Charlotte Boyett-Compo- WIND VERSE- Hunger's Harmattan (2 page)
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Authors: Unknown
“She had just asked if Ensign Harmattan got
a chance to speak to the man he believed was his brother on the
Revenge
,”
Strom replied. “I did not get the chance to answer her.”
“No, he did not,” the vice-counselor
stated. “Felix attempted to follow his brother but Ailyn lost him on the ship,
seemingly vanishing for all intents and purposes.”
“I’ve heard you can look right at a Reaper
and not see him,” Shanee declared.
Elspeth Harmattan-Jost flinched. “Please,
don’t speak of my son in that way,” she said, her voice soft but threaded with
steel.
“How old is your younger son, Madame Jost?”
Shanee asked.
“He is twenty-two,” the vice-counselor
answered for his wife.
“That would have made him two years old
when his brother went down with their father?”
“What does that have to do with…?”
Shanee interrupted the vice-counselor. “How
old was Ailyn Harmattan?”
“I don’t…”
“He was just out of Fleet Academy,” the
vice-counselor’s wife answered. “He was twenty-four.”
“How is it possible your younger son
recognized a man who disappeared when he was but a toddler?” the Primary
Riezell Guardian inquired.
“Felix has seen Ailyn’s portrait in the
Grand Hall at Harmattan Manor all his life, Colonel,” the ailing woman replied.
“He says the man he saw on the
Revenge
was his brother and I believe
him.”
“Does he believe the man on the
Revenge
knew who he was?”
“He says he saw shocked recognition in the
man’s eyes and Felix believes that is why Ailyn hid from him,” the
vice-counselor snapped.
“But you don’t know for a fact that it was
Ailyn Harmattan on that ship,” Strom stressed.
Elspeth Harmattan-Jost turned a vicious
glower to the general. “We don’t know that it wasn’t either. Felix spoke with
many of those warriors from Theristes and although they would not confirm the
man my son had seen was indeed Ailyn, neither did they deny it.”
“What exactly is it you want me to do?”
Shanee asked.
“We want you to go to Theristes and bring
Ailyn home where he belongs,” the vice-counselor snapped. “He is the duke of
Kentsington, the rightful heir to the Harmattan fortune. He has obligations.”
“Has it occurred to you that if the man on
the
Revenge
is your son, he doesn’t want to be brought back?” Shanee
queried. “It is my understanding that none of the men who had been interred on
R-9 wanted to return to their former lives though they were given the chance.
They took the Burgon up on his offer to take them to Theristes, which they have
made their new home. It was only out of loyalty and appreciation of what the
Burgon had done for them that they left Theristes to help avenge the attack on
Aduaidh Prime.”
“It doesn’t matter whether Ailyn wishes to
return or not,” Vice-Counselor Jost declared. “He has responsibilities. He…”
“I am dying, Colonel,” the vice-counselor’s
wife cut in. “I have only a few short months to live. It would comfort me
greatly to know my eldest child—the goddess help me, my favorite son—is alive
and well. I ache to see him just once more before I leave this world.” She took
a white linen handkerchief from the pocket of her coat and blotted her upper
lip. “Is that too much to ask?”
“This doesn’t seem to me to be a matter for
the Guardians,” Shanee said. “Wouldn’t it be better to turn the request over to
Fleet Command? They have the resources to…”
“We want the best,” Vice-Counselor Jost said.
“The Guardians are the best. No expense is to be spared. My lady-wife and I
will foot the entire bill from the leasing of an adequately prepared LRC to
whatever other provisions you might need in the undertaking of your mission,
Colonel.” He raised his chin. “We have the blessing of the arch-counselor
himself to undertake this rescue.”
“Rescue?” Shanee questioned. “You are
suggesting the target is being held against his will on Theristes.”
“The target—as you so blithely call him—may
be my son,” the older woman sneered. “I want him home!”
