Chapter 10:
“It’s so beautiful here.” Tara stared at the grass she sat on, and her hand went down to run across that turf. The grass swayed and waved, and the smell of flowers and trees and the wind all lifted her spirits.
Jenny, who was mated to Marik—a Revant who, like the human Jenny, was a natural healer—smiled at her. “Oh, I know. Every time I look about myself, I think how lucky I am that I no longer live Below.”
Below. The underground section of Old Earth, where the poorest and most miserable had lived because of their caste. Tara looked down, suddenly ashamed of the fact that she had never known hardship like that. “I was sorry to hear that Old Earth was destroyed.”
Jenny sighed, but she smiled too. “We all were, but maybe it was necessary. I hate that so much life was lost. We tried, we did. It was awful—the war and the destruction—but the lives we saved were worth it. That and the fact that we stopped the Gorlites and killed off their entire race, something that should have been done centuries ago.”
Tara’s head came up. “I can’t believe that the Federation really had a pact with them. I mean, I know that they did, but…Gorlites?”
It was true. The Federation had made a pact that had allowed that loathsome race to take ships and kill off entire planets without consequence, and all while calling them a menace that needed to be stopped. She knew that, but it still boggled her mind. In the weeks since she and Blade had arrived at Revant Two, which was now acting as a meeting place for those who would rebel and fight, she had been stunned by all the stories of all the ways that the Federation had betrayed its citizens.
Talon and his mate, Jessica, stepped out of a building nearby, and she raised a hand, but they turned the other way and kept walking, their heads bent together and clearly unseeing of her gesture.
Jenny said, “How are you and Blade doing?”
Tara shrugged. He had basically avoided her like the plague since they had arrived on Revant Two. He was always busy, working hard on making plans for the first strike, which would happen in just a few days, and she knew that he was busy and worried with the things that war would mean, but she still found herself rushing toward him and trying to get his attention whenever she could.
“Not very well. I finally heard about his lover, the one that the Federation killed, a few days ago from his father and I wonder, I really wonder, if whatever was between us was just a matter of convenience for him. If it mattered at all.”
She had not meant to make such an admission. She really had not. Yet she had, and she knew why. Jenny’s nature, so sweet and kind, and her natural ability to pull out whatever harmed a person had loosened her tongue.
Jenny patted her knee. “I know how you feel. Men can be hard to figure out. It seems what they want most is the thing they run from the hardest.”
Was that what Blade was doing? Running from her because he wanted her? If only there was a way to find out for sure.
There was one, but it would involve the heavy risk of rejection, and she was not sure she was ready for that.
But if she wanted him, and she did, perhaps risk was the only thing that would win him over.
She said, “I think you may be right. I have to get going. I’ll see you later.”
Jenny stood. Her blonde hair glinted in the sunlight, and her walk was easy as she headed in the opposite direction. Tara watched her go for a minute, then her attention was diverted by the sight of Blade striding out of the same building that Jessica and Talon had exited just a few moments before. She headed for him, her feet working quickly to take her across the grass and dirt paths to where he stood.
He stopped, and a small smile came upon his handsome face, but it didn’t quite meet his eyes. She lifted a hand and said, “You look tired.”
“It’s been a trying few days,” he admitted softly. “How are you?”
“Good. I…” Oh, what the hell? It was either risk it or never know. She leaned in, her mouth landing softly on his.
For a moment, he just stood there, his arms at his side and his mouth loose, and then he was kissing her back so hard that her lips felt pulped and bruised, and she loved it.
He broke the kiss off and growled out, “I…I have been avoiding you because I thought that perhaps you needed time to recover and grieve, and because…because I was not sure why you ever slept with me in the first place. I did not want to take advantage of you.”
Her breath caught, and her bold answer made her heart pound like someone had shot it full of some drug. “I want you to take advantage of me. A few times.”
His eyes lit up. The smile turned to real laughter. His hand found her waist and slid around it. He leaned against her and the loose tunic and trousers he wore transferred heat from his body to hers. “Then we should probably go somewhere far more private.”
“I have a hut to myself. It’s small but…but there’s a pallet.” It was true that her hut was small. Revant Two was a primitive planet that was just beginning to sprout into something. She led the way, walking fast because desire was pouring through her and making her whole body react.
