Empire Reborn (Taran Empire Saga Book 1): A Cadicle Space Opera

by A. K. DuBoff

  Jason approached slowly, trying to balance his expression between friendly and sympathetic. “I can’t bring back your family and friends, but I am in a unique position to help heal your mind.”

  “My brain isn’t the problem.” Darin pulled in on himself more. “That thing is out there. Don’t you understand? It’s coming for us!”

  The panic in Darin’s tone turned Jason’s stomach. “You’re safe here.”

  “No one is safe. Not from it. From them.”

  That kind of talk must be what the other interviewers had taken to be a sign of a psychological break. However, there was clarity and resolution to the statements—not the disconnected nonsense that Jason had half-expected to hear, based on Trevor’s warning.

  “Who?” Jason ventured.

  Darin laughed gruffly and wrapped his arms around himself, shaking his head. “It’s everything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s everything. We’re nothing. I might not remember what it showed me, but I know that. None of you have a foking clue.”

  No, I really don’t. He suspected the ‘it’ the young man referenced was the entity in the photo, but he was uncertain of the deeper meaning behind the words. Regardless, he couldn’t shake the feeling that Darin was speaking with profound insight rather than madness.

  Regardless, it was time for a change in tactics. Bring it back to his mother. His grounding. Jason took a slow breath. “I know you’ve been through a lot. I promise I’m here to help.”

  “What makes you think you can do anything? The Guard was utterly useless.”

  “They often are,” Jason said with a slight smile. “The TSS is different. Did your mother ever talk about us?”

  At the mention of his mother, Darin softened. “Only her opinion that all of you Agents are a bunch of entitled pricks.”

  Jason managed to keep his expression neutral; rarely had he heard such disrespectful sentiments. Perhaps the TSS had lost some of its illustrious mystique in recent years. “Everyone’s entitled to their opinion.”

  Darin shrugged. “I haven’t seen anything yet to change my mind.”

  “The other Agents you’ve spoken to don’t have my level of ability.”

  “Mind-reading is mind-reading, isn’t it?”

  “There’s quite a bit more to it than that.” Jason hadn’t been trained in the most nuanced arts of telepathic therapy, but just as with physical-focused telekinetic feats, the general principle was that the stronger a person’s abilities, the more they could do. So, even with his comparatively basic telepathy training, he had the potential to delve into a person’s mind as well as the experts—raw ability compensating for his lack of learned skills.

  However, his innate strength meant he needed to be careful when interacting with others. Merely being in the presence of someone with his Gifts was enough to overwhelm those in a compromised state. He’d experienced that firsthand during the Awakening of his own abilities, being near his father and the other Primus Elites. They’d needed to keep shields around themselves to avoid inadvertently harming him until he learned how to guard himself; the enhanced environmental sensitivity made those with Gifts so powerful, but it was also enough to break someone’s mind if they didn’t know how to filter the inputs. Though Darin didn’t have the same sensitivity as someone newly Awakened, his volatile emotional state made him vulnerable in other ways.

  “Are you willing to talk?” Jason asked. Regardless of Darin’s answer, he’d need to use telepathy to delve deeper. Nonetheless, having a conversation about the topic at hand would speed the process along.

  Darin scoffed. “Do I have a choice?”

  “You’re not under arrest, so yes, of course.”

  Darin took a few seconds to respond. “You’re not the first guy they sent in, which means either you’re higher up, or they’re hoping that someone close to my age will soften me up. If it’s the latter, should have thought to send a pretty girl.”

  “Would that help?” Jason tilted his head, amused by the suggestion but not letting it show.

  Darin shrugged. “I mean, it never hurts. I’ve been stuck on a ship for a long time.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not in a position to bring in anyone else right now, but I’d like to get you back to your life as soon as possible.”

  “Fine. Let’s get on with it.”

  Jason grabbed the chair from the small desk in the corner and sat across from Darin. He began initiating a loose telepathic link, getting a feel for how much resistance he might meet.

  Typically, when entering someone’s mind, a telepath would encounter a layer of outward thoughts, usually characterized as one’s internal voice—the consciously controlled projection. These outward-facing thoughts could be faked, quite convincingly if the person was well-trained. Truth was found in the inner mind, skimming subconscious thoughts and memories. In most cases, TSS Agents only went as deep as this second layer in order to verify information. However, some occasions required an intensive examination of the inner mind, going into the subject’s long-term memory; the information garnered at that level was sometimes more than a person knew themselves, where forgotten details were buried or where fragments remained if others had tried to erase a memory.

  Jason suspected that he’d been sent on the mission to verify that Darin’s memories were genuine. It was unclear what someone might have to gain from faking an alien attack, but stranger things had happened.

  He leaned forward in his chair and looked Darin in his eyes. “What was your role on the ship?”

  “Pilot and labor. My mom is—was—the captain. I was supposed to take over the Andvari from her, keep up with the salvage jobs after she retired.”

  Good, keep it on his mother. Jason took the opening. “Working with family can be a double-edged sword. Did you get along well?”

  “Yeah. I mean, we had our moments sometimes. But, things were good. What does that have to do with anything?” The bite was back in his tone.

