Call of Courage: 7 Novels of the Galactic Frontier

by C. Gockel

  “I’ll wager your brother is of the same ilk. It was his hurried induction into infantry that allowed him to go undetected. Oddly, I cannot obtain his records. An interesting coincidence, no? Perhaps the hand of your uncle. One last reach of power before his death?”

  Something like jealousy entered Tristic’s tone. “But you are their beloved Kindred class. Who would even question your breeding, your pedigree? I am sure they were more than happy to invite you both into their ranks. After all, full genetics screening is for breeders and low-born conscripts.”

  Erelah’s legs folded and she slid down the console to sit on the floor. She watched Tristic rage on in what seemed like a rapture.

  “Your so-called uncle and his compatriots altered you both. It was enough to fool a cursory examination by a dull-witted country physician or a simple gene culling mech for recruitment. Oh, but look closely and there you are, hiding in plain sight. I almost envy the simple elegance of it.”

  “Manipulation of genetics is forbidden.” The words spun in Erelah’s head. It was hard to pluck them from the air, tumble them into order.

  “A tenet of Miri your uncle chose to ignore in the case of you and your brother. How special you must have been to Helio Veradin for such great lengths to be taken. How truly loved you must have been by this man to betray his own kind,” Tristic purred, standing over her.

  Erelah shifted, pushing her body back in a crab-like crawl along the gleaming dark floor, trying her best to distance herself from the hybrid that no longer seemed sickly or weak.

  “You may have continued for decades, living this lie, floundering in your imperfect Human container. You may have excelled still, dwelling right under the very gaze of First. Perhaps even counted among their leaders one day. Your uncle did not anticipate you encountering me. I am an anomaly, the product of a chance unhappy encounter with the questionable blessing of my…talents. Ironic, really.”

  “This cannot be,” Erelah croaked. Truth or not, it was clear that Tristic believed it. That was the gift of insanity: anything could be justified. Any evidence to the contrary could be easily twisted to support the Defensor’s argument. That was a lesson Uncle had tried to impress long ago. It was as evident in the actions of First as it was in the Defensor.

  “Think of it, Lady Erelah. Of all the choices and possibilities, the things that had to go just right, to place you in my Path. Well. It’s as if the Fates designed it.” Tristic turned a frightful grin upon her. “You are perfectly…imperfect .”

  “Why do this?” She grasped for the right words to offer up in protest. “If this is true, why I am I still here? Why have you not reported me?”

  Tristic tilted her head. With everything in her power, Erelah wished that she had never met this monstrosity.

  “I have use for you, my lovely child.” Her smile was hideous.

  Chapter Twelve

  Time came apart. Occasionally, Erelah realized it as a whole, spread out in a logical progression. The remainder was fragmented nonsense. Just as time moved slowly near the event horizon of a collapsed star. That was what Erelah circled. Time moving on, torturously slow. And all the world she left behind moving on with ignorant normalcy.

  Instead, she counted time by the number of different brilliantly lit rooms, smelling of antiseptics and filled with the detached curiosity of barely glimpsed others. At first, there had been relentless questioning, sleep held at bay for eternities. She tried reasoning, pleading, threats: all to no avail. The thought of escape was an impossible fantasy.

  After all, there were rules. Said to her only once, but delivered by Tristic with a firm expectation of absolute obedience:

  “Do as you are told, comply, and your brother’s secret is safe. Disappoint me, and he will perish. Do not doubt my ability to enact this. I stand with his heart in my hand, and all I need do is squeeze.”

  Erelah would daydream that Jonvenlish had found out what was being done to her. He would come to rescue her. Appearing like a warrior from the early days of the Expanse, he would break into the cell. Together they would run to safety.

  Sometimes she would go for long stretches without hearing another voice. There would be blissful darkness after the pinch of needles and the whisper of rough fabric against her body. Then the true pain began. Glinting steel of machines and instruments that measured and tested. Injections of things that made her curl into a tiny ball of agony and seek to claw her brain from her very skull. It became a cycle. Her fear rose and fell like tides governed by an eclipse.

