Author: A. C. Hadfield
Date: 2017-08-14 07:00:00+00:00
Description: The war with the deadly Host continues, only now they have secret alien allies bolstering their efforts. Our former general has defected. Our fleet of battleships took a battering in the first battle. And I’m trapped in another part of the galaxy trying to find my parents and, ultimately, my way home. The situation looks bleak, but I have ancient Navigator technology at my disposal, and I'm mad as hell. Then there's this weird alien information bomb inside my head that I can't access despite it suggesting great power. With new enemies lining up to thwart my plans, I’ll need to muster all the c
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Rights: Copyright 2017 A.C. Hadfield. All rights reserved.

Magnitude

Blackstar Command Book 2

A.C. Hadfield

Binary Books Ltd

First Published in 2017 by Binary Books Ltd

Copyright A.C. Hadfield 2017

All Rights Reserved.

The moral right of the author has been asserted. All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be produced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

Version 1.0

Created with Vellum

Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

About the Author

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the following wonderful people for all their help and input. Their combined efforts helped make this book a reality. Thank you!

A.Sikes, P.Szabo, P.Nolet, D.Crosley, and C.Barnes

Chapter 1

After Kai had opened up a wormhole and sent the fighting Coalition and Host ships through it, he was eager to follow them in the Navigator ship, the Blackstar, and find where they had gone.

He had his mother to find—and if true, his father was also somewhere beyond the Veil: the section of space previously unavailable to those in the quadrant.

Marella, Senaya, and Bandar were now the crew of the Blackstar and were hurtling through space to a coordinate where Kai suspected he would find the other ships.

Kai learned something else early on into their trip through the wormhole about the maxim of silence being golden: it could also be uncomfortable. Once the initial scrambling of senses from entering the wormhole wore off, no one really spoke.

Senaya tinkered with the Blackstar’s controls, muttering occasionally about the need for a user manual.

Marella wandered around the bridge. Her fingers grazed the walls, and she bent lower to get a close look at the bottom of the holocube: a centrally placed cube about a meter wide on all sides showing a holographic representation of video streams or whatever the crew desired.

Bandar simply leaned back in the semicircular crash couch on the bridge, stretched out, crossed his legs in front of him, and puffed on his pungent jola leaf cigar, its smoke encircling his head like a halo.

As for Kai, he spent the first few minutes of the journey watching the space inside the wormhole on the holocube. It was a swirling blackness, the deepest dark he had ever seen. There was a liquid quality to the way it churned and rolled over on itself.

He had to glance away after a while because staring at it caused his stomach to roll. He knew he should talk to Bandar, his half-brother, but all the questions he wanted to ask were jumbled up in his mind. He didn’t trust himself to voice them yet.

The revelation of their family relationship was still too new; he hadn’t processed what it meant.

Instead, he removed the tetrahedron from his pocket and rolled it around in his fingers. A twinge of excitement rushed through him when he made the symbols glow, but that feeling quickly turned to ash when he remembered that, while a neat trick, it brought him no closer to unlocking all the new knowledge in his head. And since that one time when it seemed to happen automatically, he hadn’t been able to replicate it.

“So,” Bandar said, finally breaking the awkward silence.

Kai tore his eyes away from the tetrahedron and met Bandar’s gaze. “So…”

“Well, now that we have the formalities out of the way,” Bandar said through a cloud of smoke, “don’t you think it would be a good time for us to talk? We have about four and a half hours left to get to the other side of the Veil.”

The Veil.

One more thing to add to the increasing weight on Kai’s mind.

Not so long ago he just wanted to race ships. But now? He had his own ship—a Navigator ship, no less—and was on a journey with an old friend, a new friend, and a thug, to the other side of the Veil to find his parents.

Kai sighed and placed the Navigator artifact back into his pocket.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Kai said.

“Um, should we leave you two alone?” Marella said from where she stood at the front of the bridge.

“No way,” Senaya interjected, her eyes aglow. “I’ve got to hear this.”

“Maybe they would like some privacy, Senaya,” Marella said.

“No, it’s fine,” Kai said. He ran a hand through his hair, giving his crew a half-smile. “We’re all in this together. I don’t want any secrets between us.” He glanced at Bandar. “Unless that’s a problem for you?”

“Right as rain, kid,” Bandar said, chomping on the butt of his cigar. “I’m too tired for more secrets.”

“Okay,” Kai said. “First off—”

“First off, how are you still alive?” Senaya interrupted.

All eyes turned to look at her; she felt a bit of a blush begin to creep up her neck. She shrugged. “What? We all want to know.” She looked at Bandar and pressed on. “The last time we saw you, you slammed a gyrocraft into that Host ship. The thing exploded.“

“Very true,” Bandar said with a half-smile.

“Well? How the hell did you not die?”

“Oh, I died,” Bandar said, a pained expression on his face. “But just for a minute. I bailed out right before impact, did a nifty little free fall, and then landed on the roof of a building opposite your position.”

“But we didn’t see that,” Kai said. “We would have come back for you.”

“And that would have been amazingly stupid, even for you,” Bandar said, noticing his cigar had gone out. He relit it, puffed to get it going again, and blew out a huge stream of smoke. “And of course you missed my dive. You were all paying attention to the collision. Anyway, I got banged up during my fall. I crawled to cover and sent a message to an old friend of mine, a former doctor, and waited. Next thing I know, I’m waking up with the old drunk smacking my face. I almost throttled him. Long story short, I died for about a minute, and the doc brought me back. He patched me up; I convalesced for a couple of days, then heard about your little mission. So I stole a ship, and here I am.”

Kai and the others stared at him in wonder.

He made the whole thing sound so normal, so average, so routine. Perhaps, Kai thought, coming back from the dead was normal, average, day-in-the-life kind of stuff for his half-brother. He shook his head in disbelief.

“If anyone else told that story, I’d think they were lying,” Kai said. “But you?”

“Just another day, kid,” Bandar said, but a quick look in his eyes—there for a split second and then gone—belied his casual tone.

“Okay. About us being brothers,” Kai said.

“Half-brothers,” Bandar corrected.

“Right. How do I have no memory of you from childhood?”

“When you turned three, I was fifteen and went off to a military academy. After that, I joined up full-time. So you would never have seen me.” He paused and tapped ash into a pocket. “Well, that’s not entirely right. You saw me plenty; you were just too young to remember it.”

“That makes sense, I guess,” Kai said. “But my parents—”

“Went off to fight the Host war and left you behind with relatives.”

“But why?” Kai was trying to understand but couldn’t. Perhaps it was due to exhaustion or perhaps because his mind was a fragmented mess since the Navigator artifact on Oberus had shoved all this information in his head. “Why did they leave me on a remote, backward planet like Zarunda?”

“Well, kid…” Bandar must have recognized the pained, confused expression on Kai’s face. He sighed. “Look, Kai, I don’t have all the answers. What I do know is this: Kendal didn’t want you on a core world because of the Navigator blood running through your veins. If the Coalition had found out, you would have become a lab animal, constantly poked and prodded, in hopes they could use you to unlock secrets to Navigator tech.”

“It’s true, Kai,” Marella said. “You would have been under constant scrutiny from their scientists. That’s how the Coalition works.”

“But if it would have helped…” Kai trailed off.

“The main reason you were left on that hell-pit of a planet,” Bandar said, “is that our dad wanted you to be able to live a normal life, to live your life as you saw fit. Ain’t no better way to learn than to fail, kid.” He smiled a roguish smile. “And from what I saw, you failed a great deal.”

“No truer words,” Senaya said, her large eyes dancing.

“Yeah, thanks, Sen,” Kai said, then turning his attention back to Bandar, asked, “So how did you end up on Zarunda?”

“After my injuries, I left the military, and our folks asked me if I would be willing to go back, to keep an eye on you,” Bandar said. “So I became Bandar Trace, rogue, thug, and parts dealer.”

“Thug is right,” Senaya said. “Your reputation was terrifying.”

“Is. To be in that life, I had to live that life,” Bandar said with a shrug. “But that reputation of mine was partly fiction. A tale to scare kids and keep my cover secure.”

“Kids, hell,” Senaya said. “It scared everyone.”

“Then I guess it did its job.”

Kai relaxed into his chair, somewhat satisfied with Bandar’s explanation. He’d still prefer to hear it from his parents, but a part of him could understand why they’d left him behind.

Bandar prodded Kai with his elbow. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” Kai said, rolling the tetrahedron around in his pocket. “Well, mostly, anyway.”

“I wish I could tell you more, but that’s pretty much the extent of my knowledge on the subject,” Bandar said. “For the rest of the story, you’re going to have to ask your dad.”

“And our mom,” Kai said. “That’s the weirdest part of this whole thing, you know. That a decorated GTU agent is the mother of the most feared man on Zarunda.”

“You’ll get used to it, kid,” Bandar said, then reached out and rustled Kai’s hair.

“Do that again,” Kai said, “and I will shoot you.”

“You used to love it,” Bandar said.

“I used to love sprouts, too, but you don’t see me eating them now, do you?” Kai said.

Bandar laughed. “Point taken.”

* * *

The rest of the journey through the wormhole was spent in equal amounts getting to know each other and trying to learn more about the Blackstar.

Finally, a warning flashed on the holocube, and Senaya checked her board.

“Okay, buckle up, boys and girls,” she said. “We’re about to exit the wormhole.”

The crew took their places on the couch, buckled in, and waited for the exit procedure.

Moments later, all went dark on the bridge.

Kai felt as though his insides were being pulled out forever, and then it was over. “At least I didn’t pass out that time,” Kai muttered, shaking his head to clear his vision. “Everyone all right?”

The crew acknowledged in the affirmative, though Marella looked like she wanted to throw up.

“Oh my, look at that…” Senaya said in breathless tones.

Her eyes were bigger than normal. Kai followed her gaze to the holocube.

“Wow,” he said in a small voice, slowly getting to his feet.

“Amazing,” Marella said.

True to what looked like a bad habit, Bandar lit a fresh cigar.

The holocube showed a new part of the galaxy. Well, new to them, at any rate. The patterns of stars in the inky void were like nothing they’d ever seen before. None of the constellations they’d all known for their entire lives were evident.

A massive nebula of gold, green, and orange dominated the middle distance and drew their eyes like magnets to a metal file.

“Yes, children, it’s all pretty and whatnot, but you’re missing the important stuff,” Bandar said.

“What?” Kai said, tearing his gaze away from the awesome sight, raising an eyebrow.

“Look again.”

Kai did so, and the look of awe vanished from his features. He collapsed back onto the couch.

Scattered in the foreground was the huge wreckage of dozens of ships, both Host and CDF. And so many bodies, floating in space like frozen fragments of garbage.

Kai’s stomach clenched. He wondered if the wormhole had caused this destruction. If so, then he was responsible for all of these deaths.

“This ain’t your fault,” Bandar said, as though reading his thoughts. “Look closely. You’ll see evidence of carbon scoring on the hulls. Or what’s left of them, anyway.”

Kai ordered the screen to magnify and saw that Bandar was correct: the destruction had resulted from a battle.

The holocube flashed red and let out a chirp.

“What the hell is that?” Kai asked, but Senaya was already checking the clear board at her station.

“It’s a distress beacon,” she said. “Coalition.”

“Track it and get us there,” Kai said.

Senaya nodded and, after a brief moment, navigated the Blackstar through the debris until they found the source: a lone Coalition escape pod.

Kai immediately opened a hailing frequency.

“Coalition pod, this is Kai Locke of the Blackstar. We’ve received your distress signal and are preparing to bring you on board.” He paused and looked at Senaya. “Right?”

“Working on it, Kai,” she said, waving her hands over her control panel.

“Blackstar? Yes, right, whatever you say,” a quavering voice replied. “You’re not even real, are you? No, no, not real at all. Just my imagination. All my imagination.”

“We’re real,” Kai said, casting a questioning glance at Bandar, who just shrugged and puffed on his cigar.

“Oh, yes. Of course, you are,” the voice replied and then broke into a racking cough.

“What’s your name?” Kai asked.

“I know my name; why would my imagination want to know my name?”

“Senaya, how’s it coming?” Kai said.

“Still working,” she answered, flailing her arms in frustration. “Can we turn the AI back on?”

“Not yet. I don’t trust it.” Kai returned to the open channel. “Coalition pod, what is your name?”

“My name? Fine, fine. My name is Dalmar Osbyrne, XO of the CDF Trident.” He laughed. “Or is that former XO since the Trident no longer exists?”

“Okay, Osbyrne, how extensive are your injuries?” Kai asked.

“What does it matter? We’re all going to die! Or we’re already dead, and you’re speaking to a ghost. Or I am.”

“His life signs are erratic,” Marella said, looking at her own panel.

“Osbyrne, listen,” Kai said. “We’re going to come get you, okay? Stick with us for a few moments, we’re having a bit of a technical glitch over here.”

“Aren’t we all?” Osbyrne replied and launched into a spasm of wet-sounding coughing.

“Senaya, today,” Kai snapped.

“Ok, got it,” she said. “You’re taking this captain lark a little seriously, don’t you think?” She gave him a side-eye glare. Kai shook his head but tempered himself; she had a point. There was no need for him to snap at her.

“Okay, Osbyrne, we’re on our way,” Kai said. “Are there any Host vessels still alive out here?”

“Host?” Osbyrne spat, his voice cracking. “There’s no Host here. Only those goddamned machines. They attacked us. Nothing we could do to stop them. They wiped us out.”

His voice vanished into another fit of coughing. The sound of gasping and pounding filled the Blackstar’s bridge.

“We’re losing him,” Marella said.

“They’ll kill you like they killed us,” the XO wheezed. “They’re unstoppable. They’ll kill you all.” Another gasp, a long wheeze, and then silence.

“Osbyrne?” Kai asked. “Osbyrne!”

“It’s too late, Kai,” Marella said in a small voice. “He’s gone.”

“Damn it,” Kai said, and slumped back in his seat.

“What was he talking about?” Senaya asked. “What machines?”

“I don’t know,” Bandar answered. “But I don’t want to stick around here to find out.”

“We can’t just leave. There could be more out there,” Kai said.

“Kid, that’s real noble and all, but they’re all dead,” Bandar stated bluntly. “We need to move on before we join them. We need to go to the next coordinate, find Brenna.”

“Brenna?” Kai said, “You mean Mom, or Mother, surely. She’s family, after all.”

“Call her what you want, kid, but she’s a GTU agent, and hell, I’ve called her Brenna for as long as I can remember. Don’t mean nothing, though, just how it is when you’re in the CDF.”

“Surely it’d be Agent Locke in that case,” he said, staring back at Bandar.

“Family doesn’t have to be so formal,” Bandar replied with a sly grin.

Kai ran his fingers through his hair in frustration, even going so far as to pull it briefly, and then nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “Of course, you’re right. Senaya, lock in the coordinates for the next jump point and let’s—”

The holocube flashed red; the warning cut him off.

“We’ve got company, Captain,” Senaya said.

“What? Who?”

“Looks like Host fighters,” she said. “Must have been hiding in the wreckage. And they’re right on top of us.”

Chapter 2

Brenna Locke thought about one of the facts rarely mentioned in films or holonovels—that the first thing a body wants to do after recovering from being knocked unconscious is to throw up.

She hated the feeling of her rebelling stomach when she came round in alien territory. She cranked the oxygen levels up to seventy-five percent and took deep, calming breaths. She hummed a nursery rhyme while rubbing her temples and let cool air from the Rapier’s HVAC system blow directly into her face.

Her stomach finally settled down after a few minutes of her ritual. She dropped the oxygen levels of the cockpit back to normal levels. The last thing she needed now was a case of oxygen intoxication, particularly since one of the possible side effects was vomiting. The irony wasn’t lost on her.

All of her hard work proved to be for nothing, though. She glanced out the forward window, and the star field beyond rotated in a slow, corkscrew pattern.

Her stomach clenched again, and she squeezed her eyes shut. She inhaled long and slow through her nose, exhaling through her mouth.

“Son of a bitch,” she muttered, once she finally gained control of her treasonous digestive system.

“Do you need something, Agent Locke?” the ship’s AI said over the speakers.

“Nothing, Flick.”

Brenna set about righting her floating ship. A thought struck her, and she stopped.

“Ya know what, Flick? I lied.”

“How so?”

“I do need something.”

“Hardly a lie, as far as my programming shows. You merely changed your mind, and I believe your culture accepts that as your prerogative.”

“Lighten up, Flick.”

“That is not within my parameters.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Brenna fiddled with some of the readings on her control panel.

“What do you need, Agent Locke?”

“I need a damage report and a full diagnostic check on the engines and control systems.”

“Running.”

Brenna originally wanted to turn on the engines but thought better of it. If something had happened during the battle, she didn’t want to risk blowing her engines out or, worse, cause an explosion.

“Minor damage to the fuselage,” Flick said. “Nothing to concern yourself with at the moment. Hull integrity is at ninety-eight percent.”

“Good to know. And the engines?”

“Working well within their functional guidelines.”

“Excellent,” Brenna said. She flicked her hand across her control board, and the engines powered up. A low rumble ran through the Rapier. She engaged the throttle and maneuvering thrusters, reversing the rotation and bringing a halt to that damned slow spin.

“Finally,” she said.

She glanced over the star charts but found them futile. She scanned the section of space but quickly realized her knowledge was equally worthless. All of her knowledge was of Coalition space. Nothing looked at all familiar.

“Flick, do you have any idea where we are?”

“Outside of Coalition space.”

“I kind of figured that.”

“Then what was the reason for the inquiry?”

“I was just hoping that maybe there was some kind of information gathered from the Navigators in this part of the galaxy in your memory.”

“If that information was available, logic dictates it would be included in the star charts.”

“Yes, Flick, thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Brenna sighed and shook her head and thought that maybe she should have Flick put in a requisition for a ship’s cat. At least a feline wouldn’t frustrate her.

“Okay, Flick, do you have the ability to scan and store this quadrant?”

“Indeed, Agent Locke,” the AI replied.

Brenna thought she caught the barest hint of sarcasm in the tone, but let it go.

“Do you have enough memory for that?”

“Yes. Since it will not be actual video of the sector, but rather a simulation, it should not take up much room.”

“Good. Get on that.”

“Working, Agent Locke.”

While Flick scanned and stored the positions of the stars, Brenna set to work on bringing one of the Rapier’s probes online. She tapped in the search parameters and adjusted the onboard sensors.

“I could have done that for you,” Flick said.

“You’re busy at the moment, and I didn’t want to wait until you finished to find out where the Veil is.”

“I have the ability to multitask, given my two hundred and four CPU cores, most of which go unused around here.”

There was that tone again. Did Felicity—or Flick as Brenna thought of it—have the ability to adapt built into one of her subroutines? A question for another time, Brenna thought.

“Duly noted, Flick.”

Brenna checked the numbers she had input into the probe and launched it.

“Fly, little probe, fly,” she said and watched the exhaust trail until it was lost in the dark background of space.

She nodded and rubbed her hands together, content to be doing something about her predicament. Even if it was only something so small as to figure out where the damned Veil was.

“How’s that scan coming?”

“Still processing.”

“Keep me updated.”

“Of course.”

“And after you complete that—” Her train of thought was obliterated. “What the hell is that?”

Outside her craft, what could only be described as a giant tentacled creature floated by through the vacuum of space.

Not floating precisely, but more like swimming, she corrected herself.

The creature’s tentacles undulated behind it, propelling it through the empty void as though it were swimming through the depths of an ocean.

Brenna’s blood ran cold. Her eyes grew wide, her fingers digging into her control panel. Was this thing real? She wondered if she had breathed too much of the pure oxygen but cast that thought aside as quickly as it had come.

The thing floating—swimming—past outside was like something from one of the stories she’d read as a youth, about impossible otherworldly horrors that shattered the human mind.

But Brenna’s mind wasn’t shattered at all. Now that the initial shock had worn off, her mind raced, cataloging every detail of the creature that she could see. About a half a mile in diameter, give or take, its rubbery-looking flesh was a dark gray hue with an almost liquid appearance. Small puffs of ejecta emitted from various parts of its body, the largest coming from the buccal mass where the tentacles met.

That must be how it propels itself, Brenna thought.

“Flick…”

“Recording already, Agent Locke.”

“That’s a good girl,” Brenna said. Her fingers ached, and she realized she was still white-knuckling the control panel. She released it and flexed her hands, shaking the pain and numbness away.

“This is incredible,” she said, giddy at the idea of making possible first contact with a species no one in the Coalition had even dreamt of.

The creature turned toward the Rapier and stopped, floating in the inky void several kilometers in front of the vessel. The space around the creature blurred, looking akin to the haziness of overheated concrete, pulsed out and enveloped the ship. The comforting thrum of the engines died; the cabin’s lights went out. The Rapier was dead in space.

Brenna’s elation and wonder turned to dread.

“What the hell?” she said. “Flick, you with me?”

Nothing.

“Of course not.” Brenna tapped on her control panel, trying to will some signs of life out of the vessel, but to no avail. “Two hundred and four CPU cores and you ain’t worth a damn when it matters.”

A bright white light projected from the octopus-like creature’s mantle and pierced the darkness of the void.

Brenna squinted and held up one hand to shield her eyes from the blinding light. Even then it was almost too much for her ocular system to handle. Pain pierced her skull.

And then it hit her. She wasn’t under attack, not at all.

This creature was scanning her ship.

This realization, however cold it might be, comforted her somewhat. At least she wasn’t going to die. Not yet, anyway.

And then it happened.

Brenna’s already stressed mind was filled with images of alien worlds and equally alien species.

Giant golden pyramidal structures in the middle of a desert, crawling with tripodal creatures, dark almost obsidian-colored skin, no body hair to be seen, and large eyes that were mostly pupil.

A massive crystalline tower, reaching into the heavens, almost too big to comprehend, like something out of a fairy story from her childhood.

Androids, or something related. Their eyes emitted a dark glow. Terrible mechanical beings that appeared exactly as they were: cold and heartless.

Brenna’s eyelids fluttered. The cascade of images faded from her mind.

“What the living hell was that?” she asked aloud, breathless.

Her heart hammered in her chest. A line of cold sweat rolled down her spine. She shivered at the almost ticklish sensation. It was only then that she noticed that the Rapier was no longer being bathed in the light of the alien being.

When she blinked, she still had the afterimage behind her eyelids.

“What the hell is going on? Flick?”

She closed her eyes and shook her head, trying to clear her mind. She opened her eyes just in time to see the alien turn and move off. It floated away from her.

The Rapier’s power returned as suddenly as it had gone out. The sounds of the rebooting systems startled Brenna, and she let out a small squeal of surprise.

She shook her head at that. She hadn’t squealed at anything since she was a teenager; when a large insect had dropped onto her bare stomach while she sunned herself on a rock by a lake. And now, forty years and countless dangers later, she sounded like that young girl.

“Pathetic,” she said.

Brenna checked the instruments, and everything seemed to be in working order, as if nothing had happened.

“Flick, are you back online?”

“Yes, Agent Locke.”

“I don’t suppose you got any of that?”

“Any of what?”

“Didn’t think so,” Brenna said, her eyes following the retreating alien life-form.

She sat bolt upright and stared forward. A wormhole opened up in front of the creature, and it slipped inside.

“Ping the probe, Flick.”

“Pinging.” Flick paused. “It’s still in search mode.”

“Damnit.” She tapped a finger on the control panel and watched as the creature’s tentacles began to disappear inside the wormhole. “Right. Let’s go.”

“Go where, Agent Locke?”

“We’re following that big bastard into the wormhole—it leads somewhere, and I don’t want to stick around here, waiting to become a snack for something bigger.”

“I would advise against that, Agent. There’s no telling where it might lead or what might be on the other side.”

“Exactly.” Brenna smiled a crooked smile. “Where’s your sense of adventure? Besides, we’re currently nowhere, and our resources will continue to run down. Better we follow this thing and hope to find some kind of civilization.”

“Adventure is not in my programming.”

“More’s the pity.”

There was something else that Brenna didn’t share with Flick for fear of triggering a psych report: there was something about that whole experience that told her she should follow. Perhaps it was the body language of the alien entity, or perhaps it was related to the imagery it had put into her brain, but those didn’t seem like acts of aggression.

Brenna brought her engines up to full power and engaged them, chewing up the distance to the wormhole at a rapid pace.

She noticed a red flash on the control panel. The sensors picked up another ship directly behind the Rapier and following at the same speed.

“Flick, give me visuals and magnify the image,” Brenna said.

“On your screen.”

“It’s a ship, all right,” Brenna said, squinting at the screen. It was hard to make out, as if it was partially cloaked, but to Brenna, it looked like some kind of bird.

“Nothing I can do about it now,” she said.

She took a deep breath, steeled her nerves as best as she could, and tossed out a prayer to any deity that might be roaming that part of space.

The Rapier plunged into the wormhole. And the black ship followed.

Chapter 3

Kai watched the holoscreen as the three Host fighters approached on an attack vector, their needlelike noses aimed directly at the Blackstar.

In his head, he pictured their approach and placed their positions into a three-dimensional matrix so that he could spot a route of defense.

This was an ability familiar to him, but he assumed was also part of his cache of information he couldn’t quite fully activate. He remembered having similar experiences during his ship-racing days, and it always proved helpful in tight situations.

“Awaiting your orders, kid,” Bandar prompted.

“Right,” Kai said, giving a curt nod. “I’ll pilot, Bandar. Senaya, you’re on weapons.”

“What about the AI?” Senaya asked.

“No AI. We’re doing this the old-fashioned way.”

“But why?”

“I don’t trust it yet, Sen. I trust you, however.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

“What do you want me to do?” Marella said.

“Be our eyes and ears for anything odd out there.”

“Will do.”

“By the way, Bandar? Let’s cut the kid crap, all right? Call me by my name or nothing at all,” Kai said.

Bandar dropped a level look at him and then nodded. “Roger that. How are we running this, Kai?”

“You control the port arrays, and Sen will control the starboard.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Kai’s fingers flew across his control panel. The armrests and restraints enveloped the crew. Next, he brought up the shields. A light flashed on the holocube, indicating the shields were functioning, but it was redundant, as the whine through the hull told them the same thing. He was starting to bond with the ship now, getting to know it like the body of a loved one.

“Two kilometers out and closing,” Marella said. Kai continued to watch the oncoming Host Arrow fighters. The ship’s systems indicated they were less than thirty seconds away from their firing range.

“What are they doing?” he said. The three Arrows changed formation, lining up tail-to-nose.

“Setting us up for an easy shot,” Senaya said.

“I don’t think so,” Bandar said.

“They’re smarter than that,” Marella added, leaning in to get a good look at the video display on the wall of the ship’s bridge.

Kai counted down the seconds.

“Get ready. As soon as the Arrows are remotely in range, I want full power through the weapons array on the lead ship,” Kai added.

Ten seconds. Five seconds.

“Now!” Kai ordered.

Bandar and Senaya each unleashed a volley from their respective particle rearrangement cannons, but at the last possible instant the Arrows broke their single-file formation and spun off in three different directions.

“Miss!” Senaya called out. “Son of a…”

The Arrows flashed by on three sides, unloading on the Blackstar with their lasers. A flash outside showed that the shields easily absorbed the attack. The holoscreen showed the fighters turning and coming back around for another run.

“Damn, those things can shift,” Kai said, thinking what he would have done to have had one of those in his ship-racing days.

He engaged thrusters and began guiding the Blackstar through the debris field of the previous battle.

“Risky move,” Bandar said. “There could still be live ordnance in here.”

“No ‘could’ about it; there’s definitely live ordnance out here,” Kai said as the shields absorbed another round of laser fire.

A thought struck Kai. He turned to Marella.

“Scan for any weapons floating around out there. Missiles, bombs, whatever,” he said.

“Ok, scanning,” she replied, quickly entering the data in the control panel. “Bandar was right, Kai. There’s a lot of dangerous stuff in here.”

Kai swung the Blackstar wide to the right to miss the hulking remains of a battleship and then back around to narrowly miss colliding with another. On the holoscreen, the Arrows were following behind, maneuvering much more easily than the larger Navigator vessel, but apparently not as confident. The Blackstar might be able to withstand a glancing blow from a piece of wreckage—the small fighter craft definitely would not.

“Find the nearest explosive and put it on the holoscreen, Marella,” Kai said. Sweat dripped down the side of his face, causing the day-old growth of beard stubble to itch. He ignored it.

“Done,” Marella said.

“Okay,” he said. Based on the power readings, it was a red-tip nuke located less than three hundred yards aft and to the port side of their position. He nodded and piloted the craft toward it.

“Bandar, Sen, aim for that missile,” Kai said. “As soon as we’re past—”

“Got it,” Bandar said, cutting his half-brother off.

“I don’t get it,” Senaya said.

“Please, just trust me,” Kai said.

Senaya squinted at him and raised an eyebrow but did as he suggested.

“Locked on,” Bandar said.

“Excellent.” Kai sped past a burned-out Host ship. The Arrows were less than two hundred and fifty yards behind, but beginning to close.

The Blackstar sped past the derelict missile.

Kai watched the display, waiting for just the right moment.

“Fire!” he barked. Senaya and Bandar unleashed a flurry of cannon fire at the floating explosive just as the three Arrows came abreast of the nuke.

“Vampire missiles coming our way,” Marella called out.

“Where?” Kai said.

Marella enlarged her view on the control panel to the large video screen on the west side of the bridge. The feed tracked the missile launched from the rearmost Arrow.

“Nice work,” he said as he engaged the engines to full, wreckage be damned, the thrust sending the Blackstar speeding by the wreckage. The cannon fire struck the first red-tip missile.

The holoscreen and the video feed on the walls displayed a flash of brilliant white and orange light. The nukes had vaporized the Arrows and much of their surroundings.

“Yes!” Senaya cried, pumping a fist in the air.

“Good plan,” Bandar said.

Kai ignored the desire to celebrate and concentrated on piloting the Blackstar through the dead starships littering the space around them.

“Missile’s still closing,” Marella said, a slight quiver in her voice.

“Don’t worry. I see it,” Kai said.

He gestured the piloting controls right and then left, making the Blackstar spin between two Host warships.

“Oh boy,” Kai muttered. “This is going to be tight.”

The missile kept coming, matching his maneuvers with AI-controlled precision.

Bandar tried shooting the projectile, but it ducked and dodged the shots.

Kai argued with himself about the pros and cons of staying in the debris field. Sure, there was a decent chance the second red-tip would slam into something else, but there was an equally decent chance that the Blackstar would do the same. He turned and headed for empty space.

And the missile turned with them.

“Sen, try the gravity distortion array,” Kai said.

“What’s it do?” Senaya asked.

“I guess it distorts gravity,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” Senaya said, letting out a high-pitched laugh of pure nervousness.

The Blackstar made a low booming sound and then shuddered as Senaya unleashed the gravity weapon at the missile.

“One hundred yards and closing fast,” Marella said.

“Hit it again,” Bandar said. “The space around it is twisting; it just needs more juice.”

The booming sounded once more, and this time the missile jumped and fell as it tried to fight through the new gravity signature.

“Seventy yards.”

“Die, you son of a bitch!” Bandar cried as he and Senaya fired the weapon once more.

The nose of the missile flattened out against the localized gravity distortion and careened off course, slamming into the remains of a Coalition ship. It exploded in an incredible ball of white and orange light.

“Hot damn,” Bandar said. His face split into a huge grin.

“Incoming—again,” Marella called out.

“What now?” Kai asked. They were just about out of the wreckage zone. He looked at the holoscreen, and his mouth went dry. The shock wave from the explosion had hurled the remains of a Host fighter directly at the Blackstar.

“Oh shit,” Kai and Senaya said in unison.

Kai jerked his hand quickly toward the right on his control panel, but the Blackstar was too slow to respond. The fighter slammed into the aft section of the ship. A tremendous crash reverberated through the hull, a din as though a god had kicked an empty cymbal across the cosmos.

The Blackstar skewed left, drifted, and slammed into their last remaining obstacle before open space. The collision sent them slewing back in the opposite direction. The artificial gravity within the bridge had a hard time compensating for the sudden shift in direction. Kai was flung about in his seat, the harness biting into his shoulders.

And then they were clear.

Kai cursed and brought the Blackstar to a halt.

“Well, that was bracing,” Kai said through deep breaths. “Is everyone all right?”

“Yes,” Marella said, a slight groan accompanying her speech.

“Right as rain,” Bandar said.

“That… was… awesome!” Senaya said. Her eyes were bright and dancing, her cheeks flushed with a ruddy glow. “Can we do it again?”

“You’re insane,” Kai said but laughed in spite of himself. The relief of the situation brought with it a kind of giddy euphoria.

“Seriously, Kai, that was the most intense experience of my life,” Senaya said.

“And all it took was us almost dying.” Kai turned to Marella and was pleased to see her already regaining her composure. “Can you run a quick scan of the area? I want to make sure there are no other little surprises waiting for us out there.”

“No problem,” she said before going back to her control panel.

“That was some nice work back there,” Bandar said. He leaned back in his seat and lit another jola leaf cigar. “Where’d you learn that little trick?”

“No trick of mine,” Kai said. “Just reacted to what was in front of us.”

“You have good instincts.” Bandar tipped him a nod of respect through a haze of blue-gray cigar smoke.

“Thanks.”

“According to sensors, we’re all alone,” Marella said.

“That’s the best news I’ve heard all day,” Kai said. He was glad that they could finally slow down for a bit, catch their collective breath. A quick flashing red light on the holoscreen drew his attention, and he slumped back in his seat. “Oh hells, now what?”

“The power converters sustained some damage during that last collision,” Senaya said, her head bowed above her control panel.

“What does that mean?”

“It means that we still have thrusters but, unless the converter is fixed, we can’t open a wormhole.”

“Wonderful.” Kai pinched the bridge of his nose. So much for things starting to look up. “And how do we go about fixing it?”

“Well, according to the schematic, it’s located outside on the rear of the hull.”

“Can you fix it, Sen?”

“Come on, Kai. I can fix anything.” She smiled at him and then looked once more at the schematic. Her smile dissipated and was replaced by a tight frown. “Can I amend that statement?”

“Why? What’s wrong?” Kai sat forward, eyebrows raised.

“I might be able to repair it, but there is no access to it inside the ship.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, I’ll have to go out there to do it.” She shrugged as if a spacewalk was no big deal.

“Absolutely not,” Kai said, shaking his head. He glanced at the holoscreen and brought up the schematic Senaya was looking at, trying to find another way.

“It has to be done, Kai.”

“There has to be a way to repair it without going outside,” Kai reiterated.

“If there is, I don’t see it.” Senaya pursed her lips for a moment. “But maybe the AI does.”

“I’d rather not, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Why not? What is your problem with the AI?”

“I told you I don’t trust it.” Kai rubbed his chin and tried to figure out how to put his feelings into words. “There’s something about it I can’t quite put my finger on.”

“You don’t trust it?” Senaya looked at him, head cocked.

“Yeah…” He blew out a long breath.

“Look, Kai,” she said, her words coming in gasps. “It’s like this: either we turn the AI back on to help with this, or we spend the rest of our lives creeping through uncharted space without the benefit of the gravity drives.”

Kai stared at the ceiling, trying to access the Navigator info hiding in his brain—anything not to have to turn to the AI. He sighed.

“Fine,” he said, his voice resigned. He tapped a few numbers into his control panel. “Blackstar, are you with us?”

A three-dimensional face appeared on the holoscreen.

“Yes, Kai Locke, I am here.”

That formality again. It irked Kai to no end, but he put it on the growing list of things to worry about at a later time.

“All right, look. The power converters sustained some damage in battle.”

“Yes, I know. I ran a diagnostic when I booted up.”

“Wonderful.” There it was: that smugness that spoke of something more than just AI efficiency. Kai was almost ready to type in the override command but held off.

“Blackstar,” Senaya said, “is there any way to access the converters from inside the ship?”

“No, there isn’t, Senaya. Repairs can only be done from outside.”

“Just great,” Kai said.

“Can you talk me through the job?” Senaya asked.

“Yes, with little to no difficulty.”

Kai looked at Senaya, and she offered up a small smile.

“Looks like I’m going for a walk,” she said and shrugged.

* * *

Marella took advantage of the technical discussion to finally dig into the Blackstar’s archives. She thought perhaps there would be some information located in the memory banks to help them. Star charts, ship’s logs, anything.

She found great amounts of what appeared to be crew logs, which she was unable to read, as they were written in the Navigators’ language.

She did stumble across what she assumed were star maps but, as with everything else in this sector, nothing looked familiar. She marked them to look into later, after the others had repaired the ship.

She continued scanning for several minutes, looking for anything she could read, and became increasingly frustrated. They were going to have to get all of this stuff translated into Coalition Common so that she could study all the information.

She was just about to give up when she saw words that she could read. Her heart hammered in her chest, and she heard her pulse pounding in her ears.

Journal entries from Kendal Locke appeared on the screen before her.

She checked on the others, but they were busy discussing repairs with the AI. She returned to the journal and did a quick scan through Kendal’s notes.

“Marella?” Kai said. His voice startled her, and he looked at her with a quizzical expression.

“Yes, Kai?”

“You’ve been really quiet. Find anything of interest in there?”

“Umm, no, not yet.” She closed the search screen on her control panel, but not before marking the journals for later perusal. “Nothing at all.”

“You sure?” Kai asked. “You looked pretty intense there for a moment.”

“No.” She smiled at him, ignoring the stab of guilt in her heart. “Nothing of any import. I just got distracted by the star charts… It’s all so unfamiliar.”

Kai nodded and returned to the discussion on how to go about the repairs.

Marella hated herself for withholding on Kai, but she wanted to know exactly what was in the journal before sharing it with him. Who knew what Kendal was up to and where he had gone? She wanted to know before telling Kai in case it was something bad. If it were bad news, she’d want to be able to deliver it to him in a better way than just blurting out some stuff in a journal.

Chapter 4

Kai stood in the airlock, watching Senaya squeeze into the protective suit for her spacewalk, and loathed that this was the only way.

“Kai, you look like you’re ready to fight something,” Senaya said.

“I hate this, Sen,” he replied. “I still think we should put this off and figure out something else.”

“Give it a rest,” Bandar said. He pulled a strap tight, attaching a toolbox to Senaya’s chest, and then nodded at her. He looked back at Kai, the chrome half of his face gleaming. “That’s your fear talking. You know this is the only way to repair the converter.”

“I know.” Kai ran his hands hard through his hair and gave the wall a quick kick. “But it shouldn’t be Sen.”

“What? Why not, Kai?” Senaya had a puzzled look on her face.

“Because…” Kai wondered why it shouldn’t be her. She knew how to fix damn near anything in the universe. She was the logical choice. Why did he feel so against this? What else was there?

“Put that out of your mind, Kai,” Bandar said, as if reading his mind. Kai tossed a sharp, questioning glance his way. “Relax, little brother. It’ll be fine.”

“I guess,” Kai said.

“How do I look?” Senaya asked. She posed like a model from one of the holomags, one hand on a thrust-out hip, the other behind her head. And, by the stars, she even had a pouty look on her face.

Kai cracked a smile despite the situation. Senaya always knew how to raise the mood in the darkest moments. She blew him an exaggerated kiss.

“Okay,” Kai said. “If we’re done playing now? There’s work to be done.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” Senaya said, throwing up a sarcastic salute.

Kai crossed the room, and a previously invisible drawer slid out from the wall. He snatched the space helmet off the shelf and stepped up to Senaya. He gave her a crooked grin and placed the helmet atop her head. It self-sealed and the face screen fogged over. A hiss of air later, it was clear.

“You be extra damned careful out there,” he said.

“Of course, I ain’t going out there to party. Trust me, Kai. This ain’t my first EVA repair.”

Which was true, Kai knew. He’d seen her spacewalk on two other occasions, but there was a station nearby in case of an emergency. This time, out in the middle of the void, it was completely different. He looked down into her large eyes, and she smiled back at him.

“I know,” he said. “I just don’t know what I’d do without you, is all.”

“Oh, brother.” She rolled her eyes in exaggerated fashion and pushed him away with both hands. “Let me get out there before you get all mushy.”

“Senaya,” Bandar said, “once the door closes, count to five. Then open the outer hatch, okay?”

“Got it,” she said. The slight look of fear in her eyes when they stepped out of the airlock and the door closed behind them belied all of her bluster. Kai almost said something, but Bandar put a firm hand on his shoulder.

“She knows what she’s doing, and the AI is online to talk her through everything,” Bandar said.

“Yeah,” Kai said. He looked out the window just in time to see Senaya reach around the outside of the door and snap her safety harness into place on the outside of the hull. She stepped backward out of the Blackstar and into the emptiness of space.

She waved a big childlike wave and then pushed off and out of view.

“It sure is big out here,” Senaya said, her voice coming through the internal speakers. Kai was amazed at the quality; there was hardly any sound degradation.

“That’s the rumor,” Kai said.

“Senaya, you have to pull yourself around the rear of the hull,” the AI cut in.

“I know, on my way.”

“Blackstar, you keep us posted on her progress, understand?” Kai said. He silently reprimanded himself for the quavering tone of his voice.

“Yes, Kai Locke.”

“I’ll stick back here and keep an eye out,” Bandar said. He was kinder than normal, and it pissed Kai off, though he kept that to himself.

“Yeah, thanks,” Kai said. “I’ll be on the bridge.”

* * *

Kai checked the chronometer on his control panel and was surprised to see that Sen had only been outside for a little over an hour.

It felt like ten.

He stretched and rolled his head around, enjoying the relief of each cavitation pop in his neck joints. He considered striking up some sort of conversation with Marella but didn’t want to disturb her. She was in the same position as when he’d entered the bridge, huddled over her control panel, her face a mask of concentration.

He pulled up one of the outer hull cameras and panned it back and forth. He figured they might be in this sector for a while, so he should at least familiarize himself with the stars. He pulled his collar away from his throat as he scanned a distant galaxy cluster.

Beads of sweat popped out on his forehead. Something was wrong.

Kai’s head started swimming then; his vision doubled, then trebled. He glanced around the bridge and there appeared to be an entire squad of Marellas hovering over identical control panels. They were all lost in their own world.

The walls of the Blackstar appeared to melt.

He tried to talk, but no words would come, as though his tongue had swollen to fill his entire mouth. He leaned back in his command couch and tried to slow his racing heart.

And then the experience was over as quickly as it came.

He shook his head and looked around. His mouth gaped open.

The Blackstar was gone, replaced by the outskirts of what could only be described as an alien city. He turned in a circle in place.

Outside the city, there was no vegetation, at least as far as he could tell. The ground was coated with blue-white ice for miles, stretching beyond the horizon. He knew he should be cold, freezing really, but the temperature didn’t affect him.

There weren’t even any of the telltale puffs of steam when he exhaled.

“What is going on here?” he asked, unsure if he was having a vision or an out-of-body experience.

He tried to move toward the city, as though his speaking aloud broke some sort of spell, but his feet remained still. He was floating towards the alien metropolis, faster and faster, but no wind cut his bare face or caused his clothing to billow.

It was as though he were a ghost, and for a moment, he wondered if he had died.

Kai couldn’t believe his eyes as he approached the city. He’d never seen or heard of anything like it in his life. It was massive, bigger than the capital city on Capsis and taller than Gostabul. Hell, it towered over Zarunda’s capital by several magnitudes.

The buildings were made of a crystalline substance that glittered in the sunlight. The reflected light should have made Kai squint, but like the lack of cold and wind, it didn’t affect him in the slightest.

“Am I dead?” he asked. His voice landed with a hollow thud in his ears, similar to how things sounded after his eardrums ruptured.

He looked up as he entered the city. All of the buildings were large, but in the center were enormous crystal spires that reached into the sky, so high that he couldn’t see their tops. His gaze wandered around the inner ring of the city, but he saw no inhabitants.

He was utterly alone.

Then his attention was drawn to a circular atrium beneath the tallest spires and came to rest directly in the center. He stood in the midst of twelve crystal structures, long and narrow, much like coffins. Within each of them a soft, silver-blue light glowed. It projected outwards, the beams diffused by the construction of each box.

All save one.

The last coffin gave off no light. Kai hovered closer to it and saw the reason why: it was empty.

From a distance, he heard a call. More like the shadow of a voice; small, tiny, with a slight reverb effect. He turned and looked, noticing he was still alone. The voice—female, he could now tell—called to him again, louder this time, closer.

Was it his mother? Not Brenna, but the Navigator that had given birth to him?

“Kai, wake up,” the voice said. He looked up and blinked.

A woman stood over him, one hand shaking his shoulder. Beyond her, the crystal city was gone, and the Blackstar had returned.

“Marella, is that you?” he asked. He rubbed his eyes and sat up. “What’s going on?”

“I found something,” Marella said. Her eyes were bright, and her hair bristled.

“What? No, wait, hang on.”

“But—”

“Just a second.” He felt numb, as though he were in shock. Did that really just happen? He took several deep breaths as he tried to decide if he’d had a legitimate vision or if it was more of the Navigator knowledge bubbling up to the surface. Or perhaps it was a bit of both. Whatever it was, it scared the hell out of him and excited him at the same time. He blinked at Marella again.

He looked at the face projected on the holoscreen and leaned forward. “Blackstar, is Senaya finished with the repairs?”

“She is moments from completing her task, Kai Locke,” the AI voice intoned.

“Good. Thanks.” At least she would be back inside soon. That was something. “Now, what were you saying?” He looked into Marella’s perturbed face and knew an apology was in order, but she spoke before he had a chance.

“I might have found Kendal,” she said. Her eyebrows arched as if she were scolding him.

“What, what?” He felt all the air leave his lungs.

“I’m pretty sure I know where he is.” Her eyes flashed from their normal blue to a deep violet and back to blue.

“How did you figure this out? We don’t even know where we are, precisely.”

“I found it in a ship destination log.”

“Wait, slow down for a second.” Kai ran his hands through his hair, a tic he had picked up just recently when agitated. “Where did you find this?”

“I told you. It was a destination log buried in the ship’s servers.”

“That is incorrect,” the Blackstar said.

“No, it isn’t,” Marella replied.

“What do you mean, Blackstar?” Kai asked.

“There are no such logs anywhere in my memory.”

“Then how did I find them?” Marella’s eyes flashed different colors again. She obviously didn’t like to be challenged.

“Destination logs do not exist, Kai Locke.”

Kai cringed once more at the formality.

“One can only assume that Marella is ly—”

“Oh, log off,” Kai said and tapped the override code into his control panel. The AI voice cut out and the face vanished from the holocube. He sighed. “That thing bugs me.”

“Anyway,” Marella continued, “the log was dated just a few days before the Blackstar arrived on Oberus.”

There was something she wasn’t saying, Kai thought. Some information she was holding back. But what? And why? Or was it just the AI’s borderline accusation against Marella working on his mind? He sighed. His list of things to worry about was growing longer by the hour.

“Don’t you see, Kai?” The Lantesian’s expression was intense for one of her race. “I have coordinates. We can go get your father!”

* * *

Senaya closed the cover of the power converter and slapped it twice with the flat of her hand. She replaced the last of her tools and closed the toolbox.

“That’s that,” she said, satisfied with a job well done. She was glad the Blackstar was there to talk her through the repair, but, in the end, she really didn’t need the assistance. Sure, Navigator technology was highly advanced, but a converter was a converter, be it power or waste. They all worked on the same basic principles.

Principles that the Coalition had probably gained by studying Navigator tech, now that she thought about it.

“All right, Blackstar, I’m heading back in now,” she said. Her comment was met with silence. “Blackstar? Hey, computer, where’d you go?”

Still, she received no reply from the ship’s AI. She shook her head and began to pull herself back to the hatch.

“Bandar, what happened to the AI?” she asked into her headset mic.

“I don’t know,” his voice answered. “Are you done?”

“Yeah, heading back in now.”

“Copy that. See you inside.”

Hand over hand, slow and steady. She mouthed the words over and over as she pulled herself back toward the safety of the airlock. She tilted her head back to check her position, and something smacked off the helmet’s visor. She jerked back, almost losing her grip on the rail.

“What the hell?” she said.

“What’s wrong?” Bandar asked over the headset.

“Nothing,” she replied. She took a few deep breaths to calm her pulse. “Something hit my helmet.”

“Did it crack?” His voice was intense.

“No. It’s all right. I’m almost at the hatch.”

“Move your ass.”

And she did. Hand over hand again, but slow and steady got thrown out the window.

Just as she reached the hatch, a metal object several times her size appeared in her peripheral vision and skidded down the hull toward her. She let out a shriek and shoved herself away from the ship. She held her tether line in a death grip as she sailed farther and farther from safety.

The piece of detritus continued its movement through the area she had vacated a moment before.

“No,” she gasped as the metal projectile came into contact with her tether. She felt a jerk. The cord in her hand went slack. Without slowing its momentum, it sliced through her safety line and continued its journey down the side of the ship.

She stared at it in horror as she free-floated away from the Blackstar.

Chapter 5

Brenna learned early into her trip through the wormhole not to look at the swirling void outside. When she exited the wormhole, she was pleased that she was only mildly nauseated instead of being on the verge of vomiting all over the cabin like she almost had on her first excursion beyond the Veil.

She sat up straight in her seat and took note of her new surroundings. She had emerged into a binary star system. The two main sequence stars burned a bright orangey-yellow. Between the two stars, a planet rested in space, but it was impossible to tell which star it orbited without studying it.

The octopus-like creature she had followed through the wormhole was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps this lone planet was the home to its species.

“Wake up, Flick,” Brenna said to the ship’s AI. “Time to go to work.”

“I’m not sleeping, Agent Locke,” Felicity said. “In fact, I do not require sleep.”

“I know.” Brenna grinned and shook her head.

“This need of yours to constantly anthropomorphize me is quite baffling,” the AI said. “Particularly since I’ve already told you that it is not a part of my programming.”

“Okay, Flick. Got it. Run a sensor scan and see if you can find any trace of that creature.”

“Working.”

While the AI began its scan, Brenna tapped a few commands on her control panel. She hoped that the probe she launched hadn’t got sucked into the wormhole with them, but the tracking sensors picked up no sign of it.

“Agent Locke, sensors have failed to locate the creature,” Felicity said.

“I figured as much,” Brenna said.

“We are being hailed, however,” Felicity said, just as Brenna saw a flashing light on her control panel.

“By whom?”

“By the ship that followed us through the wormhole.”

“Ah, of course, I forgot about that. Connect us, Flick.”

A brief blast of static, and then the cockpit of the Rapier was filled with the sound of a voice speaking in oddly accented Coalition Common. An accent she did not recognize despite her extensive knowledge of Coalition languages.

“… I repeat, unknown vessel, do you copy?”

“I read you loud and clear,” Brenna said. She was taken aback by the fact that she could understand the words being spoken by a probable unknown alien. How could it be that they were speaking a version of Coalition Common on this side of the Veil?

“You will identify yourself immediately,” came the response. An odd clicking tone punctuated each word.

Brenna remained silent for a moment, biting back her first caustic reply and deciding the best course would be honesty. For all she knew, they could be potential allies. And if not, then it wouldn’t serve her to antagonize them further.

“My name is Brenna Locke. I’m a representative from the Coalition from beyond the Veil. May I ask to whom I am speaking?”

