Finally Governor Ledesme spoke up; one of the few non-military persons present, she attended today in Commander Lekkas’ stead. “The IDCC doesn’t possess a sizeable force to contribute, but we’ll look at ways we can increase our contribution in the form of tech and other resources.”
“Thank you, Governor.” Miriam’s gaze swept around the room. “All right. The pertinent data is being provided to the appropriate analysts as it’s processed and catalogued. I’m hoping to have a briefing package ready we can push out to everyone by tonight.
“Now that we have actionable data, there’s no excuse to lollygag around. We’ll use every hour we have to increase our preparedness, but we must reach an acceptable level of readiness very soon. Let’s make it happen.”
As everyone was filing out, she called out to Bastian. “Field Marshal, would you mind staying a moment? I wanted to follow up on a matter.”
He’d almost reached the door, but he pivoted and came back, though he didn’t sit.
As soon as the door closed behind the last person, he fixed a sharp stare on her. “You want to know why I didn’t fight you on the increased force commitment, given my earlier reticence about AEGIS.”
She appreciated that he’d taken her advice and adopted a more direct approach. “I do.”
“It’s quite simple. The Metigen superdreadnoughts steamrolled through the galaxy, decimating entire fleets and colonies. They were the stuff of nightmares.”
He gestured at the Machim ship holos still rotating above the conference table. “These ships? They give the Metigens nightmares. To my mind, we should probably treat them accordingly.”
PART VI:
VERGENCE
“Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.”
— Winston Churchill
AMARANTHE
42
HELIX RETENTION FACILITY
MILKY WAY SECTOR 7
* * *
HE WAS ON FIRE. His skin scorched and smoldered. He was the fire.
Caleb’s eyes popped open.
He was in a space recognizable as a detention cell, with three white walls and a force field as the fourth. Another field surrounded his body, keeping him immobile and suspended a meter in the air.
The burning sensation he experienced was not caused by the field itself, but rather the diati fighting against it. He directed his conscious attention to the energy restraining him…but the power he wielded wasn’t strong enough to break it apart.
Still, his enigmatic companion appeared to be plenty robust enough to protect him from the negative effects he assumed the field steadily worked to impose on him.
A drone floating outside the cell noted his awakening. A flat, emotionless voice emerged from it. “Who are you? Who do you represent? Where is your homeworld? How did you access Machim Central Command? What data did you attempt to steal, and for what purpose?”
Caleb stared mutely at the drone. Where was Alex? If he wasn’t dead, he chose to believe she wasn’t either. If they needed him alive to provide answers, the same must be true for her. She could be in the cell next to him or halfway across the cosmos.
He sent a pulse, but wasn’t surprised when his eVi immediately returned an error. Whether due to shielding in the walls of the cell or a security block tied to the larger structure, no communications were possible.
I love you. Be strong. I will find you, and we will escape this prison. It was but a thought sent on seraphic wings of conviction, and it was all he could do.
“Answer or be pacified.”
Eren had told them a bit about what ‘pacification’ meant; he remained silent. Was the anarch dead? Logically, there was at least a chance his consciousness had been transferred and undergone regenesis, but Caleb had difficulty reconciling the concept with the grisly memory of Eren’s shredded body spilling its innards across the floor of the server room.
He could only move his head a few centimeters, but he shook it over those centimeters in the smallest act of defiance.
The diati absorbed the surge of electricity with a seeming absence of difficulty. It took Caleb a split-second to realize he should act the part. He quickly screamed in an imitation of suffering and tensed his limbs rigidly against the restraining field.
“Who are you? Who do you represent? Where is your homeworld? How did you access Machim Central Command? Who were your accomplices? What data did you attempt to steal, and for what purpose?”
Attempt to steal. As his head cleared away the last of the fog, he honed in on the nuances of the phrasing. The drone wasn’t sentient, so the questions were coming from one or more Anadens in positions of authority.
His captors must believe they’d been unsuccessful in their mission. A search of their persons would have yielded only a single Reor slab, one which contained untraceable falsified credentials and a few access codes. He couldn’t say precisely how much data Valkyrie had been able to copy off the data server before the ambush, but he felt certain it represented a sizeable chunk of their goal.
The Vigil guards hadn’t been able to capture Mesme or Eren, and he’d place good odds on Valkyrie escaping as well. So he and Alex were all they had.
It penetrated his overburdened brain then that his captors knew little to nothing about them, what they were doing on Machimis and what they might have accomplished. This explained the general and wide-ranging nature of the drone’s questions.
Alex wouldn’t break. After bearing hours of mental and physical agony from acute neurological withdrawal unbowed, this style of torture wouldn’t break her. It distressed him to think of her enduring it nonetheless.
Of course, as advanced as the Anadens were, they surely had more sophisticated methods of extracting information—methods physically impossible to resist. But if so, why weren’t they using them?
He laughed to himself as he gleaned the answer, taking care not to let the mirth soften his pained visage. He, and hopefully Alex, were being treated with relative kid gloves because not only did their captors not know what they’d been after and whether they’d succeeded, their captors didn’t know what they were.
