by Richard Fox
“Marines and sailors died for ‘might be useful’?”
“Hold on to the railing. This part is a little weird.” Stacey’s hands tapped at unseen controls.
Hale grabbed the railing, and the gray expanse vanished. Bright white light stung Hale’s eyes. He put a hand over his face and looked over the edge of the sled. A swirling mass of red and black clouds writhed far beneath him. Bands of multicolored clouds stretched so far into the distance Hale thought it was another sort of illusion.
Great pillars of nebulous clouds rose from the bands and towered hundreds of miles into the pale blue sky. Bolts of lightning rose and fell soundlessly within the pillars.
“This is Qa’Resh’Ta. To your left you’ll see Bastion,” Stacey said. The space station hung far above the gas giant, faded by the atmosphere between Hale and where Stacey actually was.
Hale saw the two stars at the center of the planet’s star system, one large and blue, the other small and white.
“Sir, can I open my eyes now?” Torni asked.
“I think you’d better. You don’t want to miss this.”
Torni yelped and shut her eyes again. She relaxed a few moments later and looked around in wonder.
“Whoa,” she said.
“Humanity could have sent a poet for a moment like this,” Stacey said. “Instead we’ve got two Marines. But … I don’t think there are many poets left on Earth. Ready for something special?”
The sled cut through a tuft of white cloud and banked around a cloud pillar. Sunlight glittered off something close to the roiling cloud layers. Hale looked over the edge of the sled. A city floated above the clouds, immense crystals the size of skyscrapers fused together, glowing from within. It looked like the entire island of Manhattan redone in crystal with skyscrapers fused together at the base, clutching against a solid mass of stone. Shadows floated between the crystals, darting away as Hale tried to hold his eyes on them.
“This is where the Qa’Resh live. They can’t be on Bastion in their true form. You’ll understand in a second,” Stacey said.
“What are they?” Hale asked.
“They are the glue that holds the Alliance together. They created the probe that saved so few of us on Earth. They are the ones trying to save this galaxy from the Xaros. And one of them is coming to say hello.”
A blaze of white light rose from beneath the sled. Hale backpedaled into the railing, his hands fumbling for his weapon out of ingrained reflexes. The creature floating before the sled was enormous, several times the size of Elias in his armor. A dome covered in crystal plates held long tendrils that waved in an unfelt breeze. Glowing filaments rose and fell from the tendrils, rippling and shifting.
+Greetings+
Hale felt the word in his mind, reverberating so hard it felt like a vice across his temples.
Torni wiped a hand across her nose, and blood streaked across her glove.
“Too much?” Stacey asked. “It’s sorry. Our minds can’t process their communication very well. The AI on Bastion does most of that for us.”
A tendril lifted from the Qa’Resh and slowly reached for Yarrow.
“Stop!” Hale moved Yarrow away from the glowing crystal tip and put himself between the fallen Marine and the alien. “What’re you going to do? Tell me how you’re going to get that thing out of Yarrow without hurting him.”
“Ken, the Qa’Resh will do what it needs to. Don’t expect it to explain itself,” Stacey said.
“The hell it will.” Hale jabbed a finger at the Qa’Resh. “You sent that probe to Earth and it let billions die for this war. You expect me to believe you won’t kill Yarrow just to get at what’s inside him?”
“They are our allies.” Stacey’s hologram walked in front of Hale and pointed a finger at his chest. “You’re insulting them, I’m sure, by this macho nonsense. Now get out of the—”
Hale’s hand snapped out and grabbed the ball at the center of the hologram. Stacey vanished and a muffled protest came from Hale’s fist.
The tendril flipped over, tiny white filaments writhing like each had a mind of its own. The tip floated slowly toward Hale.
+Permission+
The word echoed through Hale’s mind, a waning echo repeated by several different voices.
Hale didn’t move.
+Touch+
The tendril bounced slightly.
“That do you think, Sergeant?” Hale asked Torni.
“It’s a giant goddamn crystal jellyfish, sir. I don’t know what to think,” Torni said.
