exhausted, they backed away from their Kreelan opponents by a pace or two, many of them dropping to the ground, chests heaving with pain and exertion.
“Pull it out, Esah-Zhurah,” Reza whispered into the sudden stillness, speaking in the Old Tongue. His hands clutched at the armor protecting her back, his talons issuing a high keening sound as they sought purchase in the metal of her armor.
“No,” she whispered. Her sword’s blade had a serrated upper edge. It would tear out his heart if she tried to remove it. “No. Reza, I cannot… The healers will take care of you. They can remove it without–”
“You must,” he breathed, a trickle of blood escaping his lips. “Please, Esah-Zhurah. You know I cannot return… home.” He felt hot tears burning his face. “Let this be done… Let it be over… Now.”
“Reza,” she rasped. Her voice was an echo of the agony that seared her soul. She held him tightly with her free arm, thinking desperately for another way – anything – but there was none. She smelled the salt of his tears mingling with the scent of his blood, and suddenly wished she could cry with him. For him. The black of the mourning marks she had worn since he had gone so long ago just did not seem to be enough. “Forgive me, my love,” she rasped as she closed her eyes. With one smooth motion, her sword hand drew back with all the strength she had, freeing itself with a ghastly grating sound against Reza’s armor and the shattered bones of his ribcage.
Reza cried out before he slumped against her. She threw her sword to the ground and held him with both arms, her teeth grinding with anguish, her heart cold in her chest, dead with pain. Gently, with Syr-Kesh’s steadying hands, she laid him on the ground, cradling his head to her breast.
“Reza,” Esah-Zhurah whispered mournfully. There was so much to tell him, so much wonder that he would never know. “Why did you do this?”
His eyes, still gleaming with the life that faded rapidly within, fastened on her. He struggled to free his hand from the armored gauntlet, finally succeeding with Syr-Kesh’s reverent help. Unsteadily, he reached for Esah- Zhurah’s face. She took his hand and held it to her, kissing his fingers.
“You well know why, Esah-Zhurah,” he said, softer than a whisper, barely a sigh. “You are the successor to the throne… on you the Way shall someday depend.” He shuddered, suppressing the cough that would rend further his violated lungs, his damaged heart. Already it slowed, nothing more than a leaky valve as it sought in vain to pump more blood into the ruptured lungs where it rapidly pooled, and would soon drown him. “My life is nothing beside yours. I only ask that… in my memory, the Empress let live the people of this world.”
“So much do you care for them,” she said in a trembling voice as she watched her lover’s life ebb away, “that you would utter your last words on their behalf?”
Reza smiled. “Not so much as that,” he told her, his trembling fingers stroking her face. He could no longer feel anything below his waist. “My last words I save for Thee, Esah-Zhurah. While I love the Empress with all that I am, I love Thee all the more.” He labored for another breath, knowing it would be his last. His chest was warm, too warm. “I shall… take my memories of you… to the Darkness that falls upon me. Your face and love shall keep me… for Eternity.”
She watched helplessly as his eyes fluttered, closed. His hand, the hand that had held her, that had touched her as they made love, lost its strength, the fingers relaxing in her grip. His breathing stilled.
Shutting away the Universe from around her, she held him close as she had the child she had born to him, the son who had never felt his father’s Bloodsong, the son whom Reza would never know.
On the Plain of Aragon, Esah-Zhurah wept without tears.
“Your orders, sir?” Captain Amadi asked quietly.
Sinclaire scowled at the tactical display. Thirty Kreelan warships, none of them smaller than a heavy cruiser, had just jumped in-system. There was nothing Sinclaire’s task force could do to save the people down below. They did not have enough ships to hold them all, even if they had time to evacuate them. The first of the new Kreelan arrivals would be in orbit in less than thirty minutes. Sinclaire had recalled all the fighters, and the last of them were landing now. In one of the starboard landing bays, the last of Reza’s Marines were carrying wounded civilians from their hijacked boat. They were lucky to be alive.
