Villain

by Ivan Kal

  Doranis, a being that had existed for longer than some suns, who knew secrets that no one had even contemplated yet—a being that wanted to kill all life, a being that killed her children—died. In the heart of a molten core, with an entire planet collapsing in on him, his life ended, and Anessa followed just behind him.

  She felt the moment when she lost her grasp on the power and her existence faded away, falling through the deepest reaches of the Sha. She was Shara Daim, and she had accomplished her vengeance. Her last thought was for her loves, Adrian and Ryaana. She hoped they would forgive her for being selfish.

  And then there was nothing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Year 718 of the Empire — Galactic Core

  Adrian watched the battle take shape. The Seventh was a brilliant military mind, but that wasn’t a surprise to Adrian, who had lived its life. The Seventh was pushing the Enlightened all over the system, forcing them to commit more and more forces to stop their push. They were still far away from the planet that housed the weapon, but Adrian only needed to see the defenses around the planet thinned. He knew that as soon as Aranis and Loranis realized that the fleet would eventually reach the weapon, they would commit more forces to its defense.

  The Krashinar formation smashed into one of the Enlightened task forces, and Adrian watched as the battle intensified. The Enlightened tried to harry the fleet with hit-and-run tactics, coming in on courses that would leave them able to fire on the Krashinar while allowing them a clear escape route: a fighting retreat.

  Navigation through the system was tricky—there were so many forces exerting influence on one another that one could easily miscalculate and get off course—but the Krashinar beasts were master navigators of the void, and with their help the entire force had few problems on that front.

  Adrian and Moirai kept back, conserving their strength. Lurker of the Depths and Loranis were still testing each other, but neither wanted to get into a real battle. Not yet. Ryaana’s ship was next to Moirai, along with Lurker of the Depths’ Dark Waters, but she was keeping herself fresh just like Adrian.

  Still, he was growing impatient. He needed to provoke Aranis and Loranis into doing something, and so he was planning on the best way to do that. Going out and destroying some of the Enlightened ships could work—they had many of their Juggernaut-class ships in the system, and taking a few of them might convince them to take an active part and meet them in battle. Adrian dropped into the Sha state, extending his senses to watch over the battle. There wasn’t much that he could sense without focusing directly, but he could feel Lurker of the Depths close by as he, too, was in the Sha state. He couldn’t tell what he was doing, other than that he was doing something. Loranis, likewise, was visible to him. She didn’t attempt to hide, but he couldn’t tell what she was doing either.

  In the end he decided that staying still and allowing the Enlightened time wasn’t wise. He reached out to Ryaana and Lurker of the Depths, making a mental connection.

  “Dad? What is it?” Ryaana asked.

  “I’m going to go and poke them a bit. I need you to be ready to come and help if we need it.”

  “We?” Lurker of the Depths asked.

  “I’m taking Moirai with me,” Adrian said, and then he pulled back before they could speak. He reached out to Moirai. “You ready to make some trouble?”

  “GOING TO FIGHT?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Adrian answered.

  “You sure that is wise?” Iris asked. Before she had moved to the Custodian’s core, she shared part of her core with Moirai: a blending of biology and technology. Now she was no longer in the old core, but she could use it to speak with Moirai, and also hear when Adrian and Moirai spoke.

  “It’ll be fine. I just want to take their measure. I’ll need you in case we get in trouble,” he said out loud as Iris appeared next to him.

  “Fine. I will retarget a few of my md cannons to cover you. They have the range.”

  Adrian smiled at her and then stood up, walking up to the large upright cylinder in the corner of the room. It opened to show an empty tube. He stepped inside and it closed around him. Armor pieces from above and below floated up and were fixed into place even as a sea of nanites flowed over his body. The armor was a new design by Iris, finished just a few weeks ago, while they were still in transit. She had only made one of them, but they planned on making more for Ryaana and Lurker of the Depths, as well as Anessa, once they got back. The armor suit was designed to work better with the Sha state, with a couple added features that made abilities easier to use. It also had an access-point comm system that allowed Iris to be with him no matter where her core was. She could also control the added features for him, in case he couldn’t, or simply to help out. The tube opened up and he stepped out, the silver armor moving as if it were a second skin, even though it wasn’t exactly thin. The forearms were a bit wider to accommodate the hardware inside.

  A moment later he reached out to Moirai and they prepared. The back end of the shell that surrounded her folded up and four blood-red fin-like extensions, each over five kilometers long, extended from her insides, the shell pieces folding over the fins like armor. The front of the ship opened up, revealing her main weapon. The sides of the ship slid out as she extended another two stubby, wing-like extensions. Her wings started glowing red as Adrian guided her through the process. With help, they could extend that field to hold a few more ships, but right now there was no need, as they weren’t going to engage fully—they were only testing the enemy.

  A moment later, the field was around her entirely, and it disrupted the skim-nullifying field that filled the system. Adrian could’ve had them bend space, but doing so was exhausting when he moved anything other than just himself. The two of them could do it, but engaging the skim was more power efficient. He didn’t want to tire them out.

  A moment later they entered the skim and were on their way across the system.

