Chapter 6
Two hours after throwing Kila out of his home, Piras had finally achieved some measure of real peace.
It had started with slamming his fist into the wall.
A few drinks had helped as well.
He thought he might even be able to sleep in a couple of hours, the time when he usually went to bed.
All he needed to do was enhance his level of serenity.
To that end, he contemplated doing something that would smooth the last of his tangled nerves.
Piras’s common room, the room for relaxing, was a close second to the balcony as far as favorite spaces were concerned.
In that room, he had a vid system where he could watch the latest news, sports, or entertainments.
A small but well-stocked bar took up one corner.
In the middle was the ubiquitous firepit seen in numerous other common rooms, with a curved lounge.
The space looked much larger than it actually was due to the lack of any other furnishings. After years of living in cramped ship’s quarters, Piras hadn’t quite figured out how to fill a room with possessions.
Behind the lounge was the best part of the room.
A long, low table, surrounded by comfortable seating cushions, made up his hobby space.
At the moment, the table’s surface was cluttered with the bits and pieces of his latest project, a model of a raider.
Piras had started building it to commemorate the disbanding of that arm of the fleet’s forces.
Regarded as a refuge for crews that were barely more than rogues and mercenaries, the raiders had long outlived real usefulness to the Empire. Spyships, destroyers and the swift single-man fighters had taken their place.
Still, there was some romance attached to the small but fast ships that had been used primarily to drive enemies crazy with their ability to strike quickly and do significant damage.
The crews who flew them were known to be the most fearless of the fleet.
There was an aura of lawlessness about them that uniforms and duty couldn’t mask.
Unfortunately, they were also the men least able to bow to authority.
Raiders had been near the chopping block for years. With so many of them defecting to the Basma’s side of the conflict, their fate had been sealed.
It had once been fun to contemplate being a part of the unruly, devil-may-care branch.
Yet from the earliest days of his career, Piras had known he wasn’t cut out for crewing or captaining a raider.
That branch had been largely the province of Nobeks and Dramok-Nobeks, a wild and untamed bunch of men who could fight each other until blood was drawn and then enjoy a drink together afterward.
Despite the disreputable nature of the raiders, Piras still felt a sad sense of nostalgia that their era had passed.
Seeing the scrappy little ships decommissioned, knowing their future lay in repurposed scrap, had made him appreciate their history all the more.
Thus, he’d begun building the model of what most considered a most unimpressive ship design.
He was contemplating the project, thinking he would have it halfway done before he retired for the night, when his home com went off.
Since his portable was automatically linked to it when he was in residence, it went off too.
He pulled it out of its belt pouch and checked the frequency.
Piras debated whether or not to answer.
If he did, he could most likely forget about losing himself to model building.
Or a decent night’s sleep for that matter.
Then again if he didn’t answer, he would most definitely get no sleep.
Calna would worry and com every hour until he gave up and talked to her.
It wasn’t that he didn’t love his mother. She was simply wearing with her fretting and how her overactive mind never shut off, never gave her a moment’s peace…nor anyone else within speaking distance.
Piras sighed, turning his back on his raider construction with regret. He clicked the beeping com on, setting it to vid mode. If he didn’t, Calna would think he was trying to hide something from her. “Hello, my mother.”
“Good evening, my son. It is evening there? I forget the time difference, but I know if I’m supposed to be sleeping, you’re probably still awake. I see you’re drinking?”
Piras smiled at her, letting the deluge of words pass over him. “A glass of dlas. How are you?”
She waved her hands, and he noted how the veins grew more prominent with advancing years.
Piras had been a late-in-life baby, his parents’ only child.
Calna’s knee-length curly hair would have been gray had she not kept it dyed the blue-black of her youth.
Piras didn’t mind that one concession to vanity she made.
Calna took far too little time for herself.
She looked good for her advanced years, passing for at least twenty fewer than her actual age.
A few creases had become deep, but most of the lines remaining fine and unremarkable. Her health problems were few and far between, thank the ancestors. To Piras, his mother seemed eternal.
She couldn’t be bothered to talk about any of her own cares.
“Oh, I’m fine, fine. I’m worried about your father Jorawi, though. He’s not been sleeping as well as he should.”
Piras assumed an interested expression, the one he wore when Calna went into her latest litany of anxiety.
He only half-listened however, feeling the somehow comfortable throb of guilt as he did so.
Calna agonized over everyone and everything.
She stewed even more when there was nothing wrong, reasoning that it was surely the calm before the storm.
Tonight was no different from any other time.
