Not long after, Saturn crept ever closer.
She’d seen the gas giant once, nearly a decade before, but she’d forgotten how beautiful a sight it was. The planet’s tilted discs circled it like crescent blades of ice and dust. Their soft pallet of blues, oranges and browns flawlessly complemented the roiling atmosphere of the planet.
Dancing around all of that was an archipelago of smaller bodies, one of which was the pale orange orb of Titan—her destination. Enceladus floated a distance from it, the moon where Tribune Nora Gressler’s citadel was located. Those two moons hosted the primary settlements in Saturn’s orbit, and positioned closest to Titan was a conduit station.
She keyed a few commands and sent a transmission to Cassius Vale’s compound. “Cassius, it… it’s Sage,” she said, doing her best to sound composed. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I must see you. I promise I’m coming alone.”
No response. After some time, her ship plunged through the thick atmosphere of Titan. The restraints pulled tightly against her armor as it rattled and shook violently. When she emerged above the icy world below, Cassius finally answered.
“Sage!” he exclaimed. “What a pleasant surprise. I will open the hangar for you immediately. You know where to go.”
She didn’t expect him to be so compliant, especially if he was guilty, but there was no reason to argue. Pulling on the ship’s yoke, Sage flattened her flight path and headed toward Edeoria. Her fighter shot over the ridge of a crater and she banked around, slipping smoothly into a hangar built into the wall of the crag.
The White Hand was already parked within, so she set down beside it. She unlatched her restraints, opened the viewport, and hopped over the side, where she saw Cassius already approaching.
“Sage, my dear,” he said, spreading his arms wide to embrace her, “I wasn’t expecting your visit.”
“I wish it were under better circumstances,” Sage said, returning a timid hug.
“Last I saw you, you were bedridden on New Terrene. I’m glad to see your injuries have all healed.” He pressed his hand between her shoulder blades and led her toward the exit.
What does he mean ‘saw me’? Sage pondered. She imagined that word must have spread to him from the council about what had occurred on Mars. “It’s been too many years, Cassius.”
“Years?” His brow wrinkled as he glared at her with a confused expression. “It was only a few months ago that I helped you with that bomb. You saved many lives that day.”
There he goes again, she thought, worried that Benjar was right about him losing his mind. “Helped me?” she asked. Then she tried her best to think back to the explosion on Mars. It still remained a haze of distorted figures and shouting voices.
Cassius frowned. “You don’t remember, do you?” he said. “We must have less time than I thought.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I will tell you everything soon enough.”
“I didn’t come here to exchange secrets.” She shook his hand off her. “The Tribune is accusing you of crimes I know you wouldn’t commit. You must—”
“No secrets,” he promised. “Come with me. I have to show you something.” His face was stern. He led her down one of the branching corridors, and she couldn’t help but follow.
It didn’t take long for Sage to realize that his entire compound had been stripped bare. When she’d visited him almost a decade earlier, it had been filled with handcrafted artifacts and beautifications collected by generations of the Vale family. Presently, the deeper they delved, the more stark and lifeless it became. It didn’t appear that anybody was living with him. Not even a single aide. He was in complete and utter solitude.
“I don’t remember it being so empty here,” Sage said matter-of-factly as they strolled side by side. She was hopeful he would give her at least a suitable reason.
“I found many of my parents’ assets to be superfluous,” Cassius replied, his robust voice echoing throughout the vacant halls. “It all reminded me too much of him. I enjoy the quiet.”
“But so alone…” Sage whispered, realizing she understood exactly what he was talking about.
“To be an executor is to be alone. It is the vow we take. ‘I am the silent hand of the Tribune.’ Bullshit,” he snapped, causing Sage to jump. “They never tell you how empty it makes you.”
“But you rose beyond it,” she argued, the tone of her voice growing more urgent without her realizing. The more Cassius spoke, the more Benjar’s fears seemed to be justified. “You became a Tribune. You achieved more than most men do in an entire lifetime.”