  * * *

  Ryaana watched as Moirai disappeared along with her father. She wanted to reach out and tell him that he was being reckless, that he shouldn’t go alone, but she didn’t really have anything to say that would convince him to change his mind. Her father was as stubborn as her mother; in that, they were made for each other. She could only watch and hope that he knew better than to overextend. This battle was not going to be over in a single encounter, and they had a plan on how to win. A plan that they were supposed to be following.

  She knew that most of her nervousness came from the fact that she was in the same system as Vas, or rather Aranis: the person who used to be her best friend, the one who had pulled her out of the loneliness she found herself in. While he was by her side, her life had changed for the better. She’d fixed her relationship with her mother, had grown, had found a romantic partner, all just because he had become her friend. Now he was the enemy, had always been the enemy. That was what was hurting her so much, the fact that he had never been her friend at all. Lurker of the Depths tried to convince her that his intentions didn’t matter in the end, not if his actions were true, and in a sense she could understand that. Aranis had been her friend, had helped her, and the fact he had ultimately betrayed her shouldn’t taint everything that they’d had. But she just couldn’t think in that manner. She was not like them, like her father and mother, and was not even like Lurker of the Depths to some degree.

  All of them lived in a far different reality than she did. Somehow she had joined their little club, achieved the same power, but she didn’t yet think like them. Perhaps it was because she was far younger, because she didn’t have the centuries to turn her apathetic to what they considered unimportant things. She wanted to protect the people around her, people she cared about and anyone else who was weaker than her. She didn’t agree with her father’s belief that people should stand on their own power. She wanted to help them stand.

  Ryaana was many things, but she was never going to be like they were. She had vowed as much to herself. Not th
at she thought that her family was evil, that they didn’t care. She knew that they did. Her father cared—he wouldn’t be here now if he didn’t—but she also knew that he viewed people who weren’t as strong as him differently. He was not good or evil. He just was.

  Seeing him rush across the system to poke at the Enlightened brought all those feelings to the front of her mind. She knew that it might make sense to do so, but she was also certain that her father was doing it more because he was bored and because he wanted to fight the Enlightened. No matter how he might justify what he was doing and why, it was always for the purpose of growing stronger and overcoming.

  But she didn’t have the luxury of doing that. She entered the Sha state and watched her father, making sure that she could act the moment something unexpected happened. Knowing her father, it was only a matter of time.

  * * *

  Adrian knew that he couldn’t reach the planet with the weapon, not with the skim. It was too well defended and there were too many ships in between them. He could just as easily hit something and kill himself in the process. So he skimmed them above the plain of the system and above a large force of Enlightened ships that was on its way to meet with a Krashinar force.

  As soon as Moirai dropped out of the skim, she opened fire, her myriad weapons bathing the space between them in weapons fire. She fired the kinetic weapons from her grown weapons, and spike-like shells made out of compressed carbon were expelled by muscles and gas at speeds close to those that a rail-gun could achieve. She was filling the space with them, forcing the Enlightened ships to evade and keeping them from being able to respond fully. Her ion beams punched enemy ships’ shields and brought them down, allowing her anti-matter cannons to deliver payloads of anti-matter into their hulls.

  Ships were dying quickly, and Adrian used their connection to guide her Sha powers. He would reach out and mark a ship, take hold of the gravity forces around it and Moirai would add her own power. They crushed a ship to a crumbled wreck and continued on.

  He knew that there was going to be a response, had hoped for it. Moirai was blazing with fire and power. The task force of some ten thousand warships was nothing before her, and the Enlightened couldn’t let her act with impunity without reacting.

  He felt an attack echoing through the Sha as it was pointed at his mind, and then Lurker of the Depth’s mind was there, shielding him. Adrian let Lurker of the Depths handle Loranis, and instead turned to the presence that had just bent space and appeared within the enemy fleet. He felt Aranis bend several of Moirai’s attacks and send them back at her, but her shields were powerful enough to handle it. Adrian tried to catch him with a telekinetic grasp, using Moirai to fuel his power, but Aranis didn’t allow it—he used a burst of disruptive energy and bent space to get away.

  He fired a blast of something that Adrian didn’t recognize, so he had Moirai raise a Sha shield in addition to her energy-powered shield. His instinct was right, as it went right through the energy shield and hit her Sha shield. It was powerful, but didn’t break through.

  Then Adrian felt Aranis reach out with his mind.

  “Why are you here, Heart of the Mountain? You do not care to save everyone. You want only to be the strongest.”

  “That is where you are wrong, Aranis,” Adrian responded. “I do care. If you succeed in what you intend to do, there will be no more people to challenge me. I need to know that, someday, someone will rise to meet me.”

  “And you would doom all existence for what? A couple million years? Maybe more?”

  Adrian couldn’t really think in that frame of mind; he hadn’t even lived past his first thousand years. But he understood finally at least a piece of why the Enlightened wanted to do this. They were beings that had lived for an incredibly long period of time, who had intended to live for longer. To them, the end of the universe was a real threat. Adrian could admit that he didn’t understand it, not really. The death of an universe was something that might happen in the future, but he could not know it would. What he did know was that if the Enlightened won, it would be the end of life, at least until other life rose again to fill the galaxy. He wondered what the Enlightened intended to do then. Would they remain and cull all life in the galaxy, never allowing it to reach the same height it had now? Or would they just sterilize it to prevent anything like this happening again? It didn’t matter to Adrian—he had made his choice.

