Yen groaned and threw the pillow across the room as the pain refused to subside, echoing in metal spikes rocketing back and forth within his skull. Snarling in a hollow gesture, he pushed himself into a seated position. Crossing his legs, Yen closed his eyes and tried to block out the scraping of his power running its tendrils across the far walls. Instead, he let his mind sink into itself, imagining a calming and empty plain of white. He took deep breaths, practicing a meditation technique that he had used since the initial onset of his powers during puberty. Wordlessly, he mouthed the same words over and over, a mantra to relax his body and mind. He continued his mantra, straining his concentration against the growing pain in his head. Slowly, the sound of his power’s destructive rage subsided. His body shuddered, the pressure of maintaining his powers inside growing exponentially. The world settled once more, no longer shimmering as though his body were exuding extreme heat. He didn’t know how much time had passed since he began his meditation, but he truly didn’t care, knowing that it was safer for everyone if he regained some semblance of control before leaving his room. He knew, however, that he would need to leave soon if he were to make his meeting on the bridge.
Throwing on his uniform, Yen paused at the dinning room table, staring at a half-filled glass that he never cleared from the night before. Opening his hand and placing it on the far side of the table from the glass, Yen concentrated, focusing his wayward power on pulling the glass to him. The simple action should have been thoughtless, especially after the impressive display of power earlier, but as a few minutes passed Yen had managed to do no more than rattle the glass in place. Gritting his teeth, he tried again, straining to pull the glass across the slick table. Rocking back the forth, the glass responded to his power but refused to move. Yen clenched his hand into a fist. His vision narrowing, Yen stared at the glass; the veins at his temples and on his forehead pulsed with the exertion. The glass began rattling, rolling dangerously on its edge but not tipping or spilling the remnants of the wine within. Darkness crept into the edges of Yen’s vision and his breathing became labored as consciousness threatened to leave him. Straining still, Yen leapt backward as the glass shot from the table, flying across the room before shattering into the cupboards within the kitchen. Where the fragile glass had struck, the wood was splintered from the explosive impact. Yen stared in surprise at the unleashed power, cursing himself for still lacking the control he desired. Absently, he used the back of his hand to wipe away the blood that seeped from his nostril as he felt the pain in his head swelling once more.
Knowing he was already late, Yen shuffled into the hall outside his quarters, squinting against the harsh light. As he moved to the elevator that would take him to the bridge, he passed Crewmen in the halls, catching snippets of thoughts as his power reached involuntarily into their minds. Shaking his head, he slammed his fist into the call button for the elevator, urging it to hurry to his floor. As the doors opened, he slipped into the relative coolness and darkness of the waiting lift. Glancing over, he noticed a Crewman First Class standing rigidly with his arms behind his back, having not been told to relax in front of a superior officer.
“At ease,” Yen mumbled to him. Though he visibly relaxed, he still kept his eyes directly ahead. He said nothing, but his thoughts were an open book to Yen, who continued to scan the minds of those around him.
He looks terrible, the Crewman thought. Having access to the Officer’s Mess must also include access to their stores of liquor. He…
Yen growled to himself, shaking the thoughts free from him mind. He glared at the Crewman, who glanced over and nodded respectfully to the Squadron Commander. As the door opened onto the bridge, Yen quickly exited the elevator and covered his eyes against the harsh light. He quickly noticed that other officers on the bridge sat around in obvious disdain and impatience. Nearly an hour late, Yen could understand their frustrations.
“So glad you could finally join us,” Merric said sarcastically from his seat at the Tactical Station. Yen felt his words slice into his mind, Merric’s voice continuing to grate on his nerves.
“Enough, Eminent,” the Captain chided from the helm. “Regardless of the delays, we still have a very important business to discuss. In less than a month, we’ll be engaging the rear vanguard of the Terran Fleet. They are already moving to intercept, which means that they will be firmly into position…” She looked inquisitively toward Merric, who looked down to examine his data.
“Less than a week, ma’am,” Merric finally answered.
