by Amy DuBoff
Raena and Jason inhaled sharply. They looked at each other, processing.
“That’s why your abilities are so much stronger,” Raena said, breaking the silence.
“Yes,” Wil confirmed. “And that’s why the Priesthood manipulated our lives behind the scenes to make sure we ended up in the TSS. They made sure my parents would meet and that I’d be born into a life of service to the TSS. When I was fourteen, the Bakzen broke into Headquarters and captured me—with the help of a traitor. I made it back home, but that’s when I learned about the secret war that had been going on for almost five hundred years without any of us knowing. There was a whole division of the TSS operating independently in the rift. Finding out about the war and my future part in it changed the entire tone of my existence. My mandate was the complete destruction of the Bakzen.”
Jason’s jaw dropped open in horror. “And you found this out at fourteen?”
“Yeah.” Wil stared down at the tabletop.
“I can’t imagine hearing that… Not then or ever,” Raena murmured. “How did you keep going?”
“Things were really rough for a while,” Wil said. “I met your mom about a year later. She’s the main reason I made it through.” He fell silent again.
“The ensuing years were tough on all of us,” Cris jumped in when it appeared Wil wasn’t going to continue. “Our time in the war was on the horizon. After graduating to Agent, your dad spent the next three years working on the independent jump drive design—a piece of technology we needed to allow more precise maneuvering in the space battles spanning between the rift and normal space. When that was done, it came time to train a group of officers to assist him with battle tactics. This team was the Primus Elites, some of whom I believe you met.”
“So they’re your war buddies,” Raena commented.
“It’s more than that,” Saera tried to explain. “Agents that work together extensively develop a bond that’s a sort of telepathic connection. Those of us that trained together for the war are tied together—like you and Jason as siblings.”
“There were only five years to train,” Cris continued. “The war was dragging on and needed to end. At that time, your dad was sworn in as Supreme Commander of the TSS.”
“I had my mandate to fulfill,” Wil murmured, still staring at the tabletop. “Eliminate all of the Bakzen.”
“The rest of us didn’t know at the time that the Bakzen were of Taran origin,” Cris explained. “But Wil did. He spared the rest of us that knowledge so we could do our jobs.”
Raena’s face drained. “No wonder you didn’t want to talk about it.”
“We lost a lot of really good people.” Cris swallowed. “One of them was your namesake, Jason. Jason Banks—the former High Commander of the TSS.”
“He was family to us,” Saera added.
“Wow.” Jason slumped back in his chair.
Raena looked around the table at the drawn faces. “You won the war. Then what?”
“Your father didn’t want the command any longer, so I stepped up from my position as Lead Agent to High Commander after Banks died,” Cris replied. “At that point, I eloquently told the Priesthood to fok off and we’ve been operating independently ever since.”
“Wow.” Raena released a slow breath. “That’s a lot to go through.”
“The entire experience left me pretty broken,” Wil said. “It took me a long time to come back from it.”
“Yeah, I can imagine,” Raena murmured.
“So there you have it,” Cris said, forcing a smile. “That is all the madness you were born into. And hopefully now you understand why we feel so strongly that the Priesthood needs to go.”
“No kidding,” Jason said. Raena nodded her agreement.
“Now, I highly advise some lounge time by the pool for the rest of the day. This was a way heavier conversation than anyone should endure while on vacation.”
“I’m pretty sure this was more of a business trip than a vacation,” Saera corrected. “At least, that’s what my expense report will state.”
“You do realize that we’re still the ones paying the bills around the TSS these days?” Cris joked back.
Saera grinned. “It’s not my name on the account.” She rose from the table. “Okay, pool time!”
“Go on ahead,” Wil said to the twins. “Saera and Dad, hang back for a minute.”
* * *
As Wil had listened to his father and wife give their account of the war, he realized that so many crucial details were being left out. They don’t know… They really don’t know what decisions I had to make in those months.
He had to come clean. They had been through too much together for him to continue harboring his dark truth alone. He could never explain it to Raena and Jason—they hadn’t been through a war so they’d never understand. But his father and wife—they were by his side. They had asked him so many times what had happened and why he’d withdrawn. If they want today to be about truths, then I need to tell them.
Wil waved his children out of the room.
“Okay, we’ll see you out there,” Raena said as she headed out of the door. “And, thanks for filling us in.”
Cris smiled at them. “Of course. We’ll see you out there soon.”
As soon as the door was closed again, Cris turned his attention to his son. “What’s up?”
“A long time ago, you asked me what had happened—what so suddenly changed in the middle of the war,” Wil said.
Saera came to attention. “Yeah.”
Wil took a slow breath. “I’m sure you had your theories.”
“Well, you were forced to take out all of the Bakzen, knowing who they really were. That would mess up anyone,” Cris replied.
“That was a part of it. A big part,” Wil acknowledged, “but it wasn’t what put me over the edge.” He fell silent and stared at the floor, still not wanting to admit what he’d done aloud.
