The commander pushed forward on the accelerator, as far as it would go. The rover took a few moments, but built up speed. Strands of hair escaped Taj's helmet and blew over her face. Thoughts of Romjha's smile lingered. Had he smiled like that when he made love to his wife? He'd never kissed his young bride in a hidden spring-of that she was sure. The secret location of her own spring, accessed from within her quarters through a long tunnel bored in solid rock, had been told to Taj upon Pasha's death, willed from one bombmaker to another. That indoor freshwater spring was just about the only benefit of her job. She'd never gotten around to bringing anyone else there, not even Aleq, always savoring it alone with her scented oils and lotions.
She conjured an image of Romjha bathing, tossing his head back under a cascade of water, his hair throwing droplets everywhere, water and soap sluicing over a muscled back, buttocks, and thighs. . . .
Sudden yearning heated a place low in her belly. She clenched her teeth against it and stared out at the horizon. He touches you just once and look what it does!
Reprimanding herself, she tipped her head back. The wind cooled her frustrated desire. After a while, her perspiration dried and left behind a band of dust and salt at her hairline.
The stench of fuel was strong. Taj hoped no one decided to smoke a cigar, something both Romjha and Petro treated themselves to from time to time: the rover had a leak. But at least the crap-trap worked. They had a fleet of three of the vehicles, several hundred years old and still going. That was a testament to the remarkable technology of Those Who Came Before.
Those who were now gone.
She raised her visor to scan the night sky. All around her, tiny lights danced, wavering in the rising heat. Beckoning, teasing, tempting. Had the stars been lovers, she would have followed them wherever they wanted.
Who still lives on your worlds?
But the stars didn't share their secrets. Pretty but irrelevant bits of light they were, just as they'd appeared to the primitives at the dawn of civilization.
In truth, the people of Sienna were no better. Isolated, they were completely cut off from the rest of the galaxy. They could only guess at how many others had been killed so far in the power struggle following the collapse of the interstellar government. Billions? Trillions?
She focused on the stars. So many worlds ... so many people surely dead. The technology that had once bound this empire together was incredible. Medical science could heal damaged nerves, regenerate skin, and cure disease. Starships traveled at faster-than-light speeds. Communication took place in instants over vast interstellar distances, the legacy of a fabled lost civilization predating the next by a million years. Marvels, all. But now gone. And this very technology that helped the next empire expand had brought about its collapse.
The more spread out worlds became, the more difficult it was to keep control over them. Some had decided that they didn't need what they saw as the interference of an undeservedly privileged central monarchy, ineffective and self-serving. Those planets declared independence, and the urge spread. Smaller groups formed. After a while, differences in philosophy bred hostility. Planetary factions split and split again. Worlds began to look for reasons to fight each other. Almost unnoticed in the turmoil, the Imperium fell. Power landed in the hands of warlords who used tech to invent weaponry that could ruin entire worlds. And did. History stopped being written after that-for Taj's people, at least.
"There they are!" Petro called out.
The rover dipped a few feet in altitude and Taj jerked to alertness, her fingers curled tightly around her rifle. Another rover sat camouflaged amongst forgotten carcasses of long-ago melted equipment. Yellowish smoke and sparks like dying fireflies obscured her view of the burning fuel field. Farther out, near the horizon, plumes of fire shot into the sky. Heat hammered her skin.
Romjha stopped the rover at the edge of heaps of copper-colored boulders-rocks that seemed not to belong to the barren landscape but looked, as if ancient giants had played with them, leaving them scattered in impossible piles. In prewar days, it was said the huge stones had been hidden under hundreds of feet of knotted, centuries-old flowering vines. There, too, creatures of every description had thrived; some lived so deeply within the layers that they never saw sunlight, having evolved past the point of needing it.
Taj shuddered. None of the people she lived with had evolved into sunlight-shirking, cave-dwelling creatures. Not yet. Give them a few more centuries underground before they wouldn't crave the feel of sunshine and open spaces and air that didn't burn its way down their throat to their lungs.
She, Romjha, and Petro jumped out of their vehicle and ran over the sterile, hard-packed dirt, taking shelter under an ancient, scorched husk of a tank. The darkness was thick, the heat crushing. Perspiration oozed out of her pores and trickled into her eyes. Taj blinked to clear her vision. Two raiders scurried out of the shadows. Jetter was the first to reach them.
"Report," Romjha barked.
"We're all still in the game, Commander! The others are finishing up and on the way."
Taj exhaled. A knot between her shoulder blades unwound.
The other black-uniformed raider hunkered down next to her. She grabbed his bicep. "Aleq!"
"Taj, you should have seen it-"
Her fingers pressed into his skin. "You're alive."
"Of course I'm alive." He grinned. Straight teeth glowed in the weak moonlight. "Why wouldn't I be?"
She shoved him. Cocky bastard.Sudden fireworks of shrapnel and propellant made her squint. Her stomach tightened."Look at it, Taj," Aleq said, raising his visor. His eyes glazed over. Fire danced in them. "It's beautiful."Taj had never seen him look at anything or anyone that way. Not even her."What happened here?" Romjha demanded.Aleq's excitement burned brighter than the geysers of flame behind him. "We blew up the landing pad. The entire pad. It's gone."Taj's heart thundered. Her mouth was almost too dry to form words. "The charges malfunctioned.""No, they were great. They did just what you designed them to do. But give them most of the credit. They deserve it."
