by Paul Tassi
In the end, only eighteen Guardians had survived the mission. The unit had never suffered a loss so devastating, though they’d never been assigned a task so monumental. Lucas and Asha trained with the remaining soldiers to keep in shape as Maston barked orders at them. The man could do an impressive number of exercises with only one leg.
Each night the group gathered to tell war stories about their fallen comrades. Lucas laughed as Kiati recounted a time that Silo crawled through a murky swamp during an assassination mission in the Ruined Marshes, only to discover it was the dumping grounds for the enemy’s latrines. The rest of the Guardians found it hilarious when Asha recounted the story of how she and Lucas had first met on Earth, where she’d put a bullet in him after he unwisely tried to help her in Georgia. Lucas didn’t understand what was so funny about that one. His shoulder still ached some nights.
Lucas’s leg had mostly mended, even though the plasma round had eaten away to his bone by the time he managed to treat it. One final souvenir from the Desecrator. Lucas knew the beast wasn’t dead. Monsters like that didn’t die. He saw its burning eyes far too often in his dreams.
The most heartening part of the voyage home was seeing Alpha and Zeta reconnect. He’d never seen Alpha like this before, lighthearted, almost carefree. The two passed hours fixing up parts of the old ship like they were rebuilding a classic hot rod. They did sleep in separate quarters, however.
Asha had taken quite a liking to Zeta herself. The two spent many afternoons wandering the cramped halls of the ship, talking at length about the resistance, life on Xala, and what Alpha was like in his youth. Lucas only heard bits and pieces of these conversations, and Asha wouldn’t fill him in on the details. “Girl talk,” she said reproachfully when he inquired.
Lucas had gotten a chance to talk with Alpha more than he’d been able to since they’d arrived on Sora. His high spirits with Zeta around had made him amiable.
“So what are you going to do when this is all over?” Lucas asked him one night on the bridge as the two of them both battled insomnia. They were playing an old Xalan game on the central holotable. Alpha couldn’t pronounce it in English, so Lucas just took to calling it “Squares.” It involved moving holographic cubes around, blocking and parrying your opponent’s advances. Lucas always lost, ending the games with no more cubes to push around, but he was getting better over time.
“Even with our current actions, the likelihood of the war ending in our lifetime is remote,” Alpha replied.
Lucas rolled his eyes.
“Humor me. If it did end, what would you do?”
Alpha looked out the viewscreen for a minute. The only light in the room came from the table in front of them. They could hear footsteps on other decks; the walls and floors of the old ship were thinner than most. Lucas guessed there weren’t many who could sleep soundly after what they’d experienced on Makari.
“I should like to continue the research my father began many years ago.”
“What research?” Lucas asked. He grabbed three of his cubes and flung them toward one of Alpha’s. The Xalan’s piece disintegrated instantly.
“True terraforming,” Alpha replied. “The rejuvenation of a planet.”
“Doesn’t that already exist?”
“No,” Alpha said. “Artificially raising temperature a few degrees, or forcing plants to grow through twisting their genetics is not what I speak of here. Rather, I refer to a process that could take a desolate planet and turn it into a place like Sora. Like old Earth.”
“Or Xala.”
Alpha nodded. He swept his arm across the floating game sphere and a wave of his cubes advanced forward, crushing a half dozen of Lucas’s own.
“That would indeed be a crowning achievement. Millions of years ago, Xala was such a place, but it would require an exceptional amount of effort and an unknowable amount of science to revert it back to that state.”
“Well,” Lucas said, “if anyone can do it, I’m sure it’s you.”
“Perhaps,” Alpha said quietly. “Though war remains a focus for the foreseeable future. Perhaps my own children can see the vision come to pass someday.”
Lucas raised his eyebrows. Glancing at the board, he saw that his cube count was starting to get dangerously low.
“Thinking about starting a family?”
Alpha sighed.
