Bonds of Resolve (Cadicle #3): An Epic Space Opera Series

by Amy DuBoff

Tiro leaped into action, adjusting the rigging to orient the sail toward the wind.

  “Cast off the line to the dock,” Petre told Wil.

  Wil looked along the edge of the boat facing the dock and saw two lead lines tied to posts. He went to untie the knot.

  “No, not like that,” Mila said with a hint of exasperation. She nudged Wil aside and took over. “I wasn’t lying when I said that you needed me.”

  “Maybe so,” Wil replied, standing back to let her work. He took note of her technique and then turned his attention to Petre and Tiro’s manipulation of the sails and rudder.

  Slowly, the boat pulled away from the dock and picked up the morning breeze to take them northward. Petre stayed at the rudder and Tiro tied off the sails.

  After tying the final knot, Tiro came over awkwardly to Mila. “Why are you really here?” he asked her.

  She beamed at him. “To be with you, of course! Sorry about the show earlier.”

  Tiro visibly relaxed. “I thought maybe…” He shot Wil an accusatory look.

  “I didn’t touch her!” Wil assured him.

  Petre was watching the exchange from the aft of the ship where he was working the rudder. “What’s going on?’ he called out.

  Tiro sighed. “Do you promise not to turn the boat around?”

  Petre frowned. “Why?”

  “Mila and I are in love. We’ve been seeing each other for some time now,” Tiro admitted.

  Petre slumped. “I should have figured.” He sighed, then looked to Wil. “You knew about this?”

  “Mila told me last night,” Wil said. “I have someone waiting for me back home, so it was a relief, actually.”

  Petre nodded. “Well, what’s done is done. I was never much for the council arranging marriages, anyway.” He sighed. “We have a long voyage ahead. Just don’t break up.”

  Mila took Tiro’s hand. “You don’t have to worry about that.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Disabling the planetary shield sounded easy at first, but it was more protected than Haersen hoped. The nearest station was located four towns over from where he initially arrived on the planet. It had taken him a month to find passage, and he cursed the pathetic inhabitants of Grolen for delaying him so long. Since arriving in the town several days before, he had been casually staking out the grounds for the shield generator compound. He had yet to identify a covert way to gain access.

  At first, he thought that a subtle sabotage was the only reasonable course of action. However, the longer he observed the mundane existence of those who called Grolen home, the more he became convinced that there was nothing worth saving. The entire purpose of lowering the shield was to draw the Bakzen to the planet. No one would be left to identify him as the perpetrator; but even if there were, he would already be safe with the Bakzen.

  Haersen stood in the shadows of a low, cinderblock building. Across the street was the structure that housed one of the field generators that in aggregate shielded the planet from enemy attack or meteor impacts. The generator itself was deep underground inside the fortified compound—one of the few technologically sophisticated structures he’d seen on the world. It would be powered by a geothermal converter, if it followed standard colonization construction standards. Remove the power source, and the field would be weakened. He would have to bring down additional generators for the shield to lose a meaningful degree of integrity, but Haersen was confident he could handle that through the computer network once he was inside.

  He chuckled to himself. To think he had been trying to find a way where they wouldn’t know it was him that brought the enemy within their walls. Walking through the front door was so much easier.

  It was several hours into the shift for the guards at the front gate. Through his observations, Haersen had noticed they were a somewhat apathetic lot and not terribly attentive, relying instead on the sophisticated biometric scanners safeguarding entry to the inner operations. Presenting a cover story wasn’t even worth the effort.

  His mind made up, Haersen strode out of his cover beside the building, heading straight for the main gate.

  The guards straightened as he approached, readying their blast guns.

  “Who are you?” one of the guards asked.

  In response, Haersen telekinetically cast him to the side with a flick of his wrist. It had been years since he’d been able to wield his power so freely, and it sent a wave of exhilaration down his spine. The second guard cried out as his colleague was thrown against the wall, but Haersen disposed of him before he could complete his warning.