Taj followed Aleq's gaze to a smoldering hulk of metal she hadn't noticed before-the smoking remains of a fighter craft.
Romjha's helmet visor glinted. "A scout?"
Aleq shook his head. "Not the warlord's. They're resistance fighters like us. They saw what we were doing
to the skyport and asked to finish it off. And they did!" He deflated slightly, adding, "Before they crashed."
Taj wasn't sure if she should be outraged that the skyport was destroyed on purpose, swamped with relief
that her explosives hadn't detonated by accident, or stunned speechless that a starfighter had crashed on Sienna. She decided to let Romjha deal with it.
The way the muscles in his jaw bunched was ominous. "You were the leader of this raid, Aleq. Your orders
were to take out the southwest corner of the pad with the new charges and to bring back fuel. You accomplished a bit more than that, wouldn't you say?"
Aleq scrubbed a hand over his bristly chin. "Yes."
"On whose orders, Raider!" Romjha demanded coldly.Think fast, she willed Aleq. As reckless as he could be, as adolescent as he often seemed, she didn't wantthe commander to come down too hard on him. Even if what he'd done was wrong.
"We broke the raiders' vow. We acted independently. If you remove me from the ranks, I'll accept it. But,
sir, would you have told them no?"
Romjha raised his visor. Rivulets of sweat ran down his cheekbones and square jaw. Hair that looked dark brown but was almost blond when dry lay wetly on his forehead. Gazing at the inferno, his expression brooding, he wiped perspiration from his brow with the back of a thick, grimy forearm. "No," he said at last.
"I would not. I would have done the same."
"What?" Taj almost stuttered. This was Romjha, the cautious, by-the-rules commander, the widower who never stopped grieving, a man she admired for his restraint, his principles, his prudence. Either her good ear had gone bad or her lip-reading was off, because Romjha couldn't possibly have said what she'd just heard.
"We've lasted this long because we've lain low. We take only what we need-food, medicine-not airfields!"
"But, Taj, do we remain underground forever?" Aleq asked.
"If it's the safest option, of course we do."
Romjha crouched at her side. "Taj, you shouldn't have to make such a choice. You deserve to live without worrying about killing or being killed. Maybe it was time to strike a blow back. I'd like to see it where women don't have to-"
Not again. "I'm a soldier. I'm supposed to fight."
A shadow passed over Romjha's harsh, rugged features. "It's wrong that those who should be protected find themselves fighting-both here on Sienna and on the other worlds. If I had the power and the resources, like these outsiders had, I'd do something more. I'd change everything. I'd ban weapons of mass destruction. I'd bring back the freedom to worship, to reproduce, to prosper. I'd bring us peace."
There had always been something dead in the commander's gaze. Weary. Uncomplaining. But now those eyes had come alive. More than alive, they glowed.
Petro appeared as astonished as Taj was by his leader's speech, but he seemed understanding, maybe even admiring of it. Gah! Petro was crazy, too. Maybe there was something in the drinking water that had infected all the men. She prayed it wasn't contagious.
"Great Mother." She shook her head. "I cheat death in a hopeless life, but you dream. I don't know which is more futile-or more dangerous."
"Don't be afraid, Taj," Romjha said in a gentler voice.
The muscles in her back bunched. Her head throbbed. "I am not scared," she snarled. "I am incredibly irritated!" She wanted to wipe that knowing half-smile from his patronizing face. "If I am afraid of anything, it is of your mental stability-or lack thereof."
He regarded her so intently that she grew warm. He didn't believe her; he didn't believe a word she'd said. "I want to take back our future, Taj. I don't want to sit here passively, waiting to see what will happen to us. Destiny isn't a matter of chance. It's a matter of choice. You yourself said that when Pasha died."
She searched her recollections of that horrible night. "You remember that night?"
"I have internalized it, my dear Taj." He leaned sideways, and his voice dropped to a private rumble close to her good ear. "I consider myself a patient man, but when I set my mind to achieving an objective, little can deter me. Often, a goal must be held close, buried deep, before it can be brought to fruition. I value most what I work hard to win, what requires time, thought, and careful wooing."
Oblivious to words that had become strangely charged with an undercurrent that left Taj breathless, Jetter broke in. "Romjha, the warlord's forces are on the run. They're pulling out of the area."
Taj could almost feel the jolt of interest that shot through Romjha. It matched the surge of dread that swelled coldly in her belly. If I ever have the chance to do more than dream, Taj, I will take it. What would he do?
"How did you learn this?" Romjha asked.
Jetter squared his shoulders. "The outsiders told us, sir."
"They communicated with you? How?"
"From the air. They transmitted their voices into our helmets. The static made it tough to hear, but we heard enough."
"It's been a long time since anyone's used those receivers," Petro stated.
In obvious appreciation of the technology involved, Romjha squinted at the demolished fighter. "What brought them down?"
"A missile. From a system in the skyport."
