Jame
The next week and a half is a montage of battle plans and boredom.
The Jerumatians are a blur of action, running here and there with arms full of important files or shoulders loaded down with weapons. I see the governor and her husband once or twice, usually engaged in what looks like a vital meeting with a horde of men and women I don't recognize.
The freedom fighters from Xilan and the tribes show up midway into the first week, sporting their characteristically serene expressions and brightly colored jumpsuits. Other recruits soon follow, flowing in through Jerumat's airway like its some kind of cosmic homeless shelter. Battle ships litter the streets, parked in every available space because the hangars are all full. We Broenians are all but pushed to the side in the wake of the revolution mania.
The whole thing has taken on a life of its own.
I try to spend as much time as I can with Kenna while we have this interim because there's no way to know how much we will get to see each other over the course of the coming conflicts. We eat all our meals together. We hang out in our room rehashing old times. We tell each other all about our experiences while we were apart. She talks to me about boys and friends and what she learned from Ms. Natalie. I talk to her about distant worlds and neon pink skies and the bizarre clothing of the outer systems.
And our time passes like that...for a week and a half. In a mythical dream state of time spent with Kenna, time spent alone, and time spent planning to go to war.
The only really memorable moment is when I wake up one morning to find Spades sprawled sideways across the armchair in my room. Kenna is gone, her bed left empty and unmade. I feel a bout of annoyance at Spades, as if he ran her off with his presence.
"What do you want?" I sit on the edge of my bed, running my hands through my hair and then rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.
"Halsey told me to come get you... There's something you're gonna wanna see."
"Yeah?" I quirk an eyebrow sarcastically.
He blows out a sigh, "Look, man-"
"Shut up and get out of my room."
"Jeez, just listen, would ya? I'm- well I was wrong. About Eden Virdane. I was wrong, and you were right. Can you stop being an asshole now?"
I roll my eyes, "Whatever."
***
My mother always said history was a liar - that it only looked at the bad side of things and often ignored the details. She believed that if you wanted to know the truth about the past - the truth about where we came from - you wouldn't find it in the history books. You'd find it in the ancient novels preserved by fleeing fanatics back in the days when Earth was becoming a hostile environment and everyone thought the world was ending. You'd find it in journals kept in tattered notebooks by people who had lived through those times. But mostly, you would find it in the poetry. She said poetry captured the emotions behind everything, how events like weddings and funerals had held more weight than concerns about pollution and overpopulation. In my mother's eyes nothing was ever as honest or real as poetry.
We had lots of different poetry in our house when I was growing up. We had the modern, half-formed version of poetry, the scribbled copies of Earth Age works slapped down on any available parchment and bartered like it was pure gold, and then we had the real stuff. The genuine, authentic, unchanged, and untouched books. Well, we only had the one book, but it was better than nothing and it felt like a pretty big deal at the time.
I never really had an ear for poetry myself. I had an ear for my mother's voice. She had the softest, most caring voice in the galaxy, but maybe everyone thinks that about their own mother. Whatever the case, I could sit for hours at a time listening to her read. My father wouldn't let me most day, said I needed to be out doing work, or learning something useful - being a man. He only let me be a man when there was work to be done.
Still, almost every night, right before bed, my mother would come into my room with whatever type of poem or story she had read that day and she would read it back to me. My father didn't mind. He loved my mother and her poetry and had deemed it passable for me as a bedtime story.
My sister never liked listening to poetry, said it didn't make sense. So these moments belonged entirely to my mother and I. In my memories they are a haze of blurry eyes and yawns, interlaced with glimpses of my mother's face or the sight of her perched on a stool by my bedside, a thick black book balancing open on her lap. And always - always - was her voice. Sometimes I could recall words, snippets of verse that I had unintentionally and unknowingly memorized, but mostly it was just her voice.
Now, as I stare at the satellite image on the screen before me, for the first time in years, I recall the words. The frozen video image of Eden Virdane on Broenia reminds of the words.
Once it smiled a silent dell/Where the people did not dwell. My home settlement left abandoned.
They had gone unto the wars,/Trusting to the mild-eyed stars... Our people scattered by war, fleeing to outer space in hopes of finding safety on a distant planet.
...By no wind those clouds are driven. The way Eden Virdane's cloud-white hair blows in the dry wind of my home planet.
That rustle through the unquiet Heaven. The unquiet heaven - my planet disturbed by Protectorate troops.
Over the violets there that lie/In myriad types of the human eye. Her eyes, an innocent, misleading blue, in this picture full of a devouring fire you might mistake for some kind of passion if you didn't know she was actually just another power hungry soldier.
I'm conscious of my heartbeat thrumming in my chest as I stare for a long time at the fractured details of this frozen image, my eyes shifting over and over again from Eden Virdane to my desecrated home around her.
The Jerumatians have accessed Protectorate satellites and now have a view of virtually every planet in the terraformed universe. It was a routine sweep of Broenia that picked up footage of the Protectorate unloading their supplies and beliefs onto the surface of Broenia. Our home was officially lost.
I can't tear my eyes away from the screen.
Eden Virdane.
I don't think I've ever despised anyone so much.
I thought- I don't know what I thought. That she was different? That because she hadn't tried to stop me from fleeing our settlement back on Broenia it meant she was some kind of human being? That there was an actual beating heart under that Protectorate uniform?
That there was any way the Protectorate would leave our planet in peace and never return?
I don't know how it happened, but somehow I had been fooled into trusting that girl again.
We'll probably never see each other again.
If we do, we will be enemies.
I should have listened better, instead of focusing on the way her eyes lightened when she smile and her teeth practically gleamed. I'm as stupid as Spades. Maybe that's why I'm so pissed at him.
"The Jerumatians have offered to help us take back Broenia...in the future," Halsey says from behind me, "As the first payoff for our support in this revolution. They've promised something similar to everyone."
