Jeanne G'Fellers - No Sister of Mine (26 page)

“All done.” Trazar patted her good leg, understanding when she unconsciously jerked away. “You didn’t feel a thing I did, did you?”

“No. And I know that’s not good.”

Trazar nodded then separated the ration pack her hands couldn’t manage. “Eat something.”

“You, too.”

“All right already!” Trazar laughed. “Geez, you act like my sister or something.”

“I’m not only your sister,” she reminded him, her head at a subtle tilt that suggested teasing. “Sentry Commander Laiman, I am also your superior officer. So eat. That’s an order.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Trazar saluted her and took a bite of dried meat. “This is really bad. It’s old.”

“Tough, too.” LaRenna choked down a half-chewed bite and shoved the rations away. “I can’t eat this. It hurts my jaw.”

“Then eat your fruit preserves and crackers. They’re still reasonably edible.” He traded her meat for his tin of Taelach sweet rations. “Now I’m going to pull a little rank. Your big brother says to shut up and eat, so you’d better mind.”

LaRenna stuck her tongue out in her typical mild defiance but did as he asked, finishing the first tin and half of the second by the time he had worked through one meat pack.

“Take this.” She pushed the tin at him. “I can’t eat anything else.”

“Drink your water.” Trazar cleaned out the second tin. “Then try to rest. Your eyes are burning in your head.”

She slid down, stretched as much as she dared, and peered up at their awkward quarters.

“You know,” she yawned, “it’s a curious sensation to lie on the ceiling and look up at the floor.”

“Even more so to wake up hanging from the floor.” Trazar laughed again, happy see her outlook improving. “So tell me, are you and First Kimshee Middle oathed?”

LaRenna was puzzled by the query. “Why, you know Krell?”

“We’re acquainted.” Trazar thought of the late-night visit to his quarters. In hindsight, maybe he shouldn’t have been quite so callous.

“No, we’re not oathed.” LaRenna let the subject drop as she searched for a position that didn’t make her ache.

“Hold on.” Trazar unfolded a blanket over her and lay beside her, his arm extended as a pillow. “Get as close as you can. It’ll be cold by morning with this rain. We’ll both need the heat.” She gave him a brief, uncomfortable look then moved close. He spread the second blanket over them both, wrapping his pillowing arm around her until his hand rested palm down on her hair.

“Where’s my cloak?” she asked with a fevered shiver.

“Long left behind, I’m afraid.” The emergency lighting flickered then died, shrouding the launch in darkness. LaRenna began to shake again, not from cold or illness, but from the fiendish memories that leached in with the night. Trazar stroked her hair to remind her of his presence. “Remember what Krell told you. You’re not alone. You’re safe.”

“Thank you.” LaRenna relaxed into her brother’s hold and listened to the rain. If it would only wash away some of the pain, some of the deep stains the twins had left on her.

Your deepest instincts should always take precedence over the doubts your mind projects.

—Sarian Military Standards

Chandrey knotted the deep blue mourning sash around her narrow waist and draped the excess fabric down her right side. Belsas’s sash, though just as large, fit when worn across her shoulder and tucked into belt-line as was the traditional guardian manner. “It was kind of Ockson to provide us with sashing from the ship’s stores.” Chandrey joined her lover on the overstuffed divan in their temporary quarters. Belsas had remained silent since they had left the battle deck and now sat, staring blankly ahead.

“Bel?” Chandrey smoothed at the bottom section of hair Belsas had removed from her braid. She’d kept it in the same complicated plat for so many passes that the strands refused anything but a return to their accustomed position. Chandrey’s hair had rejected the new styling as well, frizzing uncontrollably at the same site. “Bel?” she inquired more gently of her lover. “You all right?”

Belsas looked joylessly up then away. “I’m fine. Have a headache is all.”

“Don’t shut me out. You have to be feeling something.”

“I’m not.”

“Yes, you are. Talk to me.”

Belsas scowled. “I told you my head hurts.”

“I’ll do no such thing. Tell me what’s going through your mind.”

“I told you, nothing!”