“All that need be said is that I am an emissary of the Patari,” the alien said, his words clipped and formal.

“Forgive me, but I do not know what that is.”

“You are in Patari space, Brenna Locke of the Coalition from beyond the Veil.”

“I’m sorry, Emissary, but that means absolutely nothing to me.” Brenna took a deep breath to bring her frustration under control. “I’m not here out of choice but rather a series of occurrences beyond my control.”

“We are one of several known spacefaring races inside the Veil, and you are trespassing in our home system.”

“That’s good to know. As a representative of the Coalition—”

“By entering Patari space, you are in violation of our laws.”

“I apologize. It’s just—”

“You are to land on the planet and follow instructions implicitly, or face immediate destruction.”

“Wait just a minute,” Brenna said, unable to hold her ire any longer. “I know nothing of your laws for this sector of space. Can you please tell me exactly where we are?”

Her question was met with silence. She didn’t appreciate being dictated to and had to fight to keep her temper under control. She waited a moment longer for a reply.

In the end, there were only two options available to her, and she didn’t like either one. She could either try to shoot it out with this alien vessel and escape, or do as the alien commanded and land on the nearby planet.

She decided to go with option two. Although she was very confident in her ability to win a potential dogfight, even if she was victorious, she still had no clue where she was or how to get home. The octopod had led her here, but to what end? Without a wormhole back to where she had just come, she had no direction of where to go.

And who knew how quickly reinforcements would arrive? Chances were the alien had already contacted its base.

“Fine, Emissary,” Brenna said through gritted teeth. “But I don’t know where I’m going.”

“Coordinates incoming,” the alien clicked at her. “Just follow the beacon planet-side.”

“Copy that.”

Brenna input the received coordinates into her control panel, picked up the beacon, and headed toward the planet.

“Flick, I hope you recorded all of that,” Brenna said.

“I started recording the instant the hail came through,” Felicity replied.

“Good job.”

The planet grew larger as the minutes passed until finally the Rapier bumped and jostled its way through the upper atmosphere. It appeared to be a desert planet with very little water, from what Brenna could see. There were deep chasms running through the center of the largest mass, indicating long-extinct rivers.

She zeroed in on the beacon as the land drew closer, and her heart rate increased with each passing minute. Several flashing lights bordered what could only be a landing platform. Brenna engaged the landing gear. As she touched down, a squadron of Patari soldiers encircled the Rapier. They were dressed head-to-toe in clothing of varying shades of brown, and Brenna knew that they would be damned near invisible in the desert climes.

“Now what?” she asked. She shut down the engines and placed everything else in standby mode.

“I do not know, Agent Locke,” Felicity said.

“Always a big help, Flick.”

“I’m sorry.” The AI didn’t sound sorry.

Her panel lit up, alerting her to the main hatch being opened.

“How the hell?”

She stood from her chair and turned just in time to see several of the Patari soldiers entering the cockpit, guns drawn. Her breath caught in her throat.

These were some of the aliens from the vision she’d had while being scanned by the octopus thing.

The soldiers stood on three legs, their skin a dark, almost shiny, obsidian color. They peered at her with unreadable eyes that were mostly pupil.

“You will come with us,” the lead alien said.

Face to face, that clicking sound was more pronounced than over comms.

“Fine,” Brenna said. She put her hands up and took on a casual, nonthreatening stance. “Just lead the way.”

“No, you first,” the soldier said, motioning her forward with his firearm.

“I’m human,” she said. “Can I breathe your atmosphere? Is your air poisonous to my kind?”

“We will supply you with breathing facilities shortly. Now move.”

She emerged from her ship, the soldiers following close behind, and the heat hit her like a fist. There were dozens of other aliens spread out in a crescent formation, weapons aimed in her direction.

“Straight ahead,” the leader said from behind her. He poked her back with the barrel of his rifle, reminding her not to do anything stupid.

Message received, she thought and stepped into their midst.

They led her up a gangway, and she stopped as she experienced her second shock in as many minutes. Directly in front of her was a giant pyramidal structure made of what looked like pure gold. It glittered in the light of the binary suns. Her mind was reeling from the recent turn of events, and she hadn’t even noticed the structure as she was making her landing approach.

“Keep going,” the lead soldier said and shoved her again with his rifle.

“I’m going, I’m going,” she said.

By the time they reached the entrance, Brenna was practically gasping. Her lungs were working overtime but didn’t seem to be getting enough oxygen. The thin atmosphere was threatening to send her into unconsciousness.

“I can barely breathe,” she gasped.

“Keep moving.”

She passed through a large door and into the cool, dark interior of the pyramid.

Her breathing was ragged now, and she pressed a hand against her chest. Small flashes of light like sparklers swam before her eyes. She tried to inhale deep, but it was no use. She was going to faint.

“Put this on,” a clicking voice said off to one side.

Brenna turned and saw one of the aliens, this one unarmed—the emissary, perhaps—holding something out in its clawlike hand.

Relief flooded through her as she recognized it as some kind of breathing apparatus. It didn’t matter which side of the Veil one was on, it was quite clear what it was.

She reached out and took the proffered mask and slipped it on over her head. It wasn’t a great fit—there were small gaps around either side of her nose—but she didn’t care. She was breathing cool oxygen, enough that her lungs stopped burning and her vision began to clear. She looked up into a pair of large dark eyes.

“The emissary, I presume?” she said between gulps of air, the mask dulling her voice.

“Indeed,” it said.

“Thank you.”

“Silence now.” It held out one arm, pointing towards a door. “This way.”

Brenna nodded and followed the emissary through the entrance.

They proceeded down a darkened corridor, passing several other doorways. She counted her steps as a precaution. One never knew if a chance to escape would present itself and she needed to know the way out.

They continued, turning right and left from time to time, and the emissary stopped. He tapped a code into a keypad and pushed open a door and stepped inside. Brenna followed. He stopped again at the end of a short hallway and pushed open a door made up of steel bars. He held his arm out again.

Brenna knew he wouldn’t be entering this one, so she stepped through and turned to face him, accepting her place within the cell.

He closed the door, locking her inside.

“Brenna Locke of the Coalition, you are hereby charged with breaking Patari law,” he clicked at her. “In the morning you will stand trial before our magistrate.”

“Now, wait just a minute,” she said.

“Rest now.” With that, it turned and left the cell block. The main door slammed shut behind him, and she was alone in the dark.

Brenna grasped the bars and leaned her forehead against a crossbar.

And the memories came.

Not long before she had been in a different cell in a different part of the universe. She had answered a distress call that turned out to be a trap. Captured, she had awakened on a Host ship and learned from a fellow captive—a GTU agent named Lutes—that she was to be interrogated by one of the shrain. The clones liked to fight dirty and soon brought in her husband, Kendal, though he turned out to only be a very lifelike hologram.

Her fingers tightened around the bars of her cell door as she was flooded with fury at the memory. To use Kendal against her like that was low. And the worst part?

She almost fell for it.

Almost.

A shudder racked her body at the idea of not being in control, of those bastards drugging her and locking her up like a common criminal. She smiled a grim smile at the sounds of her boot stomping down over and over on her captor’s face.

She shook herself free of the memory. It wouldn’t do her much good dwelling on it now. She looked around her cell. Not much to see, really. What must have been a lavatory sat in one corner with a cot in the other. No cellmate, however.

Not this time.

She sat down to wait and try to formulate some semblance of an escape plan.

Which was when she heard muffled shuffling noises coming from the cell adjacent to hers.

Chapter 6

For the first time in quite a while, Kai felt that he was in some semblance of control. He had his own ship—he finally started thinking of it as his, at any rate—a good crew, and a plan. As soon as Senaya fixed the power converter, they could be off to find his mother.

“Kai, you better get your ass back here,” Bandar’s voice boomed from the Blackstar’s speakers. “Now.”

Kai sighed, ran his hands through his hair, and shared a quick glance with Marella.

“I’ll be right there,” Kai said. He heaved a great sigh and stood up from the command couch. “Marella, could you keep looking through those ship files, see what else you can find?”

“Okay, I can do that,” Marella said.

Kai ran from the bridge, bounced off a doorway, and continued down the hallway to the airlock. He skidded to a halt when he saw what was waiting for him.

“Bandar, what the hell is going on?” Kai asked.

“Put on a suit,” Bandar said. “Senaya came untethered from the hull. She’s just floating around out there.”

“What?” Kai felt his heart speed up; hot adrenaline shot into his belly. His vision blurred momentarily.

“Stop asking stupid questions, Kai.” Bandar finished, snapping the last of the suit’s straps into place.

“Why doesn’t she just use the thrusters built into the suit?”

“These are old suits,” Bandar said. “They don’t have thrusters.”

Kai cursed and pulled up a video feed from outside the Blackstar. He gasped in horror. His oldest friend was free-floating through space about a hundred meters from the ship. He considered just flying the ship out to her, but she was surrounded by too much debris. She flinched as a headless body bumped into her and floated by.

Kai grabbed Bandar’s arm. “We can’t just go hurling ourselves out the airlock. There’s a better way that won’t risk all three of us.”

“You better be quick about it!” He shrugged Kai’s arm off.

“We need to get a tether out to her,” Kai said, sweat pooling in his suit.

“She’s too far out. We need something else, like a harpoon. Have you seen anything like that lying around the ship?”

“What? No, I haven’t seen so much as a fishing pole.”

“Well, we’re gonna have to figure something out and fast.”

“Could we tie a line around one of us and, I don’t know, jump out towards her?”

“Sure, Kai. And after about a thousand tries it might just work.” He shook his head and continued prepping his suit.

Kai’s breath stopped in his throat as an idea struck him. He took a few seconds to work out the logistics and smiled.

“We don’t have a harpoon,” Kai said. “But I might know where there’s a pole.”

“Well, don’t just stand around here, go get it!”

Kai nodded once and took off down the hallway towards the living quarters. He went into Senaya’s room and started rifling through what little belongings she had with her. He found what he was looking for and snatched it up.

Seconds later he was thrusting a rifle into Bandar’s outstretched hand.

“And what exactly are we supposed to do with this?” Bandar asked.

“We need to get the barrel off.” They walked into the airlock and Kai began to put on a spacesuit.

“Well, that should be easy enough, this gun is a piece of shit.” With that said, Bandar held the gun by the barrel and slammed the butt onto the floor. He repeated the maneuver once, twice, three times. With a metallic crack, the gun was in two pieces, and Bandar held the barrel up with a tight grin on his face. “See?”

“How does your flame blaster work?” Kai asked.

“I squeeze the trigger. It shoots out flame.”

“Come on, Bandar, you know what I mean.”

“It’s a liquid-based propellant that…” Bandar nodded his head, his smile growing even tighter. “Yeah, that might just work.”

“Well, get working on putting it together while I get this damn suit on.”

Kai struggled into his spacesuit while Bandar went to work jury-rigging a harpoon gun. He bashed one end of the attached rifle barrel so it would fit inside the barrel of his own flame blaster, and with a little tweak here and there, it slid home with a click.

“How’s it coming, Bandar?”

“Just about done.” He attached the end of a tether to the sight on the end of the barrel.

Kai clicked his space helmet into place, annoyed at the momentary fog on the inside visor. It cleared just in time to see Bandar finish the final touches to the impromptu harpoon, and he thought to himself that this just might work.

“I turned off the accelerant, the oxygen canister is full, and we are ready to rock ’n roll,” Bandar said.

“Good, let’s get this going,” Kai said. He reached over to a pad on the wall and closed the inner hatch, securing the interior of the Blackstar from the vacuum of space. With a start, he realized that Senaya had no idea what they were doing. He flipped on his helmet mic.

“… wanna die out here,” Senaya’s voice said through the helmet speakers, her voice shrill.

“Senaya, you are not going to die.”

“Kai? Where the hell have you been?” Her voice was at least an octave higher up the register than normal.

“Calm down, Senaya. We’re gonna take care of you,” Bandar said.

“Don’t tell me to calm down, Bandar,” she screamed back at him. “You calm down, you’re not the one out here heading for a shit ton of debris and ordnance.”

“Senaya, we’re going to shoot a tether out to you. When you see it, grab it and hold on tight.” Kai wished he felt as confident as he sounded, but his pulse was pounding in his ears, and his vision had been reduced to a single point.

“Hurry, Kai, please.”

Both men were surprised at the fragile tone of her normally ebullient voice. They shared a look and knew that she wasn’t going to be able to hold it together much longer.

“Okay, Bandar, give me the gun and open the door,” Kai said.

Bandar shook his head in the negative. “No way,” Bandar said. “If someone is going to take the shot, that someone is me.”

“Okay.” Kai heard in that tone that Bandar would brook no argument. And he did have much more firearms experience, so it made all the sense in the world.

“Grab on to me, Kai. We don’t need two of us floating around out there.”

“Yeah, all right.” Kai grabbed hold of one of the straps on Bandar’s spacesuit and secured himself against the wall next to the airlock door. He took one quick deep breath and opened the door.

“All right, Sen,” Bandar said, taking a proper shooting stance and aiming his gun out the airlock. “Get ready, we’re probably only gonna get one chance at this.”

“Just do it already,” Senaya bellowed.

Bandar smiled his grim little smile. “Here it comes,” he said and squeezed the trigger.

The makeshift harpoon exploded out of the barrel of his flame blaster in a puff of discharged oxygen and rocketed towards Senaya.

In Kai’s mind, everything seemed to happen way too slow. It seemed to take hours for the tether to travel the distance between the ship and their shipmate. She reached out with both hands, and the harpoon passed directly between them.

His stomach knotted. he thought he was going to vomit inside his space helmet, but then he heard Senaya whoop with delight as she closed her hands around the tether.

“I got it,” she said. “Hit me right in the face, but I got it!”

“Holy shit, Bandar, great shot!” Kai said, slapping the big man on the back.

“Yeah, I’m pretty impressive,” Bandar said. “Now quit beating on me and help me pull her in here.”

“Of course.”

As they pulled Senaya back to the safety of the ship, their helmet speakers were filled with her thanks and prayers and not a small amount of cursing.

Finally, she was inside the airlock and Kai reached to close the outer door, but something caught his attention.

His hand froze above the button.

Off in the distance, a massive creature was moving through space. It was a deep almost jet black and floated gracefully as its tentacle-like appendages swayed with its movement.

Kai stared at it in gape-jawed wonder.

A wormhole opened several hundred yards in front of the beast. It flew into it, never slowing down for an instant. But just before the wormhole collapsed on itself, a small metal object escaped the vortex and floated harmlessly on its way.

“Close the damn door already,” Bandar said.

“Did you see that?” He tried to look over his shoulder, but the helmet prevented the motion.

“See what?” Bandar asked.

“Never mind, it’s gone now.” If it was even really there, he didn’t add. He hit the button, and the airlock door closed. Immediately the small room filled with oxygen.

They removed their spacesuits and stepped out of the airlock into the comforting confines of the Blackstar.

“Senaya, thank all the gods!” he heard Marella say from behind him, her voice almost breathless. “I was so damned scared. I was going crazy.”

Kai closed the inner door, and when he turned around, Senaya’s arms were wrapped around his neck. She clutched onto him desperately and was whispering thanks, her entire body trembling.

“Don’t do that again,” Kai said. He held her at arm’s length. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“I thought you’d lost me, too,” Senaya said. There was a little trembling in her voice.

“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” Kai said.

“I don’t either,” Senaya replied. She gave him a big smile, which he returned.

And then she bent at the waist and vomited all over the floor.

* * *

They all sat on the command couch, and Kai filled them in on the creature he’d seen. As with himself, no one else had either seen or heard of anything like it. Not even in myth. If it was, in fact, real, it was entirely unique to anyone from the Coalition.

Kai pulled up the sensors on his control panel.

“Right before that wormhole collapsed, something came out of it,” he said. His fingers tapped across the panel. “I want to find out what that was.”

Within seconds he had his answer.

“It’s a probe from the Rapier,” he told the others and sat back on his couch. “My mother’s ship.” A lightning strike flew up his spine. She was here, close…

“We should probably retrieve it instead of just lounging around, don’t you think?” Bandar said, a slight teasing note in his voice.

“That would probably be a good idea,” Kai said.

“Is the probe dead?” Marella asked.

“Not according to the sensor read,” Kai said.

“Then we should be able to take control of it via remote and dock it with the Blackstar,” Senaya said. They were the first words she’d spoken since she got sick.

“Okay, let’s give that a shot.”

Kai went back to work on his control panel, and soon the probe came back to life and flew in their direction.

It was much easier to recover the probe than it was to save Senaya. They had it on board and hooked into a computer module in short order.

“According to the probe sensors, we have a new set of coordinates,” Marella said, “that might just lead us to your mother, Kai.”

“Okay. Let’s plug them into the Blackstar’s star chart and see what we will,” Kai replied.

After a few moments, Marella had the answer.

“According to the Blackstar database, these coordinates are in the middle of a system controlled by a race called the Patari,” Marella said, looking up from her control panel. “Apparently, they don’t really like Navigators all that much.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Bandar asked.

“Where is it in relation to my father’s possible location?” Kai asked.

“In totally opposite directions,” Marella said and shrugged. “As far as there are directions in space.”

“Maybe the Blackstar can tell us more,” Senaya said.

Kai didn’t want to depend on the arrogant AI but felt that in this instance he had no choice. He tapped in the override code to wake the program up.

“Blackstar, what can you tell me about these coordinates where my father might be?”

“Nothing at all, Kai Locke. That is uncharted space.”

“Well, thanks for nothing,” Kai said.

“I apologize, but I can only give you information that was programmed into my memory modules.”

“Blackstar, do you know anything about the giant octopus thing that Kai saw?” Senaya asked.

“I am sorry, Senaya, but I have no information on that either.”

“Aren’t you just a big old bundle of help,” Bandar said, chomping on a cigar butt.

“Forgive me, but—”

“Enough,” Kai interrupted. He looked around at his crewmates, his friends, his eyebrows raised in question. “I propose we go in search of my mother, Brenna. We need to find out if she is still alive. That should be priority number one. Unless anyone has any pressing arguments for something else?”

“Makes sense to me,” Bandar said. “Kendal probably isn’t going anywhere anyway.”

The rest agreed, and Kai put the coordinates for the Patari system into the nav computer.

“Kai Locke, the journey to the Patari system will take just under one standard day at full thrust,” the AI said.

“Why? According to the charts, it shouldn’t be that far away.”

“The gravity drive is not working,” the AI said.

“What are you talking about?” Senaya asked. “We just fixed it.”

“Yes, Senaya, but the detritus that hit my hull and cut you free also damaged the power converters once more.”

“Son of a bitch,” Senaya said, exasperated. “I don’t know if I can go out there again.”

“You won’t have to,” Kai said. “There’s no telling how badly damaged the converter is, and I don’t want to risk another spacewalk. Besides, we could all use a little rest.”

They all nodded in agreement, even Bandar, who never seemed to get tired at all.

“Buckle in, everyone,” Kai said. He made some adjustments on his control panel. “Next stop, the Patari system.”

Chapter 7

Rising to a strange noise in an unfamiliar place would not head the list of Brenna’s top ten ways to wake up. She opened her eyes at the sound and leaped out of bed, immediately sliding into one of the nineteen defensive positions that she’d learned over the years. She blinked her eyes wildly at the sunlight streaming through the windows of her cell.

And then she remembered where she was.

The rustling of clothes came from the cell directly opposite hers. She remembered hearing the same sound the night before. It seemed as though someone, or something, over there was still alive.

“Hello over there,” Brenna said. There was no reply. She sighed with frustration. “I said hello over there. Are you awake? Are you alive?”

She let the tension drain from her muscles and walked to the door. She peered through the bars of the other cell door. A shadowy form huddled in the shadows, hiding any detail that would identify them.

“Can you hear me? There’s no sense for you not to talk to me, we’re both here together.”

Her frustration built toward anger. Instead of slamming her palms against the bars, which was her first instinct, she took a deep breath and stepped away from the door. She crouched in the middle of the cell and stretched her muscles, trying to loosen the knots caused by stress and a night spent on an uncomfortable cot.

Movement came from the cell beyond, but she ignored it now, focusing instead on her stretching routine. If they wanted to talk, they would; if not, she had better things to consider.

The main door leading into the cell block opened with a squeal. Footsteps from booted feet—three of them, to be precise—moved down the hallway and stopped outside her door. She opened her eyes, stood, and leveled her face at the door.

The emissary stared back at her with his pitch-black eyes and obsidian complexion hiding any emotion.

“Good morning,” she said.

“You will come with me,” he said. He tapped on a keypad, and the door popped open. “And you will refrain from doing anything that will result in your immediate destruction.”

“That’s fair enough,” Brenna said, stepping through the open cell door. She took a quick glance through the bars of her fellow prisoner’s cell, but couldn’t see anything beyond a dark lump on the cot.

Presumably, they had been taken away.

“After you, if you please.” The emissary held one hand out toward the far door. Brenna thought about making a break for it, tensed to run, but an armed guard stepped into view just outside the door. She relaxed, deciding it’d be better to wait for a clearer opportunity—if one came.

She passed through the doorway into another room. Four more armed guards lined the hallway.

“A lot of trouble for just one prisoner,” she said.

The emissary ignored her. Brenna shrugged and followed the guards down the hallway. They traveled in the opposite direction from the night before, progressing ever deeper into the large structure, until they came to a large ornate set of double doors. The guards opened them inward and proceeded inside.

Never before had she seen such decadent beauty.

The walls were covered in gold inlaid with different images: birds, beasts, and artistic scenes of what could only be important historical events.

At the head of the large chamber, three Patari dressed in bright golden robes sat in three ornate gold thrones. The one on the right had one eye that was covered by a gauzy film. The Patari in the center wore an ornate headpiece, tall and swept back, like a bird’s wings. The last wore the same clothes as the first, but something looked off about the alien compared to its counterparts. It clicked into place within seconds: it was missing half of one of its three legs.

Behind them on the wall stood a golden statue of a large raven, wings outspread, its talons forward and wide.

The entire room was bathed in the dazzling light through holes in the ceiling from the system’s twin suns.

The guards led her to a dais in the center of the chamber and made her stand on top of it. The emissary tapped a command into a control panel, and Brenna found that she could not move.

She strained against invisible bonds, but to no avail.

“You should save your strength,” the emissary said in a low voice. “This dais creates a force field around you. There is no escape from it.”

Brenna relaxed and waited for the show to begin, taking in her surroundings and scrutinizing the guards. At some point, she was sure she’d have an opportunity to escape, but that time was not now.

“Fair morning, Your Eminences,” the emissary said, bowing gracefully to the thrones. “Before you stands an outworlder, awaiting your judgment.”

“And what is the charge, Pokshawl?” asked the one on the left. Was that a name or a title? Perhaps she would ask later if she got the chance.

“She was captured and brought here last eve for trespassing in our space.”

“Now hang on just a second,” Brenna said.

“Silence, criminal,” the second of the enthroned said. “You will have a chance to defend yourself. For what good it will do.”

“And does she understand these charges?” the third judge asked.

“Yes, Your Eminence. I told her last eve that trespass was illegal here,” the emissary said.

“And what was her response?” the first asked.

“That it was a mistake for her to be here.”

“Indeed it is,” the second said.

Brenna ground her teeth. That one was going to be a problem.

“Do you understand the charges brought against you?” the first asked.

“I do now, your Eminence,” Brenna said. It couldn’t hurt to show them the proper courtesy and deference, regardless of her situation. “But I was not aware of this law when I encroached upon your territory.”

“Ignorance of the law is never a good defense,” the second said.

“But it’s my only defense,” she replied with a deferential bow of her head.

“Then you are a fool,” said the second.

Brenna chose not to respond to that, though she seethed inside.

“For matters of record, how came you to Patari space?” the first asked, rolling its one good eye in her direction.

“I was displaced to this side of the Veil during a battle,” Brenna said. “Upon my arrival, I saw a strange creature, an enormous eight-tentacled being flying through space.”

“You saw one of the great Travelers, a Sumahn,” the third said.

“Is that what it’s called?” Brenna filed that knowledge away for later. “I did not know that.”

“They are not on your side of the Veil, I take it,” the first said.

“No, that was the first time I have ever encountered such a creature.”

“Continue,” the second said, its deep voice clicking with impatience.

“Of course. So, the Sumahn went into a wormhole, and since I did not know where I was, I decided to follow it.”

“And does your kind always blindly leap without looking?” the first asked. Brenna knew if she could appeal to any of them, it was going to be this one.

“It is one of humanity’s hallmarks, Your Eminence.” Brenna gave them another brief nod.

“So you are a fool from an entire race of fools?” the second asked.

Give me a blaster, and I’ll show you who’s a fool, Brenna thought. She chided herself to remain calm.

“Please—continue,” the first said.

“Well, the Sumahn exited the wormhole, and I followed, but the creature was nowhere to be found on the other side.”

“The Travelers tend to do that,” the third said.

“And that is when your emissary informed me that I broke your laws, and now here I stand.” She bowed her head one more time for good measure.

Brenna let out a deep breath and met the three Pataris’ stare with half-lidded eyes. Best to remain calm and look neutral, she thought.

“And how did you breach the Veil?” the first asked.

She remained silent for a moment and then decided to play her ace card.

“During the battle, my son opened up a wormhole to defeat our enemies, but it swept many of us across the Veil,” she said. “He is of Navigator birth.”

The three judges blinked in shock and held a quick conference, whispering amongst themselves. Brenna strained to hear their words, but the distance was too great.

“The Patari are no friends of the Navigators,” the second said.

“Oh.” Brenna could have kicked herself for the schoolgirl error of assuming the Patari would naturally ally with the Navigators. With no knowledge of the political strata this side of the Veil, it was, in hindsight, ridiculous to speculate.

“They abandoned us,” the first said.

“I don’t understand.” Brenna tried not to show her confusion, to lock down her emotions once more.

“You see, outworlder,” the third said. “The Great Ancients, the Navigators, have been slumbering for millennia. Once, they were the peacekeepers of the galaxy, but since they went into hibernation, it has allowed the Koldax to run amuck.”

“The… Koldax?” Another name Brenna stored away. “You’ll have to excuse my ignorance; we have such little knowledge of the Veil worlds on our side.”

“A technological life-form, heartless, soulless, completely without mercy,” the second said, the first words he spoke that didn’t sound insulting. He sounded frightened.

Good to know, Brenna thought. The bastard could feel fear.

“The Great Ancients used to keep them in check,” the first said. “But now the Koldax travel from system to system, conquering worlds and subsuming all intelligent life-forms they come across.”

“That sounds… terrifying.” Brenna wasn’t just adhering to social niceties. Her first thought was whether these Koldax would be able to cross the Veil. The Coalition really couldn’t afford more enemies on their doorstep.

Still, if she survived this… whatever it was, she’d have a great deal of intel to share with the government.

“Quite the understatement,” the second observed, clicking his anger.

“That is why we have no love for the Navigators,” the first said. “They created the Veil to trap the Koldax in this part of the universe, and then they diminished. Without the Great Ancients playing their role as equalizers, they’ve trapped the rest of us here to be picked clean by those technological terrors.”

“I understand. I do,” Brenna said as a thought struck her. “My son is a Navigator. Well, partly, anyway. And my husband is an expert on them. He is somewhere on this side of the Veil. They both are. If you could let me go, to find them, they may be able to help.”

“I think not,” the second said. Brenna glared at him, her eyes boring into his, and he looked amused. Or what she assumed passed for amusement amongst the Patari.

“Please, let us help you by helping me. My people are known to make good allies. Let us forge a new relationship between our two species.” Brenna hated the pleading sound in her voice but could do nothing to stop it.

“Silence, criminal!” the second bellowed. “We confer.”

Brenna had seen enough stuffed shirts in her time that she knew protesting would do no good, so she just watched as her fate was decided by three aliens she didn’t even know existed two days ago. She didn’t have to wait long.

“We have come to our decision, outworlder,” the first said.

“Brenna.”

“What?” asked the first, blinking in surprise at the interruption.

“My name is Brenna Locke.” She held out her chin. If she were going to be sentenced, then, by the gods, they were going to know her name.

“Your name,” the second said, his voice mocking. “Your name matters not to anyone here.”

“Brenna Locke, then,” the first said. “We find you guilty of trespass into Patari territory. The penalty carries with it a sentence of death.”

“What?” Brenna exploded. “This is outrageous!”

“Said penalty shall be carried out at sunset this eve,” the first said.

Brenna let out a slow, shuddering breath. She was not going to die on some alien world far from home.

“And how will this ridiculous sentence be dealt?” she asked.

“You shall be perched atop the grand pyramid and sacrificed to the Gods of the Twin Suns,” the third said. “As is our people’s custom.”

“Sacrificed?” Her blood ran cold. Humanity’s oldest, most basic rule was not to be eaten. And now she was to come face-to-face with that centuries-old terror.

“Yes, sacrificed. To the great Razorclaws,” the second said. “In short, you will be eaten.”

The emissary released her from the dais and led her, dumbfounded, from the great hall. As they left, the room guards fell in on either side and watched her with cautious eyes, their weapons at the ready in case she tried anything foolish.

But she was too stunned to even consider it.

A death sentence for encroaching on someone’s territory?

She couldn’t believe it. This was madness.

Once she was back in her cell and the guards left, she found her voice.

“Emissary,” she called through the bars. The alien returned and stopped in front of the door.

“Yes, outworlder,” he said.

“What exactly are these Razorclaws?”

“The gods of this world,” he said. “Great are they. Massive birdlike creatures, dark of feather and beak and eyes. They know all and see all and protect us from those who would do us harm.”

“Wait,” she said. “I’m going to be bird food?”

“Your mocking tone is blasphemy.” He visibly bristled at her words and tone. “The great Razorclaws are more than mere birds. They are All of this world.” She could hear the honorific here, the way ‘All’ sounded different from his other words, proper. “To be consumed by them is to become one with them. It is a great privilege.”

“Right.” Brenna was having a hard time keeping up with this insanity.

“You should be honored.”

“Right,” Brenna repeated, stunned.

“I shall return for you at sunset. Make peace with whatever gods you worship and then prepare to be embraced by the All.”

With that, the emissary turned on his heel and left.

Brenna slumped down onto her bunk. A soft laugh drifted across the corridor from the opposite cell.

And, much to her surprise, she joined in.

Chapter 8

Goddenia, Capsis Prime

The Glass House was the perfect symbol of the opulence—some would say decadence—of the upper government of the Coalition.

Even so, newly appointed General Ratic Hominos was very impressed with the splendor of the building. The seven-foot-tall Lantesian’s footfalls barely made any sound as he walked down the hallways, due to his race’s natural grace.

He nodded at security forces lining the hall as he passed them and barely received a reply, as was their custom; they were to look and behave in a focused fashion.

Especially as the Coalition remained on a military footing.

Hominos emerged into a small reception area. The blond-haired human secretary sitting behind a glittering silver desk immediately looked up and gave him a small smile.

He put her age at anywhere between sixty and a hundred and thirty years old.

It was always so difficult to tell these days, especially on Capsis Prime, where antiaging technology was readily available to those who could afford it and those who knew the right people.

“You can go right on in, General; they’re waiting for you,” the secretary said. Her voice belied her appearance, and he revised his opinion, placing her on the lower end of that age scale, perhaps even younger.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said.

He stepped forward beyond the desk, and a security guard opened the door for him. He went into the two presidents’ main office for the first time in his life. He had been outside the Glass House before in the capacity of deputy to General Amelia, but she’d never brought him inside.

“General Hominos, welcome,” President Gatskil said, his arms out wide to match the smile on his face that Hominos didn’t consider to be genuine. But then that was always the game. Hominos knew the rules and played them well, hence his current position.

“Please, have a seat,” President Lattis said, motioning to a plush chair in front of their desk with one beefy hand.

“Thank you, Mr. President, Madame President,” the general said and sat down across from them.

“You led the forces very well after the… departure of General Amelia,” Gatskil said. “You are to be commended.”

“Thank you, sir. I was just doing my duty.”

“No need to be so humble, General,” Gatskil said.

“Yes, there’s no need to stand on principle here,” Lattis said, smoothing her long hair. “False modesty is for junior politicians and celebrities.”

Hominos merely smiled and bobbed his head subtly in response.

“Well, how goes the war effort?” Gatskil asked.

“Sir, it’s going well at this stage, for the most part. Our forces at the outer rings have managed to push the Host fleet back out of Coalition space.”

“That is excellent news, General,” Lattis said. “Now tell us about Amelia.”

“Just before the battle, the good general absconded with the shuttle and defected to the Host. It was quite a blow to our forces at the time—”

“Correction, General, it would have been a blow to our forces had you not been on the scene and taken control,” Gatskil said.

Hominos’s brown fur bristled slightly. The usual political glad-handing that was going on never did appeal to him, and he concentrated on remaining neutral throughout, although his natural instincts could only be masked so much.

He wished they would stop with the praise, but that would probably not happen.

“Yes, well,” Hominos began, “we have people looking for her, and she will soon be brought to justice.” He paused and sighed. “A lot of good people died in the early stages of the battle because of the confusion her departure caused.”

“We have the utmost confidence that you will track her down soon,” Lattis said. Her large frame wobbled within her tightly tailored suit as she spoke. Her doughy hand mushed against the ornate desk, communicating her desire to crush Amelia.

The previous general’s defection had rankled those in the higher echelons. Hominos could understand that, though. Amelia was a political darling and would undoubtedly be in possession of a great many Coalition secrets.

The two presidents waited in silence for Hominos’s reply. Their expression brought him out of his thoughts as he admonished himself for not focusing.

“Thank you for your confidence in me,” Hominos said.

“Fully deserved,” Gatskil said. “Now, please, continue with the status update.”

“Well, as per orders, Coalition worlds have been enacting our new defensive schemes in the unlikely event that Host forces fight their way back into the system. New battalions are being called up from the reserves, conscription is under way on half the worlds, and we’ve begun outfitting civilian vessels with weapon systems. Said civilian captains have commenced accelerated training. Should the Host push their way back inside our perimeters, they will find a very hostile welcome.”

“That’s excellent news, General,” Gatskil said. “Earlier you said the war is going well, for the most part. Can you elaborate further?”

“Yes, sir,” Hominos said. Politician or not, Gatskil didn’t miss much, the general thought. Hominos pulled a small data pad out of his briefcase and set it on the edge of the presidents’ desk. “I’ve received this report from Captain Mathieson—”

“Captain Mathieson?” Lattis asked, her eyebrows inching closer together as though she were trying to recall the name.

“Yes, ma’am. Mathieson is the acting captain of the GTU until Lopek returns from beyond the Veil.” Hominos did not share his apprehension of that ever happening, but given the presidents’ grim expressions, he knew they had already considered that the most likely possibility.

“Very well, continue,” Gatskil prompted.

“According to Mathieson’s intelligence reports, these unknown allies of the Host have amazingly advanced technology, something we’ve never seen before.”

“Such as?” Gatskil asked. Hominos wished they would stop interrupting just to hear the sound of their own voices.

“Such as this video taken on the border between Coalition and Host space in the fifteenth sector.”

Hominos brought up a video and beamed it to a large vid screen on the wall. They all turned to look at it.

The video crackled to life and showed an ongoing battle.

Coalition and Host forces fight capital ship to capital ship, fighter to fighter. It is a scene of chaos, with dead vessels floating in space, some in their death spirals, and others getting in the way of the fighters.

A new ship arrives on the scene from the left of the screen. It is a behemoth, dwarfing even the Coalition’s largest flagship. The new vessel moves slowly in comparison to the ships doing battle around it. A hatch slides open in the nose of the ship and a dark gray almost black glow begins to build. A beam shoots out, invisible save for the warping of space it creates as it passes.

The beam impacts on a planet in the far right corner of the screen. The atmosphere bursts into flame and soon the entire planet begins to shudder visibly.

“What in the Seven Hells?” Gatskil asked.

Hominos didn’t reply. He’d seen the video dozens of times and would wait until its conclusion to answer any questions.

The planet ceases to shudder, and a massive explosion rips apart one of its great landmasses. And then, the climax to this little drama. The surface of the planet begins to break apart, shattering in a hundred different places, from pole to pole.

There is one more explosion, which bursts the planet’s core, and then the world is torn asunder. Thousands upon thousands of massive chunks of stone and earth burst outward, scattering in a thousand different directions. Several Coalition and Host vessels are caught up in the conflagration and obliterated by the flying rubble of what was once a thriving world.

Hominos tapped his pad, and the screen went blank. He looked across the desk at the presidents and figured he’d worn that same expression the first time he saw this video.

“My word,” Lattis said. Her face was a portrait of horror, her eyes wide, her mouth trembling above her second chin. “Is this real?”

“Oh yes, Madame President, it’s very much real,” Hominos said, his voice slow and steady.

“What the hell was that thing?” Gatskil asked. His normally strong baritone voice came out in a croak.

“That would be some of that unknown technology I spoke of earlier. Some sort of large-scale reverse-gravity weapon, from the scant readings we picked up from it.”

“The host has something that can, what, destroy entire worlds now?” Gatskil asked.

“We believe that it belongs to their new allies, but it amounts to the same thing. Yes, at this juncture, it is wise to assume the weapon can be reused in such a fashion. At least until we know more about its full capabilities—and vulnerabilities.”

All was silent in the glittering office. The two presidents looked utterly shell-shocked like their world had just come crashing down.

And, Hominos thought, if the Host gets their way, that is exactly what will happen.

“This… this can’t stand,” Gatskil said. The croaking quality to his voice was gone now, replaced by disgust and, more importantly, a simmering anger. “We need direct action. We can’t afford to sit around and discuss this.”

Good. Maybe this old man isn’t merely the pathetic politician that Hominos originally perceived him to be.

“What are we going to do about this?” Lattis asked. She, too, seemed to be regaining some of her composure.

“We blow it out of the fucking stars, that’s what!” President Gatskil slammed both fists down on the table. The tremor knocked a glass over, spilling water over the desktop. He swept everything in his reach off the desk and onto the floor.

Hominos smiled inwardly.

Perhaps this portly little man had some steel in his spine after all.

The main door flew open, and two security guards rushed into the room, guns drawn. Gatskil scowled at them and made a flapping gesture with his hand.

“Put those away,” Gatskil snapped at the men. “Everything’s fine.” He paused as the men holstered their sidearms. “Well, in here, anyway.”

“Dismissed, gentlemen,” Lattis said to the guards.

They nodded and left the office, closing the doors behind them.

Gatskil sat up straight in his seat and smoothed his suit jacket while taking several deep, calming breaths. He placed both hands on the desk in front of him and looked into Hominos’s eyes.

“General, you are to send a battalion of our best ships after that thing,” Gatskil said. “Do you hear me?”

“Yes, Mr. President.” Hominos felt he could get on very well taking orders from this man—as long as he remained focused and motivated. Something the Coalition government had trouble with in the past.

“I want it found, and I want it destroyed. I don’t want there to be a single atom left over from that abomination. Am I clear?” Gatskil added.

“Clear as crystal, sir,” Hominos said.

“Good.”

“And another thing,” Lattis said, her eyes flashing. Hominos noted she also had some steel in her spine. “Contact Captain Mathieson. She is to send her best spies out to infiltrate the main Host worlds. I want a full and deep insurgency. This is not the time to spare expenses.”

“Yes, Madame President.” He could work with her, too. Good.

“They are to find out any and all information on these new Host allies.” She leaned forward. “And tell them that the gloves are off. They are to obtain this information by any means necessary. I don’t care how they do it, just get it done. The time of being morally superior is over.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And one last thing,” Gatskil added. “I want Amelia found and dealt with. You’re dismissed, General.”

Hominos stood and nodded. “Mr. President, Madame President,” he said, and left the office of the two most powerful and angry people in the Coalition.

The general had work to do. And even better, he had a full, unconditional mandate.

Unlike Amelia, Hominos wouldn’t be shackled by political handcuffs.

Chapter 9

Kai stared at the screen in silence. He gazed at the twin suns burning brightly in the near distance. Emotions bubbled beneath the surface, a combination of fear and excitement.

“Kai, according to sensors, the Rapier is on that lonely planet gravity-locked between the suns,” Senaya said. “The signal is clear and unmistakable.”

“Okay, bring us in quickly, but not so fast that we can’t change course if need be.”

“Roger that,” Senaya said.

He continued to study the screen. He hoped his mother was still near her ship so they wouldn’t have to search the entire planet for her, but the way his luck usually ran, she was probably exploring deep inside the core.

“We have something inbound,” Senaya said.

“Bring it up on the screen, please,” Kai said, leaning forward on his couch seat, eager to see what this next surprise held for them.

On the screen, the image of a small ship heading their way showed. It was dark black in color and appeared to have the shape of a bird of some sort with elongated wings, indicating that it was likely designed for in-atmosphere flight as much as space.

“This feels ominous,” Bandar said. “Whoever built that ship obviously wanted to make a statement. And I’ve always had issues with an alien that likes to make a statement.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet,” Marella said.

Kai appreciated the balance; there was no immediate need for anyone to panic.

“We’re being hailed,” Senaya said.

“Okay, best we open up a channel and see who this is,” Kai said as he fidgeted on the couch and tried to remain calm and captain-like.

“—repeat. Unidentified vessel, identify yourself,” a clicking voice said over their speakers. Kai glanced over at Bandar, but the big man just shrugged.

“This is Kai Locke of the Blackstar. To whom am I speaking?”

There was a pause before a response. “Kai Locke of the Blackstar, I am an emissary from the Patari.”

“Good to know, Emissary. What can I do for you?”

“You are trespassing in Patari space and in clear violation of our laws.”

“I apologize for that, Emissary. We are here looking for—”

“You will proceed to the Patari home world, land your craft, and await further instructions.”

Kai looked at Bandar again. His half-brother seemed irked. His one good eye squinted at the screen of the ship, and his jaw clenched. Kai considered his options: they could refuse and fight, or acquiesce, but without knowing more about their potential enemy, he couldn’t risk getting into another fight and damaging the Blackstar further.

“Look,” Kai said over the communications channel. “I’m sorry we’re in your territory, but we’re here on a mission, and—”

The Patari emissary clicked and cut Kai off, responding with that odd, emotionless voice. “I shall send you coordinates, which will link you to a beacon on our world. Lock on to that beacon and follow it in.”

The channel closed and the Patari ship let out a jet of thrusters to alter its trajectory and head back toward its home planet.

“What the hell is all this, Kai?” Senaya asked.

“I have no idea. But if the Rapier is down there, then they must have my mother.” He ran his hands through his hair, tugging slightly. “But is she a guest or a prisoner?”

“Come on, Kai,” Bandar said. “Use your head. What do you think? There is no way she’s a guest. They would have mentioned that. I’m no expert on these Patari creatures, obviously, but let’s face it, they weren’t bringing us flowers and sweets.”

“And it is odd that they speak a form of Coalition Common,” Marella added. She was sitting calmly, her hands resting in her lap. “That might help us negotiate.”

“For what?” Senaya asked.

Marella shrugged. “I’m not sure yet, but their lack of surprise about us suggests they have the advantage. That we can communicate gives us hope of a good outcome.”

Kai knew his older brother and Marella were right. The Patari’s first communication was to tell Kai and his crew that they had just broken their law. That wasn’t exactly the friendliest of greetings from one species to another. They would have to play this carefully.

The channel buzzed again, and Senaya patched it through.

“Blackstar, are you still receiving us?” the alien said in that weird percussive voice.

Kai considered his response. A brief thought of opening fire on them rose up like a devilish temptation, but with his mother at stake, he couldn’t risk it.

“Send the coordinates, Emissary,” he said.

Senaya and Marella shared a questioning expression.

He closed the comm channel and said, “What choice do we have? My mother’s down there; we have to follow. At least this way we’ll know right where to go.”

“Now you’re thinking,” Bandar said.

“Have you received the beacon coordinates, Blackstar?” the Emissary asked over the comms.

Senaya checked her control panel and nodded.

“Yes, we’re inputting them now.” Kai’s frustration mounted, and he resisted swearing at the officious alien.

“Are you reading the beacon signal?” the Emissary asked.

“Yes, damn it!”

“Just follow. We will escort you to the surface. Deviate, and we will accept that as an admission of guilt and will be forced to act.”

The bird-shaped craft slowed its acceleration until the Blackstar drew level with it, and together the two ships headed for the orbit around the small planet.

“Channel closed,” Senaya said.

The indicator light on Kai’s control panel flashed off. “Jumped-up little bitch,” Kai said, still glaring at the Patari ship on the view screen.

“They take their regulations seriously around here, I guess,” Marella said.

“A little?” Senaya asked with a shake of her head. “It makes me wonder why they’re so hardline about all this. Perhaps it indicates issues in this sector of space.”

Bandar stamped out his cigar and stood up. He stretched and started to leave the bridge.

“Where are you going?” Kai asked.

“Going to get my little micro-hauler prepped and ready,” he replied.

“What for?”

“Because getting Brenna out of this mess will be a little bit easier with a smaller ship, especially if the Blackstar is under guard.” With that, he vanished into the bowels of the Blackstar.

* * *

Kai brought the Blackstar’s AI online as they approached the lone planet’s orbit.

“Blackstar, as soon as we are in range, I want the highest definition video you can get of the landing area,” Kai said.

“We are in range now, Kai Locke,” the AI said.

“Good to know.” Kai still wasn’t used to the incredible level of technological advancement of this craft. “Put it on screen, please.”

“As you wish.”

The holoscreen displayed a highly detailed view of the planet. It focused in on a patch of land where the beacon identified the docking area’s location. The Rapier was parked to one side of a platform. The platform itself stretched out wide and connected to a large gold-colored pyramid structure.

No other spacefaring vessels were in the vicinity.

But there were at least a dozen gold-clad figures with rifles, most likely awaiting their arrival. They were strange-looking creatures. Kai had never seen anything like them. Tall and three-legged, they cast a bottom-heavy silhouette. He guessed they would be physically tough but probably slow, given their tripod limb arrangement.

Marella inched forward, her eyes wide. “Are we recording this?”

“Yeah,” Senaya said. “Quite the find. If only they weren’t so hostile…”

“The Coalition is going to love all this new data… if we get back,” Marella added.

“Looks like we’ve got quite a welcoming party waiting for us.”

“It appears we’re facing arrest,” Marella said.

“Not if I can help it,” Kai growled. “Blackstar, keep the vid running until we land.”

“Of course.”

After a standard hour of tense approach, they finally reached the planet’s upper atmosphere and were momentarily jostled around. Seconds later, the Blackstar’s internal gravity caught up with the new gravitational pressures and their approach smoothed out.

Bandar came back to the bridge and stood behind Kai.

“Is that…” Senaya didn’t finish.

“Yes, that’s her,” Kai said. His mother was being led out of the door on the left side of the pyramid, surrounded by a group of three aliens, all armed to the teeth.

“You know we’re probably going to have to take out all of them,” Bandar said.

“Wait, what?” Marella asked.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Kai said. “They don’t seem to be the type to negotiate.”

“Guys, what if they’re bringing her out to give her to us?” Marella asked.

Senaya slowly shook her head.

“Get real,” Bandar said. “That looks like an execution squad to me.”

Kai visibly tensed at those words. They were so close, only to fail now?

No damned way.

“This is why I got my ship ready, Kai.” Bandar dropped a strong hand on Kai’s shoulder and squeezed.

“What do you have in mind?”

“We fly down there, shoot up the bad guys, grab Brenna and get the hell out of here.”

“Sounds like as good a plan as any to me,” Kai said through gritted teeth.

“That sounds like a stupid plan,” Senaya said. “No offense, Bandar, but your old rust bucket of a micro-hauler isn’t exactly a gunship. How do you plan to get out of there?”

“Sen, you’re going to be our backup,” Kai said. He stood and cracked his knuckles. “Blackstar, anything that isn’t us, you blow out of the sky. Can I trust you to do that?”

“Of course, Kai Locke. You are the captain, after all,” the AI replied.

“But… aliens… data,” Marella stammered uselessly.

If they had time, Kai would try to explain, but right now all he knew was that if he didn’t act, his mother was going to be killed and he would be to blame.

“Let’s do this,” Bandar said, a slight smile stretching his scarred flesh.

At that moment, any brotherly connection they had built up vanished. Standing before Kai was Bandar the soldier. Bandar the efficient killing machine.

But that was exactly what they needed.

Kai ran through the ship after his half-brother, grabbing his P&G rifle and connecting his comm unit as he went. They headed to the docking bay and climbed into the old micro-hauler. They both took a seat in the cockpit and strapped themselves in. Bandar flipped a few switches and cranked up the engines.

“Open the bay door, Sen,” Kai said.

“Opening now,” she replied.

With a small screech of metal on metal, the bay door opened before them.

“Hold on to your ass,” Bandar said. He punched the throttle fully open. The small craft rocketed out of the Blackstar and descended toward the planet’s surface.

Chapter 10

As they descended towards the planet surface, an idea struck Kai.

“Blackstar, soften up those on the surface with the gravity cannon,” he said.

“Good thinking, Kai,” Bandar said.

“Firing now,” the AI said.

Their small vessel was buffeted by the passing of the Blackstar’s energy weapon. But the results were more than Kai had expected.

It slammed into the ground ahead of the soldiers surrounding Brenna. The concrete blasted apart. A ripple of gravity energy rushed out in all directions, knocking the Patari soldiers and Brenna off their feet.

“That was a little too close to my mother, Blackstar,” Kai said.

“My apologies. I’ll extend the range perimeter,” the AI replied.

Something dark outside caught Kai’s attention. “What the hell is that?” he asked, pointing at the thinning clouds above the pyramid.

A giant blackbird, as large as the micro-hauler—which looked a lot like the Patari craft that escorted them in—was diving out of the sky towards them.

“That’s a big damned bird,” Bandar said. “Maybe you want to take control of the forward blasters—”

Bandar’s order was cut short by the booming sound of cannon fire. Kai brought up the low-resolution video screen on the micro-hauler and saw the Blackstar maneuver behind them and fire upon the gigantic bird.

A second later, the creature exploded. The micro-hauler plunged through a cloud of feathers and gore.

“Good shooting, Sen,” Kai said over the comms.

“Wasn’t me,” she said. “Blackstar’s on it like a boss.”

“Perhaps I was a little hasty in not trusting it.”

“All right. It’s going to be a hot landing zone,” Bandar said. “When we leave the ship, you shoot anything that moves, got it? We don’t have any time for diplomacy.”

“I have no problem with that.” Kai double-checked his P&G rifle to make sure it was ready.

Bolts of energy impacted against the hull, making the structure boom and rattle.

“They’ve seen us,” Bandar said. “Taking rifle fire from the ground.”

“Sen, we need cover from small arms,” Kai said. “We don’t have a lot of armor on this old garbage can of a ship.”

“We’re on it, Kai,” Sen said.

The soldiers fell to the ground at the hit of another gravity burst from the Blackstar. Bandar brought the micro-hauler in low and fast, landing abruptly on the platform.

The ship skidded and slewed across the surface until, eventually, it screeched to a halt in a cloud of black smoke.

Bandar was already unbuckled and making his way to the rear of the ship, grabbing on to handholds to keep his balance. Kai quickly followed.

