Tinaree: Trial By Inferno (Shadows Of Peace Book 1)

by Nic Plume

  Richards was stunned by the revelation. Four hundred thirty-one people dead, wiped from the universe, many murdered in cold blood while they were defenseless. It was a new low the Traverse had sunk to—never in the nearly two hundred years of ongoing conflict had there been such a massacre.

  Dean looked at Torrents. "Who has access to this?" His mind raced with damage control and possible ways to keep the rumor mill in check. Every member of the Intergal fleet is going to scream for Traverse blood. But that might be exactly what they were aiming for.

  "Just you, Commander Teak, and me."

  "Nobody else?" Dean frowned. Kilrian’s intel section had a standing order to monitor Torrents’ activities.

  "Well, the intel section is keeping tabs on me, but I haven’t released it to them yet."

  "You haven’t released it—" Dean looked at Robert, who raised his eyebrows in an ‘I told you so,’ before turning back to the slicer. "Are they aware that you’re controlling what they see?"

  "Of course not." Torrents scrunched up his face. "They’d have a fit if they did. But, I’m not really controlling it as much as I’m delaying it." He paused to consider the two commanders. "I’m kind of sending it the long way around. You know, like going from here to the BCC via every mess hall and lounge on the ship."

  "How long?"

  Torrents shrugged. "A few minutes or so. Why? You want me to send it on another loop?"

  "Yes." Dean headed to the hatch. "How long can you give me?"

  "How long do you need?"

  "Long enough to allow me to be in place to prevent a rushed attack that’s ill-prepared or based on the previous battle plan," Dean said over his shoulder as he left the compartment.

  "You got it, sir," Torrents called after him as the hatch slid shut.

  Commander Kilrian agreed with him. Instead of moving forward with the attack, he pulled the fleet further into deep space and put it on total lockdown until the operational security of every person, computer, and piece of equipment was vetted and new battle plans were drawn up.

  "What timeline are we looking at?" Kilrian asked.

  "At least four or five months." IO Carmichael replied.

  "You expect the survivors to hold out that long?"

  "Per the reports, there were no survivors."

  "Have you seen a body count? No? Then let’s give our people, and their training, a little more credit than that."

  "Yes, sir," the officer said, chastised.

  "You will account for every last one of them."

  "Sir, considering the damage done to the ships, there is no way we’ll recover all the bodies."

  "Understood." Kilrian nodded curtly. "But non-consequential."

  The officer stared at him.

  "We’ll do the best we can to give you a full report of every trooper’s death or whereabouts," Carmichael said once he recovered.

  "See that you do." Kilrian dismissed him with a nod.

  "He has his work cut out for him." Richards said, nodding toward the back of the retreating officer.

  "Considering how long we expect them to last, it’s the least we can do for them."

  Taylor woke up sputtering, fighting to take in air past the painful stream of water assaulting him. A few moments later, the water stopped. He lay in a puddle, coughing, trying to catch his breath. He hurt all over. Somebody grabbed his collar and dragged him across the floor in a lopsided, knuckle-supported scrabble. Soon after, he was flying toward a cacophony of voices. The floor came up fast, but a flurry of arms caught him and landed him against a warm body.

  They rolled him onto his back.

  A goofy grin accompanied by a gaze that should be restricted to visitors of a med ward’s intensive care unit filled the round face looking down on him.

  "What the hell did you do?" Tonee asked.

  Damn, it was good to see the big guy.

  "Broke his fingers coming out of the lift tube," Taylor mumbled past his pain. "I think it pissed him off."

  "You think?"

  Taylor tried to grin at Tonee’s nonchalant answer, but only succeeded in grimacing.

  A loud staccato of metal hitting metal startled Taylor. He flinched. Tonee looked up.

  "He needs medical attention," Tonee said in broken Tinareean.

  "He’s got you, don’t he?" A voice answered from behind Taylor. It belonged to the guard who had dragged him to the cell.

  "We aren’t medical personnel," Tonee shot back.

  That’s a lie.

