by Richard Fox
“Should I go back?” she asked her guards. “Go back for that last moment of true life?”
“We need you,” Hamish said.
“We are lost without you,” Tyrel added.
“I fought the monsters,” she said. “I stared into the abyss. And this is what I have become.” She ran her fingers down the seam of the stasis pod and it sank back into the floor.
“Why do I do it?” she asked.
“Every soul cries out to live,” Hamish said, wiping blood off his lip. “You will save us. You will save all of us.”
“Just like you did during the Ember War,” Tyrel added.
“There are dark days ahead of us,” Stacey said. “But who better than an Ibarra to bear the torch?”
Chapter 6
Sitting on his bunk, Roland rubbed his aching jaw and poked at a plate of rubbery potatoes. He looked up at Marc Ibarra through the cell bars and shrugged.
“A pair of medics looked me over, then I got the hood and muzzle and they brought me back here,” Roland said.
“This is worse than I thought,” Ibarra said. “But things are beginning to make sense now.”
“Really? I got the impression that she’s had meltdowns like that before.” Roland mashed his fork into a potato and took a bite. The pain of chewing spoiled his meal.
“Not that—the Toth, you nitwit.” Ibarra shook his head. “We thought they were extinct, but some of them must have been away from their home world and had a ship with a Qa’Resh jump engine. The overlord must have…” He paced across his cell, one hand on his hip, the other tapping against his lips in thought.
“They must have feared we’d hunt them all down,” Ibarra said. “This was before the Xaros were defeated. They jumped to a system beyond the Crucible network, in Alliance space where the Xaros hadn’t made it to. Then they must have gone to the Kesaht system and…it fits.”
“What fits?”
“Fits that the Toth would masquerade as divine beings to a less advanced culture. They’ve used the glamour of high technology to enthrall others. How did I miss this?”
Roland waited as Ibarra kept pacing, occasionally raising a hand mid-revelation, then dropping it again to continue wearing a rut into the floor.
“Why would the Toth be afraid of us killing them off?” Roland asked. “Wasn’t it the Xaros? They were the ones bent on xenocide across the whole galaxy.”
Ibarra stopped, then clasped his hands behind his back.
“It wasn’t the Xaros that annihilated the Toth home world…it was us,” Ibarra said. “Do you know what the Xaros masters were? Energy beings. Nigh immortal, with an infinite supply of drones and technology that we still don’t fully understand. By the end, they’d destroyed Bastion and the Alliance. There were drone armadas several-trillion strong closing in on Earth before we launched the final attack on the Key Hole gate and the Xaros’ Dyson sphere. Things were desperate, you understand?”
“I know about the last battle,” Roland said. “What I don’t understand is what any of this has to do with the Toth. We killed off the Toth? I don’t believe it.”
“What you believe is irrelevant.” Ibarra’s surface shimmered. “We had one real weapon at the end of the war: a Qa’Resh named Malal. The last Qa’Resh in the galaxy. He was left behind and imprisoned after the rest of his kind…ascended, shall we say. Malal was willing to help us fight the Xaros, but he had a price. And when you make a deal with the devil, you end up losing your soul. So Stacey and I agreed to Malal’s terms once the Xaros were gone. And the Toth paid the price.”
Roland set his fork down, his appetite gone. He looked at Ibarra, a man he knew had traded billions of human lives so that a few—Roland included—might survive and reconquer Earth. What Ibarra told him made a certain horrific sense.
“What did you do to the Toth?” Roland asked.
“Malal wanted to follow the rest of his kind into paradise, some other dimension where death was impossible,” Ibarra spoke quickly. “To do that, he needed the gate, which the Qa’Resh had, and he needed the strength to open it. Malal fed off the minds of sentient beings, their souls. And the number of souls he needed was in the billions.”
“That’s why the Breitenfeld vanished right after the last battle with the Xaros,” Roland said.
