Tears of Tungsten: A Reverse Harem Sci Fi Bully Romance (Chimera Academy Book 2)

by Eva Brandt

  “I can do that. I’ll speak with the Great Mother. She’ll surely be able to arrange something.”

  I clenched my jaw and nodded. That was more than I’d expected him to promise. Then again, since I’d finally fallen in line with his wishes, maybe he was a little more inclined to indulge me and my ‘foolish’ whims.

  “Listen, Selene,” he continued, “I know we started out on the wrong foot here, but I do think we can make things work. I’m never going to ask you to give up on your dream to build a better world for your people. But that’s what I want too—for The Grand Judiciary to pay for their crimes and us Heliads to be able to start anew, without having to worry about a war with the Terrans.”

  “Do you really think that’s possible?” I asked. “For peace to be accomplished, just like that?”

  “I think war and peace are two sides of the same coin. We’ve been at war for centuries, whether we realized it or not. The time will come for us to take this to its ultimate, unavoidable conclusion.” He cupped my cheek and this time, I didn’t push him away. “But after that, yes. Peace will come.”

  It was simple logic, a truth that had been proven by historical fact for millennia. In that respect, I agreed with him. There was just one problem.

  “If that happens, Jared… What price will we have to pay for it? How many more people will have to die?”

  It was a rhetorical question, but Jared answered me anyway. “As many as it takes. Helios will be there to receive those who deserve it. And those who are consumed by Tartarus will go to their deaths knowing it is for a greater purpose.”

  Would they? I wasn’t so sure. Those people in Gaia’s Haven had only wanted to be left alone to raise their families. But that wasn’t about to happen and war was coming, whether I liked it or not. And no matter how I felt about Jared, he’d forced me in a situation where I had no choice but to rely on him.

  I pressed my hand to my belly, thinking about the life that was possibly growing inside me now. It was much too soon to accept it. I still wasn’t sure I wanted the same things Jared did. But for the moment, I’d give Jared a chance, at least until I figured out a better solution.

  “All right, Jared. Just… Make sure I get to speak to your superior, all right? I don’t think I like the idea of being assaulted by an overly affectionate plant every time I try to leave my room.”

  Jared wrapped an arm around my waist and nuzzled my cheek. “Don’t worry. I’ll call the Phaeton Heart off. The last thing I want is to make you uncomfortable.”

  Somehow, I doubted that very much, but I didn’t say it. I wasn’t in my homeland anymore and here, I was even more helpless than those women living in Tartarus Base.

  And the worst thing about it was that I couldn’t with full confidence say I hated it—that I hated Jared. How in Gaia’s name was I supposed to save my world, when I couldn’t even save myself?

  Black Holes

  Knox

  Meanwhile

  “Well, this is it. The Apsid Quasar. I’m pretty sure I’ve narrowed down the entry point as accurately as I could.”

  “Are you sure about this, Brendan? If we pass this point, we won’t be able to turn back.”

  “I’m as sure as I can be. It’s risky to rely on Penelope, but the alternative is waiting for an approval we’d never receive.”

  Hidden in the shadows of the control room, I watched the others discuss our unavoidable doom and silently focused on reining in my beast. It was more of a challenge than I’d have liked to admit. My instincts of self-preservation screamed at me to get out of here at once, but I found that very easy to ignore. It was the delay that bugged me, the inexorable passage of time and the knowledge that every second that passed could very well be another day Selene spent in the aliens’ clutches. I’d have gotten angry the others were even having this conversation had I not known they were as anxious about it as I was.

  For the purpose of expedience, we’d taken Brendan’s Venom to what he and August had determined to be the closest access gate to the quasar. The large vessel wasn’t that inconspicuous, but we’d be leaving it here anyway. Even with the strong tachyon shield around it, our chimeras would still be a better option for the mission. We’d be cooked alive if something went wrong again, but it was a risk we were willing to take.

