by David Brush
“Fine,” she replied. “We’ll keep it confined to the ship once we arrive, and I’ll restrict its network access now that the repairs are done.”
“A wise course of action, Commander. I have checked all decks. We are ready to jump at your command.”
“Do it then,” she said, standing up and walking down the length of the bridge towards the viewport. “It’s high time we return to Dawn and reclaim what’s rightfully ours.”
James let his eyes wander over the screen again, reading the umpteenth file on the Desolator. “Unbelievable. He’s had this fucking weapon for years now. He must’ve commissioned it right after we finished building the Forge.”
Haley nodded from beside him. “And I’m guessing this is how the outbreak started,” she said, pointing at a line towards the bottom of the screen. “The Lost Fleet had a third of the supply. How could Nightrick have been so careless?”
“He was scared,” said James, stepping back from the console. “He, more than anyone, knew how close we came to extinction. He was so concerned with losing his empire that he couldn’t see the risk he was taking by creating a weapon like this. Nightrick was always that way. To him, the ends always justified the means.”
She ran her fingers across the terminal’s input, pulling open a new file. The screen went black, flickering violently for a second before returning to normal.
“What the …” Haley paused, closing her eyes for a moment.
James frowned. “Are you ok?”
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she said, sitting down. “Just a little dizzy still.”
“Haley, we need to get you to a med center,” he said, gently turning her head to look into her eyes. Only thin streaks of glaze remained over her bright green irises. “You’re getting worse.”
“It’s nothing,” she said, pushing back onto her feet. She tilted for a moment and sat back down. “It’s just the aftereffect of…”
Her head jolted back as another violent seizure took hold of her. The same white foam began drooling out of her mouth again, in larger portions than before. James quickly cleared the area around her as she writhed across the cold metal floor.
“Doudna,” said James, kneeling over Haley as she continued to twist. “We need to get her help right now. She’s shorting-out.”
Doudna cast its yellow glow up through the AI terminal next to him. “The Eternity has just entered the system, Doctor. I have summoned emergency medical evac.”
“Oh thank God,” he said, lowering his head. “She’ll be fine once we get her back to the ship.”
“As you say, Dr. Mercer. I have encountered a problem, however.”
“What?” he asked, watching as Haley’s body grew still again.
“I have detected an unknown presence in the servers of Outpost Delta. I believe that the sphinxes used a backdoor to access our records at this facility when we relayed our signal through their network. I was able to isolate and remove the unknown entity the moment I detected it.”
James felt the blood rush out of his face. “How much did they see?”
“In all likelihood, everything. At a minimum, whatever you and Dr. Hall accessed in the last few hours,” said the AI, pulling up a planetary map on the large screen overhead. “It seems that they are marching on the outpost as we speak.”
“Then they know,” he said, scooping Haley up off of the ground.
“It would appear so, Doctor. What would you have me do?”
James looked down at the pale body cradled in his arms. He could still feel her trembling lightly.
“If we don’t get her help immediately, she’ll die,” he said, looking up at the map as the red indicators representing the sphinxes slowly encircled the base. “We’re out of options…”
“Shall I have the automatons fall back to a defensive position?”
James shook his head, pulling Haley a little bit closer. “No… we need to clear a path for the shuttle. Tell the sphinxes to fall back now or we’ll have no choice but to use force.”
“I issued the command numerous times already. I am afraid that they have cut communication with us.”
James felt his jaw clench. “Have the droids engage.”
“Dr. Mercer, that course of action could spark…”
“And have Commander Denova knock what’s left of their fleet out of orbit. Do as I’ve commanded,” he cut in. “I’d reduce their entire species to dust if it meant keeping her alive. Kill them all.”
“As you say.”
James closed his eyes as the gunfire erupted overhead. A cold shiver raced down his spine, numbed only by the dull heat radiating from the body he held pressed up against his chest.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Governor Zuma sat in Captain Palladium’s private dining chamber aboard the Titrant, staring at the young sphinx sitting across from him, who was shoveling beef stew into his mouth like he was afraid that he might never eat again. “You’re going to be big soon, Karo. You’re at that age, I guess.”
The boy lowered his spoon for a moment. “I’ll be like my dad. He was the strongest person I’ve ever seen.”
Zuma smiled. “Your father was something else. He would’ve been proud to see how you’ve carried yourself since leaving Mars. You’re a good kid, Karo. You have a good heart, and that’s an exceedingly rare thing these days.”
“I don’t care about that anymore,” said the sphinx, pausing to shovel another bit of stew into his mouth. “I want to be strong, so I can crush the people who attacked us.”
The governor regarded the boy for a moment. “You know, strength isn’t everything. It’s useless without conscience guiding it. Undirected power always dissipates. That’s the nature of things.”
Karo nodded. “That may be, but Dorian will die regardless. I’ll never forgive him for what he did.”
“Nor should you. But don’t allow yourself to be consumed by revenge either, or he’ll have destroyed you too. You can’t hate your way to happiness, no matter how hard you try.”
“Maybe not, but I can hate my way to justice, and that might be enough for me. My dad used to say that some men aren’t meant to be happy. I see now how true that is.”
