Call of Courage: 7 Novels of the Galactic Frontier

by C. Gockel

  She cleared the space between them in two great strides. Leaning down into his face, she planted her hands on the wall to either side of his head.

  “You don’t know a damned thing, priest,” she said, teeth clenched.

  But he did. He had ripped the secret Sela carried out into the hot, listless air for anyone to see. None of her team knew, not Veradin, not even Atilio.

  Lineao made a placating gesture. “The bonds of a mother and child are great. It is unnatural to sever them the way First does.”

  Sela straightened but continued to loom over him. Still, he did not recoil. He was on a mission now. Perhaps he thought he would manipulate her into freeing him, or, save her eternal spark, what they called a soul.

  “Imagine, Tyron. In an army so vast, and the Council of First with powers so great, they cannot keep the Fates from reuniting you with your son.”

  The Council of First was not genuinely loved out here on the frayed edges. Anyone knew that. Sela was not a wide-eyed innocent. But First, and the power of the Regime and Fleet, were the thin lines that kept the Citizens of the Known Worlds safe. The Regime kept the monsters away. The Council of First kept the lights from going out. Yet the farther from Origin, the less gratitude was shown for this.

  “Valen!” she shouted, still staring down at Lineao. This time the priest did flinch. Good.

  Her sergeant was instantly in the room. She realized that, in all likelihood, he had probably been in the corridor just outside.

  “Watch him. I need air.” Sela stormed from the chamber without waiting for a reply.

  When Sela threw open the heavy doors that led to the courtyard, the cool night air greeted her burning face. She nodded to the sentry.

  Simirya rose. “All quiet here, sir. No movement.”

  “Spell you,” Sela said. “Go eat. Rest.”

  As the gunner turned to leave, she paused. “Sir, how is Atilio?”

  Of course, she would ask after him. Sela had suspected the two had shared down time more than once. Not that it was any business of hers. They were the same rank. It didn’t violate Decca.

  Sela gave her a brittle smile. The word held all the trappings of a lie. “Fighting.”

  “I’ll check him,” Simirya offered before fading into the dark. Her moves were quiet with trained stealth.

  With a weary sigh, Sela sank against the wall. Eyes blurring with tears, she studied the darkness of the street below for movement.

  Lineao had spoken the truth. But how could this stranger have known?

  Was I not careful enough?

  Chapter Three

  Atilio was her son, the same mewling pink life that had been torn from her body eighteen years ago. The medic had presented her with a cursory glimpse and a glib rehearsed speech of praise before carrying the infant away.

  A male. Sound body. Good infantry build for sure, Cadet Tyron. Well done.

  It had been a relief. Not that the pain was of particular notice; she had been well-trained to deal with that. But it was a relief the boy was born whole. Because of the unregulated nature of his conception, she had heard rumors the child would be born skew, defective. This had been her punishment for a non-reg breeding and for refusing to name the father. Sanctioned breeding was a careful selection process. It was a nearly sacred art to the kennel masters and the splicers. In the end, the fear and rumors Sela had endured for the four weeks of the accelerated pregnancy had proved hollow.

  She had not bothered to ask the designation that they had assigned to the child. Best not to know. Yet in the years after the boy’s birth, she wondered about him. Sometimes she found herself studying the faces of young men who would be close to his age and wondering: Could that be him? My son? Does he live and thrive? Does he ever wonder about me?

  Over time, her curiosity faded, driven to the back. It was something to conceal. It was a liability. Nothing good would come from knowing. She could not have revealed herself to him without facing reassignment or punishment. The child might have been of her body, but he was not hers. He belonged to the Regime, as did Sela. On that, Decca was quite clear.

  For Sela, all her memories—no matter how trivial or unpleasant—earned permanence. Things came to her like pictures, filed away for safe keeping. It mattered little as to the subject: numbers, coordinates, schematics. Everything remained, unfading. It never ceased to amaze her that others could not do the same. She had learned to use this to her advantage, but this was an occasion when she considered it a curse.

