“The gravity drive,” Kai said. “It creates wormholes in space-time. We’re going to create one in front of Capsis Prime.”
“I’m afraid we don’t have the power for that,” the AI said. “You’re restricted to—”
“I’m not restricted to anything,” Kai said, shutting the AI down. “I’m a damned Navigator and the rightful owner of this ship in my father’s absence. I have complete control.”
“There’s only one location such a wormhole that large could lead to,” the AI said. “I’m forbidden to allow—”
“You might be,” Kai said. “But I’m not.”
A series of numbers came to him. The same numbers that were on the footlocker: his father’s army ID. Kai tapped the sequence into the Blackstar’s system. The AI’s three-dimensional face faded away and the words ‘Override active’ flashed on the holocube.
“What’s happening?” Senaya said with a suspicious look on her face.
“I’m taking off the training wheels, Sen. You two should hold on; I’m not sure how this is going to work.”
Senaya and Marella did as he suggested.
Kai hailed his mother, but she didn’t answer. She had entered the corridor and was a few kilometers in front of the Spearhead.
The Doomsday deployment was less than a minute away.
A dozen or more Host fighters were now engaged with the flea swarm—and winning. The red Host destroyer had altered its vector and joined the rest of the fleet in the large arrow formation.
The Fang exploded into pieces; large chunks flew away at opposing angles. All around the Host fleet, CDF ships were going down, despite their valiant attempt.
Fifty seconds to deployment.
Kai tried one more time to hail Lopek and tell him to call it off, but they refused to answer. He just hoped his plan would work, because if it didn’t…
Remembering the race he had run through his mind earlier, he forgot everything else and focused on his control panel. He enlarged the coordinate area the AI had set earlier and engaged the gravity drive.
“Um… Kai, we can’t leave,” Senaya said when she saw the status update on the holocube.
“We’re going nowhere,” Kai said. “I want you to divert full auxiliary power to reverse thrusters and engage when I say so, okay?”
Forty seconds to deployment.
The hatch on the underside of the Spearhead opened, and the massive warhead lowered into position. All Kai could see was his mother’s death in its future.
“Okay,” Senaya said, her voice shaking.
Marella sat wide-eyed and frozen with uncertainty.
Kai delved into the Blackstar’s systems and increased the power of the gravity drive beyond its maximum capacity. He trusted the ancient technology would withstand the strain he was about to put on it.
Thirty seconds to deployment.
The Rapier opened fire on the Host target, providing the Spearhead with direct laser-targeted coordinates.
Kai hailed his mother once again, this time telling her of the plan.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Do it.”
“You need to get out of the formation,” Kai said. “Otherwise, you’ll—”
“Be sucked into the veil with the other ships? I know.”
With that, Kai’s mother closed the channel to him, leaving him with no time or any other option. He looked to Senaya and ordered her to hit the thrusters as he engaged the gravity drive.
The Blackstar shook furiously. The hull creaked and groaned against the massive amounts of power it was generating. Kai still didn’t know where it got the power, but however it was doing it, it was enough for his eardrums to burst and blood to pour down his neck.
His vision blurred and time seemed to stand still as a rupture in space opened at the tip of the Host arrow. The swirling void grew larger, obscuring the planet on the other side. Some of the smaller ships at the tip tried to angle away, but the gravitational power was too much, and they were dragged in.
The Blackstar’s thrusters fought against the force and managed to escape the worst of the gravity well. The other ships, including the Rapier and Spearhead, had no chance.
The hungry wormhole grew larger and larger until Kai doubted if he’d done the right thing. He was meddling with forces he barely understood, but with a sense of elation and horror in equal measure, he watched as the entire Host and CDF fleets slowly entered the wormhole.
When his mother’s ship crossed the event horizon, he let out an anguished scream. The Spearhead and its payload soon followed.
A few seconds later, the last of the Host ships disappeared into the void. The wormhole contracted until it became a tiny pinhead of bright light—and then eventually nothing.
Space folded shut around it. Apart from the swirling debris now set on new orbital paths thanks to the wormhole’s interference, the space about Capsis Prime and its moons was clear of all ships.
The Blackstar hung in space, slowly floating away from the capital planet.
Senaya reached over to Kai and gripped him by the shoulders. She was breathing slowly, and her voice was tight with pain. “Are you okay?”
Kai’s entire body hurt, his hearing was messed up, but he was still breathing. He turned to check on Marella; she was huddled over her knees and breathing deeply.
“I’m okay,” Kai said. “You two?”
“Still alive,” Senaya said with a forced grin. “That was insane. Where did they go?”
Marella looked up at Kai with red eyes. “Beyond the veil,” she said, shaking her head. “He sent them beyond the veil.”
“That’s a good thing, right? I mean, Capsis Prime is saved; his mother will still be alive along with the Spearhead…” Senaya looked at Kai with wide eyes, beckoning him to tell her it was all okay.
But really, he had no idea.
Marella was right.
The only place he could send them was the veil. He couldn’t produce a wormhole that powerful in quadrant space; the veil itself had an abundance of energy that he needed to power the singularity.
