Rahel watched from one of the best seats that wasn’t in the dignitary section. Despite not approving of the new Lancer, she had to admit the woman was a mesmerizing public speaker. At the end of the ceremony, she left the stands wondering if Lancer Tal might actually be able to do the job.
For five cycles, Tal did it well enough that Shantu could find no openings large enough to launch a caste coup through.
Then aliens crash-landed a gigantic spaceship in a field northwest of Blacksun, and their universe tilted on its axis.
FALL
37
FAHLA’S COVENANT
Given her history, Rahel had considerable experience with life-altering events. But their impact had always been personal while outside, life went on as usual.
She had never realized what a comfort that was until all of Alsea plunged overnight into an unrecognizable existence.
The surviving aliens from the gigantic crashed ship called themselves Gaians. Their leader, Captain Ekatya Serrado, said they represented a unified body of planets called the Protectorate.
The previous day, Rahel and every other Alsean had believed they were the only intelligent life in the universe. Now, they found they weren’t considered sufficiently advanced to join this confederation of worlds.
As if that weren’t unsettling enough, Captain Serrado informed them that the reason she and her crew were here was that an opposing group of aliens called the Voloth had tried to invade Alsea and take its resources. Serrado had destroyed all three ships of the invasion fleet before losing her own to battle damage. She managed to evacuate most of her crew, then rode her ship down to keep it from hitting Blacksun. Had she abandoned it, the capital would now be a crater.
This much Rahel knew from Lancer Tal’s public address, but Shantu told her the part that had been suppressed: one of the resources the Voloth sought was the Alseans themselves. They were no longer alone in the universe, but they were still alone in having empathic senses. The Gaians and Voloth were all sonsales, blind to emotions and unable to front their own. For the Voloth, Alsea was not just a resource-rich world to be stripped. It was also a source of empathic slaves.
The day after crashing her ship, Captain Serrado helped the Alsean war council fight a single surviving asset of the invading fleet, a mobile weapons platform called a ground pounder. With its invincible shielding, it shrugged off the coordinated attack of the entire Whitesun Base transport fleet, and was destroyed only through geographical advantage, a clever ambush, and luck.
Ten warriors died in the battle, twenty-eight transports were either damaged or lost—all for a single ground pounder. And then Captain Serrado delivered the bad news. Another Voloth invasion force was on its way, carrying at least five hundred more and possibly one thousand.
The worse news was that the Protectorate had no intention of offering aid.
Rahel saw very little of Shantu while he worked with the war council and the High Council to save their civilization. Her skills were of no use in that effort, and she found herself in the intolerable position of onlooker. She was a trained warrior, obliged by caste duty to defend Alsea above all, and she was sitting on her hands like a merchant with no wares.
When Captain Serrado realized that Alsea had a resource of immense value to the Protectorate, she used it as leverage to arrange for reinforcements. The only question now was which force would arrive first.
Alsea teetered on the edge of a knife, its fate in the hands of aliens.
Knowing that the Voloth ground pounders would initially target the major cities, the war council ordered mass evacuations. Blacksun was exempted when Captain Serrado promised that she could protect the city with her ship. The Caphenon might be a bird unable to fly, but it still had vicious talons and the ability to strike.
Rahel heard all of this from Shantu, who had called her in upon arriving home from the latest war council strategy session. After bringing her up to date, he poured them both a drink and said, “There’s more, but I want you to drink that before I tell you.”
“That sounds ominous.” She drained the glass and set it back on his desk. “What is it?”
“We have a plan to fight this invasion if the Protectorate fleet doesn’t get here in time. There will be mass casualties, but for the first time, I truly believe we will save our world. But we’ll have to break Fahla’s covenant to do it.”
Surely she had misunderstood. That was the most absurd statement ever to cross his lips; he could not mean what it sounded like.
Then she saw the look in his eyes.
“No. You can’t.”
“We must. Fahla gave us this gift. We have to use it.”
“No, we don’t! That gift came with limits! You can’t just—” She could find no words to convey the depth of her horror.
“Rahel, we cannot beat their technology. Destroying their minds is our only hope.”
He outlined the plan, but she only half heard him. She had beaten a man to death for breaking Fahla’s covenant and violating her mind. The thought of his claws ripping into her, immobilizing her, hurting her, had the power to terrify her even now. And Shantu was talking about setting loose every high empath on Alsea to do the same?
“I know,” Shantu said. “If I could, I’d send you far away from this. But we need every single warrior who can fight. I’m assigning you to head one of our empathic units. The ground pounders are operated by four Voloth: a pilot, an engineer, and two weapons specialists. We need four high empaths per unit to handle them, and eight warriors to protect the high empaths.”
“You want me to lead a unit of empathic violators?” Her voice was too loud for the room.
“I want you to lead a unit of ethical fighters who have the only weapon that will work against these invaders. They are not violators. They’re honorable Alseans who will give everything they have to protect our world.”
They argued for nearly thirty ticks. She knew Shantu had no time for this and she should be accepting her orders like a sworn warrior. But if they broke the covenant that protected every lesser empath from the unthinkable power of high empaths, what was left? They might as well let their civilization die.