  When the string of seven numbers was called out carelessly by one of the medics as they marked the infant boy with his ident, they became etched in her memory. Eighteen years later, those same seven numbers appeared on the index of Atilio’s file.

  The young man had appeared across the logistics table from her one morning as she made her way through the hateful, yet unavoidable documentation expected of her rank.

  “Atilio, Brin. Meditech class three. Reporting for assignment, Officer Tyron.”

  “Commander,” Sela corrected, not looking up from her tasks on the logistics table. “You’ll address me as ‘sir’ or ‘commander.’”

  She sensed him fidget before he replied. “Apologies. Commander.”

  “Manners, even. I am impressed—” She finally tore her attention away from the screen. Her heart stammered.

  Stelvick, in the flesh, stood across from her.

  It couldn’t be. That man was long dead, a harsh memory from her past. Yet this could have been his twin.

  His coloring was different, more like hers. Dark blonde hair. Clever amber eyes taking in everything. But the line of the jaw, that same patrician nose. Stelvick’s ghost.

  Her eyes flitted over the ident number as her pulse raced. Not his ghost, but his son. The boy he fathered on her.

  “Commander?” Atilio asked. He must have noticed something change but did not move from his rigid stance of attention.

  “Assembly at 0400. Report to Sergeant Valen for team assignment.” She looked back down at the table and feigned absorption with the strategy display. Her throat grew tight. “Dismissed.”

  “I just wanted to say, sir.” Atilio began. “It is an honor—”

  “Honor. Got it. Try not to get killed,” she said quickly, gesturing at the doorway. Still, she could not look up. She was afraid of what she might do. “Dismissed, sub-officer.”

  He hesitated.

  “Are you skew, booter? Go!” Sela shouted, practically running him out of the office.

  The moment he stepped across the threshold, she triggered the door closed and cycled the lock. She slumped against the doorframe, heart pounding, not sure what she was feeling. Whatever the strange feeling, it could be a problem.

  She raced back to the table to examine his file. The numbers, those same seven numbers, identical. The birth date. The location. The kennel information was redacted, of course. That was always the case for personnel records. Had she the access, she knew what she would have found. Brin Atilio was her son.

  Sela knew she should have reported the oversight and moved to have him reassigned. Or she could have simply rejected him as a candidate. She did neither. Her choice to keep Atilio with the team was born of selfish curiosity, she told herself.

  For the first few weeks of his assignment, Sela watched Atilio for that connection, that thing that made knowing him so dangerous and forbidden by Decca. She chose to be harder on him in particular and resolved not to show him favor.

  Yet, at every engagement or exercise, she felt compelled to cast a careful eye on him. She told herself she was protecting the valuable asset of a meditech—a role that was hardly savored by other infantry when the emphasis from day one was on combat skills. It meant that in addition to being shot at, they got the privilege of lugging around fifteen kilos of gear no one hoped they would need. They gave battle pharms to ward off fatigue and dispel pain; they patched new unwanted holes in you. They did things that kept you alive and let you fight on. It took the right kind of soldi
er to fill that role: Temperament. Compassion. Intelligence. Atilio’s father had none of those. A part of Sela feared what his son may have inherited from him.

  Her fears were soon dispelled. Atilio proved well-balanced and so quick to adapt. He assessed a situation and moved with decisiveness. His actions seemed deft and well-practiced—as though he possessed skills well beyond this novice posting.

  Breaking her own self-imposed rules of limited interaction with him, Sela once asked him about this as he carefully arranged the contents of his medistat kit during a mission prep.

  “I just sort of…remember, sir.” Atilio grinned slightly, tapping his temple. “Like a habit. Show me something once. It just seems to get stuck in here.”

  His smile faltered. She could only guess what expression she wore. Something within her seemed to change. It was like walking out of cool shadow into a patch of warm sunlight. It was the moment that marked the difference between knowing Atilio was her son and truly feelin g it. He was a part of her. He was hers, pure and simple.