He snarled at the drone and readied himself for the next jolt.
43
MW SECTOR 52 TERMINAL HUB
MILKY WAY SECTOR 52
* * *
EREN HAD DIVERTED FROM Anarch Post Alpha to the MW Sector 52 Terminal Hub before contacting his new ‘friends.’ He’d begun to trust Alex and Caleb and perhaps not actively distrust the SAI and the Kat, but he wasn’t ready to lead any of them straight to the anarchs’ front door. Not quite yet.
Only once he’d settled into a rented room and had retrieved the explosives intended for the Erevna exobiology lab did he initiate contact with the SAI.
“Valkyrie, are you…alive, or functional? This is Eren, your resident contrarian anarch mate.”
The pause before an enthusiastic response arrived was so short as to be nonexistent. Eren asi-Idoni. I am relieved to hear you are breathing once again.
“It’s my best parlor trick. What do you know about our mutual friends’ status?”
We know where they are being held.
“I’m glad to hear you say that. And by ‘we’ you mean you and the Kat?”
Mesme and myself, yes. Mesme has endeavored to gain additional information regarding their status, but the structure is protected by a diati barrier blocking outside access of any kind.
I will soon reach the outskirts of the structure, at which point I will seek to regain contact with Alex. Earlier attempts during their transport failed due to her being in an unconscious state, but my hope is the supradimensional quantum nature of our link will not be blocked by this barrier. An additional hope is that she has awakened.
As more than one anarch had experienced the misfortune of being held in a Praesidis detention facility, his superiors were well educated on their security and defensive protocols and, to his slight surprise, had provided him a host of helpful cou
ntermeasures.
“If you want to swing by the MW Sector 52 Terminal Hub and pick me up first, I’ve acquired some tools to help us get inside.”
Us? You are offering to assist in their rescue?
He blew out a breath and gazed around the crappy little rental room. “I am. It’s my kind of challenge.”
Thank you, Eren asi-Idoni. There is no need for us to divert from our present course. Mesme will acquire you momentarily.
Eren hardly had time to formulate the thought that he wasn’t sure he wanted to be ‘acquired’ by Mesme when the Kat materialized right there in his room. He groaned theatrically, climbed off the bed and grabbed his bag. “What do I do?”
Simply do not run away.
He supposed he could manage that.
Also, you would be advised to close your eyes for the duration of the journey.
“Done.”
You should additionally be aware the—
“By Athena’s grace, can we go already?”
SIYANE
MILKY WAY SECTOR 7
The situation was so much worse than he’d dreaded. He didn’t inspect the rotating map Valkyrie displayed above the big table in the cabin; he didn’t need it, as the sector information told him more than enough.
“Congratulations. Your people are being held in the most maximum, most secure special detention facility in Amaranthe.”
‘What does this mean for them?’
He dragged his hands down his face. The skin still felt supple. New. “On the positive side, it means they’re not dead and probably won’t be for a while. You don’t take prisoners to Helix Retention just to kill them.”
‘This is good news.’
“On the negative side, it means they’re probably being tortured.”
We assumed as much.
‘I will not wait for proximity any longer. Attempting to reconnect with Alex now.’ The palpable anxiety in Valkyrie’s artificially generated voice was…startling. ‘I am unable to do so. I cannot say whether the diati barrier is preventing the connection or she remains in an unconscious state.’
“I don’t know enough about the nature of the connection between the two of you to say definitively, but I’ve never heard of a signal that can pass through a diati barrier. Regardless, it’s likely for the best if she is unconscious, Valkyrie. I’m sorry.”
‘She will be fine. She has withstood much darkness in previous difficult situations. Her resilience is beyond any I have witnessed.’
I sense this would be an appropriate time for a joke about Alexis’ relative irascibility in those difficult situations, in order to inject levity into what is a disquieting conversation. But I fear I am a poor comedian.
Eren knew his expression contorted briefly, betraying an inappropriate level of amusement. He was struck by an absurd desire not to embarrass the Kat, but he had no fitting response.
The awkward silence which followed was even worse than the awkward comment, and finally he laughed anyway. “This is without a doubt the strangest week of my life.”
‘Alice, welcome to Wonderland.’
“Now you’ve lost me, Valkyrie.”
‘I suppose even if the Anadens had Lewis Carroll, he lived more than a million years in your past. Alas.’
“What? Who?”
‘Never mind. It doesn’t matter.’
Gods, the SAI sounded positively despondent now, and the Kat moped around the cabin, dimmed and listless. They were worthless without Alex and Caleb, weren’t they?
This wallowing wasn’t helping anyone, least of all those they needed to rescue. He straightened up and made to look meaningfully at his cohorts, only to realize there was nothing to look at. Right then.
“Okay. Breaking into secure Anaden facilities happens to be one of my specialties. It’s not going to be easy, but with your help—both of you—we can do this. We can get them out. So hop to it, and let’s get to work.”
