Page 43 of Clan and Command

“Sorry to take so long, my Nobek.” Tranis emerged from his office and stopped short to see them standing close to each other. His stare turned hard. “Admiral Piras. Were you waiting to speak to me?”

Piras wasn’t sure if he was disappointed or relieved at the timely interruption. The tormented cry in his throat retreated, a barbed piece to lodge in his heart once more.

Despite the pain, he thought he managed to sound normal as he turned from Lidon’s still-apprehensive stare. “Not at all, Admiral Tranis. Your Nobek and I were exchanging pleasantries as I passed by. Good night, Admiral Tranis. Nobek Lidon.”

He executed a stiff bow to the pair and walked off. He felt lightheaded as he went, barely able to feel his feet on the floor. He felt disconnected from everything, except for the piercing sensation in his chest.

He didn’t want to know his former lover still felt a measure of compassion for him. Sympathy from Lidon was more of a curse than indifference or even hatred would ever be. It made what Piras had felt for him trivial. Pathetic. That what he had regarded as a great if doomed love affair had only been a pitiful chapter to the Nobek, one best forgotten.

He made it to his office. Piras ordered the door closed and locked. He walked over to his desk. Then he punched the hard surface over and over. He punched it until his knuckles bled. He punched it until the pain of his abused fist overrode the re-opened wounds in his heart.

With physical pain came the return of Piras’s other senses. He could feel the floor under his feet. His head was a solid weight once more. He no longer felt disconnected.

He felt angry as hell, though. Mostly at himself for having lost his composure so thoroughly in Lidon’s presence. Not to mention the hideous sense of worthlessness that had come over him in the face of the Nobek’s overt concern.

He decided he was mad at everything else too. At the Basma and his shitty war. At High Command, which was sending him out to do the unthinkable to win that same shitty war. At Kila, who would eventually decide Piras wasn’t worth the effort. Who would no doubt pity Piras in the end just as Lidon did.

“I’m going home,” he announced to his office. “Not to his destroyer. If Kila wants to fuck anything, he can go fuck himself. I’m not hanging around, begging him to care, wasting years of my life only to be left for someone he thinks is a real Dramok.”

Piras stalked to his shuttle in its bay. He flew home. He did not com Kila to tell him their rendezvous was off.

The first thing Piras did when he stepped into his house was stomp to the common room and grab a bottle of bohut and a glass from the bar. He went out to the balcony, thinking that the serene atmosphere out among the high branches might calm the churn of hurt and fury. Yet he didn’t see the stars and moons in the sapphire-toned evening sky or the sheltering canopy of broad leaves overhead.

Instead, he saw ships firing on Laro Station. Broken bodies of brave men dying. The horror on Lidon’s expression when he discovered what Piras had done. The look on his mother’s face –

By the ancestors, he’d never even thought of how his espionage would affect Calna and his fathers. The shock and shame of it would be devastating to his parent clan.

“Damn it,” he moaned. “I already gave Kila the plans. He’ll have shared them with the Basma by now. It’s too late to call it off.”

He looked at the sky and screamed. The sound was wild with despair and rage.

Piras stumbled back and forth across the balcony. He’d messed it all up. His life was well and truly fucked.

Throbbing pain made Piras look down at his hand. Bloodied still from being pounded against his desk, it clutched the bottle of bohut he had yet to open. He looked at the alcohol and the glass he held. With a curse, he flung the glass away. It smashed into shards against a railing.

Piras opened the bottle and took a huge mouthful. It burned going down. It set his lacerated knuckles on fire as it sloshed over his fingers.

“Stupid, fucking – everything! Fuck! Fuck!” he yelled at the pain in his hand, his throat, his heart.

Continuing to mutter agonized profanities, bemoaning all the things he’d done wrong, Piras kept drinking. Ideas, most borne of grief and desperation, pinged around in his skull. He considered quitting the fleet. He thought about booking passage on a transport and leaving Kalquor without telling anyone. Maybe he’d assume a new identity. Disappear from existence entirely. Start over from scratch.

The bottle was only a quarter full when his door announce buzzed for attention. Piras’s pacing had become an awkward stagger by then. He’d tripped over the seating cushions twice before chucking them over the railing to fall to the ground far below. The night sky was black, the pinpoints of stars bleary. The moons were smeared. The announce buzzed again.

“I’m not here. Fuck off,” he muttered, taking another swig. “Admiral Piras has resigned from life and cannot answer you anymore.”

It seemed his caller might have heard him, because the announce fell silent. Piras drained the last of the bohut and looked sadly at the empty container.

“A lot of songs in that bottle, as my grandfather used to say,” he remarked. “Or there would have been if I wasn’t tone deaf.”

A low chuckle sounded from the door leading into his house. “Did you drink the entire thing just now?”

Piras peered at the dark silhouette. His night vision was hazy, and it took a couple of seconds to focus on Kila’s face. The Nobek wore not his casual smirk, but the more dangerous version of his grin. The one that said big trouble was on the horizon.

For a moment, it had a terrifying effect. Every hair on Piras’s body stood at attention to be caught in the glare of that threatening leer. Then he thought of how Kila would react if he knew of Piras’s encounter with Lidon. If he knew how much Piras still suffered over the broken relationship.

How smug he would be. Piras could almost hear the captain’s rough voice, filled with haughty conceit saying,I knew it all the time.

It brought back the rage that had become Piras’s one assured shelter. He straightened to his full, if wavering, height and sneered, “So now you’re breaking and entering? Dumb move, Nobek.”

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