Redeemer: A Military Space Opera Series (War Undying Book 2)

by N. D. Redding

  They were very wrong. Mankind mustered its entire might, employing almost every single gun we had to impress the Federation, and at first, it seemed we were on our way to fulfill our destiny and take our place among the great spacefaring civilizations of the Milky Way. Zaria III fell in less than a week, but just a day later Aloi reinforcements appeared in the sector.

  The Aloi came very prepared to deal with humankind’s might. The combined strength of thirty systems suddenly looked like a drop in the ocean compared to the military strength of a race that held half the galaxy in its palm. The Aloi didn’t waste their resources on ground troops, they just bombarded the entire surface of the planet, turning it into a molten ball of lava. Millions died before they had time to even be aware of what was going on. Our fleets were met with overwhelming force as thousands of Crusaders decimated our warships.

  “Fewer than four hundred ships returned to Federation territory, barely a hundred thousand people escaped the onslaught. It was the single most devastating blow our military had suffered, and you know what the Imminy did? They stripped the remaining officers of their rank and threw them into prisons. They used those hundred thousand surviving souls, me among them, the very next day on Gizma VII where we just continued fighting as if nothing had happened.”

  “Shit. I suddenly feel like thanking that asshole for sending me to this place,” I muttered.

  Leo snorted, breaking character, and caught himself quickly.

  “Soon, Federation forces took over our shipyards completely. Before the fiasco, we were churning out instruments of war for the Federation, but at least we were the ones who controlled all of it. We were at the helms of our ships. But now? Every larger ship now has an Imminy captain, and every fleet an Imminy Admiral. Zaria III, Richard, wasn’t a failed operation, it was successful. It was an excuse to dominate humankind and the few weapons we had to defend ourselves. Now we’re at the complete mercy of the Ka and Imminy, and I won’t stand for it. Ever again.”

  “So, you sided with the Aloi?”

  “I sided against the Ka and the Imminy, Richard. I sided with the truth, with compassion, with love, and with those willing to stand for these principles.”

  I took a sip of the purple drink they were serving. It tasted like heaven. Drinking recycled piss for weeks made anything taste great, but this stuff was truly excellent.

  “So, you came here to kill a Ka?”

  “I did.”

  “So, what now? You’re just flying around the galaxy trying to find stranded Ka and kill them?”

  Leo laughed out loud, startling the people sitting nearby. They were all higher-ranking officials or whatever the nomenclature in Leo’s cult was.

  “No, not at all. I mean we do when there’s an opportunity like we thought this was. No, we were on our way to the Partak Sector, to Jareet Prime actually.”

  “So, you’re here to help the Partak Sector join the Aloi? You’re an emissary for the Aloi?”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions. It’s more complicated than that. My allegiance is to my people, Richard. It will never be to the Aloi, and not even then to the Ka.”

  I nodded and turned the subject to lighter topics. I still had a bunch of questions, but I allowed myself to be entertained by a choir singing in Aloi, chanting songs with Arthur at the helm. I drank the purple stuff, ate the myriad of delicacies, laughed, and generally enjoyed myself.

  The people aboard the Redeemer seemed joyful and warm, and though I considered that there could be quite a sinister background to this most unusual turn of events in Leo’s life, the people in his crew seemed sincerely happy. Happy to drink, sing, be alive, and weirdly, happy to hang out with my notorious crew.

  I heard Fars scream in excitement when someone asked what this “Crater” he constantly swears by was.

  “You want to know about the Crater?” he roared, and I rolled my eyes but Leo grabbed my arm.

  “I want to hear this.”

  “You? But you know this story, you were with me when Qualt—”

  “Yes, but I never got around to ask about it.”

  Fars jumped on one of the tables and asked for everyone’s attention. He was drunk as a lord, but he knew this story by heart.

  “The Crater! Hallowed be the name!” He turned to Leo. “No offense, friend of Richard Stavos.” The entire room broke into laughter, even me.

  “He’s a merry one,” Leo chuckled.

  “Yeah, tell me about it,” I muttered and shook my head slowly.

