by Ivan Kal
“Ouch,” Ryaana said.
Adrian opened his eyes, and saw his Sha vision superimposed on his regular vision. It was strange looking at the world like this; half with his eyes and half with his mind. He saw shadowy swirls that were spread across her body, and they gathered more thickly in her chest, where the organ that allowed them to store the energy to affect the Sha was located. The more powerful someone was in the Sha, the more it pooled in their body, and the thicker the shadows were. Ryaana was very powerful, but not yet as powerful as her mother or Adrian himself. Regardless, she was still one of the more powerful Sha users in the Empire.
“Another round?” Adrian asked.
“Hell no, I have another debrief in an hour,” Ryaana said as Adrian helped her up.
She shook herself and then turned her eyes on him. “So, how much were you holding back?”
Adrian stopped tilting his head in thought. “About sixty percent,” he lied.
Ryaana smiled sadly. She knew him too well. “I’m never going to catch up to you, am I?”
“You have all the time in the world,” Adrian told her gently.
“I guess that everyone needs to have something to overcome,” Ryaana said as she walked out of the training room.
Adrian gazed at the closed doors for minutes after she was gone. Her words had struck a chord with him. There were only three people in the alliance that could give him a challenge: Anessa, the Lurker of the Depths, and Ryaana. And not even they could force him to use all of his power—never that. Everyone in the Empire had at least a few Sha abilities. The Shara Daim, Humans, and Nel had everything that they had inherited from the People: a wide spectrum of abilities. The rest of the races in the Empire had been given as many as the geneticists had managed—a few races had even developed a couple of unique abilities after they had been given the rest. But very few individuals had the talent and power that Adrian possessed.
While dedicated training could increase an individual’s power somewhat, and talent could push them even further, all seemed to hit a wall, an obstacle past which they could not go and they could no longer improve. Ryaana hadn’t yet reached that wall, but Adrian could tell that her rate of improvement had slowed, as it had been with her mother. Although for Anessa, it could have been because she had been focused more on ruling than improving herself these last few centuries.
Adrian, on the other hand, still hasn’t reached his limit. He still pushed himself constantly. It was his goal, his reason for living—to find greater and greater obstacles and overcome them, to find his limit and try to push beyond it. He craved challenges and conflict, craved true struggle, something which seemed to have been denied him in the last five hundred years. He had commanded fleets, mastered his mind and body, defeated enemies, and all of that had left him only craving for more. He had created the Sentinels in order to seek out challenges, and yet circumstances had forced him to remain in the Empire, to guide from Sol as others sought out that which he had wanted for himself.
He understood why Tomas had needed him to stay in command. Adrian was one of the Empire’s most visible leaders other than him, and the people had needed stability. But now times had changed—the Clans had grown more powerful, and the Empire was at peace. Adrian wasn’t truly needed anymore.
He was more excited to make contact with the Krashin than he had been for anything in centuries. And after he was finished with that, after he made sure that the Erasi were no longer a threat, he would leave. Because there was one challenge out there in the galaxy that might sate his hunger—the Enlightened. He needed to find them, to see with his own eyes what they were. And Tomas had promised him that he could go.
He glanced at his bare arms. Both were covered in tattoos. Each image represented an aspect he had mastered and the level of mastery he had attained; the tattoos stretched even to his back. Five hundred years was a long time, and he had spent it all improving himself. He learned as much as he could from every area that even remotely interested him. He had spent time learning how to operate mechs, how to fly combat shuttles. He had learned how to care for those machines and repair them, and he could even build one by himself if he had the tools and materials. He had spent a century learning about the histories of all the races in the Empire, and he studied their conflicts and important events.
So much knowledge…and still, he needed more.
Finally, he sighed and walked out of the training room, heading toward his private rooms. “Get a transport ready to take me off planet in an hour.”
“Where are we going?” Iris’s hologram appeared in front of him.