  “I ask because you were awfully far out for a salvage operation. Was that a mutual decision?”

  Darin’s face darkened. “You think it’s our foking fault we got our crew killed?”

  “That’s not what I said or meant.” His heart was heavy for the young man, feeling his hurt from the loss through the telepathic link. I don’t know that I’d handle it any better if I lost my family.

  When Darin didn’t say anything else, Jason continued, “All I want to know is why you decided to venture from the usual salvage grounds.”

  “Quotas to meet. Lots of good stuff gets swooped up in the Kryon Nebula. We had a lead on valuable scrap from the war that would keep us in business.”

  The TSS had suspected as much, but it was still odd a singular ship would venture so far beyond the normal transit routes. “Who gave you that lead?” Jason asked.

  “We always worked through Renfield, a salvage op headquarters on Duronis.”

  “How long did you have that business relationship?”

  “I think my mom had worked with them for… I dunno, a decade.” This time, at the mention of his mother, he winced.

  “Do you know if Renfield is part of some larger organization?”

  “How should I know? I just flew the bomaxed ship! I never should have gone along with the plan to go after scrap in the nebula.”

  “When did things start getting strange?” Jason questioned.

  “I went to investigate a shipwreck, and I was knocked out while on board.”

  “And you have no memory of the events that took place on the ship?”

  “I was unconscious. So no.”

  Jason studied him. He couldn’t blame the guy for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but Darin was definitely holding something back. Only minutes before, he was going on about how the entity was ‘everything’. The mood swings and shifts in lucidity were proving to be a challenge, after all. However, the interview was never intended to be only question and answer, so Jason prepared to del
ve into the man’s inner mind.

  “Tell me everything about what led up to when you were rendered unconscious.” As Jason asked the question, he also slipped past the outer layers of Darin’s mind.

  The young man’s surface thoughts shifted to the moment. In Jason’s mind’s eye, he experienced the events from Darin’s vantage, feeling the pressure of his EVA suit and the anxiety of exploring the unknown.

  This man Jason saw on the inside reminded him much of himself—confident, capable, playful. None of that was evident in Darin now. The light was gone from his eyes and Jason could feel his emotions were on a short fuse, coiled so tight he could go from apathetic to intense, bitter anger in a flash. Though Jason hadn’t yet witnessed that swing, he was aware of the potential and knew he needed to tread carefully.

  “We were scoping out a salvage target,” Darin explained. “I went in to investigate with Jameel. I’ve done tons of EVAs, but I felt a little off from the beginning with this one. Headache, dizzy. But that could be from anything, you know? I didn’t want to miss out on the action, so I stuck with it and started scoping out the ship. After a while, I started feeling worse. I was trying to head back to the Andvari when my memory goes blank. Next thing I remember, I’m waking up in the escape pod.”

  Jason continued to explore the sensory memory, playing it slowly in his mind moment-by-moment as Darin explored the ship wreckage. Aside from Darin’s physical discomfort, there was nothing remarkable about the event at first. Then, without warning, there was a bright flash followed by unconsciousness.

  There has to be more to it. Jason dove deeper, isolating the moments leading up to the flash.

  Except, when he tried to delve into the memory, he hit a wall. It was likely the same block the other interrogating Agents had come up against and been unable to bypass. Strange, considering that Darin didn’t have abilities of his own. Usually, those without Gifts could only manage rudimentary mental guards. But this… The barrier shielding the memory had no discernable weakness. To anyone less skilled, it would be as if the sectioned off area didn’t even exist.

  “Let me see,” Jason coaxed in Darin’s mind. When there was no telepathic response, Jason said aloud, “Keep thinking about that moment. Share it with me.”

  The mental wall remained, but its edges became more defined. Jason picked a spot and began chipping away at it, using more force than he had expected to need when he’d walked into the interview. Darin gave no indication of being in discomfort, so Jason forged ahead until there was enough of a crack in the wall to look inside.

  Unlike Darin’s spoken testimony that he didn’t remember anything, there was a vivid memory of the encounter locked inside the vault. Now, when Jason played through the event again, there was definitely something there right before the light. A glimmer—almost like a tendril reaching out toward him. He couldn’t see it, exactly, but the intensity of it seemed to make the air vibrate. The tendril extended to his forehead, and at the moment it touched him, he was frozen. It scoured his mind in one rapid wave, offering none of the deference and respect those with Gifts tried to show those they read. It was looking to gather information, and it didn’t care what it did to Darin in the process.

  The Everything. Jason felt the immensity of it through Darin. Awe, fear, wonder, terror. The entity had known him in his entirety in the span of an instant. While it had been too much for Darin to consciously register, it was seared into his sensory memory.

  What was immediately evident to Jason’s trained senses was that the being didn’t exist in any recognizable corporeal form. Its presence extended from somewhere unseen, in the way he sensed the immense energy of the Rift, even from afar. It made sense, given the reports from the Andvari and the transdimensional image of the form he’d flippantly called a ‘space kraken’ during the briefing. Now, he got the distinct impression that what was captured in that image didn’t reflect the being’s full extent. It was unlike anything he’d heard of, or even imagined. The stuff of far-fetched stories he’d read as a kid about Old Ones or ancient god-like entities.

