by Celeste Raye
There was the real crux of power. The greater good balanced against what he wanted and needed: what he loved.
But inside him, the battle had already been lost. All of his defenses were crumbling. There was nothing left but his broken and shattered heart and the certain knowledge that this was the end of everything good about him. That he would never ever be able to recover even the slightest bit of goodness from within himself. Not even if he managed to stay with her. Especially if he couldn’t find a way to do so.
Chapter 15:
The sheer amount of ships in the sky was so staggering that they blotted out the heavens, forcing an unnatural darkness into the world. Lornia stared upward, all of her hatred and anger coming back again.
That time it was not directed solely at the humans though. There were other beings in this universe, beings who were just as reckless with the life and just as mad with power.
Destroying the Federation would not destroy that. She knew that because her race had already seen this happen before.
Her mind went back to those long ago days, and she could feel the weapon beginning to power down slightly as those memories stole her concentration away from the moment at hand.
They had been foolish. Her race, they had been foolish enough to believe that if they only closed that one door and tried again in the universe untried and untested, not yet alive, that they could end war and bring about peace that could never be broken.
But within every being lay hatred. Within every being lay anger and rage and the tendency to war and fight. In every single being in every single universe lay greed, lay apathy, lay ignorance, and the willingness to turn away from evil and to let it play out rather than to stand against it and fight for something better, to fight for the good.
But there was good too. In every single being and in every single universe, there were those who were good. Here, in this universe, she had seen so much good. So much evil too.
She had never wanted to be this weapon. She had never wanted to be a killer, and she had never wanted to be at war. She had turned away from her responsibility to her own race as they lay dying and fighting in the universe beyond the one in which she now stood. She and the elders who had chosen her had decided to turn their backs and to do nothing. They had closed that door and let evil rule, and now and in that other universe lay something even worse than the Federation.
And it should have been stopped long ago.
She had turned away from evil once, and now the fact that it was still alive and much worse was just as much her fault as it was the fault of those who had originally engaged in it.
That anger within her, that pulsing hatred that was the weapon’s greatest power, gave off sick and thick little throbs inside her heart and body. The weapon systems grew stronger with every breath that she took, and she knew that Drake was hesitant, torn between ordering her to use that weapon, to become that weapon, and his love for her.
That love that had worn down his grand and killing ambitions and let the goodness of his soul shine through the darkness that had started up in him and that the weapon had brought even closer to the surface.
She knew that he feared, just as she had back then, ordering the release of that weapon upon the universes.
But it had to be done. He had to be stronger than he thought he could be. He had to use the weapon even if it meant sacrificing the love they had for each other.
She had to be the weapon, had to sacrifice herself and that love she wanted so much to keep because there were hundreds of thousands of people gathered below, all of them staring up at the sky. The Federation was willing to kill all of them, and she could not allow that.
She looked at Drake and spoke. “Give me the command. I can’t command myself. You’re the only one who can, and you must. Fire the weapon. You must. Please.”
Had he understood what she had said? Her ability to speak was fading. The machine was taking over and soon she would be nothing more than that machine. She hoped he had understood her and as he looked at her, she thought she saw recognition and understanding written on his face but stamped over that was a grief so violent and so large that she feared he might yet fail in his duty.
Drake reached out a single hand. His fingers stroked through her hair, sending it fluttering in the sour wind emanating from the ships above.
His voice was gruff. A single tear tracked its way down his right cheek. “Weapon, I command you to fire.”
The whole of the Federation Armada was in the skies above them. There was no way out of this. He had to do it. Drake spoke the command and even as he did, the last vestiges of hope and joy that he had known crumbled into nothingness. Lornia’s last words rang through his mind, trying to summon up a small bit of that hope—hope that there would be after—but it faded as she suddenly threw her head back and her arms spread wide.
The rip began in the sky and he stared upward, his mouth opening in a silent scream. He had never seen anything like that in his life. How could he have? Space and time tore its self in half, rupturing across the sky. The ships, suddenly flung out of the orbit that they had known, crashed together as if a child's hand had carelessly swept down from the heavens and smashed them like an unwanted toy.
Then a vast suction began. The wind was so strong, so bitter and acrid that it burned his throat and eyes, that it lifted him off his feet and toward that rupture so many hundreds of miles above him. His scream lodged in his throat. He managed to keep one hand fisted into her hair, but he could feel his grip slipping.
A funnel appeared, a whirling and sucking funnel. That funnel arced across the sky and as he watched in complete terror and shock, the Federation ships suddenly began to fly into that funnel. He saw a vast warship, one that held at least fifty thousand of the Federation’s soldiers, get sucked into the maw of that funnel.