  The scientist that Erelah had once been recognized it in a hazy, formless way. She was the subject of study for Tristic. That it was not random curiosity or blatant cruelty that motivated their acts. She had fit some kind of criteria: Perfectly imperfect. There had been others before her. None of them had survived this far, she came to understand from overheard snippets of hushed exchanges. It made her valuable, in a sense.

  “Today is an anniversary of sorts for us, my love. Two years.”

  Maynard paced around her in another nameless room of gleaming metal and rough white. It was common for him to appear and whisper his petty torments. Then-Erelah, the one that came before, would have rankled at how he addressed her. Now they were just words, permitted to eddy past. Words could do no harm. That was left to other things.

  Two years? Had it been that long? Why would he lie?

  “Perhaps, Lady Veradin, if you had taken me up on my offer…things could have been different.” He ran a hand over the oily hood of his slicked hair, preening in the reflection of a polished surface.

  She could laugh at him if she wanted to surface and actually listen. As if he could have enacted something that would have changed this. She had realized that everything Tristic did had been planned long ago. The Defensor could foresee every outcome, every variable. It was not the product of a preternatural gift, but a horrifyingly cunning intellect.

  In truth, Maynard was just as afraid of Tristic as anyone else. Erelah could sense it all over him. But instead of shrinking inside his fear, Maynard wore it like camouflage, the way a sand dragon used bits of rock and debris to blend into its surroundings. Maynard would have been dangerous in any time, any place. This place of monsters was ideally suited for him.

  Erelah stared at him silently. He looked away, the sneer slipping from his pointy rat-face. Then the idea took root in her. It was a rarity. It belonged to then-Erelah. Usually, she allowed events to flow around her, like a current buffeting a great stone under water.

  Maynard was just a man. Men had weaknesses. She could find his, find some leverage, some crack. Escape was impossible, but just knowing that she could affect her limited world in the slightest would be worth the attempt.

  It took energy to pull free from the depths where she dwelled. Courage earned punishment, she had learned. It also put Jon at risk. She had to be cautious.

  “Lieutenant Maynard, perhaps I was hasty to dismiss your suit.” Although her voice was rusted from disuse, Erelah addressed him in High Eugenes. It was meant to flatter him, although it was well above his station. He would never merit the chivalries granted to respectable company.

  “Too late for that.” Maynard toyed with a long, neat tray of surgical instruments.

  “It’s never too late. We can be friends, can’t we? I get so lonely here.”

  She leaned forward on the gurney, hoping that she did not look as she imagined: pale skin, red-rimmed eyes, and gaunt cheekbones. This would probably matter little to a man like Maynard. Perhaps to a creature like him, it was an enticement.

  “You didn’t want my kind of friendship. Remember?”

  He plucked at the plain cloth shift she wore. It was a faded, dull blue material.

  Blue was never my color. I had a blue fire-silk gown once. Uncle had given it to me for my ascension ceremony at the temple. I was to wear it only on special days because fire-silk was dear, but I wore it into the fields that time to chase scythe cats—

  Don’t go away. Focus!

/>   “What if I had a change of heart?” Her mouth twitched with a fraudulent smile.

  She leaned further, intimating. There were no restraints. The lab techs had stopped using them long ago. Her obedience had made them lazy, complacent. After all, where would she go? They had left her in the small room. The one where they would give her the injections. But for now, they had disappeared behind a glass wall, busy and distracted and probably grateful to not be near Maynard.

  “Really.” He sounded largely unconvinced but amused.

  Yet she sensed an edge, even if he was just toying with her. How many others had done this before? Bargained? Tried to offer themselves? It was entertainment for him, she realized.

  Maynard placed his hands on either side of her thighs, trapping her against the hard metal surface. His dark eyes were eager.

  “I bring you news of your brother, Jonvenlish.” He watched, thirsty for her reaction.

  At the mention of Jon hope sparked and the foggy haze in her brain lightened.

