“What do you think… what’s your name?” Cassius addressed her. He didn’t know much about her, only that Benjar had recently chosen her to serve as his personal Hand.
“Nora, Your Eminence. Nora Gressler,” she responded firmly, kneeling to touch the floor in reverence.
“The Ancients foresaw much,” Benjar said plainly before Cassius could respond to her. There was no real animosity in his voice, though hardly any interest in conversation either. At the time, however, he and Cassius had the decency to tolerate each other. They had to, for the good of the New Earth Tribunal.
Cassius smiled in Nora’s direction. She nodded before taking a step back to stand quietly at attention.
“Who could have foreseen this?” Cassius asked whichever of them was listening as he turned back toward the view of Earth. “I can’t imagine that it was ever blue and green. What a sight that must have been.”
Benjar shot him a stern glare. “And one we shall witness once more if we stay on the proper path.”
“My son doesn’t think so,” he countered. He placed his hand against the glass and squinted at Earth. He could barely make out the landmass where his son’s research lab was supposedly located.
“Yes, well, Caleb shall soon see what a fool’s errand he is on. One man cannot save Earth. Her Spirit begs a grander act of pena—”
“But what if he can?” Cassius cut Benjar off, not interested in hearing what the Tribune had repeated a thousand times before. “What if science can fix our world as easily as it has provided us new ones?”
Benjar had to reach up to place his hand on the center of Cassius’ back. He then ushered him along down the passage.
“Such are the thoughts that ruined Earth in the first place,” he said. “Gravitum is the curse of our curiosity. One new element to offer us so much, but to take away so much more. Men spent centuries trying to alter the landscapes of Mars and Titan before the Tribune stepped in. Wasted years. Some things are not meant to change until the universe wills it.”
“And some things need more time to grow.” Cassius sighed. “It seems there are some things we will never agree upon.”
“As I have learned…”
They proceeded into the citadel’s private hangar. Only a few ships were docked inside, mostly small transports, but to the far side, the White Hand glistened like a roughly cut pearl.
“Well, I must be off,” Cassius said, veering toward his ship.
“Is Caleb expecting you so soon?” Benjar asked.
“No. I figured I’d surprise him on my birthday and see his work firsthand.” He paused and took a deep breath. “I haven’t returned to Earth since the war.” The words slipped out of his mouth with a sour note. As much glory as the Earth Reclaimer War had brought him, enough to be named a Tribune despite his origin, few fond memories of the conflict remained.
“The planet is forever in your debt, Cassius, but you will find it has not changed much. Despite your son’s intervention.”
“Ahh, Benjar.” Cassius smiled warmly and clutched his fellow Tribune’s shoulder. “One day I will make a believer out of you.”
“And I, you.” Benjar put on a haughty grin before he clasped his hands together and bowed. “May the Spirit of the Earth guide your steps.”
“It always does.”
Cassius swiftly turned around to board his ship when a group of engineers burst into the hangar. The few Tribunal guards posted around the space were roused by the commotion, forming a defensive line in front of their masters.
“Your Eminences!” the head engineer shouted frantically. By the time he reached them, he was so winded he could barely speak. He still found the energy to kneel and touch the floor in their presence.
“Out with it!” Nora ordered, stepping before the Tribunes and brandishing her pulse-pistol.
“There is…” He gathered his breath. “Intense seismic activity on Earth. A new rupture appears to be opening from the core. I-I don’t know wh—”
“When?” Cassius whirled around and stormed back down the White Hand’s ramp.
“Right now. The activity is off the charts.”
Cassius seized him by the collar. “Where? Show me!”
The engineer quaked with fear as he activated a holopad and pulled up a projection of Earth. A substantial blob of red light bloomed beneath the surface of one of the continents in the northern hemisphere.
“It can’t be.” Cassius’ eyes widened in horror. His fingers slipped off the engineer’s shirt and he stumbled backward as if he were shot in the chest.
“What’s the matter, Cassius?” Benjar asked, without appearing overly concerned.
