Ouroboros 4: End

by Odette C. Bell

  She didn’t get the opportunity.

  Somebody raised their voice and coughed very pointedly. ‘So are the rumors true?’

  Nida, though she desperately wanted to run away, found herself turning. She recognized that voice.

  Bridget.

  Alicia's friend was standing there, one eyebrow raised as she crossed her arms defensively in front of her chest. There was a very sour expression crumpling her usually pretty face. ‘So, is it true? Are you,’ she brought up a finger and pointed directly at Nida, ‘somehow with Carson. Or is this just some dumb joke?’

  Bridget’s tone was forceful and belligerent.

  And it washed right over Nida.

  Really? This was what people were concentrating on?

  The galaxy was going to hell, and all Bridget cared about was a little romantic competition?

  Nida’s lips simply parted open in disbelief.

  She felt cold. And disconnected.

  How could these people be so oblivious?

  They were cadets in the Coalition Academy, they knew the responsibility they shouldered. So why weren't they shouldering it? Why were they massing around her, more interested by the possibility of intrigue, then the probability that something dangerous was happening?

  Granted, none of them knew about the Vex. But Nida couldn’t listen to her own reason right now. All she could hear was the anger bubbling up inside her.

  These people were so damn naive.

  They had no idea what was waiting out there for them. Who cared about their romantic troubles and tribulations in the grand scheme of things? When they graduated, they would be responsible for the Coalition, for the galaxy, for countless lives.

  Nida had never been a particularly forward-thinking person, and though she had always acted responsibly and diligently, she wasn’t the most mature of souls.

  Well, maturity had been thrust upon her.

  Her once narrow perspective had been blown apart. She no longer had the luxury of caring only about herself and what was happening to her immediate friend group. The future of the Vex now weighed upon her shoulders, and it changed her as she stared out at her friends and colleagues.

  She could no longer understand them.

  Nor care about their petty problems.

  Rather than face Bridget, she turned around.

  She went to walk away.

  Bridget pounced forward, grabbed her arm, and held her in place. ‘Come on, tell us. What happened? Are you really with Carson? Or is this some elaborate trick?’

  She didn’t usually have a problem with Bridget. She was a little like Alicia. She was just fiery, but deep down, she was a good person.

  Today, Nida had a problem with everyone.

  The more the shock of realizing the Coalition were going to destroy Remus 12 settled in, the more powerful anger began to grow within her.

  She was a lot of things, but she was very rarely angry. And the sensation was such an odd one, and so different to her usual character, it felt like someone had switched her body with someone else’s.

  As strange as it was, however, she couldn’t deny that growing feeling.

  She was angry at Carson. She was angry at the Coalition for their decision. She was angry at her friends and classmates for being so damn naive.

  She was angry at herself for being so weak.

  The emotion kept building and building, like a flame being fed more and more fuel. Soon it would rise right from her toes to her head, and she’d burst.

  Without thinking, she roughly tugged her hand free from Bridget’s grip.

  It was easy enough.

  Surprise shot through Bridget’s expression, but then once again her face crumpled with clear animosity. ‘You know, you don’t deserve a person like Carson. You’ve never tried at the Academy, you’ve never put your heart and soul into it. He has. No matter what he faces, he always does what’s right for the Coalition. It’s in his blood. You wouldn’t understand that. You run from your problems when they get too hard,’ Bridget said.

  Maybe her comments drew laughter, or gasps, but Nida could hear nothing but her words.

  She didn’t deserve a person like Carson.

  Carson always did what was right for the Coalition.

  ‘You don’t meet people with loyalty like that too often. You mostly meet people like you, too weak to bother with,’ Bridget said as she crossed her arms in front of her chest and flicked her head to the side.

  Though Nida was now free, and could walk away, she found herself grinding to a halt, her face directed at the ground.

  She stared fixedly at the grass.

