“Well, that’s what it is—the origin of the Calamity in this galaxy.” Harker sniffed. “What else would you call it?”
“Calamity Junction?” Jeanne offered, her smile a little too wide.
“Enough,” Cross said without heat. “Much as I appreciate the attempt at levity, Paragon Romee, we should stay focused. However interesting the evidence for this Origin Point, I still don’t see how this is the origin of anything. We don’t even know what the Calamity is, exactly.”
“Not exactly, no,” Harker conceded, “but we do know in broad terms that it is the end of a galaxy, and we know that it is not identical across galaxies. Some gradually succumbed to their fate and others vanished practically between eye-blinks. But those that I observed displayed a clear pattern: the noh raids, the proliferation of esper crystals, and then attacks.”
“Attacks? From what?”
Harker frowned and slumped slightly. “I don’t know, not for certain. I’ve fought them. They are beautiful and deadly, but I don’t know what they are. All I know for certain is that they are not native to any of these galaxies. They arrive in a galaxy, their way prepared by the shifting esper flows, and they kill everything before them.” He paused, considering. “No, that isn’t correct—or rather, it isn’t complete. They don’t just kill, they erase everything in their path. There is literally nothing left behind except the empty void. Not even heat.” He looked at Cross, and once again Malya was struck by the pale fatigue that pulled at the pirate. “They aren’t simply the death of a galaxy. They are angels of annihilation, embodied oblivion. And they are coming.”
“And you think you can stop them.” Cross did not phrase it as question.
“I believe that I can,” Harker said. “I don’t know, but I think so.”
He explained the alien poetry, the supposed prophecy that seemed so tenuously to describe Malya and Sebastian Cross, but the paladin simply accepted it. Malya supposed that in Cross’s profession he saw and heard a great deal that was every bit as strange. Especially being a Relic Knight. She felt a rueful kinship in that.
“So,” Isabeau mused, “why not just atomize this Origin Point with plasma beams?”
“In every case that we know of,” Harker said, “the Calamity is marked by three events. The raids of the noh dragon fleets we have already discussed. The rampant spread of esper crystals is the second. However useful we find these things, and the Doctrine certainly make great use of them, they invariably signal the end of a world or galaxy.”
Malya nodded, recalling an exhibition race on Galator IV very early in her career. The multi-hued, six-sided crystals had sprouted from nearly every surface. She had practically seen them growing. Workmen had carefully cleared streets and doorways early in the day, but the clusters had returned by the next dawn. The formerly thriving agricultural planet had shifted its economy entirely to crystal harvesting by that time. Two cycles later, nothing could live on it. Less than a cycle after that, Galator IV and its galaxy had vanished. She shuddered at a deep chill and tried to pay attention to Harker again.
“The third is the appearance of a being called the Herald, one of the invading creatures. The Herald’s duty appears to be to prepare a galaxy for invasion somehow. It took me far, far too many cycles to identify the Herald for this galaxy, for she has operated in a way I have never seen described. She is called Amelial, and she has somehow managed to coordinate at least four of the dragon fleets in this galaxy, including Dragon Fleet To.”
All of the paladins sat up at this assertion and glanced at Kenobo, who nodded. “My peoples’ spies among the other fleets have confirmed the existence of this demon with the angelic face. It’s how we learned her name.” He gritted his massive teeth. “She holds a sway over my cousins that I’ve not seen any outside creature wield in our eons-long history.”
“So, wait,” Betty said, putting up her hand. “Wait, wait, wait. Are you saying you want us to fight the Noh Empire? Because if so, I’m just going to jump out an airlock right now and spare myself the waiting.”
“No,” Harker said, smiling sadly. “Nothing quite so romantic or hopeless. But it’s the reason I haven’t simply blasted Origin Point to atoms, as the good paladin here so succinctly puts it. Without that asteroid, they will simply make another, and it may take more time than we have to locate it. This way, we know exactly where they will be. If the Herald has revealed herself, then they will be here soon.” He looked around the table. “I propose that we go to Origin Point and destroy whatever device they will use to enter our galaxy.”
