Every land on Elystra spoke basically the same language. One would notice a few idiosyncrasies if they were to travel to another land, but for the most part, one would be able to understand more than enough to get by. This word was unknown to Mizar.
Sen leaned forward expectantly. “Hello. How are you –”
Upon hearing his voice, the girl gave a sudden, shrill shriek. Yanking her hand free from Sen's grasp, she struggled to sit up quickly. As she did so, she swung her other hand around, balled it into a fist, and struck Sen square on the nose. He flew backwards, toppling his chair and sending the contents of his mug onto the wall, the floor, and his own face and clothes. Sen hit the floor with a thud and a cry of pain as he brought his hands to his nose.
Mizar watched his apprentice hit the ground, knocked silly for the second time in as many days.
Oh, for the love of …
Chapter Forty-One
D avin had night watch again the night before, so Maeve let him sleep in. When he awoke at just past three in the afternoon, Maeve gave him a minimal account of the disagreement she'd had with Kelia the day before, and it was a struggle for her to internalize the anger she had for herself.
Davin, as she expected, consoled her as best he could. He pointed out that despite numerous setbacks—-a severe manpower shortage, engine troubles, a lyrax attack, wonky PTs, and a woeful lack of appropriate celebratory libations—-their mission was a success. They'd found the energy source they sought in less than two weeks, and Maeve had become the universe's first Earth-born proto-human. Oh, and he'd gotten to see a woman naked. That was definitely the best thing that happened. Maeve wanted to smack him.
Not much was said over lunch. There was nothing left to do but pack up and leave Elystra.
To go where?
Davin was convinced he could figure out how the quantigraphic rift drive worked. He just wasn't sure how long it would take. The good news was, they had plenty of time. Maeve would let Davin dismantle and reassemble the thing to his heart's content if it would help them get home. Failing that, they would have to scan every planet in the neighboring systems for fissionable material that they could use to power the supralight engines. Davin calculated they had enough fuel to get them to any of several systems, so at least they had options.
Yeah. What a great plan. We found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and now the farking rainbow is broken. Maybe we could just form our own country here in the mountains. Davin can be the prince, and I'll be the empress. Every bird, every animal will do my bidding. It'll be fun.
She shook this ridiculous notion out of her head as she and Davin set to breaking down their equipment and moving it back into the Talon's hold. After stowing the generator, they secured both the purifier and the synthesizer to the walls of the crew room so they could have easy access to them without having to return to eating rations. Next, they filled up several large containers with lake water, enough to last them for several months in space. After that came the smaller stuff: the table and chairs, the sensor rods, and the flood-lamps. That just left the excavator.
And the Stone.
While Davin treated himself to one final swim in the lake, Maeve placed the Stone in the securest case they had. It was two cubic feet in volume, triple-lined with lightweight quadranium. Hopefully it would be enough to block the Stone's super-rays, or whatever it was that made their instruments go tits-up. Then she placed the crate in a compartment built into the floor of the crew quarters, reasoning it should be as far away from as many of the ship's vital systems as she could put it.
After stowing the last sensor rod back in the hold, she walked down the ramp to the riverbed. It took a few seconds for her to locate Davin, who had dried off and stood, fully clothed, near the rocky overhang beneath which they'd buried Gaspar.
“Hey, kiddo, you all right?” she asked as she approached. His eyes were closed, his hands were crossed in front of him, and his head was bowed.
“Yeah,” he said softly. “Do you think it's okay for us to just leave him here? I'd hate to think of those lyrax things digging him up and … you know.”
Maeve put a comforting arm around him. “I'm sure he'll be all right. We did bury him pretty deep. And besides, whether we bury him here or out in space, he's still gone.”
“I know. I just miss him.”
She leaned her head on his shoulder. “So do I, Dav. So do I.”
He let out a deep exhale. “This is a good spot for him. He always did like the mountains.”
“That's true.”
“So what's next?”
