Go talk to him. Ella had urged. Easy for her to say.
Alicia had strained relations with tech-priests at the best of times - if they weren’t gunning for her personally because of who she was, as Oppen and Kuscelian had done, then they were working to their own inscrutable goals.
Delaz and Vizkop had no qualms about going rogue when it suited them. Look where that got us all.
And Burakgazi seemed more volatile than most, even for one of the notoriously zealous fulgurite sect. There had been a moment at the previous strategy meeting where Alicia had reached for her sidearm, convinced that he was about to start lashing thunderbolts around the room. It had been Souvage’s bright idea to invite the luminen - something about a counter-narrative against the recent disaster on Perinetus, where the legio Fulminata had lost three titans in a single action; one, apparently, to an errant Sentinel.
Things had gotten interesting when Burakgazi had shoved one of Souvage’s men up against the wall and thundered, “
That’s my brother!”
I chose to stand with my brother...but if Burakgazi was given a choice at all it must have been before they turned him into a lightning rod.
Still, to find out that your sibling was not only in the same warzone, but had gone toe-to-toe with a god machine? Yes, that probably warranted throwing one of Souvage’s cronies into the wall.
I’d do the same to the man himself for free. What do the hivers even see in him?
That altercation was what had prompted Alicia to ask Ella about the electro-priest, and
that had led to Ella telling her that Burukgazi was aware of the Tâin.
“Don’t tell me you
told him!?” Alicia had gaped.
“No, of course not!” Ella’s expression had been hurt. “It’s his augmetic eyes, somehow he saw it.”
“Then he’s a threat!”
“No! I’d have sensed it if he was. And he’s...he’s got his own daemons to contend with.”
Alicia wondered if Ella had meant that literally as well as figuratively.
No, the Tâin would have told me.
But still, he knew. Who might he tell? A secret between two was bad enough. Between three?
Ella trusts him.
“For someone who can see a man’s soul, Ella trusts too easily.” The voice was a whisper in her ear, familiar and comforting, even if its words were not.
“I’ll see for myself.” Alicia promised aloud. “And if it comes down to it…”
She flexed her fingers, coiling and uncoiling her fists. They were empty, but no less deadly for that.
“That’s my brother!”
Alicia shook her head. She had fallen before by reaching too fast for people she thought she shared common ground with.
Glabrio...Kally...Marc.
Even Ella she wasn’t sure of any more. Alicia had pictured things differently, but her friend seemed sad and pensive more often than not nowadays.
This...Adrantis, freedom, surety of her place in the world...this was what she had wanted too, wasn’t it? That was why she came with me?
She winced as she remembered the Tâin’s offer to bring back Ella’s memories of Raeni, and how badly that had gone. And now she had no doubt offended her again over this Emperor-damn fulgurite.
“Urgh.” she groaned aloud, digging the heel of one hand into her forehead. “What am I doing wrong?”
“Nothing.” her mother’s voice soothed. She felt warmth on her face as the Tâin’s phantom hand cupped her cheek. “You’re doing the best you can.”
Alicia was no longer sure that that was true.
They practically lined up to criticise me after they found out who I really was again.
Crenshaw had been the first one to humiliate her, summoning her to his quarters and then calling out
“You may enter.” as he heard her approach, as if she were some frakking scholem juvie being hauled in by the headmaster, instead of the owner of the ship that had made their covert infiltration of Adrantis possible.
There had been a star chart of the Adrantis subsector on his desk when she entered, which couldn’t have been an accident. If there was one person you didn’t want delving into your business, it was Martin Crenshaw.
You know more than you are telling us, Tarran. his hand tapping on the map said.
And I intend to find out what.
“That was a poor arrangement of priorities down on Baraspine.” Crenshaw had said, before Alicia had time to ask what this was all about. “You could have prevented Vincent’s injury in a friendly fire incident, and yet you did not act until you were forced to.”
Alicia had been wrong-footed. “You’re not suggesting that I
wanted him to get hurt?”
“I am suggesting that a modicum of judgement would have led you to use your obvious history with the Nebula Corps to ward them off
before we came within shooting range of each other - unless of course you valued your Theodosia charade more than your colleagues and the mission.”
