The Imperium (2 page)

As a man who had done many a tour, he
believed strongly in the bonds formed with your comrades. He spoke
of their ability to help you win the tough battles and give you the
strength to push through, over insurmountable odds. He said that
when you were unable to find the will to go on, looking to your
left and seeing someone you loved, pushing just as hard, often gave
you the spark you needed.

He had been right of course. As we fought
through our first hard years, we all grew closer together. The
friendship we started as toddlers, developed into a more mature
version of love.

After our first tour, Christolis and Delphine
decided to be married. This did not come as a shock. They had been
sweet on each other since we were teens and the constant intensity
of always having one's life on the line, escalated their
affections.
I had urged Christolis to wait until after we had all finished our
second tour and been promoted. But, he would have none of that. He
accused me of being blind and not understanding life, saying that
if we could not hope to build lives and starts families, then what
was the point of all of this. He said that if I did not take his
cue, I would lose Shadra.

At the time, I had not known what he meant.
Shadra and I were fine. Our relationship had not taken the same
pathway as Christolis and Delphine, but we had a fierce friendship.
I counted on her to watch my back and there was an ease between us
that allowed me to be myself. I had never thought to marry her or
anyone else for that matter. All that I had ever wanted, was to
fight and become a great man, like the others before me.

Christolis and Delphine were married in the spring, during the
break before our second tour. The happiness I witnessed between the
two of them that day, softened my heart. The relationship between
Christolis and I had taken a hit after the conversation we'd had
and we hadn't spoken much since then.

After the ceremony, I pulled him aside and
apologized for my callousness. He said he understood and that we
would always be brothers. He also gentle joked again that I should
take his lead and marry Shadra. His jibe had fallen on deaf ears,
until later that evening.

Shadra had asked me to dance and I had been
filled with enough wine to have said yes.

With the warming effects of the alcohol and
the joviality and love in the air, I saw Shadra for the first time
as a woman. We were almost the same height and as she leaned her
head into my shoulder, I took a deep breath in and filled my lungs
with her. She was beautiful. I had not intended to say it out loud,
but I must have, as she had looked up at me. In her eyes, I saw
something there that I had never noticed before. There was an
expectation and there was love. Not just the love of a friend and
comrade, but the love that my mother and father shared and the love
that I had seen between Christolis and Delphine.
I had kissed her. Feeling the softness of her lips on mine and been
filled shame at having never thought to do it before.

Had Christolis been right? Was this the thing
that we were all actually fighting for? The right to find a good
person and settle down, build a family?

Before that night, I had only been motivated
with dreams of being the best. But, being the best for who? My
mother and father were already proud of what I had accomplished,
who else was I doing this all for?

I was locked into a blurred mess of
questions, when Shadra had grabbed my hand and led me away from the
party, out toward the old woods, near the edge of town.
It was not until she had stopped under the old canopy used for the
yearly picnic that I realized where we had actually come. She'd
kissed me again then and all my questions had gone away. I wanted
nothing more than to know that kiss inside and out.
When she pulled away from me and eyed me coyly, stepping back
toward one of the tables, I followed behind her, anxious to have
more of this new feeling.

Before I reached her, she started removing
her clothes. I had stopped my approach then, slightly unsure of
myself. I had no experience and did not know where to begin, if we
were indeed going to do what I thought we were. Shadra who knew me
so well had sensed my unease and beckoned me to her. It lit the
spark and gave me the courage to continue forward.

Once I made it to her, she placed her hands
on the side of my face and looked me in the eyes. Then she had
said, "I know that you don't have experience, neither do I. It's
okay because this could never be bad as I have waited for this
moment my whole life."

That night, under the canopy of festivals, my
eyes were opened to a part of life I had not even begun to consider
for myself. Before then, I had lived only for the glory, for
restoration of my planet back to its rightful spot. But, after I
had been shown the way, I wanted to live if only to touch and see
Shadra again.

I really believed that night, laying on the
table and looking out at the surrounding woods, feeling Shadra's
warmth next to me, that things were going to be perfect. She and I
giggled about how we would tell everyone, especially Christolis and
Delphine, who she said, had known all along. We spoke about the
future and made plans to be married after we finished our next
tour.

It all seemed so easy and possible.

I wish I had understood then, that in times
of war, no one's hopes and dreams are safe.

That short span of time before our second tour started had been the
best of my life. It was like getting to meet Shadra for the first
time. I had known her forever, but nothing like this. We spent
endless hours stealing away with each other, wrapped up in our
entangled limbs, kissing and talking about how our lives were going
to be.

It took everything we had, to tear ourselves
away from our little hideout and meet up with Christolis and
Delphine, when they sent word that they wanted to speak with us.
The assumption was that we were going to be chided for not helping
them settle into their new home.

When we arrived, we were told that Delphine
was now pregnant. Congratulations were said, but I couldn't ignore
the tension in the air. With Delphine pregnant, she would not be
joining us for the next tour. This would be the first time our
little foursome would be separated. I sensed Shadra's sadness,
around the edges of her happiness at the news.

Later that night, while we were in bed, she
had said only one thing about it out loud, "I do not ever want to
be separated from you. If there is a war and you are fighting, I
will always be at your side."

Two weeks later, we all left Delphine behind.

Christolis, would not speak on any of it
directly, so I made it a point to not bring it up. Every now and
again, I would find him sitting alone and assumed that he was
dealing in his own way.
Shadra and I did what we could to keep his mind occupied in the
small downtime we had, but as the due date got closer, he became
more reserved.

