by Aer-ki Jyr
“How does that work?”
“We have our ways. The truest test takes place when you don’t know you’re being tested, and good people have the ability to smell out others. You don’t reek of goodness like another Archon would, but I get a whiff of it from you. You changed when you met Rammak, I’d guess?”
“Sometimes it’s hard to remember the way it was before. It wasn’t that long ago, but it feels like forever. I can’t imagine living like that again.”
“One way or another, you won’t have to. Right now it’s a question of whether the V’kit’no’sat or Star Force get to us first. You’ll either be dead or in our empire, where the light of good shines bright and pulls the follower types our way. It’s hard to be evil and live in Star Force. Apathy is there, in the masses, but few are evil…and those are identified quickly.”
“What do you do with them?”
“Most people in Star Force are raised from birth in a maturia, so we train everyone. If someone is born evil, rare as it is, we do what we can to steer them another way, giving them a chance, but when they are released into the populace after graduation…if they make it that far…security watches them closely. When they do, or try to do, something wrong they’re plucked out of society and put in a Star Force prison where they live in isolation until their penalty time expires.”
“You don’t kill them? Even if they murdered someone?”
“If we take someone prisoner we never kill them. But there are times when we track down someone and don’t take them prisoner. Those times are rare and almost always have an Archon involved, or there’s some sort of fight happening and the threat is dealt with in the moment. We don’t mistreat prisoners, we put them away into their own private living space with all the material and resources needed to improve themselves. We don’t expect they will, but they’re given the chance while being kept away from everyone else. But still, most people in Star Force are not good. They may be leaning that way because they’re followers, but good people are still rare in the galaxy. Star Force seems to collect a lot of them though.”
“Rammak was good, wasn’t he?”
“I didn’t know him well enough to be sure, but I would guess that he was at least part way there. You’d be hard pressed to find a Commando that wasn’t at least part good. Warriors can feel out other warriors, and if their motivation isn’t right it’s easy to spot. And if you can’t trust a fellow Commando then they don’t deserve to be a Commando.”
“What happens then?”
“An Archon will remove them however necessary, but our training has gotten so good that we eliminate the unworthy before they make Commando rank.”
“Do you think I could be a Commando?”
“Like Rammak? No. You are on a very rare path now, youngling. You have a psionic, and Commandos do not have psionics.”
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“Archons have psionics, but we do not get them when we become Archons. If we pass our basic training we earn our armor and the rank of Adept. We then go through a leveling up process for about 100 years, more for some, because we start out level 1 and go up through 99. The next level is Acolyte 1, and when we make that transition we get the basic 7 psionics that Zen’zat are also given initially. Except for us they’re not given, rather unlocked, because our genetic code already has them in it, lying dormant. But for you, Esna, one of yours has come unlocked on its own. You now have Fornax, and that is something very, very rare for non-Archons.”
“When did that happen?” she asked, shocked.
“When you were injured Hati felt you use it. Do you remember anything?”
“Nothing more than a big headache. Everything else is a blur.”
“Your tissue isn’t quite right, hence the headache. I’ve repaired you as much as I can, but I suggest you don’t try and use it again until we get you to a medbay where they can finish the repairs.”
“Use it? I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“It feels like a mental button in your mind. If you look for it you’ll find it, and when you use it you’ll create an energy burst that disrupts the nervous systems of living beings temporarily. It causes us to twitch and fall, though you’re immune when you use it. I have another psionic that limits its effect on me, but most Zen’zat will not have it. You now have a weapon that can be used against them, even through their armor, unless they want to blind their own psionics to protect themselves against you.”
“I don’t feel anything,” she said, searching her mind and feeling nothing but a headache.
“You will, in time, and when you learn to use it you’ll have an ability that even the Commandos don’t have.”
“Can I become an Archon?”
“No,” Tyrenk said, slowly shaking his head in apology. “I’ve been inside your mind many times. You don’t have what it takes, and rarely does anyone develop what it takes later in their life. A few have, but they were anomalies. The skillset we’re chosen for is more intuitive than learned.”
“Then what can I do?”
“A Commando with Fornax would be a very powerful addition to a fighting unit, but there are many options, all of which require a lot of training and effort. You’ll have to earn your way, but the testing will have to be different because of your new ability.”
“But I can fight the V’kit’no’sat…someday?”
“Possibly.”
“But not likely,” she said, looking down at the ground. “My Calavari mother said hate was a bad thing, but right now that’s all I can feel. I want to fight back, but I’m too pathetic now. I can’t let it go, especially looking at them now.”
“You were told not to hate?”
“That’s what she said, Innit, my adoptive mother on Forso. I don’t even know if she’s still alive or not. We had to run and not look back once it was discovered I was a Human. Anyway, she said hate was something that tore you up inside, and it was something that you had to let go of to be healthy.”
“Well she was wrong,” Tyrenk said firmly.
“She was?” Esna blurted.