Her gossip about those she cared about, including people he’d never met, ranged far and wide.
She applied liberal observations about their lack of well-being, citing concerns and apprehensions that were both valid and ridiculous.
Had Piras paid closer attention, he knew he would hear her zip from topic to topic, one breathless sentence piled on the next.
Her occasional questions required no thought as long as he wasn’t the focus of her fears.
He didn’t even have to do more than grunt.
Before he could answer anything, she was off on another tale, her frantic mind working too quickly to slow long enough for a response.
At last her tone changed, warning Piras she was about to begin a caring interrogation into his affairs. He cleared his thoughts, which was a relief. That damned Kila kept trying to sneak into his ruminations, and Piras didn’t want to think about him.
He readied to explain himself when Calna asked, “But why are you drinking? Was work difficult today?”
No, just a certain Nobek. But then, Nobeks are always difficult.
“Work was fine. I just—”
“What?”
Calna, as usual, was so busy thinking about whatever she planned to say next that she had forgotten she needed to listen for his answer. Patiently, Piras kept his next attempt short. “Work was fine.”
“Good. You know, your Uncle Tebrok had such a high-stress job that he would drink until he passed out at the end of the day. I hope that’s your only glass tonight.”
Piras didn’t point out that dlas was hardly any man’s spirit of choice to get roaring drunk. The alcohol content was too low.
She kept fretting. “Are you stressed about the war? You must be. Is that why you’re drinking?”
“Not at all. You’re right in that everyone is stressed, my—”
“What?”
She didn’t wait for him to answer again. “Promise you won’t end up a drunk, Piras. I do wish you had an Imdiko to keep an eye on you. You’re surrounded by Nobeks all day, so I don’t worry about protection. But a caregiver would do you so much good.”
She went on, launching into another monologue that went off on every tangent that occurred to her. Piras was free to let his mind wander again, half-listening to Calna’s fears, worries, and gossip.
His mother was right on one thing: he was stressed.
The mission Hobato and Kila wanted him to take on upset him.
Did they really expect him to serve up fellow loyal Kalquorians to the Basma like sacrifices? It made his stomach churn.
Yet they had a point when it came to making the assignment authentic.
The war was horrific, the hope for victory dwindling.
If the Basma won, it put all the Earthers living in the Empire in jeopardy.
The growing number of halfling children, all younger than ten, would also be at risk.
Piras would have liked to think as most did, that Maf wasn’t so bloodthirsty as to kill mere babes.
However, the evidence that he was willing to let younglings die in his quest for Kalquorian purity was too blatant to ignore. His forces attacked targets that were civilian if it gained them important territory.
Hobato was right.
The fleet needed someone who could get close to the Basma, to get the secret knowledge that would stop his madness.
At the very least, they needed to take away his latest toys, the Earther battlecruisers.
Throughout his ruminations, Calna chattered on, hardly taking a breath.
Piras responded automatically each time she said she was ending the call and returned to his own thoughts when she remembered something else she had to tell him.
It was half an hour beyond the time he usually retired for sleep before they exchanged their final goodbyes.
By then, Piras’s head swam with the gravity of the mission as well as the weight he would bear by taking it on.
Despite the late hour, he knew sleep would not come anytime soon.
Sighing over the worries, none of which had come from Calna, Piras poured himself another drink.
It was hard to resist the unopened bottle of bohut, but he stuck with the dlas instead.
He had the feeling he’d be facing Kila again, probably first thing in the morning.
He did not need a hangover on top of dealing with that damned Nobek.
He was too wound up to sit down and work on the raider model.
He ended up aimlessly walking around his home, bought only a year ago though he’d been planetside for a few years.
He’d waited to find the right place, a comfortable oasis where he’d be close to headquarters but far enough away to not have it intrude on his senses when he wanted to relax.
The home, high in the reaches of the rainbow-leaved forest a few miles from the coast, was the quiet retreat he’d imagined.
His nearest neighbor was half a mile away, so he had all the privacy he could ask for.
His fathers and overly-worried mother were a continent away.
Piras had not quite gotten around to furnishing all of his abode.
Though the tree home was one of the more modest-sized available, a couple rooms were nearly bare.
If not for his models lining shelves throughout the place, only the sleeping room, balcony, and common room would seem occupied by a living being.
He’d appreciated the extra space that allowed him to build to his heart’s content.
Piras strolled through the home, seeing it from the viewpoint of others who might come in.
People who would want to know why he had turned his back on the Empire.
Investigators, digging for clues.
