Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
AIRIK
As soon as Vorn disappeared into the crowds of the launch way, Airik slammed the panel, sealing the door.
His breath came in ragged gasps, masked by the clacking of the old metal gears as they retracted the ramp.
He then rushed to the command chair, eyes glued to the flight board that called up craft to ascend.
The sky glimmered as the portals opened, allowing craft to sink into its pull, drawn to wherever the neural engines programmed.
Just as the board displayed his mission’s number, a loud sound hissed from behind.
Airik turned his chair like a man who’d been sentenced to death and was about to face his executioner. He knew who this would be.
The ship’s ramp dropped open. Its lock could only be overridden by someone who outranked him, which, in the case of a morazir, would only be one of the Six Generals.
He pushed to a stand, pulling his sleeve down over the wound on his arm.
Aelior strode aboard, alone as she always was, wearing a formal black uniform of coat and trousers, with the Veynari insignia on her arm. A glove on her right hand covered the only brand she’d ever earned in her life.
“Let me see your medical clearance.” She gave him a lethal stare.
Without a word, he handed it to her.
She scanned the document, then held her omnislate against it to verify the Veynari seal.
“Do you think I falsified my records?” Heat flared in Airik’s face.
“I don’t think anything. I verify and know for certain.
” As she moved down the document, reading it, Aelior let out a low growl.
“I can’t believe you survived long enough for mechanical salvage to find you.
It says here you lost half of your blood and were nearly blinded.
‘In a state of unsapient-like rage.’” Her scales flared.
“What does that mean? Are they trying to insinuate that rage kept you alive?”
“Maybe,” Airik said, unable to explain because he didn’t remember anything about what had happened on the Lemides.
Why did he have to explain himself at all?
Hadn’t he done enough? Perhaps it was rage now that pushed the next words out.
“Or maybe it was simply that I was afraid of dying—that is a sapient-like trait, isn’t it?
Or maybe it’s because I’m untouched. Untaken.
Unconquered. Armed with the Sword of Ulliel. Unkillable.”
“Careful, boy,” Aelior hissed, her tail banging against the bulkheads of the ship’s tight hall. “That’s three brands—one for each oath you mocked.” She held up the glowing document between them. “Your sword recorded a death flow. You’d been debladed. Not so unkillable when your sword is useless.”
Airik resisted the urge to look down at the sword at his hip. Because Veynari technology required a tagion code, he carried an unlocked sword—the only one of its kind. Yet it still recorded his movements. “There was interference.”
“Interference?” She tilted up a plated brow. “That wasn’t in the reports.”
“My suit disengaged. I had to get out of it. So did my sword. My gun’s plasma coils wouldn’t hold a charge.
I had no choice. But…” He met her hard gaze.
“I completed the mission, didn’t I? I was sent to eliminate the last of the insurgents on the west beach.
I wiped it clean. According to the reports, shield forces had no trouble continuing on.
I hear a temple is already built in honor of our True Father. ”
“You’re not heeding my warning.” Aelior stepped closer.
“I wouldn’t call what you did ‘wiping it clean.’ You were unrecognizable.
The others were so mangled that an analyzer had to be brought in to identify the species of the…
insurgents. More importantly, you were sent to an outpost that, to my knowledge, should have been a shared task among four morazir, not one.
You were interfered with—and I want to know why.
” Her tail tip flicked over her shoulder.
“And worst of all, how could you have let yourself be left behind?”
The sharp venom of her accusation dug deep into Airik’s chest. He wanted to hate her.
And yet…the weakness in him wouldn’t let him do it.
A madness—what else could it have been?—kept the hatred from fully forming toward her, Torren, and even his dead progenitors, none of whom should mean anything to him at all.
Maybe this mission would dispel that flaw that made his chest hurt whenever he felt… too much.
“The Ourex has approved my current mission.” Airik spoke evenly and slowly. “Are you here to revoke it?”
Without warning, she tossed the medical documentation chip at Airik’s chest. He didn’t catch it, letting it fall. Its purpose had failed—he’d never leave Vorakon’s soil again.
