Reality's Veil

by Damon Alan

  “It’s good to have options,” Sarah replied, giving a centimeter of ground back to her officers. “You’re the only human commander to defeat me, so as arrogant as that sounds, I believe you are exactly the one to research a way to punish the Obedi if they betray us. But they won’t.”

  “If we battle the Obedi, it will be a fly attacking a giant,” Salphan said, finally chiming in. “If they wished harm to us, there is nothing we could do to stop them.”

  “What is your impression of them, other than their military capability?” Kuo asked the adept battle master.

  “They are ancient. The place they live is so beyond our full comprehension that I feel awe every time I think about being there. Not because I fear it, but because I know that when I was there, I was more than Salphan. My mind expanded to fill some of the room it was given. Even then, I feel like our hosts limited the room we had, probably for our own good. My comprehension there exceeded everything I know to be possible here.”

  “Is that what you sensed, Admiral?” Algiss asked.

  “I didn’t feel that I was limited in how much room I was given,” Sarah answered. “But other than that, I had the same experience Salphan did.”

  “Then you made the decision to trust the Obedi when you were in their home?” Heinrich asked, looking at Salphan.

  “You’re looking for an excuse to not trust them, aren’t you Inez Heinrich?” Salphan asked, chuckling. Before she answered, he continued. “No, I made it here, in Sarah’s quarters, with her. Because I know the rules of battle too. Sometimes you feel something to be right. And that is what you do. Even if it seems dangerous, even if it seems needlessly risky. In this case, it is not needlessly risky, and the danger that does exist is a danger we must embrace. Because, as Sarah has pointed out to us all more than once, in just a few centuries humanity will be dead if we don’t find a way to destroy the Hive.”

  “We did find a way. Blow up their home territory,” Heinrich rebutted.

  “That won’t work,” Sarah said.

  Heinrich arched an eyebrow, looking skeptical once again. “Why not?”

  “I…” Sarah felt flustered, frustrated by the lack of comprehension as to why her original plan wouldn’t suffice any more. “I struggle to explain it. I don’t understand consciousness, I’m not a scientist. Something to do with the degree of sentience and destroying a section of this universe’s awareness of itself. It would be like taking out part of a brain to stop seizures, for example. Something after that will always be missing.”

  “That sounds like mystical nonsense,” Heinrich said. “With all due respect, Admiral.”

  “I get that,” Sarah replied. “But it’s the path we’re taking. If the Obedi can’t keep up their end, we can fall back on my old plan.” She reached out and squeezed Salphan’s hand. “But we won’t need to do that. Because I know the agreement we made with Sylange and Khala is a good one. Salphan was there to help, and he feels it is right as well.”

  “You’re the admiral,” Heinrich said. If she had additional reservations, she said nothing about them. “I follow where you lead.”

  “You should sound more certain of that,” Kuo admonished, surprising Sarah by coming to her aid. “Admiral, I am worried about you. About what effect this event had on your psyche. But the truth is, if you say we do this, I will embrace it as if it was my own idea.”

  Heinrich glared at Kuo.

  “She’s my admiral,” Kuo explained, “and I owe her the respect she’s due. If you’d served with her on the Teplo, you’d feel exactly the same.”

  The steel expression on Heinrich’s face finally broke.

  Sarah watched the exchange. This was purely between them. She’d leave it up to them to decide how they would deal with command differences, as long as it didn’t affect how the fleet performed.

  “You’re right,” Heinrich finally agreed after almost a minute of silence. “Admiral… Sarah… you forgave me and gave me a chance when everyone else in the fleet thought I was a traitor. Your plan is my duty. And I will execute that duty to the fullest extent of my abilities.”

  Sarah looked back and forth at both officers for a moment, then waved toward Kuo while grinning at Heinrich. “Wow, he really has changed you,” she said before laughing. “Good job, Hanada. You’re softening her up a bit.”

  Heinrich’s face turned red. “He simply pointed out that we all owe you. Upon reflection, he’s got a point.”