Crenshaw paused to straighten the papers on his desk.
“And I include your old comrades in the Nebula corps under the umbrella of
colleagues who might have died, given that Vizkop overpowered Garcia, and I put a hit on Callisto - a shot which I had every intention of following up until you jumped past me to engage her hand to hand.”
One hit or not, you condescending bastard, she’d have cored out your skull if I hadn’t been there to distract her. Alicia had dearly wanted to voice the words, but instead she had bitten her tongue. She had seen plenty of loyal Nebulas die on Siculi; more than enough.
Yeah, and this asshole knows that as well as I do.
“How did Arcolin escape his cell?” Crenshaw asked, switching subjects like a fencer on the attack. “How did he overpower you?”
“I told Machairi this already.” Alicia replied irritably. “The lights went out, and I didn’t know that the daemon was in Kelly until she tipped the generator and pinned me against the wall.”
“And despite knowing that he had outmatched you once already, you still went after him alone?”
“Of course I frakking did. I didn’t know where any of the others were, or how long it would take them to get back to me.”
Crenshaw stared, hunting for something more behind her words. “Another instance of poor judgement, then.”
That had gotten Alicia’s hackles up. “I didn’t set the order to capture rather than kill - and I dealt with the shit-storm that came out of it as best I could.
You planned this whole mission, not me. And I’ll remind you again that it’d have been a lot slower without
my ship and
my trade warrant.”
Crenshaw merely cocked an eyebrow, in that maddeningly cold and smug way he always did. “Yes, the trade warrant. I have more questions about that. But I will
prioritise and ask another.” The major folded his hands. “Did you know that Arcolin’s sorcery extended so far as summoning daemons?”
Alicia narrowed her eyes. “No.”
Crenshaw clacked his teeth and
hmm’d. “Incidentally, captain Tarran, your rogue trader writ counts for much less now that you are within the boundaries of Imperial territory - less, in fact, than my status as a Telepathica overseer, when you have been openly using Spook.”
“Oh please.” Alicia scoffed. “You’re going to put a break on this whole mission to haul me up on a drugs charge? Do you want to confiscate Viz and Kally’s combat stimms while you’re at it?”
Crenshaw had stared her down. “The consequences for unsanctioned psykers are much more severe than a mere drug charge.”
There was a prolonged silence as the Telepathica officer maintained his impassive stare, hands calmly folded on his desk.
“Were it not for the necessity of rapidly redeploying to Perinetus, I would have hauled you before an astropath to verify all of your answers.”
Alicia opened her mouth.
“Not Ella Seren. As I said on Baraspine, after your unnecessarily dramatic revelation, an
impartial astropath. One who might need to be terminated at the end of the procedure, if you wish to have that on your conscience as well.”
Alicia remembered flushing, her hands balling into fists as her long-dry stimm injectors twitched with the impulse to flood her with enough satrophene to punch the major’s smug face clean off his shoulders.
“You know, Crenshaw, I think you might be the biggest asshole I’ve ever met, and that’s including Merle Carson. At least he’s only a
random asshole, who spits up whatever’s going through his frakked-up brain in a particular moment. Whereas
you made Gavin’s life shit for years just because of who he was. Other psykers too, no doubt - and Emperor knows how many of them.”
The major’s bland expression didn’t falter. “With that point made, captain Tarran, I would ask whether you are also being deliberately cruel towards the psykers on this team, or just, as you so eloquently put it, a random asshole.”
“What are you
talking about?” Alicia snapped, genuinely perplexed.
“Whether it is for tactical benefit or just a part of your Theodosia routine, you have been brazenly taking Spook in front of them. You have been, essentially, flaunting your ability to experience the temporary benefits of being a psyker without the lifetime of accompanying groxshit.” The major’s eyebrow quirked again. “And I am not alone in having concerns about your treatment of Ella. After everything she has been through-”
“I think I’d know a lot more about that than you, major.” Alicia retorted hotly.