“Again, a lofty idea in our present circumstances. But for a long while now I have looked upon you and Asha and Noah and now your new child, and have … desired such an opportunity for myself. I have been alone too long.”
“And who’s the lucky lady?” Lucas asked, attempting to hide a grin.
Alpha chortled and took the opportunity to destroy another pair of Lucas’s game pieces.
“Do not attempt to be coy. You have knowledge of my attraction to [garbled]. To Zeta.”
“How’s that going?”
“It is a bridge that must be built from both sides, though it may take some time. We have both endured much. The treatment Zeta suffered after capture is … to use the Earth word, inhumane. Unconscionable.”
He paused. In the pale blue glow of the room Lucas could see a deep sadness in his eyes.
“I see the woman I once knew, but often she feels like a shadow of who she was. She likely thinks the same of me.”
“Just give it some time. You have decades to catch up on.”
“And yet sometimes it feels like there is nothing to say.”
Alpha absentmindedly swirled one of his cubes around with his finger, seemingly pondering his next move.
“You and Asha. What binds you together?”
Lucas leaned back in his chair to consider that.
“At first it might have been, what was the phrase you used back on the Ark? ‘Proximity and duress.’ But it became more than that. It’s a kind of connection you can’t verbalize. It just … is.”
“That is most unhelpful.”
Lucas laughed.
“Sorry, but it’s something you have to find on your own. It took her almost killing me three times before it finally clicked.”
“I would like to avoid a similar path toward such a revelation.”
“Well, I’d hardly say we’re the model. And I’m no expert on the inner workings of Xalan relationships.”
Lucas advanced the majority of his remaining pieces, crushing one of Alpha’s strongholds on the spherical board. The move caught him off guard, and he was visibly surprised.
“Emotion is weakness on my planet. Other than anger of course. That’s what we have been taught since birth. Here and now, Zeta and I exist as two of the only truly ‘free’ Xalans to live in thousands of years. Traitors are imprisoned or executed. They do not escape the way we have. There is nowhere to go.”
Alpha brought up a secondary display, checking on the status of the ship before quickly closing it.
“The idea that we answer to no one is liberating, but also terrifying.”
Alpha flicked a few of his cubes forward. Reaching a certain point of the board, they combined into a single pyramid. Lucas was in trouble now. Alpha continued his thought.
“If the war ends, I worry my people may not understand freedom; they have been subservient for so long. A vacuum may be created that another corrupt body could fill. They will need strong, but kind leadership.”
Lucas folded his arms.
“Well, I nominate you.”
Alpha scoffed.
“I despise politics, and am far from capable enough to be thrust into a role such as that. If only my father still lived …”
He waved his claw in the air.
“But enough of such talk. You have caused me to ignore our present circumstances and speculate on an all-too-ideal future. Such fantasizing is not helpful.”
Alpha’s pyramid advanced and crushed the last of Lucas’s cubes. Another loss.
“Have faith in the plan,” Lucas said as he made another tally mark in Alpha’s column to recognize his latest defeat. “Yo
u’ll get your future.”
“How you have endured so much, yet continue to have such an attitude is perplexing.”
Lucas shrugged and tossed aside the game board so that there was nothing a but a dull blue glow in between them.
“If I don’t, then all of this has been for nothing. Every injury suffered, every friend lost. I’ll make it mean something if it kills me.”
“It might,” Alpha said wearily.
“I know.”
That night Lucas walked back to the cramped cell he and Asha had made their quarters. She was asleep, curled up in a pile of crimson and black furs. A few of them belonged to Guardians who hadn’t made it back onboard after the assault on the spaceport. It was freezing in the cell block, as it was most places on the ship. The craft was so old that nothing worked right, despite Alpha’s constant tinkering. A pair of Guardians once got stuck in their cell for a solid six hours when the door mechanism jammed. They finally just had to cut them out with a plasma torch. A female Guardian had lost the tip of her index finger to a faulty ray shield meant for emergency lockdowns only. A half second earlier and she would have likely been cut in half. The prison ship was something of a deathtrap, but if it got them home, none of them cared.
