by J. N. Chaney
“Rear observation deck, confirmed. Thank you, Admiral Kane,” the synthesized voice said.
Kane felt the elevator slide backward and then ascend toward the aft of the Goliath-class Corvette—his Corvette, the Black Labyrinth, did not belong to the Republic, as much as someone like Senator Blackman might insist that it did. In fact, none of the ships in his fleet did. Weren’t Blackman and his ilk the very ones to make him disavow the Republic? Wasn’t the entire charade contingent upon severing allegiances?
Only when it suited them, apparently. If anyone were to be caught, there would be no record of backroom agreements with senators, just a rogue admiral gone mad. How convenient.
In the end, it was always about convenience. Anything could be categorized under that heading. His marriage, for example, could have been forged or terminated using convenience as a catalyst. Forgoing a relationship with his daughter had been predicated upon convenience. His life was always a matter of someone else’s convenience.
But no more. From now on, he would do what was convenient for him and no one else. His wife was gone—she’d chosen them over him. His daughter was gone too—as was his love for the Republic. All of it was lost.
Something warm flowed from his nose again. More blood, he supposed. The pain in his head told him so. The handkerchief was already saturated, so he decided not to bother wiping.
“Arrived, rear observation deck. Thank you, Admiral Kane.”
The elevator doors swooshed open with a chime. He stepped into an immense room the size of a small cargo bay. The entire ceiling was an intricate latticework of windows and girders, while the far wall boasted a spectacular view of a desert planet. The only better view of the Jujari’s home world of Oorajee would be in a void suit. This was as good as any ship could provide.
Several crew were scattered throughout the popular space, enjoying their breaks or an off-duty picnic with friends. One at a time, conversations turned to hushed whispers as the crew noticed the admiral. Several covered their mouths while others put their food down.
One brave soul approached the commander. “Admiral Kane, do you need assistance?”
Kane ignored him. There was no time for this. “Everyone out,” he seethed, noting that his voice sounded different.
The room began to empty, people rushing as one toward the elevator without a word. Once Kane was alone, he stepped closer to the wide window on the far side. The view was truly spectacular, the planet’s curvature taking up the entire breadth of the window. Other ships in the fleet—his fleet—shot short bursts of light to the planet. Puffs of sand-colored smoke erupted hundreds of kilometers below. Everything looked so small from up here.
He turned and looked at the ceiling filled with stars and ships. Small bursts of light exploded against defense shields as the Jujari and Republic fleets sparred. These were just small slaps, but the real fighting would begin soon enough.
He activated the holo-screen on his wrist computer and opened a private channel. “Captain Nos Kil.”
“Yes, Admiral.”
“I want you in the rear observation deck.”
“Right away, Admiral.”
Kane closed the connection and turned back to the wide window to wait. Everything had gone according to plan. Well, mostly. The discovery that the Novia’s ships were, in fact, derelicts was not fortuitous. But he knew there was more. The hidden halls of that forgotten place held more than any of them could imagine. The place called to him to wake it from its long slumber. And he would do just that.
After all this time, it was finally his turn to choose—his turn to tell the traitors what to do. He was not their lapdog or their errand boy. And they would not be able to steal power from him. Of course, he would not be inconsistent like them either. He would keep power free of the stains of compromise. He would not dilute the goals of the Republic with the whims of manipulators.
No, he must not call it the Republic anymore. It was too far gone. Its day was done. Instead, there would be a new name, a new dawn. The long slumber would be over soon, and the essence of perfect power, the paragon of rule, would take its place.
He heard the soft patter of blood smacking the black floor.
The Republic had taken enough. They’d taken his wife, his daughter, and now his granddaughter. They’d taken his career. He’d sacrificed his body in the temple of their bloodlust. And then they tried to play it all off as “the price of devotion.” Isn’t that what they called it? What a terrible price it had been. But no more. Now it was they who would pay a dear price.