“Jupiter Yards. I’m going to accept Gotu’s invitation to show me a few more prototypes of his nanotechnology.”
“You could just tell him what you are planning, you know?” She put her fiery hands on her hips as she floated backward, pacing his steps.
“Most of the yards are booked for another five years. Even if I wanted to start now we wouldn’t be able.”
“You could at least tell him. Who knows, he might even sign on.”
“I’ll think about it.”
Chapter Nine
Colony world Santis
Jacob, Nkiruka, and Vas were crouched behind a large fallen tree trunk, looking ahead at the inconspicuous break in the rock of the mountain that was about two hundred meters ahead of them. Nkiruka’s drones had already scouted ahead, carefully, and they were certain that this was indeed the pirate depot. A large door was covering the entrance into the cave.
“There are two turrets, hidden in the rock, here and here,” Nkiruka said as she showed them the feed from her drone on the holo-screen above her forearm.
“I see them,” Vas said. “They look nasty.”
“Class-3 plasma turrets; Erasi make. There aren’t any other defenses inside, but these turrets can blow a hole through our suits,” Jacob said.
“So how are we getting around them?”
“We’ll disable them, but first…” He pulled his backpack and put it down in front of him, and Nkiruka did the same. Jacob pulled out the two boxes that had been at the bottom, and he opened one, pulling out two plasma pistols. He checked their charge, then offered one to Vas.
“You’ll need a backup. You have ten rapid shot rounds before it needs to cool down for ten seconds. The charge holds twenty in total,” Jacob said as he showed Vas where the safety was.
“Thanks,” Vas said. He slid the weapon into his coat before he raised his rifle and started checking it over.
Jacob opened the other box and pulled out three small insect-shaped drones. He slaved them to his implant and turned them on. The small things buzzed to life and flew into the air above them.
“Once I shut down the turrets and open the doors, we need to move quickly. Our objective is their computers—and remember, we need them intact. The rest of the scum are irrelevant,” he said derisively. “I’ll make them an offer to surrender. If they drop their weapons to the ground and put their hands on their heads, knock them out and move on. Anyone with a weapon in their hands is considered fair game.”
The other two nodded. “Norr and I will take the point,” Jacob said firmly. He turned to look at Vas. He didn’t know the man, yet he couldn’t escape the feeling that he was trustworthy. “Vas, you follow and keep our backs safe.”
Vas and Nkiruka readied themselves, and Jacob sent his drones out. He used his implant to guide them to their targets, but they were mostly autonomous. Two of the drones landed on the turrets, and small needle-like injectors stabbed into the turrets’ control panels. Their advanced computers started hacking in. The last drone flew over to the door and landed on its access panel, doing the same.
It didn’t take him long to get control over the pirate systems. They were using old Erasi tech—nothing that presented a difficulty for the Hand’s latest-generation toys. Through the door panel, he got into their surveillance system and retrieved the feed from the cameras inside. There were three feeds, each from a different room.
/>
The storage area was the first one. Inside, dozens of crates were stacked up on one another and two of the pirates were moving the crates from the back of the room to the front. Both were Sorvani, furry bipeds with two arms that split off at the elbows into two more. Thus, while they technically had four arms, the two pairs weren’t capable of full independent movement. Another feed showed him a room that looked like a mix between a resting area and crew quarters, with beds stacked to the one side and entertainment modules on the other. There were three doors, each leading to another room, which meant that one room didn’t have surveillance. There was only one person inside: a Ssarath. Black and red in color, it had a long, sinuous, snake-like body with two arms coming from its torso.
The third room looked like what Jacob would expect of a small command center—computer modules occupied one wall, and a small holo-table stood to the side. It, too, had a single occupant. Another Ssarath.
“Only four occupants. If what you told us was correct, Vas, there should be two more,” Jacob said.
“Unless they left. You did say that at least one more shuttle had landed here,” Vas said.