“Hold this.” Stacey’s angry face emerged briefly as Hale handed the ball to Torni. He removed a glove and slowly reached to the Qa’Resh’s tendril. It felt warm, dry and rough like sandpaper. For some reason, Hale thought of the last time he saw his grandfather. He’d held the old man’s hand while he lay in the hospital bed, his final moments nearing.
Everything vanished in a flash of white.
Hale blinked. Torni and the Qa’Resh were gone, and a new person was on the sled—a white-haired elderly man with bright blue eyes and wisps of hair. The old man wore a plain white jumpsuit, spotless and gleaming.
“Sorry about that, Ken,” the old man said. “It’s easier for us to communicate this way.” His words echoed with the voices of many others.
“Where’d the others go?”
“They’re still here. We’re just talking privately. Now, may we remove the entity from young Mr. Yarrow?” His lined face widened into a kind smile.
“Can you do it without hurting him? I’ve lost too many good Marines and I don’t want to rush … whatever you’re going to do if there’s a risk you’ll hurt him.”
“Your species is so contradictory. Save some, kill others. But we’re not here to discuss philosophy. I can remove the entity, but there will be some lasting effects on Yarrow. He will be whole.”
“Do you have a name? What are you?”
“We are who you perceive. We don’t really bother with names. Now, may we?”
“All right. How will you—what the hell?” the old man vanished. Hale turned around and found him standing next to Yarrow’s gurney, a hand held over the Marine’s chest.
“This intelligence,” the old man said, “has hurt so many innocent beings.” Rays of golden light emerged from his palm and danced over Yarrow’s body. “What it knows will aid us in the fight against the Xaros. Perhaps that will give it some manner of redemption.”
Gray mist rose from Yarrow’s eyes and mouth, coalescing into a small sphere just like the one they encountered on Anthalas.
“Billions of years ago,” the old man said, his gaze on the sphere as it grew into the size of a baseball, “this species ruled the galaxy. They chose to leave, but they abandoned this one. Left it imprisoned on that planet. This one will tell us where they went, and how they got there.”
“How does that help us against the Xaros?”
Ephemeral strands sank into the sphere, now nearly the size of Yarrow’s head. A skeletal face pressed against the sphere, howling in silent, impotent rage.
“The Xaros are a tool, servants to something else. What controls them is after something more than a galaxy of their own. Something connected to this entity,” the old man said. Hale blinked, and he was gone.
“Thank you, Ken,” came from behind him. Hale looked around, and the old man stood at the edge of the sled, the glowing sphere suspended above his fingertips. “We would have saved more of humanity if possible. But if that sacrifice leads to victory, and survival, then it was an acceptable loss.”
“‘Acceptable’?”
“All life is precious to us, but we cannot save all of every species from the Xaros. More may be lost before we can end the war. This is our decision.” The old man stepped off the side of the sled and fell away.
A flash of light overwhelmed Hale. He grunted in pain and pressed his palm against his head until his eyes stopped burning.
“Get back here! We are not your pawns and you’re not going t
o throw us all away just because it suits you!” Hale opened his eyes to see the Qa’Resh floating in front of the sled, the full-sized sphere dangling between its tendrils.
“Sir,” Torni had the hologram ball held tight against both hands, shaking and struggling to contain it.
“Let her go,” Hale said.
“—will find a hot poker and ram it … what happened?” Stacey’s hologram stared intently at the sphere.
“Where am I?” Yarrow groaned and pushed himself up on his elbows. He looked right at the Qa’Resh.
“Sweet Jesus!” Yarrow kicked away from his gurney, sending it and himself clattering against the sled. Yarrow scrambled away from the Qa’Resh and bumped against the force field surrounding them. He rolled onto his chest and looked down, over the edge of the sled and into the wide expanse of the planet’s striped atmosphere.
Yarrow went prone, trying to grasp onto the sled.
“You OK, Yarrow?” Torni asked, she knelt beside him and put a hand on his shoulder.
