“Seriously? You did your job, so it’s not your fault? That’s what you’re going with?”
“We trusted generations of training and precedent, kid. It might not sound like much, but let me ask you somethin’: how’d it go for you, playing hero all on your own out here, with no damn clue what you were doing?”
Nate opened his mouth to spit back that it’d gone a hell of a lot better than anything they’d tried—that he’d survived more than Jaeger could shake a condescending stick at. That he’d bonded with the Excalibur, dammit. Battled troglodans. Found the Beacon.
But what had any of it accomplished in the end?
He’d stumbled through it all, through failure after failure. He’d survived. But that was the sum total of it. He’d survived. He’d tapped into powers he never could’ve imagined. And he’d saved no one.
Most of the students he’d broken out of the brig had been promptly recaptured. Iveera, he had a strong feeling, might well have managed on her own if he hadn’t happened along. And his friends? He didn’t have to look any further than the somber gathering past the trees or the sick ache in his heart to remember how well he’d protected them.
When Jaeger finally spoke again, his voice was almost gentle.
“Aliens don’t fall from the sky, Nate. It doesn’t happen. Never has. Not until now.” He looked out at the remnants of the park evacuee traffic, up to the small shape of the last retreating trog ship. “So no, I’m not sorry that we did our jobs the best we knew how, but I’m also not an ignorant tit.”
He looked back to Nate. “It’s a new world now. New rules. And for what it’s worth, I’m pissed too. More pissed than you’d probably believe. Truth is, I don’t think I would’ve done much differently, had I been in your place. But none of that matters anymore.”
Nate just stared at him, wondering how he could stand there and dole it out like that. Eighty-thousand innocent lives lost in the shuffle for this brave new world, and none of that fucking mattered anymore? He wanted to shout. To scream. To demand answers. But part of him—maybe the part that was merely anticipating what Jaeger would say, or maybe another part entirely—already had the only answer that mattered.
They were dead. And there was no making it right.
“The only question now,” Jaeger pressed slowly on, almost as if he’d been reading Nate’s mind, “is do you wanna stand here bitching about how we fell flat the first time, or do you wanna help us make sure it never happens again?”
Nate scowled. “What is this, some kind of soldier pep talk?”
“This is me doing the job, kid. All my people want is—”
Not to be the bearer of ill-timed news, Ex broke in, as Jaeger continued on with something about a chance to talk, but it appears Ser Katanaga has found our ship.
Nate glanced inadvertently to the sky.
Not here, Nathaniel. Near Atlantis. The ship has been sequestered in e-dim aboard Ser Groshna’s Crimson Tide these past weeks. That was why I couldn’t find it. Captured, apparently, alongside the Merlin. The ship is quite distressed about the entire episode.
Nate was trying to process how a ship could even be distressed when Jaeger’s voice cut into his thoughts.
“—didn’t hear a word I just said, did you?”
“Sorry,” Nate said, before he could remember he really wasn’t. “I was thinking.”
Thinking about how his precious time was almost up.
Jaeger gave a dubious grunt, clearly unconvinced, but deciding to move on anyway. “I’ll ask again, then. Come debrief at UN HQ. No black bags. No dark holes off the edge of the map. Just a talk. Preferably with your gorgon friend, if she’s available.”
She will be presently. She is on the move. Quite quickly.
A trickle of panic burbled up in Nate’s chest. He was vaguely aware Jaeger was saying something about potentially providing support, and the spirit of cooperation, but he really only caught the last words.
“So what do you say?”
Could be as little as ten minutes if she continues accelerating.
That, and the unfettered rush of panic it brought on, pretty much settled it.
“I say your five minutes are up, Colonel.”
He needed to get back to his friends. Needed to tell them… Fuck. He didn’t know what. Everything. Everything he’d somehow managed to hold back until now, trying to convince himself he’d have time later.
“Kid, now’s not really the time for you to—”
He whirled back on Jaeger. “I might not be enough to scare off a trog armada, but I sure as fuck wouldn’t push me right now.”