“You take the excavator and retrieve all our lights and digging tools from inside the cave. I'm going to do a systems check, make sure everything's good to go. I'm thankful Roisin and her friends haven't put in a return appearance, but I don't want to push our luck now that I've put the Stone away.”
“Where'd you put it?”
“It's safe on board. I'll show you where later. Now, though, we gotta get back to work. I'd just as soon we were on our way before sunset, which according to the ship's clock will be in just under an hour. Collect our stuff, and then we'll stow the excavator and be on our way.”
“All right. See ya soon.” He gave a weary smile and strolled toward the cave.
Maeve entered the cockpit and sat down in the pilot's chair. Out the viewport, the Elystran sun was beginning its descent behind the western peak.
Her mind flashed back to two days before, when she first saw Kelia, standing in her thick brown robe, that same peak in the background, with that same sun setting behind it.
My first ever “first contact” mission, and I damn near killed the poor woman. Not exactly something to be recorded in the annals of diplomacy, is it?
Thoughts of Kelia filled her head. Maeve had expected a savage, and got the exact opposite. Kelia could have killed her. And not only did she not do that, she'd saved her. Healed her. Freed her from the despair that was slowly crushing her. She'd shared something miraculous with Kelia, but she had to go and get all high-and-mighty on her.
If only things could have ended dif–
Her reverie was interrupted by a flashing icon that appeared in the center of her console screen. Had it been blinking the entire time? This was odd, because Maeve hadn't even begun to power up the ship's systems. The computer should not have been on.
But it was.
The words on the screen read “MESSAGE – PLEASE PLAY,” in big bold letters.
What the hell? Where is the computer drawing power from?
It didn't take long to find a tiny power module behind an access panel at the foot of the main console. It didn't seem to be connected to anything but the main computer. It was definitely Terran in origin.
Intrigued, she placed the module on the console and tapped the “PLAY” icon. Immediately, a face appeared in the center of the screen. A very familiar face. A face she never expected to see again.
Richard.
Maeve let out a short gasp, then caught herself. She recognized the room Richard was in: Sahara Base's security office. And from the time code on the playback, it looked like he'd recorded it at 3:15 a.m., the morning before the base was attacked, everyone else was killed except for her, Davin, and Gaspar, and the three of them escaped.
She took in the details of Richard's face: his intelligent eyes, aquiline nose, strong jaw and slightly-receding hairline. He looked exhausted, of course, which he usually did after he'd gone two days with barely any sleep. God, how she missed that face.
And just like that, she started to well up with tears. At that moment, however, the recording began.
“Hey, Starbird,” he said with his usual crooked half-smile. “Betcha never expected to see this handsome face again. What I wouldn't give to have this be a two-way conversation. But, that's not possible.”
A smile pushed its way past the sadness as she beheld his image. She stabbed at the “pause playback” icon, but nothing happened. He just kept smiling at her.
&nb
sp; “I know you're probably thinking 'I should go get Davin right now,' darlin', but this message is for your ears alone. It can't be paused or rewound, and I've programmed the computer to delete it as soon as I'm done speaking. So just listen.”
Taken aback by his words, she slumped back in her chair. Her eyes locked on the screen, afraid to even blink lest his image disappear forever.
“I'm not sure you're going to believe the story I'm about to tell you. Fark, I pray to the Saints you do. I'm still not sure I believe it. But it's all true, and you need to hear every word I have to say.
“I'm recording this only seven hours before we're scheduled to leave the Terran system on the Talon. Our little solar flare is set to disrupt the Jegg dampening field so we can escape. Unfortunately, it won't work.” He threw his hands up as if frustrated by the realization.
Maeve's breath hitched in her throat.
“You know this already, but just before we make our attempt, the Jegg will attack. Don't know how they found us, but they do, and there's nothing we can do to stop them. You'll be in the cockpit doing your pre-flight checks, Davin and Gaspar will be performing the final diagnostics on the quantigraphic rift drive. The rest of us won't be there.”