Crenshaw
hmm’d again. “After everything she has been through, you deliberately led her on and then manipulated her to suit your needs with the false Tarot reading. As I am sure you have noticed, this has greatly harmed her status with the other agents.”
Alicia had never intended to let a grade-A prick like Crenshaw get to her, but that last point had given her pause. It was part of the reason she had gone to Ella in the med lab...where worst of all, she had proved Crenshaw right.
“I’ve had your back! This whole time, even though it’s left me in shit with the others!”
At least Ella had it in her to forgive people. Gavin on the other hand had been a lost cause long before Alicia had mustered the courage to talk to him. She had found him in one of
Arthrashasta’s derelict machine workshops, methodically grinding something off the shin-plate of his detached left leg. His arms and face were dark with stigmatic bruises.
“You’re hurt.” she had said, trying to empathise.
Gavin had raised his head, looked through her for a moment, and then shrugged as he returned his attention to the grinder.
“The daemon.”
Alicia hadn’t been sure how to respond to that. The Tâin had gone out of its way to not harm Kelly, but had been less selective in its treatment of Gavin.
Maybe he attacked it? Self defence requires force. And then she remembered that it had shot down Ella too, and that she was victim blaming.
“Ella was wearing a flak vest under her robe.” her mother’s voice reminded her.
Alicia jerked her head. She still wanted to believe in the Tâin’s benevolence, but she still remembered the sick rush of fear when she had seen Ella lying like a broken doll in the middle of the ward floor.
And she remembered Gavin planing away at his detached augmetics, sparks hissing angrily from the grinder as it screeched across metal. When she had stepped a little closer she realised that the marks he was obliterating were names - some of which she recognised. They were Gavin’s comrades from Task Force Carbon, the now-defunct stormtrooper company that had served as inquisitor Sidonis’ personal hammer.
Why would he do that? she remembered thinking. She would never have deliberately erased all of her Nebula comrades who had died on Siculi, and elsewhere. The Imperium lost too many lives in a day to spare them a thought, and so it fell to those closest to remember in its place.
“Hey…” she had ventured, gently. “Are you sure you want to be doing that? There’s few enough still alive to remember the sacrifices they made.”
That time, Gavin hadn’t even looked up. Alicia still remembered the dangerous monotone of his voice. “Their memories don’t matter to me, and neither do their names. They never cared about me, so why should I pay them any tribute in return?”
Alicia cast about awkwardly for a moment before remembering something that corporal Mainwaring - one of the few members of Brenner’s crew who had been able to raise her spirits rather than depress them - had said to her during the journey to Sol.
“What about Ky? I know that a rape whistle is a bit of a shit present, but...you know, that’s just crass soldier’s humour. That’s how they show they care.”
Gavin raked another shower of sparks from his leg, and then let go of the grinder to raise two fingers from a curled fist. He lifted the imaginary gun to his lips, meaningfully.
“I put a laspistol in my mouth on the way to Sol, but it misfired. The trouble with being a technopath.” He shrugged. “I tried again later with my combat knife.”
His voice was still a dull, dead rasp as he showed her the scars on his wrist. Unable to find the words to respond, Alicia fidgeted in awkward silence as the psyker’s hollow, thousand-yard stare bored through her.
“You know, by Imperial regulations a psyker like me should not have been armed while off mission, but nobody thought to check - least of all anyone from Carbon.”
“Kylara-”
“As for Kylara,” Gavin interrupted, uninterested in whatever she had to say, “I’m told she was busy catching up with you at the time.”
“Hey, that’s not fair.” Alicia had said, stung. “She was my friend too…”
Gavin scoffed dryly and mirthlessly as he took up the grinder once more. “If Kylara mattered that much to you, why didn’t you try to find out if she was still alive while you were keeping up your carefree Theodosia mask? I think that when it comes to critiquing me for not remembering fallen comrades...well, if you’ll excuse the pun, you don’t have much of a leg to stand on, Alicia.”
Alicia still remembered his grim, humourless smile.
There were plenty of things she might have said in response, but in the moment she had panicked and tried to backtrack. In the end, all she had managed was to say, hesitantly: “So...what
did happen to Junior?”