  “That may come to pass. What you intend to, however, do will lead to certain death,” Adrian told him.

  “Such shortsightedness. You disappoint me, Heart of—” Aranis stopped speaking, and Adrian froze as well.

  Something had happened. He felt a shudder pass through the Sha, a ripple that was both faint and powerful at the same time. It took him a moment, but then he recognized the source as Doranis. For a moment he thought that perhaps he had arrived in system, that the Grand Fleet hadn’t been enough to distract that force. But he quickly realized that it was not that. It was something far different…something that he couldn’t quite grasp.

  And then he felt it. One moment Doranis was there, in the deepest reaches of the Sha, and in the next he fell deeper through it.

  Adrian remembered his conversation with Aranis on Ullax Darr’s planet, how he said that the uploaded version of Axull Darr wasn’t really him, how the Enlightened had felt him pass through the Sha long ago. In this moment he realized what that meant, the feeling of someone passing through the Sha.

  Doranis was dead.

  “Impossible,” Aranis sent and then he retreated, pulling his mind back and bending space away.

  Adrian didn’t know how, but he knew that Anessa had killed the Enlightened. In that moment he felt proud, and confident. Doranis was dead, and that meant that the Enlightened could be killed, could be defeated.

  But then another shudder went through the Sha, this one more powerful, more full, and Adrian’s heart stopped beating.

  He felt Anessa—a part of her, as ripples came through the Sha. In the Sha state he tried to reach out, but she was far away, and what he was feeling was an echo of a powerful being as they passed through. A moment later she too passed, and he knew that she had met the same fate. Anessa was dead. His love, his partner, the one person in this wretched galaxy who understood him and loved him despite all of his flaws.

  Adrian had only rarely felt grief in his life. He had thought that the last time was when Bethany died, but now, in this moment, he realized just how wrong he had been. What he had felt before wasn’t grief, it was nothing compared to this. A part of him had just died, a part that had accepted all that he was. He would never again feel her touch on his skin, never again speak with her, never again see her. It made him feel cold, alone, made him feel like there was nothing left for him in the universe.

  “Dad?” His daughter’s words reached out across space. He closed his eyes, fighting back the grief. There was confusion in Ryaana’s tone, but there was grief as well, a mirror of his own. She didn’t understand, but she knew that something had happened.

  Adrian and Moirai took hold of the Sha and bent space around themselves, coming back to their force. Adrian sat on his throne, his daughter speaking to him with telepathy but he couldn’t answer.

  “HURT?” Moirai asked, her childish yet somehow wise tone making him feel even sadder. She didn’t understand this, not really.

  “Adrian, I am so sorry,” Iris said.

  “I can’t, not now,” he said. He could feel the grief threaten to overwhelm him, but he couldn’t let it. He needed to fight the Enlightened, needed to be at his best. And he knew that Anessa would understand, that she would approve. He could almost hear her voice berating him for allowing even a moment of weakness. Adrian turned his head to the holo, looking at the locations of the two Enlightened Living-ships. Anessa was dead, but she had taken Doranis with her. And if Adrian was affected by her death, they would be affected as well. A being with which they had spent a vast majority of their lives, who was closer than a brother to t
hem, had died.

  And Adrian was going to take advantage of that.

  He reached out to Ryaana and Lurker of the Depths. “Get ready for an attack. I’m going after them—now.”

  “Dad? Mom… What was that?” He heard the hope in her voice, the thought that she had come to the wrong conclusion.

  A part of Adrian that was her father wanted to comfort her, but the other part that was the Heart of the Mountain knew that there would be no better chance for them to strike at the Enlightened.

  “Your mother died fighting Doranis. She killed him and gave us an opportunity. The Enlightened are off balance. They are reeling from the fact that one of the three is dead. We must strike now.”

  He felt her shock at his words, the hurt that spilled from her mind. “Mom’s dead, and you want to use that as an opportunity?”

  “It is what your mother would’ve wanted,” Adrian said. “Ready yourself.”

  He reached for Moirai and prepared himself, intending to go straight for the enemy’s throat.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Year 718 of the Empire — Mars

  Tomas stood next to a holo table in a large command room of the Olympus Mons complex. The holo in front of him showed the battle half a galaxy away. The Grand Fleet was sending all of its data through Josanti League relays, though the connection wasn’t in real time. They were watching events that had taken place roughly twenty-four hours ago.

  The room was filled with officials from other races, by military leaders and analysts. They were a day behind, but they were still analyzing everything that they saw, just in case they saw something the Grand Fleet didn’t. Tomas had been watching the battle with trepidation and worry. He had seen the records of what had happened to the first Grand Fleet, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was going to happen again. They needed to defeat the Enlightened, and they needed to do it handedly. Too many relationships between galactic nations were in the balance. The fate of the Grand Fleet held the future of the galaxy.