He knew? He knew the Jegg were going to attack? And he did nothing? How could–
“Obviously, we're going to have to activate the base's self-destruct. If the Jegg discovered our plans, if they knew where you're heading, it would screw up everything we've worked for.
“No doubt you were surprised when you opened the box of PT's and only found four instead of ten. Mahesh will remove the other six right before the attack, and he and the rest of the team will use them to evacuate to Himalaya Base. They'll be quite safe. As for me … not so much. Someone has to stay behind.”
His face became somber. “There's something I have to tell you, Starbird. You're going to hate me for it, but this is my last chance to tell you the truth. I told you my first contact with Banikar was two years ago, when we began drawing up plans for this mission. Where we would somehow fuse a Jegg QRD with a Terran supralight engine and use it to escape. The fact is, I've been speaking to Banikar for thirty-five years.”
Maeve's mouth went slack, and she felt her head shake involuntarily. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. She wanted to scream at the image on the screen. Make sense, damn you!
“I was just a kid. Scared the fark out of me the first time he appeared. Right there in my bedroom, floating above my bed like a cheap holographic ghost. I couldn't even scream. But he calmed my fears and we talked. He was a blob really, no eyes, no mouth, nothing. But he talked to me, inside my mind. Maeve, he was wise beyond all measure.
“He told me that I was going to change the course of human history. That's all he said, and then he disappeared. I was sure I'd dreamt the whole thing. But when you're eight years old and someone tells you that, you actually believe it. From that day forward I poured every angstrom of energy I had into achieving greatness. By the time I turned eighteen, I had three doctorates and a Hawking Prize. And I was just getting started.”
Maeve remembered a younger version of Richard than the one she saw on the screen now. He was always handsome, but he also had a whimsical charm when he was younger that the invasion robbed him of. She smiled in spite of all he wasn't telling her.
“Every night from that first day in Texas, I slept with one eye open, hoping my glowing friend would drop in on me again. It didn't happen, though, until I was twenty-one, after I joined Dr. Hochstetter's team. We had just finished building our new Aldebaran prototype ship and were all set to begin flight testing when Banikar appeared. I was shocked as hell. I mean, it'd been thirteen years, for God's sake. I'd long since written off my memory of him as a product of my overactive imagination.
“I asked him all sorts of questions, but the Eth aren't much for small talk. He told me 'all was as it should be,' which made me really happy, like I was fulfilling my great cosmic purpose. He told me to go celebrate. He even told me where to go, a dive bar near Fort Bailey. It was June 18, 2719. I'm sure you remember that day.”
Maeve's lips pursed. She remembered it well. It was the day they met. Richard had looked so out of place. An engineer in a bar frequented by military personnel. He was lucky he didn't get his arse handed to him. When he asked her to dance, it was so clumsy and pathetic it was hard not to laugh. But there was something so sincere, so endearing about him that she accepted, despite the snickering of her friends.
Wait … Banikar told him to go there? This was making less and less sense.
“When we crossed paths two weeks later when you were assigned to pilot our prototype, it must have seemed like coincidence. But it wasn't. It was meant to happen.” He paused, a hard edge wrinkling his face. “Everything, every single goddamn meaningful thing that has ever happened to me, to you, to everyone in our lives, was part of some grand plan. Everything. Me becoming an engineer. Us meeting, marrying, having a son. And oh, remember when the Diplomatic Corps asked if you wanted to lead the mission to the Denebian system? You wanted to turn it down, but I talked you into going. Because, to quote our friend, 'it was necessary'.”
Maeve wanted to scream, to run away. She didn't want to hear any more. She wanted to smash the console with her fists, stand up and run out of the room. But indecision, fear, and morbid curiosity kept her glued to her seat.
“And then, five years ago, the Jegg came. Governments have had bunkers hidden all over the world for centuries. From our little hole in the ground, we watched as our world, our colonies, even our allies, fell to the Jegg.