Gavin’s smile held - all he did was slowly shake his head slightly from side to side.
“She was posted to the
Mooncalf’s cargo bay when Sidonis sent the Sons of Plutarch to finish us off. She was up on the number three loading gantry when they teleported in. She got off one burst before a bolter round caught her.” Gavin moved a hand to touch his chest below the left pectoral. “About here.”
Alicia had scrunched her brow at the uncannily detailed answer. “How do you know that?”
Gavin had merely shrugged. “The interrogators on Terra thought that the most efficient way to torture me was to bring in an astropath who could make me witness all the Carbon troopers’ deaths.” He moved his grinder over to Kylara’s name. “I guess you managed to avoid all of that, but what’s done is done.”
And with that, Kylara Mainwaring Jr had vanished in a fountain of shards and swarf.
“He was grieving.” the Tâin broke in; the same words that Alicia had told herself after the encounter.
“Maybe he was right though.” Alicia murmured aloud, rubbing her temples. Her Nebula neural implants were hard discs beneath her skin. “And Sapphira…”
Sapphira, the team’s surrogate mother and emotional rock, was the last one Alicia had expected to twist the knife on her after Baraspine, but again there it was. Alicia had been on her way to the
Arthrashasta med-lab to see Ella, and had found the sister hovering in the doorway, keeping watch over the still-comatose Kelly. Sapphira had been diligently working the beads of her chaplet with one hand, while she almost distractedly ran the tips of her fingers across her neck. Alicia had noticed the thin, faint blade scar across the hospitaller’s throat some time earlier. Hero of Siculi or not, she hadn’t had the courage to ask Sapphira how she had acquired it.
Kelly had a scar too now, no doubt. Alicia had made every argument short of admitting she knew something of the Tâin and its motives, but Machairi hadn’t listened. Instead, the high-handed inquisitor bitch had insisted that Kelly needed to be branded with a protective ward, and had forced Sapphira to do the surgery alongside that merciless, soulless bastard Crenshaw.
No wonder the sister had been in a terrible way. To her credit, Sapphira had managed to get her stony sororita mask back into place when Alicia announced herself with a tentative cough. But only just.
“Hey, Sapphira.” Alicia had asked, in yet another fruitless attempt to empathise. “How’s Kelly?”
“She still hasn’t woken up.” Sapphira had replied, in an audibly strained voice.
Alicia clasped her hands behind her to try and hide the fact that she was twisting them together. “Look…” she ventured, “I tried to convince Machairi that she didn’t need the pentagram, I really did.”
It must have been the wrong thing to say, because the sister immediately tensed. The chaplet looped about her waist rattled as her hands curled into trembling fists around the devotional beads. One bead for each act of penitence, Alicia knew. There were a lot of them.
“Out.” Sapphira had said, a tumult of despair, guilt and rage warring for dominance on her face.
“What…?” Alicia floundered. “I’m here to see Ella.”
“These are
my patients, in
my ward.” Sapphira’s voice had been a venomous hiss. “And if you actually do care about Ella, or anyone else, then you’ll step outside it
right now so that I don’t have to shout at you in front of them.”
She should have walked away there and then, Alicia reflected, but this was back when she had still held out some hope of mending fences with her teammates. She had followed the sister, mortified, her heart thudding in her chest at the unexpected outburst. As soon as they were down the hallway and soundproofed within a derelict crew berth, Sapphira had let loose.
“Do you have
any idea what you’ve done?” the hospitaller had thundered, with a vengeful anger that even Alicia’s battle-sister stepmother would have struggled to match. “You could have called your Nebula friends off and stopped Vincent from nearly being killed! Throne, you might even have called them in to help us guard Arcolin! I mean, was this all a game to you?”
“I…” Alicia had stumbled, wilting before the sister’s wrath. “I don’t…”
“While they went through hell, you were swanning off to play rogue trader! And you liked it so much that you didn’t even bother to tell them until your old friends blew your cover! Do you have any idea how much work it’s taken to get your team-mates back from the brink after Terra? After the trial and the torture and everything else? What condition do you think they’re all in now? This might be a game to you but these precious, fragile souls deserve so much better than what you’ve given them!”
