Her head was constantly throbbing and piercingly painful migraines came and went without any trace. Every time, Naima felt the presence of the evil again. She saw glimpses of a cold, icy world and burning red eyes, but she was on so many painkillers Naima didn't trust her eyes anymore.
Yet the visions kept coming, clearer every time, and more vivid. At their worst, Naima found herself lying on the floor of her room, shivering from head to toe in the blistering heat of a particularly sunny day. An image of a snarling face with a vicious gaze seemed burned into her retinas and didn't go away for endless minutes.
On the fourth day, her paleness was so visible that the others suggested that Naima should climb into one of the thermo-cocoons.
On the eighth, a strand of Naima's hair turned white.
After that, Doug no longer stood for any of her excuses. With Captain Gordon backing him up, the leader of their mission finally sent a message to orbit, where their ship the Dawnstar waited. It relayed both the findings and Naima's curious illness to the Galactic union 's council. The Brions were informed as well.
A very strange silence was the only answer for a curiously long while. Then the Palians finally replied.
"Thrilled about the discovery. Very concerned about the well-being of Miss Naima Jones. Wait for further instructions on both accounts. Do not tell anyone else."
That order wasn't unheard of in itself, but Doug agreed with Naima that it was unusual. The lifestone was a big find, they eventually decided. It was only natural that the Palians just wanted to make sure it was safe.
The truth came out the morning Captain Gordon woke Naima up unexpectedly. Her room was cold like a cave now, but Naima's first concern was still a very instinctive one.
"How did you get in my room?" she asked, pulling the sheets up higher.
The captain regarded her seriously.
"Every door on this boat opens for me," he said with a solemn look on his face. "Get dressed, Miss Jones. We are in a lot of trouble. I think."
"You think? What's going on?" Naima asked, glaring at the man until he turned around and let her get dressed in the green suit she wore those days.
It kept her warm – well, sort of - and matched her eyes, so Naima considered it a win on all accounts.
"I don't know how to put this more delicately, so let's just say there is a Brion flagship in the Matthos system. From what the Dawnstar can tell, they're coming here."
Naima's mouth dropped open, fumbling with the zipper on her suit. In recent years, Brions had worked hard to make the galaxy forget about their warmongering, bloodthirsty past, but Naima had a long memory, as did most of the rest of the galaxy.
When she had been a child, wherever Brion generals went, blood flowed and people died. She had chosen to ignore the warriors when they were appointed to guard them, but that was only possible because Naima had never expected to come face-to-face with them.
They’d even expected the Brion escort to come down to the surface of Matthos IV after they sent the message to the Palians, and had been surprised to find that not being the case. Now it was clear that they hadn’t come because they were waiting for their superior.#p#分页标题#e#
Flagship, she thought. This is not good. We either did something very good or very bad. If a general comes here, I don't think either option will produce a positive ending to this thing.
"Do they have permission?" she asked.
"I don't think the Brions recognize permissions," Captain Gordon said, still with his back to her as Naima resumed her rushing to get ready to meet whatever was coming. "Their generals certainly don't."
She stopped again.
"You have got to be kidding me," she repeated. "One of the Brion generals is here. Why!?"
Not that she needed to ask. Nor be surprised by the reality of a general being in the system. A flagship went nowhere without its master.
"Guess."
"The lifestone," Naima sighed, feeling something tighten around her heart. "You can turn around now."
Gordon did and they exchanged a determined look.
"There is something else, Naima," he said and his concern was plain to see. "We received a message from the Palians this morning. It said this general has been looking for you."
"Me?" Naima repeated, dumbfounded.
"You," Gordon confirmed. "I don't know how or why, but apparently there is a manhunt going on. While we've been isolated on this rock, the entire galaxy looks for a red-haired girl in a dark ocean."
A thousand thoughts sped through Naima's mind, none of them very optimistic. They all manifested in a single, determined decision.