“Your clearance has been signed by Vorn and a healer by the name of Ullrick. I’ve never seen such sparse notes in a near-death report, especially for a morazir.
Every explanation is simply ‘Of wild constitution.’” Her eyes narrowed.
“I don’t know how Vorn convinced the healers to clear you, but I’ll find out.
I’ll squeeze him until he pops, spilling the truth.
And you—” Her tail wrapped around his ankle.
“You’d better not do anything stupid while on Ed’un.
It’s a short mission, and Ulliel knows you need to destroy something right now. ”
Airik’s breath stopped, disbelieving in what he heard.
Aelior stepped back, a small smile on her scaled lips.
“I came here to stop you,” she admitted.
“When I voted to approve the mission—an easy job because I had been the last stationed there—I didn’t know they’d send you.
But they’ve given you a striker. And would you believe I used to pilot one of these?
Before the neural engines took over flight and portal tunneling? ”
She rested a hand against the panel housing the ship’s power core, as if feeling for the heartbeat of a large beast. “I spent a long time on one of these. I had a forgemate—she flew one, too. We—” Her gaze dropped to her right, covered hand.
Airik heard her swallow before she continued.
“You like to take care of things, even if you won’t admit it.
I’ll be honest—I don’t think the molecular disrupter this ship is fitted with can crack a rock the size of a fingernail.
But she needs attention. And you need to do something, don’t you? ”
Airik found himself holding his breath, as if words or any sudden movements would disturb the strange reality he’d just entered, one where Aelior would actually let him go.
The launch way announcement called his mission number.
“You stand on tremulous ground,” Aelior said, her eyes piercing as they strained in the dim interior of the ship.
Suralians didn’t see well in the dark without modifications.
“Don’t for a moment think you’re not. I’ve seen that glazed look of yours before.
No one comes back from a mission gone to shit like that unscathed.
You’ll crash, boy, and it’ll happen much sooner than you think.
You’ll break—into so many pieces that no one can put you back together. ”
She pulled out a small pouch and set it on a shelf meant for charging plasma cartridges.
“That’s a heart-slowing serum. I know you’ll only need to land on Ed’un’s surface for a few minutes to trigger the molecular disrupters allegedly planted on the surface.
” Her head turned as if remembering something.
“Which, by the way, my personal team is working to confirm because I don’t remember any molecular disruptors, and my carefully drafted report from all those years ago is corrupted.
” She tapped the pouch, muttering something about wasting resources on needlessly updating systems, then shook her head.
“Anyway, though improbable, there might be morphed kudra outside the city, too. If something happens, this will buy you time in case of a mishap.”
He eyed the pouch. Such medicines were illicit in Veynari territories—deemed too archaic to be safe. “Time for what?”
“If it’s a small exposure, a simple blood cleanse will work. Even primitive worlds have that technology now. Inject it directly into the heart, then program the striker for the planet Mehrooj. Your father had ties to them. They’ll recognize the Jortag name.”
Father. His skin turned cold at the word. Aelior should have known better than to utter it where someone could hear it.
An announcement blasted through the hangar. His window for departure was about to be forfeited.
“I know,” Aelior said before he could speak. “You want to go.”
In the privacy of the ship, she reached for his face. His vision blurred, and he had to remind himself he trusted her. She was unarmed.
Her finger hovered over the raised welts of his scars, which sometimes still burned when he woke from terrors.
She didn’t touch him. She never did. There’d been a time when she’d towered over him.
But now she could barely reach him without standing on her toes.
The heat of her finger near his skin was too much.
Not wanting to remember the last time someone had touched him—a mechanism by which weakness could leach into him—he stepped away.
Aelior sighed, dropping her arm.
She didn’t say goodbye because she’d seen what it did to him once before when he’d been forced to say it.
Instead, from the base of the ramp, she smiled, revealing tiny, sharp teeth that had frightened him as a young child, when he had once been cloistered on a ruined estate. “Don’t lose your sword this time, boy. I’ll make sure you never get it back.”