BORN OF HEROES

— by Jeff Karamales

Chapter 5
 

Elias explored the area around the cabin with Cerise, let her show him her favorite fishing spots along the river, continued to follow his therapy regimen, and grew stronger each day. Days were filled with experiences that were like new with the vixen, and nights were times of quiet conversation. And each moment that passed made the fox realize that life was so much sweeter, more fulfilling and vibrant in the time spent with the ebony furred female.

  He had never really believed the stories that he’d heard as a child, the faerie tales of individuals finding true love after some form of quest or hardship. He had never thought it possible that there could be that kind of life altering feeling for another. This stemmed from never having felt anything but a passing fondness for most of the individuals in his life.

  But that was before he met Cerise.

  They would be leaving the cabin in two days, and while anticipating a return to duty, Elias was a little subdued at the prospect of leaving Cerise. As he’d told her, the fox had dated others, but looking back over his past dalliances, they were fleeting things and Elias, and those he’d been with, had known that. Now he had discovered something with her that he didn’t want to let go of, and it was causing him something akin to physical pain.

  Cerise sensed the other fox’s sour mood as they sat in front of the fireplace and saw the way that he looked at the dancing flames pensively as he wrestled with something that was shutting him off from her. She snuggled closer and gently stroked the fur along the edge of his jaw.

  “Elias? What’s wrong? You’ve been a little distant tonight.”

  Elias turned to look at her, slipping his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “I’ll be leaving for my new assignment soon. I’ll be gone for long periods, and while it’s something that I need to do, part of me doesn’t want to. I’ve even been thinking about resigning my commission.”

  The vixen looked at him and saw that he was serious.

  “No. You won’t.”

  Her tone was so matter of fact that Elias’s eyes grew wide in mild surprise.

  “You won’t resign. You will take your new assignment and you will do it to the best of your ability.” This was a new side to Cerise that he had no idea existed. He opened his mouth to speak, but she shook her head. “You can’t quit because quitting isn’t what you do. It certainly wouldn’t be a decision that the one I love would make. You will do this and do it well. Or is everything that I care about a lie?”

  Stunned was too light a word for the impact that Cerise’s words had on the fox. “What did you say?”

  “That you will do this, or the individual that I thought you were is a lie.”

  He shook his head. “Before that.”

  Cerise smiled. “Oh. That. I love you.”

  Elias looked at her with astonishment, a grin slowly spreading. He took her in his arms and held her tightly to him. She had spoken the words that he’d been reluctant to say and he informed her of as much. “I mean, we’ve only known each other for what? Almost three months. It just seems…sudden.”

  With a chuckle, Cerise kissed him and held his face in both of her small hands. “We both come from a species that tends to mate for life. Why should this surprise you?” She kissed him again. “Elias, I’ve been waiting a long time for someone like you, and it doesn’t matter what you do, or where you go. I will always be here for you.”

  “I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, though,” he pointed out. “It could be weeks, months, maybe even a year or more. That’s a bit of a strain, don’t you think?”

  In answer, Cerise slid up onto his lap, wrapping her arms around him tightly. “Then I had better give you a good reason to come back, then, shouldn’t I?” she asked in a husky whisper.

***

  They left early the next day, landing temporarily at the starport. Going to a small shop that Cerise knew of, he made a small purchase then both made a quick visit to one other place. Before long, they had retrieved the ‘copter from the starport and Cerise flew it the twelve minutes it took to reach her parents’ house. Other revelations were made after their discussion of the previous night, and while Elias had been set against what he’d been told, Cerise’s counter arguments had mollified him somewhat. Now they were on their way to meet with the coyote’s parents at their estate.

  Dona took care of doing the post flight on the ‘copter and squealed with delight when she saw the pair. “Did you have a good time?” the hyena asked, Then she looked again at both of them with greater scrutiny. “Nope. Never mind that question! It’s obvious that you did. Your parents got in four days ago and are up at the house with one of your father’s old comrades. Leave the bags. I’ll bring those up when I’m done with the Dragonfly.”