Lucas pulled the blankets over him, but couldn’t stop shivering in the icy room. He could see his breath in the dim light, and curled up close to Asha, attempting to siphon some of her body heat. This was no place for romance, but some nights they blocked out their surroundings completely and made do. Lucas pretended they were back in the palace penthouse on Sora, wrapped in smooth sheets in a room stocked with unlimited food and drink and priceless treasures. It was a pleasant thought that stayed with him until he drifted off to sleep and the nightmares began again.
After another month, Sora was finally within reach. All of them gathered on the bridge as they emerged on the other side of the space-time tunnel. The green-and-blue haze slowly faded, replaced by a sea of stars in the viewscreen. Within minutes, a sizable chunk of the Soran fleet had encircled them, bringing cheers from the Guardians. The ships were there to ensure the Xalans hadn’t followed them back, and to escort them through the system to Sora, just in case. The blackness of space behind them revealed no unwanted pursuers, and after a period of tense waiting, they set a course for the homeworld.
Maston stood upright on the bridge next to Lucas, which was impressive given his injury. He’d made do with a crutch for the first month, but eventually Alpha hacked together a robotic leg for him from spare parts around the ship, and had done the same for the other injured Guardians onboard who had lost limbs in the conflict. Maston’s appendage was hardly state-of-the-art tech, with most of the pieces rusted and the wiring constantly shorting out. But it was better than the alternative, and through a large amount of effort he’d mastered walking on the thing. Lucas actually saw him break out in a sprint a few days prior. Soon he’d get an official robotic replacement for Alpha’s makeshift device, with an organic limb to be spliced onto him a few weeks later, created from his own DNA. They’d started growing it for him as soon as they were able to reestablish contact with the planet in transit, and the Guardians all logged their various injuries that would need treatment upon their return. Over the past three months, Lucas’s leg had healed well, and though Asha had had a bout with some strain of pneumonia a few weeks back, the pair were in relatively good health for a change.
Maston’s gaze was fixed out the viewscreen as the fleet of enormous ships escorted their tin can back to Sora. Since Lucas had rescued him twice back on Makari, once from the Dead City and again after the battle that took his leg, the two had formed a bond that vaguely resembled friendship. It was hard to believe this was the man who had ordered him beaten nearly to death on the voyage there. Then again, Lucas was also enamored with a woman who had tried to kill him on at least three occasions. It seemed to be how all his relationships started in the current state of the galaxy.
“Looking forward to becoming whole again?” Lucas asked, nodding toward Maston’s metal appendage.
Maston looked at it and sank down a bit so the coils tightened and a hydraulic contraction mechanism hissed.
“It would take more than just a leg,” he said sullenly.
“It’s hard to believe this could be over soon,” Lucas said.
Maston scoffed.
“The war? You can’t still be that naive.”
“Why can’t it? It’s a solid plan.”
A large ship drifted in front of them. It had twelve rear engines, which glowed white hot and caused the surrounding stars to twinkle rapidly.
“As much as I no longer doubt the sincerity of our new Xalan allies, putting this final stage of their idea into action would be more difficult than anything that’s come before. Impossible, in fact.”
He broke his gaze out the window and turned to Lucas.
“I spent three months with Alpha and Zeta, trying to come up with a workable plan to infiltrate Xalan central command on their homeworld. There is none.”
“Why not?” Lucas asked.
“The building is a fortress. The city is a fortress. The planet is a fortress. If we had the ability to infiltrate Xala, don’t you think we would have done so by this point?”
Lucas supposed that was true. It was odd it hadn’t occurred to him.
“Perhaps Zeta will be of some tactical significance to us in decoding the enemy’s transmissions, but this idea that we could broadcast Alpha’s message to all of Xala without it being intercepted or interrupted is merely a fantasy. It cannot be done outside their central broadcasting unit, and accessing it is simply not in the realm of possibility.”