They reached her hut and went inside. The door closed and he swung her around and into his body for another kiss.
That kiss left her mind whirling and her body traced with fire. Their bodies collided and the urgent press of him against her made everything else fade away. His hands trailed down her body. His fingertips pressed into the highly raised knobs of her spine, traced the column of her spine before dropping lower to the pert slopes of her ass cheeks.
He gathered those full cheeks into his large hands and kneaded them through the fabric of her dress, lifting and massaging them as her crotch met his, and the thick hardness of his member pressed into her belly.
Her gasp was one of sheer delight. His tongue slid into her mouth again, bringing the taste of the water he had drunk earlier and the faint tinge of mint and herbs. The shape of his teeth met her tongue for a moment, and then their tongues were parrying and thrusting, meeting and parting. Every breath was a precious thing, all sweetness and heat that made her nipples stiffen and her juices start to flow from within her core and spread along the puffed surfaces of her inner and outer lower lips. She wriggled against him, her eyes closing as that kiss grew even deeper and his hands went lower, yanking at the hem of her dress before tugging it upward.
He had to break the kiss off to get her dress over her head, and she took advantage of that to shed his tunic from his skin. She watched with greedy eyes as his body came into view. Her fingers fumbled against the buttons of his trousers, and his staff sprang into her hand.
Her fingers stroked against that flesh, satin over steel. The heavy veins wrapping that shaft pulsed and his head was dusky and filled with blood. Tara went to her knees, eager to please him and equally eager to taste his skin in her mouth.
Her tongue slid over his engorged head, bringing a low moan from his lips. His hips slid forward, and her mouth opened, taking that rigid member down her throat. His scent, slightly starchy and all male, filled her nose as his hands cupped her head and brought her face even closer to his thatch of coarse hair. That hair tickled her nose as she swallowed down his cock and then struggled to bring her mouth off and away from it. His grip relaxed, and she bobbed her head, breathing hard before taking him again.
Blade’s hot rod slid past her lips again. Her tongue licked along the skin of his shaft, and a slightly salty fluid filled the back of her throat. His groan was rough and raspy, and his fingers went taut in her hair then released her head so she could back away and then suck him down her throat again.
She pursed her lips, applying more pressure. Her fingers went to his sac, and she stroked the balls within it, feeling them lift and thicken as he reached a higher peak of desire.
He said, “My God that feels so damn good, but I need you to stop now.”
She didn’t want to stop. She wanted this; she wanted to feel him spilling his seed into her mouth, but more than that she wanted to feel him inside her, his body taking and filling hers. She sat back, one hand still wrapped loosely around his shaft.
Blade reached down and hauled her to her feet, lifting her off the floor and toting her toward her pallet in an unceremonious and hasty way that took her breath away simply because at that moment she could feel his strength, that incredible strength of his, and then she was on her back on the pallet, and his mouth was on her nipples, teasing them and making her squirm against his body.
Her words were a whisper. “Please. Please, I want you so badly. I want to feel you inside me.”
She did want that. She needed that. His fingers dipped between her legs, and then he moved lower yet. His fingers moved through the hair that covered her pussy and found the wet seam of her lips before plunging inside her in one fast and unapologetic pump that made her gasp and writhe against the rough linens covering her pallet.
His tongue streaked along her clit then bore down, massaging it from left to right in a way that made every thought fade from her mind. She could not think; all she could do was press herself upward, seeking to get even closer to his tongue as his fingers plunged in and out of her body, and her oils spread and leaked across his tongue and fingers.
Friction built, and then it built again. A high keening wail rose from her mouth, and she grunted, her ass cheeks straining as she lifted higher off the bed again, her fingers gripping at his hair and her inner thighs shaking. Her juices spilled, coating his face and her inner thighs before running down the cleft between her ass cheeks.
The scent of sex filled the air of the small hut. Her breath came in and out, ragged and harsh and her belly quivered with each flick of his tongue and entry into her that his fingers made.
He moved upward, leaving her hovering on the edge of a climax. Her legs wrapped around his body and her hand found his thick and pounding staff. He was inside her in a single breath and they moved together, thrusting and yielding and taking as the heat and friction grew to a level too intense to bear and then shattered and broke, making her inner walls contract and loosen and her body go first rigid with the strain and then limp and loose with satisfaction.