“I’m…” Alicia stumbled, “I’m sorry! I never thought this was a game, it was just a cover! I’m taking Arcolin’s threat as seriously as any of you! I mean, I was
raised by a battle sister, that’s why she named me
Alicia…”
She had been desperate, and had appealed to their one unequivocal common bond in the sororitas. She quickly realised that it was the worst thing that she could have possibly said as Sapphira’s demeanor instantly shifted from volcanic to glacial.
“If you…” Sapphira’s jaw and throat were tensing, as if she were physically struggling to get the words out. “Were named for a matriarch of the sisterhood, then you should have followed the sisterhood’s creed and killed the heretic when you had the chance.”
Alicia had almost blurted that she
had put a gun to Arcolin’s head before his interrogation, and it was perhaps just as well that Sapphira had interrupted her by slamming her palm into the closed door.
If I had been thinking straight, I might have realised that she was aiming that fury at herself, not just at me.
“If you do anything to harm this team,” Sapphira had gone on, mercilessly, “
Ever again, then I’ll kill you myself.”
The worst thing was that she had very obviously meant it, and that had made Alicia see red.
“Even if you managed that,” she fumed coldly, “Machairi would have you executed.”
“And when I knelt before the God-Emperor, I would thank Him for having allowed me a worthwhile death.” Sapphira answered, without even a blink of her tempestuous grey eyes. Alicia had recoiled in reflexive horror from the unflinching zealotry, which made Sapphira almost pityingly shake her head. “I don’t suppose you’d understand the concept of laying down your life for your friends.”
That was when Alicia had cracked. Because she had realised, for all the camaraderie of the Nebula corps, there was no-one in the whole Imperium who would ever have done something like that for her. She had fled the room so that Sapphira wouldn’t see her tears.
I still don’t have anyone like that. she thought, emptily.
Well, unless Ella…
“Don’t lose yourself in the past, Alley.” her mother’s voice soothed.
“Not when there’s such an important future to look to.”
Alicia yanked her sleeve into her palm and used it to dry the moisture that was once again pricking at the corners of her eyes. The Tâin wasn’t always right, but it at least knew what she needed to hear.
“Remember your Spook.” it added, and Alicia felt the vial hidden in her sleeve pocket grow warm against her arm.
She drew the tiny container out, and looked at it. The black liquid reflected the light from the candelebras lining the walls. Alicia hesitated.
What if Crenshaw was right after all? Ella still urged her against it every time she saw her with a vial in her hand.
“Ella isn’t here.” the Tâin argued.
“And this Burakgazi might still be a threat. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
And I don’t want to hurt Ella. Alicia thought, biting her lip. But in the end she uncorked the vial, and drained the syrupy liquid within.
Please let me get this one right, at least…
Konstantin Burakgazi was waiting for her in the tunnel bridge that linked the penultimate levels of spires primus and secundus. The narrow glass tunnel spanned two hundred metres, though Alicia could still hear the buzz and flash of servo skulls authenticating travellers at either end of the bridge. An intermittent stream of foot traffic was passing through - priests, couriers, adepts carrying tottering piles of scrolls - but all of them were walking with their heads fixedly down, trying to avoid the surrounding cloudscape and the steady rumble of the wind until they were safely ensconced on the other side.
Most hivers can’t handle wide open spaces. Alicia reflected.
Burakgazi was alone in tarrying at the bridge’s centre, facing out towards the sea of cloud and the hive spires thrusting up through it like jagged rocks. His palms rested on the transparisteel of the tunnel wall, as if he were testing the vibration of the structure under the stratospheric winds outside. But it was not his hands that Alicia saw first.
She could see the auras of the travellers, shimmering around their bodies like haloes. They flickered preoccupied blue and anxious, agoraphobic white. Burakgazi’s was steadier, but it was not his own. Bleeding in from somewhere just past the veil that the Spook allowed her to pierce, she saw tendrils sifting down like trickles of sand. They danced in the air current, circling the man - some red, some pale purple.
Alicia felt a tug behind her ribs as the Tâin bared its teeth.
