by Sarah Hawke
Or did I?
Grinning, I closed my eyes and focused on controlling my clairvoyant abilities. I had seen how Raxyl and Shandris could enhance their powers through the Valkyrie. He could practically turn his fighter invisible, and her metabolic link had been so powerful she had mentally downloaded piloting techniques straight from my brain. There had to be some way I could augment my abilities too—
It happened so quickly I almost thought I’d suffered a stroke. The entire galaxy seemed to screech to a halt around me; I could actually turn my head and watch the green plasma bolts streak right past the canopy. But unlike my normal “time freeze” or whatever the hell this was, I had control over more than just my body. I could move the Valkyrie right along with me, and I promptly fired the thrusters and pushed even harder for the hangar door…
I barely made it. Time returned to normal the instant I slipped through the narrow opening, and I slammed on the reverse thrusters in a frantic attempt to land without smashing into anything. The grav restraints on my seat fired, the landing gear skidded across the deck, and I clenched my teeth and braced myself for the worst. But the Valkyrie did eventually come to a halt, and when I leaned up to risk a glance outside I didn’t even see a brigade of assault mechs waiting to blast me. Could this have actually worked? Had I finally concocted a plan that didn’t suck?
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I muttered as I popped the canopy and grabbed my pistol. As usual, disconnecting myself from the psionic interface made me nauseous, but the sensation passed quickly. Apparently I had enough adrenaline churning through my system to counter the worst of the psychic withdrawal.
“We appear to be alone,” Raxyl said, sliding out of his own Valkyrie with a pistol in hand. An anxious orange smear rippled down his scales. “Perhaps the Blades have already drawn the ship’s defenders elsewhere.”
“Maybe,” I said, hopping down to the deck and taking cover behind the landing gear. My coms still weren’t working, but at least the automated security systems hadn’t responded. Selorah must have already disabled them remotely somehow. Even the maintenance drones seemed content to ignore me. “Either way, I don’t see any point in waiting.”
“Agreed.”
We charged across the empty deck and through the exit into the ship’s wide, Tarreen-sized corridors. The path was much, much easier than I had anticipated. Mosaad and Kaveri must have already drawn away and defeated the actual guards, though I didn’t see many signs of battle. The eerily empty hallways reminded me of when Kaveri and I had boarded that Spider ship all those weeks ago. The memory didn’t exactly fill me with confidence.
If this is a trap, they have already walked into it. And you and Raxyl are the only ones left who can help them.
I kept my pistol ready as we scurried through the ship, though I was painfully aware of how thoroughly inadequate our weapons would be if I actually encountered any combat mechs or—Seraph forbid—an actual Tarreen. I couldn’t hurl objects with my mind or conjure a fancy psi-blade out of thin air, and as far as I knew Raxyl couldn’t either. Perhaps this wasn’t such a good plan after all…
The farther we moved without facing resistance, the more concerned I became. We did eventually stumble upon some trashed mechs in the corridors, though, and we followed the path of destruction to the lift and up to the main deck. I kept concentrating on my powers, hoping they might grant me another quick glimpse of insight, but they remained strangely silent until I reached the bridge.
The scene before me was almost how I’d imagined it: Mosaad and Kaveri were standing nearby, their blazing blue psi-blades extended and ready while they stared down two red-scaled, heavily-armored Baalir commandos. A third Tarreen—Admiral Ferron, presumably—was sitting in the egg-shaped command throne next to the translucent display screen that made the front of the bridge look like a giant window.
The only difference between my premonition and reality was the tall, thin human man standing calmly on the opposite side of the bridge. He was clad in a splendorous blue-gold uniform, and his trim brown beard was only just beginning to turn gray. I was reasonably certain I had never seen him before, yet he looked so eerily familiar I would have recognized him from a hundred meters away.
“Ah, there you are,” the man said, a disturbingly smug smile on his lips. “I told you he would be along shortly.”
