Loyalty

A Short Story

Editor’s Note:

Today’s short story is written by Brady Putzke. Though he is focused on being a novelist, his short fiction is top-tier. Each story is crafted with style and care. I’m always thrilled when he finishes a new piece, and I secretly wish he would write more in this form. Until then, I recommend you keep a close eye on Mr. Putzke’s career and his growing oeuvre.

- Frank Theodat

---

Lita was wrapped in a glorious reverie made of swirling stars, swirling hearts, and Damon’s arms, when the transmission came through. The voice in her head, implanted there by a direct graft into her nervous system, shifted her whole world like the tectonic plates of the Old Earth. Violent. Shattering. Irrevocable.

“The Alliance has declared unprovoked war against the Federation. Lieutenant Volkov, eliminate the enemy combatant.”

Combatant? They were engineers. Military, sure, but not fighters. Enemy? Damon was the great love of her life and now she was under orders to kill him.

She kept her gaze on the starboard viewing port, the once bright-burning galaxies now cast over with a strange darkness born of the battle between love and duty. She leaned back and fought against physics and reality itself to melt away into Damon’s arms. After a moment’s futile effort, she remained as solid and corporeal as ever. He laid a gentle kiss on her neck. She smelled the cinnamon and clove of that soap he liked, mingled with the faint sweat of a morning’s work on the fuel storage deck. She breathed him in greedily. Would it be the last time?

Damon was a lifelong abstainer from cybernetic modifications. He wouldn’t get the order from his Alliance commanders until 1800 hours when he checked his comms at the terminal before dinner. That stubborn independence she so adored could prove to be his undoing. At her hands no less.

Lita stole a glance at the readout on her wrist, a Holo projection hovering a millimeter above the sleeve of her carbonweave uniform. 11:24. She pondered the metallic grey material with streaks of Federation red and the eagle insignia of her gloves. The fibers that had once been like a comforting second skin now threatened to choke the life out of her. She shuddered, jerking forward and gasping for air.

“Lita, what’s wrong?” Damon asked, reaching to cradle the nape of her pale neck.

“Nothing,” she said. “Just hold me.”

She made another useless attempt to dissolve into him. She heard the voice of her father, her father’s father, and back as far as there were ever Volkovs. You must live for your people, Lita. For your nation. There is nothing more sacred than your call to defend and uphold the Federation. She had always defended. Always upheld. The late Colonel Volkov's pride and joy. The disciplined servicewoman among profligate brothers probably wasting away somewhere on pleasure cruisers or casino stations.

Damon dipped her back, pecked a kiss on her forehead, and leapt up with that dopey smile, that practiced innocence she knew was the fruit of choice and not ignorance. He had seen suffering and lived through enough of his own. Yet, he seemed to look at life through eyes of childlike wonder. Hard-won sincerity and quiet strength that would never yield to the pain of living were his near-miraculous gifts to the universe. To her.

“I’m famished. Race you to the dining room,” he said with a wink.

He shoved her playfully aside and jogged to the door that slid open before him with a muted hiss. She saw him turn left down the corridor and sat alone with her private pain a few minutes longer. She felt as if her ribcage might rip in two. One breathless sob was all she would allow herself before rising to join him for their last meal together. She had her orders.

---

Damon was sauntering to the table from the cabinet-mounted nutri-printer when Lita reached the dining room. The computer had whipped up some pesto chicken and penne with cherry tomatoes and fresh bread with garlic and olive oil. The aroma was delightful, as if Damon had been cooking for hours rather than touching a few buttons.

“What’s your pleasure, love?” Damon asked.

“You,” she said, forcing a coy giggle to hide her sadness.

Damon laughed and gestured with his fork to the printer.

“This delicious bit of Italian cuisine is in the recents folder if you want some.”

She thought she didn’t deserve such a lovely meal.

“My stomach is kind of off. I think I’ll just have some oatmeal.”

“Suit yourself, goofball,” he said, mouth full of pasta.

Lita grabbed her fitting bowl of gruel and sat across from him.

“Damon?”

“Yeah?”

“You ever think about what would happen if things changed?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” she lied. “What if I got transferred to an Outworld post? Or back home, to Terra? Or you got moved?”

“Don’t see that happening but we’d figure it out. A Pilgrim envoy is only a four-day journey to this refueling station.”

She chuckled with unveiled derision.

“So, what? I pretend to be some religious nut to get on board?”

He frowned and his eyes became distant for a flash. Then he cocked a wry smirk.

“Oh, Damon. I’m sorry.”

Silence.

“I know your faith is important to you,” she said. “Really, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, babe. You’ll come around.”

They locked eyes for a moment before Lita looked down at her bowl.

“What if a war broke out?” she asked, looking back up, half hoping he knew.

He shrugged.

“Not likely. The Unified Coalition has been in place, what, 150 years or something? And there hasn’t been an encroachment into Neutral Space in at least that long. I love you, Lita, but sometimes you worry too much.”

He smiled with that chosen innocence again and stood up, putting his plate in the washer.

“Meet me on the tennis court when you’re done?” he asked.

“Yeah. Well, I feel a little out of it. Might lie down for a while, then I’ll be over.

“As you wish,” he said with a bow. The Princess Bride. Her favorite of the classical films. She beat down the persistent thought that war was nothing but a curse. Pride a disease. Family and nation nothing but a prison.