Burakgazi turned smoothly. He was a big man by any measure of the word, with a golden brown beard and matching hair, though it was his silver bionic eyes that instinctively drew the gaze.
“Perhaps you’d care to khek off for a moment while the humans talk?” the former electro-priest said, and Alicia knew that he wasn’t talking to her. She pursed her lips over the teeth she hadn’t realised she had been baring, and pushed her protector back down into dormancy with a mental effort.
“As you can see, we have something in common.” Burakgazi said in High Gothic, sliding his hands away from the tunnel wall to rest on his belt.
That remains to be seen. Alicia thought. “The way Ella told it,” she replied in the same language, “I thought it was your two lady friends, not you as well.”
“I normally do not let them get this close.” Burakgazi said, soberly. “I wanted you to see them.”
Behind them a bent-backed functionary shuffled past, oblivious to their Terran cant. Burakgazi watched him pass with his silver eyes. While she was no tech-priestess, Alicia knew enough about augments from the Corps to know that Burakgazi’s eyes were quality work. They were articulated after the style of High Imperial statuary, and to Alicia’s mild surprise seemed to be completely solid.
How does he see? On closer inspection, she noticed his left implant had been bisected in a similar manner to his sculpted face, but unlike the neat and unobtrusively sutured flesh, the silver bionic had been mended with a seam of gold. It seemed incongruous, even gauche compared to the rest of his refined augmetics.
Like Merle and his gold teeth.
Perhaps he had been worked on by more than one tech-priest.
And they both had enough ego to want to leave their signature.
“I apologise for some of the company I keep.” Burakgazi said after a moment. “No doubt they don’t think much of your associate either.”
Alicia folded her arms, guardedly. “They probably don’t like the idea of one of their kind serving mortal interests, rather than whatever mad god they follow.”
Burakgazi’s brow furrowed. “Many people will try to win their enemy’s trust with honest trifles before betraying them. I’ve never seen anything to suggest that other intelligences in this universe aren’t able to use the same trick.”
“Not the Tâin.” Alicia argued firmly. “There were many, many times where it could have betrayed me or my friends, and it only ever acted to save me and my brother.”
Burakgazi regarded her steadily, a muscle in his cheek working. “I know many people who have believed it so, but at the end of the day there’s no such thing as a benevolent daemon.”
Alicia tried not to flinch at him speaking the word aloud, even in a tongue that most of the passing commuters wouldn’t understand.
“The Tâin was a daemon once.” she admitted in a low voice. “But now it’s something more.”
Burakgazi lowered his head, though his metallic eyes didn’t blink. “I remember my combat drop into the slums of Vaxanhive. The barriers between our world and the daemons we were sent to stop were wearing thin. I was a luminen, of the fulgurite brotherhood.”
The erstwhile electro-priest raised his head towards the metaphorical heavens and spread his arms, fists clenched. The simple gesture, despite his modest Vaxan attire, only emphasized his broad and muscular physique. With her Spook-heightened senses, Alicia could nearly envision Burakgazi as he went into battle. She was certain he strode towards his enemies with a smile.
“My faith was perfect in its purity. My purity was the truth and the light of the Omnissiah’s might. I was an avatar of the Eight Warnings of the mechanicus creed. I was to break their ritual, and break their faith.” Burakgazi recounted, without the conviction expected from his infamously fundamentalist sect. “I didn’t think that any warp-spawn trick would be able to weaken my resolve - ”
“Excuse me.”
Alicia blinked, and glanced towards the less than patient voice. A junior prelate and her entourage, cardinal Raygar’s judging by the lion badges on their cowls, had stopped short of Burakgazi as he blocked the width of the tunnel bridge.
“You’re in the way, and we have somewhere to be.”
Burakgazi quickly brought down his arms, and offered a polite bow to the inconvenienced travellers as he moved aside. He smiled, almost bashfully, as he spoke proficient if noticeably accented Tephainian. “My apologies. May you all have a pleasant day.”
Alicia chewed her tongue as the clergymen began to shuffle past, without so much as a glance of recognition in her direction.
They don’t even know me without my armour on.