“…less than a week before we arrive,” she finished. “Still, that means that they will be firmly entrenched, using the cover of the orbiting planets to their advantage while we, having pulled hard gravities the entire two months, will enter the system defenseless and exhausted from the travel. We will be at the disadvantage, which will lead to even further delays in our attempt to protect the Alliance capital on Arcendor.”
Captain Hodge leaned forward, her pale wings pulled in tightly against her back. “What I need is ideas and lots of them. I need a way to turn their advantage into ours. I need a way to decimate their significant vanguard while taking few if any losses to our own Fleet. You all are my premier officers on board, my tacticians. Give me ideas.”
As the group was prone to do, a silence ensued as they wordlessly jockeyed for position. No one wanted to voice their opinion first for fear of being overshadowed by another shortly thereafter. Instead, they all sat in silence and reanalyzed their own strategies, ensuring no loophole existed that could be exploited by a rival officer. To Yen, the world suddenly turned into an explosion of sound as voices and ideas overlapped into a hazy grey of background noise. Occasional voices rose to the forefront and Yen grasped at the fractured ideas like life rafts in the rising flood of thoughts.
…decoy missiles, programmed to appear like an element of the Fleet, one voice called out in his mind. Use their strategy against them…
…double envelopment, like a trident, called another, the female voice whispering in his mind. Let the Destroyers engage the center column who will be firing solely reflexively and defensively while two smaller elements maneuver…
A single voice rang out louder than the others, its smugness and overconfidence apparent even in his thoughts. As the voice explained the strategy in great detail, Yen focused his attention solely on the sound of its arrogant tone, drowning out everything else in the room.
“The Terrans are operating in a very narrow window of opportunity,” the voice explained in the small bridge. “If they can’t get into position ahead of the Alliance Fleet, then all advantage will be lost and their ships will be annihilated, regardless of their numbers. We use their reliance on the projections of our Fleet’s arrival against them. Since we’re already burning our engines at maximum speed while traveling through open space, we’ll have to use a different technique to accelerate our timetable.
“My recommendation is to use the gravities of planet’s we’re passing by already on our route to our advantage. There are three gas giants that we will have to cross near during our two-month trip. All three of them suffer from intense gravities, between fifty to one hundred times that of a normal gravity on board our ships. If we slingshot around these three planets, skimming across their atmospheres, we can shave over a week off our journey, putting us in the sector of space just ahead of the Terran vanguard.
“The passage through the increased gravities will be hellacious on the crew as even the gravity inhibitors on board won’t be able to suppress the combined might of the planets’ gravities and those of higher accelerations. However, the couple hours of discomfort will be worth it for the positive gain we will receive as we establish our own ambush for the Terran Destroyers.”
As the voice stopped, Yen felt the pressure build again behind his eyes and nearly cried out in pain. Blinking strongly, he focused once again on the room and looked around, surprised to see everyone staring at him. He looked from face to face and realized, in horror, tha
t the arrogant voice he had been hearing was his own. As he finished his scan of the room, he saw the shocked and infuriated expression plastered across Merric’s face and knew that while it had been his voice telling the plan, it had not been his own idea. Before Merric could say anything, however, Captain Hodge stood from her chair.
“I will assume that the reason you were late to this meeting,” she began, “was because you were finalizing the details on your plan.” A smile broke across her thin lips, one that Yen mirrored to the best of his ability. “I think the idea of using the gas giants to slingshot ahead of the Terrans is brilliant. Does anyone else have another idea or anything to add to Squadron Commander Xiao’s?”
She looked from officer to officer, but they all shook their heads, knowing their own plans jeopardized the ships in the Fleet significantly more than did Yen’s. When she finally reached Merric, her eyes rested on him longer as she watched the blood drain from his red face.
“Eminent Merric,” she asked, “do you have anything to add?”
“No, ma’am,” he said through tightly clenched teeth and jaw muscles that clenched and unclenched in his fury. “I have nothing to add to the brilliant plan.”
