by A. K. DuBoff
All of that had gone to shite. This wasn’t a victory for either side—just senseless loss of life.
No one said anything else for the remainder of the shuttle ride back to the transport ship. When they docked, the other Agents filed off into the main ship in silence.
“I need to see,” Jason said soberly.
Leon nodded. “Me too.”
Kira and Lexi wordlessly nodded their agreement.
The four of them headed to the flight deck, where the Militia officer pilot was observing the planet on the holodisplay.
She met Jason’s gaze when he entered. The slow shake of her head said everything.
The planet was now nothing but a baren wasteland, reduced to its base geological features. No life remained.
“No…” Leon gasped. “They were trying to make a targeted disease…. How did it take out everything? It shouldn’t have spread like that. How did it encompass the whole planet?”
Kira wrapped an arm around him, offering what little comfort she could through the physical contact.
Jason’s chest was tight and his throat hurt to swallow as he held back his anguish. Is there anything I could have done if I’d gone back inside?
He’d been certain a shield could hold back any kind of decimation. He’d trusted his abilities. He was wrong, and now all those colonists were dead. The innocents who’d called in the TSS to help in the first place.
We made this worse for them. Would the Coalition have rushed their test if we hadn’t come here today? He’d never know what might have been different, but he felt the blame of it as if it was entirely his fault.
Lexi placed her hand on his back and gazed up at him. “No one could have known what this weapon would do.”
“We should have evacuated everyone before moving in,” he murmured.
“And blow our approach?” Kira said. “No, this is just one of those shite situations where things go bad and there’s not a bomaxed thing we could have done to change it.”
Jason knew all too well about those. He’d lectured about it to his students, and he’d lived it for himself with what happened at Alkeer. Hindsight gave clarity, but it didn’t change the facts. Decisions made on incomplete data weren’t bad in the moment, and he wasn’t to blame.
“If we hadn’t evacuated when we did, we would have been caught up in that blast, too,” Kira pointed out. “This isn’t on you, Jason.”
Then why do I feel so responsible? Nothing they could say would make him feel better anytime soon. He needed to talk about the incident with his father; if anyone could give an honest perspective, it was him.
“Make a record of all the scan data from the incident,” Jason instructed the pilot. “This information is now classified until further notice.”
“Yes, sir,” she acknowledged.
Jason had seen enough. “Plot a course back to TSS Headquarters and jump as soon as the scan data is sent to Command.” He left the flight deck.
Lexi, Kira, and Leon followed him out. He wasn’t sure where to go, so he stopped in the corridor and closed the flight deck’s door.
“I still don’t entirely know what we saw,” he said. “It looked like all the organic matter was un-made, like what happened on Alkeer. If this is the same thing, the Coalition is messing with the energy that is literally the foundation of everything. No one person with our corporeal limitations can control it. What we do as Gifted is only scratching the surface of what’s possible with that higher dimensional power.”
Leon shook his head. “Those scientists thought they were invincible.”
“I saw it with the others on Duronis,” Lexi murmured. “They believed they were above natural law—that it would bend to their wills.”
“Another planet destroyed because of hubris.” Kira scoffed with disgust.
Jason’s stomach turned over as guilt welled in his chest. He kept replaying Alkeer’s destruction, when Tiff’s presence had been ripped away.
Lexi took his hand, sensing his struggle. “Hey, I’ve got you.”
Her physical touch and the presence of her in his mind kept his thoughts from spiraling further. “I’m glad you’re here, Lexi.”
“You did everything right.”
“Sometimes, that’s not enough.” He swallowed the lump in his throat. “What happened here today isn’t something we want getting out onto the public news streams. If people knew that there was a weapon capable of destroying life on a planet in this way, and that it’s in the hands of a terrorist group, there’d be mass panic that could tear apart the Empire.”
“The information may have been destroyed with them,” Kira said.
Leon shook his head. “I don’t think so. They were reporting to someone offworld. I’m sure there are data backups.”
“We must proceed with the assumption that this could happen again,” Jason said. “We still don’t know who is behind this or what their end goals are.”
They all nodded somberly.
“Where does that leave us?” Kira asked.
“We don’t speak of it. We file our reports and the truth gets locked away at the highest clearance levels.”
She nodded her understanding. “I’m all for never speaking of it again.”
“What about the locals?” Lexi asked. “There were people on the orbital station.”
“The TSS will talk with them and see what aid we can offer, though nothing will make up for this loss.”
“I’m so sorry, Jason,” Leon said. “I really had no idea…”
“I know. None of us did.” Jason took a steadying breath. “I’ve gotta say, this first command hasn’t gotten off to a great start.”
“On the plus side, it can only get better from here.” Kira gave a surprisingly lighthearted shrug.