“They won’t just show up from slip space with a battle fleet?” Jeanne asked, scratching her cypher under his chin.
“No. They don’t travel between galaxies as we do. I don’t know exactly what they will do, but there is always a triggering event of some sort connected to the Herald. They open some kind of breach in reality. We must simply prevent that.”
“Oh,” Jeanne said, smirking. “As easy as that, then?”
“Not at all,” Harker replied. “I believe we can expect significant resistance. The reason that my data on the asteroid is two months old is because I dispatched a small ship to inspect the site, and that was the last time they reported. I suspect that hostile forces are there already.”
“But that also leaves us no time to gather more troops,” Sebastian said. “Are you proposing we take on the noh and whatever force these creatures can muster with just the paladins here and your pirates?”
“Each of my captains and most of their crews have lost lives and loved ones to the Calamity,” Harker said with icy calm. “I have recruited them from across nearly a dozen galaxies. All of them know that, whatever else we may do in the meanwhile, when the time comes, I will throw them against the forces of oblivion. Each of them sails with me for the chance at that fight, for the chance at revenge.” He sat back and crossed his arms. “They are more than reliable, Lord Cross, I assure you.”
Cross nodded, adding that to the scales in his mind, and turned to Malya. “And you, your highness. Are you committed to this?”
Malya started to speak and stopped. She chewed her lip and collected her thoughts. “Everyone keeps asking me if I believe in this or if I’m confident in success. I’ll level with all of you, I’m not.” She pointed to Captain Harker. “He believes it, and he makes a great argument. And that belief is enough to convince me that this is the right move. I just—” She cut off as realization dawned on her. “I just don’t know what good I’m going to be. I don’t know what I’m doing here, no matter what the poem says.” She tossed up her hands. “Gods of our fathers, I can’t tell you how much I wish I was racing right now. That I understand.” She scrubbed at her face for a few seconds. “But you don’t enter every race because you want to. Sometimes you do it because you have to. And there’s no guarantee, no matter how good you are, that you’ll win. That’s—” She paused, remembering a little tonnerian girl. “That’s why you run the race. So, yeah. I don’t have any idea what I can do or why I’m here, but I guess that if Harker believes I need to be, that’s good enough.” She gestured to her friends. “I won’t speak for anyone else, but this is right. I’m in.”
Mr. Tomn landed on her shoulder, grinning.
“I’ll speak for the pit team,” Betty said after a glance at Lug. “We’re in too. Where the princess goes, we go. Simple as that.”
“Likewise,” Rin added. “Heh, after that buildup, you couldn’t keep me away.”
“Very well,” Sebastian Cross said, setting his palms on the table and standing. “We will go to Origin Point. As you said, your highness, if there’s even the slightest chance that Captain Harker is correct, we must help.” And then he smiled and shrugged. “Besides, I can always arrest him later.”
Malya let out her breath. “Okay.” Then she leveled a finger at both Harker and Cross. “But the very first thing we do is stop calling me ‘your highness’.”
Chapter 12
Pullish marketplace, Alexian, Ulyxis
sector, Alliance space
Marikan To straightened up very slowly, just peeking her head above the rubble that surrounded her. Movement caught her eye, and she froze. A message crept into her mind—not a voice or even words, but simply an impression of nervousness, fear, and a desire to escape. She rose a bit more and saw troops in worn Alliance Security uniforms scurrying through cover. Perhaps a dozen humans and though frightened, they held their rifles with purpose and their positions with determination. She sank back, chewing lightly on her lip. To her left, the strange alien Tahariel also drifted back down into cover. She did not actually touch the ground, but she had an unnerving stillness to her all the same.
“Too many for a quick kill,” she whispered to Marikan To. “Too many and too ready. Perhaps if you distract them, and I come in from the side.”