  And what good did that indulgent possessiveness serve? Or her protectiveness over him?

  It did not matter now. Mother or commander, she should be with him. She pressed thumbs against her shut eyelids, forcing back tears. Sighing, Sela got to her feet and went back inside.

  “I am only a novice, but I can hear your transgressions,” Lineao said.

  Sela frowned, turning away from Atilio. The sanctuary had been so quiet when she returned from the courtyard that she had honestly thought the priest had fallen asleep sitting upright on the bench.

  He just didn’t know when to give up, did he?

  “My trans-whats ?”

  “The wrongs you have committed to offend the Fates.”

  She snorted. He had to be joking. Lineao only granted her his back and then somberly knelt before the depiction of the Fates on the wall. In a low voice, he muttered a meaningless pattern of words in Tasemarin.

  Prayer, she guessed.

  After making sure Valen was not nearby, she moved closer.

  “Why?” she asked. She was standing over him now, staring at the top of his shaven head.

  “It’s my duty to the Fates to guide all pilgrims along their Path.”

  “I’m not a pilgrim.”

  “That is something that you do not decide.”

  “No, I mean…why abandon your post? To become a priest, of all things?”

  “Because it is my Path.”

  “Your Path ? You were a soldier of the Regime. That is what I’d call a Path.”

  “One of many possible for me.”

  “That’s incredibly convenient, isn’t it?”

  Lineao shook his head and sighed. His voice took on a tone as if he were teaching a child.

  “Commander, with each decision, you choose a Path. Each decision along the way is much like charting the course of one of your carriers. I was like you. I was a soldier. I had never made a decision for myself that really mattered. Kill here. March there. The Regime had always commanded my Path.” He thrust his palms out to the ruined room. “Then the Fates intervened. They brought me here, to where I was truly needed.”

  “You abandoned your post. That’s a violation of Decca.”

  Why even listen to his nonsense of Paths and decisions?

  “Decca.” He spat the word. “Belief in Decca is where uncertainty lives. Your Council of First knows this. It is about control. Their control over you. Decca is merely a list of rules to keep you like a child, to keep you ignorant of the worlds beyond their reach.”

  He said it with such matter-of-fact arrogance that she gaped at him. Soldiers were permanently “retired” for speaking such things.

  “Tyron, you’re a soldier now,” he continued. “But certainly you must long for a different Path than the one the Regime has forced upon you. Surely, if you so truly believed in Decca, you would have reported their error in assigning your offspring under your command. Yet, you chose to keep that secret.”

  She refused to grant him the satisfaction of knowing he was right.

  “No one forced me to be a soldier. It is the duty for which I was born.”

  “Straight from the hallowed tome of Decca. The mantra of the Volunteer.” He drew the word out, full of ridicule. “Your Kindred masters call you Volunteer because to think of you differently would be uncivilized. It would acknowledge slavery—an outlaw act that they pretend to find repugnant. Yet they enslave entire worlds and breed soldiers to do it.”

  “No. I shouldn’t be talking to you about this.”

  She should find Valen, see if the others had rested. See that the munitions check was completed. But it was so hard. Lineao had tapped into the desperation that grew with each passing hour. His words seemed to hover on the same wavelength as that quiet voice that kept saying: you have been abandoned…left to die…help is not coming.

  “Don’t tell me you fear words.” Lineao chuckled.

  “I don’t. But this is lunacy!” She leaned down, hissing the words against his ear. “Do you know what I think? I think you came here and one of their priests whispered this same insanity into your ears, and it burrowed in. It infected you. That is why there is Decca.”

  “It was difficult for me too…at first.”

  “Don’t compare yourself to me.” She prodded his shoulder with her knee.

  At that moment, she hated his quiet patient tone, hated the stench of the incense, and hated the beauteous pity painted on the faces of the women on the walls. Their expressions contained serene understanding; their eyes seemed able to peer into her soul. She found their forgiveness suffocating. And, above all, she hated the tiny niggling thing in her that wanted to know more. Sela took angry strides to the outer sanctum but pivoted back.