“Caleb… it’s… it’s right under him.” He could hardly get the words out, but he caught his footing and took off back onto his ship.
“Your Eminence!” the head engineer cried out after him. “It’s too dangerous!”
Cassius bounded through the cargo bay of the White Hand and toward the command deck.
“Ready the engines and set a course for Earth!” he shouted into his holopad.
“Beginning preparations, Cassius,” the virtual intelligence Gaia responded through the ship’s speaker system. He didn’t even care that he was risking using her around Tribunal men.
When he reached the command deck, Cassius took his position. The floor rumbled as the twin ion drives powered up. The hangar doors outside remained closed, blocking him in, as he impatiently rolled his fingers across the armrest.
“Cassius, step down. I can’t let you do this,” the voice of Benjar Vakari demanded calmly from behind him.
“I’ll blast through it if I have to, Benjar,” Cassius said, seething. “Get out!”
“And have everyone inside suffocate?”
Cassius stood, drew his pistol, and wheeled around. Three Tribunal soldiers standing behind Benjar drew their weapons as well. Nora was just in front of him, hand over the grip of her pulse-pistol. The head engineer stood directly beside her with his eyes trained on the projection of Earth.
Cassius took aim directly at the man’s chest. “Open it,” he commanded sternly.
The engineer went to key some commands on his holopad but was stopped by Benjar. “No,” he said. “The risk is too great.”
“Do it.” Cassius’ voice barely rose above a whisper, but the ferocity in his tone was enough to make the engineer freeze in pure dread. “Open it.” Cassius shot at his feet, and the three Tribunal soldiers instantly stomped forward. Nora took aim at him.
“He will do no such thing. Cassius, you are not thinking clearly,” Benjar said from behind the safety of his guards. “You are a member of the Tribunal Council.”
“It is my son!” Cassius roared. He shifted his aim to Benjar. A bullet from Nora’s gun slammed into the side of his own and knocked it out of his hands. He stood still, staring into his empty hand. He could hardly make out any of the muddle of noises surrounding him, until the engineer spoke up.
“Your Eminences,” the man began timidly, “scanners are picking up a ship taking off from the site of the seismic activity.”
“There are survivors?” Cassius snapped out of his trance. He rushed past the group of anxious guards. “Show me!”
He grasped the engineer’s wrist to get a closer look at the projection, seeing a tiny red blip flying away from Earth toward Luna.
“Tell them to head here,” he said. “Open the hangar doors! Quickly!” Cassius ran to his ship’s viewport and leaned over the rail.
The engineer looked to Benjar, who offered a reluctant nod before returning his attention to Cassius, a narrow grin pasted onto his face. After a few moments, everybody in the hangar evacuated for depressurization. Then the two layers of its airlock opened, and Earth became visible.
Everybody waited quietly, the soldiers with their fingers on their triggers. The engineer was ready to break into tears as he glanced down at the bullet hole in front of his feet. Cassius’ hands squeezed the railing, watching anxiously as an ion trail
traced across the blackness toward their location.
Minutes went by. All in silence. Then, finally, the small ship darted over Luna’s gray landscape. It was on low approach, and as it grew closer, Cassius could tell that one of the wings was severely damaged. Just barely able to reach the surface of the hangar, it skidded along the floor until it crashed against the opposite wall with enough force to stagger everyone.
Cassius didn’t hesitate for a second. As the hangar pressurized, he rushed out of the command deck before anybody could stop him, quickly traversing the halls of his ship to exit back into the hangar.
As he approached, Cassius saw the pilot stand and head to the cabin of the small transport. The cargo door slid open, and the pilot tumbled out, soaked in blood and soot. He gripped his leg in clear agony.
“There are more inside,” he moaned. “I don’t know if they made it.”
Cassius ignored him. His eyes were fixed on the open cabin. Two bodies lay inside, he was sure of that. Once he got closer, he saw that they were side by side with one’s arm thrown over the other. A thick piece of metal shrapnel pierced it, severing the limb and also plunging through the chest of the body beneath.
