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  As she took her seat, the room erupted in chatters of conversation. For many, Captain Hodge’s teasing speech added fuel to an already hotly burning fire of speculation. For others, there was a worrisome expression on their faces. Yen not only understood their concern, but was happy to see the reality of the situation finally sinking in for the new pilots and soldiers. Maybe, if they could understand the dangers associated with real combat, some of them might survive to see how the war develops. Yen had spent quite a bit of time thinking about what was to come and had come to a realization. Their attack against the Terran Fleet would be brutal, but would be far from the end of the war. If anything, he knew that their attack would only ignite the fervor of the Terran Empire. The single attack could lead to years of open warfare, the likes of which hadn’t been experienced in a century and a half. The stories of those brutal battles, leaving millions dead on both sides, had never been forgotten. Yen cringed at the idea of another war like that, in which so many were left dead. No, Yen had realized that the assault on the Terran Fleet could not be the end of the Alliance assault, but rather the tip of a long and deadly spear. He only hoped those in power, the High Council in particular, thought much the same.

  Dinner was served, though conversations took precedence over eating. For many in the room, their food was barely touched by the time their plates were taken away, having only shifted their entrees from one side of the plate to another while discussing their theories in hushed tones with those they shared their table. Thankfully, Yen, Adam, and Keryn had avoided most of the gossiping, spending their time lost in small talk and pleasantries. Having served together for over a year, Yen and Adam had many stories about one another which kept Keryn laughing throughout the meal. By the time dinner was over, their table’s jovial attitude still remained. They still joked between one another as Captain Hodge finished her meal and stood once more. A silence fell over the room as she gained everyone’s undivided attention. Cameras in the room turned and began recording. Yen had a suspicion that her speech would be replayed on all ships in the attack Fleet simultaneously.

  “Over the past few months,” Captain Hodge began, “a new and dangerous threat has emerged from the Terran Empire. A small invasion Fleet of six Terran Destroyers slipped into Alliance space, in clear violation of the Taisa Accord. This is the first major incursion in violation of the Accord in one hundred and fifty years. Were that their only transgression, it would be grounds enough for us to go to war. However, as you are all aware, invading our sovereign space was not the only atrocity they committed, nor was it the most recent. Almost a year ago, direct actions of the Terran Empire resulted in the deaths of over one hundred Infantry soldiers on Perseus II. More recently, however, this invading Fleet has attacked and destroyed five Alliance Cruisers.”

  Yen felt the ache in his chest at the mention of Perseus. From the corner of his eyes, he could see the same sorrow-filled expression on Keryn’s face at the mention of her brother’s loss. “The Terrans have done more than just invade our space. They have made an open declaration of war, a declaration that has not been lost on the High Council. In response, the High Council contacted me yesterday with new orders; orders to break orbit and make haste toward the Terran Fleet’s location. Our orders are simple: destroy the Terran Fleet at all costs!”

  A raucous cheer erupted from the crowd as the rumors were validated. To Yen’s surprise, he felt a hand fall on top of his. Keryn squeezed his hand hard as he looked at her. Her violet eyes burned with an agitated fervor and he could see her breasts rise and fall with excitable breaths. Turning his hand, he laced his fingers with hers and held her hand as Captain Hodge continued.

  “Your enthusiasm is a direct reflection of what I felt when I heard their message. To know that all of our training and all of our waiting has finally come to fruition, it was nearly more than I could bear. However, I encourage you to continue your diligent training and rehearsals during the next few weeks of transit. We face a dangerous and determined enemy in the Terran Fleet. I don’t need to remind you that they have already destroyed five ships just like the one we now crew. The enemy ships are filled with combat veterans who know that a retaliatory strike is inevitable.” Captain Hodge’s musical voice grew louder as she continued, her cheeks flushed with emotion. “They will be expecting us, so when we attack, we will have to attack with reckless abandon. We cannot be afraid! We cannot be unsure! But most importantly, we cannot be deterred! In less than a month, there will not be a single citizen in either the Alliance or the Empire that doesn’t know the incredible exploits of this battle fleet!”

  The roar of the audience was deafening as the Captain harped on the chords they all wanted to hear. They could be heroes, faces and names that the Alliance would remember forever. Though Yen still had his reservations about catering to the youthful exuberance of the crowd, he couldn’t deny that he was beginning to feel his own heart race at the thought of being the hero of the Alliance. His smile was infectious as he turned to Keryn and tightly squeezed her hand. He could see the fire burning behind her eyes and knew that she was as eager to go to war as any of the other pilots and soldiers in the crowd. It was reassuring to know that soon they would all have their chance.

  Following the Captain’s speech, the formal dinner evolved into a more social event. Music full of heavy beats and minor chords played over the intercom and many of the Officers and Warrants cleared the center of the room to dance. Alcohol flowed freely and it wasn’t long before a red-faced Adam and his date bid Yen and Keryn adieu and left, leaning heavily on one another to make sure neither collapsed on the way back to his quarters. Adam and his date were not the only couples who slipped away nonchalantly to spend more personal time together. Soon, the densely packed room thinned until less than half of the original crowd remained.

