Lattis considered Senaya for a moment and inclined her head a few degrees. “You have a legitimate complaint, Ms. Orlanda. But we’re not here to interrogate you. We just need to know what happened and whether there is a risk posed to our people. Will the wormhole open? Will the Host force make their way back? You can surely understand that we need to know the status so we can start strategizing the rebuild of our Coalition.”
“Before we say anything else,” Kai said. “I want to know what the status is on Zarunda. I only agreed to find the Blackstar if—”
Gatskil held up a hand to stop Kai. “It’s being dealt with. I received a report directly from Captain Lopek a number of days ago, and resources have been allocated to address the blight. On that, you have my word.”
Kai relaxed in his seat, appreciative of them honoring the deal. He didn’t care so much about what happened to him as much as he did the fate of those stuck on Zarunda.
“Now,” Lattis said, opening her arms in a friendly gesture. “Let’s put any ill feeling aside, shall we, and discuss the topic at hand and see where we can help each other.”
Senaya reluctantly sat back down in her seat and took a breath.
“Okay, here’s how we saw it all go down…” Kai began.
He told them, honestly, his recollection of the battle and his decision-making process. Although he kept out the specifics of how they generated the wormhole, he gave them enough information that they were satisfied they were safe, at least for now.
The briefing went on for two hours with both sides questioning the other as they formulated what their next move would be.
After lunch, they resumed the meeting.
Marella had joined them and corroborated Kai’s information. He wasn’t sure if she would; her intentions weren’t clear to him, but over the course of another hour, her report on how they found the Blackstar and their usage of it afterward absolved him of any wrongdoing in their eyes.
“So,” Kai said after a lull in the discussion, “what’s going to happen to General Amelia?”
The two presidents shared a look before Lattis said, “There’ll be a trial, and, if found guilty, she’ll be executed, along with her shrain informants.”
“Which brings us nicely to our last piece of business today," Gatskil said, leaning forward and resting his weight on the table. "Before the GTU headquarters was destroyed, our operatives delivered to me a report—which earlier today proved to be correct."
“Go on,” Kai said, eager for the meeting to finish.
“We picked up a shrain inquisitor posing as a council official this morning. From it, we confirmed that the Host is receiving help from an ally outside of the quadrant. Their population, power capacity, or anything at all is unknown, but we’re working on that.”
“Another faction?” Marella said. “But we’ve explored many of the planets outside of the quadrant and haven’t found anything to suggest another galactic-faring race.”
“The Universe is a big place," Lattis said. "We've been protected by the infrastructure of the Navigators. One has to ask the question now, as we have always done, what forced the Navigators to retreat behind the veil, and what instigated the building of the Veil in the first place? Although we don't know the answers, the intelligence we've gathered points to a powerful race hitherto unknown."
“It does not surprise the Host would sell themselves as pawns to someone else if it meant they could strike back at the Coalition," Senaya said. "But is there nothing at all we know about this other race?"
Gatskil shook his head. “The shrain died before we could… well, extract any further information, but we are working on it. The CDF ships have forced the remains of the Host on the outskirts into retreat. A number of those have been assigned missions into Host territory, and we’re following up some specific leads that should prove to be enlightening.”
“We do know, however," Lattis added, "that this attack, this whole operation was just a proof of concept. A test if you will. The real attack is yet to come and given how depleted we are… well, the future looks bleak."
“You must have some plan,” Kai said.
“We’re in the process of drawing up emergency plans for total defense. There’ll be further conscription, and every planet within the Coalition will be put on war status with all production and resources focused on military requirements. Further, a compulsory purchase order of all suitable space-faring ships has been ratified by Congress. We’re fast-tracking officers and pilots as we speak.”
Gatskil leaned further toward Kai. “Which is where you come in.”
“You want me to fly a civilian ship?”
“No, no, Mr. Locke, we want you to do the thing you want: find your mother. Fly beyond the veil, find her, and find the Navigators. We’re going to need them if we’re to survive what is coming, because if we’re defeated; they’ll surely be next.”
“I’ll do it,” Kai said. “In fact, I’ll leave as soon as we finish here. No offense intended, but this isn’t my scene.”
“Understood,” Gatskil said. He then turned his attention to Senaya. “I’m told that you want to join the Engineers Guild. In light of your actions, I think it’s fair to say you’ve more than proved your worth and we would be honored to have you in the guild.” From his jacket pocket, he produced a holoscroll and slid it across the table. “Your entrance details,” he said.
Senaya picked it up, unfurled it, and read the contents. A smile stretched across her face. Although Kai knew it was selfish of him, he was disappointed. Sure, on some level he was happy she got what she had always wanted, but he didn’t want her to go.
“Well?” Lattis said. “What’s your decision, Ms. Orlanda?”
Senaya looked at the scroll, then at Kai and said, “I’m sorry, Kai, this is what I’ve always wanted, you know that, right?”
“Of course,” he said, disappointment gripping his guts.
“Being in the guild would fulfill my lifelong dream. It’s one thing working on wrecks, but another to work on CDF ships. I know it sounds crazy, but it would validate who I am, you know?”