  Kay was a full-blown MO, after all, and Taylor a combat medic, but the guards wouldn’t know that. At least, Taylor hoped they didn’t.

  "Not my problem."

  A moment later, a door closed with a thud. Taylor hadn’t heard him walk away, but considering the overload of messages his pain receptors sent up his nervous system, that wasn’t surprising.

  Kaydeen leaned into view. Her fingers flew expertly over his wounds, inspecting the damage and diagnosing his injuries.

  "Couple of broken ribs, cut on the temple, probably a concussion." She pulled up his shirt. "Contused abdomen." She looked up at him. "You don’t do anything halfway, do you?"

  "It was worth it." Taylor shrugged and winced, immediately regretting the move. Kaydeen shifted her attention to his shoulders.

  "Move." She motioned for Tonee to loosen his grip and grasped Taylor’s left arm.

  He grabbed her wrist, stopping her attempt to move his arm.

  "Don’t think so." He shook his head, and immediately regretted that move, too.

  "It’s dislocated. I need to set it." She looked at Tonee. "Get him flat."

  Tonee complied, and with Salayla’s help, lifted Taylor off his lap while Kaydeen steadied his shoulder.

  Taylor hadn’t realized Tonee was below him.

  Nerve damage? Peripheral system? Nervous system?

  He remembered fighting for breath the moment the guard had grabbed his collar. It had cut deep into his throat. Dragging him like a dog, the guard had kept him too low to get his feet under him but too high to push off with his arms. Or maybe that was where his shoulder got dislocated. He vaguely remembered getting some distance from the floor and then losing it when the guard rammed him into a doorframe. He’d nearly passed out from the sudden pain shooting through him. After that, the floor rushed past. Then it changed to this rough gray canvas of dark circles. He’d assumed the lack of oxygen was playing tricks on his mind. Air had flooded his lungs again as the guard shoved him forward, but it didn’t kickstart his brain fast enough. As he had tumbled, falling, scraping, or possibly even flying across the floor, he didn’t have time to dread his landing. He registered surprised yelps, then a bunch of hands, and finally a body sliding below him as he landed. And those stupid circles again. So, he did register Tonee below him—it simply took him a while to process it.

  He turned to look at the floor, nearly rolling out of Salayla’s grip in the process. Kaydeen tightened her hold on his shoulder. He screamed in response. Salayla adjusted her grip and his vision rolled back onto the ceiling. There were circles up there, too. No, those were holes. Who would put holes in a ceiling?

  "What are you doing?" Salayla’s oval face blotted out the holes.

  "Looking at circles."

  "Excuse me?"

  Tonee had slipped out from under him and rolled to his knees. He slid his arms under Taylor’s body and nodded to Salayla. She let go, and while Tonee lowered him to the floor, touched her hands to each side of Taylor’s neck.

  "Relax." Her face blotted out everything again. He’d never seen eyes that dark blue. "You’re confused."

  You can say that again.

  She had that calm singsong in her voice that he absolutely hated but couldn’t remember why. Then he felt her invade his mind and remembered—he didn’t like her Reading him.

  "Shh. This is going to hurt, but I’m going to help you through it."

  It felt nice, feeling her…her…her what—Essence?—filling him. What was not to like? A sh
arp pain brought everything back into focus.

  "Whoa, shit." Nope, his nervous system was still functioning, at least the part connecting his shoulder to his brain. And he definitely didn’t like Salayla muddling his senses. He shoved her out and tried to sit up. The first one worked, the second didn’t. Tonee held him pinned to the floor.

  "We’re not doing that again." Tonee leaned over him to catch his gaze. "This time, you hold still until she’s done."

  The severe concern in his gaze was gone. Not completely, but some of his humor was nudging its way back in. "I’m not taking another bloody shower."

  Taylor remembered the incident Tonee referred to. They had been together only a few weeks and Taylor had still been coming to grips with suddenly controlling only a quarter of his grade and having to depend on his teammates for the rest.

