Cydonia Rising

by Dave Walsh

  “What?” she looked back at him, then at the projection of O’Neil’s best friend, Jack Dumas. “Uncle Jack?”

  “Yeah, let me just play this back for you.” He set the holoscanner down and played the message.

  “Kat,” Jack’s image started with a smile. “These are truly troubling, extraordinary times. Your Uncle Peter has been removed from his position of prime minister by Cronus. There is bad news and good news associated with this. The bad news is that Cronus has dissolved the Senate, removed your uncle and mother from power and sent them away. The good news is that your mother is currently en route to Andal-3 where Hideo and myself are and your uncle is on his way to Helgun. Loren has been working for your uncle for a very long time, you can trust him, although he might be obnoxious…”

  “What a prick,” Loren laughed.

  “But you can trust him, at least until your uncle arrives on Helgun. Try to stay safe and keep a low profile. Just lay low,” he said before the image dissipated, and Loren snatched up the holoscanner and pocketed it.

  “Trust me now?”

  “I guess I don’t have a choice,” she said.

  “Now it’s all sunshine and sweets, isn’t it?” Loren looked back at Jace, shaking his head, before taking her hand and shaking it. “I’m pleased to meet you, Princess Ka—”

  “It’s Eja,” she corrected him.

  “Pleased to meet you, Eja,” he said, then turned to Jace. “You are still Jace Krios, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Jace said. “I’m still me, no need for me to change much.”

  “Well, it was you I was tracking, so I don’t know,” Loren said. “I didn’t recognize her with all of this,” he motioned with his hand toward her. “But I recognized you.”

  “The only person looking for me right now would probably be Jol’or,” Jace said. “I don’t see him wanting to admit that Jace Krios got the slip on him and made him look like a fool, do you?”

  “Those were his men I just killed, right?” Loren said. “I dunno if that was it for him or what. Your friend here is pretty valuable, especially for a guy like Jol’or. I’ve been on Cyngen for a few cycles now, and that guy has ambitions far beyond just being the neighborhood creep on Cyngen.”

  “Those mercs meant business, didn’t they?”

  “You, my friend, are lucky to be alive. They need her, not you.”

  “Good point.”

  “So we better watch our backs, at least for the time being. Especially you.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time someone came after me.” Jace took a deep breath. “So we are all friends now, right? Shouldn’t we come up with some sort of plan?”

  “See, now I like this guy,” Loren said. “Although I don’t know how secure this place is for us to be scheming the fall of an empire.”

  “It was good enough for you to play that message out here in the common room,” Eja frowned. “Jace says this place is secure, and he’s the one with friends here so I think we should be listening to him.”

  “I trust the monks,” Jace said. “I’ve laid low here for cycles now, whenever I get myself into trouble.”

  “Which I can only assume is all the time,” Eja said.

  “Very funny. I’m usually not carting around wise-ass royalty. This isn’t just my problem, Princess. I’m here, hell,” he motioned back toward Loren, “we’re here for you.”

  “Alright, alright,” she said. “I get it. Loren, how do you know Dumas, anyway?”

  “I’ve got family on Andal-3,” he said.

  “Isn’t that nice,” she said. “Still doesn’t explain how you know him.”

  “Alright, alright. Some might call you annoying, you know that? If the Old Man wasn’t so worried about you, I’d just take off right now.”

  “Luckily he is,” she said.

  “He is,” he confirmed, sitting back onto a bench. “Alright, so, my ex-wife is out there with my two girls. I served in the military for a while, special ops and, well, things went pretty shitty at one point. Shitty enough to where I was worried about them, or someone trying to use them to get to me.”

  “You musta done something pretty awful,” Jace raised his eyebrows.

  “Hey man, I had to make a split second decision, you know? Lives on the line, mission on the line and I chose to save my friend, which is when shit went south and, well…needless to say, I was no longer in the military.”

  “So you ran?” Eja asked.

