Recovering Our Own

Chapter Eleven: Anger and Tears

 

Owen sat in the Duxian office, feeling uncomfortable in the chair Raidah normally sat in. Why am I the one sitting here? He thought, frustrated. It never should have been me. I can't do this. They've been gone less than 48 hours and already things are getting out of control.

Three sharp knocks hit the door.

"Come in!"

Tyler entered the room, anxiously wringing his hands.

"What is it now, Ty?"

"Travis, you know the air guy, pilot? Broke his wrist in a nasty fall, he's in the hospital now."

Owen ran his hands through his hair and drew in a sharp breath. "Broken bones, we've had plenty of those before. Is there something immensely important about this Travis?"

"No, but we have to report all injuries to the top commander, and as of now that would be you," Tyler explained.

"Very well. Alright, is that it?"

"For now. I'd expect you'll be getting a lot more injury reports in the near future."

Owen groaned and his head flopped down onto the desk. "This is was we're preparing for! We won't have time to bother with injury reports in battle. Why bother now?"

"Take it up with the Council," Tyler said. "How're you holdin' up here?"

"Terribly," Owen responded. "How does Raidah handle this? And for the rest of her life? No wonder some of them have gone crazy."

"You're the first person I've known to have complained about the prospect of being Duxian," Tyler said with a chortle.

"Ty, you know I was never meant for this."

Tyler's face cleared of laughter, and his glance focused for a moment on the harsh white scar running across Owen's face. "Yeah," he said. "But you'll do just fine. She picked you for a reason."

"She picked me as a backup. The second option."

"Seconds pretty good."

"Is it? Is it good knowing you were just the default second pick, that there was one person better, and maybe if you had just worked a little harder, pushed a little more... that maybe you would be in first, and second? Second is when it seems like there's no one else to blame, second's your fault." Owen spat out the words as if they were a bitter liquid.

"Hey," Tyler said, placing a hand on Owen's shoulder. "It's not your fault."

"But it is, Ty. It's all my fault."

~~~

Taya flopped down on her bed, sinking into the soft brown comforter. She began to cry. Tears trickled down her cheeks as she reflected on the past day.

In only one day, she thought, how could I have gotten into such a mess?

She didn't know what she had been thinking. Lead an army? Destroy an entire world of people with only a couple hundred people? Insanity, all of it. They should just wait for Kallan to come back, and she would help them-

No. A small part of her interrupted, the two sides battling in her mind. Why should Kallan be the one we rely on for everything? After all, the rest of us are just as good. We don't even know what her power is, we should be ready for anything. We can't just really on Kallan to save us all. We have to do something.

But what to do? Their numbers were few, and though they had been training all their lives, they were no match for the humans, who had weapons of mass destruction they used in their own wars. And that was against themselves. Who knew what they would when an inhuman species attacked them? They had to use something the humans could stop, something they had no way of overpowering.