There will come an age after the darkness is gone, when hope shall spring from the most unlikely of places.
A future where the clerics and Kardiac have fallen, and we are once again Peacekeepers.
Taine home - Karin City - Karin
The ambient music drifted from the stereo system as Darien stood at the kitchen counter chopping vegetables. The modern ski lodge had been a gift to him from Walker, part of an old resort built on a small plateau a little further up the mountain fortress. It looked down on the bright city lights from slanted windows, the bustle of traffic giving it a feel of being a part of, but separate from, the life around it.
Stone and woodwork, deep and rich, it matched the dark furniture, and heavy blankets that were tossed over the backs of the leather couches. It felt like his home, and yet he'd never really settled there. His home remained over the city of Karin, gleaming in the night sky, a city unto itself, buzzing support ships whisking to and fro from his starship.
He checked the recipe, cursing as he realized that he'd added too much spice. His cooking left a lot to be desired and even when he followed the recipe to the letter it always seemed to lack something.
"Fine housewife I'd make..." he muttered as one of his other pots began to rattle and bubble threateningly.
Lauren looked up from the breakfast bar where she was sitting reviewing the requisition lists that Darien had noted for her attention. "Why don't you just order in?" she asked, clicking her pen as she spun it through her fingers absently.
"Because neither of us has had a decent home-cooked meal in..." he shook his head, "Too long, and..." he bit his lip as he measured some water for the sauce. Pouring it sizzling into the pan, he glanced back. "I need to practice this sort of thing."
She rested back in her chair, the BDU tunic she always wore falling back to reveal the gun she had tucked into a shoulder holster under her arm. "Why?" She fixed her striking eyes on him. "We're not the people to be playing make-believe. You of all people..."
Darien stopped his cooking and looked at her. "Make-believe?"
"Yeah," she tossed the pen down upon the pile of paperwork she was working through, "Let's say Peligia is as important as you think it is, and Rikard is after it. How much firepower is he going to bring to bear just to keep you from beating him?" She shook her head, pushing her finger up the side of her face and then pointing at him, "And let's say that you do, you get to Peligia first and you save the entire Human race, what then, Darien? You're going to come back here and play happy families with the Immortal Emperor?"
"I have to believe this is going to all work out," Darien replied, returning to his food preparation, "It has to."
"You're not the kind of man to blindly believe in 'happily ever after', and you know that." She braced her foot against the edge of the counter and tilted her chair back. "Just take a look at yourself. You're at home, cooking, and you're wearing a weapon."
Darien shrugged. "Maybe, but when do we stop being 'heroes' or what ever we are, and when do we start being people?" He adjusted the heat. "I'm in love with a man, as are you..."
Lauren blew out a sigh and looked away.
"What?" Darien asked, catching the gesture.
"What?" She looked back at him.
"You sighed, it was..." Darien frowned and crossed to the breakfast bar. "Okay, Lauren." He unclipped the Polian shard weapon and dropped it on the counter. "There, no gun. I'm still a human being underneath, as are you..."
"No, no I am not," she snapped, looking at the silver weapon. "He saw to that." She gestured to it remembering all she had suffered at the hands of Pachyeus-Ra during her time as Rikard's prisoner.
"You're still you," Darien insisted, folding his arms, "I'm still me. This war can't drag us down into..." he sighed. "The Matriarch asked me if I was a weapon, or a leader."
"You're both." Lauren got up from her chair and walked across Darien's lounge, digging through a cabinet and fishing out a bottle he kept tucked back there, shaking her head at the fact that Darien had never opened it. She fished through her pocket and drew out her small pocket-knife and proceeded to break the seal, grabbing a glass as she returned to the bar. "What am I when all this is over? A carbon copy of a dead..."
"Marty..." Darien began.
"Marty is in love with a memory," she said, shaking her head, "Lauren Tevraun died with Kendrick on the moon of Arcanis."
"Lauren," Darien said, reaching out to stay her hand as she went to pour herself a drink, "We're all screwed up. Take it from a man in love with a memory, it doesn't invalidate the feelings I have. And it doesn't make Matty any less real to me, I love him. Marty loves you..."