  Haersen’s skin tingled from the energy, sending an electrical surge through his fingertips. Craving more, he set his eye on the entry gate. Well-fortified by most standards, the gate was no match for a telekinetic assault. He gripped the hinges with his mind and twisted the metal bars from their fastenings. The metal shrieked as the gate wrenched apart to form an opening.

  He stepped through the twisted remains, tossing aside the metal scraps that stood in his way.

  Inside the gate, voices called out from the main building on the surface of the compound. Two men and a woman emerged to investigate the commotion. The moment they came into view, Haersen lashed out at their minds, bringing them to their knees with cries of agony. They collapsed unconscious on the ground. He sensed there were others nearby, just inside the building’s entry door, but they remained hidden after hearing the screams of their colleagues. They weren’t worth the effort of a detour, so Haersen let them be. The Bakzen would deal with them soon enough.

  The entrance to the lower level housing the field generator was at the back of the compound, just inside a small structure that appeared to only be a single room from the surface. A desk topped with a computer console stood along the side wall, and a single door occupied the back wall. Haersen headed straight for the back door, telekinetically swinging it open as he approached. Stairs led downward. There was likely a lift somewhere, or surface opening to enable equipment replacement, but the stairs would do for his purposes.

  He raced down the stairway, taking two steps at a time. At the bottom, he abruptly met a solid door with an electronic keycard entry. With an exasperated sigh, he realized he should have grabbed a keycard from one of the casualties along his way. Still, the door was not insurmountable by other means.

  Haersen stepped midway back up the last switchback in the stairs and gave a telekinetic yank on the door. Despite its smaller size, it was more stubborn than the entry gate. He ramped up the intensity, vibrating the casing of the door. It groaned as the seal was breached, loosening dust from the surrounding concrete walls. With a final groan, the door swung inward.

  A pulsating hum filled the stairwell. Haersen jogged down the steps and slid through the open doorway.

  The door opened onto a grated platform suspended at the edge of an open chamber. There was a single observation computer station along the back railing. More stairs to the left of the platform led down to the field generator below, situated next to its geothermal energy source. The pulsating energy hum echoed through the chamber, creating an oppressive fog in Haersen’s head.

  Distracted by the sound, it took him a moment to realize there was a technician cowering in the back corner of the platform, behind the observation station. She winced as Haersen stepped forward, her breath ragged and hands trembling. Her eyes silently pled for him to spare her, but she was far too useful for him to let her run away.

  Haersen removed his sunglasses and placed them in his pants pocket. He fixed his luminescent brown eyes on the terrified technician and sent a telepathic spire into her mind. She convulsed at first, trying to fight the intrusion. It only took a few seconds for her to succumb, and she relaxed against the railing, staring directly at him, but into the distance.

  “Where are the generator controls?” Haersen asked her.

  “Down below,” she replied, her voice flat.

  “Show me.”

  Her movements stiff and forced, the woman rose to her
feet and descended the stairs on the far side of the platform.

  At the bottom of the stairs, the woman headed to a workstation adjacent to the generator. Readouts filled three monitors positioned above the touch-surface desktop. “Here,” she said.

  “Disable the planetary shield,” Haersen instructed.

  The woman gasped, trying to resist the instruction. She choked and stuttered her protest, her eyes tearing as her mind was overpowered by the intrusive command. Compelled to comply, she accessed the computer terminal.

  Haersen watched her navigation and inputs. The final screen displayed the active status for the planetary shield. The generator in front of him was one of five stations distributed around the planet—three on the equator, and one at each pole. If he really wanted to get the Bakzen’s attention, he needed to bring down the entire system. “Where are the controls for the network?”

  “Don’t have access,” the woman stammered.

  Haersen sensed that there was truth to her statement, but she knew something she was trying to hide. “How do I get access?” he demanded.