“Emperor of Adrantis be with you...” the priestess told Burakgazi stiffly, as she and her coterie hustled away. And then Alicia’s psychically-attuned senses heard the prelate mutter, presumably when she thought she was out of earshot. “...you bloody foreign, infidel trash.”
Alicia saw Burakgazi’s smile morph and harden into a severe frown. Evidently his hearing was
also augmented. The red sand tendrils seemed to whirl around him like a desert dust-devil. She heard the sequential clicks as he touched his silver capped thumb against his fingertips, until after a moment Burakgazi clenched his fist and irritably narrowed his eyes. The red sand receded.
“As I said, I didn’t think that any warp-spawn trick would be able to weaken my resolve...until one of the daemons produced a glamour that stopped even me.”
Alicia regarded the former tech-priest as his face took on a grim cast, as he turned back towards her.
“If it hadn’t been for one of Red’s acolytes at the Purple summoning site, both daemons would have been brought into the material world, unfettered, with all the horrific consequences that implies.”
Alicia wasn’t in the mood to be lectured, but she was curious. “One of this…
Red’s cultists stopped the other daemon?”
“I can only assume that he wasn’t privy to the whole plan. Daemons rarely share everything with their agents.” Burakgazi seemed to be giving her a pointed look. “I still wonder which one of the daemons sent its vision to delay my attack on the Red stronghold. It may well have been Purple, as it was in both of their interests to be summoned...and Red is hardly subtle in its approach.”
The silver eyes bored into her, but when Burakgazi spoke again his voice was calm, and the synaesthetic halo flickering above his head was a kindly yellow, in spite of the daemonic ripples circling around it.
“Given how hard they fought, and possibly even
co-operated, to bring themselves into our realm...can you tell me of any wholesome reason that a daemon might want a stable host?”
Alicia flexed her hand, her thumb rubbing across the cool metal of her two prosthetic fingers.
I have to make him understand. “Like I said, the Tâin isn’t just a daemon anymore. It’s the spirits of ten generations of my family, and those ties don’t break easily.”
Burakgazi exhaled quietly. “Our confessor, Kimmie, used to say that the daemon wears an angel’s face. She was entirely right. The daemons on Vaxanide sent me a flawless vision of my elder brother...and instinct overcame indoctrination.” He paused, and gestured encouragingly towards her with open, cog-like hands. “Tell me, lady DeRei - who does the Tâin present itself as to you?”
My mother. Alicia didn’t speak, but she felt strangely naked before those silver eyes, as if Burakgazi saw her mind regardless.
Ella said he could see the Tâin...what else can he sense with those damned augmetics?
“What do you want from me, Burakgazi?” she asked, more sharply than she had meant to.
“Only that you accept some well-meant advice.” Despite his piercing gaze, the Spook in her bloodstream was still telling her that the Vostroyan’s intentions were kind. “I would suggest you not take what you know as a given. Or what you have for granted.”
And I am not alone in having concerns about your treatment of Ella. Crenshaw’s steely voice scraped through her mind like a blade.
These precious, fragile souls deserve so much better than what you’ve given them! Sapphira’s voice railed in damning echo.
“I…” Alicia faltered, finding herself wilting yet again. “Ella’s been a good friend...a better one than I deserve, I know…”
“I think we both know that she sees you as more than a friend, lady DeRei.” Burakgazi said.
He spoke without the judgement of the former team-mates spinning through her mind - but all the same Alicia wanted to flee back to the safety of the crowds beyond the security gate.
I know she does. I’m not stupid. But what the frak do I know about being in love...with anyone?
After a sheltered, emotionally bereft upbringing by her Mariochi step-parents -
not parents, handlers. A battle sister and a stormtrooper… - she hadn’t failed to notice how hard it was to make the connections that everyone else seemed to form so easily. That went double when some of the young men started taking interest in her in officer candidate school. She never knew quite what to say and do, and so she had simply copied the other girls in her form as best she could.
That’s all I ever was. A mirror. That made her think of her brother’s flects, and she almost laughed.
She had tried a grand total of twice. The first boy had broken things off after a few months of asking with increasing exasperation what it was that
she wanted, but that had been easy compared to the second.