Blade braced himself above her, his body shaking and taut, then he thrust forward one final time. His dick shivered and beat within her walls, sending long bursts of hot seed into her.
He gasped and fell forward, his weight all on her body, and she let her body relax even further so she could take that weight and not be smothered under it.
He muttered, “Sorry,” and moved away a bit. His hands pulled her into his body, and she lay there, still tangled into him and smiling gently.
He said, “I’m an idiot.”
She asked, “What do you mean?”
He sighed loudly and then chuckled ruefully. “I…I’ve wanted to come to you so often since we have been here but the talk of war and the prep has been hard. I had that to deal with, but more than that I had to fight myself. You see, I was in love once, long ago.”
“I know. Lauren. Your father told me about her.” She looked into his eyes. “He said that her death was what changed you, and he could not blame you. That he knew that you had seen firsthand what the Federation was capable of and unlike him and most others you didn’t look away or excuse their actions as being something that was done for the greater good. That you saw it for what it was, what they had done. Cruel and calculated and wrong. She was a spy but they made an agreement with her and they didn’t keep it, and you saw that meant that the Federation lacked honor, something he had not been willing to admit just then.”
His smile was pained. “I spent a lot of time thinking that it was her that I mourned the most, but now I know better. It was the loss of my belief in the Federation that caused me so much pain. Oh, it hurt, that loss. I loved her, and I turned that love into a catalyst for revenge and death, and I wish I could say I regret it, but I don’t because I do see the Federation for what it is. It is a cancer on the world and one we have to excise now before it kills off everything still healthy and good.”
She swallowed hard. The feel of his skin against hers was so right and so real, and she wished they did not have to talk about war, but they did.
“We go to war soon.”
“Sooner than we planned. The people of Meridia have begun firing on Fed ships this very morning. It was premature, yes, but they had the perfect advantage, and they took it. They slaughtered an entire armada because they had the element of surprise on their side. The Feds have always believed their chokehold of that planet and its outlying systems so complete that they relaxed their grip and forgot that the Meridians were once one of the most war-like planets in the entire universe.”
Dread roiled up. “So what now?”
He said, “I have to go to Meridia. The planet’s not celebrating; they are waiting for the Fed to strike back, and when they do, it will be hard. They know that, and they will need help to battle off the next wave.”
She took a deep breath. “I can help on the ground. I can help with the wounded and the supplies and so on. And…” her voice trembled, “I can count the dead so that they are remembered. That was my job, you know. To log the dead.”
His eyes stared into hers. “You’re brave, and I wish I could leave you here, but everyone is needed. All across the universe, the planets are firing on the Federation. The people of Meridia set off the chain reaction we set in motion by placing warships and armies throughout the universe.”
She was afraid. So very afraid but there was no going back now. This war had been coming for centuries, and now it was at hand. She gave him her best smile even though it shook on the corners and fear stabbed its way into her heart. “You better not die on me.”
His fingers traced her jaw. “I was about to say the same thing to you.”
She whispered, “When do we go?”
“The ships are already loading.”
No. Not this soon! She shrank back from that, but she knew there was no choice. She had known the day he had told her what he was going to do that war was inevitable and that if she was to stay with him, she would be caught up in it.
The truth was that even if she had not stayed aboard that ship, she would have been caught up in that war.
“Then we should get dressed.”
He nodded, and then he kissed her again. But that time his kiss felt like a kiss given to say goodbye.
Tara ran across burning land and earth. The thick coils of fire from the bomb that had dropped a hundred yards from where she had been standing shot upward toward the sky. She coughed and pulled the top of her tunic over her mouth and nose as she cowered back against a wall just in time to avoid being cut down by laser weapons being aimed at the troops fighting on that side of the street, the rebel troops on whose side she stood.
The battle was pitched and violent. Bodies lay everywhere. She knew Blade was somewhere in the mass of bodies engaging in brutal combat right behind her. She felt the force of Jenny gathering her inner ability, and then soldiers dressed in Federation garb dropped to the ground screaming in agony. Their cries beat against Tara’s ears and heart and soul. She pitied them even as she knew their deaths were necessary.
