by Paul Tassi
The SDI and resistance fleets had formed a giant floating spear. They sped toward the tornado of Xalan vessels above them, and all Xalan eyes turned toward the fleet. But on the cliffs in the distance, Lucas saw the shimmer of silver-and-pearl SDI ground armor taking up positions around the Xalan encampment.
“They come at last,” the Archon said, the last-ditch attack clearly not a surprise. “Annihilate them,” he said to the millions around him. Ships started breaking off the vortex formation to meet the Sorans and Xalans in the open sky. This was it then, the last hope. Lucas counted the ships in an instant. It was nearly everything they had.
He also calculated that it wasn’t enough. Sora had lost too much in the reclamation assault, and were dramatically outnumbered. They’d lost the element of surprise as well. This was desperation, pure and simple. Lucas eyed the lead ship, a Guardian dreadnought. Kiati was undoubtedly inside. He spotted Tau’s hulking destroyer and Toruk’s long-winged bomber. They were all there. Every last one. And they were about to be reduced to ash.
“You did it,” came a weak voice from the ground. “I knew you could come back.” Asha smiled through chipped teeth. Lucas felt like he was about to collapse. Had he really done this to her?
“My god,” he said, cradling her as gently as he could manage in his charred arms. He could taste the ash on his lips. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t—”
“It’s up to you now,” she interrupted, looking up at the two fleets about to collide. The Xalans were taking up defensive positions all around them, guarding against the aggressors on the cliffs.
Looking at Asha’s broken form, Lucas had never felt more pain than he did at that moment. His chest heaved with sorrow and anger, he was shaking uncontrollably.
“Use it,” she said, brushing his cheek with bloodstained fingers. Flecks of ash fell off his skin like snowflakes.
He saw himself in her eyes. His face burnt to cinders. His eyes shards of blue ice. But as he focused, they grew lighter. And lighter. Asha’s pupils shrank from their brilliance.
Lucas didn’t need to utter a word this time. He simply stood up, and the world exploded.
Something shot through the Xalan troops like a wave, and all around them, gray and black creatures clutched their heads like something was trying to claw its way out of their skulls. They fell out of formation, and many began writhing on the ground.
Above, enemy Xalan ships began weaving oddly in the sky. A few crashed into one another, and some simply fell straight down. The break in formation was enough for the SDI to unleash an enormous barrage of ordnance against the much larger force, and the Xalan front line evaporated in a string of explosions.
On the ground, Lucas watched as his sons wrenched their weapons away from the crippled Shadows who were also clutching their heads. Noah drove the spike of his hammer through the chest of his captor, and Erik split the head of his Shadow with a bright gold laser. Even Alpha found a way to slit the throat of his guard with his mechanical claw.
It all had taken place in just a few seconds. The Archon looked around at his crumbling army with wide eyes, the stars shrunken into pinpoints.
“No!” the Az’ghal cried out, and in an instant, he was on Lucas.
Lucas didn’t feel the needles of the claws until they pierced his heart. The last thing he saw was Asha’s face, eyes closed, half buried in bloody sand.
He woke in the crater.
It was empty, all shifting sand mixed with the scattered metal bones of long-dead buildings. Portland. Where it all started.
Sometimes he wondered if he had died that day. If when he’d put his rifle in his mouth, he’d pulled the trigger, instead of seeing the flickering lights of Alpha’s ship buried in the sand. Maybe all of this was a dream. Maybe all of this had been hell the entire time.
But no, that would be too easy.
He could see his breath in the night air. He walked along the sand, his ashen feet leaving black footprints in his wake.
Is this it then? Is this what death feels like?
Was he a part of the Circle now? Trapped on some plane of the Archon’s consciousness? A lonely prison for the powerful. Then where were the others?
But in the distance, three familiar shades danced through the shifting shadows. Their wispy white robes fluttered in a breeze he couldn’t feel. He walked toward them.
“Please,” he said, almost sobbing. “I need help.”