"Do you think they'll deliver?"
"I'd say their good for it, but it could be years."
"And what of our mission in the meantime?"
Silence.
"And what of our mission, Halsey?" I repeat, thinking he may not have heard me.
"What of it?"
I spin the observation chair around to face him.
"What do you mean, what of it?"
"What of it, Jame? You want us to continue the search? The search that has come to nothing after all these years? The search that has been nothing but pain and disappointment to our people? They have hope now, Jame. And something real to hope for."
"Do your really think defeating the Protectorate is more possible than finding our people?"
"They aren't our people anymore," this he says in a whisper.
If he hadn't whispered I would yell at him, but there is heartbreak in his whisper and I can't find a voice to yell with. He's given up. Really and truly given up.
"I thought you didn't even believe in this revolution?" I resist a snarl.
"And I thought that you did," he counters.
"For them, Halsey. For Deliah and Aiyana. For Mic and Spades's mother. For Gregor's twin brother and sister. For Brenton's wife."
Halsey winces slightly at the mention of each of these people but remains traitorously silent.
"I won't give up," I tell him, rising from the chair. He is forced to take several steps back to avoid me, "I won't stop looking for them. You can if you want to, but I won't."
"Jame-"
"Just shut up, Halsey. And get out," I turn back to the surveillance screen, "I'm going to find them, and it doesn't matter if you like it or not. You're no one's captain. Don't let the nickname get to you."
"Jame, just listen-"
"I don't want to hear what you have to say. Get. Out. And you tell the others if they're still interested in our mission to come and find me."
I plop down into the chair and fiddle with the screen resolution to avoid looking at him. There's a wellspring of anger erupting in my chest and I'm liable to really snap if he says another word. Wisely, he doesn't.
I hear the soft sound of footfalls crossing the room and then the click and suction of the door as it opens and closes. I relax into the chair when he's gone, deflating like a helium air ship.
I sit for a moment in emotional indecision. I feel a range of different angers, frustrations, disappointments, and sorrows, and I desperately wish for my mother. My mother. I wish I was nine years old again being tucked into bed, when the world was so small and the universe was so distant. I wish I could vent to someone - yell about this to someone. I could yell at someone, but that wouldn't do any good. I would never vent to Kenna, for fear of upsetting her. And anyone else might try and reason with me, when I am furiously opposed to being reasoned with.
After a while of this fuming, I push my jumbled feelings to the side and tap the screen to set the satellite footage rolling again and watch as Eden Virdane's motionless form jumps into action.
Flanked by snipers with rifles at the ready, she makes her way down the shiny ramp in a scene from my memory. Her chin isn't lifted in confidence anymore, though, it is angled down as her blue eyes flash from side to side in alertness. Soldiers flow out around her and collect in the square like bugs on a windshield. There is a long period of relative inaction, where I assume plans are made and discussed. Eden Virdane and an older man appear deep in conversation.
I zone out as the bugs wriggle uninterestingly around on the screen. I find myself staring sightlessly ahead and wondering what in the world I'm going to do without Halsey's help.
He may have been next to useless as of late, but there was a time when my entire existence depended on his good will. Back when he seemed to me like some kind of heroic pirate from a story and I was just a kid without a family.
He was only eighteen, really only a kid himself, and just looking to get his girlfriend back from the Protectorate. But he had a ship, and he had crew, and he had a plan. And so to me, he was a hero. Now he's given up. My hero. What do you do when your hero gives up?
I'm deeply rooted in this existential dilemma when Eden Virdane's movement on screen catches my attention. Soldiers are spreading out through the town and disappearing into houses. Eden Virdane is doing much the same, only differently, because Eden Virdane disappears into my house. I feel my chest constrict and I lean forward, as if I can stop her by sheer concentration.
No such luck.
I stare at the outside of my sad little brick house for several analogous eternities as the Protectorate captain no doubt rifles around in my personal belongings. I hold my breath, count to three hundred, get tired of counting, hold my breath some more. Until finally she comes out. I exhale.
My relief dies quickly in my throat. She isn't empty handed. She found something.
I pan the image and zoom in.
Come on, what is it?
Whatever it is, it's so small it's practically invisible, but Eden Virdane is studying it with particular attentiveness.
I zoom in closer.
It's very small, resting in the center of her palm, and white. It is white.
What do I have that is small and white and of any importance?
Oh no.
I scramble to pull the crumpled paper from Centuria out of my pocket, unfolding and smoothing it with nervous fingers.
Oh shit. Shit shit shit shit shit.
I had been very rough with the paper on several occasions, and somewhere during all of that time, a small corner had been ripped from the page. Shit. But surely that couldn't mean anything to Eden Virdane. She couldn't know what it was by finding a blank corner. It would just be a scrap of paper to her, surely. How could she possible guess its significance? I tell myself these things and try to believe them.
Then something surprising happens.
Eden Virdane pinches the severed corner in one hand and reaches deep into her pocket with the other. She pulls out a rectangle of white and begins removing and unfolding something. Her own little piece of paper.
I zoom in closer and closer, heart racing.
What do you have, Eden Virdane?
She unfolds a stack of several white sheets of paper and studies them. Hm.
I zoom in some more, pushing the satellite lenses to their limits in hopes of catching a glimpse of the contents of her document.
All I see are black lines. Rows and rows of black lines that I could hardly even place as words, much less try and read.
But I have a feeling. A really bad feeling. A really strong feeling.
A feeling that Eden Virdane - as usual - knows more than she should.
And a feeling she would know exactly how to decipher the paper's encoded message for me.
I have a plan.
I also have a feeling that I'm going to regret it.
***
A/N: The poem mentioned here is The Valley of Unrest by Edgar Allen Poe:)