Redemption of Light (The Light Trilogy) (48 page)

CHAPTER 51

Amirah walked imperiously across the bridge of the
Sargonid,
feigning calm, though her heart beat so loudly she thought it would burst through her rib cage.

They’d just exited vault and on the broad forward monitor, Palaia loomed. From outside the EM shells, it looked like nothing more than a beautiful saffron-colored gas ball set adrift in the ebony ocean of space. Her crew worked industriously around her, charting their course, tending to last minute communications details, laughing about how nice a vacation would be, though none of them expected such a gift from the Magistrates.

Amirah walked in front of the reflective shielding over the transport tube door and stopped. She straightened the sleeves of her crisp dress uniform. The golden tassels on her captain’s bars gleamed like gaudy bits of shredded tinsel. She’d braided her blonde hair and coiled it on top of her head. She looked too thin. Everything except her stony eyes seemed pale and tenuous. But those eyes … they could have belonged to the vengeful God she’d heard so many stories about in her youth. A divinity who could lift His hand and the bitter fire of His enmity would destroy worlds.

See, Grandmama, I remembered.

Pain clutched at her chest. She fought it down.
Oh, Grandmama, forgive me. Forgive me….

From out of her memories, Setter’s gravelly old voice admonished:
“Just believe, Amirah! That’s all I ask. For on the Last Day, the heavens shall shudder and the planets shall be shaken from their places by the fury of the Lord of Hosts. On the sacred Mountain, the Lord, will swallow up that veil that shrouds all the peoples and the oppressor will meet his end. Then the dead will live again!”

Amirah went to ease down in her command chair. She studied Jason’s broad back. He bent studiously over the navigation console, but beneath the fabric of his purple uniform, she could see his shoulder muscles bunched like corded steel. A tingling, sinking sensation accosted her when she looked at him. She’d forced him to tell her in great detail about their night together, and her subsequent seizure. Since that time, flits of memory had come back to her—gentle, passionate. More than anything else, she’d recalled the timid love in his eyes and the reverent way he’d touched her. The knowledge left her off-balance. For years, she’d relied on him in the most dire of circumstances, but now she feared to. He wouldn’t do anything misguided, would he? She’d been his lover—gladly—but in a battle situation she’d retreat to being his captain. Would he follow orders?
Would he leave her in the Spires’ control room when she ordered him to?

“Captain?” Jason called, breaking her out of her thoughts. “Something’s not right here.”

“Explain, Lieutenant.”

Woloc’s hands danced over his nav board. “I’m magnifying.”

Palaia seemed to hurl toward them with dizzying speed. Amirah squinted at the image. Tiny silver lights circled the station. Strange, indeed. “Identify those objects, Woloc. I thought the satellites were inside the outermost energy shell.”

“Aye, they are. Those aren’t satellites, they’re battle cruisers. From the spacing and speed, I’d guess they’re on blue alert.”

Amirah sat forward in her chair.
Blue alert?
“Lieutenant, please scan the galactic environment around Palaia. Any hint of enemy activity?”

“A moment, ma’am.”

Amirah’s breathing grew shallow and uneven. The thought of Underground cruisers nearby left her anxious—and traitorously hopeful.

Gever Hadash spun around in her chair and peered at Amirah. The golden com aura flared around her head, accentuating the lean weasel shape of her face and her green eyes. “Captain, I’m getting a flood of dattrans discussing the off-loading of captured Gamant civilians on Satellite 4. Apparently the alert is simply a precaution against Underground attempts to rescue the captives.”

“First Lieutenant? Your analysis?”

Jason lifted a hand and continued to study his com. “I suspect Gever’s correct. There’s no tangible threat out there and I’m getting no gravity wave fluctuations to indicate incoming vessels.”

“Interesting,” Amirah remarked. “One would think two cruisers would be enough to guard such a simple action. Twenty seems a little excessive.”

“Yes,” Jason muttered carefully. “Unless they’ve already had word of an impending attack.” He looked at her over his shoulder and Amirah’s eyes narrowed in thought.

