by A. K. DuBoff
He slipped his handheld into his pocket and turned to see Gil approaching from the Primus Agent offices in the administrative wing, where he was headed himself. “Hi, Gil.”
“Is it true?” his friend asked, barely above a whisper.
“We’re still looking into the details,” Jason said. It was technically true, and he couldn’t share the full extent of what was going on until his father decided to make a formal announcement.
Gil paled. “Shite, that bad?” He shook his head. “When I saw that the incident with the Andvari had suddenly become classified—”
“I wish I could talk about it, but I can’t,” Jason cut in. “We’re taking care of it.”
“Right, yeah.” He swallowed. “Uh, welcome home.”
“Game night next week, maybe?” Jason suggested, hoping to soften the blow of not being able to share the specifics of his most recent assignment.
“Sure, that’d be great.” Gil nodded to him and then resumed his walk down the hall.
Since there wasn’t enough time to go to his quarters before the meeting, Jason decided to head to the High Commander’s office early.
As he passed by the Lead Agent’s office, he noticed the glass walls were set to full transparency—normally tinted opaque with the environmental controls. His mother waved to him from behind the desk inside. She grabbed her handheld from the desktop and jogged across her office to meet him.
“Well?” she asked.
“It’s genuine.”
She took a slow breath. “Okay.”
Together, they walked the rest of the way to the High Commander’s office at the end of the hall.
Saera opened the door without knocking and Jason followed her inside. Pacing next to the wooden desk, his father was finishing up a voice call.
“Right. Yes. I’ll keep you apprised. Talk soon.” Wil terminated the communication and sighed. “I hear you don’t bring good news.”
“Afraid not.” Jason closed the door.
Wil took the seat behind the desk and gestured for them to sit in the visitor chairs across from him. “I was surprised to see you recommended Darin for the Militia Division.”
“The poor kid lost everything on the Andvari. He needs direction and a community.”
“We do try to make the TSS feel like a family,” his mother replied. “I hope he can find that with us.”
His father nodded his agreement but remained focused on the more pressing issue. “Do you feel confident in what you got from his mind?”
“Yes,” Jason confirmed. “It took a little digging, but I got through the block. I’d never seen anything quite like it.”
“So, the being is telepathic?” Saera asked.
“It’s a lot more than that.”
His father had his full attention on him. “How so?”
“What we could see in that image was only part of it. This entity looks massive, but it’s just a temporary manifestation. I don’t think it has any kind of set physical form. I believe it’s from a higher dimension and that it is, indeed, using the Rift as a gateway to spacetime.”
“Worst-case scenario, then,” Wil stated flatly.
“It’s looking that way.”
“What an odd way to make first contact—attacking a random civilian ship,” Saera commented.
“I don’t think that’s what it was.” Jason sat up straighter. “On the way back, I mulled it over and reread part of the initial findings report. I have a hypothesis. Rather than an attack, I believe it was an experiment.”
His parents exchanged glances. “Go on,” his father prompted.
“Going through Darin’s memories and, more or less, experiencing the contact firsthand made it clear that the being was curious. It wanted to learn about our Taran form. It basically scanned him, but it wasn’t particularly careful in how it went about it, and it shocked Darin’s system enough to put him in a coma.
“Then, there’s what happened to the ship,” Jason continued. “People started seeing things. Seemed like the ship was haunted. But I don’t think the crew was going crazy—not in the least. I think the entity was testing them. It used the info it got from Darin to design various scenarios, and the Andvari’s crew was its lab rats.”
Wil’s brows drew together. “I could see that. But to what end?”
“I haven’t a clue.” Jason shook his head. “All I know is that the entity looked at Darin as a tool to be used until he was no longer helpful. It was only a flash, but that’s not a feeling I’ll forget anytime soon.”
Wil folded his hands on the desktop. “All right, let’s say this wasn’t an attack but some sort of… scouting mission. What would it have learned?”
“That’s the problem.” Jason swallowed hard. “I think the crew probably pissed it off.”
“By destroying the ship,” Saera murmured, having put the pieces together for herself.
“Yep. Let’s assume it came through the Rift to scout out what Tarans are up to—possibly in response to what went on with the Gatekeepers, and the Andvari became the ambassadors for our race. Upon first contact, one person passed out, another threw themselves out an airlock, and the others gave their lives defending their ship. And in their final moments, they sent comatose Darin in an escape pod with all the information they had before turning their ship into a bomb with the express purpose of hurting the thing that had been terrorizing them. And maybe they succeeded; we can’t be sure what happened after the escape pod was sent, only what their intentions were and that the Andvari did eventually explode. In any case, we know what happens when a plaything tries to hurt us.”
“Your curiosity turns to hate, and you discard it,” Wil said.
“Or destroy it,” Saera added.
Jason looked between them and nodded. “Right. Now, we may never know if this scout was coming here to figure out how best to wipe us out—as the Gatekeepers said the ‘others’ would—or if it may have been looking to extend a peace offering. But I can imagine what kind of impression it left with.”
