Punished, Tana Stone [top reads .txt] 📗

It seemed almost silly that I’d been worried about being embarrassed when I saw him. Right now I’d give anything to feel embarrassment instead of the regret that threatened to swallow me whole.

I opened my eyes again, shifting my gaze to the other bodies splayed across the hardpacked dirt. The two nearest him were without helmets and one was without a head. I tasted the tang of bile in the back of my throat as I spotted a disembodied head that had rolled to one side, dirt caking the bloody neck stump. Farther away was another imperial soldier wearing his black helmet, Corvak’s battle axe impaled deep in his chest as he lay face up, although to me, he was faceless.

Had he killed them all himself? Guilt gnawed at me. I should have been here sooner. I should have been fighting by his side. Maybe if I’d been with him instead of his useless fighting unit, he wouldn’t be dead himself. A rumble of anger bubbled up in my chest—anger at myself for not arriving faster, and anger at the stupid rules on my planet which had deprived the Vandar of someone who would have had his back.

I pushed myself up to my feet even though my legs trembled. I needed to get away before I lost it and made a scene that I’d live to regret. Now that Corvak was gone, life would return to normal for me. No late-night training sessions. No sneaking bundles of bread onto his windowsill. No quickening of my pulse when I heard him tramp through the woods toward me. Everything would return to the normal drudgery that had defined my life before the Vandar had arrived.

I flicked a quick glance at the dead Zagrath. Well, maybe life wouldn’t be completely normal. Someone would have to answer for them, and now we had no Vandar to defend us from the empire.

Walking forward on jerky feet, I reached the helmeted soldier and stared down at him. Even in death, he clutched a blaster in his hand, the finger on the trigger. He’d been the one to shoot Corvak, I realized. He’d shot the Vandar in the back.

“Like a coward,” I whispered.

After our training sessions and while we’d eaten the bread I’d snuck from my sister, Corvak had told me many tales of the horrors the empire had inflicted on other planets and especially what they’d done to the Vandar millennia ago. They were vicious cowards driven by greed and a disregard for those they deemed beneath them, which was everyone who wasn’t one of the privileged Zagrath.

Even I knew that the Zagrath were also humans, but they’d been what had been referred to as the “one-percenters” when the human home world, Earth, had been all but abandoned after its resources had been stripped and it had fallen into poverty and chaos. The humans who’d been wealthy enough to escape had left and started colonies elsewhere, using their top scientists and vast wealth to increase their lifespans and improve their biology to be more resistant to the illnesses that had plagued their former planet. They’d called themselves Zagrath to distance themselves even further from the rest of us humans, who finally made it off Earth, and had been attempting to rule the galaxy ever since.

I’d heard the barely suppressed rage in Corvak’s voice when he’d spoken of the atrocities he’d seen at their hand. Now I felt that same fury as I looked down at the soldier who had shot him in the back.

Bracing one foot on the soldier’s chest, I gripped the long handle of the axe and jerked it up and out. Blood seeped into the coarse fabric of the imperial uniform, staining the smoky blue material and turning it black. Scarlet droplets slid off the curved blade and speckled the dirt at my feet.

The soldier was dead. There was no question about that. Somehow, Corvak had managed to throw his axe before he fell, and his aim had been perfect. I choked back a sob as tears stung the backs of my eyelids.

“Don’t you dare cry,” I ordered myself, clenching the handle of the axe so tight my fingers hurt. I needed to be able to see clearly to do what needed to be done. What I had to do.

Even though the Vandar axe was incredibly heavy, I heaved it over my head, holding it high as my arms shook from the effort. I thought about the stories Corvak had told me about the Vandar raiding missions, and the rich mythology of his people.

According to Vandar lore, Corvak should be warmly welcomed into their afterlife—Zedna, he’d called it—where he would drink and share tales of battles with the gods of old. It didn’t sound so bad, if you believed that kind of thing. And right now, I needed to believe that he’d been reunited with his people. I needed to believe his death hadn’t been for nothing.

“For Lokken,” I whispered as I swung the battle axe through the air and took off the imperial soldier’s head. The blade sliced cleanly through the man’s neck and hit the ground hard, sending a hard jolt up through my arms. I watched with satisfaction as the helmet rolled away from the body, and I leaned on the axe handle to keep from collapsing to the ground again.

As Corvak would have said, it was done.

Turning, I saw that no one had witnessed my act. Everyone was gathered around Corvak’s body, the whispers and excited murmurs finally reaching my ears.

“He’s alive!” Terel cried, standing up from the huddled group. “The Vandar is alive!”

I held my breath, not believing his words for a moment. Then more cheers went up around Corvak, and my heart raced at the impossible news, the blood deafening in my ears. He was alive. The sob I’d been desperately holding back escaped my lips. Then the axe handle slipped from my fingers, and I joined it in sinking to the dirt.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Ch