“Liar!” exclaimed Chandrey. “Our only child just died the most horrific of deaths and you have no sadness?”

“What do you want me to say?” Belsas slammed her hand against the divan’s cushions. “How sorry I am? How it breaks my heart she’s gone?”

“If it helps.”

“Helps what? Bring LaRenna back?” Belsas ripped her braid from Chandrey’s hand and rose from the divan. “She’s dead. No amount of grieving on my part will change that.”

“Heartless wretch.” Chandrey returned Belsas’s cold gaze. “Did you ever think that I might need you to grieve with me—that maybe what you are feeling needs to be shared? Am I alone in this?”

“Damnation, Chandrey, I told you twice now that I feel nothing. NOTHING! Nothing except dead inside.”

“There are no regrets, remorse, nothing you wish you’d said to her before the crash? Nothing?” Chandrey’s pale face turned an anguished pink. “I don’t believe you.”

“What do you want from me?” Belsas held her arms wide. “Tears? Guardians don’t cry. It’s unbecoming. The Taelach of All can’t have emotions. She must be detached. The post won’t allow for anything less.”

“What of Belsas Exzal?” sighed Chandrey. “Is she incapable of emotions now as well? Does her post control her so completely?”

“My personal feelings run second to my post. They always have. I can have no regrets, no remorse, no doubts over what I have done in the line of duty.”

Chandrey’s skirt’s twisted when she rose with a force echoed by her angry tone. “Well, I can! You sent my baby, my LaRenna, my only child to face the Creiloff twins, knowing what they did to me during the war. I hate you for that, almighty, unfeeling Taelach of All and I’ll never, ever forgive you for it!” Chandrey stormed from the room. She had stood by Belsas and supported all her decisions for nearly thirty passes. Now, the one time she truly needed her guardian to be there for her, only her, Belsas shunned her. Chandrey kept a stoic appearance until she reached the deck’s corner set meditation lounge. There, in the room’s dim light, she knelt at the Mother Maker’s small shrine and wept, begging her creator for the strength to understand and forgive.

On the battle deck, Krell threw her mourning sash to the floor. “She’s not dead. I know it. Why won’t any of you listen to me? She’s hurt. She needs me. She needs us!” Krell turned toward Firman. “You believe me. Don’t you?”

“Try to be realistic,” he replied. “She was in poor condition before the crash happened. There was no way she could have survived.”

“Here!” Krell retrieved the sash from the deck. “You’re so damned convinced, you wear it!”

Firman removed the sash from her clenched fist and laid it on the worktable. “I know you loved her, Krell—”

“Love, not loved,” she sputtered. “You don’t speak of the living in the past tense. It’s bad manners.” Krell ran her palm over the picture of Saria Four spanning the wall viewer. “Where do you think we should begin looking? Listfeindale? The lower Reisfall ranges?”

“They’ll have tracked the crash to a hundred-kilometer radius within the hour,” he sighed.

The level lift doors slid open with an airy swoosh, admitting Tatra. She glided across the room to give Krell a compassionate embrace. “I am so sorry. She was such a sweet girl.”

“She’s not dead, Tatra. She’s down there.” Krell tapped the view-screen, intent on the picture.

The Healer glanced at Firman. He shrugged and shook his head in similar bewilderment. “Denial,” he whispered.

“There’s nothing to deny!” exclaimed Krell, pushing Tatra away. “LaRenna is very much alive. I know it. I feel it in my heart.”

“You’re positive she’s alive?” A physician’s analytical tone seeped into Tatra’s alto. Her concern for Krell now extended beyond the usual grief counseling and into her actual mental status. “How do you know? All indications are to the contrary.”

Krell gazed at her in astonishment. “She’s near. Can’t you feel her? I hear her voice. Smell her scent. She’s close, Tatra. Getting her back is all I can think of.”

“Do you dream of her?”

“Every time I close my eyes.” Krell’s expression darkened. “Mostly nightmares as of late.”

“Tell me about them.”

Krell stepped back when she noticed the detached clinical expression on Tatra’s face. “I don’t need any of your psychoanalytical jargon trying to convince me I’ve lost my senses. I know she’s alive. I know it!”

