“Saret-i-xerera! I will watch after him, always,” Oalla replies, straightening, then approaches Gordie, who’s next to our Dad right now, and remains at his side.
Aeson then turns to Xelio.
“Xelio Vekahat! You are my Sword. Look after my sister Manala and fight to preserve her safety with all your courage, strength, and honor as astra daimon. Saret-i-xerera!”
“Saret-i-xerera!” Xelio replies, saluting gravely. “I will defend and fight for her, and will not let you down.” He approaches Manala and her group and remains there.
Aeson now faces Erita.
“Erita Qwas! You are my Shield. Protect my beloved Gwen, and guard her with your life. Saret-i-xerera!”
Erita immediately steps forward, straightening like an arrow and salutes. “Saret-i-xerera! I will guard her with my life, and will remain at her side.” And with those words, Erita comes up to me and gives me a warm, strong look of encouragement.
I admit, in that moment, just briefly, I feel a powerful surge of relief—as though an old, nagging burden on my back has lightened somewhat. Knowing that Erita is coming with me, does make me feel better, somehow.
Erita really is the ultimate shield. She is the best of the Green Quadrant.
And now, she has my back.
Finally, Aeson looks to Keruvat. “Ker . . .” he says softly, with a nod. “Keruvat Ruo! You are my Spine. Without you, I would not stand up straight. You will come with me. Saret-i-xerera!”
“Saret-i-xerera!” Keruvat replies with a shining expression.
This is the part where it becomes really, really impossible. . . .
Aeson turns to me. He takes a step and I take the tiny, stupid step to close the distance between us.
I hide my face against his jacket and just hold on, feeling his muscular, strong chest and listening to his beating, indomitable heart.
We say nothing.
No goodbyes—there can be none.
I take in a deep shuddering breath and look up at my husband, my love. “Im amrevu. . . . I’ll see you in a few days,” I say with a great big smile.
His eyes widen as he takes in all of me with fierce intensity. “Sing well . . . my love.”
I pull his face down to me and we share one soft, profound kiss. Out of the corner of my eye I notice the green locator pin still attached on his lapel, shining with an infinite, steady light of proximity.
And then it’s time for us to go.
I hardly remember the strange turmoil that takes over my mind as we walk together in our same large group along the endless corridor to the shuttle. There we pick up our small belongings, and then suddenly separate. Everyone heads for various other shuttles, transports, fighter ships.
And just like that, our mission is a go.
Erita and I walk rapidly down another corridor and take a small ardukat fighter ship on a short flight to War-2, the battle barge that is waiting for us elsewhere in orbit.
This is my first time inside an ardukat. It’s a two-person military vessel, small and cramped. Basically, a wide bench seat for two, surrounded by control panels and a dome roof. Unlike a khepri, which is saucer-shaped, the ardukat is a true sphere. The windowless hull is orichalcum, and once inside, we call up a holo-viewport so that the hull and roof suddenly become transparent like glass, and we get a full panoramic projection view of the surroundings.
The moment we get in and lower the roof hatch on top of us, Erita turns to me comfortably and says, “My Imperial Lady Gwen, hang in there, okay? Everything is going to be just fine.”
“I know,” I say. “Thanks, Erita.”
Erita smiles then starts to sing the keying pre-flight sequence. The ship comes alive, and the various holo-grids pop up.
“Oh,” I recall. “Do we need to change out of these dance outfits?”
Erita chuckles. “Oh, no. . . . Everyone arriving will be wearing this green party stuff. It’s expected—a kind of pre-mission tradition. Don’t worry, we’ll change later after we get to the battle barge. I bet the Command Pilot is wearing green high heels himself.”
I giggle, trying to visualize this Command Pilot, whom I’ve never met.
And then we detach from the Atlantis Station dock and head to our destination.
War-2 is truly an immense starship. My appreciation of its size is colored by my experience aboard the Earth Mission Fleet ark-ships, which, up to this point, I considered the biggest ships that Atlanteans possessed. Wow, was I ever wrong. . . .