  We didn’t have the forces necessary to stage an actual assault on the apsids and win. I doubted we’d have been able to gather the necessary military strength even if we’d had King Philip’s full support. So we were forced to rely on subterfuge.

  The chimeras were small enough that we might be able to escape unnoticed. Logic stated that the apsids would have means of protection against that, but I hoped we’d be able to avoid their sensors.

  That was the only thing we had, hope, coupled with the instructions in the files that held so many secrets about The Grand Judiciary. I’d actually thought Brendan would try to dangle the more delicate information over his father’s head, but then, I’d realized that was a ridiculous idea. It was much too risky. The Grand Judiciary was far more likely to ensure our deaths at the hands of the apsids than they were to provide reinforcements.

  Either way, we were here now and we’d soon have to face our worst enemies. Nobody was looking forward to it, not even Cerberus.

  The chimeras were at the back of the Venom, but even so, Cerberus managed to reach out to me through our bond. He didn’t say it, but he knew our chances of success weren’t very high. “Don’t be so down, pup,” he tried to encourage me. “You’ll find your mate. I’m sure she’s waiting for you. And she’s strong. Even if she’s angry with you for what happened on Terra, she’ll understand eventually.”

  Maybe she would have, under regular circumstances, if we’d been able to talk to her immediately. Selene had always been willing to hear us out, to open her heart to us, even when we hadn’t deserved it. But this time, we’d well and utterly failed her. We’d almost gotten her killed and had been unable to save her from the apsid. “I don’t know about that, Cerberus, but at this point, I wouldn’t mind it if she hated me. All I want is to get her back to safety.”

  She deserved so much better than this, so much better than being lied to and used. Because that was exactly what we’d done. We’d lied and used her. Even Sphinx had been no better, for all that she’d sworn to protect Selene. And while we’d had our reasons—good ones—the fact remained that Selene was more than entitled to push us away.

  I shoved aside my morose thoughts and joined the others next to the displays. “We’ll go with our previous plan then?” I asked.

  Brendan nodded and passed an agitated hand through his hair. “It’s our best chance. Come on. We’re wasting time. Let’s board the chimeras. Flight Lieutenant Cavallero, you’re in charge of setting us up for launch remotely.”

  “Yes, Your Highness,” August answered.

  It was no coincidence that both August and Brendan had chosen to refer to one another in such an official way. This was a mission, the most difficult one we’d ever participate it. We had to be as professional about it as possible.

  Today, we weren’t just a pack, a brood, or a team. We were an army, a task force of nine people all working for the same goal. Nothing—not even each other—would stand in our way.

  One by one, we entered our respective chimeras. Sphinx looked lonely and abandoned because she didn’t have a tamer, but she could use her primary systems without Selene, so she was going anyway. If we succeeded in extracting Selene, Sphinx’s presence would be essential. She could easily whisk our captive lover away while we fought off potential waves of attackers. We’d also be relying on her to guide us to Selene. Her bond to our lover was cracked, but frayed threads of it still remained, and it was our best chance to track her down instead of losing ourselves in the immensity of the quasar.

  As Brendan had instructed him, August opened the launch pad of the Venom. The void of space was ahead of us, with Jupiter looming to our right, a silent monolith barren of all life.

&
nbsp; The area seemed innocuous and not at all like a place that would secretly hide a transport point to the Apsid Quasar. But appearances could be deceiving, and there was no one who knew that better than I did.

  When Cerberus launched himself into space, a mix of clarity, anger and determination flooded my veins. We might not be near Mercury now, but it was still so easy to remember our last battle, when we’d almost lost August to the viciousness of the sun. This time, it was so much worse, because back then, we’d still been together as a unit. This time, we’d been torn apart. But we would fix it, no matter what we had to do.

  Usually, Brendan led our missions, but today, August took his place. Brendan was right behind him, with Pollux, Sphinx and I following. August had insisted on this formation, because he really did believe the information Penelope’s files had provided on his background as an apsid. If something went wrong, he’d likely suffer less damage from a full blast of an apsid’s attack than we would.

