Fall of Icarus (45 page)

           
“How about you, Yen?” Adam asked, turning toward the psychic.
 
“You’ve got way more responsibility than we do.
 
How are you holding up?”

           
“You know,” Yen replied.
 
“The entire fate of the Alliance military is resting on my shoulders.
 
What’s there to be nervous about?
 
You know, I really wish I had all three of you coming with me.”

           
“Adam might have served you well on Earth,” Penchant replied in his gravelly voice, “but I was never cut out for large scale assaults.
 
I am better suited for the espionage mission.”

           
Adam shrugged.
 
“I don’t think Earth’s sun would have complimented my complexion.”

           
For the first time that morning, Keryn cracked a smile.
 
“Why don’t you two go load up the last of our gear and I’ll meet you on
board.
 
We have a lot of flying ahead of us, so the sooner we depart the sooner we’ll get there.”

           
“Take care, Yen,” Adam said, shaking his hand before turning away.
 
Penchant nodded, his featureless face betraying none of his emotions.

           
When they had both passed through the airlock and the crowds had thinned to only a few crewmen working around the area, Yen turned to Keryn.
 
A storm of emotions brewed behind her violet eyes.

           
“It’s not too late for you to stay with me,” Yen offered.
 
“We could always find an excuse why you couldn’t lead the mission.”

           
“It became too late after I agreed to lead this mission.
 
Now that I have so many people relying on me, there’s no way I could possibly let them all down.
 
I have to go.”

           
“I don’t want you to leave me,” Yen admitted.

           
Keryn sighed and looked away.
 
“I told you once before that this wasn’t about you and me.
 
This has always been about the mission and what’s best for the Alliance.
 
It doesn’t matter what we feel for each other.”

           
“And how do we feel about each other?
 
You know I love you, but every time I say it you find a way to avoid saying it back.”

           
“Please don’t,” Keryn pleaded, shaking her head.

           
“I love you, Keryn.
 
I’ve loved you for a long time now.
 
I am willing to wait for you, no matter how long it takes us to be reunited.
 
We were meant to be together.
 
If you feel the same way, then there’s no reason why you can’t look me in the eyes and tell me that we’ll be together again someday.”

           
“I can’t promise that, Yen,”
Keryn
replied sternly.
 
“We are both getting ready to depart on long, dangerous missions.
 
Even, by some fluke, we both manage to
survive,
we are still going to be apart for months, even as long as a year.
 
Who knows what’s going to happen to us in that time.
 
Just in the few months that we’ve been together, I’ve changed drastically.
 
Things… happened in my life that will forever change who I am.
 
I don’t know what else might happen while I’m away.
 
By the time we meet again, I may not even be the same person you remembered and loved.”

           
“Keryn…”

           
“Please, let me finish,” she interrupted.
 
“If we had met at another time, in a different place, things might have been different between us.
 
You truly do make me happy, Yen, and there is a part of me that loves you.
 
But fate is conspiring against us.
 
I’m not happy about leaving you, but you have to understand something about me.

           
“I sacrificed everything I knew in order to join the Fleet.
 
My parents and friends threatened to disown me if I joined.
 
But I joined anyway, against their wishes, because of a sense of duty and honor.
 
I still keenly feel that loyalty to the Alliance.
 
My feelings for you are secondary to my mission.
 
I look in your eyes and I know you’re trying to understand that, but I can also see that you don’t.
 
You’re an idealist.
 
To you, it’s as simple as ‘we want to be together, so we will’.
 
I’m a realist.
 
I know that there’s only a slim chance of us ever seeing each other again.
 
Because of that, I know it’s best if we part today as friends and nothing more.”

           
Yen shook his head.
 
“As long as there’s a chance that we’ll be together again, I won’t give up that hope.”

           
Keryn smiled warmly, her eyes watering with gentle emotion.
 
Reaching up, she placed a hand on his cheek.
 
“You’re a dreamer, Yen.
 
It’s one of the things that drew me to you.
 
But every dreamer eventually has to wake up.”
 

Leaning in, she kissed him firmly on the mouth.
 
Yen could taste the sweetness of her lips mixing with the saltiness of her tears.
 
Slowly, she pulled away, wiping her eyes on the back of her sleeve.

“Goodbye, Yen,” she said quietly before turning and disappearing through the airlock.
 
The door slid closed, sealing only moments before he heard the hiss of the area beyond depressurizing.
 
Moving a little further down the wall, Yen found one of the viewports, through which he watched the
Cair Ilmun
pull free of the vestibule and, with its engines burning brightly, begin flying away from the
Revolution
.

Yen continued to watch until long after the
Cair Ilmun
carried away the woman he loved.