“Kai Locke,” the Blackstar’s AI said over the comms.

“Not a good time,” Kai said.

“Might I suggest breathers? According to my sensors, this is a low-oxygen atmosphere.”

“You couldn’t have told us that sooner?” Kai shot back. He turned to Bandar, but the older man was already ahead of him.

“Here,” Bandar said and handed him a breather unit.

“Thanks.” Kai put it on over his face.

“Okay, here’s where the fun starts,” Bandar said. “Ready?”

“Let’s do it.”

Bandar hit a button on the wall, and a ramp slid down into place. They burst out of the ship, firing at anything that moved. Return volleys sizzled the air as they missed their targets and slammed into the hull of the ship.

“Come on,” Bandar yelled and headed straight for Brenna.

The soldiers guarding her were just getting to their feet when Bandar unleashed a bout of plasma-fueled flame on them from his pistol.

Two of the Patari screamed as their clothing burst into flame.

Kai followed up with two carefully aimed shots from his P&G, taking down two more Patari coming out of the pyramid. The creatures let out piercing screams as they fell from the platform to the ground.

“Mom!” Kai screamed, trying to get her attention through the din of battle. She pushed herself up from the ground and shook her head.

Overhead, a Patari craft screamed by, flame and smoke issuing from its engines. It slammed into the main building. Kai and Bandar threw themselves to the ground as it exploded. Chunks of metal sprayed the courtyard like projectiles.

Several of the Patari, clumped together, were killed by the wreckage. A sharp piece of the ship flew directly toward Kai. His heart froze, and his body instinctively jerked out of the way as the debris slammed into the ground.

“That was too damned close,” Kai said.

A squad of four more Patari joined the firefight.

Cannon fire from the Blackstar kept them at a distance.

Kai spun to face them and fired three more rounds at the Patari soldiers as he and Bandar fought their way towards Brenna.

Half a dozen more burst out from beyond the platform. They were going to get quickly outnumbered if they didn’t move faster.

“Senaya, blast that door!” he yelled into his comm.

“Blasting!” Senaya replied. A few seconds later, a bolt of energy slammed into the building above the door, which collapsed the hallway. Quickly following that, another gravity pulse impacted directly in the center of the newcomers, launching them dozens of meters into the air.

Finally, Kai made it to Brenna and threw his arms around her neck in an uncharacteristic show of emotion.

“Later, Kai,” Bandar said, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “We’ve got to go.”

“Right,” he said. He looked at his mother. “Can you run?”

“Faster than you,” she said and gave him a weary smile.

“Prove it, then,” he said.

They bolted for the micro-hauler. Bandar brought up the rear, protecting their backs. Kai continued firing his weapon, not even aiming, just wanting to keep the path clear.

They made it into the ship even as the Patari fighters opened fire on the battered micro-hauler.

Bandar boarded and flipped the switch to raise the ramp, but before it could close, a metallic round struck him in the leg and sent him sprawling in a heap on the other side of the cargo hold. He cursed, clutching his leg.

“Bandar.” Kai started to help him up, but the older man shoved him away.

“Get us back to the Blackstar,” he said. “Go.”

“Right,” Kai said, launching himself into the cockpit. “Hold on back there!”

He engaged the launch procedure and pushed the throttle to full.

The craft buckled under the sudden power as it scraped across the platform and lurched into the sky. Kai struggled to straighten it in the thin atmosphere.

“Shit!” Kai cried and jerked the flight stick to the left to avoid the falling wreck of another Patari ship. It struck the ground with a booming thud. Black smoke and dust flew up in a cloud that covered the micro-hauler and obscured Kai’s view.

He quickly brought up the holoscreen and reoriented himself, using the Blackstar as a point of reference. “Head for low orbit,” Kai said. “We’re getting out of here right now.”

“I hear you,” Senaya said. “Good job down there.”

Several tense moments later, Kai brought the ship to a stop in the Blackstar’s docking bay. He ensured the clamps were engaged and shut down the engines.

“Docking complete, Sen. Now get us the hell out of here.”

“We’re on our way,” she replied.

He went into the hold to check on Bandar and his mother as the Navigator ship turned and rocketed away from the Patari world. Kai just hoped that they’d caused enough confusion and mayhem that they would have the advantage on any pursuers.

“You okay?” Kai asked his elder brother.

“Yeah, fine,” Bandar said. “Just winged me. I’ve hurt myself worse falling out of bed. The medkit on the Blackstar will have me up and running in no time. Good flying back there.”

Kai shrugged, suddenly self-conscious in the presence of his mother.

“Is there a comm station back here?” Brenna asked.

“Yeah, back there in the corner.” Bandar pointed towards the back of the cargo hold.

Brenna stepped up to it and tapped a few signals into the screen and nodded.

“What was that?” Kai asked her.

“I just sent a remote message for the Rapier to catch up with us. It seems we could use all the resources we can get right now.”

“It’s good to see you again, Mother,” Kai said, struggling to get a grip on his emotions. He didn’t know whether to embrace her, yell at her for being so reckless, or express his outrage she had kept Bandar’s identity a secret from him all this time.

It didn’t matter, however. Kai’s mother grabbed him in a hug and held him tight.

* * *

They reconvened on the bridge, and Kai took his place on the command couch.

“I see you found your father’s ship,” Brenna said, looking around the spotless bridge.

“We sort of found each other,” he said, then gestured toward Marella. “With her help, of course.”

Marella smiled and nodded her head toward Brenna. The two woman quickly exchanged pleasantries before the attention was back on their current situation.

“What’s our status?” Brenna asked.

“We appear to be in the clear,” Senaya said, beaming. “This ship handles like a dream. I think I’m in love!”

“Ship incoming,” the AI warned.

“On screen,” Kai snapped. The holoscreen changed visuals to show a ship following them.

“It’s okay. That’s the Rapier,” Brenna said.

“Sen, slow us down for a moment if you wouldn’t mind,” Kai said.

She did as he asked. Several minutes later they heard a metal clunk as the Rapier magnetically attached itself to the Blackstar’s outer hull docking point.

The AI provided a stream of data, which culminated in a status telling them that the Rapier was secured and all systems were operational.

“Okay, let’s get out of this system,” Kai said. “And then we catch up properly.”

“Where to?” Senaya asked.

“The coordinates of the Spearhead’s last known location.”

“I’m on it.” Senaya input the coordinates into the nav-computer and put the star drive on full power. “Okay, everyone, get ready for a subspace jump. Make sure you’re all strapped in.”

The now familiar swirling of space ahead of them grew larger and enveloped the Blackstar as it slipped into subspace.

Pressure built around Kai’s eyeballs. His internal organs squished together as though he were being pressed down by a great weight. A few moments later, his hearing popped, and the pressure eased. The Blackstar had passed through the distorted gravity barrier and now traveled smoothly, without any further thrust, through whatever space or dimension the wormhole passed.

When the ship’s AI gave them the all-clear, they unstrapped from their crash couches and stretched their limbs.

“That was exciting,” Brenna said.

“Not the word I would use,” Marella said. “For a moment, I thought you were… that we were… well, let’s say I didn’t think we’d get this far.”

“You have no adventure in your soul,” Senaya replied with a smile.

“Nice rescue, Kai,” Brenna said. “You arrived just in time.”

“The kid… sorry, Kai had a little help,” Bandar said. He winced as he applied a lather of medi-gel to his wound.

“Always the charmer, Bandar,” Brenna said. “It’s good to see you all. For a while, I thought I’d be lost forever.”

“That brings us to my next question, Mother,” Kai said. “What happened to you? How did you end up on that planet?”

Brenna sighed and spent the next few moments explaining what had happened, from coming to an unfamiliar space to pursuing the space octopus and ending with her trial.

“I saw one of those!” Kai said, a surge of adrenaline pumping through his veins. “They didn’t believe me.”

“We didn’t not believe you,” Marella said. “But without seeing it for ourselves, it’s quite a stretch. We’ve nothing comparable on our side of the Veil.”

“Apparently,” Brenna said, ignoring the banter, “they are known as the Travelers. They can create wormholes like the Blackstar and, well, travel from system to system.”

“I wonder if the Navigators—” Marella started.

“The Great Ancients,” Brenna said. “That’s what the Patari call them.”

“Okay. Well, anyway, I wonder if those creatures are what the Navigators based their own wormhole systems on?” Kai said.

“More than likely,” Brenna replied.

“So they are sentient? These Travelers?” Senaya asked, leaning over her control panel with interest.

“Yes, from what the Patari said. And that’s all I know about them.” Brenna paused for a moment, thinking. “And, apparently, the Veil was created to lock off our sector of the universe from a race of beings called the Koldax.”

“Who are they?” Kai asked.

“Don’t really know. All I do know is that they are a techno-organic race that goes about swallowing up other life-forms and planets. Real nasty bastards, according to the Patari.”

“How creepy,” Marella said, her soft brown fur undulating on her bare forearms.

“Indeed,” Brenna said. She went on to fill them in on what the Patari had told her about the Navigators’ slumber.

Kai had a flashback of the crystalline city with the twelve coffins that lay in the courtyard. And then something else flashed through his mind: another alien race spreading out in waves across the universe, and in its wake something larger, more powerful.

The Darkarahn.

The thought of that word made him shudder with a chill through his veins.

“Kai?” Brenna asked, reaching a hand to his shoulder. “You okay?”

“Yeah, fine… did the Patari say anything about something called the ‘Darkarahn’?”

“No, I don’t recall them mentioning it. What is it?”

“I’m not quite sure yet.” He tapped his temple. “This Navigator stuff inside my head keeps bubbling to the surface every now and then, but I don’t know what any of it means. But I just got an image of something called the Darkarahn. Massive, terrible… Some great cosmic horror… And real old. As old as time itself.”

“Sounds like your typical bedtime story,” Bandar said.

“Perhaps.” Kai looked at the space outside the ship on the holoscreen. “Or perhaps not.”

Chapter 11

The Blackstar’s galley was pleasant, as far as galleys went on starships. Clean, well-stocked, and roomy. Kai sat across the table from Bandar and Brenna and thought about what he was going to say.

They were all drinking coffee and picking at food.

“Well, we should probably get this family-reunion show on the road,” Bandar said. He pushed his plate away, lit up a cigar and stretched his legs out. In the quiet of the kitchen, the hydraulic whine from his prosthetic leg startled Kai.

“I guess so,” Brenna said.

“Yeah,” Kai said.

And then they lapsed into a less comfortable silence once again.

“Okay, this is ridiculous,” Kai said and looked at Brenna. “Wanna tell me about myself? Bandar knows some; you know some. Hell, you two know more about me than I do.”

“Easy, Kai,” Bandar said.

“No, Bandar, it’s okay,” Brenna said. “He has every right to be angry.”

“That’s just it, Mother. I’m not angry. More confused than anything else.” He paused. “Well, maybe a little angry.”

“And that is completely understandable,” she said.

“So, care to fill me in?”

She finished off her coffee in one gulp and then sighed.

“Okay, Kai. I left you on Zarunda to learn to make your own mistakes, your own choices. I was brought up in a very strict household, where a career was first and foremost. Everything, really. My entire youth was spent taking extra classes and extracurricular activities in school for the sole purpose of preparing me for an eventual career in the GTU.” A wan smile spread across her face. “My parents were none too happy when I decided to go into the military. My father went so far as to threaten to disown me if I signed those recruitment papers. He didn’t, of course. But my familial relationships were strained for the rest of my parents’ lives.”

“I never knew that,” Kai said. “Because you never told me.”

“Of course I didn’t. I wanted you to be self-sufficient, to choose your own path. Part of me feared that I would become my parents with you.”

“Like trying to talk me into joining the military?” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Over and over again?”

She smiled at him. “Yes, just like that. But with your father missing and me constantly being away on GTU missions, I didn’t want to drag you all over the galaxy.” She paused and pushed some food around her plate with a fork. “No, that’s not entirely true. I couldn’t drag you all over the galaxy. My job, my career would have made that impossible. So I set you up with relatives on Zarunda. A solution? Yes. The best solution? Probably not. But I didn’t really see that I had much choice. I could have given you up to foster care or something like that, but with your parentage, it was better to hide you because…”

“The Coalition would have found out somehow.”

“Probably through health screenings. So, yes, I sent you away. And it hurt. Badly.”

“Even though I’m not your son.” Kai didn’t sound accusatory, merely stated a cold fact.

“As far as I’m concerned, you are my son. I love you, Kai, and it broke my heart to send you away like that. But you were never alone on Zarunda, not really.”

“Because Bandar was there to keep an eye on me.” He looked at the old soldier’s face through a cloud of cigar smoke. Only thirty-eight years old, but he could pass for ten, fifteen years older than that. Just what kind of hell had he been through?

“That’s right,” Bandar said. “And you made it hard, sometimes. Flying around in those junk-heap racing ships, getting into scrapes with people you shouldn’t even have been dealing with. At times, you were a real pain in my ass.”

Kai laughed and ran his hands through his hair.

“I swear, you keep that up, and you’re going to be bald by the time you’re thirty,” Bandar said.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Kai said. “How did you get sucked into this?”

“Well, someone needed to keep an eye on you and at the same time set up shop on one of the outer worlds as a criminal mastermind.”

“Mastermind?” Kai asked, eyebrows raised.

“Well, a good lot smarter than most, anyway. So, while I was making sure you didn’t get killed by the criminal element you worked for, I also kept my ear to the ground for any information on the Host.”

“What does Zarunda have to do with the Host?”

“Think about it, Kai. It’s an outer world, far from the center of Coalition space.”

“And closer to Host territory.” Kai nodded in understanding.

“Bingo. It’s practically an outpost here-there-be-dragons world. A perfect spot to set up an intelligence-gathering post.”

“But why pose as a criminal? Why not a farmer or a shopkeeper or something?”

“Simple,” Bandar said. “Thieves, killers, grifters, scum of the universe, they have a highly sharpened instinct about the secret comings and goings of the people in power.” He paused to relight his cigar. “Well, the good ones do, anyway. So if there were rumblings about the Host encroaching back into Coalition space, they would be the first ones to hear about it. Mainly the smugglers.”

“Makes sense, I guess.” Kai folded his arms across his chest. “But why you?”

“I already knew you; at least I did when you were a young one.” He looked at Brenna, and a small smile touched his lips. Brenna refilled her coffee mug. “Besides, when you get right down to it, it was a family matter.”

Silence reigned again as Kai took some time to process all of this information. It wasn’t precisely new—he’d had similar thoughts on the subject in the darkest parts of the night—but it was nice to have it all laid out, spoken aloud. But there was one more piece he needed.

“And what about my birth mother?” he asked Brenna.

She leaned forward, elbows on the table, and rotated her coffee cup on the smooth surface. It made a minute scraping sound. “To be honest, I don’t know all that much about her,” she said finally. “Or her relationship with your father. He didn’t talk a whole lot about it.”

“Tell me what you do know,” Kai said.

“They met sometime after your father’s disappearance.” She glanced at Bandar, who was concentrating on the tip of his cigar, and then back at Kai. “After the war, I mean. He met several Navigators, and she was one of them. A queen of some sort.”

“A queen? Really?”

“Yes, really. At least that’s what Kendal told me. She was dying and needed to create an offspring to whom she could pass on her genetic code and powers to.” Brenna took a long, slow pull on her coffee. “Ultimately, that was you.”

“Okay, but how did they meet?” It was his turn to lean forward now; his steady gaze grew intense.

“I don’t know, Kai.” She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms and sat back. “You’re going to have to ask Kendal about that when we find him.”

“If we find him,” Kai said. “And if he’s still alive. Have to locate the Spearhead first.”

“We’ll find him,” Bandar said. “Trust me, Kai, Kendal is too good and too stubborn to die out in the boonies.”

“So, my mother… birth mother… wanted to pass her powers on to me,” Kai said.

“That was the plan, according to Kendal,” Brenna answered. She finished off her coffee and rubbed her temples.

“Well, I sure don’t feel like I have any powers or anything. I mean, I feel like the potential for… something is there.” Kai tapped his forehead in frustration. “If I could just manage to unlock all this Navigator crap in my head.”

“Don’t push too hard,” Brenna said with a yawn. “And now, if you don’t mind, I have to get some sleep. Being on Patari wasn’t exactly like staying at a five-star hotel on Capsis Prime.”

“Prison cells aren’t known for their comforts,” Bandar said.

“Oh, thank you so much for that keen observation,” she snapped.

Bandar raised his hands, palms out.

“I’m sorry,” Brenna said and shook her head. “I’m just exhausted.”

“Come on.” Bandar stood and tipped his head at the door. “I’ll show you where the crew quarters are.”

Brenna gave him a weak smile and got to her feet. She patted Kai on the shoulder as she passed and followed her other son out of the kitchen.

A great deal of information had been imparted, and Kai had a lot to think about. He was mostly curious about the Navigator powers he was supposed to inherit, whatever they were. He decided to head to the bridge. He seemed to think better sitting in the captain’s position.

“And maybe I’ll have another vision or something,” he muttered to the empty kitchen on his way out.

He entered the bridge and Senaya was sitting on the command couch, her head hunched over something. Marella was nowhere to be seen.

“Hey,” he said as he approached. Senaya glanced at him over her shoulder, the diodes in her mohawk tinkling against each other.

“Hey,” she said. She turned back to look at whatever was in her lap.

Kai sat down next to her and saw that she was watching the old footage of the aftermath of her cousins’ assassination.

“Why are you watching that?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Senaya said and started the recording from the beginning. “It’s been on my mind a great deal lately.” She paused the video and pointed to a woman at the back of the crowd. The woman mimed shooting her cousin with her forefinger, and a grim smile touched her lips.

“You can’t kill her again,” Kai said.

“I know that.” Senaya shrugged and set the holoscroll down on the couch beside her. She pulled her legs up and rested her chin on her knees. “It doesn’t make any sense, you know?”

“What doesn’t?”

“Why my cousins were murdered.” She turned her head to look at him and for a brief moment looked like that little girl he had met all those years ago. An angry-as-hell version of that girl. “I mean, the war was all but over. The Host already surrendered. From what I’ve been told, they were just there to mop up, you know? Peace negotiation stuff. Why even bother assassinating anyone at that point?”

“I really don’t know.” He shook his head and felt helpless.

“I really wish we’d taken a DNA sample from that witch back on Zarunda like you suggested.” She shrugged again and let her feet drop to the floor. “Oh well. Too late now, I guess.”

Kai wondered if the authorities on Zarunda had bothered to ID the trader that Senaya killed, and if so, would they be able to get that information? With Brenna’s GTU connections, perhaps she could pull some strings, get a name, a little background, anything really.

“I have an idea,” he said. “Why don’t you let Marella take a look at the video?”

“Marella? Why?”

“She’s really good at sussing out information. Hell, it was part of her job before we met her.”

“So?” Senaya placed her hand protectively on the holoscroll without even realizing she did it. “There’s nothing there, Kai. I’ve probably watched it a thousand times.”

“And that might be the problem. You’ve seen it too much, but Marella hasn’t seen it at all. She’ll have fresh eyes, a fresh perspective, and might be able to come up with something you missed.”

“I don’t know…” She looked dubious.

“Come on, what could it hurt? If she can’t find anything, then you’re no further away from answers than you are right now.”

“It’s worth a try, I guess.”

“Good.” Kai looked around the bridge. “Do you know where she is?”

“In her bunk. She said she needed to stretch out for a bit.”

“Let’s go.”

Kai and Senaya left the bridge and headed for the crew quarters. They found Marella’s berth and knocked. Seconds later the door opened.

“Did we wake you?” Senaya asked. “We can come back.”

“No, no,” Marella said. “Come on in.”

They followed her into her cabin and Kai marveled at her height. He was so used to seeing her sitting on the bridge, hunched over her control board, that he sometimes forgot just how tall she was.

“What can I do for you?” Marella asked.

Senaya told her all she knew about the assassination, playing with one of the luminescent diodes in her hair.

“Would it be too much bother for you to maybe take a look?” Senaya asked.

“That’s terrible,” Marella said. “And of course I’ll look it over.”

“Thanks,” Senaya said, an embarrassed smile on her face. She held the holoscroll out with one hand.

“Think nothing of it, Sen,” Marella said and took the proffered scroll. “I’ll get started analyzing right away.”

Chapter 12

General Hominos ensured his office door was closed and then crossed the room and sat behind his large ornate desk.

He still wasn’t accustomed to this new office, previously occupied by General Amelia. The desk was twice the size of his old one, the carpeting plush and spongy under his boots.

It had only been a few days since Amelia’s defection to the Host, but all traces of her presence had already been wiped out.

The bookshelves aligned against one wall were empty save for the same old military history books that seem to find residence in every officer’s library. He hadn’t had time yet to fill the blank walls with his own memorabilia—pictures of his first command, family mementos, his degree from the academy—but he would have enough time for a more personal touch once this crisis passed.

The chronometer on his desk beeped twice, a soft reminder that the operation was about to begin. He tapped his password and credentials into his computer and sent a message to the Vector, a GTU scout and spy ship heading to rendezvous with a group of ships. The battalion was fast approaching striking distance of the new, terrible weapon the Host had got their hands on.

The video feed on his monitor opened on a young male face. Dark, short cropped hair, pale blue eyes, a strong jaw. And doesn’t look a day over fifteen, Hominos thought.

“GTU Vector, this is General Hominos.”

“We read you five by five, General,” the young man said.

“And who is it I’m speaking with?”

An introduction should’ve been the first thing this young officer offered, and Hominos fought to hide his annoyance at the protocol breach. There was a time for the carrot and a time for the stick. This was not the time for the latter.

Besides, it was never comfortable behind enemy lines, as they were.

“Pardon me, sir,” the young man said. The general was happy to see a flustered expression on his face. “I’m Agent Emil Johnson.”

“Johnson? That’s an old name. Don’t see a lot of Johnsons around anymore.”

“Yes, sir,” Agent Johnson said.

“If I recall correctly, there was a Colonel Johnson at the academy?”

“That would be my father, sir.” A smile cracked upon Agent Johnson’s face that told the general the young man had heard that many, many times before.

“He was a good instructor,” Hominos said. “Is he still there?”

“No, sir. He retired ten years ago.”

“Well, the next time you talk to him, tell him Ratic Hominos sends his best.”

“I’ll do that. Thank you, sir.”

Hominos straightened in his seat and shot a piercing gaze at Agent Johnson. Time for business.

“What’s the status?” he asked.

“Sir, we are in-system and ETA to engagement is…” Johnson’s eyes slipped to one side for a moment and then returned. “Five minutes, thirty-eight seconds, sir.”

“Excellent,” Hominos said. “Keep this channel open, but share the feed of the battle with me.”

“Yes, sir,” Agent Johnson said.

The screen shifted from the nose of the Vector, which was located in the rear of the fleet, to an exterior view, observing and relaying strategic commands.

Several classes of starship—from frigates to battle cruisers—spanned the width of the field of view.

A small part of Hominos wished he was there, leading these brave men and women from the front. But he knew that he was of more value to the CDF right here on Capsis Prime.

“Host fleet in sight,” Agent Johnson said. “And, gods, what is that thing?”

“The reason you’re out there.”

A massive warship, directly ahead but off-center to the right of the screen, hovered in space. The sheer size of it sent a tendril of unease snaking up Hominos’s spine.

“Destroyers are engaging now,” Johnson said. His voice had risen half an octave, and there was a note of edge that wasn’t present before.

That behemoth had him spooked. But Hominos couldn’t blame the young agent, not really. That was exactly how he’d felt when he had witnessed it for the first time.

The leading edge of the CDF battalion launched their attack on their opposites in this small Host battle group. The Coalition had the enemy outnumbered and outgunned, and things looked to be going well for them. In the first moments of the engagement two Host ships were broken in half from torpedo attacks, and a third was limping away, trailing smoke from one of its two main engines. CDF vessels closed in to finish wiping the small force out.

And then all hell broke loose.

Hominos caught a brief flicker from the superweapon. His stomach clenched.

A now familiar dark energy fired from the open nose of the vessel, warping space as it went. It caught the broadside of one of the battle cruisers, which had been turning in pursuit of an escaping Host ship. The warship shuddered from stem to stern and then broke in two, spewing smoke and flame briefly into space.

A series of explosions rocked the hull of the doomed craft.

Agent Johnson gasped over the comm.

The remaining battle force turned to face the real threat and, in doing so, immediately signed their own death warrants.

The superweapon fired its antigravity weapon at each of the attacking ships in relatively quick succession. In turn, they launched weapons of their own—torpedoes, missiles, and even a pair of nukes—but to no real effect.

Hominos clenched a fist with each impact, hoping beyond hope that they would do some damage. But the damned thing was just too big, too heavily armored, for conventional weapons to do much harm.

The same was not true for the Host’s antigravity weapon.

As each Coalition vessel was struck by the shimmering beam, it shuddered and then exploded in a series of concussive bursts.

Hominos leaned forward in his chair, his nose mere inches from the computer monitor.

“Seven Hells,” he said.

Somehow, some way, that antigravity beam was punching through the hulls of those ships and setting off their ordnance. “They’re using our own weapons against us.”

And then it was over. The video feed from the Vector continued for several moments, but the audio was dead. Or there was no one alive aboard the spy vessel to send any updates. Based on the circular rotation of the feed, Hominos decided the latter was probably the case.

The massive enemy ship shimmered. Hominos was about to kill the feed but stopped, his finger poised over the button. The superweapon vanished from the screen. It didn’t enter any kind of subspace, nothing at all like that.

It just vanished.

He leaned back in his chair—the plush, comfortable chair he’d fallen in love with the first time he sat in it—and let out a long shuddering breath. The light hair all over his body stood on end. He glanced at his chronometer, and it showed him that only ten minutes had passed.

Ten minutes to destroy an entire Coalition battalion.

He knew this was a possibility, of course. It was his job to consider every outcome of every engagement, but he didn’t spend much thought on this conclusion.

He had hoped that even with the losses expected, they’d do enough damage to the Host behemoth to slow it down, or at least incapacitate it, but it was like children throwing sticks at a giant.

“An entire battalion,” he muttered and slammed a fist down onto his desk.

Who the hell were these Host allies?

He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths to regain himself, part of a meditation technique he’d learned long ago. He let his mind drift. Men died in combat; it was part of the deal they signed up for. Except those who were conscripted, but even that was part of living in a society based on the defense of freedom.

Sometimes blood had to be spilled. And those weren’t just words floating around in his mind; he truly believed them. He’d dedicated his entire life to those ideals, in fact.

Hominos opened his eyes, centered now. He tapped a few commands into his computer and reviewed the short battle from the beginning. When it concluded, he restarted it and continued this process for another ten minutes. Something about that new warship was niggling at his mind, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

Two more cycles through and he saw it.

The ship never moved away from the system’s star. It merely hovered there in place, not even really in orbit around it. And there was energy streaming from the sun to the ship.

“It’s using the star to power itself,” Hominos muttered to the empty room.

He loaded the transmission into a message and sent it off to the analysis department, calling them immediately.

“This is General Hominos,” he said as soon as someone came on the line. “I just sent you a recording of the recent engagement with the new Host technology.”

“Yes, sir, I see it now,” the analyst said.

Hominos gave the woman a brief rundown of all he knew about this strange new alien technology.

“I need something to counter it,” he said after the quick briefing. “We need to know how it works and how to stop it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“This is your Number. One. Top. Priority,” the general said, punctuating each word with a stabbing finger. “Anything else on your agenda can wait until we have the means to counter this weapon. Those who died to get us this footage will not die for nothing. Am I clear?”

“Yes, sir. I’ll get on it right away.”

“You’ll get on it sooner than that.”

Hominos cut the connection and played the recording back again. It was in the hands of his experts now; best to put it out of his mind until they came back with any insights.

He hailed Captain Mathieson and then silently chided himself for not using his secretary for these tasks. He didn’t have to wait long for a reply.

“Yes, General,” Mathieson said. Her long white hair was braided and fixed into an intricate tower above her round face.

“How goes the GTU’s mission to infiltrate the Host worlds?” he said. “Give me some good news, Alisa, I could use it right about now.”

“Yes, sir.” Her muddy brown eyes seemed to look directly into the general’s, as though he were sitting in front of her and not on the other end of wireless connections and computer screens. “We have an agent, Musa Miles, inside the Host embassy on Gaszla II.”

“Why there?” Hominos didn’t know the particulars beforehand, he just wanted things done.

“Well, sir—we believe that is where the Host are receiving orders from their new ally.”

“Orders?” That was new to the general. As far as he knew, the Host didn’t take orders from anyone.

“Yes, sir.” Mathieson took a pad from someone offscreen, glanced at it and nodded before continuing. “According to Miles, they are due to meet with this new faction—whoever they may be, we still don’t know—later in the day. My man is in a good position to learn more. I’ll forward any and all pertinent details to you once I have it, later in the day.”

“Excellent, Captain,” Hominos said with a nod. “Right now, we need anything we can go on.”

“I informed Miles that extraction might prove… difficult,” Mathieson said. “Though, impossible would be more like it.”

“But he knows the importance, right?”

“He said it was worth the risk, that the information could prove far too valuable to pass up.” She paused and cleared her throat, and she wore an expression as though she had more to say but stopped herself. It was just a fleeting micro-expression, but in his heightened state, Hominos caught it immediately.

“Just say what’s on your mind, Captain.”

“Sir, I’m not comfortable sending my people on suicide missions. And that’s what this is probably turning into. Miles knew this, but still. It doesn’t sit well.”

“He sounds like an honorable and dedicated agent,” Hominos said. “He understands his duty to the Coalition and seems willing to do whatever needs doing. What’s the problem, exactly?”

Mathieson looked uncomfortable, glancing away from the screen. She looked back at her commanding officer and said, “There is no problem, sir.”

“Good to hear, Captain.” Although Hominos knew there was more to it. He thought briefly of demanding she explain herself but decided to let it lie for now. The mission was more important than one person’s opinion.

“Is there anything else, General?” she asked.

“Yes, one more thing.” He leaned forward and once more engaged his intense stare. “You need to step up the GTU’s efforts in finding the good General Amelia.”

“Sir, we have been trying—”

“No, Captain,” he interrupted her. “I don’t want to hear about trying. You need to do everything you can, turn over every rock, run every source, whatever needs to be done to get this completed. You have the power and weight of the entire GTU at your disposal. Use it—in whatever means possible. We need to find Amelia. I want her head on a pike. Do you understand?”

Mathieson nodded. “Any means necessary it is, sir.”

He stabbed the connection closed and planned to chase up the analysts within the hour. For now, he prepped a status update for the presidents. They’d no doubt want an up-to-the-minute report of events, and he wanted to prove that he was managing the situation as best as possible.

Chapter 13

Brenna splashed water on her face to wake up. She was still tired from the lack of proper rest since this entire adventure began.

Ten years ago she could have gone days at a time with no sleep, and it wouldn’t even have slowed her down. But every day she was getting older, and she just couldn’t hack it the way she once did. She wished she had a common street stim or, gods forbid, even an Equilibrium shot, just to fight off the fuzzy-headed feeling. But she didn’t, so coffee was going to have to do.

On her way to the kitchen, she passed Marella going the other way with a steaming cup of something delicious. She nodded and smiled at the Lantesian and continued on her way into the kitchen. She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table. She drank it black—her nose crinkling at the bitter taste—because she didn’t want anything getting in the way of the caffeine boost.

She thought about the information on Kendal’s location that Marella possessed. She claimed to have gotten it from the ship’s logs, but that didn’t feel right. Brenna’s keen nose for disinformation, honed over the years by her spy craft, was twitching. She trusted it more than she trusted that the sun would rise over Capsis Prime every day. And she wanted to find out why. She finished her coffee in three long pulls and headed for the crew quarters.

Brenna buzzed the door and Marella answered.

“Hi,” Brenna said, her tone light. “Mind if I come in?”

“Um, I’m kind of busy with a task at the moment,” Marella said.

“It’ll only take a minute.” Brenna took a step closer to the open door. “I need to talk to you about something, and I’d rather not do it in public.”

Marella glanced over her shoulder then turned back and nodded. “Sure, come on in.”

“Thanks.” Brenna walked in, and the door slid shut behind her. Marella picked something up off a table that looked like it might be a holoscroll and set it down on the floor next to her chair.

“Please, sit down,” Marella said. Brenna nodded and took the seat opposite. “What is it you wanted to talk to me about?”

“What did you find in Kendal’s journal?” Brenna asked, getting it right out there to avoid any pointless small talk.

Marella’s eyes widened a fraction and changed color. She blinked rapidly, and the color returned to normal. Although it all happened in a fraction of a second, Brenna was watching for her reaction and saw what she expected.

That was the problem with Lantesians. No matter how good they were, they always had a few tells they couldn’t control.

“Excuse me?” Marella asked, trying to recompose herself.

“I know you didn’t get Kendal’s possible location from the ship’s logs. Kai bought that line, but I don’t.” She paused and folded her hands on the tabletop. “And neither does the AI.”

“I don’t… that is…” Marella was clearly flustered. Her fine hair stood on end.

“Look, I know Kendal much better than Kai does. And one thing that he always did was keep a journal. I should know, I have several hard drives full of them at my apartment.”

Marella looked to Brenna like she was ready to bolt, but there was nowhere to run on a starship, even one as big as the Blackstar. All the tension drained from her body, and she sat back in her chair, deflated.

“Yes, I found Kendal’s journals,” she admitted.

“Why did you lie to Kai about them?”

Marella ran her hands through her hair and Brenna wondered if she’d picked that particular tic up from Kai since being in his presence.

“I just wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything bad in them,” Marella said.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know,” Marella said. “You know how Kendal is; he’ll do anything to complete a mission, and sometimes those things aren’t very nice.”

Brenna knew very well what she was talking about. When her husband was into something, he was single-minded about it and would pull out all the stops until he completed his task.

She wasn’t pleased that this girl knew that, though. Not at all.

“And what does that have to do with Kai?” Brenna asked.

“I didn’t want him to perhaps get the wrong idea about his father,” Marella said.

“So you were, what, protecting my son, after knowing him for a week or so?”

“Yes.” Marella met Brenna’s eyes directly for the first time with an almost defiant look. “And I don’t see the problem with that.”

Brenna wondered why this stranger, who had only known her son for a week or so, would care that much, but she let it go for now.

“That’s commendable,” Brenna said. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” She leaned her elbows on the table, and her shoulders slumped again. “Plus, there’s some fairly crazy stuff in there. Things I don’t fully understand yet.”

“Such as?”

“I don’t even know if I can explain it properly,” Marella said.

“Try. You might find me a little sharper than I appear.” Brenna could do the steely-eyed gaze as well.

“Kendal talks about something called the Darkarahn, an unimaginable cosmic horror.” Marella cocked her head to one side as if remembering something. “Funny.”

“What is?” Brenna asked.

“Kai used the same words to describe it as Kendal did—almost verbatim.”

Brenna didn’t like the way in which she said her husband’s name. There was a sense of a feeling there, under the surface.

“Like father, like son, I suppose,” Brenna said.

“I think it might be more than that,” Marella said. She shook her head. “Never mind.”

This young lady has all sorts of secrets, Brenna thought. What fun it would be extracting them from her.

“What did the journal say about the Darkarahn?”

“A massive cosmic horror, the stuff of nightmares, imprisoned by the Navigators long ago.” Her eyes had a faraway look like she was reciting directly from a passage instead of memory.

“Imprisoned how?” Brenna was a spy, but she was not a fan of riddles. Unless they were of her own creation, of course.

“Kendal didn’t know, or he just didn’t say,” Marella said. Her eyes focused on Brenna again. “But it’s getting stronger, apparently.”

“I don’t understand any of this,” Brenna said. “Do you?”

“I’m not really sure,” Marella replied. “And Kendal didn’t understand it either, not completely.”

“Wonderful,” Brenna said.

“But what he was rather explicit about is that the Navigators are actually stuck in their slumber state,” Marella said. “They’re trapped, and Kendal suspects that’s the Koldax’s doing. They have free reign on Azelia.”

“What’s that?”

“The Navigator home world. To free the Navigators, someone has to go to Azelia and destroy the Koldax. Or chase them off, at the very least.” Marella took a sip of her tea.

“So all we have to do is assault a world that we know nothing about that is being held by a hostile alien force. With one ship.” Brenna had to laugh just to break the tension she felt building in her shoulders.

Marella smiled at her over her cup. “But it’s a Navigator ship.”

“Yeah, well, the Navigators didn’t seem to do so well against the Koldax.”

“Actually, they held them at bay for centuries,” Marella said and set her cup down on the table, centering it in front of her so the handle was on the right side.

“I know.” Brenna rubbed her eyes. The caffeine rush was already wearing off. Gods damn getting older. “So what about Kendal’s location?”

“That was in his last journal entry,” Marella said and got that faraway look in her eye again. “They found a Koldax outpost on Azelia.”

“They? Who are they?”

“Kendal and a small group of Patari,” Marella said.

“Patari?” Brenna jerked forward in her seat, wide awake once more.

“Apparently, they aren’t all religious zealots,” Marella said. “Anyway, he wrote that they were headed to this outpost. The Koldax set up some sort of force field generators that are somehow tampering with Azelia’s energy fields.”

“I can’t believe he went with the Patari.” Brenna just couldn’t wrap her mind around teaming up with the aliens that wanted to feed her to a giant bird.

“Kendal theorizes that whatever the force fields are doing to the energy fields is what is keeping the Great Ancients trapped and entombed in their crystal coffins.”

Brenna wondered again just what the hell they’d gotten themselves into. This sounded like the stuff of fantasy stories, but she trusted Kendal’s word implicitly.

“And that was it?” Brenna asked. “There was nothing else?”

“Nothing,” Marella said. “Like I stated, that was the last journal entry.”

“I’ll need to see the entries for myself, you understand?” Brenna said.

“I’ll forward them to your terminal right away.”

“Thanks. I guess we’re going to Azelia after we find the Spearhead,” Brenna said.

“That would be the likely course of action. But we really have to find Kendal.”

Brenna looked sharply at Marella. There was that tone again. Could it be that she and Kendal…?

“Tell me, Marella,” Brenna said. “How well do you know Kendal?”

“Very well, Brenna.” Her eye color flashed again, and her light hair rippled, as though disturbed by a summer breeze.

“Do you love him?” Brenna’s tone was blunt.

“What? No,” Marella said. She lifted her mug, took a sip, and set it back down, centering it once more.

“Are you sure there’s nothing you’re not telling me?” Brenna asked, one eyebrow cocked.

“Yes. Kendal is a great man. A good friend and mentor. I admire him greatly, but I assure you I do not love him.”

“So then what is your interest in all this?”

“I know how it seems to you; he’s your husband, and I wouldn’t want to get in the way of that. You see, when I first met Kendal, it was our shared desire to know about the Navigators that initially bonded us, but then we went to Oberus, and I was left behind… it’s not Kendal that I miss or desire, it’s the knowledge he had access to.”

They locked eyes then, fully taking the measure of one another. After several long moments, Marella blinked once and looked down at her mug on the table. Gotcha again, Brenna thought.

“Okay, Marella,” Brenna said and stood. “Thank you for talking to me. It doesn’t answer all of my questions, but it did clear some things up.”

“Think nothing of it, Brenna,” Marella said and started to rise.

“Don’t get up.” Brenna held a hand out, motioning her to remain seated. “I’ll see myself out.”

She left Marella’s cabin and headed for the bridge. The Lantesian wasn’t entirely forthcoming, and Brenna wanted to know why. She mentally vowed to keep an eye on her.

Brenna stepped onto the bridge and saw Kai and Senaya finishing up a very animated conversation.

“Am I interrupting?” she asked.

Kai spun to look at her, his eyes hard. “No, I was just about to call you and the others.”

“Why, what’s happening?” Brenna asked, stepping up to the command couch.

“We just received a distress signal through the subspace channel,” Senaya said.

“Its signature matches that of the Spearhead,” Kai said. “And it doesn’t sound good.”

Chapter 14

The Blackstar dropped out of the wormhole into a sector of space between systems, and Kai’s stomach cramped. The sudden shift in velocity forced the strap to tighten around his body. Pain flared through his shoulders, making him wince.

As great as the Navigator technology was, they could have made the furniture and support more sympathetic to a human’s experience of pain—especially as the craft appeared to be made for humanlike species.

Senaya and Brenna both grimaced and squirmed against the straps holding them securely to the crash couch next to him.

The panoramic screen resolved as the ship’s cameras swept through a full rotation. The AI tagged elements of interest but said nothing. Even its holographic face, floating in the middle of the cockpit, remained impassive, waiting for orders.

Kai slapped the central button over his chest to free himself from the harness. It slid back into the couch, and he slumped forward. He rested his forearms on his thighs and took long, deep breaths. His lungs hurt with each inhale, but experience had told him this wouldn’t last. A part of him, the cognitive element rather than the physical, was getting used to these effects. The same part suggested he preferred the immediate pain and discomfort to the long-term sickly effects of subspace.

At least this way, he reasoned, he wouldn’t have to shoot up with Equilibrium to be functional. A little pain didn’t get in the way as much as having one’s entire brain fogged with powerful pharmaceuticals.

“That wasn’t at all fun,” Senaya said, standing from the couch and stretching her limbs. “I’d like to take a look at the dampening field generator at some point, see if I can make it a bit smoother.”

“It wouldn’t take much to improve,” Brenna said, clutching her ribs. “That’s worse than being wrestled by a ganik bull.”

“Must be because of the extra mass we’re carrying with the Rapier and micro-hauler docked,” Kai said. “Anyway, let’s see where we are. Sen, can you hail Bandar and Marella? Ask them to come to the bridge.”

“I’m on it,” Senaya said before letting out a deep sigh as she relaxed back on the couch and hunched over her control panel.

Brenna paced around the central holographic platform and stared up at the screen.

Kai followed her gaze and took in the scene of devastation before them. The AI’s tags showed the Spearhead spread over a kilometer section of space in approximately three hundred thousand pieces.

The hull fragments coalesced in a rough sphere shape. Small jagged pieces of hull and larger parts of the destroyer’s engines and damaged weaponry tumbled over each other.

“Blackstar, any signs of life out there? Escape pods?” Kai said.

The holographic face lightened as though coming to life from a long-dormant sleep. It looked toward Kai and said, “No life signs detected. The distress signal is coming from a mechanical beacon two thousand kilometers away. Do you want me to mark it on the screen for you?”

“Thanks,” Kai said.

Brenna tapped a finger against her lips as she stared up at the screen. Her gaze followed the field of twisted, charred metal from one side of the bridge to the other.

“Mother?” Kai prompted. “What is it?”

“The amount of detritus out there: that can’t all be just from the Spearhead. Looks like Host ships too. Blackstar, can you determine the different fragments and assign them IDs?”

“I can attempt to match identification through design and livery if you wish.”

“Do it.”

From their current view, the wreckages of various indistinguishable ships were tagged with colored dots. Faint lines connected the dots, showing the relationship between the destroyed vessels. The colors clumped tightly together in some areas and mingled more loosely in others.

“Definitely a battle pattern,” Brenna said, smoothing her clothes and returning to take her seat next to Senaya on the couch. “But the way things are, it doesn’t look like the results of ordinary weaponry to me. If we were talking about torpedoes and nukes, surely the destruction would be much farther spread and not as tightly grouped.”

“That raises a question,” Senaya said, looking up from her control panel.

“Go on,” Kai prompted.

“If there are no survivors here, and both Coalition and Host ships are destroyed utterly, who or what destroyed the remaining last ship—or ships. Or did they subspace jump out of here? And if so, to where?”

Kai smiled. Senaya had a point.

“Blackstar,” Kai said, “can you detect any recent subspace activity in the area?”

The holographic head nodded and dimmed while it computed the necessary check. A moment later it brightened and said, “There are no traces of subspace activity in this area of space at all. And it appears there never has been.”

“That leaves just wormhole tech,” Brenna said. Then, “These poor souls… Hundreds dead. Lopek…”

Kai, Senaya, and Brenna remained silent for a moment to pay their respect to the dead GTU agents and civilians aboard the Spearhead. It was a terrible loss of life. Kai felt it in his guts: a cold dread. He slumped forward, head in hands.

This was down to him.

“I condemned them to this,” Kai said. “My actions led to their deaths. How many more lives lost will I be responsible for?”

“The probability can be calculated to—”

“Shut up,” Senaya said, cutting off the ship’s AI. “Listen, Kai, this is not your fault. If you didn’t do what you did, we’d have lost billions on Capsis Prime—and a lot more besides.”

“She’s right,” Brenna said, scooting across the crouch to place a hand on his shoulder. “Their deaths were inevitable. You made the right decision.”

“It doesn’t feel like it, looking at all this destruction,” Kai said. Even as he said it, he had a vision of more destruction to come. He knew deep within himself that this was just the beginning.

The door to the rear of the bridge that led to the rest of the ship slid open. Bandar and Marella entered, sharing a laugh. When Bandar locked eyes with Kai and then saw the screen, his face returned to the same grizzled old rogue Kai had always known.

“What the hell happened out there?” Bandar said.

Senaya brought him and Marella up to speed on the situation.

“That’s terrible,” Marella said, standing tall behind the couch, resting her hands on the back. The fine fur on her forearms rippled gently as though a breeze flowed through the bridge. “But what else could we have done?”

“She’s right,” Senaya said. “It’s ‘we’, not ‘you’,” Kai. “We’re all responsible, and I’d do it all again if faced with the same situation.”

“It’s war, Kai,” Bandar said. “It’s all shit. You just have to do your best not to let it get in your mind, because if you do that, then you’re really screwed.”

Kai suspected Bandar was talking from experience. He wondered if that was one of the real reasons why he had remained back on Zarunda to observe him. It gave him time away from the military; maybe it gave him time to heal.

Everyone was now staring at Kai with a mix of expressions ranging from sympathy to expectation. Never one to be victimized or receive pity, Kai strode across the bridge to be closer to the screen. He located the signal beacon among the debris and visually plotted a course.

“Senaya, take us in slowly via impulse toward the beacon. Blackstar, find us a direct route through so we don’t have to use course-correction thrusters.”

A moment later a white dotted line flickered across the various available routes until it remained in place and turned yellow.

“Got a route,” Senaya said. “Easing us in.”

“Bandar, take weapons. Mother, target acquisition. Marella, do what you do best: observe and let me know if you notice anything out of the ordinary—well, out of what we know currently as ordinary.”

Everyone affirmed his order and took their respective positions on the circular couch.

Kai paced around the bridge, considering any potential dangers.

“ETA to beacon, fifteen minutes on three-quarter impulse,” Senaya said. “Don’t want to risk going any faster than that due to collision issues.”

“I can divert subsystem resources to collision-detection processes,” the AI said.

“No,” Kai said. “Let’s just take it easy. I want all systems fully operational until we know what we’re dealing with.”

“As you wish,” the AI said.

Kai was starting to get used to dealing with the AI. The mistrust and concern he had with it before was softening, but he couldn’t tell exactly why. Maybe it was something in his subconscious; something amongst all that inaccessible knowledge floating to the surface.

Either way, he was happier without the nagging feeling of tension. He could focus on being the best captain he could be. The magnitude of the situation required him to step up and be the leader he had apparently been groomed for.

The crew remained quiet as Senaya piloted the ship with care and purpose.

Kai knew the AI would have done a perfectly adequate job of piloting the ship, but he preferred knowing Senaya was at the controls. It gave her purpose and kept her mind sharp. It was the same for the others, too. Although the Blackstar’s computer would manage the weapons and target acquisition without issue, he still trusted people more, even if they might not be as effective in all situations.

After a few minutes, they had passed the bulk of the Spearhead’s remains. Kai thought he saw bodies floating among the debris but couldn’t be entirely sure. He resisted the temptation to look closer.

What good would that do? They would have perished within minutes. Any chance to save anyone was long gone. There were no other distress signals or attempts to hail them. Kai had to face it: everyone was dead.

All they could do now was find the beacon, retrieve whatever intelligence had been left, and find a way home to honor their lives.

“There’s something moving over there,” Marella said.

Kai turned to face her. She was pointing past him, about thirty degrees to the port side. He followed the direction of where she was pointing and squinted. He too could see it now; a shifting shadow among a large section of a ship’s hull.

“Blackstar, can you enlarge that area?” Kai asked, drawing an imaginary square over the screen. “And does this ship have strong enough lights to illuminate it?”

“We’ll need to be within a few hundred meters,” the AI said. “Enlarging the view by two hundred percent.”

“Sen, can you alter the vector to come at that segment of hull more directly?” Kai said.

Senaya moved her small agile hands deftly across the control panel. “Yeah,” she said. “It’ll add time to get to the beacon, but we’re not going so fast that I can’t use the thrusters to alter our approach.”

“Do it,” Kai said.

The screen shifted a moment later as the thrusters dampened their current trajectory. The main engines pulsed to set the Blackstar on its new route, bringing them centrally toward the area of movement.

A distance countdown appeared on the screen.

The closer they got, the more obvious it was that something was moving around on the hull segment. When they were within a few hundred meters, the AI switched on the Blackstar’s external lights, bathing the area in cool, white light.

“What the hell is that?” Bandar said, leaning forward over his control panel. “Marella, you ever seen anything like that before?”

“Never.”

To Kai, it looked like one of the giant tree spiders that lived deep in the Zarundan jungle. Only this one wasn’t biological, at least not from the outside. The thing was mechanical. It had tethered itself to a section of Spearhead’s hull and was using various probe-like instruments from its triangular head to cut and shape the fragment of detritus.

Sparks bloomed from the point where its instruments struck the surface.

“Looks like it’s salvaging parts,” Senaya said. “Maybe a drone of some sort?”

“No,” Brenna said. “Not a drone… look, there’s more of them farther in the wreckage.”

“Blackstar, identify the machines and their number,” Kai ordered.

The holographic face seemed to Kai to display a stern expression as it carried out the order, then said, with what he thought was a slight hint of anger in its voice, “They’re the Koldax. I’m identifying nine of the machines.”

The AI tagged their locations on the screen with red triangles.

“Crap,” Kai said, returning to his position on the crash couch and strapping himself in. “Everyone strap in. Blackstar, full shields.”

“They’ve seen us,” Marella said as she clipped in the safety harness around her body. “Four of them coming right at us.”

“Shields won’t help against the Koldax,” the AI said. “They don’t have ordnance of any kind. They attack more directly. The shields work on frequencies, such as laser and light beam weapons. They won’t help against a plasma torch, drill, or saw blade.”

“They’ll cut us apart,” Senaya said. “Just like they did with the Spearhead and other ships.”

“There must have been thousands of them,” Marella said.

The image gave Kai pause. Were there still that many out there, beyond the Blackstar AI’s reach, waiting to swarm? He banished the thought and focused on the job at hand.

There were nine of them. That felt doable to him. Although where he got that confidence from, he couldn’t tell, having never faced these things before.

How bad could nine small machines be to something so advanced as the Blackstar?

“They’re almost on us,” Senaya said.

Kai watched them grow larger on the screen. Their metallic shells were matt black with no other markings or signage. Each machine had half a dozen limbs, each one appearing to be armed with a multitude of weapons and tools.