Cassius burst into laughter and leaned toward her, malice in his eyes. “I was merely a figurehead placed in honor of the war that we won… That I won. That’s all. And after leaving all of it behind, I have only a single regret, Sage. Only one.”
Sage’s brow furrowed. “What is that?”
“You.” They stopped and he turned, his passionate gaze boring through her. “That I let them do this to you. What happened to the beautiful, affectionate young woman my son fell in love with? I look at you now. I look into your eyes and see the same coldness that seized me. I could have stopped it, but I fear it may be too late.”
“It was my choice,” Sage said defensively. She averted her gaze and continued to walk. They were entering the only hall in the entire compound with anything in it. Rows of holographic busts lined the walls—detailed effigies of all the Vales before Cassius.
“Maybe it was, but I rebuilt you after that terrible day. I could have showed you the path to freedom. If only I wasn’t so focused on the spineless Tribunes trying to get rid of me!” His face flushed with anger as he took a moment to collect himself. “Do you even remember his face? Or is it just a blur along with everything else that came before they took you in and made you numb?”
Cassius looked left at one of the busts. Sage mimicked him and stared at the hologram of a young man for at least ten seconds before she recognized him. It can’t be, she thought. Her throat went dry and her jaw dropped open. Her chest felt like it was being squeezed.
“Ca… Ca,” she stammered. “Caleb.” The name barely managed to escape her quivering lips as she stumbled forward, catching her balance on the pedestal projecting his face.
“It seems like an age ago, doesn’t it?” Cassius said. “Every life you take for them will make him more and more the stranger—your mind occupied by the specters of the men you kill until he is gone. That blithe smile he always wore will be lost like ashes to the winds of Earth.” Cassius’ fingers stretched down over both her shoulders. “And then you will be no more than a mindless machine to them. A tool, as I was.”
Caleb… Just repeating his name in her mind overwhelmed Sage so much that she dropped to her knees. She wasn’t hysterical, but streams of silent tears ran from her eyes, out of her control.
“Why are you showing me this?” she asked softly. “I haven’t forgotten him…”
“Not yet,” Cassius said. “Not entirely. But I don’t want you to become like me. When I look at his face, it fills me with enough rage to raze the Circuit to cinders.” His voice cracked. “It makes me want to go and kill something so that somebody else will understand… so that anybody else could know what I lost!”
Sage had always known Cassius as a serious man, but it was only then that she saw him for what he was. It gave her goosebumps. The hatred in his dark eyes was like a black hole ready to devour her and everything around her. She didn’t want to admit it, but it terrified her.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” she said weakly, her fingers falling to caress the handle of her pistol. “Benjar was right…”
“You always were bright,” Cassius remarked. He turned his back to her and sighed. “I think that’s why he loved you so much. Not only a pretty face. You were worth talking to.”
Her index finger threaded through the trigger guard of her gun, but when Cassius glanced back over his shoulder at her, she pulled it away. As mu
ch as it frightened her, she recognized the hollowness that accompanied his rage. She saw it in her own eyes every time she looked at her reflection.
It doesn’t matter. I am an executor of the Tribune. She had to do what was required of her.
“I have to arrest you, Cassius,” she said. “I can’t allow you to do any more harm to the people of the Circuit.”
He slowly turned to face her, displaying his empty hands in surrender. “I know. And I won’t try to stop you, Sage. But first, allow me to show you something else. Let me show you the truth of what it means to be an executor.” He extended his hand to help her to her feet.
She hesitated. She wanted to trust him, but as genuine as he seemed, she couldn’t help but imagine that he was inviting her to her death.
“Please,” he urged. “I would never tarnish my son’s legacy. You have my word.”
She glanced up toward the image of Caleb’s face. I believe him, she thought as the static hologram looked back at her. Then, placing aside her doubt, she reached up to grasp his outstretched hand. Whatever he had become, Cassius would never break a promise made in his son’s name.