---

Lita stood at the threshold of the closed door to the court, lightknife concealed beneath her suit, flush with the skin of her right wrist. A quick triple tap of her ring finger and the hydraulics would render her armed and ready to carry out her orders.

She drew a deep breath, tried to settle her fluttering heart, and let out a sigh that signaled resignation to her terrible fate.

A step forward and the panel slid open to reveal Damon ready for a blissfully ignorant afternoon of fun and games.

“Hey lazy bones, grab a racket,” he called.

Lita dragged her reluctant body onto the court and found herself frozen just before the net.

“I can’t,” she said, under her breath.

“What’s up, lady?” Damon called. She was relieved he hadn’t heard.

“Nothing, sorry.” She felt a knot in her throat.

“I know what you need,” he said.

Damon made a couple swipes to the controls on his forearm. Music poured into the room. Strauss’s Emperor Waltz. A beautiful relic from Old Earth that they both loved. He made a few more quick taps and swipes, disengaging the room’s gravity generator. He floated a few centimeters from the court, rising with the bouncing wind section. Kicking gently off the ground in her direction, he swam through the air as the strings plucked and the horns built to a crescendo. At the heights of the swelling orchestra he swept her off the floor, one foot pushing them both upward as they spun in each other’s embrace. Lita felt as if the ceiling above them disappeared to reveal a beautiful autumn Terra sky. She imagined they would float away forever. Away from the sorrow and the new war and the crippling burden of duties and loyalties.

“I can’t…”

“It’s okay, Lita.”

One, two, three. One, two, three. The room seemed to dance around them as Damon held her in a still eternity.

“I can’t.” She began to cry.

“It’s okay.”

He pulled her in and their lips met. Passion and pain, light and ecstasy exploded through her body like a thousand supernovas.

One, two, three. One tap. Two taps. Three taps and the blade was out, pulsing with electricity. She thrust it forward.

“I can’t… I can’t,” she sobbed.

“It’s okay,” he choked out, throat suddenly rattling with blood and cold death.

The room turned out not to be infinite and they met the ceiling with a thud, Lita cradling Damon and stroking his hair, wetting his face and neck with her weeping. Cinnamon and clove. The life gone from his blue eyes.

Lita engaged the gravity again and it came in gradations, lowering them softly to the floor. Damon’s hand clutched a silver disc to his chest. A recorder. She slipped it into her suit.

The blaring of the ships emergency alert cut through all her thoughts of what she had done and made her start instinctively for the bridge. She flew from the room in a panic, guilt and fear chasing her to the front of the ship.

---

Lita switched on bridge’s the wall-length view window, stifling her tears, body coursing with adrenaline and grief and rage.

The approaching ship was striped with red, brandishing an enormous eagle across its bow. Federation. They must be coming to rescue her in the event that things had gone awry.

But why the alert?

They were armed... That had to be it. Her refueling ship’s sensor had picked up torpedoes at the ready and sounded the alarm. What was going on? She thought to hail them and send word that the enemy combatant was eliminated, but the idea of uttering the phrase made her dry heave and she buckled to her knees.

It dawned on her suddenly that the Federation didn’t want Alliance ships to get the fuel and it clearly made no difference what colors the people on her ship wore. And she didn’t care anymore if they blew up the whole damn thing.

The recorder. She almost forgot it in the whirlwind of threat and anguish and self-loathing. She placed the disc on the command console and put her thumb to its print scanner. Damon had set it to play only for her.

Beams of blue light shone from the little circle and Damon’s face appeared before her in Holo. His stubble looked just as it had moments ago. He must have recorded it when she had lain down after eating.

“Lita, my love, it’s okay.”

Her tears welled again.

“If you’re watching this, I’m gone. I got the news yesterday, along with my own orders.”

She tasted salt on her quivering lip.

“Don’t you dare feel foolish for trusting them. Your fierce loyalty to something bigger than yourself is something I’ve always loved about you. I knew the moment the news came that this life was done for. We were never going to make it out alive. And I couldn’t bear the thought of spending the end of our time together pondering war and all the lunacy that comes with it. I just wanted to be with you. Think of this morning. Me holding you and looking out at the stars.”

She felt a warmth flood in, a smile fighting to break through her weeping.

“I never had a family or a home. You talked of being sent home to Terra, but I was only ever home with you. You did what you had to do, my love. You were faithful to what you thought was right.”

Damon’s eyes turned watery. He looked down a moment, then back to the camera.

“I know you think it’s silly, but I don’t believe that this life is all we have. I don’t know if you ever listened to all my bumbling about religion but hear me now. I forgive you. I love you. Forever. And I believe we will get that forever, together. And I will be here with open arms. Come home, Lita. My sweet love.”

He brought his blue-light hand to his lips, kissed two fingers and held them to the camera. The kiss floated on his hand just in front Lita and she kissed her own and reached out to touch them together. She heard herself crying and thought it would never stop. The image flickered as her kiss-bearing fingers passed through it. Was he really gone? Or was he right? Was there more?

She felt a hope begin to burn in her that forever might be real and that maybe Damon’s love was stronger than death. His love that blazed with an impossible light. His love that loved her beyond anything she deserved. That loved her through the ultimate betrayal. It was too good not to be true. She would see him soon.

The warship fired and the torpedoes ripped through the outer hull as the corridors outside the open bridge doors exploded in fire. She spoke to the flames.

“Take me home. Take me to his arms.”