They featured a flat, triangular head and a narrow body that Kai assumed housed its propulsion system. Given how small they were compared to the Blackstar, Kai wondered what kind of advanced technology they had to enable them to move so swiftly with no apparent fuel capacity.

“Engagement imminent,” Senaya said. “They’re in range.”

Chapter 15

Mother, target lock these damned things,” Kai said. “Bandar, fire the PDCs when ready. Blackstar, Marella—keep an eye on the other five.”

“I’m watching them. Don’t worry,” Marella said.

The AI set the five other Koldax out of range with yellow triangles on the screen to distinguish them from the ones in immediate range. Those the AI showed on the holocube in three dimensions for more accurate combat planning.

The four machines in range started to spread out, threatening the Blackstar’s flanks.

“Firing disruptors,” Bandar said.

Brenna highlighted the two outer machines for target acquisition as Bandar instructed the ship to unleash a volley of disruption cannon fire from the port and starboard side arrays.

The entire ship thrummed with energy for a couple of seconds.

On screen, the tight beam of disruption energy was invisible to the naked eye, but the results weren’t. The machine on the port side wobbled at first. Its limbs gyrated then became stiff. A moment later strips of ribboned metal peeled off the narrow body, then the triangular head.

Yet it still came at them.

“Fire again,” Kai said. “Widen the beam for the starboard target.”

Brenna adjusted the targeting and nodded to Bandar to fire again. The grizzled solider sneered as he gestured across his control panel.

The Blackstar’s hull vibrated with a low octave note again as it fired the beam of disruption particles.

This time, the small Koldax machine couldn’t resist. It burst apart in a black cloud of parts. The machine on their starboard side likewise broke apart into hundreds of pieces and floated away into the void of space, beyond the reach of their lights.

“Target the two coming right at us,” Kai said. “Use the gravity distortion array to alter their course, and finish them with rockets—assuming we have rockets.”

The AI appeared on the holocube above the battle view. “The ship is equipped with twenty-five short-range nuclear-tipped missiles. I am more than capable of operating full battle modes if you wish.”

“Fine,” Kai said. “Show us what you’ve got. Bandar, prepare for manual control if it doesn’t work out. One other thing, Blackstar—can we give you a different name to differentiate you from the ship?”

“My name,” the AI said with a hint of pride in its voice, “Is Eesoh, pronounced Ee-sow.”

“Why didn’t you tell us before?” Senaya said.

“No one asked.”

Kai sensed Eesoh wanted to say something else, but its visual representation remained impassive. He returned his attention to the battle at hand despite oddly feeling bad for not having asked the AI its name earlier.

Within a few seconds, Eesoh had targeted the two machines directly in front of them.

A pulse from the GDA altered the gravity around them, sending them swirling around each other in a tight cluster, their mechanical limbs tangling together. The holoscreen indicated the firing of three rockets while the ship engaged full reverse thrusters, presumably to avoid the resulting explosion.

As the Blackstar’s reverse thrusters first slowed their approach and then sent them flying backward away from their target, Kai was forced forward, only the safety harness stopping him from hurtling across the bridge.

Marella let out a surprised scream.

Bandar grunted his displeasure.

Kai composed himself in time to see two of the rockets slam into one of the swirling Koldax machines. The twin explosions destroyed it instantly, sending its partner spinning off into space. The third rocket matched its trajectory and struck true, turning the second machine into nothing more than metal filings.

“Nicely done,” Senaya said, a wide grin on her face.

“What about the other five?” Brenna said.

Two of the other group had broken away and were now far off to the starboard side. Another one had gone high while the remaining two had gone low, their combined vectors culminating in a cone around the Blackstar.

The Koldax had them surrounded, and they were closing in—fast.

“Um, Eesoh, you might want to fire more of those handy rockets,” Senaya said.

“Enemies are exceeding the targeting capabilities.”

“Then use the PDC,” Kai said. “Or the gravity distortion array.”

“The machines have already learned and adapted. Their positions and velocity are such that the chances of a hit are barely in the positive range.”

“So we just sit here like a lame animal and wait to die?” Bandar said. “Screw that. There’s got to be more that we can do.”

The Koldax machines were even faster than the Host’s Arrows. They were within close range already. Brenna’s hands moved quickly over her control panel, trying to acquire the targets to no avail.

“I’ve got an idea,” Kai said. “Eesoh, bring up the shields, and before you say it, I know they’re not effective. Just do it.”

“As you wish.” The screen confirmed that the shields were up and at near one hundred percent capacity.

“What are you thinking of doing?” Senaya said. “Because whatever it is, it’s got to be fast. They’re…” She tailed off and looked up at the screen. Eesoh changed the video feed to show the hull of the ship.

Attached to it like metallic tumors, the five Koldax set about cutting and drilling into the hull.

“This is not good,” Marella said. “We really need to do something right now.”

“I’m going out there,” Bandar said, reaching for his harness. “The damned things won’t like a combat rifle up close and personal.”

“Sit down,” Kai snapped. “No one’s doing anything stupid.”

“Then what do you propose?” his mother said, arching an eyebrow at him like she used to do when he was a young boy planning on doing something reckless.

“The shield is a field of energy, right?”

“Right,” Senaya said, leaning forward, her eyes wide with interest.

“And those things are metal. What does metal do?”

“Conduct energy—and electricity,” Marella said.

The sound of sawing metal echoed throughout the ship, followed by the high-pitched wail of a drill.

“Eesoh, I want you to dump all auxiliary electrical power into the shields.”

“That’ll destroy the shields, Kai Locke,” Eesoh said.

“And the Koldax. At this point, it’s them or us, and I choose us. Can you do it or not?”

“The power converters will need rerouting from the supply unit in the cargo hold,” the AI said. “I can instruct Senaya on how to do this.”

“How long will it take?”

“A few minutes at most.”

“That’ll do. Senaya, can you get on that right away? We don’t have any time to lose.”

“Aye, Captain,” she said, removing herself from the harness and running through the main bridge door.

“I just hope you’re right, Kai,” Marella said.

“I’m open to alternatives if you have any?”

Marella fell silent, and she dropped her gaze to her control panel. Bandar and Brenna shared a look and then conversed quietly among themselves. It irked Kai, but he turned his attention to the holoscreen. Eesoh had brought up some ship-related metrics.

Hull integrity was at ninety-nine percent and falling.

So far, the Koldax hadn’t pierced through yet, but it looked like it was going to be a tight race between them breaching the hull and Senaya diverting power through the shields.

That was if it even worked.

For all Kai knew, the Koldax had defenses for such things.

“You’re taking one hell of a risk, Kai,” Bandar said.

“I don’t hear you coming up with a better strategy.”

“I could take the Rapier. Lure them away.”

“And then what? The Rapier gets cut to pieces too. No, we stick to my plan.”

Kai’s mother stared at him with a curious look in her eye.

“What?” Kai said. “You think it’s a bad idea too?”

Brenna held up her palms, communicating no. “I’m just glad to see you being assertive is all.”

“Now’s not the time for a mother-son growth moment,” Kai said, and then turned his attention back to the matter at hand. “Eesoh, how’s the power diversion coming along?”

“Thirty percent complete.”

Outer hull integrity was down to seventy-five percent.

Marella’s eyes had changed to a dark red color that Kai assumed was fear.

He felt it in his guts and down his spine too. A deep chill that one only ever experienced when one was just a thin skin of metal away from being exposed to the brutal nature of a cold vacuum.

“Senaya,” Kai said, “how are you doing back there?”

A long moment passed.

Hull integrity dropped to sixty-three percent.

“Almost… there…” Senaya said between heavy breaths.

Fifty percent.

Thirty-five.

The Koldax were speeding up their efforts.

The cameras showed sparks and outer pieces of hull being stripped away by the spiderlike machines. A red warning light on the screen flashed, communicating that the particle disruption cannons were offline. One of them on the port side came away from its hard point and floated off into the dark expanse.

“The damned things are stripping us of weapons,” Bandar said.

“Senaya,” Kai prompted, “we need to do this now. Like, really, now.”

“I’m… trying,” she said.

“Eesoh, dump the power the second the reroute is done,” Kai said.

The holographic face appeared passive for a few long seconds; then the eyes flashed a bright blue. “Reroute complete.”

“Now!” Kai yelled as the hull integrity dropped to just fifteen percent.

The holographic display showed a wave of electricity flowing out from the tip of the ship and quickly flowing through the shields surrounding the hull. Blue lines of electricity struck the remaining Koldax as they arced from one to the other, each machine exploding in a cloud of sparks before the vacuum of space extinguished the flames.

One of the machines clung to a hard point even as it died from the electrical overload. It remained stuck there, inanimate as its fellow machines joined the debris field in many hundreds of small parts.

A fitting end, Kai thought.

He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding and closed his eyes.

“You did it, Sen,” he said. “You really did it.”

“Are they dead?” she asked, her voice high-pitched with hope over the comm channel.

“Yeah,” Bandar said. “And even better; one of them is stuck to the hull. How’d you like to take a look inside one of them?”

Kai shot him a look. “What is it with you wanting to go out there?”

Bandar smiled back at him and shook his head. “Not me… A tether. Let’s drag it inside and see what it’s made of. Consider it an autopsy. If we’re to fight these things, it makes sense to cut it open and see what makes it tick.”

“He has a point,” Marella added. “More knowledge is more power, after all.”

Kai noticed his mother glare at Marella with a strange expression. He couldn’t decide whether it was suspicion or aggression.

“Eesoh,” Kai said, “are you still operational?”

“I am,” it said. “We currently have twenty-three percent auxiliary power left after the discharge.”

“Good. Can you target the Koldax on the hull and bring it into the hold with a tether?”

“If you wish.”

“Yes, I do. Let me know when it’s on board.”

The AI confirmed the order.

“Mother, run a diagnostic while Eesoh is dealing with the Koldax. Let’s see how badly the Blackstar was damaged in all that.”

“Yes, Captain,” Brenna said with a smirk.

Kai made a mental note to speak with her alone at some point. If he were to captain this vessel to the best of his abilities, he needed to draw a line with this family stuff. He couldn’t have his own mother or his half-brother undermine him.

“Senaya,” Kai said over the comms, “I’ll meet you in the cargo hold in a few hours’ time. We’re having a present delivered and I’d like you to inspect it.”

“I never knew you cared,” she said, a smile in her voice.

“Everyone else, go grab some sleep; you all look exhausted. Senaya and I will take this watch. Bandar, Mother, Marella, you can relieve us in, say, six hours? Eesoh, can you manage and monitor the systems while we inspect the Koldax?”

“Of course,” the AI said. “I’ll inform you of anything unusual should it arise.”

“Oh, and one more thing, Eesoh. Does this ship have any spares to deal with the hull damage?”

“No parts specifically,” the AI said. “But the ship is fitted with a liquid metal reforming repair system. I can tether in parts from the debris field and use those to patch the damage if you wish.”

Despite his initial mistrust, Kai was starting to like the AI. Having it repair the ship was one huge headache he didn’t need to worry about. He just had to worry about more of the Koldax coming out of the darkness and tearing them to shreds.

“Thanks, Eesoh,” Kai said. “Let me know if there are any problems.”

With that, he left the bridge and headed to his bunk to get an hour’s rest before helping Senaya take a look at the Koldax. Fatigue washed over him as he entered his room and flopped down on the bed.

Soon after, the dreams came.

Chapter 16

When Kai’s alarm woke him up an hour later, he had no memory of the dreams, just a ghost of an idea of vague imagery.

A part of him thought it was something important, something he held within that data bomb of information that he couldn’t unlock. Without that access, however, he couldn’t know.

He got up, washed his face, and picked up the tetrahedron, which had fallen out of his pocket and on to the floor during his sleep. He knew that it would still be important to him without knowing exactly why. He pocketed it and set about checking the ship’s repair statuses and running various maintenance routines.

Thankfully, no more Koldax or other hostile alien had discovered them floating among the debris field of his fellow Coalition compatriots.

He pondered on the loss of life again and became exasperated with himself. He couldn’t change it, and he knew, logically, that what he condemned them to was the only option, yet it still didn’t absolve him of his guilt.

“Just got to live with it,” he said to himself as he left his cabin and filled up the next five hours with maintenance and repairs.

When he was done, he went to check in with Senaya in the cargo hold to see how she was getting on with the Koldax machine—and to relieve her so she could get some well-earned rest.

Kai walked through the narrow corridors and climbed the ladder down to the belly of the ship. He pressed his hand against the control panel to open the cargo hold door. It hissed quietly, and he stepped inside.

Senaya was doing what he had learned to be her victory dance around the captured Koldax machine.

It lay in pieces across the floor. Various elements of hardware were set amongst a trail of wires. A power cable connected the machine to the power conduit on the rear wall of the hold, another snaked to Bandar’s micro-hauler, while a third was hooked up to the airlock system, presumably going to the Rapier attached to a docking hard point just outside of the cargo door.

Up close, the alien technology gave Kai a sense of its intelligence and utility. Each of its limbs featured multiple complicated-looking appendages among its arsenal of saws, torches, and blades.

Its body, the narrow section from which the limbs extruded, stretched five meters long and a meter wide. The matt black color hid most of the details of the panels, but under the glare of the bright cargo lights, it reminded Kai of his biology classes as a kid when he’d had to dissect a fist-sized crawler beetle.

Like the beetle, this thing’s carapace split down the middle. Senaya had most of its guts hanging out as she had sought to understand its inner workings.

Kai didn’t recognize any of the parts. Complicated spiral gears of the utmost intricate design only added to its truly alien nature. Even the wires between hardware components looked more like blood vessels than something that would carry electricity.

Whatever the thing was before, Senaya had reduced it to a collection of elements.

Kai remembered the first time he’d had her work on an engine. He had expected a few minor adjustments, but within hours, she had stripped it down to all three hundred and fifty-three distinct parts and knew how each and every valve, sprocket, and bolt functioned.

Senaya still hadn’t seen Kai enter.

She gyrated her narrow hips and nodded her head to an imagined beat. Her mohawk flapped back and forth as the yellow and red diodes flashed. She held her spanner as though it were a microphone and sang an offbeat tune Kai didn’t recognize.

He leaned against the cargo hold’s bulkhead, smiled and crossed his arms.

It was good to see her happy again. Given all the trouble they’d had since coming through the Veil, he’d worried that the crew would end up in a dark depression from which they’d never escape.

He had little experience in managing morale. He’d thought about speaking with his mother about it; she being far more experienced in these matters than he, but to do that would show weakness.

If he was to cement his position as captain, he had to lead from the front.

After a minute of watching her dance, Kai stepped forward and tapped her gently on the shoulder.

She skidded to a stop and spun around, her eyes wide and her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. The spanner she wielded transformed from a faux microphone to a bludgeoning weapon.

“You scared the crap out of me, Kai,” Senaya said, stepping back and smoothing her wild hair with her free hand. She placed the spanner in one of the many pockets of her custom-made coverall. “How long were you skulking there for?”

“Long enough. Your vocals are a bit pitchy. You need to work on your falsetto.”

“I’ll work on removing your genitals with a blunt instrument if you ever speak of this.”

Kai held up his open palms. “Hey, it’s fine, I get it. Sometimes you’ve just gotta dance. It’s like a fever.”

“Seriously, Kai, shut up. Or I’ll tell your big brother that you sleep with a stuffed toy.”

“That’s a filthy lie.”

“Yeah, but he won’t know that.”

Kai sighed dramatically. “Fine, your awful dancing and attempts at singing shall remain as big a mystery as the Navigators. Anyways, talking about mysteries, what have you found out about our new mechanical friend?”

Senaya grinned, and her eyes went huge. “I’ve managed to crack into its programming. It’s still partly operational.”

Kai’s stomach muscles tensed and he stepped back away from a limb that ended with what looked like a plasma torch. “The damn thing is operational, and you’re dancing like it’s Millennium Day? What are you thinking?”

“I think we’ve got ourselves an asset that we don’t need to torture to gain information. Here. Look at this log report I’ve prepared—it shows that somewhere out there, there’s a swarm of these things numbering in the thousands. From its data drives, I’ve managed to separate this one’s ID from the others. And don’t worry, it’s no longer networked. I burned out the network chip from its processor array right after I downloaded all the data to a ring-fenced virtual machine on the Blackstar’s system.”

“Okay,” Kai said, drawing the word out as he took the terminal from her and read through the report she’d prepared. His gaze darted from the log to the machine and back again. The report was over three thousand words long, not including charts and data visualizations. This was not Kai’s forte. “Give me the gist, would you?” he said, handing her back the terminal. “What exactly do we have here?”

“We have a networked killing machine, ultimately. It has a kind of fuel I’ve never seen before that allows it to travel with great thrust, and having no soft, squishy organs to worry about, the g-force it pulls isn’t an issue.”

“So these things can out-accelerate anything with organics inside?”

“Yup. Easily.”

“That’s… not encouraging. But go on.”

Senaya squatted by the open section and indicated the components inside. “The processing power is incredible. It has a multidimensional quantum array. It computes across dimensions! It takes entanglement to whole new levels.”

Kai pondered on what that meant. Quantum entanglement discounted the whole issue of light speed, taking it entirely out of the equation, but to have it accessible across dimensions meant a much greater capacity for information sharing.

“They use it for communication?” Kai asked.

Senaya nodded enthusiastically, adding, “And travel. I don’t think it is too dissimilar to how the Navigators and those Sumahn creatures use wormholes. They shortcut through dimensions. It’s still a theory at this stage…”

Kai took a deep breath and wandered around the machine. It had proven to be far more advanced than anything he could have imagined. Which raised the question: “How did you hack it?”

“I didn’t,” Senaya said, smiling broadly and indicating the cables. “I hooked up a processor bridge with the Rapier and micro-hauler’s AI to the Blackstar. With that power combined, and with a few tricks I learned from some darknet hackers a few years ago, we figured it out. Oh, and a few judicial appliances of a hot soldering iron. Turns out the Koldax like their encryption to be hardwired instead of relying on software redundancies.”

“I guess they weren’t planning on you getting your hands dirty on their innards,” Kai said, beaming with pride of what his apprentice had grown into. “So what now? Anything we can salvage and reuse?”

“The whole thing,” she said, standing and grinning. “It’s under our control now. Watch.”

Using her terminal, Senaya punched in a few commands.

Within a split second, two of the rear appendages began to wiggle back and forth in a rhythmic movement. It didn’t take a genius to see that Senaya had set it to the same beat as her out-of-tune singing.

“Great, you’ve got a mechanical dancing machine. This is really helpful,” Kai said with a smirk.

“There’s more.” Senaya gestured across her terminal once more.

The machine stopped its wiggling, placed all six of its limbs on the floor and lifted its body up, taking the wired parts with it so that they hung loosely in the air. Then it began to walk forward toward Kai, forcing him to back off. He shot Sen a glance that told her to stop it, which, thankfully, she did.

“Now watch this,” Senaya said with an expression of smug pride on her face.

The machine used two of its highly articulated limbs to place the components back into its open body. It was like watching a patient doing surgery on themselves. As each part was placed inside, another limb with a driver application screwed it in place while another routed the vessel-like wires neatly through its systems.

Barely two minutes had passed, and the machine had fixed itself back together.

“That’s impressive.” Although despite that, Kai couldn’t quite shake the feeling that this thing was just playing along and biding its time. “You’re sure we can trust it?”

“Absolutely we can. It’s not malevolent now that I’ve removed it from the spawn network and reprogrammed its protocols. It’s just a machine to carry out our orders.”

As if to prove her point, Senaya sat on its back sidesaddle style and walked it around the cargo hold, removing the power cables as it went so that it was completely independent and working under Senaya’s control.

After a lap of walking around the hold, Kai held up his hand to stop them. “I’ve gotta admit it could be seriously helpful. But you said something about information. How can this thing help us with that? Also, we can’t just keep calling it the thing.“

Senaya hopped off its back and ordered it to go into what she called standby mode, where its belly flopped to the floor to a resting position.

“I agree about the name. Which is why I renamed it. You’ll see it on the local network.”

Kai checked his terminal and looked at the device list for the network. There were entries for the three ships along with everyone’s personal terminals, and there, at the bottom was the newest entry in the network: Wiggs.

He raised an eyebrow. “Wiggs? Really?”

Senaya shrugged. “Why not? It’s short for Wiggles. It’s an accurate description given the way it moves. Besides, my project, my name.”

Kai sighed and shook his head. “Fine, Wiggs it is, then. But the minute I suspect it’s broken its programming or poses a threat, Wiggs is going to be spaced and burned up in the Blackstar’s thrust.”

“That’s fine by me. But before you space it, there’s one really important job it can do for us—it can help repair the gravity drive and get us fully operational again. I’ve already created a manifest of work and broken down all the tasks. If I were to do it myself, it’d take days, but Wiggs and I can do it in about six hours. And it means none of us have to tackle an impromptu EVA again.”

“Now that’s definitely a benefit.”

Kai considered this as he walked around the machine.

Despite her reassurances and his faith in her, something about it still gave him the creeps from deep within his psyche. As he thought about it, he got a flash of the Navigator crystal world again, and of swarming machines, and worse: the dark abyssal thing known as Darkarahn.

“Are you okay?” Senaya said. “You’ve gone super pale. You’re not going to chuck, are you?”

“What? No… I’m okay, just tired and stressed. I have to be honest, I don’t trust this thing, but I trust you more, so if you think you can use it, then I’m happy for you to go ahead, but I won’t hesitate to destroy it the second it shows anything other than complete compliance with orders.”

Senaya reached out and gripped his arm in a sign of reassurance. “It’ll be fine. It’s not a threat to us at all. You asked about information, well, Wiggs aside, I discovered a few interesting things.”

Senaya stepped closer to him conspiratorially.

Kai looked over her shoulder to make sure the cargo hold door was fully closed and leaned in. “Go on.”

“Eesoh—it’s not an AI.”

He snapped his eyes open. “What?”

“You know something wasn’t right with it; you said yourself. I had Wiggs take a look through the network, and there is no AI module on the ship. No programming or hardware that could facilitate an artificial intelligence of any kind. Believe me or not, Kai, but that thing you’ve been communicating with—it’s a real, conscious entity. Eesoh is alive.”

Kai reeled at this information, and a familiar buzz deep within his mind told him that what she was saying was true. This was exactly why he couldn’t quite understand his feelings towards it. It wasn’t an issue of trust. Rather, it was the unfamiliarity of a new kind of… He struggled for the word. Animal wasn’t right, nor person, and entity felt too cold now that Kai knew it was actually alive.

Before he could consider its terminology further, and its ramifications, the hiss of the cargo hold door’s mechanism interrupted his thoughts. He stepped away from Senaya as though their close proximity would signal their conspiracy.

“Who is it?” Kai whispered to Senaya, who was checking her terminal’s video feeds.

“Mummy dearest.”

“Great. Don’t speak a word of Eesoh’s status to anyone else, including my mother, okay? I want to understand it myself first.”

“Got it.”

The door opened, and Brenna smiled when she saw Kai. Wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and dark patches below indicated that she hadn’t been sleeping well. Her dark blue GTU clothes were tatty and damaged, and her hair—brunette currently—was wrapped up in a tight bun. Strands of silver hinted at her advancing years.

To Kai’s shame, he realized he couldn’t remember exactly how old his own mother was. He knew she was in her late fifties, but as she’d been away for so long as a GTU agent, time had conspired to obfuscate her age.

“My boy, just the man I wanted to see. I hoped to find you here,” Brenna said, walking into the hold and looking around at the place, her focus falling briefly on the Koldax before coming back to Kai and Senaya.

“What can I help you with, Mother?”

“We need to talk about your father and Marella.”

“Ooh, messy family stuff,” Senaya said. “I’m outta here. I’m gonna grab some sleep—it’s been a long cycle.”

“It’s fine. You can stay,” Kai said, not wanting to get into all the family stuff again.

“Nope, this is all yours.” Senaya gave him a smile and quickly slipped out the open door, leaving him alone with his mother and the Koldax machine.

“So, Mother, what’s on your mind?”

“Marella has been lying to you. She found some journal entries from Kendal that you need to read. I requested them from her, but after reading them, I know she’s holding some back. Oh, and I suspect her of having an affair with your father.”

Chapter 17

General Ratic Hominos yawned and groped for the alarm buzzing next to his head.

In truth, he needed no such alarm and had been awake for at least an hour, waiting for his scheduled meeting at 2300 hours to commence. He and his intelligence expert, Officer Ukjao, were due to discuss the report from agent Miles regarding this meeting between the Host hierarchy and their mysterious allied faction.

Miles had used one of the GTU sleeper agents on the Host world of Gaszla II to get him a position as a translation aid to the embassy.

Over eight years of covert operations had come to this final moment.

Hominos hoped all that time and effort wasn’t spent in vain. They had to get something useful from this, especially given the unlikely situation of Musa Miles surviving the event. The Coalition needed to know who was manipulating the Host, who was supplying them with soldiers and technology, if they were to have any chance of defeating them.

He had pondered on it while resting in his quarters, wondering what species this new ally could be. Probably nothing from the Lasides Quadrant. These species were almost entirely known and populated both the Coalition and Host worlds. If there were something within the quadrant with advanced technology and sufficient numbers, everyone would have known about them.

Not least Ratic Hominos.

As a child, he’d developed a wide-eyed wonder for all the different species within the Lasides Quadrant of systems, both Host and Coalition alike. This interest led him to a doctorate in anthropological species studies, specializing in hybrid biology.

His work in the academic circles and knowledge as a result of his interests led him down a career track that had culminated in his role as general.

Although he did his best not to show it, he felt the pressure. A tightening of the neck and shoulders and a permanent unsettling of his digestive system the physical manifestations of that. None of that affected his resolve. Or diminished his focus.

Quite the opposite.

He’d ended his long-term relationship with his fiancée within a few hours of his receiving news of his promotion, knowing he couldn’t give her what she needed now that he had more serious responsibilities.

He couldn’t afford the distraction a family would bring.

Given his new role, he needed to be independent so he could make decisions from a higher point of view. An elevated position of ultimate perspective.

The pain still hurt. He still missed Elisa not being next to him in bed. He missed her smile and her brunette hair, all wild and jumbled. He missed her spirit and refusal to follow anyone’s rules—even her own at times.

Letting her go was the hardest thing he’d had to do up until now, but also the best.

The decisions he was now expected to make required him to be less human and more objective, calculating; some would say cold and detached. He couldn’t ruin Elisa’s life or hold it back. He’d poison her, and watching her wither within her devotion would surely kill them both.

His ability to rise above his own emotional drives and the fact he had no family—both of his parents having died in the first war with the Host—or dependents of any kind had no doubt made him an attractive proposition for the role of general.

The presidents had said as much, albeit in different terms, in their offer message.

And now, over a video feed, he had to watch a good agent die for the safety of the Coalition and its citizens and somehow be okay with that.

He briefly considered the option of standing down and finding Elisa. But what good would that do? They’d all likely die at the machinations of war shortly after. At least this way, with him in a position of power, he might just be able to save a few lives.

And give Elisa a future she deserved—even if it meant without him.

* * *

Hominos cleared his throat as he approached his office within the CDF HQ. A mute pair of guards stood to either side of the door. He knew their names, but couldn’t find it in him to engage in polite conversation. To know them would only make it worse if he failed to stop the Host’s new weapon.

“Is Ukjao inside?” he asked.

“Sir, yes, sir. We let her in two minutes before your arrival, sir,” the one on the left said.

“We’ll be about an hour. No one comes in—even the presidents.”

“Understood, sir,” the other guard said.

Hominos nodded to them and entered his office, locking the door behind him.

Officer Urahu Ukjao was standing by the large window overlooking downtown Goddenia.

She wore a long, flowing gown the color of the evening sky. It was almost black in the low lighting of his office and matched her skin. The robe shimmered as her tall, sturdy body shifted beneath the fabric. A gold necklace contrasted brightly and brought out the inner, fiery glow of her skin that made the Axzatti people so attractive to almost every other species. Long, flowing black locks of shiny hair completed the striking look.

During Hominos’s studies, he had focused on the Axzatti. They were a highly adaptable species, willing to use synthesis drugs to drastically alter their metabolism and bodies to thrive on a wide variety of different worlds.

This made them exceptional diplomats, especially given the race’s philosophical leanings. Although they usually took up scholarly and political roles within the Coalition and even some within the Host, Hominos had always sought them out for strategic positions.

Officer Ukjao was his first appointment when he was lieutenant general, having had her in his sights for some years previously when she had first signed up to the CDF.

“General Hominos,” she said, turning to face him, “it’s a quiet night out there. I don’t think most of the population truly grasps what is happening beyond their own small sphere of existence.”

Hominos joined her and gazed out at the slumbering city. “They can’t,” he said. “It’d crush them if they knew the full extent of what is coming.”

“But not us,” Ukjao said, with a lilt to her voice that seemed to intone every word and phrase with implied gravitas. “We stand between the fates, do we not? Doing our jobs to prevent the worst from happening to the blind and unaware.”

Hominos didn’t respond and repressed an urge to cut to the chase. He simply took in the moment for what it was: a quiet time to just reflect before descending into the grim reality of a war that he suspected couldn’t be won despite their best efforts. He focused on the city below them. Towers and domes dominated the skyline. There was little traffic this evening. It had been that way since the first battle with the Host.

Vast numbers of the population had either left to go to remote worlds closer to the center of the quadrant and farther away from the fighting, or bunkered down, preparing for the worst.

“It’s never looked so peaceful,” Ukjao said.

“Ironic considering the motivation.”

“And the developments of the Host’s…” She tailed off and her muscles stiffened as though she had overstepped her mark.

“Please, Officer Ukjao, continue. What of the new Host weapon? Do we have a lock on its current location?”

“We do, sir,” she said, brushing a slender finger across her terminal, scanning for the appropriate data.

“Is it retreating, or threatening a front?” Hominos prompted, already knowing the answer, but gauging how this bright officer would choose to communicate the news.

She looked up from her terminal, locked eyes with him and gave it to him straight. “It’s seven days away from engaging with Capsis Prime, sir.”

“Good,” he said.

She raised a golden, neatly sculpted eyebrow in silent query.

Hominos remained silent, waiting for her to take the initiative and vocalize her confusion.

A tense few seconds passed.

She coughed into her fist and broke eye contact for a moment before looking back at him. “Excuse me for asking, but why would that be good, sir?”

“It means fewer deaths to our citizens as it approaches, Officer. If we attempt to engage with this new weapon with the ragtag defense force we have out there on the boundaries, they’d be slaughtered. It’s better we keep the civilian defense fleet to engage the smaller Host ships, make a nuisance of themselves, so our more experienced and more potent ships can focus on defeating the biggest threat—if that’s even possible.”

She didn’t hesitate this time. She was learning rapidly, Hominos thought, proud of her for quickly escaping the burden of morality. “You don’t think it’s possible to defeat?” she said. “If we can’t find a way to nullify it, we’ll surely lose the capital and the war.”

“That is the most likely outlook, yes. We will almost certainly die during this conflict,” he added, maintaining his direct gaze. He leaned forward to emphasize his statement, wanting to see what she was made of.

To his surprise and delight, she leaned forward, balled a fist, and said, “Then we better make the most of the time we have and do as much damage to the enemy as possible.”

“Indeed, Officer.” A beep from his desk terminal sounded, signaling to Hominos that Miles’s report was ready to be streamed. “It appears my other appointment is waiting for me, so you’ll have to excuse me. While I’m dealing with this, I’d like you to talk with the analysts and see what tactics against the new weapon they’re working on and report back to me as soon as they’ve got anything useful. But don’t waste my time on anything that isn’t directly applicable.”

Officer Ukjao stood up and snapped a salute. “I’m on it, sir.” She spun on her heel and left the office, closing the door with finesse.

He turned his attention to the terminal screen on his desk and pressed his thumb against the pulsating green circle. It flashed once; then the screen resolved the video.

Captain Mathieson, the new acting head of the GTU, appeared on the feed. Her tall blond hair dominated the frame, obscuring the details of her office. She leaned in, filling the frame further with her face. She appeared more drawn and tired since they had last spoken.

“General Hominos,” she said with a curt nod, “Agent Miles is in position and broadcasting. The feed from him is currently delayed by thirty standard minutes. Our relay stations are working to their maximum.”

“That’s good enough,” Hominos said, knowing they couldn’t save him anyway. “Patch me in.”

Mathieson’s face tightened. Her eyes squinted. The edges of her mouth twitched as though she wanted to say something, but the pain of the situation was too much.

She and Miles were close friends, having worked together in the GTU for well over a decade. Intellectually, Hominos understood that this would be tough for her, but that wouldn’t change the outcome.

Miles’s life had run its course and brought him to this moment.

The ensuing scene would play out regardless of his or anyone else’s intentions.

This was what made Musa Miles such a good agent. He had walked himself to the slaughterhouse fully cognizant of his pending termination and still remained professional.

Like Hominos, he had sacrificed his future and his own happiness.

Miles knew his sacrifice was for the greater good.

“Patch me in, Agent,” Hominos prompted again, keeping his voice firm but respectful. “We’ll speak further later.”

“Yes, sir,” Mathieson said as she leaned forward and tapped the screen.

The feed changed to show a grainy, washed-out video sent from Miles’s iris camera. The resolution was low, but the software within the relays did a good job of balancing the exposure and stabilizing the focus.

Ratic Hominos sat back, placed his hands together and prepared to watch a good man die for his people.

Chapter 18

Musa Miles’s feed sharpened into focus as he adjusted the controls of his internal systems. Hominos could make out five other individuals within the glass-walled room. They were all wearing the two-tone gray outfits that were the current fashion for Host embassy officers.

Sitting around a glass table with a communications pod situated in the middle, the Host members fidgeted in their seats.

Small talk broke out between the ambassador, a short human male with close-shaved dark hair, and the Host leader, Empress Yuan Lia, identified by the glittering chain adorning her bare neck.

Someone leaned into Musa and whispered something Hominos couldn’t make out.

He made a note to get one of the analysts to run it for any potential intel, although he assumed it was just random chitchat.

Musa responded in kind and played nervously with the glass of water in front of him to fit in with the overall mood. It was small things like this that had gotten him behind enemy lines and into the queen’s parlor, as it were.

Hominos noted that they were all the same species: a variation of human; one of the Host’s most common species, especially within their governments and representatives. Unlike the Coalition, the Host had clear demarcation for which species worked in which field.

On the one hand, it could be argued this wasn’t a fair way to treat people, on the other, and to Hominos, it made perfect sense given each species’ natural talents and inclinations towards certain tasks and activities.

The chitchat continued for a few more moments. The room featured a large round table and two empty chairs at its head, directly opposite Miles. Hominos knew this was no accident. It was clearly the best view available, giving the Coalition the best chance to analyze their new enemy.

It was such a shame to lose an agent who did his job so well. The regret within Hominos didn’t last long, however.

All the chitchat stopped; the light within the room changed as a door opened somewhere offscreen. The empress shot to her feet, smiled and extended both of her hands in the traditional Host greeting.

The ally, a dark shape off to one side, ignored her greeting and loped past her, taking the seat at the head of the table. A smaller secondary person, presumably an aide or a vice-command, followed suit, sitting next to the ally.

“Welcome, Lord Hett,” the Host ambassador said. “We’ve all been looking forward to meeting with the representative of our new allies, the Koldax people. You have our utmost—”

“I’m not here to discuss pleasantries,” Lord Hett said with a deep, mechanical voice that clipped the vowels. It leaned its great bulk across the table. “I’m here to witness the orders. The weapons are in place and have proved fully functional. We move within hours.”

Yuan Lia coughed politely and tried again to greet the Koldax leader. “Lord Commander Farah Hett, it is my privilege to finally welcome you to the Host. Firstly, let me extend my gratitude for all that the Koldax and the shrain people have done for the Host. Together, we’re stronger…”

She continued, saying a whole lot without saying anything.

Hominos’s attention diverted away from her speech for a moment as he pondered their new enemy’s name: the Koldax. As far as he could recall, this was an entirely new species. He quickly typed it into a second terminal window to check: the result came up blank.

So all this new technology was from somewhere else, perhaps even from a different galaxy. The Host were just puppets to some other power. A power that clearly controlled, or perhaps even propagated the shrain. Hominos returned his attention back to the video stream.

Miles had increased the magnification of the feed, centering it on Farah Hett.

Hominos had never seen anything like it before. The creature was part biological, part machine. Biped in shape, but somehow utterly alien in the way it moved. Its hairless head was long back to front, its jaws almost a snout. Its teeth gleamed in the bright room as though they were made from polished metal.

Piercing yellow eyes that flicked mechanically back and forth across the creature’s rapt audience gave it a sinister intelligence. Wires and servos jutted from the skin around its neck. It appeared to have been wounded at some point and was perhaps wearing the scar as a form of intimidation, showing anyone that looked upon it that beneath the skin was not bone and muscle, but something more potent, something made of machine.

Hominos estimated it probably weighed in excess of two hundred kilos, given its bulk and stature, yet it moved with a mechanical grace born from technology more advanced than anything the Coalition or the Host had ever developed.

A shiver of fear and excitement crawled through Hominos’s veins.

Yuan Lia, having got through her speech undeterred, added, “Of course, Lord Hett, the assembly has had time to review your proposal—”

“It was not a proposal,” the vice-command said. This one appeared to be a modified clone of a Tassarel. Hominos had seen these before from reports sent by various Host-side GTU agents. This one was a shrain entity. Probably quite high up in their hierarchy if it accompanied this lord commander.

The shrain continued, berating the empress. “We’re not here to discuss options. We’re here to ensure that you give our orders to your military commanders as per the agreement. The time has come. The time is now. We need more power, more star systems if we’re to succeed.”

The Host leader wiped the back of her hand across her forehead and tugged at the collar of her jacket. “But we… I mean… That is to say…”

As she rambled on, Farah Hett stood up, thrust out an arm and grabbed her by the neck, crushing the ornate necklace that symbolically represented the power of the Host. The Koldax entity dragged her body fully across the table, making everyone else scramble from their chairs.

Musa Miles managed to maintain a degree of control in his subterfuge and kept his attention on the situation even as he backed away with the others.

Yuan Lia choked and coughed. Blood spattered the glass tabletop.

Hett just glared at her with its yellow eyes.

Somewhere outside was an exchange of gunfire.

Miles spun around and focused the feed on the glass doors. A dozen members of the Host security lay dead on the floor beneath a group of heavily armed machine-people, presumably soldiers of the Koldax.

The feed snapped back to their leader.

“We do not negotiate,” Hett said through clenched teeth and stretched lips. “If you value your life or that of your people, you will do as agreed. Failure to comply with our terms will lead to the annihilation of your people—starting here.”

Yuan Lia nodded frantically, her eyes bulging from their sockets and her face dark purple from the lack of air.

Hett released its grip on her and nodded toward the comms pod atop the table. “Give the order, and select two star systems for destruction to power our systems. Now.”

Yuan Lia coughed once more and croaked, “We can’t just destroy entire star systems…”

“You’re mistaken,” Hett said, leaning in closer. “We can and we will. We’re giving you the grace of choice. If you can’t decide, we’ll choose for you.” It turned its mechanical face to the windows. Miles’s feed focused on the scene.

Outside, surrounding the government building and swarming the city, were hundreds of flying machines with various limbs that appeared to be weapons of some kind. The things were shaped like mechanical bugs and were flying in perfect formation, no doubt under the control of these Koldax people.

Hominos made a mental note to get his analysts to pay particular attention to these machines. He had a suspicion the Coalition forces would be fighting them soon enough.

Given Lia’s vulnerable position, she had little choice but to comply.

She sighed, and with a shaking hand, pressed her finger to her wrist terminal, activating a broadcast. She spoke her orders, presumably to the Host government, and named two star systems to be handed over to the Koldax.

The data stream behind Miles’s video indicated that a radio signal was being sent to a relay system. That was as far as the Coalition’s intelligence could reach, but the slice in their network between Miles and the relay would still give the GTU analysts a good section of signal to investigate for more data.

And now they had the names of two star systems ordered for destruction.

Hominos entered their location into the star map and compared their position with that of the Coalition ships. There was a fleet of four destroyers less than half a day away. Without wasting time, he relayed orders to divert the fleet’s current destination to the two nominated Host systems under extreme covert movements.

If they could get in place in time, they could witness the Koldax technology more closely. Knowing how their weapon harnessed the power from destroyed suns should give the Coalition insight into ways in which they could stop it.

Before Hominos could strategize further, the camera feed suddenly jerked away from the view outside to focus on Farah Hett.

A gun held in Miles’s right hand appeared in the frame.

The muzzle flashed.

Jumping in front of Farah Hett, the shrain vice-command took the shot directly in the face, his skull exploding. Blood and brain matter splattered across the table and covered both Hett and the empress, who screamed and collapsed away and out of frame.

Hett raised its arms.

Then things got weird.

The streaming rate of the video reduced as though it had gone into slow motion, but the timer in the corner indicated that the effect was running in real time. On Miles’s side of the feed, reality had been altered. The round from the gun slowed to a crawl and orbited an imaginary sphere around the Koldax leader.

Miles raised his arm once more and fired a second time.

It too slowed and joined the first projectile in its slow orbit around the machine creature.

Hett’s lips curled back to show its mechanical teeth. A guttural cough, presumably a laugh, came from deep within its chest. The feed smoothed out completely, making Hominos think that Miles had somehow been caught in Hett’s aura, or perhaps the agent was suffering from some form of paralysis.

Hominos watched with inevitable dread as the Koldax leader reached toward Miles, placed both hands on the sides of the agent’s head and twisted sharply. The feed went lopsided and shook for a brief moment before stabilizing.

Hett stared down at Miles, glaring directly into the iris camera as though the Koldax leader could see through to the other side.

Hominos shivered.

The hairs on his arms and neck quivered as though his very soul had been exposed.

Dark edges appeared on the feed and grew until, like Miles’s life, there was nothing left.

Without realizing he had been holding it in, Hominos let out a deep breath and panted for a few moments until his heart rate returned to normal.

But nothing would be normal again.

Wasting little time, he used the terminal to patch into the Coalition’s fleet bulletin. He ordered three of the closest warships, which carried nukes, to Gaszla II to fire everything they had at the planet. He didn’t even try to hide his anger or vengeance.

Although there was a chance they’d get this Farah Hett, deep down Hominos knew his new adversary would be smarter than to stick around for the two and a half days it would take for the ships to be within range.

At the very least they’d test the Host’s antimissile defense systems. If Miles had been as meticulous about his work as he had been with the penetration of the Host government, there would be a chance that Gaszla II’s defenses would be sabotaged to the point of ruin and the Host government would feel the wrath of the Coalition.

And they would know the name of Ratic Hominos. They would know the new general was the bringer of retribution and justice and that the Coalition refused to stand idle while a new external threat swept through the quadrant.

The Host might be weak enough to succumb to this new alien menace, but the Coalition would spit in the eye of any who dared threaten its existence.

Chapter 19

After a few hours of broken sleep, Kai rolled off his cot and thought about how he was going to approach Marella with regards to the bombshell his mother had dropped on him earlier.

A part of him was annoyed at himself for not pressing Marella further before they went into battle and all hell broke loose. Since the jump beyond the Veil, Kai had barely had a few minutes to himself to think.

Even now, as he stood and stretched, his mind whirled with parallel thoughts. Eesoh wasn’t an AI; Bandar was his half-brother; Kai himself was an apparent heir to the Navigators; a cosmic horror was lurking somewhere out there in the great expanse; he held within him knowledge that he couldn’t yet access; and they’d barely escaped with their lives from a race of angry tripodal bird fanciers.

He slumped to the edge of his cot and eased his temples. The tetrahedron pressed into the flesh of his thigh within his pocket. He retrieved it and rolled it around in his palm like a game die. Despite nothing happening—as usual—he did find the sensation of it against his skin comforting.

It held within it promise. Much like the inaccessible knowledge lurking in his subconscious. He knew instinctively that at some point in the near future, both of these elements would coalesce into answers.

For now, though, he put all thoughts of everything else aside and focused on Marella.

Right now, she posed the biggest problem. While the repairs were still ongoing and the rest of the crew were getting some much-needed sleep, Kai determined to scrub at least one mystery off his growing list.

Not wanting to wake her suddenly, he sent an alarm message to her cabin as he left his. He walked through the corridor of the Blackstar until he came to the central junction. Using the ladder, he climbed to the second section of bunks and located Marella’s room.

The cabin door was already ajar by the time he stepped in front of it. He poked his head through the gap. “Marella, are you awake? We need to talk.”

A tired voice answered, “Come in, I was expecting you—after my talk with your mother.”

Although there was little malice in her voice, Kai detected a tightness to her words, indicating no lost love between the two women.

Kai stepped inside and closed the door.

Marella was sitting in a chair by a desk, a holoscroll in front of her. The scene that was running was familiar to Kai: Senaya’s video of her cousin’s assassination.

“Take a seat,” Marella said, indicating with a long, graceful finger a chair opposite her. Next to the holoscroll sat two glasses of water, the surface of which rippled with consistently small vibrations, physically manifesting the ‘voice’ of the Blackstar—an almost imperceptible hum.

Kai sat down and crossed his legs. He tried to make eye contact with her, but she averted her gaze, keeping her attention on the video as it played out in a loop. She was wearing a robe wrapped twice around her long, lithe body. Her hair was pulled up in a bun, and the soft fur on her wrists and neck was light and smooth, indicating no overt nervousness or anxiety.

How much of her calm exterior was real and how much was through training, Kai couldn’t tell. He’d not been around Lantesians long enough to truly read them, as some people could.

“So,” Marella said first, finally turning her gaze to Kai, “your mother and I had a chat earlier. She’s quite the woman.”

“Don’t take it personally,” Kai said, letting the chair take his weight as he relaxed now that the ice was broken. “She’s spent most of her life in the force in some capacity or another; she’s used to dominating situations and can be a little blunt.”

“I do admire her. She’s a very strong character and clearly loves Kendal a great deal. Not to mention you and Bandar. It must have been difficult for her, knowing you were the son of a Navigator queen.”

Kai shrugged. “I wouldn’t really know. I was stuck on Zarunda for most of my years while she and my father did their duty for the Coalition. It’s my father that I wanted to speak to you about.”

Marella took a deep breath and let it out as a long, quiet sigh. She closed her eyes for a moment and then looked directly up at Kai. “You mother is wrong,” she said with finality that Kai had difficulty not believing. “I know she thinks I’m in love with him and that we were having some kind of affair before he left me behind on Oberus.”

Kai wanted to ask her questions regarding the journals, but he’d learned enough over the years to let people carry on while they were on a roll. The resistance was lower, and it avoided him putting her on the defensive. He simply nodded for her to carry on.

“After I found my way off Oberus, via a passing trading ship, I ended up on Parsephus, doing odd jobs here and there, trying to raise the cash to buy a ship so that I could return to Oberus. I knew your father had gone beyond the Veil and I was desperate to do the same. Not because I loved your father, but because…”

Marella trailed off and looked back to the looping video. The fine fur bristled on her exposed skin. Kai edged forward in his chair and placed a hand on her arm. “Look at me,” he said. “Look at me and tell me why you lied about the journals. Tell me why you didn’t give all of them to my mother when she asked. If you’re to remain a member of this crew, you’re going to have to give more. You’re going to give me the truth.”

Marella tried to pull away, but Kai gripped her arm tighter.

“I damn well mean it, Marella,” Kai said with a grit to his voice that even surprised him. “The truth or I swear to all the holies I will space you here and now. Do you understand me?”

“You’re hurting me,” Marella said, her eyes wide and changing to a darker color Kai knew to be a sign of alarm.

He eased his grip on her and took a few deep, ragged breaths. The anger had come on quickly, and he’d pictured firing Marella out of the airlock. Pictured her contorted face as she froze in the vacuum of space.

“Listen to me,” he said. “I’m tired, angry, and running out of patience. All around me is chaos and death and pain. All I want to do is reunite my family and find a way back home. You’re currently standing right in front of that goal, and I know you have information that you’re hiding from me. If you don’t tell me, then I’ll make sure you see the GTU side of my mother, and trust me when I tell you that she’s adept at getting information from stubborn people.”

He hated threatening her this way, but he wanted to spare the going back and forth and dancing around the truth.

Marella’s face twisted with psychological pain as she struggled with the choice. Kai let her arm go, and he stood. “Fine,” he said. “You’ve left me with no option.” He took a step toward the door when Marella jumped to her feet and grabbed his arm, pulling him back around to face her. Tears tracked down her face as her eyes changed to a light gray.

“Don’t, please… I couldn’t show you the journals because…”

“Damn it, Marella, just tell me.”

“Because I was ashamed! That’s why. I was ashamed that your father rejected me and left me to die. I was ashamed that I wasn’t good enough for him, that I represented a deep regret on his part and that he’d rather he hadn’t done what he did…”

She turned away from Kai, her shoulders bobbing up and down as she sobbed into her hands. She collapsed to her cot, resting her elbows on her knees as she continued to cry.

A wave of sorrow came over Kai, along with a sense of regret for pushing her so hard. He stepped closer and placed a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be so…”

She turned to face him and shook her head. “It’s okay,” she said, wiping the tears from her face and gaining control of her emotions. “It’s actually a relief to get it off my chest, but I have something to tell you. You were told my real name was Marella Maio and that my pseudonym was Lexis Dray. Well, the former is a lie; that too is a pseudonym. You see, Kai, I’m none of those people. I’m not even a citizen of the Coalition, not originally.”

Kai removed his hand and shifted back. The regret of pushing her too hard turned to anger that she had deceived him. He clenched his fists. “I’m tired of this. Who the hell are you?”

* * *

“My real name is Gilla Pallista. I was born on a Host world and was traded to a criminal family on Yarth when I was just a small girl.”

Her words struck Kai like a bolt of lightning. “Yarth, as in the Battle of Yarth, the last place my father was known to have been with the CDF?”

She nodded.

Kai’s chest tightened, and he had no doubt she was telling the truth. Her eyes were still, the light fur on her arms likewise. And deep inside himself, he knew this to be true. He had read a report that postulated his father had died in combat during the Battle of Yarth. There was no way Marella, or Gilla, could have read that top-secret CDF report.

His throat went dry, but he managed to croak out the words, “Tell me everything, from the beginning. How did you meet my father and what is he to you, really?”

“Please, take a seat, and I promise, I’ll tell you everything I know. And for the sake of ease, keep calling me Marella. I’ve not gone by Gilla since your father and I met.”

Kai and Marella both sat down and faced each other. The Lantesian took a few breaths to compose herself and began her story.

“I was just a small girl when I was taken from my home. I barely remember it now, as I was sedated. My parents had died sometime before. I grew up in an orphanage on a Host planet far out by the boundaries of their space. Its name isn’t relevant. I was quickly sold to a trader and was transported to Yarth, where a wealthy Host crime lord bought me with over a hundred others.”

“For what purpose?” Kai asked as he tried to relax in the chair despite the tense tale.

Marella shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t really know. It could have been anything. Sex, slave labor, domestic labor. Back then, kids from broken homes were often sold for all kinds of reasons. Yarth is in the interstitial zone between the Coalition and Host governments and is somewhat independent, meaning there was no real government to speak of to enforce justice. The crime lords did what they wanted. Until the CDF realized that a segment of the Host army was using it as a base of operations and invaded.”

