by M. R. Forbes
He had a mop of brown hair, a thin frame, sharp features and dark skin. But it was the eyes that drew her in. The eyes that caused the fire of the Gift to burn within her once more.
They were Thraven’s eyes.
She looked over all of the images, confused. Ketmose was no more than ten. His penis was present and accounted for. He was supposed to be dead.
How could this be Thraven?
She looked at his face again. She stared into his eyes. It was him. She was sure of it. Ketmose was Thraven. Ketmose was alive.
“Gant,” she said, reconnecting their comm link.
“Aye, Queenie,” Gant replied.
“I think I found something.”
36
The Rejects spent the next four days setting out to try to solve the mystery of the boy who would be Gloritant, and who didn’t have the history Selvig Thraven claimed to have. As it had been for Abbey, it became for the rest of them - a distraction from the mess they were rushing headlong into, and a chance to bond over the enigma of Thraven’s true origins.
Bastion apologized, of course, coming to her quarters early the next morning with a small gift, a misshapen Gantrean star that Gant had instructed him in the construction of and had loaned him the material for. It was an odd alliance for the two of them, but one she found she appreciated more than Gant probably knew. He was proving his loyalty by keeping the bonds of their family intact and strong. He knew they would need them to be in order to survive the days ahead.
She had responded by inviting him in and talking to him for a while. He wasn’t afraid of Lucifer, he said. He was more afraid for her and her daughter, and she knew from his reason for being in Hell that sometimes he acted or said the wrong things for the right reasons. She accepted his apology, surprised when he didn’t proceed to make any stupid or immature comments, despite the tail that writhed over her shoulder, reacting to her emotions.
She was able to keep her mind focused, and as a result, hold the fury under control. She could always feel the Gift burning beneath her skin, begging for release. She could always feel that vein of violent destruction pulsing just below her surface. She held it at bay, working with the others to come to a conclusion on the real story of the boy named Ketmose.
Thankfully, the rest of the fleet was running almost as smoothly as the Harvester. Gloritant Iona was doing her part, keeping the other ship commanders organized and putting forward Abbey’s intent for how to run her newly formed Prophetic, as Iona insisted on calling it. The separation between Apostants, Lessers, and Unders wasn’t going to vanish overnight, but the lines were quickly beginning to blur as all of the individuals involved became more attuned to their shared plight.
They were headed to Shardspace to fight a war on behalf of a woman they barely knew, but who had stood up to Lucifer and survived. A woman who had defeated their Prophet. A woman who had set them free. Abbey had earned their respect and their commitment, their loyalty and their trust. She could bring them all to something different, something better. All they had to do was fight.
All they had to do was win.
Abbey was on the bridge of the Harvester when the far end of the wormhole became visible, a ripple in the darkness that signaled a return to regular space. The Rejects were there with her, Erlan at the controls of the ship, Gant monitoring its systems, Bastion handling navigation. Ruby manning the comm. Pik, Benhil, Phlenel, Trinity, Jequn, and Uriel stood to the side in observance.
Their efforts to uncover more about Thraven had been limited to the data available, which wasn’t much, and had led to a relatively dead end. Besides the relationship between the younger, not-as-dead-as-it-had-seemed Ketmose and his older brother, the most salient piece of information they had gathered from a ship’s log was that the Honorant in charge of the Harvester had taken a liking to Ketmose and had treated him more favorably than the others. Other logs from the crew corroborated the suggestion, although there were multiple accounts that suggested the Honorant’s involvement was anything but honorable. It wouldn’t do much to help them now, but it did potentially tie back to what they could only assume was Thraven’s intentional dismemberment.
Beyond that theory, how it all translated into Thraven’s survival and eventual rise to power was anyone’s guess, and they had all taken turns making as many guesses as they could. It had quickly become a game that produced plenty of laughs, but no resolution.