However, one thing still bugged her. “Why, though? Why raid harmless transports?”
“Harmless?” Cassius appeared shocked by the question. “Gravitum, my dear. It’s the key to all of this.” Once they both stood upright, he went to wipe her cheeks. She instinctually pulled away.
“All of what?” she bristled.
“Everything.” Cassius led her back in the same direction they’d arrived from, an air of exuberance about him. “The Circuit. Our survival. The war for our homeworld. The element has now been sought on all the worlds we know of, and never been found. Even after spending half a millennium beyond it, we remain bound to Earth.”
“The Spirit binds us,” Sage said. “One day our homeworld will receive us with gracious arms. You know that.”
Cassius scoffed. “The ramblings of the Tribune are no more than a means of control. Tell me, do you really believe in your heart that we are all connected by some cosmic power inherent to that wasteland of a planet?”
Sage gritted her teeth, biting off the first response that popped into her head. She took no pleasure in having her faith belittled but chose to keep the conversation civil. “You really don’t think we’ll ever return for good?”
“Through faith?” He sounded on the verge of hysterical laughter. “You’ll have better luck trying to turn water into alcohol. Perhaps we could fix Earth one day. My son believed that through science we could, and now he is dead for it. I believe that he was right, but not without centuries of dedicated work, probably more. But there is no Spirit unifying us. The Tribune appeases its people with lies, lies that I was once foolish enough to hope for. Faith is a powerful ally.”
“How can you say all of that after serving alongside them for so long?” Sage argued, her hands balled into fists. It was getting difficult for her to remain calm.
“How could I not? There was a time when we needed such order to pull us out of an age of darkness. Now, the value of the Tribune has outlasted its welcome. Is our survival really so much in question anymore? Do we even need gravitum when we could finally let our bodies evolve and adapt? I don’t blame them for their methods, but it took the death of my only son for me to realize how much their dogmatic views are holding us back!” He stopped in front of an unmarked, plated metal door. “I wish only to release the shackles both they and Earth have placed on us, so that we may reach beyond our wildest dreams.”
Cassius activated his bracer’s holopad and keyed a few commands. A console flipped out of the wall beside the door, and he placed his eye in front of a retinal scanner. The door slowly began to rise into the ceiling, kicking off a layer of dust.
An ominous feeling ran through Sage as the opening grew to reveal a cramped, dimly lit elevator.
“What if it is just you who wants to leave the Tribune behind?” Sage asked. “What if you’re wrong?”
“Then at least…” Cassius exhaled. “At least I will have opened some new eyes along the way.” He stepped forward onto the lift and waited patiently for her to join him.
Everything in Sage’s body told her not to go in, but she couldn’t help it. She couldn’t arrest him without seeing what he wanted to show her, no matter how much heresy he spewed. She owed him that much for saving her life.
Why kill me now? she assured herself before stepping in.
The door slid shut behind them and the elevator began to descend quickly. A ringing sound filled her ears as if a bomb had gone off nearby. It grew louder and louder the deeper they went. Again, her heart began racing, her fingers impulsively falling toward the handle of her pistol.
“Don’t be afraid.” Cassius placed his palm over her artificial hand and guided it away from her weapon. “It’s just interference. I would never harm you.”
The lift came to a sudden halt and opened. Sage gratefully stepped out before looking where she was. The ringing didn’t subside.
She stumbled forward, finding herself in a passage with holoscreens projected on either side of it. Each of them showed the same thing—exactly what she saw through her own two eyes. As she looked around the room, the screens replicated her vision. She came to the center of them and turned to Cassius, and he appeared all around her.
“What is this?” she mumbled as she began spinning around. All the screens raced to keep up like there were cameras in her eyes, causing her to go dizzy.
“I must apologize,” Cassius said contritely. “I did lie about one thing. I was expecting your visit.”
