“Tedix!”
I turned at the sound of my name and saw Louth walking into the room, his scaled bulk filling the doorway. He was a big one, Louth, wider than even Clint. But not as tall, nor as strong. He was also one of the six beings in the Bandits who would call me by my first name. To the newbies, each member of the old Bandits was a demigod, capable of amazing feats. Our reputation had spread throughout the Rebellion as well as the Empire, and they saw us as the pinnacle of the Rebellion, the ones who were not afraid to fight overwhelming odds.
It helps when you had an enormous human with a passion for killing Swrun and was nigh indestructible, a huge Jahen who should not exist, and five other beings who each had their own reason to see the Swrun dead, and were very skilled at making the living the dead. “What is it, Louth?”
“Clint wants to see us in the comm room,” he said, voice low and somber, the way it always was.
“Then let’s go,” I replied. The newbies could handle themselves for a while. Louth turned and walked away. I followed.
“What have you got?” I asked Louth we walked down the corridor outside of the firing range. His massive bulk moved with a deceptively gentle lope. Clint said he looked like a giant teddy bear with scales. I did not know what a teddy bear was, but he had called me it before and I assumed it was something humans used as a term of endearment. Which was strange, because he had never called anyone else teddy bear.
Louth walked soft and gentle, his movements careful and precise, looking like he couldn’t hurt a fly. But at a moment’s notice he could change from a peaceful breeze to a raging thunderstorm. I have seen him tear Swrun apart with his claws with little difficulty. Out of all of the Bandits, Louth was the one who came closest to matching Clint or I in combat skills. He was an ex-mercenary, so that was to be expected.
“Central Intelligence just sent us a message. They’ve received reliable information that General Ral-dak will be inspecting the training camp on Kuehr.” General Ral-dak. The Eraser, they called him. His name was known throughout the galaxy as one of the most vile, vicious commanders of the Swrun Military. He was responsible for the Death of Kiea, the planet-wide massacre of the simple farmers and settlers. Their crime had been to unknowingly harbor a wanted fugitive. Ral-dak had seen fit to kill most of them and enslave the survivors as a message to the rest of the galaxy.
As the Bandits did not like such behavior, we had decided that we would kill him if we got the chance, to send a message of our own to the Swrun Empire. We had been looking for the opportunity to kill him, but he had always been in the midst of thousands of trained soldiers, battle-hardened at that. Even the Bandits couldn’t go up against those odds. But now it seems he was to be visiting a training camp in the middle of nowhere. The remote location was to prevent interference in the new soldiers’ reeducation and extensive training, and would give us an excellent advantage, as Ral-dak would not be surrounded by an army.
“Let’s get the bastard,” I said venomously. I was looking forward to this.
Louth grinned. “I knew you’d say that. Heras owes me ten Marks.”
I shook my head. Louth and Heras had taken to betting on anything they could. They once bet on the outcome of rolling dice, a strange object Clint had introduced them to. A cube with the edges and corners lightly smoothed, each of the six sides had a number of dots on them, increasing from one to six. Clint said they were widely used back on Earth for gambling purposes or for games.
“Any word from Juiwa or Vyena?” I asked Louth. I t had been a day since they had left and it was beginning to worry me. It shouldn’t have taken them that long to retrieve a body.
Louth gave a humorous grunt. “I wouldn’t doubt if they found a nice little space and are getting some intense physical ‘training’.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, confused. Did he mean that Juiwa and Vyena were…
“Are you serious? You haven’t seen the way they look at each other?” Louth laughed hard, stopping to bend at the waist and put his hands on his knees. “Juiwa actually talks around her and he’s the only one she doesn’t look like she wants to kill on a daily basis. They’re head over heels for each other.”
I was certain Louth was seeing things. Juiwa and Vyena were professional soldiers and they would never get involved while on duty. And I didn’t really see what Louth was talking about when he said Juiwa talked more and Vyena was less hostile. Louth managed to contain his laughter and we made it to the communication room without further delay.