He glanced sideways at Aleq. "The skyport was auto-defended against an air attack? The robot guns were deadly against us, but..."
"It surprised them, too."
"All these years and I never figured that out." Romjha exhaled audibly. "It proves how little we know of our own home." His voice turned sorrowful, reminding Taj of the numerous funerals over which he'd presided. "This is a historic day. For the first time, we know for certain that others like us still live, that not all are dead or imprisoned by oppressive regimes. What we can assume about the rest of the galaxy has changed. These outsiders came here in good faith. Brave men they were. Later we'll hold a vigil for them, as if they were our own."
"A vigil?" Aleq blurted out. "A celebration's what we need. They're alive!"
Taj and Petro swung their rifles toward the sound of shouts, and Romjha rose to his feet as five shadows appeared from the smoke and darkness.
Chapter Five.
Taj squinted down the barrel of her rifle. Three of the people running toward her were the remaining raiders. The other two were strangers. Outsiders.
Her lips pulled back in a snarl. Her finger flexed over her trigger. One shot, two, and these suicidal thrill seekers will no longer be a problem. They would bring no more attention from the warlords, nor would they make Romjha consider chasing off to fight a war he couldn't win.
Aleq laid his hand over the muzzle of her rifle and gently pushed the weapon down. She swallowed, saw that her hands were shaking.
"They're not the enemy, Taj," he said. "They're like us."
"They don't look like us." They were bigger, stronger, healthier than the men she knew, save Romjha and Petro, who were phenomena among their own people. Yet if these strangers had tech, then it followed they might have decent food, shelter, and medical care, too. Such luxuries would account for their size.
The outsiders wouldn't stay for long on Sienna, Taj knew. If they had the tech it appeared they did, they'd be rescued by their people and taken off-planet quickly enough. They weren't here to help the people of this planet; they were here to fight. But what if they seduced Romjha with tales of the worlds beyond, and he left with them on an idealistic, unrealistic mission to destroy the warlords?
Taj's back crawled with foreboding. Her hands twisted impotently around her lowered rifle as she watched the quintet approach.
The two outsiders wore dull-colored clothing that appeared to be uniforms stripped of identifying insignia. The larger of the pair bore his comrade on his back. His shirt was missing a sleeve, revealing a sweat-slick, muscular arm wider in circumference than Taj's thigh.
"That's Jal," Aleq explained. "The wounded man is Cheya. He took shrapnel in the leg."
Cheya would need an experienced healer's attention, Taj realized with a sinking feeling. She hoped he would make it. The healers were a rover's ride away. Like the raiders, she knew how to tend the usual injuries, but the healers discouraged amateur interference, claiming it caused infection and death more often than not.
"That's all there were, Romjha," Aleq continued. "Two of them."
The group tumbled into the shelter of the gutted tank. The odors of scorched clothing and overheated metal mixed with the tang of blood, sweat, and fear. The outsiders may not be familiar, Taj thought bleakly, but the scent they carried was. It was the smell of war.
The outsider named Jal fell to his knees and eased his comrade from his back as gently as one would lay down a child, though Cheya was nearly as tall as Jal. A hasty field dressing had been wound tightly around the wounded man's upper right thigh-Jal's missing sleeve, Taj realized. Blood had soaked through it, turning the grayish cloth brown-black. In full daylight it would have been gory red. Taj was glad it was night.
As the remaining three raiders reported to Romjha, hastily debriefing him, Taj scrutinized the outsiders. Their boots were made from real leather, she guessed, sniffing at a faintly exotic scent in the air. This wasn't footwear hand-stitched by women sitting around the fire, nursing babies and trading stories. Nor were their uniforms made of homemade cloth. Everything was machine-made; finely made, too. The wonders of technology she'd only read about, these men had experienced.
While the returning raiders boasted about destroying the skyport, Jal tended his companion. The outsider's breaths were ragged, likely from exhaustion and injuries hidden beneath his soiled uniform. He'd been in a violent crash, but he wouldn't realize just how affected he was until later. Shock hit you that way, Taj knew, a delayed reaction, like when she'd gotten flash-burned.
Jal raised Cheya's visor, making the lower portion of his face visible. His jaw was slack and his lips dry. Muttering softly, Jal dipped his head in prayer.
Taj bit back surprise. She hadn't expected such a show of faith from this hulking warrior. In her community, it was the women who prayed, and the men who were prayed about. She said, "I hope your prayers work. It looks like your friend could use all the help he can get."
Jal lifted his head, fixed her with a steady but glazed stare as if she'd called him back from a long journey. "He will be healed. And he will live." His accent was heavy, his tone aristocratic stopping just short of haughty. "Like his ancestors, Cheya will survive."
Jal's confidence made her angry. "If the bandage holds until we reach base camp," she retorted, "If infection doesn't set in. If the medicines we fabricate or steal heal the wound-"
Romjha's hand landed on her shoulder. Her body gave an involuntary start. His fingers flexed gently and communicated with alarming perception. Easy, they said.
"Doesn't he realize where he's crash-landed?" she argued under her breath. "We don't have fancy tech. We don't have miracles. After today, we likely don't even have a future."