by J. N. Chaney
Awen, since boarding Geronimo Nine, had disposed of her tattered clothes in the ship’s incinerator and then let TO-96 tend her wounds in sick bay. The bot had wanted to talk, apparently eager for company, but she was not in the mood and asked him to go silent. When TO-96 had finally cleared her, Awen traded the sick-bay gown for one of Ezo’s knit turtlenecks, a pair of leggings, and some leather boots Ezo had picked from a stash in the unusually spotless cargo bay. Then she gave the captain a course to lay and made her way to the main lounge to get comfortable.
For a smuggler or bounty hunter or whatever he was, Ezo had done remarkably well with keeping the ship in top condition, which included interior cleanliness—something Awen was all too grateful for. While her work with the Luma often took her to worlds with much different standards from her own, Awen always appreciated returning to the order and predictability of Plumeria. Similarly, Ezo’s ship was tidy and surprisingly comfortable, much different from what she’d imagined a bounty hunter’s vessel to be. It even smelled fresh. Glowing white floors rounded up to polished metal walls and handrails, while the ceiling was regularly spaced with clusters of pin lights. Awen looked around, concluding that this is what illegal money and contraband can buy.
She sat with her knees to her chest, back resting against the wall of a recessed couch. The nano-meds were doing their work, easing the pain and mending the frayed ends of whatever had come undone inside. The steady hum of the ship made Awen feel safe even though she knew the void was only a meter behind her.
The void. She heard her father saying, “All you’re going to find is the void,” warning her not to join the Luma, to stay on Elonia. But she hadn’t listened.
She pinched the bridge of her nose as her mind wandered back, replaying the explosions in the mwadim’s tent—or at least what she could remember of the incident. She’d sensed the blast soon enough to cover herself and the mwadim with a partial shield but not fast enough to help anyone else. It had all happened so quickly. And now Matteo, Elder Toochu, and the rest were…
Awen swallowed. Her mouth was dry. They were dead, and she hadn’t done enough to try to save them.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She had worked so hard, and for what? For some idiots to rig the meeting and blow the prospect of peace into a thousand pieces? It felt so futile. The galaxy’s last great divide was about to be mended, the Jujari and the Republic finally at some sort of agreement. It had been in her grasp. My father would have understood me. He would have seen what was possible. He would have understood that I was right to leave.
Awen wanted to cry, and she wanted to sleep. But her exhaustion was more than fatigue. It was a sudden urge to stop being a Luma, to go back home and do something other than whatever all this was—to try to forget everything that had just happened. And at the same time, she knew she couldn’t forget. She sensed that the faces of the dead would be with her for a lifetime.
Awen was lost in her thoughts, head on her knees, when Magnus appeared with a steaming cup of something to drink. “Made you this,” he said, handing the metal cup to her. He had stowed his helmet and gloves and removed several of the bulkier elements of his armor, making him almost normal sized. He’s still too tall. She guessed it had something to do with his boots.
“Thanks.” She savored the small warmth the cup provided.
“I see the bot got you squared away.” He sat in an acceleration couch across from her. “Nothing too serious?”
“Nothing too serious,” she confirmed. “Nanos doing their work. Just need to rest.”
Magnus nodded. “Looks like you were able to salvage your necklace.”
Awen instinctively reached for it. “Yeah, it’s the only thing I didn’t have to throw out.”
“Not that you had a whole lot on to begin with.” Magnus’s face froze. “I mean, it’s just that you—”
“Lieutenant.” Awen laughed then winced from the pain it caused her.
At Awen’s interruption, the trooper sat back and rubbed his forehead, looking relieved. She noted that he wasn’t the hardest man to look at… for a buckethead.
“Listen, about back there,” she started. “I wanted to thank you for saving my life.”
“It’s nothing.” Magnus waved. “Just doing my job.”
“Well, it may have been nothing to you, but it was something to me.” She dipped her head, trying to catch his eye. “So thank you.”
Magnus looked up. “You’re welcome.” He glanced into his cup. “You know, I can say the same about you too. That concrete block and the way you threatened Abimbola.” He paused. “Can you really blow yourself up?”
Awen laughed again. “Yeah. But it’s not the sort of thing you want to do more than once a day.”
Magnus looked up, surprised for a split second. “Oh, splick, you’re kidding,” he said, suddenly smiling. “Sorry. Language.”
“I don’t expect soldiers to be saints.”
“Good, ’cause we’re not soldiers—we’re Recon,” Magnus said. “Anyway, thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Awen took a sip of her drink, trying to think of something else to say. “Good tea.”
“Yeah, it’s all Ezo seems to have. That and Svoltin single malt whiskey.” Magnus paused. “I mean, I could get you—”
“No,” she said with a smile and waved him off. “The tea is just fine.”
“Good. No one should ever see you drunk.”
Awen raised her eyebrows and then realized he must have been talking about her being drugged. She didn’t remember much, but she guessed it was bad. “Abimbola’s?”
Magnus nodded. “Abimbola’s.”
“Mind if we keep whatever I said between us?”
“You said something?” He winked.