Jessica’s body shot in front of hers just as a jagged lance of weapon burst struck. Jessica was already on the ground, taking her down too. Tara gasped out, “Thanks.”
Jessica, her face streaked with blood and ash, snapped, “Keep your goddamn head down and your ass covered.”
Then she was gone. Tara crawled onward, trying to get out of the center of the fighting. She knew Jessica had not meant for her words to be unkind, so she ignored the tone of them and took the very good advice, ducking behind a low wall formed of a broken craft and a partial remnant of a stone wall.
She heard death cries and shouts. The rattle of blades as laser weapons lost power and surge and failed and the fighting got even grimmer and even more volatile. The rebels wanted freedom. The Federation wanted everything else.
It was a battle that had to be won, and she crawled onward, her hands stinging from the heat rising up from the ground below her knees and palms.
A body lay nearby, and she recognized the plain clothing as belonging to a citizen of the planet. She turned the body over to see a young man staring at her. Blood ran from his nose and lips, but he was smiling even as his eyes began to cloud over in the first throes of death.
He wheezed out, “We got those bastards, didn’t we? Fuck the Federation. Freedom!”
She ran her hands over his tunic. He had a massive chest wound that he could not survive even if she got him to help right then, and she knew it. She took his hand and said, “You fought like a warrior.”
He grinned again. Blood coated every single tooth. His eyes went wide and stared at her. He garbled out, “Freedom. I’ll die for that.”
He would. He was. There was no way around it. Tears came up, but she held them back.
He whispered, “What’s your name?”
“Tara.” She let her fingers wind around his and impart a little warmth to his chilling flesh. “What’s yours?”
“Gregor. I’m seventeen today. It’s my birthday.” His smile held everything. “I won’t live, will I?”
“No.”
He tried to nod but could not manage it. “We did it. We beat those bast…” he coughed, sending more blood running down his chin. He asked in a voice gone child-like. “Is it over? Did we win?”
“Yes, it is over, and yes we won. The Federation is no more.”
It was a lie, but what did that matter? They were winning, at least for the moment, or so it seemed, but how could she possibly know?
One of his hands went into the air and formed a fist. He screamed then, screamed in a mixture of both pain and victory. “Freedom! Fre…”
He died before he got the word out the second time. His life ended abruptly and without a second of pause. Tara crawled away from him, her heart breaking at the waste. She got back to the wall and looked over it.
Meridia was aflame. The Federation had been furious at the sudden open rebellion against it that was playing out across the universe, and it had sent its warships to every planet that was firing upon it.
Meridia was the epicenter, and the Federation had spared nothing.
Tara saw the bombs falling again, and her heart shook with rage as she realized that that time they were bombing the hospital and the shelter where the eldest and youngest had all taken refuge.
“You bastards!” her scream was one of utter fury, and she was up and moving before she even registered that fact.
Bombs whistled all around as Tara ran for a building, her hands clawing at falling rubble to yank an older man and a terrified woman from the falling debris. Tara’s fingernails were broken and bloody from that and from other rescues.
Laser fire hit the wall right over her head, and she screamed and ducked then rolled along the ground, pressing up hard against a wall that promptly began to topple onto her.
Hands yanked her forward and out. Blade shouted, “Come on! We’re fighting too short on the ground!”
They were short everywhere. Talon and his crews had had to go to the outlying planets above Meridia to try to battle back a massive wave of warships and Meridia had lost too many of its fighter pilots that day. The wreckage of downed ships was everywhere, burning on the streets and on the crushed roofs of the buildings upon which they had landed.
Blade stopped running. She did too. His head went up and back. He tracked a ship, so large its shadow blotted out the sun above them. His lips formed two words that sent horror and fear right into her. “Neutron bombs.”
The bombs that could destroy entire planets. The bombs that could wipe out everything and everyone. The bombs that there was no escape from.
Blade yanked her forward again. Her feet skimmed across the burning ground. Her body was loose with fright, and her brain had gone so numb she could not even fathom what was happening anymore as he pulled her toward a ship that was hastily loading people from the planet onto it.
Bombs everywhere. Federation and rebel ships, locked in lethal combat, blew to bits ahead and the sky was lit with the flaming wreckage. The world had gone upside down somehow, and she was in the center of a war she had never wanted to take part in, but believed in.
