by Amy DuBoff
“What if the Bakzen have an independent jump drive, too?” Agent Ellis asked.
“They might,” Wil admitted, “but maybe not on every ship, just like with our own fleet. If nothing else, at least we’ll gain some added security.”
“True,” Cris agreed from the Vanquish.
Next to him, Kate nodded thoughtfully. “We should make another pass at the supply lines from Aleda while they’re caught off-guard. I’d give it a day, maybe two, before the Bakzen are in a position to retaliate against the new nav system.”
“Agreed, we need to move quickly if we’re to keep any advantage,” Wil replied. “I know the fleet needs some time to resupply after being trapped for a few days. Let’s plan a run at 09:00 tomorrow. I can observe from here.”
“Yes, sir,” the captains confirmed.
“Speak with you in the morning.” Wil ended the transmission. He let out a slow breath.
“Somehow, I feel like the change to the nav network won’t cause the Bakzen to miss a beat—just piss them off,” Michael commented.
Wil frowned. “I’m afraid of that, myself.”
“Worst case, it changes nothing,” Ian said.
“True.” Wil checked the time. “I’m going to go over the full fleet report. Let’s reconvene at 08:00.”
“See you in the morning,” Michael acknowledged.
Wil headed into the private workspace off to the right side of the Command Center. It was just large enough to hold a couch for a quick nap and a touch-surface desk. A viewscreen next to the desk was currently set to a rotating display of colorful nebulas.
He sat down at the desk and began going through the tedious reports of fleet supplies and current positions. The downed nav network had left a few ships in a tough spot, but for the most part, all the key vessels should be well positioned for the attack in the morning. They just needed a few hours to get back in order.
Suddenly, Rianne came over the comm, “Incoming message addressed to you, sir. Unknown origin. It’s marked as private.”
“Unknown origin?” Wil asked. “That can’t be right.”
“I tried a trace, but there’s nothing.”
“Put it through in here,” Wil instructed, unsure but intrigued.
When the video feed resolved on the screen, Wil nearly fell out of his chair. Bakzen eyes met his, glowing red under a heavy brow. The face was unmistakable. Tek.
It took a moment for Wil to gather himself. His pulse raced, every muscle tense. How did he get this comm channel? “Tek. It’s been awhile.”
The Bakzen examined him. “It has. My, how you’ve grown.”
What does he want? Wil attempted a covert scan to identify the transmission origin, but he found that the signal was blocked. “That tends to happen with age.”
“I see you’re still as spirited as ever. You know, that wasn’t very nice of you to lock us out of the beacon network.”
Wil swallowed. It hadn’t taken the Bakzen long to notice. “It wasn’t yours to begin with.”
“Wasn’t it? We used to be Tarans, too, after all.”
Not knowing how to reply, Wil remained silent.
“I hear they’ve named you Supreme Commander of the TSS,” Tek continued.
“That’s correct.”
Tek’s lips parted into a sneer. “I’ve received a promotion myself.”
“How generous of your superiors.” What’s this about? There’s no way this is a just social call. He tried to stay composed, but he knew there were cracks in the façade.
Tek seemed pleased by Wil’s discomfort. “My former superiors hardly had a say in the matter. I have little tolerance for ineffective leadership, you see. I had to take matters into my own hands.”
A chill ran down Wil’s spine. That can only mean one thing. “You made yourself Imperial Director.”
“You do catch on quickly, I’ll give you that.”
Stars! We’re fighting an enemy led by a madman. “So, leader to leader, what do you want?”
“I want Cambion.”
Wil almost laughed at the boldness of the statement, but felt too ill for humor. “I may be Supreme Commander, but I’m in no position to barter inhabited planets.”
“Don’t underestimate the power you hold,” Tek countered. “This is wartime, and you call the shots.”
“Then let me rephrase. I won’t hand over a Taran world to you.”
“Surely there’s a price you would consider.”