  “He simply revealed that you’re human,” Salphan said to Heinrich. “That you have loyalty, trust, and compassion. That you understand the debt that all of us here build to a successful leader. Our good leaders sacrifice much for us, and we let them. You’re seeing that, maybe for the first time.”

  “Stay out of my brain,” Heinrich growled.

  Sarah squeezed Salphan’s hand again. “You’re welcome in my brain when the time is right.”

  The adept grinned.

  “We’re decided then?” Kuo asked. “We trust the Obedi, and we work with them to end the Hive. We bring the Komi Syndicate into the fold, secure Bannick’s leadership, then use the… what number of warships did he say? Ten thousand? Twenty thousand? Either number seems ridiculous.”

  “He didn’t really know for sure. Bannick said that ten thousand was a conservative estimate,” Sarah replied.

  “Okay, we use the many-thousands of warships of the Komi empire to pin down the Hive so the Obedi can come and wipe them out.”

  “It saves the Komi territory, and it eliminates our threat,” Sarah replied. “Bannick, by cooperating, will still have an empire to rule over. And if he doesn’t work with us and we can’t make the Obedi plan work, we will fall back on my plan of destroying the stars of the Hive systems and the surrounding stars out to two hundred light-years.”

  “We have to kill or remove Urdoxander from power before your enemy-turned-friend can help us,” Heinrich reminded Sarah. “Bannick is nothing but a disinherited son at the moment.”

  “He’d love to hear you put it like that,” Sarah laughed. “The look on his face would be delightful.”

  “I’ll get Major Hamden and start working on a plan,” Heinrich said. “The man is a tactical genius when it comes to ground troops. We’re going to need more ships to carry all the marines.”

  “We’ll need schematics for the ground insertion point from Bannick. We’ll still be outnumbered a thousand to one on the surface of Komi IV,” Kuo pointed out. “At least we’ll put all of our troops in one place, and the Komi forces will be spread all over the planet. If we’re quick, they won’t have time to respond.”

  “Then we have a beginning to a plan,” Sarah agreed, “but you got one thing wrong.”

  “Oh?” Heinrich and Kuo said simultaneously before looking at each other in surprise.

  “First we go to the former Alliance capital and get our people,” Sarah said. “Crews for all of our ships, more combat marines, and supplies for the entire lot. Arms and munitions if we can. If I’m going to fight the most powerful empire the human race has ever seen, I’m going to do it with fully loaded guns.”

  Heinrich smiled and agreed.

  Kuo nodded enthusiastically, clearly eager to free more Alliance personnel. “Capital idea, Admiral, but we will encounter hostile Komi ships when we do that. Although I do feel like we have a chance with the adepts on our side,” he said, standing. “With your permission, Admiral, I’ll go talk to the crew and we can head toward Refuge to get the ships we need for your Alliance personnel plan.”

  Heinrich stood as well. “And I’ll get to engineering. This bucket is barely holding together.”

  “Bucket?” Sarah asked, feigning indignity. “This is my ship you’re slandering.”

  “And once we fix him, maybe I’ll be closer to understanding why my admiral is flying a heavy ELINT destroyer instead of a capital cruiser or the Hyaku,” Heinrich replied.

  Heinrich and Kuo laughed as they left the galley. Sarah noticed the looks they gave each other. And then s
he gave Salphan one just like it.

  “You restored their confidence,” he told her. “And their faith.”

  “We’re going to win,” she said in response. “We hold the high cards now.”

  “You sound fairly confident as well,” Salphan said. “But be careful. War can turn bad in all sorts of ways.”

  “True, but this is no ordinary war,” Sarah countered.

  “How so?”

  “I have the universe on my side.”

  Chapter 34 - Change

  Emille and Alarin separated their minds into individuals once more. Salphan was coming to visit, and while he was also an adept, he didn’t understand the strong appeal that unity had for the married couple.