  “I had no choice, really,” he said. “Started taking jobs wherever I could find them, espionage, deepnet kinda stuff until I ran into your uncle. Hell, he knew all about me. At this point Sera had left me and took the girls with her, told me I had a drinking problem—but I’ll have you know, I haven’t had a drop in over four cycles now, alright? Anyway, yeah, the Old Man found me and let’s just say he persuaded me to work for him. Part of the deal was that he’d find a way to keep Sera, Lorraine, and Patricia safe, so they are on Andal-3 with Jack.”

  “That’s quite a story,” Eja said.

  “Yeah, it is. Anyway, we are in an unsecured location and I’m still the professional here.” Loren stretched out. “So I’ve gotta check our perimeter and make sure I’ve got some surveillance in place. You know, just in case.”

  “Sure,” Jace said. “Do what you’ve gotta do to feel comfortable here, but I’m gonna take a nap.”

  Jace retreated back into his quarters and pulled the blinds shut on the window. Loren seemed like an alright guy, he at least told them his story, which set him more at ease and hopefully let Eja calm down a bit. Everything on Helgun was archaic by most Andlios Republic standards, but he kind of liked feeling like he was living in the past, living in simpler times. That immersion was hard to keep with a holoscanner attached to his belt, a pistol in its holster and most of the tech he had laying around broke that illusion, but the little things were still nice.

  He had sure gotten himself wrapped up in something strange—something big. He had spent the past few cycles on his own, just a man, his ship and his cargo. That life was pretty simple and kept him from getting tangled up with other people. There were still the contacts he made on each of his routes. Everyone was friendly enough and there were favor exchanges here and there to keep the commerce flowing, but none were really his friends.

  In a way that was how he wanted to live his life: simple, and without the complications other people brought into it. The best example could be saving Katrijn. It was a simple act of kindness, one that didn’t even require him to think twice, but now he was on a mission to return her to her home to restore her to the throne of the Andlios Republic so she could dissolve her own role and change the way the Republic worked at its very core. Pretty simple, right? Never mind the fact that her brother had gone completely mad with power and anyone who could have helped them had been basically exiled. This was all a bit too much for him, and he had already reached out to some contacts out toward Gimle to see if he could scoop up any contracts. As soon as he heard back he’d be out of here and let them go and save the universe or whatever they needed to do. They clearly didn’t need his help.

  Just as he was beginning to drift off into sleep, his holoscanner chimed. He grumbled while he rolled over and flipped it on, Loren appearing before him. “We got trouble, man.”

  “For Freyja’s sake,” he cursed. “What now?”

  “Apparently we’ve got a Cydonian planetside, asking after an Andliosian princess.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Yeah,” Loren said. “Collect our princess and meet me by the tavern. I’ve got eyes on the Cydonian now, but make it quick.”

  Eja

  “I knew this was a terrible idea.” Eja strapped her belt around her waist, ignoring Jace’s attempts to calm her down. “I knew that going with you would just make things worse.”

  “You are very welcome,” Jace said. “Next time I find a life pod floating in the middle of nowhere I’ll just leave it.”

  “My life would have been infinitely
easier, I think.”

  “Your life would have been infinitely shorter in that pod. Either by starvation, running out of air or from your brother’s patrols that ran through the area to confirm that you were dead.”

  “I could take them,” she said. “What I can’t take is your incessant idiocy! Thanks to your buddy Jol’or I’m worse off than—”

  “You didn’t have to come with me!” he said. “I didn’t ask you to come with me to Jol’or’s, you asked! You wanted to come along because you missed your rendezvous and had nothing else to do. Without me you’d just be on Cyngen, probably rotting in a jail cell because you would have carved up Loren when he inevitably found you and wasn’t able to get your uncle to confirm his identity.”

  “Whatever.” She pulled her jacket on and zipped it up. “Let’s just go, alright?”

  “After you, your highness.” He mock-bowed to her, Eja scoffing and huffing past him and out the door. Jace’s nonchalant attitude was beginning to wear thin on her, that along with the fact that he didn’t seem interested in anything beyond where his next contract came from.