Blade’s hands gripped her arms. Tears poured down her face as he said, “Go. Go now, Tara.”
Her heart was like a stone in her chest. Fear, so real and vital she could feel it clawing at her internal organs, rocketed through her and made her entire body take on a high thin trembling that made it hard to keep standing so she leaned against him, feeling the strength of his body, his warm and living body, against her own. “No, not without you. I won’t.”
Blade sucked in a breath. “There’s about two seconds before they blow the entire world we stand on to bits. Goddammit, go. Now.”
Tara knew he was right. She took his hands. Her voice trembled. “If I’m going to die, I want to do it here and now. I don’t want to spend whatever’s left running. Please.”
He whispered, “What are you saying?”
“I’m not running. There’s nowhere to go anyway. You know that. The bombs are hitting everywhere. Everything’s falling. No matter what I won’t get off the surface and if I do what then? The Fed ships will blow whatever ship I’m on to bits. I’m not dying without you.”
They were going to die. Period. Full stop. There was no way around that fact, and she accepted that at that moment. There was nowhere to go and running might prolong it for a few more minutes, but death was inevitable. This was her death, and she would damn well choose how it happened, and she was choosing to be with him.
Blade said, “I love you, Tara.”
Tears streamed down her face. The ground shook below her feet. The Fed ships dropped another bomb, and the earth split and fissured not far from where they stood. Buildings fell. The screams of the wounded rose high in the air and the sound of more ships crashing, bringing flame and death with them, drowned those screams out.
“I love you,” she whispered, “With all my heart and soul, I love you.”
Ash, thick and greasy, rolled over them in a choking wave. Blade drew her into his arms. His mouth came down on hers, his lips holding fast to hers. More bombs whistled down, and the sound of weapon fire rose yet again.
The wind blew the rank smell of scorched earth and the dead to her nose, but she forgot about that; everything faded away as his mouth took hers captive and then plundered it. She could feel the hammering of his heart below his stained and ripped tunic. She could feel the press and thrust of his body against hers and the beat of blood in her veins and the tender and yet demanding feel of his tongue against hers.
The world, the entire universe, was ending. But love was forever, and she gave in to all the things she felt for him, for the strong and proud and sometimes impossible man who had saved her life and then showed her things she had never thought she would see.
That this was the end was not something to fear anymore.
They would be together in this life and the next: she just knew it.
The kiss broke off. The smoke and ash blew harder. Blade’s head tilted back. His eyes, shining bright in his dirty face, suddenly widened. He said, “Oh my God! It’s Talon and his army!”
His hand took hers, and they ran. Her legs pumped fast, and her breath stroked in and out of her lungs like an engine on overtime. The row of hills stood stark and nude; the grass burned to nothing and the sky still dark. The Fed ships fell back, their pilots already wearied by the battle and the losses suddenly more than they were willing to endure as the Revant co-leader of the rebellion zoomed in, his ships armed and his captains fresh and eager for Fed blood.
The battle became a battle in the sky. The bombs stopped falling. The military on the ground began to mobilize.
Blade shouted, “Tara, go help the wounded and get the kids and elderly somewhere out of the range of the weapon fire, help as many as you can!”
She wanted to kiss him again, but there was no time. He was already turning away, his weapons drawn once more and his shouts rallying the ground forces to him, and then he was gone, lost from her sight as they moved forward, determined to end this oppression of the Federation for once and for all.
She might still die but hope had sprung anew, and Tara was galvanized by it. She ran, her arms and legs moving in tandem and her dirty hair flying out behind her. The smoke made breathing difficult. She spotted a small child sitting on a broken pile of rubble, and she ran for the boy, his coughs telling her just how dire his predicament was. She snatched him up into her arms and raced away from the building he had been atop just as it crumbled and fell away into its own basement.
The boy let out a high thin scream and she wanted to comfort him, but she knew that was hardly possible right then. She spotted a small column of people fleeing from the epicenter of the destruction and headed for them.
She called out, “Wait! Wait! I need anyone able to help me get those who aren’t out!”
A man, tall but thin, stepped forward. His hand rested on the head of a small girl. He said, “I can help. Is that your boy?”