He left me crying on the floor of my hab after shouting about what was the point if I was going to just lie there like a plank of wood.
The simple, uncomplicated and undemanding camaraderie of the Nebula corps had been a blessed relief - only that had been snatched away from her too, by a massacre that the governor had seen fit to trumpet as a heroic victory. No-one after that had been interested in the real Alley, only the idealised propaganda image of
Alicia Tarran, and shutting down that side of her life had been so much easier than trying to deal with any more disappointment and stress.
I thought I had another chance as Theodosia, but look how that turned out. And after that it had been back to the mirror, and the ever-present fear of what might happen if she leaned too far out of it.
Alicia was struck by the sudden, extremely uncomfortable realisation that anyone she had ever been in an intimate relationship with had approached her first, and as a result she had never really invested much thought into what sort of person
she would truly be interested in.
Spending time with Ella was nice, but…
Her insides were squirming, and when she looked down she realised that she was wringing her hands. She took a ragged breath to steady herself, trying not to draw any more curious eyes from the passing traffic, but there was no hiding from Burakgazi’s own silver orbs.
At least when Ella looks through me it’s bearable…
“I…” Alicia fumbled, and jammed her hands in her pockets to stop them from fidgeting. “I’ll be honest with you, I’ve…”
She knew that she was blushing furiously, and cursed herself for it.
“I’ve never, well,
been with a woman before...and I never really thought that I ever
would be…”
She trailed off, and just about managed to meet Burakgazi’s eyes. Of all the reactions she had been expecting from him, an understanding smile was not one of them.
“And until recently, lady DeRei,” he said, “I had never been with a woman, nor thought I ever would be either.”
Alicia blinked. “Oh.” she said, slowly. “Lady Tumasian, I assume.”
So that’s why she’s always so touchy-feely with him.
Burakgazi acknowledged her guess as correct with a nod. Alicia saw the strands of purple sand swirl elegantly through the air, encroaching on the luminen at the mention of his Vaxan companion. Burakgazi’s silver eyes flicked towards the daemonic presence, before it could make contact with his statuesque form. The purple tendrils reluctantly unwound as they undulated on the air current, resuming their circling with the red.
“Nara and I have a…” Burakgazi paused, thoughtfully, “
Complicated dynamic.”
“Evidently.” Alicia dryly commented. She chewed on her bottom lip, and spoke despite herself. “So why...do...it?”
“Because I want to be human again. I want to be more than…
this.” Burakgazi answered, and Alicia would’ve sworn those damned bionic eyes had a
knowing look as he touched the silvered fingertips of his polymer gloves to the stylized electoo embedded into his thickly-muscled forearm. “On Vaxanide, with Nara, however unlikely as that seems to all logic and reason...I was able to make a genuine human connection, without any preconceived notions...and that was a privilege I thought I would never have again.”
“Again?” Alicia ventured, picking up on the last word.
“His name was Sasha. And I will not ever see him again.” Burakgazi smiled wistfully, as he answered the next question before she could even ask it. “And yes...it’s worth it.”
“In spite of...everything?” She asked, tentatively.
“
Because of everything.” Burakgazi answered, with the quiet conviction of a true believer.
The former electro-priest raised a hand to rest against the tunnel wall once more, and cast his silver gaze out across the clouds as the sunlight played over them.
“You don’t have to decide who or what you are right now.” he reassured Alicia, looking back at her. “As Nara once chided me, sorting things into neat little boxes is a Martian trait - and it’s one not suited to the new Adrantean Republic. Assuming of course that the Republic lives up to chancellor Souvage’s propaganda.”
His aura shimmered with dark red, but his tone was mild as he spread his hands.
“I will give you one other piece of advice, if you’ll permit me. Your self-determination is just as valid as that of the Republic you’re risking your life to defend. Although,” He returned his hands to his belt clasp. “I would suggest that you think about your feelings towards Ella somewhat sooner. If you can’t open yourself up to her, romantically speaking, then do the correct thing and tell her. It wouldn’t be kind to let her hold out hope in vain.”
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