“Possible. How long until we dock at Palaia?”

Jason accessed the chronometer on his console. “Our shuttle has been cleared to dock in forty minutes. Magistrate Slothen himself will meet us at the spaceport. He asked me to let you know that he’s set up a celebration dinner for you tonight, so he can personally award your Medal of Honor.”

His voice had been purely professional, just informing, but the words affected Amirah like a glacial breeze through her soul. The seven other members of her bridge crew turned to gaze at her, pride brimming in their eyes, and she felt physically ill. She got out of her chair and walked to stand behind Jason.

“Lieutenant, please assemble a security team and escort our prisoners to landing bay twenty-two. I’ll meet you there in fifteen minutes.”

“Affirmative, Captain.”

Amirah lifted a hand to her communications officer. “Gever, you’re in command. Establish standard orbit around Palaia. Take good care of the
Sargonid
until we get back.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.” Hadash got up from her console and dropped into the command chair. The rest of the bridge shifted in trained symmetry, Pirke taking Hadash’s console, Reis taking Jason’s, and on down the line.

Amirah hurried toward the transport tube and held the door for Jason. He trotted up and hit the patch for level two, saying, “I assume you’re going to your cabin …”

The words:
one last time
hung bitterly.

“Yes,” Amirah responded. “I need to get my dress cap. So do you, Lieutenant.”

He nodded and slumped back against the wall, a forlorn expression on his handsome face. He looked as though he wanted to say something badly, but couldn’t quite get the nerve.

Gently, she prompted, “What is it, Jason?”

When he glanced up, all the stoic professionalism he’d been working so hard to maintain vanished. His eyes shone with naked vulnerability and fear. “Amirah, there’s a question I’ve been trying not to think about, but now that we’re at Palaia, I—I’d like to ask you.” He hastily amended, “You don’t have to answer.”

She smiled fleetingly. “I assume that means it’s personal. Go ahead. You can ask me anything you want, Jason. I’ll answer it as honestly as I can.”

He held her gaze powerfully. “Amirah, when you—when you were
ill,
the only person you called for—”

“Was Tahn.”

“Yes.” He shifted uncomfortably to brace his other shoulder against the tube wall. “Are you … do you love him, Amirah?”

“No, Lieutenant.” She said it quickly and decisively so she didn’t have to think about what a lie it was, or how the question made her ache inside.

Jason examined her face in detail, trying to ascertain the truth of the assertion. After a few seconds, he quietly exhaled and the light came back to his hazel eyes. “Thank you for answering. I’d no right to ask, but—”

“You’d every right.”

The door opened, revealing the long corridor on level two. Amirah put the heel of her hand over the patch to hold the door open. Jason watched her anxiously, as though waiting for her to say something intimate and reassuring. She railed at herself,
Can’t you comfort the man, Amirah? Just for the briefest moment, can’t you let him see the woman he loved last night? You’re going on a suicide mission, what harm would it do?

She shifted her palm to the patch to close the door. Jason didn’t move a muscle, but she saw the swift rise and fall of his broad chest. The hum of the tube seemed to grow deafeningly.

“Forgive me, Jason. I know I’ve been acting aloof and cold.” Spreading her arms in a gesture of futility, she vented a desperate laugh. “It’s just that I’m scared to death.”

A smile warmed his face. His hazel eyes softened. “I understand that feeling, Amirah.”

She started to hit the “open” patch again, but her hand refused. Instead, she turned and wrapped her arms around Jason’s shoulders, pulling him close in a frantic hug. His arms went tightly around her waist.

“Amirah,” he murmured. “I know you don’t remember what happened last night, but before we go down to Palaia, I want to tell you again that I love you.”

She stared blindly at the white wall, feeling empty and aching. “Tell me again when we get out of this, will you? Right now, I’m too—”

“I’ll tell you again.” He assured. He embraced her so hard that she couldn’t breathe, then he backed away suddenly. “Come on, we’ve got work to do.”