“Smart lad. Stacey and I commandeered the Breitenfeld and jumped to the Toth home world…and we let Malal loose. The Toth were in the middle of a civil war after I helped assassinate their last tyrant. All their fleets had been called back to the home world; their one colony on Nibiru had been destroyed during the in-fighting. You should have seen it. A white pulse of light spreading across the planet, devouring every Toth in existence…well, almost every Toth.”
“This was after the Xaros masters were dead,” Roland said. “Why? Why keep your deal with this Malal? It was genocide.”
“The Masters were dead, but the drones were still out there. Drones with programming and reproduction protocols good enough to wipe out most of the galaxy without a Master directing them. Just because the Masters were gone didn’t mean we were safe. But Malal had the means to get rid of the drones, change their programming and make them fly into the nearest star. He wasn’t going to trust that we’d deliver the power he needed. Again, you deal with the devil…”
“And then the devil won? Malal went to that paradise of his? Did you wave goodbye or try to go with him?”
Ibarra stopped and looked away from Roland.
“We took Malal to the dimension gate after we dealt with the Toth,” Ibarra said quietly. “The Qa’Resh had the door ready for him. He used his power to open it and…well, the Qa’Resh put some fine print into the devil’s contract because they gave him a door all right. But it wasn’t to where the Qa’Resh exist, but to some nightmare. Whatever lived in there tore Malal to pieces and devoured him. The screams were…impressive. He didn’t get what he wanted, but he got what he deserved.”
“If Malal could have been tricked, why didn’t you, Stacey, and the Qa’Resh do it before an entire alien race was wiped out?”
“I’ve run more than one long con in my day, kid. You want to do that, you’d better be smarter than your mark. Malal was evil, the purest evil I’ve ever come across. No, I didn’t think I could pull one over on what the Average Joe might consider to be a malevolent space god that would eat my soul out of spite. So I acted in good faith, which is what you do when you’ve got a knife to your throat. Thankfully, the Qa’Resh were that confident and knew Malal better than I did. I’m glad the Qa’Resh left the galaxy after they took care of their straggler. Anyone with that much power can never be trusted.”
“And you don’t think you did anything wrong?”
“Don’t act like the Toth were innocent bystanders in all this. They betrayed the Alliance. They attacked Earth. They enslaved races and used them like cattle. As food! They were a hostile, evil species, and they were hell bent on gaining control of our proccie tech…until I poisoned that well for them. Removing the Toth from the galactic stage was a win-win for us, the Vishrakath, the whole galaxy.”
“Then why was it kept secret? Why not proclaim what a hero you were for doing this?” Roland got off his cot, hands balled in anger. His visceral reaction to the story struggled with the analytical part of his mind that, in ways that terrified Roland, found reason in the Ibarras’ actions.
“Imagine there’s a wolf terrorizing your village,” Ibarra said. “A smart wolf, an apex predator that no trap can catch. The wolf’s threatening the children, snatching away sheep just before winter arrives. A hunter decides to end the threat, but the only way he can catch the wolf is to use a villager as bait. Even if the hunter uses an outcast…the village will always be a bit suspicious of the hunter after that.”
“So you kept what happened to the Toth hidden from Earth and the rest of the galaxy.”
“There weren’t many eye witnesses. Those that saw what happened have been scattered to colony worlds, many sent off with Hale to Terr
a Nova, never to be seen or heard from for a couple hundred years. Now Admiral Valdar may be a war hero, but when Valdar was captain of the Breitenfeld, he made a few errors in judgment that I leveraged to keep him quiet. That the ship had a sudden and total system failure that erased some of her logs and video files was a coincidence.” Ibarra winked at Roland.
“Much easier to get along with everyone when they don’t see you as the same genocidal enemy that was just defeated,” continued Ibarra. “Also easier to move on to a glorious future if you’re not soul-searching over the path. Stacey and I chose to be humanity’s sin eaters.”
“She’s not dealing with it very well,” Roland said as his anger subsided.