Yarrow burst into tears and covered his head with his arms.
Torni gave Yarrow a reassuring pat. “I know, kid. It’s that kind of a day.”
Yarrow brought his head up and took a quick look at the Qa’Resh. “Sir, I know I said I wanted to join your squad for the experience … but God damn.”
+Valdar+
Yarrow squealed and pulled into a fetal position.
“What about Captain Valdar?” Stacey asked. The Qa’Resh floated away, back toward the crystal city. “Why would …?” Her hologram looked around and swiped at a screen wherever she truly was. “Oh no, not the Dotok. We need to get back to the Breitenfeld, now.”
CHAPTER 14
The sled skipped over the gas giant’s upper atmosphere as it flew toward Bastion, carrying Valdar, Lowenn, Lafayette and Stacey’s hologram.
Lowenn looked to space and gasped.
“A three-star system, how rare,” Lowenn said, pointing upwards.
“There’s only one sun up there,” Valdar said. “Yellow, like Earth’s.”
“I see a white dwarf,” Lafayette added.
“You all see the same security feature,” Stacey said with a wave of her hand. “If you can’t identify any stellar features, you can’t trace your way back to Bastion.”
“There are billions of stars in the galaxy. The Qa’Resh think one glimpse to the sky will compromise their location?” Lowenn asked.
“Take it from a navigator,” Stacey said. “Every star in this galaxy is unique. If I know what the primary star, or stars, really are, and if I can see the star field through this gas giant’s upper atmosphere, I can tell you exactly where in space Bastion really is.”
“You’ve never tried to figure it out?” Valdar asked.
“Seems like a surefire way to get kicked off the station and on to the Qa’Resh’s naughty list,” Stacey said.
“Forget I asked,” Valdar said. He looked back to the Breitenfeld, a grey bubble in the sky. He caught a glimpse of something beyond his ship, something that looked like another space station like Bastion. He looked closer, but it was gone.
Atmo playing tricks on me, he thought.
“There’s a protocol to these conferences. Let me do the talking,” Stacey said.
Bastion grew closer, layered domes of steel blue metal dotted with irregularly sized windows. Great spikes hung from it like a patch of icicles amassed over a long winter. A small circle of light opened against its bulk and the sled adjusted course suddenly.
Valdar and Lowenn grasped the handrails, their bodies reacting to what they saw and not what they actually felt.
“The other Karigole react the same way,” Lafayette said. “Kosciuszko actually refused to take a sled to the pod that brought us to Earth. Steuben convinced him otherwise, and by ‘convinced’ I mean he threw our brother onto the sled and kept a boot on him until the trip was done.”
“Why don’t you have the same problem?” Lowenn asked.
Lafayette’s metal fingertips tapped against the metal rising from the base of his skull. “My inner ear is bionic. Some improvements were made.”
The sled shot into the open portal. A dark gray metal tunnel blurred by, too fast to make out any features.
“Be right back,” Stacey said. Her hologram vanished and the ball returned to its hole in the sled.
Valdar saw the end of the tunnel, interlocked metal walls that looked very solid and that were getting very close.
“Stacey?” Valdar asked. He looked around, his gaze returning to metal walls several times. “Stacey you want to open up?”
The sled continued on, its speed steady. The doors cracked open, and Valdar and Lowenn ducked as the sled shot through an opening barely wide enough to keep from knocking the upright Lafayette’s head off his shoulders.
“My assumption is that they’re showing off,” Lafayette said.
“There’s a fine line between arrogance and—whoa!” Valdar pulled himself to his feet, his jaw still on the floor.
A central dais rose from the center of the assembly, a column of rough stone perfectly flat at the top. The assembly stretched for miles around the dais, hundreds of small domes over round bases that floated in the air. Most were the size of an Eagle fighter, but others ranged from the size of a suitcase to one that was so large it could have held a destroyer with ease.
One pod rose above the others and the sled angled toward it. A door on the pod slid aside as they approached. Valdar saw a humanoid figure inside, obscured by shadow. The sled came to a halt at the door and the railing vanished.