  We’d all tried to tell him that if the shields around the chimeras faltered, his nature wouldn’t make a difference. We’d been unable to dissuade him, and in the end, Brendan had decided to go along with his idea. For all we knew, August might be right. It couldn’t hurt to have an additional layer of protection, even if it wasn’t something one hundred percent reliable.

  We swept right through the point of entrance to the quasar. After all the fuss made to protect the area, actually going inside was pretty anticlimactic. One moment, we were in our galaxy, and the next, the space around us shifted unnaturally, turning into a different reality. I took the transfer in stride, more concerned with the possibility of running into guards. If any apsids were nearby, though, I couldn’t see them. The displays of the Cerberus lit up with the impossible heat he had to withstand, the accretion disk of the quasar attempting to force us out. He took the assault without protest, but he didn’t hide his concern. “It’s going to be difficult to track down any opponent here, pup.”

  “We already knew that was going to happen. I’m more troubled by the absence of the patrols. Just how much will we stand out?”

  “Too much,” Brendan replied through the coms. “We’ll just have to use what time we have at our disposal to the best of our ability.”

  “The temperature isn’t excessive,” August offered. “For the moment, I’d say we’re doing fine. Sphinx, which way?”

  Sphinx transmitted the general coordinates she was getting into each of our systems. “It’s very difficult to be accurate,” she said. “The anomalies of the quasar are throwing off all our sensors. But she’s here, in the singularity. I can feel it.”

  In essence, the quasar was a gigantic trap for anyone who was not an apsid. The first layer of protection was the accretion disk, a corona of diffuse material with a temperature that rivaled that of the sun. Assuming we passed through that, we’d reach the supermassive black hole in the center of the quasar. In theory, if we went there, we would never be able to make our way out. The gravitational pull of the event horizon kept anything from escaping, even light.

  But the Tartarus diamond cores of the chimeras were fueled by tachyons. Studies indicated that such technology could circumvent black holes, to a certain extent, which was what had given The Grand Judiciary the courage to make an incursion here in the first place. That attack had ended in failure. We wouldn’t be as arrogant or ambitious. We’d get in, grab Selene, and flee before the apsids could catch us.

  That brought us to our final problem. The very center of a black hole contained a huge mass compressed in an infinitely small space, where the laws of physics as we knew them didn’t apply and time didn’t obey any rules. Theorists speculated that one such singularity was the home world of the apsids, and the unique nature of its energies had allowed this species to develop the way it had. But a human being had never set foot on a singularity so we didn’t actually know how we’d be able to infiltrate the apsid’s world, if it was even possible.

  Even so, we kept going, following Sphinx’s instructions. Time passed by sluggishly. Moving along the flow of the accretion disk of the quasar felt odd, as if we were both fighting against a current, and obeying it. A bad headache started throbbing at the back of my skull. Cerberus kept in check, my always watchful guardian, but it was still irritating.

  At one point, Brendan reached out to us through the coms again. “Be careful,” he warned. “I think the time distortion anomalies are hurting us.”

  “Yeah, I could tell,” Pollux replied. “Don’t worry about us, Brendan. We’ll be fine. Just keep your eye on the prize.”

  “Selene,” Brendan said.

  “Selene,” I repeated.

  “Selene,” Pollux and August echoed us.

  Carrying the name of my beautiful Terran on my lips and her image in my heart, I guided the Cerberus forward, into enemy territory.

  I didn’t scream when the forces of the event horizon finally pulled me inside the black hole. My heart was racing and I knew there was always a chance the chimera’s systems wouldn’t be powerful enough to withstand the power of the void. But I was a chimera tamer, so I embraced the danger and the pain. I clutched Cerberus’s controls as tightly as I could, forcing my strength into him, becoming one with the beast.

  One thing most people didn’t understand was that chimeras didn’t choose their tamers at random. Their decision relied heavily on the mental stability of the chosen pilot, but also on the interior power of their souls.