When Sage’s hand grasped her pistol this time, it wasn’t out of reflex. “How are you doing this!” she shouted, lifting her firearm to aim at him. With her other hand she held her ear to try to keep the ringing at bay.
“I’m doing nothing. I merely hacked onto an already existing system.” He presented his empty palms.
“What system? What are you talking about?” She approached him cautiously, not shifting her aim.
“There’s the killer they made you,” Cassius said. In the holoscreens, she realized that he could see her sights directed at the center of his forehead.
“I’m talking about the Tribune!” he pronounced. “About the true intent behind my visit to the Arbiter’s Enclave on New Terrene.”
Sage’s frustration was building. Her natural hand began to shake with rage. Beads of sweat dripped down her forehead, and her whole expression darkened to the point where Cassius actually appeared worried that she might shoot. She worried she might too.
“While there, I was able to obtain the encryption to show you this,” he said. “Did you wonder how your masters knew about the raid on that freighter without you having to make contact? Have you ever wondered why that worm Benjar feels the need to be near you, to know your scent and touch, when he could have any woman he desires?”
Sage shook her head repeatedly, reciting the vows of an executor under her breath as if it would calm her. She wasn’t even looking at Cassius anymore, but her artificial grip kept her aim steady. She couldn’t help but notice that on the holoscreens.
“After seeing through your eyes for so long, and hearing your beautiful voice, it’s no wonder he craves you. But now that I have seen it, I won’t let him or others continue to poison you.” Cassius remained guarded, but he began to slowly stride toward her with his palms still presented. “I won’t let them taint what my son loved. Not anymore.”
“I led Tal… impossible… This is all you…” Sage struggled to speak. Her eyes darted from screen to screen.
“Why, you ask? You said it in your vows. A body must feel where its hand is going. It must see what its fingers touch if it hopes to explore the darker corners of our universe. The executors are the extent of the council’s gaze—eyes with a gun. That is all you are to them.” As he spoke, Cassius took a few hardly noticeable shuffles forward. He was so near that her pistol now pressed against his chest.
“Even when I was a Tribune, it was all I remained to them too,” he continued. “A puppet with a legend they could exploit. I only found out this truth after I took my oath, but they used my son’s life to keep me loyal. Now they don’t have that luxury.”
Cassius went to lower her firearm, but she nudged his hand away.
“No… Lies…” she pronounced. She could hardly speak.
“The implant they gave you does more than augment your ability to fight,” he explained. “It invades the hippocampus, making your memory fuzzy and unclear. It’s why Caleb remains no more than a blank face. It dulls all pain, not just physical, and after too long takes away all that makes you human. Until all that remains is the Tribune. What do you think happened when it was damaged in that explosion? The parts of you it had subdued were able to shine through.”
Sage wheezed, trying her best to hold back from vomiting. “You are a liar!” she roared, shoving him back with the barrel of her pistol. “Betraying the Tribune… staging robberies… what are you planning, Cassius!?”
He didn’t budge. Instead, he stared into her petrified eyes, somehow knowing that she wasn’t going to shoot.
“But you are not completely lost yet, as I am,” he continued. “I found a way to remove it without them killing you! I can make your eyes your own again.” He turned his head so that she could see the long jagged scar running up the back of his head from his neck. It was in the same position as hers and every other executor’s was, but far more gruesome.
“You are a servant, Sage, but I won’t allow it any longer.” He again reached for her artificial hand still clutching the handle of her gun. This time she backed away, almost stumbling as she kept the pistol upright. “Remember who fixed you before,” he said. “It’s my fault they got their hands on you, but please let me help you now again.”
She gazed straight into Cassius’ eyes and in them saw those of his son. It seemed like a lifetime ago, but they had been engaged before Caleb Vale was prematurely taken from her. She even gave her arm to try to save him—an arm restored by the man standing in front of her, promising his help. Yet that was all before he turned his back on the Tribune she loved.
The Circuit: The Complete Saga Page 24
