Desert World Rebirth (7 page)

Temar didn’t know why that made him cry harder, but it did. He cried himself to sleep, Shan’s arms around him to chase away the ghosts.

Chapter 6

WHEN Temar woke, his face itched. Reaching up to scratch it, he realized that tears had dried, leaving his skin feeling rough and stiff. “Damn.” Pushing himself up, he rubbed his hand across his eyes. “Nothing like a little humiliation in the morning,” he whispered to himself.

“There’s nothing to feel humiliated about.”

Temar almost jumped out of his skin when Shan appeared in the doorway.

“I brought tea,” Shan offered, holding out the mug. Temar took it and wrapped his fingers around the dark glass mug. For a time, he focused on the drink, avoiding eye contact. “Do you want to talk?” Shan asked.

Temar cringed. “I’m really sorry.”

“Hey,” Shan sat down on the bed next to him. “You don’t have to apologize.”

“I really think I do,” Temar had meant to repay Shan for all his work, and instead he’d ended up acting like a child and ruining the night. He couldn’t believe he’d cried. He didn’t even understand
why
he’d cried.

“Do you know why I hated slavery?” Shan asked quietly.

“Because Naite liked it?”

Shan laughed. “Okay, that might have been a little part of it.”

He fell silent for a time, and Temar sipped the tea and wondered if he should walk out. He could come back later when he was less likely to break down over nothing. However, before he could come to any decision, Shan started talking again. “I would listen to confessions, and I could see the pain it caused when people lost control over their own lives. I saw how much people struggled and how much they suffered.”

Temar looked over. “Did anyone....” He stopped and swallowed.

“I can’t violate their privacy. I can’t tell you what I heard, but I can say that humans aren’t designed for slavery. Give yourself time to recover.”

“I’ve had months.” Temar clamped his mouth shut before he could start spewing the anger and frustration that he felt.

“It took Naite years. Forgive me for being a judgmental ass, but most days I still think he hasn’t healed.”

Temar turned the mug in his hands. “Is that going to be me? Never recovering?”

“No,” Shan said with far more confidence than Temar felt. “Give yourself some time. You’ve come a long way.”

Temar had to laugh at that. “No, I haven’t. I’m getting worse, Shan.” Feelings he’d once been able to shove away would ambush him at the oddest time, rages would wash through and leave him shaking with emotions that didn’t feel like they were his.

“I don’t believe that,” Shan said firmly.

Turning his head, Temar looked at Shan in disbelief. Three months ago, he could ride into battle with Shan and throw himself into a fight. Now he cried. That didn’t feel very strong.

“I don’t believe that,” Shan repeated. “You’re a strong man, and I’m going to keep saying that until you believe me.”

“You may have a very long wait.” Standing up, Temar headed for the living area. He could go home, but if he did, he’d have to face Naite, and that man seemed to be able to see into his soul, which was more than a little uncomfortable. Besides, if he went home, he was going to have to deal with Cyla and the farm and the crops. And Hannal would come over and offer tea. And in the end, if he was going to be miserable with someone, he’d rather be miserable with Shan. That didn’t exactly make him a great lover.

“If you—”

“Could we not talk about it right now?” Temar turned to Shan. “Please?” Temar could see the worry in Shan, but he didn’t have any words of reassurance.

Shan looked down for a moment and seemed to think about that. When he looked up, he nodded. “Take some time to get yourself together. We can talk later,” Shan promised. It wasn’t exactly the vow Temar had wanted, but at least he’d earned a respite from talking right now.

“Meanwhile,” Shan said in a brighter tone of voice, “you have a lot of reading to catch up on. It turns out that your idea about getting the subspace communication repaired paid off.”

“You heard something?” Temar’s mouth nearly fell open. In the morning light, it had been such a silly request he had trouble believing it had actually worked.

“A lot of something,” Shan agreed. “It just so happens that the war ended about twenty years ago and turned into a nasty, long-term scuffle with pirates and looting and accusations of government support for insurrectionists on either side.”

Temar grabbed for the edge of the door to steady himself as his whole world rocked. “Wait. The war ended?”

Shan nodded.

The ground seemed to roll as Temar’s brain made sense of the words. “Twenty years ago?” he asked, his voice weak and thready. All of Livre lived in hope of the war ending and the inner planets coming back to finish the terraforming. They battled the desert and had children and tended dew catchers and maintained irrigation systems and generally fought with every breath to survive until the war ended. However, the war had ended when he was one or two years old.

Shan nodded again. “The older systems kept the name Planetary Alliance. However, about twelve planets pulled out. They call themselves the Alliance of Free Planets.”

“They… but….”

“Are you as angry as I was two hours ago when I read the news?” Shan asked, and he almost sounded… amused… or maybe simply fascinated. He didn’t sound angry.

Temar had to think about that, because his feelings were so tangled, he couldn’t get a good grip on how he felt. “Furious,” Temar finally answered. “The war is over?” It didn’t feel real. Words shouldn’t be able to redefine his reality.

Shan nodded. “The Alliance of Free Planets has sent decades of info bursts about the other side stealing ships and financially raping planets. The Planetary Alliance has sent just as many warnings about the other side raiding and protecting pirates and condoning murder. Apparently, both sides pretty much gave up a while back when they didn’t get an answer.”