“Money isn’t a big motivator for me.”
Tek tilted his bald head. “How about your wife?”
An icy fist gripped Wil’s heart. Shite, where’s Saera? “I think she’d agree with my stance.”
“Don’t play dumb. That wasn’t my question.”
They couldn’t have captured her, could they? Wil was about to bring up the route information for Saera’s shuttle, but Tek’s level gaze stopped him.
“Answer me. Your wife, or an entire planet?”
Wil swallowed. “An irrelevant hypothetical.” She must be okay, right? She hasn’t telepathically reached out to me. I sense no distress.
“A hypothetical for the moment, but what happens next is up to you.”
“Empty threats won’t win you any consideration.” Stars! Where is she? Wil shook Tek’s piercing gaze to hunt for Saera’s shuttle on the desktop console. When the coordinates came up, he saw she was right on course. He breathed an inward sigh of relief.
“My threats are never empty,” Tek said. “You have two minutes to make your decision. Your wife, or Cambion.”
“I already told you, I won’t hand it over to you.” Fok! What is he after?
Tek smiled. “I wanted to challenge myself, to see if I could make you yield to me. Look closely, and you will see that two Bakzen scout ships are ghosting your wife’s shuttle. There is no way she could escape with the limited maneuverability of her craft. We can end her at any moment.”
Stars, no! Sickened, Wil confirmed the presence of two ships floating in subspace that could jump into normal space at any moment and fire. His mouth went dry. “Then why haven’t you?”
“Because Cambion offers much greater short-term gains.”
Wil’s mind raced. “So just attack it.” They likely have telepathically controlled civilians standing by to bring down the shield generators. No matter what I do now, the planet is probably lost.
“Why destroy a single planet when I can also bring you down in the process? The beacon virus was just a distraction to lure your wife into the open—whom else could you trust to carry out such a repair? Our educated guess that you would send her was correct. Targeting her was the perfect opportunity for Cambion’s destruction to carry so much more impact.”
Think! There has to be a way out of this. “How’s that?”
“By making it your fault.”
Wil’s heart dropped. “You’re insane.”
“Hardly. You see, the Bakzen have been at war with the TSS for long enough to anticipate your tactics. I know exactly how long it would take for you to send reinforcements to mitigate our assault, and that window will now close in less than two minutes. You can notify the TSS about the planned attack now, but your wife will die. However, if you wait out those two minutes, your wife will live—but you will need to bear the weight of knowing you could have prevented four billion deaths, if only you weren’t so weak and selfish.”
Fok! Sudden rage flushed Wil’s face. They must have civilian drones. Tek knows the planet is already his. This is just a game to him—making me consciously choose not to send help. However, realizing Tek’s intent didn’t change that Saera was still in immediate danger. “What assurance do I have that you won’t kill her anyway, as soon as the time is up?”
“Nothing other than my word. However, her death under those circumstances would be counterproductive. Killing her then would just make you angry, if I break our deal. It’s guilt that will destroy you, and her living is what will make it real for you.”
“I ha
ve no reason to trust you.” Stars! There might be nothing I can do for Cambion now, but Saera… I can’t lose her.
“Maybe not, but if you choose Cambion, she will surely die. In choosing her, there is at least a chance that I will honor my word, and that she might live. What is that chance worth to you?”
Everything, but… Wil could barely breathe. He has me, and he knows it. Fok! “I won’t negotiate with you.”
“Stop pretending you don’t care. You have a choice to make! Either lose the person closest to you, leaving you—and the TSS, by extension—distracted and compromised. Or, save your wife, and let your guilt eat away at you until you can no longer look in her loving eyes and see anything but the bartering pawn she has become—a reminder of your choice to let all those innocents die.”
“I’m not that easy to manipulate.”
“Oh, but you are. I can already see you breaking.”