The three turned toward him. Cora, Natalie, Sonya. Their faces beautiful, this time. Sorrowful, not stern.
“Forgive me,” he said. “Forgive me for all I’ve done.”
“That is not for us to give,” said Corinthia.
“I want to let it go,” Lucas said. “All the pain. I don’t want it anymore.”
“We cannot free you of it,” Natalie said.
“Tell me how,” Lucas pleaded.
“You know,” said Sonya. She smiled a sad smile, and drifted close to kiss him on the cheek. The touch of her lips was ice.
Lucas turned and found another shade. This one shrouded in darkness and twisting shadow.
“Forgive me,” he asked Asha. “For all the pain I’ve caused.”
Blood trickled from her eyes, nose, and mouth.
“I am not your answer, either,” she said, shaking her head.
“You brought me back. You can free me,” he said, shaking.
“Only one person can do that.”
She kissed him as well. Only her lips burned.
And then she was gone, and Lucas was alone.
He turned, and found him. Found them.
It was him, clad in a stiff shirt and tie, a typical workday before the war. His jaw was lined with a five o’clock shadow. There was vodka on his breath.
But then next to him, another vision. This one a gaunt survivor with hollow cheeks and a swollen stomach. He wore camouflage pants and held a dusty assault rifle with a name etched into the stock.
And next to him, a regal-looking man in a high-collared suit with piercing eyes and well-combed hair. How he’d been presented to the Soran public when he’d first arrived.
Then next to that one, a stern-faced soldier, clad in blood-spattered armor, the kind he’d worn on the suicide mission to Xala. In his arms he held his famed rifle, its casing cracked and core smoking.
In the center of them all, the dark one. The one he didn’t want to look at. Blue eyes blazed in the dim light of the crater.
“You know,” they said together. “Who you must forgive.”
All of the men before him, all the versions of himself had done terrible, awful things at one time or another. They’d turned their back on friends and family, risking their lives or getting them killed. These versions of him had murdered dozens, hundreds, even thousands to survive. Lucas had carried the oppressive, unyielding weight of that for a long time.
Too long.
He searched inside himself and found the nest of pain in his heart that had spread to every inch of him.
“Forgive yourself,” the figures said in unison. “And be free of it.”
He found the vile ball of hate and pain and guilt inside him, and felt it dissolve into nothing. The black tendrils retracted from his insides. They released his heart, his mind. They had no more power over him.
Lucas was free.
“Now you understand,” said Mars Maston, standing in front of him, the other figures gone. He was flanked by Omicron, the Desecrator, and at least a dozen other pairs of blue eyes in the darkness.
“I would not have guessed it possible,” Omicron mused.
“The Archon must die,” the Desecrator said sharply.
“And he shall,” Maston said.
“I don’t understand,” Lucas protested. “What have I done?” He looked around the crater. It was still barren, but he could see the sun rising now over the lip of the looming wall across from him.
“You’ve bent the Circle,” Maston said.
“What does that mean?” Lucas asked.
&n
bsp; “Open your eyes, and learn,” Omicron said.
Lucas did.
Maston and the Shadows stood before him, though the crater was gone and replaced with the Rhylosi red waste. The Xalans had recovered and were now engaged in a heated ground and aerial battle with countless SDI troops. The floating holoscreens that once showed Elyria now were blank white squares of static, and every so often one was pierced by a passing plasma round. The Archon was hovering above the fray, mentally shouting orders Lucas could hear in his own mind. Lucas watched him thrust his claw upward and psionically shear a passing SDI fighter in half.
Turning around, Lucas saw Alpha helping Asha to her feet, Noah and Erik defending them from the Xalan horde. Half of Noah’s armor had been torn off, and the exposed skin of his arm and shoulder was almost entirely covered in blood. Alpha’s hand was pressed to a horrible-looking plasma burn on his abdomen. Erik’s face was a mess, and it looked like he might have lost an eye. But all were upright and fighting. Asha looked worse than any of them, but she caught his glance and smiled weakly as she leaned on Alpha for support.