Yes, it would look as if he’d gotten rid of many possessions in anticipation of racing to the Basma’s side.
He snorted.
Possessions he’d never owned because he couldn’t figure out how to fill so much space after almost a lifetime in space.
He hated the mission that had been set before him.
He despised the idea he could be responsible for killing those who didn’t deserve it.
Yet a part of him rejoiced at how it would end up, if all went well.
A nagging bit of his consciousness had often whispered he’d made a mistake accepting the promotion to admiral, taking him off the front lines of duty.
That piece of Piras looked forward to the assignment with an almost unsavory glee.
Those months fighting the war against Earth on board Kila’s destroyer had breathed life in what had become a dull existence.
True, it was Kila’s ship and Piras was not in command of it.
He had been in control of the squadron itself however, plotting and planning and leading his assigned ships to many victories.
He’d been the Dramok he naturally was in the arena he felt good about directing.
Even though Lidon hadn’t been there, Piras could sometimes imagine his former weapons commander close by.
Often the fantasy was a little too real. He had frequently felt surprise when he looked at the weapons command station and saw Mostar there instead of his former lover. He’d missed the stoic Nobek who had been equal parts familiar and irritating.
Not Lidon, his strong, capable companion.
Instead, it had been Kila at Piras’s side, different but still reliable.
Trustworthy.
Strong in his own way.
A good warrior who kept his men disciplined and ready to fight.
Piras had often compared the Nobek captain to his former lover…in a professional sense only, of course. Nothing more. The painful memory of Lidon had seen to that.
It was a pity Kila had not felt the same way.
Even now, having found out what the private Piras was like when duty didn’t bring out his leadership urges, Kila had decided to pursue him.
Piras could handle Kila knowing about his sexual proclivities.
He could handle the rejection that would follow when it became clear Piras was submissive to the core in that respect.
What he could not handle was Kila or anyone else knowing Lidon had walked away for that same reason.
Pity on top of the hurt he already lived with, hurt that refused to lessen after years of seeing his former love happy with another Dramok, was too much for Piras to bear.
And yet the mission would put him face to face with that.
Would he have to see the knowledge in Kila’s eyes for weeks or months? To cope with his unwanted solicitousness?
Piras wanted to be back on a ship.
But the price…between the deaths he would bring and spending day after day with Kila…it was too high.
Much too high.
He couldn’t go through with the assignment.
He didn’t want to think about letting Hobato down.
He didn’t want to think about facing Kila long enough to reject the mission.
He needed a distraction.
Piras wandered back into the common room.
Still too ramped up to work on his miniature raider ship, he switched the vid system on instead.
As usual, it was set to broadcast the latest news vids.
Piras was confronted with the bloody faces of Imperial ground troops, the display showing a mass of Nobek casualties.
“…the latest attempt to liberate the civilian population of Lobam was once again repulsed by Basma fighters.
The enemy dug in, hiding in mines, buildings, and bunkers to escape the shockwave attacks by the Imperial fleet.
The traitors waited for our ground troops to land before launching a devastating counteroffensive that resulted in an hours-long standoff.
The fighting ended when Imperial Commander Bevau ordered loyal troops to return to fleet ships on standby.
It’s being counted as a minor victory, however, as more than one hundred Earther Mataras and their Earther and hybrid children were found and evacuated before the retreat—”
Piras cursed and switched off the vid hurriedly.
He was too late.
Before the vid went blank, he glimpsed bruised, emaciated women and children being rushed into escape shuttles.
The momentary images stabbed him in the heart.
“Fuck,”
he groaned.
He’d been ready to turn his back on the atrocious mission Hobato had offered.
Just as he’d been prepared to reject attacking his own people, not to mention confront Kila again, Piras had been reminded of the true innocents in Kalquor’s civil war.
He’d seen the faces. Those frightened, desperate faces.
The ground troops of the battling sides were evenly matched.
Only the fleet, with its majority on the Empire’s side, had managed to win any substantial battles against the Basma.
With Browning Copeland and his Earther cruisers throwing their lots in with Maf, the slight advantage the Empire held would change in a hurry.
The Empire could still defeat Maf. Even if it happened, the costs to Kalquor would be high. They were already too high and climbing.
No matter what I do, there will be blood spilled. Lives lost. I have a chance to end it sooner rather than later. Kila’s right about one thing;
our faithful Nobek warriors would welcome the opportunity to save those poor civilians, even at the cost of their own lives. I just have to find the guts to take those devoted lives, if I must.
“And deal with Kila’s mocking smile every fucking day,”
he muttered grudgingly.