In the end, it wasn’t Shantu who convinced her but Captain Serrado, via the security cam footage of the last war council meeting. The council had argued exactly as she and Shantu were, until Serrado shut them down by pointing out that after thousands of cycles of civilization, high empaths were not going to suddenly discover the joy of hurting people. The problem, she said, would be helping high empaths who were traumatized by having to use their gift in violation of everything they had ever lived or taught.
Rahel stared at the captain, who looked so like an Alsean but for the lack of facial ridges. With her smooth face and small stature, she brought back memories of Mouse.
In that moment, she knew what Mouse would say. Practical, worldly Mouse, who at nineteen had understood Alsean nature better than she ever would.
“I’ll lead a team,” she said. “But I’m shocked that you got the High Council to agree.”
“We didn’t. Lancer Tal and I are of one mind, and this is a matter for our caste. We can’t allow the ditherings of the High Council and especially the full Council to delay us for even one day.”
Rahel gaped at him. “You took over the government?”
“Lancer Tal is invoking her emergency powers with my full support.”
“You’re supporting Lancer Tal.” A tiny smile crept onto her face. “Then it really is the end of the world.”
38
CALM BEFORE THE STORM
Whitesun was an eerie place with no one in it.
Rahel walked down the empty bayfront road, making her final good-byes to her beloved city. She didn’t know if it would be the same when the battle was over.
Lancer Tal had made Shantu the commander of all Pallea forces, with his command center at Whitesun Base. Rahel had flown down with him, then left him to his high-level decisions while she met her unit and b
egan a frantic four days of training. Four days was all she had to pull together seven warriors, who had never fought an enemy like this, and four high empath scholars, who had never fought at all.
Her scholars had hit their limit this evening, and there was no point in pushing them any harder. Right now, the best they could do was get some sleep. But sleep was the furthest thing from her mind.
As a First Guard, she outranked most of the warriors on the base. She had no trouble checking out a skimmer and driving into town. Upon reaching the bayfront, she left the skimmer at one end and was now walking its length, remembering better times.
Somewhere out there, two fleets of spaceships were screaming toward Alsea from opposite directions and with opposite intent. If the one from the Protectorate arrived first, then her solitary farewell to her city would be a happy waste of time. If the Voloth were faster . . . she might never see these places again.
The magtrans were in their stations, their elevated tubes empty and silent. No skimmers moved in the streets. There were no delivery vehicles, no shouts of crew unloading cargo, no resonating horns of ships arriving in port. All of the ships were far out to sea, avoiding potential damage and, in many cases, carrying evacuated residents.
She walked out to the end of Dock One and had to blink back tears at the sheer familiarity. Wildwind Bay was breathing, surging up and down against the pilings.
“Hoi, Mouse,” she said softly. “It’s me. I haven’t been back in a while. You wouldn’t believe what’s happened since you’ve been gone.”
The call came in late that night, long after Rahel had returned to Whitesun Base and everyone was locked down, waiting. Given her low chances of surviving the battle, she had tried to say good-bye to her mother, but that conversation had not gone well. Ravenel simply refused to hear it. When the call sounded in her earcuff, she thought it would be more of the same.
“Rahel. You have to talk to Sharro.”
“Um . . . all right, why?”
“Because she didn’t leave!”
“What? I thought she was on one of the evacuation ships!”
“She was supposed to be! She just called. She didn’t go, Rahel. She didn’t go.” Her mother sounded stuffy, as if she had been weeping.
“Are you telling me she’s here? In Whitesun?”
“She says it’s her home and she won’t leave it. You have to get her! Take her out of that city!”
The helplessness crashed over her. “Mother, I can’t. The base is locked down. We don’t know exactly when the fleets will arrive, but they’re only a few hanticks away. I can’t leave.”
Her mother made a sound that Rahel hoped she would never hear again. “What am I going to do?”
Pray to Fahla, she thought.
“The Protectorate ships might arrive first. We may have planned all of this for nothing. Then you can come to Whitesun and tell Sharro that you bought her a session with a prime who specializes in spanking.”
Ravenel let out a strangled laugh. “If she comes through this alive, I’ll administer that spanking myself. I can’t believe she would do this to me. She knows how worried I am. But she says that if the world ends tomorrow, she’d rather watch it from her own home than crammed into a stuffy ship.”
That did sound like Sharro.
“I told her if she didn’t want to board a ship, then she should come to Brasalara. She could be comfortable here.”
In the village where her mother lived with her father? Not likely. Rahel didn’t blame Sharro for refusing that invitation, no matter how safe the rural villages were from the initial invasion.
“I don’t think it’s about comfort, Mother. It’s about being home.”
After trying and mostly failing to calm her mother, Rahel called Sharro and ran into a stone wall. Nothing would induce her to leave. At one point, Sharro said that the reason Rahel’s arguments were so unconvincing was because she wanted to stay, too.
Trust Sharro to see right through her. If Rahel weren’t leading a unit herself, she would indeed be in that house on the hill, drinking up Sharro’s supply of Whitesun Rise while they watched the world end.