Lucas looked down at his hands. The ash flakes that coated his skin were peeling off and floating up toward the sky. Underneath was soft, pale flesh. Smooth and unblemished. He felt his face, and found more ash rising from his skin.
“A cure …” he said breathlessly.
“A weapon,” Maston replied, still standing in front of him with the others.
“I don’t understand,” Lucas said, looking across the group of Shadows in front of him. “Are you …”
“The Circle is bent,” the Desecrator rumbled. “Let us break it.”
There was a wall of about five hundred Xalans between them and the Archon, but the Shadows tore through the blockade of metal and flesh like paper. Father and son, Omicron and the Desecrator, were a blur of claws and teeth, shredding Xalan armor and tearing any creature limb from limb that got in their way. The other unnamed Shadows, at one time executed by the Archon, fanned outward and ripped into the Xalan army. Lucas watched as two took down one of the Archon’s muscled Shadow personal guards, and soon the warrior was nothing more than a torso.
Lucas walked calmly through the chaos, unable to tear his eyes away from his newfound pink skin. No shots hit him, and every Xalan that drew close was ripped back and mangled by a summoned Shadow. Lucas followed behind Omicron, the Desecrator, and Maston, who were cleaving a path toward the Archon up ahead. Maston was without claws, but held a knife nearly as long as his forearm, and it served the same purpose. He hacked and slashed his way through Xalans left and right, though no drops of black blood ever touched his pristine uniform. Lucas swore he heard him laughing.
The Xalans thinned out and the path to the Archon himself was clear. He turned to Lucas and the advancing Shadows.
“It cannot be,” he said, fear in his voice.
His tone changed to a snarl.
“You will die here today with the rest of your wretched Exos!”
Lucas walked toward him as Shadows tore Xalans out of his way.
“Only one race faces extinction in this galaxy,” he said coldly. “The Az’ghal.”
The Desecrator launched himself into the air on his long, furious insect wings. His jaws caught the Archon’s shoulder and he tore at the meat, sending dark blood spraying into the air. The Archon had no mouth, but Lucas heard him scream all the same. The pair tumbled down to the ground, where Omicron leapt on the Archon and plunged a black claw into his gut with a fearsome war cry. Mars Maston was last to arrive, his enormous knife diving down into the Az’ghal’s chest. The Archon’s featureless face contorted in agony, and the immortal took his final breath.
“Lucas!” came a shout from behind him. He turned.
It was Asha, being helped by Alpha and Noah with Erik close by. All wore stunned looks.
He turned back toward the Archon. There was nothing but a corpse on the ground, surrounded by silver-black blood, its galactic eyes now completely dark. Maston and the others were gone. Looking around, Lucas saw no more Shadows. Only the bodies of the Xalans they’d butchered.
“What happened?” Noah asked, clutching his injured arm. “How did you do that?”
“The Shadows …” Lucas stammered, “Didn’t you see?”
Everyone looked at each other blankly.
“You tore them all apart,” Erik said, his face a mask of blood. “Didn’t you?”
“No, I—” Lucas turned around again. Mars Maston was right in front of him, completely undisheveled. Even his knife was spotless.
“Was the Circle even real?” Lucas asked him, suddenly confused.
Maston smiled, and then vanished.
The Archon’s black, dead eyes watched the tatters of his fleet flee overhead, now lost without direction, pursued mercilessly by the SDI. On the ground, Xalans stepped on his corpse as they sprinted across the sands, but those who would not surrender would find no quarter on Sora.
Lucas looked toward his family and caught Asha as she staggered over to him.
“It’s over,” she said. He held her until the first Soran ships touched down around them.
Epilogue
Peace is more difficult than war, Alpha mused as he rubbed his temples, sitting at the far end of a long, elaborately carved tulwood table inlaid with holographic projectors. Through the dancing maps and documents made of light, the other participants at the summit could be seen. Men and Xalans alike sat together at one table. That much is progress, at least, he thought.