Temar turned and headed into the living area, desperate to get to a chair before he fell on his face. “We weren’t answering,” he said weakly. They weren’t answering because Ben’s buddies, who were in charge of the relay, had sabotaged the equipment. They hadn’t answered because no one knew either alliance had called.

“Ironic, huh?” Shan asked. He stopped next to Temar for a second, his hand resting on Temar’s shoulder before he went to the couch and sat down. “Ben thought he had to steal the rocket because the inner planets had forgotten us, but the inner planets gave up on us because Ben had the equipment turned off. He didn’t even live long enough to see that he was a fool.”

Temar agreed, but his brain was still trying to wrap around the idea that the inner planets had finished their war. Sort of. They’d split into parts, but the war, the armies fighting each other, was over.

“Are they going to come back?” Temar asked. He looked up, but Shan could only look back with a hopeless expression. They stared at each other until the silence grew uncomfortable.

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

Temar closed his eyes. If the war was over, and they’d decided to let Livre slowly die, who would stop them? “Twenty years.” The words came out as a curse.

They sat in silence for a time, and Temar tried to reconcile his whole life to his new fact. Ben’s betrayal, the general desperation of the whole planet, his father’s farm slowly drying out and dying. All of that had happened after their war had ended. It didn’t feel real.

“I have to go tell the council,” Shan said.

Temar nodded. They had to know that all their waiting was for nothing. The war had ended and the inner planets hadn’t come back to finish the terraforming. Again, the room fell silent except for the sound of a lazy wind across the top of the station.

Shan stood up. Maybe he was leaving, maybe he was getting soup; whatever, Temar had to see these reports. He believed Shan without reservation, but he had to see the reports to make any of it real.

“I want to see it,” Temar said. “I really hate how easily you’re just accepting all this, and I want to see the actual reports.”

“I had the morning to get the shock out of the way, Temar,” Shan said softly. “I had an entire morning of reading data burst after data burst as the two sides tried to figure out who we would align ourselves with.”

“Align ourselves?” For a second, Temar was confused, but then the reality of it struck him. If the planets had broken into two alliances, each side would want to know if Livre was friend or enemy. Should they bomb the planet, or use it as a camp for enemy prisoners of war? Could they count on Livre to provide glass sands or attack landing ships? In a very few minutes, the world had become far more complicated and dangerous than it had been when he went to bed. Actually, the world was the same, but his awareness of it had changed. Awareness sucked. Becoming aware that he was a very small part of a very large universe sucked even worse.

“And if you hadn’t asked for that relay to take priority on the repairs and been here to help, we still wouldn’t know any of this,” Shan pointed out.

“I didn’t help.” Temar protested halfheartedly, since it really didn’t matter.

“Yes, you did. If you weren’t here, I would have had to climb down the ladder every time I worked a circuit to see if the system came online. Trust me, I would have made it up that ladder twice before I would have given up and gone to work on getting a water tap repaired. And there aren’t a lot of people clamoring to come out here to the middle of nowhere to help get the station running. Although,” Shan said with a slow and thoughtful voice, “that may change now. A lot of things may change now.”

Temar understood that. Suddenly his own personal dramas and his stupid crying seemed twice as stupid.

“Come on, I’ll show you the reports. You can look through them while I check over a sand bike so we can head back to Landing.” Shan headed into the control room without even offering breakfast—not that Temar’s stomach could face food right now.

Chapter 7

TEMAR thumbed the controls to roll the screen to a new page. He skipped the technical data at the front and moved into the narrative section—one more demand that Livre declare allegiance with the Alliance of Free Planets or face the consequences. Obviously they hadn’t suffered any consequences, but Temar wondered how the councils would have reacted if they’d actually received any of the messages.

The bursts from the Planetary Alliance were more nicely worded, but Temar could still feel the threat in each one. When the war was over, those planets who had failed to maintain membership in the alliance had forfeited their rights. That came down to, “Help us or we won’t finish terraforming.” Well, they’d followed through with that threat, but looking at a map of which alliance owned which planets, Temar wasn’t sure they would have kept terraforming either way. The Alliance of Free Planets held most of the local territory, with the Planetary Alliance sort of controlling a sickle-shaped wedge of space that reached out toward Livre and included their closest neighbor, a planet called Minga.

Temar jumped when Shan’s hand landed on his shoulder. “Sorry,” Shan quickly offered, and Temar felt a twinge of guilt at making Shan feel like he had to apologize for doing something so normal. “I brought you a sandwich.” Shan held it out and Temar took it, more because he didn’t want to make Shan feel worse than because of any hunger. He honestly wasn’t hungry.

“Have you read all these?”

Shan settled into the second chair with a sandwich of his own. “I gave up after I decided that it sounded like the universe was being run by fifteen-year-olds throwing insults on the playground.”

“Huh.” Temar looked at the report. “I’m still at the part where they sound like thirteen-year-olds making threats.”

“Oh, it gets better,” Shan said sarcastically before taking a big bite of sandwich.

Temar was deep into a report with one side blaming the other for terrorist attacks when the board started to whine. It was a high-pitched sound that made Temar cringe. “I didn’t touch anything,” he cried out, putting his hands up as if that would prove that he hadn’t broken the machine.