Had he ever had a choice? With the haunted eyes of the women and children on the news vid – and the knowledge there were more such souls out there who were still behind enemy lines – Piras knew the answer to that.
He gave his bar and the unopened bottle of bohut sitting on it a wistful gaze.
Then he turned his back on it and went to his computer station instead.
He sat down and got to work, looking for a victim.
Piras had a direct connection to Fleet Command, once he got through a gauntlet of passcodes, security checks, and various scans.
It took nearly two minutes to navigate those.
He used that time to settle his thoughts so he could pursue his objective with a clear, logical intent.
He looked over everything his credentials gave him clearance for.
Even the most unimportant operations of the fleet came under his scrutiny as he made his list of potential targets.
Most of the fleet not patrolling a defensive cordon around Kalquor itself was massed near the Joshadan and Galactic Council borders, where the Basma’s forces had been most active and carved out the greatest territory for the revolt.
He scowled to see the colonies and stations Maf had managed to grab.
The bastard’s rebellious army had gained a substantial foothold.
There were also several installations and colonies within a day or two’s flight from those territories.
Rumor had it that the Basma himself was in that area, directing his forces with the generals and high commanders who had joined his poisonous cause of a pure Empire.
The areas most in danger from the revolt at that moment were those that contained Haven Colony and Rel Fleet Station.
Most thought Maf would move against them next.
Piras was not so sure.
Due to its function as a large-scale training facility, Rel had a sizeable fleet presence that would give the Basma’s forces a hell of a fight.
Maf would squander precious resources if he went after Rel, and for little gain.
Rel was nothing more than a training facility, not in close proximity to any major resources that would gain Maf much.
Even Haven was no more than a small farming colony. It occupied less than half a percent of the planet it was located on.
There were those in Fleet Command who were certain Maf would go after Haven despite its lack of use in the war.
It was a mixed colony of Earthers and Kalquorians, an installation made to grant refugee Earthers a new start within the borders of the Empire.
Maf was known to hate Haven with a passion.
He’d instigated a rebellion there before his identity had become known to everyone.
Piras had been the one to point out on more than one occasion that going after Haven would be a huge tactical mistake for the Basma.
Even if his fanaticism led him to order such a thing, his generals and commanders would argue him into better sense.
Yet fellow admirals persisted in calling for increased security around the tiny colony and Rel.
With someone on the inside, particularly someone like Piras who had kept High Command from expending resources where they weren’t needed, Maf could get hold of Haven.
Maybe even Rel Station now that he had battlecruisers to work with.
Yet despite the earlier rebellion on Haven, things had settled down.
The two races living there now worked together peacefully.
Peacefully? Hell, they were thriving.
The Haven experiment was now widely hailed as an unqualified success, showing everyone how well former enemies could co-exist when their politics stopped getting in the way.
Piras couldn’t give Haven up to Maf, not after all that.
He couldn’t insult the inhabitants that way.
He most certainly couldn’t hand over all those civilian women and children in any case.
Haven and Rel were off the list.
He looked elsewhere, his interest moving to the other end of Maf’s strongest hold: a large section of the border shared with the Galactic Council of Planets.
There were few planets, moons, or colonies in that sector, but quite a few space stations.
Thousands of stations, in fact.
Shipping, commerce, and political interests had made that border important to the Basma and Imperial forces alike.
The concentration of the opposing fleets and armies was highest here, with battles occurring on an almost daily basis as they wrestled for control.
Unfortunately for Piras’s needs, many of the space stations strung like pearls along the border were civilian in nature.
Way stations for travelers of many species, commercial shipping, science and medical stations, and manufacturing facilities made up the majority of those targets.
Maf would indeed love to get his hands on any piece of that Piras could get him, but the cost of noncombatant lives would be too steep.
Maf had more than enough innocent victims whose only crime was in trying to live their normal lives.
Piras couldn’t consign them to becoming the enemy’s hostages.
Piras shook his head at the lists of potential targets on his screen.
He stood up and paced the floor, unable to find a way to do what he must without devastating his conscience.
“I will not give Maf the civilians.
I will most especially not give him Earther Mataras and their children.
But then what? Every military installation on the Joshadan and Galactic Council is close to something that’s not combative in nature.
If he gets any of those martial stations, he’ll be able to take one or more civilian facilities as well.”
Piras raked his fingers through his hair in frustration.
He couldn’t see a way out except to expose the most vulnerable people to danger.
He refused to do that, so he was stuck.
“Fuck!”