Especially when it wasn’t clear there was any way to save the Vex.
To them, the conclusion was clear.
To her, it was murder.
The Vex deserved better. They deserved better, she kept repeating in her head as she clutched her left hand tighter and tighter. Soon her fingers wouldn’t just push through the flesh and draw blood, but likely punch all the way through the bone too.
She didn’t care though.
This was so wrong.
The Vex hadn’t asked for the entity to push through and damage their timeline. They hadn’t asked to live through countless iterations of their history, only to be obliterated time and time again.
They hadn’t asked to be turned into a race hell-bent on survival, manipulated into being the coldest, most brutal, most efficient creatures they could become.
It had simply happened to them.
And now they would be destroyed.
You could argue that would be putting them out of their misery. It wouldn’t though. The only way to save the Vex would be to fix their timeline and repair the damage that had been done.
At first she’d hoped Carson understood that. Now she realized he didn’t.
All he was thinking about was the Coalition.
A part of her understood that of course that was the case. Yet the rest of her, the part that understood how guilty the entity felt, it couldn’t accept this.
There had to be another way.
She found herself wandering through the corridors in a daze.
Though she was still aware of the entity’s presence, it was no longer close to taking her over. Though she’d endured a brief episode with Carson, she was once again in full control.
In fact, if anything, what had occurred in Carson’s office meant she had even more control than before.
For the entity was giving up. She could feel it receding within her. As it realized what the Coalition was going to do, it surrendered to hopelessness.
She barely had to concentrate to control it anymore.
Perhaps she should have celebrated at that fact, she couldn’t. It simply made her sad.
This whole thing was so terribly sad.
Though she’d joined the Coalition Academy on the premise she could go out there into the galaxy and make a difference, she now realized the emotional cost that often brought.
Solutions weren’t always easy, peaceful, and nice. You didn’t always have the luxury of choosing between two distinct options, one of which was moral and decent, the other of which was obviously abhorrent.
Sometimes, like now, you found yourself choosing between two different versions of Hell.
Though Carson kept trying to tell her she wasn’t the worst recruit in 1000 years, and Nida had started to believe him, now she wasn’t so sure.
A proper recruit, who understood the remit of the Coalition Academy, and the tremendous responsibility that came along with it, wouldn’t second-guess Carson. They’d understand this was the only way.
Yet as she plumbed the depths of her feelings and reason, she couldn’t.
She really never had been cut out for this life, had she?
She was soft on the inside, too sensitive. She couldn’t turn her mind off and do what was necessary. All she could do was obsess over how much she’d lose.
Feeling bitterly disappointed and on the verge of tears, she barely paid attention to where she was walking.
Soon she found herself heading out towards the grounds. It was an incredibly beautiful day, and gorgeous sunshine was streaming down from above. The grass was lush, green, and soft. The oak trees were resplendent in young spring growth, their leaves gently shifting about and rustling in a refreshing breeze that danced off the bay beyond.
As she looked around, the various personnel and cadets at the Academy were all smiling and enjoying their day. Granted, a few were hurrying by with worried expressions on their faces, either shouldering the same burden she did, or another. But the majority of people were simply enjoying the day.
It was strange to see them so oblivious.
Strange, and painful.
She found herself gravitating towards her favorite oak tree. It was off the beaten path, and if you were lucky, you could lie underneath that great gnarled trunk without anyone disturbing you.
She needed to be alone right now. Alone with her thoughts and the entity’s bitter grief.
She didn’t make it.
As she was walking across the grounds, she ran into a group of her classmates. Though she tried to walk around them, she couldn’t.
Their faces exploded with expressions of surprise and wonder. She didn’t exactly know how much of her tale had spread through the student body, but she could safely assume they barely knew a thing. Just enough to be intrigued, but not enough to run the heck away from the entity currently residing in Nida's left palm.
She closed her fingers tighter as Cadet Rosali half-ran over to her, his enormous blue face bobbing close to her own as his red eyes widened with interest.
‘I heard from one of the officers in the docking ring that you arrived with Carson Blake. You haven’t joined the Force, have you?’ Another cadet asked, their voice arcing high in surprise.
The group kept assaulting her with their questions. They bombarded her with the same ferocity as the Coalition would soon bombard Remus 12.
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t.
To face their curiosity and rapt attention, despite what was happening, felt so wrong.
She went to push past. Maybe she’d head back to her room in the medical bay. There it would be silent. And though no doubt the medical equipment would keep scanning her, she’d still be alone.
She didn’t get the opportunity.
Somebody raised their voice and coughed very pointedly. ‘So are the rumors true?’
Nida, though she desperately wanted to run away, found herself turning. She recognized that voice.
Bridget.