Marikan considered this for a second and then cocked her head to listen. Both of them had developed this habit over their hunts together as a way to show the other that they had connected with their cyphers. Lakmi, her avian cypher, gave her an impression of the whole ruined hall from her position in the remains of the rafters. Her compatriots in the dragon fleet had laid waste to this block three days before and moved on to not draw attention to her hunt. She still could not fathom why the Alliance troopers had remained to contest the wrecked building, but the noh’s continuing raids had them on edge. She could use that.
“No need, I think,” she whispered. “We’ll let them do the work.”
She selected an esper-charged arrow from her hip quiver and sent instructions to Lakmi. The cypher called, long and eerily in her rough, too-deep voice, and dove toward the Alliance position.
“Be ready to put on a show,” she said.
She began feeding esper to Lakmi. She could hear and smell the result. An echoing, roaring sound rose from the shadowed edges of the space, following Lakmi’s path like a horde of monsters. The dim light around them wavered and flickered, and illusionary horrors dashed ever closer among the rocks. The troopers shouted and rushed around.
“Now,” she hissed to Tahariel and they rose from cover.
Marikan To took a second to aim and sent her missile arcing over the lead Alliance troopers. It exploded when it struck the debris just behind them, sending sparks and a concussion wave and unnerving streams of esper out in a flash. Tahariel also attacked, sending half a dozen bolts of yellow-black esper into the enemy ranks, killing one and striking at least two others, who shrieked as the energy corrupted and putrefied their flesh in seconds. The other troopers panicked and fell back with their wounded. Marikan To and Tahariel dropped back to cover, grinning at each other like children. They waited until both of their cyphers had declared the Alliance soldiers well and truly gone.
“I admit I was hoping to kill more of them,” Tahariel said as they moved forward. She glanced at the dead with only superficial interest.
“Too many, as you said, and we don’t want the wrong sort of attention. Let them think that here there be monsters.” Marikan picked her way over the unstable landscape that her companion simply floated above. “It gives us the time we need.”
“And I can’t say it wasn’t fun,” Tahariel said, her grin returning. “The door is . . .” She scanned the partially collapsed wall at the back of the cover the troopers had used. “Here.”
Her staff moved in a compact, jagged pattern, and esperic tendrils pulled away the intervening debris. They regarded the partly crumpled metal door. Marikan To thought it resembled all the other nondescript doors they had seen in this abandoned building.
“I don’t . . .” She hesitated, still searching for the right word and falling back, again, on the inadequate nearest approximate sense. “. . . smell anything. Not that I know what this artifact would smell like.”
Tahariel glanced at her, eyes glinting a bit, and the grin playing around her lips. “Have you tried just looking?”
“Don’t start that again,” Marikan grumbled. “I can’t do it on command.”
“That’s because you’ve never been properly taught. You have outstanding senses; it’s another shame of your people that you’ve never been trained to use them.”
Marikan To bristled, tired of this particular thread of discussion. “I’m good at this, and you know it. You’ve said it.”
“Oh yes.” Tahariel sent her wispy tendrils out again to rip the door free. “You’re gifted—a natural hunter with tremendous talent. But there’s so much more you could be doing. You could make so much greater use of the esper.”
Marikan To sniffed, unable to argue with the assertion. “We prefer to make use of our physical talents rather than rely too much on outside power.”
“And wise to do so, generally,” Tahariel agreed. She smiled companionably. “But when you can use the esper, why not make the most of it?” She stepped into the empty doorway and gestured to the darkness below with her staff. “For instance, you could tell me now if what we seek is in there.” She finally got a look at Marikan’s expression and softened her tone. “You have it in you. You’ve just never had to do it.”
“And you know how, yes? You’d deign to teach me?”
Tahariel frowned and put her hand up in a conciliatory fashion. “I meant no offense, then or now, and no, I’ve not the talent or skill to see esper flows.” She smiled again. “But you do. You’ve never been taught to, and that’s no one’s fault. I can’t teach you, but you might be able to learn anyway. Take a deep breath.”
