Page 46 of Triplets for the Barbarians

I can tell from the tone of her voice that something has changed within her. A new kind of fuel has been added to her blazing inner fire, and I’m actually tempted to feel pity for those who are dumb enough to stand in her way.

Truth be told, I am exhausted. Not just physically but mentally, too. This has been going on for so long that I can barely remember a time when I wasn’t looking over my shoulder or ducking laser projectiles. I can barely remember a day that didn’t end in violence or with a laser pistol under my pillow.

How long are we supposed to function in this fight-or-flight mode until it finally kills us? Until our bodies finally give out?

“How are we going to do this?” Jewel asks. “Or better yet, what will we do next? Because as much as I want Shaytan and Blaze to pay for what they did, we’re still not done with our main mission.”

“We’ve got one more starship to destroy, yes,” Fadai says. “It’ll be even trickier, though.”

“But It's not impossible,” I reply. But yeah, we need a plan, and we’ll need to cover every possible front. The Sky Tribe will spread themselves thin to do the same. The whole of Sunna has likely heard about what happened by now. Shaytan’s honor demands revenge, but he can’t ground that last starship for much longer, either.”

“We have to find it,” Jewel says.

We barely found this one, and the price we paid in order to get to it feels steep. What will the last starship cost us? Our lives on top of the lives of our brothers and sisters? Good grief, I can still feel their carbonized remains crumbling in my hands from earlier.

I shake the memory away and look up at the three moons instead. The sight of them used to comfort me, but nowadays, even they can’t soothe my wretched soul.

It will get harder.

Unbearably harder.

The Sky Tribe will fight us with everything it’s got, but we can’t slow down either. It’s time for our tribal chiefs to start reaching out to the other cities. Shaytan’s failures should bring a few more fighters under our command—those who have been sitting on the outskirts until now, waiting to see which side would rise to the top.

We may have lost a couple of hundred warriors last night, but we did take down a starship, and we did snatch our most precious human woman right out from under the dear leaders’ noses. Surely, that has to count for something.

I give Jewel a long, hard look, wishing I could just kiss her pain away. “We will organize accordingly,” I tell her. “Recruit new fighters, if we must. Diamond City, Emerald City. Hell, even Pearl City’s survivors will surely have a bone to pick with Shaytan after what happened.”

“They’ll blame us,” she says.

“I’m not so sure about that,” Fadai replies, the shadow of a smile testing his lips. “From what I heard while we were there, the locals weren’t happy with the starship being there in the first place. Something tells me we could still spin this in our favor with the right kind of messaging. We have printing presses and enough resources in Sapphire City to send out one-page memos to every major city left on Sunna, especially to Pearl City. None of this would’ve happened if the Sky Tribe had kept its affairs out of there. And given the body count, I’m sure there will be plenty of dissenting voices who won’t mind letting their sons go to war under our banners instead of serving the fuckers who are ultimately responsible for that disaster.”

“Amber can spin it into a good and effective message,” Jewel mumbles, her gaze darting from one funeral pyre to another as she processes her frantic thoughts. “She’s got a way with words, especially where the Sunnaites’ emotions are involved. Alicia will probably help, too. Yeah, it could work.”

“We have to try,” I tell Jewel, determined to bring her out of the darkness so she can set her sights on a brighter future ahead—the kind of future that is still possible. We have to try and try until we have the life we deserve—the life we promised each other.”

We cannot be complacent and go to our deaths.

If the idea of self-sacrifice seemed somewhat appealing in the past, I cannot consider it anymore. Not when I’ve delved so deep inside Jewel, not after all the times we’ve had together, not after I’ve tasted her soul on my lips.

I want to live out the rest of my days basking in her sunshine. It’s the three of us against the world if need be. But I am not dying a martyr on a hill in the middle of fucking nowhere.

18

Jewel

Afew days later, we gather what resources we could find beneath the piles of burnt rubble: laser cartridges, water flasks, and some dried food cans that somehow survived the destructive blaze, and just enough fighting equipment to give us an advantage against any foe who’s likely to cross our path as we make our way back down to Opal City.

With heavy hearts but steely resolve, we stick to the lesser-traveled roads that once connected the south to the north, courtesy of a resilient buggy that can climb across red sand dunes and down along the rocky riverbed before we take a sharp turn west.

More than once, we take shelter beneath the sprawling canopies of rogue blackwood patches as Sky Tribe vessels fly above—fighter jets and drones— headed farther south before going east and north again to Ruby City.

“They’re looking for us,” I say, watching a group of ten drones buzzing up toward the Sun River Plateau.

“It's not just us. They’re surveying the area for that long-range laser,” Fadai reminds me with a grim look on his face. It’s only a matter of time before they find it.”

“They might assume the weapon was mounted on a buggy somewhere close by,” Jewel surmises.

“But there were no tracks that would lead them to draw that conclusion,” I say. “Besides, a weapon that powerful would be too big to fit on an all-terrain vehicle. Shaytan knows that much. No, they’re looking for a stationary source.”

---