“Chances are she isn’t.” Tatra glanced again to Firman. “You have to face facts.”

“Facts?” Krell’s denying expression shifted into indignation. “You physicians think you’re above error. You know what you can do with your facts, Healer Wileyse?” Krell overturned one of the worktable chairs in a lunge that shoved Tatra against the wall. “You can shove them and that self-serving, know-it-all analysis up your bony ass!”

“Krell, release me—please. Your personal pain doesn’t give you the right to attack another.” Tatra chewed at her bottom lip. “I only wish to help.”

“Back off, Krell.” Firman laid a hand on his sister’s shoulder. She shrugged him off and shoved Tatra into the wall again.

“Pain? Woman, you’ve no idea the pain she’s endured!”

“Krell, NO!” Firman jerked back with all his might, tumbling them both over the worktable. Tatra retreated to the corner nearest the lift and watched, gasping as Firman turned his sibling’s anger. “Come on, Krell, it won’t be the first time I’ve dropped you a peg.”

“And it won’t be the first time I’ve kicked your fool ass either!” Krell swung at him, stumbling forward with the effort. Firman grabbed her arm as she moved, twisting it high on her back.

“If that’s the best you can do then I’m disappointed. LaRenna could have done better than that.”

“You bastard!” Krell wrapped her foot around his ankle and jerked hard, careening him to the floor. Firman pulled her down as he fell then rolled on top, neatly pinning her with his knees.

“Stupid move, Kimshee. LaRenna would’ve known better.” Firman pushed his knees deep into Krell’s back, encouraging the string of curses she threw at him. “Come on Taelach, you too weak to fend off a mere Aut? How do you expect to care for a mate when you can’t whip me?” Firman hauled Krell’s head back by the hair then bent close. “If this is the best you can do,” he whispered in her ear, “then maybe she’s better off dead.”

Krell bent with uncontrollable wrath, throwing Firman off her back. “You sorry son of a bitch, I told you she’s not dead!” She grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and swung him headlong into the viewer’s control board. The impact scattered an arcing electrical spray across the room. “She’s alive!”

“She’s dead and you know it!”

“NO!” Krell grabbed him again, throwing him across the worktable and into a far chair. “Had enough, old man?”

“Not on your life. This is just getting interesting.” Firman reached across the table, snagging Krell’s tunic. “Come here, kid. Let me knock a little reality into that thick skull of yours.” He ducked a punch and landed his fist squarely in Krell’s face, sending her sliding back across the table. “Your woman is gone. Deal with it.”

Krell quickly shook off the blow. “You’ll have to do much more than that to convince me she’s anything but alive.” Her sweet right toppled him to the floor.

“Whoa!” A grin crinkled the skin surrounding Firman’s stinging eye. “It’s about time you put some energy into it. Put that much effort into finding LaRenna and you just might get her back.”

“What?” Krell stumbled back and dropped her arms.

“You heard me.” Firman threw his arm around his sibling in a bear-grip hug. “I haven’t put up with your crazy notions for thirty-nine passes without learning they have an annoying habit of being true.” He shoved Krell to the floor and collapsed on top of her, his deep laugh shaking the floor. “Come on. Hit me again. I haven’t tussled with you in ages.”

Krell chuckled and lightly punched his arm. “So, you’re going to help me?”

“You know it.”

“Have you lost your minds?” Tatra exited her corner to face them, one hand on her hip, the other shaking a critical finger. “You try to kill each other one minute then laugh together the next? I don’t understand!”

“You wouldn’t.” Krell clouted Firman’s back. “You don’t have a sibling.”

“Think of it this way, Tatra.” Firman scrubbed affectionately at Krell’s head. “She was going to blow regardless. Would you rather have been tossed around?”

“Certainly not,” warbled the healer. “I’m no fighter.”

“That’s obvious,” he snickered with a wink her direction. “You’re all bone, no flesh. That crash would have snapped a twig like you.”

Tatra gaped. “You mean to tell me you think she’s alive, too? Ockson said she was in a bad way before the launch ever went down.”