“Good people hate. We hate evil, we hate injustice, we hate bad things happening. If we can look at something bad and not feel hate, then we are apathetic. We are supposed to hate. It’s an emotion that’s in you for a reason. The trick is in not letting it get warped into something unintended. Just burying the emotion doesn’t work in the long run. You end up making yourself apathetic, essentially blinding your gut instinct.”
“Like the V’kit’no’sat…” she said, not wanting to be like them in any way, shape, or form.
“They are more than just apathetic, but you’re not wrong.”
“So you’re feeling hate right now?”
“No, not this moment. I feel it when I see something happening, and when I remember, but the memories don’t produce much. I feel hate when it’s fresh.”
Esna pointed at the bodies. “What do you feel when you look at them?”
“Loss. Pity. Pride. Determination. And yes, a little lingering hate, but nothing like what I feel in the moment. Hate spurs you to take action, either to stop what is happening or to stop those doing it. Good people hate, Esna. If you don’t, then you’re either not good or isolated from the evil of the universe.”
“Thanks. That makes me feel better…and makes a lot of sense, actually.”
“You didn’t grow up in a maturia. There’s a lot you didn’t learn.”
“I know,” she said, looking at the bodies on top of the logs again. “How are we going to light it? Shoot it?”
Tyrenk shook his head. “No, that would blow apart the logs. I can light it.”
“With what?”
The Archon held up his hands and walked next to the stacked wood.
“As I said, there are seven basic psionics. Ikrid is the mind power. Pefbar is the ability to see without your eyes. Lachka is our telekinesis. Sesspik is a healing trance. Fornax is what you have now even if you can’t feel it. En
sek is a telepathic repeater. And last is Rensiek, the ability to produce and move heat within our bodies, as well as shield against it. I can use it to start the fire.”
“You can make fire with your hands?”
“If I have something to burn, yes. Otherwise it’s just heat. It also means I can run around in the snow naked and not get cold.”
“Do you have one to cool you in this heat?” she asked, having mostly gotten used to the sweltering planetary climate.
“No, but I can move heat around and expel it from my body…if I have somewhere to put it. Doesn’t work as well to keep me cool as it does to produce heat, but I can use it for that in a pinch if necessary.”
Tyrenk knelt down and concentrated, then he touched his hands to some small branches that held a ball of even smaller pieces of wood that looked like they had been put there on purpose. With a crackle and puff of smoke the whole ball erupted into flames on his touch but the Archon didn’t pull his hands back. He kept them and his forearms in the fire as it grew larger and larger, then he finally stepped out of it and walked back next to Esna as it began to spread up and down the length of the pyre remarkably fast.
“I really wish I could be an Archon,” she said as she watched the flames approach Rammak’s body.
“A lot of people think that, but they don’t have the fortitude to handle the infinite training, among other things. You must walk your own path, and if it’s combat you want, it will be there for you if you earn it.”
“And if not?”
“Then you stay safely behind the battle lines until you do, or until the V’kit’no’sat overrun us.”
“Is that going to happen eventually?”
“No one knows. They should have done so long before now, but we’ve been holding them off. I don’t know what’s going to happen in this war. I just take care of my little piece of it as best I can,” Tyrenk said, looking at the row of bodies as the flames began to rise up to them around the edges of the wood. “And I didn’t do too well here.”
Esna reached out and grabbed his hand, reflexively flinching when her mind realized that it might still be burning hot, but it wasn’t. His skin was actually cool to the touch, so she squeezed it and held on tight, not taking her eyes off the pyre.
“I don’t think they’d blame you. And you saved me and Hati. Thank you for that.”
“You never get used to losing people,” he said, squeezing her hand back. “But when it happens over and over again, you learn to process your emotions more quickly. They are gone now, we are still alive, so my focus is on the living. I’m only doing this because we have the time. One last gesture of respect. But I still failed to save them, and I do not like that.”
“What could you have done differently?”
“Get stronger. An Archon of higher rank in my position would have saved them.”
“But they weren’t here, you were. So why blame yourself?”
“It’s not blame, Esna, just a simple fact. I meant to protect them and the V’kit’no’sat killed all but you and Hati. Each of you was a mission objective, and all are failures save for 2.”
“It wasn’t a fair fight.”
“It usually isn’t. Archons have to find a way.”
“You kept us all from dying in space.”
“A small victory there, but I didn’t buy them much time. Still, we take what we get and what we have now is our lives, three of them. They meant to kill us all and we’re not all dead. So long as one of us survives that's a victory, but I’m not ok with failing missions…even the impossible ones.”
Esna didn’t say anything further, and the two stood there holding hands until the flames got too high and they had to step back to avoid the heat, with the lost little Human girl saying one final silent goodbye to her protector before she did what Rammak would have wanted her to do.
Keep moving and survive.
At least he died with Star Force, in battle. She thought that’s the way he would have wanted it if he had a choice of deaths, but Esna knew it should have been her dead body up there and Rammak standing here alive. That would have been justice after the hundreds of years he’d survived on his own. Her being here in his place was injustice…and she hated it.