  Cerise thanked the female and walked up the path through the trees with Elias, the pair holding hands. There wasn’t anybody on the pool deck, nor in the room that looked over the swimming area. They heard voices and laughter coming from further in the house and Cerise pulled on Elias’s hand to lead him where she knew the others to be. Swallowing hard and taking a deep breath, the fox followed.

  The room that Cerise led him to was a den that was devoted entirely to all things male. The furniture was covered in cracked leather that was worn shiny in some places from use, the deep mahogany dye having faded and returning the soft hide to its original color. There were bottles of liquor on a sideboard with cut crystal glasses. On the walls were numerous weapons, some antique, some very modern, ranging from knives, daggers and swords to black powder muskets and present day caseless autorifles.

  Sitting in an overstuffed chair was a fox that could only be Cerise’s father. Elias had seen pictures of Rovi Tambor during his time at the Academy, but the photos had been almost two decades old at that point. Cerise obviously got her coloration from her father who also had glossy black fur, though his muzzle and ear tips were sprinkled with strands of white.

  He had been swapping stories with Sander Brees who sat in a chair angled so that he could comfortably face his host. Both males looked up at the young couple’s entrance and went silent.

  Elias stopped cold as the two regarded him. One that was his superior and automatically intimidating, the other was his new Father-in-Law. The last prospect was by far the most frightening for the white furred fox.

  Cerise crinkled her nose as she let go of Elias’s hand and walked through the cloud of blue tinged pipe and cigar smoke to embrace her father. Rovi accepted the hug perfunctorily, noticing that his daughter and the still unintroduced male wore matching earrings in their left ears, a symbol of marriage from the younger fox’s small home province on Alexandrius.

  “What have you done, Cerise?” the older male asked in a quiet voice.

  Brees said nothing, but the raised eyebrow spoke louder than words as Elias glanced at him.

  “Daddy, this is my husband, Elias Tivnan. I told you about him.”

  The black furred male set his glass down, his eyes never leaving Elias’s. “Yes,” he said softly and slowly. “You told me about him, but you didn’t tell me that you were planning on this.” He walked past his daughter and stood before the younger fox and studied him intently for a long moment. “Well, Cerise has never done anything without thinking it through, and if you are half of the person that she says you are, which Sandy also confirms, then the only thing I can do is welcome you to the family.”

  The older fox offered his hand, and Elias took it cautiously, also turning his head slightly to the side exposing his neck. The province that Elias came from had several customs that many individuals that hadn’t grown up with found peculiar. Symbols of matrimony were normally matching earrings as it was hard to see a ring through fur most of the time unless it was a huge, gaudy affair, and collars, which were more prevalent on other worlds, were considered to be demeaning. It was also customary to treat the parents of one’s mate as the equivalent of pack Alpha male and female.

  Brees had a lopsided grin and raised his glass at the two in way of salute. “Don’t waste time, do you, son?”

  Rovi then turned to his daughter. “You know this is going to infuriate your mother. You were going to be the first daughter to be wed, and you’ve gone and spoiled all her fun.”

  “Didn’t you two elope?” Cerise asked moving back to take Elias’s hand possessively.

  “You know we did. That’s why she was going to make such a fuss over your wedding.” He started to chuckle, and that eventually became an outright laughing fit. As he wiped his eyes, he looked at the young couple. “This is going to wreck Keena’s hunting plans just a little!”

  “What?” Cerise said, her eyes going flinty hard.

  Her father nodded, still chortling. “She’s been scheming since your mother and I got back on how to get young Mister Tivnan here alone for a while. This puts a serious kink into whatever elaborate plan she’s been working on.”

  “You mean you’ve known about Keena’s…um, behavior in the past?” the petite female asked with chagrin.

  “Of course!” her father said with a grin. “We always expected you to beat the tar out of her for what she did sometimes. You were the dominant one growing up, and we expected a little more assertiveness when Keena discovered boys, especially the ones you brought home, but you never did. Though I would hazard a guess that things are more than a little different now. Just as long as you don’t cause any permanent damage you have my permission to do whatever you think is right.” He paused and looked at his daughter. “Better yet, nothing that causes bleeding.” He turned to the lion in the other chair. “I think that’s fair, don’t you, Sander?”