  “Jon?” She breathed the word, like a prayer or a wish.

  This was Maynard’s game. He loved to ignite that spark of hope and then snuff it out.

  “His battalion of mangy breeders was assigned to Tasemar,” Maynard said, feigning sadness. “Stupidly, he chose to go in with the ground detachment. The odds, my lady, did not bode well for them.”

  Maynard drew closer, waiting to absorb her hurt. He would lap it up like a thirsty animal. “Even now, the Fleet Captain has been told to withdraw, to abandon the losses there. Your brother is among that number.”

  Erelah felt the shuddering sob build in her throat.

  “It would be an honor to comfort the last Veradin.” Closer still, he leaned against her. His hand went to her thigh. She recoiled at the feel of his cold skin.

  Jon would not die. He had to stay alive.

  Part of her had always assumed she would know if her brother had been truly lost. She would have felt it like the shutting off of a lantern. Its light would be suddenly absent, and she would feel her universe dim.

  Did Jon miss me? Would he mourn me?

  The nature of Ravstar’s mission was classified. Even if Jon had petitioned for the right to contact his sister, she knew he would have been denied. Erelah Veradin would have slipped beneath the dark glassy surface of oblivion with barely a ripple in her wake.

  Maynard made a hushing sound. This was part of the parody he enjoyed. He played the part of a caring paramour and feasted on her anguish. He knew nothing of love or compassion. Her reflex was to tear his hand away. She reached for the bare skin of his arm, seeking to injure with her fingernails.

  Erelah was unprepared for what came next.

  A wave of prickling heat pounded up her arm and into her spine. Her head sagged. She tasted copper as she bit her tongue. The images were a collage of torture and rage. It came in a sudden violent wave:

  Bleeding flesh, naked twisting anguished bodies, keening mixed with a woman’s shrieks. There were dozens of them: women and men. Each a disappointment for Tristic and ending up staring at Maynard’s bloody smile.

  “Tristic gives us to you…when she’s done. The ones before me. The ones that didn’t work out,” Erelah rasped, not aware she had even spoken.

  The smug sneer on Maynard’s face evaporated. He tried to pull back, but her hand was frozen in place around his wrist.

  She wanted to force him away. Something within her pushed out at him like fingers digging and parting the slick loaves of his brain. More images jumbled behind her eyes, with them a foreign memory of Tristic’s water-jasmine-and-rot voice:

  Veradin shall be the new host.

  “Get her off me,” Maynard barked.

  “Host?”

  Erelah was distantly aware of the sounds of panicked techs rushing to the room.

  Strong hands wrenched Maynard free. He stared, wide-eyed, as he massaged his wrist. Dark hair slipped into his eyes across his pale forehead. His bravado was gone. There was something else there: fear.

  She liked it. He knew. He had realized what just happened and he was afraid.

  “You’re just as big a monster,” Erelah breathed. “Maybe worse.”

  “Quiet.”

  Impossible to stop, the words now poured from her in a frantic torrent: “Your mother knew what you were, even before you did. That was why your father sent you off as a conscript. They found you with that poor servant girl and saw the bloody work you had done—”

  Maynard shoved her. Her head collided with the wall.

  Around her, she was dimly aware of a panicked scramble among the techs in the suite. She soon felt the injector at her bicep. A soggy darkness drowned out the sterile world and Erelah dreamed of running across winter fields on Argos, of a little girl in a blue fire-silk dress being chased by a rat-faced monster with great bloody teeth.

  The stars blurred, framed by the tiny portal in Erelah’s cell. Hastily she wiped the tears away.

  She felt them around her as she always did when she was alone like this: the Human women who had come before and were as unlucky as she to fall into Tristic’s grasp. It was worse now, knowing what had actually become of them.

  Erelah knew it was her imagination. Old Sissa had told her that the Fates would not suffer ghosts; every child knows that. Nyxa may end a soul’s fleshy torment, but her sister, Natus, collects your eternal spark and returns it to the night skies where you rejoin those who have gone before you.