Kai couldn’t say anything because if he did, his emotions would run wild. He couldn’t say goodbye to her like this.
“So we can inform the guild of your acceptance?” Lattis said.
Senaya gazed once more at the holoscroll, folded it up and handed it back to Lattis. “I’m afraid not,” she said. “My place is on the Blackstar with Kai. As much as I’d love to join the guild, I can’t stand by and watch my dearest friend face this challenge on his own. Besides, as an engineer, what better place to go than the home of the Navigators? That’s if you’ll have me on your crew, Kai?”
He spluttered then smiled. “You’re my number one pick,” he said, grabbing Senaya in for a hug so he could hide his emotion. His heart pounded against his chest and relief flooded his system that she was sticking around.
While hugging her, he caught Marella’s gaze.
Gatskil did too and said, “Ms. Maio, your help has been much appreciated, and our advisers have been very impressed with you. We’d like to offer you a position within a new department of Navigator Studies. You’ll receive a generous grant and will head up a team to liaise with Kai and anyone or anything else that comes back from the veil. To help us make sense of our Ancient guardians.”
“Or,” Kai added, wanting to be proactive this time around, “you can satisfy your curiosity firsthand and come with us beyond the veil to see for yourself. I still need you to help me find my father if we get a chance. I know he’s over there somewhere, and I know that you have feelings for him.”
At this Marella looked away and hid her eyes. The soft fur on her skin bristled. Kai knew this to be a sign of surprise and shame, although he didn’t judge her; his father and Brenna had been apart for many years, and as far as he could tell, she hadn’t had an affair, just admired Kendal perhaps a little too much.
After a tense moment, Senaya suggested she would like Marella to join th
em.
“Okay,” Marella said sheepishly. “I’ll join the crew of the Blackstar.” To Gatskil and Lattis: “I’m sorry, but the opportunity is too great for me to miss. And Kai is correct; I do have feelings for his father, but not in the way he thinks… It’s complicated.”
Senaya grinned and grabbed Marella around the neck in a surprise hug-attack. The two laughed briefly before Gatskil coughed to get their attention.
“It seems our business is concluded. I’ll have our security team escort you to the Blackstar whenever you’re ready. If you need any supplies, please let the team know, and they’ll arrange it for you.”
The two presidents stood, as did Kai and the others. The security team entered the room and waited to escort them out.
“Before you go,” Lattis said, waddling around the table until she was facing Kai, Senaya, and Marella, “we wanted to give you these.” From a satchel beneath her robe, she pulled out three medals and placed them over their heads.
A reporter stepped forward from the escort team and indicated with a rolling motion of his hand that he was broadcasting.
The two presidents moved until they were standing on either side of the Blackstar crew, smiling at the camera somewhere on the journalist’s person. Probably a contact lens vid streamer, Kai thought as he tested the weight of the medal in his hand.
Lattis spoke as though she were addressing the public, which Kai soon realized she was. He stood up straighter and tried to look more hero-like as she began her short speech.
“Citizens of the Coalition Republic, although we’ve already been through much, there’s still more to come, and trust me when I tell you that we have planned for every eventuality and we will get through this, just like we did a decade ago.
“This is due to no small effort by these three brave citizens. Kai Locke, Senaya Orlanda, and Marella Maio have earned the highest honor we can give them: the Coalition Medal of Freedom. Their heroic actions saved billions of lives, and we owe them an enormous debt of gratitude, but that will have to wait, as their bravery knows no bounds.”
Lattis paused for a moment as the journalist stepped closer and focused individually on Kai, Senaya, and then Marella before stepping back.
“These three brave souls have recovered a Navigator artifact, which I’m sure many of you have already seen on your feeds: the Blackstar. And with it, they’re going to journey beyond the veil to rescue our men and women and to bring back the secrets of the Navigators.”
On and on she went. Kai tuned out and eventually slid out of view as the journalist moved around to focus his questioning to Gatskil and Lattis.
Senaya and Marella joined him, and they were escorted out by the security team. No one said anything as they made their way to the shuttle and down to the landing zone where the Blackstar awaited.
Crowds of people had gathered around the craft and were being held back by soldiers. They were chanting all kinds of stuff that Kai ignored. The medal around his neck felt too heavy for him; he doubted he could live up to such a decoration. He hadn’t done much when all was said and done. He hadn’t sacrificed himself like his mother did. He hadn’t fought at the frontline like his father or even Bandar.
He waited for Senaya and Marella to step inside the ship, then turned to face the crowd. He removed the medal and threw it over the barriers to a young girl standing on her own, looking up at the Blackstar with awe.
She wasn’t shouting and hollering like the others. She caught the medal with a shocked expression and then smiled up at Kai.
He returned her smile and hoped silently she’d still be alive to make use of the medal. He hoped she’d sell it; he hoped she would see through it and realize that Kai was just like her and anyone else in his position would have done what he did.
Just because one of his parents was a Navigator hadn’t changed a damn thing. All that knowledge in his head and he couldn’t access most of it.