  “My people were from Kantus and some still believe in prides. I’m not really the one to ask.”

  “There will be no pride!” Cerise said with mock ferocity. “Elias is mine and I’ll be damned if I’m going to share him with my tramp of a sister!”

  “Watch your mouth, young lady,” another female voice said from the doorway.

  Elias and Cerise turned to see an older vixen enter the room with a tray of sandwiches and cold cut meats. While Cerise got her coloration from her father, it was easy to see that her beauty came from her mother. The older female had coloration more like her other daughter, though with a bit more dark gray and a touch of silver in her hair.

  “My daughters don’t go around calling each other those kinds of names.” Then the female put the tray down and turned to greet Cerise and Elias. She stopped and looked at her daughter, then the white fox, and back again. Her mouth fell open.

  “Momma, this is Elias. Elias, my mother, Sharan.” Cerise tried to smile warmly but it was too late.

  Elias didn’t have a chance to greet his new mother-in-law as Sharan pushed him aside as she grabbed hold of Cerise and began to cry noisily. “Why didn’t you tell me?” the older vixen wailed clutching her daughter to her.

  “Actually this is a story that I’d like to hear as well,” Brees said grinning broadly. “Son, aren’t you content to contain the wreckage you cause to just ships?” he asked and began to chuckle himself while Sharan continued to cry.

***

It was almost midnight and no one seemed to be tired. Sander Brees had been convinced to stay and help celebrate the joining of Elias and Cerise. While Sharan sat near Cerise and began laying plans for a formal ceremony at a later date, the males sat and talked over glasses of the scotch liqueur that Elias, and Rovi both enjoyed so much.

  The younger fox discovered aspects to the two males that helped put them into a different light and Elias quietly assimilated what he was learning.

  When the other two males had joined the Spatial Police Force, the PA sanctioned agency was still a relatively young organization. They had been much like Elias himself, full of youthful exuberance with high ideals for the group that policed every system of the Planetary Alignment. Rovi had turned out to be a natural pilot, a trait that he’d obviously passed on to Cerise. As such he’d earned a reputation of being a terror when in the cockpit of anything that flew.

  As far as Brees was concerned, he had specialized in zero gravity combat, boarding operations and after a run in with a hostile force of ships early on in his career had developed a very pragmatic, some would say brutal, outlook regarding the necessity of training and professionalism in all aspects. It didn’t mean that he was a cold hearted monster, but a firm believer in that those that volunteered for the SPF had better do their jobs to the best of their ability to serve the citizenry of the PA, regardless of where they came from or what that job was. He carried this same set of standards into the Department of Investigations, then Special Operations when he became too old for spaceborne service.

  From the conversation it became very apparent that Rovi Tambor was the co-conspirator of the idea of outfitting civilian ships as pirate hunters. As the talk progressed, both males turned more frequently to Elias for an opinion.

  “The problem as far as I see it is that there is simply too much space to patrol. The volume is staggering, even around a single planet,” Elias was saying. “The reason that I think this has a chance of working is that the Colonel has developed a means that will save time and resources by making the pirates and privateers come to the trap. It’s far more efficient than sending battle capable ships out in an active search. It’s far too easy to tell what’s a cargo vessel and what’s a warship even with the most rudimentary sensors available.

  “Prohibiting the sale and possession of point defense weapons only makes the freighter crews easier targets, and it certainly won’t stop brigands from outfitting their vessels with whatever they can get their hands on. So that tack is also nonviable. But seeding the space lanes with these…what did you call them again, Colonel?”

  “Q-ships,” the lion said sipping from his glass.