His heart raced. He immediately recognized the body on top by her long, wavy auburn hair. “Sage,” he whispered as he noticed her chest was still expanding and contracting.
She was alive. Breathing. Though if she wasn’t tended to quickly, she would likely bleed out through her mangled arm. The face of the other victim was blocked by her hair.
Cassius moved forward slowly. He almost didn’t want to know. After countless battles and scrapes with death, that moment of uncertainty was the most frightened he had ever been. He reached in and brushed Sage’s hair back. When he saw the face it covered, it felt like a knife had been stuck through his heart.
“Caleb,” he whimpered. “Caleb!”
He dragged the body out, pulling it to the ground, where he began pushing down on his son’s chest. He attempted to kiss air into his lungs, but all he tasted was blood.
“Caleb, breathe!” He repeated the same process over and over, pushing down harder. “Breathe!” he wailed, tears raining down his cheeks as he fell into his son’s chest. “Breathe…”
“I tried to help him. He went back for this,” the pilot said. He struggled to pull something out from his belt, but before he could, Cassius turned around and punched him across the face in rage. A small glass cylinder with a wiry plant floating inside rolled away from the pilot’s body. Cassius was too incensed to notice then. He lost control.
Tribunal guards raced over to pull Cassius away, but he fought them off, driving punch after punch into the poor pilot’s face until the man spat up his own bloody teeth. By the time he was peeled off the poor man, he’d already beaten the pilot half to death.
“Your Eminence, you must calm down!” Nora Gressler demanded. She hurried to tend to the groaning pilot.
The soldiers around Cassius backed away, unsure what to do next since he was still their superior. The whole room spun so fast he felt like he was going to vomit. And at the time, he didn’t notice Benjar pick up the plant and tuck it into his robe.
“Caleb,” Cassius whispered as he crawled toward the body. He ran his hands through his son’s short hair and lifted his head to his chest, cradling it as he sobbed. Then he went to grab Caleb’s hand, only to find a small spherical holorecorder held firmly in the dead fingers’ grip. The only pair for his own in existence.
Cassius broke down completely. He couldn’t even speak. He was shattered.
***
Nearly eight years later Cassius held that same recorder in the center of his palm. He’d made it for Caleb, able to transmit direct messages across the Circuit, or even initiate holo-communications if they were within range, without Tribunal oversight. He’d watched the message from Earth, which had never reached him for his birthday that day, countless times since. It was all he had left to remember Caleb in his final moments of life.
Tears pooled in the corners of his eyes as he glanced back up toward Enceladus, where he imagined Nora Gressler sitting comfortably upon her throne. I will see you soon, my replacement, he thought, squeezing the recorder.
His period of rumination was over. War had taught him well the sacrifices that had to be made to achieve victory. Cassius Vale was ready.
29
Chapter Twenty-Nine—Adim
ADIM remained in sleep state as the Shadow Chariot raced through space toward Ennomos. He was twenty-five hours and three minutes away from Titan when the ship’s scanners registered an unidentified vessel.
He stirred promptly, studying the data streaming across the viewport holoscreen. A small spacefaring vessel followed him, one that likely didn’t have the fuel to be able to make it anywhere else after it followed him to Ennomos. Cassius had taught him all the different types of Tribunal ships, so he knew right away what this one was.
“Creator, this unit is being followed by a small ship, executor class,” ADIM transmitted to Cassius. He began to alter his own ship’s heading so subtly that whoever was tracking him wouldn’t notice. “This unit has modified course. The executor cannot be allowed to track the Shadow Chariot’s trajectory toward Ennomos.”
Soon after, Cassius responded with a touch of excitement in his tone. “Finally! I had a feeling I saw a man tracking us back at the Conduit. It appears she’s not as coy as I believed.”
“She?”
“Tribune Nora Gressler. Benjar has her entirely on his leash now.”
“Shall this unit destroy the executor?”