“No, that’s not what’s eating away at her.” Ibarra leaned against the bars and motioned around him. “When I saved her, put her mind into one of these bodies, it was rushed—she was moments away from dying. It’s not like I had a chance to consider the long-term implications—and the transfer was imperfect. Her mind’s stabilized in the past year, but she’s not whole. The trauma of being shot and that she can’t go back to her old body has been an…issue for her. Among many, many other things.”
“She had proccie tech. Why not just grow herself a new body?”
“Two reasons.” Ibarra started pacing again. “First, we cannot grow a body without building the mind within it at the same time. Transferring her consciousness into a brain with a mind of its own would kill the host. That’s the best-case scenario—I’ll let you marinate on everything else that could happen—and killing the host would be murder.”
“That’s beyond the two of you? Simple murder?”
“There’s killing and then there’s murder. You’re a soldier. I think you can draw a line between the two. At first, Stacey wasn’t willing to do a transfer…but the longer she’s stuck in that body, the more she slips away.”
“And the second reason?”
“We need a Qa’Resh probe to do the transfer. They were the conduit from an ambassador’s home world to Bastion. Want to see one?” Ibarra went to his desk and opened the drawer. He pulled out a thin glass needle and held it up to catch the light.
“This is Jimmy. About a century ago, he dropped into the Arizona desert and made a phone call. It’s been quite a trip since then.” Ibarra laid the needle on his palm and pushed it from side to side. “The Qa’Resh took his light away when they left. This is all I have to remember him by.”
“That’s what she was looking for on Oricon, wasn’t it?” Roland asked. “A way to live again?”
“No, son.” Ibarra placed the inert probe back in the drawer and slid it shut. “She’s looking for something far more dangerous than the privilege to eat, feel, and grow old. She wants control, and for that, she needs power. If she finds the Qa’Resh ark, then she can remake this whole galaxy in whatever way she wants.”
Ibarra sat on his bunk and leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
“And it’s my fault,” he said. “I made her this way. I set her on a path before she was ever born, never gave her the chance to be her own woman. Now she’s free. Free and in control of her own nation, armies, fleets. Free to choose her own path and she’s chosen to never, ever let anyone control her again. And it is all my fault.”
“Then how do we stop her?” Roland asked.
Ibarra lowered his head and remained silent.
Chapter 7
Aignar steadied himself against the railing of the Ardennes’ observation deck as the ship translated through the wormholes connecting Crucible gates. He knew the science behind the event, knew that the travel was as instantaneous as science could detect, but every time he made a jump, he felt like his body was stretching.
Gideon seemed no worse for wear, same with Cha’ril. The other officers and sailors on the deck spoke amongst themselves and pointed out the tall windows. The points of the Crucible’s gigantic thorns moved slowly, occluding the dense star field beyond the New Bastion system.
A spacecraft shaped like a silver corkscrew rotated slowly in the distance.
“Naroosha.” Aignar’s metal hands opened and shut with a snap, earning a look from Gideon. “Sorry, sir. Gets my blood up just seeing them. I’m used to ‘see the alien, shoot the alien.’”
“I didn’t know you felt that way,” Cha’ril said.
“Not you. You’re not an alien. You’re Dotari. Which are alien but not the ones we shoot. Are you just being difficult?” Aignar asked.
Cha’ril made small clicks with her beak.
“This is neutral space,” Gideon said. “No active weapon systems allowed, which is why Admiral Lettow didn’t make this jump under combat conditions.”
“Must be driving him nuts,” Aignar said. “Where is New Bastion anyway?”
Cha’ril ran a finger down the smart glass and opened a menu. A window popped open and lines traced from the corners to a large pale dot halfway up the glass. A close-up of a desert world with extensive mountain ranges and small ice caps ringed by oceans appeared.
“Real garden spot,” Aignar said. “Why’d they pick this place to have powwows?”
