Crossroads of Fate (Cadicle #5): An Epic Space Opera Series

by Amy DuBoff

  * * *

  The Command Center of the Vanquish was far too quiet while they waited for Wil’s order to jump from their hiding place in the Kyron nebula. Cris nearly jumped at the sound of his own seat creaking as he shifted position.

  “Any minute now,” Kate said to break the silence. She slouched in the command chair to his right.

  “I can’t wait until this is over,” Cris muttered. I never dreamed we’d be instigating a battle at H2.

  A chirp sounded on the front right console a step below the central dais.

  “Message coming through from Headquarters,” Kari informed Cris. Her brow wrinkled. “The origin is the High Commander’s office, but it’s Saera’s code.”

  “Open a channel,” Cris instructed.

  Saera’s image appeared on the front of the curved dome. “We’re under attack,” she said the moment the video resolved.

  Kate took a sharp breath next to him.

  “Bakzen?” Cris asked, his pulse spiking.

  “They’re about to open a spatial rift. It’s maybe ten minutes from tearing through. Banks is going to stop it. He’s in a shuttle now.” Saera crossed her arms around herself. “He said there’s no other way.”

  Cris’ mouth fell open with horror. “He’s going to throw himself into space—”

  “The Bakzen fleet just appeared at H2,” Kari cut in. “Wil gave the order for our first wave to jump in.”

  Shite! That’s us. There was no time to jump back to Headquarters and make it back for the impending battle at H2. It was one or the other. “If we…”

  “The carrier is exposed without us,” Kate reminded him, even though it didn’t need to be said.

  We can’t deviate from the plan. Headquarters is on its own. Cris’ gut wrenched. “Make the jump to H2, Alec.”

  “Aye,” Alec affirmed.

  “We’ll be there as soon as we can, Saera,” Cris told her as the Vanquish slipped into subspace. By then it would be over, but there was nothing more they could do. I’m sorry, Banks.

  Kate reached across the center console and took Cris’ hand in hers. “We’ll win this for him.”

  * * *

  The compact transport ship that normally served as a ferry between the spaceport and surface of the moon now felt more like a coffin. Banks cast aside the thought as he struggled to override the autopilot so he could direct the craft toward the spatial rift.

  Unfortunately, the shuttle was never designed to deviate from its set course. There’s no time to go all the way to the port to get another ship. I need to make this work.

  The shuttle let out another angry buzz of disapproval at Banks’ latest attempt to bypass the security safeguards failed. “Insufficient route data,” CACI stated.

  I know… it’s a one-way trip. He let out a gruff sigh and dislodged the main panel beneath the console. “You asked for it,” he muttered as he dropped to his knees to get a better vantage. The crystalline circuitry all looked identical at first glance, but his trained eye spotted the regulating command module. He wrenched it from the console with his thumb and forefinger.

  The console blanked for a moment, then refreshed with a flash. Banks tried his route input again.

  “Route confirmed,” CACI stated, and the shuttle lifted from the surface.

  Banks set the chip on top of the console and took a deep breath. His life would be over in a matter of minutes.

  What will be my legacy? War, manipulation, deceit—he could only hope to be remembered for more. Others may never know what he’d done for them over his career, but he could enter into his eternal rest knowing that he’d had a hand in changing the course of Taran history. Though for better or worse remained to be seen, at least he had followed his beliefs. The Priesthood’s unchecked rule could finally end with Cris leading the charge.

  The shuttle made its silent approach to the spatial rift and adjacent nav beacon. Focusing on the nav beacon, Banks gripped it with his mind and rended it apart in four directions at once. The beacon shattered in a shower of sparks, its signal disconnected. Without the beacon or the rift corridor, only a TSS ship with an independent jump drive could make the journey in any reasonable amount of time.

  The emerging rift was practically invisible to the naked eye, but Banks could feel its signature. Electromagnetic sparks danced before his mind’s eye as space frayed around the edge of the corridor. His surroundings sang and pulsed with an eternal chorus of ancient energy he had heard so rarely in recent years—always confined to Headquarters, performing his duties. To spend his final moment so close to the unbridled power within the rift was freeing. His mind was clear, his senses unburdened. Never had he felt so alive.

