I froze.
“You may hate him, and you have very good reason to, but at least he… at least he….”
“If we win this war,” I finally found my voice, “we will win it on our terms. I refuse to descend to Hell. I refuse to become a devil like him.” I was surprised by my fervor. My voice shook through my throat, sounding like a coin rattling in a can.
Her attention riveted on me.
We stared each other down.
I didn’t even blink.
But before I could win and hammer home my point, my comm PIP beeped.
I ground my teeth together. “Yes?”
“Your presence is requested on the bridge.”
“Understood.”
Before I could stop her, Alyssa began to turn away.
“Alyssa—”
“I’ll come see you later,” she promised over her shoulder.
That promise sat heavily in my gut. It wasn’t anger, it wasn’t nerves, it wasn’t frustration. But boy was it close to all three.
With a deep sigh, I half closed my eyes, turned, and walked for the bridge.
…
Alyssa Nightingale
I headed back to my room. I slouched over to my bed. Twisting on my foot, I let my knees buckle, and I fell down on the mattress, the covers bunching around my stiff body.
Drawing a hand up, I planted it over my eyes.
I pressed them closed until the darkness flooded in.
With it came memories of my life. Of my training.
Unbidden from my unconsciousness I saw flashes of what Axis had done to me. The various tasks, the exercises.
My training had been so extensive that as I remembered every exercise, I felt minute twitches in my muscles as if I were trying to follow along.
I really was his complete battle system.
I was primed to fight in even the hardest war.
… So why wasn’t I fighting?
Despite what Nathan had said, Admiral Shepherd’s words sprang back into my consciousness like a light that simply wouldn’t turn off.
What was the point to me – the point to the horrors I’d endured – if I wouldn’t fight? Now. When the galaxy needed me the most?
Maybe Admiral Shepherd’s words had been deliberately manipulative, but maybe that didn’t matter.
He was still right.
I got to decide what to do next. I could either use the curse that had been given to me, or I could turn from it and turn from the Milky Way at the same time.
With a heavy sigh that rattled through the room, I pressed my hand as hard as I could into my eyes until I saw stars.
Gritting my teeth, a new wave of guilt assailed me, and with it a conclusion.
… There really was nothing I could do but fight.
I couldn’t deal with the shame of anyone else losing their lives for me.
My hand dropped of its own accord, flattening beside me.
I opened my bleary eyes and stared at the ceiling. Then my muscles stiffened down my back, my stomach crunched, and I sat, hair tumbling over my shoulder.
I locked my gaze on the door.
No more indecision. No more vacillating.
I stood and tugged down on my uniform, fingers lingering as I brought them up and placed them on the pips that indicated my rank.
Without a word and without another thought I marched towards the door.
…
Lieutenant Commander Nathan Shepherd
I knew what she’d be thinking. Though I’d barely known Alyssa for more than several months, that didn’t matter. I understood her. And I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, what she’d be telling herself right now.
That he was right. That the bullshit my old man had spouted was true.
I knew all that, so that’s why I rounded on my foot and headed through the cell.
I’d done what I needed to on the bridge, and now I was back.
Ready to face my father.
The door to the cell beeped and opened.
I strode in, fists pressed by my sides, jaw clenched hard.
There he sat, like always, calm and serene behind that flickering orange force field.
My father was a master at hiding his true feelings. That, or he simply couldn’t feel. Perhaps he’d scratched away all emotion from his body years ago, so now all that was left was a brain hardened by war and victory.
“Son, I was wondering when you were going to come back to see me,” he commented casually.
“Stop it. Just tell me what you told her.”
“I told the truth, Nathan, that she is our only hope. That if we are to win this war, and we must, she must fight, not run.”
“The Forgotten are after her. They’ll do anything to get her back. And you told her to fight? Do you have any idea what you’ve done? She’s vulnerable, she’s—” I stopped abruptly realizing I couldn’t discuss a word of this with my father. While I hated to see how tortured Alyssa had become, discussing that with my dad would only lead him to manipulate her.
So I clenched my jaw harder.
“Do I need to share with you the consequences of losing this war? The Forgotten will not allow anyone to win. They view all forms of life as a scourge upon their galaxy. They will wipe everyone from existence, destroy every testament to the Alliance and every other civilization in the Milky Way, and rewrite history anew.”
“I know that. Goddammit, I know that,” I bellowed, “but you had no right to say that to her. Not now. Not ever.”
“Why? You want to protect her, don’t you, Nathan? You want to keep her for yourself.” He shrugged. “An interesting position for a so-called selfless soldier.”
“Don’t you dare call me selfish. You’ve always done exactly what you wanted to without any care for the consequences.”
“Incorrect. I’ve always done what I’ve had to with absolutely every care for the consequences. If I hadn’t done what I had, son, we would have no chance of fighting the Forgotten. But now, now we have that chance. You call her Alyssa, and it’s time to let her out from under your wing.”
“Don’t tell me what I have to do,” I bellowed, voice punching around the room.