“Turn the fleet around, captain,” he growled. “There’s nothing more for us to do here.”
Nodding sadly, Amadi quickly began to carry out his admiral’s orders.
“What’s wrong with her, doc?” Jodi had come to the sickbay the instant she had gotten free of the flight deck. She stood in the sickbay’s anteroom with the doctor, her face still sweaty and marked with the outline of where her helmet had been pressed against her skin.
“I don’t know,” the surgeon said uneasily. “She’s in deep shock, like she experienced some kind of massive physical trauma, but there’s no evidence of any injury. Not a thing.”
“Please,” Jodi said, “I need to see her.”
She was not ready for what she saw. For all she could tell, Nicole was dead, for nothing but a corpse could look so white. Her eyes were all that seemed to be alive. But they frightened Jodi: they were the eyes of the insane. She took Nicole’s hand. It was freezing. “Nicole,” she breathed, “can you hear me?”
Nicole’s eyes pivoted slightly, then again, as if the muscles were no longer capable of the rapid and fluid movements they once had been. “Jo…di.” The sound seemed alien coming from her blanched lips.
“I’m here, Nikki,” Jodi said again, holding her friend’s hand tightly, running her other hand across Nicole’s chilled brow. “It’ll be okay. Can you tell me what’s wrong? What happened?”
“Reza,” Nicole uttered, a little more clearly. “Help him.”
Jodi fought back the tears that wanted to come to her eyes. She knew that others often saw them as a sign of weakness, but it was how she coped with things that otherwise would break her heart and crush her spirit. “Honey,” she said gently, “Reza’s…” She paused. It was so hard for her to say it. “He’s gone, Nicole… dead. There’s nothing–”
“No,” Nicole said with such force that Jodi blinked. “No… help him… must not… let him die.”
“Nicole, I know this is hard for you, but he’s gone. Let him go. Besides, we’ve got to leave. There are more Kreelans coming and–”
Nicole’s grip on Jodi’s hand suddenly tightened, so hard and quick that Jodi let out a yelp of pain and surprise. “Nicole!”
“Help him,” Nicole said through gritted teeth. The skin of her face was stretched tight, exposing the outlines of her skull through the bleached skin. Her eyes burned with ferocious intensity, like a wolf making its final leap before the kill. Jodi felt her knuckles grating together as Nicole’s hand clamped down on them like a vice. “Save him.” It was not a request, or even an order. It was a commandment.
Suddenly, the energy that had taken her over vanished, and she faded into unconsciousness, her heart beating erratically, her breathing shallow and unsure. Her hand, limp now, fell away from Jodi’s. Her eyes rolled up to reveal the whites, then closed.
“Jesus,” Jodi muttered, looking with widened eyes at the surgeon, who only shook his head; he was as shocked as she was. “If there’s no real trauma,” she said shakily, “she can’t die, right?”
One glance at the vital signs monitors would have told her otherwise.
The surgeon shook his graying head. “I wish saying it made it so, but it doesn’t. If I can’t figure out what’s causing her to be like this, I don’t think she’ll make it another two hours. Her body is just shutting down.”
“Take care of her,” she told him decisively before turning to the door. There was a certain Marine first sergeant she needed to see.
Eustus stared at the landing bay portal, as big around as a football field and filled with the stars and vacuum, safely on the other side of the force field.
“Eustus,” Jodi said urgently, “it’s Reza we’re talking about.”
“It’s mutiny,” Eustus snapped back. “More than that, it’s suicide. You weren’t there when the bombardment was coming down. You didn’t see a whole planet get flattened. I did. And the fact that there’s a whole shitload of Kreelan ships coming down our throats doesn’t thrill me, either.” He turned to Jodi, mindful of the blue eyes in her ebony face blazing at him. “Look, Jodi, I loved Reza as much as anybody ever did. I fought for him. I gladly would have died for him. But it’s over. He’s gone, along with the rest of them. He told me himself that he had no intention of coming back.” He looked at Enya, who tended to some of the wounded, most of them Raniers. She was the real
