by Amy DuBoff
“They were constructing a spatial rift corridor,” Cris continued before Wil could speak. “The sensors around Headquarters saw it forming, fortunately, so there was time to act. Banks—” his voice caught, “Banks did what any great commander would do and stopped it.”
“How?” Wil stammered.
“The same way the Bakzen make the rifts,” Kate said. “The power to destroy and the power to rebuild.”
Wil choked on his breath as knives stabbed into his heart. “He’s gone?” The war was never supposed to touch our home.
Cris nodded and pulled Wil into an embrace. “But we’re safe. Our home is safe.”
“Saera?” Wil asked into his father’s shoulder.
“She’s fine. The Bakzen never made it through,” Kate assured him, rubbing his back.
Wil stepped away from his father. “They’ll come back.”
“The nav beacon is destroyed,” Cris stated. “The only way to get there is with a true independent jump drive.”
Wil leaned against the conference table, his breath ragged. “I never should have left it so exposed.”
“We needed every ship we had,” Cris tried to comfort him. “No size fleet would have guaranteed Earth’s safety. Sealing the rift corridor was the only way.”
“We should have taken out the beacon sooner. Something!” Wil exclaimed.
“It’s done now,” his mother murmured.
I can’t believe he’s dead… Banks was always more family than commander. Beyond the loss of an exceptional leader, there would be a hole in Wil’s life. Mentor, surrogate grandfather, protector—Banks had always looked out for Wil even through the most difficult moments of his life. As much as Wil despised the manipulation and deceit, he knew in his heart that he would have been in a far worse place were it not for Banks’ guidance. No words felt fitting to express the loss, and so he remained silent.
“Saera is in command,” Cris stated. “Headquarters is still in lockdown.”
Wil nodded slowly. “I should call her.” His parents glanced at each other, no doubt still perplexed by why Wil had sent her away in the first place.
“We have a lot of cleanup to begin,” Cris said at last. “Take some time to recover.”
“No.” Wil stepped forward from the table. “We need to go after the Bakzen now, before they have time to regroup.”
“We’re in no shape—” Cris started to protest.
“We’re in better shape than them for the moment,” Wil countered. “We need to cut off the rest of their supply lines so they can’t rebuild. We have to act fast, before they expect it.”
Kate sighed. “All right. I’ll get the ships that are still able to fight ready to go.”
“We’ll leave in an hour,” Wil instructed. “They’ll go for Tararia next. We’ll head them off.”
“Okay,” Cris agreed. “And please do check in with Saera.”
“Yeah.” Wil took a few minutes to gather himself after his parents departed. Banks’ loss would leave a deep scar.
He took a resolute breath and initiated a call to Headquarters on the viewscreen, where the communication automatically routed to Saera’s location. An image of her resolved on the viewscreen against the backdrop of the High Commander’s office. “Hey,” he greeted.
“Hi,” she replied. Her normal radiance was absent, as though she was just a shell of herself.
I did that to her. I sent her away, abandoned her. I destroyed myself to save her and then gave up the very thing I wanted to protect. His chest ached. “I’m so sorry.”
“You heard about Banks?” Saera asked after a moment, her voice shaking.
“My parents just told me. Are you okay?”
“I should be asking you that. You knew him way better than me.”
Wil’s shoulders rounded. This is too much to process right now. “I thought you’d be safe there.”
“Apparently, nowhere is safe from the war,” Saera murmured. “I still don’t understand what happened—why you sent me back here.”
“I was shortsighted,” Wil admitted. I did exactly what the Bakzen wanted—played right into their hand. I should have seen all of it coming, but I lost focus. “It’s all my fault.”
“We’ve all just been doing the best we can under the circumstances.”
Wil leaned against the conference table. “I’ll make things right again, Saera. Somehow.” He let out a long breath. “How are you holding up?”
Saera wiped a tear from beneath her tinted glasses. “I feel like everything’s falling apart.”
“Not everything.” Wil pushed off the table and stepped close to the viewscreen. “I’m going to end this war, and we won’t have to live in fear anymore.”
“I’d rather live in fear than continue being apart from you like this.”
“It won’t be for much longer,” Wil told her, hoping it was true.
“Let me come back!” Saera pleaded. “Let me help.”
Maybe if Banks were still there. “There’s no time for transport now. Besides, Headquarters needs you. Make everyone feel safe. It’s almost over.”
“What about you?”
“I’m fine,” Wil insisted.
Saera shook her head. “No, you’re not. Going a week without talking to me… What’s been going on?”
I can never tell her about Cambion. No one can ever know. “That’s something I still can’t share. Try to accept that—I can’t lose you.”
“Then stop pushing me away.”
“I never should have,” Wil said, hanging his head. I let the enemy get to me.
Saera bit her lower lip. “I will always be here for you. But I can’t help if you don’t let me.”
“Right now, the best help is staying safe and looking after our home. I’ll come back to you as soon as I can.” If there’s anything of me left.
“You better.” Saera ventured a smile.
Wil smiled back through the pain. “I love you.”
“Love you, too. Now go get the bad guys.”