  If she wanted to, she could silence Bridget easily enough. All Nida would have to do was point a finger at the sky, and she could send Bridget soaring off into the clouds. Or she could simply turn around and flatten a hand on her chest, and crush her body with all the force of a meteor slamming into the earth.

  . . . .

  She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Although the anger kept building inside her, Nida held onto herself. To the scrap of identity that always remained within.

  And she walked away.

  Bridget kept calling out to her, and maybe the rest of her classmates kept assailing her with questions, but Nida turned her mind from them.

  She focused her attention within. Towards the boiling anger as it rose and peaked through her belly, feeling like acid eating at her guts and heart.

  She brought a hand up and flattened it over her chest.

  She did not, however, at any point turn around and attack Bridget.

  No, she was different.

  Despite the anger curdling within, she was not that far gone.

  Instead she turned, Bridget's words still shadowing her.

  Carson was a good man. He always did what was right for the Coalition.

  Nida, on the other hand, was a worthless recruit who didn't know what it was like to sacrifice herself for others.

  If she'd been in a daze before she'd walked across the grounds, it was nothing compared to the stupor she experienced as she headed back to the medical bay.

  Her head was elsewhere. All the way back on Remus 12, to be precise.

  Despite the fact she kept drawing quite a crowd, though nobody else accosted her, Nida felt alone.

  Completely and abjectly alone.

  She hadn't felt this way when she'd been nothing more than an ordinary recruit, even though people had fastidiously ignored her.

  Nida had never been popular. It hadn't bothered her though.

  Yet now, in the face of all this limelight, she had never felt so distanced from people.

  She tried to tell herself it was just the entity. Carson was right. This grief and shame and anger, it wasn't hers. She simply had to hold on. Push back the deluge of feelings until Vex was destroyed and the entity was removed from her.

  Yet even as she thought that, she swallowed hard, her throat pushing against her collar, the implant scratching the fabric.

  She tapped at it, closing her fingers tight against the skin.

  Though she wanted to believe none of these feelings were her own, her gut instinct told her they were.

  It was too easy to turn her back on the entity and the Vex. Despite what they had done to her, she was a member of the Coalition Academy.

  And Bridget was wrong. Nida did have values, and she knew how to uphold them.

  She'd been there on the first day of class when Sharpe had told them all that as members of the Coalition Academy they were to uphold the good, the right, and the just.

  For that's what the Galactic Coalition Union stood for.

  It separated itself from the Barbarians and the Kor and all of those other warring factions because of its moral integrity. It protected the weak, it shepherded people into the future, and it never harmed others for its own gain.

  Well, the lecture Sharpe had given all those years ago no longer meshed with the Coalition she saw today.

  She could understand Carson and the decisi
on he'd help make, but she couldn't push away the fact they weren't trying hard enough.

  Surely destroying Vex should be the last option. Not the first. Surely they could travel to Vex and spend the time until that planet realigned looking for a solution.

  If the worst came to the worst, then they could destroy Vex just as it realigned with the galaxy.

  They could at least try.

  As Nida walked and thought, she paid no attention whatsoever to where she was and who was around her.

  In fact, she was in so much of a daze, that she walked right into the back of a large man and barely noticed. Glancing off his shoulder, she continued forward, clutching her left hand back and forth as she thought through this desperate situation.

  The man cleared his throat. It was a very pointed move, and though she wanted to ignore it, there was something terribly memorable about it.

  It raced up her back, and panic sunk deep into her gut.

  ‘Really, Cadet? You walk into me, and you don't apologize?’

  She froze.

  Commander Sharpe.

  Bradley and Bridget were one thing, Sharpe was in a completely different league.

  He'd been the one to come up with her nickname of the worst recruit in 1000 years. He'd been the one to berate her about her story of the Vex.

  And he was now the one who took several short, marching steps her way, his expression souring as he did.

  Though Nida had felt powerful anger moments before, it was burnt up in Sharpe's presence.

