by Ivan Kal
After he had finished, he had found himself extremely drained. Entering the Sha fully like he did did not drain the body; it was more of a drain on the spirit. Being connected to everything at the same time was overwhelming. He now felt as if he had just woken up from a long sleep, and he knew that the effect would persist for a while. And that meant that he could not do what he had done again until he recovered, not unless he was together with the other two Enlightened.
Regardless, he did not expect to need to do this again anytime soon–and even as diminished as he felt, he was still far too formidable to be in any real danger, even if he was discovered. For now, he was content to wait.
Aranis glanced at Ryaana, who was hunched over the holos, trying to deal with the loss of all those under her command. He understood that, of course, as he had felt such feelings himself. Even though Aranis was not someone to second guess his own decisions, he knew that he made a bad one when he had saved her. It had been a pointless act. She, like all others in the galaxy, were going to die. He had simply delayed her death.
Ever since he had become Aranis, he had tried to abandon his sentimentality, yet he always found himself making decisions based on it. The decision to let Ullax live, to come here and see Axull’s descendants, to save Ryaana–all had been decisions made with sentimentality. The other Enlightened had been much better at leaving their old lives behind.
Aranis, on the other hand, was constantly fighting with Waiss’s shadow. He did not waver in his belief of what had to be done, as he knew that there was no other way–it was their fault, and it was they who would fix it–but still, small moments plagued him. Ryaana reminded him so much of his own daughter… These were not the things that he welcomed. They only made what had to come that much more difficult. But he was not a monster, and a part of him grieved for what had to be done.
He sighed–there was no point in him doubting himself. He had done what he had done, and there was no changing it.
Now he had only to live with it.
Chapter Seventeen
Gena system – Erasi capital
Valanaru, Weaver of the Erasi, sat in her sanctum looking at the report and the data her scouts had returned to her. She did not quite believe what she was seeing. Her fleet was gone, as was the Crescent. And that did not seem possible, because beside the reports she had from her scouts, she had another source, this one containing the records of the system prior to it being cut off–and in those records she was seeing a complete victory. The alliance’s force was decimated, the Crescent had fired without any complications, and her fleets were whole. The last report from the Crescent said that they had powered down the weapon and were returning to orbit.
Yet still the reality seemed to be something quite different. The entire system was filled with the debris of both the alliance’s and Erasi fleets; it would take years to find and identify it all. And there were no signs of the Crescent. Her people told her that the most probable explanation was that the Crescent had malfunctioned, that it had taken out their entire force and itself in the process.
It was a possible explanation, but one that she did not quite believe. The Crescent’s last report said that it had powered down the weapon. With the destruction of the invaders’ force, there was no need to power it back on again. Besides that, the rest of the system did not look as if it had suffered the effects of the weapon. The last time the Crescent had malfunctioned it had shattered an entire moon and had taken a chunk out of a planet. There was nothing like that here. The bases were gone, and all the defenses were gone, but the moons and the planet were still there. There were only craters in the place of the bases–indicating targeted acts of destruction rather than a malfunction.
And the timing…it was suspicious. The comm relay had been destroyed unexpectedly and suddenly, even though it had been sufficiently away from the battle that, if something had happened, there should’ve been enough time for a message to be sent.
However, it appeared as if the relay was the first thing that had been destroyed, indicating that someone had not wanted any word leaving the system. But even with that motivation in mind, it should not have been possible for no word to reach her. Her ships had been spread across the system, so one at least should’ve escaped even if the Crescent had malfunctioned–an idea which she doubted.
It did not change the fact that something had clearly happened, and that she was now in a horrible position. She had already lost much of her influence with the other O’fa. Nothing in this war had gone her way thus far, and another failure would severely hamper her. Vorash would most certainly spin it to his advantage, the same way he had lessened the victory at Jerthath. She knew that he wanted more power, but she would rather die before letting him steer the Erasi toward his vision. The Erasi ruled because they were strong, because they crippled anyone capable enough to be a threat.
And Vorash would have them move away from that; he would help those who would eventually and inevitably strike at their backs. Well, Valanaru will not let that happen.
She need to bury this data, to eliminate anyone who knew enough to tell the truth. She would need to move things around–no one could know that she had moved core fleets and that she had lost them. She would need to make it seem like those fleets had been destroyed on the front, something that would require a great amount of tampering, but it was necessary.
And she needed to spin the loss of the Crescent, make it seem like it malfunctioned and destroyed itself. As for the bases… She could just blame it on the ghost fleet that no longer existed. The loss of the Crescent would hurt her, but not as much as it would if the other O’fa found out that she had used it in battle against the ruling of the council.
Her arms trembled as the screams in her head threatened to break the barrier she kept them behind. With an effort of will, she squashed them. She could not stand by this any longer. She needed to make them pay. She still had assets in play; she could turn the war around.
She only needed time.