  “The Crater is the birthplace of the Eres! Our destiny is the destiny of a planet destroyed by a comet before the Eres race took its first step. The comet destroyed almost all life on Eres. It shifted tectonic plates, evaporated oceans and created new ones. It lowered a curtain of darkness over the world for a century, and yet the destruction wasn’t just destruction! No! The destruction meant life for the Eres! The Crater was born from the comet’s impact. Within the Crater, life grew anew! The Eres race took its first steps within the walls of the Crater and it was there where our civilization spread its roots!”

  “This is going to take a while if he tells the whole story,” I whispered, but Leo didn’t seem to mind at all.

  “Outside the crater life grew too! Separated by gigantic walls, two species dominated the world. The Eres within our Crater, and the Fraya beasts outside. For untold millennia, the Fraya would hunt down whatever climbed the wall of the Crater. The Fraya was a horrifying enemy so unlike anything our race had ever met. It took thousands of years for us to learn how to fight them and it wasn’t until the Ba’kri order was formed that we started to gain the upper hand.”

  “Fraya?” Leo whispered.

  “He’s just about to get there,” I replied and stared at the drunken Eres.

  “A Fraya is smart, a Fraya is deadly, a Fraya is quick, and a Fraya is merciless. But do you know what they say? An Eres is smarter, an Eres is deadlier, an Eres is quicker, an Eres is merciful, and an Eres will always triumph!”

  “An Eres is drunk and should get off the table!” I yelled at him.

  Fars laughed and pointed at me.

  “Look at this man, everyone! Here I am telling you the story of the Eres when I’m not even allowed to call myself that. This man here was gifted a Ro Sword by General Qualt himself and is now a Rak’kri of the Eres race! This man is more Eres than I am!”

  Many interested gazes fell on me and were joined by some applause. Vogron looked at me with a raised eyebrow as he bit down on another finely cooked animal. Was I getting to Vogron? Was he finally, actually going to begin respecting me for who I was and not for how easily I could kill him? The thoughts grazed my mind.

  Leo turned to me.

  “You have a lot of stories to tell, old friend.”

  “And so do you,” I said somewhat seriously.

  “You’re not going to let it go, are you?”

  I knew it pained Leo to talk about Layla’s death, but there were so many open questions that I needed answers for. I had to have closure regarding my squadmates, Winters and Tailor, the war, Detera... I felt like I had been torn from one world and thrown into another, and before I knew where and who I was, that world too seemed to sink into the horizon while a new one rose.

  Leo asked the few people at our table for privacy and they immediately jumped at his words. Fars, Arthur, and Vogron were the light of the party and it seemed like Leo’s entourage was waiting for him to tell them to leave so they could join the mass of people who watched the three wasted alien predators dance, sing, and flex their drinking prowess.

  “Listen, Richard. I have a hard time telling this story. I never thought I’d tell it to anyone anyway so it might sound cluttered or confusing. I—” He stopped and looked around.

  “You don’t have to right now, Leo, but eventually I need answers.”

  “No, it’s fine. It’s about time I said it. Layla and I died in the last days of battle on Zaria III. Winters was pushing us hard in those days to prove himself a great comma
nder. We were at the last stronghold of the Aloi, and Layla and I ran into Templars and, well, she had something to prove as well. She’d become quite famous, not just as a brawler but as a commander, a leader of sorts… I followed her Richard. I followed her trying to save her, but I failed miserably. We both died in that attack, but within minutes I woke up in one of our rebirther bodies. You remember that we were awarded slots after Detera. But she never awoke in her body, or she did, and it was too late, I don’t know. The Aloi already surrounded our fleet and began taking it apart. They had destroyed the other rebirther carrier before it could escape. Mine survived, so I survived.”

  Tears formed at the bridge of his eyes. He wiped them away and took a deep breath before continuing.