  She took a shaky breath, tears running down her cheeks. “Override codes. In the manuals.” She looked toward a shelf under the stairs.

  Haersen stepped over to the shelf. There were electronic components of various sorts in clear storage boxes. On the top shelf, he spotted a thin book and took it. The gray cover was unlabeled, but the opaque plastic interior pages were printed with scenario labels and corresponding alphanumeric codes. Haersen smiled. He had figured he would have to hack into the network, but he’d just been handed the operations manual.

  “Scenario Gallantry,” the woman replied to his unspoken question.

  Haersen flipped through the book and located the entry. The access code was a string of twenty characters. “Bring up the authorization,” he instructed.

  The woman’s hands jerked as she prepared the system to accept the codes. She entered her personal authorization, and looked to Haersen for the final entry from the book.

  He entered in the code, giddy with excitement. Soon the Bakzen would come to the world, and he would be welcomed as a hero.

  As soon as he tapped “Execute,” the hum from the generator wound down. The command window closed, returning to the graphic of the planetary shield. In unison, the graphic of the shield disappeared from around the simulated planet and the five generation stations flashed red.

  “Have to destroy this station,” the woman stammered. “Can’t re-establish shield without the full network.”

  Haersen grinned. “Thank you, you’ve been very helpful.” With a flip of his wrist, he cracked her neck and she dropped to the ground.

  He stepped over her lifeless body toward the network hub. With telekinetic lashes, he ripped out the wires connecting the station to the rest of the defense network. He doubted her statement was completely true—there would be a workaround to restore the shield without that station—but it would be a delay and that’s all he needed.

  The Bakzen were out there, watching and waiting for any vulnerability. The world would be theirs for the taking. It was his gift to them, for everything he was about to receive. His trials were almost over. At last, he would be complete.

  CHAPTER 20

  Wil squinted in the sun. He was tan after a month on the open ocean. The warm glow of the radiant heat soothed the chill that had entered the air as they traveled north. Their progress was slowed by inconsistent wind and only a vague knowledge of their destination.

  The creak of metal sounded behind Wil, and he restored his tinted glasses.

  Tiro and Mila emerged through the sealed hatch to the living quarters below the deck of the small sailing ship. It was the only place to get any privacy.

  “Any sign yet?” Tiro asked Wil.

  Petre came to join them from his perch midway up the central mast where he’d been on lookout, as well.

  “No,” Wil replied, looking back at the horizon. For days Tiro had been saying they were nearing the Northern Seafarers village. Aside from some cast-off buoys floating in the dark green water, there was no sign of any civilization.

  “I feel it, we’re close,” Tiro insisted. “There’s a smell in the air.”

  “We’re down to a weeks’ worth of food stores, unless we find fish,” Petre said. “We can only keep wandering for so long.”

  Wil gazed out at the empty horizon. “Turning back won’t do us any good, either.”

  “No, Tiro’s right. There is a smell in the air—like smoke,” Mila said.

  Wil focused his senses and concentrated on the air. Sure enough, there was a hint of smoke on the breeze. He couldn’t identify the direction. “Where—”

  “Look!” Mila exclaimed, pointing toward the southeast.

  Two compact watercraft were speeding toward them. The crafts were too low and traveling in the wrong direction to be carried by the wind.

  Tiro beamed. “It’s them.”

  As the crafts neared, Wil saw that each was driven by a single rider. They slowed as they approached the sailboat. Both riders wore cloth wrappings around their faces and were bundled in outfits suitable for blocking out the cool sea breeze at night. Five meters from the sailboat, they halted.

  The jet skis looked to be powered by a compact steam engine, and based on the smell, the engine was fueled by burning treated blubber.

  The rider on the left, a young man in his early-twenties, removed his head wrap. “What is your business here?” he called out.

  “We have come to speak with the council of the Northern Seafarers,” Petre replied.

  The other rider removed their covering, revealing a pretty young woman with red hair. “Why?”