“True,” Jacob agreed, “but we must assume that they are in there somewhere. We don’t have feeds through that door,” he said, pointing at the holo-feed. “For all we know, that door leads to a larger complex.”
“That’s unlikely,” Nkiruka chimed in. “Their system doesn’t support a larger complex, and this is about the right size for every depot we found before. They like to keep things small. Less chance of us detecting them.”
“We should be on guard nevertheless. Once I open their entrance, we storm in, take care of those in the storage area and move forward. Vas, you come in after us. I’ll broadcast just before we go in.”
“All right, let’s go!” Jacob jumped over their cover just as he initiated the turret shutdown. Before he had even crossed the halfway point, the turrets were disabled. Jacob and Nkiruka reached the entrance and he used the pirates’ own system to broadcast the offer for them to surrender. Before his words even had the chance to settle in, he opened the doors and stepped inside.
Looking down his rifle, he stepped to the left and knew that Nkiruka stepped to the right, both going around the crates. He spread his limited telepathy around him, giving him a small sense of where the pirates were. The two Sorvani were caught off guard. One reached for the weapon at his hip, and Jacob fired, a plasma bolt making a hole in the center of his face. The other one dropped the crate he was holding and raised his hands as he was going down to his knees. Nkiruka walked passed him as Jacob threw a punch in the pirate’s direction and sent a kinetic blast that knocked him out with a hit to the head.
A glance at his HUD’s map told him that Vas had followed them inside. He heard Nkiruka firing her weapon, and he rushed forward into the next room. The Ssarath was on the ground with two steaming holes in the chest.
Nkiruka walked into the control room. Jacob moved toward the door through for which they didn’t have any feed. His drone was still in control of their system, and he opened it. He stepped into the small room that was clearly a bathroom of some kind and was immediately attacked. A large shape grabbed his rifle and ripped it from his grasp while pulling him in. Large hands fell on him and threw him against the wall.
A large, hairy biped with a hulking torso launched down at him—a Bomtu, Jacob recognized the race, as his attacker raised a hand to strike. Jacob had never really been that good with the Sha. He didn’t have the talent for it—but he could throw a good kinetic punch. Jacob raised his left arm and threw a kinetic punch right into the pirate’s face. The pirate’s head snapped back. He stumbled backward, but still held Jacob against the wall. Jacob reached to his thigh and grabbed his pistol. Drawing it from its holster, he started firing from his hip upward. The plasma sizzled as it punched through the pirate’s clothing and flesh. The Bomtu’s grip lessened, and he took a step backward before falling summarily to the ground.
Jacob stumbled from the wall and into the doorway to the previous room, and came face to face with another pirate. The pirate’s rifle was pointed right at Jacob’s face. Time froze as he saw the grin on the pirate’s face, saw his finger tightening on the trigger. The suits that Hand of the Empire provided were good, but not good enough to stop a point-blank plasma shot to the head.
His life flashed before his eyes. He had lived for a long time, more than he could’ve ever imagined back when he had still been on Earth. His only regret was that he couldn’t have done more good, couldn’t have helped more people—
A gunshot boomed, and Jacob saw as the pirate’s head blew apart, his rifle and body crumbling to the ground. Jacob turned toward the source, and saw Vas standing there, his rifle pointed at where just a moment before the pirate was about to kill him. Vas inclined his head and moved further inside the room.
“Thanks,” Jacob said, the modulator hiding his voice’s shakiness, before going back to retrieve his rifle from the floor and he walked back into the “living room.” Vas was standing alert and ready in the corner, watching every entrance. Nkiruka peeked out of the control room, and then gestured for Jacob to follow. He did so, but first he closed and locked the main entrance through his imp.
Inside the control room, Nkiruka was sitting in a chair in front of a computer, looking through the data. “They had initiated a wipe as soon as they became aware of us. I managed to stop it partway through, but they still managed to wipe a few things.”
“Location of their base?”