CHAPTER THIRTY

           
Keryn stood up from the pilot’s chair and stretched as best she could in the low-ceilinged cockpit of the
Cair Ilmun
.
 
Everything ached in her body and she knew that the one-piece flight suit she was wearing was far from clean.
 
Reaching up in mid stretch, Keryn brushed some of her oily silver hair out of her face.
 
Sighing in defeat, she pulled an elastic band free from one of the front pockets of her coveralls and used it to hold her thin hair back into a ponytail.
 
During the month since their departure from the
Revolution
, she had worn her hair pulled back so many times that it was starting to form a natural crease from the tight elastic band.
 
At this point in their trip, she would have gladly killed someone for a comfortable bed and a long, hot shower.

           
Setting the autopilot, Keryn turned away from the controls and opened the door that led into the modified crew quarters of the
Cair
transport ship.
 
The normal interior for a
Cair
ship had been a long, open bay lined with trooper seats on either side, while still leaving plenty of space for excess equipment in the middle of the compartment.
 
The
Cair Ilmun
, thanks to the foresight of the High Council, had been modified to appear almost like a civilian transport.

           
Stepping through the doorway, she entered a wide room filled with plush couches and reclining chairs.
 
A series of tables were strewn about, most covered with consoles that would allow the team to play an assortment of games to pass the time.
 
Even now, Keeling and Rombard were engaged in an intense game of
Jach’tar
.
 
Similar to the three dimensional simulations that Keryn had gone through at the Fleet Academy,
Jach’tar
was an Avalon strategy game that pitted two opposing fleets against one another.
 
The victor was decided by a series of rules determined at the beginning of play, many of which Keryn quickly forgot.
 
After repeated losses at the game, she had forgone any further challenges from the team.

           
The Uligart and Oterian looked relaxed while they played, but Keryn could see the strain behind their eyes.
 
She had seen the same strain on all of them.
 
For a month, they had been traveling at faster than light speed.
 
Though the
Cair Ilmun
had been retrofitted with inhibitors much like those found on a Cruiser, the inhibitors were still unable to compensate for all the excessive gravities that were created from such
high speed
travel.
 
The crew was being exposed to nearly one and a half gravities, but it was punishment on bodies not used to the increased pressure on their systems.
 
Only Penchant seemed unaffected, though Keryn wasn’t sure how much of that was due to his physiology and how much was just because she had no idea on how to read his different moods.
 
She had never realized how much she relied on facial expressions to betray attitudes until she befriended someone without a face.

           
On top of the increased gravity, the
Cair Ilmun
just didn’t offer enough alternative escapes from one another.
 
Though they all considered one another as friends, it was still difficult to be in such close confines with each other for such extended periods of time.
 
Keryn found her escape in the cockpit, though even that was unnecessary.
 
They were traveling between star systems, covering such an expansive area of open space that she could have left the pilot’s controls unattended for over a week and still not feared running into something.
 
Still, it was time away from people, and she was coming to cherish her quiet time more and more.

           
As Keryn walked past the common room and entered the narrow hallway, a pair of doors split off to either side.
 
To her right, Keryn looked into the medical bay.
 
Sterilized instruments and state of the art treatment supplies lined the mirrored metallic shelves around the room.
 
The room’s soft light left Keryn feeling relaxed as, she was sure, was the desired effect of the quiet room.
 
The single bed in the center, however, was not unoccupied.
 
Smiling gently to herself, Keryn stepped out of the doorway and let the door slide silently shut behind her.
 
Of all of the crew, there were only two teammates who she swore would never tire of one another’s company.
 
McLaughlin and Cerise, the Pilgrim and Avalon husband and wife, had grown withdrawn during the trip, choosing to spend the majority of their time searching out the private corners of the ship; at least searching out the minimal privacy that could exist with five other teammates on board.

           
Turning toward the left
door which
would lead to the crew quarters, Keryn smiled to herself.
 
She had never been opposed to interspecies mating, but the sight of it had never been
common place
on her home world.
 
Now, being exposed to it in such great quantities, she couldn’t help but try to suppress a childish glee at accidentally interrupting them time and time again.

           
The door opened to the crew quarters, exposing the brightly lit room.
 
A series of bunk beds were stacked along the walls, with a number of wall lockers strewn intermittently between them.
 
Most of the beds were unmade, a reflection on the relaxed attitude her team had toward their former military expectations.
 
Within the Infantry or Fleet, beds were always made before first formation, often with folded creases along the edges so sharp that they appeared ironed in place.
 
Keryn, however, treated her team differently.
 
After dismissing their ranks in lieu of first names and the approval of civilian clothes, she also allowed everyone a level of home front comfort.
 
Even on their lengthy, draining mission, it had helped to bolster the morale of her team.