  While he yearned to bask in its energy, the Bakzen were knocking on the door to his home and he had one final task to complete. He removed his tinted glasses and placed them in his inner pocket one last time.

  Banks cleared his mind and began to form a spatial dislocation field around himself, creating a bubble within the shuttle. The air was still as the energy swirled around him in a shimmering orb of light. He lifted off the floor and passed through the shuttle’s ceiling in that state on the brink of subspace—energized and confident.

  Drawn by the immense energy of the forming rift portal, he drew himself to its center in open space. He drank in the energy, using it to feed the power coursing through his body.

  It is a part of me, his consciousness called, from somewhere that was not his former self. The tendrils of the natural energy grid resonated with him, drawing him in. Twisted darkness from the Bakzen’s attempts to warp the fabric of space tried to push through the natural energy web, but the light emanating from Banks held it at bay.

  Banks released himself to the light. The natural grid rippled as the energy tendrils solidified into unbreakable bonds. No more could the structure be twisted. The rift corridor was sealed.

  Energy swelled around the former portal, gathering along the ancient energy corridors beneath the fabric of reality. The natural grid flexed around the marring corridor that the Bakzen had started to rip through the fabric, snapping the energy pathways back into their proper forms and dislodging the Bakzen forces within to endlessly drift within subspace.

  With a flash, the concentration of energy dissipated, as though nothing was ever out of place.

  Only a single, empty transport shuttle floated in the blackness. One sentinel, watching over Earth below.

  CHAPTER 24

  Wil leaped to his feet and gripped the handholds at his command pedestal. “Jump on my mark…” he ordered. “Now!”

  In an instant, the first wave of TSS ships within the Kyron belt disappeared into the blue-green cloud of subspace.

  The Conquest shuddered as the cloud lifted around them at their destination, revealing a battle already unfolding.

  Eight heavily armored enemy cruisers and two carriers were positioned at great enough distances from H2 that there was no way to surround the Bakzen forces. Two cruisers occupied each quadrant around the central TSS target and the two Bakzen carriers were on the opposite side of the battlefield from the TSS carrier the Vanquish was escorting. Bakzen assault jets from the cruisers and carrier swarmed around H2 in triangular formations of six—raining shots before arcing away to avoid counter-attack blasts from H2. The less nimble carriers, however, already showed signs of damage where H2’s rail guns had sliced through the outer hull shielding.

  Between each set of jet attacks, the Bakzen cruisers took two rapid shots targeted at the connection point between the rotating central ring and the rest of the structure—the greatest weak point for the transformed facility. The armor was rated for five minutes of constant fire, but Wil couldn’t be sure the exposed mechanical mechanisms would hold out for half that long. They needed to offer immediate relief.

  Unfortunately, the Bakzen’s positioning was exactly what Wil would have done, were the roles reversed. He searched for any possible weakness in the formations, but none stood out. However, inaction would
get them nowhere.

  Wil gripped the handholds of his pedestal and slipped into a state of simultaneous observation. A cross-section of the planes appeared around him as only ethereal echoes of the places and objects in each until he focused in on just one. With the overall image relayed through the Conquest’s neural interface, his officers in the Command Center had a clear image of the battle on all fronts. Their telepathic commands to the rest of the fleet flitted through Wil’s mind with instantaneous precision.

  “Focus your fire on each of the cruisers,” Ian commanded to his tactical teams.

  “Surround the Bakzen ships,” Michael ordered the fleet commanders. “Don’t let any stray too far. We need to keep them contained.”

  Curtis contacted the flight leaders for the fleet of TSS jets, “Separate the Bakzen formations and pull them out of pattern. Thin them out.”

  “Gamma Squad,” Ethan said, “take out the shield on the cruiser docking bay so they have nowhere to run. Watch out for the Detno!”