  As Yen watched the dancing, writhing crowd in the middle of the room, he felt warm breath on the side of his neck. “Would you like to go for a walk with me?” Keryn whispered into his ear.

  Yen could feel a yearning passion twisting in his stomach. Without saying a word, for fear that his voice would betray his excitement, Yen nodded and pushed away from the table. Keryn stood and joined him and, still hand in hand, they walked out of the ballroom. He had intended to lead her back toward his quarters, but once they were free of the ballroom, Keryn took charge and pulled him along toward one of the lifts. Unsure of where they were going but feeling strongly sexually aroused, Yen fought little, figuring she had something mischievous in mind.

  To Yen’s surprise, once inside the elevator Keryn pushed a button that would take them to one of the observation decks.

  As soon as the lift doors opened, Keryn playfully slipped away and hurried ahead, taking a place near the thick windows. As he strode forward, she gave him barely a second glance as she lost herself in the distant stars. He slipped his arms around her slender waist and followed her gaze out the window.

  “They’re beautiful,” Keryn said cryptically.

  Yen followed her gaze, but saw only the stars beyond the window. “They’re great,” he said, trying to understand the awe he heard in her voice. “No matter where you go, though, they change very little.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Keryn said softly, “but they’re the reason I joined the Academy. I looked up at the stars every night when I was growing up and wondered what it would be like to fly among them. I could have gone through Initiation and became a warrior, but then I would have been doomed to spend each mission on a different planet, always looking at the stars but knowing that they would be out of reach.”

  Nudging him backward, she turned and faced him. They coy glances he had received before had been replaced by a stern seriousness. “You’re not the first guy I’ve had feelings for, Yen. I’ve met my share of both boys and men as I’ve grown, but none of them truly understood my passion. They’ve come and gone from my life because they couldn’t see past the physical me and truly appreciate my deeper commitment to being a pilot.” She p
laced a gently hand on his chest, feeling his pounding heartbeat. “With you, I finally am friends with someone who shares my passion for being a pilot in the Fleet. It’s important that you truly understand me, Yen.”

  Yen was caught off guard by the depth of her concern. Simultaneously, he felt a small ache in his chest. “Just friends?” he asked.

  Keryn’s smile was sympathetic. “It’s not that I don’t have feelings for you. But right now we both have a mission to do and a war to prepare for. The last thing either of us needs is messy emotions getting in the way of our common sense and tactical decision making. For the next few weeks, we focus on preparing for the Terrans.”

  She reached out and ran an affectionate hand over his chest. “If we both make it through this next fight alive, then I promise we’ll talk about the you and I. Do we have a deal?”

  “I don’t think I have a choice in this.”

  Keryn laughed. “You don’t. Anyway, we can’t sleep together yet.”

  “No?” Yen asked, finally starting to regain his composure.

  “No. You still haven’t taken me out to the dinner you’ve been promising.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A single dinner between Yen and Keryn turned into dinner nearly every night as the Revolution traveled toward the inevitable conflict with the Terran Fleet. Regardless of where they wound up — be it at the ship’s mess hall, one of the few restaurants on board, or even a home cooked meal within one of their two quarters — they were rarely seen together without a console between them, displaying previous battle plans and going over both traditional and non-conventional strategies. For Keryn, she seemed to gleam quite a bit more from the non-conventional warfare than she did from standard attack patterns. Much like she had been trained from a young age during her warrior training, she had been taught to always be on your opponent’s blind side, striking at his weaknesses. She saw no reason to approach space combat any differently.

  Though she absorbed all she could from the training sessions, simulations, and console explanations that Yen offered, she couldn’t deny a strong desire to spend time with him. Yen was remarkable in nearly every way. He told countless war stories from his time in covert operations, which included both Infantry and some minor Fleet encounters. She also found that they thought very much alike, with Yen offering his insight on abnormal strategies which Keryn yearned to implement into real combat scenarios.

  After weeks of training and tactics, Keryn’s confidence had grown exponentially, though she still had trouble shaking her memory of the abysmal loss during the Defiant training exercise. Aside from Yen and Adam, she talked to few of the Infantry soldiers assigned to the Cair Ilmun. She didn’t know what they thought of her or if they had any confidence in her abilities when they faced the Terran Fleet, but she knew that she wouldn’t let them down. Still, the nervous recognition of her own failure hovered over her like a storm cloud.

  Keryn quickly realized that a lot of her brooding came from the fact that all she and Yen had done together for nearly two weeks was study and train. She knew that they both needed a break.

  As they sat together in Yen’s quarters one night, Keryn set down her console and rubbed tired eyes. “Can you really read minds?” she asked.

  Yen smiled and flicked the switch that would turn off his own console. “So I take it we’re done studying for the night?”

  “Yes,” Keryn conceded, “we’re done studying. Now answer the question.”

  “I can read minds, though it’s spotty at best. It’s not so much that I get clear words from the other person. More accurately, I get senses and feelings; sort of a kaleidoscope of emotions that paint a picture in my mind. I see what they see via their thought patterns more than their actual words.”