  It was the first day of advanced hand-to-hand combat training. Trainer DeMacia had called Taylor onto the mat and told him to give it his best try. DeMacia had intended it to be a quick, eye-opening demonstration. But Taylor hadn’t gone down as easy as expected and then refused to stay down. He kept getting up, no matter how many times DeMacia beat him down. In the end, DeMacia told him to submit. Taylor stepped back on. The next time Taylor landed off the mat, he had a broken arm and dislocated shoulder. DeMacia commented that if he came back again, he’d be shipped home in a box. Taylor tried to get back up, but his teammates stopped him. DeMacia sat on the mat and watched.

  When Taylor stopped struggling, DeMacia nodded at Kaydeen and asked, "Your teammate’s finally stopped trying to kill himself. So, what do you do next?"

  "Get his injuries treated."

  "Then treat them."

  "Sir, his arm is broken and dislocated."

  "You’re a medic, aren’t you?"

  She was, but barely. Kaydeen had completed a few civilian first responder courses before she joined Intergal. Although nowhere near qualified as a medic, the courses, and her near perfect memory, gave her a leg up on her training. She had breezed through the basic infantry medic course and was finishing up her intermediate certification. By the time they graduated, she was not only an SF commando with sharpshooter qualifications, but also an advanced SF medic capable of minor surgeries.

  But at the time of Taylor’s brawl with DeMacia, she hadn’t been.

  "Sir, I’m not yet qualified to treat a break."

  "But you are qualified to treat a dislocation."

  "Yes sir, but I might do more damage to his break."

  "That’ll be his problem, not yours. You want to get him to medical? Then set his shoulder."

  She did, and she would have done it well, but the pain brought Taylor’s reflexes into motion. He pulled out of their grip and in the process turned his clean, closed break into an open, gory wound that had doused Tonee in blood.

  They had ended up confined to quarters for two weeks for his defiance. The trainers took teamwork to the letter. Each trainee team ate, slept, trained, and was punished together, no matter whom the perpetrator or what the infraction. DeMacia stayed pissed at him and rode him hard the rest of the training. That little bloody temper tantrum of his, as Tonee liked to call it, might have earned him a trainer from hell, but it did wonders for his teamwork capabilities.

  Tonee looked at Salayla, who had backed away. "You okay?"

  "Yes," she answered with a frown. "He pushed me out again. This is very disorienting."

  Tonee scanned the room before returning his gaze to Salayla.

  "I thought humans were helpless against Readings?" His voice was scarcely above a whisper.

  "Not helpless," she replied, keeping her voice equally low. "Some are able to resist. A Primary’s Reading is harder to resist than a Minor’s, but it’s not unheard of." Salayla frowned. "When it comes to a struggle though, Din will win, which is why a human, once a Din has entered his mind, cannot break the contact."

  "But Taylor just did."

  "Yes, he did."

  "Maybe you weren’t all the way in, or something?"

  "Tonee," she admonished, barely raising her voice above the whisper she’d been using, “This is a gift we are born with." She spoke as if addressing a small child. "It refines and strengthens as we grow and reaches its full strength by the time we become sexually mature."

  Tonee rolled his eyes at her. They’d heard that speech many times before.

  The day they had met, Salayla and Kaydeen had introduced themselves as Din. Descendent from humans who settled the planet Dinai, Dinai’s Children, as they called themselves, evolved differently than the rest of humanity. While they looked the same, Din had the ability to ‘Read’ other people’s feelings and thoughts and were much more open in their sexual relations. Or, at least, that’s what most people knew when asked, which explained why Din usually didn’t announce themselves. But Kaydeen and Salayla, thinking openness and clarity was the way to become the best team possible, had immediately cleared up any misconceptions Tonee and Taylor might have had about Din. Yes, they could Read feelings and thoughts. Yes, their society encouraged sexual activity, and yes, there was no chance of pregnancy since Din were infertile until they bonded. But Readings needed skin-to-skin contact, usually hand to neck, and gave only general feelings and surface thoughts, and no, Din didn’t have an insatiable sexual appetite. They simply didn’t perceive sex as intimate and emotionally attaching like humans did. Sex was another developmental step to be practiced, like walking and talking, and a tool to find a bond-mate, become fertile, and have children.