Abbey was okay with that. She had held out hope they would find something they could use against the Gloritant, but some of the comments she and her fellow Rejects had come up with made the whole thing worthwhile. At the same time, there was a part of her that felt a level of empathy for Ketmose. He had grown up in Egypt as a child slave, been taken by aliens and abused, and then delivered into further slavery on the other side of the universe. Was it really his fault that he had done what he could to survive? Could she blame him for becoming the enemy after what the enemy had done to him?
Who the hell cared? It didn’t matter what made him a threat. He was a threat now, and he needed to be taken down. Even if she didn’t already want to end him for taking Hayley, she knew she would have to drink his blood if she had any hope of going toe-to-toe with Lucifer.
And there would be nothing in the entirety of the so-called multiverse that could save him from the most miserable end she could imagine if he had done anything to her daughter even remotely like what had been done to him.
The Harvester reached the edge of the wormhole and continued through. Instantly, the pure black was replaced with a scattering of stars, while she knew the hole in the universe continued behind them, the rest of the tethered fleet still emerging as if from a womb.
“Weeee’rrreeee baaaaacccckkkk,” Pik said.
“Ruby, activate the Galnet back channel and try to establish a link with Captain Mann, and with General Kett. I want to know what the frag is going on around here.”
“Yes, Queenie,” Ruby said, adjusting the controls at her station.
“Imp, what’s our position relative to anything useful?”
“We’re sixteen light years from the outer Fringe, Queenie,” Bastion replied. “The nearest occupied planet is under Outworlds control. Shastian.”
“Frag Shastian,” Abbey said. “I said useful.”
Bastion laughed. “There’s a song about Shastian.”
“My Shastian Hoo-ah,” Pik said. “I like it.”
“Not useful,” Abbey said.
“Queenie,” Ruby said. “I’m not able to initiate the back channel.” She turned to face her, synthetic face shifting into a fake nervous frown. “The Galnet is unavailable.”
“Unavailable?” Benhil said. “Is that even possible?”
“Anything is possible,” Gant said. “But you would need to bring down hundreds of nodes to break the web.”
“What about the Milnet?” Abbey asked. “Is that back online.”
“One moment please,” Ruby said, returning to her station.
“Imp, get us a path to the Fringe, between the Republic and the Outworlds. I don’t want to waste too much time out here.”
“Aye, Queenie.”
“Gloritant Iona,” Abbey said, opening a channel to the Morningstar.
A projection of the woman appeared. She was wearing a crisp uniform, her hair tied behind her head. She bowed at the sight of Abbey. “How may I serve you, my Queen?”
“We’re going to move deeper into Shardspace. Tell the Honorants to stay alert to the morale of their crews. We don’t want anyone doing anything stupid because they got spooked.”
“As you command, my Queen. We will be prepared.”
“Thank you.”
Abbey cut the link, glancing back at Bastion. “Imp?”
“Course charted, Queenie,” he replied. “Six hours from our current position.”
“Six?” Benhil said. “That’s quick.”
“You have to love traversable wormholes,” Gant said.
“I think there’s a song about that, too,” Pik
said.
“There is not,” Benhil said.
“Yes, there is.”
“Is not.”
“Thank you,” Abbey said, cutting them off. “Ruby, Milnet?”
“Negative, Queenie,” Ruby replied. “Still offline.”
“Frag.” She paused, thinking. “This ship doesn’t have an Outnet link, does it?”
“It does,” Gant said. “The Nephilim monitor transmissions from across the galaxy.”
“What good is that going to do us?” Bastion asked. “We can’t talk to any friendlies that way.”
“We need to know where Thraven is,” Abbey replied. “Listening in on the Outworlds might help us figure that out.”
“Roger.”
“We’re patched in,” Ruby said. “Shall I set a marker for the Gloritant’s name?”
“Yes. And for reports of attacks, sightings of starships matching the description of the Nephilim vessels, that sort of thing. And also for Lucifer and the Covenant, just in case.”
“Yes, Queenie.”