“Yes. I’ll meet you in the bay in ten minutes.”

“Affirmative, Captain.”

She stepped out of the tube and strode down the corridor. She heard the tube close just before she rounded the corner for her cabin. As though the soft click caused it, a sob lodged in her throat. She slumped against the wall and pressed her hot cheek to the cool tiles.
Don’t feel, Amirah. Don’t feel! You can’t afford to. Not ever … not ever again.

She shoved away from the wall and stolidly trotted to her cabin. Once inside, she wasted no time. She tramped to her closet and grabbed her purple dress cap from its hook. Pulling it down to the middle of her forehead-just as regulations required—she then strapped on two pistols and slipped Tahn’s Wind River fighter into her black boot. He’d seemed irrationally fond of it—if she miraculously got the chance, she’d give it back to him. Finally, she clipped her communications unit to her belt and hit her exit patch.

She started for the door … but her steps faltered when she passed the divider and glimpsed the rainbow wine goblets. As though the years fell away, she saw Sefer’s withered face. Grandmama gave her a tender, loving look as she wrapped another glass in the bright yellow paper they’d bought at the local stationery store that morning.
See these glasses, Amirah? They’re made by the old Gamants on Earth. They say the swirling colors reflect the beauty of Epagael that pervades Creation. Remember that. The government can take everything away from you but that. God’s beauty lives inside you. Don’t forget. They can beat you and rape your mind and kill you
—
but they’ll never take your Gamant soul. Not so long as you remember who and what you are.

Amirah suppressed the cry that constricted her throat, but tears fell from her eyes to splat on the beautiful blue swirls of the goblet. “Grandmama, if you can hear me now, I want you to know that I’ve finally stopped running from myself.
And I’m going to make them pay for what they did to you.”

She strode briskly to her table, picked up the curious necklace that Slothen had demanded they search Mikael Calas for, and sprinted out of her cabin to the transport tube. “Level twenty.”

The tube descended. No one else got on. She rode alone through the dreadful silence. When the door snicked back, she stepped out into a group of four security officers. She spied Jason a short distance away. When he saw her, he shouldered through the crowd and saluted.

“The prisoners are already aboard the shuttle, Captain.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant. The rest of the team is assembled?”

“Aye, sir.”

Behind Jason, Amirah saw her security chief, Lilith Moab, straighten up and unsling her rifle. A very tall, heavily-muscled woman with short black hair and steely brown eyes, Moab was generally brusque and bad-tempered. The rest of the team milled nervously, glancing at their captain and first lieutenant, no doubt wondering about Woloc’s hushed, urgent tone.

Amirah slapped Jason in the shoulder confidently. “Then let’s go.”

She led the way, and heard his steps pounding behind her. She greeted Moab and shoved through the doors leading out into bay twenty-two. The shuttle sat like a gleaming silver lance point on the white tiled floor. She strode purposely for it and her team followed obediently.

The two shuttle guards saluted as she walked up the gangplank. Amirah returned the gesture. When she stepped into the fuselage, Baruch’s gaze pinned her. He sat in the last chair on the left side of the shuttle, wrists and ankles bound in EM restraints. Two long rectangular portals trimmed each side of the ship. A gleam lit Baruch’s eyes—as though he were quietly speculating about her abilities.

I’m no Sefer Raziel, Baruch. You’re right about that. She was braver than I am.

As she moved toward the command cabin, Amirah noticed that each prisoner had been provided with fresh clothing meeting their individual demands. Mikael Calas was dressed in traditional Gamant garb. His long red robe accented the black of his beard and hair. Sybil Calas wore an ivory robe. She glared fiercely at Amirah as she passed by. Funk and Yosef Calas had adopted matching gray robes. Tahn and Baruch wore official Gamant Underground black uniforms.

Amirah’s gaze briefly touched Tahn’s as she walked by—his expression struck her as hard as a stiff belt of whiskey on an empty stomach. Filled with dread and suspicion, he seemed to be silently pleading with her not to let him down—not to change her mind.