“I’ve had to readjust my definition of ‘impossible’ over the last few years,” Lucas said.
“Believe what you will,” Maston said, “but the facts dictate a different course.”
Maston noticed Lucas growing annoyed.
“But in any case, I will be proud to fight along with the Earthborn in coming battles. You’ve proven yourselves … adaptable since your arrival. Whether it’s talent or luck, I’ll take either on my side.”
Forever the charmer.
Up ahead, a bright blue ball came into view among the stars. Home. Or the closest thing they had to it.
18
Lucas stood uncomfortably with his arms crossed behind his back. He was in Guardian dress blues with a winged badge on his collar that Maston had personally pinned on him, despite their past differences. The commander stood at his left with Asha on his right. Alpha loomed next to her, and there were eighteen other Guardians standing in similar poses further down the line. Camera bots orbited them like satellites. The event was in a small, ornate room in the upper floors of the palace, but it was being broadcast to billions.
He stared into the kind eyes of Talis Vale in front of him. She placed a medallion around his neck. It was silver with an engraving of the visage some long-dead warrior king.
“I present to Lucas the Earthborn the Mark of Ayon, for extraordinary valor facing overwhelming odds.”
Lucas bowed slightly and the metal clinked against one of her rings as she drew her hand away. He briefly returned her soft smile, and she moved to present a similar medal to Asha. Maston already wore his.
The event was being beamed out to all of Sora—the return of the conquering heroes from their mission to one of Xala’s colonies, the first ever attempted. Talis said it would help lift the spirits of the planet, which had been suffering from the recent loss of Kollux over the time they were away. Details of their mission were kept vague, and the people of Sora were content to know that the Guardians and the Earthborn had rescued a high-value target critical to the war effort and made contact with a new strain of Soran warriors, the Oni. The crowds watched in amazement as armor-cam footage was released onto the Stream showing their siege of the spaceport and bits of their duel with the fearsome Desecrator. Lucas unwillingly shuddered every time he saw a flash of the crimson creature onscreen.
/> The dead had already received their medallions, one rank higher than the distinction the living now wore. They’d been sent home to their families along with their Finals. The names and faces of the deceased floated behind them like ghosts. Lucas turned back to glance at the hologram.
Jat Corvin
Elys Sonotro
Mardok Axon
Yanna Hollus
Sol’tanni Silo
Lucas finally knew his first name. He turned back to face the cameras. His stomach felt flipped upside down, but he maintained his composure. The Earthborn losing it at his victory ceremony wouldn’t be very good press. Lucas swallowed the lump in his throat and maintained his stone-cold stare straight ahead. He had to let go of Silo now, no matter how good a friend he had been, or how horrifying the circumstances of his death. Far too often when Lucas closed his eyes, he saw that red mist in the jungle, and the half a body that lay below it.
Talis lay a medallion around the last Guardian’s neck. The crowds watching around the world erupted in cheers they could not hear.
It was surreal to be back on Sora after their latest journey to a new kind of hell. The jungles of Makari had proved even more treacherous than the wastelands of Earth, and it was yet another ordeal that would never leave Lucas. Even in the comforts of their palace quarters, Lucas still itched at his Mol’tok sting. He still saw the yellow eyes of the bloodwolf. The red ones of the Desecrator.
But there was at least one pleasant distraction from all of it. One ray of hope that burst into the room like a sunbeam.
“Lucas!” Noah squealed with proper pronunciation. “Asha!”
The child had grown immensely in the months they were gone. He was easily almost five inches taller, and the giant’s blood in him was starting to show, as he was noticeably large for his age now. Noah no longer wobbled but strode forward sure-footedly. Lucas and Asha knelt down to wrap him in their arms. Behind him, Malorious Auran and two caretakers smiled at the touching reunion. Golden locks spilled onto Lucas’s hands. Brilliant sky-blue eyes gazed into his. The child had been well cared for in their absence, that much was obvious.