More grief hit. Those were living and sentient beings on that ship! He had just killed thousands! He had done that; he was a murderer, and a murderer with a high kill count on his conscience and heart. More ships were sucked upward. The rift continued to form and shape itself. The people below on the planet screamed and ran for shelter. He wondered if it would do them any good at all. Would this entire planet, would the entire system that they were within, be taken by that rift? Had he made a vast mistake?
He had to command the weapon! The Federation ships were being clawed out of existence, winking away, and to some place where he could not see them. He wanted to weep with sheer horror at what he had ordered to be done even as he knew that it had to be done.
And still, the rift continued to grow.
More Federation ships vanished. The wind picked up, blowing him across the ground they stood upon and toward the high spikes of the wall that they had built. Blade grabbed him and hung on. Drake stared at his half-brother with real bemusement. How had they ever been enemies? How had they ever let things as ridiculous as the circumstances of their birth and the fact that they had different mothers keep them from appreciating each other for the men that they were? It didn’t matter now. Everything was ending, and it was his fault, and he had no way to stop it. Or did he?
“Weapon, disarm!”
Was it too late? Had she any ability to stop now that she had begun such destruction? The Federation ships were gone, but the sky still boiled and rolled. The atmosphere changed. Stinging sand blew in, shattering windows and toppling buildings. People ran, screaming now as they realized that the weapon they had unleashed in a bid to save their lives might very well end them.
“Weapon! Disarm!”
His voice was harsher now, louder. But Lornia did not hear him, did not listen. Above in the sky, more of her power burned. It shot from her outstretched arms and her legs and center of her being. It poured from her mouth, from her eyes, and even from her elegantly carved nostrils. Time stopped. Nothing moved. He was aware of that fact, aware of what was happening, but unable to break past the sudden cessation of time itself to move toward her and to give her that order yet ag
ain.
Then time came back. It jolted, rocking the world around them with a clap somewhat like thunder and a lot like a sonic boom. People lurched forward, as time did as well. He managed to move, and that time his fingers, still tightly wound into her hair, lifted her head up toward her shoulders and then turned her face toward his. The force of her power hit him, withering the skin away from his face and burning him like fire. Everything in him said this was death, that he was fighting against his own death and it was stupid and pointless. To let her go.
But his heart said if this was how he died, if he’d died with her, then so be it.
His mouth came down on hers. Her power flooded into him, shattering every bone, destroying every organ. He could feel himself breaking down to nothing but a series of molecules and atoms, becoming dust and ash on the wind. Her lips fastened to his, and the keening of the wind grew higher, stronger, and louder. His eyes were gone now, and he was unable to see. It didn’t matter. He could feel her body against his, what was left of it, and he was dying.
The Federation was gone. Swept away from the universe and sent into the other. The door was forming. Lornia was forming the door that would keep this universe safe, and he was dying, dying right there in her arms. And it didn’t matter.
It didn’t matter if people forgot his name. It didn’t matter that there was no glory in such an ignominious death. It didn’t matter that he was in so much agony behind his kiss and the scream that he could not voice. It did not matter that he would never see her again because for one heartbreaking, heart-stopping second, a tiny little space somewhere between the loss of space and time, his body actually melded into hers. They were one. One creature; one being with one purpose.
Disarm the weapon. Disarm the weapon. Disarm the weapon.
Chapter 16:
It was there, in her mind. What the fortress had been before the beast wars, before the Federation’s founding members had come and changed everything. The lush gardens, the well-appointed rooms. The freshwater wells and the docks where ships could land, if they only knew the way. The seams of time and space that held it there within its little bubble. The seven gates that approached it and moved away from it at the same time. The tall and graceful arches of windows and the sweet, sure feeling that peace was real and present.
Tralam, as it had been envisioned by that ancient race. As it had been meant to be kept. As it should have been and would’ve been had it not been for the foolishness of those who would come to it hoping to use the weapon within for their own means. Substance changed, everything faded, and then colors spun and space fell silent in a way before gathering itself up again.
The stone walls formed. The doors, the ones that led to universes that she had never known; all that she knew all too well formed all around her and long columns settled into space, forming a barred prison, a barred existence. The one she had been saved from and now must return to. What would the Tralam that was drawing her into itself be?
She did not know, but she was moving through space and time fast now, and still, she could see it all, see the thing she was made to protect—that the weapon had been made to protect. Behind every door was another door, behind that door yet another door. An endless and infinite amount of universes, some running parallel and some universes within universes, alternate dimensions that also had their place already carved out.
And there in the center of all of them, spinning like a top and presenting nothing but a blank space to any who would open those doors, stood Tralam.
Tralam, and the weapon within it.
Her.
She felt his kiss. She felt Drake’s mouth on hers and his order for the weapon to disarm, but it was too late. The weapon would disarm without any help from her because its power was now spent. And she was being taken away from him, hurtling through space and time, pulled back by the technology of an unparalleled race who had died long ago but not before building the one thing that would ensure that all life would go on every universe, and in every alternate universe beyond them.
