Just then Joel appeared at the kitchen door with the beer, but Molly’s attention was pulled by the Estarian-Zyhn couple who had just appeared.
“Just going to take a pod back down to Estaria,” Arlene called over from the foyer as the pair staggered through. “That okay?”
Molly waved her hand. “Sure. Be safe, night!”
Arlene and Ben’or, still giggling like teenagers headed for the basement door and helped each other down.
Molly shook her head, smiling. “They make a good couple.”
Paige eyed her knowingly. “Yes,” she agreed, looking up at Joel who had returned from the kitchen. “A good couple.” She shuffled up off the sofa and stood. “I’m gonna go find Maya. She’s taking way too long to find that bottle we stashed. I suspect she’s just opened it herself!”
She clipped away across the foyer disappearing down the corridor to the quarters.
Joel sat down in the armchair across from Molly. “Soooooo,” he drawled nervously. “Nickie makes you look like you have a stick up your ass?”
Molly sniggered, taking another sip of her beer. “You heard that?” She snorted lightly. “I guess so. All the more reason I’m glad she’s gone.”
Joel grinned. “Well, I think you handled the whole thing pretty well.”
“Thanks,” she said, raising her bottle to Joel.
“Tell you what,” he offered. “Lemme go and drop these beers back downstairs and then I’ll come back up to hang for a bit. Things are getting a bit intense down there on the MMORPG game that Oz and Bourne decided to run together.”
Molly sniggered again. “I can only imagine!”
“Yeah, I’ll tell you about it. Gimme a few minutes.” He got up and carried the beer away, leaving her to sit alone in contemplation for a few minutes.
It’s not often I’m on my own these days, she noted to Oz.
Oz?
No response.
Oz?
Yeah. I get it. But, erm, can we hang later. I’m in the middle of—
Your role-playing game.
Yes. And Bourne is being a little arse, so I need to show him who’s boss.
Molly, tipsy and happy, giggled to herself. Ok, Oz. May the force be with you.
She sat for a few moments, appreciating everything she had in her life: her team, her friends, and missions that meant something. Missions that could make a difference.
Doesn’t get much better than this, she thought to herself.
What? His tone was intense and distracted.
Nothing, Oz. I’m thinking to myself.
Right. Okay, Bye.
And he was gone again.
Epilogue
Ekks Residence, Spire, Estaria
Richard Ekks slowly came aware of the world, the comfortableness of his dream floating away as the bleeping sound tore him back to reality. He felt a wave of nausea move through his exhausted body.
Reluctantly he opened his eyes. They stung. He reached across to the bedside table to lift his holo.
Four in the morning.
Fuck.
It was an incoming call. He didn’t recognize the address, which meant it was likely him.
Hurriedly he sat up and readied himself for the interaction. He wiped his hand over his face and tapped accept.
“Are you able to talk?” The voice on the other end was clipped, but calm. It was Ghetti.
“Yes. I’m alone,” Ekks responded.
“We have something else for you to do.”
“Okay.”
“We need you to make sure that the warships are launched and protecting the outer system.”
Richard felt another wave of nausea hit him. This time it wasn’t from exhaustion.
“How do you expect me to do that?” He tried to keep his voice steady, but felt it crack as the air seemed to disappear from his lungs.
“We made you Commander of the Estarian-Ogg Space Fleet for a reason. Did we make a mistake?”
Ekks felt his mind whirring. He needed to stay on point. He could process later. “I need support from the Senate. Consensus from my peers. I can’t just launch them. There are practicalities to consider.”
“This is your task,” the voice told him.
“But you don’t understand. I can’t just—”
“You can.” Ghetti was eerily firm. “Do what you need to do to make it happen.”
There was a slight pause as Ekks thought through what he had to do. “It’s going to take some time,” he said quietly.
On the other end of the call Raj Ghetti smiled, satisfied, with cool confidence. The discussion of the parameters was merely an indication that he had already accepted the task. “You have a few months. Start the process. But don’t put off acting. When the time comes we are going to need those ships in position. Our very existence in this system will depend on it.”
“I understand.” Ekks made an effort to sound in control, when in reality he had no idea what was happening or what he was really going to do.
“Good. I’ll be in touch.”
The call was ended.
Ekks sat in his darkened bedroom, palpitations thumping through his chest and throat, threatening to give him a heart attack.
He thought he could handle the pressure. He thought he had been acting in the greater good when Ghetti had first pitched him the opportunity. But now, faced with the task of launching the ships with no immediate threat, he couldn’t help but wonder what he’d signed up for.
What was he going to be forced to do in the coming weeks and months?
FINIS
Invasion
The Ascension Myth Book 11
Chapter 1
Main Hall, Skóli Uppstigs Academy, Spire, Estaria
Molly hovered by the stage, observing the room of about forty to fifty people.
“Thought you said this was going to be low key?” she muttered, glaring at Paige briefly as she kept the potential audience in her view as if they were the biggest threat in the room.
“We did. We had to, else certain people wouldn’t be able to join us. As far as the outside world knows this is just a health and safety meeting.”