“Cole, stay back!” Kaveri warned, the tip of her blazing psi-blade wavering between Ferron and the strange human. “You shouldn’t have come here…”
“You act as though he had a choice, my dear. I called out to him, and I knew he would answer. He was destined to answer.” The man’s smile widened. “It is good to see you…son.”
Yet again the entire fabric of reality screeched to a halt around me, but this time it had nothing to do with my psionic abilities. A tremor shuddered through my body until I had to clutch my pistol in both hands to keep from dropping it.
My father, Falric Tisarys. The man who betrayed his people. The man who tried to steal me from my mother.
The man who was supposed to be dead.
A thousand questions looped through my mind, and a thousand different emotions followed in their wake. If I didn’t know better, I would have assumed I was having another prophetic dream. None of this seemed like it could possibly be real…
“All these years, it was as if the galaxy itself was conspiring to keep us apart,” Falric said, still beaming. “You have no idea how long I’ve been looking for you. No matter how many times my operatives insisted you were dead, I refused to believe them. I always knew you were out there somewhere…and I always knew that one day we would finally be reunited.”
My throat was so parched I couldn’t have talked even if I had known what to say. Just looking at his face unlocked another trove of memories I didn’t realize I had. Voices, images, vague sensory impressions…they were the fractured, insubstantial recollections of a child. I hadn’t been in the same room as my father since I was a toddler. All my real, tangible memories of him revolved around my mother’s stories, like how he had tried to buy her silence before throwing her to the wolves…
“And I see you’ve brought your mother’s pet lizard with you as well,” Falric said. “The man who stole you away from me—the man who brought you to this wretched backwater and denied you the glory of your birthright.” My father’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “You have no idea how much I have wanted to meet you.”
Raxyl’s scales turned completely yellow, and his body was frozen so stiff he seemed petrified. I had never seen him stricken so speechless…or so obviously afraid.
“You will never understand how much I have missed you, Cole,” Falric went on, his eyes slowly shifting back to me. “If your mother and this wretch hadn’t stolen you away from me, so many things would have played out differently.”
“How touching,” Admiral Ferron sneered. “The dreega rats are finally reunited.”
I turned to face the enormous red-scaled Tarreen. Never before had a four-hundred kilo Baalir seemed like the least threatening figure in the room…
“I came here the instant I learned the truth,” Falric went on as if he hadn’t heard the admiral speak. “I spent the entire journey dreaming of all the ways you and I can finally rebuild what we have lost.”
“What trickery is this?” Mosaad asked breathlessly. “I saw you fall. I saw you die!”
Falric looked at the other man as if he had only just remembered they had an audience. “You saw exactly what you wanted to see, as always.”
Mosaad shook his head. “But the official reports…the Emperor-Regent…”
“Have all served their purpose. Make no mistake: the Emperor of the Old Dominion died that day on Keledon.” Falric smiled as he glanced back to me. “But the Tisarys dynasty is very much alive.”
“Alive, and finally in its proper place as a Convectorate vassal,” Admiral Ferron sneered. He flicked his claw towards his Baalir bodyguards. “Enough of this. Take them to the brig while ou
r drones neutralize the last of their fighters. If they resist, subdue them.”
The sight of the two hulking commandos aiming their rifles was enough to snap me out of my momentary paralysis. I reflexively grabbed Raxyl and pushed us both behind the nearest console for cover, but the Baalir were completely fixated upon the two Blades of the Seraph…for good reason.
Despite their stunned surprise at my father’s appearance, Mosaad and Kaveri leapt into action with calm, coordinated, almost machine-like precision. They rolled in opposite directions as the Baalir unleashed a barrage of stun blasts, and when they bounced back to their feet they simultaneously reached out and telekinetically snapped the enemy rifles in half. These particular soldiers obviously weren’t used to fighting Seraphim; they glanced down at their broken weapons, confused and staggered in equal measure, and by the time they recovered it was already too late. Mosaad and Kaveri lunged forward and cut the Tarreen down with a flurry of searing slashes and telekinetic thrusts.
