“I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” Sylvan said to Brand. There was true regret in his pale blue eyes. “I feel like this is all my fault. I never should have let you volunteer to Join with one of the Q’ess. They have claimed us as their enemy for hundreds of cycles—I should never have allowed one of them aboard the Mother Ship in the first place.”
“It’s not your fault, Commander.” Brand shook his head. “I volunteered. I thought…thought it was the will of the Goddess. But I don’t understand how she could let something like this happen.”
“The Goddess doesn’t promise us we will have no problems or burdens in this life, Brand,” Sylvan said gently. “We don’t live in a perfect universe, after all. But she does promise to help us bear the problems and burdens that come to us.” He sighed and gripped Brand’s shoulder. “Though I must say, this seems like a heavy burden indeed.”
“I still love her.” Brand looked up at his commanding officer, begging for understanding. “I know it sounds crazy after she tried to kill me, but I can’t help myself. I can’t just…turn off my emotions.”
“Of course you can’t,” Sylvan said firmly. “You wouldn’t be a thinking, feeling being if you could. Allara came to mean a lot to you in a very short period of time. It’s natural for you to still have feelings for her. She—”
“Got it!” It was Olivia, rushing back into the room. She was waving a communications pad in one hand triumphantly. “The Ceremony of the Unbreakable Oath—Kat sent it to me,” she said, coming over to Brand and Sylvan again. “And you won’t believe what it says!”
She read the article rapidly aloud and as he listened, fragments of it seemed to lodge in Brand’s brain.
“So…they’re indoctrinated as children?” he asked when Olivia finished.
“And programmed as the perfect assassins.” Sylvan shook his head wonderingly. “Gods, who would have guessed?”
“Not me,” Brand admitted. “Allara seemed perfectly fine and normal until after the conversation with her aunt and father yesterday. It was after that she seemed to just …shut down.”
“Then they must have triggered her somehow!” Olivia exclaimed. “Something they said to Allara tripped the mental switch inside her and set the assassin part of her in motion.”
“Then…you don’t think she tried to kill me on purpose?” Brand, who only moments before had been sunk in the pits of despair, felt a wild hope rise in his heart.
“It’s possible…” Sylvan frowned. “What kind of shuttle were you flying, Brand—was it one of the newer ones?”
“I think so. Why?” Brand frowned.
“Because the newest long-range shuttles all have an auto-record function on their viewscreens,” Sylvan told him. “We might be able to go back and listen to the conversation Allara had with her father and her aunt and get a better picture of what happened and why it happened.”
“Let’s go right now!” Brand threw back the covers and got out of bed.
“Whoa, there! You just got over having one of your lungs popped like a balloon—you need to rest.” Olivia attempted to make him get back into bed, but Brand refused to budge.
“Don’t you see—I can’t rest!” he exclaimed. “If there’s a chance—any chance at all—that Allara didn’t try to kill me because she wanted to—that she still loves me the way I love her—I have to know!”
“You might as well let him go, Olivia,” Sylvan said. “At this point, I think it would be more detrimental to his health to force him to stay in bed. Once a Kindred warrior has given his heart to a female, he cannot rest until he is sure of her.”
“Well…” Olivia sighed. “I guess as long as you go with him…”
“I will,” Sylvan promised gravely. “Yipper and I were up all night working on him—I won’t let him spoil my handiwork, I promise.”
“Go on, then.” Olivia stopped trying to get Brand back to bed. “Just please, be careful.”
“I will,” Brand swore. “Come on,” he said to Sylvan. “Let’s go!”
If there was a reason why Allara had done what she did, he was determined to find it. He just prayed that the recording of her conversation with her father and aunt would make things clear.
Thirty-Eight
The vid recording did, indeed, clarify the situation. After watching the screen and seeing what Allara’s aunt and father said and listening to her replies, (which had also been recorded by the viewscreen, although only as an audio file), Brand collapsed back in the passenger seat of the shuttle, shaking his head.
“They triggered her—her aunt did, anyway,” he said.
“It seems so,” Sylvan sounded thoughtful. “The trigger word appears to have been ‘trab’. I wonder if that means anything in a different Q’ess dialect?”
“What it means is that my wife is innocent!” Brand exclaimed. “And she loves me! You heard her say it, Commander Sylvan—she told them she loved me and she didn’t want to kill me. She called me the man she loves!”
“She did, indeed.” Sylvan nodded gravely.
“She should never have been sent away.” Brand said. “She belongs here—with me.”
“I understand that you want to forgive her and take her back, Brand,” Sylvan said gently. “But I’m afraid the High Council might have something to say about a programmed assassin living aboard the Mother Ship.”
“Then we’ll live someplace else!” Brand said. “I don’t care where we live as long as we’re together. I love her, Commander! In fact, I’m going to go get her now—trade me seats!” he demanded.
“Oh, no you don’t.” Sylvan frowned at him from the driver’s seat of the shuttle. “I understand you’re anxious to go to your wife, but we must do this through the proper channels. I will need to speak to the Q’ess authorities about getting her back and I’ll have to get permission from the High Council to allow her back aboard the Mother Ship. Not to mention the fact that I promised Olivia to keep an eye on you and not let you go running off until you’re completely healed.”
“But I feel better already!” Brand protested. “What if something is happening to her? What if they’re punishing or hurting her even now? I don’t have a bond with her yet, so I can’t tell. What if…” He swallowed hard, hearing a dry click in his throat. “What if she’s dead?”
Sylvan frowned.
“To use a common human phrase, Brand, ‘don’t borrow trouble.’ You come back to the Med Center so Olivia can check you out and give you a clean bill of health and I’ll make a call to the Q’ess authorities at once.”
Brand tried to control his impatience. He knew his commanding officer was right and that protocol had to be followed. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that Allara was in danger somehow. He wanted desperately to go to her and save her—to protect her from whatever it was he was certain was threatening her.