“What, then?” Cris pressed.
“I— I knew about the attack on Cambion before it happened.” The words caught in Wil’s throat.
Cris paled. He needed no reminder about to which planet Wil was referring. “How?” The cold of his tone caught Wil off guard.
“Tek told me.”
Saera and Cris looked at each other with horror.
Wil knew what they were suddenly thinking, that he had been consorting with the enemy all along. “It was my only communication with the Bakzen before the final minutes of the war. He messaged me because he had Saera’s shuttle in a weapons lock.”
“Oh my god,” Saera brought a hand to her mouth. “So something really did happen that day.”
Wil shook his head slowly. “Tek gave me a choice between you and the planet. He gave me two minutes to decide. I ran through both scenarios every way I could think of them… and I couldn’t lose you, Saera. That would have been the end of the war right there. But Tek also made foking sure that every time I looked at you I would also see the burning remains of Cambion.”
“Shite.” Cris collapsed back in his chair. “I…”
“I realize it was a treasonous act,” Wil said with surprising calm. “I should have turned myself in a long time ago.”
Cris and Saera sat in silence for what felt like an eternity to Wil.
Just yell at me and hate me and get it over with. He folded his hands on the tabletop, prepared for any reaction.
“That explains a lot,” Cris said at last.
“At the time, it had to be done. Sacrificing those lives meant winning the whole war,” Wil went on. “Afterward, I felt like I wasn’t worthy of living because of the atrocities I committed. The guilt festered and ate away at me until I couldn’t take it anymore. That’s why I left for those three months—I needed to see if I could still reconnect with myself. And I did, just enough. I put up walls around the dark truth and buried it. But these last few days hearing everyone talk about the past and seeing the Aesir again… I remembered and it was too much to lock away a
gain.”
Cris took a shaky breath. “I don’t know what to say.”
Saera continued to stare into space.
“Say something,” Wil pleaded. “You should hate me for what I did.”
“No.” Cris shook his head. “You were put in an impossible position. From the very beginning, you were set up to destroy the Bakzen. It’s unfair to judge you for collateral damage.”
Wil stared at him in shock. “Collateral damage? It was four billion people!”
“It’s a scale I still can’t comprehend even after all these years,” Cris replied. “But I came to terms with that loss a long time ago. As High Commander, I had to review a lot of reports after the war, and though Cambion’s loss was tragic, if the TSS fleet had been sent in to try to counter the attack we never would have had the forces left we needed to storm the Bakzen homeworld. The decisive military actions you took saved more lives in the long run by ending the war so quickly.”
How can he be so understanding? I let all those people die! “What I did was selfish.”
“It was a calculated decision, just like all the others you had to make. If it hadn’t been that world, the Bakzen would have taken another. You need to let it go, Wil.”
He couldn’t—not while Saera was still sitting in silence with her inner thoughts blocked to him. He tried to reach out to her but she kept up her mental guards. “I’m sorry,” he said aloud.
“That was a tough time for all of us,” she said eventually.
“We all did what we had to do,” Cris said under his breath. Then louder, “We can’t forget how we got in that position in the first place. There’s another entity at the center of the conflict, and that’s the Priesthood. They were behind everything—the creation of the Bakzen and the entire clean-up effort where we were the center of their plan. Giving in to guilt wasn’t a productive path then and it’s not the way ahead now. The Priesthood needs to be brought down. Now we’re finally almost in a position to do just that.”
“But what I did—” Wil protested.
“What you did allowed all of us to be sitting here today,” Cris stated, resolute. “Those lives are on the Priesthood’s hands.”
As his father looked at him with the same loving admiration that he had for Wil’s whole life, the guilt that had plagued him for so long finally began to dissipate.
Saera met his gaze and he was relieved to see that there was understanding in her eyes. “We have the upper hand now. The Priesthood made us to vanquish Taran enemies, and that’s exactly what we’ll do.”
CHAPTER 16
Releasing his deepest secret left Wil feeling light in a way he hadn’t felt since his early teenage years. For once, the future possibilities were those of hope.
Saera remained reticent as they exited the conference room, but Wil could tell that she just needed some time to reprocess a highly emotional time from their past within the new context. There wasn’t any of the hatred he’d feared she might feel toward him for having bartered her life in that way, but perhaps enough time had passed that such a visceral reaction was no longer possible.
For him, though, admitting his actions freed him of a weight that had been holding him back. He’d felt the anchor on him when he’d faced off against the Aesir, but he no longer perceived those restrictions. He’d been bred as a creature of war and he’d bring the war to the Priesthood’s doorstep.
As much as he wished he could just storm their island and be done with it, he recognized that the Priesthood’s tendrils ran far too deep to run headlong into anything. Further, the genetic analysis running in the conference room upstairs might unveil yet another layer to the Priesthood’s plans that had gone unnoticed until the night before.
With promises to join them later, Wil sent his father and wife out to the pool with the twins while he returned to the conference room to check on the results of the analysis.