  “Thank you. Q-ships. Seeding the lanes with these Q-ships draws those we want to capture much more easily than a reactive presence would hunting them down after the fact. And with the Okami H model hull that’s being fitted now, it can carry the shielding, armor, firepower and speed to take on anything but a naval Ship of the Line. What pirate would be able to resist a target as juicy as an Okami? They’re common, they pack a lot of cargo, even the ship is easy to sell off either whole or as parts…it’s too rich a prize. No one will suspect it’s a combat vessel. Then to do the same with other freighters and luxury craft? Absolute brilliance!” Elias was leaning forward now. He was a firm believer in Operation Sweeper and had been since Brees had asked him to join the program so many weeks ago in the hospital. “That each one would also be equipped with an interceptor, there are very few pirates that would be able to stand up to that kind of combination.”

  Rovi leaned back in his chair and regarded the other two, his eyes finally settling on Brees. “This is what our conversations so long ago created, Sandy?”

  The lion nodded. “Things have changed out there, Rovi. The Siilv War threw everything out of whack. Sure, freighters, even the more expensive cruise liners are starting to ship more goods and commerce is picking up, but not like it was. Each shipment, no matter what it is, whether electronics or lingerie is the cargo, they’re all vital for the worlds they are coming from and going to. And with the economic ramifications, even the SPF has had to make budget cuts. If we can demonstrate the difference a single Q-ship can make, it’ll be worth it. After a while, the pirates will either curtail their own attacks because they don’t know what’s a legitimate freighter or combat vessel. Or they’ll find less risky means of obtaining their gains, which would mean legitimate endeavors. But we all know that’ll never happen. There will always be those that prey on others, quick rewards for minimum risk. And we’ll be out there waiting for them.”

  The older fox looked at Elias then. “You know this is going to put a strain on the relationship you have with Cerise, don’t you?”

  Elias nodded. “We talked it over, Sir. We know that it won’t be easy at all, but she knows that I can’t give this up. I’m not going to tell you what her reaction was when I brought up the idea of resigning my commission.”

  “Don’t do that, son. I need you too badly,” Brees said with a growl. “Besides, day after tomorrow you’ll be meeting your crew and doing a final inspection of the ship.”

  “It’s ready?” Elias asked in amazement. “I thought there was still about three weeks of work to do!”

  The lion shook his head. “The crews at Okami really burned the candles to get this done. They’ve had workers going ‘round the clock to finish outfitting the ship. Which reminds me, I need to know what you want to name her and if there are any special colors you want the hull painted? Nothing military like, mind you.”

  The fox looked over at Cerise deep in conversation with her mother on the other side of the room and nodded. He quietly told them what he wanted and why. Brees and Rovi both nodded, somewhat pleased.

  “Makes sense. The Maker knows I’d have done the same if she were the first thing that I’d seen waking up in a hospital,” the lion said with another lopsided grin.

  Rovi agreed. “I named my fighter after her mother. She never let me down, that’s for sure.”

  Elias was pleased that they concurred with his choice of name for the ship. Then, curiosity getting the better of him, Elias asked a question that had been burning in his head all night.

  “Sirs, if you don’t mind my asking, how did the two of you meet? One was shipboard operations and the other a pilot, I haven’t really seen that much camaraderie between the two sections.”

  Brees laughed and Rovi smiled. “It all started on the first day I arrived at the Academy. All of us were nervous and scared with the instructors yelling at us constantly and ordering us to do things that made absolutely no sense to brand new cadets,” the elder fox’s eyes had taken that faraway look to them that said he was reliving a memory that hadn’t been dusted off in quite some time. “Drop for push-ups, run to such and such thing and back, giving out nicknames because there must have been two hundred of us and that’s too many names to actually remember. And here comes this mangy lion that isn’t old enough to have a full mane yet, staggering out of the shuttle where he’d fallen asleep. And the first thing he asks is ‘when do we eat’? I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. The instructors had a field day with us then, I’m here to tell you! We were dorm mates and became close friends afterwards.”

  Brees laughed. “I couldn’t help it. I had just been on the worst three week run of my life to get to the Academy and hadn’t been able to get breakfast. I was hungry!”

  “Sandy, you are always hungry,” the black furred fox said. “I could have fed my entire family for an extra week with what you ate tonight.”

  Brees looked at Elias. “High metabolism,” he said with a shrug.

— NEXT CHAPTER —

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