8
September 27, 4812
Chawik System (Devastation Zone)
Darlek
Over the following days Esna, Tyrenk, and Hati had little to do but wait and manage their supplies. All three of them did a little training, with Esna working up to a couple of minutes of jogging in the high gravity, but that was only to maintain their bodies. The Archon did a lot more, but far less than usual so not to burn through so many foodstuffs and limit their time here. They did find some V’kit’no’sat foodstuffs, but still they had a limited supply and no way of knowing when someone would find them.
After a while Tyrenk started eating local plants, which was when Esna learned that one of his many psionics gave him the ability to digest cellulose…which was something in plants that Humans normally couldn’t digest. Tyrenk was going around pulling leaves off the trees and munching on them constantly so he could save more of the foodstuffs for her and Hati, though he still ate some of them along with his Ambrosia, the latter of which he was still giving Esna tiny bits of to help her fight the high gravity.
Day after day went by with Hati making repairs and reworking the interior of the V’kit’no’sat ship debris into carefully sorted piles of junk he’d been collecting while the three of them lived out of a tent nearby. Esna wondered why they didn’t go back to their own crash site and wait there, but all things considered it didn’t really matter. They weren’t too far apart from the view overhead and the V’kit’no’sat debris was more intact, giving her some rooms and hallways to explore and clean up while they waited…and waited.
It was almost a month before a ship arrived in orbit, and fortunately it wasn’t one of the enemy’s. It was a Star Force ship sending out a signal looking for the survivors the buoy they’d left behind in space had signaled there were. Not long after that dropships were coming down and landing in the burnt out clearing that had already begun to sprout new plants as the jungle worked ferociously to consume the open dirt/ash landscape.
Esna saw a couple of dropships land in the distance where their ship had gone down, with another three coming to their location. She walked out to meet them along with Tyrenk, seeing another Archon come down the ramp wearing the pink armor of a ViLord. That was one level higher than Tyrenk’s Titan status, though he’d admitted to her that he’d gotten a few psionics ahead of time. They were split up into 4 tiers and Archons weren’t scheduled to get all the tier 3s until they became a ViLord, but Archons could share their psionics and if a higher ranking one wanted to give them one early.
So Tyrenk was still outclassed by the ViLord that stepped out of the dropship to meet them, but not as much as a Titan normally would be…though she could still kick his ass with ease if she wanted.
“Aren’t you a little short for a Zen’zat?” she asked, helmet off as she looked at the enemy armor gauntlets that he still wore.
“I used up my armor, so I improvised.”
“And you?” she asked Esna.
“He broke mine too,” she said with a tired grin.
“Where is the Kiritas?”
“Still working on the debris.”
“We can’t stay here long,” the ViLord warned. “I’ve got 8 damaged warships to get to a repair yard and I don’t like sitting still and waiting to be detected. We have to keep moving.”
“This is worth it. These Kat’vo spent their last seconds smashing equipment rather than defending themselves against me. There is something in their ship important enough that they didn’t want us to have it.”
“Please tell me whatever it is can be moved in a few hours?”
“Our tech has already been sorting out pieces, but there are larger components still in the hull. We have to cut those out and I’m not sure how long it will take, but we n
eed to get whatever it is.”
“And he has no idea what it is?”
“There’s some form of emitter in it, beyond that he doesn’t have a clue.”
The ViLord blew out a puff of frustrated air. “Alright, we’ll risk it. I only have skeleton crews. Most of the personnel were transferred onto operational ships.”
“How bad is the damage?”
“They’re roughed up, but the V’kit’no’sat didn’t get any big hits in. Lost enough gravity drives to make them limp though.”
Tyrenk nodded, knowing that if the huge control ships didn’t have full engine power they wouldn’t be able to evade as needed. “We winning?”
“A lot of damage to both sides, so it’s hard to tell, but we got the surface evacuated. The trailblazers are staying just so they can pound the Viks.”
“That means we’re winning. How many made it out?”
“A little over half.”
Tyrenk cringed, and only then did Esna realize they were talking about Tauntaun, the ice planet that they’d escaped from in the evacuation ship.
“They’re still fighting?” she asked, aghast.
“Yes,” the ViLord confirmed, looking closely at Esna.
“She’s not Star Force,” Tyrenk added. “She’s one of two recovered from the Devastation Zone. The other was a Calavari that died here. She hasn’t been trained.”
“Recovered?”
“Wayward Humans operating beyond our or the V’kit’no’sat’s reach.”
The ViLord raised an eyebrow. “Now that’s interesting,” she said as a group of techs moved down the ramp behind her, stumbling as they hit the high gravity before heading off towards the ship debris.
“She needs transfer out of the Devastation Zone and was waiting for a ship on Tauntaun. The V’kit’no’sat hit us before she could get a ride.”
“We’re not going all the way back. Too risky to travel that far. We’ve got a rendezvous a few systems away. We can take you that far.”
“Ghostblade?”
“Yeah.”
“That’ll do. Esna, wait inside the dropship until we’re ready to leave. It’s normal gravity in there.”