Alicia's friend was standing there, one eyebrow raised as she crossed her arms defensively in front of her chest. There was a very sour expression crumpling her usually pretty face. ‘So, is it true? Are you,’ she brought up a finger and pointed directly at Nida, ‘somehow with Carson. Or is this just some dumb joke?’
Bridget’s tone was forceful and belligerent.
And it washed right over Nida.
Really? This was what people were concentrating on?
The galaxy was going to hell, and all Bridget cared about was a little romantic competition?
Nida’s lips simply parted open in disbelief.
She felt cold. And disconnected.
How could these people be so oblivious?
They were cadets in the Coalition Academy, they knew the responsibility they shouldered. So why weren't they shouldering it? Why were they massing around her, more interested by the possibility of intrigue, then the probability that something dangerous was happening?
Granted, none of them knew about the Vex. But Nida couldn’t listen to her own reason right now. All she could hear was the anger bubbling up inside her.
These people were so damn naive.
They had no idea what was waiting out there for them. Who cared about their romantic troubles and tribulations in the grand scheme of things? When they graduated, they would be responsible for the Coalition, for the galaxy, for countless lives.
Nida had never been a particularly forward-thinking person, and though she had always acted responsibly and diligently, she wasn’t the most mature of souls.
Well, maturity had been thrust upon her.
Her once narrow perspective had been blown apart. She no longer had the luxury of caring only about herself and what was happening to her immediate friend group. The future of the Vex now weighed upon her shoulders, and it changed her as she stared out at her friends and colleagues.
She could no longer understand them.
Nor care about their petty problems.
Rather than face Bri
dget, she turned around.
She went to walk away.
Bridget pounced forward, grabbed her arm, and held her in place. ‘Come on, tell us. What happened? Are you really with Carson? Or is this some elaborate trick?’
She didn’t usually have a problem with Bridget. She was a little like Alicia. She was just fiery, but deep down, she was a good person.
Today, Nida had a problem with everyone.
The more the shock of realizing the Coalition were going to destroy Remus 12 settled in, the more powerful anger began to grow within her.
She was a lot of things, but she was very rarely angry. And the sensation was such an odd one, and so different to her usual character, it felt like someone had switched her body with someone else’s.
As strange as it was, however, she couldn’t deny that growing feeling.
She was angry at Carson. She was angry at the Coalition for their decision. She was angry at her friends and classmates for being so damn naive.
She was angry at herself for being so weak.
The emotion kept building and building, like a flame being fed more and more fuel. Soon it would rise right from her toes to her head, and she’d burst.
Without thinking, she roughly tugged her hand free from Bridget’s grip.
It was easy enough.
Surprise shot through Bridget’s expression, but then once again her face crumpled with clear animosity. ‘You know, you don’t deserve a person like Carson. You’ve never tried at the Academy, you’ve never put your heart and soul into it. He has. No matter what he faces, he always does what’s right for the Coalition. It’s in his blood. You wouldn’t understand that. You run from your problems when they get too hard,’ Bridget said.
Maybe her comments drew laughter, or gasps, but Nida could hear nothing but her words.
She didn’t deserve a person like Carson.
Carson always did what was right for the Coalition.
‘You don’t meet people with loyalty like that too often. You mostly meet people like you, too weak to bother with,’ Bridget said as she crossed her arms in front of her chest and flicked her head to the side.
Though Nida was now free, and could walk away, she found herself grinding to a halt, her face directed at the ground.
She stared fixedly at the grass.
If she wanted to, she could silence Bridget easily enough. All Nida would have to do was point a finger at the sky, and she could send Bridget soaring off into the clouds. Or she could simply turn around and flatten a hand on her chest, and crush her body with all the force of a meteor slamming into the earth.
. . . .
She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Although the anger kept building inside her, Nida held onto herself. To the scrap of identity that always remained within.
And she walked away.
Bridget kept calling out to her, and maybe the rest of her classmates kept assailing her with questions, but Nida turned her mind from them.
She focused her attention within. Towards the boiling anger as it rose and peaked through her belly, feeling like acid eating at her guts and heart.
She brought a hand up and flattened it over her chest.
She did not, however, at any point turn around and attack Bridget.
No, she was different.
Despite the anger curdling within, she was not that far gone.
Instead she turned, Bridget's words still shadowing her.
Carson was a good man. He always did what was right for the Coalition.
Nida, on the other hand, was a worthless recruit who didn't know what it was like to sacrifice herself for others.
If she'd been in a daze before she'd walked across the grounds, it was nothing compared to the stupor she experienced as she headed back to the medical bay.
Her head was elsewhere. All the way back on Remus 12, to be precise.
Despite the fact she kept drawing quite a crowd, though nobody else accosted her, Nida felt alone.
Completely and abjectly alone.
She hadn't felt this way when she'd been nothing more than an ordinary recruit, even though people had fastidiously ignored her.
Nida had never been popular. It hadn't bothered her though.
