The Chronicles of Kin Roland: 3 Book Omnibus - The Complete Series Page 3

  “I miss them so much I can barely breathe,” she said. Tears welled in her eyes. She turned them to the horizon, fixing them on something in the distance. “The Reapers tore them apart, Kin. I have nightmares.”

  Kin held her and she leaned into him. They were silent for a long time.

  “I’m going to volunteer for the Hellsbreach Campaign.” He spoke softly into her hair, but his heart raced.

  “I don’t want you to go, because no one returns from Betaoin. But I want vengeance. You’re the only man in the Fleet who can deliver it,” Becca said.

  “I’m just one man, but only the best are allowed to volunteer for this mission. If the Reapers can be wiped out, we’ll do it,” Kin said.

  He didn’t want to go. He wasn’t afraid. The reality of the battle to come was too far in the future. The danger seemed abstract. He didn’t hold the same hate as Becca did. All men die. Some die badly. He didn’t need vengeance, but Becca did, so he would deliver it. If he survived, she’d be thirty by the time the Hellsbreach Campaign ended and ships traveled back to Earth Fleet controlled space. She’d be married and barely remember her childhood friend.

  Memory was a cruel sorcerer. He held the vision of Becca in his mind, but the spell was destroyed by the fires of Hellsbreach and the sounds of gunfire and plasma bolts. He saw splashes of red, explosions of orange and gold. He smelled smoke from the past and present.

  He fled the images in his mind and focused on what needed to be done. Fleet troopers watched as he walked. They towered above him in their assault armor.

  Expressionless.

  Menacing.

  Kin examined the squad’s sergeant from a distance. There was something about the way he moved — arrogant and cruel. He towered over the other troopers, swaggering aggressively. They jumped when he said jump.

  Kin shortened his stride when he saw the etching on the ceramic exoskeleton of the suit. The design differed from what he remembered, but the style was familiar. Sergeant Orlan decorated his armor with etchings despite regulations forbidding it. Many troopers on Hellsbreach had done the same thing, putting notches on armor for every kill, carving pictures of loved ones or enemies or religious symbols to match the tattoos on their skin, or merely decorating the ceramic shell with art. Sergeant Orlan’s talent for ornamentation was impressive, despite his large, thick hands.

  Kin knew he should go around the man, yet he moved closer and saw a lion’s head skillfully engraved on the breastplate. On Hellsbreach, it had been a wolf, but Kin recognized Orlan’s handiwork. It was unfair such a brute could create something so magnificent.

  Kin abruptly turned down an alley. A guard noticed him and followed.

  “You there, where are you going? Why are you armed? Do you have a permit?”

  Kin faced the guard, taking another careful step into the shadow of the building. He glanced down the street, noting Orlan still faced the other direction. The worst danger was over, or so he thought. But then he realized this was the same trooper who saved little Kylee and Samantha Davis from the fire before recognizing him.

  This guy is stalking me.

  “I have a permit.”

  The guard accepted the paper, pretending to not recognize Kin. The mechanized gauntlets looked too large to hold such a delicate object, but Kin knew the assault armor was capable of both fine motor skills and feats of incredible strength. He also understood the suits required charging, despite the solar power they gathered to extend battery life. In time, the fierce machines would be men and women, mere mortals without shells of technology. Kin doubted this soldier would follow him into an alley alone without the armor, even if he hoped to collect a reward for capturing the Enemy of Man.

  “Who wrote this permit?” the trooper asked. The depersonalized voice sounded neutered by the amplifier projecting it. The sound and deception it represented bothered Kin.

  “All permits for firearms are approved or denied by the Crater Town Council. Councilwoman Laura Keen signed that particular paper,” Kin said. Prior to the arrival of the Fleet, Kin had been in charge of enforcing the permit laws but never bothered. Crater Town was a frontier settlement on an uncharted planet. Life was dangerous. People carried weapons when they could find or make them.

  “You are Kin Roland? Security officer for Crater Town?” the trooper asked.