Drake was with her. She felt his presence, but she knew that he could not survive this. She was not even sure that she could either. The weapon within her would survive it. Of that she was sure, but whether she would or not—of that she had no way to know. Everything compressed until she felt as if there was no air left in her lungs. Her entire being was broken down, her flesh scraped away in an excruciating and agonizing moment that stretched on for an eternity. A thousand years passed as she writhed in that pain, and only a second passed as she writhed in that pain.
She was everywhere and everything. She knew love and laughter and hope and joy. She knew greed and hatred and anger and rage. She knew violence and sweetness. In that moment, she felt billions of heartbeats racing through her chest and laughing with millions of mouths. Her ears heard millions of voices rising in song and screams of terror. She was the universe, and the universe was her, and she knew everything within every one of those universes.
And then the door slammed shut.
The weapon was once again held in the prison that had been created for it so many millions of years before.
Chapter 17:
Drake’s eyes opened, and he realized that he had eyes again. His vision came back along with the sensation of him falling into his body. The weight and solidity of his flesh and bone startled and confused him. He had blown apart, he had felt himself blow apart, and so how was he a whole man again?
Lornia stood there, her face shining and more honed and sharper than ever. Drake looked down at his body, his hands brushing against his chest and then lower. He gave his crotch a covert squeeze, unable to resist. Everything was in place it seemed. He glanced back up to see Lornia grinning at him. He said, “Go ahead and laugh it up. If you were a man, you would’ve checked too.”
Lornia said, “Oh, believe me, I was checking a few things myself when I came to.”
He blinked a few times. “Did that actually happen? It felt like I was being taken apart one piece at a time and then turned to dust. Was that just a hallucination or did it happen?”
Lornia nodded. “Yes, you did go to pieces, as did I. It happens in that kind of travel, I think. I felt all of my skin being peeled away, and it was so painful I thought I would die before it ended.”
Drake went to her and wrapped her in his arms. Their bodies collided together, and he felt again the familiar press and shape of her body against his. Desire stirred within him, and he whispered, “Where are we?”
She said, “Tralam. Only not Tralam. At least it’s not the one that you saw. This one is much different, but it’s also the very same.”
He didn’t know how to make sense of that. He knew that Tralam was a creation of the machine that was, in turn, an invention of that older race. How they had managed to re-make it after it had blown apart was a mystery, but he rather suspected that it had something to do with the weapon being drawn to Tralam, and Tralam forming around it.
He looked around. “It’s not falling apart. That’s something.”
“I think,” her tongue came out and wet her lips. “I think your kind never came to this Tralam. If they had, it would be changed and turned toward the way it was after they came.”
His kind.
Humans.
His lips touched against her temple. The fine blue veins there pulsed a bit below his lips, confirming that she was indeed alive. “My kind has done a great amount of wrongs to yours.”
Lornia said, “Mine did a great deal of wrong to yours.”
He stepped away, a frown between his brows. He wanted to touch her. He wanted to hold her. He wanted to make love to her. He sensed that she was ready to talk to him now about her race, something that she had not been willing to do for so long. “What do you mean?”
She turned her head and looked around them. The hallways seem to wander on forever. The walls were high and unbroken. Rooms lay in all directions and uneasiness filtered through his system. They were there, but they were alone there
. He had no idea how long he could live in a place where time did not exist. Would he be willing to stand it?
His gaze moved back to her face and his heart said yes. For as long as he could live and be with Lornia, he would need no other.
She said, “Walk with me.”
Her hand came out, and he took it. Her long fingers twined around his shorter ones, and he felt the warmth of his skin transferring itself onto her flesh. They began to walk, side-by-side, and down the long and echoing hallways. Again, that uneasiness came in, but again his heart said that it did not matter. That being alone with her for eternity would be no chore at all, it would be a blessing.
He said, “Your race created mine.”
Lornia said, “Yes.”
He should have been floored by that yes, but he wasn’t because deep down he had known that for a very long time. He asked, “Why?”
“We wanted slaves.”
That hit him hard, but he bore up under it. Slavery was an evil that had always existed and likely always would. Nothing seemed to change the need to own things, not even other beings. It seemed to be something hard-wired into every being. While some species and races had evolved beyond it, they still had slavery in their pasts; some of those pasts were distant and dim, and others were very close by. Slavery did still operate all over the universe, and he wondered if there would ever be a time when every single planet in every single system outlawed that terrible thing—and if it were outlawed, if it would truly be eradicated.
Slavery was a shameful thing but those who were determined would find a way to enslave others, and there were legal ways to own people.
The Federation had made slaves of all who had allied themselves with that organization after all, and they had done it by touting freedom and peace and the law.