As she spoke, her voice became calmer and quieter, almost as if she were at confession and didn’t want anyone else to hear. Kai watched her closely, but she didn’t show any obvious signs of deceit, which didn’t mean she wasn’t lying—up until now she had shown a skill for withholding the truth.

“And when the CDF invaded, is that when you met my father?”

“Yes. The family I was staying with, cousins of the crime lord, came under fire as the compound in which they lived had been reported to CDF intelligence as a target. Before I had arrived, the palatial home was used to house Host spies and army officers. The attack was brutal and short. Your father was leading the attack. I remember hiding from the bombs and the destruction.”

“Were there many others in the palace at the time?” Kai asked, not because he wanted to know, but rather he could tell Marella needed a moment. Tears were welling up in her eyes and she took a few sips of water. After a few moments, she nodded and continued.

“At the time of the attack, the family was hosting a dinner for the soldiers and spies. It was a celebration of some other battle the Host had won based on their intelligence. I remember how everyone seemed so happy. I was even smiling at the time, not truly understanding until much later what they were celebrating. They invited me to a room with other children, where we were fed properly for the first time since we had been taken there. I truly thought that things were changing, that I was going to be looked after.”

“But you weren’t?”

“No, when the attack happened, everyone ran for safety, leaving the other children and me to fend for ourselves. I knew of a hidden place. A place where one of the spies used to go to send secure information to his handlers. I only knew it as the ‘secret place’, as I used to play there sometimes when the family started getting aggressive. I led the other children there and we stayed inside for what seemed like hours while the fighting went on outside.”

“Were there any survivors on the Host side?” Kai asked.

“None that I saw. Perhaps your father’s squad managed to get some prisoners to interrogate… But I really wouldn’t know. When the door to the secret place opened, I thought we were going to be killed too. Your father was standing in the doorway as he aimed his rifle at us, the flashlight attachment shining right in my eyes.”

Marella broke away for a moment, leaving Kai with the image of his father confronted by a group of Host kids. His stomach knotted as he waited to hear what happened next.

A long pause stretched out and he was about to prompt her when Marella seemed to understand his concern from the expression on his face.

“He didn’t shoot or harm us in any way, Kai. Your father saved us. There were six of us in total and he helped to take us to the Coalition ship, but there were more forces on Yarth than the Coalition had anticipated and the ship was destroyed. Soon, the place was overrun, leaving your father and me alone in a war zone. But he didn’t abandon me, Kai. He got me out of there and kept me alive until he could get passage off Yarth.”

Kai’s chest throbbed with the pounding of his heart. He had inched to the edge of his seat and sweat pooled at his lower back. “What happened when you left?”

“He took me on as his daughter as we hopped from one rogue trader ship to another until we were safely back in Coalition space. It was some time during this journey that your father came across the tetrahedron that sent him on his journey to discover more about the Navigators. Over the years, I helped him with research until I became old enough to look after myself. That’s when he and I split for some years. I only found him again much later after my stint on the great library ships. It was through our shared fascination with the Navigators that we developed a bond and it ultimately reunited us.”

“I don’t understand why he would let you go if he had sacrificed his former life to look after you.” Kai couldn’t help but keep the bitterness out of his voice. It didn’t take a genius to work out that for many years while Kai had thought his father was dead or, at best, lost somewhere on a remote planet, that he was in fact fit and well and being a parent to someone else while Kai was barely surviving on Zarunda.

“It is during the period he let me go I believe he met up with the Navigator queen and fathered you, Kai. When I met him again, he was desperate to get to the other side of the Veil. I agreed to help and it was our combined research that led us to Oberus. Before he left, however, he arranged for you to retrieve the tetrahedron via the shuttle. He couldn’t bring it to you himself, as he was being tracked by the shrain. They had picked up his trail shortly before we left for Oberus, so he tasked me with sending the shuttle.”

“What if it ended up in someone else’s hands? I had to fight pirates for it,” Kai said. “It’s a bit of a stretch that he would have left something so important to me in such a way.”

“He had little choice, Kai. But you’ll need to question him further to fully understand his decisions. I couldn’t possibly speak for him. Besides, he knew Bandar was looking out for you on Zarunda. That’s why you two met each other that day. If you hadn’t gotten to the shuttle and retrieved the tetrahedron, Bandar would have. He was tracking it all the way after I made sure he knew about it.”

Kai stood up, drained the glass of water and paced the room, running her story through his head, trying to find anything that could be used to contradict her account, but it all sounded plausible, and the timeline did match what he remembered growing up and what he had read in the CDF files. Not to mention what his mother had told him.

That Marella had been somehow in on all this and had so far failed to volunteer this information only served to make his guts churn with a multitude of emotions—few of them positive.

“To recap,” Kai said, turning to face her—his, what, adoptive sister? “My father kind of adopted you as his own after saving you from the Host on Yarth. The two of you then had some unspecified adventures while researching the Navigators only for him to drop you when he met a queen and fathered me. Later on, you met up again and helped him find the Blackstar, which he used to travel beyond the Veil. He then sent that back to me via whatever the hell that was on Oberus and entrusted this artifact to me because the shrain were hunting him?”

“That’s a pretty accurate account,” Marella said. “I know it’s hard for you to believe, but the journals do back up what I’m telling you.”

Kai’s temper got the better of him as he lurched forward and bellowed, “Then why the hell didn’t you give them to me earlier? Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”

Marella backed away from him and held out her hand palm up.

Breathing heavily, Kai tried to calm himself as he took a step back.

“How would you have reacted at the outset if I dropped all this on you?” she said, a pleading tone in her voice. “You had just realized that your father was alive and that you had access to a Navigator ship. And then the chaos of battle and all the trouble we’ve had to deal with here. When would have been a good time to tell you? I’ve had Brenna questioning me and giving me dirty looks. I’ve had to deal with the ship’s AI being a hindrance… I admit it, Kai, I’m not damned perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but your story isn’t the only one that needs resolving. You’re not the only one who wants to find your father and get home. You’re not the only one who has suffered. I was sold to slavers! And even when I thought I was free on Parsephus, I was conscripted into a criminal gang and used against my wishes. This is the first taste of freedom I’ve had for years, and it’s taken me a while to get used to that.”

Marella sank to the cot and rested her head in her hands as she recovered from the outburst. Before Kai could say anything else, she reached to the desk for her terminal and tapped a few commands. Then, turning to face Kai, she said, “There, you have access to all the journals that I could find, including a password Kendal gave me to give to you when the time was right. You’ll find that your father corroborates everything I’ve said. Now if you don’t mind, I would like some peace and privacy.”

She stared at him with a steel he hadn’t seen before. He checked his own terminal and noted that he did indeed have the journal files in his possession. He’d make it a priority to read his father’s words, but he had to first decide what to do about Marella.

Even if everything she had said was true, it didn’t change the fact that she had lied to him and withheld information, regardless of the situations they had found themselves in.

It hadn’t changed the fact that she had an ulterior motive to find his father and had engineered her way on to the Blackstar. Kai needed a crew that could trust each other completely and he still had doubts about her.

“We’re not done,” Kai said. “I need to think about all this. I need to be sure your presence here won’t harm our mission.”

Marella barely reacted to this. Presumably, she knew how he would take the news. She simply shrugged. “Fine, make up your mind and tell me what you want to do. If you want to get rid of me somewhere, do it. I’ve survived all these years, I’m sure I’ll continue to survive. But either way, I know I’ve told you the truth. The rest is on you.”

Without a further word, Kai turned away and left the cabin. Once outside, he took a deep breath and headed for his own cabin when he received a status report from Eesoh. The terminal message informed him that the repairs to the hull and gravity drive were going well and better than expected due to the help from Wiggs. Eesoh estimated that they would be fully operational and ready to travel within four hours.

That gave Kai four hours to read the journals and decide what to do with Marella, or Gilla, or whatever the hell she was called.

Chapter 20

Four hours and twenty minutes later, Kai woke with a start and groped into the darkness to get his bearings. His breath came in ragged gasps. Where was he? His heart raced and he rolled over, hitting the floor with a heavy thud.

Something sharp jabbed into his thigh.

A moment later, a glow of pale light bathed his surroundings—his cabin.

He remembered then: he was on the Blackstar and no longer in the dark crystal city of his dream… his vision. It was hard to tell these days the difference between the two.

He stood up and noticed the tetrahedron on the floor. He picked it up and rolled it over in his palm. It was warm to the touch, more so than just from the contact with his leg. A vision of him placing the artifact into a semitranslucent receptacle flashed in his mind.

The symbols on the artifact glowed and then dimmed so briefly one could have easily mistaken it as a flash. He sat down on the edge of the cot and held up the pointed object, wondering what secret it held within and why he couldn’t seem to activate it at will.

What do I care? It was just another mystery to add to the growing pile.

Kai shook his head and took a few deep breaths. The recycled air was starting to taste stale to him. He made a mental note to ask Senaya to investigate the system and ensure there was no problem. He guessed it was just his heightened state, however.

“Come on, Kai, get with it,” he said to himself. He stood up and splashed some water from the basin onto his face. The sensation helped to snap him awake again, but what he really needed was a long span of unbroken sleep.

Checking his terminal, he noted that he’d only had two hours of rest after spending the previous two hours poring over his father’s journals that Marella had forwarded to him. He still wasn’t sure if he believed it all.

If it weren’t for his experiences with the Blackstar and the artifact so far, he would have had no compunction in declaring his father insane or suffering from some drug-induced fever dream.

One thing the journals did do, however, was corroborate the tale Marella had told him. Not that this fact changed his opinion or distrust of her. She had read them before handing them over, after all. It wouldn’t have been that difficult for a scholar like Marella—assuming she was one—to memorize a tale.

His instinct didn’t tell him one way or another if he believed the story. The chances were she was telling the truth, but until he saw his father with his own eyes and heard the old man’s story with his own ears, he had little choice but to remain skeptical.

That aside, he did need to process some of the stories he had read. He sent a silent message to Senaya to see if she was awake. A few seconds passed and she responded with a text reply:

— What’s up, Captain?

— Kai’s fine, Sen. I want to talk with you. Are you busy?

— Just digging through Wigg’s programming. I could use a rest, though. What’s bothering you?

— Everything. My father. Marella… I need to tell you what I read in his journals to see what you think. I’m not sure I can trust my judgment anymore.

— Sounds important. Give me five minutes; I’ll get us a couple of brews.

— Thanks, Sen. And don’t tell anyone else we’re meeting.

— Righto!

While Kai waited for Senaya to arrive, he thought back to the overriding sense of impending doom he had experienced before waking. He knew it was the Darkarahn with every cell of his body. Maybe it was a racial memory handed down by the Navigators? Maybe it was just his imagination building a phantom antagonist, because if there was something to fight against, it would make everything he had gone through so far have some kind of meaning. Either way, Kai knew that there was a reckoning in his future and this Darkarahn entity would be involved in some capacity.

His father, according to the journals, certainly believed that it existed. He even mentioned that the strange tentacled spacefaring creatures, the Sumahn, could potentially be enlisted as allies in the fight against the great evil.

Given Kai’s only interaction with one eliciting a vision, he was glad to read that they weren’t overtly hostile and could potentially be of help. This side of the Veil, it appeared they had few options in building allies and finding a way home if their experiences with the Patari were anything to go by.

Once he had found his father, he considered dealing with the Sumahn as the next step in getting back to Coalition space.

A flash on his terminal told him that Senaya had arrived. He unlocked and opened the door for her, letting it close automatically after she had entered. She brought with her the smell of bitter coffee and mechanical grease.

She was smiling at him, and her eyes were as large as ever, but Kai noticed shadows beneath, indicating that, like him, she too was exhausted. The quicker he got this journal situation over, the quicker they could decide on a destination and get some rest while they traveled through the wormhole.

“You look like you’ve gone ten rounds with a Tai-Pao boxer,” Senaya said. She handed him a coffee and sat on the end of his cot. He joined her and took a deep gulp of the hot liquid. It burned all the way down and made his stomach cramp pleasingly. He followed it up with another deep draw before exhaling.

“That tastes like crap,” he said. “But by all the holies, do I need it.”

“You and me both. It’s been a crazy day or so. My sleeping rhythms are completely out of sync. I don’t even know how long we’ve been out here.”

“Five days, thereabouts.”

“Feels like fifty.”

“I know what you mean. I fear we’ve got a long while ahead of us yet.”

While Senaya sipped her coffee and looked up at him with expectations, he transferred the journals to her terminal.

“These the famed journal entries?” Senaya asked, placing the coffee on the floor and browsing her terminal.

“The very same. They tell quite the story. I’ll give you the quick notes version and then I want you to tell me what you think. Okay?”

“Sure, shoot.”

Kai spent the next fifteen minutes telling her the story Marella had told him of how she and his father had met and all the details up to the point where they’d found her on Parsephus. Following that, he went through chronologically what he had read in the journals.

“So apparently,” Kai concluded, “my father met the queen on some glorified moon in an uncharted system on the edge of Coalition and Veil space. My father was on the trail for the Blackstar after having found the artifact on a trading ship. He doesn’t explain how, but it was finding that which led him to this particular moon. He talks of ancient structures and cave systems, much like the ones we experienced on Oberus. Only he didn’t find the Blackstar there. He found the queen: alone, injured, and dying.”

“Why was she there?” Senaya asked.

“Apparently, according to my father, the moon was once a staging post for incursions into our side of the Veil by a few of the Navigators. Over millennia ago, a number of them would make the pilgrimage across the galaxy to ensure the Veil was working as intended and keeping this Darkarahn entity at bay—among the other threats, like the Koldax.”

“Okay, so your dad meets a queen and…”

Kai shrugged. “There’s little else to say other than they got it on and made a baby. The only thing that my father says is that he felt it was his duty and that if he didn’t bring me into the world, the queen would have died and the power and knowledge she carried would have died. Supposedly, that’s a bad thing. But I’m not sure how much good their union has done in the scheme of things, as I can barely understand a damn thing that comes into my head and I can’t access this supposed wealth of important knowledge. I make a terrible Navigator.”

“Yeah, you do, kinda, but remember, you also sucked ass when you first started racing ships. But you got better.” She grinned up at him and her snarky nature brought a smile to his face for the first time in a long while.

“I knew I could trust you to bring some levity to things. But what do you think about all this? Is it nonsense? Are we being fed a pack of lies? It feels like my entire family conspired to hide the truth from me, and now that I have the truth, it doesn’t seem as if that matters at all. I mean, other than flying this ship, what can I do that anyone else can’t?”

“I guess time will tell. I wouldn’t be so hard on yourself, though. You didn’t ask for this. Clearly, the Navigators are more ancient and cleverer than us walking meat-bags, so perhaps you just need to have a little faith that they knew what they were doing and the answers will reveal themselves when needed?”

Kai thought about this for a moment. He stood up and paced the room, draining the last dregs of the coffee. Senaya did have a point. He had done his part. He had strived and sought to understand. He had followed all the hints and leads given to him. So what if he couldn’t access the information in his head yet? So what if he didn’t understand what Eesoh was or why it was on the ship?

None of that was his fault. None of it was through any lack of effort on his part.

If anything, he’d put in too much effort.

He was tired of thinking about it all and wanted to get back to some kind of forward movement. The thought conjured the image of the tentacled Sumahn and he filled in Senaya on the information his father had written about them and their apparent potential to be great allies.

“So, Sen, what do you think? Am I crazy for suggesting that we try to make some allies out of these tentacled creatures once we’ve found my father? If the Navigators are endangered and potentially facing destruction at the hands of the Koldax, we could really use some help from another ally who knows the sector of the galaxy and its threats.”

“I think it’s a fine idea,” Senaya said. “From what I’ve just read here, your father is suggesting that they can manipulate fields of energy similar to the Navigators. We just need to find a way to communicate with them. But that doesn’t seem too difficult, right? It beats sitting around here trying to decide our next move while a swarm of Koldax come and pick us apart.”

“Yeah, that’s not an appealing alternative option. There’s also this whole Marella thing. I know I ought to give her the benefit of the doubt, but I just can’t. There’s just something about her. Maybe I’m paranoid?”

“I think I may have a solution—at least for now.”

Kai folded his arms and cocked his head. “I’m listening…”

“I was running some calculations through Eesoh earlier now that Wiggs has helped bring the gravity drive up to full power. Dragging the Rapier attached to us means we won’t be utilizing that power to its fullest. There’s too much mass and its throwing off the thrust calculations.”

Kai considered what she had just said. If they weren’t carrying the Rapier, then it would have to fly solo in close formation. Which meant it ideally needed its own crew. “Ah, so we split up?”

“Yep. That way, we can get out of each other’s pockets for a while and also let the ship’s AIs take up some of the slack. There’s very little need for a full crew on these ships when the systems do pretty much everything themselves.”

“But can we trust Eesoh given you’ve already said it’s not an AI?”

Senaya’s eyes narrowed for a moment as she thought about it. A short nod from her that Kai had become so familiar with over the years told him that she thought Eesoh was trustworthy, and he placed more trust in Senaya than any other living or nonliving being he’d ever met.

“Okay, but after we’ve had some proper rest, and while we’re on the way to Azelia, I’d like you to dig around Eesoh’s workings, figure out just what it is and what it can do. I’d like to be prepared for any potential surprises.”

Senaya stood up from the cot and placed both hands on Kai’s shoulders. “Don’t you worry, I got this.”

“No, we’ve got this.”

She grinned and left the cabin, leaving the decision of how to split the crew to Kai, but in truth he already knew, he just had to tell them.

Chapter 21

Kai entered the bridge to concerned expressions from his brother, mother, and Marella. He hadn’t told them what he wanted to see them about, preferring to tell them in person. He expected an argument, and this way he could better explain his thought process.

“First of all,” Kai said, “I wanted to let you know that the ship is now fully operational, including the gravity drive, meaning we can now travel faster through the wormholes.”

Bandar gave a nod of acknowledgment as he rolled a cigar between his fingers. “I knew Senaya’s skills with that Koldax machine would come to use. So, the question we’ve all been asking ourselves is where next? You wanna go get Kendal?”

“Absolutely,” Kai said. “The quicker we find him and deal with the Navigators, the quicker we can all get home. But there’s a catch of sorts. I’ve already programmed the navigation computers, and it’ll take a couple of days even with fully functioning gravity tech. We’ll use this time to get some much-needed rest and to prepare for whatever is waiting on the other side of the wormhole. But to do that we need to alter our arrangements here on the Blackstar…”

“Go on,” his mother said, leaning forward on the crash couch.

“We can’t travel at full velocity with the Rapier attached. We’re going to have to split the crew.”

His mother was about to speak when he held up a palm to cut her off. “Listen, I’m in no mood to argue about this. Mother, I want you, Bandar, and Marella to fly the Rapier. Senaya, Wiggs, Eesoh, and I will run things here.”

“You’re throwing me off the ship?” Marella said, glaring at Kai with disbelief.

Bandar shrugged his shoulders and shared an expression of ‘why not’ with Brenna.

“I’m not throwing anyone off the ship,” Kai added. “I work best with Senaya. Mother, you know the Rapier better than anyone, and Bandar, your skills on the weapons will be better served there. Eesoh clearly has a handle on things here on the Blackstar.”

“But… but my research!” Marella said, waving her arms for emphasis. “I need access to the systems and the data. I need—”

“To follow my orders,” Kai barked back. “This isn’t a damned research project. This is a survival mission. If and when we’re safe, then you can have all the access you want, but right now, we’re focusing on two things: find my father and find our way home. If you don’t like that, you’re free to find a ship somewhere and make your own way.”

Marella opened her mouth to protest, but Kai’s mother gripped her arm and whispered something that seemed to calm her down.

Then to Kai, she said, “I think it’s a logical decision. We’ll remain within comm reach at all times and have the AI’s liaise if necessary. You’re right, Kai, this is your ship and your mission. I’ll happily support you from the Rapier.”

“Thanks, Mother.”

“What about the micro-hauler?” Bandar asked.

“That’s fine in the hold. It doesn’t affect the mass calculations too much.”

“But I could fly it solo; makes sense to have three ships in formation, right?” Bandar continued to roll the cigar in his fingers as he avoided eye contact and appeared far too casual.

“I’ve run the calculations,” Kai said. “The micro-hauler will only slow us down. Besides, as I’ve said, your skills on weapons will be greatly useful given the Rapier’s armaments, and you’ll free up Mother to focus on piloting.”

Bandar cricked his neck with an audible click, glanced at their mother, and then back at Kai. “Okay then, Captain. I better get my gear together and get settled on the Rapier. I hope you’re making the right decision.”

The more time Kai spent with his family and Marella, the more Kai felt the decision was correct. He worked better with just Senaya and felt less pressured. This way, he could lead without the burden of all this family stuff.

He engaged in some final pleasantries with his mother as she escorted Marella and Bandar off the Blackstar.

Half a standard hour later when all the checks were completed, Kai engaged the gravity drives and led his crew through the wormhole on the way to Azelia, the home of the Navigators—the home of his origin.

Deep down he knew he had made the right decision. He had eased a pressure that was only noticeable due to its absence; much like how, back in his workshop, he’d only notice a generator had been running after it had stopped. Perhaps now, with some space and fewer people in his mind, he could focus on getting home.

Chapter 22

After nearly twelve standard hours of uninterrupted sleep, Brenna rose from her bunk on the Rapier, entered the small washroom and splashed her face with recycled water. It tasted of iron on her lips. Her reflection in the mirror above the basin was of someone a decade older than she had expected.

“No surprise, given the stress of the last few weeks and months.”

She thought back to where it had all started on Haleedez. The day she had lost her apprentice, Jannis Fo, to a shrain assassin. The image of those Host destroyers breaching the planet’s atmosphere… the destruction… the panic. And eventually, the war. And in between all of that, her abduction by the shrain and the cruel trick they had played on her, using a convincing hologram of Kendal.

Her guts twisted as she thought back to how happy she had been to see him and then the crushing disappointment as reality asserted itself and the illusion was exposed. Just thinking about seeing him within the next few days twisted her guts once more.

Only this time, she tried not to hold on to it. For all she knew, this could all be a mistake, another trick of their enemies past and present.

Or maybe they’d find Kendal, but not in the way they expected.

Who knew what was really happening on Azelia? There was still so much mystery surrounding the Navigators, and given how weird things were here beyond the Veil, Brenna couldn’t even begin to imagine what might or might not have happened to her husband.

Brenna closed her eyes for a moment and resisted a wave of nausea and dizziness.

She gripped the edge of the basin and pulled in a couple of long breaths as the sensation abated. It was then she realized that the sensation in her guts wasn’t just anxiety regarding Kendal, but hunger. She hadn’t eaten anything properly for well over a full standard day.

“Come on, get a grip,” she said to herself, lifting her chin and standing straight. “You’re a damned spy master. Pull your shit together.”

Her reflection took on a harder edge as she channeled her professional self, overriding her emotions and bringing herself into a state of being more appropriate for someone with her experience and skills.

“Flick,” she called out, activating the AI, “how’s the journey to the Azelia system going? Are we still near the Blackstar?”

“Calculating, one moment… The ETA is currently twenty-three and two-quarter standard hours. The Blackstar is updating our nav computers every few minutes. We’re within two point six klicks and maintaining a steady pace through the wormhole. I trust you rested well?”

“Time will tell, Flick. What’s the status of our two new crew members?”

“The woman was trying to access my databanks a few hours ago after rising from her sleep, and your son has been sleeping soundly after he briefly read my weapons protocols fifteen hours ago.”

“The woman’s name is Marella,” Brenna said. “What specifically was she looking for?”

“I cannot tell, as she doesn’t have the appropriate credentials. Would you like to update her access privileges?”

“No, if anything, I want them even more restricted. I don’t know what her deal is, but whatever it is, I don’t want her gaining access to Coalition military secrets. As far as I’m concerned, we’re still on a war footing and I want to maintain standard protocols.”

“I can’t restrict her further,” Flick said, “unless you’re suggesting I restrict her oxygen access.”

“What? No! Flick, don’t do anything like that. Why would you suggest such a thing?” Brenna said with shock as she left the washroom and got dressed in a fresh Coalition-issue uniform of dark blue and orange accents.

“It’s best to blame my programmers,” Flick said.

Brenna shook her head and found herself smiling for the first time in a long time. There was something quirky about the Rapier’s AI that she was growing to like, even if it was just a programmer injecting some of his or her own personality into the code. It certainly made for a more amenable and entertaining AI.

“Just to confirm,” Brenna added as she activated the door control and stepped out into the narrow corridor, “I don’t want any restrictions on oxygen levels anywhere on the ship. The same goes for water and food and temperature. I’m giving you full permission to keep us alive at all times, Flick. You understand?”

“Keep organics alive. I believe that is well within my code parameters, Agent Locke.”

“Good. Glad we’re on the same page. Us organics are just a few centimeters away from the cold, uncaring vacuum of space. We’re reliant on you, Flick.”

“You poor, fragile creatures.”

Again, that humor. It made Brenna smile as she headed to the tiny area at the back of the ship that she had set up as a makeshift galley.

The Rapier, being more of a combat ship, didn’t have a lot of room for such luxuries, but given the distances she’d had to travel as part of her varied missions, she greatly desired a place to relax and become appropriately caffeinated, so she’d had an engineer friend convert one of the small boxlike storage areas when she had first taken possession of the ship.

Although against Coalition regulations, the small kitchen area was designed in such a fashion that the folding table could easily be stored against the wall and the coffee and food making facilities lifted up beyond the ceiling into a maintenance crawl space, thus restoring the storage area.

As Brenna activated the door and slipped inside, she set the coffee machine whirring away and took a seat. A few moments later the familiar, bitter smell filled the room. The dark liquid poured out of the machine in a bulb-shaped drinking vessel.

Brenna took it, along with a packaged pastry, and sat down at the table.

For a few minutes, she forgot about the chaos of her current situation. She forgot about the Patari, the Sumahn, and the Koldax. All that mattered right now was enjoying the sensation of her belly accepting the delicious food and the hot beverage.

Slowly, she was starting to feel herself again.

Before she had too much time to relax, the heavy thud of a limping individual caught her attention outside in the hall. The door slid back, and Bandar entered, his attention on his wrist terminal. His face was pinched into an expression of concentration.

“Hey,” Brenna said, “what are you watching?”

Bandar looked up with surprise and nearly fell into Brenna.

She leaned back, carrying her precious bulb of coffee out of the way.

“Whoa, sorry,” Bandar said. “I was in a world of my own. Didn’t realize you were awake.”

“Same here. Sleep well? Coffee’s brewed if you want a bulb.”

“I’d love one, thanks. And yeah, feeling fresh for the first time in weeks,” he said with a glint in his eye and the roguish smile that he got from his father. The chrome prosthetic that covered half of his face was so expertly made that it hadn’t affected his bone structure, and the similarity with his father was still evident.

Bandar filled a bulb with coffee and sat opposite Brenna at the small four-person table. He took two long gulps of his coffee and let out a raspy sigh as he swallowed the hot, bitter liquid. A slow smile, small but clearly apparent at the corners of his mouth, appeared.

“Looks like you needed that,” Brenna said.

“Probably won’t help with the unease I feel going through these wormholes, but it’s better than jacking up on Equilibrium through regular FTL travel, that’s for sure.”

An awkward silence developed between them. Brenna had so many questions but didn’t want to know the answer to most of them. She had received reports over the years of the life Bandar had led on Zarunda. At one time she had wondered if he wasn’t taking his cover story too far. She decided to keep things simple for now and address her main concern.

“What do you make of Marella?” Brenna asked as she glanced over her shoulder to make sure the galley door was closed, which to her relief was.

Bandar shrugged and took another gulp of coffee before leaning back against the bulkhead wall. “She seems okay. Not a bad looker for a Lantesian. Seems to have gotten involved with some bad types on Parsephus. According to Kai, she helped out a great deal in getting the Blackstar.”

“Ah yes, the journey to Oberus,” Brenna said, recalling the whole story.

“She’s a curious sort,” Bandar added. “But I don’t think she means any harm. Sure, she’s a bit tactless and has a way about her that makes her seem on edge all the time, but can you blame her? You, me and Kai are related, and Sen is virtually Kai’s sister. She must feel like an outsider among us.”

“Maybe. Or maybe she’s distanced from us because she has things she doesn’t want us to know.”

Bandar leaned forward and lowered his voice now, becoming every part of the conspiratorial crime lord that he fitted so well. “Like what?”

How much should she tell him? Brenna considered the ramifications. Would it help or hinder their cause if she were to confide in her son that she suspected Marella of having an affair with Kendal? Given Bandar’s close relationship with his father, soldiers in arms for many years, she couldn’t be completely certain of his reaction. And given his time on Zarunda, being Bandar Trace, she now had to admit to herself that she couldn’t completely trust him either. War changed people in myriad ways, and for him to have spent all that time living under a fake identity—who knew how far the changes went?

Brenna waved it away and sat back. “It’s nothing. I just find her curiosity a little annoying. For example, since we’ve been on this side of the Veil, we’ve seen some extraordinary things—new species, worlds—but none of that seems to interest her, despite her supposed career as a historian and her fascination with all things Navigator.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Bandar said, draining his coffee and standing up. “She seems harmless to me.”

“How’s the leg, by the way?” Brenna asked, nodding her head to the wound he’d taken on Patari. The smart bandage was still wrapped around it, the dark-gray gel layer merging with his dull-colored fatigues.

“A bit of a limp, but no pain. Just a small flesh wound. It’ll take more than a few Patari peashooters to dampen my day.”

“Good to hear. I’m heading up to the bridge, see how things are going. Unless you’ve got anything urgent to do, I’d like you to come with me so I can get you fully acquainted with the weapons systems.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

* * *

Brenna and Bandar entered the bridge of the Rapier to find Marella sitting in the copilot seat, watching a video playing on the view screen.

“Hey,” Bandar said, his voice full of sincere friendliness. “What are you watching?”

Marella physically startled at Bandar’s words. She looked over her shoulder and forced a smile when she saw Brenna there.

Brenna cocked an eyebrow to reiterate the question.

The Lantesian woman spun back around and switched off the stream.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” she said. “Just something Senaya… it doesn’t matter.”

Bandar stepped forward and placed a meaty hand on her shoulder. “I’d like you to switch it back on… I saw something.”

“Yes, Marella,” Brenna added, “we’d all like to see what you were watching.” She folded her arms across her chest, indicating to the younger woman that Brenna was the captain of the ship and would not take no for an answer.

Marella hesitated but eventually, under the glare of both of them, relented and replayed the video. It showed a group of people surrounding two bodies lying on the ground.

Bandar and Brenna watched the short video in fascination. Although relating to Senaya, it didn’t mean anything to Brenna. Her son apparently found something or someone within it very interesting, though.

“Stop the video there,” he ordered. Then, leaning over Marella, he pointed to a blurred image of a young woman in the crowd around the murder scene. “I know her.”

“Who is she?” Marella asked.

“A princess to some old monarchy on a dying planet. They were funding some of the war effort in the Z-89 sector against the Host. I don’t know why she’s there, though. What did Senaya tell you about this video?”

Marella explained that it was the only recording Senaya had of her cousins’ death at the hands of an alien assassin. She pointed her out toward the edge of the frame. She was wearing a municipal driver’s uniform and put something into her jacket before heading away from the scene. Using the Rapier’s video analysis suite of tools, Marella had shown that it was a weapon the assassin had placed inside her jacket.

“So,” Brenna said, leaning forward to take a closer look at the screen, “Senaya’s a baby and offscreen somewhere. The two dead bodies are her cousins on their way to a peace summit between the Coalition and Host—that could potentially be the reason for their deaths. A segment of either government may not have wanted the peace talks to have gone as well as they ultimately did, but that doesn’t explain why a princess to a wealthy monarchy is in the crowd. She can’t be much older than a teenager. What would she be doing on a planet so far from her own without any counsel or protection?”

“That’s a good question,” Bandar said, tapping a finger against the bottom edge of his chrome face guard. “This planet is not far from the Capsis system. It was used as a protected DMZ to hold the peace talks, is that right?” He looked toward Marella, who nodded.

“Yes, it’s the only habitable planet in the Juani system. It was also where the Host officially surrendered, signaling the end of the war.”

“This doesn’t bring us any closer to finding out why Senaya’s cousins were killed,” Brenna said. “It’s just a guess that it was something to do with the peace talks. It doesn’t explain why the assassin tried to kill her on Zarunda. She was just a baby at the time, and this video doesn’t show anything that she hadn’t already known. There must be some other reason. Bandar, you have any thoughts?”

His face was still and his eyes slightly squinted as if concentrating. He rolled an unlit jola leaf cigar between his fingers as he hummed quietly, a gesture Brenna had begun to recognize; Kendal used to do the same thing, but with vapor-sticks in lieu of cigars. A rush of emotion hit her. She missed Kendal so much.

Pushing the emotion down, she listened to her son’s theory. It was a good distraction.

“It’s got to be something to do with the princess,” Bandar said. “Given how wealthy that family was, there’s no way they’d let an heir to the throne be on her own for more than a few minutes. Especially near a murder scene. Marella, why don’t you follow that lead up and see what happened to the princess and the family after the war. Perhaps that’ll shed some light?”

“Sounds like a reasonable line of inquiry,” Marella said. She smiled briefly at Bandar before turning away.

The show of bashfulness irritated Brenna more than it should.

Now that they were working closely together on the Rapier, Brenna could keep a close eye on her. Perhaps that was what Kai had planned all along. Seemed like her stepson was smarter than she had given him credit for.

Chapter 23

General Ratic Hominos stood at the large glass windows of his office and stared out at the metropolis below. There was little traffic today, mirroring the pattern of the previous few days. The media were actually doing a good job of keeping the population informed of the threat without inciting them to panic.

Hominos’s PR spokespeople were giving the media twice-daily reports on the situation.

With almost thirty battles now ongoing just beyond the border of Host and Coalition space, there was a lot of which to inform the public.

And given how much of a large portion of the Coalition fleet was now made up by conscripted civilian craft and crew, he felt it only proper to keep their loved ones in touch with what was happening—within reason, of course. He oversaw each and every brief. There was a fine line between updating the public and unnecessarily scaring them.

Directly above the government building that held his office, a patch of dark clouds broke apart, leaving almost a perfect circle through which the sun shined, adorning the building with bright light and warmth. For a brief moment, Hominos closed his eyes and became mindful of the heat coming through the glass, warming his skin. He had found himself taking increasingly more notice of these small experiences.

Ever since Miles’s tragic death at the hands of that monster Farah Hett, and the image of all those Koldax machines at his command, Hominos had sensed the faint stirrings of fear deep within his soul.

But unlike the traitorous former general, Amelia, he would not cow to that fear. He would not run and defect to survive. He would die for the Coalition if it came to it. He used the fear as fuel. Fuel for a hatred that he would wield like a weapon to strike against those who would threaten his people, his fleet, his section of the galaxy.

A knock on the door broke him out of his mindful state and brought him crashing back to reality.

“Yes?” Hominos called, turning away from the window.

One of the two guards poked his head around the door. “The analysts have a report for you, General. They wish to speak with you in their labs. Apparently, they have something highly confidential and important to share with you.”

Good. He’d been waiting impatiently for their report on the signal that they had detected shortly after the Host queen had enacted orders on behalf of her new lord, Farah Hett.

“Thank you. I’ll go right away.”

“Would you like one of us to accompany you to the labs, General?” the young guard said, almost stumbling back into the corridor as Hominos paced across his office swiftly, eager to find out what his analysts had come up with.

“No. I’ll be fine on my own. I know the way. You two remain here at my office.”

“Yes, sir!” the pair of guards said in perfect unison as they snapped off a hasty salute.

Hominos strode past them and down the corridor toward the elevator that would take him farther down into the government complex, where a suite of labs and offices housed the Coalitions best scientists and intelligence analysts.

A tingle in his spine gave his step an extra spring.

He was eager to find a crack in this new enemy’s shell. In all of his years of service and research, he’d yet to find an alien species without an exploitable weakness. He tapped his fingers anxiously against his thigh as the elevator made its way down fifteen levels, deep beneath the ground of Goddenia.

The terminal on his wrist flashed green with each level as his access code was scanned and accepted. After what seemed like an eternity, the elevator came to a halt, the doors opened, and the clinical smell of the labs wafted in, tainting the air.

Hominos wasted no time. He stepped out of the elevator with purpose, heading down a brightly lit, gray-walled corridor.

Scientists of all species in lab coats turned to face him from beyond the inset windows, but he cared not about them. His people were behind the highly secure red door at the far end. A door that only selected staff, himself and the presidents had access to.

When he entered the administrative credentials, he stepped inside to a tense atmosphere.

Only three people sat around the wooden table: President Desmona Lattis; the acting head of the GTU, Alisa Mathieson; and the head of the analysis department, an old wizened Tasarel named Gaila Frey. The latter looked up at Hominos with wide eyes half covered with bushy, graying eyebrows. Concern was etched on his old wrinkled face.

Lattis and Mathieson remained stoic, presumably because they were now hardened to these high-pressure situations.

President Lattis stood, her corpulent body rippling with the movement. She held out her hand to indicate a seat at the wooden table within the sparsely decorated, highly secret room. “Take a seat, General. We’ve much to discuss.”

“Thank you, Ms. President.”

She waved her hand as she sat down. “Call me Lattis. I’m sick of the procedure and pomp. Hell is breaking loose and we don’t have time for the ceremony. Alisa, Gaila, please explain to the general the current situation.

At first, Hominos found he had to hide the rising sense of being left out of something. That these three already knew something and had clearly strategized without him made him feel like an outsider. He was about to question that when Gaila, the old Tasarel scientist, stood up and gestured to the blank rear wall.

A video screen appeared.

“You’ll recognize these ships,” Gaila said as a matter of fact. “They’re a day away from the Host capital in preparation of nuking it to hell and back. You’ll also notice that ahead of the formation is a Host government shuttle.”

Hominos clearly saw this and nodded his head. “What do they want?”

“They… want to negotiate an alliance.”

“An alliance?” Hominos repeated, unsure if he had heard correctly. Not an hour ago, the Host forces and the Coalition fleets were battling across the galaxy. “Are you sure?”

Mathieson handed Hominos a data pad with the official request, signed by the new Host empress. An individual named Reyes Kamala.

Hominos knew a great deal about this Kamala; he had a data report on almost all of the Host’s administration.

As soon as Farah Hett had killed the previous empress, Kamala took control of the Host’s affairs and controlling senate. Although, this one was from a rival house to the previous empress. House Kamala was controversial in that it was a house known for its violent past and was a singular monoculture made up of a fringe species: the Gratellians, a hairless, humanlike species known for their unique perspective on morals. Mostly in that they rarely had any, which naturally meant they were well-suited to leadership and positions of control.

While Hominos read through the proposal for discussions, Gaila flicked the video screen over to a new display: a direct recording from the current Host empress.

“She sent a video message as soon as the shuttle was within distance,” Gaila said, his eyebrows twitching with every word. “It was surprising enough that the fleet thought you should see it first before they acted. As far as they can ascertain, the shuttle is on its own with no other ship signatures detectable.”

“Which doesn’t mean there isn’t anything there,” Mathieson added with a grim expression on her face. She had clearly not taken Miles’s death easily.

“Indeed,” Lattis added. “We’ve already discovered the Koldax ship has cloaking abilities. We have to be mindful that all of this could well be a trap.”

Gaila almost sighed with exasperation at that suggestion, prompting a stern look from the president. The old scientist didn’t shrink, though. Instead, he explained, “Given what’s on the video and the proposal Kamala is offering, it’s highly unlikely to be a trap. If the video got out to the Host Senate, House Kamala would be ruined and Reyes would be charged with treason and ordered to death. She knows that we know that, which means we can take it in good faith. That’s exactly why she’s doing what she’s doing.”

Lattis thought about this for a moment and nodded her head, her many chins wobbling in agreement. Then all eyes were on Hominos.

“Let me see the recording, then,” he said.

The video screen flickered briefly before the image of Reyes Kamala appeared. She was entirely bald, as was the custom of her species. Her skin was perfectly smooth, no doubt augmented. She had no eyebrows, which always made reading the Gratellians difficult. But even without those cues, it was clear to Hominos that she was doing a poor job of holding her fear in check. After blinking a few times and coughing to clear her throat, she finally spoke.

“I’m addressing the administration of the Coalition. I officially request urgent talks to discuss the Host’s surrender and plans to ally against the Koldax. I have no doubt you’re aware of what happened on Gaszla II. I knew all about your GTU agent within our ranks. In fact, I was the one who helped relay his signal. The reason I did this is because Farah Hett is a monster in all respects of the word. Our previous leader had allied with the Koldax and the shrain purely for the power she thought it would bring her house and solidify her position as the Host’s leader. But she never understood the full ramifications of her actions.”

She stopped then and took a few breaths before looking over her shoulder and nodding to someone offscreen. A few moments later another person, with a mask over their face, appeared in the frame next to Reyes Kamala, who continued with her proposal.

“Not only did Yuan Lia strike a bargain with a devil in Farah Hett, but she paved the way for the deaths of billions of Host people for the Koldax to charge their hideous weaponry. We’ve lost over four systems to them, and those heartless machines show no sign of stopping, seemingly indifferent to all the deaths they’re causing their supposed ally. As for the shrain…” The empress shook her head and looked to her left at the masked person.

She reached out and removed the mask. “As a gesture of goodwill on my part, I will gladly hand over the traitor, your former general Aria Amelia, in exchange for personal talks. We have little time with which to do this if either the Host or Coalition are to survive the Koldax and the shrain. Capsis Prime and the surrounding systems are just the first part of the plan.”

Hominos ordered Gaila to stop the video. “Is that really Amelia?” he asked. “Could she have been cloned by the shrain?”

“I believe Reyes Kamala is honest and that this is indeed Aria Amelia,” the scientist said, overlaying the video with a stream of metrics showing indisputable data of Amelia’s ID. She still had the Coalition tag embedded within her. One of the ships had scanned her and received the unique ID reference.

Lattis stared at Hominos with her eyes wide. “Well?” she prompted. “I’d like your thoughts before I decide whether to trust this Kamala woman.”

Hominos thought about it for a moment, ignoring Lattis’s eagerness. That this was Amelia was undoubted; the ID chip could not be faked and the credentials checked out. Kamala was also who she said she was, having provided an official seal from her house with the transmission.

That she was willing to give up Amelia showed an act of faith that very few Host leaders had shown the Coalition during the last decade of peace. And considering what Hett had done to Yuan Lia, it made sense that Kamala would want to be rid of the Koldax; the Host people were essentially being used as nothing more than batteries to power their weapons.

As he considered it, other than delaying the fleet from laying waste to Gaszla II, there was little other motivation he could attribute to this surprising request.

“There was one other thing,” Mathieson said, breaking the tense silence. “Within the transmission was a secured data package. A few minutes after receiving the video from Reyes Kamala, a second, smaller data burst was detected. Within that burst was an extract from a Host intelligence report. I believe Kamala is suggesting they have in-depth knowledge of the Koldax and their technology.”

“Something as sensitive as that wouldn’t be sent by mistake,” Hominos agreed. “Along with handing over Amelia, it’s clearly a hint at a goodwill gesture. And I suggest one that indicates the Host are panicking. And rightly so, given what the Koldax are doing to them; they’re causing them more damage than we ever could. Which means—they need us more than we need them.”

“If only that were true,” Gaila said. “Our analysts have yet to find anything useful to use against the Koldax ship. It’s last known location was about five days away. We’re as much at the mercy of Hett and his minions as the Host are.”

The room fell silent again as all eyes fell on Hominos.

As before, he didn’t allow this tension to affect his thinking. He considered the ramifications, the risks, and the facts and came to the only conclusion that made sense.

“I think we need to talk with her,” Hominos said. “I’ll have Kamala surrender the shuttle to the Beaufort and have her, along with Amelia and anyone else, taken into custody. Once there, we’ll speak with her over video link. I don’t want this going any further than just us and President Gatskil. We need to discuss this in detail before anyone else knows what’s going on.”

“I agree,” Lattis said, clapping her podgy hands as though it were her idea all along. “General Hominos, I’ll leave you to make the order. I’ll speak with Gatskil and let him know what’s happening. Call us when you’re ready to talk with her and we’ll reconvene here.”

“As you wish,” Hominos said, bowing his head slightly.

Lattis got up and made to leave the room, but before she opened the door, she turned around and stared at Hominos directly. “As for Amelia: let it be known between us that I don’t care what you do to her. I don’t want her alive. Is that understood?”

“Yes, President, I understand,” Hominos said. “She will be… dealt with.”

“Good. That’s good.”

With that, President Lattis left the room.

Hominos placed his data pad on the table and began to type out his response to Kamala along with orders for the Beaufort. While that was sending, he brought up the copy of the leaked intelligence report and smiled.

It appeared the Koldax weren’t as invincible as they had appeared, and with this small gift, it looked as though the Host had put themselves into a position entirely beholden to the Coalition, and thus Hominos’s whims.

The galaxy suddenly seemed that much larger. His prospects that much greater—if they could survive the Koldax.

Chapter 24

With their wormhole journey thankfully over with, the Blackstar shot out of the shortcut through space and time and instantly fired thrusters to equalize their velocity.

As usual, Kai swore with the engagement of the engines and the exit. Although this time, he had made sure they weren’t shown the swirling universe beyond them on the holocube or screens.

The hypnotic patterns only served to disorientate him.

Kai glanced around the bridge, staring at the various screens of info and the holocube in the center of the semicircular arrangement of couches.

Nothing alerted him to any major failures or damage.

He leaned forward and gestured across the terminal to bring up video streams of their surroundings. According to the data of their location, they had arrived within ten minutes of Azelia’s gravity well.

The front video screen flashed to life and focused on their destination.

Azelia looked like a white marble in an infinite void of darkness. It was the only planet in the system, orbiting its remarkably small sun with no moons or rings or any other stellar phenomena.

“Wow,” Senaya said. “It looks so pure, but—”

“Anticlimactic?” Kai suggested.

“Kinda. I mean, it’s cool-looking and all, but I was expecting… well, I don’t know what I was expecting, but something more. Bigger perhaps.” She shrugged off the chest straps holding her to the crash couch and winced.

“Are you okay?” Kai asked.

“Yeah, that exit wasn’t as bad as previous ones,” Senaya said with a smile. “And I got some rest despite that not-quite-there feeling of wormhole travel. I don’t think I’ll ever truly get used to that. I almost feel like we shouldn’t be doing it, you know? It’s like a big cheat to the universe.”

“I know what you mean.” Kai stood up from the crash couch and stretched his limbs. “Eesoh, can you confirm the Rapier exited with us?”

The amorphous face appeared on the holocube and inclined its head in acknowledgment. “The Rapier is due out… right about now.”

“Open the comm channel.”

“Channel open.”

“Thanks.” Kai turned his attention to Senaya. “Sen, can you and Eesoh go through pre-conflict checks. Make sure all weapons and arrays are charged, online and fully working. We don’t know what we’re going to find down there, and I want us to be ready.”

Senaya gave him a salute before sliding out the terminal panel and getting to work.

Kai confirmed with his mother that the Rapier was in full working order and everyone was physically and mentally prepared for landing. As they approached, Kai had Eesoh run scans for any other crafts or entities nearby.

Nothing.

Not even the Navigators themselves showed up on the scan—despite Kai sensing their presence manifesting as a barely perceptible tingle in the back of his mind.

One thing that did clearly show on the scanners, however, was the force field mentioned in the journal entries. It was clearly coming from the coordinates and spread across the planet, dampening a swathe of frequencies. Kai also felt it in his bones—perhaps reacting to his latent, slumbering Navigator abilities.

“We seem to be the only ones here,” Kai’s mother said over the channel. “That can’t be right. Perhaps something’s manipulating our scanners?”

“It’s possible,” Senaya said, looking up at Kai. “But I guess we’ll find out when we get there. Weapon systems and shields here are fully operational. Let’s do this.”

With that, the Blackstar’s thrusters grew stronger as they headed for the coordinates to the reported outpost. The Rapier followed closely.

* * *

Just over ten minutes later, the Blackstar, followed by the Rapier, entered the atmosphere of Azelia with little ceremony. The atmosphere was surprisingly thin, and initial scans revealed they would need breather units due to a lack of oxygen in the air.

Luckily, this time of the planet’s day cycle was mid-afternoon, so their location was bathed in a white light diffused by the thick white cloud cover.

“We’re in visual distance of the outpost,” Senaya said. “Bringing it up on screen.”

As Eesoh piloted the Blackstar down through the layer of clouds, the outpost became clear among the vast landscape surrounding it. Kai instantly thought back to that weird vision he’d had. The ground of the planet was entirely covered in white-blue ice. Mist floated all around, giving the place an ethereal feel and reducing their visibility to just a few hundred meters.

“Are you seeing this?” Kai asked his mother.

“Yep, crystal clear. What the hell is it?”

It was a good question that Kai didn’t have an answer for. He zoomed in to the view for a closer look. The outpost itself looked like a dome a hundred or so meters in diameter. Covering the surface was a mesh of wires, conduits, and hardware. Dozens of burned, damaged pieces of machinery dotted the landscape around the dome. Other unidentified pieces of debris were strewn chaotically on the icy surface.

“The force field originates from the dome’s epicenter,” Eesoh said, his face shifting within the holocube. Kai wondered again why Eesoh was here and what it truly was, but would wait for answers; they had more important things to focus on, like finding his father and disabling this force field so that he could wake the Navigators.

“There was a battle here,” Kai said. “There are scorch marks on and around the dome. I’m going down there to check it out. Bandar, I’d like you to join me. While we’re searching the area, I’d like you, Sen, and you, Mother, to cover us from the air.”

“Got it,” Sen said.

“If you’re sure,” Kai’s mother said. “I’m happy to go to the surface.”

“I’m sure you are, but I really need your skills covering us.”

“What do you want me to do?” Marella said.

Kai considered her question. He’d thought about her a lot during the journey to Azelia, and he found his view on her softening considerably since he’d heard her story. He trusted her because if his father was still alive, then he’d soon know if she was lying and she must have realized that too. And besides, he doubted she was a good enough actress to have made up the story and sound so convincing. It all made sense when he considered her story. After he had read through the journals that his father had left, there was nothing in there to suggest she was withholding anything from him.

“I’d like you to keep scanning,” Kai said, answering Marella’s question. “We need to know if this is an ambush of some kind or if there are enemies en route.”

“I can do that,” she said, a lift to her tone of voice as though this token of trust truly meant something to her.

With the orders sorted, Kai and Bandar on their respective ships got their suits on, guns readied and zipped down the lines to the icy surface. Kai’s HUD filled with various amber warnings about the freezing subzero temperatures outside and the toxic air, but there was nothing to concern him just yet.

The wind whipped around him and his half-brother as the Blackstar and Rapier started their circular patrol around the area.

Kai switched on the internal speaker and microphone. “Bandar, you hear me?”

“Loud and clear, Kai. Stay sharp; we don’t know anything about this place.”