“Then this meeting is going to be prematurely concluded,” Captain Hodge said. “Navigation, begin plotting a course that will take us into the atmospheres of the gas giants. Commander Xiao, good work.”
Yen had no urge to stay on the bridge. Between his growing migraine and open hostile feelings rolling off of Merric like sheets, Yen was quickly feeling nauseous once more and had no desire to vomit blood in front of his commanding officer. Instead, he slipped quickly into the lift and closed the doors behind him, leaving the rest of the bridge crew trapped until the elevator returned for them. He hurried through the doors as the elevator stopped on his floor and, entering his code, he slipped into the enveloping darkness within. Taking a seat at the table, Yen placed his head in the crook of his arms and breathed deeply of the cool air in his room, glad to be out of the stifling discomfort of the bridge. Moments after sitting down, however, he heard a code being entered into his door. He turned as the door slid open and light flooded into the dark room. Standing in the doorframe, silhouetted against the bright light, Merric glowered at the seated Yen.
Merric stormed into the room as Yen slid out of his chair and moved around to the backside of the table, keeping the furniture in between himself and the infuriated tactical officer. His head ached as he sought the words that would placate the understandably upset officer.
“You stole my idea,” Merric snarled. “That was my plan and you know it!”
Merric lunged around the right side of the table, but Yen quickly moved as well, keeping the table between the two. The jarring movement caused another spike of pain to run through his skull and the air around him wavered slightly. Yen noticed a faint blue glow emanating from his hands. He was barely maintaining control of his powers, but Merric barely slowed to notice.
“I spent two days on that plan and you plucked it from my mind, you cowardly thief!”
“Merric, I’m sorry,” Yen tried to explain. “I didn’t even realize I did that to you until it was already too late.”
“I don’t want your pathetic excuses,” Merric yelled, spittle flying from his lips. “How dare you steal from me? Do you know who I am?”
Merric’s voice continued to dig into Yen’s mind, planting jagged hooks beneath the tender flesh of his brain and jerking, ripping toward the surface. Cringing from the pain, Yen watched as a single blue tendril slid from his sleeve and wrapped itself around his fingers. So fascinated was he by the power breaking free of his grasp, he didn’t notice as Merric came around the table and grabbed the front of his shirt, pulling Yen up onto his toes so he could look eye to eye with the Pilgrim officer.
“I should ruin your career,” Merric said, his eyes wide with hatred. “But ruining your career wouldn’t be satisfying enough. Instead, I’m going to take my retribution straight out of your skin!”
Yen shook his head, the lancing pain blurring his vision. “Not right now, Merric,” he said passively.
Yen’s obvious lack of concern over his predicament angered Merric further. “You don’t tell me what I can and can’t do,” he roared. “I tell you!”
His eyes flaring a soft blue in the dark room and tendrils spreading from his sleeves and from the spines on his back, Yen’s hair whipped wildly in the windless room. “I said,” Yen began, his voice augmented by the unleashed power, “not…”
The first wave of energy slammed into Merric. Though he kept his grip on Yen’s coat, his feet slid backward on the tiled floor.
“…right…”
The second wave snapped Merric’s head back, singeing the flesh on his exposed neck.
“…now!”
As Yen finished his sentence, Merric was lifted from his feet and tossed across the room, slamming painfully into the kitchen cabinets before being dropped to the floor. His forearm twisted awkwardly behind him as he landed, his mass snapping the bones. Merric cried out in pain, clutching the fractured limb, but still glared at Yen with murderous rage. He leapt to his feet, his shirt torn, exposing the smoldering flesh beneath. Small lacerations across his arms, face and chest bled freely, staining his dark grey tunic with darker smears of blood.
“How dare you assault a superior officer,” Merric stated, his own ego overriding the shock in his system. “I will end your career for this. I will have you brought up on charges and executed!”
“No,” Yen explained calmly, his body aglow with uninhibited psychic energy, “you won’t.”