“Assuming it even ‘went’ anywhere.” Wil groaned softly. “A higher-dimensional being could… We have no way to guess what kind of abilities it might possess. Fok, it could be listening to us right now and we’d never know.”
“Well, it did single out Darin and the Andvari. That wouldn’t have been necessary if it were that omniscient,” Jason pointed out.
“True. I guess that is a bit of good news.” Nothing about Wil’s expression indicated he received any solace from the observation.
“There might still be an opportunity for diplomacy,” Saera said. “We’ll reexamine the existing information from this new perspective and see what else we can learn.”
“I hope so.” Jason looked down. “I don’t know how we’d defend ourselves against something like this. Whatever we’re facing, I feel confident now that it’s the darkness from my vision.”
“We’ll find a solution,” his mother assured him.
More than he’d ever wanted anything, he hoped she was right.
— — —
Wil took in Jason’s account of the interrogation at the Prisaris base, growing increasingly concerned with each new detail. The written reports hadn’t done the situation justice.
What the fok are we going up against? He tried to keep his expression neutral as his fatherly instinct kicked in to shield his son from additional worry; he needed a response plan before he raised the alarm. “Anything else?”
Jason shook his head. “Nothing that seems relevant. I’ll, of course, let you know if anything else comes to mind later.”
Wil nodded. “Well, at least now we have confirmation and can plan accordingly.”
“I’ll be standing by,” Jason said as he rose from his seat.
“Thanks, Jason. Good work out there.”
His son inclined his head and left Wil and Saera alone in the office.
“I’ve just gotta say it…” Saera slumped back in her chair, “this sucks.”
He
couldn’t help chuckling. “It is less than ideal.”
She straightened. “But we’ll find a solution, because we’ve fought too long and hard for our children to not be safe.”
Wil nodded. “I will never stop fighting to give them the best possible future.” He always put his children first. The future of the Empire was their future, and it shaped every decision he made as a leader.
When it had come time for him and Saera to start a family, they’d made the difficult decision to keep the twins in the dark about the Taran Empire—to preserve their innocence for as long as possible. Between the messy politics on Tararia under the Priesthood’s rule and the aftermath of the Bakzen War, there was too much baggage to dump on young children. Wil knew firsthand what it was like to grow up in TSS Headquarters with parents serving dual roles as Agents and dynastic scions; he’d never had a chance to just be a kid. So, he’d done everything he could to give the twins a proper childhood unburdened by galactic-scale responsibilities.
Saera had grown up on Earth—before being recruited into the TSS—and had extended family there, so the planet was their best option for them to escape the Empire’s influence without going too far. Since Primus Elite Agent Michael Andres was Saera’s childhood friend, he and his wife Elise had also moved down to Earth so they could raise their daughter alongside the twins.
Logistically, a little creative engineering had made it feasible to reside on Earth while still maintaining their day-to-day roles within the TSS. Wil had designed a transdimensional spatial dislocation device—or TSD arches, as they were commonly known—which functioned like a gate-ring system to create a tethered portal for short-distance subspace transit without a craft. Though Wil had reduced his TSS duties to a part-time advisory role while his father served as High Commander, Saera’s daily commute as Lead Agent was as simple as walking through the TSD arch hidden in their basement on Earth and stepping out in TSS Headquarters.
Once the twins’ Gifts emerged at the age of sixteen, they had learned the truth about their birthright. Though they were justifiably upset about the deception at first, in the years since, they’d come to understand why information had been kept from them as children. Wil had no regrets. He was proud of the young adults his children had become, and he credited their compassion and open-mindedness to having lived among people from all walks of life.
Now, all of them would be put to the test with this new transdimensional menace. Wil knew he couldn’t protect his children from everything, but he would always shield them as best he could. At present, that meant figuring out a way to make contact with the aliens.
He stood, feeling the need to pace while he worked through the new information. “We can’t go into an engagement blind.”
“Find a way to see the alien the way the Andvari did, you mean?”
“Yes, but still image capture won’t do it. We need to replicate those conditions in real-time.”
“That’s a tall order. From what the data showed, they nearly destroyed their own ship in the process.”
“They were a group of moderately trained civilians. Our engineering team is the best.”
“Should probably get them on it sooner than later.”
“Consider it done.” He paused and took a heavy breath. “We also need to know the terms of that treaty between the three races—what, exactly, we did to violate it. Not to mention, it would be helpful to know more about the circumstances surrounding that ancient conflict; there must be a reason the three races decided to strike a deal rather than battle it out to the end.”
“It seems the Gatekeepers were most upset about the use of their Gate tech, so I’d wager it had something to do with that.”
“I was thinking the same thing. But is it related to one race using the technology of another? Or traveling through the Gate to the Gatekeeper’s world? Or the technology itself? Are our forces equally matched? Each of those variables changes the conversation a little. Something sparked the Gatekeepers to reveal themselves to us now and then prompted these other beings to send a scout—assuming Jason’s hypothesis pans out.”
“I suppose it isn’t a viable option to just ask the Gatekeepers?”
Wil shook his head. “You saw what they were willing to do to us. That’s not a line of communication I’m ready to reopen.”