My father didn’t react. I was boiling up on the inside, and he was as calm as a placid lake.
“If you take too long to realize the truth, Nathan, you will condemn the galaxy. Let her go.”
My jaw punched open as another wave of anger slammed into my gut. But I couldn’t think of anything to say. Not a word.
He stared right at me. “You wish to know what I told her. Very well. The Star Forces have known of the Forgotten’s existence and impending attack for over a century. In that time, we have prepared. We have militarized. We have pushed for more and more weapons. All for this war.” He pointed a stiff finger at the floor, the only sign of tension he’d shown since I’d entered the room.
I deliberately shook my head.
“Shake your head, son, but it will not change the facts. Everything I have done – every so-called brutal act you have chosen to hate me for – all have been for the Milky Way’s preservation.”
“You’re lying,” I said quietly through a dry mouth.
“If only I were. If only I were.” He rested back again, clasping his hands neatly in his lap. “I would have liked to have led a quiet life, son. Perhaps you cannot believe that, but it is true.” He broke eye contact and stared at the floor, a far-off quality to his gaze. “There are many things I would have liked to achieve.” He finally looked up at me. “But only one thing that ultimately mattered. True leaders must push away their selfish desires. To lead is to adopt the goal of the many wholeheartedly. And that goal is existence. For if we do not fight the Forgotten and push them back, we will all die,” he repeated once more. Though his voice was arguably lower, his tone soft like a whisper, it somehow had more import, punching through me and settling hard in the base of my gut.
“I’m not going to believe you,” I said defensively.
“Inc
orrect – you do not want to believe me. Your entire identity is invested in the fact you are different from me. You want to be a good man, but you don’t know how. Because to be a good man, you must save the many. And in this case, to save the many, you must become exactly like me,” he spread a hand on his chest, the fingers smoothing over his always immaculate uniform, “you must defeat the Forgotten, no matter the costs. And the costs will be lives. Freedom. Rights. But existence, Lieutenant Commander Nathan Shepherd, trumps those all.”
Like a child, all I could do was stand there and shake my head. Over and over again. My neck muscles loose, limp, cold with dread.
“I told Alyssa that she must obtain the weapons on the Primary Outer Storage Station and use them to defeat the Forgotten,” my father continued without pause.
“What?”
“We have developed weapons that can defeat the Forgotten. However, they can only be successfully deployed with Alyssa’s assistance. Not only will she draw the Forgotten towards us, but she will be able to conduct the battle to give us the chance we need.”
I wanted to shake my head. I couldn’t. Not anymore. All I could do was stand there, cold, half dead, staring as my father revealed facts I couldn’t believe but couldn’t push away.
“And that, Nathan, was what I told her. I stand by my words. If we are to have any chance of defeating the Forgotten, we must liberate those weapons.”
“… Listen to what you’re saying. Liberate weapons? You’re still in the Star Forces, aren’t you?”
He shrugged. “I offer no allegiance to any specific group and never have. My loyalty lies with the galaxy,” his eyes widened and his look became intense, “with existence. If that existence can be better assured with the pirates, with the resistance, with some faction yet to be developed, then so be it.”
I couldn’t believe what he was saying. In my mind my father was the epitome of loyalty to the Alliance. He breathed, ate, and slept the Alliance. Surely the blood of the Alliance pumped in his veins.
But what he was saying… what he was saying….
I shook, the move obvious.
My father’s eyes locked on my shoulder, then drifted slowly up to my face. “Your trouble, son, is you have always had a hard time adjusting your beliefs in the presence of new evidence.”
“You mean I’m not easy to manipulate,” I countered through clenched teeth.
My father stared at me impassively. “I think you’ll find the definition of reason is a point of view that can be altered in the face of new evidence. Inflexibility of opinion, however, is the very opposite of reason itself. Fundamentalism.”
I receded at his argument.
I was determined not to lose to him, though. “If what you’re saying is somehow true, then how in God’s name did you develop a weapon that can destroy the Forgotten?”
“They are a curious race with a curious history.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“We have never seen technology like there’s.”
“You mean it’s light years beyond ours?”
“Yes, and no. In the short-term, it does give them a significant advantage, however their technology has a significant disadvantage too.”
Nerves pumped through my gut. I tried to tell myself not to believe a word he was saying, but I couldn’t stop the anticipation from climbing my spine. “What do you mean?”
“That the Forgotten’s technology – their ships, their weapons, their body drones, even the implants that were adapted for the Farsight Program – no more of them can be created.”
“What?”
“They are unique and cannot be replicated. It is the Forgotten's current goal to scour the galaxy and retrieve stockpiles of their technology they left before they disappeared several hundred thousand years ago.”
“Their current goal? You must be out of your mind. Their current goal is to destroy the Star Forces and burn through the Milky Way.”
“Think, son, watch. Think,” my father repeated, voice bottoming out and shaking. “Do what I have always taught you to do. Take a step back and assess the Forgotten’s goals. You will see what I have just told you. Their attacks have a pattern. They’re not just going after the Star Forces. They’re going after their strongholds. Areas that once held their own technology.”
