Shadows, стр. 7
“Earth is your home?”
“It was.”
“And it is up there, among the stars?”
“So they tell me.”
“Can we see it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Did you leave family on Earth, Lieutenant Cutter?”
“My parents, a brother, and two sisters.”
“Do you hope to see them again?”
He smiled sadly. “Not in this life.”
Kesteluni lifted his chin and locked eyes. It felt like she was hugging him. He wanted to cry. “But in the next?”
“I hope so.”
“If living well matters, then you will.”
He grunted. “The friends and families of those I’ve killed would argue differently. They likely felt the same way about their loved ones.”
Kesteluni paused to consider his comments. There was a slight upturn to her nose that made her resemble Disney’s Snow White. “There is no contradiction in the idea of two warring peoples both living good and fulfilling lives.”
Cutter leaned back, struck with the simple but profound truth in her words. “Doesn’t that make killing my enemy worse?”
Kesteluni tilted her head the way a proud mother does when her child learns a valuable lesson. “It makes killing your enemy more difficult, and that is the way to peace, but only if your opponent believes as you do.”
A small child ran up and whispered in Kesteluni’s ear. She nodded and whispered something in return, then got to her feet. “I must go now, Lieutenant Cutter, but I know my people are in good hands.”
Once she’d gone, Cutter spoke to Tanavuna with admiration in his voice. “You are one lucky man, Tanavuna.”
“Yes, I am very lucky,” he said, watching his wife disappear into the darkness, “as Kesteluni reminds me every day.”
“She doesn’t seem like the type to do that.”
“She speaks no such words. She does not need to.”
* * * * *
Chapter 4
Inside a J’Stull Airship over R’Bak, Six Months Later
“The air is calm today, Silci,” said the airship’s captain. There was no hiding the nervousness of his grin. “It is surely a good omen.”
Seated in the captain’s own chair, Yukannak, the satrap’s silci—an archaic J’Stull word best translated as “representative with authority”—praised his own good fortune. The captain’s evident worry hid Yukannak’s own. At any moment, a radio call could order his arrest if the next wave of his fellow Kulsians found out what he’d done, and floating two thousand feet above the hills below left him no path for escape. He thought about leaping to his death if that happened, but while Yukannak was many things, suicidal wasn’t one of them. He’d spent his life talking his way out of one difficulty after another, and while his most recent transgression was unforgiveable, habit and ego nevertheless gave him hope. It was also likely they would never learn what he had done. Still, the time might come when, under Kulsian torture, he regretted passing up the chance to die quickly.
“A good omen it is, Captain,” he said in a well-practiced tone of friendly tolerance. An airship captain wasn’t the social equal of a silci, but he wasn’t a peasant, either, and needed to be shown the proper respect. Especially since men with guns obeyed the captain’s orders. “It bodes well for my mission to Imsurmik. Rest assured the satrap will hear of your competence and that of your crew.”
“My lord is too kind.”
Heavy double shutters blocked sunlight on all sides, save for slitted view ports. The sunlight from the planet’s parent star, Shex, always punished R’Bak’s middle latitudes, but the approach of 55 Tauri’s primary meant a deadly increase that thoroughly baked it. The resulting Sear had already turned the once-green plant life on the rolling hills underneath the airship to a crusty brown. Peering through the slats only gave Yukannak a general impression of the terrain, but what he saw gave no comfort. Should he need to flee Imsurmik, there was nowhere to go except into the wild, and while his survival skills in the cutthroat world of Kulsian politics had kept him alive long after he should have been dead, his skills in the open country were non-existent.
The gravity of Kulsis wasn’t much different from R’Bak, but the heat was another matter. Temperatures on Kulsis ran to the higher end of what the human body could endure, and Kulsians had long since adapted. Under the grueling Sear on R’Bak, though, his lungs ached from breathing air heated to the point of pain. Yukannak knew it was an illusion, that his lungs really weren’t baking, but it felt that way.
Cooler air filtered through the vents in the gondola floor as hot air seeped out of identical vents in the roof. The temperature variance wasn’t great, but, inside the airbag’s stifling control cabin, it felt like a cool breeze. The heavy clothing and face paint necessary to combat sun damage itched and chafed. His skin was particularly sensitive to it since he had spent the past few years mostly living in space, so he noticed even the small improvement of the airflow.
Remaining rigid, he tried not to show his discomfort. Several hours after takeoff, the ground began to creep toward the airship, and, in his peripheral vision, Yukannak saw the captain watching him. The level of water in the glass provided for him showed a definite downward cant, but again he resisted showing a reaction.
“Docking towers in sight, Captain,” called the helmsman, staring ahead through a system of telescopes designed to cut down on glare.
The captain pulled down a flexible tube that extended upward into the airship’s framework. “Grappling crew to your stations.”
Yukannak had always disliked heights, and the irony wasn’t lost on him. For a man who’d traveled from Kulsis, to be uneasy at flying a few thousand feet above the ground