* * *
Cris looked over the ship manifest Kate had gathered. They were in better shape than he expected. Unfortunately, they had no indication of the Bakzen’s reserve forces.
“Do you really think they’ll make a run for Tararia?” Kate asked.
“That’s been their goal all along,” Cris replied. “Eliminate all Tarans and make the Bakzen the prominent race.”
Kate examined the viewscreen. “Based on this manifest, we do have sufficient numbers to blockade each of the subspace corridors heading for Tararia.”
“It’ll be thin, but the Bakzen can’t be in much better shape by this point,” Cris agreed. “All the targets are within close jump range, so we can redistribute once we know where they’re coming from.”
Kate crossed her arms. “There has to be a better offensive strategy.”
“If only there were a way to collapse the corridors…” Cris mused.
“Maybe there is!” Kate exclaimed. “Wil’s ship. Destroying or collapsing portions of the rift takes more energy than one person can handle and it burns them out. However, sharing the load across five people and running it through the amplifier…”
Cris lit up. “That just might work.”
* * *
The shadow of High Commander Banks’ death had left a sober mood in the Conquest’s Command Center, despite the former excitement of their battle victory. Michael made no effort to cheer up his comrades, knowing that everyone processed loss in their own way. The news would be kept need-to-know for the time being, but he was grateful for the certainty that Earth was safe.
As soon as he heard about the attack, he’d messaged Elise. She had only had time for a short reply, but it sounded like Saera was holding things together for the time being. Michael wished he could be there to comfort his friends, but they had more pressing issues to worry about in the field.
Little time remained to make repairs in preparation for the next assault. The last hour had been a flurry of communications a
nd system checks. They were almost ready, but their leader had yet to show himself.
“Any word from Wil?” Michael asked Ian, who was working at his adjacent console.
“No. I’m surprised he isn’t here,” Ian replied.
“We need to talk strategy.” Michael reached out with his mind, searching for Wil. It only took a moment to identify that he was in the Strategy Room. “We’re prepared to head out on your order,” he told him. No response. Michael sighed. “I’ll be right back.”
Michael exited the Command Center and stepped across the hall to the Strategy Room. He hit the buzzer on the door but immediately stepped inside.
Wil was at the back of the room staring out the window at the salvage ships beginning to clear the scrap from the battlefield. H2 was still in its transformed state, and a series of shuttles were examining the armor plating for critical damage.
“Hi,” Michael greeted. He stepped inside and the door automatically closed behind him. “Are you ready to head out?”
Wil slumped against the back bulkhead. “I’m really not, but we need to.”
Michael approached the table on the opposite side from Wil. “I know you lost a close friend today, but the rest of us are counting on you. You were great in the battle—exactly how we always hoped we’d be together.”
“We still lost twenty percent of our forces,” Wil replied.
“And took out about ninety percent of the Bakzen. I’d say those are pretty good margins.”
Wil scoffed, shaking his head.
“We’re all tired, Wil. We both almost had our home destroyed. We just need to push through and end this.”
“I know. Even still… I can feel myself slipping away,” Wil murmured. “When we vaporized that carrier, I was reminded of the kind of destruction my power could bring—it wouldn’t even take this ship as an amplifier. I have no right to decide who lives and dies, but that’s exactly what I’m doing.”
“It’s what we’re all doing. But right now, we have an opportunity to prevent even greater losses,” Michael said. “Your parents had an idea.”
“To use the ship to restore the rift corridors to the natural energy grid?” Wil asked.
“Yeah…”
“I’ve been thinking about that, too. It never occurred to me before, but I’m still not sure it’ll be enough.”
Michael shrugged. “We don’t know until we try. It’s the best shot we have right now to seal off Tararia from a Bakzen stealth attack, without sacrificing more lives.”
“Or we just go straight for the Bakzen homeworld.”
“That still leaves Tararia exposed.” Michael placed his palms on the tabletop and leaned forward. “I don’t like what we have to do, either, but running away from your abilities won’t help matters. Let’s just get this done, and then we can find some way to atone.”
Wil swallowed. “There’s no atonement for what I’ve done and what I’m about to do.”
“Is stopping here any better?”
His friend hung his head.
“Come on,” Michael said, trying to sound upbeat. “We’re finally making headway. We can’t stop now.”
Wil took a slow breath and nodded. He silently stepped around the table toward the door.
“Look, Wil, I know things have been tough.” Michael met him by the door and placed his hand on his shoulder. “We’re all here for you.” Including Saera, even if it is from a distance.
“Thanks.”
They returned to the Command Center across the hall and took their stations at the pedestals.
“All right, where do we get started?” Wil said as he pulled up a star map around the domed viewscreen. He activated an overlay of the rift corridors.
“Tararia is the most logical Bakzen target,” Michael suggested.
“That has always been Tek’s prize. We just spat in his face and he’ll be looking for payback.” Wil examined the pathways around Tararia, zooming in with his hands. “Here.” He pointed at three rift corridors extending almost to Tararia. “They’ll use these. It follows with the rest of their strategies.”
“So we collapse the pathways?” Ethan asked.