In the center of the room were Clint and the other Bandits, surrounding a large holo-display table. All but Heras were standing. Clint looked up from the holo-map he was currently pouring over. At first glance it appeared to be a map of a training camp, which was likely, given the nature of our situation.
Clint straightened and clapped his hands together. “Since we’re all here, I’ll begin. Less than an hour ago, we received word that General Ral-dak the Eraser will be in a vulnerable position in the next few hours. He will not be surrounded by the thousands of soldiers he normally is. Instead, he will be surrounded by recruits going through basic training.”
Clint looked around the room. “This provides us with a perfect opportunity to kill him. Recruits will be easy to get through and the General will not be expecting an attack, he thinks he is safe, hidden from the galaxy. Well,” Clint said with an evil grin, “we get to prove him wrong.”
We all cheered at that. Any day we got a chance to deal real damage to the Empire was a good day for us. “The plan will be simple enough. A few of us sneak in, plant a few pounds of CGS-43 in the command post and the rest of us attack the front. Swrun military policy is that in the event of an attack, the highest ranking official-in this case, Ral-dak- is to be taken to the command post, or a point sufficiently far enough from the action to command the battle. So we attack, he goes to the command post and we blow it to hell. Simple enough.”
The rest of the Bandits and I nodded. It was a simple plan and involved three of our favorite things: explosions, frontal assaults, and killing Swrun. “When do we leave?” I asked.
Clint smiled. “Immediately.”
Beep. The communicator that gave this room its name alerted us to the fact that it had a message. Raising an eyebrow, Clint pressed the button to answer the call. “Hello?” he said.
“I have a message for Captain Clint Stone,” came the voice from the other side. It sounded female.
“I am he.”
“Good. That cuts down on time. Captain Stone, you are required to stand before General Skuar as soon as possible. You are to arrive yesterday. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes,” said Clint, a hint of confusion in his voice. “What is this about?”
“I’m not authorized to disclose that information. Goodbye, Captain.” The line clicked off. Clint turned back to us, eyebrow raised.
“Well that changes things.” Clint shrugged. “I guess I’m not going to be with you when you attack Ral-dak. Do you think you can manage without me?”
We all nodded our acknowledgements and agreements. Clint grinned his wide grin, showing the barest hint of teeth. “I do look forward to seeing what you’ve done when I get back. Tedix, you’re in charge.”
I had been expecting that, but it still felt surreal. I was going to be leading an attack without Clint nearby to get my bacon out of the fire if I messed up. But I wasn’t terribly concerned. As far as plans went, there wasn’t much I could do to mess it up. Get in, plant bombs, provide distraction, detonate bombs. Simple. But without Clint, it may prove to be difficult, especially given that neither Juiwa or Vyena was with us. Hopefully, they would show up before we went off.
“Tedix, could I speak to you privately?” Clint asked me across the table.
I glanced around and saw that no one else needed my attention and nodded. Clint and I walked over to the wall and spoke in hushed tones.
“If this is about what I think it is about, you may be Captain for a while longer than this mission.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, with a sinking feeling in my stomach.
“This is probably about Koruk and I’ll probably have to stand trial,” he said with a slow voice.
“That’s stupid,” I snapped. “You are easily one of the most valuable members of the Rebellion. They can’t just lock you up.”
Clint gazed at me with his deep eyes, somber and piercing. “They can and if they find me guilty, they should. It would not set a good precedent if they let a convicted killer lead.”
“But Koruk deserved to die.”
“Yes, and I’ll just have to convince them of that. Goodbye, Tedix. I’ve wasted enough time as it is. They want me there yesterday.”
And he just left, walked out of the room and didn’t look back.
“…and when the President said he needed some time, that’s when I knew to push him. Always keep them on their toes. It works out much better that way. Did you understand?” finished Jaein. The small number of trainee Diplomats nodded in agreement, telling her that they understood. They didn’t, of course. No one can truly understand being a Diplomat until you have actually been one.