  “I am. Is there a problem?”

  “Most people with that unfortunate name changed it after Hellsbreach,” the trooper said, studying his reaction.

  Kin shrugged.

  “Commander Westwood wishes to know who doused the lighthouse as we approached.”

  Kin nodded. “I’ll ask around.” He turned away from the trooper.

  “Wait.”

  Kin faced the trooper again, who seemed to be listening to a command sequence inside the helmet.

  “You are to appear before Commander Westwood and the Crater Town Council in the meeting hall.”

  Kin hesitated but knew he couldn’t delay for long. “I need to check one more person, then I’ll head that way.”

  The trooper shook his head and stepped closer to Kin, towering over him. “My orders are to bring you without delay.” Another pause. “Who are you looking for?”

  “Sibil Clavender,” Kin said.

  “Who is Sibil Clavender?” the trooper asked.

  Kin pointed at the wormhole, discolored and turbulent from the disturbance of the planetary assault. “She’s the person who soothes the spirit of the wormhole.” Kin couldn’t hear if the soldier snorted without activating the helmet speaker, but he probably did. Kin held the trooper’s gaze until the helmet slowly turned toward the pulsating wormhole.

  The trooper faced Kin and waited for what had to be an order from Fleet Command. “You may look for her. I will escort you.”

  Kin turned, stepping through the alley to emerge on a street not much wider than the path between buildings. He trudged up the steep dune, navigating twists and turns, avoiding the direct route in order to disorient his guard.

  “This is the wrong way,” the trooper said. “Our drones have already mapped this area. What are you doing?”

  “Making a fool of myself, apparently.”

  “Don’t.”

  Kin studied the reflective visor and searched for clues in how the trooper stood and how he chose to arrange the accessories on his armor. There were no engravings or unit markings beyond the Earth Fleet emblem. “Do I know you?”

  Silence. They stared at each other.

  “Please continue.”

  Kin waited a few moments and turned away. He walked slowly, sensing it would annoy the trooper. This type of guard duty was a waste of time. A good soldier would resent it.

  “I thought you’d be looking for Imperials,” Kin said.

  “Why would you think that?”

  “I heard some troopers talking about them.” Kin waited. He assumed Imperials blasted this Fleet Armada through the wormhole but had never heard of them. Whoever they were, their presence in Earth Fleet controlled space occurred after Hellsbreach.

  The trooper didn’t respond.

  Kin led the unhelpful guard to a cottage set into the side of a dune. Little more than the door betrayed the location of Sibil Clavender’s home. A gaggle of hopper birds loitered near the threshold. Fur grew around the faces and forelegs of the strange creatures. The hopper birds also possessed strong hind legs for running and multicolored wings in perpetual motion.

  Kin squatted, waiting until each hopper bird scrambled to him and pecked his hands. “I am Kin Roland. I mean no harm,” he said several times, making sure they recognized his scent and the sound of his voice.

  “Why do you do that?” the trooper asked.

  “They’re my friends.” Kin stood.

  “They’re messenger birds.”

  “They are.”

  The trooper stood motionless while receiving an order Kin couldn’t hear but could remember from a hundred missions.

  Secure all forms of communication.
You’re the tip of the spear, Trooper. Report success to Command and Control. Do you copy?

  Roger that.

  The trooper looked at Kin. “They will be confiscated.”

  “Good luck.” Kin ducked inside the dwelling, leaving the Fleet trooper to chase birds around the yard.

  Dimly glowing stones illuminated the surprisingly large room. As his eyes adjusted to muted light, he noted simple items — a pitcher on the low table, a bowl of local fruit, and silver beads in a pattern representing the ring of moons around the planet. Glow stones were set in the walls, like oval windows or portals to unknown worlds.

  Kin moved to the table. He studied a book Clavender never allowed him to open. Something like an angel graced the cover, with multicolored wings, noble beard, and the face of a warrior king. The eyes reminded him of Clavender.

  His fingers grazed the book.

