by Day Leitao
Dess shook his head. “Without the agreement? That would be stupid. If they’re mistaken we can clear that up.” He blinked while looking at his terminal. “That’s… a huge ship. Military class or transport, like for large machinery or something. We’ll need to contact it.”
Saytera then felt even more cold and dreaded that her hunch had been right.
Larissa checked her terminal. “On it. No way to know their frequency, so I guess I’ll just throw a request for communication out there. Sapphirlune should have better luck than us, since they’re closer.” She bit her lip, then was thoughtful. “It could also be… someone coming to attack us. Here. I mean, we’re the ones here stirring trouble.”
Dess crossed his arms. “Maybe. But this is a pretty expensive facility, and not a lot of people know how to get a living complex up and running on an inhospitable moon.”
Saytera disagreed. “They don’t need to destroy everything and shoot us from space, just get close, get in, and fight us.” She then had another thought. “But then we still have our canon.”
Dess was thoughtful. “A large spaceship wouldn’t be able to approach, but if they are a fighter-carrier, they could send a large fleet to overwhelm us. That’s possible. If it is any kind of military ship, we’d better leave.”
Nadia looked down. “I think we’re safe here.” She turned to Larissa. “You know that garbled communication we got earlier?”
Larissa nodded.
Nadia sighed. “It was my mother. She was asking me to stay where I am.”
“So that’s why you were worried.” Saytera then realized she might have sounded harsher than she’d meant.
The girl looked down. “Maybe.”
“We have no reason to assume those visitors have anything to do with your parents, though,” Larissa said.
Saytera felt her heart pounding and a feeling like a cloud surrounding her.
The communicator beeped. Nadia flipped it. “Yes?”
“Hey.” At this point Saytera recognized Sam’s voice. Weird to think he’d been the one sent to rescue Dess. Weird to think about that time. He continued, “Abby and Carmon went for a visual.”
Dess approached the mic. “Call them back. Right now. Don’t send fighters without communication.”
“Spare your words,” Sam said on the comm. His words were heavy. He continued, “They were at a safe distance. They were contacting them and had the universal peace signal on. It was meant to be safe. They went. They went.” His voice became frantic. “I didn’t send them. It was meant to be safe.”
Nadia shot an annoyed look at Dess and then took the mic. “Sam. We trust you. Whatever happened, we know it wasn’t your fault.”
Sam’s tone didn’t change. “I could have stopped them. Called them back. I thought it was safe. I swear I did!”
“We know. We all do,” Nadia said. “What happened?”
“They… didn’t come back.” He sounded as if he was crying. “But they sent an image. I’m sending it to you. Tell me what you think.”
Nadia took a deep breath. “They were heros, Sam. They died as heroes. It’s all a soldier can ask for. It’s what we were trained for.”
“Look at the image and then call me back.” His voice was dry.
When the communicator was turned off, Nadia broke into sobbing, her body shaking. They must have been people she knew. Larissa rubbed her back and tried to calm her down. Dess was serious and troubled.
Nadia looked at them. “Abby, we were best friends. We drifted apart, but we used to be best friends. I never got to say goodbye. I never got to say I was sorry.”
Saytera didn’t know what to say or what to do. Even her, who had never even heard of Abby until then, couldn’t help from feeling sad.
“Let’s check the image she gave her life for,” Larissa said.
It was a blurry blob. A long blurry blob with a large bulge underneath it. Very much like the diagrams of the shield destroyer.
Nadia wiped her eyes. “I guess Mainland never changed their plans.”
“No,” Larissa said. “The truce is still up. This has never been voted. It’s illegal. Mainlanders would never approve of that.”
Horrible realization hit Saytera. “But it doesn’t matter. All they need is a horrible destruction of Sapphirlune to blame Mainland. That’s all they need.”
“No!” Larissa protested. “We can prove we never wanted this! We can prove it!”
Her friend’s hope was commendable, but there was no point. “How are we going to prove it? To whom? If they close our gates and make decisions outside their systems, will they send anyone to hear our story?”