She shook her head. “Don’t know yet. It could be that it wasn’t even on these computers, but there must be at least a clue. This is the first database that we managed to get that was so much as partially intact.”
Jacob nodded at her words. It wasn’t that the Hand was incompetent, it was that the pirates had been very careful. Lucky, too, he thought with irritation.
“Ah, here we go. They were planning on abandoning this depot soon. They have a ship scheduled to come and pick them up…in two months.”
For a moment Jacob wondered, Why so long? Then he realized that they had no reason to believe that the colonists knew about them—for all they knew, they had eliminated the only person that had seen them.
“What else?” he asked.
“There are manifests of cargo: where it was acquired and which ship took it and what amount they should be paid for it… This indicates that they have a kind of a centralized organization. The pirates bring their loot to the depots, they catalogue it and then send it to their base. The pirates can then retrieve funds from the depots after they receive it from their base.”
“Anything on location?”
“There are coordinates for other depots, but I’m not… Wait. I have something—I managed to retrieve a database that had been deleted. I think that this is it,” she said excitedly.
“Where is it?”
“One sec.” Nkiruka opened a map above her wrist and input the coordinates. The map changed, and a system flashed red. “Well, that is a problem.”
Jacob grimaced behind his mask. “Yeah, that’s a problem.”
Then a sizzle of a plasma shot rang out, followed by a gunshot, startling them both. They ran out of the room immediately, their weapons at the ready.
***
Aranis watched as the two inquisitors walked into the control room, his arm still tingling from firing his weapon. He had memories of Vasily firing the weapon before, but it was another thing to experience it for himself. The People had never invented devices whose only purpose was to kill living beings; they had only adapted tools for that purpose. And now the galaxy was filled with races that did so. Aranis and the rest of the Enlightened had done some experimenting, and while their technology and weapons were more advanced, they were also simpler in concept—if vastly more powerful.
Aranis let his mind expand and brush against the two inquisitors, making sure that they didn’t plan on leaving the room soon. Then he turned and walked back into the
storage area. The alien lying on the floor unconscious had the bad luck of being present when Vasily had been shot. He knew his face, and knew that Vasily couldn’t have survived.
He approached the pirate and but stopped several steps away. There were visual recording devices. He couldn’t do anything that the inquisitors wouldn’t later see, and he would really like not to need to alter their memories—that was complicated and carried too much of a risk of detection. He pretended to look the pirate over, then he stepped back to the doorway and stood so that he could see into the both rooms. As he turned to look at the living area, he reached out with the Sha, waking the pirate up. Then his mind broke through the feeble defenses that the pirate had. His telepathy was pathetic, barely capable of mind speech. He put him under his control, breaking his mind in the process. It didn’t really matter; no one would be able to look at him and discover what Aranis had done.
The pirate, under Aranis’s control, crawled over and took his fallen comrade’s rifle. He knelt and pointed it at Aranis. By his command, the pirate fired once, missing, and Aranis turned quickly and fired, putting a shot through the pirate’s head.
The two inquisitors ran out of the control room almost immediately.
“What happened?” Jok asked as soon as he saw the dead pirate.
“He woke up and fired at me. I had no choice,” Aranis said.
The inquisitors looked at the body and the rifle in its arms, and Aranis could see them thinking. He could make them more ready to believe him, but there was no need. The facts would speak for themselves, even if they looked at the video feed.
“Did you find what you’d been looking for?” Aranis asked.
And after a beat, Jok answered him. “Yes. Yes, we did.”
Chapter Ten
Erasi core world
O’fa Valanaru, the Weaver of the Erasi, sat in the center of her sanctum. All around her, holograms twisted, showing her whatever data she wished. The last preparations for her revenge were at hand, and it had been too long. The fleets were mobilizing and the supplies had been acquired, great care having been taken for all of it to remain secret. She was certain that the alliance of the Empire and the Shara Daim had spies in Erasi territory; after all, she had her own in theirs. They might know something, but they couldn’t know everything.