“Admiral, sir,” a voice said from across the room. Kane raised a hand to summon the captain, and footsteps followed as Nos Kil’s armored boots thumped across the floor. “You summoned me, Admiral?”
“I’m not that anymore,” Kane replied.
There was a pause. Kane knew the captain might need a minute.
“Pardon me, Admiral?”
“I’m not that—Admiral. Stop calling me that.”
“Yes—sir.” The captain paused. “How would you like me to address you, then?”
The blood had started to ebb, and the pain was beginning to subside. The voice—the other voice—had stopped talking to him as well. It didn’t need to. It felt good to finally be a single soul.
He turned and faced his captain. The trooper stood, helmet under his arm, blaster maglocked to his thigh, clad in his black armor, three white lines on his chest and shoulder. Eyes wide, the Marine took a step back.
“I need you to do something very special for me, Captain Nos Kil.”
Nos Kil pointed. “Sir, your—”
“Did you not hear me?”
The captain cleared his throat and lowered his hand. “What are your orders?”
“I need you to go back.”
“Back, sir?” Nos Kil asked.
“To Ithnor Ithelia.”
The captain hesitated, staring to the side rather than at Kane’s mouth—bloodstained surely—and black eyes. “As you command. You don’t wish me here, then?”
“I will not be staying long over Oorajee. I will give the fleet its orders. I have other business to attend to—with the Luma.”
“Yes, Ad—”
“The admiral, he is no more.”
“Sir, your eyes and your voice are—”
Yes, his eyes and voice had changed. For the better. “From now on, you will address me as…”
Could he really say it out loud? Saying it out loud would make it real—something he could never take back. But it was true. He had changed. Something inside him had changed, and he would never go back.
So he could say it.
He had to say it.
“You will address me as Moldark.”
2
Awen’s strength returned after four more days of recovery, each marked by oddly placed sunrises and sunsets. She had remained confined to her makeshift bed in the large office, watching the alien world through the large floor-to-ceiling windows along two walls. When she did sleep, however, it was anything but restful. Her mind was filled with images of Kane and that thing that resided inside of him. She thought of her parents and their safety. And she wondered—with more interest than she cared to admit—how Magnus had fared in finding his men. As her strength returned, she was eager to leave her restless dreams and help her new friends find a way to return to the protoverse.
Ezo and TO-96 returned at regular intervals to report on their findings, and Awen was happy to see them. They were like the old pioneers on planets in the Meridian Outskirts, playing out the stories her parents had read to her when she was a child. Ezo and his faithful bot would set out on an expedition to map some new part of the city, only to return to camp, eager to share their findings with everyone else—in this case, just her and Sootriman.
On her first morning of feeling fully recovered, Awen sat with Sootriman in the far side of the makeshift recovery room, treating the meeting nook like a small headquarters. It provided a good view of the city, safety from whatever beasts roam
ed the forest, and quick access to street level. The building’s top floor had a better 360-degree view of the entire city, but none of them wanted to climb a hundred flights of stairs to get there. Ezo had done it once and said it wasn’t worth it until they could find some way to recondition the elevators.
Awen sat with her elbows on her knees. Sootriman had washed her old clothes, and Ezo had provided a new set from the Indomitable’s holds. Like Sootriman, Awen wore green cargo pants, and tore the sleeves of her black shirt too. It was too hot for long sleeves. She also chose to keep her old boots since they were already breaking in—no sense starting over. She’d rebraided her hair and still wore her Luma medallion.
“You and Ezo seem to have worked things out,” Awen said. They had some time to kill before Ezo and TO-96 arrived.
Sootriman blushed. “You know, being stranded on an alien planet in another universe has a way of forcing you to talk things through. That, or make you kill each other.”
“Didn’t you want to, though? Kill him, I mean.”
“What makes you think I still don’t?” Sootriman winked.
