Page 7 of Twins for the Barbarians

I know because I was once a warrior. Long before I was chosen to lead the Tallas clan as a scholar and protector of our history, I was devoted to rewriting it in the name of the Fire Tribe. My weapons were sharp and deadly. I fought long and hard for my people, and my body bears the marks of each battle while my conscience holds the mental portraits of those whom I have killed. That era feels like a long time ago, though it’s really not. I suppose Alicia’s arrival has warped my senses. She keeps bringing out the softer, kinder side of me, a side I haven’t shown since before I had to bury my wife and daughters, since before I had to bury my brother ages ago. It feels like ages.

“Welcome!” Yossul greets us with a broad smile. We spot Jewel and Fadai atop the plateau wall, walking along its edge and likely planning another operation. They like to keep busy these days, and it’s been driving the Sky Tribe brass positively insane. “I hope your journey was easy and uneventful.”

“It was fine,” I grumble, wishing we’d thrown Kingo out of the buggy so we could consummate our bond with Alicia. That will have to wait, though. “Thank you for welcoming us, brother.”

“The minute your telegraph arrived, I made the appropriate arrangements for you and your people. As is the custom, we’ve reserved three rooms at the bottom of the plateau. One for you and Kharo, one for Alicia, and one for Kingo,” Yossul says, then moves in closer to whisper with a playful smile. “Unless you’ve been making strides with the human, and you’ll only need two rooms?”

“Alas, we’ll use three for now,” I reply discretely.

“How is everything coming along?” Alicia asks.

Yossul laughs lightly, beaming with pride as he takes us on a tour of the base. It’s hard for me to focus when we’re climbing up the rope ladders—Alicia goes first, and I get a glorious view of her gorgeous, generous ass. I will die of black balls in this place, and so will Kharo. I can tell from the pained look in his eyes when we steal glances at each other when we’re around her. She has had quite an impact on us, and we are positively enamored. It could get us killed if we’re not careful.

“I keep forgetting you’ve never been this far south,” Yossul tells Alicia. “But this place is infinitely better than our original setup up north along the river. Out here, we discovered a cave system deeply embedded within the plateau,” he adds as we follow him through a narrow, dimly lit corridor. Torches burn on the walls, their orange light playing with the shadows across our faces. He pushes his way through a metal door, and we’re suddenly standing in the middle of a massive aircraft hangar built entirely underground. “We needed a place to store the vessels we retrieved from the Sky Tribe, you know.”

“Oh, I know,” Kharo mutters, his eyes wide with fascination as he looks up.

I follow his gaze and hear myself gasp with surprise at the sight of a huge ceiling opening made of thick obsidian glass. Yossul points at it, beaming with pride. “Jewel designed it, and our engineers worked hard to put it together and install it. It opens directly above the plateau. It allows our jets to fly out with ease but also to land here quickly.”

“I suppose it’s neatly camouflaged above,” I say.

“A generous layer of volcanic rubble,” he replies. “It does the trick.”

Looking around, I count about a dozen jets of a second generation, about a hundred years old but fully operational, and two hundred weaponized drones. “Is this all?”

“No, we’ve got six more jets out in the field as we speak and a fleet of another hundred drones constantly surveying the area,” Yossul explains.

We walk between the vessels for a while, occasionally nodding at soldiers and engineers passing us. From what I've gathered, nobody likes to rest here. Everyone is busy doing something, and it shows. We’ve come further along in the past five years with the humans by our side than we did in the twenty-five years before that.

“We’re hoping to get more from the Ruby City raid,” Yossul adds, “assuming they’ll be busy enough trying to save their starship while we sneak inside their aircraft hangar.”

“You have a precise location for the starship, then,” Alicia concludes, the shadow of a smile testing her lips.

Each starship destroyed makes her happier and happier. Frankly, I don’t want her to have any means of leaving Sunna, anyway. Alicia has chosen to stay here and devote herself to keeping the Sky Tribe away from Earth, but what then? Would she return to her home planet if she had a chance?

“We do,” Yossul replies. “And we’re preparing for the operation. The Yellow Gang is already hard at work putting together the explosive devices. Fadai and Jewel are handling the logistics.”

“You’ve done a spectacular job so far,” I feel the need to tell him. “While I advocate for diplomacy even to this day, I cannot ignore the benefits of your military prowess, Yossul. You must know that.”

“It means a lot coming from you, brother Helios. You were once quite the warmonger yourself, weren’t you?” he asks, admiration glimmering in his crimson eyes.

I give Alicia a quick glance. Her hair is long and the color of honey, flowing over one bare shoulder and driving me insane, while her brown eyes carry a golden hue because of the wall torches. I love the way she looks in the somewhat skimpy brown leather and white cotton outfits she’s learned to make for herself. When she first arrived on Sunna, she was more self-conscious and doubtful regarding her hourglass figure, but she has really come into her own since. And this confidence of hers is causing my blood to boil through every fucking vein.

But it’s the concern in her gaze that makes my heart ache. She knows very little about my past, and I’ve made sure of that. Alas, Kharo said it rather well the other day. I cannot hide it from her forever. If we’re to build upon this bond, Alicia must know everything about me, about the monster I used to be.

“That was a long time ago,” I tell Yossul as respectfully as possible. “But yes. I carried swords in the heat of battle, and I carried them well.”

“You had quite the body count, if I remember correctly,” he insists with an icy grin. “The Sky Tribe brass had a bounty on your head almost as big as the one they currently have on Fadai and me. They still want Jewel alive for obvious reasons. Otherwise, she’d fetch the highest price among us.”

“Those were difficult times. Hard decisions had to be made, but everything I did, I did it to protect my people and the few women and children we had left in our clan,” I say.

“And Kharo here, he was of the Sky Tribe when your father brought him back from a mission, right?” Yossul shoots back, giving my blood brother a long look.

“I barely remember my life before the Tallas clan,” Kharo says.

Alicia clicks her teeth and waves the whole conversation away with the flick of her slender wrist. “The past needs to stay in the past,” she says. “We’ve all done things we’re not proud of in the name of progress and survival. Questionable things. Awful things. It’s best not to lose sleep over them because we cannot change them; we cannot take them back. And we certainly shouldn’t look at one another with suspicion based on the sins of our fathers, Yossul. I’m sure you agree.”

“Oh, I wasn’t implying anything of the sort,” Yossul says, offering a polite nod in return. “I’m merely admiring my guests’ history and resilience. Kharo may have been just a child when old man Tallas brought him in, but when he came of age, he was given the option to go back to his tribe. He didn’t, and that kind of loyalty is priceless, in my humble opinion.”

---