  “Sounds complicated.”

  “Not really. Take right now for instance,” Yen said, leaning forward and narrowing his eyes as though in deep conversation. “I’m getting the impression that you long to have sex with me.”

  Keryn laughed. “I guess that power of yours really is spotty, superhero.”

  Yen shrugged. “I didn’t have to use powers to figure that one out.”

  Keryn’s blushed. She grasped for a change of subject. “What else can you do, aside from embarrass innocent women?”

  Yen leaned back in his chair and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He obviously wanted to find something to do that would definitively impress Keryn. Finally finding his answer, he leaned forward, placing his right hand on the table, palm skyward. “This is something that I’ve been working on for over a year now and only recently perfected. Prepare to be amazed.”

  The air around Yen began to shimmer, wavering as though heat was rolling from his skin. The wavering air flickered angrily as he concentrated. In the palm of his hand, a single blue tendril began to extend toward the ceiling. It shook unsteadily for a moment before settling. The top of the tendril tipped forward like a serpent’s head, glancing side to side as though examining its new surroundings. The head of the tendril turned around and looked at Yen before tilting to the side inquisitively, awaiting its next orders.

  “That’s amazing,” Keryn said, laughing at the amount of personality present in such an inanimate object. “It’s almost like it’s alive.”

  Yen’s smile was weak as he strained to maintain his psychic projection. “Sometimes it feels alive,” Yen explained. “I may be the one manifesting it, but it comes with its own personality, like it’s less an extension of me and more a self-aware servant of mine.”

  Keryn’s eyes narrowed. “So you don’t control it? What if it gets out of control and starts doing real damage?”

  Yen shook his head, his eyes never leaving the tendril. His voice seemed to come from far away as he spoke through the shimmering air around him. “Think of it like your Voice. It’s a part of you, but clearly doesn’t control you. I can dismiss it with a thought if it gets out of control, but that’s never happened. It may seem to have its own mind, but it still shares mine as well, which means that it knows my intent and ambitions.”

  “I think it’s cute, but what can you use it for?” Keryn asked, watching the tendril twist around itself in Yen’s palm like a young animal searching for something to do out of boredom.

  “It’s a physical manifestation of my power, but it’s still incorporeal. I can pass it through any armor, clothing, or skin. And, because it’s made of psychic energy, I can use it to lash out at an opponent and disrupt his nervous system. Send one of these against a Terran in a full battle suit and it will disable him without ever firing a shot.”

  “Useful,” Keryn said as a statement more than a question. “I like it.”

  “That’s not all it can do, you know,” Yen said cryptically as a smile crept across his face. “These little tendrils can have quite a few other uses.”

  “Like what…” Keryn began before stopping in mid sentence, her breath frozen in her throat.

  Beneath the table, from Yen’s other palm, a second tendril extended toward Keryn. The tendril passed insubstantially through the thin uniform pants Keryn wore. As it brushed across the skin beneath, the tendril activated nerve clusters and pleasure receptors. The pleasurable signal was carried to Keryn’s brain, instantaneously driving her hormones wild and causing her entire body to flush.

  Gasping for air, she finally managed to speak. “Stop,” she said, her lips quivering.

  Though obviously strained from the effort of maintaining two tendrils, Yen still managed a strong laugh as he withdrew both tendrils. The air around him stopped moving and the room settled back into its former self.

  “I told you,” Yen said as he continued laughing, “it has many, many other uses.”

  “Don’t…” Keryn managed, her eyes closed as she tried to settle her wayward emotions. “Don’t ever do that without warning me first!” Her breath was still ragged as she tried to control her pounding heartbeat.

  They sat in silence for quite some time as Keryn regained control of herself. She foug
ht against the obvious desire to act on her spiked lust knowing that her acting on it was exactly what Yen had intended when he sent the tendril her way. Finally, her body calmed though she still felt a stirring of desire burning in her belly. She also didn’t dare stand, knowing that her legs were probably unstable.

  “You’re an ass,” Keryn said, opening her eyes slowly and staring at the still smiling Yen.

  “I have my moments,” Yen joked.

  “It makes me wonder how many women have been exposed to your little tendrils.” In one swift moment, she had shifted the balance of power out of Yen’s hands and into her own.

  Yen was caught with his mouth open, unsure of how to reply. She had deftly turned the tables on him, leaving him wondering if he could talk his way out of the situation. Of course Keryn had not been the first woman exposed to his powers like that, though he wouldn’t have expected her sharp mind to connect those dots quite that quickly. He stammered, hoping that he could find the right thing to say, but was finally saved when the transponders they both wore crackled to life, broadcasting a message to everyone on board the Revolution.

  “All hands to battle stations,” Captain Hodge’s voice called over the ship-wide intercom channel. “This is not a drill. We are approaching the Terran Fleet. I say again, all hands to their battle stations.”

  Keryn and Yen looked at one another in surprise as the message began to replay, their previous encounter already forgotten. They both leapt to their feet, knocking over their respective chairs in their hurry. Reaching the door, Keryn glanced over her shoulder.