Dess turned the communicator on. “Sam.”
“Yes.”
“Whoever decided to send them for a visual might have saved thousands of lives. This will give us time. It’s a shieldbreaker. Get all the fighters you can. We need to stop it from reaching Sapphirlune.”
There was silence for a moment. “Are you sure they are going to attack?”
“They already attacked, right? But we can try to communicate with them. Maybe they’ll go away.”
“I’ll keep trying to reach them,” Larissa said.
“I’m also coming,” Dess said.
“Me too,” Nadia added. “Get everything organized.
Larissa pressed a button and a siren blared in the room. She cringed. She pressed it again and it stopped. “To wake up the others.”
Nadia was up. “I’ll get on a fighter and I’ll blast them. I’ll blast them.”
Saytera understood the girl’s anger and need for revenge, but she wasn’t sure it was the best way to solve the issue. “It’s heavily armored. You guys will be like flies on a whale.”
“Mosquitos,” Nadia said. “Mean mosquitos with ugly bites.”
Dess turned to Saytera. “I know what you’re saying, but we can’t just stand and do nothing. I am the best pilot in Sapphirlune. Nadia is probably the second best. We trained for this. If there’s one chance in a thousand, we have to do it.”
Saytera tried to come up with another solution. “We could maybe evacuate them. Get them to Mainland.”
Nadia shook her head. “No transports and no time.”
Marcus and Sylvia came to the room. “What’s happening?”
“Somebody is sending a shieldbreaker to Sapphirlune,” Dess said. “We think they are going to attack. The Lunars are going to take all the fighters they can and try to bring it down.”
He looked confused. “Isn’t it like… humongous?”
Dess shrugged. “We need to try to do something. We have just a couple hours. You guys can stay here. Try to contact people, comunicate. Marcus, if the worst happens, you take our transport and take them to Mainland.”
“I want to help.”
“Help me then. Live a long life. Be happy. Take Saytera to safety.”
It was then that she realized Dess was walking away from her. Walking straight into death.
Marcus was silent.
Dess approached Saytera and took her hands. He had tears in his eyes. “I’m so sorry our time was so short.” He took a deep breath. “There are… so many words I wish I could say, so many stories I wanted to hear, wanted to tell.”
She looked in his eyes. “Stop. That’s foolish. There’s nothing glorious in dying in vain.”
Dess shook his head. “I’m not going to die in vain. I’m going to save the lives of the people on that moon.”
“You need a decent plan, then,”Saytera pleaded.
“We don’t have time.”
And if Saytera didn’t come up with a better idea in mere seconds he’d walk away from her forever. She closed her eyes, trying to find her answer, feeling darkness settling in her. Darkness. “Dess, take me. If I can get into that ship, I could disable it.”
“No, Saytera. I won’t have you risking your life.”
“Right? Cause it would suck to see me die. And yet you want me to do the same for you. You want me to see you dying,
and yet you know damn well the pain of seeing someone you care for dying. Or the fear of that. That’s not fair, Dess.”
He sighed. “You want to die with me?”
“I want to live with you. And make sure that thing doesn’t shoot a helpless city. But I want to do it right, not just for a blaze of glory.”
He was thoughtful. “Very well. I’ll get you on that ship.” He then turned to the others. “Change of plans. I’ll try to get into the shieldbreaker with Saytera. We’ll disable it from the inside. We’ll just need cover. I’ll take Tarel’s ship. Those of you who want to join the Sapphirlune defenses, come with me. We need to leave the other ship for whoever remains in case they need to go back to Mainland.”
“I’ll stay,” Marcus said. “I’ll be here making sure this facility is safe for you, my friend. And if they come and try to take it, I won’t let them.”
Dess shook his head. “I’d rather you just ran, but at this point, I don’t even know.”
Larissa said, “I’ll be here trying to contact everyone I can. If this is a terrible misunderstanding, we’ll get someone from Mainland to contact them.”
