The Only One

those around him to view the latest mishap. Too much carnage, too much death—
    they had a numbing effect on the psyche.
    Covered in gore, Taj Sai, Joren Sai's orphan, staggered into the Big Room. Her red-blond hair had come loose from its binding, thrashing about like blood-encrusted whips as she swung her overly bright gaze from one end of the room to the other. She waved off an army of helpers. "I'm unharmed," she gasped.
    She stopped in the middle of the room, her hands fisted at her sides. At first glance, she appeared fragile, her amber eyes hollow and haunted, but the muscles flexing beneath the skin of her slender limbs indicated endurance and strength.
    The silence as everyone paused was deafening. Taj Sai pressed one bloodied fist to her chest. "Pasha is dead," she said on a breath of anguish.
    "Pasha . . . Pasha," came cries and murmurs around the room. The bombmaker fabricated the munitions they used on raids. Taj was his apprentice. It should have been many years before she had to take his place.
    Should have been, Romjha thought. There were a lot of things like that.
    Elder Patra, an ancient who'd known those who lived topside in prewar days, raised her voice. "What happened?"
    "There was an explosion in the lab." Taj shook visibly but didn't shed a single tear. With contempt she spat out, "Another accident. And I have come here to tell you that this irresponsibility must end, or we will end as a people!"
    Romjha's head spun and his leg ached, but he couldn't pull his eyes from Taj as she shouted, "We've met the enemy, and he is us! Should you doubt me, you can ask Pasha—for if things continue as they are, all of us will be making a trip to the Ever After to see him. Just yesterday a raider's rifle misfired." Her wild, impassioned eyes found Romjha's. The jolt of that brief contact rocked him to the core.
    "Last week it was the fuel spill," she continued, dragging those appalled eyes from his. "What is next?" she beseeched the shocked, silent gathering. "Who is next?"
    Romjha grimaced. Her accusation rang with a truth he couldn't deny. His misfire was a mistake that could have just as easily killed Petro or any of the children scampering underfoot. He'd loaded his weapon too early, kept it cocked. With their population in decline, could they afford such recklessness, such sloppiness?
    "We have become lax," Taj charged. "That is what is killing our people. Laziness. Apathy," she growled.
    "These are the greatest dangers of all!"
    Her scorn for men like Romjha emanated from her like heat from a blaze, melting his indifference like wax.
    Abruptly self-conscious, he cleared his throat and shifted more of his weight to his good leg.
    Taj marched back and forth, as if the energy coursing through her wouldn't allow her to stay still. Romjha had been raised to celebrate and appreciate the differences between men and women, but this woman was unlike any he'd ever encountered. The black outfit she wore was utilitarian and unisex. It contrasted with her long hair and graceful body. She obviously relished her femininity, and yet she addressed her people with the confidence of a raider.
    It roused his curiosity.
    What was she—seventeen by now? Eighteen? He should know, but he didn't. He'd grown up with the girl.
    Joren, her father, had been a hero to him.
    Joren was one of the few men who studied theology beyond the classes given them all as youngsters in an attempt to keep this small, cavern-bound civilization "civilized." He and Romjha had debated endless hours on religion. philosophy. and politics. If not for Joren, Romjha would not know as much as he did about the pre-Fall years of the Empire; he would not have known how to study the books—huge handwritten tomes created from what the original survivors of Sienna had remembered from the days of computers and historical databases. Joren had helped Romjha form opinions on what the ruined galaxy might be like now, who in it had perhaps survived, and who had not. And then Joren had died.
    Taj had been a brave soul throughout the ordeal, but Romjha hadn't given her much thought since, or anything else much thought. He'd spent too much time drifting in his own personal hell.
    It occurred to him now that Taj had lost her family, too, and here she was: so vital. So alive.
    So angry.
    "We say that we fight the warlord," she growled. "But I question who is the real enemy when all the casualties we've suffered of late have been at our own hands."
    Several of the