Jaein could remember her first negotiation. She had been the junior Diplomat then, to a Remin named Lyrh. He was one of the best she had ever seen. Being a Remin gave him an advantage of course, with his innate ability interpret body language and psyches, but he went far and above his natural skill. According to the other junior Diplomats, Lyrh had managed to talk his way out of a pirate attack by the Dread Pirate Klaen, the most ruthless and bloodthirsty pirate in the galaxy. But when Jaein had first met Lyrh, he did not seem like the type of being who could face down a pirate lord.
He had seemed more likely to fall over with a good gust of wind. Lyrh had a way about him that made you think he was missing a few brain cells, the ones that controlled impulse and social interaction. He had been awkward and unable to stop himself from saying whatever came to mind. Needless to say, Jaein had been disappointed. Lyrh was supposed to be one of the best Diplomats alive and he acted like a teenager. But that was just a cover.
During the negotiation, he had changed into a confident and composed individual, one who brought the Thyen System into the Rebellion with a single meeting. The Remin was as good as they said he was. She, on the other hand, had forgotten all of her training at the start of the negotiation and nearly caused the whole deal to go sour. Lyrh had saved it from disaster and had used it as a learning opportunity.
He was the one who told her of the different Faces and showed her how to use them to her advantage. Since then, she had rarely been out of Hard Face. She gained a reputation as a tough, skilled negotiator who would not back down. Not suited to the soft halls of peacetime negotiation, but in the hard battlefields that were wartime negotiation, she was perfect.
She glanced at her wrist and noticed that it was a quarter ‘til. She needed to be in Skuar’s office at a quarter past for assignment. “That’s it for today,” she told the trainees. “You will be studying under Diplomat Kuhsa tomorrow as I will be in the field.” They gathered their things and left in an orderly fashion through the door. She sat down in the chair behind her and closed her eyes for a moment.
Teaching the new trainees was one of the more difficult tasks she had been assigned during her time with the Rebellion. It was not that she did not have the experience or the knowledge, it was that she didn’t know how to give it to them. So she just told them about her own experiences in negotiating, both the successful and unsuccessful. She was careful to point out what she did wrong and what she did right, and what the trainees should focus on in similar situations. She still felt it wasn’t enough. But what was she going to do?
She wasn’t meant for the educational application of Diplomacy, she was meant for real life application, for the Table. She had tried explaining that to Skuar, but he had said that she needed to pass her skills down to the younger students. She gave a little snort at the memory, amused at the thought of younger students, because most of them were nearly as old as she was, or older. At twenty seven years old, she was one of the youngest full Diplomats the Rebellion had. And one of the best.
Opening her eyes, she forced herself to stand and walk out the door, heading for Skuar’s office. Skuar was likely going to have her go to the Lwaa system and try to bring them around to the Rebellion’s way of thinking. Which was the very simple idea that the Swrun were a threat to the freedom of the entire galaxy and they needed to be stopped. But actually convincing the various independent systems and Free Fleets that they could, in fact, stand against the might of the Empire was a very difficult task.
At this point in the Rebellion, her job was one of the most important. The Rebellion needed soldiers, supplies, infrastructure, ships, and a multitude of other resources. The independent systems could supply all of those things. What the Rebellion was doing was gathering all of them in an Alliance against the Swrun. It was their only hope at even coming close to matching the resources the Empire had at its disposal. Thousands of systems and trillions of beings supplied the ships, the metal, the food, the medicine, and the million other things an army needed to function.
The Swrun military was the only thing that the Swrun supplied themselves. Only a Swrun could serve in the army as they had a deep distrust of all other races when it came to giving them weapons. But since the Swrun population numbered in the trillions, this was not a problem. Irgh were the only other race the Swrun let fight alongside their army, and that was after a hundred years of reeducating the population to view the Swrun Empire as the only true power in the galaxy and the only ones worthy of leading the Irgh.
The Empire controlled over half of the galaxy and they were absorbing more and more of the independent systems as time went on. Left much longer and the Empire would control everything. Jaein worked hard to prevent that from happening. Just this year alone she had gathered a dozen systems under the banner of the Rebellion, gaining them much needed access to food stores and personnel, and acquired the ships of the Free Fleet of N’Rachel Lruch. True, there had been complications, but without them she would have got the treaty signed anyway.