“No,” Marella said. “It’s not a good thing. Not a good thing at all. There’s a reason why the Navigators created the veil in the first place. Not to stop people from getting in, but to stop whatever’s in there from getting out. And now there’s a rip in space-time.”
“But the wormhole is closed,” Senaya said, pointing to the video feed.
“She’s right,” Kai said, knowing instinctively that there was some threat beyond the veil the Navigators were holding at bay, and by creating a massive wormhole as he did, he had weakened the barrier. The Ancients would no doubt be unimpressed with him for this, but if it came down to it, he would deal with them when the time came—whatever that would entail.
“But what does this all mean?” Senaya asked. “What’s going to happen now?”
“The wormhole was unstable,” Kai said. “It was the only way to create such a large one. Not all of the ships will end up in the same place. The Blackstar recorded a range of possible destinations. Our job will be to find my mother and, where feasible, destroy the remaining Host ships—if the Navigators aren't already doing that."
Marella shook her head, muttering, “No, no, no,” over and over. “This is bad. Real bad. For many millennia the Navigators have kept them and us apart. There must have been real reasons for that. This can’t end well.”
“It was a risk I had to take,” Kai said. “I couldn’t stand back and watch twenty billion citizens die at the hand of the Host. Once they had the capital, the rest of the quadrant would have fallen. It still might if our leadership is as compromised as Lopek said. But at least we’re here to fight another day.”
“He’s right,” Senaya said. “I would do the same thing again if it came to it.”
Kai squeezed Senaya in a tight hug, appreciative of her support.
“Now if you two don’t mind,” Kai said. “I need to visit the medical bay. Sen, take us down to the surface. Marella, get in touch
with the Capsis Prime government and let them know about Amelia being compromised and what we did. I’m sure they’re going to question us. The quicker we deal with them, the quicker we can get on with our next task.”
With that, Kai stood from the couch and stumbled across the bridge and headed for the medical bay. He needed some time alone to process everything that had happened and what it all meant.
The Capsis government would demand answers.
And he would demand help for his excursion beyond the veil. Biology or not, Brenna Locke was his mother, and if she had survived the wormhole, he needed to go and get her—along with his father.
Chapter 28
A day later
Kai eased the formal suit collar from his neck and looked out of his hotel room window. The view stretched down onto the streets of Goddenia, the capital city of Capsis Prime and the seat of government for the entire Coalition Republic.
He rubbed his ears and flexed his jaw. His hearing was still a little off even after the automated med-bay surgery to repair his ruptured eardrums. The healing gunk sitting in his ear canals would take a while to do its thing and dissipate.
The city looked empty, the fifteen million citizens locked in their homes as they processed how close they had come to complete annihilation. On the other side of the planet, the remnants of the geosynchronous defense station lay in tatters, but safely in the depths of the Felstatic Ocean.
A few hundred brave souls died when they used their trading ships to drag the structure away from the highly populated places as it re-entered the atmosphere.
The three moons, however, didn’t fare so well.
The GTU headquarters on Capa was utterly destroyed, killing fifty thousand.
As for Ceassa and Cesta, they were still calculating the tragedy.
Kai wondered what the obsession for the media was in the actual numbers. It didn’t mean anything really, and there was no way one could turn back the clock.
Those poor souls had perished; the exact number didn’t matter.
They weren’t credits to be accounted for and balanced.
They were more than just statistics.
He breathed heavily and considered turning down the Twin Presidents’ hearing. He’d had enough of bureaucrats and didn’t want an inquest of what he had done. A report of everything he did was already in their system; he’d made sure he, Senaya and Marella posted that as soon as they had arrived in Goddenia, knowing the public would want an explanation of the phenomena they had all witnessed.
The media channels were describing it as a miracle. Some ascribed it to various deities while others suggested the Navigator Ancients had returned. The arrival of the Blackstar was filmed and beamed all around the Coalition.
Kai was being hailed as a Coalition savior and Navigator spokesperson. He had already told a dozen reporters that he was just a lowly mechanic from Zarunda.
Of course, that wasn’t sensational enough for them. The journalists would print and broadcast what they wanted anyway.
A knock on the door broke his inward focus.
The feed on his wristband showed it was Senaya standing outside. She was the mirror image of him in her formal slate-gray suit, and she looked as out of place as he felt. She looked good, though. Fresh and free from wounds.
He opened the door and let her in.
“Hey,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
“Nervous,” she said. “What if they charge us with something, like treason?”
“They’re not going to charge us with treason; we saved their asses. The media have us as descendants of the gods. The government has the secret service surrounding the Blackstar because people are making a pilgrimage to it.”
“It’s crazy, Kai. I never thought we’d be here, doing what we did. I just want to go; I hate being around all this government, all this attention.”
She slumped onto the edge of his bed and ran her hand through her mohawk, now died a somber brown and free from her diodes. He’d never seen her so formal. It didn’t suit her; her body language was all wrong. It made him feel even more uncomfortable.
“Where’s Marella?” he asked.
“She’s with the History Department, filling them in on what she’s learned. I’m not sure I trust her; she just doesn’t seem the same since we arrived. Wouldn’t even look me in the eye.”
