Chapter 2 The Rule
The Rule
“Commander Khoth Voor, you are accused of violating the Rule of Duuskukeh by risking your command--twenty-four highly skilled pilots--to save one,” High Councillor Nova Voor pronounced from her seat at the council table, known as the Vakh, twenty feet above Khoth’s head.
Her voice was even. Some would characterize it as cold.
There was no familiarity in it. No one would ever know she was his mother from the way she spoke to him. “What say you?”
Khoth’s fingers curled slightly towards his palms. It was the only sign of emotion he showed. He quickly forced them straight. His voice was as even and cool as hers as he answered, “It was necessary.”
“I did not ask if it was necessary, Commander Khoth. I asked if you violated the Rule,” she stated crisply.
The six Councillors to either side of her nodded their heads in agreement. They loomed above him in judgment now, but not one of them had been in a battle for over ten cycles, some much more than that.
His fingers twitched. He stilled them again.
He lifted his head slowly so that he was looking directly at his mother’s face, blanking out the rest of the Councillors, speaking only to her.
She had commanded more missions than all combined up there.
She had to hear him. She had to understand.
The Rules were there to guide, but they should not--could not--become a prison that would stop a Commander from doing what was necessary.
Hear me, Mother, he willed even as his face showed none of his need.
She filled his vision. Blue skin like the color of the lakatch flowers that grew in abundance on their homeworld of Haseon.
The whole right side of her face was tattooed with the ta’na, her marks of victory in battle.
Her back had grown too full to contain them all.
She was given a dispensation to mark those great battles on her face for all to see.
He had been granted the same, but for only one battle with the Khul.
He wondered if he’d be commanded to remove it after this. He felt he deserved to lose it.
I could not save Daesah. I could only end her suffering. We lost the best of us with her.
“I believe that the Rule does not apply in the situation I was in,” he answered, not allowing any of his raw feelings to taint his voice. “As it was a mission to save our High Commander, the concern of sacrificing the many for the one was not triggered.”
“You expect us to believe that you acted as you did because it was your High Commander in danger and not… your sister?” His mother lifted a white eyebrow. Her glowing blue eyes, a deeper blue than her skin, darkened.
And your daughter, his traitorous mind whispered.
A tremor went through him, but he stilled it and shook his head.
He would have been gutted to lose Daesah, but he would not have risked twenty-four other pilots just to save her.
They might be blood and he had loved her and would always love her, but the Rule of Duuskukeh was at the very core of Thaf’ell society.
The many above the one.
It was something that every Thaf’ell was taught from birth to death.
The needs of the society were greater than the needs of the individual.
To act to the detriment of the whole for the benefit of the one was verboten and punishable by exile, the worst of all punishments.
Better to die than to be split from the whole.
But there were exceptions. And risking himself and his command to save Daesah had been one of them.
Saving her was saving all of The Illumen Alliance.
“That she is my sister played no role in my decision,” Khoth said with chin lifted, meeting every set of glowing blue eyes on that Vahk. Let them see the truth in me. He continued, “High Commander Daesah Voor was worth more than twenty-five lives. She was… invaluable.”
He included his own life in that. Twenty-four under his command plus his own for twenty-five.
I would give my life and so many others to have her back, Khoth thought and grief threatened to eclipse his powerful control.
“High Commander Daesah was a fine pilot and a keen strategist,” his mother stated. Her voice remained as even as ever. It did not catch over saying her daughter’s name. “But she was one person.”
One person...
He remembered every second of the mission where his sister’s saber class ship, the Alarion, had been overrun by the Khul and she had been taken.
The Alarion had responded to a sighting of a squadron of Khul ships by a mining operation on the planet Dracelea’s surface.
The mining operation was small and it was only a sighting of the Khul.
There had been no attack. The Khul could have simply been passing through.
It hardly warranted attention, let alone attention by the Alarion and himself.
But his sister had thought very differently.