When he entered the room, the holographic representation of the scan had ceased and “Match Found” was displayed in white script. The search had gone all the way into the most secured files, only afforded access by Wil’s equivalent of High Commander credentials.
He stared at the results, mouth agape. It’s not possible. Somehow, though, Ryan’s lineage was far more intriguing than Wil could ever have imagined. What to do with the information was another matter.
He telepathically reached out to his father’s consciousness. “Dad, the pool will have to wait. Meet me in the western wing. You need to see this.”
* * *
I’m totally foked. Ryan wrung his hands as he took the final stretch of a servant passage toward the administrative wing of the Sietinen estate. There was no way he’d still be employed by the end of the impending conversation. He couldn’t think of an alternative outcome from being called into a meeting with two dynastic heirs. The message from Wil was cryptic enough to leave Ryan open to speculation and all his thoughts were dire. He must have changed his mind about me spending time with Raena. I can forget about that offer to join the TSS. I’ll probably be shipped off to a prison planet!
He took a deep breath as he swung open the door at the end of the corridor, careful to check the internal monitor for any passersby after his last collision with Raena. I guess I’ll never see her again. The thought jabbed at his heart more than he anticipated.
The hidden passage opened directly across the hall from the destination office in the western wing. Through the open door, Ryan could see Wil and Cris seated at a small conference table in the center of the room. They spotted him after a moment and beckoned him inside.
“My lords.” Ryan bobbed his head as he entered the room, figuring he should at least keep up appearances.
An electric tingle passed through the air and the door swung shut behind Ryan.
He jumped with surprise. Telekinesis?
Cris smiled. “I stopped following the rules a long time ago.”
Ryan took half a step backward, confused. That isn’t the demeanor of someone who’s about to rip me to shreds for spending the night with his granddaughter.
“You’re not in trouble,” Wil stated, seeming to almost read his mind.
He probably did, actually, Ryan realized. He swallowed hard. “How many I be of service, my lords?”
“No more honorifics,” Wil replied. “Ryan… please, join us at the table.”
Hesitantly, Ryan stepped forward and took the chair closest to the door. The two Sietinens exchanged glances as he sat down.
Wil cleared his throat. “Ryan, what do you know of your birth mother?”
“As I said before, my l— As I said before, she turned me over as a Ward when I was six years old. I don’t really know anything about her. She didn’t work, as far as I can recall, and spent time playing with me. I don’t know why she gave me up.”
“And your father?” Cris asked.
Ryan shook his head. “Never knew him.”
Wil nodded. “We did.”
Ryan’s heart leaped. “What?”
“When I looked into your official file, it was pretty clearly a forgery—knowing what to look for,” Wil explained. “So, I decided to run a manual genetic evaluation to see if I could figure out who you actually are. The results were… Well, they change things.”
“Who was my father?” Ryan asked, his gaze flitting between the two men.
“He was the former High Commander of the TSS,” Cris said. “My mentor, Jason Banks. At least, that’s the name I knew him by. Apparently, like me, that was an assumed identity, too. He was actually the younger brother of the Head of the Bankris Dynasty, in the Second Region.”
Ryan’s mouth went dry. “I’m… I’m from a Dynasty?” he stammered at last.
“Yes,” Wil confirmed. “But that’s only part of it.”
My father was High Commander of the TSS? He couldn’t begin to comprehend the implications of that revelation. “What else?”
“Have you ever heard of the Dainetris Dynasty?” Cris asked.
“
We’re not supposed to talk about the Fallen Dynasty,” Ryan hastily replied.
“This room is secure, don’t worry,” Cris assured him. “So you know it by reputation?”
Ryan inched back in his chair. “Only that it was once a seventh High Dynasty, but it fell many generations ago.”
Cris nodded. “Yes, it was. And do you know what the ‘fall’ of a dynasty is?”
“Loss of power and influence?” Ryan ventured.
“Yes,” replied Wil, “but there’s more to it than that. It’s the forcible removal from power, really. But Taran law is written in such a way that an entire family can’t just be disowned. The Corporations are private—the most anyone could do is encourage people not to buy from them anymore. However, the corporations operated by the High Dynasties are so integral to society that cutting one off is impossible.”
“So how did the Dynasty fall?” asked Ryan.
Wil smiled. “That’s the real question, isn’t it? Truth is, we have no idea. All records of the event have been wiped from the official historical logs. As far as we can tell, the only way to really unseat one of the High Dynasties is by eliminating their chance of inheritance. No heir, no means to perpetuate the power.”
“Then it’s a matter of distributing assets. What’s now the ship manufacturing division of SiNavTech was actually absorbed from Dainetris after its fall,” Cris continued. “Several other components of the Dainetris’ corporation, Dainetris Galactic Enterprises—or DGE—were divided up among the other High Dynasties. That’s the protocol when there’s no heir.”
“Okay…” Ryan said slowly. “Why does any of that matter?”
“Well, what do you think would happen if there actually was an heir?” Wil asked, looking him over.