  “Are you well, Kin Roland?” Sibil Clavender emerged from the shadows in all her alien glory. She wore a silk tunic narrowly covering her small breasts and gathered at the waist by a decorative chain. The fine metal made Kin think he could hook one finger under it and rip it off. Her back, naked all the way down, gave room for white wings tipped in blue and dusted with diamonds. The hem of the tunic reached her ankles — slit up the sides to her hips. Her unruly hair was tied high enough to expose her slender neck. Her eyes, blue-green like a tropical lagoon, welcomed him.

  Kin stepped away from the table and cleared his throat. “As well as might be expected.”

  She smiled, moved closer, sent his heart racing. The exotic way she walked fascinated him. Her wings dazzled his vision. The silver beads in her hair seemed magical.

  “Have you been outside?”

  She nodded, pressing against him. Kin felt the warmth of her body.

  Don’t move. She’ll disappear from this dream. He held his breath. Not everything on Crashdown is dangerous. A battle-scarred veteran like me could be healed in this room.

  “I have seen the strangers. They wear armor. Are we so dangerous?”

  “I doubt they came here on purpose. Uncharted planets are always assaulted,” Kin said.

  He forced himself to think. Few people could withstand Clavender’s presence for long without being enthralled. Crater Town people thought of her as some kind of spirit or goddess in communion with the weather and the wormhole. She appeared young. For all he knew, she was immortal.

  She touched him, gripping him with both hands. His pulse raced with something more powerful than lust or love. Clavender’s touch was like morphine, caffeine, and a childhood memory of spring pressed into a shiver.

  “I am not so young,” she said.

  Kin blushed, which should have been impossible for a genocidal maniac. “I worry about you. Crater Town needs you,” Kin said, shifting uncomfortably.

  She smiled dreamily and took his hand. Sensation diffused throughout his body, filling him with peace.

  “I wish to see the sky. Walk with me,” she said.

  “There’s a Fleet trooper in your yard chasing the hopper birds.”

  She turned her face up to him, still smiling like a satisfied lover but also with slyness in her eyes. She led him through a narrow tunnel that forced him to stoop as he walked. Moments later, they emerged on the opposite side of the dune, then climbed a goat trail to a place where they watched the frustrated guard below.

  Servomotors whirred as the trooper jumped left and right, grabbing at the local birds. Beyond that spectacle, the town spread out to the sea. Cleanup had begun with military precision. Crater Town thrived with activity.

  Clavender looked at the sky. “She wants to come home.”

  Kin looked at the wormhole and thought the space anomaly seemed masculine rather than feminine, as though it wanted to devour Crashdown. “You understand what that is?”

  “I understand,” Clavender said. “You do not. Perhaps it is correct to call it a wormhole, but it did not come to this planet. It came from this planet. There is only one.”

  Kin shook his head. “There are more than a thousand charted wormholes. I’ve been through a hundred of them.”

  “There is only one,” she said, still gripping his hand firmly and nestling her small body close to his.

  Kin shivered, not because her warm skin electrified his imagination, but because the thought of a single wormhole intruding into every corner of the universe terrified him. He pointed to it. “Look at the colors — red and orange and purple after the lightning flashes. Other wormholes are blue and silver, or green like your eyes.”

  “Or like the reflection of the sea,” she said.

  Kin suddenly imagined every wormhole looking down at Crashdown and soaking up color from the ocean. The thought unnerved him because it felt right. Was he standing in the center of the universe? If he were, who was this young woman next to him who changed the color of the waves and the thrashing of the sea with her moods?

  CHAPTER THREE

  KIN took a knee — a soldier’s pose that came naturally. Clavender stood with one hand on his shoulder. They watched the trooper and the town as a sea breeze spoke softly.

  “I am glad these soldiers are from your Fleet,” Clavender said.

  “You might not be if you were in my position,” Kin said.

  She bent and looked into his eyes.

  He waited until she smiled. Knowing she wouldn’t ask the question, he answered. “Fleet Command gave me a mission to kill every last Reaper on Hellsbreach.”