Messaging was spotty at best out there, so he
had only been able to send and receive a few messages about
Delphine's progress. Even though it appeared that everything was
going alright back home, it was clear that Christolis wanted,
needed, to be with Delphine during this time.

When word reached us that we would be part of
a small fire-team, checking on a possible issue in one of the
outlying planets, I had been excited to finally see some action. We
had been sitting around for the last little bit, doing patrols and
assisting in the restoration efforts of the local village.
Many of the small villages did not have their own armies and were
open and prone for attacks that often left their homes in ruin.

It was good work, but I was itching to be out
on the battlefield. I also thought that a change in pace would help
to give Christolis something else to do with his mind. By this
point, it was hard for Shadra and I, to get more than a word or two
out of him.

The flight over to the planet had been a bumpy one. I was not a fan
of the tiny transport units myself, but they always made Shadra
uncomfortable. I wanted to get her attention, so that I could give
her a look of encouragement, but she was sitting there with her
eyes squinted shut.

Even though everyone knew that we were an
item, we generally kept things professional when we were out in the
field. Seeing how nervous she looked as we bounced around, I was
compelled to do something.
We were strapped in on benches across from each other, three on
each side. I had leaned over as far as I could, straining against
the belts holding me in and placed my hand on her knee. She had
immediately opened her eyes and locked onto mine. I'd mouthed the
words "look at me", to her and she had nodded and produced a shaky
smile.

No one else appeared to have paid us any
attention, probably doing their best to keep themselves calm, but
out of the corner of my eye, I had seen Christolis, who was sitting
next to me, grimace and turn his head away.
To this day, I wish there had been something else that I could have
done. I had no way to know how that gesture would affect him and
that I would never get a chance to say I was sorry.

Once we landed, things had moved swiftly. We
never reached the designated point of interest. Less than a quarter
of a mile away from our disembarking site, we were ambushed by the
Qual-Shek and forced to fall back amongst the trees.

While fighting, Shadra and I always moved
like we were attached by an invisible string. This used to be
something that all four of us shared and took for granted. But,
when we found cover, we realized that Christolis was not with
us.

An order came to fall back, we protested, but
were not heard. We were taking fire and there was another man
missing in addition to Christolis.
Shadra was having none of it. As the other two members of the team
broke out and starting heading back to the pick-up site, she looked
at me and nodded once. We both checked our weapons and prepared to
head back towards the fighting.

Many years have now passed since that day and
as anyone who is a soldier will tell you, battles begin to blur
together. I know that upon seeing that we were not with them and
hearing our firepower, the other two members of the team headed
back our way to help us out.
When the dust settled, we had taken many of the Qual-Shek out of
commission.

As we had walked amongst the twisted metal,
we found what was left of Christolis. He was barely recognizable
and I remember clearly, how my stomach had lurched at the sight of
him and how Shadra, who had been unable to hold hers in, had lost
the contents of her stomach at the base of a twisted tree.

My heart had broken for the first time that
day and I had never imagined that it could be any worse than
that.

Oh, how time is a teacher.

Neither of us intended it to be that way, but Shadra and I, turned
into ourselves after the death of Christolis. We just went through
the motions, like two ghosts. We barely said a word about what had
happened, but I assumed we were both feeling the same things. The
loss of one of our friends and pain for the other and the child who
would never know its father.

I know that it broke Shadra up that we could
not be there with Delphine. We were barely midway through the tour
and there were no leave options available to us.

While we seemed like empty shells and kept
our conversations on the day to day tasks, our lovemaking had taken
on a fervor that had not been present before. It had a new
intensity and would often end with us covered in sweat, clutching
each other like we were scared the other one would slip away. On a
few occasions, I had found her crying afterward, silently, trying
not to let me know.

She was so very strong.

All talks of the future and of our wedding
were stopped. It had seemed like an insult to our fallen friend and
Delphine, to think of our own happiness. So we moved on, day in and
day out. Assisting with repairs to the villages and trying very
hard not to think of what would be, when we finally returned home.
Things had gone like that for the majority of our tour.

As we approached the last month before
returning home, I had seriously begun to wonder if we would ever be
okay again.
Our love for each other was still there, burning as bright as it
ever had, but it was covered with so much pain and guilt.

It was during another dinner filled with
sparse conversation that we got word, we were to be sent on one
final mission, before the end of the tour.

One of our allies had taken heavy losses in
their attempt to hold out against the Ascendency and needed
reinforcements and additional supplies. Our job was to tag along on
the troop drop and assist with anything they might need in the way
of extra hands. It was busy work and slated to be easy.

When we got there, everything had already
started to move like a well-oiled machine again. It was hard to see
that they had suffered any setback at all. The command structure
had been put back in place and the new troops, most of which were
`green' Hastati Munis, were being directed to their stations and
given tasks.

It looked like we would mostly be there for
show and likely spend the week and a half sitting around, watching
the new kids make fools of themselves trying to one-up each
other.

Then on the third day, one of the perimeter
guards had come running back to camp, saying that there was a huge
force filled with Templar Knights heading toward us and he had
barely escaped with his life.

The commotion started as we mobilized our
forces and prepared the troops, many of who had never seen any real
fighting. There was the usual speech by the Optio, about honor and
fearlessness, which barely had a chance to sink in before the
fighting started.