  “To unite against a common enemy,” Petre stated.

  Wil stepped to the edge of the sailboat. “I’m here as an official representative of the Tararian Selective Service. It came to our attention that there’s been an injustice on your world. We seek to repair the wrongs done to you by Makaris.”

  The young man scoffed. “A TSS representative? What kind of joke is this?”

  Wil removed his tinted glasses, exposing his glowing cerulean eyes. “It’s not a joke.”

  The two strangers exchanged a wary look. “What proposition do you bring to the village council?” the man asked.

  “That’s for us to discuss with them,” said Wil.

  “We don’t know you. We’re not taking you anywhere,” the woman retorted.

  “My name is Wil and I’m a Junior Agent with the TSS. Makaris Corp is operating outside of official procedure, and I wish to place the head of operations for this planet under arrest. However, my escorts and I can’t take on a fortified supply outpost without additional assistance. We’re coming to you without village borders, as citizens seeking to improve the quality of life for everyone on Orino. Our hope is that your leaders will be sympathetic to our cause and lend aid.”

  The man and woman scrutinized Wil and the others on the sailboat.

  “He speaks the truth,” Petre said. “My village council reached out for help as a last resort. We couldn’t survive another year on the supplies we receive.”

  “It’s not much better for us,” the woman said. “Something needs to be done.” She looked to the man and he nodded. “I’m Daela, and this is my brother, Rod.”

  “All right, come with me. We’ll let our council decide.” Rod turned to Daela, “Continue on to the outpost. I’ll meet you there.”

  Daela readied to head off on her jet ski.

  Tiro licked his finger and held it in the air. “The wind isn’t in our favor. We’ll need a tow.”

  Daela hesitated.

  Rod frowned. “Do you have rope?”

  Tiro ran to grab two coils of rope from inside the hatch to below deck. He tossed Rod the end of one length.

  Rod secured it to his jet ski and tried to pull the boat. The jet ski groaned and the boat barely moved. “It’ll take both of us to tow them,” he said to Daela.

  “What a
bout the supplies?” she asked.

  “It’ll have to wait,” Rod replied. “Grab the other rope.”

  Daela frowned but nodded her consent. Tiro tossed her the second length. “You completely passed the village, you know,” Daela said as she begrudgingly tied off the rope to the back end of her jet ski. “It’s half a day’s travel back the way we came.”

  “I told you we were too far west!” Mila said as she gave Tiro a little shove after he secured the knot on his end of the rope.

  “We’re on the right path now,” Petre cut in. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  The world was surprisingly quiet as Haersen stepped out of the shield generation compound. He had expected a flurry of panic as people realized their world was exposed to attack, but perhaps there were bunkers where they were holed up in a futile attempt to seek shelter.

  The next phase of his plan was a dangerous bargain. Bakzen invasion protocol tended to follow a broad sweep attack as the first pass, and it would be easy for him to be killed in the fire. He needed to make his presence known.

  A field stretched out to the back side of the generation station, and Haersen jogged a hundred meters into it. The grass reached to his knees and danced like a silver wave under the moonlight. He matted down a patch of grass and sat at the center of the clearing. With a slow exhale, he cleared his mind and opened up his consciousness. He strained to extend himself, brushing the edge of the world—listening and waiting for the Bakzen to approach.

  It felt like an eternity to be so far extended and exposed. But eventually, he felt the presence of a single mind at the distant reaches of his consciousness. He called out to the mind, “I am here. I give you this world.”

  There was no response.

  For a moment, Haersen panicked. Perhaps the scout did not find the world worthy. Or the shield had been restored. He tried to reach the mind, but then it disappeared. He called out, but there was no one to hear him.

  Suddenly, a thousand voices crashed forth into Haersen’s mind. He wanted to withdraw from their power, but he forced himself to remain a beacon, calling them to him. “I am one of you. Accept my gift.”