  Jason’s gut wrenched. It was real. The incident, Darin’s memories. No tampering; only confirmation of alien contact. It wasn’t what he’d hoped to report back to Headquarters.

  What in the stars are we going to do? He was careful to keep the thought to himself, maintaining a thin veil between his consciousness and the shared experience with Darin.

  As he probed the memories, he found it increasingly difficult to maintain a tranquil demeanor. But, he needed to—not only as a point of professionalism, but because Darin was a scared young man who’d had his life ripped from him. It wasn’t fair to put him through any more grief, even if that meant downplaying the magnitude of his own experiences.

  Unfortunately, the Andvari’s encounter was likely just the beginning. Jason couldn’t tell that to Darin. Instead, he needed to do something good to help balance out the tragedy. Maybe he could help the man move on with his life, however much was left of it to live.

  “I can ease your pain,” Jason said in his mind. It wasn’t an official part of his assignment, but he felt it was the moral thing to do, under the circumstances.

  “How?” Darin’s response wasn’t words so much as a cloud of skepticism in his scattered mind.

  “By helping you remember the good and taking the sting out of the loss.”

  Darin shook his head and sniffed. “I’m sick of feeling this way.”

  “You don’t have to anymore. Let me help. It’s the least I can do.”

  “Okay.”

  Jason looked into his eyes. “Relax,” he spoke simultaneously out loud and in his mind.

  Though he’d used the required techniques only on a couple of occasions, Jason understood the principles well enough. The basic process was to share the emotional burden of the memories—to take them in, filter, and feed them back. It was a mind-meld, of sorts. They’d practiced it as Junior Agents as a tool to cope with combat trauma. Not everyone could do it; the act took a great deal of raw telepathic ability as well as emotional fortitude. But when done successfully, the patient could get immediate relief with lasting results.

  With Darin’s mind open and ready, Jason began the treatment. It wouldn’t be helpful in the long-term for Jason to bury the young man’s pain entirely, but he could help take the edge off of it. Carefully, he skimmed through Darin’s memories and pulled forward the fond memories of his mother and lost friends. With each memory brought to the forefront, the pain of the recent loss pushed back a little. As he pressed on, the tragedy of the loss lost its sharp edge, and instead Darin’s thoughts first went to the best moments of his times with his loved ones. The loss still left a hollow place in his heart, but it no longer was the initial, overwhelming feature of those relationships.

  Jason worked through the layers of memory with Darin until his sense of tragic loss had diminished to a manageable state. When Jason finished, he retreated from Darin’s mind, maintaining a light touch to assess the other man’s state. He felt emotionally drained by it, but he would recover quickly. The benefit to the other man was well worth the temporary discomfort.

  Darin remained on the bed, still and silent. After several seconds, he finally met Jason’s gaze. “It feels… different.”

  “I’ve tried to help you remember what made your relationships special.”

  “Yeah, I…” Darin faded out, his gaze going distant. A slight smile touched his lips. “I needed that reminder.”

  “The way someone leaves us shouldn’t dictate how we think about them,” Jason said. “Just because they’re gone, the relationship doesn’t end. Their influence on your life will always remain.”

  They sat in silence for several seconds.

  “What happens now?” Darin asked at last.

  “We have what we need from you for now. We’ll do what we can to help you find a way forward. As far as I’m concerned, you’re free to go.”

  He looked down. “Thinking about that feels more doable
now.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “Have you ever lost someone? The way you were talking earlier seemed heartfelt.”

  “I haven’t in the way you did, but we’ve been through some things as a family—enough that I’ve thought about how I’d react if I did lose someone. My military training has instilled the perspective that there’s always a way forward, even when the future seems too dismal to face.”

  Darin nodded. “It must be nice, being a part of something bigger like that.”

  “It is. The TSS is my extended family.”

  “I guess I’ll need to find my own place to belong like that.”

  “I hope you do.”

  “Thank you for…” he shrugged, “whatever you want to call it. Helping me. I didn’t realize how much this whole mess had blinded me.”

  “We all need a little help sometimes.”

  “Yeah.” Darin swallowed hard and dropped his gaze.

  Jason stood up. “Don’t let this loss define you. You still have a lot of life to live.”

  Darin nodded slowly. “I wish I knew where to go from here. My entire life was on the Andvari.”

  “There are lots of opportunities out there. DGE is hiring like crazy.”

  “I’d always thought about joining the Guard.”

  “Lots of good people do.”

  “But that’s not where you see the real action, is it?”

  Jason shrugged. “I’m no doubt biased on the matter, but I’d direct someone toward the TSS any day.”

  Darin perked up a little. “Are you recruiting?”

  “The TSS is always looking for dedicated people.” He paused. “I could put in a good word to get your application fast-tracked, if that would help.”

  “You’d do that for me?”

  If Darin was just some random kid on the street, Jason couldn’t stake his reputation on a recommendation. But he’d seen inside Darin’s mind, and he knew his heart was in the right place. He couldn’t think of a better place for Darin to find a new family than within the TSS. “I’d be happy to.”