Stars of Blood and Glory (29 page)

“
I do not think she is
Federation,” said Roman. “Her datalink implant is not same
design.”

“
Well, who else but the
planetborn would resort to such dishonorable tactics?”

The old cyborg ignored the jab, while Danica
finished up the dressing and saw to the gash in his side. The girl
slowly tensed, then her fingers began to twitch.

“
I think I have something,” said
Roman. “It is signature code, but it is encrypted. One moment
…”

“
What’s wrong with the
lieutenant?” Danica asked. “She looks like—”

“
She’s dying,” said Roman.
“Here—code is 636-TG. It is not found in our database.”

Abaqa gasped, and his legs went weak. “Stars
of the deep,” he said, his stomach falling out from under him.
“That’s—that’s—”

“
That’s what?”

“
That’s Tagatai’s personal ID
tag.”

Danica and Roman both looked up at him and
frowned. In the cyborg’s arms, the unconscious girl started going
into spasms.

“
Hameji,” Danica muttered. “They
probably wanted to place her close enough to strike the Rigelan
royal family.”

It can’t be true,
Abaqa thought to
himself. Yet even as he leaned against the wall for support, he
knew it had to be. 636-TG—that code was known to everyone across
the Hameji fleets. And the kill order—she must have received it
when they’d jumped in to New Vela. The implant would have connected
covertly to the Hameji network and uploaded its report before
waiting to receive orders. But to think that Tagatai would stoop so
low—how many of his other rivals had been killed by such cowardly,
backhanded means?

“
She needs help,” said Roman.
“Her implants are killing her, but she does not have enough
strength to reject them.” He laid her gently on the floor and
pulled out a cord from the base of his neck, where the cybernetic
enhancements included a neural socket.

“
What are you doing?” Danica
asked, her voice betraying her alarm.

“
I must make direct connection to
save her. It is only hope.”

“
But—”

“
I will be safe, I promise. In
your time, it will take only seconds.”

The girl’s spasms had gotten worse—her whole
body was stiff and shaking as if she were about to have a seizure.
Roman pulled the cord down to the jacks at the back of her
neck.

“
Good luck, Sergeant,” said
Danica. She saluted him, and he nodded solemnly back, his hands
already full. Even though it was just a nod, it carried the weight
and authority of a salute.

Tagatai,
Abaqa thought, still dizzy as
Roman plugged the cord into the back of the girl’s neck.
How can it possibly
be true?

* * * * *

Roman swam in a sea of raw data, all physical
sensation stripped from his consciousness. It tore his awareness in
every direction, leaving him no center around which to settle. By
sheer force of will, he struggled against it, seeking patterns in
the chaos. As he found them, his cybernetic mind translated them
into feelings analogous to his physical senses, orienting him
within space and time.

Suddenly, he found himself standing in an
empty, dark waste. The data was not far from him—invisible streams
still streaked around the edges of his consciousness—but for now,
his mind had wandered into an island of simulated reality within
the digital realm.

“
Rina!” he called out, stumbling
through the darkness. If he was right, this was a part of the
girl’s subconscious. She could not be far.

A tingling sensation in his right side made
him glance down and pat his chest. His prosthetics were gone, and
his body was much younger—almost fifty standard years younger, back
when he had first enlisted in the Gaian Imperial Navy. He looked
again, and saw that he was wearing the uniform of the Tajji
revolution—the olive green fatigues which he had taken upon
defecting shortly after the wars in the New Pleiades. The darkness
shifted, and he was in space, staring down at the brown-green
steppes and rolling hills of his beloved homeworld.

Our subconscious minds are
struggling to connect,
he thought to himself as he sped downward toward
the surface.
I am here because our memories share some
correlation.
The all-too familiar longing for home and family swept over
him like a flood, and he found himself floating over a sea of
glass—the planetary dome of his childhood, as seen from above. He
looked down and saw the factory town where he was born, monorails
weaving between the industrial centers and outlying settlements
nestled against the hills and forests. A lump rose in his throat,
and he felt an overwhelming desire to go down there—but he knew
that he would never find Rina that way. No, she would be somewhere
else in this dreamscape, sharing a similar memory.

In the deep blue sky overhead, soundless
explosions flared while tracers arced down to the surface of the
planet. Roman’s body tensed—it was the Gaian Imperial Navy,
crushing the revolutionaries in their last desperate battle for
independence. Somewhere up there in orbit, he would find the
battleship on which he’d fought on that fateful day. Perhaps, if he
could go up there—if he could just change a few small things,
reliving the battle the way it should have been—

No,
he told himself.
The girl—you must save
her.
Ignoring
his youthful longings, he pointed himself east, to the desert where
the free nomads roamed under the open air.

“
Rina,” he called out again,
trying to picture her young, almost girlish face in his mind. An
unseen force pulled him forward, as if to the center of a
whirlpool, and he found himself speeding over a desert landscape
far different from his own. Sharp, craggy mountains stretched
across the horizon, while the rocky land below was a deep, dark
red, like rust stained with blood. He passed over a forbidding
mountain range and across a wide alluvial plain before flying over
an expansive desert waste, heading toward a small mesa and a
cluster of adobe huts around a rickety old windmill.

Rina,
he thought to himself, and knew that
she was there.

He was near enough now to see a shuttle, the
engines still glowing as if it were about to take off. A small
group of people had gathered nearby—a man in white flowing robes
and several women dressed in brown and black. A feeling of tension
filled the air, so thick he could almost taste it. She was here,
all right—this was her nightmare.

“
Rina!” he called out, but none
of the figures looked up at him. Overhead, the pink and yellow
flares of nuclear explosions cast eerie shadows across the
forbidding landscape, and he realized that the Hameji were moving
into position, preparing to slag her world. Her despair swept over
him, nearly drowning the sense of urgency that had driven him
forward. But mustering his will, he fought back against the wall of
her emotions and plunged downward.