Ten seconds later, it was all over.
“You honestly thought your men could handle two Blades of the Seraph?” Falric snickered as he arched a dark eyebrow at the smoldering red corpses. “You really have grown overconfident.”
Ferron, orange eyes gaping wide, slapped his hand against the com on his chair. “Where are the rest of the commandos? Get them up here now!”
When the com remained silent, Mosaad’s eyes narrowed like he’d just had an epiphany. “There’s no one left on this ship who can hear you.”
“What?” Ferron snapped. “I have twenty commandos and a hundred mechs just waiting to—”
“There aren’t any other sentient minds within a half a kilometer,” Mosaad interrupted. He lowered his blade and stepped over the corpse at his feet. “Falric must have already ordered them to move onto the station. Even he couldn’t conceal a whole crew from two telepaths.”
“Impossible,” Ferron hissed as he flicked an unsheathed claw at his accomplice. “What is the meaning of this?”
“The meaning, Admiral, is that you no longer serve a purpose,” Falric said. He flashed a dark smile at Mosaad. “Feel free to kill him if you wish. That is what you have been waiting for all this time, isn’t it? A chance for revenge against your mortal enemy?”
Ferron continued glaring at my father, his tail frozen in midair. I wasn’t an expert on Tarreen body language by any stretch of the imagination, but “stunned silence” seemed like a fairly universal reaction.
“Dreega wretch!” he snarled. “I warned the Hierarchy not to trust you. I told the Intelligence Ministry to keep you on a tighter leash!”
“What are you waiting for, Wynn?” Falric asked, still looking at Mosaad. “Don’t you want to avenge all your friends at Talasea and Keledon? He’s the one who led those fleets. He’s the one who ordered the massacres.”
“You will not ignore me!” Ferron roared in impotent rage. His maw frothed with wisps of flame, and he reared back in preparation to scorch the entire bridge—
At which point Mosaad turned and hurled his psi-blade like a dagger. The glowing blue weapon stabbed through the Tarreen’s shoulder and bowled him back into his command throne. Ferron roared again even as the blade dissipated like a wisp of smoke, but when he tried to stand Mosaad smashed the Baalir with a wave of telekinetic force and sent him skittering unceremoniously across the deck. He crashed into the wall so hard an entire console crumbled on top of him, pinning him flat.
Falric chuckled and clapped his hands together. “Oh, I bet that felt good, didn’t it. You can thank me for the opportunity later.”
I stood, glancing between the buried Tarreen and my father. “What the hell is going on?”
Falric’s smile widened as he shifted his attention back to me. “When we return to Keledon, there will be a grand celebration for us, Cole. Citizens from across the Core will come to see the triumphant return of their sovereign and the new crown prince. They will celebrate the end of a long darkness as the light of the Seraphim returns to the Crystal Throne at long last.”
I shook my head, more confused than ever. If I didn’t know better I would have assumed this was some kind of warped, twisted dream…
“There will be some resistance at first, of course,” Falric went on. “The Regent, the Council…but we needn’t worry about them. Once the people know the truth—once the people have heard our story—they will be bow at our feet and beg us to lead them into the future.”
“You’re insane,” I rasped.
Falric snorted softly. “On the contrary, I have never seen the future more clearly than this moment. Father and son, reunited at last…”
Mosaad glanced back to Ferron as he shaped a new psi-blade in his outstretched hand. “No,” he whispered. “You can’t possibly be behind all of this…”
Kaveri shook her head, her tendrils twitching nervously as she hoisted her sword defensively in front of her. “Master, I don’t understand. What is going on?”
“He has finally realized how badly he underestimated me,” Falric said, acknowledging her presence for the first time. “I tried to warn you, Wynn. I tried to explain my vision of the future, but you refused to listen. Your pride wouldn’t allow you to admit that we couldn’t defeat the Convectorate by force. We needed to be clever. We needed to be patient. We needed to bide our time and destroy them from the inside.”
