“Also…earlier, in the chaos… The prisoner, Drogan… he…”
“He finally slipped his bindings?” Donellanus chuckled, now that he saw it the way Machaeus did.
“I’m afraid he escaped,” Caullen nodded. He winced away from the eight-hundred possible reactions his King might have. Nothing could have prepared him for the one Donellanus actually had. He laughed. Hard. Through bucks of his chest, he managed to say:
“No, he hasn’t.”
Chapter Fifteen: Seven Tears
Kalus waited outside the door to the Captain’s back office. His knuckles slid against the smooth wood, unwilling to knock. He let his head droop in a listless moment of hesitation. He alre
ady knew what was waiting for him on the other side. He’d known the second Demi asked him to come back there, by the quaver in his voice. Only hours after his duel with Donellanus, Kalus found himself even more frightened. Now, he took up a fist in place of swords. He rapped it once against the hardwood door.
“In,” his Captain’s voice called him. Kalus twisted the knob, pushed through, and pulled the door shut behind him in a single motion. He dragged his boots until his toes hit the front of Demi’s desk. Kalus stood in wait for the lashing. “That was about the stupidest thing I think I’ve ever seen you do. That should say quite a lot.”
“That it does,” Kalus admitted. He forced his eyes up, to meet his Captain head on. “Sometimes my job calls me to do stupid things.”
“Don’t you try to justify it,” Demi struck back, fist clenched against his desktop. Kalus broke his stiff form only for the slightest of shrugs.
“It’s not about justifying it. My role in this unit is to protect you and the others from close-range threats. That’s exactly what I did,” Kalus objected.
“Within reason, Kalus!” Demi roared. his hands slammed down on his desk hard enough to topple his Captain’s plaque. “You shouldn’t have taken on the King of Dragons alone! Especially not after I explicitly ordered you not to!”
“I’m sorry, Demi. I don’t know what to tell you besides it’s-”
“From now on, your job is to keep your name off my conscience! I never want to visit your grave, Kalus. Do you understand me?” Demi demanded. Blood funneled through every pronounced vein in his face, brightening it to a hot red. “Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” Kalus muttered. The color drained from Demi’s face with the resignation of his Arms Master. His hands slid across his desk in a struggle to hold himself upright. Suddenly he was weak. For the first time since they’d set out, Demi let one of his crew see what he hid behind that office door. That, sometimes, he was weak as any normal human.
“I can’t take it again, you hear me?” Demi whispered. His voice shuddered, a mask of sound threatening to shatter any second. It would let loose the flood of all the agony he’d swallowed - a vomit of twenty years’ regret.
“Again?” Kalus asked. His brows curved up, his voice tinged with real concern.
“When I first started working for the WCC…there were still resistance groups on Earth, people opposed to a central world government. Could you imagine, with the way things are now?” So lost in the flood of memory, Demi actually chuckled. Head hung low, he didn’t notice Kalus sit on the edge of his desk to listen. He might as well have been talking to the air. And yet, no, Demi would never have shared such secrets, even with the air, if it had been anyone else in the room with him. “I was part of an undercover unit. I was assigned to infiltrate a group called Blue Terra.” Then Demi went quiet. The next part caught on its way up his throat. In all the years it had sat in the pit of his gut, the words themselves had grown barbs.
“I’ve heard of them,” Kalus said, to release his Captain from the heaviness of the quiet. Some of the Blue Terra had been the first miners of Saturn’s rings, interplanetary pilgrims in search of a new home.
“I was good at my job,” Demi forced out. With those six words, something snapped inside him. Suddenly he couldn’t keep down what he could never spit out. “I had the leaders convinced, without many violent protests, that I was entirely devoted to the cause. They made me a recruiter, which was exactly the goal the WCC had in mind for me.”
“I had a direct line to the inflow of bodies to the Blue Terra. Of course, I could only set up a small percentage of the new recruits to be captured, without arousing suspicion. I was authorized to use any means necessary to gain the unreserved trust of these newbloods. Do you understand? Any means.” Kalus sat upright on the desk to listen. He didn’t realize it was a genuine question until Demi glared right at him.
“I-I understand,” Kalus stammered.
“Violence. Drugs. Sex - with men and women alike. Whatever eased the minds of the most dangerous recruits, the Blue Terra’s potential new leaders. The worst was genuine emotional connection. I had to get to know these sons of bitches, until they just looked like people again. People who made a few core choices differently than me, and ended up on a different path. Then I turned them over to the WCC.”
“One day, they assigned me an up-and-coming bomber. He’d caught the attention of the Blue Terra with high-energy Chrysum explosives… The WCC branded him extremely dangerous. But Reggie… He wasn’t even sure he wanted to join the Blue Terra. He’d set off explosives mostly as a vigilante in the war-torn countryside of Germany. The WCC and Blue Terra only knew him for his explosives. I knew him for who he was. He was good. He was trying to do right. And I…” Demi’s hands clenched tight enough to shake both of his arms. He clammed up until a gentle caress of fingers pierced his trance. Kalus’ hands on his own.
“Hey, it’s alright. You say what you’ve got to say. It doesn’t leave this office,” he assured his Captain. Then again, no - the roles had vanished between the two yet again. Kalus held the hand of his friend - a man he respected as much as loved - and listened.
“I thought I could help him. I thought, if I turned him over, the WCC might cut him a deal. His cooperation for a lesser sentence, rehabilitation. Maybe they’d even offer him a job with them. Shit, was I dumb for him. If it’d been any other recruit, I wouldn’t have been so blinded by hope. For…love. Like I said before, the WCC only saw Reggie for his skills. When I walked him out of the Blue Terra compound for a smoke that night…there was a sniper on the hill. It…it didn’t even make a sound.”
“The only sound was Reggie, becoming a body on the ground. A kind of folding, then a thump. I kneeled right in the blood. All of my training. All of my experience. I should have known right away he was gone. It was over. But, it was him. It couldn’t be. I wanted so badly to pick him up. To shake him. To scream at him not to go. But…some part of me knew I was in the sniper’s scope. I knew that kneeling to mourn him was already borderline treason. If I did anything more, they would have thought I was corrupt, taken in by the Blue Terra. They might have put a bullet through me just then… Instead, I got up. I wiped away exactly five tears. I don’t know why I remember that, but I do. And that was that.”
“That…was not that,” Kalus said, about twenty seconds later. He gave Demi time to quiver. Time to cry, scream or launch the contents of his desk across the room. Demi had done none of these, nothing, but sit up straight and stare into nothing. “You carried it with you all this time. It’s affected every decision you made.”
“For better or worse,” Demi muttered. He unclamped his fist of sore fingers. Without the constant tension of the story inside him, he found himself suddenly sore down to the splinters of his bones.
“I couldn’t tell you which one,” Kalus said. Now Demi’s hand was open, he slipped his fingers in the natural gaps. “I can tell you you’re a spectacular leader in spite of it. You’ve exceeded every poor example set for you by double, and more. I don’t think another Captain could have turned us into Dogs of War.”