He was kind of cute; his baby face and deep-green eyes saw to that. She took another sip of tea and noticed the damage to his armor. “I’m so sorry. How are you?”
Magnus glanced at his body. “Looks way worse than it is,” he replied. “This suit can take a beating.”
“Even though you were leaking back there.”
“Leaking?”
“When we were tied up at Abimbola’s, I noticed the ground beneath you. Did you—did you wet yourself?”
“Did I wet myself? No, I”—a look of surprise dawned on his face, then he pointed to his thigh—“the Jujari punctured one of my reclamation bladders.”
“Reclamation bladders?”
“Yeah, it’s how we—”
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell,” she said.
“What? No, I don’t think you understand.”
“I get it, Lieutenant. Even the big boys get scared.” She winked. “How about the blood on you?”
Magnus paused then appeared to give up on trying to justify his leak. “Jujari. Maybe some of my own. But the armor’s good at clotting. I’ll get treatment when I get back to my unit.”
“TO-96 can check you out.”
“I’m sure he can, but I’d rather wait.”
“Suit yourself, Lieutenant.” Good-looking but still a naked monkey butt. Wait, where did that come from?
“You can just call me Magnus,” he said.
“I think we really should stick with—”
“After what you and I just saw, I’d rather not stick with the protocol. Magnus, please.”
“Magnus,” she replied. She found his assertiveness appealing even though it had to do with bending the rules. Maybe he wasn’t a dimwitted drone after all. “And you can call me Awen.”
“Awen,” he replied.
Hearing him say her name had more of an effect on her than she cared to admit. Did it show? She was suddenly extremely self-conscious and hid her face in the cup. You’re an idiot, Awen, and you have no time for this.
“So, any ideas on who’d want to blow up a room of Jujari, Luma, and Republic officials?”
“That is the big question, isn’t it?” Magnus sipped his tea. “Someone who didn’t want the alliance to happen. Or…”
“Or what?”
“Someone who didn’t want the mwadim giving you that,” he said, indicating the stardrive on the table. Its slender form and elegant lines looked otherworldly, a soft blue light emanating from slits in its cylindrical housing.
“That would imply that someone knew he had it and that he wanted to give it up,” she said.
“Didn’t he, though?”
“I don’t see how I could—”
“Listen, Awen. I have my own opinions about the Luma. You have yours about the Republic. But if there’s ever been a Luma who truly believes in her work—I mean, who embodies the ethos of what the Luma stand for—it’s got to be you. The Jujari may be a bunch of—”
“Easy,” Awen interrupted.
“A bunch of dangerous galactic pack hunters.”
“That works.”
“But they’re not stupid. And the mwadim was their alpha. Which means he knew who you were—he knew who was coming to help his planet. I’d wager a thousand credits on the fact that he was going to hand you that stardrive with or without a bomb blast. Because he trusted you.”
“But why give it to me at all?” she asked.
“And that’s the other big question. I don’t know. But I’m guessing you’re going to make sure his death isn’t in vain.”
Awen felt her face flush. Why his sudden confidence in me? Did he—
“Hey, mind if I ask you what the ambassador said to you?”
“The ambassador?” Awen’s mind raced. “Oh, when he grabbed my arm, you mean? Sure. He threatened me.”
“Threatened you?”
“He was upset that I was about to hand the mwadim a microdrive of the broken promises he’d made with other civilizations.”
“I don’t follow. You’re saying the ambassador—”
“Is a two-timing lowlife who only cares about his comfy credit account and where his next fatty mondollon steak is coming from. He only closes so many negotiations because he tells the incorporating worlds that they’ll get whatever they ask for. By the time leaders realize they’ve gotten the short end of the deal, it’s too late. And who’s going to stand up to the Republic when they send guys like you in as muscle?”
“Listen, we just—”
“I know,” she said. “You’re just the hired help. You don’t do any of the dirty work.”
“That’s not what I was going to say. Our hands are plenty dirty. I was going to say that we don’t support evil when it’s exposed.”
Awen believed him—not that she thought every trooper resisted evil, but she was sure that at least Magnus did. “You might be the exception, then,” she replied, chin raised.
“There are way more good Marines than bad.”
She didn’t know how to reply to that, so she didn’t.
“We’re called in to do evil things to evil people. Not everyone gets that, and I don’t expect them to. But it’s my job, and I do it well.” Magnus looked down at his tea for a second then back at her. “Your records on the ambassador’s betrayal… they are legit?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“Then I could see how he might be pretty upset. And I see how you’d mistrust the Republic.”
Awen looked at him, genuinely surprised. “Thank you.”
“Plus, the upside to this is you’ll never have to worry about Ambassador Bosworth again.” Magnus made the sound of a small explosion and spread his hands apart. “So, where are we headed?”
“I told Ezo I need to get to Worru.”
“Headed back to the Order,” Magnus concluded correctly. The Order of the Luma had its origin in the ancient city of Plumeria, now the capital of Worru and the galactic center for cultural learning.
“I still wished we could have searched for survivors,” Awen said, looking into her tea.
“I get that. But you have to remember the big picture in moments like this.”
“And what’s that?”