  “Which way to the damned tavern? I don’t know where I’m going,” she said.

  “You mean your combat training in the palace didn’t cover that?”

  “No, it didn’t.” She caught herself starting to sound like her mother when she was on the warpath and felt flush. “I…look, let’s just see what else has gone wrong, okay?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Let’s just go and see what’s up. We might be able to nip this in the bud before it becomes a problem. Plus, you aren’t exactly easy to recognize now and this Cydonian wasn’t asking after me, just you.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Really, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

  “Same here.”

  Their walk to the tavern was quiet and tense. Eja felt terrible about her outpouring before, but she was trying not to be too hard on herself. She had never gotten along with her mother that well, seeing as though her mother tended to gravitate toward Cronus. It was difficult not to resent the fact that her family had always been so divided. Those little quirks from her mother that had always made her cringe as a child were becoming increasingly frequent. Here she was in a life-or-death situation and she found herself blowing up at Jace just like her mother had blown up at her father all the time growing up. She never felt particularly linked with her mother, but it was hard to ignore these things she had picked up from her.

  Loren was standing outside the tavern with a grim look on his face. “Took you long enough,” he said.

  “Sorry, we had to hash some things out,” Jace said.

  “Oh yeah?” He looked up at Eja and winked. “Everything good between you two lovers?”

  “It’s fine,” she frowned, not having the energy to correct him. “So what’s going on?”

  “One Cydonian,” he held up one finger. “Inside the tavern walking around asking if anyone has seen a Krigan princess that was heading toward Andlios and had come from Cyngen.”

  “Maybe there is another princess?” Jace joked.

  “Jol’or did say something about another princess, remember?” she asked.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Jace said.

  “I don’t know any other princess and I’m not about to risk it. Alright, remember how you two cornered me?” Loren looked at both of them. “I don’t know this place for shit, so we’ll have to do the same play you guys tried to use on those goons earlier, you cool with that?”

  “I guess so,” she said. “You mean we lead her down an alley and corner her?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “I thought you were a professional,” Jace said.

  “I’ve never been on this shithole before,” Loren shook his head. “Just work with me, alright?”

  “We got it,” Jace said. “We’ll be across the street over there,” he pointed to the cabin across from the tavern.

  “Good,” Loren headed back into the tavern while Jace and Eja ran across the dirt street and hid behind the cabin.

  “I thought this guy was supposed to be well-trained,” Jace joked.

  “Give him a break,” she said. “If my uncles trust him then he’s good. He’s just a bit unorthodox is all.”

  “Sure,” Jace said, “and I’m the amateur here. Didn’t he just tell us about how he got people killed and botched a mission? I’m not so sure about this. Plus, I thought you didn’t trust him.”

  “You were the one who trusted him in the first place,” she grunted. “Show some consistency.”

  They waited, Eja’s hand on the hilt of her knife ready to spring into action while Jace kept his hand on his gun, the clip on the holster undone. She thought back to her combat training in the palace; her instructor was an eccentric who had mastered the Zarr’nid knives and was in service to the palace with bright blue eyes and short cropped, wavy black hair. He had trained her to always keep her heart rate under control in situations like this, to control her breathing and to not give off signs of where she was. Going into combat with the Zarr’nid knives against what was most likely a more heavily armed opponent meant that the element of surprise was crucial. Both were ready when they heard voices coming from the alley, one was Loren and the other was distinctly Cydonian—robotic, fuzzy, but oddly saccharine.

  “I tracked the princess to this building here,” Loren’s voice rang through the alley. “There’s a door in the back here that we can get in there unnoticed. We’re gonna have to confirm payment on this again, because look, I’ve got mouths to feed.”

  “Are you sure about it?” the woman asked. “I already told you I’d pay you as soon as—”

  “Stop right there,” Eja jumped out, knife in hand, pinning the Cydonian to the wall.