Jason was amazed by her ability to take things in stride. He’d admired that about her since their first meeting, and the more time they spent together, the more he saw her resilience in action. It was a necessity in this line of work. Loss—horrible loss, sometimes—was a fact of the job. It would either get a person down or they would find a way to let it fuel them to be stronger.
“I guess I would have set an unreasonably high bar if I’d solved all of our problems right from the get-go,” Jason jested back. The attempted levity pained him in the moment, but he knew it was best to keep things in perspective; he had a long fight ahead of him, and he couldn’t give up now.
Kira took Leon by his arm. “Well, we’ve got a few hours before we reach TSS Headquarters, so please excuse us while we unwind after this shiteshow of a day.”
“Thanks again for getting me out of there,” Leon called over his shoulder.
“And, Jason, don’t forget you owe us a fancy date night!” Kira said as she led Leon into one of the guest cabins.
“I remember.”
The cabin door slid closed.
Lexi turned to Jason when they were alone in the corridor. “This is what I dealt with every day in the Alliance. Those two can’t keep their hands off each other.”
“How can they even think about that at a time like this? A planet was just destroyed.”
“People deal with stress in different ways. In a way, I can understand just wanting to be close to someone you care about, to remember you’re alive.”
“Yeah, I guess there is that.”
She wrapped her arms around him. “There’s no one else I’d rather be with right now.”
“Me either.” He savored her presence. “We’re going to track down the people who did this and bring them to justice, Lexi.”
“I know we will. And we’ll do it together.”
— — —
How did this happen? Wil took in the devastation on the video feed from Quel. His son was safe. Leon was rescued. The loss could have been worse, but it was still horrific.
He’d received word from Jason’s ship that they were on their way back to Headquarters. They had been successful, but this was far from a victory.
Saera e
ntered his office. “I just heard.” She closed the door behind her.
“I doubt they made this weapon on their own. A transdimensional bridge that can break apart matter?”
She nodded. “It has the Erebus written all over it.”
“How did they get involved with the Coalition?”
“No idea, but this explains why we haven’t heard from them much since calling a truce.”
It’s not a truce if they’re working with a rogue faction to design planet-killing weapons. Wil had no doubt that Quel was just the beginning if this was the new scheme. What are the Erebus planning? What do they intend to gain?
“On a more optimistic front, the new power core production started today, right?”
New planetary shields won’t do any good if a weapon like this is released from within. Wil nodded. “Yes, I suppose that is a bit of good news.”
Saera sighed. “I hate this feeling, too, Wil—constantly playing catchup. Of not feeling in control.”
“This enemy doesn’t think like us. They don’t move like us. I don’t know how to get ahead.”
“You’ve solved the unsolvable before. I believe in you.”
But how many people will die while I figure it out? Wil knew it wasn’t all on him, yet he was the TSS High Commander. A war hero. The designer of the revolutionary jump drive. Everyone was looking at him for answers again, whether he liked it or not. “Thank you. I could never do this without you.”
She smiled playfully. “I know.”
He had to crack a slight smile at that. No matter how grim the situation, she always knew what to say to keep his thoughts from going too dark. “We’ll prioritize getting the new shields in place. If the Erebus are working with the Coalition, a large-scale assault is no doubt coming.”
“Agreed.” Saera sat on the edge of his desk. “I wish we had a way to definitively test the shields without… well, a direct Erebus attack.”
“It’s the unfortunate nature of our position. We can create theoretical models and explore the elements of the universe through our own perception, but nothing within the scope of our existence can compare to how the Erebus experience their reality. I don’t know if any of our predictions about their abilities will hold up.”
“Well, we know that the aesen can be directed away from them,” Saera said. “The Erebus wouldn’t be hurt by the Gates if they had full control over the energy flow; they wouldn’t allow their own essence to be taken if that were the case. So, they do have limitations to their control. We have that going for us.”
Wil considered the thought. It was true; Tarans might have a chance to take advantage of that limitation. He thought through the possibilities. “The only thing I feel fully confident in right now is that the Conquest and the ships like it can hurt the Erebus if used in proximity to their being. However, there have been too many assumptions made in the models about these new planetary shields for me to be confident that it will be an impenetrable barrier.”
“At this point. I think it’s reasonable to think in terms of ‘slowing down’ rather than stopping completely. Even putting up a fence is better than an unmarked property line.”
“Fair. And I do believe that the augmented shields will give us that much, at a minimum.”
Saera drummed her fingers on his desktop. “It still doesn’t make sense to me why the Erebus gave us this tech. They had to have predicted that we would use it to power our own defenses. Do they not care?”
Wil shook his head. “More than anything, I wish I knew the catch. But I’ve been over every millimeter of the design and completed every conceivable test, and I can’t find any evidence of the device having a hidden trap.”
Saera bit her lip.
“What?” he asked, recognizing the look she got when she’d made a worrying realization.