The ferocity in his voice might’ve surprised him more than Jaeger. The Lt Col just went icily neutral, his weight subtly shifting to a ready position. Nate held his gaze a moment longer—the multi-voice in his head simultaneously shouting that Jaeger’s request wasn’t really all that unreasonable, and that it was also the height of all bullshit, and that he needed to get back to his friends, and that maybe they wouldn’t have to leave the moment Iveera got back if this UN debriefing was actually pertinent, and that why, for that matter, did he even have to leave at all, save for the fact that his every strand of guilt and moral fiber was telling him it was the only way?
He turned wordlessly for the park—trying to blink away the buzzing hive of crazy in his head, Jaeger watching like a hawk—and nearly ran headlong into Gwen, who was edging hesitantly through the trees like she wasn’t quite sure whether she was interrupting or coming to the rescue.
Jaeger looked between the two of them, assessing, then gave a suit yourself shrug. “I’ll run your answer up the chain, kid. I’d say it’s been a real pleasure, waving big ones with you, but I have a feeling we’re not done yet.”
They waited in uneasy silence as the Lt Col trekked back through the trees, no doubt bound straight for whatever comms they’d established.
“So…” Gwen said quietly once he was gone, looking uncertainly after Jaeger before turning back to him.
He showed her a sad smile, thinking of the moment they’d shared back in that quiet stockroom, before everything had fallen apart all over again. “So?” he asked, just as she had back then. “That’s all you’ve got after all this?”
She bobbed her head, and for a second, he thought she’d smile or say something witty and perfectly Gwen, or that her eyes would fill with tears and she’d rush forward to throw her arms around him.
Instead, she just sobered, tilting her head after Jaeger. “Everything all right there?”
“Yeah,” Nate said reflexively, feeling each second ticking by like a light smack to the heart. “No. I don’t know. He was just… They want answers.”
“You don’t say.” She tried to smile, then bit her lip instead, hanging on the edge of her next question. “So then that other thing about, you know…” She glanced in the direction of the group, almost like she wished she’d brought support, then turned back to him, seeming to remember she didn’t need it. “Was he right? Are you going somewhere?”
Nate couldn’t have said how many seconds he wasted floundering, mouth half open, trying to find the words. Even after everything she’d seen today, and everything he’d told her, it was all still too vague, too arcane, to explain to any satisfactory degree. He didn’t even understand it himself: what was really at stake here, what dangerous and convoluted manner of Galactic Alliance politics he suddenly seemed to be caught up in, whether he liked it or not. Even what he owed to the Merlin, and to Earth.
So he gave up on words, and settled for a dumb nod.
She did surge into him then, gasping his name and wrapping him in a hug that might’ve been bone-crushing had he not been encased in powerful alien armor. Feeling her arms around him, though, he released that armor back to e-dim for the first time since Atlantis, and let her have a fair go at it.
Gods, did she feel good in his arms. Warm, and precious, and irrefutably right in a world that’d gone horribly wrong. He didn’t know what to say other than that.
Couldn’t even seem to get those words out. For a long while, they simply held one another. He felt the seconds ticking by, felt the inevitable drawing closer, and he held her tighter. She didn’t need to ask why.
“You have to?” was all she asked when they finally drew back enough to look at one another.
He swallowed, searching for his voice. It was only then that it really dawned on him just how terrified he was. “All I know is that I’m pretty sure the evil bastard behind this invasion got exactly what he wanted today. And if we don’t make it right…” He gathered himself and met her eyes, tears pressing at his own. “I need to do this.”
“Okay,” she whispered, taking his face between her hands, fingers exploring along his jawline, through his hair, like she was trying to store it all up for later. “Okay,” she repeated, nodding faintly to herself.
“I’m sorry.”
She shook her head, tears welling. He prayed to god she wouldn’t let go.