That call ended on a better note than the one with her mother, but Rahel had now lost all possibility of sleep. Not wanting to lie in bed fretting, she dressed in her battle gear and went to the base’s west border, on the cliff that overlooked the bay.
At least a hundred warriors and quite a few scholars were already there, sitting silently as they stared across the dark waters. She chose a spot in the short-cropped grass and joined the vigil.
Their numbers increased as they kept watch through the night. Twice, Rahel laid back in the fragrant grass and napped. Each time upon waking, she found that the crowd had grown larger.
“It’s dawn in Whitemoon,” someone said nearby.
Rahel checked her wristcom. Yes, the sun was already over the east coast of Pallea. It would be here in less than two hanticks.
As if called by the distant dawn, a breeze sighed over them, carrying the pungent, organic scent of Wildwind Bay. And then they heard it: the bells of Whitesun Temple, ringing out the alarm.
The Voloth had arrived first.
39
BATTLE OF ALSEA
Rahel and her unit waited in the hills south of Whitesun, watching the sky lighten to a soft gray. The Voloth fleet had been estimated to be a hantick from drop altitude, possibly a hantick and a half, giving everyone plenty of time to get to their assigned positions. She was grateful not just for the reprieve, but also for the fact that it would be dawn by the time the battle began. She had not wanted to fight in the dark.
For four days, they had learned everything there was to know about these ground pounders. Rahel could sketch one from memory, with its block-shaped body atop four jointed legs. She knew that the Voloth had designed them for efficiency of construction and transport, not aesthetics. Their square shape meant that more of them could be packed into an orbital invader. Their shielding smoothed out the edges when they dropped, making them as aerodynamic as they needed to be during the trip through the atmosphere. The bottom of the square body was twenty paces off the ground, and the body itself was nearly that high. Every ground pounder was more than three stories tall and packed full of weaponry: missiles, mortars, a rapidgun, and a laser cannon. Their shields were impervious to all Alsean weaponry—except empathic force.
The factual information did not prepare her for the heart-stopping sight of one hundred and fifty ground pounders falling through the skies all around Whitesun.
“Fahla save us all,” murmured one of the scholars.
“So many!” said another.
One of the warriors laughed. “Look at that! Those over there—they’re going to fall right into the bay!”
“It won’t disable them,” Rahel said. “But it will slow them down. I’m more concerned with the one that’s about to land on top of us.”
She had thought she would need to drive her scholars to the nearest ground pounder, but it was almost as if they had been targeted. The massive block fired thrusters to slow its descent and then unfolded its legs, which had been tucked up under its body.
For a few pipticks, Rahel stared openmouthed at the monstrosity overhead. Then she shook herself out of her stupor and shouted, “Do it now! Before it lands!”
One of the scholars bit her bottom lip. Another, much older, narrowed his eyes. The others looked equally focused, but that was the only sign Rahel could see or sense of their empathic force.
The ground pounder cut its thrusters and plummeted the remaining distance.
“Get back!” Rahel cried, grabbing one of the scholars by the arm.
She had barely turned around before the massive machine hit with a thundering crash. They raced uphill, their boots slipping in the dewy grass, the sound of groaning, stressed metal behind them. Rahel had the hysterical thought that it would be Fahla’s joke to die in the first tick of battle by having a ground pounder literally fall on her head.
/> She risked a glance back and called for her unit to stop. The ground pounder was lying on its side, its legs bent in ways they were surely not designed to accommodate.
“Are they disabled?” she demanded. “We can’t let them fire any of these weapons.”
“Mine’s dead.”
“Mine too.”
“Mine is . . . well, not dead, but not fully conscious, either,” said the third.
Arsinoe, the older scholar, spoke in a hollow voice. “Pain. Mine is in agony. I don’t think he’s capable of much anymore.”
“We can’t take the chance,” Rahel said. “Both of you—break them.”
The words felt foreign. She had just commanded two high empaths to scramble the minds of other sentient beings. No one knew if the damage could be repaired, but they would worry about that after the battle. First they had to survive it.
The scholars looked at her, just as shocked to receive the order as she had been to give it.
“It has to be done. You know that. You learned how in your training.” Even now, she could feel nothing from them. It was a testament to the power of high empaths that they could be so visibly horrified, so focused on doing something they barely knew how to do, and still keep even the tiniest whisper of emotion from leaking out.
They nodded reluctantly, closed their eyes, and went still.
“It’s done,” Arsinoe said.
Just like that. Ten pipticks of empathic projection, and minds were shattered.
Rahel suppressed a shudder. “You did well. All right, everyone in the skimmer! We’ve got another hundred and more of these to take care of.”
The roof had been removed from their twelve-seat military skimmer, giving them greater ease of entry and full visibility. The high empaths sat clustered in the center, waiting to get close enough to the next ground pounder for their empathic powers to be effective.
Their new target was on the move, its heavy mechanical legs thudding into the soft ground and lifting chunks of land with every step. As they approached, it fired a shell toward the city.
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