“There’s a reason you survived.”
“And a reason they died?” she asked.
Magnus pursed his lips. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Listen, the big picture is that you’re still alive and you have something important in your possession.”
“I’m alive because I had a split second to do something about it, and it still wasn’t enough to save them too.”
“You… you did something back there? When the first explosion happened?”
Awen nodded.
“More magic?”
“Not magic. It’s just that some of us… are different. We’re able to sense things before they happen.”
“The concrete,” Magnus said.
“Yeah, like the concrete. We can’t see everything before it happens. It can be… fuzzy. But I felt something in time enough to get a partial field around me and most of the mwadim.”
“Yeah, but not his head,” Magnus said with a sniff, remembering the giant dog’s mutilated muzzle.
“Like I said, a partial field. It was all I could do.”
“Well, it probably saved your life.”
“And it didn’t save theirs,” she said, feeling a sudden wave of bitterness.
“Awen, listen. Blaming yourself isn’t—”
“Isn’t going to solve anything?” She shook her head, agitated. “For all the mystics! I’ve heard that speech so many times. When will we learn that it doesn’t make people feel any less guilty?”
Magnus swirled his tea then took another sip. “I think we say it because we don’t know what else to say. And it’s what I keep telling myself.”
Awen searched his face. She suddenly realized, to her shame, that Magnus had lost people too. Sure, they were troopers, and they’d expected to die. They were paid to go into those kinds of situations. But that didn’t make it any less painful.
“Magnus… I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I didn’t even—”
“Bottom line is, you’re alive, and now you need to make it count.”
Make it count. Awen considered the wisps of steam that appeared above her cup and then vanished. “And what if I don’t?”
“What do you mean?”
Awen fought back a sudden urge to cry. She bit her lower lip and closed her eyes. This work might be about as meaningless as a wisp of steam—here one second and gone the next. The years of mounting tension with her parents, her tireless work for the Luma, the Jujari, and then it had all been snuffed out in a matter of minutes. Lives had been snuffed out.
“What if I just want to go back home and be done with all of this?” she asked then cleared her throat. “You know, I was just seventeen when I was asked to attend observances.”
Magnus looked at her with a raised eyebrow.
“Sorry. It’s six years of monastic training in the Luma’s academy. Anyway, I was seventeen. I had top scores in school, was civic minded, and wanted to make a difference. So, when I got the letter, I was beside myself. I thought, you know, this is it. This is my chance to change the galaxy. I loved what the Luma stood for, preserving galactic cultures and keeping them from—”
“From getting swallowed up by the Republic. Yeah, I get it.”
“It’s just a different way of making progress, that’s all.”
Magnus didn’t look convinced, but it didn’t matter. This was her story, not his. “Anyway, my parents fought me on it for months. Said it was a mistake.” She wiped a tear from her eye. “But I knew it wasn’t. After my first year, my tests revealed that I was a true blood.”
“A what?” he asked.
“A true blood. It’s believed that everyone can learn to move in the Unity of all things, but true bloods can move through it more powerfully.”
“That’s what you meant by ‘some of us’ earlier? About sensing things before they happen?”
“Yes.” She nodded and pushed a strand of hair over her ear. “So I thought, that was it. It would prove to my parents that I was destined to be
a Luma—that I’d chosen well for myself.”
“But they didn’t take it that way, I’m guessing.”
“No. No, they didn’t.” She sipped her tea. “The gap widened, and I threw myself into my studies.”
“The Jujari?”
“And quantum mechanics,” she added with a smile.
“Huh. Overachieve much?”
Awen smiled. “Yeah, well… I excelled in school. No surprise there, I guess. And by the time I graduated and became an elder, I knew more about the Jujari then even my masters. So when the Order received word from the mwadim that they wanted us to serve as council for negotiations with the Republic, I was asked to lead the diplomatic mission.”
“That’s quite the honor for someone so young,” Magnus said then hesitated. “I don’t mean any disrespect.”
“None taken. And I agree. At twenty-four years common, I’m the youngest emissary to lead a mission in the Luma’s multimillennial history.”
“Whoa, I had no idea. That’s impressive.”
“You’d assume my parents would think so too. But now that everything’s fallen apart, maybe this was all just a big mistake. Maybe my parents were right.”
“Maybe they were,” Magnus agreed, “and maybe they weren’t. But as far as I can tell, they’re not the ones writing your destiny, Awen. You are.” He set his tea down on the mess table beside him. “Back on Caledonia, during my first deployment, our platoon had been pinned down on a beachhead, and our CO was trying to come up with options. I noticed a stand of palms to one side and offered to take my fire team to flank the enemy. It was risky. There was no cover between our position and those trees. But I felt that if we had a shot a catching our enemy off guard, this was it. My CO said I was an idiot, called me a bunch of names not worth repeating here. But in the end, he let me go. Said it was my call.”
“What happened?”
“I ran my fire team across the beach, took up firing positions in the palms, and surprised the enemy emplacement. My idea worked. CO said it saved the platoon. Bottom line is, my CO wasn’t writing my destiny, and neither was my enemy. I was.”