by Richard Fox
“The procedure proved to be quite fatal,” Stacey said. “Through this soul energy, Malal discovered a dimension where existence was perpetual. A true heaven where entropy and death were impossible. But the energy required to open a gate to that dimension was immense. The universe would decay to the point of energy death before the Qa’resh could open a doorway and escape fate if they stuck to more conventional physics. But if enough souls were harvested…they had their way out.”
“The Qa’resh didn’t offer themselves up, did they?” Roland asked.
“Why would they? They were supreme. But there was a galaxy full of sentients available to them. So…Malal began harvesting soul power. World after world. All fell victim to Malal’s promise of eternal life. It seems the fear of death, the annihilation of self, is a constant for any species.”
“How many?” Roland asked. “How many did Malal kill?”
“All of them.” Stacey clasped her hands behind her back. “Malal killed every last sentient in the galaxy…that wasn’t Qa’resh. Some were duped into giving up their lives willingly. Others were taken more suddenly. I saw it happen to the Toth just after the Xaros were destroyed. Humans and all the others we know today weren’t developed enough to be worth the effort.”
“And Malal’s people agreed to that?” Morrigan asked. “Just okayed an apocalypse?”
“They did.” Stacey nodded. “Some developed a conscience during the cull, but when so many trillions had already been killed…it would’ve been a waste to stop so close to the ultimate goal.”
“Trillions?” Roland asked. “It couldn’t have been—”
“Trillions more followed,” Stacey said. “During the harvest, Malal…his true nature came to light to the other Qa’resh. It wasn’t that he killed so many for their benefit; it’s that he enjoyed it. Delighted in the suffering. As the time of their apotheosis came closer, the Qa’resh decided they didn’t want to spend eternity with a monster.”
“Did they let Malal in on this decision?” Roland said.
“They did not. Malal continued his work, shared his technology with his kind…and then they imprisoned him on Anthalas. Malal’s laboratories remained. His harvester ships continued their trek from planet to planet. The Qa’resh used the life force of countless innocents and they went on to their reward: eternal life. But one—one close to Malal—felt a tinge of guilt. She half remained in our reality to make sure Malal never escaped his prison and to watch new civilizations—the ones the Qa’resh didn’t murder—rise across the galaxy.
“Then came the Xaros. The Qa’resh tried to stop them, but the drones were too many, and the Xaros Masters were safe in their world ship. Eventually, the Qa’resh had to bring Malal back into play if we wanted to survive the Xaros, and I was the one that brokered the deal.”
“What…was done?” Nicodemus asked.
When Stacey didn’t answer, Roland went farther along the Ark’s hull and found another giant mural, this one of souls leaving the aliens’ bodies and reaching toward the figure above the ship.
“The Qa’resh promised Malal he could join them in paradise. All he had to do was help us defeat the Xaros. Which he did. But the dimension gate had grown cold. He needed more soul energy to join his brethren,” she said.
“The Toth,” Roland said, turning to look at Stacey. She nodded quickly.
“The Toth. I delivered Malal to their home world and watched as he devoured their billions. It was a bargain, really. Malal took care of two different enemies. All it cost was the near total extinction of a race of slavers and murderers,” she said.
“Not total enough,” Morrigan said.
“No. One overlord survived and he escaped to turn the Kesaht against all of humanity.” Stacey tapped a fingertip against her cheek. “Karma? Our sins come back to haunt us? Do we deserve to suffer for putting our survival over the Toth’s? Who can decide these things?”
“The Toth are evil,” Martel said. “They deserved it. Sacrificing another people, like the Ruhaald or the Kroar…that would have been wrong.”
“Well, Overlord Bale certainly disagrees.” Stacey turned from the mural and walked toward Roland. “I’ll deal with him soon enough. Loose ends have a way of unraveling entire tapestries, don’t they?” she asked him.
Roland’s communication suite fuzzed out and a single channel opened, one without a designation.
“Don’t they?” Stacey asked over the private line. “Keep walking.”