  Though she'd never thought of it that way, the Commander was kind of her nemesis. The bully who had berated her through her few short years as a Coalition cadet.

  Except, he wasn't, was he?

  Not entirely.

  Though Sharpe never missed a chance to tell her she was a terrible cadet and should quit the Academy, there was no true anger behind his words.

  He didn't hate her. A fact evidenced by the way he'd treated her after her accident with those TI objects so long ago. With compassion as well as frustration crumpling his brow, he'd told her to look after herself.

  Well right now, as he marched up to her side, crossing his enormous tree trunk like arms before his chest, he looked down with that same confused expression. There was a definite edge of frustration, but flickering deep within his slate grey eyes was compassion. ‘What are you doing? Shouldn't you be in the medical bay? You should not be walking the halls. Drawing attention,’ he added in a hiss.

  She blinked quickly, trying to marshal up her courage.

  A few seconds ago she'd been lost in the brutality of the Coalition destroying the Vex, and now all she could remember was how damn weak Sharpe made her feel.

  Her heart was a mess, her hands were sweaty, and she was now pressing her teeth into her bottom lip so hard, the damn thing would likely pop.

  ‘Cadet,’ Sharpe said in a low growl, ‘don't you have anything to say for yourself?’

  She opened her mouth.

  She stopped.

  ‘Cadet?’ He crossed his arms harder, looking at her with a truly questioning expression.

  ‘I'm heading back there now,’ she finally said in the weakest of voices that barely carried beyond her lips.

  Without bothering to salute, and feeling her emotions tackle her once more, she turned on her foot to walk away.

  ‘Nida,’ Sharpe said suddenly.

  He used her first name. He very rarely used her first name. When he wasn't calling her Cadet Harper, he was calling her a waste of space. Yet now as he said her name, there was an odd tone to his voice. Almost familiar. Like he was a friend rather than a commander and her constant bully.

  She paused, turning over her shoulder to look at him.

  He dropped his arms around his middle. ‘They haven't told me what's going on,’ he pointed out.

  She half closed her eyes. Right. He wanted to know.

  Before she could shake her head, he shook his. ‘I'm not asking you to tell me, Cadet,’ he spoke tersely, ‘I'm here to give you some advice.’

  She paused.

  She should probably walk away.

  Like she walked away from Bridget.

  Like she walked away from Carson.

  But she didn't.

  Because this was Sharpe.

  Despite the fact she now had an incredibly powerful entity residing in her left palm, and the weight of the universe resting on her shoulders, he was the one force that could keep her riveted to the spot.

  ‘You weren't always the best cadet,’ he began.

  Her heart sank.

  Really?

  That's not what she needed now.

  People had to stop reminding her she wasn't brilliant.

  Yes, she was fully aware of the fact she wasn't Carson. She didn't share his loyalty, nor his determination to save the Coalition.

  She didn't have his pure heart, she couldn't use it to understand this murky moral situation.

  What she had, instead, was a direct line to the entity and its guilt. To all of that shame. Not only had it broken Vex, but it had spent so long, so many eons trying to fix it. It had shepherded those people through so many iterations of their history, that the entity could not see them fall.

  No doubt a better cadet could push past that and do what was necessary.

  She couldn't.

  With a sinking heart, she went to turn away again.

  ‘Cadet, I'm talking to you,’ Sharpe snapped, shifting in front of her. ‘I'm not done. Like I said, you weren't always the best cadet, but you tried.’

  Reluctantly, she looked up at him.

  With turgid emotion swirling through her, she was at once on the verge of tears, and also vitriolic anger.

  She remained there though, watching Sharpe.