Lauren looked up at Darien, a sadness in her eyes that made him draw his hand back from the bottle. It was that understanding that she needed the drink, a realization that there was more to what she was saying.
"You don't love him," he said after a moment.
"For the Empire," Lauren said, lifting the glass and downing it, gesturing with the tumbler to the pots behind Darien, "Your tourva root's burning."
Darien grumbled a curse as he turned back to the stove. "Why is it I can never cook tourva root properly? It's no different than squash, and I can cook that..."
"Tourva root's not a squash," Lauren said, picking up Ra's shard weapon, cold metal acid-etched with the history of his battles. He had been a warrior, but according to his weapon, he had been one without any true victories. "You can't cook it like squash, you have to cook it from the inside out, not outside in, or it will burn."
"How the hell do I cook it from the inside out?" Darien asked, wafting the heavy black smoke away from the pan.
"Well, Orions have a special cooker, it injects heat into the heart of the root, and that heat radiates outward." She waved the weapon back and forth and looked up at Darien's back. The white sweater he was wearing, the silly khaki pants - he looked so domestic.
"Well, so much for tourva root surprise," he grumbled.
"The surprise would have been you actually being able to cook it," Lauren remarked, "How come you get to keep the Polian Kill'a'ma'jig?" She held up the weapon, referring to it by its shipboard nickname.
Darien turned. "No one's tried to take it away from me, I guess," he replied, focusing his attention on the chicken simmering in a pan.
"Imperial R and D confiscated the one I... took, on Rikard's ship." She turned the weapon over, looking at the inset trigger set between a pair of interlocking plates above the worked leather grip. The tassels swung to and fro, yellow and blue, dangling, tickling her wrist.
"I think they wanted to study one," Darien turned back to her, setting his elbows on the counter top and watching as she poured herself another drink, still examining the weapon, "Besides, we recovered a bunch from the gunship when we secured the Rock of Braal, but I want to keep them secured in the Excalibur's armoury, they're the only reliable weapons we have against Polian foot soldiers."
They settled into silence for a moment, and Darien watched her, realizing how rough she looked, like she'd just stopped caring at some point, and he tried to remember when that had been. They'd all been through hell, some of them weathering it better than others, but she was worn, frayed around the edges.
"So when are you going to say something to Marty?" he asked.
"He's so happy," she said, with another look of regret, "I can't break his heart like that."
"You also can't marry a man you aren't in love with," Darien pointed out, "That's only going to make both of you miserable."
"Love advice... from you." Lauren scooped up her glass. "Captain Darien Taine, Highlord Oblivious..."
Darien fished through his pocket and pulled out a small box that he set down on the counter and slid towards her. "Open it."
She looked at the ring box apprehensively. "What's this?" she asked, setting the glass and the weapon down and flipping open the box, looking down at the platinum ring inside. She smiled sadly as she ran her hand over the dark purplish crystal band set into the hand-worked metal. It flared, and bright blue sigils on the crystal sparkled and danced, the sigils rotating from side to side at different rates.
"Peligian," she said, looking up. "It's beautiful. What's it say?"
"I love you," Darien said, "At least, Doctor Chiang Casey seemed to think so. It's an educated guess, but she is the closest thing the Empire has to an expert on the Peligian language."
"I remember her name from the profiles. You're looking to bring her on the Farstrider Expedition." Lauren stared at the ring, smiling at it faintly, her finger brushing the glowing surface. Darien had put a lot of thought into it, and the sentimentality it showed. "You're going to ask him to marry you," she said, realizing the implications of the ring.
"Yeah at some point, when I can work out where my head is at," Darien replied, "No more ducking, no more hiding from my feelings. This time I just admit how I feel about him."
"I'm almost jealous," she said, looking back up at him, "Matty's going to be bouncing for a month. Who's your best man?"
Darien smiled. "Shale, I think. He's been a friend in ways I can't describe. Like a rock when I've needed one."
"I can see it," she said, closing the box and pushing it back to him, "Congratulations, Skipper."
"He hasn't said yes yet," Darien replied, returning to his cooking, "For all I know, he could turn me down flat..."
