14. Rhykor
RHYKOR
The old man's hand trembled the entire walk through the maintenance tunnel.
I keep returning to that detail, the papery grip of human fingers wrapped around my forearm, his weight shifting into my body with absolute trust even though the last time a Kraaj male this size stood over him, his neighborhood was burning.
He leaned against me like I was a wall between him and the dark, and I held my stride to match his shuffling pace because the alternative was carrying him, and carrying him would have stolen whatever dignity he had left.
Last night, I led a strike team to extract fifteen civilians from a collapsing housing block in Sector Twelve.
Dessik and Britt handled the transport logistics while I walked the final group through the maintenance tunnels to the sublevel bunker—checked the heating units, verified the water filtration, counted ration crates, and marked the resupply schedule in the encrypted log.
Then I walked back to the compound alone through tunnels thick with the stench of singed wiring and old concrete, and the silence ate me alive.
It’s been three days since Cassia told me to stay away. That short amount of time feels like it has stretched across months.
During this time, I’ve maintained the compound perimeter and run combat sweeps through Sector Twelve’s collapse zone.
I also coordinated supply drops to the bunker network, executing all of it with mechanical precision like a soldier following orders that no longer carry meaning.
Food is only consumed because Varrik sets it in front of me.
Rest comes in fragments of ninety minutes at a time, because anything longer invites dreams where amber-brown eyes stare at me from across a freight bay full of burning documents, leading me to wake with my hands scorching the bedframe.
The absence is killing me. A furious, ceaseless rhythm hammers in my core, a desperate alignment pulling me toward the lower levels where she breathes, where the muffled cadence of her work drifts through the ventilation and tethers my attention.
I catch myself standing in corridors I have no operational reason to occupy, straining to catch the muffled cadence of her words through walls thick enough to stop a plasma round.
Twice I've redirected patrol routes to avoid going through the med bay entrance.
Once I stood on the rooftop for forty minutes because I could hear her laughing two floors down, and the sound cracked through me like a fault line.
Last night was the worst of it. We worked the same freight bay for three hours with me carrying survivors, her stitching wounds, and the expanse of concrete separating my side of the loading dock from her triage station might as well have been a continent.
She never looked at me. I never crossed that invisible border.
And the restraint required to keep my boots on my side of the room while her hands were covered in someone else's blood burned through more discipline than any battlefield I've survived.
And she laughed. After everything, the documents, the confrontation, the devastation in her eyes when she read my name at the bottom of an authorization that destroyed her people's homes, she laughed at a teenager's joke while stitching a wound, and her laughter threading through the ruins of what I did to her world makes the gulf I've carved open feel like swallowing glass.
Going to her is my only desire. Standing in her doorway and letting her tear me apart again would be acceptable because at least then I'd be near her.
But she asked for space, and giving her what she asked for—even when obedience hollows out my chest and leaves nothing behind except the cauterized outline of where she used to be—is the only thing I can offer that proves I am capable of giving rather than taking.
The morning after the rescue mission, I relax on the rooftop observation platform, cleaning a disassembled pulse rifle.
The city stretches below in its usual sprawl of rusted metal and failing infrastructure, smoke curling from three separate sectors where overnight fires burned themselves out.
My hands move through the maintenance routine automatically while the rest of me exists somewhere between fury and grief.
"You look like hammered shit."
Varrik drops onto the bench across from me; his bad leg extends.
His battered cane sits against the railing.
The weak morning light catches his face, highlighting the deep lines of exhaustion setting in around his eyes.
He carries two field canteens and a grease-stained cloth bundle giving off the warm, earthy scent of smoked grain cakes.
Tossing the bundle onto my workbench, he waits for my reaction. "Eat; you missed the last two meal rotations."
"I'm not hungry." I set the rifle barrel down, and Varrik uncaps a canteen, watching me over the rim with those eyes that miss nothing.
"Dessik tells me you resequenced the perimeter grid three times overnight. Britt says you rerouted her patrol away from the med bay so aggressively that she thought you were punishing her for something."
"The perimeter needed optimization."
"The perimeter was fine. You were avoiding her.
" He leans forward, elbows on his knees, the cane shifting between his fingers.
"It’s been three days, Rhykor. Three days of you prowling this compound like a wounded kessrak, burning through door handles and scaring the junior crew into thinking you're about to detonate. How long do you plan to keep this up?"
"As long as she needs." The answer is automatic, drilling into me by seventy-two hours of repeating it like a mantra when my feet tried to carry me toward the med bay.
"And what about what you need?" He is the only living being I allow to speak to me this way, and even now the question scrapes against a vulnerable nerve, making my claws extend involuntarily. I anchor them against the metal bench and breathe through the surge until the light dies back.
"What I need is irrelevant," I manage, and the reply tastes like copper.
He unwraps the grain cakes and shoves one toward me.
"Dragonshit, you need to stop punishing yourself for being twenty-two years old and stupid inside a system fashioned to render young soldiers too stupid to question orders.
You did terrible things, following a chain of command that pointed you at human settlements and told you compliance was the same thing as loyalty.
And you carried the names, the fires, the collapsed buildings with you for many years while the commanders who wrote those orders got promoted and retired to estates in the capital.
" He bites into his own grain cake, chewing with slow, rehearsed patience.
"You think she hates you for what you did?
She hates that she trusted you before she knew.
There's a difference, and if you're too busy drowning in guilt to see it, then you're a bigger fool than command thinks you are. "
"I signed those documents, Varrik. I authorized the clearance operations." The facts grind out of me like metal on stone. "Knowing that makes everything I've done since—the supply drops, the rescues, the civilians in the bunker—feel like bailing water from a ship I sank myself."
"Maybe it is." Varrik shrugs, the damaged wing on his left side twitching with the motion.
"And maybe bailing water is still better than letting everyone drown.
You did monstrous things inside a monstrous system, and you stopped.
That's more than most of our people managed.
" He finishes the grain cake and brushes crumbs from his palms. "Eat the food and do the work.
Let the woman decide what your past costs on her own schedule, because crowding her with your guilt is merely another form of control, and you've done enough of that to last three lifetimes. "
Hauling himself upright, he grabs his cane to hobble toward the stairwell entrance. At the doorway he pauses, half-turning back.
"She was watching you last night. During the evacuation.
" The revelation hits like shrapnel between my shoulder blades.
"Stood on the loading dock and watched you carry that old man out.
I know because I was watching her watch you.
" He taps the cane against the doorframe.
"Hate looks different from how she was looking at you, Commander. "
Then he's gone, and I slump on the rooftop with a cold grain cake in my hand and the morning light burning through the smoke over District Seventeen, and I let myself feel the full destructive weight of hoping she might still reach for me.
Nysera returns to the compound six hours later.
She left two days ago on an intelligence errand she refused to explain, which is standard for Nysera; information flows outward from her on her own schedule, and probing only makes her close tighter.
The perimeter alert pings once on the military frequency, and I meet her in the armory, the most soundproofed room in the compound, shielded by enough reinforced plating to muffle a detonation.
Standing with her hands on her opposite shoulders and her back to the weapons rack, she looks composed and sharp, carrying danger that runs deeper than physical strength.
Reaching into the satchel at her hip, she pulls out a data chip.
Matte black, unmarked, the kind intelligence uses for information too sensitive for encrypted transmission. She sets it on the weapons bench.