Just then, Ezo and TO-96 entered the room and glanced at the two women. “What?” Ezo asked, looking as though he’d missed the punch line to a good joke. “What’d I miss? What were you talking about?”
“Oh, nothing,” Sootriman said. “Just catching up.”
“That’s not true. According to my long-range audio sensors, you just said that you’d like to—”
“Shut it, Tee-Oh,” Sootriman ordered, shaking her head. “You always were a lurker around the den.”
“A ‘lurker’?” TO-96 asked Ezo. “But you said I was—”
“Never mind what I said, Tee-Oh! That was years ago.”
“Everyone is insisting I stop speaking,” TO-96 said to no one in particular. “I was simply trying to help.”
Awen laughed. She’d grown to love this bot.
TO-96 sat down in the headquarters while Ezo walked to the windows. Over the preceding days, the pair had brought reports of the city’s infrastructure and how the planet’s ecosystem had reclaimed it. The foundations and innermost sections of each building, however, had held up surprisingly well, a fact that they told with ample enthusiasm. Apparently, the Novia Minoosh had been a vibrant and dynamic culture right up until its inhabitants all disappeared.
“So, still no ideas why they’re gone?” Awen asked TO-96.
“I am sorry, Awen, no. Not at this time.” The bot’s glowing round eyes stared at her through his clear face shield, almost managing to convey remorse. “We still have too little evidence to formulate any substantial hypothesis, let alone generate reliable conclusions. To put it in laypeople’s terms, we are coming up short. We are unable to secure a suitable dance partner even though the band has begun playing. We are at the head of an inland waterway without a hand-propulsion tool.”
“We’ve got it, Ninety-Six,” Awen said with a laugh. “I think you need to work on your metaphors.”
The bot tilted his head. “You don’t find them applicable?”
“No, I do. But the wording is… you know what? Never mind. They’re perfect.”
“Very well. Furthermore, as far as we can tell, there are no signs of war or mass pestilence—a biological pandemic, for example. For either of those, we would have found bodily remains. And in the instance of war, we would have seen the structural damage and disarray emblematic of said activities.”
“And you haven’t found those,” Awen concluded.
“No.”
“It’s almost like they vanished,” Ezo said, stepping toward the angled floor-to-ceiling window. “Then there’s the outstanding question of why it seems like no one else has been here.”
“So, we’re the first?” Awen asked.
“At least as far as we can tell.”
“If other species have explored this place,” the bot said, “then they covered their tracks well. There are no traces of vandalism, and all Novia belongings—personal or corporate—seem meticulously stored. As far as we can tell, these beings were bipedal vertebrates, taller than the known humanoids of our race and significantly stronger, at least by my calculations.”
The thought of seeing what these beings looked like and finding their possessions delighted Awen, but that would probably need to wait for later trips. “Seems there will be much to discover when we can return,” she said, still lamenting the fact that they’d never actually meet the Novia Minoosh. She rubbed her hands together. “So, where do you suggest we scout today?”
She was eager to lend her efforts to the cause of finding transportation home. Also, she’d been bedridden during her recovery—following Doctor TO-96’s orders—and she was sick of it. Sootriman had chosen to remain behind and care for Awen, further decreasing the team’s effectiveness. The way Awen saw it, she and Sootriman had a lot of catching up to do.
TO-96 looked at the large coffee table in the middle of their oversized seats and projected a holo-map of the city as seen from their initial scans while in orbit days earlier. The metropolis pressed against a purplish-blue ocean to the south and a deep-green mountain ridge to the north. The larger peninsula was connected to a landmass farther north, one that stretched out of view. TO-96 zoomed in to Itheliana and changed the satellite view to one presented in white with gray lines for buildings, borders, and roads. He zoomed in even farther until a green dot blinked inside a square tower surrounded by several other buildings.
“This is where we are now,” the bot said, indicating the dot. “We’re in some sort of administrative building, as far as I can tell. Since we know nothing of their system of governance or enterprise, it is hard to know what type of administering they were doing here.”