The war was over, at last. Though not without cost.
It was unknown precisely how many had died in the Archon’s invasion of Sora, but the toll was in the billions for both races. That included the nearly two hundred million whose ashes rested in the great interlocking craters of Elyria, the city vaporized by the Archon in the moments before his death. For all they’d done to stop him, they couldn’t save Sora’s greatest metropolis, nor all those who had taken shelter there. It weighed heavily on Alpha, and he often thought if he’d stayed behind, perhaps he could have disabled the explosives in time. There is no point dwelling on what might have been, he constantly told himself, but the thought was still hard to shake. He was alive, his friends and family were as well, and that would have to be enough.
The destruction of Elyria was why they were now gathered in a new space station constructed to house representatives of both races, to try and come together and learn how to live in peace.
There was no more High Chancellor of Sora, nor a new Ruling Council of Xalans. There was only the Forum, a collection of hundreds of Xalans and Sorans, with a few Oni members as well. And, as their population grew, Earth’s humans would come to be represented. Getting so many to agree on anything was difficult, if not often impossible, but it was a preferred alternative to giving individuals the power to control entire planets, as far too many had abused their station recently between Talis Vale, Madric Stoller, and the Archon’s puppets on the Council. Progress was slow this way, but healing had begun.
“Can you update us on the status of the Makari settlements?” a slim, dark woman asked Toruk. She was a representative from one of the larger Soran continents, but Alpha couldn’t recall the name.
“We have finished dividing the regrown northern forests,” Toruk answered, clad in his finest bone armor for the formal occasion. Alpha thought he looked rather out of place in the room, but he supposed he wasn’t one to talk. He flittered his six metal fingers across the tabletop.
“There have been a few shouting matches, but nothing insurmountable,” the Oni chieftain continued. He grew more eloquent by the day.
“Some Oni have begun teaching the Xalans how to hunt and fish in the forests,” Zeta added helpfully. Alpha’s mate had spent most of the year since the war’s end helping with the integration of Makari. Her remark drew a few snorts from some of the Xalans present, but Alpha silenced them with a sharp look.
“And what of Earth?” Maeren Stoller asked. Madric Stoller had retired
from public life, escaping criminal charges in the process, but his daughter remained a military fixture. She had no desire to rule, however, and seemed far more grounded than her father.
“The new colony there has been established,” Alpha answered. “The climate has normalized in enough areas to make habitation viable again. Readings indicate the rest of the planet will heal in time, though it will take many decades yet. Keeper Auran should be arriving there shortly to supervise the young ones.”
“Xala is progressing as well,” General Tau chimed in, his voice two octaves lower than anyone else in the room. With his strength, the Shadow could have easily tried to seize power for himself in the wake of the war, but he remained committed to cooperation, and to putting his days of killing behind him. Alpha had been working on a cure to try to reverse what had been done to him and the few remaining Shadows that hadn’t turned outlaw and fled to the stars.
Alpha nodded.
“The limited reproduction of the Archon’s terraformers has proven fruitful in select areas. The technology is at least one gift the monster left us.”
Xala was still a cesspool, and largely abandoned now as its people fled to the other planets in the quadrant, but Alpha was determined to revive it. He might not live to see it thrive, but perhaps his children would. Or his grandchildren after them. He’d recently returned from a visit to his former homeworld, and found his breath taken away at the sight of a small grove of stunted trees growing in the courtyard of the shuttered Genetic Science Enclave. It was perhaps a pathetic cluster of botany, but it was the most green he’d seen in one place on Xala his entire life.
“I know no one wants to bring this up,” said Grand Admiral Kiati, her fiery hair pulled into high ponytail, her hands folded across her chestplate. “But we need to talk about Lucas. Are we sure he’s ready for this new mission? After all this time, we still don’t really understand what happened in Rhylos.”
“He is ready,” Alpha said firmly. “They both are.”
“But you’ve seen the footage,” a sharp-featured man said, some ambassador from the Broken Shore. “You’ve seen what he did.”