  Their quarters, on the adept observation deck of the Sheffaris, were lavish by most standards. They had gravcouches like much of the rest of the ship, but very few controls. The room was ringed on two sides and toward the front of the ship with displays that would share intel, communications, or a view of the outside as needed.

  For the times when the ship wasn’t moving the room had soft couches, and the most normal bed Emille had seen yet on a spaceship. She and Alarin still had to strap themselves into it to keep from floating away, but she liked the effort Sarah’s people had made to make her and her husband comfortable.

  Dinner usually came to them, although occasionally they’d eat in the crew mess.

  Mess was a funny name for a place where people ate food.

  After a minute or two of being herself again, clarity returned to her mind. Just in time to be ready for Alarin’s questions brought on by the recent events in the Komi system.

  “Do you think it’s possible for Salphan to share the kind of unity we do with Sarah?” he asked Emille.

  She shook her head. “I doubt it. Her mind is too limited, and he doesn’t quite reach the threshold of the gift to achieve that sort of mental cohesion anyway.”

  “Our grasp of the gift is as individual as we are,” Alarin reminded her. “Salphan is terrific at what he does. Fire, telekinesis, skills with combat utility.”

  “The same could be said for you.”

  “Not to his degree,” her husband replied. “My gift lies more in the interpretation of individual minds.”

  She rolled her eyes and giggled. “Will you forever brag that it was you who first read the newcomers?”

  He laughed and threw a pillow at her. It shot in a straight line across the room, past her head, and into a display screen. “I will brag all I want.”

  She laughed again. His point was valid. Her skills were different, Salphan’s were different. Even the rebel Eislen’s skills were different, although she didn’t yet know where his strength lay since the peasant was too stubborn to learn properly.

  “Do you think Sarah and Salphan will mate permanently?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “I do, I think they already have. I’ve been in her mind. The pain washes under the surface like a river, and for him to get into her heart is no small miracle. Had he not saved her life at the risk of his own, she might not have opened up to him.”

  “And is that a good thing?”

  “Her pressures are immense,” Alarin said, his voice darkening. “Lately I’ve been wondering if her sanity is being tested. I think he buttresses her against that risk.”

  “Of insanity?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s fine,” Emille scoffed.

  “Merik was fine too, until she wasn’t,” Alarin chided. “She was always one with a cruel streak, but not insane until her last year.”

  “Sarah isn’t consumed with a tumor,” Emille reminded him.

  Alarin shook his head. “Some cancers, my dear, aren’t physical. Yet they consume you just the same.”

  That was a truth, and she hated when he made so much sense. She held up her hand, stopping the conversation. She sensed… “Salphan approaches.”

  Alarin waved toward the door and the open button depressed. A moment later the hatch dilated, showing Salphan standing on the far side.

  “Knock, knock,” the battle adept said, smiling.

  “Come in,” Emille gestured. “Strap to the couch so you don’t float around. It strains my neck enough to follow Alarin as he floats aimlessly.”

  Salphan clacked across the room in his treasured boots then strapped in as Alarin went on about how much he liked 0G now.

  “You and Sarah have changed,” Alarin accused Salphan once they were all seated.

  “Oh. Right to it then,” the older adept replied.

  “Right to it,” Alarin agreed.

  “We’ve shared an experience I don’t know if you can comprehend,” Salphan said slowly, his voice seeming to question his words as he said them. “You brought me here more to interrogate me than for dinner, didn’t you?”

  “I promise you a good dinner, but I suppose we did,” Emille said. “There is much to know.”

  “Such as?”

  “You can tell us what happened with the aliens, for starters,” Alarin told him.

  Salphan did so and left out nothing.

  Emille would detect any deception immediately anyway, and Alarin probably would as well.

  “You trust these Obedi?” Alarin asked when Salphan had finished.

  “I do, but there also isn’t any choice in the matter.”

  “There is always a choice,” Emille countered. “Always.”