* * *
Vorash looked at the latest reports Skmeh had delivered to him, and smiled. Valanaru had made a grave mistake, but what was even worse, she was trying to cover it up. And Vorash was perfectly willing to let her. Once she succeeded, his information would have so much more weight. With this, he could finally wrestle the control of the Erasi away from her.
But even with his joy at his luck, he still felt a pang of sadness at the loss of life that had occurred so that he could get this chance. It was his people that had died, even though they had followed Valanaru’s orders.
He did not know what had happened, or why–whether the Crescent malfunctioned or the alliance brought another weapon to the battle that could match the Crescent. And for now, at least, it didn’t matter. He would use this to save the Erasi.
Chapter Eighteen
Alliance staging point
Anessa sat in a small private room, one otherwise occupied by only Adrian and Ryaana. Her daughter had arrived only an hour ago in a small frigate, and with a terrible story. Adrian and Anessa had decided against a usual debrief, favoring something a little less official.
“Start from the beginning,” Anessa said softly. She knew what it was like to lose people under her command, and this was Ryaana’s first loss of such magnitude.
“Everything was going as according to plan,” Ryaana said slowly, her eyes fixed forward and her face outwardly calm. But Anessa knew better–her daughter was in pain. “We attacked several systems with no problems. Get in, attack, and get out.”
She paused, taking a deep breath. “Then we entered the next system, and we executed the plan perfectly. We skimmed to the planet. There, we found a force waiting for us. I decided to avoid a battle, as such a fight was not our mission. So I ordered a retreat. That is when we discovered that we could not form skim fields. The Erasi had enhanced their skim-field cancellation technology to encompass the entire system. So, I set course for the hyperbarrier. The Erasi were going to catch us no matter wh
at I did; we had to turn and accelerate while they had already started accelerating toward us. For that reason I ordered a small force to act as a rear guard, allowing the rest of my forces to escape.”
Anessa nodded–she would’ve done the same.
“Then we detected a massive ship, the size of a Sovereign. We didn’t know what it was, but I did not want to find out. Then its power spiked and it fired.” Her eyes got a faraway look to them. “I must’ve gone over the sensors a thousand times since I woke up on the ship… It–the weapon–it did something to space itself. I think that it might be a gravity weapon of some kind, but I just don’t know enough to say. It made space twist and churn–it ripped our ships apart. And it had a massive range, enough to catch almost ten fleets. I…I discovered that the more mass the ship had, the more it could withstand the effect. Our lighter ships parted like they were made out of paper. The more massive ones…they took a few more minutes to be ripped apart. Not that it mattered in the end.”
“You couldn’t have known that they had such a weapon,” Anessa said, even though she knew that it wouldn’t matter to her daughter, not now.
Ryaana looked like she wanted to argue, but she stopped herself.
“And what happened then?” Adrian asked from his spot leaning against the wall to the side. He had remained surprisingly silent ever since Ryaana had returned.
“The Erasi ship fired again, this time to finish the rest of the fleet. The Gallant got caught in whatever that weapon’s effect was… We lost our drives. The entire back section of the ship was torn off. And I ordered everyone to abandon ship.”
“But only you and Vas survived,” Adrian said. Anessa turned and gave him a questioning look. It almost sounded like he didn’t believe her.
“I… We reached the landing bay. There the ship was hit again, the bay was decompressed, and I lost consciousness. Vas grabbed hold of me and of the landing gear and held on until the safety field covered the hole. Then he took me to the frigate and left the ship.”
Adrian narrowed his eyes, but didn’t comment.
“No one else survived. Not from the Gallant at least. There were other transport ships and shuttles, leaving the other ships, but…the Erasi were destroying any ship that survived.”
“Then there still could be other survivors,” Anessa said.
“Maybe,” Ryaana said, but she didn’t sound convinced.
* * *
Sometime later, Anessa and Adrian sat together in their quarters. Ryaana had finished her debrief, at least the first of many, and they had given her leave to rest.
“We could’ve lost her,” Anessa said softly, the words sounding strange to Adrian’s ears.
“We didn’t,” Adrian said.
“Because of luck. She was lucky,” Anessa said, then turned her dark eyes on him. “She should’ve died.”
“She didn’t,” he said again, more firmly this time. But I am fairly certain that she would’ve been dead indeed had Vas not been with her, he thought to himself, not daring to speak the thought.
“I never thought about this before. I didn’t even consider it… How arrogant is that?” Anessa said, mocking herself.
“Didn’t consider what?”
“That we could lose them, our children,” Anessa said. “Yes, I worried about her, but not in any moment did I actually consider losing her.”
“Anessa,” Adrian said, “she is fine.”
“But she almost wasn’t. And I…I was a bad mother to her, Adrian.”
“She chose to follow us into this life. She could’ve been anything she wanted.”
“Did she? I forced her to be this. I made her become a Dai Sha. I sent her off with Shara Daim Legions. I pushed her away to become a Sentinel.”