  “Since then, things have changed. I decided I didn’t want to be a Commando anymore. I wanted to be a healer, and that’s all I wanted to be. I wanted to save lives. I had to save lives to make up for the one life I had failed. But it wasn’t the same anymore. In the next few days, my powers seemed to had grown significantly. Within seven days, I could send out waves of healing nanites into groups of people. Nobody knew how I did it and least of all me.

  “Similar to mine?”

  “In a way, I guess,” he whispered. “The authorities caught up quickly and soon I was called for different, apparently random check-ups. They tested and prodded me but found nothing unusual. They pulled me from the battlefield and assigned me to a desk job lightyears away from any dying. At first, I thought I was too valuable for them to lose me in the field but as time passed, I realized there was another reason the Federation disliked the idea of a healer as powerful as I was. The rebirther bodies, Richard. The Ka made a mistake with the cloned bodies. You must have felt it too. Since I was reborn into this body my powers grew exponentially. Why do you think humankind has Technomancers? Why don’t the Takkari have them? We react differently to the nanites and especially our rebirther bodies. There’s something about mankind the Ka didn’t anticipate and now they want to get rid of us.”

  “Shit,” I muttered. “I knew things were shitty, but never did I think it was this bad.”

  “And even worse, Richard. We’re blessed and the Ka hate the idea. Since I was a child, everyone in my multi-family thought I was blessed with the gifts of healing. It was only then that I realized they were right. I was blessed, but it wasn’t until I died that my full potential was unlocked. For the first time in my life, I know what I am, Richard. I’m here to heal this galaxy and not to destroy it. I’ll do everything in my power to fulfill my destiny, even work with the Aloi.”

  “Even hunt Ka?”

  Leo laughed through his tears. “To heal a body, we must remove that which harms it.”

  “I guess.” I smiled and took a sip, trying to wrap my head around what he had told me.

  We didn’t talk much about the issue after that. I told myself I needed to celebrate, relax, and enjoy myself, but Leo’s words hung heavily over my soul. I thanked them all and told Fars to watch out for Arthur and Vogron as I turned to my quarters, wanting to have a good night’s sleep on a full belly. I couldn’t sleep, no.

  I spent hours scrolling through Leo’s database of pictures of Layla, him, and me while I downed glass after glass of black reindeer. Leo found himself in this chaotic universe, but me? I seemed to run circles, each more tiring than the last, trying to save something that didn’t seem to need saving.

  I had some decisions to make, and soon at that. Everything seemed to be crumbling right before my eyes, and there was no way for me to stop it.

  18

  For the first time in months, I had dreamed of the lights again. Waves of whiteness that sent messages across the stars, communicating, screaming, hoping, and then despairing. The dream seemed as intense as the first time, and I woke with a silenced scream only to see Fars’ face before me.

  “What... are you doing here?” I asked, slightly out of breath as I tried to figure out what was going on. His drunken face hovered above mine.

  “I have failed you, Richard Stavos. You were right, you were right about everything.”

  “Fars, can you just let me sleep? We can talk about whatever it is in the morning.”

  “Don’t you hear my words, Richard Stavos? Don’t you see I’m in pain? Will you never forgive me, Rak’kri, just like my people have never forgiven me?”

  “Fars, what are you—”

  “Must I forever walk in shame, or should I take this miserable life now? Tell me, Richard Stavos, and I will cut open my own throat tonight.”

  I got up out of bed and sat next to him, wiping the sweat from my brow.

  “What time is it?”

  “Richard Stavos, please absolve me from this misery. Send me to death. Send me to my last battle, and I will die carving a path for you!”

  “Fars—it’s fine, all right? It’s fine.”

  “It’s not fine! I can see it in your eyes. The way you look at me with condescension and judgment. I have become less than nothing! Like the paintings on these walls, less than dead!”

  “Fars, if it wasn’t for snapp, neither of us would have been alive now. Do you remember?” Fars had sprinkled snapp into my food for days when I had just arrived. It was the only thing that managed to calm me down. That and his words.

  “There is no meaning without struggle and no freedom without meaning. You had to do what you did to survive. And you did, but now you carry the consequences of the battle. Your addiction is your scar. Wear it with pride because you have beaten it.”