This immense elongated cigar shape is a monster of sleek metal, easily the size of a city. It is four times bigger than an ark-ship, with four times the personnel capacity.
We approach like a tiny dust mote and fly parallel to its hull, among a roiling cloud of other space vehicles, looking for the appropriate docking bay tunnel.
We locate it and Erita takes us in through the tube, passing the violet plasma shield and blasting into the pressurized interior. She hover-parks the ardukat and we get out of the spherical vessel and head directly for the Main Command Deck through myriad corridors and past an endless flow of Fleet personnel. Now and then we pass someone else wearing green formalwear and it’s clear they are newly arrived from the Green Zero-G Dance.
“The people who aren’t dressed up are regular crew serving on War-2,” Erita explains in passing. “They weren’t down on Atlantis to begin with, so they didn’t get to party with us at the Station.”
We finally arrive on Deck and head directly for the Central Command Office to meet Command Pilot Amaiar Uluatl, who turns out to be a serious young man with river-red clay skin and shoulder-length black hair.
As with all the other battle barges, this particular warship has crew predominantly from one nation, which happens to be New Deshret. That explains the snatches of Deshi language we’ve heard in passing all around the ship corridors. It also explains Command Pilot Uluatl’s accent.
“Welcome to War-2, Imperial Lady Gwen Kassiopei,” Amaiar Uluatl tells me, rising from his seat with courtesy and giving me a short bow. “We have been briefed on the mission details and additional information has just arrived directly from the SPC Fleet Commander. We depart for your designated mission coordinates at fifth hour of Ra, and in the meantime, you will be shown to your quarters and assigned additional security.”
“Thank you,” I say, as Command Pilot Uluatl calls personnel to assist me.
And then I decide to ask. “Command Pilot, I realize that this is a New Deshret vessel and I’m honored to be on board. Just out of curiosity, is there a reason you are delivering me and not your own Princess Sheolaat Heru to her mission location? And forgive me if this is an inappropriate question.”
For the first time, Command Pilot Uluatl smiles. “Not at all, my Imperial Lady. The answer is simple—we are one of the two flagship vessels in the SPC Fleet, and are simply the best. The Commander requested my services on your behalf as a personal favor, and I am pleased to oblige.”
“Oh,” I say. “Then I thank you very much.”
Erita and I are shown to our adjacent cabins in the officers’ quarters on the Command Deck. Since, at present, it is late night (or very early morning on Red Mar-Yan 6), we go to bed to catch a few hours of badly needed sleep before the complicated events pick up pace.
As I lie alone in my compact bunk, listening to the soft hiss of sterile ship air in the vents, I am plagued by stressful thoughts and a steady undercurrent of despair. This is the first time since the Wedding that I am not falling asleep next to Aeson in our marriage bed—or at least falling asleep with the knowledge that he’s working late and will be returning to join me shortly.
Such a strange, lonely feeling.
Will I ever see him again?
The last time we made love was. . . .
No, stop it. . . . Don’t think.
And oh, the things that we’re about to do, the mission, weighs heavily on me.
I finally start drifting off around morning, and barely notice the sudden change in the backgr
ound noise level in the hull and that tiny initial lurch of momentum. . . . The immense battle barge starts resonating with the energy forces of motion as it casts off into the deep space void.
The journey to my designated astroctadra alignment coordinates is thankfully uneventful. The moment I wake up on the first day, I send off an “I’m okay, are you okay?” message to Aeson, and then receive one immediately back from him. Both of us are in flight—I on the battle barge heading to the middle of nowhere, and he on board a sebasaret with Keruvat and select others, heading to Ishtar.
We spend the time exchanging brief interstellar messages, then the crew techs help me establish a video link in my cabin, so that I can see Aeson’s face up-close as he sits in his own version of cramped spacecraft quarters and smiles at me.