"They can't have it," she said. "Does this general know we have the stone? Did someone mention it to him?"
"As far as I know, he only knows a lifestone was found on the planet. But I agree. He cannot have the stone," the captain nodded. "Imagine what it could do to those warships of theirs. They can already cut through smaller plants, they'd be unstoppable then.
“On the other hand, they are in the union too. The Palians could have sent them here."
"The Palians have a lot more trust to give than I do," Naima said, rushing out of her room. "I'll keep the stone with me, just in case. Alert the others, please. Not one word to him about it."
An hour later, Naima watched as a "small" ship – larger than the Nautica, which wasn't exactly a fishing boat either – hovered above the ocean, just starboard from the Nautica. It was way too big to land, so she really had no idea how the Brions thought to get aboard.
Then the bay door of the ship opened and someone fell down from the sky.
Naima gasped in surprise, thinking the person was bound to crash against the boat, but he did not.
A Brion warrior landed with a thunderous crash on the deck before her. She could feel the floor shake beneath her feet from the impact.
Her breath was caught long before the warrior rose to his feet, reminding her of how she’d felt stuck in that cave, not even caring if she could ever breathe again. In fact, he took Naima's knowledge of how to breathe at all. The stone hadn’t managed to do that.
She didn't know much about the Brion insignia, but the man in front of her had to be a general. The magnitude of his presence was undeniable, commanding and awe-inspiring.
It also happened he was the most gorgeous man she had ever laid her eyes upon. It shouldn’t have mattered, definitely not to a scientist, but she couldn’t escape it. Not with this man.
He stood in front of her, tall and proud and fierce. The warlord looked like he was carved from some fantastic story, too unreal to even exist.
Naima's eyes took in his strong frame, every bit of the general exuding power. His armor only served to boost the man’s already impressive bulk, but she saw the true strength laid underneath the dark surface of the armor.
There was a tall, sharp spear strapped to the warrior’s back, the signature weapon of the Brions. A long line of glowing valor squares went up his neck to his ears, with the rest hidden by the armor he wore.
Clear, fierce blue eyes watched Naima from under strands of dark hair as black as the ocean around them. The general's gaze was fixed right on her, making her shiver from head to toe, for once not because of the cold but because of the heat that snaked through her, radiating out from the pit of her stomach.
"I am General Braen," the warlord said, his deep voice easily demanding the attention of every person present. "The union 's council and the Elders of Brions have sent me to you. I believe you have something that is of value to us all."#p#分页标题#e#
Naima's hand brushed against the lifestone, hidden inside her pocket again, but it seemed to her Braen had looked at her when he said that. She couldn't tear her eyes off the general no matter how hard she tried. There was something about him that had taken ahold of her.
This is… a little too familiar for comfort, a little voice inside of her noted.
"But before we get to the lifestone," Braen went on, nearly stopping Naima's heart with his look. "The girl with white in her hair. Does the Fearless know where you are?"
Every pair of eyes not already watching her now snapped in Naima's direction.
The Fearless.
She finally had the proof she needed that the images she'd seen were real. It had a name. Only now that the answer was in front of her, she could no longer enjoy it.
The nightmare she’d envisioned had come to life.
4
Braen
To anyone else but a Brion, the news would have been disastrous, to say the least. Even Kerven, the young warrior who had come to deliver the news to him, seemed to think so.
"The Fearless is not dead," Braen repeated impassively, more curious than disappointed.
It wasn’t a reaction the general could have perhaps expected from himself, but there it was regardless.
What Kerven had just reported didn't bode well for the galaxy, but Braen hadn't become a general simply by the whim of a capricious enemy and a good deal of luck. The old General Valden had personally hinted to his second-in-command that he preferred Braen to succeed him, among other things.
He was born to be a general. It didn't just mean being better at combat than the army of world-conquering warriors under Braen's command. It needed a specific mind, a soul that no surprise ever rattled. A warrior who would walk up to a Fearless without even considering the possibility of not going.