  “There are always at least two choices,” Salphan agreed. “But sometimes one of those two choices is death.”

  “Is that the case here?” Alarin questioned.

  “Not in the sense that the Obedi are the threat. But I believe they want our help to destroy the Hive that Sarah speaks of. That we’re essential to the process,” Salphan replied.

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. I just sense that we are tied to this place, this universe, in a way that is important to the destruction of the machines.”

  “By we you mean…” Emille pressed sensing clarity was needed.

  “The adepts,” Salphan told her. “I don’t think Sarah’s people are overly important to saving this universe.”

  “Have you told her that?” Alarin asked.

  Salphan looked perplexed. “Do I look stupid to you?”

  Chapter 35 - Tandella

  14 Ors 15332

  Heinrich never knew if she was going to direct the fleet or not. Technically she was Fleet Captain, but with only one fleet of ships there was a lot of oversight from Admiral Dayson. The plan to sterilize Hive space would have drawn the admiral away, letting Heinrich have a bit more freedom, but that didn’t materialize.

  She wrapped a coolant pipe that threatened to burst, even as the Sheffaris pulled into dock at Tandella Station. Deep in the machine-filled aft of the destroyer, she had a lot of time to think. Nobody was with her except a few surviving crew members, both of whom were busy doing their part to hold the ship together just long enough to get home.

  Fortunately, once the major damage from battle had been repaired, they’d vented the fouled air into space while they were near the Hyaku in the Komi system. Then they’d refilled from the giant ship’s reserve air tanks.

  The vessel clanged as a docking collar sealed to the hull, and finally she could quit worrying. The Fyurigan was sending a contingent of technicians and engineers to patch up the Sheffaris. The exterior, seen during Heinrich’s inspection when joined to the Hyaku, was starting to show the scars of a battle-hardened warship. New unpainted armor plates covered the bridge breach that had killed Captain Harmeen, and now similar patches would soon cover the rear hull and the grappler engine nacelles.

  They were lucky to be alive, and it might be the lighter armor of the destroyer that had saved them. Much of the enemy fire went straight through the ship instead of exploding on the hull as the munition vaporized. In passing through, much of the kinetic energy was wasted. Still, spalling on the inside of the engineering section had killed two of her people.

  That
gave her a stake in going after Urdoxander. Intellectually she’d understood why Sarah Dayson took it personal when people under her watch died, seeing two people she cared about riddled with holes from splattering molten metal really brought that “taking it personal” concept home.

  And Urdoxander Komi was responsible.

  She looked up as the first of the Tandella Station engineers entered the compartment.

  “Wow, you survived this Fleet Captain?” one, an older woman, asked.

  “As did these two and more,” she said, gesturing toward her workers still on station. “But it was all luck, depending on where we were. I still have ringing in my ears.”

  “We’re standing to relieve you, sir,” the same person said. “I’m a civilian, but I’ll be in charge of the restoration of your vessel.”

  “A civilian?” she asked.

  “I’m a planetary engineer. Hydro projects, bridges, mantle mines… and similar projects,” she replied. “You can trust I’ll get this small-scale stuff done quickly.”

  “What are you doing here? A civilian should be working in Jerna City.”

  “See these wrinkles?” the woman asked, pointing to her face. “I’m too old to be out there fighting. But I have experience and can do things here. Not having a rank means I get to say what I want to who I want in order to get things done.”

  “That must be nice,” Heinrich agreed.

  “It is,” the engineer agreed. “And speaking of saying what I want…” She gestured toward the hatch. “Get out so I can get my team in here and get started.”

  “The Fyurigan crew works for you?”

  “Yes, Captain,” the woman answered. “Now if you don’t mind,” she added as she gestured toward the hatch again.

  “I can take a hint,” Heinrich said, smiling.

  She opened the hatch just as she heard the woman mutter behind her. “I was beginning to wonder.”

  She stopped by her quarters to pick up her travel pack. Kuo met her in the gangway when she exited her room.