  Each order was accompanied with the tactical specifics through a combination of telepathic imagery and computer inputs on their consoles. A fluid tapestry of battle plans overlaid on the rendering of the space around the Conquest on the Command Center’s spherical viewscreen. Flight paths and targets illuminated in a rainbow of colors that would seem like complete chaos to any outsider, but all their training and drillings had been building to that moment. They were in control.

  With his men focusing on the minutia, Wil extended himself to get a broader picture of the battle zone. They were clearly expecting us. That can’t be all their ships. Then, he spotted the second wave charging on three fronts.

  “Incoming!” Wil warned in the minds of his officers.

  The Bakzen fleet surged forward through the rift. On the final approach, a wave of jets poured out of the hangers of a dozen new cruisers and three additional carriers. The jets fanned out before winking out of view.

  In response, Wil stretched himself in an elevated state of simultaneous observation so he could maintain a broad vantage across all planes. His team rallied around him, but there was hesitation without having Saera there as an extra anchor. “We have this. Hang on,” Wil tried to assure them as he pressed further.

  The echoing forms of the overlapping planes came into view in his mind’s eye. He cycled through the rift, subspace and normal space, trying to locate all the Bakzen vessels. They were all changing planes at different times—Wil would have to keep track of all three at once.

  It’s too much. His vision slipped, craving the simplicity of the physical world.

  Michael caught him. “Don’t give up.”

  Wil took a deep breath and focused on the jets. He studied their movements, looking for patterns across the planes. As he watched them, three groups emerged. One group was headed for H2, one was going for the main TSS carrier, and the last was headed straight for the Conquest.

  “Curtis, send a team to intercept the group heading for H2. Michael, have the Vanquish move into position to defend the carrier,” Wil ordered. “Get the rest of our fleet here!”

  His men relayed the telepathic commands to their counterparts in the field, transmitting the mental image Wil was routing through the Conquest. The TSS forces moved seamlessly into place through normal space, ready to strike when the moment was right.

  Wil tracked the enemy forces, waiting for their flight pattern to loop back to when the greatest number of ships were all within the rift where the Agent pilots were strongest. “Jump!”

  The TSS fleet moved at once, opening fire even before the ships were fully clear from subspace.

  Bakzen jets banked to the side, some slipping back into subspace to avoid the stealth attack. But the TSS ships were waiting there, too.

  Wil and his officers herded the Bakzen ships back toward the main fleet where the two dozen cruisers opened fire on the cornered Bakzen ships just as the TSS jets would slip out of harm’s way.

  The reserve TSS contingent emerged from the subspace cloud around the Bakzen forces, immediately opening fire on the newest cruisers and carriers. Two TSS tactical warships under Ian’s command made a run for a new Bakzen carrier—disabling the launch bay before any more jets could emerge. A TSS cruiser moved into position to assist the smaller tactical vessels, overwhelming the Bakzen carrier until it buckled. The TSS ships pulled back just in time to avoid the explosive decompression blast from the ruined Bakzen carrier. Three Bakzen cruisers occupied with an assault on H2 were caught in the blast, charring their hulls and disrupting their fire.

  More Bakzen jets were destroyed with every pass of the TSS jets looping through the battlefield, weaving through the planes using the relayed map from Wil. The damaged vessels were dealt swift deathblows, leaving a field of debris floating around the fractured former TSS space dock and scarred H2 structure.

  Empowered by Wil’s vision across the spatial planes, the TSS was waiting to counter every Bakzen move. For every TSS ship damaged, four Bakzen ships were completely destroyed.

  Wil kept a vigilant eye on the Bakzen command ships as the battle progressed. One, in particular, was holding back. “Are you there, Tek?” Wil asked across the distance, not expecting a reply.

  But a voice did respond. “Well played.”

  Before Wil could react, the ship jumped away—stranding all its jets in a hopeless battle against the superior TSS forces.

  He tightened his grip on the handhold, anger boiling in his chest. Next time, I won’t let him get away. All the destruction over the years, Cambion, the wedge he drove between Saera and me… Tek needs to die.