“I’m sorry I didn’t—”
She kissed him, and he tasted tears. His or hers, he didn’t know. He just pulled her close and kissed her back, closing his eyes, leaving the ticking time bomb of a world behind as best he could. For a while, he succeeded, and it was only the two of them, safe and warm in the darkness behind his eyelids. Only her eyes holding his when he finally found the courage to look again. Only those beautiful eyes, and the painfully deep ache of emotion they stirred within him.
He wanted to tell her that he loved her. Wanted nothing more than to close his eyes and disappear again. To wake up in bed twenty years down the road and look over to realize she was still there, right there with him, and that they were happy, and content, and at peace—her with her life-changing biotech breakthroughs, and him with… his art?
An odd wave of dissonance passed through him at the thought, like he’d queried his inner storage for the familiar fantasy only to find the file had been corrupted—all relevant data badly warped by the heat stress of a new reality. In a way, it almost felt like some part of him had died back there in Atlantis, replaced by the one that had bonded with Ex—the one that had kicked open an entire galaxy of unknowns, for better or worse.
Pandora’s box.
Jaeger had been more right than he’d known.
“How soon?” Gwen whispered, her forehead resting lightly against his chest.
“Soon,” he whispered back, flat and drained.
Too soon. Not soon enough. He didn’t know. It just wasn’t fair, some corner of his mind insisted, that he should finally make it to this moment only with the certainty that it couldn’t last. The rest of him just watched in quiet acceptance as Gwen drew back and cupped his cheek in one hand, studying his face with a soft frown.
“You’re different, you know,” she said, stroking his cheek with a thumb, smiling a little at her own words. “I mean, of course you are, after everything, but… I don’t know. There’s just something in your eyes. Something that wasn’t there before.”
Nate took her hand in his, unnerved for some reason he couldn’t explain, and resenting that he couldn’t even seem to enjoy the feeling of her hand in his in that moment. “I guess the whole world’s different.”
She looked around the ruined park, then gave him a sad smile and leaned up to plant one last soft kiss on his lips. “I guess you’re right.”
Something fluttered back to life from the abyss, watching her descend back down from tip-toes. Something that, for one wild second, begged him to simply say to hell with it, scoop her up, and fly them off somewhere. Run for it and never look back. Have a chance to actually be together, to have anything more than this stolen moment at the tail end of a four year marathon of his self-pitying snivel-fest.
But he couldn’t. And not only because he knew what was out there now, or because Iveera would probably hunt him down like a dog in a day flat. But because he just couldn’t. Because he had a job to do, same as Lt Col Not-A-Tit Jaeger. And because, in some grim way, he actually kind of wanted to do it, he realized.
Merciful Sith, when had that happened? Three weeks in, one world crisis averted, and he’d officially lost his mind.
Just imagine where we’ll be in three centuries.
The thought sent his head spinning. It was about the last thing he wanted to imagine right then. The faint patter of another approaching helicopter reminded him he didn’t have the time to spare anyway.
“C’mon,” he said, taking Gwen’s hand and turning to head back to the others. “Better let the”—he flinched away from the word squad, thinking of Zach—“the guys into the loop.”
As it turned out, though, there was little loop-letting to be done.
They’d barely made it out of the trees when Marty and Kyle both rose from the group, watching him with looks that said they already knew—had seen it coming since they’d first spied him atop that rooftop with Iveera. He couldn’t even say if it was horror on their faces, or something more like shock and awe. Maybe all of the above. Whatever it was, it didn’t make him feel any better about what came next.
Neither did the SAS team loitering nearby, or the odd looks they were all shooting him.
He didn’t have time to parse it out, or even to speak a word to Marty and Kyle before he caught the first faint hint of a rushing something high above. He looked to the sky, not quite sure if he’d imagined it.
He hadn’t.
It was only a speck in the sky when he caught first sight, but it grew with frightening velocity, moving straight for them so fast he could hardly make out the shape. By the time it decelerated enough to resolve into anything but a large blue blur, it was practically landing on top of them, kicking up a healthy gust of wind as whoever was at the helm—Iveera, he presumed—brought it to a crisp, calm hover.