  “I am a soldier of the Regime. It is my Path,” she said as loud as she dared. “I serve with honor for as long as I breathe.”

  “Then what? One day they’ll reward you by making you a Citizen?” Lineao sneered. “Have you ever met a Citizen that was once a breeder, Tyron? Will your masters one day call you their equal? Perhaps your Kindred captain that I hear you praise so much?”

  Sela froze. The priest had felt around in the dark unknown of her heart and pulled at the loosened threads there. Was it that plain to everyone, her feelings for Veradin? So that even an observant stranger would notice?

  “It happens. Everyone knows it.” She could have winced at how childlike it sounded.

  “Believing that lie—that’s lunacy, Tyron.”

  “Enough.”

  “There is more to you than a simple foot soldier. These others you command, perhaps that is the only life they envision, but in you, I can see a deeper intelligence. There’s hunger in you. It is never satisfied by the hollow lies of the Regime and their rules, their commandments of Decca. You have consumed their lies for years, but you are always starving, while their own adherence to Decca is a matter of convenience.”

  Her hands shook. A tightness invaded her throat. “Stop.”

  “You wonder about the great hidden wheels that turn the Known Worlds. You wonder about the Kindred masters that command you. All the while, you go where you’re told, fight where they tell you to fight. You do these things, but there’s that hunger in your clever brain. It’s a simple question but powerful enough to guide your Path, if you are brave enough. It’s a simple thing: why?”

  It was muscle memory, instinct that made Sela draw her sidearm. A threat evoked her response. The priming trigger’s high-pitched whine was the only sound as she pressed the muzzle against the priest’s temple.

  “No more words, Lineao. That’s it.”

  He did not cower. He bowed his head and returned to more muttered prayers.

  This did not satisfy her. She wanted him to fight back or pelt her with curses. The anger commanded her to rip and tear. She could fight what she could see and touch, not his stupid words. Yet, they stung and invaded her ears, burrowing into her brain, tunneling to where they could never be r
etrieved.

  This must be what it was like to be infected.

  Staring down at the back of his shaven head, she thumbed the priming chamber closed and holstered her weapon. With a tremulous breath, she pressed her fists against the sides of her head.

  Count to a hundred, a thousand. Breathe.

  On unsure feet, she went to the doorway and sagged against the rough stone of the archway.

  “Commander?” It was Valen’s voice.

  Sela jerked upright. Her sergeant had been standing there unannounced for some time. How much had he heard? Where there had always been fierce worship in his gaze, she imagined there was doubt.

  “Sergeant.” She had to clear her throat and try again. “Valen.”

  “Nominal, Commander?” His wary expression fell on Lineao.

  “Yes. Report.”

  “Signal hit on vox. Old code, but valid. We have an extraction. Got coordinates. Two click hump from here.” The relief in his voice was apparent.

  The tight grip on her lungs slackened. There was a flood of relief knowing that she would soon never see this room again.

  Valen studied her. Then she realized why. Sela felt for her vox-com’s earwig, realizing that she had actually removed it with her chest armor. Her throat mic was missing too. She felt exposed as if caught in a guilty act.

  “Excellent, Valen. Time?”

  He glanced at his chronometer: “Eighty-six minutes.”

  “Send an advance—”

  “Already done, boss.” Valen’s eyes moved over to the altar. “How’s Atilio, sir?”

  She turned to regard her son’s form and slowly shook her head.

  “Glory all,” he responded.

  They regarded each other in uncomfortable silence. Then Valen spoke: “This one gonna be a problem, boss?” He tilted his head toward Lineao.

  “I’ll deal with him.”

  As the dawn became a fresh bruise on the horizon, Sela remained at Atilio’s side. She watched as he stopped fighting to breathe. Fitting, she realized. The one to see him draw his first breath was there to see him expel his last.