“I’ll file that under the ‘obvious declaration is obvious’ status. But I hear you. Let’s stick close together and make our way to the far edge of the dome. I see a doorway of sorts on the left side, so let’s not just walk straight up to it.”

“Sound thinking. Looks like you’re learning quickly. You take point; I’ll cover you from behind—like I’ve done for most of your life.”

Kai didn’t appreciate the hint that Bandar had been responsible for Kai’s survival on Zarunda, but he put it to one side and moved toward the first pile of metallic debris.

Now that he was on the ground and up close, he could tell they were smashed pieces of Koldax drones. Being up close to Wiggs had helped him recognize the machine species’ textures and shapes.

“Are they Koldax machines?” Senaya said over their comm network.

“Sure are,” Bandar said.

Kai inspected one of the dead machines closely. It was as cold as its surroundings, so this wasn’t a recent battle. The damage indicated ballistic weapons had downed this particular drone. “Bandar, take a look at this and tell me what you think did this damage.”

Bandar joined him, knelt and inspected the machine while Kai raised his rifle and covered his brother.

“Looks familiar,” Bandar said. He reached out and picked up a spent round, holding it up to the sky. “Standard gauge—could be Coalition. Which means…”

“Our father could have done this,” Kai finished off. “Let’s keep exploring.”

The two Locke brothers continued to move through the wreckage of the battle. They found a dozen or more dead Patari soldiers, along with more Koldax drones. When Kai was about to give up the search and head directly for the dome, something caught his attention.

Partially obscured by a Patari body was the butt of a rifle.

“Help me get this out,” Kai said, indicating the alien body. With Bandar’s help, Kai shoved the Patari aside and revealed a Coalition-issue rifle. Bandar slung his weapon over his shoulder and picked up the other rifle, checking it over closely.

“It’s his,” Bandar said with conviction. “This belonged to our father. I remember him scratching in this series of marks—the number of times he had come close to death in combat.” Bandar showed Kai. There were sixteen short lines scratched into the body of the rifle.

“Mother, we’ve found Father’s rifle. We’re on the right path,” Kai said. “Any signs of movement from where you are?”

“Nothing so far,” his mother said. “If his rifle is there among the dead, where is he? Hopefully, it means he escaped and is still alive.”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Kai said. “We’ll keep looking. We’re approaching the dome now.”

Bandar swapped weapons so that he was wielding his own rifle as Kai came to the dome opening from the side.

Kai placed his back against the structure and dared a look around into the gloom. He couldn’t see anything moving inside, and there was no sound either beyond the whistle of wind. What he could see, however, was a number of large pieces of machinery, the size of a small racing ship, hooked up to what appeared to be batteries or a power source of some kind. Wires snaked to the structure and the various pieces of hardware that covered the dome.

When the wind dropped, a hum of power came from inside.

“Let’s see if we can deactivate this thing,” Kai said. “I’m going in.” With that, he spun around the edge of the building and slipped inside the doorway, sweeping his rifle across the full field of view.

His heart rate ticked up a few notches, but he remained calm. Nothing moved and nothing changed. Bandar followed in behind him. The two men covered each other’s flank as they descended farther into the building.

They swept around the perimeter, checked all shadows and potential hiding places, and found nothing other than signs of more fighting: bullet holes in the walls, debris strewn across the floor, and more dead Patari and Koldax fighters. Encouragingly, they did not find Kai’s father’s body.

“Okay, Sen,” Kai said, approaching the center mass of machinery and cabling. “Let’s see how we can take this thing down. It is CPU controlled; I can see that much. There’s no terminal, though, so there’s no way we can manipulate this directly from here. We can start cutting cables, but seeing as there are hundreds of them, that’s going to take some time. Do you have any suggestions?”

“Let me switch piloting to Eesoh and take a look. Bear with me while I set up the scans.”

“We could just blow it with explosives,” Bandar said from the gloom.

“I’d rather we keep that as a last resort. But it’s an option for sure.”

While Kai waited for Senaya to assess the field generator further, he took another circuit around the inside of the dome, checking under bodies and fragments of metal. It was during this search he found a door to the rear of the building that he hadn’t noticed before. He tried the handle. It was locked.

“Bandar, I need some help here. I’ve got a locked door in need of a boot.”

“I can provide that,” he said with a smirk as he approached. “Stand back, little one.”

Kai shook his head as he moved aside.

With his unwounded leg, Bandar slammed the sole of his boot into the door near the lock. The first hit bounced off the metal surface, but the next one broke the frame, and the third strike smashed the door open.

“What are you guys doing?” Kai’s mother said.

“Amateur lock-picking,” Bandar replied. “We found a room.”

The two men entered, both covering each other and their flanks as before.

There was little need. The room was barely large enough to hold the two of them with a few meters either side. Like the dome, it was unlit.

Kai switched on his external lights on either side of his helmet and swept them around to see what he could find.

Roughhewn surfaces surrounded the room, using the same rocklike material that made up the exterior of the dome. Kai assumed it was either something mined directly here on Azelia or a compound created by the Koldax. It was gray and lumpy and appeared as though it had grown in layers, indicating that it might have once started off in a liquid state.

There were no shelves, units, or worktables. No furniture of any kind except an upturned metal crate pushed to the rear of the room. “We’ve got something,” Kai said as he approached cautiously. Bandar stayed close behind.

“What is it?”

Kai reached the items and they became clear. “It’s a Coalition officer’s jacket and a blue crystal wrapped inside.” Kai slung his weapon over his shoulder and carefully moved the jacket aside. There was nothing else hidden and it appeared as if his father had hurriedly wrapped the crystal and stashed it here.

“Is this definitely Dad’s?” Kai asked.

Bandar inspected the stripes on the jacket’s shoulders and nodded. “Yeah, it’s got his numbers and stripes. He was definitely here. Probably got ambushed, or perhaps was forced to hide here.”

“Which means that if he waited out the battle, presumably after losing his weapon in the fight and retreating here, then after it was done, he escaped.”

“But why lock the door?”

“It doesn’t make sense… unless he locked it from the inside.”

“Then where did he go? Our father is many things, but a magician isn’t one of them.”

Kai pulled the crystal free from the jacket and held it in both hands. It was surprisingly light despite its size: half a meter long and half again as thick. An iridescent blue hue pulsated from within. Kai’s hair stood on end and his vision blurred.

“Kai?” Bandar asked. “Are you okay?”

His brother’s voice sounded far away, clouded by fog. The scene of the small room transitioned from opaque to transparent, and in its place, shimmering like a desert-world mirage, the great capital city of Azelia appeared. The great crystal spires reached high up into the sky. Then his vision zoomed further in, too fast to make out any details beyond the blur of color, until it settled on a semitransparent room of ice.

Within that frosty antechamber lay two men on slabs. One was clearly Kai’s father. The other one Kai did not recognize.

“Kai!” Bandar shouted from that same faraway place. The vision shook, the details vibrating. Something gripped his shoulders…

The capital city and the image of his father dissipated as the darkness overcame him. He looked up and saw Bandar’s face, concern written on his tight grimace. “I’m okay,” Kai cracked before slumping to his knees and dropping the crystal to the ground. “I know where our father is… We have to go now… but the force generator…”

Kai’s every muscle felt as if it had been put through an intense workout. His breathing was ragged as he struggled to get enough oxygen into his lungs. Bandar helped him to his feet and made him sit down on the metal crate.

“Slow your breathing; your heart is racing. Focus,” Bandar said.

It took a few minutes of concentration, but Kai managed to get his heart rate down. The lightness in his head ceased, and he felt his normal sense of self return, but a persistent thought remained in the back of his mind; what was his normal self: this corporeal Kai, or the all-seeing, ethereal Kai? Maybe the truth lay somewhere in the middle. But he didn’t have to ponder too much.

“Kai,” Senaya said with excitement, “I’ve managed to gain access to the field generator with the help of Wiggs. It appears the Koldax don’t change encryption models too often. Because Wiggs is offline, there’s no way they can know he’s doing what he’s doing. Anyway, I’ve reversed the transformer couplers. The dome is likely to blow in the next couple of minutes. Basically, you need to run as fast as you can. We’ll come and get you both.”

Kai grabbed his father’s jacket and wrapped it around the crystal, which he then tucked under his arm. Using Bandar for balance, he made his way out of the room. The movement helped him regain his sense. He nodded to Bandar to indicate he was okay and the two men sprinted out of the dome and across the battleground, getting as much distance as they could.

While they were running, the Blackstar and Rapier swept around in an arc until they approached from ahead of them. The two ships were just meters away from each other. They descended to the surface, the frost whipping up in their downdraft. Two zip lines dropped.

Kai grabbed onto his with a single hand. The robotic base automatically wrapped around his legs, creating a safe cocoon. To his right, Kai watched as Bandar did the same. His older brother held up his thumb as the zip line pulled him up and into the hull of the Rapier.

“I’m good to go,” Kai said over the comms to Senaya.

A second later he too was zipping upward.

Before he could enter the ship fully, a red and amber flash of color reflected in his helmet’s visor. He looked down just in time to see black smoke and more flashes of fire. The dome split into hemispheres and collapsed to the icy ground. A column of smoke and fire rose from the debris.

The auto-dampening speakers had equalized the volume from the explosion, so Kai only heard it as a small pop, but he certainly felt the power push against his body as he was slammed against the opening aperture of the Blackstar. It was all he could do to keep hold of his father’s jacket and crystal.

A hand grabbed his. He looked up to see Senaya smiling down at him. He handed her the jacket and crystal before easing himself over the edge of the entry point. Once inside, he ordered Eesoh to close it and set a course for the capital city, using the landmarks he had seen in his vision as a guide.

“Glad to have you back,” Senaya said. “And nice that you bought me a gift from the gift shop too. What is it?”

“An Azelian crystal. I’m not quite sure exactly what it does yet, but I would advise not touching it with your hands.”

“You’re so kind, Captain.”

“Kai, what happened?” his mother said over the channel.

“I’m okay, just had a little accident getting in. We’re all good. We’re scanning for landmarks. I saw father. He’s alive, I think, and in the capital city. Stay close. We’re not far away. I had a… well, not sure how to explain beyond a vision. Bandar will explain.”

After a little more effort to assuage her concern, Kai regathered his bearings and took his place with Senaya in the bridge. All the screens were on, showing every angle possible of the planet. They were flying low beneath the cloud cover. All scanners were working to match the images he had described.

He sensed they weren’t far away now.

With the force field generator down, the planet took on a different… well, the only way Kai could describe it was vibration. Visually, the planet looked much as it did before, but there was a different sense of it now. He himself felt different. Lighter, more clearheaded, as though his cognition was somehow affected by the Koldax’s diminishing force field.

As he sat on the crash couch, keeping his attention on anything that looked like a spire, he saw deep within in his mind a dark, cosmic force. The word Darkarahn came to him. Kai sensed the bonds that held this great evil were weakened, perhaps in the process of getting weaker still.

The Koldax had failed in their attempt to knock out the Navigators completely, and their protective barrier had held, but only just. Kai sensed the Koldax had other plans, however, dictated by this strange great evil from across dimensions.

“We’ve got a visual,” Kai’s mother said. “We’re patching it across to you guys. Is this what you saw?”

The front screen updated with the image feed from the Rapier and Kai knew that what he was seeing was indeed the tall spires of the capital city.

“That’s it,” he said. “Full speed ahead!”

Chapter 25

Hominos, accompanied by Officer Ukjao, took his seat at the table within the secret room far below the ground of Goddenia. The other members of the security council hadn’t yet arrived, which he didn’t mind; it gave him time to finalize his response to Kamala.

He’d spent the last half day getting some rest and watching the video feed of Host Leader Reyes Kamala’s request on repeat. He considered all options, weighing them against each other, and had decided to accept Kamala’s offer of an alliance.

In truth, it wasn’t the hardest decision he’d ever had to make.

Perhaps the presidents had known that all along and had let him be the one to decide on the off chance it might have gone wrong.

It wouldn’t be the first time a general or other political leader was hung out to dry by the presidency. But in this instance, he was happy they had held him up as a firewall. He could take the heat. He thrived on it, in fact.

So much so, that despite himself, he now felt as though he were the most powerful individual in Coalition and Host space. He had an empire at his feet, and by joining with the Host, he would guarantee peace for his lifetime and more. Not even a president could overrule that much power and influence.

A few minutes later the rest of the council arrived: Gaila Frey, the head analyst; Presidents Lattis and Gatskil; and the head of the GTU, Alisa Mathieson.

They all greeted each other and before long looked to Ratic Hominos. He had seated himself at the center of the semicircular table. The presidents were to his left, and the others to his right. A video wall directly opposite showed a live feed to a secure cell on the CDF Beaufort.

“Glad to see you all looking fresh,” Hominos said. “I trust you all received my preliminary report of today’s proceedings. If you have any objections, now’s the time to discuss them.”

They all shook their heads.

Gatskil spoke, as he always seemed to feel the need. “I just wanted to say that I appreciate the swift action on this matter, Ratic…”

It bugged him that Gatskil used his first name. As far as he was concerned, he ought to be addressed as General Hominos, and at any other time, he would remind the president of that, but now was about moving things along. So he just sat there, nodding politely until the old gas bag ran out of words.

When Gatskil finally stopped, Hominos diverted everyone’s attention to Gaila Frey. The analyst had prepared a report based on the section of intel regarding the Koldax flagship, the Dominion, that Kamala had secretly sent them.

“Please, Gaila, tell the others here what you and my team of analysts make of the intel and the defense strategy outlined,” Hominos said.

Gaila nodded and then spoke about the strategy. “It’s quite simple when it comes down to it,” he said. “The Dominion uses a similar system of gravity manipulation as we saw briefly from the Blackstar when it created that giant wormhole. But instead of creating intersectional tunnels through space and time, the Koldax ship harnesses its manipulation of gravity to focus the force outward, almost like a reverse black hole. The effect is temporary but devastating, as we have seen. That kind of power can tear planets apart, but to create the initial effect also requires a lot of energy, hence why we’ve seen the ship charge itself by destroying the suns of various Host systems.”

“How does it use the energy that it collects?” Gatskil asked.

“That’s the part of the intel that has led us to a potential defense strategy,” Gaila replied. He scratched his eyebrows as though trying to find the kind of language someone simple like Gatskil would understand. “Imagine a battery, and imagine gravity is electricity. In this instance, the Dominion is a giant battery, and by destroying suns, it saves that energy and converts it to a force that we’ve not seen before; it’s a force that can alter gravity’s nature, reversing it and focusing it, creating a cascading outward explosion.”

“I think I understand,” Gatskil said, nodding as though that would somehow make his brain work more efficiently. “So how do we combat this?”

“Supercooled, semiconductor shield array,” Gaila said, an excitement reaching his eyes but then quickly disappearing as it was clear that neither Gatskil or Lattis understood a word. Ukjao and Mathieson, however, were both leaning forward with interest. “Let me put it another way. Think of them as gigantic magnets that run at very cold temperatures. When they do that, the magnetic field behaves differently. The Host’s intel suggests that a wide array of these—think of a network of ships interconnected around the Capsis system, each one a node in a grid—would create a field that would interfere with the Dominion’s deployment of its energy. It would disrupt their aim, essentially making it harder for them to focus their energy and disrupt gravity.”

“Is there a risk to this?” Lattis asked.

Gaila and Hominos shared a look, and the others instantly picked up on the tension.

“There is, isn’t there?” Gatskil said, puffing himself up. “There’s a problem with this strategy. What is it? Cost, resources?”

“We have all those,” Gaila promised. “Between us and what the Host have already developed, we should be able to put this network together over the coming days. The risk, however, is that if we attune the network array incorrectly, there’s a small chance that the Dominion’s weapon would be… amplified.”

A quiet fell over the room. Ukjao smoothed her robe and did her best to control her body language, but Hominos could tell she was nervous. Mathieson too appeared to be anxious; she fiddled with her tall blond tower of hair and avoided eye contact with the presidents, who muttered quietly together.

“And do we have an alternative plan?” Lattis asked.

“No,” Hominos said bluntly, already bored with the discussion. “We’re lucky to even have this much. That there’s a risk is immaterial. Without at least trying it, we’re already highly unlikely to survive an attack by the Dominion. The best we can do is hope the intel is good and that we can get the array set up in time. Until an alternative idea presents itself, I’ve decided that this is our best approach. I’ve prepared a full report that you’ll find in your inboxes after this meeting, explaining the rationale and the logistics.”

“Put that way, I guess we have little option,” Gatskil said, doubt lacing his words. “But I want our scientists and analysts working around the clock to find a better alternative.”

“You have my word we’re working on it,” Gaia replied.

When they had finally covered the intel topic, Hominos drew their attention to dealing with the signing of the treaty. The quicker they could get that out of the way, the quicker he could get on with his job, but he had a couple more surprises yet to reveal.

Hominos sent word to the officer on the Beaufort to bring Host Empress Reyes Kamala to the secure cell. Barely a minute later she was staring down the camera lens, concern twisting her face with tension.

“Empress Kamala, I’m General Hominos, and I’ve read your intelligence report. Firstly, let me thank you for your brave actions. I’m sure it wasn’t easy to come to us like this, knowing what a weak position you’ve put yourself in.”

“I had no choice,” she said, her lips curling at the corners, betraying her feelings. She didn’t want the alliance deep down, she just had no other way to ensure her or her people’s survival. After a long pause to let the words sink in, she sighed and relaxed, her shoulders dropping. Someone out of frame brought in a chair for her and adjusted the camera when she sat down and crossed her legs.

“You had many options open to you,” President Lattis said, “which makes your choice all the more respectful. Our respective people are different in many ways, but we’re also alike in many others. That the threat we’re facing is a danger to both only highlights the similarities that we have, and it’s on that foundation that we must build.”

Hominos did his best not to groan at this pointless diplomacy. From where he was sitting, there was no need for it.

The Coalition had the Host exactly where they wanted them.

Eager to move on with things, Hominos spoke as soon as there was a gap in the dialogue between the two factions’ leaders.

“Empress Kamala, on behalf of the Coalition, under security protocol fifty-one fifty, I am officially accepting your surrender and proposed alliance. I have drawn up the regulations of such an alliance, and I’m assuming you’ve had the chance to read them and accept the onetime offer.”

President Gatskil glared at Hominos and then readdressed Kamala. “If you would give us just a couple of moments; we’re having a technical difficulty on our end. We’ll reconnect with you shortly. Stand by, Empress Kamala.” He then motioned to Gaila to cut off the feed before turning to Hominos. “Protocol fifty-one fifty? You didn’t speak with us about that; that’s not been enacted in over a thousand years. How dare you!”

Lattis’s chin wobbled as she nodded her head in agreed outrage.

Mathieson and Ukjao were much better at holding their emotion and simply waited for an explanation from Hominos in using a clause open to generals in extreme war settings but hardly ever activated. This was the first time in a millennium and only the second time in the Coalition’s long history.

Gaila Frey looked on, confused. “I don’t even know what this protocol is. Someone care to explain?”

Gatskil jumped in before Hominos had a chance to speak, but that was fine by him. The president often had a problem keeping his mouth shut, and it would soon get him into trouble. “The protocol diverts executive power to the CDF general, superseding all other branches of power within the Coalition. Only I’d suggest we’re not at the stage where that’s necessary. It was designed to prevent an outside agent from taking over the presidency, the view being the generals were elected and above reproach. But after former general Amelia’s traitorous acts, I don’t see how this protocol should still be respected.”

“Unless you have the power to rewrite Coalition law right at this moment, it’s too late to worry about that,” Hominos said. Then, to Gaila, he added, “I took this approach to speed up proceedings. Given what was included in the intelligence package sent to us by Kamala, I knew we didn’t have time to discuss strategy amongst the council. I was elected as general of the CDF for this exact reason: The Coalition government wanted swift, concise action. I can’t do that if I have to navigate all the red tape.”

“You have our confidence,” Lattis said. “You could have spoken with us, and we’d have backed you. There was no need to activate the protocol.”

“Maybe not, but I couldn’t take that risk. The future of our entire nation is at risk. And you’ll have to excuse me if it seems like I don’t respect your presidency, but I did the very thing you hired me to do: get results and act fast. Now if you don’t mind, we have a job to do. You’re welcome to stay while we deal with Amelia and Kamala, or you can reconvene with the relevant houses and prepare for a post-protocol future, assuming we survive the Koldax.”

“I never thought a coup would be so… anticlimactic,” Gaila, the old analyst, said.

The presidents shot him a sharp look. He just shrugged his shoulders. “What?”

“Just do your job, Gaila,” Gatskil said, standing up from the table and motioning to Lattis to join him. Before they left, the two presidents looked back at Hominos as though he were crap on their shoes. “You better not mess this up,” Gatskil said. “Protocol or not, you will face consequences if your decisions harm the Coalition.”

With that they left the secret room, the heavy doors closing with the clunk of magnetic locks behind them.

“Well,” Hominos said, readjusting his uniform and adopting the air of de facto leader of the Coalition, “now that the politics is out of the way, let’s get on with this. Gaila, could you reconnect us to Reyes Kamala. I want to make this quick.”

“Yes… um, what do we call you now?”

“General Hominos officially will be fine. Otherwise, Ratic will do. I don’t care about ceremony now that the presidents are out of the picture.”

“I underestimated you,” Mathieson said from the other side of the table. “I thought you were the presidents’ stooge. I have to admit I have more confidence in the Coalition surviving under protocol fifty-one fifty than I did with Gatskil and Lattis in charge.”

“I appreciate the confidence,” Hominos replied. “Okay, Gaila, let’s get Kamala back on the feed.”

A moment later the video wall came to life. The Host leader was finishing a mug of some hot drink when she noticed the camera feed working. She handed the mug to someone offscreen and waited with an open expression on her face. She appeared to have relaxed in the meantime.

“Empress Kamala, my apologies for the technical difficulty. Shall we continue?”

“By technical difficulties, you mean a disgruntled presidency?”

Hominos smiled; he liked this woman. She was sharper than others gave her credit for. “Indeed, but they won’t be a problem; we’ve ironed out the new chain of command. So, the terms. I’ll need your verbal and written consent to accept. Once accepted, I’ll file the documents onto the central law server and announce the alliance to the Coalition public. I’ll expect you to do the same for the Host worlds. The Beaufort’s communications team will help you relay the message.”

“I realize you won’t negotiate on anything,” Kamala said. “I am in no position to demand anything. It’s quite clear for all to see that we need you more than you need us if it came down to it, but when it comes down to it, we’re all running in second place against the Koldax and shrain forces. Their flagship, the Dominion, is probably still going to vanquish many trillions of our people, but given our intelligence, there’s an outside chance we can ultimately defeat it.”

“Please, Empress Kamala,” Hominos said, leaning forward, “tell me what it is you want. I’m not Farah Hett. I’m no monster. And despite everything you said being true, if what you want is reasonable, I see no valid argument not to consider it. We are future allies after all, are we not?”

Kamala nodded. “I want a position with the Coalition government. If we’re to unite our people, it will give the Host systems a great deal of confidence if I were on the executive council.”

“One moment,” Hominos said, indicating for Gaila to mute the feed.

Hominos considered it for a few moments. Ukjao leaned over to him, and said, “Sir, I don’t think that’s a great idea security-wise. Even with the alliance, are we sure we can trust them?”

“I am,” he said. There was no way the Host would risk such a strategy. “Bring Kamala back up, and we’ll conclude this,” Hominos said.

Gaila gestured to his terminal and the feed was re-established.

“Empress Kamala,” Hominos said, his arms out wide, “welcome to the Coalition. I’ve ordered the Beaufort to escort you to Capsis. If your intel on the Dominion is correct, the fleet that you’re residing with currently will arrive at the very least a day before the Koldax flagship. That’ll give us enough time to swear you in to the council and bring you up to speed on our basic protocols. For now, however, let’s get the treaty signed and announced so that we can move forward together as fast as possible so that we can face this threat with the greatest strength our two fine nations can muster.”

“Thank you, General Hominos,” Kamala said, visibly relaxing. “I think we’ll enjoy a good partnership together. I’m looking forward to meeting you in person soon.”

She spoke with someone offscreen and placed her hand on a terminal scanning device, which also took a reading from her iris, and blood via a tiny fiber needle embedded into the device. It created the unique signature ID. Hominos’s terminal bleeped with confirmation that she had officially signed the law-abiding treaty.

Gaila brought over a similar device to Hominos. Like Kamala, he placed his hand on it and waited for his unique signature ID to register.

“That’s it,” he said. “By blood and the law, the Coalition and the Host are one under this new alliance. We can ratify the fine details later. In the meantime, if you could arrange with the technicians on the Beaufort to forward any further intel you have on the Koldax, along with communication channels with your generals, I’ll have my team liaise with yours and organize the defense strategy.”

“I’ll do that right away,” Kamala said. “I’ll speak with you again soon, General Hominos. It’s been an honor.”

“The honor is all mine,” Hominos said as the Host leader left the room.

One of the Beaufort technicians appeared in the frame. “Former general Amelia is ready, General. We’re awaiting your orders.”

“Bring her into the cell. I want to see her.”

* * *

An officer dragged Amelia into the frame. Her hair was matted and caked in dust. Her face and bare upper arms showed bruises and cuts.

According to the information forwarded by Kamala, Amelia and her hired goons had fought hard before her arrest. She had personally killed two Host men and a woman in her fight for survival after she had realized that the very people she had sold out to had revoked that sale.

“You’re the unlucky bastard that replaced me, eh?” she said. “You won’t last long. No one ever does.”

“I think protocol fifty-one fifty says otherwise,” Hominos added.

Amelia looked aghast, her bright blue eyes narrowing, and then her lips twisted into a grimace. “You think you can get away with that? No one’s activated that for centuries.”

“A millennium, actually,” Hominos said. “And perhaps if you had, you wouldn’t have needed to run to the Host—well, the shrain and Koldax, really. You never really understood what you were letting yourself in for. You only thought of yourself. Thought that the people you commanded were going to lose. But you never considered the Blackstar, did you? You never read the report on Kai Locke that I had prepared, and what an asset he would be. You thought the Blackstar and the Navigators were myths. But then you didn’t even think the shrain were a real threat, did you? You were always too shortsighted.”

She spat on the floor. “I did what I needed to survive.”

“You sold out to the losers and were the cause of many thousands of CDF soldiers’ deaths.”

“The courts will decide that,” she said. “I have a good defense attorney and enough extenuating circumstances to make my defection look like I was pushed from above. Gatskil and Lattis wanted their own way. They mistakenly thought you were going to be their puppet.”

Hominos stood up and straightened his uniform. “That was unfortunate of them. And it is unfortunate that you believe you’re going to have a court hearing. Under protocol fifty-one fifty, I, the general of the Coalition and Host alliance, find you guilty of treason in the highest degree, and I sentence you to death with no right to appeal.”

He gestured a command across his terminal, and a few seconds later a CDF officer appeared in frame with an injector gun in his hand.

Amelia snarled at him and tried to back away, but another two officers grabbed her and held her in place.

“Goodbye, Amelia,” Hominos said as the officer pressed the gun against her arm and injected her with the lethal cocktail.

He watched as her body went into spasm until she fell to the floor.

Gaila, Ukjao and Mathieson looked away, but Hominos stared at Amelia’s dead form and took it all in, every last little detail. Although an officer gave her the drug, it was on his order, and he would make sure he owned it like he owned all of his decisions.

When the officer confirmed she was dead, Hominos ordered her body to be sent to her family. He would make sure they were given sufficient funds to bury her. There was no need to punish the family for her crimes.

“What now?” Ukjao said.

“Now we prepare for war.”

Hominos left the conference room, satisfied with this morning’s work. He had sent instructions to the rest of the fleet to communicate with Kamala.

With all that dealt with and the presidents out of his way, he was free to strategize their defense, using the intel provided by the Host.

His team of scientists and strategists were already busy running computer simulations and had come up with what they thought could be a sound plan or at the very least a way of slowing down the Dominion’s terrible weapon long enough to allow the CDF and Host fleets to mount a strong offensive.

A part of him regretted having to activate the protocol, but if he didn’t take charge now at the most crucial time, he feared that red tape, inter-house arguments, and politics would get in the way of survival.

He refused to see the Coalition, and now the Host, be so brutally defeated by an alien insurgent.

No, not on his watch.

Not in his life.

Not while he still had breath in his body would he allow his galaxy to be ruled by damned machines and genetic monstrosities.

Chapter 26

It took a few hours, but between Kai’s vision and the notes from Kendal’s journals, Eesoh had zeroed in on the capital city.

The journey was thankfully without incident.

Kai had inspected the crystal and discovered that it acted as a portal of some kind, a connection to the room in which he saw his father and the other man. Although, as they were readying to land outside the spires, near an atrium Kai had seen in an earlier vision, he noticed that the other man had disappeared.

“Wow, would you look at this place,” Senaya said, glaring up at the video feed of the scene outside. “It’s incredible. I wonder if those spires were built or whether they grew like that.”

Kai didn’t know or have any inclination as to the answer. Despite his obvious connection to the place and the people, details like that eluded him. As the Blackstar descended to what appeared to be a docking bay made of smooth rock, he took in his surroundings.

The light here was filtered through a thinning layer of cloud. The atmosphere shifted the light to a pale blue tint, making the sky almost impossible to distinguish from the planet’s frosty surface.

Twelve spires dominated the view. The Blackstar’s docking area was located just outside an atrium but within the circle of spires. It was clear now that they were fully inside that there were other ships docked here. Eleven others to be exact, their designs were unlike anything Kai had seen before. Arranged in a dodecagon around the atrium, it was obvious that the Blackstar was the twelfth such craft.

Some of the others were covered in thick layers of ice and frost.

They must have been here for centuries, or longer, Kai thought.

While he witnessed their surroundings, Senaya and the others on the Rapier were busy chatting like excited children.

Even Bandar, whose nonchalant demeanor had so far dominated his personality, softened to that of surprise and wonder.

Ignoring them, Kai continued to analyze the video feeds of the surroundings.

The central, circular atrium caught his attention. It was the same as the one he’d seen in his vision and the later one via the experience with the crystal. The circular area was probably no more than thirty meters in diameter and surrounded by an ornately carved crystal border that rose approximately two meters.

An open section, a gateway of sorts, led into a pathway that cut through the middle. Either side of the path lay six coffins, making twelve in total. They weren’t really coffins as such, Kai thought, zooming in, but crystal capsules. And much like his vision, eleven of them featured a sliver of silvery-blue light. One by one, he turned his attention to each of the capsule-like structures and received a deep sense of recognition and belonging.

The experience was so deep he didn’t see Senaya’s palm until too late.

A quick slap to the side of his face knocked him out of his concentration.

“What the…? Why’d you do that?” he said.

Senaya shrugged. “You weren’t answering anyone. And your eyes went black. Seriously, dude, it was weird even for you. What happened?”

His right cheek burned with the slap and he pressed his own hand against it. “I was just looking at those structures in the atrium.”

“Coffins,” Senaya said. “They’re clearly coffins, Kai. And those lights inside—they’ve got to be the spirits of the Navigators, right? Seriously, this is like something from a holonovel.”

“Would that be so surprising? Legends and myths often have a grain of truth. Perhaps all this inspired those stories? Either way, we ought to go check them out and see if we can find a way inside. I saw my father in a chamber that I’m certain is within one of those spires.”

Kai turned his attention to his mother. “Have you guys landed the Rapier okay?”

“Yes, Kai, we’re not far from your position. We’re approaching on foot. We can see the Blackstar on its docking… rock? I take it you can see the other ships. This place is incredible.”

“It sure is. And yeah, we saw the other ships. The designs are so different. I’m assuming each one belonged to a corresponding Navigator if the numbers aren’t a coincidence.”

“I doubt there’s any coincidence here, Kai,” Bandar said. “I can see what looks like an archway at the base of the main spire. Do you think that’s a door inside?”

“Hold your position,” Kai said. “We’re coming out. We’ll meet you and investigate further.”

* * *

Kai and Senaya, wearing full protective suits, joined the others, who were also in environment gear. Marella had joined them. At first, Kai wondered if it was wise leaving the ships unattended, but so far, they had not detected any movement on the planet. And given this was the capital, Kai assumed it would have its own defenses. If it didn’t, then there was no reason why the Koldax would have gone to the trouble to install a force field generator; they would have just stormed the city directly.

Kai joined his mother at the front of the group. Senaya and Marella were behind them. Bandar covered their rear. All were armed with rifles. Senaya had a belt of various other gadgets that Kai could only guess to their function.

Although Kai wanted to inspect the crystal capsules closer, he felt a pull toward the archway and suspected he would have time aplenty to know more about the curious spirits within.

“Well, are we going on or just going to stand out here like a bunch of tourists?” Bandar said.

“Okay,“ Kai responded. “We’re going. Just don’t do anything rash. We know so little about this place or what to expect. Things might not be as they seem.”

“In other words,” Marella said, “don’t shoot anything until you know what it is.”

“Got it,” Bandar said with a mock salute. “Let’s get moving, then.”

With that, the group approached the archway and found that it surrounded an opening into the spire. Darkness lay ahead, and their helmet lights soon cut a swatch of illumination through the blackness.

All around them the place sparkled with infinite facets of the crystalline surface.

According to the helmet’s HUD, the temperature inside was mild and suitable to their various species: a comfortable nineteen degrees. Even oxygen levels appeared breathable, but Kai didn’t want to take any risks and kept his helmet on.

They walked for a few more minutes, going deeper through a tunnel until, finally, they exited into a larger area. Their lights could only illuminate so far, and they couldn’t pick out any other architectural features.

Kai was about to ask them to formulate a plan when a voice echoed throughout the cavernous space.

“Welcome to the citadel. Please continue on your current path. You’ll find a door that leads to my chamber. My name is Cenoc, and I am the overseer of the Navigators. You are all safe here, but hurry, there is much we need to discuss.”

As soon as his voice echoed away, a pale light shone from beyond, almost directly ahead.

“I guess we ought to do as he suggests,” Senaya said. “He sounds like an individual one would not like to mess with.”

“This is all so fascinating,” Marella said. “I can’t believe we’re actually here. It’s surreal.”

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” Bandar asked from behind the rest of the group as they continued on toward the light. “You’re right at the source here.”

“It is,” Marella agreed. “It’s truly amazing.”

Cenoc’s chamber was just as Kai had seen in his last vision. Only he was mistaken about it being made of ice. Like the rest of the citadel, it was a crystalline material, but clear and without any hue. There were two slabs, as before, but devoid of his father or the other man he’d seen, which presumably was Cenoc.

“Okay,” Brenna said as she walked around the slabs. “We’re here. Now what?”

The room was just large enough to accommodate them around the slabs. A secondary door on the east wall made from a material that Kai didn’t recognize opened up. A man entered wearing a plain, formfitting robe and sturdy boots.

His head was covered in short-cropped blond hair infused by streaks of white.

“Welcome,” he said, opening his arms wide. “It would be considered a cliché to say that we were expecting you, but we were. And we have business to attend to. I know why you’re here, and you will have your answers. But first, come with me through to the communal area. I have refreshments prepared for you.”

“Cenoc, I’m here for my father. Where is he?” Kai asked. “I saw him in my vision. Is he alive and well?”

“He is, Kai. You’ll meet with him soon, I promise.”

With that, he turned his back and entered the doorway.

Kai led the others after him into a much larger, secondary room.

This one appeared to have walls made from a coral-like material. Pale white in places and pastel colors in others, it seemed as this too had grown naturally. It featured a domed ceiling and stone floors that were covered with ornately made rugs of reds and purples. On their surface was myriad scenes embroidered in gold and silver thread. It felt like some kind of sacrilege to walk on them, but Cenoc gestured for them to follow.

He came to a large table carved from crystal. Bench seats ran along both sides of its length. On its surface lay a veritable feast of food and various liquids in transparent jugs.

“Please,” Cenoc said, gesturing to the seats. “Come and sit; enjoy the food. We have a tight schedule, and you’ll need the fuel. Oh, and you won’t need your suits here. You’re free to remove your helmets. Trust me, the air in here is safe. I’m half-human, half-Tasarel myself and have been here… well, for a long time with no ill effects.”

His smile was sincere and genuine. And despite his appearance putting him in the middle-aged bracket, Kai could tell he was far older. Kai decided to trust him, as he felt no sense of trickery, and took off his helmet.

A few moments later, the rest joined him, and they all took a seat at the table.

Cenoc, seated at the head, nodded for them to partake of the food and beverage.

It was clear they were all dying to ask this man questions. Kai felt it like a pent-up energy, but there was something about this overseer that elicited calmness and patience. They ate and drank in almost complete silence for ten minutes or more when Kai felt that he needed to move things on.

After all, it was the overseer who had suggested they had a tight schedule.

“Cenoc,” Kai began, “I really think we’d like to see my father now and ask our questions. We’ve been patient and have done as you have suggested, but like you said, there is much to discuss.”

The overseer stood up from the table and bowed halfway toward Kai. “You’re right, of course. But don’t worry, I’m well aware of the passing of time. I’ll fetch your father; he’s currently recovering, but the time is right.”

With that, he left the table and headed toward the rear of the room and disappeared through another door. It was just a few minutes later when he returned and was followed by another man.

The two approached the table and into the light. Everyone stopped eating and chatting and turned their attention to them.

Kai’s chest tightened as he recognized his father.

“Hello, son,” Kai’s father said.

Chapter 27

All words stuck in Kai’s throat. He was paralyzed for a moment as he stared at his father. He looked so different now. Thinner, his face considerably gaunt. His eyes held a shadow that suggested many dark days. For the first time in Kai’s life, he looked at his father and saw an old man. The sudden realization shocked him. How could Kendal Locke, war hero and living legend, be old and frail?

“Well, are you not going to say something?” Kendal said, raising his eyebrows as the wrinkles on his forehead creased. He looked at Kai and then around to the others. His expression changed when he saw Marella, an expression that Kai couldn’t quite place. It was either shame or perhaps fear.

Bandar broke the tense silence. He strode forward and grabbed Kendal in a bear hug. “Good to see you again, old man.” He patted a heavy hand on Kendal’s back, making him cough.

“Easy now, boy. I’m still in recovery. But it’s good to see you again. We’ve got so much to catch up on. I can’t quite believe you’re all here. And, Brenna… my love!”

Bandar released Kendal from the hug and stood aside as their parents reunited.

Kai’s mother took his father’s face into her hands and kissed him gently on the lips. “You silly old bastard. We all thought you were dead for so long. And here you were, having adventures in alien lands like some kind of teenager.”

She wiped the tears from her eyes and her nervous laugh hid her sobs of joy and no doubt relief. Kai felt himself welling up, but he pushed it down and crushed the emotion away. He didn’t want to appear weak. He was not the boy his father had last known.

“And it’s good to see you too, babe,” Kendal said, sneaking another kiss. “I’m so sorry for everything. It must have been hell not knowing. But I couldn’t risk any communications. Not even the Coalition. There are people there not trustworthy. I wasn’t even sure if I could get the artifact in the right hands, but it’s clear that all went well, I hope?”

“Yeah, we know. General Amelia defected recently. And despite some dicey moments, we’re all here in one piece, so I guess your bread-crumb trail did its job. Although we would have preferred some clearer information.”

“I know… I’ve spent years and months trying to find a way back. I’ve been lost for so long.”

He looked away then to hide the haunted shadow that crossed his face. Kai caught it just in time, and even from his body language, Kai could tell his father had suffered. He had a slight tremble throughout his limbs. Even the way he carried himself seemed as if he were carrying a great weight on his shoulders.

Kai glanced over to Cenoc, who stood there watching with a neutral expression of eternal patience. Marella had tears in her eyes and she fidgeted from one foot to the other as she stared at her hands.

“Wow, we do have a lot to catch up on,” Kendal said with a deep sigh as he looked around the group again until his attention fell on Kai and then Senaya.

“I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure,” he said, holding his hand out to Senaya. She shook it and nodded politely and introduced herself.

“I’m Senaya, Kai’s friend. You’ve caused a lot of trouble,” she added, surprising everyone with her hard tone of voice. “I hope you realize the sacrifices your son has made to get here.”

Kendal let her hand go and dropped his to his sides. “I know full well the cost of my actions, my dear.” And then to Kai, “I’m truly sorry for everything, but I’ve only ever done what I thought was best.”

Before Kai could respond, Marella couldn’t hold her silence any longer.

She yelled at him, “What you thought was best? Like leaving me behind on Oberus? Abandoning me? After all you did for me, you just left me there to fend for myself. Why, Kendal? Why did you do it?”

Kai’s father ambled toward her, his arms out, beseeching. “You trusted me then; I’m asking you to trust me now. It was for the best. I needed to make sure Kai had someone to lead him to the Blackstar, and you were the best candidate. I knew you would survive. You are a born survivor.”

Marella turned away from him and wiped her tears as her shoulders rocked with a sob, but she quickly got a grip on herself with a couple of deep breaths. She turned back to face him. “I loved you like a father,” she added softly. “You were the only safe, stable thing in my life, and you just left me.”

“You weren’t the only one,” Kai finally said, unable to hold his tongue any longer. Although he sympathized with Marella’s situation, he himself had also been abandoned and left to fend for himself. “And I grew up thinking I knew who my parents were. I thought I knew who I was… but that was all a lie.”

Kendal held up his hands. “I get it, you’re all angry with me, and you have every right to be. From the outside, my actions seem appalling, but believe me when I tell you that none of the decisions I made were easy. I had to choose my family or the potential destruction of the galaxy.”

“Listen,” Kai’s mother said, gesturing for everyone to calm down. “It’s natural that we’re all emotional. There’s so much to deal with, but we can’t dog pile here. I suggest we all take a minute and approach this logically. We need answers, but throwing accusations around isn’t going to achieve anything.”

Cenoc broke his silence and moved to Kendal’s side. Addressing the group, he suggested, “Why don’t we all take a seat and let me explain things from a Navigator point of view. We’re the ones to blame here. Kendal was thrown into this by us. There’s a story here and it will explain things, if you will allow me?”

“I think that would be for the best,” Kai said, preferring to have an intermediary bring everyone up to speed. He wasn’t sure yet how he felt about his father. There were too many emotions colliding inside: feelings of abandonment, blame, relief, and myriad more all bubbling to the surface.

Given that Cenoc had earlier suggested they didn’t have much time, Kai didn’t want to spend that time dredging up family issues. That would get them nowhere. And besides, now that they were reunited, there would be plenty of opportunity to rake over the coals.

The group returned to the table and nervously picked at food and sipped from the goblets. Cenoc stood at the head of the table and with an incline of his head began, first by addressing Kai directly.

“Kai Locke, your father was selected by our queen of the time to help seed the future of our species and ensure the safety of the galaxy.”

“Yeah, I read that,” Kai added. “But what does that actually mean? What am I? And why can’t I access the information in my head?”

“You will in good time. It’s not safe for you to receive the cache of your legacy in a single moment. Your biological mother, Queen Emeralissi, was dying. She had reigned for over three thousand years and was beginning to enter her final form. Which meant we needed an heir. A king in your case. The terminology I’m using is not entirely accurate, but in your current form, you couldn’t possibly understand the full meaning. Even I, as the overseer, have to use these abstract terms to refer to things beyond normal comprehension.”

Senaya gave Kai a wide-eyed look and raised an eyebrow. Then to Cenoc, she said, “So you’re saying Kai is the ruler of the Navigators, the head guy?”

“Not quite,” Cenoc said. “It’s more complicated than that, but for the purposes of this conversation, you could think of that position as being a focal point for the Navigators’ energies. Without a focal point, that energy would dissipate, and the Veil would fall.”

Kai saw his mother and father inch closer together at the table. They were sitting opposite him and it warmed him to see them together again. Turning his attention back to Cenoc, he asked, “So let’s get to the crux of it: what exactly is the Veil, and what’s this Darkarahn entity I see in my visions?”

Cenoc’s expression darkened and his body stiffened at the mention of the name.

“There’s little to explain about Darkarahn, beyond its evil is beyond scale. It’s as ancient as the oldest Navigator and has destroyed countless galaxies in its unquenchable thirst for destruction. The earliest overseers have written books suggesting that it’s part of a balance of life and death in our universe. That without the Darkarahn, we wouldn’t have the Navigators. Without evil, there is no good, and without darkness, there is no light. However, the Navigators saw a way to create a status quo. That’s where the Veil comes in.”

Kai’s father faced him and added, “This is why I couldn’t risk communicating what I know. The Veil is under attack, and I couldn’t trust the Coalition to take that threat seriously when they saw the potential of Navigator technology. Power corrupts, son; I’m sure you’ve seen that in your life. Imagine that on an infinite scale.”

Kai had indeed seen his fair share of corruption over the years.

“I guess you’re right, Dad, on that front at least. But where do I fit in with this Veil stuff? I had a vision that it’s getting weaker. We destroyed the Koldax outpost, has that not changed anything? And also, while I’m at it, what happened there? How were you fighting with the Patari? Those savages captured Mother and were going to sacrifice her to giant birds. Not exactly ally material.”

Bandar pulled a cigar from his pocket but didn’t light it. Instead, he used it as a pointer while he leaned over the table. “That’s what I’d like to know. We fought the Koldax. They’re not easy to defeat. What happened back at the outpost? What was the crystal you left behind?”

Kai realized he was still holding the crystal within the jacket. He placed it on the table and unfurled it.

Kendal looked at Kai directly. “It was my way of reaching out to you. It’s a sending stone. Its power is rooted here. Where it’s taken, it will still have a connection to the citadel.”

“So a communication device?” Senaya said. “Like a portal of some kind?”

“Exactly that,” Cenoc said. “But its latent power can also be used. The plan was for Kendal to use it to disrupt the force field generators that were dampening the Navigators’ power. But the machines had already circumvented it.” The overseer narrowed his eyes. “How did you destroy the outpost?”

Senaya spoke up, now eager to show her skills. “I hacked a Koldax machine in a previous battle and used that to manipulate the network. We basically switched off the power conduits and then reversed them to blow it up.” She shrugged as though it were nothing.

Kendal smiled an approving smile, and some of his old charm returned. “Very impressive. I’m glad my son has had you by his side. You clearly have some considerable skill.”

“She’s incredible,” Bandar said. “Saved our asses a number of times. I’ve seen the girl fix almost anything. She’s a natural.”

A reddish hue blushed on Senaya’s cheeks and she looked away.

“But it was all of us that got us here,” Kai said. “Marella included.”

The Lantesian gave him a nod of acceptance.

Cenoc continued, clearly eager to waste as little time as possible.

“So,” he began, “you were born to take your place among the Navigators and complete the circuit. For the Veil to hold and keep Darkarahn at bay, the citadel requires the spirits of twelve Navigators. Your mother, Kai, the queen, has taken her place as the eleventh. As her power was receding due to her transformation, she needed to pass it on. That’s why you were born. Without you, the Veil will fall and, well… all there will be after that is darkness.”

“So, what, I just get in the coffin and all’s well?” Kai asked. “Because if that’s what it takes, then I see no other choice.”

“Sadly it’s not as simple as that,” Kendal said. “It’s why I sent the artifact and the Blackstar to you. I was going to join you, but then the Koldax attacked, and things got out of control.”

“By out of control,” Cenoc said, “your father means he was brutally murdered and left for dead along with the Patari. If it wasn’t for the power of the dormant Navigators, he would have perished eternally.”

Senaya whistled and shook her head.

“We owe you our thanks,” Brenna said, hugging Kendal. “But what do we do now?”

“You take the fight to Darkarahn’s minions,” Cenoc said. “Now that you’re reunited, you must travel to Coalition space and defeat the Koldax. We can’t risk any more Navigator power going beyond the Veil. The artifact you have, Kai Locke, is the only key to travel to and from the two sides of the galaxy. But somehow, the Koldax have found a way to piggyback on that and are now, as we speak, planning to destroy Capsis Prime and rend a tear in the Veil. Thus freeing Darkarahn.”

“Why Capsis Prime?” Marella said. “Sure, it’s the Coalition capital, but that’s an arbitrary thing. What’s so special about it?”

Cenoc inclined his head, indicating it was a good question, and answered, “The various worlds in Coalition and Host space all make up a network of power. Capsis Prime is the central node. If that falls, the Veil will be torn forever, regardless of what the Navigators can do. You must stop the Koldax at all costs.”

“And we’re expected to defeat them by ourselves?” Kai said. “With all the power of the Navigators, and all the hopes just rest on us and a couple of ships?”

Kendal nodded as Kai was talking. “We’ve thought of that,” he said. “When Cenoc brought me back and tended to my wounds, my task was to draw an alliance with a friendly force.”

“Who, the Patari?” Brenna asked. “Because they’re no friends of ours.”

“No, not them,” Kendal replied. “And they’re not all like that. The home-worlders are sadly insular, but other Patari traveled out to other systems and created their own outlook on the Navigators. Our allies are a race called the Sumahn.”

“I know them,” Kai said. “The tentacle space-faring creatures?”

Cenoc nodded. “They’re mercurial creatures for sure, but Kendal had made a connection with one of them in his first journey across. It’s why he stayed. We’ve tried to communicate with them but without luck. For some reason, they chose your father and he has brokered an alliance with them. They’ll be joining you when you arrive in Capsis Prime.”

Kai leaned back in his chair and let out a long breath. “This is a lot to take in,” he said. “And what if we do manage to stop them, what happens next? What do I do next?”

Cenoc and Kai locked eyes, but the old man said nothing.

Kai, however, saw his fate in his mind. He knew that at some point his form would ascend and join the others in their crystal tombs.

But not today.

Today, he had to rally his team and fight to save Capsis Prime.

“And me?” Marella said. “I’d still like to understand what my role in this is. I get that you left me behind to help Kai, but you’ll have to excuse me if it seems wrong that I think I’ve just been used as a throwaway tool.”

Kendal got out of his chair and placed his hand on her shoulder. He shook his head. “You were never just a tool. I didn’t know it at the time, but my fate had already been sealed. I was also supposed to save you. I was always supposed to take you with me. And yes, as cold as it seems, it was the right thing to leave you behind. If I had brought you with me, you would have surely died. Your life is what it is because of what the queen told me. You see, Marella, I knew I would see you again, that you would arrive here with my family and Senaya.”

Marella’s face took on a confused expression as she looked from Kendal to Cenoc. “I don’t understand.”

Cenoc reached out a hand toward her from the head of the table. “Marella, my dear, isn’t it obvious by now? You are to be the new overseer when my time is up. You’re home. You’re at the end of your journey and will now start your studies in earnest. You will have everything you have ever wanted: the answers to the universe. You will take my seat when the time comes, and will be the custodian of the Navigators.”

“Holy crap,” Senaya said, exclaiming loudly and clapping her hands. “I’m sorry, but that’s fraking cool.”

Marella burst into tears and hugged Kendal before approaching Cenoc. She was shaking from head to toe and looked back at Kai, Brenna, Bandar, Senaya and Kendal in wide-eyed shock. “Is this really happening?” she said between sobs.

“It is, my dear,” Cenoc intoned with nothing but sincerity. “We’ve been waiting for you all your life. Periodically, I’ve been watching you go down your fated path. It was always meant to be. But now your path ends, and you’re free to start your own journey—if you wish.”