“It’s located on the far side of the galaxy from the edge of the Xaros advance. Not close to any of the old Bastion worlds. The desert where they’re building the Congress is in a dead zone, no risk of local microbes infecting anyone. The main reason they picked this place is that no one else wanted it,” Gideon said. “Radiation levels are higher than most species can tolerate over the long-term, so they’re building biomes for each member and calling them embassies.”
Cha’ril double-tapped an icon on the planet and the holo zoomed in on an incomplete large dome with several smaller spokes connected by covered highways. She panned the camera around, pausing over construction equipment. The covered stadium looked like a cloud with even layers.
“They’ve still got some work to do,” Aignar said.
“Anything done by committee is inherently inefficient,” Cha’ril said, “and ugly. What architectural style are they going for?”
“It’s modeled after the old Qa’Resh station that was the original Bastion,” Gideon said. “Which the Xaros destroyed at the end of the war.”
Cha’ril zoomed out and sent the camera to a line of alien vessels in orbit around the planet. She stopped over an asteroid with massive engines protruding from one end, its irregular surface broken by weapon emplacements and lit bays.
“The Vishrakath are here,” she said.
“Vish…” Aignar held a prosthetic hand up in front of the glass, looking at the reflection. Seeing their ship and hearing the name of the insect-like aliens seemed to make him more self-conscious about his appearance than usual.
“They called this session,” Gideon said. “Seems we aren’t the only ones that have had run-ins with the Kesaht.”
“The Kesaht are the reason we’re here?” Aignar asked. “Not the Ibarras?”
“I doubt we’ll leave here without a long, painful discussion over the Ibarras,” Gideon said. “It’s an eighteen-hour burn to the planet. Get some rest. You’re both coming down as my bodyguards. There’ve been some security incidents in the past few months.”
“Will I get to see Vish?” Aignar asked.
“Best behavior,” Gideon said.
“Leave it to diplomacy to suck the fun out of anything,” Aignar said.
****
Ding ding.
Aignar woke with a snort. He lifted the stump of an arm that ended just below his elbow and wiped sleep from his eyes, then he rolled over in his bunk and squinted at the blinking time on his new data slate. He had ten minutes to get to the cemetery and suit up and he had incoming calls from Cha’ril and Henrique, his chief armor tech.
“Balls,” he said as he sat up, swung his legs over the side of his bunk, and pushed the nub of his right leg into his boot. The cybernetics interface at the bottom of his calf clicked into the boot and he rolled the ankle of his prosthetic around.
“Balls, balls,” he said as he co
nnected his other foot, then leaned to one side where his hand and forearm waited in a holster. He snapped it on as he mentally kicked himself. He’d forgotten to set his alarm with the new data slate and now he was about to make a mortal sin as an armor officer: missing time to cross the line of departure for a mission.
He twisted his other arm on and bumped an elbow against the door control panel. On the other side of the sliding door hung two cylinders the width of a finger. Each was plastic, but carved with little totems of birds and Dotari language.
“Sure. Why not?” Aignar grabbed both totems and snapped them free of the string connecting them to his door frame.
“No, no, no!” Cha’ril shouted from the end of the passageway.
At the other end, the two aggressive Dotari pushed past the Marine guard, both calling out in their native language.
Aignar looked town at the two totem sticks, then to Cha’ril, then to the two males that didn’t seem interested in each other, but were pointing at Aignar.
“A little help here!” Aignar yelled to Cha’ril.
She ran up to Aignar, twisted him toward the oncoming Dotari, and ducked behind him. She then began singing in Dotari, a soothing rhythm that only confused Aignar more as it seemed to make the two males even angrier.
The Dotari pilot snatched a totem away and broke it in half.
The Dotari armor grabbed the other and bit down on it, breaking it into thirds and spitting out a chunk at the other’s feet.
The corridor was silent but for the constant beeping from all their forearm screens.
The pilot pointed at Aignar.
“I am Man’fred Vo and I demand the ushulra choose once the mission allows. I do not yield.”
“I am Fal’tir, and I do not yield,” the armor Dotari said.