It was Kai the grease monkey, the scavenger, the B-list racer that did what he did, not some medaled hero. He turned and entered the ship, not waiting to wave at the crowd. He wasn’t the hero they needed. At the end of the day, he was just a boy looking for his parents like so many other orphans out there.
But he was the lucky one: he had the Blackstar. And more importantly, he had Senaya and Marella. Together they would chart new worlds and travel to places few people would ever get the chance to see.
First, however, they needed to narrow down their search and prepare themselves for going beyond the veil.
Chapter 30
Later that day, Kai and the Blackstar crew flew away from Capsis Prime. They’d traveled two million kilometers using their regular stellar drive so as not to disrupt anything when opening up another wormhole.
The three of them took their places on the couches surrounding the central command module. Kai looked to his left and caught Senaya’s attention.
“What’s up, Captain?” she said.
“Just wondering how the ship’s doing. You finished the diagnostics, right?”
“Yeah, but why didn’t you just get the AI to do it for you? It would have been quicker.”
“I don’t trust it,” Kai said. “Not sure why, but I get the feeling there’s more going on there than just logic and processors. Besides, I thought it’d be good to give you the opportunity to poke around in the ship’s innards and see how she works.”
Senaya gave him the rundown in glorious detail. He tuned out after a few minutes but remained quiet to allow Senaya to enjoy her geeking out over the Navigator tech.
Before they had started their journey away from Capsis Prime, he’d already run the diagnostic routines himself and knew the ship was in good condition. While they were handling the briefing with the presidents, the ship itself had been busy running maintenance routines.
Marella joined in with Senaya, giving her thoughts on the design choices and technological advancements of the ship’s various systems.
The more they talked, the more fragments of the data cache in his head started to open up. He still couldn’t fully understand most of it, but he was sure this was all helping.
“That’s great,” he finally said when his two crew had finished. “I suppose we ought to prepare for the jump unless you two have any last minute tasks you want to run?”
Marella’s fur waved slowly, which Kai had come to learn was a Lantesian way of politely saying no.
“You’re just stalling now, Kai,” Senaya said, running a hand through her mohawk and adjusting her brightly lit diodes that she had refitted since returning to the ship. She had even put on her multi-pocketed overalls. She now looked like her true self. And just as her true self, she had seen right through him.
“You’re right,” he said. “It’s just… we’re going beyond the veil. That’s huge!”
Marella placed a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay to be nervous,” she said. “It doesn’t diminish your status with us. You’re still our captain; you’re still the son of a Navigator. There’s no pressure, Kai. We’ve got your back.”
“Marella’s right,” Senaya said. She then took a holoscroll from one of her many pockets and handed it to Kai. “While you were navigating us away from Capsis, I ran some scans and found these three possible exit points of the wormhole. Your mother is likely at one of these.”
The coordinates didn’t make a lot of sense to Kai. They were for systems of planets on the inner rings of the galaxy. No one had charted that area, so to him, despite his new understanding of the Navigators, the numbers just represented random chance.
“The probability is equal for each choice,” Marella added. “From my investigations into the Navigator culture, I have figured out that the third option is most likely an outer planet while the other two are further in.”
Marella handed him a pencil sketch showing a crudely drawn diagram. She had used elements from the cavern on Oberus, along with some other artifacts she had studied, to come up with that conclusion.
His ha
nd naturally went to his pocket where he had the tetrahedron.
He had learned how to make the symbols glow at will, but these had yet to illicit change in his understanding. He did, however, find it gave him increasing comfort to have on his person.
The bond with it had continued to grow stronger, but it hadn’t given him any indication of which choice would be the right one, as he had hoped.
“Let’s go with the outer coordinates first,” he said. “That way if we draw a blank, we’re already heading inward. If we continue in right away, we may not have the chance to come back out.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Senaya said. “I’m plotting in the details now.”
“Gravity engines ready to rock and roll when you are, Kai. The wormhole protocol says it’ll take us about five hours to reach our destination.”
Five hours! Kai had gone on longer hikes through the forests of Gostabul on Zarunda. It amazed him to think they would be traveling to the inner rings of the galaxy in that time.
Turning to Marella, he said, “Are you ready?”
Her fur bristled, standing on end this time, making her look fuzzy. She smiled and nodded her head. “I’ve always been ready. Let’s do this.”
“Go for it, Sen. Take us beyond the veil and let’s see what’s awaiting us.”
“Aye, Captain!” she said.
The process wasn’t very dramatic—it was just a single gesture over the glass control panel at Senaya’s lap—and he briefly considered coding up a more dramatic procedure with sirens and fancy graphical effects.
The holocube floating above the central island span a few times until the wormhole data screen faced Kai and the others. A stream of data flowed down one column while a countdown ticked in another. It was counting down from thirty seconds.
When it reached twenty, a notification came through; the holocube flashed red, and on one of the walls a video feed flickered to life. Off to their right flank, a few hundred kilometers away, a small subspace exit point flashed and the Blackstar received a communication request.
Blackstar Command 1: Prominence Page 22