Molly snorted. “How… appropriate.”
Paige grinned. “I thought so. Especially given that that was what we almost got shut down on.”
“I’m still amazed by how you both got this put together so quickly.”
Paige shrugged. “It was mostly Maya. I’ve had some things in the business to deal with.”
“Oh? Nothing too stressful I hope?”
“No. Just niggly things, like staff retention and minor lawsuits.”
“How come?”
“It feels like someone is out for us. You know… like the Northern Clan is just trying to keep us busy.”
“Yeah. The sooner we root them out, the better. For everyone on these damn planets.”
“That would be good. Ok. You ready?”
Molly took a deep breath. “Ready as I’ll ever be…”
Ogg Military Base, Ogg
The technician scuttled through the corridors like an ant navigating a crack in the sidewalk. He ducked past other Oggs as he went, picking up his speed to a jog before he could get cut off by the janitorial staff closing the hallway.
They glared at him bitterly as he passed, but he simply waved an apologetic hand and hurried on his way.
An Estarian and a Teshovian, both standing out like drops of paint on a clean sheet of paper amongst the sea of Oggs, glanced up in bemusement as the technician loped past them. He gave them a passing glance, and it looked as if the Teshovian was going to ask if there was anything wrong. She changed her mind and looked back to the file they were both perusing with an almost visible force of will.
He pushed them from his mind and carried on until he ground to a halt outside the door to the Captain’s receiving area. He knocked once, waited for barely half a second, then knocked again before the door
opened and the Captain’s secretary gestured him impatiently into the room.
It was comfortable in a sterile, nondescript sort of way, offering little to get attached to, but also little to take offense to. The secretary sitting at the tidy, expansive desk looked decidedly unimpressed at the interruption as the technician strode quickly into the room, though her expression shifted gradually to concern as he leaned over the edge of the desk to quickly explain his reason for showing up without an appointment.
“Just wait there,” she stated with a sigh once he was finished explaining his presence there. She opened her holo and typed a message.
The technician paced across the office like a nervous cat, picking distractedly at the hem of his uniform jacket. He pondered over what he was supposed to say once he was in the Captain’s office, at least until the secretary interrupted his pacing to tell him. “The Captain will see you.”
The technician hardly paused to offer her a quick, “Thanks,” before he turned on his heel and darted into the Captain’s office without even waiting for the door to finish opening.
The Captain was already looking at him when he entered the office, elbows on the desk and fingers steepled in front of his chin, waiting expectantly.
His office was almost as sparse as the receiving area.
“Presumably you have a good reason for barging in like this,” he stated blandly before he gestured loosely for the technician to explain himself.
The Captain was not a man predisposed toward patience on most days, so the technician wasted no time in opening his holoconsole. He sorted through the tabs until only the most relevant were immediately visible before he passed the screen over for the Captain to take a look.
“We caught something on our outermost satellites,” he explained quickly before the Captain could even comment on what he was seeing. “We can sort of triangulate its position, but we don’t know much about it other than it isn’t supposed to be there. We can’t find any recent incidents on record that would account for it. I was told to give you the news and let you see it for yourself.”
The Captain was silent for a worryingly long moment, until the technician began to wonder whether or not he should repeat the entire spiel. Just as he opened his mouth to say something, though, the Captain abruptly pushed his chair away from his desk and got to his feet, quickly enough that the technician backpedaled a step.
Without a word the Captain rounded his desk, picking up his communicator as he did.
There was a secluded corner in the back of the office, partially partitioned off from the rest of the room by a set of shelves, and he strode there as he activated his communicator.
Before he could wrangle his curiosity under control, the technician trailed after him, peering around the corner of the shelf to see what he was doing.
“I need you to put me through to—" The Captain’s budding conversation jerked to a halt as he realized the technician was still there. He turned to him. “Thank you for the report. You’re dismissed.”
The technician didn’t linger to test the Captain’s patience
He turned on his heel and beat a hasty retreat. All he heard was, “No, that wasn’t aimed at you. Could you put me through—" before the door closed, muffling the conversation.
The technician lingered a moment at the closed door until the secretary cleared her throat at him and sent him hurrying back to his station.
Nefertiti Military Base, Estaria
The Estarian Ensign stared at his terminal, using the heel of one boot to fidget his chair back and forth like a metronome as he watched information scroll across the screen. He checked the time; it had to have been at least a couple of hours since the last time he checked.
It had been about ten minutes.
He blinked slowly, and his eyes stayed closed until he started to tip forward toward the desk. With a jerk, he snapped back upright just before his forehead could meet the surface, eyes opening again. He got to his feet, shook his head briskly, and jogged out of the room to get himself a cup of coffee.
By the time he returned to his station, he had his personal communicator in his hand and was scrolling through his personalized Estarian stock market feed.
He sighed out a contented breath as he took a sip of his coffee and dropped back down into his chair.
He could feel the fog clearing already.
It was a fairly standard day on Nefertiti Military Base, and especially so in the atmospheric monitoring center. There was no harm in taking a personal moment to wake up.