After they had done a sweep of the system without success, she had contacted him.
He remembered her face on his view screen. She was not seated in the command chair of his Alarion. Instead, she had been in her quarters on the war vessel while he and his command were all in their Paladin-class fighters, about to dock and head back.
Her expression was rarely relaxed, but the tensity it normally carried was increased.
She was the leader of The Illumen Alliance’s military branch.
It was assumed that she would be their mother’s natural successor as High Councillor when Nova was ready to step down.
Responsibility for everyone had been drilled into his sister every moment of every day of her life.
But the usual weight on her shoulders had been doubled. But why? They had found nothing.
I am about to find out.
“Khoth,” she said using his first name without his rank. That and the fact she was speaking to him on a private channel from her quarters without any of her first officers meant that she wished to speak to him outside of their roles in the military.
Still, he answered automatically with, “What can I assist you with, High--”
She waved a hand through the air, cutting off his words. “This is your sister speaking. Not your superior. I need you to hear me, Khoth.”
He paused for a moment then nodded. “What is it? What do you sense?”
“We have searched the quadrant and found no sign of the Khul,” she told him, her expression growing grimmer.
She was telling him what he already knew, but he understood that she was listing the reasons for why, logically, she should not do whatever it was that she was thinking of.
She tossed her head and the selchilite, the beads in her hair that showed their family’s station, clacked together almost angrily.
“But I feel that there is something more here, Khoth. I can almost smell the Khul in this place.”
He continued to be silent. His sister only confided these feelings to him.
In the past, she had shared them with their parents, but that had stopped.
Both Nova and Thadden Voor had been clear that following instincts was for lesser species, not the Thaf’ell.
Let the Neccuk or--the stars forbid--the humans follow their “gut” as it was said.
But the Thaf’ell followed logic and left emotion and superstition out of it.
Yet her instincts had been proven right more times than anyone’s logic ever had been.
It was part of her gift as a strategist.
“What should we do? If the Khul are here, we must find them. This may be the edge of Alliance space, but it is still our territory,” he stated.
She nodded, her eyes distant as she contemplated something inside of herself instead of outside of it. Finally, she shook herself again. The selchilite clacked some more.
“I want you to go down to the surface and speak, face to face, with those who called us here,” she instructed. “T’cklock was the name of the Zols I spoke to. He was sweating like a narlacc in heat.”
“Zols always sweat,” he pointed out with a twitch of his lips.
She smiled back. “Not that much. He was practically in a puddle of it.”
Khoth lifted an eyebrow. “Are you sure he was simply not intimidated by speaking to you, Daesah? He likely did not expect to reach the High Commander when he alerted the Alliance to a Khul pod.”
“I do not think so. In fact…” She tapped her lower lip as her eyes grew distant again, “I think he wasn’t surprised to see me at all.”
Khoth frowned. “Perhaps he did not recognize you then.”
A smile played on her lips a moment. “Well, then he could not have been intimidated by him if he did not recognize me, now could he?”
Khoth shrugged. “I suppose. So what do you think the reason was for his nervousness?”
“I think he was lying about something. I know he was lying,” she insisted. “I just need to know about what. And I trust you, little brother, to find out what that is.”
“I’m surprised you do not wish to pursue this yourself. You have a greater sense of other species’ emotions than I do.”
She smiled again. This time it was a fond smile. “On the contrary, you are very sensitive, Khoth.”
He left out a huff. “By the stars forbid!”
“It isn’t a bad thing no matter what Mother and Father say,” she told him softly. “They are caught in the old ways of thinking.”
“They are pure Thaf’ell!” he protested, thinking that nothing could be so good as that.
“If just Thaf’ell thinking could defeat the Khul, we would have done so already,” she said and passed a hand over her forehead.
He was too shocked to say anything at first then he managed, “Perhaps we should ask the Ode or the Grillix or the--the humans for their thoughts about defeating the Khul!”