Saera sighed. “I’m not sure where that leaves us. We can’t just wait around twiddling our thumbs until these transdimensional beings decide to attack!”
“Never. We prepare for all contingencies. It’s the TSS way.”
“Even so, narrowing it down a little would be helpful.”
“There is one possible way to get a more definitive answer about the treaty,” Wil mused.
“How? You’ve already spoken to the Aesir. They don’t have anything in their records.”
The Aesir had been Wil’s go-to information source about past events, since they were former members of the Priesthood and had taken a copy of the organization’s collective knowledge when they split from the rest of the Taran Empire one thousand years prior. However, they were a private people, so getting a straight answer was often difficult. “The Aesir aren’t the sole keepers of historical information.”
His wife raised her eyebrow quizzically.
“The Priesthood’s island,” he explained. “They had vast records in the underground vaults. It’s possible we missed something in the raid. If this ancient war was such a big deal, I’d expect the Priesthood to have gathered any available information about it.”
She frowned. “The references you saw in the Aesir’s records indicated that it was potentially tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago. That predates the formation of the Priesthood.”
“However, they fancied themselves the official recordkeepers for Tarans. Someone would have made a copy of something as important as a galactic treaty, and the Priesthood would almost certainly have acquired that documentation when they came into power.”
Saera started to perk up. “And if it wasn’t a digital record, then the Aesir wouldn’t have had a copy of it to take with them when they branched off, so it wouldn’t be in their archives now.”
“Exactly.”
Saera nodded thoughtfully. “That is an interesting angle.”
“I’ll add, Raena invited us to visit the island. Apparently, the renovations are going quite well.”
“I suppose it would be appropriate for us to find a suitable location for a parents’ guest suite somewhere out-of-the-way… say, in a neglected basement?” She straightened in her chair.
Wil smiled. “A former records room, perhaps?”
“I like the way you think.”
— — —
After a terrible morning and even worse afternoon, Jason looked forward to turning the day around by spending the evening with Tiff.
It wouldn’t be a date, per se; their relationship wasn’t romantic in nature and never would be. ‘Intimate friends’ is how he labeled it in his mind, not that he ever spoke the term aloud. Honestly, he wasn’t sure how she viewed him, exactly. Whatever they were to each other, it worked—no strings, no pressure. And stars, on days like this, he needed the physical connection to unwind and forget about the outside universe for a while.
Their relationship had been Jason’s lifeline during his early years in the TSS, after Raena left for Tararia; that twin connection everyone joked about was frustratingly real. She had found Ryan, by all accounts her soulmate, while Jason was alone in TSS Headquarters, training for most of the day and studying for the remaining waking hours. In a bold move, Tiff had propositioned him with a ‘friends with benefits’ arrangement near the end of their first year. He’d eventually accepted, figuring there was no harm in a one-time thing, but they kept coming back to each other.
Over the years, as the intimacy in their relationship grew, Tiff had become his closest friend. Now, they spent at least one evening a week together; sometimes a whole night. Jason had long since stopped caring if anyone found out. Tiff
was a smart, attractive Primus Elite Agent. Anyone who judged him for being with her rather than a dynastic heiress deserved a punch in the face—a sentence he’d been known to deal out, when necessary.
The strange thing was, despite their closeness, they rarely spent time together when it wasn’t one-on-one. He was sure his other friends must suspect they had a ‘thing’. In particular, though Gil had never explicitly asked about Tiff, his friend always got a knowing look on his face whenever her name was mentioned. Jason was glad that part of his life remained private. It had zero bearing on his performance as an Agent, so it wasn’t anyone else’s business.
Jason headed to his quarters to shower and get in a short nap before Tiff arrived. They’d occasionally meet up in her quarters, but his was the norm—in large part because he was far tidier. In fact, he was fairly sure that half the time she invited him over was to motivate herself to pick up laundry. Word had it she’d been a decent roommate during training, but she had taken the liberty of having her own space as an Agent to do whatever she pleased. However, that was the beauty of their type of relationship: not his problem.
After showering, he managed to get just under two hours of sleep before his alarm woke him, leaving just enough time to grab a quick meal from the mess hall and brush his teeth before her arrival.
He’d just settled on the couch to wait for her when the door beeped softly and slid open in response to her biometric check; as a matter of ease, they’d coded each other as authorized visitors to their respective quarters.
He stood to greet her.
“Hey,” she said, removing the elastic tie from her dark-brown hair so it fell loose to just above her shoulders. The door slid closed behind her.
She wasn’t stunningly beautiful in the way he had found many of the highborn women he’d met, who had a refined bearing of sophistication that always managed to mesmerize him. Instead, Tiff had downright sex appeal, with a great ass and breasts she knew how to work to her advantage. However, that was never why he was most attracted to her. Her innate confidence and adventurous attitude gave her a frank way of speaking that was a refreshing contrast compared to the deference others paid Jason. He could talk with her for hours, about anything, and be one-hundred-percent confident that what they discussed would never be repeated to another soul.