  “It’s infuriating!” he roared, flailing his hands at the air.

  “Your old friends have raised armies and ships. They are celebrated by everyone around them, just like you! And I? I call myself a friend to Richard Stavos, and here I am being pathetic again. I can’t carry the burden of failure anymore.”

  “Fars! For fuck’s sake! I’ll tell you this one last time, so I need you to listen carefully. There’s nobody I trust more than you, Fars. Not even Leo and his sanctimonious army. It wasn’t him who saved me on Xan, it wasn’t him who sacrificed everything for me, no, it was you the whole time. I can’t even imagine what snapp does to an Eres body, and I know you took more doses than half the prison just to get a glimpse of the high, and yet here you stand. More or less.”

  “Oh, Stavos!”

  He looked as if he was about to bawl his eyes out.

  “Forget it, Fars. I’ve been too harsh and I had too little time to process everything that’s going on. You’re an honorable man, Fars. Something that few in this galaxy can claim. Forgive me if I’ve been detached.”

  He sunk his head into his hands, but he didn’t cry. Fars never cried and I don’t know if it was something Eres couldn’t generally do or if this was specific to him.

  “Thank you, Rak’kri!” He threw his arms around me. I wasn’t up for any kind of hugging this early, especially not with an Eres, so after several uncomfortable seconds passed, I pushed him off me. Or tried to at least.

  “All right, Fars, I think that’s enough. What’s with Vogron and Arthur?”

  “They’re still celebrating. Now that I know you still love me, I must get back to them.”

  “It’s been ten hours of celebration already. Don’t you think that—forget it. Have fun.”

  As soon as he left I got out of bed, went to the bathroom, and washed my face as I stared at the mirror. My power had grown exponentially after my death. Leo’s words unlocked a waterfall of memories and conclusions. I thought about the days after Pelerin, and slowly but surely, my mind started making connections.

  It took me almost a decade to return to the battlefield after I had died the first time, but even before that, I had noticed how quickly and efficiently I could use my nanites at work. I ascribed it to the years of technomancy and left it at that. And yet, when I returned to war, I grew in power so quickly that it seemed to have scared the higher-ups.

  Still, my encounter with the rogue Ka beneath the mountain had changed that once agai
n. It was after that incident that I felt my powers grow staggeringly and in weird ways. Perhaps Leo had missed or misunderstood something. There would have been others with great powers, as rebirther slots had gone out for centuries as far as I knew. How come no technomancer or healer had uncovered this?

  I walked onto the training deck that I set up weeks ago so I had somewhere to channel my frustration. And today was the perfect day to do just that.

  “Mitto, simulate open plains. No restrictions. I want to see something,” I said and within seconds, Mitto created a nice pasture spreading as far as the eye could see. I put both my palms to the floor and began channeling my nanites into the ground. “Come on, Beast, old friend. Let’s see how you’ll look now.”

  Swarms of nanites grew from the floor in four columns, recreating the body of my assault bot. They merged in the middle, creating the bot’s torso. I could feel the nanites establish the millions of tiny connections within every part of Beast. From a free-flowing tide, they turned into cables, microchips, sensors, and finally plates and weaponry. The nanites evoked the patterns in my mind and turn thought into a solid form.

  There he was: Beast, a four-legged battle machine that could mow down squads of soldiers with relative ease, no new parts, no new extensions. He was just as he’d been years ago. Minus the armaments. Creating Beast was like riding a bicycle, at first it felt like you could never manage to keep your balance, but within the first several tries you realized you could take it across a continent.

  But that was the catch. I never managed to take it across the continent. Not because I didn’t want to but because of two different reasons: I never thought I actually could, and I was always restricted by the patterns the Federation military allowed. And the allotted number of nanites.

  Beast circled around me, waiting for my command. Although his actions were an extension of my will, he still had an artificial brain that handled simple motoric functions and all the other intricacies of assault-bot functioning. The one thing they hadn’t been able to steal from me even after taking my bots was their experience and patterns. They had remained ingrained inside me.