Shanee and Strom watched the wife of the
vice-counselor breakdown, putting her trembling hands over her eyes and sobbing
wretchedly, her loud keening sharp and painful to the ear.
“Look what you have done!” the vice-counselor
barked. “I shall report this to your superiors, General, I assure you!” He had
gotten to his feet and was hovering over his wife, patting her back, speaking
to her as though she were a distraught child instead of a grown woman.
Shanee’s attention shifted to the general.
Strom was frowning sharply, his jaw tense, his eyes hard as ice.
“Come, my love,” Vice-Counselor Jost said,
helping his lady-wife to her feet. “Let me take you back to our quarters so you
may rest. I will deal with this in your stead.”
“I need my boy home, Laverne,” Elspeth
Harmattan-Jost whimpered. “Please bring my boy home to me.”
“Now, now, sweeting,” the little man
consoled her. “Please don’t fret. They’ll bring Ailyn home.” He turned at the
door and gave Strom a fierce look. “I promise you they will bring your son home
to Riezell.”
After the vice-counselor and his sobbing
wife had left his office, Miriam came over to the general’s door and eased it
shut, giving her boss a pursed lip, rolling eye grimace as she did.
“So,” Strom said, relaxing in his chair.
“What do you think, Colonel?”
“I believe the woman missed her calling,”
Shanee replied. “She should have been an actress.”
Strom smiled slightly. “You didn’t buy her
tears?”
“Those were crocodile tears, Sir,” Shanee
said with a snort. “Shed to impress us with a sorrow I seriously doubt she
feels toward her missing son.”
“My feelings exactly,” Strom agreed. “My
guess is she wants him home in order to gain access to the rather hefty
inheritance the duke of Kentsington would receive from the Harmattan estate.”
He scratched his cheek. “Since no body was ever found, the bulk of the estate
reserved for the primary heir still sits in
an
Éilvéiseach
numbered account, the password to which is known only by Ailyn Harmattan.”
“Since she is not long for this life, she
might not need or want her missing son’s money but I would lay odds the
vice-counselor does and has been nudging her through this,” Shanee said.
“Or her youngest son does,” Strom injected.
“True.”
“All right, here’s the deal,” the general
said. “I have requisitioned an LRC for your use to Theristes. It’s about a
month’s flight out there, another month back. Since you were injured in the
line of duty and Command Central owes you some R&R, take it on Theristes. I
won’t expect you back for at least three months.”
Shanee’s white eyebrows shifted upward.
“With or without the heir-apparent?”
“My guess is he’s like the rest of those
poor wretches who were experimented on at R-9. From what I’ve been able to
gather, most of them fear what they have become and don’t want their families
to know they’re still alive. I’ll bet you Ailyn Harmattan has no desire to
return to this world. So—to answer your question—if he wants to return, fine.
If he doesn’t, that’s okay too. We’ll leave it entirely up to him. If he wants
to send the password back with you for that numbered account, that will be his
decision to make. If he wants to see his mother one last time before she kicks
the bucket, that’s his choice. My feeling is the man’s gone through enough as it
is. He doesn’t need to be put through the wringer with that barracuda of a
mother cracking the whip over his head.” He unfolded his tall length from the
chair and stood.
“When do I leave?” Shanee asked as she got
to her feet.
“Do you have anything on the burner that
needs turning off?” he asked.
“I’ve no living pets, no plants and no pals
to wonder where I’ve gone. My twin babies are powered down and can stay so
indefinitely until I return. I can leave as soon as I pack a bag,” she said,
making reference to her two Class 10 titanium construct cybots that were her
pride and joy.
“That’s the way to travel,” he said,
extending a hand to her. “Good luck, Colonel, and enjoy your stay in paradise.”