The governor looked down at his plate for a moment before pushing his chair back a bit from the red-clothed table sitting in-between the two. “When we arrive on Sphandaria, there’s someone I want you to meet.”
“Who?” asked the boy, setting his spoon down on the tabletop.
“Your last remaining relative, that I know of anyway. King Raydon Karosh.”
“King?”
Zuma nodded. “Your father was a prince, and so are you.”
“Why did we leave then?” said Karo, clenching his fist. “If we had stayed, my mom might have survived.”
The governor shook his head. “When your grandfather found out about her illness, he meant to send her into exile alone, but your father wouldn’t hear of it. He brought you both to Mars himself. I know that he dreamt of returning home one day to lead your people, but now that dream falls to you, Karo. You’re the only family that King Raydon has left. The Sphingian Empire is yours.”
The boy frowned. “And will my people rally against Dorian when we tell them what happened?”
“I don’t think they’ll have a choice. When Dorian arrives, they’ll face him or die.”
“And what will you do? Will you really side against your own species?”
“Nothing is ever that simple, Karo. It’s not black and white. Do you know why the admiral is going to attack your people?”
“Because he’s evil.”
“No. He’s going to bring war because he thinks, deep down, that by doing so he’s saving humanity. And your people, given the chance, would annihilate mine, because they believe that by doing so, they’d be saving themselves. We exist now between two diametrically opposed forces, neither of which has any moral high ground to stand on. I’m not going to take a side, as if one or the other is righteous. What this universe needs, now
more than ever, is moderation. We have to find our way to the center, where black and white become grey, and there we’ll find the truth of things. You’ll see, in time, that the only option left to us is to form a new paradigm, and hope that it’s enough to pull our races out of their death march into oblivion.”
The long table in the center of the Silica’s war room had been completely filled, arm to arm, with commanders representing both the human ships in formation around Mars and the borrrian ships, which had arrived just prior to the meeting’s convocation. Admiral Dorian, seated at the helm of the table, stood up and tapped the screen ingrained in the wood. The purple glow of his AI, Finn, filled the room. He waited for a moment as the murmuring subsided.
“My friends, welcome to Mars,” he said with a small nod. “My name is Admiral Victor Dorian, and I am, for the time being, Protectorate of Humanity following the assassination of Dr. Johnathan Nightrick by the Sphingian Empire.” He waited another moment for the outraged chatter to subside, nodding at the uproar. “Trust me when I say that they’ll pay dearly for what they’ve done. A great light has gone out in the universe, and now it falls to us to keep the darkness at bay. Finn, pull up the fleet formation array.” The device in the middle of the table glowed to life, projecting a 3D star map of the surrounding space over the table. “We stand here now, on this historic day, to end the great threat which has loomed over our peace-loving empires for eons. I want to thank our borrrian allies for once again reaffirming their commitment to destroying the Sphingian Empire and for standing in solidarity with mankind in the brutal struggle against those who would bring war to our people.”
One of the slug-looking commanders responded through the communication collar wrapped around its throat, which turned its cacophony of inhuman gurgling into words. “As it was, so shall it be. We move forward together.”
The admiral dipped his head a touch in acknowledgement. “Our time has come at last. With the Plague ravaging our respective civilizations, we must act quickly to finish the wounded sphinxes before they rise again. Their army is a shadow of what it once was, their fleets fall into disrepair, and their industry grinds along at an unprecedentedly slow pace. Of all the affected, they have been hit hardest.” Dorian swiped his fingers across the display screen in front of him, causing the star map to transition into a large hologram of a yellow, blue, and green world. “Sphandaria. One world, one attack, and their entire empire ceases to exist. The human battlegroup, consisting of the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Fleets, will come out of warp space here,” he said, pointing to a greyish dot on the map. “Over Astaria. The borrrian navy will strike from the other side of the world. Once the sphingian fleets have been laid to waste, we’ll reduce the entire planet to glass from orbit. No mercy and no survivors, that our people might know peace in the coming age.”
“Then only one question remains,” said one of the human commanders, leaning forward against the table. “When do we deploy?”
“Two hours. Commanders, return to your ships and make ready your fleets,” said Dorian, folding his arms behind his back. “We ride now to war, not as conquerors, but as vindicators. The coming struggle will be unparalleled in the history of our universe, both in scale and cost. But know that there is no calm without a storm to weigh it against. There is no concord without chaos. Together, through great sacrifice, we will win that prize of which our forefathers could only dream: a lasting peace. Let us go now, not as humans or borrrians, but as people of light, to vanquish the darkness and reach that shining new day hanging just over the horizon.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Dr. Nightrick pulled the blast goggles down over his eyes, raising his hand to his sphinx counterpart standing on the other side of the Spire’s stone roof. His white lab coat fluttered wildly in the wind. After days of preparation, the Anomaly was finally in position over the energy pylon, suspended from a series of drones hovering overhead.
“Are we ready?” he called, pulling a thin wire out of his datapad and connecting it directly into the terminal sitting off to the side of the towering pole.