Christina sat beside her. “I’ll help.”
It was in a daze that Saytera embarked on Dess’s ship, actually, Tarel’s ship, on their way to Sapphirlune, without even a proper goodbye to her friends. Friends she had no idea she’d ever see again. Perhaps her life was all about leaving without saying goodbye.
There was something bothering Saytera. “If they can shoot a ship when it’s way out of range, how are we going to reach it?”
Dess sighed. “I think they sent a fighter. We’ll be in large numbers. Hopefully they won’t be able to reach all of us at once.”
“We could fly around them and get them from all directions,” Nadia added.
Saytera looked down. That still meant some of them would die. Die for a small shot of defeating that monster. They could instead try to fly to Mainland and save themselves. And then leave everyone in Sapphirlune to die. No, that wouldn’t work.
When they landed on the military port in Sapphirlune, Saytera remained on the ship, trying to calm down, find that strength within her, or perhaps just tell herself that this would be possible. Dess had chosen to go on Tarel’s ship due to its powerful shield and because it fit two. Fighter ships were meant for only one. Dess would be weaponless, though.
They took off not long after, together with so many other ships, then split in two directions.
Dess stared straight ahead and asked, “Do you… need to be inside a place to… turn off its energy?”
“I don’t know. I think I need to be close enough. I don’t know how it works or if I’ll succeed.”
He took her hand. “We’ll die together, then. It’s not the way I would have chosen it, but I…” He sighed. “Understand.”
Saytera nodded, getting lost in her thoughts. Strange to be facing death looming so close, with only uncertainty, a poorly-formed plan and the fear that their failure could cause dreadful destruction and pain.
Strange to think that they’d been pawns for a plan that had nothing to do with freedom, that they’d been involved in a war that was just make-belief to support greater interests, and that they’d bought into all that. Saytera got into it late, but still, she’d bought it. Attacking and winning had never been a path for victory.
34
Death
Time had no meaning. Had it been minutes, seconds, hours? The shield destroyer loomed before then, far away. On the way, though, small black fighters, some twenty. Their group had only ten ships. Saytera hoped they would be enough.
“Hold tight,” Dess said.
She didn’t need to, strapped as she was to the seat in all directions, even if artificial gravity should keep her seated.
A fighter was straight ahead of them. Dess dove just before they were shot and then flew up to be right beside the fighter. It turned, but too slowly, and got hit. Dess flew above it to escape the debris. Whatever instructions he was getting were coming to his headset. She could feel it in his face, his demeanour, the feel of death. Some of their companions must have been shot, and maybe the fleet on the other side wasn’t faring as well as they were.
Dess’s strategy was to dodge. Funny how he could do it just at the right moment, sometimes causing the enemy’s shot to hit another enemy. It was like a strange dance of death.
After a while, the fighters retreated. Dess exhaled, seeming relieved. “They quit.”
Saytera just nodded, more on edge than before. Their enemies disappeared in the distance.
Dess then spoke on the mic, “I’m ready to advance, just give me cover.”
The huge destroyer was turning and facing them now. Saytera had an ominous feeling. “Dess, they’re gonna shoot.”
“No worries, I’ll dodge.”
But the energy coming from the destroyer wasn’t a ray or a projectile, it was like a circular wave of yellow energy. Fire was life. And fire was death. A circle of death advancing on them too quickly for them to escape. Saytera then realized the futility of their endeavor, perhaps the futility of her idea. Dess would never even have the chance to get anywhere remotely close to that monster.
The same power that could destroy a city’s strong shield could also destroy an entire fleet. Perhaps they were mosquitoes, but they’d never get a chance to bite. Not even a fair chance to fight.
Milliseconds can sometimes stretch in an eternity. Saytera accepted death. The end of this physical life. The quenching of her fire. It wasn’t the end, but freedom, transformation. No need to mourn. Except that it wasn’t the right time. She glanced at Dess, not scared or angry, but in silent acknowledgement. They would still be together. What hurt was the pain they’d leave behind. Everything had been useless.