“We get it, Ninety-Six,” Ezo said, returning from his long gaze out the window. “There’s going to be more questions than answers for several—”
Ezo stopped abruptly, and Awen wondered what he was going to say. Months? Years?
“We’re not going to have a lot of details filled in, so just stick to big picture stuff,” Ezo said. “Got it?”
“Very good, sir. As I was saying, this is us, here.” Then the bot zoomed out a little. “Over the last nine days, Captain Ezo and I have been able to chart the sections you see here, overlaid in blue.” Colored patches emerged, indicating each day’s scouting. They primarily emanated from the region immediately surrounding the admin building, with some small sections toward the eastern border.
“Is that where the Indomitable is?” Awen asked, pointing to the east side.
“Was,” Ezo corrected with no attempt to hide his anger. “They tossed grenades into engineering and the bridge. It’s a mess.”
“To quote Captain Ezo from earlier,” TO-96 added, “‘If you thought she was a pretty piece of splick before, she’s an ass-ugly piece of splick now.’”
“Thanks for that reminder, ’Six.” Ezo rolled his eyes.
“My pleasure, sir.”
“Have you explored the temple more?” Awen asked.
All three of them looked at her. “The temple, Star Queen?” Ezo asked.
“Yes. You know, the library in the plaza, ‘the temple of all we’ve gained and the cost of all we’ve left behind,’” she said, reciting the inscription over the building’s entrance.
“We remember,” Ezo said, running a hand over his face. “It’s just that—well, no one feels like going back there.”
“I was fine with going back there,” TO-96 interjected.
“And I wasn’t with you,” Sootriman added.
“Okay, okay,” Ezo said, hands up in protest. “So Ezo didn’t feel like going back there. Okay?”
“It’s okay, baby,” Sootriman said, reaching up and placing a hand on his forearm. Ezo didn’t acknowledge the hand, but he didn’t pull away either. “I almost died in there. I get it. No reason to go back.”
Ezo stepped away and moved to the window. “No, Ezo almost died in there. Holy mystics, you always think everyt
hing is about you, Sootriman.”
Sootriman winked at Awen. “That’s because it is,” she mouthed.
Awen smiled. “Well, if anyone would like to join me, I’d like to explore the temple,” she said. “If I were the Novia Minoosh, I’d seek wisdom there. And I suspect it will be a very different experience now that we’re not being chased by a madman intent on blowing us up.”
“Sounds good to me,” Sootriman said.
“Count me in, Awen,” TO-96 said.
The three of them looked to Ezo.
“Fine,” he said. “But I doubt we’ll find anything that’s survived the trinitex.”
* * *
The entrance to the temple building looked different from the way it had during the firefight. The lighting was different perhaps. Or am I just more relaxed this time? Maybe a little of both, Awen thought. The inscription spanned the archway as before, and the blown-out doors invited them inside. This place felt familiar—perhaps because she’d been here once already. But it was more than that. Something piqued her interest. The feeling was deeper than she could articulate, like something on the edge of her vision that she knew was there but couldn’t focus on.
Awen wanted to enter into the Unity, but she hadn’t attempted it since leaving the temple nearly eleven days before. For the first time since she’d been a teenager at the academy, she was afraid to do so. The events surrounding Sootriman’s rescue plagued her. Or worse—maybe they’d broken her. Still, with each step down the main hall, Awen knew she was getting closer to stepping across the Unity’s threshold in order to see the temple from its truest angle. But could she? Would she?
As before, columns lined each side of the main hallway and supported an arched ceiling nearly thirty meters above. The late-morning light filtered down from high windows, revealing lavender beams cutting through air thick with dust particles. Awen had visited many religious monuments and cathedrals in her day, and this space reminded her of those if nothing more than for the echo her footfalls made in the long chamber.
The farther they walked, the less vegetation clung to the floor and walls. Before long, the jungle had lost its grip, and the air began to change.