She nodded enthusiastically and took Cenoc’s hand even as tears fell from her face. “It is,” she said. “There’s nothing more in the world I want. Thank you…” She turned back to Kendal and tried to speak, but she choked up. Kendal wiped a tear away from his eye too.

“But this is where we say goodbye again,” he added. “We have to go back across the Veil. And your place is here now.”

Marella let go of Cenoc’s hand and hugged Kendal again. They stayed like that for a while. No one spoke, not wanting to break this heartfelt goodbye.

For the next fifteen minutes, Cenoc provided them with the remaining information they had on the Koldax, which didn’t amount to much more than they had already discovered themselves. He did, however, give them the coordinates to get home, to Capsis Prime, and provided them with much-needed food and water, along with many medicines.

Before they left, Kai took one last look at the crystal coffins and tried not to think about what his new form would take. Or what it would feel like. He tried not to dwell on it too much, even as the information in his head began to unspool.

Thousands of years of information lay before him. Mostly of empires rising and falling, myriad species building worlds, all the protective auspices of the Navigators. And then there were the elven presences that lurked in the shadows. They weren’t a negative force, rather the opposite, but he felt them there, watching, waiting, expecting.

After they had packed for their journey home, Kai spent some more time with his father. They didn’t really talk much. Kai had understood from Cenoc’s story earlier what and why his father had to do what he did. He could see it now: he was special, he was a Navigator, and he couldn’t have been allowed to have been exposed.

His father had risked everything to help protect the Navigators while also giving Kai the tools to make the journey and ascend to his new position.

Kai forgave him and knew that his father had suffered terribly for his burden.

But each of them had a burden to carry now.

They had to fly home and save the galaxy.

Before they left, Cenoc gave Kai the communication crystal in case he needed to warn the overseer of anything—or vice versa. Marella had agreed to stay and start her training. The group were happy that her story had finally come to its end and also its new beginning. Kai was pleased that his mother had found the truth and no longer suspected any threat to her marriage.

If they survived, she was now free to live her years out with Kendal.

With everything said and done and plans made, he ascended the steps into the Blackstar once more. Before the ramp closed, he waved goodbye to Cenoc the overseer and prepared for war.

Chapter 28

General Hominos welcomed Reyes Kamala to the Coalition war room situated off from the main presidential suite, where the twin presidents, Gatskil and Lattis, were busy coordinating the other governors and senators of the Coalition worlds.

A large round table situated in the middle of the room served as the center of operations.

Kamala took a seat immediately to his left.

It was still early in the morning, approaching six a.m., and although most of the government and the people in its employ had enjoyed a national day of rest ahead of the war effort after having completed their orders, Hominos had instead used that time to read through Kamala’s intel and work with the science and technology division to fine-tune their experimental defense system.

Sitting at the operations table with Hominos and now Kamala were Officer Ukjao, Mathieson and Gaila. Those three had quickly established themselves as Hominos’s most reliable people. They got things done when they said they would and brooked no hesitancy.

It was through them that over the last couple of days Hominos and his people were able to rapidly put into place their defensive array.

Hooked into the war room’s communications were channels to every captain of every ship in the combined fleets, along with officers and captains of ground troops on the surrounding systems in case the Koldax or shrain decided to attempt a ground offensive.

Although that was highly unlikely given their ultimate goal of destroying Capsis Prime and punching a hole through the Veil, Hominos didn’t want to take any chances.

Now that Kamala had joined them, Hominos approached the topic of the Koldax and shrain’s motivation. Although he had read Kamala’s report, he wanted to discuss it here with the others so that he could then forward it to everyone within the communication network.

He believed it was better for everyone to know what they were up against so that they could raise their game and fight for their lives. If they just thought they were fighting against a few advanced robots and a new class of destroyer, they wouldn’t truly grasp what was at stake. He turned to Kamala after checking the comm channels were open and began his questioning.

“Empress Kamala, first of all, I’d like to thank you for reaching out to the Coalition and presenting us with the opportunity to achieve peace between our two nations. I’d also like to thank you for the intel on our new, imminent enemy. For the purposes of all those listening to us, could you please tell us what you know about their motivations and what they ultimately wish to achieve with this incoming assault.”

Kamala composed herself, took a few breaths and said, “The enemy is led by a hybrid organic and machine calling himself Lord Farah Hett. He’s the leader of a faction called the Koldax—primarily a machine species. We don’t know too much about them beyond the video packages we have delivered, but what we do know is that they’re highly adaptable, deadly and difficult to kill.”

“Please, go on,” Hominos prompted once Kamala had time to take a sip of water and compose herself once more. Before this point, the two of them had briefly covered what she would say, but she still needed a few moments to decide how best to explain.

After a few moments, she continued.

“We believe that when the Blackstar was first sent across the Veil a decade or so ago, it left a small rift in its wake. It was through that rift that Farah Hett and a squad of his Koldax fighting machines came across. During the following years, Hett oversaw the rapid expansion of the shrain. I’m sad to say it was on our watch on a number of Host worlds that this was happening.”

“We’re beyond blame, Empress. We’re just focused on what we need to do. What can you tell us about the Dominion, this new kind of ship that threatens us?”

“It’s entirely of Koldax design,” she said. “Presumably Hett brought plans with him. As far as we are aware, the ship was completed just a few months ago; we’ve no intelligence of it before then, so we’re assuming that it’s taken him and his machines nearly a decade to complete. It powers its great batteries by destroying star systems. We don’t fully understand it, but like the Navigators, it appears to utilize gravity-based technology that is far beyond our levels of tech.”

“But you think there’s a way we can fight against it?”

“Indeed, General Hominos. Many of our scientists, both Coalition and Host, have been working around the clock over the last few days, putting together a network array of superconducting magnets and various sources of energy. We believe that this will prevent the Dominion from targeting its powerful gravity weapon on Capsis Prime and buy us the time required for our combined fleets to destroy it.”

Kamala looked at Hominos with raised eyebrows as if to ask if there was anything else.

Hominos briefly considered going into more detail, but he didn’t want to overwhelm the population with the technicalities, especially as he didn’t fully understand them himself. He could get Gaila Frey to explain, but that would take time they didn’t have.

“Thank you, Empress Kamala,” Hominos said, addressing his audience. “Further details of our defense strategy will be found in the most recent comms package sent out early this morning. Our scouts have told us that the shrain fleet and accompanying Koldax fighters will be in the system within hours, although given that it appears the Koldax are using a different kind of technology to subspace travel, we can’t be entirely sure of their exact time of arrival. Therefore, I’m officially stating that we are on a war footing. Orders will be beamed out to relevant captains in the coming minutes and hours. This is our time, my friends. This is our time to stand up to those who wish to eliminate us. The quadrant has been our home for many millennia, and that will not end today, or tomorrow, or any other day. Fight hard, fight brave, and we will prevail.”

Hominos took a breath and waited for Gaila Frey to his right to give him the nod that the broadcast channels had closed and that they were free to speak.

Officer Ukjao wiped the back of her arm across her eyes. “That was a moving speech, General,” she said, trying to pull herself together. Even Mathieson seemed a little moved.

“Thank you,” Hominos said, “but we’re only at the beginning. Let’s keep it together for a while longer. Gaila, please bring up the display and let’s see how we’re doing with the defense network and getting our fleets into position.”

“Of course, General,” the old scientist said. He made a few gestures across his wrist terminal, and the large holographic display flickered to life above the table, which gave them a complete overview of the Capsis system.

In columns to the side were the details of the Coalition and Host fleets. In another were the numbers that they currently knew the shrain and Koldax had, but they couldn’t update that until the fighting started in earnest.

Given that the Koldax had amassed an army and built a new superweapon in secret, there was no telling what they would bring to the party until they arrived.

“It looks impressive,” Kamala said, nodding to the 3D image of the array displayed on the holographic battle map. “Our fleets look strong together. And your people have done wonders to get the new defensive shield up so quickly.”

Gaila hid a smile of satisfaction from her compliment, but Hominos noted it before he had time to hide it. “Thank you,” Gaila said with just a hint of pride. “It was all down to your intel. As for the speed, we had the superconductors already earmarked for a new space station to replace our damaged moon from our last conflict.”

“I’m sorry about that, truly,” Kamala said. “My former leader was responsible for that attack. Many of my governors and I opposed the action, but she overruled us. I know it’s impossible to make amends for such a loss of life, but trust me, when and if this is all over, the Host nation will do its best to make amends under the new treaty.”

Mathieson scoffed. “There’s little you can do unless you can bring back the dead. That moon was the HQ for the GTU. Nearly all of my friends and colleagues were killed.”

Hominos held up his hand and silenced the room before it got out of hand. “What’s done is done. The Coalition has its fair share of blood on its hands from both of the wars, so let’s not sit here and pretend one side is holier than the other. War is terrible, and deaths are inevitable. Let’s just focus on staying alive for the next few days. If we are lucky enough to survive, then we can argue all we like, but for right now, we need each other, and we need to focus.”

“I hear you, General,” Mathieson said, nodding curtly at him while giving Kamala a brief look of disdain before she composed herself once more.

“So,” Gaila said, pointing to the defense network, “using your information, we’ve managed to create the gravity shield. Its ability to withstand the levels of gravity distortion of which the Dominion is capable of remains a theoretical proposition, but if the science tells us anything, we’ve given ourselves at least a chance. How big that chance is… We’ll have to wait until it’s tested.”

“So we’re guessing it works?” Ukjao said. She held a hand over her mouth as she stifled a yawn. Like Hominos, she’d been awake for the past couple of days, eagerly carrying out his orders. Unlike him, however, on account of her upbringing, she had refused the alert-tightening drugs that he was eating like sweets.

“It’s more than a guess,” Gaila replied. “We’ve run simulations on the supercomputers. But until we’re exposed to attack, we don’t know how well the energy dispersal system will work. And there’s the danger of repeated large-scale attacks. Gravity distortion uses huge amounts of energy, and that has to go somewhere. The supercooled conductors can only take so much before they heat up and lose their properties, thus weakening the shield. We’ll only have a relatively small window to defeat the Dominion even if the shield holds for the initial attacks.”

“It’s better than nothing,” Hominos added. “And I’m proud that you and your skilled team have organized it so quickly.”

“It helps that we have a master red-tape cutter.” Gaila smiled at Hominos, referring to the general’s many hours of bellowing at people and using the protocol powers to get things done in minutes that would normally take weeks.

Hominos turned his attention back to the display and assessed the formation of ships. He wanted them in such a way that he had as many firing arcs situated on the Dominion as possible.

From the observations he and the Host agents had made on the Dominion’s attack patterns from destroying star systems—presumably charging its banks of batteries—they knew the ship had to be within a certain distance of its target. This had created a firing zone that he and Kamala had used to position their combined fleet.

There were still more ships to arrive, but almost seventy percent of their forces were in position, awaiting the arrival of their opposition.

On the holographic display, Capsis Prime was located centrally, the sun somewhere off in the distance. The view zoomed in to focus on what would be the immediate area of defense: an array of eight superconducting magnets, a kilometer in diameter each, were held together around Capsis Prime and its moons with a meshed network of optical projectors and receivers mounted on a fleet of thirty-three reservist ships called up and altered for this one purpose.

Aside from those ships, the Coalition fleet consisted of two Flea swarms, each one containing one hundred and twenty drone fighters; seven Decimator-class frigates; twenty-three civilian reservist assault ships; ten reservist missile cruisers; thirty-two CDF missile cruisers; and fifteen GTU strike ships. A further thirty-nine ships were just three hours away and en route.

The Host fleet added to this formidable force, half of which were in place already, the other half approximately a day away and due to arrive hours before the Dominion based on its last known location. The Host fleet comprised one hundred and ten Arrow-class fighters in five squadrons; ten Epsilon carriers for said Arrows; eleven Kane-class destroyers, and sixteen Vanquish-class battlecruisers.

Between them, the two fleets had enough fire power to glass a planet in minutes. Whether this would be enough to defeat the Koldax and shrain, however, was another thing altogether. As far as the shrain forces were concerned, Host intel had last counted they had stolen upwards of fifty-five destroyers and eighteen torpedo ships.

Even if they brought that full complement into the system, Hominos was confident the Allied fleet would have too much firepower for them, but this was excluding the Dominion and the Koldax themselves.

Still, despite that, Hominos had a steely determination running through him. It might be misplaced, but he didn’t care. He and his people had worked around the clock during the last few days and worked miracles.

The force looked strong, and it appeared everyone was ready to fight.

“Our joint fleets make an impressive armada,” Kamala said to Hominos.

“Yes, yes, they do. Let’s hope it’s enough.”

The current formation was set out in three concentric semicircles, each overlapping the other, creating a full three-hundred-and-sixty-degree arc of defense. It meant that no matter where the Dominion arrived, the fleet could easily and quickly orientate themselves for maximum firepower and, more importantly, defense of the network array.

Hominos didn’t have long to wait for his enemies to join the party.

Off in the distance, beyond the firing range of their frontline smaller ships, a squadron of fifteen shrain destroyers, accompanied by two hundred and fifty Koldax drones, appeared out of a subspace jump.

The light from the shrain destroyer’s thrust illuminated the chrome chassis of the drone fighters.

“Zoom in to the Koldax,” Hominos ordered the AI running the holographic projection.

They were the same ones that had appeared on the video feed from Agent Miles. Tentacled, deadly, and completely alien. They swarmed in and out of formation, a writhing intelligence.

Hominos waved away the zoomed view and instructed the AI to tag the individual enemies: red for the shrain and purple for the Koldax. He pointed his finger against a squad of Arrow fighters facing the oncoming enemies, activating their comm channels. “Arrow squad Delta, prepare to engage the Koldax with red-tips. Fire when in range.”

“Acknowledged, General,” came the voice of the squadron leader.

Hominos then pointed to three of the Host Kane-class destroyers. They would be more than a match for the shrain if they got off their ordnance first. “Kane Squadron Beta, maneuver to flank the current vector of the incoming shrain destroyers, using full thrust if you have to. I want you in range first. Open up with a volley of ten Storm-bringer missiles, then, when shields are below fifty percent, launch your full complement of White Widows. If they survive that, they’ll be sufficiently weakened to provide no real concern to the defense array.”

“Orders accepted, General,” came the response from the longest serving Host captain, Raison Glesta, who was now the de facto leader of the Host fleet. “We’re moving into position and preparing to open fire in eight standard minutes.”

Gaila looked out across the projection and then up to Hominos with what looked like fear in his eyes.

Hominos returned a stern glare to each one of his advisors. “And so it begins. Leave aside whatever you’re currently feeling and focus on one thing only: the total destruction of our enemies.”

Chapter 29

Hominos slammed his fist against the war table. His first orders had not gone well; the Koldax drones easily avoided most of the red-tip missiles and subsequently swarmed the squadron of twenty-two Arrow fighters, turning the Host’s most agile combat craft into a cloud of metallic debris. Despite that loss, the AI indicated the Arrows had taken out almost one hundred of the two hundred and fifty Koldax drones with their close-combat cannons.

“Captain Glesta, have your Arrow commander reroute the red-tip missiles to the remaining five shrain destroyers,” Hominos ordered.

“They’re looking weak,” GTU leader Mathieson said, pointing to the fragmented formation. “The Kane squadron ordnance ripped them to shreds.”

The holographical representation of the battle scene and its columns of metrics showed that only five of the initial fifteen shrain destroyers remained in fighting capacity. The other ten were incapacitated beyond practical use by the Host’s powerful Kane-class destroyers and their fusion-powered White Widows.

Hominos wasn’t getting excited about this small victory, however. The battle had only just begun, and three of the eleven Kane-class destroyers were now out of their most formidable weapons.

It was one thing having the ships, it was another having the firepower at hand. A floating hunk of metal with no weapons wasn’t much good to him. He ordered the AI to update one of the columns of data with a running total of remaining weaponry and their assigned status.

“The Koldax drones are focusing on the starboard flank,” Officer Ukjao said. “Looks like they’re trying to burn a hole through the first layer of our defensive arc. They’re swarming a couple of the smaller GTU strike cruisers.”

“That’ll be their mistake,” Mathieson said, sticking up for her crew. “My men and women know a few tricks.”

Even as she said that, one of the strike cruisers exploded into a cloud of debris. Mathieson looked away and clenched her jaw, no doubt feeling the loss of her people.

Emperor Kamala scanned through their list of resources. “We could see how the laser batteries within the battlecruisers handle the Koldax; they have fast tracking and are on that side.”

Hominos considered it for a moment. “It’s not a bad suggestion, but they’re one of our most powerful laser outfits; I’d rather we kept them for the Dominion, and on the inner arc, where we need more defense.”

“That’s a fair point,” Kamala said. “What do you suggest, then, General?”

“I think it’s time to see how our drones fair against the Koldax.”

Hominos had already seen how the smaller, more maneuverable alien drone machines had avoided the red-tip missiles. He needed something as agile as the Arrows but not as costly to lose. He tapped the icon representing two Decimator-class destroyers within the starboard position of the outer arc and ordered them to unleash a Flea swarm—one hundred and twenty semiautonomous close-combat fighters.

Within a minute, the drones appeared on the holographic display with a direct vector to the Koldax. He gave orders to five GTU strike cruisers to combine their laser fire and not use ordnance against the alien attackers, knowing they were too agile.

The strike cruisers repositioned themselves and opened a volley of laser fire, cutting down a further twenty Koldax, reducing them to just over a hundred and thirty units.

While the Flea swarm was en route to engage, Hominos shifted his attention to the remaining five shrain destroyers.

The red-tips fired earlier by the Arrows had all hit home, the Kane-class ships having disabled the shrain’s antimissile defense system earlier in a volley of cannon and laser fire. Still, the shrain had managed to take out one of the Kane destroyers, leaving them with ten ships.

The AI crossed it out on their list of resources and turned its signature, along with its icon, to white to match the other ships now out of the battle. As if to honor their fallen comrade, the remaining two Kane destroyers in that squad opened up with their remaining fission-based missiles and eliminated the final shrain destroyers.

But that small victory was short-lived.

A few seconds later, and seemingly for that very outcome, two subspace re-entry points opened up on the port side of the outer arc and the full remaining complement of thirty shrain destroyers entered the battle.

Although they were still five minutes away from their range, they were clearly heading for a single point in the first defensive arc.

From Hominos’s position on Goddenia, they were coming from the left side if looking toward the sun. By the nature of the ships at hand, that was the weakest side of the arc. Hominos ordered the two ships within the victorious Kane squad along with five others from a nearby position and one of the Host carriers to intercept the incoming shrain force. They would need all the Arrows on the carriers and probably more resources to hold such a strong opposing force at bay.

“This could be bad,” Ukjao said. “We’ll need to shift resources from the middle ring of the arc to shore up that side if they manage to punch a hole through to the second arc.”

As she said that, a third entry point winked open, a bright white sphere in the darkness of space. This one was located on the starboard side of the defensive arc, and from it emerged eighteen torpedo ships—fast and deadly craft once belonging to an elite Host squad, but now commandeered and in possession of the shrain entities.

“It appears they’re receiving orders,” Gaila said, itching at his bushy gray eyebrows and looking up at Hominos. “Those entry points don’t look random to me; their coordinates suggest a symmetry not usually found with the tolerance factors of subspace re-entry.” He checked his terminal to confirm his calculations.

“Must be Farah Hett,” Kamala said with a scowl. “He’s probably receiving battle intelligence from his Koldax drones.”

Hominos checked with Ukjao and her team to see how far away the Dominion was.

“Under two hours, General,” Ukjao said. She was trying not to show her fear, which Hominos appreciated. Having control over one’s self in this kind of situation meant that correct decisions were made. They couldn’t let fear overwhelm them. They had to break the battle down into small pieces and not worry about the whole. But still, under the surface of calm, he could see the tension in her neck and the anxiety in her eyes.

“But, General,” Ukjao added with an uplift to her words, “our reinforcements will arrive in less than an hour.”

“Good,” Hominos said. “That’ll give us time to bolster the defensive arc.” He then turned his attention to the holographic display and took in the new situation.

The Flea swarm engaged the Koldax drones, using their pinpoint lasers and mini-nuke, short-range ballistics. The fighting was frantic, and at first, it appeared as if the Flea swarm had dominated the alien drones, but soon, as though they just needed time to gather data, the enemy adapted its strategy and turned their chaotic movements into a cohesive, cube-like formation. Presenting a block and acting almost like a ship, the Flea swarm’s advantage was lost as the larger surface area combined its firepower and fought back.

The vicious mini-battle lasted just ten minutes.

When all was said and done, the Flea swarm was wiped out completely, but during the fighting, they had whittled the Koldax down to just twenty-three units that split from their cube formation and returned to their individual, asymmetric shape. They appeared to be targeting a section of the defensive arc populated by ten civilian reservist assault ships—small, adapted yachts with makeshift shields and shredder cannons: inaccurate, but cheap weapons retrofitted during the great rearmament.

“The Flea swarm did better than expected,” the old scientist Gaila Frey said with pride in his voice. He and his team were part of the program that had developed them over the years. “We still have another swarm to deploy if you want to give those civilians ships some help.”

“We can’t use them just yet,” Hominos said, tapping a finger to his chin as he watched the battle shift and undulate on the holographic projector like a living organism.

Gaila quirked an eyebrow in a silent question.

“If Kamala’s intel holds out, that initial two hundred and fifty Koldax were just a quarter of what we expected to face. Which means there’s likely a great deal more ready to spring out—probably when the Dominion arrives. Given the Flea swarms’ effectiveness against them, I’d rather keep them back.”

“What do you suggest we do to bolster those civilian assault ships?” Gaila asked.

Hominos took the luxury of a few seconds to consider his options. He didn’t want to disrupt the formation of the three defensive arcs too much—otherwise, it’d allow a route for the enemy to reach the network array, and they needed that up and running for as long as they could get away with.

But he also didn’t want to stand by and watch the shrain ships pierce a hole through his carefully planned defense.

The Koldax were a problem but short in number.

He had two other areas of interest: the shrain destroyers heading for a position on their port side, coming planet-ward from a north-to-south trajectory into the arc, and almost the opposite from their starboard approaching the south side of Capsis Prime. One could draw a line between the two forces they were so well coordinated.

And the third point of contact: the Koldax drones.

Within a few minutes of the civilian assault ships, which he assigned the designation Bulwark Alpha, were two of the Host carriers, each one hosting eleven Arrows. Given how well they did the first time around with the Koldax using their cannons, Hominos used the AI to take the data from the first battle and produce a likely outcome of casualties.

Of a squad of twenty-two Arrows against the twenty Koldax, the AI predicted seven Arrows would likely survive the encounter and completely vanquish their targets.

Although Hominos would prefer better odds, without supporting Bulwark Alpha, they would be sitting ducks. But, used as support for the Arrows, they could rid themselves of this particular menace with acceptable losses. If the AI was correct, the allied fleet would still have eighty-one Arrows across its various carriers.

Hominos shared his plan with Kamala, knowing she would accept; she had already said she trusted his judgment as the general of the allied fleet, but he knew he had to make much tougher decisions later on, and it would be good to keep her on side and feeling as if she had some say in the fate of her people.

“Do it,” Kamala said. “Engage a squad of Arrows.”

Hominos nodded his acknowledgment and gave the order to the various captains. He also gave orders to one of his most trusted commanders put in charge of Bulwark Alpha.

Although the reservists serving on them had completed their basic training and battle scenarios, having an experienced CDF commander leading them gave the group much-needed experience when the fighting started.

That didn’t take long, however. Within minutes the Koldax drones engaged Bulwark Alpha, losing two of their number before they got within range, the shredder cannons initially surprising the aliens with their unusual firing patterns.

A moment later, the twenty-two Arrows engaged in a furious close-combat volley.

While that particular battle commenced, Hominos tasked Officer Ukjao to oversee it and report to him anything unusual. He then turned his attention to the group of thirty shrain destroyers approaching the northern, port side of the defensive arc.

The seven Kane-class destroyers along with one of the Host carriers and complement of eleven Arrows had intercepted and engaged the enemy. Reverse thrusters had been applied all round, creating stripes of orange light against the dark black of space. The two sides engaged and the battle had begun in earnest. The fighting was fierce, and it wasn’t long before some of the shrain destroyers at the tip of the formation had blown apart, the debris having the positive effect of damaging nearby allies.

The Arrows’ multipoint thrusters enabled them to avoid the damage and zero in on their targets, taking out some of the weaponry of the shrain, leaving targets for the Kane-class destroyers to focus fire upon.

It was clear to Hominos that the shrain were suffering from a lack of battle skill. Given they were just constructs, it wasn’t entirely surprising. His commanders and captains had been studying battle patterns and strategy solidly for the last couple of weeks in preparation.

Although the drills were often seen as boring, now that the firing had started, the knowledge they had gained had clearly given them an advantage in the fighting. The orders were given and obeyed immediately, meaning they could adapt to the changing circumstances.

The shrain ships, however, were trying to rely on brute force. They were doing damage for sure, but their numerical advantage was working out for them against the superior planning and agility of the allied fleet.

As the fighting continued and the metrics flowed in, Hominos assigned Mathieson to track the progress of the fight and liaise with the commanding officer.

This left the third ongoing battle, which Hominos himself focused on.

Eighteen torpedo ships, piloted by the shrain, had crashed into the southern starboard section of the outer defensive network. They were engaged by Bulwark Gamma, a squad made up of four Decimator-class destroyers, ten missile cruisers, and three Host battlecruisers.

The AI’s calculation suggested the shrain ships would have the advantage in a straight exchange of fire, but he had some of his best commanders in Gamma squad and considered it an equal fight. Given the other fights going on and the defensive arcs getting moved out of position, he couldn’t add more numbers to that particular battle for quite some time, and by then he expected the war layout to have changed dramatically.

He ordered Gamma squad to hold the shrain torpedo ships up as long as they could. According to Kamala’s intel, the torpedo ships were armed with long-range heavy nukes. As hard as it was to take, it would be better if they were forced to use them against Decimators and the battlecruisers than the network array, which wouldn’t be able to withstand that kind of power.

“Gamma squad, aim your lasers at the rear quarter section of the shrain torpedo ships. That’s where their targeting arrays are located. If you can’t take out the entire ship, this takes priority. Without targeting, they’re just useless floating hunks of metal.”

“Understood, General,” the leader of Gamma squad said. “You can trust us. We won’t let these bastards get through to the network array—one way or another, it stops here.”

The commander’s gusto filled Hominos with pride.

It was at this point he noticed the sweat dripping from his face and stinging his eyes. His palms were damp too when he released his fists. The tension had been getting to him, but his system had blocked it out to enable him to focus and strategize.

For now, it was all he could do.

Three fights were under way, and small changes here and there would only have small effects. The respective squads knew their tactics and their responsibilities. Hominos made sure to let them carry that out and not micromanage. He needed to remain calm and have an overview of the entire war.

Between him, Ukjao, Gaila, Mathieson, and Kamala, they were just about keeping the shrain and Koldax at bay, but the losses were mounting up, and the defensive arc was looking more and more dispersed.

Hominos ordered a fifth of the ships from the inner arc to press outward and fill the gaps while providing long-range supporting fire.

The battle was fierce and raged on for another hour before a lull descended upon the system. Kamala and Ukjao took a long pull of their energy drinks. Gaila had injected himself with a powerful stimulant. Hominos looked around his loyal team and began to see weariness threatening to damage their morale.

“Officer Ukjao, can you give me an update on our reinforcements and the Dominion,” Hominos said.

The Axzatti officer checked her terminal and exchanged words with a couple of her intelligence workers. Turning back to Hominos, she said, “Reinforcements are due in fifteen minutes. The Dominion about twenty. It’s gained time. We’re expecting it to continue to gain until it arrives shortly before the reinforcements.”

“This is worrying,” Gaila said.

“The network array is still in position and undamaged,” Kamala said. “If we reorganize the arc as soon as the Dominion arrives, we should inflict a great deal of damage to it before it moves into position.”

“Assuming our weapons are even capable of damaging it,” Mathieson said.

Hominos shot her look and was about to reprimand her for bringing negativity into a place where it most certainly wasn’t welcome, but the AI’s various alerts grabbed his attention. It had updated the columns of data showing the unit numbers and condition.

Hominos took a moment to carry out a census to see how the allied fleet was faring.

Firstly, the AI had overestimated the odds of the first battle. Instead of being left with seven Arrows out of that particular squad after defeating the Koldax drones, they only had three. Five of the civilian assault ships had perished too, although they had the crowning glory of defeating the last of the Koldax drones in this wave. Hominos made a note to honor them if they survived the war.

The second fight on the port side was worse. The advantage Hominos had hoped the allied ships would benefit from hadn’t materialized. Of the seven Kane-class destroyers, only two survived. All eleven Arrows were destroyed. The shrain force had just three more destroyers left, which the Host carrier was more than capable of holding at bay.

Finally, the battle of the Gamma squad was looking better than expected.

They had lost two of the four Decimator-class destroyers to nuke strikes. Four of the missile cruisers had succumbed to the shrain, and two of the three Host battlecruisers had also fallen, but for that sacrifice, all of the torpedo ships had been destroyed.

Sadly, one of the nukes had breached the defensive line and had taken out one of the eight superconducting magnets and a number of ships surrounding it within the network array.

Given the redundancy they had built in, they could withstand losing a couple of the nodes without dropping their defensive power—assuming this theoretical defense could actually stand up to the onslaught from the terrifying Dominion—but too many losses would see it fail.

From the AI’s calculation, the allied fleet had lost about a third of its ships and offensive power, including the incoming reinforcements.

Speaking of which, Hominos received the alert of subspace re-entry detection.

He and the rest of his war council stared at the holographic projections, waiting to see where and what was about to enter the fray. Naturally, they were hoping for the reinforcements, but to Hominos, it was what he was expecting: the Dominion.

And that wasn’t all.

The AI’s tagging system went crazy, flashing icons and colors like a firework display across the projection as it tracked seven hundred and fifty more Koldax drones loosely collected into ten squads, but given their amorphous shape, it was difficult to make out.

“The Dominion will be in striking range of Capsis Prime within ten minutes, General,” Gaila said, with the heavy dread of the entire allied forces in his voice.

Before that happened, twenty more Kane-class destroyers from the Host appeared on the opposite side—sunward—of Capsis Prime.

Hominos immediately ordered them to coordinates around the gaps within the outer defensive arc, and to the rest of the forces: to shift around facing away from the sun to receive the Dominion as its great thrusters flared in the dark, sending it speeding toward the Coalition capital.

“This is it, then,” Mathieson said, stretching her limbs before focusing on the holographic projection. Kamala’s face had paled, and Ukjao had a visible tremble.

“We just need to follow the plan,” Hominos said. “We will prevail.”

A few minutes later, the great swarm of Koldax drones hit the outer defensive arc, and the holographic projection exploded in a confetti shower of alerts, signals, and tracking tags. Hominos took a deep breath, assessed the situation and got to work, communicating with squads, ordering maneuvers, giving confidence-filling speeches to reservists, and doing everything he could to hold the allied fleet together for as long as possible.

However, he knew, deep inside, the swarm would soon overwhelm them and they would likely fall to the power of Farah Hett. But still, he vowed to fight on and take as many of the bastards down as possible.

If the Coalition and Host were to fall, Farah Hett would feel the cost deeply.

Chapter 30

Kai gripped the straps around his shoulders and clenched his jaw as the Blackstar came out of its wormhole jump. His brain rattled inside his skull, and it was all he could do not to vomit. Given their velocity, this particular exit was not as smooth as the others he had experienced, but considering the urgency, he didn’t mind.

“Sen, Bandar, are you okay?”

“I’m a little banged up,” Bandar said, “but I’ll live.”

“And I’m just about fine,” Senaya said with a cracking voice. She sat close next to him and flashed him an uneasy smile. “Although we ought to check the status of… oh crap…”

Eesoh had already filled the holocube and the ship’s video screens with coverage of the Capsis system. The place was total carnage with ship debris strewn everywhere. Blasts of thrusters and light from explosions littered the space.

“Looks like we arrived just in time,” Kai said. “The capital still appears to be in one piece.” He then turned his attention to Eesoh, asking, “Can you contact the Rapier; check if my mother and father are okay?”

Eesoh remained silent for a few seconds before confirming, “They’ve arrived in complete condition with no mechanical or biological damage, according to Flick’s reports. They’re currently two klicks from our starboard position.”

One of the video screens to the left of the bridge showed the Rapier illuminated by its main thrusters.

The comm link between the two ships chirped into life.

“Kai, is everyone okay?” It was Kendal. At first, the voice felt unfamiliar to Kai’s ears, but he soon readjusted.

“Yeah, Dad, we’re fine. You all right over there?”

“Couldn’t be better. What situation do we find ourselves in?”

“I’m just assessing that,” Kai said. “Let’s hang back until we know more. I’m sending a comm request to the Capsis government. I’ll patch you guys into our chat group so we can all hear the situation.”

“Good thinking,” his mother said. “It sure doesn’t look pretty, I know that much. God, look at all the numbers involved… The Koldax, there’s so many of them.”

“Lucky we know how to kill the bastards,” Senaya said with no joy in her voice. They all knew that it wouldn’t be easy. Despite them surviving two fights with the Koldax, there hadn’t been anywhere near this number, and they hadn’t been controlled by one of their warlords, the famed Farah Hett.

Bandar, sitting opposite Kai on the semicircular crash couch, leaned forward from his position and scratched his stubble. “Weird,” he said. The pale blue of the holocube reflected in his chrome faceplate. Ship movements and ordnance flared within the reflection as though it were a glimpse into another world.

They’d been away from here for so long, Kai had almost forgotten what it looked like.

“What is it?” Kai asked.

“It seems as though the Host is helping the Coalition.”

“That can’t be right,” Senaya said. She looked to Kai and shook her head in disbelief.

Before Kai could say anything else, the comm channel crackled, and a blunt, gruff voice spoke. “Kai Locke of the Blackstar, do you read me? This is General Ratic Hominos, the leader of the allied forces and temporary head state under protocol fifty-one fifty.”

All three on the Blackstar looked at each other with surprise. It appeared they had missed a lot of political upheaval during their adventure beyond the Veil.

Kai had Eesoh check the ID signature that came with the secure comm connection.

“His credentials check out,” Eesoh said, his voice echoing around the bridge. Although there was no physical representation of him on the holocube or view screens, Kai felt his presence as though he were sitting right next to him. And unlike before, when they had first discovered the Blackstar and was suspicious of him, Kai now felt comforted by his presence.

Despite not even the Navigators knowing what species Eesoh was, the fact that he had chosen to exist within the confines of the Blackstar’s AI module told Kai that he was more than trustworthy.

“Thanks, Eesoh,” Kai said before switching back to the channel with General Hominos.

Kai spent a minute giving this Hominos guy a brief version of the events from beyond the Veil. He covered all likely questions regarding the fate of the ships he had sent through the wormhole during the first battle with the Host, the retrieval of Kendal, and some of what he had learned about the Navigators.

“Is that all?” Hominos said. “Is there nothing else you can share from your time with the Navigators? Anything that we could use to help us in this fight?”

From the concerned expressions on Bandar and Senaya’s face, Kai knew he wasn’t alone in thinking there was a hint of desperation in the General’s voice.

“We struck a deal with a friendly species called the Sumahn. They should be joining the battle… Soon, I hope. They’re no friends of the Koldax, that’s for sure. But they’re mercurial, so I can’t be absolutely certain. Beyond that, you have the power of the Blackstar, along with my mother’s Rapier.”

“I fear we’re going to need far more than that,” Hominos said and then as if to add a polite sheen to his obvious disappointment added, “but I appreciate you joining the fight. I’ll hook you into the allied AI system so you can see the battle. Do you have a holographic projection suite onboard?”

“We do,” Kai said. “Connect us in, and we’ll get up to speed right away. Do you have any immediate orders that we can help with?”

There was silence for a moment, and then Eesoh switched the holocube to show the battle map projection from the Glass House war room.

The battle looked even worse in this way.

“Damn those machines,” Bandar said. “They’re swarming everything. And look at the size of that thing… I assume that hulking ship is under the control of Farah Hett?”

“That’s correct,” Hominos said. “We’re currently holding it at bay, but I fear the network array defensive system we cobbled together is going to fall soon; we just can’t stop the Koldax from getting through our defensive arcs. If you have any tricks up your sleeves to help, now is the time to do it.”

“As it happens, General, we’ve developed a way to fight the Koldax,” Senaya said. “I’ve managed to hack one of the units and have gained a certain degree of knowledge of their network and how they work. I’ll send you all my information right away, but for now, I’ll use it to scan their network and see if I can find any weaknesses or at least their point of control.”

“It’ll be the Dominion—Hett’s ship,” a new voice said. It was older and held a weariness to it. “Sorry, I’m head scientist, Gaila Frey—”

“I know you,” Senaya interrupted, suddenly smiling with the excitement of a child. “I’ve read all your manuals—I actually used your theory of inertial quantum dampening for a… sorry, there’s no time for that now, I guess. But yeah, it’s likely the Dominion, but I’ll check for sure. I might be able to gain access to their servers—any data I find, I’ll be sure to send it over to you.”

“Thank you,” Gaila said. “We need any advantage we can get. Our forces are quickly dwindling. Even with the Host alliance, we’re badly outnumbered and outgunned.”

Even as he said that, the battle projection’s metrics updated, showing the alliance had lost another fifteen ships across its complement.

“Kai,” his mother called from the Rapier, “why don’t you use the Blackstar’s wormhole tech to divert the Koldax units away from the defensive network array? It might give the fleet time to focus their fire and burn their numbers down.”

“It’s a good idea,” Bandar said. “Our firepower alone won’t have much effect, but we can act as a kind of traffic controller.”

“Wait,” Senaya said, pointing to a new color—pink—showing up on the projection. There were fifteen new spots flashing, covering the planet-side area of the system. “Is that?”

“We’ve got unidentified entities incoming,” General Hominos said. “What fresh hell is this?”

“Not hell,” Kai said with a grin on his face. He’d felt their presence even before anyone could see them on the projection. “But help. The Sumahn have arrived.”

From the fifteen wormholes, nearly two hundred and fifty giant tentacled cosmic creatures floated serenely into the system. Plumes of white ejecta dotted the scene as they gracefully formed a matrix formation and approached the fierce battle at the front of the defensive arc.

“My god… what are those things?” Hominos said.

“Friends,” Senaya added. “Gaila, you might want to record as much of this as possible for later study; these things are super weird.”

“We’re tracking them all right,” Gaila confirmed with awe in his voice. “They’re magnificent. Are they normal for creatures beyond the Veil?”

“Nope,” Bandar said. “Nothing beyond the Veil can be considered normal. Anyways, it looks like they’re going to help us after all. I guess that makes this a fairer fight.”

The AI confirmed Bandar’s suggestion.

Although it didn’t know what the Sumahn were actually capable of, given their number and size and ability to move so quickly via their wormhole technology, the battle AI increased the odds of survival by nearly twenty-eight percent. Hett and the Koldax still had the upper hand given the power of the Dominion, but it wasn’t a sure bet anymore.

“It’s time to act,” Kai said, eager to get on with his part. “Bandar, you and Eesoh take weapons and target acquisition. We’re going to take down as many of the Koldax as we can while using our gravity distortion weapons to protect the defensive array.”

“We’re too far out of range,” Eesoh said. “We need to be within a hundred klicks of the array if we’re to have that level of control over localized gravity distortion.”

Senaya checked the projection. “That takes us right in the middle of the battle.”

Kendal spoke over the comm channel. “We have to enter the fray,” he said. “It looks like the Sumahn are engaging the Koldax drones directly—shifting them to… wherever. Look at all those small wormholes opening up. With them helping, and us by your side providing short-range ordnance, we should be able to stay in a position to use the distortion array. General, if we take the pressure off, that’ll free up your fleet to focus fire on the Dominion, as it appears the shrain destroyers are almost wiped out according to the battle AI’s metrics.”

“Thank you, Mr. Locke, I’m never one to ignore experience,” Hominos said. “Give me a second to run some calculations.”

“Your father is right,” Brenna said. “Kai, we need to get closer before…”

Her words trailed off as everyone’s attention focused on the video feed within the battle projection. Even the chatter from the general’s side became silent. It was almost as though the entire battle had hushed, knowing what was coming.

A dread crept over Kai’s body, and his skin turned to gooseflesh.

The Dominion had activated reverse thrusters, slowing its vector toward Capsis Prime and lighting up the giant craft with yellow and orange light. The ship looked even more imposing than when they had first seen it. It was at least twice as large as the biggest allied ship—a Host carrier. The front section of its hull retracted to expose a glowing ball of light nearly a kilometer in diameter. It continued to get brighter and brighter until eventually, like a balloon popping, it suddenly dissipated.

For a second, it seemed as if nothing happened, but then the battle projection updated and showed a video stream of two Kane-class destroyers rip apart from the inside as though someone had set off a great bomb within the center of their hulls.

Fragments and slivers of debris shot out as Kai and the others witnessed a mini supernova of a mechanical kind. The two ships tore apart into billions of pieces, the shrapnel striking other ships within distance.

Two of the nodes on the defensive network exploded, taking out eight of the civilian craft holding it together.

“We’re breached!” General Hominos shouted. “The attack has ruptured the defense network. All ships close in and open fire on the Dominion. Ignore all else. We can’t withstand another shot like that.”

Even as he was saying that, the bright white light of the Dominion’s frightening weapon began to glow once more.

With all focus on Hett’s ship, the Koldax drones that weren’t being manipulated by the Sumahn swarmed the squads of ships surrounding the defense network.

“My god,” Senaya said, “that weapon… How do we stop it?”

“Don’t worry about it. Stick to the plan. Hack the Koldax network, that’s all we can do right now,” Kai said, his heart now pounding against his chest. “Eesoh, take us in. Mother, follow closely with the Rapier and watch out; there’s rogue ordnance flying everywhere.”

“I’m bringing Wiggs online,” Senaya said, and then a moment later, “Got it. The network is visible but encrypted. It’ll take us a moment to crack into it and then follow the orders back to their main server.”

“Do what you do best,” Kai said. “Just try to do it quickly.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Senaya said as she bent over her terminal and worked to find a way into Hett’s controlling network.

The Blackstar shook violently as the shield absorbed another hit from a large chunk of what might have been a piece of hull from a Kane-class destroyer.

Kai tried not to think of all the casualties.

Despite that particular metric being available for the battle projection, he chose not to display it. There was a time to focus on the casualties, and right now his main aim was to prevent as many as possible. There would be time if they survived to do right by the dead.

More and more shrapnel and cannon fire struck the Blackstar as Eesoh engaged the thrusters. The shields held, but a sustained barrage would soon breach them. Kai just hoped they could help turn the tide before the Blackstar succumbed.

“Bandar,” Kendal called out over the comm channel, “use the particle rearrangement cannon to clear a path through the shrapnel and fire. Set a wide arc to cover you and the Rapier. It’s a trick I’ve used before.”

“I hear you, Dad,” Bandar said, swinging the terminal over his lap and gesturing frantically to bring the weapons online while Eesoh focused on targeting and piloting—which had proven exceptionally taxing given that Eesoh hadn’t thought of the particle rearrangement cannon.

Kai could feel the entity’s stress and emphasize with it.

It wasn’t cut out for this kind of work, and given the Blackstar was its chosen habitat, each strike must have hurt like a knife to the body.

They approached the defensive network and the hundreds of ships surrounding it. The rearrangement cannon worked well to turn any potential danger into subatomic particles, bathing the Blackstar and Rapier in a film of space dust.

“Sen, are you making any headway?” Kai asked.

“I’ve narrowed down the type of encryption,” she said. “Wiggs has a codec, as do all the drones. I’m just waiting on it to gain security credentials from the server. Given that the Sumahn are screwing with them, IDs are changing all the time, so we should be able to spoof our way… There! We’re in. Wiggs is online, tracing now…”

“Great job, Sen!”

Kai turned his attention back to the projection.

Almost every allied ship was now firing on the Dominion. Its shields were holding, each missile’s strike sending heat and power around it in a distributed bubble of energy transference.

Although the glowing white light had slowed, it hadn’t stopped.

The battle was now utterly chaotic.

All strategies had been abandoned, resulting in an all-against-one effort for survival.

General Hominos was barking orders over the channel.

Various captains and commanders were doing their best to implement his orders, but it seemed as though every few seconds another ship went offline.

The Sumahn were littering the system with their temporary wormholes, taking the Koldax away, but even they were suffering losses, almost a third of which had been killed. Each loss stabbed Kai in the heart—these peaceful, majestic creatures being slaughtered by machines was almost too much to bear.

The Dominion’s weapon reached its climax and fired again, just a few klicks from the Blackstar and Rapier’s position. Another two of the giant hexagonal superconducting magnets exploded, taking the surrounding craft with them.

A red light began to flash on the battle projection.

[Defensive Network Deactivated. Defensive Network Offline.]

“We’re too late,” Bandar said. “Look, the Dominion’s spun to face Capsis Prime… and we have no way of stopping it.”

All the noise and imagery began to fade in the distance as Kai felt the now-familiar tingle within his head as a vision bubbled up. His Navigator ancestry was activating as it had done in the crystal city. Only this time, he felt it come at him in great waves. Tons of metrics, outcomes, and strategies flooded his consciousness.

At first, he felt he would drown in it and resisted.

Yet it still came, the barrier now fully open and his full potential cascading down to him from hundreds of millennia.

Senaya was waving her arms and screaming something.

Bandar looked wild-eyed.

Kai’s mother and father were saying something over the channel as the Rapier opened fire on a group of Koldax approaching their position.

A formation of fifteen Sumahn swam in their elegant way past the front of the Blackstar and took the Koldax away through their wormholes, removing the threat. As the last one disappeared, the wormhole shrank to a pinhead of light, the vision in Kai’s mind crystallized, and he knew what he had to do.

Senaya was still screaming, “We’re in! We’re in the network! I’m activating a virus to shut down the Koldax drones’ ability to carry out orders…”

“It’ll still be too late,” Kai said calmly. He had a perfect picture of the outcome. A smile spread across his face. “Nothing matters anymore. It’s time to end this.”

Bandar snapped his gaze away from the battle projection to face Kai. “What the hells are you talking about?”

“I’m going in.”

“Where?”

“Kai?” Brenna said. “What are you talking about? What’s going on?”

Taking the tetrahedron from its familiar place within his pocket, Kai held it in his palm and closed his eyes to see the vision once more. He knew in that instant this would be the only way. He couldn’t come back.

Nobody and nothing could.

After all this time, he finally understood what the artifact was for.

And his role in the fate of the galaxy.

He turned to face Senaya and said. “I’m going into the belly of the beast. I’m going to destroy it from within. Eesoh, set a wormhole for these coordinates.” He read out a series of numbers that he’d received from his vision and that he knew was the command center of the Dominion. “I want it to start from just outside the airlock.”

Senaya and Bandar were frantically trying to appeal to him, but their voices became silent. Shrugging them off, Kai exited the bridge and rushed to the airlock, saying “Guys, trust me, this is the only way,” over the comm channel and ignoring their protests and questions. He didn’t have time to translate what he saw in his vision. Action was needed now. He could explain later—if possible.

“You better know what you’re doing, Kai. Otherwise, I will damn well kick your ass all over this galaxy,” Senaya yelled. “You hear me?”

Kai smiled as he entered the airlock.

Eesoh communicated to him that a small temporary wormhole was being generated and would be ready the moment he exited the ship.

Kai knew he should be scared; no one had ever walked into such an anomaly before without the protection of a ship, but he knew instinctively he would be fine.

The vision explained so much; the risks he’d taken as a ship racer. The ‘lucky’ moments that got him out of one scrape or another. It wasn’t luck at all; it was his fate.

And for the first time in his existence, he knew he was doing the right thing.

With his helmet and breather in place, rifle strapped to his back, and the airlock door behind him secured, he approached the outer breach.

Eesoh opened it for him.

A swirling white and blue entry point awaited just a few feet from the ship.

“Hurry,” Eesoh said. “There’s no time to wait.”

And so, Kai didn’t.

“It was good knowing you, Eesoh.”

With that, Kai stepped out of the Blackstar and dove headfirst into the wormhole.

Chapter 31

At first, Kai thought it hadn’t worked. The moment he stepped inside the wormhole, his vision was consumed by blackness. He felt nothing as though he were just floating in a vacuum. But a second later, a bright flash of light blinded him, and he struck his head against something solid. His body slumped hard to the floor. Pain exploded in his hip and lower back.

He took a deep breath and opened his eyes but saw only darkness. Behind him, a pop sounded, and a mist settled on the glass mask of his helmet. He spun around to see a pinhead of light wink out of existence—the wormhole had closed behind him.

Okay, he thought, where am I?

The pain continued to pulse in his hip when he shifted his body and got to his feet. Reaching out, he touched something solid. With the place in total darkness, he had to rely on the sense of touch and quickly came to the conclusion he was in a tall corridor of sorts—the ceiling was out of reach, but he found two walls about two meters apart and of course the floor on which he stood.

The vacuum motors in his shoes whined on and off with each step as he made his way down the corridor, using the right-side wall as a guide.

Vibrations ran through his gloved hands and up his arms. The sensation was familiar: a ship under thrust, albeit in this case a low thrust. There was a deeper thrum coming from somewhere else beneath him.

“Kai, do you read me?” Senaya was calling him across their comm channel, but her voice was so faint he could barely make out her words.

“Just about,” he said. “I think I made it. I’m on a ship, so I’m assuming it’s the Dominion.”

“I’m so glad you’re alive. What other crazy plans do you have in mind? Because whatever it is, you’re going to have to be quick about it; the weapon is recharging.”

“I’m heading for the battery compartment,” he said. “If I destroy that, it won’t have the power necessary to destroy Capsis Prime.”

“And how do you plan on doing that?” Senaya asked between bouts of static.

“I’m kinda hoping you’ll help with that when I get there.”

“Kai, you’re mad, you know…” Her voice trailed off as static overwhelmed the signal.

Damn it, he thought. He’d have to figure it out himself after all. He took a few moments to relax, get his breath back and focus on the vision he’d had. He pictured an area within the ship that had grabbed his attention and where he suspected the batteries were held. The more he focused on the image, the more he got a sense of where he was.

And then the realization slapped him so hard in the face he laughed out loud.

He was a freaking Navigator! Of course he would know where to go…

The barriers to the cache of information in his mind were coming down one by one with each of these visions and realizations. He wished the Navigators themselves could have been a little more helpful so he had the info at hand the moment they got here, but he supposed he had to let the process happen for himself so he truly understood.

Despite the ship being in total darkness, he hurried forward now, taking one corridor after the other, rifle in hand and pointed forward into the gloom. That the ship was so devoid of machinery or drones didn’t surprise him. They wouldn’t have expected anyone or anything to have boarded, and the drones were more useful in the battle.

It took a further couple of minutes to descend the levels and traverse the long corridors until he came to a door he knew instinctively led to the battery compartment.

Although compartment didn’t really cover it.

When he tested the door, it opened easily. He stepped inside and felt its cavernous dimensions expand around him. The place was huge and hummed loudly; the pressure pushed against his mask. He felt it thump against his body in a rhythmic pattern.