There was a thump from the middle of the living room, and both their heads turned towards the dark lump of flesh that was painfully unfolding into James. The assassin picked himself up, looking sheepish as he rubbed his arm, as all their heads turned up towards the beams high above them, and Darien looked back at James.
"Do you have to climb the walls?" he asked shaking his head.
James rubbed his bruises and shrugged, lifting his boot to look at the worn sole, making a mental note to replace it, smiling lopsidedly as he scratched his curly hair and leaned a little to get a better look at what Darien was cooking.
"How do you do that?" Lauren pointed up to the rafters.
James thought about it, looking thoughtful as he leaned back, bounced from foot to foot and took a couple of bounds, springing up to the back of the couch, arcing across to the mantle of the fireplace, springing to the side as he used the mantle to propel himself across to catch the edge of the upper landing as he pulled himself up.
He looked thoughtful again, choosing his objective again, bouncing up onto the edge of the railing and hopping across to the large beam, which he promptly sat down on, extending his hands in a ta-da pose.
"Jimmy Jumping Bean." Lauren shook her head using Masconi's name for James; she looked back at Darien, "Another example of how you are not a normal guy."
She shifted to lean back in her chair, looking up at James sitting up high above her, always dressed so simply, even when not wearing the adaptive armour that allowed the Fida'i to blend so seamlessly with the shadows. Creased jeans with a tee shirt that was rumpled and well worn, the sleeves rolled once over his well-formed biceps.
He was eyeing her carefully, idly scratching his three-day-old stubble and feigning indifference. But she knew that even looking as relaxed as he was, he was poised ready to defend his Aga-Kahn.
She tipped her glass up to him and went back to getting suitably drunk, playing with the Polian Kill'a'ma'jig and thinking about a future none of them had.
In front of her Darien turned and pointed to the radio. "The election results should be coming in from Tempus..."
Lauren shook her head. "You know what it's going to be," she said, turning the channel to the news broadcast.
"...landslide victory for the Restorian party, managing to secure all ten of the Tempus and House Kardiac seats..." Lauren switched it off.
"That's eighty percent of the Senate so far." She rested her chin on her hands. "Walker's lost."
"There's still Karin itself," Darien reminded, sounding hopeful, "If they all go for Walker..."
"Darien," Lauren said calmly, "Walker's lost the election. Chancellor Evans will be appointed in the next day or two, and..." She shook her head. "We're all up shit creek without a paddle."
"Not yet," Darien vowed, turning back to his pot, lifting the cooking knife, and driving it with frustration into the chopping board. "Damn!"
* * *
The articulated truck bounded along the great southern highway. The Parkins Industrial logo was emblazoned on the side, painted rust red with the yellow signature scrawl that was as familiar in the rural parts of the Apilon Rift as the word Tractor or Harvester. The old Parkins had become associated with a level of quality that set it apart from much of its competition.
The robotic arm whirred and span, the tool selector switching to the soldering iron that tapped onto the circuit board, making adjustments to the small attack mech, configuring it as a search unit.
The comm dish had been a converted civilian unit that had been inadequate for the task, but Lex Talionis had linked with the Intelligence communication satellite in orbit and established an uplink to the Black Tower's communication net. And once again they were reunited with the Avatar program, again becoming extensions of himself, like fingers capable of reaching out and grasping what he needed.
He accessed the Imperial traffic nets, noting that Intelligence was performing a search for a Lieutenant Galadriel. Rikard, searching for another piece of his puzzle. Lex decided to hijack that search, redirecting the organics reviewing the computer records so that they would be directed to interstellar nets, making them believe that she had left the world, while Lex followed the flight plan and path of the archaic thrustlifter.
He grew irritated at the obsolete computer system that wasn't connected to the communications equipment; in an age where everything was computerized, the Dragonfly was frustratingly low tech. He wasn't going to be able to seize control of the vessel, which left his Mechs.
He directed the mech driving the truck to alter its course and head south towards the southern continent, knowing that the land-based vehicle would take hours to reach its destination. He had little choice in the matter but to remain patient.