  Ghosts or not, Erelah felt their echo. How many had survived this long after suffering Tristic’s tortures? They urged her in a chorus only she could hear like one of the morality plays performed at the temple on Argos during the festivals of Miri. The spirits of the dead warriors would goad the wounded hero to victory.

  Avenge us , they called.

  I am weak, Erelah told them. I cannot be your champion.

  Tristic would be back soon. She had been called away by the Council of First. But no doubt Maynard had informed her of Erelah’s little trick in the lab today. It had surprised them both. Erelah ventured it was an aberration, something new. Tristic would be anxious to return.

  After all, Veradin shall be our new host.

  Erelah had hours since waking in her tiny room to guess what that word meant: host. All of the conclusions she reached were dire, darker than the last. The images from her connection with Maynard had faded, but she realized he had watched many tragedies like hers. Never before had it been with such urgency. None of the others had survived the treatments to this point. Her body was being changed somehow, rewritten.

  Defensor Tristic was dying. It was written in the ragged wet quality of her breathing and the way she sometimes grimaced in pain as she moved. There was the nearly constant presence of a medical attendant in her wake. Tristic was the one running out of time.

  Was I to be host to her? Would she take my body like an ocean creature takes a new shell? Or something worse still?

  Host.

  Erelah knew it meant an end for her.

  It came to her in a flash of clarity, so rare these days. The whole of Tristic’s plan. The Defensor was playing a long game, practically dynastic in its design.

  By somehow becoming Erelah Veradin, the Last Daughter of a noble house—no matter how sullied her past—the half-breed Tristic would no longer be an outsider, an abomination. First would be quick to forgive a flawed Kindred past when offered something as valuable as the Jocosta and what it represented. Everything would open before her. In an unhappy footnote, her unlikely mentor, the twisted abomination, Defensor Tristic, would have succumbed to her long illness, leaving Erelah Veradin appointed to control Ravstar. From there, inside her, Tristic would grow, like a cancer.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Compared to the quiet of the lab, the crew levels were a jarring chaos of light and noise. Erelah stumbled through the crowded corridors, gracelessly led, and sometimes carried, by Maynard’s two men. There were no shackles. Nothing to suggest she was really a prisoner. Noneth
eless, she felt them staring: the techs, a few sub-officers. Their curiosity was plain, and with it a vague type of envious awe. As if to be a party to Tristic and her secrets imbued Erelah with some special quality. If only they knew. She sneered at their faces, her head bobbing on her neck.

  Maynard scowled. But he was fearful still. No more posturing.

  “You disappoint me, my love,” he said. “I’ll show you no more favor.”

  “For that I thank Miri,” she slurred in High Eugenes. Her head buzzed with the pharms, but she held onto that one bright thread of clarity that had come to her in the anguished quiet of her cell. Somehow it would be her salvation. Somehow she had to use it. But how?

  They entered Tristic’s now-familiar chamber with its ceiling that disappeared into the dimness high above. Maynard receded to the shadows that hugged the wall, where she knew he would watch with sick fascination.

  “You have been keeping secrets from me, Lady Erelah,” Tristic said, climbing down from her throne-like chair. The evil queen from a child’s tale holding court in her dark lair, menacing and all-powerful. She liked to use Erelah’s title, throw it like a barb, a reminder of who she once was. It was a reminder of the warm and safe, a realm she could never regain.

  Erelah tucked her chin against her chest and shifted her gaze to settle onto a black corner. She listed on her feet. Inwardly, she felt herself withdraw, disengage. The room became distant.

  A stinging slap brought her back into the present. She caught the blur of Tristic’s hand moving away and tasted blood between her teeth.

  “You exist because I wish it, foolish child. I could have reported you a hundred times over by now. I have shown you mercy. To your brother as well.”

  “Mercy . What do you know about mercy?” Erelah croaked. “You cannot touch Jonvenlish. I understand that now. Even you have limits. I know what I…saw.”