The helmet’s HUD told him it was nearly a hundred degrees inside. A loud whine started, telling him that the weapon was ramping up its power. Massive batteries, like two-story buildings, stretched as far as the eye could see into the darkness—which ultimately wasn’t very far, but using his newly realized Navigator sense, he knew they went for many hundreds of meters, perhaps even the full length of the ship.

The battery units closest to him featured a strip of neon blue across their flat, metallic surface. Although not perfect, they were enough to provide him with more light to ‘navigate’ by. He thought of trying to communicate to Senaya, but the comm channel continued to hiss.

His hand began to tremble as he stepped forward and moved closer to the area he’d seen in his vision. This long corridor between batteries would lead to a central open area, where a command unit regulated the power.

Running now, almost leaping given the microgravity generated by the low thrust, Kai quickly reached the open area that he had foreseen.

Each time reality matched up to his vision, he felt more confident this was the way, this was what he had to do.

The command unit in the center of the room was a semitranslucent sphere of coalescing gas set atop an obsidian column roughly waist high. He had seen something similar in the library of artifacts back at the crystal city on Azelia. He knew this to be of Koldax origin and the center of their power.

This was where he was always meant to come.

The trembling in his hands increased. He moved closer until he could reach the sphere. A crackle of energy snaked all over the round ball of gas. He put his hand into it, but nothing happened; the gas just obscured his hand, creating no other damaging effects.

This was a technology he did not understand. It was a technology even the Navigators didn’t understand; otherwise, they would have told him more. Even his vision and opened cache of information provided no insight.

But he didn’t need to know how it worked to destroy it.

The process was very clear.

Kai slung his rifle over his shoulder and removed the tetrahedron from his pocket. A streak of electricity shot from the gaseous sphere to strike it. The strange symbols he had seen but once on the tetrahedron’s surface came to life, eliciting a chill down his spine.

The heat in the room increased a further ten degrees.

Warning lights flashed on his helmet. He switched off the early-warning system. He didn’t need it now; he only needed the helmet to provide oxygen.

The whining sound also increased, making the glass of his mask vibrate.

And the rhythmic pulsing became more violent. With each pulse, Kai had to fight to maintain his balance. It felt as though the entire ship was building tension.

He knew what that meant and knew he had little time left.

With no other choice, Kai placed the tetrahedron, the key to travel to and from the Veil, and his birthright, into the gaseous sphere. When he removed his glove, the artifact floated within the gas orb.

The green symbols grew brighter until they were aflame with green fire.

A miniature lightning storm exploded within, each bolt striking off the Navigator artifact. The ship all around him shook and vibrated. The temperature continued to increase, but the whine didn’t stop, and the batteries continued to convert their power.

Before Kai had time to think what else he had to do—his earlier vision no longer providing clues—he felt a looming presence behind him.

He spun to see the large hideous form of a half-organic-half-machine entity.

The thing looked like a mechanical bipedal dog with a long snout, glowing yellow eyes, and taloned hands. Before Kai could do anything, the creature roared and grabbed the sides of Kai’s helmet, ripping it clear from the mounting ring and tossing it aside like a piece of inconsequential trash.

The heat blasted Kai’s face, making his skin prickle as it dried almost immediately. The loud whine made him wince with pain, yet he managed to squeeze out a few words. “Farah Hett, I presume?”

“Your presumptions are correct, but it matters not. It’s time for you to die.”

With that, the creature reached behind its shoulders in a way that organic limbs don’t normally work and pulled forward two long, gleaming blades that within a split second were thrust forward into Kai’s chest.

The pain was incredible. His entire body went into spasm, and his throat closed. Then, with a pulse of energy, he let out a primal scream that cleared all pain, anguish, and anxiety. His mind flashed brightly, and everything was put into place.

There was no more confusion, no pain from the past, no questions.

The attack, although not part of his previous vision, had been the catalyst he needed. At that moment, as short as it was, he saw the truth of it all. Saw that he was born for this moment, that the Navigator queen, his mother, had foreseen this and strived to make it happen.

He understood too that fate was just a guide. One still had to move in the right direction, and his species were the masters of that. Kai saw that he’d always had that ability, but being a half-breed had meant that his latent birthright was buried under the infinite minutiae of conscious thought.

Farah Hett had, ironically, sealed his own fate with this attack. He too had moved toward it, but for him, his fate was not of transcendence and peace, but destruction.

Kai snapped back to the present. His eyelids shot open. He stared down at the wounds in his chest as blood poured into the gaseous orb. The tetrahedron exploded into a ball of white light that grew and grew until finally…

Kai had become what he was always meant to be.

He was going home to where he belonged to take his place in the bigger picture and keep the Veil between the two parts of the universe running, to keep the cosmic horror that is Darkarahn imprisoned.

With his mortal sacrifice, Kai Locke, the new Navigator king, had assured an afterlife of service to peace and protection.

Although he would never be conscious again as he knew it, he was now aware of a crystal coffin around his spirit, although he now realized it wasn’t a coffin at all but rather an eternal womb, where his spirit would ascend to its full form and eventually start the cycle all over again, but that was many millennia away.

Whispers surrounded him in the ancient language of the Navigators, which he now understood fluently. The entire universe opened to him, and from within his crystalline surroundings, his mind was free to travel and shape and influence the mysteries of time and space.

For the first time in his life, Kai Locke was home.

Chapter 32

Brenna hit full power to starboard thrusters to avoid an oncoming wreck of a shrain ship.

Kendal yelled as heavy g-force struck those in the cockpit. Brenna gritted her teeth and let out a scream. The pressure built to squeeze her vision to tiny tunnels, but when she thought she was about to succumb to unconsciousness, the ship’s AI cut the thrust and activated counterthrust to keep them on a clear approach.

With adrenaline filling her body and slowing her perception of time, she yelled for Flick to connect to the video feed from the Blackstar. The feed was brought up on the Rapier’s screen. She slumped back in her seat and watched in horror.

Next to her, Kendal mumbled something. Brenna didn’t know what he was saying; she was too focused on the image of the Dominion before them.

“Senaya, do you copy?” Brenna said, her voice strained.

“Yeah, I’m here… Kai’s…” Senaya’s words drifted away, as Kai’s plan was too late to stop.

Brenna’s heart pounded against her chest, which tightened as if a great weight had rested there, squeezing her lungs and making breathing difficult. A splitting pain cut through her head, making her wince, yet she couldn’t look away.

The Dominion’s weapon glowed a bright white and coalesced into a sphere that kept on growing. When it stopped growing, she knew what would happen next: Capsis Prime would explode.

The video feed, however, split.

“What’s happening?” Kendal said, leaning in closer so that his prickly bearded face rubbed against Brenna’s cheek. “Is he okay in there?”

The split video showed anything but.

“No,” Brenna said. “I think he’s going to…” Her words failed her, but it was obvious to them both. Kai wouldn’t get out of there alive.

With a horror so deep that there were no words to describe it, Brenna watched as her son took two long blades to the chest, blood spilling over a control column within the Dominion.

Kai screamed initially, but then calmed, as the damage was already done. He watched his life drain away to be collected by the strange gaseous orb that controlled the Koldax ship.

It seemed to have the effect of activating the floating tetrahedron.

The creature, Farah Hett, stumbled back and stared in horror as Kai’s body became still and then a blinding light burst from the control panel, utterly engulfing him. His mouth opened in a silent scream.

His obvious pain ripped through Brenna. Tears tracked down her face. She reached her hand out and grabbed Kendal’s arm, whispering in a hoarse voice, “He’s dying… My boy…”

Kendal said nothing. There was nothing to say.

On the other side of the feed, the Dominion’s sphere grew larger still.

Brenna’s attention flipped from one side of the video stream to the other. Her son was being burned up by the release of the energies just as the weapon outside grew ever more powerful.

“Kai!” Brenna screamed through the open comm channel to the Blackstar, hoping he would hear her through the piggybacked connection, but all she got back in response was high-pitched static and the sounds of metal rending.

In one violent burst of energy, a vertical beam of light exploded out from the Dominion, bursting through the top and bottom of the midsection. The glowing sphere immediately blinked out of existence the instant the rest of the ship exploded apart in a trillion or more fragments.

The column of light glowed for what seemed like an eternity.

Brenna stared at it, regardless of the damage it would do to her vision. Somewhere in the column was her beautiful, brave boy. He had sacrificed himself to save the quadrant.

All around the system, Koldax machines stopped and floated in space on whatever trajectory they were previously on.

“He did it…” Kendal said in a tight whisper. “My god… he actually did it.”

Brenna turned to face her husband and finally burst into tears. The pair hugged, holding each other as though their lives depended on it. Kendal’s body shook in her arms as he too let out his grief in great gulping sobs.

The pair stayed that way for many minutes, both unable to articulate the pain they felt. But amongst it was a deep well of relief. Through his actions, Farah Hett’s plans had failed, and billions of lives were saved.

Yet that equation meant nothing to her. Even if Kai wasn’t her biological son, his death sure felt like it. It stabbed her directly in the heart, and she knew in that instant she would never recover. She would never be the same again and her time within the GTU or any military unit of the Coalition was done.

Her family had paid enough, some the ultimate price.

The comms channel from General Hominos activated a few moments later, his gruff voice shattering the grief-filled silence.

“Allied forces, it’s over. The Dominion is defeated. Kai Locke has saved us all! The Koldax are dead. But do not relent. Open fire with everything you’ve got. Destroy every remaining deactivated Koldax and shrain ship. Take no prisoners. Honor Kai Locke’s ultimate sacrifice and bring swift justice to our enemies.”

Brenna and Kendal eventually let each other go. They locked eyes. Brenna wiped away Kendal’s tears and brushed his hair from his face. “You knew he would do this, didn’t you? When you were at the Azelia capital with him, you mentioned his fate. This was what you meant, wasn’t it?”

Kendal shook his head. “I didn’t know the specifics of how it would turn out. But I knew eventually he would have to make a decision. I just wish it wasn’t so soon. We’d only just reunited.”

“I wish I knew,” Brenna said. “I wish I knew what he had planned. There was so much I would have like to have said to him.”

“He knew you loved him,” Kendal replied before kissing her and taking her into his embrace once more. “He died knowing you were his real mother in all senses of the word. In fact, it was because of that, he did what he did. He wanted you to be safe. Come on, let’s get the hell out of here before we’re hit with friendly fire. We’ve got the rest of our lives to grieve.”

“You’re right. And I dare say it will take the rest of my life to grieve for him.”

She then thought about Senaya and what she must be feeling. She tried to contact the Blackstar and Senaya but received no reply. If Senaya was feeling even a fraction of the pain Brenna felt, she didn’t blame the girl for not wanting to talk to anyone. She was closer to Kai than his own family and Brenna doubted she would be in a good place.

Not wanting Senaya to feel like she was being ignored, Brenna sent her a personal, coded message with her full suite of contact details so that when the dust settled, Senaya could contact her whenever she felt like it.

“Flick, chart a safe vector down to the capital. Our job here is done, and we’ll no doubt have to deal with Hominos and the briefing about what happened. Better to get that out of the way so we can find a home and grieve in peace.”

“I’m sorry about your son,” the AI said with no sense of it being a scripted response. Oddly, it comforted Brenna.

“Thanks, Flick. I appreciate that.”

With a gentle use of the thrusters, Flick piloted the Rapier away from the firing arcs of the remaining ships and headed to Goddenia, the Capsis capital. As they flew there, Brenna and Kendal sat motionless, holding hands, not saying a word.

There was nothing else to say amid the pain and loss. Underneath all that, however, Brenna felt pride. She was proud that her son had given his life to save others. So many in a similar position wouldn’t have made the same choice, and she was grateful that his legacy would be as a hero and a friend to the Coalition.

Chapter 33

The day after the battle

Hominos sat in the comfortable armchair of his office and stared out of the window, watching as the celebrations of the population below continued.

A media stream playing on a screen showed signs of delight and relief all across the Coalition. There were even images from some of the Host worlds celebrating their freedom from the Koldax and the shrain.

He drank the remaining dregs of his drink and prepared to meet with the presidents in the Glass House to discuss the battle and what was to come next. He was due to meet them any moment now, but he wanted a few minutes of time to himself to let it all sink in. The last fortnight had gone by so quickly, yet each day had felt like an eternity. With so many developments and so many threats to have dealt with, it had finally taken its toll on him.

When the battle was won, he let the CDF carry out their orders while he retired to his office to get some much-needed rest, especially as sleep had been in short supply of late given all the things he’d had to organize.

During the past twenty-four hours, he had overseen the capture of all remaining shrain-populated ships and the subsequent destruction of all shrain and Koldax entities.

He had, however, given Gaila Frey the right to research Koldax tech using a number of specimens recovered from the battlefield. The girl aboard the Blackstar had apparently sent a message with instructions of how she had reprogrammed one for her own uses. Gaila would no doubt be eager to put those to the test.

Given the likelihood of another Koldax attack in the future, it made sense for the Coalition to be as prepared as they possibly could be, and given the amount of Koldax floating around the system, they could prove very useful if put to work.

There was already a great deal of debris in the system to deal with. Although the Capsis system had its own proprietary defense mechanism that would collect any potential debris that got too close to its various gravity wells, there was still the requirement to remove as many objects as possible to avoid damage to low-shield ships traveling from planet to planet. The presidents had mentioned they had already assigned a team to deal with that in their last message to him a few hours ago.

Also within that message was confirmation that they had requisitioned the Blackstar and its ally, the Rapier. Both ships were now in secure docking bays at the Goddenia shipyards. The crew of both were due to meet with the presidents later that day.

Although Hominos had no real need to speak with them, given their supreme bravery and help with the battle, he wanted to express his gratitude and to pay his respects for their loss. If it weren’t for Kai Locke sacrificing himself to take out the Dominion, none of them would be alive today.

Hominos stood up and stretched his tired limbs. He thought about all those that had lost their lives during the battle. Although Kai Locke’s loss of life won the battle, everyone who had perished deserved just as much respect, for they’d bought the time needed for Kai to get into a position where he could strike the killing blow.

As far as Hominos was concerned, it was a team battle, and the family of every single casualty deserved the same kind of treatment. Their sons and daughters had died for the Coalition and Host’s freedom; they deserved to live their lives in struggle-free comfort. He’d already written up the recommendation and had sent it to the presidents earlier in the morning and didn’t expect them to reject it—they were media darlings, after all, and wouldn’t want the bad press that would come with such a decision.

For now, though, he had to talk with them in person and lay out the current status and where they go from here.

He really didn’t see the point, but the same information would eventually go out across the thousands of media channels so that the quadrant’s citizens could rest assured that the war was over and the threat extinguished.

Hominos switched his media screen to a video mirror, adjusted his uniform and headed for the presidents’ room, eager to get it over and done with.

* * *

By the time Hominos entered the presidential suite, the crew from the Rapier and Blackstar were already seated around the table.

Lattis and Gatskil beckoned him in and pointed to an empty chair directly opposite them. The crew then were either side of him. All eyes looked his way.

“First of all,” Hominos said, “I’d like to thank you all for your efforts in the war. From the brief report I received, it seems you had a tough time beyond the Veil, and I’d like to thank you on behalf of the entire quadrant for your bravery and desire to return to us in our darkest moment. Without your help and the sacrifice of your son and friend, none of us would be here today. You have my utmost gratitude and respect. And secondly, I’m sincerely sorry for your loss. I’ve come to learn that Kai was truly a special individual and we were lucky to have him for as long as we did.”

The engineer from the Blackstar, Senaya Orlanda, wiped her eyes with a small cloth that already looked as if it had mopped a lot of tears. She simply nodded and choked out what he thought was a thank-you.

Agent Locke, Brenna that is, thanked him in her usual dignified way. The two men, Bandar and Kendal Locke, didn’t respond too much. They appeared stoic and in control of their emotions, but Hominos had seen enough grief in his time to know that despite the calm on the outside, inside was more than likely a raging torrent of pain and anguish. Especially for Kai’s father. If only a tenth of the stories of the things he had endured both in the quadrant and beyond the Veil were true, then Hominos couldn’t imagine how much he hurt right now.

“General Ratic Hominos,” President Gatskil started, “as per our earlier message, we want to thank you personally for overseeing the war efforts. Without your organization and leadership skills, we doubt we would have lasted long enough for the Lockes and Miss Orlanda to have helped in the way they did. You’ll be remembered for your efforts for a long time.”

“I was just doing my job, sir. It was an honor to serve… but while we’re all here, I wanted to say that I’m officially handing in my resignation.”

The two presidents looked aghast.

The others didn’t seem too surprised, or perhaps they didn’t care, and who could blame them? They had far more important things to deal with.

“Why now?” Lattis said, leaning her heavy bosom over the table. “You’ve only just proved yourself. There’s still work to do. We need to rebuild and work with the Host to—”

Hominos held up his hand to interrupt her. “I’m sorry, but my decision is final. Although I’ve only been in the position for a couple of weeks, that was enough. I achieved what I hoped to, and I believe there are others out there more capable than me going forward. I… underestimated the personal toll such a position would take.”

Gatskil shook his head and let out a deep sigh. “Well, if that’s your final decision, then I suppose there’s nothing we can do to change your mind.”

Hominos took it as a statement rather than a question and didn’t say anything else. There was nothing else to add as far as he was concerned.

He had done his job; there was nothing left for him now.

With the peace treaty well and truly ratified and their immediate enemies vanquished, he didn’t fancy a desk job of dealing with resource management and staffing issues. That wasn’t his forte. It would drive him insane within six months.

Senaya Orlanda caught his attention and said, “I’d like to thank you too. I’ve heard a lot about what you’ve done. How you dealt with Amelia and the shrain. Few people would have had the strength to deal with them in the way you did. I don’t advocate violence or death if it can be avoided, but in both of those situations you did exactly what should have been done.”

“I appreciate that,” Hominos said. “And likewise, your cooperation with Gaila regarding your insight into the Koldax will no doubt prove highly useful. I’m sorry that you lost your friend.”

She dipped her head now, breaking eye contact, and with a breathy whisper said, “he was more than just a friend. He was my brother in all but blood and the closest I’ve ever had to family.”

Brenna Locke put her arm around her shoulder. Kendal patted her on the back while Bandar whispered something to her that made her smile briefly.

“Anyway,” Gatskil said, breaking the moment, “we have a lot that we need to discuss. General, we’d like to run past you the post-battle strategy, and we’d like for you to submit to us a report of the battle for the records and for the media. I’ve already told them that will be a while, so feel free to submit it to us in the coming days. We don’t want it right away.”

Hominos appreciated that. He had expected to have done that today and really wasn’t up for reliving it all so soon after. He needed time to process what happened so that he could best communicate his decision-making process. The public deserved to know exactly how and why it all went down the way it did.

Lattis took over from Gatskil and spoke to the Locke family. “As for your family, we’re giving you the freedom of the quadrant. You will be entitled to free travel to any affiliated planet or system that you wish. You’ll also be compensated for your loss, as is the protocol. However, I’ve decided that Kai Locke’s actions were so extraordinary that we shall erect a statue of him here at Goddenia in his honor and that his fateful final day will be commemorated as a day of remembrance all across the quadrant annually.”

Hominos wasn’t surprised to see a hint of disdain on the families faces. This was all clearly a media exercise. They didn’t need statues and freedom to travel; they needed to be left alone to grieve in their own time.

“Kendal,” Lattis continued, “when you’re ready, we’d like to bring you into the GTU for a full debrief of your experience beyond the Veil. The same for the rest of you—but again, there’s no rush. I’ll have someone schedule it in a few weeks to give you some time to come to terms with the events.”

“I couldn’t possibly explain everything I experienced,” Kendal finally said, his voice surprisingly light, given his gruff exterior. “I’ll do my best to relay what I can. You have to understand, however, that the Navigators are extraordinary and their actions won’t always seem rational. And they too deserve respect. I will flatly refuse to cooperate if I sense any plan to breach the Veil or try to use Navigator technology or knowledge for our purposes.”

“Including the Blackstar?” Gatskil said, raising a sharp eyebrow.

“Do what you want with it,” Senaya said in response. “As long as I’m allowed to take the AI, you’re free to use it however you wish. The gravity drive is damaged, but I’m sure Gaila and his team will benefit from studying it, although with Kai’s artifact there’s no way back through the Veil.”

“And the Rapier is all yours too,” Brenna said, “and ditto with regards to the AI. I’ve grown accustomed to its programming.”

Hominos wondered what the obsession was with ship’s AIs but didn’t comment. The family had gone through a lot, so they were entitled as far as he was concerned.

The two presidents leaned in close and whispered amongst themselves for a moment before breaking apart. Gatskil addressed the family again. “Okay, I think it’s only fair that you get what you’ve asked for. As for you, Kendal, you have my word that you’ll not be pressed for anything you’re not willing to share, but please realize we do need some answers and some information regarding the Veil, especially as we’ve only just survived an attack from a species beyond it.”

“That’s fair enough,” Kendal said. “I’ll be happy to share my knowledge at a later date.”

For the next few minutes, the presidents and the Locke family talked back and forth, discussing what was next for them. Brenna had agreed to take a position as an ambassador but wouldn’t take on the role for at least a couple of weeks.

Kendal officially retired from service.

Bandar… He was a curious one, Hominos thought. There was something likable and dislikable about him all at once. He was quick to negotiate pardons for any crimes he might have committed while working as a deep-cover GTU agent on Zarunda but hadn’t seemed interested in any other roles in the Coalition, despite his obvious talents. Hominos would have recommended him for a leadership role within the GTU, but like himself, he suspected Bandar was more of an action-oriented individual than a paper pusher.

“Oh, there’s one more thing,” Senaya said. “I would like a job, an engineering job, but not in the military.”

“Do you have anything in particular in mind?” Lattis asked.

“I do, as it happens. There’s a position on Jallan IV. It doesn’t pay much and is in the middle of nowhere, but that sounds perfect to me. My days of adventuring and fighting are done. Kai and I always spoke about getting off Zarunda and living a comfortable life on Jallan IV. That’s what I’d like to do. Oh, and if it’s not too much bother, I’d like a cottage and a small stipend for security in case the job ever goes away.”

The Locke family all stared at her in disbelief. Hominos got the impression that they had expected her to stay with them after all they had gone through, but from Hominos’s point of view, he could see why she would want a fresh start. She’d only known the extended Locke family for a few months; she’d lived most of her life with Kai.

“You don’t want to come with us?” Brenna said, clearly hurt. “I thought… We…”

“We would have liked you to stick around,” Kendal said. “I know we’ve only known you for a short while, but you were so close to Kai, you feel like our family.”

“But I’m not,” she said neutrally and without malice. “You really don’t know me at all. And to be totally honest, you didn’t really know Kai either. We were left to fend for ourselves on Zarunda. We survived together, through everything. All of this stuff that’s happened lately was a brief thing. There’s only one of us left now, and I want to live the life we both wanted. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize for anything,” Bandar said, removing a cigar from his pocket and lighting it despite the obvious looks of disapproval from the presidents. “You do what you want to do. We’ve got freedom of the quadrant, right? So we’ll come visit now and then if you want. And besides, you two weren’t alone on Zarunda. I was there, looking out for you both, whether you knew it or not. I might not know you as well as Kai, but I’ve watched you grow up from a small child into one of the most impressive women I know.”

“You still scare me,” she said with a laugh that was only barely able to hide the shaking emotion.

Hominos was starting to feel deeply uncomfortable. It was clear to him that the family had made up their mind what they wanted to do. As had he. What the presidents wanted didn’t matter now. They had their obligations to the media and the various houses, but that was for them to deal with.

The war was over, and they could all go their separate ways and live the lives they wanted.

Hominos handed over his security terminal and bid everyone goodbye.

On his way out, he saluted the two guards at the doors and headed outside.

He’d spent so much time inside the Glass House looking out that breathing the air and feeling the sun on his skin took him by surprise. The air felt cold in his lungs, but refreshing, and the warmth on his skin made the fine fur on his arms bristle.

“So you’re going, eh?” came a voice from behind him.

He turned to see Officer Ukjao at the doorway, smiling. “I’m glad you gave it up. You can relax now. Go live a life outside of the military—you’ve earned it, Ratic.”

Hearing his first name in such a casual manner sounded odd, but he liked it.

Ukjao approached him and kissed him on the cheek, her lips soft and warm on his skin. “It was a pleasure working with you,” she said. “But before you go, there’s one more obligation you have to meet.”

“What’s that?”

She pointed across a grassy square to a stationary hover-car. The door opened, and a wild, flailing bundle of brunette hair swept out first, the wind whipping it around the body that followed. A body Hominos knew better than anyone.

“Elise?” he called out. “Is that you?”

“That’s her, sir,” Ukjao said. “She contacted me as soon as she heard we won the war, so I told her to come here.”

“You knew I was quitting before I did?”

She shrugged. “There’s a reason I was your head intelligence officer. I notice things.”

Elise ran across the grass. The silvery robe she wore clung to her long, Lantesian limbs, and so many memories of her and Ratic came flooding back. She crashed into him, wrapping her arms around his neck.

“Ratic, I’m so glad you’re okay! I’ve missed you so much.”

“I’ve missed you too,” he said, hugging her in close. “I’m so sorry how I left it last time—”

“None of that matters now. I knew you had to do that to spare me from the stress. But it’s all over, and we can be together again. Come with me, Ratic, come live with me, and…” She broke away and stared at him with the smile that always weakened him. “Marry me! Yes, marry me.”

“That sounds like an order,” Ratic said with a smile as wide as Elise’s.

“It is, and you can’t refuse; otherwise… well, there’s no otherwise.”

“Then I have to do my duty and marry you.”

From over Elise’s shoulder, Ratic saw Ukjao wiping a tear of joy from her eye. He mouthed, “Thank you,” to her before she turned and went back into the Glass House with a final wave goodbye.

Ratic stood there with the love of his life in his arms once more and thanked the stars that he had this second chance at life. In that moment, he felt like the luckiest man in the quadrant.

Chapter 34

A month later

Senaya yawned and stretched her arms, easing out the knots of a long night’s sleep. She curled her bare feet into the damp, lush grass of her perfectly maintained garden and breathed in the deep, pure air for which Jallan IV was most renowned.

At the end of the hundred-meter-long garden, a brook babbled its fresh water from a spring farther up the hill to the east. Just beyond that, a meadow stretched out to the horizon, where it gave way to a stunning range of mountains, their peaks capped with snow.

A diaphanous blanket of morning fog obscured the bodies of the mountains. On less foggy days, Senaya would watch the gigantic swoop-wings hovering above their aeries high in the sky—their beautiful tawny feathers reflected the sun, giving them a golden hue.

Unlike the crazed birds she had encountered on the strange planet of Patari, these were peaceful, majestic creatures. Their great wings beat gently against the air as they often flew overhead of her small cozy cottage.

Some days, with all this beauty around her and the comfortable pace of her job, she would forget all the horrors of war and the battles on both sides of the Veil with the Koldax and the shrain. She would forget the fear and anguish of loss.

She would forget the Dominion…

But those days were rare.

Even though she had discovered an idyllic life here on Jallan IV, made new friends, and had found a level of peace she’d never experienced before, it all felt less than it ought. As though something from this life was missing.

That something being Kai.

She shook her head and continued her stretching routine and breathing exercises she had learned from one of the city’s best Renga practitioners. In a matter of minutes, the bubbling anxiety ebbed away on waves of energy and mindfulness.

Below this flow of energy, however, was an ache born of too much physical effort.

She’d been working hard these last few weeks in her new post as chief engineer. The capital city—which was more of a luxury village—had been suffering from intermittent power outages from a faulty solar collection array. Using Wiggs, she’d found the sector in which the fault had occurred and spent the following three solid days soldering and engineering new parts.

Together with her mechanical sidekick, she had restored power to the system, and all was well again. Despite the work being difficult at times, she had found it to be a satisfying distraction. Although she was never truly distracted…

A notification in the form of an ascending series of beeps coming from her wrist terminal pulled her attention away from her inner thoughts. She took a final deep breath before turning her back on the beautiful scenery and headed inside the cottage.

Her cybernetic house assistant, Jiff, a Mk. III android unit, stoked the open fire in the kitchen and then attended to the oven, taking out a freshly baked loaf of bread.

The aroma filled the warm kitchen.

Her stomach rumbled at the thought of thick buttered toast for breakfast.

“Eesoh is requesting you, Sen,” the assistant said, turning to face her as it placed the bread onto the kitchen table. This particular model had reminded Senaya of the Navigator overseer, which was probably why she had chosen it—the sense of something familiar helped her settle into her new home.

“Thanks, Jiff,” Senaya said. “Your bread recipe is surely perfect by now. It smells and looks delicious.” She had instructed it to call her Sen, preferring the sense of familiarity. It had worked too. Within a few days of having Jiff around the cottage, she had begun to feel as though he were a member of her family, even if every element of that family weren’t quite—normal.

There was Wiggs, the reprogrammed Koldax machine, Eesoh—whatever he was—and now Jiff: baker and domestic god. It wasn’t the worst family she’d ever experienced. But not the best either…

“I’m really glad to have you working here,” she said, wanting to somehow give the android a sense of pride, even though she knew his programming was enough to maintain his mood. But that was the thing with androids; they soon felt so real that you considered their feelings despite knowing they couldn’t feel anything at all.

Jiff’s mechanical lips moved perfectly into a smile, it’s advanced servos giving it a highly realistic look. “I’m glad to hear you’re happy,” he said without a hint of disingenuousness. “There’s an active community working on these bread recipes from other domestic assistants. The DomestiNet has thousands of iterations. I chose this one in particular due to the soil here on Jallan IV. The mix of herbs and flavor enhancers balance perfectly with the… I’m sorry, I’m rambling, and Eesoh is waiting.”

“That’s quite all right,” Senaya said with a smile. She enjoyed the rambling. Jiff always seemed so pleased with his work, no matter how small or inconsequential. She had almost forgotten completely that he was an artificial construct and had soon thought of him as more of an equal companion than a tool provided to her by the government as part payment for her role in the war.

She moved around the table and sat on the sofa opposite the fire, the flames warming the cool, damp soles of her feet.

A small table between the two held a hovering holocube two-thirds the size of the one within the Blackstar—which was now part of the Coalition-Host Peace Enforcement Fleet.

When they had taken the ship, Senaya had demanded to take the ‘AI.’ She didn’t want the government to know that Eesoh was actually an entity of some kind, so she brought him here to stay with her. A government-issue AI was assigned to the ship instead.

“What’s up, Eesoh?” she said, leaning forward to stare into the holocube.

An amorphous face appeared within. Although its features were often soft and ambiguous, Senaya had spent enough time now with him to read that something was bothering him.

“I’ve been tracking drive signatures out there, in Coalition space.”

“As you do,” Senaya said, quirking an eyebrow and smiling. “Some people like watching birds or land trains. I guess your thing is drive signatures.”

“It’s not through any desire to have a hobby, I’m afraid. Rather, I like to keep track of things that may be of interest to us. And this one certainly is. It’s the Blackstar, Senaya—it has arrived in the Jallan system, and given its current trajectory, it appears to be making its way here.”

Senaya slumped and dropped her head. She sighed, letting out a long breath.

“Why now? I’m just getting settled. For the first time in my life, I’m starting to feel normal—bored almost. Bored is good, Eesoh. Bored means one’s life isn’t in any immediate danger. Bored means you’re being left alone to your own devices. I don’t want to deal with more conflict. I’ve had enough conflict for a thousand lifetimes and more.”

“I can hail them if you wish?”

Senaya thought about it for a moment. “How far are they away?”

“Less than an hour at their current rate of approach.”

“Don’t bother; they’re too close to turn around now. And they might not be coming for me. Perhaps they have other business here?” Even as she said it, she knew she was grasping at straws.

The amorphous face twisted into a form that showed that Eesoh also doubted that thought. The two had developed a sufficiently advanced level of communication that facial expressions were often enough.

“How would you like your eggs this morning, Sen?” Jiff said. “May I suggest an omelet? I’ve developed a new kind of whisk, you see, and—”

Eesoh interrupted with, “It’s all he’s discussed these last few days,” and lowered his voice so only Senaya could hear. “On three separate occasions this week I’ve tried to engage him in a conversation about existential probability and intelligence convergence, and where did they get me? A long diatribe about the poor design of currently available egg whisks.”

“Perhaps the perfect whisk design is as ultimately important as existentialism?”

Eesoh went quiet as it appeared to think on that more seriously than Senaya had intended. But perhaps it was a good point after all. What was so important about existence anyway? It was such a fragile thing—something brought into sharp focus on Jallan IV, where so many people with terminal illnesses or just old age came to live out their remaining days in peace and tranquility.

Perhaps a well-designed egg whisk would have more of an impact on a greater number of people than any one individual’s life. If it meant millions of people around the system would have perfect omelets, perhaps that was a greater thing than certain existences.

Without meaning to, Senaya had brought a deep mood to the cottage as she and Eesoh pondered on her throwaway comment, but Jiff stood at the table with an expression of expectation, reminding Senaya of his initial question.

“An omelet would be perfect, thank you, Jiff,” Senaya said, giving him a wide, genuine smile before turning her attention back to Eesoh. “I’m going to change out of these pajamas and prepare for the Blackstar’s arrival. If you notice anything extraordinary, let me know, would you?”

“Of course. I’ll monitor it every meter of the way and will alert you as soon as it does anything unusual. Oh, and enjoy your eggs.”

Chapter 35

Almost exactly an hour later the Blackstar landed in the front garden with a burst of engine thrusters disrupting the surrounding air. Senaya stood in the doorway, dressed in her multi-pocket jerkin, the same she wore to work, and waited with bated breath to see who would exit the familiar ship.

It looked smaller to her now for some reason, despite the Navigator-designed craft dwarfing her cottage. Time had a habit of doing strange things to memories; it altered dimensions, feelings, and even fine details.

But memory was only a few images or smells away from accuracy again.

For example, the repairs to the Blackstar’s hull, its scars, brought back the sheer horror she had experienced when her tether had broken and she floated off through space. But close behind that feeling of horror was the elation and relief of being saved, of grabbing the makeshift harpoon Kai had crafted on the spur of the moment to save her life.

For all the bad experiences the sight of the Blackstar dredged from her memory, there was an equal number of good ones—almost all of them exclusively because of Kai.

The door to the ship opened with a hiss, and the steps unfolded.

Senaya held her breath as she waited.

A few seconds later her heart raced as Kendal, Brenna, and Bandar exited the ship. They came down the stairs and walked across the stone path of her front garden until they surrounded her by the door.

They all looked well, she thought. Brenna especially appeared younger. She wore her hair in a tight bun and wore a robe of rich purple—as befitting her role within the government now as an ambassador. Kendal had remained his gruff self. Still had his silvery hair and that glint in his eye that she had never grown accustomed to. It spoke of duplicity and a self-belief in his own charm that she didn’t like.

And then there was Bandar.

The sight of him brought back mixed emotions, just like the Blackstar.

His image still represented all the things that she hated, and feared, back on Zarunda: the chrome faceplate, the wheezing piston of his partially fixed leg, and the cigar jammed in the corner of his mouth.

He pulled the glowing cigar free and smiled. “Nice to see you again, girl. You’re looking good.”

“I wish I could say the same about you,” Senaya said, adding a little more bite to her words than she intended, but she refused to apologize. She did, however, smile at Brenna and Kendal. “Hey, so to what do I owe this pleasure? If it’s about Kai—”

Brenna waved away the suggestion, presumably because like Senaya, she too was still hurt by his loss. Then her expression lightened to reflect Senaya’s smile. “Actually, we’ve come with some good news—and a proposition of sorts. Could we come in to discuss it?”

Senaya stepped back and held her arm aloft, pointing through to the kitchen. “Sure, take a seat at the table. Jiff’s recently made some fresh bread. Can I offer you guys a beverage?”

“A Bulshari scotch would go down a treat; we’ve been flying for hours,” Bandar said as he brushed past her, blowing out a plume of smoke and taking in her cottage. His large frame made the place feel smaller than it was, and she had to fight the temptation to ask him to leave.

“I don’t have any alcohol,” she said flatly. “It’s tea or water, I’m afraid.”

“Tea would be just perfect, thank you,” Kendal said, entering the cottage and bowing gently to her in a respectful greeting. “I’m sorry that we’ve turned up without any warning.” He took his seat at the table next to Brenna. “We were passing through the system on a diplomatic mission and decided to make a stop off, as we’ve come into some information I think you would be interested in. And it felt better to deliver it in person than over the network.”

“It’s okay,” Senaya said, taking the seat at the head of the table. Brenna and Kendal were seated to her left and Bandar to her right. At the other end, Jiff prepared the tea, which he then brought to the table and, after dispensing cups and saucers to everyone, poured out the delicious blend he had spent the last three months perfecting.

Senaya took her cup and drained the liquid, eager to get its effects into her system and banish the low-level tiredness that had so far plagued her the entire morning.

“I’m sorry for the lack of a proper welcome,” Senaya said. “It’s just that I’ve been busy lately and I’m still getting used to the place. Seeing the Blackstar again… It’s… Well, it’s weird. I thought I was done with all that, but I guess the past has a habit of sneaking up on you when you least expect it.”

Brenna smiled gently then took a sip of the cup. She smacked her lips and nodded in Jiff’s direction. “That’s a tasty blend you have there… um…“

“Jiff,” the android reminded her. “It’s made from a collection of over fifteen local herbs and petal extracts. The exact formula enables—”

Senaya held up her hand. “It’s okay, Jiff, I’ll send them the recipe later. If you wouldn’t mind changing the bedding upstairs…”

The android got the gist of the suggestion and left the room.

Brenna’s and Kendal’s gazes followed its route through the kitchen and up the stairs. Both of them noticed the holocube on the table between the sofa and the fireplace. Kendal turned to Senaya and asked, “So how’s Eesoh doing? Has it figured out what it is yet?”

“He hasn’t. He knows he is the male of his species, but beyond that, he doesn’t know anything else about his origins other than what he is here and now and that’s enough for him. It’s enough for me too,” she added before Kendal could press her further. “It doesn’t matter to me what he is, only that he is, if that makes sense. I’m tired of galactic secrets and the desire to know everything. We’re happy as we are—and we’d like to keep it that way.”

“You’ve changed, girl,” Bandar said, pointing the now unlit cigar at her. “I’m not sure it suits you.” He leaned his bulk against the table and rested on his elbows.

The jab hit her in the chest. She opened her mouth to retort but came to her senses and stopped herself. She reminded herself that she was no longer involved with these people anymore. She had her dream, a life on Jallan IV, and she wasn’t about to let them spoil that.

“Let’s get to the point,” she said. “I’m happy here, and although it’s good to see that you’re all in fine health, I’m not ready to revisit old times or entertain guests. What is it that you want from me?”

Brenna lowered her head in acceptance of the situation and told her why they had arrived. “Before all the craziness with the Dominion and the war as a whole, Marella was working on that video of yours—the assassination of your cousins. Well, she gave us a lead, and after the war, I had some people look into it. We’ve discovered why your cousins were killed, and who hired the assassin to kill you.”

Kendal removed a scroll from his jacket and handed it over to Senaya. Inside the scroll was real paper, and on the paper, written in a fancy, cursive calligraphy, was something about a royal court. Most of the text was hard for her to read. It wasn’t in Coalition Common apart from a few words here and there, which appeared to be titles, and then at the bottom, her name.

She looked up at the others. “I don’t understand; what is this?”

“You’re a royal descendant, girl,” Bandar said, cracking a wide smile. “We really should have bowed or curtsied when we arrived.”

“Royal? I don’t get it…”

Brenna explained as Senaya sat there in disbelief. “We traced the identity of your cousins through the Coalition database. It turns out that they were the next in line for an ancient family of royals on a distant world on the edge of the galaxy. A place called Verallis. It’s not under Coalition rule or Host. It’s a principality and has mostly thrived through trade of its precious metals and unique gemstones.”

Kendal took up the story next. “Once we identified your cousins, it was a simple task to trace the rest of the people in the video. Through the GTU’s extensive network of shady operators, we found the original deal with a guild of assassins. Using some government pressure, we got some names and found the client who hired them.”

“Who was it?” Senaya asked, clutching the scroll.

“A Tasarel woman called Muerto Hesantahlia,” Kendal answered. “Your last remaining cousin, and second in the chain of succession to the throne of Verallis.”

She shook her head and glanced down at the scroll again, trying to take all this in. It didn’t make any sense. Her cousins were in Coalition space, on their way to help with the peace talks during the war when they were killed—nowhere near a distant principality on the edge of the galaxy. And as far as Senaya had known, her second name was Orlanda, not Hesantahlia. She even had a digital birth chip to prove it.

“I think you’ve got me mistaken here,” she added, nodding to the scroll. “I’m not a Hesantahlia.”

“You are,” Bandar said. “Your birth chip was changed—we have proof of that too, and guess who did it? Yup, the same Muerto who hired an assassin later on to kill you. You see, Sen, your older cousin had hired spies to track you down. With your existence still unaccounted for, she couldn’t take the throne. In all of these years, it’s been in flux.”

Brenna jumped in, adding, “But now your extended family knows about you—from all the media coverage during what you and Kai did to save Capsis Prime the first time around. It didn’t take long for us to put it all together. Your cousin, Muerto, is now in prison for the rest of her life, and your extended family has prepared the process for you to take your rightful place as queen of Verallis. You’re made for life now, Sen. You have control of an entire planet.”

Confusion and a mix of emotions swamped Sen. Her throat closed, and she stood up from the table, moving out through the back door and into the garden. She leaned against her knees as a dizzy spell threatened to knock her to the ground.

Kendal and Brenna quickly arrived by her side and helped her up. She turned to see Bandar leaning casually against the door frame, a big grin on his grizzled face.

“It’s all true, isn’t it?” she said.

“It sure is,” Bandar replied. “I couldn’t believe it myself, but when Mom and Pops here showed me all the evidence, there was no denying it. Who’d have thought that little Sen—the mechanic, rogue, and general troublemaker—was a legitimate queen?” He shrugged before adding, “But then, both of us have seen stranger things, right?”

Her guts cramped and sweat broke out on her neck and forehead. This was unbelievable. Truly. For years she had wondered about the truth behind her cousins’ murder, but as the years had rolled on, she had become less concerned.

And here it was, smacking her in the face once more, turning her life upside down when she had just begun to feel settled again.

Kendal and Brenna were just staring at her, their faces a combination of happiness and concern.

“I’m sorry,” Senaya said, finally calming down. “It’s a lot to take in. Is there anything I have to do? Are people waiting for me?” There were a hundred more questions, but she had to start at the beginning; otherwise she would overwhelm herself.

“Let’s get some more tea and discuss what’s next,” Kendal said, helping Senaya back into the cottage, her legs still a little shaky from the revelation. They all sat back down. Bandar poured some more tea from the pot.

“So,” Brenna started, “the next step would be to come with us to meet your court. From there, you’ll be taken to Verallis and introduced to your people, shown around your new palace, and then there’s the royal induction and the oversight of laws…”

Senaya tuned out.

On and on it went, a dozen things, a hundred, all of them seemingly impossible just a few hours ago. As they continued to explain what was expected of her, Senaya found herself shrinking away. She pulled her attention from the discussion and stared out of the open door and looked upon the mountains.

The fog had cleared now. The golden swoop-wings flying around their nests were visible in the light of late morning. A group of seven ganik cows from the neighboring farm trotted through the meadow, stopping every now and then to chew on the grass. Their thick brown hides almost glowed under the sun and their big docile eyes looked over at her briefly before moving on to the next patch of grass.

Brenna and Kendal continued to talk and point to various sections within the scroll, explaining what it all meant. She didn’t know how long this went on for, having tuned out some time ago, but eventually a silence fell on the cottage, and she found herself at the center of all of their attention as though they were expecting her to say or do something.

“Well?” Kendal said. “Do you have an overnight bag you want to bring? We’ve got to leave shortly. We can send for the rest of your stuff once we’re on our way.”

“What?” Senaya said, almost startled as the truth of the situation hit her hard square in the chest, threatening to slice her heart in two. “I can’t go anywhere… this is my home.”

She looked down at the scroll and let go of it so that it rolled back up and rocked on the table surface. She stared at it as though it were a cursed object.

“Sen, listen to us…” Brenna began, but Senaya didn’t want to hear it.

“Look, I appreciate you guys coming here. I appreciate what you’ve tried to do for me, but you had no right to meddle. I was done, happy to be away from it all. I don’t want to leave here. Everything I have is here. I’m no queen, regardless of blood or lines of succession or whatever. I make stuff, fix stuff. I don’t sit on a throne, ordering servants around. I don’t deal with courts and stroll around a dusty palace. That’s madness. That’s not me.”

She stood up again and moved over to the sink, where she poured herself a glass of water. As she swallowed the cold fresh drink, she stared out at the window as a group of three swoop-wings flew down from the mountain and over the meadow. Within a few moments, they flew overhead, their wings quiet but powerful in the still air.

“I’m sorry,” Kendal said, his voice right behind her. She turned to face him and saw confusion and worry written in the crags of his face. “We thought you’d be happy to know, to realize your potential and take what’s yours.”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t want to take or rule anything. You have completely misunderstood me. I’m afraid I can’t go with you. I’m sorry that you’ve had a wasted journey. You’ll have to send my apology to the people of Verallis. I’ll record a message or something—tell them to find a new queen. My name is Senaya Orlanda, and I’m a humble mechanic who is going to live out her years here on Jallan IV.”

* * *

The Locke family remained for another hour, trying to convince Senaya that this was a good thing, but she wasn’t budging. She had made her mind up. And then towards the end of the conversation when it was clear they were unable to change her mind, the subject of Kai came up.

Kendal and Bandar had returned to the Blackstar to prepare for launch, leaving Brenna behind on the path. Senaya remained in the doorway, not wanting to leave the cottage even for a moment, preferring to feel grounded in the familiar.

“Do you miss him?” Brenna said, the grief obvious in her voice, her words heavy and strained.

“Every day,” Senaya said.

“And you don’t blame him for leaving you here alone? For… sacrificing himself like that…” Misty tears filled her eyes. She wiped them away with the cuff of her robe. Senaya wanted to reach out to her, but there was a distance between them now that she couldn’t cover.

“I’m sorry,” Senaya said. “I believe he did what he thought was the right thing. He ended his life how he always lived it—with the best intention. I don’t judge him for that. He wasn’t one of us; he was something else, something far greater. Only he could fully understand what he did. We have to get on with our lives, what’s left of them, in the best way we can.”

Brenna choked back a few more tears and stepped forward, pulling Senaya into an embrace before she could back away. Reluctantly, Senaya wrapped her arms around Brenna and gave her the comfort she clearly needed.

After a long moment, Brenna broke away. Kendal poked his head out the door and beckoned her. “We’re ready to launch.”

“You should go,” Senaya added, not with any malice, but with the intention that Brenna should be with her family. There was nothing here for her now. Nothing that would bring her any happiness. “But trust me, Kai loved you as if you were his biological mother. Don’t ever think otherwise.”

“Thank you,” Brenna said, and then gave her a kiss on the cheek. “You’re such a sweet girl. I’m sorry that our coming here has made things difficult. But don’t worry, we’ll smooth everything with the people of Verallis. We’ll respect your wishes and leave you in peace, but please know that we’ll always be here for you if you ever need us, okay?”

“Okay.”

With a smile, Brenna turned and ascended the steps to the Blackstar. She waved goodbye and entered the ship. Senaya waited for it to take off and watched as it slowly turned and headed away from the village before engaging its main thrusters.

She didn’t wait to see it blast out into space.

As soon as it was out of view, she returned to her cottage and made her way upstairs and into the spare room, closing the door behind her. Jiff was somewhere down the hall, presumably going about his chores as instructed.

The room was in darkness, as she always kept it. She found it worked better that way. The curtains were closed, and the thermostat was set to a few degrees above freezing. She shivered as she approached the crystal.

Its blue hue glowed with a pulsating throb.

She knelt at the altar upon which it stood and pressed her forehead against its cold surface. She took a breath, taking in the crystal’s power, and heard his voice in her head.

“Senaya? You seem troubled,” came Kai’s voice, sent from beyond the Veil, from beyond life. Although to her and the rest of the family he was physically dead, his spirit remained in his final form within the coffin that had remained empty all those years, waiting for him to take his rightful place.

“Oh, Kai, things have been difficult… your family just visited.”

She sensed a ripple of emotion across the void, a tension that threatened to overwhelm her, but as usual, Kai controlled it so that his connection with her remained subtle and weak enough for her kind to cope with.

“Tell me what happened,” he said.

So she did. In all the detail. All about the monarchy, her cousins, her real identity. She talked about how Brenna, Kendal, and Bandar looked, their health, and what they were up to. Kai seemed happy that they were getting over their grief and moving on with their lives, busying themselves with work.

It still freaked Senaya out to communicate with Kai this way. Although his spirit was more powerful than she could imagine, it was still difficult to accept that through this crystal—that he kind of illegally stole from his own people to give to her—he was capable of such a feat.

A part of her felt bad that he had given it to her instead of his parents, but she understood why; they were very similar, had grown up together, and until the end survived together.

“I’m glad you turned it down,” Kai’s spirit said. “Only misery would have come from it. We all know what power can do.”

“Especially to minds as weak as mine,” she said with a hint of sarcasm, but knowing it was true. Seeing what Kai, now a pure mind, could do and handle, it made her realize all the more how fragile most species were.

“Weak as it is, it’s still the strongest I’ve ever known. I can’t talk for long; the Veil is under attack and requires all my energies. The Sumahn suffered a great number of losses even after the war against Hett and his minions. The Patari have sided with Darkarahn’s minions in the hopes of gaining control.”

“How likely do you think that is?”

“The future is impossible to describe,” he said, indicating that he could see the future to some degree. Which was no great surprise given the power of the Navigators. “But we’re safe for now at least.”

“And how’s Marella doing in her training with the ooverseer?”

“Surprisingly well. I’m confident that when the overseer passes over in the next fifty years, Marella will be ready to assume his role.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Senaya said, running out of things to say. Well, there was lots she could say, but she knew Kai could tell already, their connection through the crystal leaving nothing hidden from him. “I still miss you,” she added anyway.

“Likewise, Sen. Turns out the Navigators haven’t learned the art of banter yet. But I’m trying my best with them. Okay, I must go. Be safe, and we’ll talk again soon.”

With that, an overriding feeling of love flowed through the crystal and into her body.

She rocked back on her heels as the crystal darkened. With tears of joy and happiness tracking down her cheeks, she opened the door to find Jiff sweeping the hall.

He looked up at her with surprise. “Are you hurt?” he asked, placing the broom against the wall and approaching her.

“No, I’m fine, thanks, Jiff. Everything is going to be just fine.”

The End

About the Author

A.C. Hadfield always wanted to be an astronaut. As a boy he grew up reading science fiction novels and dreaming of the stars. He ended up as an engineer but developed a passion for the world of writing. He lives in the USA in various locations depending on the seasons. He enjoys traveling, stargazing, and dreaming up galactic empires in which to tell his tales.

To be notified of A.C. Hadfield releases, sign-up to the no-spam newsletter here: http://eepurl.com/cgchXv