Marikan To fumed a few seconds longer and then did as told. She closed her eyes, cleared her mind, and then looked again. Her perception did change. The landscape around her seemed haloed, as if a hidden lamp lay behind it all. Sparks broke off of the sharp edges of the rubble and darted around, fractured bits of fire that streaked her vision but did not illuminate it. She smelled smoke—scorched stone and burnt wood—but not the sharp, crisp scent she often detected on the dragon ships when near to large esper sources. Her eyes hurt. She closed them again and thought she heard a low hum, like the sound she associated with many of the Alliance’s machines.
She shook her head. “Nothing. I don’t see anything.”
Tahariel finally frowned. “Well, either you’re not seeing the Source or it’s really not there.” She brightened slightly and started into the dark opening. “Let’s find out.”
They descended the ruined staircase past two blocked landings to the reinforced basement storage area at the bottom. Marikan To sighed as she surveyed the overturned and damaged sea of, well, stored items around them. “This is all worthless to us.”
“Agreed,” Tahariel said. “I feel nothing.”
They both glanced at their cyphers. The mechanical cherub floating behind Tahariel scanned the room with glowing, pulsing eyes and shook his head. Lakmi simply perched on the twisted stair railing and preened her coarse feathers.
“This was the most likely place on this world,” Marikan said, distracted as she felt the space around them. “And there’s esper here, but it’s deeper. Likely welling up from the soil. If we have to work to feel it, then it’s not the artifact.”
Tahariel nodded. “Not even close.” She sighed, her mood only slightly dampened, and started back up the stairs. “Right then. We’re done here, I suppose. Come on. I’m hungry.”
Once they had enough open space, Marikan activated her portable rift generator. The comforting warm, humid air of the dragon fleet wafted out of the wet tear in reality, and she stepped through gratefully. Tahariel followed an instant later. Marikan took a deep breath and stretched in the cavernous space of the Hydra’s Will’s largest rift embarkation chamber. Her eyes traced the graceful arch of the walls and drifting banners hung from the roof. She turned and took a careful look behind them before closing the rift. She nodded to the leader of the Hatriya guards and tossed her rift generator to one of the slaves. The man fumbled the catch and dropped the device. The nearest guard cuffed him across the back as he reached down to retrieve it and sent him sprawling. Marikan To turned
away toward the door, her mind already onto the next task, and saw Tahariel’s expression of distaste. She looked a question at her companion and led them toward the door.
“If your bow slipped and spoiled your shot, would you break it over your knee?” she asked.
Marikan frowned incredulously. “Of course not.” She glanced behind them as they stepped into the ship’s corridor and then back at Tahariel. “Do you mean the clumsy slave?”
“Seems a waste. If you value them enough to capture them, train them, and feed them, why would you not treat them well?”
Marikan To shrugged, baffled. “They’re slaves.”
Tahariel sighed, letting the whole thing go. “Well, it’s disappointing that we found nothing, but at least we have checked every possible location in this sector. I believe we’ve covered all the ground we can.”
“We have, yes,” Marikan To agreed. She felt suddenly quite tired. “Nothing for it now but to go to Ulyxis and draw the princess out of hiding.” She took a deep breath, bracing for what came next. “But first, though, I’d better report.” Marikan found that the prospect of presenting yet another failed hunt to her warlord did not bother her as much as the possibility of having the high priestess present to hear it.
“If you feel the need,” Tahariel said distantly. “I’ll come along, if you don’t mind.”
Markian To shrugged, but she felt a certain relief that she did not want to admit to. Something in the woman’s manner and outlook tugged at Marikan’s mind. She found it both reassuring and unsettling, but with the atmosphere she feared to find among her superiors, she decided that she liked the idea of having a distraction in the room.
They found the control deck of the Hydra’s Will darkened and largely deserted. The minimum crew needed to monitor ship’s functions moved relentlessly from station to station, and a solitary figure sat draped across the command throne. High Priestess Zineda sat forward as the hunters approached. Marikan To kept her expression clear of the confusion and sudden trepidation she felt. The high priestess would not have dared such an arrogant display as her casual occupation of the throne were the warlord present or even awake. She had to be absolutely confident that Mamaro To would never find her thus. Marikan could imagine several circumstances that would occupy him sufficiently, but the act still rankled.
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