  I wasn’t known for being the most stable person in the world, but I compensated for that through sheer determination. The fires of Cerberus’s diamantine core burned brighter and we fought our way through the immense forces of the black hole, desperate to get to Selene.

  In front of me, I could catch a glimpse of the others making similar efforts. A crimson aura pulsed around Brendan’s Typhon, occasionally shifting to green and blue. Scylla’s heads and tentacles snapped at the energy currents, as if she was trying to consume the universe itself. But it was August’s Charybdis that truly stood out. The glow of her metal shell was so bright it rivaled the power of the quasar. He was channeling his apsid abilities, perhaps in an attempt to make the trip a little easier for all of us.

  For the most part, it worked, but Sphinx was still having a little trouble. She remained behind me, and the effects of Selene’s absence were truly starting to show. I slowed down a little, having already decided how to help her. “Grab my tail,” Cerberus told her.

  She complied without hesitation, using me to compensate for her inability to keep up. She’d have normally found such a thing stupid or humiliating, but right now, none of us cared about such trivialities.

  I didn’t know how long it took us to penetrate the external defenses of the apsids. Every second extended into an age and I felt like I was suffocating or dying, even if I didn’t experience any pain. It was when we finally emerged into the core of the black hole that we ran into the most serious obstacle.

  Our hopes of trying to be inconspicuous had been for naught because the apsids did indeed have patrols. There were already fifteen crystallized apsid units waiting for us, a miniature army we couldn’t hope to beat with five chimeras.

  I’d fought apsids before, but those teams hadn’t been as large, and we’d been on our own turf, not theirs. Still, some experience was better than nothing and it helped me remain calm.

  Unlike us Chimera Warriors, apsids didn’t resort to metal to build their army units. When together, several apsids had the ability to concentrate pure photonic energy to create massive organisms that mimicked our strongest war machines. Crystallized apsid units didn’t have a set shape. They could look like humanoid beings, animals, or even amorphous space clouds. But one thing they all had in common was that they were large accumulations of energy with three or more cores of mass—the ‘pilots’.

  Originally, this had made them unbeatable, since the old-fashioned weaponry ancient Terrans had used couldn’t fight off such things. But chimeras fed on energy and fire, so
they could disrupt the currents of tachyons and photons that allowed apsids to fight together.

  The problem was that the strategy didn’t really work here in the Apsid Quasar. We were surrounded by energy they could use to feed, and no matter how much power Cerberus and the others consumed, the apsids could still reinforce themselves with more.

  Between that and the high number of units, we were vastly outnumbered. That was why I was so surprised when, instead of attacking outright, one of the units flew up to us and spoke out. “You don’t belong here, tamer. Leave now and your life may still be spared.”

  The unit looked a little like a drone, perfectly circular in shape, limbless and headless. It did have eyes and a mouth, but they were located in its midsection. Wondering if those areas could be considered weak points, I prepared myself for the unavoidable moment when we’d have to launch ourselves into battle.

  “I’m afraid we can’t comply,” Brendan said, just like I’d expected. “You’ve taken a member of our unit, and until you’ve returned her, we can’t ever go back.”

  “Selene Renard belongs here now,” the apsid replied. “She has accepted it. You have no other choice but to do the same thing.”

  “Never,” I snarled.

  The Cerberus’s claws lit up with tachyon fire, responding to my anguish and fury. In front of me, Brendan, August and Pollux were already in motion, each of them targeting different groups of apsids. With a savage cry, Sphinx freed herself from my tail and joined in.

  The twisted reality of the black hole flared with the potency of clashing energy particles. The Tartarus diamond core of my chimera reached into me, threatening to drain me dry, to turn me into a shell of my former self, to consume me just like we’d consumed the lives of the Terrans in the rebel settlement.

  But if we’d been willing to sacrifice those innocents to save Charybdis, we were willing to go even further for Selene. As the wolf emerged more and more from inside me and I felt my mind start to crack, I hoped and prayed that I got to Selene before I forgot who and what I was.