Yet now, in the face of all this limelight, she had never felt so distanced from people.
She tried to tell herself it was just the entity. Carson was right. This grief and shame and anger, it wasn't hers. She simply had to hold on. Push back the deluge of feelings until Vex was destroyed and the entity was removed from her.
Yet even as she thought that, she swallowed hard, her throat pushing against her collar, the implant scratching the fabric.
She tapped at it, closing her fingers tight against the skin.
Though she wanted to believe none of these feelings were her own, her gut instinct told her they were.
It was too easy to turn her back on the entity and the Vex. Despite what they had done to her, she was a member of the Coalition Academy.
And Bridget was wrong. Nida did have values, and she knew how to uphold them.
She'd been there on the first day of class when Sharpe had told them all that as members of the Coalition Academy they were to uphold the good, the right, and the just.
For that's what the Galactic Coalition Union stood for.
It separated itself from the Barbarians and the Kor and all of those other warring factions because of its moral integrity. It protected the weak, it shepherded people into the future, and it never harmed others for its own gain.
Well, the lecture Sharpe had given all those years ago no longer meshed with the Coalition she saw today.
She could understand Carson and the decision he'd help make, but she couldn't push away the fact they weren't trying hard enough.
Surely destroying Vex should be the last option. Not the first. Surely they could travel to Vex and spend the time until that planet realigned looking for a solution.
If the worst came to the worst, then they could destroy Vex just as it realigned with the galaxy.
They could at least try.
As Nida walked and thought, she paid no attention whatsoever to where she was and who was around her.
In fact, she was in so much of a daze, that she walked right into the back of a large man and barely noticed. Glancing off his shoulder, she continued forward, clutching her left hand back and forth as she thought through this desperate situation.
The man cleared his throat. It was a very pointed move, and though she wanted to ignore it, there was something terribly memorable about it.
It raced up her back, and panic sunk deep into her gut.
‘Really, Cadet? You walk into me, and you don't apologize?’
She froze.
Commander Sharpe.
Bradley and Bridget were one thing, Sharpe was in a completely different league.
He'd been the one to come up with her nickname of the worst recruit in 1000 years. He'd been the one to berate her about her story of the Vex.
And he was now the one who took several short, marching steps her way, his expression souring as he did.
Though Nida had felt powerful anger moments before, it was burnt up in Sharpe's presence.
Though she'd never thought of it that way, the Commander was kind of her nemesis. The bully who had berated her through her few short years as a Coalition cadet.
Except, he wasn't, was he?
Not entirely.
Though Sharpe never missed a chance to tell her she was a terrible cadet and should quit the Academy, there was no true anger behind his words.
He didn't hate her. A fact evidenced by the way he'd treated her after her accident with those TI objects so long ago. With compassion as well as frustration crumpling his brow, he'd told her to look after herself.
Well right now, as he marched up to her side, crossing his enormous tree trunk like arms before his chest, he looked down with that same confused expression. There was a definite edge of frustration, but flickering d
eep within his slate grey eyes was compassion. ‘What are you doing? Shouldn't you be in the medical bay? You should not be walking the halls. Drawing attention,’ he added in a hiss.
She blinked quickly, trying to marshal up her courage.
A few seconds ago she'd been lost in the brutality of the Coalition destroying the Vex, and now all she could remember was how damn weak Sharpe made her feel.
Her heart was a mess, her hands were sweaty, and she was now pressing her teeth into her bottom lip so hard, the damn thing would likely pop.
‘Cadet,’ Sharpe said in a low growl, ‘don't you have anything to say for yourself?’
She opened her mouth.
She stopped.
‘Cadet?’ He crossed his arms harder, looking at her with a truly questioning expression.
‘I'm heading back there now,’ she finally said in the weakest of voices that barely carried beyond her lips.
Without bothering to salute, and feeling her emotions tackle her once more, she turned on her foot to walk away.
‘Nida,’ Sharpe said suddenly.
He used her first name. He very rarely used her first name. When he wasn't calling her Cadet Harper, he was calling her a waste of space. Yet now as he said her name, there was an odd tone to his voice. Almost familiar. Like he was a friend rather than a commander and her constant bully.
She paused, turning over her shoulder to look at him.
He dropped his arms around his middle. ‘They haven't told me what's going on,’ he pointed out.
She half closed her eyes. Right. He wanted to know.
Before she could shake her head, he shook his. ‘I'm not asking you to tell me, Cadet,’ he spoke tersely, ‘I'm here to give you some advice.’
She paused.
She should probably walk away.
Like she walked away from Bridget.
Like she walked away from Carson.
But she didn't.
Because this was Sharpe.
Despite the fact she now had an incredibly powerful entity residing in her left palm, and the weight of the universe resting on her shoulders, he was the one force that could keep her riveted to the spot.
Ouroboros- The Complete Series Page 80