“Don’t forget, when the astroctadra protocol will go in effect on the day of alignment, we will all be locked in a multi-person communication linkup inside each of our resonance chambers,” Aeson tells me.
I nod.
“There are multiple redundancies built in,” he continues. “My Father reminded me that we need to make sure that when we perform the voice sequences, all of our voices are picked up and transmitted to the other coordinates in addition to the main one at our location. It’s the same kind of amplification we achieved when we brought back the Ghost Moon.”
“That’s right, I remember.”
“For that reason, there will be several transmitters incorporated into our space suits in addition to the resonance chamber’s acoustic station console primary transmitter.”
“We’re wearing space suits again?” I ask.
Aeson nods. “Always—whenever we work inside a resonance chamber when it happens to be set to its primary resonance mode.”
“As opposed to its Zero-G Dance mode.” I smile.
Aeson chuckles. And then his face grows serious again. “It’s a safety precaution. Unprotected exposure to such powerful frequencies and energy levels can be dangerous.”
“I see.”
“Be sure to go over the step-by-step procedures until you are comfortable.”
“Aeson, you are telling me, the most overly studious person you know, to go over something multiple times? Seriously?”
Aeson’s expression is momentarily sheepish. “No, I just mean so that you know it so well that you don’t worry unnecessarily—”
“I know what you mean, silly.” I grin at him. And at once his expression lightens.
“It’s mostly for my own sake,” he admits. “I need to go over the sequences yet again myself, just so that it is effortless when the time comes.”
Poor Aeson. . . The sheer magnitude of the responsibility for this whole process going right is getting to him.
We banter some more, and then Aeson tells me that everyone else on our astroctadra mission team is on their way to their coordinates safely. “Your brother Gordon is with Oalla and Amre-ter Charles, safely headed to Tammuz, Manala and George and the others are making good time, no irregularities from anyone. Even my Father is making fair progress on his own separate mission to the Rim—or so he tells me.”
“How is your Father, Aeson?” I ask gently.
My husband’s expression does not change, but he blinks. “The pegasei are with him. . . . He has not Jumped yet,” is all that Aeson says on the subject.
I spend the rest of my anxious time mostly trying to keep out of the crew’s way. I follow Erita around as she gives me a brief tour of the battle barge with its sophisticated multiple decks stacked like lasagna layers, vessel bays, and an entirely different layout than an ark-ship. As we walk the corridors, dressed in the same basic uniforms as the ship’s crew, so as not to stand out, the four assigned security guards accompany us at a discreet distance.
We eat eos bread and dea meal in the officers’ meal hall, then traverse a very small portion of the Main Level Observation Deck, which—on this type of elongated spacecraft—runs in a straight line parallel to the entire length of the hull and appears endless.
Stars and cosmic clusters of varied colors fill the large window views outside. The entire spacescape is a grand design of sparkling lights and particles of mysterious, shifting matter.
“How beautiful,” I remark to Erita. “I wish we were simply here on vacation, enjoying the cosmic sights, and not on a life-and-death mission to save the entire human species.”
“Let’s plan to survive the mission,” Erita responds with a light smile. “Then you can ask your Imperial Husband to take you on an actual vacation during your amrevet days. Don’t tell me where you’re going of course, it should be your private secret.”
“I like that idea,” I say. “The idea of making plans for after.”
It takes us four days of travel to arrive at the midpoint coordinates in deep space, directly perpendicular to the rotational plane of the Helios system. There is nothing there—no planet, no station, no space buoy or tangible marker of any kind.
We simply come to a stop and then assume a stationary “orbit” in relation to the Helios system, at a 90-degree angle. In reality, we are of course moving through space in the same direction and at the same rate with which the Hel system and all things inside it are hurtling through the cosmos—to maintain our position relative to Hel itself.
As soon as Command Pilot Uluatl announces our arrival, I call Aeson to let him know. He, of course, has long since arrived at Ishtar, and has been on War-7 for the last two days. War-7 is now designated as Depet-Ra, the vessel of the SPC Fleet Commander.