Roland kept pace with her as they continued along the hull.
“Am I a loose end, my Lady?”
“Only if you choose to be one, my Black Knight. What did you notice about our discussion back there?”
Roland glanced at the mural of the souls departing as they passed it.
“Only the armor asked questions of you,” he said. “Davoust and the others…nothing.”
“Because they aren’t made to question me. Blind obedience has its perks, but it is not how our Nation must survive. What would happen if every soul on Navarre and our colonies was utterly devoted to me?” she asked.
“You could—it doesn’t matter. I am Templar. And so long as you—”
“Don’t you hide from me!” Stacey’s cry sent a stab of phantom pain through Roland’s ears. “Don’t you cower behind your vows and your Crusader cross. Answer. Truthfully.”
“You could be a tyrant,” Roland said. “With the procedural tubes, you have almost unlimited manpower at your command. And with the Ark—”
“A god. A god empress that can burn the galaxy at her whim, and my children will leap into the fire at my command. You wonder why I have you—you who raised arms against the Nation and betrayed one master already—so close to me, don’t you? What’s the answer?”
Roland felt a touch of ice in his chest, one that had nothing to do with Stacey being so close.
“You know my vows as a Templar. All your armor is Templar. We will not let innocents suffer. We fight for humanity against the darkness, the evil that destroyed Earth. We will never waver from this…and you know it.”
She nodded.
“Our loyalty to you is never absolute. If you step out of line, we will—”
“You must,” she said. “You must put me down. I know what’s happening to me, Roland. I know I’m slipping. If my mind…if I become a monster like Malal, then you and the Templar must end me. You understand this?”
“That won’t happen,” Roland said.
“Your convictions are that weak?”
“You will stay strong. The Nation needs you. The Union—even if they won’t admit it—needs you. Are we here, at this Ark, so that you can destroy the galaxy in a rage?”
“Hardly.”
“Then my faith will be rewarded,” Roland said.
“Faith, such a word. Not one for the pragmatic. But do you understand why I keep the armor so close? Why I keep you so close? Because I believe in you, my Black Knight. I believe you will do the right thing when the moment comes. Promise me. Promise you won’t let me slip away to madness.”
Roland’s heart tightened. He felt shock at the request, and unworthy of such a mantle. But if she was on the verge of losing all control, especially with the Ark within her grasp…
“I serve the Nation, my Lady. I will…I will protect you.”
“Now you understand. Good. Good. Your gauss cannons can do the job. Shatter me into a billion pieces and stop this body from ever putting itself back together again. Then I’ll know if there really is a ghost inside my shell.”
“I understand,” Roland said.
They walked past a mural of a single alien face, the eyes soft with love and a faint smile to the lips. Even across the boundaries of biology and culture, Roland grasped a message of bliss from the art.
“My Lady, what happened to Malal?” Roland asked.
“He got exactly what he deserved, but not what he bargained for,” she said. “Which is what I fear we’ll all get in the end. The wheels of justice grind slowly, but they grind exc
eedingly small.”
****
Three aliens were crucified before the Ark’s entrance. Each wore tattered remnants of robes and gold-embroidered sashes. Jewels and platinum studs stood out against desiccated flesh. The airlock to the Ark stood several stories high, the gleaming alabaster of the Qa’resh ship unmarred by the vines or passage of time.
Stacey stood a few feet from the doors, her arms loose at her sides, head bowed slightly and eyes glowing.
Roland and his lance formed a semicircle around her, giving them full view of the crucified and the legionnaires behind them, all working to construct hasty defenses around the Nation’s leader.
“Wonder if the grand pooh-bahs were the first—or last—to sacrifice themselves,” Morrigan mused aloud.
“Better question is why,” Nicodemus said. “Those murals back there? Looked like they were supposed to die in a moment of rapture, not tied to a cross and…ossified.”