The figure came to the door, Stacey Ibarra in a plain jumpsuit.
“Come on in. We’re about to get started,” she said.
Standing within the pod, Valdar couldn’t see the dome he knew enclosed them, but he had a crystal-clear view of everything around them. He reached over the edge of the control panels, which were labelled in English, and his hand stopped where he thought the dome would be. He couldn’t feel pressure against his fingertips as he pressed harder, but his hand would go no further.
“Nice to see you again, sir. In the flesh at least,” Stacey said.
“Likewise,” Valdar said, extending a hand to her. She tried to shake it, but her hand stopped several inches from his. A buzzer in the invisible ceiling sounded.
“That’s right. No physical contact allowed. When the Qa’Resh first brought races together, there were a few incidents where ambassadors tried to … eat each other. Some of the species had warred before and letting old blood feuds play out wasn’t very diplomatic,” Stacey said.
Her face was different than he’d remembered, younger-looking. Tiny filaments of silver twinkled around her eyes as she smiled.
“Can we see them? The other ambassadors?” Lowenn asked, peering across the silver domes as they vanished into the surrounding darkness.
Stacey looked over her shoulder. “Hit the yellow and green button labeled VIEW.” When she looked back at Valdar, her face was weary, more natural.
I need to see the doc when I back to my ship, he thought.
Lowenn did as instructed, and the silver domes on each pod wiped to the side, revealing plain-looking men and women in dark jumpsuits in the pods.
“What? They’re all human?” Lowenn asked.
“No, it’s a projection to aide with relatability. They look human, but they aren’t. … Trust me,” Stacey said.
“I didn’t come here to see mannequins. How do I see what they really look like?” Lowenn tapped buttons on the view panel.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Chuck,” Stacey looked up, “disable the filter.”
The nearest ambassador looked like a hunched over cockroach, staring at the humans from three eyes mounted against a lupine skull and crystal, fanged teeth. Its jaws opened and a triple tongue wagged in the air.
Valdar turned around. Another pod held an alien that looked like a sphere of roiling swamp water. Another looked like a mass of black ribbons around a red h
ot ball of iron. Yet another pod moved closer, its occupants nothing but three black teardrops attached to stick-thin bodies.
“Oh boy,” Lowenn said.
“Chuck, filter.” Stacey snapped her fingers and the illusion of other humans returned.
“You should try having a conversation with the Dreggara. They’re sentient pollen floating on a mat of seaweed the size of Asia,” Lafayette said.
A light in the pod turned from red to amber. The ambassadors around them looked up toward the dais.
“About to start,” Stacey said. “Captain, you should know that the Dotok were instrumental in getting a probe sent to Earth. If it hadn’t been for their lobbying, we’d be extinct.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Valdar asked.
“I only got the preliminary message, but I’m pretty sure they’re going to need us—the Breitenfeld.” Stacey crossed her arms. “I’m not in your chain of command, and I can’t tell you what to do, but please hear Pa’lon out.”
The light switched to green and a chime sounded twice.
A huge hologram of a woman’s face appeared above the dais. Her hair was deep gray, the lines around her lips and eyes on the verge of elderly. Valdar noted the set of her face, the same look he’d come to know from an entire adulthood spent in military service—determination.
“That’s the Qa’Resh,” Stacey said. “At least, that’s what they look like to me when we’re in here.”
“Sentient beings of the Alliance,” the Qa’Resh said. “A member finds their world under Xaros threat. This world should have been safe for centuries, but the facts are undeniable. The Xaros are there.”
The face faded away and Pa’lon, in his true form, rose from the dais and raised a hand in the air. A screen appeared above his head, showing a long, angular spaceship covered in dark lines that looked like roots had spread over its surface. The flash of laser bolts and brief explosions of dying ships surrounded the vessel. Fireballs burst along the ship’s hull and the dark lines retreated toward the engines. The ship burst apart and the spreading fireball overwhelmed the camera, cutting the image off in a wave of static.