Wil turned away from the viewscreen. It’s an impossible choice. Cambion may already be lost, but it’s still my call to not even try. How can I choose between the one person who is my world, or the entire population of a planet?
His heart pounded in his ears as the seconds ticked on.
Wil paced the room. Fok! What do I do? He couldn’t surrender an entire planet, especially not one so populated. Compounding the staggering loss of life would be the resource loss—a strategic position as well as some of the critical remaining rations the TSS would need to make it through the coming battles. Even if the Bakzen were bringing down defenses from the inside, TSS intervention now could help mitigate those losses. To take no action at all would result in a devastating setback.
But then there was Saera… What will keep me going if I don’t have her? Nothing, Wil realized. To lose her would destroy him, and if the TSS’ success hinged on him, self-preservation was by necessity his top priority. His eyes stung, but he kept his face composed. I’ll have to live with this decision forever.
“Time’s up.”
The words were knives driven straight into his heart and gut.
“Interesting choice.” Tek’s surprise was audible.
Wil glared back. “Let her go.”
Tek waved his hand.
On the desktop, Wil saw the two enemy ships disappear. He let out the breath he’d been holding. “You’ll pay for this.”
“I live with no regrets. A true leader will do anything for his people.” Before Wil could reply, the call terminated.
Wil sat in shocked silence. Did that just happen?
Warning lights flashed. Shite! He ran back into the Command Center, already knowing the devastating news to come.
“Emergency signal from Cambion!” Michael reported when Wil entered.
You have to play dumb. “What’s the status?”
“They’re under Bakzen attack. The planetary shield is dropping.” Michael shook his head, examining the reports on the screen. “Does this have anything to do with that mystery call?”
Do they know? Wil concocted a lie, “It was a secure communication from Taelis—some vague intel about a Bakzen attack. This must be it.”
Michael nodded, apparently satisfied with the response.
Wil could barely breathe. I did this. They’re all going to die because of me. “Planetary defenses?”
“It looks like an all-out assault. The Bakzen have them completely out-gunned,” Ian replied. “We’ll lose Cambion without reinforcements.”
It was lost before the first report. “Have the Bakzen already taken out the shield?”
“Two of the generators are offline. It’ll fully collapse within the next 30 seconds,” Ian stated.
“Then it’s already too late. There’s nothing we can do.” Wil cast his gaze down, unable to witness the digital representation of the slaughter onscreen. All those deaths are on my hands…
The crew looked appalled. “We can’t just abandon them!” Curtis cried.
Wil shook his head. “There won’t be anything left by the time any reinforcements arrive.” The knives twisted in his stomach.
“We have to do something.”
I could have, but I didn’t. “We’ll just lose more people and ships. We need to conserve the limited resources we have. It’s a Bakzen world now.” Stars! I chose to let this happen…
The crew continued to watch, even as they realized it was a futile fight.
Michael reviewed the reports on his console and main viewscreen. “A few ships are trying to jump out, but the Bakzen are hunting them down.”
“Stars! They’re bombing the planet’s surface,” Ian murmured.
“Four billion people…” Ethan breathed. “Isn’t Tom from Cambion?”
Wil nodded. I just killed one of my best friend’s families. “There’s nothing we can do.” Numbness began to replace the twisting blades in his stomach.
The crew fell silent as the remaining friendly icons on the viewscreen extinguished.
The numbness in Wil crept upward in his chest as emotional pain radiated from the crew surrounding him. It was too much. “Stay put. We proceed with the attack in the morning.” You have to pull yourself together. “I’ll be in the Strategy Room until Saera’s onboard.”
Wil barely held his composure until he was in the privacy of the conference room. The moment the door was closed, he dropped to his knees and sobbed. He held nothing back, trying to expel his guilt for making such a selfish decision. I thought losing her would break me. Will I be able to recover from this, either?
He remained on his knees and elbows for what seemed like an eternity. Eventually, the sobs subsided, replaced by numbness in his core. It was the only way to cope—to purge his emotions. He wouldn’t have to face his guilt that way, but he would also lose the love that motivated him to keep going through the worst moments.