“That’s the idea, anyway,” Wil confirmed. “It looks like this corridor is the main route to the nearest Bakzen base.” He pointed along the pathway with his finger across the ceiling. “I say we try collapsing that one first.”
“Sounds good to me,” Curtis agreed with a shrug.
“Michael, are any of the cruisers able to travel yet?” Wil asked.
Michael checked the reports again and saw that eight cruisers were reporting less than five percent damage. “Several.”
“Pick two and have them jump with us to…” Wil studied the map again, “…Merda.”
The planet was located midway along the rift corridor, passing by two intersecting pathways. “Are you hoping for a chain reaction?” Michael asked.
“May as well try,” Wil replied.
Michael selected two of the cruisers with the least damage and sent the command. “Ready.”
“Rianne, take us over,” Wil ordered.
“Aye,” she acknowledged and activated the jump.
The Conquest dropped out of subspace at the outermost end of visual range from the planet Merda. Their position was at the closest intersection of the target rift corridors. Michael swallowed hard. We should be trying a small corridor first, not a full chain reaction.
Wil must have sensed his doubt because he glanced over at him. “Don’t worry, we’ll start small. I just figured this way we won’t have to relocate.”
Michael breathed a sigh of relief. It must have taken hundreds of thousands of Bakzen to form the rift over the centuries. What kind of impact can a handful of us have? “So what do we do?”
“I’ve never closed a rift before, so I really have no idea,” Wil admitted. He gripped his handholds. “Time to experiment.”
Grabbing his own handhold, Michael felt the now familiar surge of energy through the Conquest. The Captains established their positions in the telepathic connection and waited for Wil’s direction.
Wil led them toward one of the smaller corridors and began assessing it—pulling at the tendrils yanked apart from the natural energy grid to open up the rift. He directed a collective pulse of energy through the ship into the grid to test its reaction. The tendrils flickered and bent in the direction of the energy pulse, like a flower orienting toward sunlight.
“That’s it,” Wil said. “We can direct the grid.”
“It will take forever moving tendril by tendril,” Ian protested.
“We shouldn’t go too fast. We have no idea how it will react to a greater concentration of energy,” Michael cautioned the group.
“Ian is right,” Wil said. “We can’t go this slowly. We need to ramp it up.” He began charging the ship for a new energy pulse, pausing when it was ten times the magnitude of the first.
The energy beam shot from the ship, directed at the center of the corridor where the smaller pulse had yielded success. Energy from the beam coalesced into an orb with spikes fanning out to the surrounding grid
The grid shuttered as it began to warp around the new energy orb. As it fused with the surrounding grid, the orb contracted, then quickly expanded as energy poured in through the spikes—creating an even larger sphere of unchecked power.
We need to get away. Michael tugged at the minds of his comrades, but they were transfixed by the interplay of electromagnetic energy.
Wil reached out toward the forms, trying to guide the flow to repair the grid, just as he’d done before. But it was too much, moving far too quickly and still growing stronger.
Michael retreated, barely maintaining the neural link. “Wil, stop!” He shouted in his friend’s mind.
“I can fix it!” Wil insisted. “Let me—”
There was no time to find out. Michael disconnected from the neural link and dove toward Wil at his pedestal. The others released their handholds with a start, their l
ink severed.
Outside, the blue energy orb exploded outward, sending a shockwave that rocked the Conquest. The waves cascaded through the very fabric of space around them along the rift corridor, illuminating briefly with a spark of blue light as the shockwave traveled outward.
“What happened?” Ethan asked.
Wil shoved Michael off of him. “I wasn’t finished.”
“That shockwave would have incinerated us if we’d been connected,” Michael shot back.
Curtis gestured to the viewing dome to bring up the map of the rift pathways. Everyone gasped when they saw the real-time readings.
“Stars! We made it worse,” Wil breathed.
There had been a chain reaction, as they had hoped—but their work had only served to rip the rift pathway even closer to Tararia. So close that a ship could practically cruise right to the planet through the rift, barely detectable. With the energy signature rippling back in the other direction, as well, they’d just sent the Bakzen an express invite to attack.
Wil gaped at the map. “We need to go for the Bakzen homeworld. Now.”
CHAPTER 26
“We’re not prepared for a planetary invasion!” Michael exclaimed.
Wil dismissed his friend’s objection. “Now is our best shot. We’ll take off the head of the beast.” Before anyone else could protest, he initiated a telepathic link to his officers scattered around the fleet. “We’re going for the Bakzen homeworld. All capable ships are to jump on my mark.”
“What’s the plan?” Ian asked.
Wil flashed a wry grin. “Shoot the bad guys.” He looked around at the concerned faces of his Command Center crew. “We have the telepathic commands down. It’s just like we used to practice—making up scenarios on the fly. Follow my lead and trust your instincts. We can do this.”
They took deep breaths and grabbed their handholds.
“And we need everyone,” Wil continued. “Ethan, is Tom healed enough to fly?”
Ethan nodded. “He’s rearing to go.”
“All right, have the Primus Squad suit up. Prep the rest of the fleet to jump.”
The next several minutes were a flurry of telepathic and spoken commands as the fleet prepared to mobilize.
“We’re ready,” Michael said at last.