  ‘I didn't always . . . credit you for that. You tried, Cadet. Sometimes harder than any of the other kids. You never gave up. Despite the fact I always thought you weren't cut out for this life, you didn't quit. And I'll admit, after your first week, I didn't think you'd last another. Then after your first month, again I didn't think you'd last another. But you kept lasting. And you keep lasting. You may not have the qualities most of the other cadets do, but you've got something different. I'm not privy to what the Admiralty has decided, as it is beyond my remit. But clearly they believe in you. They believe your story,’ he stuttered as he said the word story. ‘And if it's true, Cadet, then you should be proud.’

  Nida's stomach gave a twitchy kick. She had to press a hand into it, lest she jerked forward in surprise. ‘What?’

  ‘Cadet Nida Harper, you should be proud. I'm going to tell you a secret,’ he suddenly admitted.

  She blinked quickly.

  ‘Sometimes the standout cadets make the worst officers. What we teach in here,’ he pointed to the ground then let his wrist flick around as he indicated the walls as well,

  ‘isn't always what they test out there,’ he pointed up to the sky, clearly indicating the rest of the galaxy. ‘The troubles and pressures at the Academy, aren't the ones you necessarily face in the real world. We can only teach you as best we can, but at the end of the day, being a Coalition soldier and officer will test your personality just as much as it will your training and skills. Unless you have the guile, unless you have the guts and resilience, you won't last. I've lost track of the number of promising cadets I've trained, only for them to quit, bail, or fail. I've also lost track of the number of cadets I thought would never succeed who proved me wrong. Have you ever heard of Captain Cora?’ He nodded at Nida pointedly.

  She squeezed her lips together and nodded. Of course she had. Captain Cora was a legend.

  ‘She was one of the first cadets I taught. I thought she'd bail at the first opportunity. She had a hot head, a hot temper, and never listened to orders. Well, without her, Earth would have succumbed to a Barbarian plot years ago.’

  Nida just watched him silently.

  Was he building her up?

  Sharpe, of all people?


  ‘I could tell you a whole list of others, but there's no point. Cadet Harper, you've proved me wrong, like the rest of them keep proving me wrong. You're terrible at learning to be a cadet, but you're brilliant out in the field. And I don't need to tell you, that's all that matters.’

  The anger wasn't there anymore. The anger that had chewed through her, threatening to pull down every sense of resolve and morality she had ever built.

  It was gone.

  It died there in that moment she stared at Commander Sharpe. The man she had once assumed hated her and thought she was just a waste of space.

  The man who had coined a terrible nickname.

  He thought she was brilliant in the field?

  ‘We can't test results, kid,’ he repeated. ‘We could pretend to. We can put you through stressful situations, test you, push you to the limits, but it's still in a controlled environment. It's only when you get out there, and you know there's no one that's got your back, that we really find out what we're made off. I'm gonna tell you once more, Harper, you're a terrible cadet, but you're a brilliant Coalition soldier.’

  She was stunned.

  In that moment, all of her troubles fell away for a precious few seconds.

  She couldn't believe this.

  Though Carson kept telling her she was better than she thought, hearing it from Sharpe was the real thing.

  Sharpe never lied to you just to make you feel better.

  Sharpe told you exactly what he thought, and he didn't sugarcoat it.

  Which meant . . . good God, it meant he actually thought she was a brilliant Coalition soldier.

  Sharpe stiffened his jaw, the muscles along his neck bulging against his thick collar, making the three shiny pins that indicated his rank bulge. ‘I don't know what you're going through, but I bet I know what you're thinking. So stop it. Don't second-guess yourself, Harper. Do what is right. That's all that matters. When you get out there,’ he pointed up once more, again indicating the rest of the galaxy beyond the controlled confines of the Coalition Academy, ‘all that matters is that you do good. We try to teach you how to do that down here,’ he glanced around the corridors, ‘but we don't always get it right. Because down here is clear, and up there isn't. It's murky, it's messy. But as long as you save people. As long as you do what's right and just, that's all that matters. You've gotta be proud of yourself, and you gotta make me proud of you,’ he said as he stabbed a thumb her way. ‘Show me I was always wrong about you,’ he challenged.