, not wanting to have this conversation with him right now. This wasn’t the time nor the place to talk about what I was doing behind my own four walls.
“Don’t worry about it.” I allowed the Citlail to veer right as the burning red of the Pya sky came into view.
As strange as it was to say, the red sun society was devastatingly beautiful and could’ve been a great place to live had it not had the horrific past that it did. Not to mention the things that it inhabited.
Brushing the memories of Eikko explaining the history of the three suns aside, I narrowed my gaze on the ground and saw…nothing. No Eynos attempted to shoot down our aircraft, no seven eyed bastards racing to their barracks to get ammo for their weapons. Nothing.
“Does this look surreal to you?” Emric whispered, looking out his own window.
“Something doesn’t feel right,” I breathed, looking at the holographic map at our ground troops moving toward the front line of the battlefield.
“No kidding,” he pressed his communicator as he looked at our coordinates.
“Do you really think that the Eynos moved toward Parlan?” Surely, Aubbie was wrong about the change of course the Eynos took. Surely, they wouldn’t go to the notoriously peaceful society to start shit against the helpless citizens of the blue sun society.
“Orrie, what do you see?” Emric ignored my question and started flipping through the different holographic locators in the middle of the control panel.
I allowed the Citlail to drop in altitude and narrowed my gaze on the fallen society; buildings, aircrafts, domiciles, everything under the red sun was demolished from one extent to the next with no living thing coming or going. This wasn’t right.
We had already flown over the battlefield and only a handful of Eynos were manning the front line. So where was the other band of misfits, if not in their own society?
“What?” Emric snapped in response to something that Orrie said, “no, no, that can’t be right.”
I glanced at him as he started rapidly searching the holographic map. What the hell was going on?
“He doesn’t have that kind of pull, so how was he able to get through to them?”
“What?” I urged, needing to know what was going on and better yet, where I was going. It was obvious that the red sun had been deserted and there was nothing and no one here.
“Go to the southern side of the society. Somsang has somehow—” by the jerk of the Citlail, Emric grabbed ahold of the headliner, stopping any further direction.
Somsang had corralled the Eynos to invade the blue sun society. I knew it before Emric even had the chance to get the words out; now it was a race between who could stop the Eynos and Somsang first. I pressed my communicator to get ahold of all of my ground warriors and barked out the orders to change course.
Wherever Somsang was, Eikko was going to be close by. I could tell that he had had enough of his assistant after I had been shot from the two minions that were working under the dictator. Now, the question was, where was Eikko? I couldn’t care less about where Somsang was because if the Padrieg military ever got ahold of him, he’d be as good as dead for starting an uprising with the enemy and putting the members of the Parlan society in grave danger.
Neither Padrieg nor Parlan would allow a traitor to live, let alone breathe, within the safety of the societies.
“Thanks, Orrie,” Emric disconnected the communication and glanced at me, “did you have to jerk the Citlail?”
I shot him an apologetic look before narrowing my eyes on the upcoming horizon of the southern border of the purple sun society. Sure enough, there were Eynos in mass quantities and only Somsang standing in the middle of the crowd facing off with Eikko were the only faces that mattered.
“What the actual fuck is going on right now?” Emric breathed, catching sight of Somsang and Eikko.
“I have no idea, but I think that things have just went from bad to worse.”
“To say the least,” he pressed on the onboard communicator, barking out orders to the warriors moving in on the scene below us.
There was no way that I could land in the middle of the border without causing more p
roblems for Padrieg and Parlan. Twisting my mouth, I steered the aircraft away from the border and handed down my own orders.
“Aubbie, move in on the outer entrance to the society, we’re coming in from the north. Delta, bravo, and whiskey take out all of the enemy. The goal is to return Somsang and Eikko back to the official offices. Now move, move, move!” I jerked the Citlail away from the oncoming Eyno aircraft and shoved Emric from his seat as I caught sight of the arson torpedo flying through the air toward our Citlail.
“Damn it, not again!” Emric grabbed my wrist as he forced us from the aircraft and held me close as our bodies went free falling to the hard, unforgiving ground below.
I hid my face in his chest as the Citlail blew up with a deafening boom while his natural wind created a barrier of protection from the flying shrapnel.