Falric flicked his arm to the viewport. “I have watched and waited as our enemies grew complacent. I have fractured delicate alliances and stoked old resentments. I have done exactly what the Blades and the military never could—I have defeated our greatest enemy without firing a single shot!”
Mosaad glanced down to the dead commandos at his feet. “You’re in control…and the Tarreen don’t even know it.”
“You actually believed I wanted to hand the Dominion over to the Convectorate, didn’t you? You thought I would willingly serve disgusting Tarreen wretches like Ferron?” Falric scoffed contemptuously and turned back to me. “I’ve no doubt that he and the lizard have tried to poison your mind with stories of my alleged ‘betrayal’ at Talasea and Keledon. But the sooner you see through their lies, the better.”
He took another step towards me. “You and I…we aren’t like the others, Cole. We have clarity—we have vision. The Seraph has granted us the power to see the very fabric of the cosmos, and we can use that knowledge to mold it to our whim.” He gestured to Mosaad and Kaveri. “The Blades of old may have understood this, but Mosaad and his brethren have never been more than thugs. For generations now they have squandered their great power. That is why they needed to be destroyed—that is why I needed to build something new.”
My hands had started trembling at my side. “I don’t understand.”
“All those psychic adepts rounded up and stolen from their homes,” Mosaad murmured. “All the rumors about the psychogenetic engineering and secret training facilities…”
Kaveri shook her head. “Master?”
The color slowly drained from Mosaad’s face. “The Widow,” he rasped. “He is the Widow.”
Falric chuckled. “Not precisely, though she is the reason I’m here. Everything changed the moment Spider Zero saw your face on that transport, Cole. The Widow felt her agent’s surprise from half a galaxy away, and I left everything behind to come here and reunite with my son.”
A lump formed in my throat when I thought about Selorah. She hadn’t told us much about the Widow; apparently her mistress was nearly as secretive with her servants as she was with everything else. But if the Widow was working with my father somehow…
“For almost a decade now the Widow has been helping me assemble a new army of pure, untainted human Seraphim,” Falric said. “Our Spiders are embedded in the Intelligence Ministry, the Defense Ministry, and a dozen other strategic places across the Convectorate. They are dormant for now, but soon I will call them to their true purpose…and the galaxy will once again tremble before the might of the Crystal Throne.”
“You�
�re insane,” Mosaad breathed. “There’s no way you could possibly—”
“Infiltrated the Convectorate?” Falric asked. “Manipulated the Hierarchs and the Conclave of Ministers? Have you ever listened to a word I’ve said, Wynn? Or is that addled warrior’s brain of yours incapable of understanding that there is more than one way to win a war?”
My father scoffed and turned back to me. “Cole, listen to me. I realize this isn’t what you were expecting, and I’m sure it must all seem very strange. But I promise that you have absolutely nothing to fear from me. Neither do your friends out there. I don’t want to harm them—on the contrary, I want to save them. They will return to Keledon with us and begin their new lives as true Seraphim.”
My eyes flicked over to the viewport and the battle still raging outside. Only a few blips remained on the tac-holo; every other Valkyrie had already been disabled. My stomach sank when I thought about all the other pilots—all of my pilots—floating helplessly in the void…
“They’re not going anywhere,” I whispered. “They’ve spent their whole lives being chased and terrorized by the Spiders.”
“My Spiders were only trying to protect them,” Falric said. “The galaxy is filled with ungrateful alien filth, and our people are easy targets without the old Dominion to protect them. But thanks to you, your friends will finally have a chance to reach their true potential. They will be trained by a real Wing of the Seraph.”
I swallowed and glared at him. “They have already been taught be a real Wing of the Seraph.”
“Ah, yes, the lizard,” Falric scoffed, shifting his eyes back to Raxyl. Thoughtful black streaks had appeared all across his scales amidst the fearful yellow. “No wonder they’re still amateurs. He was one of your mother’s many pity projects, an alien with a spark of psionic ability who fancied himself Seraphim.”