“Lady Ibarra witnessed Malal consume the Toth over the course of minutes,” Martel said. “What’s out there doesn’t fit what we know about the Qa’resh. Something went wrong here.”
“Something wrong with the Ark, perhaps?” Roland asked.
“There’s nothing wrong,” Stacey snapped. “It’s dormant…just waiting for the right command. Thankfully, I have the keys to the kingdom. Rather, I am the key. Hamish!”
The bodyguard hustled toward her and removed a pouch from the small of his back. He handed it over to Stacey.
She unsnapped the lid and removed a small rod made of linked cubes.
“The Qa’resh on Bastion were terrified of this place,” she said and one of the cubes lit up. “They sent a probe to this sector hundreds of years before they ever discovered Earth. The probe here sent back one message—just one—and it was enough for the Qa’resh to quarantine this star system and everything around it for a hundred light-years.”
She twisted the rod and a second cube turned on.
Roland felt a vibration through his suit and lines of light traced up the Ark’s doors.
“What was the message?” Morrigan asked.
“I don’t know exactly, but I knew it had something to do with Malal.” Stacey raised her hand and the rod floated a few inches over her fingertips. “The Qa’resh are very specific, loved their quantum designations for things, left no room for error. I dealt enough with Malal when he was their prisoner to learn his name in their language. The probe must have found the Ark, and the Qa’resh knew it belonged to that monster. No reason to search nearby for intelligent species to fight the Xaros because Malal had already killed them all.”
The last cube in the rod pulsated.
“Now…for my next trick,” Stacey said.
The rod spun around, and the doors opened with a hiss of blowing sand.
Roland aimed his Gustav heavy rifle into the abyss behind the doors. A single dish-shaped platform hung in absolute darkness just beyond the threshold.
“At last,” said Stacey as the rod floated down into her grasp. “Years of scouring the galaxy for any clue to where to find this ship…and the means to operate it. Malal left behind a ship that will…will…”
Her head turned to one side, and one eye glowed faintly.
“Fools,” she said. “You fools, you should have waited and now…”
“My Lady?” Roland asked.
Her gaze snapped to the entrance.
“Nothing. Nothing of consequence for us,” she said. “Marshal? My lance will accompany me into the hull. The environment can’t support human life.”
“And of the excavation efforts?” Davoust asked.
“You doubt me? Of course you don’t. See that we’re not disturbed,” Stacey said. “Inform Admiral Makarov that I’ve made entry.”
Davoust beat a fist to his chest in salute.
“Shall we?” Stacey went to the threshold and paused, one foot inches away from crossing into the ship. “Roland…hold my hand.”
Roland tapped the side of his helm.
“I’m sorry, my Lady, my receptors must be off.”
Stacey lifted her arm.
“Portals,” she said. “The Qa’resh and their damn portals. Hold my hand so if the inner workings are off, I won’t be alone.”
Roland gently pressed his armored fingers around her hand, and they stepped through together.
The saucer wobbled slightly as he shifted his weight onto it. Sound cut off and the abyss seemed to press in around him and Stacey.
“Doesn’t seem so—” He turned and found only darkness. “—bad?”
Morrigan, Nicodemus, and Martel materialized and rushed onto the saucer, each with their heavy gauss rifles in hand.
“I hate Qa’resh tech,” Martel said. “No offense, my Lady.”
“None taken,” she said. “It’s so cold in here…can you sense it?”
“Atmosphere’s thicker than outside, and it’s pure nitrogen. Temperature’s far below freezing, minus thirty,” Morrigan said.
“Preservation conditions,” Stacey said. “You all will be fine in your suits. Ambient temperature is high enough to keep my shell operating.”
She put a palm to the saucer and branches of brass-colored light cut through the material. She raised her hand and a golden lattice came up with it. Stacey reached into the lattice, moving small beams of light and connecting them to different nodes.
“The code’s off…somehow,” she said. “But I can access enough of the systems from here. Enough to get us to the command throne.”
“Throne?” Roland asked.