  Seventeen at the time, the boys had received a crash course in Din physiology and psychology which left no question about what they could and could not expect from their female teammates. At least, until the girls had pointed out that the closer their relationship grew, the easier and deeper Readings would get, and the better the sex would be.

  "How far a mind can be entered into," Salayla continued, pulling Taylor back into the present, "or how much a mind can be influenced, depends on the strength of the Gift in the individual Din."

  Taylor waited for the punch line.

  "But even Minor Din can easily use it on humans, as Kaydeen has often proven to you. Saying that I cannot tell if I have fully entered his mind is like saying you cannot tell if your penis has entered my vagina." She cocked her head at him.

  "Okay, got it." Tonee closed his eyes. "And I really didn’t need that visual."

  "It helped clarify my point."

  "That it did." He shook his head. "So, why was he able to kick you out?"

  "I do not know."

  "I’m right here, you know."

  Tonee looked down at him. "So you are. How’s that shoulder?"

  "Well, I can move it and feel my arm again. May I sit up now?"

  "Nope, not until she’s done with you." Tonee looked at Kaydeen. "And?"

  She had finished inspecting Taylor’s shoulder.

  "Doesn’t feel like there’s any permanent damage here, but I need to take a closer look at those contusions on his abs."

  Tonee shifted his weight out of her way, then looked back at Taylor.

  "About time you joined us. Started to wonder if you were snubbing our company." He grinned. "So, what the hell happened to ‘don’t resist’?"

  When Taylor stared blankly at him, he elaborated, "Tico’s hand. I assume that was your work?"

  "Yeah, felt the tendons pop and his knuckles crunch against my neck. Never felt anything better." Taylor grinned, then hissed as Kaydeen found a sore spot over his kidney.

  "It wasn’t worth this beating," she said without looking up.

  "Yes, it was," he chuckled, then thought better of it—too painful.

  Kaydeen shook her head.

  He looked back at Tonee. "Tico?"

  "The guy whose hand you mangled. He and his running partner, Tristan, the guy giving you flying lessons, have been providing us with these lovely accommodations." He motioned around him.

  The room was square and about four times bigger than their cell.
As Kaydeen moved down his side, Taylor saw the only two doors leading out. One, oversized with two sliding sections sealing it shut, was in the center of the wall. The other, person-sized, hinged, and with a small window in its top half, was closer to the right corner. Four equal rows of ceiling-to-floor bars made up their cell in the middle of the room. He didn’t see a door into the cell. He got in, so where…

  "They’re the only ones we’ve seen," Tonee continued, drawing his attention back to their conversation.

  "How long have you been up here?"

  "Two or three days. Kaydeen came up first, then Salayla, and me a shift later. We still work the mine separately, but they let us sleep up here together. Been waiting for you to show up. Now we know why they took their time. What happened to no fighting?"

  He’s not going to drop it.

  "I wasn’t fighting. I jerked back when the light hit my eyes. Not my fault he had his hand wedged tight."

  "Those damn reflexes again, huh? Gotta get control of them." Tonee smirked, then became solemn. "Before you end up with another DeMacia."

  "I’ll deal with it."

  "I hope you can," Salayla put in quietly, "Tico can be a mean S.O.B."

  Taylor looked at her, then at Tonee whose eyes had widened at her choice of words—Salayla didn't curse. Kaydeen nodded her agreement but made no comment. Taylor wondered what happened, but didn’t press them for details. They would repay him in kind and he wasn’t ready to talk about his time in the dark.

  Instead, he changed the subject. "Work the mine?"

  "Yeah, move ore, push carts, empty and fill hoppers." Tonee paused and tilted his head. "They haven’t put you to work?"

  Taylor’s headshake ended with a hiss as Kaydeen found another sensitive spot. She raised her eyebrows at him as he controlled his breathing. "You might have internal damage."

  "I’ll be fine. Just sore."

  She didn’t believe him.

  She finished her exam, then motioned to Tonee, "His shirt needs to come off." She moved to open his pants, adding, "And so do these."