“I felt like the biggest sucker in the universe. 'Change the course of human history', my ass. We lost everything. Half of humanity: gone. Nine billion people, spread across forty-two worlds, dead. My entire family …” he trailed off, removing his glasses, placing his thumb and forefinger against his eyelids.
“I was so angry. I felt so useless. I wanted to give up, to lie down on a sand dune and die. I actually climbed that ten-story ladder to the surface once. I was prepared to just walk until I couldn't walk anymore. That's when old Glowface appeared to me again.”
Maeve vaguely remembered a time when her husband seemed to be more distant, more upset than normal. He eventually came around and she chalked it up to stress and the war. Eventually the old Richard surfaced and she never thought about it again.
“I hated him. All my life, he made me believe I was … special, destined for greatness even. But he led me up the proverbial garden path. Now we sat, rotting away underground, watching the Jegg siphon away our resources, one molecule at a time. I felt used. Betrayed. So I screamed at him. I screamed and cursed for what felt like hours. If he'd had a neck, I would have wrung it. I didn't want to look at him. I didn't want to hear anything he had to say.”
Richard leaned back in his chair and looked up at something off camera. “Of course, Banikar being Banikar, had all the time in the world. So he let me scream myself raw and throw punches at the air until I collapsed from exhaustion. And then he spoke to me again. I didn't want to listen, but when someone speaks to you in your mind, you have no choice but to listen.
“Believe me, Maeve, I know how this is going to sound.” He sighed. “There's nothing we could have done. The Jegg are centuries ahead of us. Whether humanity had colonized ten worlds or ten thousand, or whether we'd just chosen to stay on Earth and leave the galaxy be, it wouldn't have mattered. The Jegg would have come and kicked our butts. Because it was meant to happen.” He spat out the last three words before he stood up, walked a few paces away, and leaned his head on the far wall.
Maeve's heartbeat was frantic. But he wasn't done speaking.
“I've spent a lifetime mulling over the concept of destiny. Why Banikar chose me. All my life, it's been like I'm an actor, on a stage, waiting for the director to tell me what to do, where to go, what to say. But that's not what I am. I'm a pawn. A pawn in some giant cosmic chess game. The Eth are on one side, and on the other …”
He threw up his hands. “Who the hell knows. Banikar wouldn't say, but my guess is whoever this other player is, the Jegg are its pawns. As to what the winner of this game gets … well, that's beyond even my puny mortal brain's ability to figure out.”
He crossed the room and sat down in his chair again, moving his face until it filled most of the screen. “It took me a long time to deal with this revelation. It damn near destroyed me to keep it secret. I mean, who would believe such a crazy thing? I think the others only went along with me because, to put it simply, what choice did they have?
“I need you to remember this, Maeve: all that matters, all that really matters is that, pawns or not, we're playing for the good guys.
“And now, if everything worked out as Banikar foresaw it, you are sitting on the Talon, with the Stone. And it's done things to you that you can't begin to explain, just like the one on Denebius IV that protected you and Davin all those years ago. I may be a pawn, but you, darlin', are a queen in this chess game. But you have no idea which move comes next. Well, I'm going to tell you.”
No. Don't say it. Don't you farking say it!
“Banikar showed me everything. Your destiny lies there, Starbird. On Elystra. You're about to go where the proverbial angels fear to tread. But you won't be doing it alone. Yours and Davin's paths are linked to that woman you just chased away. Kelia, I think is her name?”
Stop. I'm begging you. In the name of all that's holy, stop farking talking!
She looked at his face. The man she thought she loved. He'd kept secrets, monstrous secrets from her, all this time. He'd never loved her. He was just following orders. He'd built their relationship like he was using a manual or a schematic. He'd used her, in every way a person can be used.
For the last two weeks, she'd grieved his loss. The sadness that gnawed at her insides, the shame she'd felt because of her dalliance with Kelia, it was all for nothing. That sadness, that shame had now morphed into white-hot hatred. She was glad he was dead. He deserved to die.
Pawns (The Wielders of Arantha Book 1) Page 31