“Their word, not mine,” she said. A tiny sun formed next to her face and she flicked it with a fingertip.
The darkness began fading away, ever so slowly.
Stacey dropped her hands and took a step back from the lattice.
“The Terran Union attacked the Kesaht home world,” she said. “They’re losing. Badly. Most of their fleet has been destroyed. What forces made it to the ground are under siege.”
“How…how do you know?” Nicodemus asked.
Stacey glanced at Roland, who said nothing.
“I still have my sources in the Union,” she said, tapping the side of her head, “and a quantum-dot bulk-information connection.”
“Are we going to help them?” Roland asked.
“They’re not our concern.” Stacey raised her chin toward the waning darkness, and Roland made out shapes in the distance. What looked like bookshelves the size of small buildings held stretched ovals, all packed into rows.
The distant objects appeared to be moving, but Roland felt no sensation through the saucer.
“What of the Iron Dragoons?” Roland asked. “My—old lance.”
“Aignar is still alive,” Stacey said. “The Dotari and…two others. Odd.”
“Gideon fell?” Nicodemus asked. “He’s my enemy, but he deserved a better death than to fall against the Kesaht.”
Roland’s stomach squirmed. If Gideon had died, then the situation for the Terran Union must have been even worse than what Stacey had described. He wanted to beg Stacey to stop this mission and help the Union, but he knew that would be futile. She was close, so close to the goal she’d worked toward for so long…there was no stopping her now.
“Will you leave me again?” Stacey’s voice came through a private channel. “If a portal opens to your old friends, will you abandon me the same way you did when you went to your brother in Terra Nova?”
“What are you saying?” Roland asked.
“I need you, Ken. Don’t leave me again.”
“Lady Ibarra, your mind is drifting. We need you to come back.” Roland looked at her, but she was as stoic as ever. The darkness around them slipped away, and the rows of ovals glowed with internal light. The saucer continued upwards, toward a crystalline globe that glinted and rotated oddly, shifting its axis every few seconds.
“Do you all know what those are?” Stacey walked to the edge of the lift and swept her hand across the expanse. “Soul ener
gy. I’ve seen them before, in Malal’s laboratory hidden in deep space.”
“From the dead outside?” Morrigan asked.
“Not just them,” Stacey said. “You’re looking at the combined energy of billions and billions of living beings. This Ark harvested hundreds of worlds before it came to Nekara. It would have kept going, but then the Qa’resh had what they needed. It must have deactivated when they imprisoned Malal. This ship had more than enough energy for that demon to open the gateway to the dimension with the rest of his kind…but the Qa’resh had him devour the Toth instead.”
“They didn’t trust him,” Nicodemus said. “What could Malal have done with this ship?”
“I’ll show you,” Stacey said. “I’ll show the whole galaxy.”
“Wait…this ship runs on souls?” Roland asked. “How are you going to—”
Stacey held up a hand.
“The dead cannot be brought back to life. Once I have this ship under my control, and the galaxy is safe for humanity, we will have no more use for it. I’ll drop it into a black hole, erase the last trace of Malal’s legacy,” she said.
Dread gripped Roland’s heart.
“This Ark is done harvesting the innocent,” Stacey said. “I will make it into a great hammer of justice, redeeming all who were sacrificed. It is the least we can do.”
Roland lowered his Mauser to one side. Could Stacey be trusted with that much power? Could anyone?
The light from the globe grew brighter.
“Hold on,” Stacey said. “This will feel…odd.”
The light overwhelmed Roland’s optics and he felt like he was going through a Crucible gate. His mind recoiled as something—something cold and evil—reached through the light and caressed his neck.
Chapter 12
Stacey and her Armor were still on the saucer, but it was at the bottom of the globe. The structure was transparent from within, and the other crystal edges appeared to be solid beams of golden light.
Stairs of ruddy white crystal, too tall and too wide to have been made for a human, extended up to a dais where a fractal throne sat. Next to the throne was a glowing sliver, one that bobbed up and down.