The power struck Merric like an avalanche. The force stripped flesh from his body and scalded through the layers of muscle before dropping the burning coals into the organs beneath. The meat melted from his arms as Merric threw up his arms protectively in front of his face, exposing the bones beneath. Yen felt the panic grow within him and tried in vain to reel the power back, but the sentient pyrokinetic power continued to lash the officer. Merric opened his mouth to scream, but his tongue melted and his eyes boiled and burst in their sockets. Choking on his own scorched flesh, Merric collapsed to the ground, twitching only briefly before he stopped moving all together.
The power satiated, it drifted back into Yen’s body. He shivered in horror, watching the smoking body lay still on his kitchen floor. Though he felt disgusted at what he had done, there was a whispering voice that he couldn’t ignore in the back of his mind. He may be horrified, but Yen had never felt more in control of his powers than he did at this moment. His powers, once chaotic and unwieldy, seemed eager to bend to his resolve. Eager to test out his control, he reached out his hand, gently lifting Merric’s body from the floor. Yen rolled his fingers and the body moved in concert, turning in mid air in response. Satisfied, Yen placed Merric back on the ground and began formulating a plan to save both his career and his life.
Yen walked down the hallway of the ship, the air around him dancing as he headed toward the engine room in the rear of the Revolution. In front of him, Merric’s body floated down the hall, suspended solely by Yen’s control. Yen reveled in the power he felt, knowing that he now had the ability to fully wield the power, to shape it as he saw fit.
As Crewmen passed him in the hall, Yen reached out, the thin blue filament reaching into their minds and rewriting their memories. In their eyes, Yen walked alone with a sadistic smile spread across his face. He nodded in response to their salutations and asked about their health as he walked, all the while leaving them oblivious to the torn and shredded corpse only inches away. As he entered the elevator that would lead to the bowels of the ship, he stood beside a Warrant on his way to the engine room. Merric floated lengthwise before the two men in the lift. The pungent smell of his scorched flesh stung Yen’s nostrils, but the Warrant didn’t notice, instead standing rigid in the presence of a senior officer. Two senior officers, Yen thought ironically to himself.
When the lift opened to the engine roo
m, the Warrant gestured for Yen to exit first, which he did, his package in tow. Moving quickly toward the plasma port on the back of the enormous engines, Yen halted, letting the heat from the exhaust wash over him. Even from the distance, Yen could feel his cheeks grow pink from the heat emanating from the engine. With barely a flick of his wrist, he sent Merric’s body drifting toward the plasma port, the blue and purple flames licking the inside of the walls within. As his legs began to enter to port, Merric’s skin blistered and smoked, the acrid smell drifting to where Yen stood in anticipation. The body entered and was engulfed in the flames, the heat from the plasma vaporizing the skin and scoring the dense bone until they, too, crumbled to dust within.
“Ashes to ashes,” Yen mumbled to himself as another Crewman walked obliviously past.
Satisfied that the body would never be found, Yen turned back toward the lift and waited impatiently for it to arrive. He still had to clean the kitchen of any evidence that might remain. But right now, he had more pressing concerns. He allowed his face to go slack, his mouth parting slightly. His brow furrowed in concern and he raised an eyebrow.
“What do you mean he’s missing?” Yen asked quietly to the empty air.
He was pretty sure that would be believable, but just to be sure he’d practice for the rest of the day in front of his mirror.
CHAPTER 15:
At the end of the workday, the survivors shuffled wearily back to their homes, eager for a good night’s rest, yet still weary of living in such cramped quarters. With the doors locked for the night and the loudspeakers announcing that curfew was in effect, most of the rest of House 12 bedded down in the common room for the night. Keryn, however, lay awake on the floor and stared at the ceiling, marking the texture of the panel above her head for the hundredth time. Her heart raced and adrenaline already coursed through her veins. She knew she had to wait just a little while longer before sneaking out of the house, but locating the sewer entrance made her excited to the point that she had trouble holding still.
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