Tara set the boy down. He immediately collapsed into a screaming and shaking heap. Several women ran forward to take him. Tara shook her head, “No, I found him. I don’t know where his parents are, but there are a lot of people who are wounded and who need to be moved. We also need to get these kids to safety.”
She was joined by a half-dozen. Many refused, determined to get themselves as far from the battle as possible; they were not willing to risk going back to the war zone. Tara did not blame them for that; she did not want to do it either, but she had to.
Somebody had to do it.
She and the others who had volunteered began trying to find the ones who were still alive and might make it. The hospital had been reduced to smoking rubble and ash and the scent of burned bodies and the soot hung thick around where it had stood. Tara did not even bother going there; she already knew that nobody could have survived that bombing.
Instead, they began in the buildings that had taken the outer rings of the blast fields, and they found many wounded and some who were just dazed and too scared to move. It was slow going, and her eyes kept going to the skies to see the rebel ships led by Talon and his crew beating the Fed ships back.
She could not tell who was winning on the ground. The dead lay everywhere and the two sides had given up on any kind of dividing line between themselves and were now embroiled in a brutal combat that raged for miles in either direction.
She could not let her mind wander to Blade. If she did, she would lose all hope. She had to believe he was all right and that he was not hurt or dead and so she just plowed onward, dragging the wounded to the tops of the hills and then into the valleys just beyond where the bombing had not yet hit, and there was a long river that could give them water. Those who were able there began to try to help save the wounded using whatever they had on hand.
A small ship set down, and to her relief, she saw the bay door swing open to reveal rebels, Jenny and Marik among them.
She called out, “Healers have come! Help them any way you can!”
Then she went back up the hill and down it again, back into the battlefield, trying to find those who needed the most help and those who could walk.
Her body was exhausted. The terrible sights all around her were too much for her mind to take and so it shut down, encasing her in numbness. She could think only of the task she had been set and that she had to accomplish it or go mad, and she knew that.
She found a wounded rebel, his leg broken and a bloody wound in his side. She helped him, walking him up the hill while he leaned against her heavily, and then she laid him down below a stunted tree before moving on from him and on to the next person who needed her assistance.
It went on that way for what felt like an eternity. She walked so much her legs became stiff and sore. Her body was covered with blood not her own. Her hair, stiffened by smoke and ash and blood and dirt, tangled around her hair. Thirst came, but she didn’t stop to drink until she absolutely had to and she could not go on without a precious swallow or two of water.
Night came. The Fed ship in the air began to retreat, and the ground troops fell until their number was so small that those left surrendered just before dawn. The rebel ships landed in groups as their captains took to the ground for fuel and rest.
The wind had picked up again, and the entire city smoldered. The flames had been mostly quenched, but the fires still burned below the rubble and Tara, completely wiped out, stood on the hill, looking down with tears rolling silently down her face.
A hand fell on her shoulder. Jenny spoke softly. “You need sleep.”
Tara’s hands came up and yanked at the stiff and stinking mass of her hair. “I know.”
Jenny stepped up beside her. Like Tara, she was dirty and tired, her clothes ripped here and there where she had yanked strips of it away to make bandages. “You will be no good to anyone if you don’t rest. Come on.”
“I’m…” She could not say the rest of it. She didn’t have to either because just then, Jenny said, “Hoping to see Blade. I know. I hope to see him too, but for now, you have to be strong enough to care for yourself.”
Jenny’s strong but gentle hands turned her away from the sight of the ruined city. Tara staggered along beside her, her eyes so gritty with fatigue that she could barely see.
Someone had had the foresight to collect barrels of water from the river, and she went to one, dipping a large pitcher’s worth out so she could wash.
Jenny said, “Here, let me help you.”
They moved to a spot where hasty shelters had been made of whatever could be found. Tara got the clothes she wore off and managed to scrub away most of the filth. Jenny helped her to clean her hair. Tara had no hairbrush, so she made due with just running her fingers through the fiery tresses before sinking down on a small section of grass and staring at Jenny.
She said, “I don’t know what to do now.”
Jenny said, “Sleep. Eat. Here, I have some rations.”
She turned away and came back a few minutes later holding a protein and nutrient rich bar. Tara tore into it, but now that she was still, now that she was no longer able to focus her mind solely on helping to save as many as possible, all she could think of was Blade.