The coffee still tasted more like floor wax than anything resembling coffee, but his stock market feed was stable, and he couldn’t see any unpleasant surprises coming. No pleasant surprises, either, but he figured stable was better than exciting—
It came as a surprise to absolutely no one when, as the door to the room slid open to admit the Lieutenant, the Ensign yelped in surprise, nearly fell out of his chair, and slopped half of his coffee over his knees. He pouted down at his sopping wet pants for a split second before carefully sneaking a glance up at the Lieutenant as a shadow fell over his desk and terminal.
The Lieutenant simply arched one eyebrow and wondered. “Looking for a repeat of the Applesauce Incident, Ensign?”
“Ah—,” Hastily, the Ensign put his cup down, shoved his communicator back into his pocket, and scooted his chair closer to his terminal. One hand rose to run through his hair before he remembered that his hand was currently covered in coffee. He scrubbed it off on his pants before setting his hands on his desk instead. “No, sir.”
Without another word, the Lieutenant nodded once and continued to his own terminal.
The quiet afternoon resumed after that, at least until the Ensign’s terminal started beeping as one of the outermost proximity alarms went off.
“Uh—sir?” he called, scooting his chair even closer to his desk as he peered at the terminal, squinting at it as he tried to figure out what it was telling him. He silenced the beeping a moment later when it seemed like it was unlikely that whatever had triggered it was going to drift farther away or drift close enough to trigger the next alarm.
“Did you break something?” the Lieutenant asked wearily, turning his chair away from his desk.
The Ensign sputtered indignantly, but he was spared from needing to defend his own honor when the Junior Lieutenant across the room, usually as quiet as a mouse, announced abruptly, “I’ve got it, too!” She leaned away from her terminal to let the Lieutenant take a glance at it.
“Well, what is it?” he asked expectantly, glancing between them before he got to his feet to look at the Ensign’s terminal. “Size? Distance? Speed? Will there be any damage we need to worry about?” He rattled the questions off one after the next, only stopping when all he got in reply were matching looks of doe-eyed concern.
He let the Ensign and the Junior Lieutenant stare for a few seconds before he snapped his fingers sharply to get them back on track and gestured expansively for one of them to enlighten him as to what was going on.
If only it were so easy.
The Ensign signaled helplessly at his terminal with one hand, as if that answered any of the Lieutenant’s questions. “I can’t get an accurate read on it. I can’t even tell if it’s one object or a cloud, or if it’s coming toward us.”
The Junior Lieutenant carefully suggested. “There was that Teshovian probe that got pulverized when it hit a shuttle a few weeks ago. The debris from that might have drifted into satellite range.”
The Lieutenant waved off the suggestion dismissively and pushed the Ensign’s chair aside to get a better look at the terminal. “That probe was tiny; I doubt we would even be able to see it on our sensors,” he corrected absently. “Are we supposed to be seeing any activity from the asteroid belt at this time of year?”
The Junior Lieutenant shook her head so quickly that her bun wobbled. “Unless it’s destabilized, we’re not supposed to see any activity there for we
eks.”
The Lieutenant made a low noise of aggravation, and the Ensign shrank back into his seat until the Lieutenant started to pace back and forth across the room. Granted, his pacing wasn’t particularly impressive, considering the atmospheric monitoring team hadn’t seen a budget increase in nearly a decade so the monitoring center was roughly the size of a closet.
“One of you needs to give me an idea of what it could be, rather than just telling me what it isn’t,” he stated testily, regardless of the fact that he was the one who had shot down the probe theory.
The Junior Lieutenant fumbled, tripping over her tongue for a moment before launching into some rather involved speculation about asteroids in the belt colliding and breaking apart and drifting into range. She kept interrupting herself to say that if it was the case, it was more harmless than it really sounded.
Cautiously, the Ensign scooted his chair back toward his terminal. He let the Lieutenant and Junior Lieutenant argue without interrupting them as he dutifully set about recording the abnormal readings. Someone was going to have to give the report on them, after all, and he always got the grunt work.
Main Hall, Skóli Uppstigs Academy, Spire, Estaria
Paige tapped her glass of champagne with a metal spoon. “Always wanted to do that!” she whispered to Molly before turning her attention to the crowd.
The chatter died down. Professor Duffledorf had been regaling a group of their newest faculty members with stories of his time in the military. The irony around his subject being non-combative military strategy seemed completely lost on him. Reluctantly he paused his story.
Dr. Jones and Dr. Augustine were the last to pull their attention from the buffet table and, mouths full of food, turned to look at the women standing just in front of the main stage.
Paige straightened up and flashed her biggest smile at her audience. “Ladies and gentlemen. Thank you all so much for being here. My name is Paige Montgomery, and I’m your hostess for the evening. As you know this event is just our little way of saying a huge thank you for all the help you’ve given us. We’ll shortly be moving to the next room where you can see the demonstration of the new equipment for the teaching labs, but before we do that our esteemed leader has a few things to share. Molly…”
The Ascension Myth Box Set Page 210