  “They’re retreating!” Ian exclaimed to the group.

  Another Bakzen cruiser jumped away, but seven more floated helplessly on the battlefield—their jump drives disabled in the tactical team’s precision strikes.

  “It’s not over yet,” Wil reminded his team.

  He spotted a group of Bakzen jets that were still making a desperate run for H2 through the wreckage. “The armor can’t take much more. We need to end this.”

  “I’m on it,” Ethan said, and began doling out commands to the jet squadrons.

  Wil watched the IT-1s weave through the planes with expert precision, corralling the Bakzen jets before they knew they were surrounded. The IT-1s jumped into the rift in one fluid motion, bombarding the Bakzen vessels with a deadly barrage. In an instant, the dozen enemy jets exploded in fiery bursts that quickly extinguished in the vacuum of space.

  Only one mobile Bakzen carrier remained—making a suicide run for H2.

  “Take it out!” Wil ordered, even though the TSS fleet was already targeting everything they had left at the ship. Easily two-thirds the size of H2, the mass of the craft was simply too great to be shifted from its course.

  “We need to do something!” Michael pleaded.

  Only one other weapon remained. Wil pulled out of simultaneous observation to focus on the rift, solidifying his connection to the ship and its systems. Around him, he felt his men following his lead, gripping their handholds tighter as they began to feed pure telekinetic energy into the neural link pathways. The energy coursed through the ship, gathering along the amplifier ring around its perimeter.

  The Conquest buzzed with the charge, an audible hum filling the air as the energy mounted—but there was no time to wait for a complete charge. The ship was mere seconds from impact.

  Wil released the energy beam, striking the front third of the Bakzen cruiser on the starboard side. The ship splintered apart in a blinding flash as a ball of energy billowed out from the impact site—nearly enveloping H2.

  A feedback spark shot back through the Conquest’s neural relays, forcing Wil to release the handhold on his pedestal. His officers around him shook their hands with surprise as the shock reached them.

  He gazed at the surrounding viewscreen to assess the damage while the energy sparks in the pedestal dissipated. Except, there wasn’t anything left to see.

  “Where’s the carrier?”
Ethan asked.

  “Completely vaporized,” Wil stated. Remarkably, H2 appeared unscathed aside from the blackened shielding where the first Bakzen wave had their short advantage.

  “That wasn’t even a full charge…” Curtis breathed.

  “I guess that’s what the combined force of five powerful Agents can do,” Wil murmured. Or me alone. This is one way I never wanted to use my power.

  On the viewscreen, the rest of the TSS fleet opened fire on the disabled Bakzen cruisers, erupting each into a quickly extinguished fireball as the ships decompressed.

  Wil and his men smiled at each other. “We did it.”

  A comm chirp sounded in the Command Center.

  “It’s the Vanquish.” Rianne announced.

  “Accept,” Wil said, looking to the front of the dome.

  An image of the Vanquish’s Command Center appeared with his parents at the center. “Are there any more Bakzen ships waiting in subspace?” Cris asked.

  “No, that was the last of them,” Wil confirmed.

  His father slumped in his command chair. “I guess we won the battle.”

  “That went a lot better than I expected,” Wil admitted with a grin.

  Cris didn’t share his enthusiasm. “I’m afraid there was another development. I’m coming over. We need to talk.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Wil sat in quiet contemplation in the Conquest’s Strategy Room, waiting for his father to arrive. An in-person meeting almost certainly meant his father brought bad news. What could it be? I hope Saera—

  The door slid open with a hiss and his parents entered. Their mouths were drawn and even with their tinted glasses he could see the loss in their expressions.

  “What is it?” Wil asked.

  Cris and Kate walked to him, stopping an arm’s length away. Wil stood.

  “The Bakzen took our bait,” Cris began, “but they had another plan of their own. While we were busy here, they sent another fleet for our home Headquarters.”

  An icy chill washed over Wil. Earth is completely defenseless! Did they…?