The mood of the people around her was slightly jubilant and yet sorrowful. The Federation had retreated, an amazing thing, but the death toll was high, and they all knew it would just get higher with each battle.
This war was far from finished.
Tara finally fell into a fitful doze but full of horrible dreams. Bloody faces and broken bodies flitted through her dreams. The sound of bombs falling and the rapid rattle of weapons fire and the screams of the dying kept jerking her from that restless slumber.
She woke again, sometime after the sun had finally risen along the horizon, to see Talon and Jessica sleeping nearby, their bodies tangled together. The trill of birdsong came from somewhere, and Tara lay there listening to it, confused by the normalcy of such a thing.
She sat up. Her body was beyond stiff. Her muscles sent off low and throbbing aches and her mouth was dry. Hunger rumbled in her tummy, and she managed to stand. She staggered out of the crude shelter and what she saw made her heart contract and then spring loose, sending a dizzying flow of blood into her system that threatened to topple her where she stood.
So many people. So many wounded.
The dead lay beyond the valley there, the bodies already in a hastily dug mass grave, and she could see from where she stood that that grave was already full. Tears streamed down her face, and she whispered, “Is this the price of freedom?”
“Yes.”
The word made her jump, and her head turned to see General Bates, Blade’s father, staring at her from the tree he stood below. She picked her way over to him carefully. Daylight lay on his face, making every line and wrinkle show, and she asked, “Why?”
“Because when you have something as powerful as the Federation, you have to not only wound it: you have to kill it. They have been through battles for power before and always won. They won because those they fought against looked at the losses and decided it was unbearable.”
“It is unbearable,” she looked back at the mass grave, at the lines of sleeping, wounded, and displaced people. “It is entirely unbearable.”
“It is not unbearable. If it means millions more lives will be lost, that too will be bearable. What is unbearable is the Federation and its ways. They can’t be allowed to continue. Even if we all have to die to make sure the Federation is crushed and broken so that those who come behind us can be free.”
Those who would come after. Tara swallowed hard. “Have you heard from Blade?’
General Bates shook his head, and his eyes went back to the dead and dying. “No. I was hoping he would have returned by now.”
He was willing to sacrifice his own son for freedom. Tara’s fingers picked at each other. “I love him, you know.”
“As do I.” Bates’ eyes were red-rimmed with exhaustion, and his cheeks were hollowed, and there were dark shadows below his eyes. “Do not ever assume that I do not love my son.”
“I know you love him.” The words leaped from her mouth. “You helped him, all those years you helped him but yet you still stood for the Federation. Why? I mean, why play both sides of the game the way that you did? Why not just decide which side you were on and make your stand there?”
“I believed in the Federation. I loved my son. There was no way I could choose, not until I found the truth.” His eyes regarded her face carefully. “I know I was guilty of many crimes against the Federation long before I decided to fight them, but what would you do for a child you loved?”
“Everything. Anything.” She sighed and let her gaze go back to the sky. The sun was rising, and the sky was a faultless blue. Unlike the land below, the sky showed no memories or effects of the battles that had raged there. “I’m scared. That he’s not here yet and so…”
“Don’t.” His hand pressed against her upper arm. “Just do not say that. Until I see his body before me, he is alive. I don’t know where he is, but I do know that until I am faced with his body and can see for myself that he is dead, he is not.”
The words gave her a blast of hope. Blade had not returned the night before or that morning and time was passing quickly, and still, he was not there. That was terrifying. Most of the ground troops had returned, and there had been some news that a few had followed the retreating Fed ground forces in order to try to decimate their ranks even further. Maybe Blade had been among them, and knowing him, that was likely true.
She leaned against the tree. She asked, “After the Federation falls, what then? Nobody seems to have any idea but…but what happens when all of this is over and done?”
Bates said, “It will take a very long time to figure it all out. We do need a coalition of the planets in our universe. We need trade agreements that fit all. We need an end to caste systems and slavery and the rule of those who are born under one mantle or another. We need an end to the starvation on some planets while other planets throw food away because they have so much of it. There needs to be some sort of fairness and equality. There needs to be, more than those things, justice. Because equality and justice are not the same at all, you know.”
They weren’t. Justice was usually blind and what was just in one world was sometimes unjust in another because equality—that was the sticking point—was often mistaken for justice.