  “What the…” the Cydonian squawked out.

  “I’m sorry, doll,” Loren said wistfully.

  “Not really,” said Jace, his gun in hand.

  “Who sent you?” Eja held the knife up to her throat. “Was it Jol’or or Cronus?”

  “Who is Jol’or?” the Cydonian asked, puzzled. “And do you mean Cronus Freeman?”

  “Of course I mean Cronus Freeman!”

  “No, no,” she said. “Princess Alva is going to take the throne back from him, not work for him.”

  “Princess Alva?” Jace scratched his head. “Who?”

  “Yeah, who?” Eja lightened her grip. “You weren’t looking for me?”

  “I don’t know who you are,” the Cydonian said. “No offense.”

  “None taken, I guess,” she relented her grip, sheathing her knife. “Alva?”

  “So who sent you, then?” Loren asked, still standing on the other side to ensure that she couldn’t escape.

  “Nobody sent me,” the Cydonian buzzed. “I escaped from Cyngen to search for Princess Alva. Trallex was taking her to Andlios and, well…”

  “Escaped?” Jace slipped his gun back into his holster, feeling less threatened. “From who?”

  “I’d rather not discuss that out in the open like this,” she said.

  “Alright, I get it,” Jace said. “So who are you, anyway?”

  “I’m Trella,” she said. “I’m just looking for my friend.”

  “Since when do Cydonians have friends?”

  “That was a part of the problem,” Trella said. “I got too close to her.”

  “Here I was thinking that Jol’or was the only weird Cydonian,” Jace said. “Oh, how wrong I was.”

  “Who is this other princess, then?” Eja was still trying to process everything.

  “Other princess?” Trella asked.

  “I mean, who is she?”

  “Alva Hedlund,” Trella said. “The daughter of Tyr Hedlund.”

  “But she’s dead,” Eja said.

  “Not anymore.”

  017. Leaving Hope

  O’Neil

  The journey to Helgun was nothing short of a giant, humiliating pain in the ass. The once-powerful Peter O’Neil was stowed aboa
rd a cargo vessel without any fanfare—not that he wanted it. Everything about the journey reeked of attempting to humble and shame O’Neil, and there were moments where he was beginning to wonder if he should simply resign. There were two stops on smaller moons for refueling and resupplying, most likely a part of Cronus and Giger’s attempt to embarrass O’Neil. While he kept to himself throughout the journey and studied plant life on his new home of Helgun, he vowed to make this the last insult he’d suffer from Cronus. O’Neil no longer cared who Cronus’s father was or protecting the familial line; he had done his duty for many cycles and this was his repayment.

  The insults continued when they finally arrived on Cyngen. O’Neil hadn’t expected any sort of grand ceremony or special greeting when he arrived, but he wasn’t expecting for there to be nothing, either. Not a single person, not a single reporter or a single sign was left to signify that someone of his stature was arriving. His itinerary from the palace had claimed he would receive his assignment upon arrival, including where he’d stay and work, but instead, he was standing out in the open air all alone. Helgun was just a dire dustbowl of a planet and he was cut loose without a further word. That meant he’d need to find himself a place to stay and an office on his own. That didn’t really bother him—he still had credits to play around with—but he could just imagine Cronus and Giger laughing like children at how they had made one of the most powerful men in the galaxy feel worthless.

  O’Neil took in a deep breath, taking in the crisp air. He did have to admit that it felt nice to be on a relatively undisturbed planet like Helgun. Andlios was beautiful in its own right, but it was wartorn by the time they had arrived and while they had done their best with it, the planet was still a mess. They had missed most of the dark days on Andlios, but the planet was still worse for wear. He was grateful that they hadn’t arrived right after their war, when the sky was black from all of the debris that covered the planet and blocked out the sun. Finding a place to grow his garden in the palace felt miraculous all things considered. According to reports he had read by Sue, Krigar was one of the few cities in that region that possessed fertile soil.