“We tested the individual units. But what testing have we done related to a group of the power cores?”
“Several, at planetary scale. Everything checks out.”
“And bigger than that?”
Wil’s heart skipped a beat. “You mean interstellar?”
“Yeah.”
“No, I don’t believe anyone has run those models. With everything looking stable at smaller scale, it didn’t seem important.”
She crossed her arms. “What if that’s the point?”
“Stars, if that’s…” Wil faded out as he jumped on his desktop to begin drafting the models for a galactic-scale assessment of the energy fields once all the cores were active.
The results of the analysis confirmed their fears: collectively, there was a unique energy field created when all of the power cores were active.
“This is why the Aesir warned us about having too many close together. What they meant about looking at the big picture,” Wil realized. “I was wrong. Not a little error, but I fundamentally missed the mark with this whole thing.”
“Wil, don’t—”
“No, Saera, I foked this one up in the worst way. We’re backed into a corner. If we halt installation of these upgrades, then we have no defense at all. I don’t know what this energy field might do, but I bet you it’s not an accident. Why do the Erebus want this?”
Saera looked over the data, unable to refute that they were at a crossroads of two horrible options.
Wil shook his head. “We’re trapped, and it’s my fault.”
“The rest of us signed off on this move.”
The worry and anger welled in his chest. “I should have seen this coming. It’s my job to see what others don’t, and I helped make all of this happen.”
“We were in an impossible situation and acted in the best way we could with the information available. We can proceed with the installation. There’s the kill switch if things take a bad turn.”
“That will shut off the planetary shields in their entirety. Do we abort the installation and stick with the tried and true that will do nothing against the Erebus, or do we take the risk with this new design on the off-chance that it might give us an edge more than it does them?”
“Going into this, we knew there was a calculated risk.” Saera looked a little queasy despite her assurances.
“We could have accepted the core and let it sit in a warehouse. I pushed for disseminating it to all of the Taran worlds, made all those announcements, figured out how to integrate these other systems with it. I turned it into a showpiece, and it’s the heart of a trap.”
Saera gripped his shoulder. “How we got here doesn’t matter. We need solutions.”
“After missing this, I don’t trust myself.”
“Well, you need to get over that, because we need you.”
He looked down, unable to meet her gaze.
“Hey, I trust you.” She cupped the side of his face. “We have to focus and get through this.”
Wil swallowed. “You’re right.” He took a deep breath. “We’re already too invested in the upgrade process to turn back now. We’ll need to take our chances.”
“I agree. We’ll look into this other energy field and see if we can figure out what it might do. Perhaps there’s a way to mitigate the effects.”
Solutions, yes. Wil refocused his mind. This wasn’t the end, just another roadblock. There was always a path forward—he just needed to find it.
Chapter 25
Having Kira in his arms again was the greatest gift Leon could imagine.
“I really thought I was done for back there,” he whispered into her hair.
“Nah, you’d never go down that easily. You’re way too stubborn.” She ran her fingers along the base of his neck and kissed him.
He lost himself in her for a moment, happily forgetting where they were and what he had just been through. The last week had been a nightmare, and just when he’d thought he was waking up, it had taken an even worse twist.
I told Jason not to worry. He would have evacuated the city or done something else to keep those people safe. Everyone died because I wanted to get away and never look
back.
The guilt and doubts had been weighing on him since the moment the blast had first ripped through Jason’s telekinetic shield without meeting any resistance. That moment had revealed that Leon hadn’t had a clue about what they were really dealing with. No one had, apparently.
The SPEAR Tec researchers within the Coalition had been trying to make a targeted bioweapon, but instead they manufactured a mass planet-killer. He suspected that the leadership would try again, using what they had learned from the mistakes of this and the previous incident.
If they do make another attempt and succeed, what would that weapon be able to do? He didn’t have answers.
The scientist in him yearned for an explanation, but his traumatized psyche wanted to stay far away from the Coalition and its profane science. He wasn’t yet sure which side of him would win out the in the end. For now, he did his best to focus on Kira and remember everything that was worth living and fighting for.
“What are we going to do now?” Kira murmured into his chest.
“Go back to TSS Headquarters for a long debrief, I expect.”
“No, I mean after that. After all this time away, it feels weird to think about going back to the Guard base and taking whatever assignment might get thrown my way.”
“I miss my lab at Orion Station a little,” Leon admitted. He had a good team back at the base, and they’d been through enough challenging projects that they’d gelled, bonded by mutual respect. That could be tough to find.
Kira frowned. “It hasn’t been the same for me since my promotion. I dunno. Maybe it’ll all feel comfortable and normal once we get back there.”
Leon kissed the top of her head. “You know I’ll go anywhere with you. I want you to be happy.”
“I don’t want you to sacrifice your career for me. There’ve been enough upsets.”