I began shaking my head instinctively. I stopped.
My father’s eyes locked on me. “Do it right now, son – use your wrist device to bring up the Forgotten’s current battle fronts. Ask the computer to predict their tactical goals. You will see what I’m telling you – they are going after their own technology.”
“Why would they be doing that?” I asked through a dry mouth.
He sat back, pressed his shoulders against the unyielding metal of the cell wall, and neatened his hands in his lap. “Because they need their own technology to survive.”
I snorted. I can’t say it was derisive, though. It was just a noise, a testament to the frustration building within my gut like pressurized gas trapped in an ever narrowing chamber. “The Forgotten are the greatest enemy we have ever faced. Their civilization is light-years beyond our own. Why would they need their own technology discarded from thousands upon thousands of years ago? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Check your common sense at the door. It won’t help you here. You need to push for answers, not assume you already know them. The Forgotten’s technology, as far as I understand it, utilizes a nonreplaceable energy source. Long ago, they harvested a unique kind of quantum energy and trapped it within their devices. They cannot make more.”
I really did laugh now, and it rattled from my throat. “That sounds like the plot from a bad holo movie. It makes no scientific sense.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Tell me, son, do you believe you have the requisite scientific knowledge to understand the Forgotten’s technology? If you do, why don’t you replicate their weapons? Why don’t you end this war with a snap of your fingers?”
I actually snarled. “Your argument doesn’t follow. And what you’re suggesting is ridiculous.”
“Son, son, son, war is won with speed. Victory goes to those who can see opportunities when others see nothing at all. If you don’t open your mind, Nathan, and research the possibilities, you will lose, and you’ll take us all with you.”
I opened my mouth to snap at him, but didn’t get the opportunity. My comm PIP beeped.
“Shepherd, you there?” It was the Chief.
“What’s up?”
“I want you to come to main engineering. I’ve got something to show you.”
“On my way.”
I took a step back without turning from my father.
Finally, however, I shifted around and headed for the door. Just as it opened before me, he cleared his throat. “Ask yourself this, Nathan – do you honestly think you can protect her? The answer is no. The answer is you must let her protect us all instead.”
With that comment ringing in my mind, I walked through the doors and they closed behind me.
Immediately I wanted to turn around and stomp back into his cell, tell him he was wrong, tell him I wouldn’t fall for his tricks.
I didn’t.
The Chief wouldn’t have called if it weren’t important.
So I ignored the frustration building in my gut, and I pushed off.
I was always called away before I could finish any conversation with my father. Which was probably a good thing. As I was looking for something I would never find. Resolution. I would stand there, pushing against anything he said, trying to force him to concede his point to me. But it would never happen.
So I didn’t look back with regret as I turned sharply on my heel and headed down the corridor.
It didn’t take long to reach main engineering. Unlike the Ra’xon, the Miracle was in much better shape. A lot of the damage Alyssa had wrought when she’d tried to escape had been fixed.
Still, it was an eerie experience walking through the
Miracle’s engineering bay – it brought up violent, sharp memories of the battle I’d just fought and barely won.
I quickly made my way over to an office on the far side of the room where the Chief had taken up shop.
At first she didn’t bother to look up as I entered. Two of her hands were locked on her desk as she leaned over a console and stared at something.
I stood there for a few seconds until I cleared my throat.
She actually jerked back, as if she hadn’t heard me enter. “Didn’t hear you coming,” she explained.
“I hardly walk like a ballerina,” I commented as I looked at her.
If I thought I was showing signs of fatigue, I was dead wrong. The Chief looked ready to drop.
She waved me over to the console, taking a step to the side as she pointed at it. “Have a look at this.”
I glanced down at the console. It was displaying some kind of message.
“What am I looking at?” Confusion crumpled my brow as I angled my head towards the Chief.
She shrugged her shoulders, the move heavy and laden with fatigue. She only bothered using one hand, letting the other five rest limply on the table. “It’s a message from Moon Alpha 98.”
I shook my head. “You mean the Forgotten? They’re trying to get in contact with us?”
She shook her head, every neck muscle strained. It was clear she was having trouble even standing, let alone working. If she wasn’t so necessary to the survival of the Ra’xon and the Miracle, I’d order her to get some rest. “No, this message is over a month old.”
I frowned, the move etching deep into my chin. “How is that possible?”
“I had to clean it up a bit, as it’s degraded over time, but as far as I can tell, it comes from a Research Manager Amy Lee. It looks as if she was the archaeologist in charge of the dig on Alpha 98.”
“I’m not following.”
“Fair enough. I looked at Lee’s records, and she used to work in signal research. Clearly her research paid off, because she managed to hide a naturally propagating message that was transmitted once the Star Forces jamming beacons on Alpha 98 were destroyed by the Forgotten.”
“I’m still not following.”
The Crucible- The Complete Series Page 62