Kai sat next to her on the edge of the bed and put an arm around her shoulder.
“Don’t worry about it; I’m sure she’s just in shock. She was still recovering from the amateur surgery on Parsephus and was also injured on Oberus. I don’t think Lantesians heal too well. I’ll try to speak with her after this meeting with the presidents.”
“So what’s our angle on this?” she said, perking up. “What’s the line we’re going with?”
“The truth,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “No need to lie; we didn’t do anything wrong. Besides, we’ve got leverage if they try to pin anything on us.”
“The Blackstar?”
“Yeah, I coded it with a Navigator encryption key. No one’s getting in or operating it.”
“Where’d you get that from?”
He tapped the side of his head. “A few things are starting to become apparent. I’m no mathematics genius, but it’s right there, and it all makes sense. If they want access to the Blackstar, I’m the only one who can get them into it. If they don’t like our report, well, they don’t get anything from the Blackstar.”
Senaya smiled. “I knew you’d have a plan.”
“Nah, I’m just making it up as I go along. Let’s just see how things pan out. But if it goes wrong, I suggest we make a run for it.” He tapped his wristband. “I’ve got remote access to the Blackstar. It’ll summon to our location within seconds if need be.”
“Like it did at the cave on Oberus?”
“Exactly.”
“I feel better about the day now,” Senaya said, nudging Kai with an elbow. “Speaking of which, you want to go get this over with?”
Kai checked the time and nodded. “Sure, lead the way. Let’s see what the stiffs have got to say about what we did.”
Chapter 29
Security services escorted Kai and Senaya to their seats in the boardroom of the Glass House—the name for the presidents’ central office on account of it being made mostly from glass and hovering fifty meters in the air, suspended by superconductor magnets.
It was just another one of the government’s many ostentatious projects that served nothing other than ego. Even the meeting table reeked of obscene wealth. The veined surface was made from precious metals supplied from all over the Lasides Quadrant.
The table surface alone could probably set him up for life.
He quickly considered a way to remove it from the Glass House—and then promptly remembered he had the Blackstar now and wasn’t a pauper on Zarunda anymore.
“This place is so over the top,” Senaya whispered into his right ear.
He had to struggle to hear her. “Tell me about it. To think there are so many cities, some on this very planet, that can barely afford clean drinking water and here’s a table worth millions. Makes me sick.”
Kai stared out of the glass walls of the circular room. The weather on Capsis was gorgeous; bright sunshine and barely a cloud in the sky. An observer would think everything was just fine and that the planet had not come within hours of being turned into a flaming ruin.
“If you’re feeling sick, we can fetch a doctor,” a baritone voice said.
Kai turned and looked over his shoulder.
The two presidents, Stephan Gatskil and Desmona Lattis, entered the room with their security entourage, decked out in black and silver nanothread armor, following close behind them.
It was Gatskil with the sarcastic retort. The corpulent president took his seat on the opposite side of the table, along with his copresident, Lattis. She too was rotund. No chance of either of them starving to death anytime soon, Kai thought.
Lattis
waved the entourage out of the room. Her long mauve hair fell slickly over her broad shoulders. She looked every bit the stereotypical native of Iggyous—a tropical paradise planet that exported the most delicious—and fattening—nuts and fruit butter. Her robe was awash with a chromatic kaleidoscope of colors, whereas Gatskil was gray all over, including his hair, but then he was seventy-eight years old to her fifty-six. The former had been in the job for eight years now while Lattis was a relative newcomer, serving just her third year.
That came about due to the previous incumbent, Kristo Fockston, being executed for selling secrets to the Host. Kai wondered how many of those secrets were responsible for the shrain agents infiltrating Coalition centers of power and influence.
Gatskil cast a beady gray eye over Senaya then rested on Kai. “I’m assuming you’re well enough to continue with the briefing?” he said with a raised eyebrow.
“If we make it quick, yes,” Kai said, bristling at having to be here. “I don’t know exactly what you want from us, but I suggest we get to the point. I have business to attend.”
Lattis sat back and heaved in a big breath. “Ah yes, your mother, no doubt. Well, then, let’s dive right into the meat of the matter, shall we? We all saw what happened with the wormhole, and we know you were responsible for it, or at least the Navigator ship was. What can you tell us about that?”
Senaya opened her mouth, about to speak when Kai interrupted her.
“It’s too difficult to explain. You wouldn’t understand it even if I tried to put it into simple terms. I don’t fully understand it all yet, either. I just did what I had to do at the moment to save this planet—and the Coalition.”
“We're going to need more to go on, Mr. Locke," Gatskil said, crossing his arms over his broad chest. "The public deserves answers."
“The public deserves a government without corruption,” Senaya said, standing up and slapping her hands down on the table. “We know all about the shrain infiltration and how they were allowed to take down the defense array. We are aware that General Amelia sent many of the CDF fleet to the outskirts of the quadrant so that the Host force could face the capital system without resistance. We’re not the ones that should be questioned here.”
Blackstar Command 1: Prominence Page 21