“Nerd, we’ll give it ten minutes, and then we’ll make the crossing to the Fringe. I want to get closer to the action.”
“Aye, Queenie,” Erlan replied.
They waited in silence. The markers would pick up instances of the words in them across the scanning channels, and while it was possible to miss some instances, if the items had any true meaning behind them they would be repeated more than once. It was a flood of media a human could never manage in ten minutes, but Ruby’s upgraded synthetic cortex could organize fairly efficiently.
“Anything?” Abbey asked after a few minutes.
“Not specific, Queenie,” Ruby replied. “Although.” She hesitated.
“Although what?”
“It’s odd. I’m getting interference across every channel. Standby.” She fell silent again while another few minutes passed. “Yes. Very interesting.”
“What is it?” Jequn asked.
“The interference is cyclical. It is repeating in an identical frequency every thirty seconds.”
“That’s not interference,” Abbey said.
“Agreed,” Ruby replied. “It is a message.”
“Can you isolate it?” Gant asked.
“Standby.” A few seconds passed. “Done.”
“Can you bring the waveform up on the projector?” Gant said.
“Of course,” Ruby replied.
It appeared there a moment later.
“Encrypted,” Gant said.
Abbey stared at it. She was familiar with a number of audio encryption protocols. This one was no different.
“It’s a Rudinian Zero-wave,” she said. “Impossible to break without a quantum detangler.”
“Of which we have none,” Benhil said.
“Who do you think sent it?” Bastion asked.
“I think that’s clear,” Trinity said. “Thraven doesn’t need to sneak an encrypted message into the background of Outnet traffic. However, if Captain Mann is trying to get word to Queenie and knows both the Galnet and Milnet are unavailable?”
“If that’s true, he’s not going to use a key that Queenie can’t guess,” Phlenel said.
“Something only you and him would know,” Bastion said.
Abbey stared at the waveform, not that it would provide a clue to the key that would unlock it. She thought back to her conversations with the Captain, trying to remember them. A word or phrase they would have shared with one another and no one else. It could be anything, and they didn’t have time to waste.
“Any ideas?” Pik asked.
“Maybe ‘bullshit,’” Abbey said, remembering how he had lied to them about the virus that would destroy their minds if they didn’t follow his directives.
“That isn’t it,” Ruby said.
“I was joking,” Abbey said.
She closed her eyes, remembering the conversations. ‘Hayley’ would be too obvious. So would most of the other things that sprang to mind. It had to be something more obscure. Something Thraven could never know or guess.
She continued to filter through their conversations in her mind. One thing they had spoken about stuck with her, probably because of what she had been doing during the trip back from the Extant.
“Try ‘Sun-Tzu,’” she said.
The waveform vanished from the projection, and Ruby turned toward her. “That was correct, Queenie.”
Abbey nodded.
Know your enemy.
“Play it back.”
“Yes, Queenie.”
Abbey breathed in, waiting for the recording to begin, her mind starting to race. Would Olus mention what had happened to Hayley? Or would he try to keep her sane, to keep her fighting for the Republic? He didn’t know what she was becoming. He didn’t know what she knew.
“Abbey. The Galnet has been disabled. Thraven’s fleet is on the move. Lucifer is here. I’ve enlisted the help of Don Pallimo and the Crescent Haulers. Contact me as soon as possible through their channels. Have Gant hack into it or get in touch with the nearest Hauler you can find. I’m sure you’re worried about Hayley. She’s doing well and under the Don’s protection. We’ll be waiting as long as we can to hear from you, but General Kett has launched an offensive on Earth, and we can’t wait long.”
37
Sylvan Kett paced in his quarters. His mind had finally calmed, though it had taken hours for him to regain some semblance of sanity.
What the hell had he done?
He had panicked, plain and simple. He had given in to fear. Fear of losing the brave individuals who had been with him and Charmeine since the beginning. Fear of dying himself. Fear of never seeing his wife’s dream realized.