The ship was long and aesthetically proportioned, all elegant curves and sleek matte panels of white and midnight blue. Based on his exactly zero knowledge of spaceship design, Nate thought it looked like it had been built more for speed and long voyages than for heavy warfare. It looked a little bit like Iveera’s ship, he noticed. And there, etched across one of the port-side armor panels in faded, barely discernible letters was a one word explanation for the connection: Camelot.
“Dude,” Kyle said beside him, gaping up at the vessel. “Fuck me.”
Nate stared right along with him, not sure how to expound on the statement, stomach wriggling even as his heart leapt at the inexorable waves of change thrumming down from alien engines, permeating through every fiber of the life he’d thought he’d known.
He looked at his friends, and took each one by the shoulder as they pried their eyes away from the ship to look back at him. They fell into a group hug without a word. There didn’t seem to be any words left.
It was only then, with his arms around two of the closest friends he had left, that he realized he wouldn’t be there for Zach’s funeral. That he hadn’t even had a chance to contact his parents. He didn’t even know if Copernicus was okay back in State College, for the love of Christ.
It was happening too fast.
He felt Gwen’s hands on his back. Saw Todd and Emily holding each other nearby, prying their eyes from the arriving ship to give him a respectful nod. A somber farewell.
Breathe, Nathaniel. It is but one step on the journey.
Nate blew out the breath he hadn’t noticed he was holding. Forced another. Saw Iveera appear from the belly of the Camelot, hovering down to collect him, and came to a decision. If he couldn’t be here in person…
Yes, it would work, Ex said, almost before he was consciously aware of what he was thinking, but are you sure, Nathaniel? It is still a risk, troglodans or not.
He took Marty’s hand, holding the thought in mind down to each tiny detail. I’m sure.
He felt it working, felt Marty stiffen as something took shape out of thin air between their palms.
“I think you know who that’s for,” Nate said, finding the hints of his first real smile as Marty turned his hand over
and looked down at the chintzy looking gold medallion that had appeared there, embossed with two lines of all-caps text: BEST DOGGO IN THE WORLD.
“Just like the earpiece,” Nate said, with a pointed look.
Marty’s eyes widened. “This will… Even out there?”
“Keep it secret,” Nate said. “And if at any point there’s anything we need to let Earth know about, well…” He looked around at Kyle and Gwen, too. “Consider yourself my official liaisons.” He frowned back at the quantcomm medallion, honestly not sure whether he was making a selfish mistake or a wise move. “Just…”
“Keep it secret,” Marty finished.
“Keep it safe,” Kyle added, still looking too flabbergasted to even appreciate his own reference.
“At least until we find the real wizard,” Nate said, glancing around and wondering at the fact that Iveera hadn’t already swooped in to yank him off. “I’ll be back when…”
He trailed off as he spotted her talking with Jaeger, who’d reappeared among the SAS crowd beside the small pile of supply crates Nate hadn’t noticed there before.
“… when it’s safe.”
What the hell was this all about?
It would seem Ser Katanaga has elected to take matters into her own hands on the question of the Camelot’s crew.
Nate stared dumbly. But that’s not… I thought it was my…
“Hey!” he called in their direction. “Just a second,” he added more quietly to his friends, disengaging to stomp over to the SAS huddle.
Jaeger stepped out to meet him halfway, Iveera watching them calmly alongside the SAS bunch, who all looked some combination of grim, determined, and morbidly excited.
“Spoke with the brass,” Jaeger said, before Nate could ask. “They reacted about like I figured they would.” He shook his head, shooting a dark frown back toward Iveera. “Sure wish you two weren’t in such a damn rush. Might’ve given us time to find more specialized volunteers. But at least one of you was willing to half-listen.”
Nate looked from the Lt Col, to Iveera, to the SAS team, and back, following but not quite processing. Certainly not accepting. “You’re saying…”
The Eighth Excalibur Page 43