“Where are you?” he called out to Saera. He needed her, more than he’d ever needed anything.
“About to dock,” she replied. He could sense her, so close.
Wil reached up to wipe his face. He pulled out his tinted glasses from his pocket to hide his eyes that must surely still be red. With a deep breath, he left the Strategy Room and headed for the hangar below.
After the brief lift ride, he darted down the hall to the hangar. When the door opened, Saera’s transport ship was powering down. She was safe.
The door in the side of the ship opened with a hiss, and Saera hopped out.
Wil’s heart leaped when he saw her. There’s still some of me left… for now. He needed to feel her again before he felt nothing at all.
He rushed to her, cupping her face with his hand. With his arms wrapped around her, he pulled her into a passionate kiss—channeling everything that remained of himself into one more intimate moment while he could still feel their connection. She kissed him back for an instant, then broke away.
“Not here.” She glanced at the confused technicians waiting nearby.
Wil’s sense of self was drifting away like sand through his fingers. “I can’t wait.” He brought his lips back to hers, desperate to keep the fading ember alive.
“Are you okay?” Saera asked in his mind, but he shut her out—lest she glimpse the dark secret he now harbored. He had given them up for her… but would she understand? It wasn’t a risk he could take. She was alive and all he wanted was to be with her one more time before he was revealed as the vicious, cold monster he’d always known himself to be.
He pressed her against the hull of the ship, lust staving off the cold slowly consuming him from within. Saera responded to his touch, a low moan of desire escaping her lips.
Out of the corner of his eye, Wil saw the technicians silently retreat from the hangar. They were now alone.
With the assurance of relative privacy, Wil released Saera from the shuttle to strip off his jacket. He fanned it out on the floor and embraced Saera once more. “I love you,” he murmured into her ear, the words carrying more meaning in that moment than she might ever know.
They sank on to the
jacket, entwined in passion. Wil savored every detail, imprinting her in his mind. Even if he could never feel such love again, he would at least have that one last memory.
CHAPTER 19
“Fok, what happened?” Taelis paced across Banks’ viewscreen, more openly distraught than Banks had ever seen him.
“You’ve said yourself that loss is inevitable,” Banks replied, hearing the hollowness in his own words. This wasn’t just a remote colony. Cambion was a major world.
“All those people…” Taelis massaged his eyes with his thumb and index finger. “We’ve never had a loss on that scale.”
“I can’t even fully grasp it.” Losing tens of thousands of people in a single Bakzen attack had unfortunately become a fact of the war, but to have billions of lives extinguished in a matter of minutes was too atrocious to fathom. Worlds like Cambion were protected by redundant shields and enough artillery to put up a substantial fight. Since the planetary shield had been brought down from the inside, that meant the Priesthood hadn’t deployed the counteragent to the neurotoxin in time—if that was ever even their intention. Regardless, the Bakzen had demonstrated that they were capable of executing a large-scale attack with enough swiftness and precision that no world was safe.
The other High Commander gathered himself. “There’s nothing we can do about their deaths now. The immediate concern is maintaining supply distribution to the frontlines. We’re at a critical juncture.”
“I know,” Banks agreed, turning his focus to business. Stars! When did we become so cold? “I already reached out to some civilian contacts. A shipment will be arriving to the Prisaris shipyard in the morning. We can use the facility as a new staging ground.”
Taelis nodded. “That’ll help, thank you. But it doesn’t change how this attack unfolded. Wil didn’t even send the fleet to assist.”
“What could more ships have possibly done by that point? The world was lost within the first minute of the attack.”
“Not all of its inhabitants,” Taelis protested.
“It was a calculated decision. We’ve always coached Wil to look toward long-term outcomes. Losing ships in a counterattack wouldn’t have increased our ultimate position.”