He had been removed from the bridge as a result. He had been removed from command. He had been taken away, confined to quarters, and though he hadn’t looked, he knew there was a guard posted outside. The crazy old General wasn’t going to get in the way of the assault on Earth. The cowardly shell of a once respected and nearly legendary leader wasn’t going to nearly get them killed again.
What had come over him? When had he become so weak? He wanted to serve the Republic, to serve the Seraphim, to see the Nephilim destroyed and the Great Return thwarted. He wanted peace in the galaxy, but what was he willing to pay to get it?
He slammed his fist into the wall, followed by his forehead. He had been so stupid. So self-righteous and self-centered. His soldiers weren’t asking him to save them. They were asking to fight. Charmeine hadn’t asked him to keep the Covenant away from Abbey. She had told the Light where to find it, knowing full well it might make everything worse. He had imprisoned the Rejects, and only his daughter’s willfulness had made the decision not a complete disaster.
“Who am I?” he said. “General Sylvan Kett?”
He shook his head. They couldn’t strip his rank because they were all technically subordinates. Captain Davlyn was technically a traitor. But he had betrayed them first by being prepared to give the order to run.
He crossed his quarters to the viewport. There was nothing to see out there. Not yet. But he knew there would be any moment. He was aware of the time to make the jump from the edge of the inner system to Earth. He was counting the seconds in his head. It was coming, fast and furious, and when it did would they survive?
He could have helped them. He could have led them. He had been granted his chance, and he had failed.
There was nothing more he could do but watch.
He put his arms out, bracing himself against the wall, centered behind the viewport. He tried to ease his breath, but it remained ragged and short. His heart was thumping, the anticipation reaching its apex.
He remained that way for thirty seconds. Then, at the moment he expected, the High Noon came out of FTL in a cloud, accelerating quickly out of the cloud, the blue marble of the Terran homeworld visible in the distance.
Closer in, a battle was raging, a half a dozen large battleships against forty or more smaller but more nimble vessel
s, half of which he knew were Outworld design. Smaller dots darted amidst the larger craft, starfighters pitted against one another in a tight dogfight, though he already knew who would win. The Republic’s Apocalypse fighters were useless, compromised by a traitorous corporation, as were some of the lighter cruisers. It left them with older craft, starfighters that couldn’t match the Outworld Shrikes over the long haul. As he watched, he saw the enemy ships take down a pair of Republic fighters, hitting them hard with lasers and leaving them floating dead in the battle zone.
One of the battle zones. There was so much debris out here he could barely believe it. How many ships had the Republic brought to defend Earth, and how many had been destroyed? It seemed like it was an overwhelming number on both sides.
For a moment, he wondered if he had made a mistake giving Olus the Brimstone. They sure could have used the advanced warship now. Its energy weapons would have cut the Outworld ships apart, its remaining torpedoes able to destroy the best Thraven’s forces had to offer.
Then again, even if they lost Earth, gaining the support of the Crescent Haulers would be a much larger and more valuable victory.
And it certainly seemed like they were close to losing Earth. Or maybe it had fallen already. Just because there was still fighting in the space above the planet didn’t mean the occupation wasn’t settled on the ground. Winning up here might only be the first step in recovering the symbol of the Republic’s strength.
The enemy ships started to turn, altering their vectors as their sensors picked up the newly arrived fleet. He found one of the Seedships further out, staying behind the Republic forces in case they decided to put their energy on destroying it. A light flashed from the battleships ahead of it, and then small burns of thrusters filled the sky, the fleet unleashing their own starfighters.
Lasers followed a moment later; quick, heavy blasts from the fleet that strategically targeted the enemy closest to the remaining Republic forces. Captain Davlyn would be trying to communicate with them now, sending short range comm hails that without the Milnet the enemy would be able to tap into and eavesdrop on. Of course, the Captain had to know that and might be sending fake commands, or at least encoded ones.