* * * * *

The harsh desert wind whipped Rina’s face,
making her pull her headscarf tighter as dust raked across her
mouth and eyes. Her mother coughed next to her, while her father
and sisters stood like solemn statues as the sky flashed white and
yellow. Directly in front of them, the shuttle settled down to the
ground without shutting off its engines. Her childish heart raced,
even in her memories—time had come to an end, and the world was
collapsing all around her.

Jalil was the first to run to the ship. His
princely white robes fluttered in the wind, and he stopped just as
the hatchway opened and the off-world girl Michelle stepped out. He
turned back to the family, his eyes burning with urgency and
desperation.

“
Everybody in!” he shouted,
beckoning for them to follow. “There’s no time to lose!”

But no one moved.

Rina looked to her older sister, Mira, who
glanced nervously at the others. The tension was visible in her
face, highlighted by the pink and white flare of another
explosion.

“
Did you hear me?” Jalil shouted.
“The world is ending—we have to leave!”

“
We’re not going anywhere in the
devil’s caravaneer,” said
Rina’s mother
, putting her hands obstinately on her hips. Rina
glanced from her to Jalil to Mira, torn with a fear made all the
worse by the confusion all around her.

“
There’s no time to argue,” said
her half-sister Tiera, running to the ship. “Come on, let’s
go!”

All eyes turned to their father,
but he glanced sheepishly at
his wife
, as if looking for some direction. As he searched
in vain for the words to express himself, Rina turned to Mira and
saw her eyes widen.

“
What are you waiting for?” Jalil
shouted again. “There’s no time—we’ve got less than ten minutes
before—”

“
We’re staying right here,”
said
their
mother
. “This
is our home, and no tricks from you are going to get us to abandon
it. Right, girls?”

Without warning, Mira took a step forward
and broke into a run. Rina’s heart leaped. A part of her longed to
run after her, but she hesitated, too scared to move.

“
Hey!” screamed their mother.
“Mira! Come back here!”

Mira and Jalil embraced, holding each other
as if they would never let go.

“
Jalil! How dare you steal my
daughter! Mira, come back at once!”

“
Mother!” Tiera shouted from the
hatchway, ignoring the others. “Come on!”

Tiera’s elderly mother Zayne looked from her
daughter to the Sheikh and back again, as hesitant as Rina to be
the next to run forward.

“
Zayne!” Jalil cried, letting go
of Mira. “Mother, please! Let’s go!”

With tears in her eyes, the old woman ran to
the ship, stumbling over the rocky earth. Tiera ran forward and
helped her to the shuttle, while Rina’s mother shook her head and
clucked. “The old whore,” she muttered disapprovingly.

“
We don’t have any more time,”
Jalil shouted, his voice growing hoarse. “Can’t you see? Everyone
who stays behind is going to die!”

Time slowed as the memory reached its awful
climax. Mira’s eyes met her own, and shivers ran down her spine as
she realized she’d reached one of those crucial moments of decision
that can never be repeated or undone. In that instant, the entirety
of her life flashed before her awareness. What had she accomplished
that was truly worth living for? What friends did she have who
looked forward to seeing her? A lump rose in her throat as she
remembered Roman, covered in blood—bleeding from the wounds she’d
inflicted on him. She was weak—too weak to love, too weak to be
worth loving.

As she watched, the child that had been her
ran forward, into her sister’s arms. She was a ghost now, a bare
wisp of consciousness in the wind, about to perish as the world
came to an end around her.

“
So, these are the demons that
haunt you,” came a low, familiar voice behind her. She turned and
saw Roman in his crisp Tajji uniform, no sign of blood from their
previous encounter. He put an arm around her shoulder, and though
she was just a ghost, his touch was not insubstantial.

“
Yes,” she whispered, watching
the terrible scene as it came to its inevitable close. “I—I
shouldn’t have gone.”

“
That is not true. If you had
stayed, you would have died.”

“
But did I really deserve to
live?”

He looked down and met her eyes, his
expression so intense that even his mechanical eye radiated with
fervency.

“
What makes you think you do not?
The greatest tragedy is when one truly loses their will to live. I
did not see this in my youth, but I see it now—yes, I see it
perfectly.”

“
My life is a living nightmare,”
she said, her emotions spilling out of her. “I have no home, no
family—I’m nothing but a killing machine. No one knows how alone
I’ve been.”

“
Your sister and brother-in-law,
they are still alive, yes?”

“
They are,” Rina admitted.
“But—but I do not deserve to be with them.”

“
You are wrong,” said the old
cyborg. He turned to face her and squatted down to her level,
clasping both of his heavy hands on her shoulders.

“
Listen,” he said, his voice firm
but not harsh. “You are not yourself now. Your mind has been
infiltrated by some malicious device, implanted by those who
destroyed your world. They have made you slave, and turned you into
killing machine. With your help, I can remove this device. You will
be free to love, free to return to those who love you. But you must
be willing—you must work with me to do it.”

Rina took a deep breath, her heart pounding.
Across from them, Tiera was boarding the shuttle with her
mother.

“
You must have the will to live,”
said Roman, his arms trembling. “I know it is difficult—more than
you know, I know. But your life does not have to be nightmare any
longer. I can free you—let me free you!”

“
But I almost killed
you.”

He grinned. “It will take more than small
knife to kill this cyborg.”

At his words, she couldn’t help but laugh—a
laugh that brought tears to her eyes. She looked down and realized
she was no longer a ghost, an insubstantial wisp—she was a young
girl, the girl who had made that decision so many years ago to
live.