The Dogs of War (SkyLine 3)

“That wasn’t the only first I had, when I met you… I…” Kalus cleared his throat to start again before anyone could stop him saying what he needed, “I didn’t know I liked men before I met you.”

“Kalus…” Demi sighed, almost a plea.

“No. No, let me say this. If you want me to have sufficient focus for my duties, that is,” Kalus insisted. The shape of his lips was the mere vestige of a true smile. Demi joined him in his transfixed stare at Saturn, resigned to listen. “What I mean is… You were WCC. Ranks and file. There to keep the peace I was disrupting. Of course, at the time I had no idea you were a ranking Officer. Every time one of your men caught me, before you, I thought it’d be the time they finally beat me to death. Every time they stopped within an inch of my life. But you… Why?”

“What do you mean, why?” Demi answered, only when the invitation to speak was so deliberate.

“Why didn’t you hit me? Why’d you tell your men I did nothing wrong, when your men saw me sneaking away from the back of that store?” Kalus asked. Demi only stared out at the encroaching body of the place where it had happened. “Why? Did you pity me, because I was scrawny? That’s what most of the others always said when I took a licking. Squashing a bug isn’t worth the stain on their boots,” Kalus quoted one of the other miners.

“I saw what you had in the bags. Food. How could I… You just wanted to eat,” said Demi. Kalus let out a rough breath, almost like a laugh. So simple an act. It had entirely rerouted his life. Demi and Kalus leaned on the rail of the Cerberus for a time both of them lost track of. They enjoyed the warmth of a hand in their hand. They moved closer by a force of unconscious gravity, until their shoulders rubbed together.

“For just a second, someone else saw me. They saw me and they thought…I deserved to live. You. For just that second, I didn’t have to bare my teeth and fight for the right to live. It gave me a second to think, which I never normally had. And I thought…you were the most intimidating, handsome person I’d ever seen. You gave me that. A chance to get to know myself,” said Kalus. Demi tensed. He almost pulled away. He knew better than to let the order of his unit depend on the emotions of one member. Then Kalus said, “That’s why I begged Lilia to fly me out there, when the Dragons attacked. I owe you something I can never repay. That’s why, even if we can’t…I’m with you.”

Demi turned to face his Arms Master. That gravity, that hazardous pull between them, threatened to undo every restraint of good sense. Just like it had the night after they fought together outside Saturn’s Rings. Their lip

s twitched with the desire to lock together. Their hands tightened around one another.

“If that’s true… Would it kill you to call me Captain?” Demi asked, a futile attempt to diffuse the tension. Arms Master and Captain were forgotten in that moment. Demi and Kalus were pure as children, giggling as they moved closer. Demi watched the light brighten in the center of his one-time lover's eyes. Saturn. Home of hard mines and harder people. At least, he thought it was Saturn. Then it brightened, and grew, until it was a painful glare from Kalus’ eye.

“Captain,” Kalus muttered, filled with an emotion so starkly inappropriate for the moment, reality seemed to splinter. Fear. What might have happened vanished behind the dropped curtain of a brutal awakening. Demi wheeled around to see the light for himself. A rippling blue and white fireball hurtled through the wall of the SkyLine.

“Dragons. Get-”

The Chrysum meteor crashed into the side of the Cerberus. A blur of color screeched across the deck, straight for Kalus and Demi. Kalus felt hands on his chest. Next he knew, his back skidded across the Cerberus while pillars of white fire jumped up around him.

“What in the hell was that?” Sophia screamed. The jump to her feet was a mistake, she realized, when the Cerberus whipped into a wild spin. She toppled beneath Lilia’s leaping feet. The Commander managed to get a hand on the helm. She used it to pull herself into her seat. She gripped the navigation bars in both hands, disengaged the autopilot and fought to regain control.

“We’re going through the SkyLine wall!” Lilia screamed while the world spiraled outside the viewing window. With each full rotation, they spun closer to the racing neon barrier. Lilia winced. Sophia grasped the nearest control panel. The whole frame of the Cerberus shivered when it struck the edge of the tunnel. Nose first, it plunged through a solid wall of energy and nanomachines. “I’m going to normalize us! Hang on a second longer!” Lilia screamed.

With the throw of a switch, she flared the side jets of the Cerberus to fight the force of their spin. Two turns later, the ship had evened out to an idle float. Lilia took all of two seconds to engage the rear jets. Two more Chrysum blasts tore through the ship’s jetstream only feet behind it. She swayed the Cerberus side to side while she read the damage reports that projected from her console. The starboard side of the deck had been blasted wide open. Kal, was the thought that haunted her sharp gasp. The Cerberus drew a bright streak back and forth across the abyss beside the SkyLine, with the white Chrysum fire eating away its deck.

“Sophia, are you conscious?” Lilia called out when she read three life signatures circling the ship.

“So far,” Sophia groaned as she heaved herself up on a seat.

“Good. Get to your ship and deploy. Whatever it is attacking us, hit it back. I’ll support you from here,” Lilia told her. Data analysts scattered throughout the bridge behind her instantly, typing out codes to track their attackers. Sophia stood, paralyzed at the sudden emergence of the woman with a mission from inside the Lilia-shaped cocoon. She stayed until Lilia shot her a fiery glare.

“On it,” Sophia said, and raced off. On the way out, she passed Howard on his way in.

“Howard,” Lilia called him instantly, the slightest waver in her voice, “I need you to go up to the deck and check on Demi and Kalus.”

“Counter-offer,” Howard answered, a hand on the wall to steady himself, “Hook me into your ventilation system and I can get the Dragons off us.” Lilia burned into him with one eyebrow of doubt over the other. Howard hadn’t looked so serious before, even inside the Chrysum Reactor.

“Alright. There’s a master control panel down on the left. I’ll patch you in,” Lilia said. Just before that, a notification popped up from her console that one of the Cerberus heads had launched. Artillery Subcraft Deployed. Lilia watched on her radar as one of the life signatures outside turned after it. The other two hovered above the deck of the Cerberus. “One on your tail, Sophia. Take it out,” said Lilia. She watched a tiny cannon-armed pod shoot across her viewing screen. The scaly, winged blur that flashed after it gave her chills.

“Are we on?” Howard asked. Lilia jostled from her trance. She set the Cerberus on autopilot to repeat her swaying flight pattern so she could take up the Chrysum turret controls. A bright crimson crosshair projected onto the viewing screen, which she leveled at two Dragons over the deck.

“We’re on,” Lilia told him. Howard put down an odd rectangular device he’d plugged in to type a command into the panel. A thin mist emitted from the vents swirled instantly around the ship.

“Once the M-Particles spread, I’m going to play a frequency across them that’s rather unpleasant to anything with Chrysum in it. Get ready for them to scramble,” he warned.

“Hey, Captain! Your hands still work?” a voice called to Demi through the infinite surge of blinding light. Next he knew, a handle of some kind was shoved through his fingers.

“Ye-yeah,” Demi coughed.

“Then take this, and use it! Come on!” the voice shouted. Kalus. His Arms Specialist yanked Demi back up on his feet. White walls of fire boxed them in on three sides. Kalus pulled Demi along before the fourth could close. They trotted across the deck of the Cerberus to the opposite rail. Two winged shadows floated over them, silhouettes in the glare of the SkyLine above. Then one of their jaws filled with silver flame. Demi activated the weapon in his hands. An edged strip of metal shot out, which ignited a shining blue. A Chrysum sword? Demi realized. He’d never seen a portable one before. This was, of course, because Kalus’ private collection was all custom.

“We’ve got to draw them to the deck!” Demi shouted, his senses flooding back at once.