She said, “Whatever he’s doing, I wish he’d just get it done and get back here.”
Bates said, “Me too, but…but I need you to hear something right now. The Federation, this isn’t them.”
She blinked. “What?”
Bates turned to her. His skin on his face was gray, and his eyes held small threads of red running through them. He said, “The Federation, the real Federation, is in hiding. They’re on Tralam. I need you to remember that. Say it. Tralam.”
“Tralam,” she repeated dutifully. “I don’t understand.”
Bates’ head drooped a bit. “I know you don’t. You won’t until you see it for yourself.”
“I’ve never heard of Tralam.”
He shook his head. “Only a few have. The Federation would kill, has killed and for centuries, to keep that place secret. That’s the place you will find the ones who are the Federation. Tell me again where.”
What was wrong with him? Tara paused, her heartbeat speeding up as she looked down and saw that his coat, covered in blood, was not just bloody, but smeared with fresh blood. A gasp came from her mouth. “You’re wounded, and badly! We need to get you help!”
“I didn’t know how badly until just a few minutes ago.” He moved slightly, and more blood stained the torn coat. “I hoped he would come back before…before…I need you to say it. Tralam.”
“Tralam.” She moved forward, horrified and shocked too much to notice she was speaking. Her hands went to his coat, and she parted it to see a vicious wound just above his ribs. She whispered, “Come on, we have to go.”
“I was standing here, thinking I would tell the first person I would see, and you came along first. Ironic. Or maybe fate. Tell my son…tell him that the entrance is the exit way and the only way in is out. Tralam is there, but you won’t see it until you blind yourself.”
Riddles. He was talking in riddles, and those riddles were likely due to delirium from the wound. She said, “Yes, okay, I will, but let me help you…” Her head turned. A scream flew from her lips. “Help! Somebody help, please! Right now!”
Bates toppled to the ground. The fall brought blood pouring from his mouth. His eyes locked on hers, his gaze intense and fading all at once. “Say it. Tell me what I just said to you.”
Sweet gods, the man was dying and clearly losing his grip on his sanity! “Help!” Her scream tore from her throat, leaving it raw and aching.
Bates’ hand found her hair and yanked, hard enough to snap her attention back to him. She whispered the words he had just said. “The entrance is the exit way and the only way in is out. Tralam is there, but you won’t see it until you blind yourself.”
Bates laughed, and the laugh made a bubble of blood form on his lips and then burst. “He’s an assassin,” he said. “At one time that shamed me, but now I know that he alone is the way to break Tralam and the Federation forever. I had hoped that was a myth, but it isn’t. I know it isn’t. I didn’t want to believe, but I do.”
A low cry roared through her head, and she stared with dazed eyes as Blade fell to Bates’ side, his hands going to his father’s face. Tears ran down Blade’s face, and he didn’t bother trying to stem or hide them. Tara, unsure of what to do, put her hands on Blade’s and he stared at her, his tears sparkling as they cut clean channels down his dirty and worn face.
He moaned out, “Goddammit why didn’t I get back sooner?”
Bates’ lifted a blood-encrusted hand. “Tralam,” he croaked. “Tralam.”
Blade blinked. “Father…”
“Your destiny is Tralam,” Bates wheezed.
Blade bent his head. Others ran to the spot where he lay, and Marik approached, then shook his head and stepped back, one long arm sweeping up to hold the others at bay. That alone spoke volumes. That gesture said that General Bates could not be saved. Tara let the tears come. She kept her hands on Blade’s and his body leaned into hers just slightly as Bates’ breath slowed and then slowed again. His eyes began to film over as death took him, and Tara watched, not moving, as Blade finally reached his fingers upward and closed his father’s eyes for the final time.
Silence reigned through the small clearing. The birds had even stopped singing. A small cloud passed over the sun, making Tara shiver.
Blade stood. His eyes held hers. He said, “I’ll be damned if I will put him in that grave. He’ll burn, just like a warrior should.”
Tara nodded and began to gather kindling. There was no other way she could tell him how much she agreed, and would do whatever it took to make sure Blade could burn his father’s body in the way he saw fit to honor the man who had kept his son alive even though it had meant betraying the very thing he loved the most—the Federation.