44
SOLUM
MILKY WAY SECTOR 1
* * *
NYX ASCENDED TO THE DIZZYING HEIGHTS of Praesidis Command with uncommon urgency.
Her Primor had instructed her to address the problem, but this problem extended far beyond her purview. She trusted her intellect, judgment and abilities utterly, but on this matter she craved guidance if not outright orders from him.
The knowledge she now possessed could not continue to reside with her alone, yet it could not be shared through the integral. The masses could not be trusted with it; she wasn’t even certain her elasson brothers and sisters could be trusted with it. This was Directorate-level material.
Thus, judging it to be the best of poor options, she wasted precious hours to travel to Solum and convey the information to the Primor in person.
The door to the spacious suite granted her entry before she needed to reign in her gait. She stepped through then forced herself to stop a respectful distance inside.
The Primor floated in the center of the room surrounded by a perfect sphere of light and flowing data and, most of all, diati. It was as if he stood at the eye of a great cyclone, he both the calm within and the architect of the storm.
She was, as ever, in awe of the man who had birthed them all, who gave them life everlasting.
The storm began to slow and fade, he gracefully descended to the floor, and in seconds only the Primor remained, the sanguine cardinal of his irises the sole hint of the power residing inside him. “Nyx. Please, come in. You have results to report.”
It wasn’t a question, and she dove in. “Some of the information still needs to be confirmed, but given the presumed fate of Aver ela-Praesidis, I felt it important to convey what I’ve learned before attempting to do so.”
“You might have simply filed a status report and proceeded with your investigation.”
“Respectfully, Primor, I believe this information is best shared in person. Outside the integral.”
He looked sharply at her, but she stood her ground. After several seconds, his chin jerked downward. “Continue.”
“Sir, I have reason to believe the Katasketousya are smuggling native species to safety in advance of the species’ planets being Cultivated or destroyed as part of an Eradication. They are creating new, isolated three-dimensional spaces to house the species in secret pocket realms within the boundaries of their Provision Network. And they have been doing so for quite some time.”
“They are rescuing non-Accepted Species and hiding them from us?”
“Yes, Primor.”
“To what end?”
“Rebellion, sir.”
He scoffed and turned away. “Rebellion is for anarchs and primitives. The Katasketousya are servants, not rebels. They wouldn’t dare.”
“My first reaction as well. However, the sheltering of these species is not the only malfeasance occurring inside the Provision Network. They are also conducting a variety of experiments, including the creation of new life forms displaying varying abilities and proclivities.
“Their goal is to develop one or more weapons and weaponized species with the skills and armaments to wage war. On us. On the Directorate. On you.”
He stared at her for a moment…then he wasn’t staring at her at all as his gaze unfocused. She waited.
When his eyes returned to her, they raged a pulsing crimson. “Discard your plans to investigate the Provision Network. The Directorate will handle that aspect of the malfeasance from here. Two individuals were captured on Machimis attempting to access the Machim Central Command data server. They’re being held at Helix Retention.
“Go there and interrogate the prisoners. All necessary measures are authorized, but learn their secrets.”
She hadn’t mentioned her previous intention—before she’d interrogated the Kat—to investigate the Network armed with greater knowledge. But she’d had no need to, of course. “Yes, sir. May I inquire as to why you believe they’re important to this matter? I ask merely as it will inform my interrogation tactics.”
“I see.” Yes, this did indeed make it highly relevant to her investigation—and highly troubling. For all she’d learned, she feared too much remained shrouded in mystery. “What species, sir? I’d like to prepare appropriately.”
The rage had faded from his eyes, leaving behind something darker. “That, apparently, remains to be seen.”
PRÓTOS AGORA
MILKY WAY GALACTIC CORE
The Primors materialized in the chamber accompanied by their usual idiosyncratic flairs and nuances.
Kyvern arrived mid-bitch. “I don’t care for unscheduled, faux-urgent assemblies, Praesidis. I’ve expressed this opinion on multiple occasions, yet here we are.”
“Enough, Kyvern. We have a situation which requires addressing. Now.” The instant the last of them arrived, Praesidis cast his accumulated knowledge into the circle for each of them to absorb.
The expected reactions came fast and furious.
Erevna: “We must force the Katasketousya to turn over their research methodologies and results. However wrongful the intent, there is much potential in the science.”
Kyvern: “We’ll take over management of the Provision Network and institute strict regulations on its use. They will be brought to heel.”
Idoni: “Fascinating. I had no idea the Katasketousya were capable of such delicious drama.”
Machim: “We must rid ourselves of the threat. Destroy the entire Provision Network and its contents and be done with it.”
He pivoted to Machim as the rest continued to toss out their predictable opinions. “I agree. It is polluted with unknown dangers, all created specifically to threaten us. Let us not try to counter them and instead simply destroy them.”
“But the science!”
“We’re not destroying the entire species, Erevna—not today. The Katasketousya will divulge the details of their malfeasance before we Eradicate them.”
Aurora Resonant: The Complete Collection (Amaranthe Collections Book 3) Page 30