But the complications had turned out the best for the Rebellion. Clint Stone was the Warlord of the Fleet now, and that meant the Fleet would do anything the Rebellion needed, rather than the limited treaty she had made up. But the complications had not been kind to her. It had been months since Keres’ death, but she still felt the ache at losing him. She felt her Hard Face slipping and she pulled herself back in, blocking off all emotion.
A young errand boy was walking by as she did so, and he jumped when her face hardened, becoming cold and harsh. He must have thought she was mad at him. Jaein would have felt amusement at that, if Hard Face allowed for it. She turned the corner leading to the hallway with Skuar’s office and she nearly ran into a Stone wall. She stopped herself at the last moment and looked up into the face of Clint Stone.
His brilliant green eyes twinkled in the light as he grinned down at her. How she loved his grins. The ones he saved especially for her, those secret grins full of mischief and promises of a pleasurable nature. “Hello, beautiful.”
It had been a long time since she had heard that voice, the deep, rich sound of honey poured over rocks. She would have hugged him right there, but Jaein noticed a pair of burly beings standing behind Clint and she had to keep up appearances. She lifted her chin and said, “Hello, Clint.”
His eyes twinkled again, this time with an inner fire. “Oh, so that’s how it’s going to be. I’ve been gone for a month and a half and you’re already putting up the walls.” She glared up at him, a glare that usually sent her students running for cover, but only served to make Clint laugh. Did he not care that there were beings around who could see everything that was going on here? After a split second of thought, she concluded that he did not.
Clint was not one to concern himself with the opinions of strangers. He really only cared about what the people who knew him thought of him, and even then he did not have to worry, because if you knew Clint Stone, you knew he was an honorable and caring man. And Jaein knew him better than almost everyone.
“Lady Night, I’m going to have to ask you to step back. No one is allowed within arm’s length of the prisoner.” It was one of the burly beings who spoke, who Jaein recognized as Ityeh, a Ghurk who had served as her bodyguard on more than one occasion. She looked up at Clint in confusion. He shrugged and she heard the clink of chains when he moved.
She glanced down and saw that both of his hands were bound in thick chains, wrapped up to the elbow, more than she had ever seen on one being. But, given Clint’s strength, it was likely he could break out of them if he wished. She also saw his right hand was wrapped in white bandages.
“What happened?” she asked, stepping back from Clint as Ityeh gave an exasperated sigh. She threw him a quick glare that stopped him from doing anything more. Clint raised his chained hands. “This?” he said, waving his bandaged hand as best he could in the chains. “I punched someone.”
Jaein glared at him again. He grinned again. He was so damn cheeky around her. “You know what I meant.”
Clint’s face grew dark again. “I killed him.”
“Who?” she asked with concern. Who had Clint killed to get him placed in chains?
“A man who deserved to die, but I shouldn’t have killed him.” That was a strange answer. “What-” she started to ask, but she was interrupted by Ityeh again.
“Lady Night, I apologize, but we have to get him to the holding cells.” Without another word, they gripped Clint by the arms and guided him around the corner. “Come visit,” Clint said as he disappeared from view. Jaein stood there for a second, then realized that Clint had to have been coming from Skuar’s office. He would have answers.
The door was shut but she barged in anyway, striding in, chin held high and eyes hard, deep in Hard Face. She would need full control here. Skuar looked up from his desk, where he seemed to be typing a long letter, keys clacking under his fingers. “Lady Night. I was not expecting you for another few minutes. If you would wait a moment-”
“My apologizes, sir,” she said, interrupting him but keeping a respectful tone in her voice. Skuar was the ultimate authority in the Rebellion and it was best to stay on his good side. “But it cannot wait. Why was Clint Stone in chains? What crime has he committed?”
Skuar looked down at his desk and sighed, pinching the bridge of his wide nose between two fingers that looked more suited to the barrel of a gun than the slender keys of a computer. “I know you have a friendship with the human, but I cannot just discuss the crimes of one of my soldiers with a Diplomat, no matter how high ranking.”