  She touched his face. “But you could not do it.”

  Kin looked away, surprised at his shame. She didn’t seem to judge him. She squatted, wrapping her arms and her wings around him.

  “We are not different. I hide from my people so that I do not lead them to war and ruin,” Clavender said.

  “I thought you were the last of your people. I mean, everyone assumed,” Kin said.

  Clavender laughed. “Have you not seen the migrations toward the wormhole?”

  “I thought those were birds. There must be thousands,” Kin said. He recalled the swarms of flying creatures passing far above Crater Town. The mysterious migrations were considered good luck by everyone on Crashdown.

  “Not birds, but foolish young men trying to prove themselves. They will never reach it. It is too high and does not open as easily as a door,” Clavender said.

  “You should go inside. The Fleet has a bad record with aliens,” Kin said.

  “An odd thing, coming from aliens,” Clavender said.

  Kin laughed.

  “I will stay outside. Do not worry. I have hidden from my people for a long time. I can hide from yours,” she said.

  Kin nodded. They stood, holding hands for what seemed like a pleasant lifetime.

  The breeze shifted, bringing the smell of burned buildings mixed with the salty air. It stung Kin’s eyes. Wind wouldn’t disperse the odors until the smoldering huts cooled. Clavender probably didn’t appreciate the odors of destroyed machines, but they painted a picture for Kin, bringing back memories. He looked down on the Fleet trooper who had given up on the idea of capturing the hopper birds and stood like a statue. Kin listened for the quiet sound of gears in the assault armor.

  He descended the front of the dune. The trooper turned to face him. Kin was glad the trooper was alert, even though they were destined to be adversaries. Fears of interrogation and torture seemed distant because Clavender touched him. He laughed inwardly. He hadn’t been checking on her; he’d been seeking comfort. The Fleet would learn his identity and he would run, fight, or die. It was simple and unavoidable.

  Kin Roland was a common name and he had taken many steps to hide who he was — a new identification number and plate in his arm, the meticulous and expensive removal of tattoos, and an assignment on a terra-forming mission that should’ve taken him to the very rim of Earth Fleet controlled space. But he couldn’t avoid scrutiny forever.

  The false identity plate in his arm would not withstand a close forensic examination. Some
one would remember him. Orlan certainly knew him and this trooper that was so interested in him probably did as well. The question was why the trooper didn’t sound the alarm.

  Kin still didn’t understand how he was able to board the Goliath in the first place. They had checked his fingerprints and photograph — a moment he had dreaded but found unavoidable. Nothing. The security screener ran his picture and prints without finding a thing. Either the captain of the Goliath had known who he was and didn’t care, or the system was too big for its own good. Fleet intelligence officers, however, wouldn’t be fooled.

  The trooper was shamming ignorance for reasons unfathomable to Kin. He hadn’t imagined the moment this person recognized him but couldn’t figure out why the trooper suddenly pretended ignorance.

  “Let’s go to the meeting hall,” Kin said.

  The trooper nodded, walking next to him.

  Kin looked for Orlan but couldn’t find him. The sergeant was uncommonly large, and since assault armor added a foot to a man or woman’s height, Orlan was seven and a half feet tall when wearing his full kit. Without armor, Orlan was thick chested, hairy, and had a face that looked as though it had once been handsome but had been stepped on too many times. His eyes were watery and sickly, almost clear. Kin never trusted Orlan’s eyes, even before the man betrayed him. If Orlan recognized him — and he would — he wouldn’t hesitate to kill Kin.

  “This isn’t the most direct path to the meeting hall,” the trooper said.

  “Did your computer tell you that?” Kin asked.

  “The computer is correct. Don’t you know your town?”

  Kin shrugged. “I know this place like the back of my hand. I also know that if I walk down Main Street, people will see me and want to talk. It’ll take three days to get to the meeting hall.” Kin was impressed with his own bullshit. He picked his course to avoid Orlan, who would be shaking down Crater Town citizens like the thug he was.