“I’m relieved to know you are safely in place, im amrevu,” Aeson tells me from the brightly lit deck of his own battle barge. “Xel just let me know that War-6 carrying Manala has also arrived and they are now in position directly across from you on the opposite side of Hel. You two are the last to reach your designated coordinates. Everyone else is already positioned for the astroctadra alignment. Now, there’s nothing to do but wait.”
“Six days of lousy waiting,” I say, looking wistfully at the close-up of my beautiful husband’s lapis lazuli eyes. “I miss you so much, Aeson. . . .”
“I know.” He breathes deeply. “And I miss you so much you cannot imagine.”
“Oh, but I can. I’ve been inside your mind, remember, sweetie?” I say with a naughty intonation and a smile.
Aeson gives me a tiny pout and the cutest little air kiss imaginable. I sense that he doesn’t care if his crew might see him, the Commander, act mushy.
This is my husband. Confident enough in his masculinity to be a mush-ball in public, for one ridiculous moment.
And then he is serious again, pausing, as if considering how to speak. “Gwen,” he says at last. “There’s some bad news—from Earth. I’ve received notification from Nefir Mekei that a similar alien golden light grid has begun to form around Sol—your Earth sun.”
“What?” I exclaim with an instant stab of horror in my chest. “No!”
“I’m really sorry.” Aeson exhales again loudly. “But keep in mind, the events we’ve set in motion are still playing out. Once my Father delivers Arlenari Kassiopei’s body to the Rim, and the pegasei take her back all the way and close the dimensional rift—all in conjunction with our own actions here in the astroctadra alignment—it will likely make a difference.”
“Oh God, I hope so!” My heart is hammering in my chest. “What about the asteroid? Did Nefir mention anything about that? Is he doing anything now to try to stop it?”
Aeson nods thoughtfully. “I believe so. He mentioned about taking AS-1999 to do a proximity flyover of the asteroid once again, and try to tractor it off course. If I recall, trying to blast it in pieces is not advised, since, at this proximity, the pieces themselves will likely form multiple lesser threats but still create the same problem at impact.”
“The asteroid is just too big,” I muse.
“Not only big but mass-heavy, with a solid metal core. Very hard to break up—my Father chose his doomsday weapon very thoroughly,” Aeson says
darkly. “However, there are still other options, and Nefir is working on them.”
“Aeson, do you think maybe I can get a direct line of communication with AS-1999? I would like to talk to Nefir and see for myself, and maybe brainstorm some options.”
“Of course. I’ll give you secure access to AS-1999 during the multi-person linkup.”
“Not any sooner? Like, today?”
He considers. “It might be best if we use the ultra-secure lines of the linkup. I would prefer not to compromise the AS-1999 holographic anonymity on Earth with an extraneous transmission that could be picked up by Earth authorities.”
“Would it even matter at this point?” I try. “If they knew that one Atlantean ship remains in orbit over Earth?”
“If you recall, some of the core Earth authorities know already. Such as your President Katherine Donahue. It’s best not to upset the very precarious political balance there on the surface.”
I sigh. “All right, I guess.”
Is Katherine Donahue even President at this point? What is happening on Earth?
And then we change the subject.
But I’m still thinking about Earth and the asteroid for many hours afterwards.
Chapter 95
The six days of waiting pass quicker than I imagine. Time drags at an infinite crawl, then speeds up to infinity and beyond as we wait, positioned at six apex points of the grand astroctadra around the Helios system.
On the morning of Red Mar-Yan 16 I wake up with a pounding heartbeat and cold sweat in anticipation of what could be the last day of my life—our lives.
Here is where our general plan kicks in. As soon as we are awake, we are supposed to go on high alert and standby. We don’t know when—or even if—anything is going to happen at Ishtar, but the probability is high that it will be sometime today. Which makes our stress levels go through the roof as we must wait, fully prepared to act at a moment’s notice.
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