“The synchronization is complete,” said Dr. Mudaw, looking up from his own datapad. “The whole grid is active.”
Off to the side, the Dread Lord stood silently with his arms crossed, flanked by a cohort of guards. Nightrick looked over at him for a moment before turning back towards the glowing screen in his hand. He steadied himself against the railing wind, which continued to race down from the dark, vaguely purple sky above.
“A storm is coming,” said the Dread Lord, unmoving as another powerful gust swept across the roof. “Let’s get on with it.”
Nightrick nodded, looking down for a moment. At his feet, resting in the pile of junk the two scientists had scattered across the platform, was the Tesla rifle that the duo had attempted to use to stabilize the Anomaly in the first place. The modified handle just barely protruded from underneath a series of panels they’d pulled down from the pylon.
“Dr. Mudaw, if you’d be so kind,” he said, stepping back and wrapping his free hand around the nearby console.
The sphinx nodded, pressing the button in the center of his glowing datapad. For a moment, it seemed as though the entire planet stood still. A low, rumbling sound slowly began to permeate the air as the energy pylon sparked violently. The shaking of the floor was hardly noticeable at first. As the light vibrations transformed into cataclysmic rocking, cracks began to fan out all along the surface of the roof. Another violent lurch, and two of the guards went tumbling over the unprotected side of the platform, hurtling down onto the rocks below.
Even through the deafening wind, Nightrick heard the unmistakable wheeze. The Dread Lord walked across the crumbling platform towards the doctors, while his soldiers struggled to find their footing behind him. The two scientists squatted down, holding onto their consoles for dear life.
“Now!” cawed Dr. Mudaw, peering out from behind his terminal.
Nightrick reached over and pulled the rifle up into his arms. He rose to his feet and leveled the weapon as best he could, firing a brilliant arc of lightning out into the Dread Lord’s black breastplate. The armored man fell to a knee as smoke rose up through the cracks in his suit. The doctor ducked back down, holding the rifle tight to keep it from tumbling into one of the deep chasms starting to form across the platform.
“You cannot kill your monster with electricity, Doctor,” wheezed the Dread Lord, pushing back onto his feet. “You cannot give life and take it with the same force.”
He walked on, slowly, deliberately, across the fractured ground as the sound of stone plummeting into the water below grew louder and louder. “You’ll die now, Nightrick, and your people will die with you.”
The doctor stood again, resting the rifle against the console to steady it. He took in a lungful of salty air and unleashed another salvo into the dark breastplate. The blue surge danced off of his black goggles as he held down the trigger, while thick, greyish smoke rose from the afflicted figure, casting a wispy aura around the melted silhouette. The scent of burning flesh finally overpowered the smell of the sea.
The broken figure raised his gauntlet towards one of the drones hovering overhead, firing a burst from his repulsor cannon. The plane exploded, crashing against the side of the platform, sending another volley of metal and stone down into the water below.
“This ends here, Nightrick,” said the Dread Lord, rising again to his feet as the Anomaly dipped hard, knocking into the glowing energy pylon. The probe pulsed for a moment as the metal pole bent down, sending the whole back end of the platform crumbling away. Nightrick crawled forward, dragging the rifle behind him as he tried to get to the door leading down from the Spire. He looked over at Dr. Mudaw, who had crawled up next to him. The sphinx nodded, and the duo rose, racing headlong for the doorway. As they reached the exit, they turned back to face the Dread Lord, who had approached the dangling Anomaly. It flickered lightly, marginally stabilized by the massive energy influx from its collis
ion with the pylon. He reached up, wrapping his gauntlet around a pole racing along the bottom of the probe.
“Your downfall is complete,” he wheezed, raising his hand towards Nightrick. “Rest easy now, Doctor; there is no war where you’re going.”
The gauntlet glowed for a moment as the energy condensed, firing in a brilliant flash.
Dr. Mudaw pivoted in front of Nightrick, taking the full brunt of the discharge. His body crashed forward, knocking both of the scientists into the stairway. They rolled together down the stone steps, landing in a clearing two stories below.
Nightrick rolled the sphinx over, eyes locked on the singed flesh visible through his charred lab coat.
“Oro…,” said Nightrick, gently lifting the doctor’s head as the tower continued to collapse around him.
“I had to,” he managed. “There’s still time left to save your people from the Plague. Francis wasn’t planning to flee yet. He’s only got one dispersal ship loaded.”
“Where is it?”
“The other side of the temple,” replied the sphinx, starting to shake lightly. “You have to stop him.”
“I tried… I failed.”
“As long as you live, then so has he. Our people are lost. You have to show them, show them all; we’ll live as one, or we’ll die as many.”
The sphinx drew one last strained breath before closing his eyes. Nightrick looked down at his fallen friend for a moment, and then grabbed the rifle lying next to him in a fury. He ran down the stairs as they fell away before him, lunging across the gaps. When he reached the lower levels, he charged out onto the landing pads and threw open the door of the first small shuttle he could find that looked human in origin. He tossed the rifle into the passenger seat and climbed in, pulling the hatch shut as he did.