Chapter Two
Coming off Transition had to be worse than
going into it, the Reaper thought as he hunkered down at the stream and looked
at his naked reflection in the water. Why he’d felt the need to shift and run
about the forest like one of its natural denizens, he couldn’t explain. But now
and again he would do so out of cycle just to feel the rush of the wind through
his fur, the freedom of movement, the power. Staring at himself, he supposed
one reason was because he had some control over the Transition at such times
whereas with his regular cycle, he did not. What irritated him more than that
lack of control was the fact that no matter how close to his cycle he was when
he forced himself to shift, he’d shift again when his system said he should.
Two months, two weeks, two days—it didn’t matter. His normal cycle would come
whether he wanted it to or not. The only thing that could completely throw it
off—or so Tariq once told him—was illness or a serious injury.
“Either way, my fucking hair will continue
to sprout like a weed!” he grumbled.
His hair hadn’t been cut since he’d arrived
on Theristes and now hung halfway down his back. Each time he reverted back to
human form from the wolflike creature he had been turned into, it was his hair
that annoyed him the most. It was wild—frizzing around his head with matted tangles
clinging to its long tendrils.
“You need to cut the gods-be-damned shit,”
he mumbled to his wavering image in the water.
Snarling, he ducked his head beneath the
water to soak his hair then straightened up, flinging the thick, wet mass over
his head, spraying water droplets in an arc above and behind him as it fell
heavily to slap against his bare back. Wincing at the feel, he tugged it over
his right shoulder, sat down cross-legged on the stream bank and began combing
his fingers through the tangles then making quick work of braiding it.
For the longest time he just sat there. His
body twitched—needing the tenerse that would calm it and the Sustenance that
would ease his hunger. He longed to dive into the stream but there was still
the residual fear that he’d drown and the nagging prickle of pain in his back
from the hellion who dared him to test Tariq’s words.
“You won’t drown, men,”
the Prime Reaper had patiently explained.
“It was a lie told to
you by the scientists on Riezell-Nine. Let me show you.”
Despite watching Tariq jackknife down the
three-hundred-foot-high waterfall beside the Reaper village and—with sure
strokes—glide over the bubbling waters of Lake Briza, few men rescued from R-9
had dared to venture into the water. Those who did practically lived in the
lake, spending much of their time crisscrossing the silver surface and striving
to bring back the many years they’d lost in the cages on Cell Block Four.
“Reapers love water,”
Tariq had insisted.
“Try it and see!”
As yet, he had not dredged up the courage
to investigate Tariq’s claims but the water beckoned to him with its coolness
and beauty. As a child, he had lived on his grandfather’s estate and every
summer day would find him out on the diving platform in the middle of Lake
Taku, nearly half a mile from shore. There wasn’t a single foot of the lake’s
bottom he had not explored, holding his breath longer than any of his friends
as he shot beneath the rippling waves.
“You are our water baby,” his grandmother
had joked.
At Fleet Academy he had been the captain of
the swim team and had won every medal offered many times over. His senior year
he had represented his country in the Coalition of Federated Worlds Universal
Games held in Bhreatain and had come away with fourteen gold medals—the most
any swimmer had ever won.
Now, he thought as he sat looking at his
rippling reflection, all he could do was stare hungrily at the water, trying
day by day to find the courage needed to dive into the water.
A sharp, agonizing pain stabbed into his
right kidney and he bent forward over it.
“Leave me alone. I’m not going to jump in,”
he whispered to his queen. Her jagged bite pierced him once more then faded
away.
He heard the ship before he saw it. It was
a low drone that shook the ground beneath his bare rump and when he looked up
at the sleek silver belly of the Class 7 LRC as it sailed past overhead, he
felt strong vibrations coming from it that made his testicles tighten.
Getting to his feet, he watched the ship,
tracked it with his amber gaze, until it disappeared momentarily behind the
tall canopy of the trees. With his eyes trained on the high summit of Mount
Korak, the LRC came back into view and soared over what the inhabitants of
Theristes called the Wings of the Raven—the two-mountain range that had formed
in the shape of a giant flying bird, its wings arched gracefully from a tall
central peak that resembled a bird’s beak in profile. The striations down the
two mountains caused by the winds looked like feathers carved in rock.