Perhaps everything was useless. Even the brightest star would someday fade. It didn’t mean it didn’t exist. They just existed in a precise moment in time. The four dimensions of existence, of matter.
Saytera embraced darkness. No, she was darkness. She could create darkness. In that moment in time, nothing existed but darkness—and death. One and the same, finishing the cycle of that horrible ray, that horrible destroyer.
Saytera opened her eyes, trembling. The ray coming to them was gone. The lights on their display had faded. Even the artificial gravity on the ship was gone, Saytera still sitting just because she’d been too well strapped in.
“That was you,” Dess whispered.
“Kind of.” Saytera wasn’t sure how to explain it. It wasn’t exactly her, but something greater she had connected to. The great ocean of life. It’s just that darkness and death were also part of it.
He unstrapped himself and hugged her. “I’m sorry I ever considered leaving you behind.”
Saytera stared at the shieldbreaker, dark for now, but surely not forever. “We haven’t won yet.”
Dess laughed. “We haven’t died yet, so I’ll take it as a win.”
After a few seconds, the instruments were back on. Dess took the mic. “There’s a power failure on the destroyer. We don’t know how long it will last. All our forces need to approach it and hit their weapons. Break that canon. If we can, we shall board it and take the crew hostage.”
“I thought you weren’t leading this,” Saytera said.
“They don’t know there’s a power outage, right?” He smiled. “You’re brilliant.”
“More like dark.”
Dess shook his head.
There was something about what she’d just done giving her a nauseous feeling. Perhaps it was the realization of the extent of her power. Perhaps it was a lingering feeling of connecting with darkness and death. Then, maybe it was just that she’d felt death staring at her, touching her, and for a moment, had been ready to let it take her, until she realized she could be death, too.
They stood behind while the fleet shot the canon. Saytera wasn’t sure if the damage would do much. But then, she had another, odd feeling, that they had nothing mor
e to fear from that shieldbreaker, as if its light had gone out.
The fleet proceeded to the ship’s dock and Dess followed them. Its entrance was an opening right above its lower bulge. When they were almost getting there, he heard something, got serious, then turned to Saytera. “Maybe we don’t need to go.”
“Tell me what’s happening.”
Dess sighed. “Some things don’t matter, Saytera. We won. We saved a city. That’s what matters.”
“So you’re just going to hide it from me?”
“It’s not hiding. It’s just… Why worry?”
“Dess, I want to know what’s happening, or it will be hard to trust you. Don’t make me crazy wondering what I did.”
He closed his eyes. “There are some… dead people. In the docks. In their fighters. I mean, we don’t know what caused it. It could be dangerous going there.”
The information was chilling. Death. So she’d really connected with it. She stared at Dess. “You know what killed them. You know there’s no danger.”
“We can’t really tell them, can we? They’ll think there might be some sort of radiation, or maybe a malfunctioning of that energy blast. That’s actually good. People will probably stop manufacturing those shieldbreakers.”
“We need to finish destroying that thing from the inside, remember? To leave just scrap metal and make sure they won’t try shooting at Sapphirlune city again. Also,” she looked down, “I want to see it.”
It wasn’t a morbid curiosity. Maybe it was.
Dess clicked on the comm and spoke on it. “I’m still coming in. I want to make sure thor weapons are no longer functioning.”
“It could be dangerous,” a girl’s voice came from the system.
“Our suits will protect us,” Dess replied.
“Dess, there are pilots there,” the girl’s voice continued. “On their fighters. Wearing suits. They’re all dead. We don’t know what happened there.”
“Their energy ray hit them back, of course.” He looked at Saytera and winked. His levity was a little unnerving, but he probably wanted to make sure nobody suspected what had really happened. He continued, “We’re not going to use it. I’ll go in and destroy what needs to be destroyed. Everyone else’s obviously free to do otherwise.”