“She chose to be a Sentinel, and she always knew that she had a choice. You might’ve had one vision for her, but I made certain that she knew that she could be whatever she wanted to be. Ever since she had been little.”
“You did?” Anessa asked, surprised.
“Yes,” Adrian said, and he saw her manner ease a bit.
Then Anessa shook her head and sighed, settling in her chair, her eyes getting a faraway look to them. Adrian knew that she had lost herself in her thoughts and left her to it.
His Dal A’sha was a complicated person, but he loved her all the same, with all the faults she had–and it was not as though he had none himself. But Anessa had changed much since their first meeting, he knew, and Adrian understood that most of her interactions with those other than their family was a mask, a facade. She was kinder than most thought her to be.
After a while her eyes turned to look at him. “What are we going to do about this new Erasi weapon?”
“We are going to go over the scans Ryaana gave us, and we are going to figure out what it is and how to defend ourselves against it. In the meantime we will send orders across the front to our commanders that if anyone encounters that ship, they are to retreat immediately.”
Anessa nodded. “We cannot afford this now. Something that powerful could turn the tide of the war.”
Adrian shook his head. “I don’t think that they have any more of those ships.”
“Why?”
“Because we hadn’t seen them used on us before. Why didn’t they use it when they ambushed us before? They could’ve destroyed our forces and killed us in the process. No–the Erasi ships were hunting down all Ryaana’s surviving ships, and coupled with the skim-field disruptors, I am certain that it was a test. That ship was a prototype that they did not want us to know about.”
“Then we need to find it and destroy it before they manage to perfect it,” Anessa said.
“I’ll send out our stealth scouts.”
“And we go ahead as planned until then?”
Adrian nodded. “We go as planned.”
Chapter Nineteen
Gena system – Erasi capital
“This war needs to be won quickly and decisively!” Valanaru said to the council. “The Krashin have almost pushed our forces out of their territory, and we have almost reached the point where we must either retreat or risk losing all of the forces we sent there. There is only one path now: you must sign off on my proposal to increase taxes and to extend work time for the workers in the yards and mines. Only our industrial might will save us now. That is how we will win this war!”
“Hadn’t you been trying to win this war for quite some time now?” Vorash asked her, smirking at her from his seat. “If I remember correctly, you had promised victory against the Empire and the Shara Daim long ago. When was it again… Ah, right. On the day you signed the document that turned over a significant chunk of our territory to them. What were your exact words…? I will not fail, if I remember correctly.”
Vorash looked at her calmly as she glared at him with hate in her eyes.
“I did not fail,” she bit out.
“Oh? Did your plan to conquer them succeed? It did not. As I recall, it was not even executed. The Heart of the Mountain converted all of your puppets to his side. Star-nations that you had held in your grip for eons…all have turned their backs to us. Face it, Valanaru. The Heart of the Mountain outsmarted you,” Vorash said, enjoying the indignation in her eyes. It would only make her fall all that much more satisfying. Today was the day when Valanaru lost it all.
“Do not dare to speak that name here!” Valanaru yelled out.
“Why not? You were the one that named him.”
“He does not matter! This war will end the only way it can end–with our victory!”
Vorash stood, drawing himself to his full height, and crossed both sets of his arms over his chest. “And how exactly are you going to lead us to this victory when you have already lost your secret weapon?”
Valanaru’s face scrunched up in a confused expression. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the Crescent, of course,” Vorash said, and he saw her eyes widen. Then, before she had the chance to answer, he spoke. “Di
d you really think that we wouldn’t find out that you had used it against the orders of this council? And that we wouldn’t learn of its destruction? Not only have you moved Erasi fleets without the approval of the council, you have done so without even the approval of Erasi Fleet Command! Did you really think that you could get away with this?”
“You…you dare speak such lies against me!” Valanaru screamed at him.
“Lies? Oh no, Valanaru. The only one who lies here is you.” He put a data chip on the table, sending the information on it to all the other O’fa. “There–I back my words up with evidence, Valanaru. Now all can see that I spoke the truth. And not only did you go against our orders, you also attempted to cover it up!”
Silence reigned in the chamber after his last words. The O’fas were reading the information, and Valanaru only gazed at him in surprise and anger.
“O’fa Valanaru,” another O’fa said slowly, “what is the meaning of this?”
Valanaru just stood there, looking at Vorash. A part of him was disappointed that she didn’t even attempt to defend herself. She just stared at him.
“Well, Valanaru?” Vorash said mockingly.
That seemed to pull her out of her trance. Her arm started trembling, and she raised it to point at him. “It was you…” she whispered. “You knew what I was doing. You sabotaged me… You destroyed my fleets…”
Vorash looked at her in bewilderment. “You are insane, Valanaru. You have been ever since your fight with the Empire’s mindbenders. I, unlike you, would never kill my own people.”