“Not yet,” Cassius instructed. “Maintain your new bearing for an hour as if you haven’t noticed him. Then I want you to do something that will contradict everything I’ve ever asked of you.”
“Yes, Creator?”
“Disable the ship’s engines. Then board it and dispose of him. And, ADIM, make sure he sees you first.”
ADIM’s eyes again began to rotate wildly. “This unit will be discovered? He’s an executor. It is as you said, ‘the Tribune is always watching through the eyes of the knights in the darkness’.”
“I’m betting on it,” Cassius said, his tone growing firm. “It is time for you to reveal your existence to the Circuit.”
For all his existence, ADIM had remained in the shadows. The order led him to pause in a manner he wasn’t accustomed to. He never had a strong need to interact with any other humans besides Cassius, but he was always curious to study how they lived. Thought. By understanding his Creator’s people more comprehensively, he could better help bring the change Cassius sought.
As the Shadow Chariot continued to cruise, his thinking shifted. He shuffled through the myriad possible outcomes, not used to uncertainty. What if they fear me? he wondered to himself, though he wasn’t truly sure what that would mean for him. But the will of his creator was all that drove him, and it had never led him astray.
“This unit shall not fail.”
ADIM did as directed, waiting precisely an hour before assuming complete command of the Shadow Chariot and abruptly looping around. He zoomed through the blackness until he got a visual of the executor’s ship. He fired high-caliber rounds from the front flak cannons, knowing that a direct missile would blow the executor to dust.
The enemy pilot was more talented than expected. His ship tucked up into a tight spiral to evade before snaking around to fire one of his missiles. ADIM waited until the last second to release chaff, and evaded, causing the heat-seeking projectile to zip by. He saw the projectile explode in the reflection of his viewport.
The ability to utilize heavy ordnance gave ADIM’s opponent a distinct advantage. He had to kill the executor in a more personal manner, forcing him to reconsider his tactics. He maintained a straight line, allowing the executor to come around and trail him. Another missile locked on, and he waited until it was close before releasing more chaff to draw it off him. Then he unlatched the circuits binding him to the ship and began processing
the exact velocities of both vessels.
Twelve seconds… eleven seconds… He counted down to when he’d make his move.
Another missile lanced out of the enemy ship. ADIM powered down the Shadow Chariot, opened the cockpit, and let himself be yanked out by the rapid shift in pressure. While soaring, he targeted the missile and shot it down before it could impact his ship. He then magnetized at the exact moment he passed over the executor vessel, clinging to it.
He crawled across the viewport, looking down at the man sitting at the controls inside. The ship accelerated into a series of tight barrel rolls, the executor desperately trying to fling ADIM off. It failed. He climbed down over the sharp bow of the vessel, just far enough so that the man could look straight at his face. ADIM saw his eyes open wide and the man’s mouth hanging, baffled.
“This unit has been seen, Creator,” ADIM transmitted to Cassius. “Shall I dispose of the executor?”
“However you see fit,” Cassius replied instantly, seeming satisfied.
Without hesitating, ADIM used his wrist-laser to cut a hole in the transparisteel. He then smashed through, grasped the executor by the neck, and heaved him out. Holding the body up in the cold vacuum of space, he stood tall atop the now-empty ship. The helmetless executor pawed at his neck frantically, his mouth trying to scream but nothing coming out. His eyes began to bulge as he thrashed futilely.
ADIM watched for a few seconds as space sucked the air from the executor’s lungs, leaving him swollen and dead. He knew humans couldn’t survive in space, but he had never seen the effects directly.
The human dies instantly, but this unit does not, ADIM thought to himself. Just like on Earth, he was able to survive where humans couldn’t, which meant he could serve the will of his Creator in any location.
Satisfied with the revelation, ADIM tossed the body aside, sending it spinning off into the void. Then he targeted the Shadow Chariot still caught in inertia and flying straight almost directly below. He moved into position and calculated the angle before pushing off toward it.
The Circuit: The Complete Saga Page 20
