by Justin Sloan
“You want to know what’s happening?” He gestured to the window as the bright lights of the gates surrounded them. It was beautiful, if not slightly blinding. “We get there, leave this behind, and I’ll tell you what I know. But first…” He stumbled forward, caught himself on the wall, and smiled wearily. “How about some food?”
Everyone agreed, realizing how famished they were as they made their way to the mess hall.
8
The Noraldian
Having passed through the gate, the group sat in the mess hall and watched the image of Earth. The ship turned and began making its approach, and once again all they could see was an expanse of stars.
Samantha was hungrier than she had been in a while. Using the powers Hadrian had taught her took a lot of focus, and was exhausting. As she munched on peanuts, a berry juice in her free hand, she listened to Hadrian explain what their strategy was.
“We can’t all go down there. As stealthy as I know we can be, we don’t want to take any risks here. The last thing we need is more fires stoked, more unnecessary deaths.”
“So you’re going alone?” Samantha asked.
He shook his head. “Just me… and you.”
“Why her?” Agathe asked. “We’ve never been to Earth. It seems such a waste to have come all this way and not get to go.”
“Oh, you must’ve not read the memo,” he said with a smirk. “Did you think you were joining the intergalactic tour company?”
She bit her lip and looked away.
“I didn’t think so.” He looked at the others. “We’re here to accomplish a mission. Will we have time to see other parts of the universe and someday come back to visit Earth? Yes, undoubtedly. And at a time when Earth will be much more open to our presence. But right now there is a tyrant ruling the planet, and I need to gather some intel. Samantha has a personal connection with the players involved, so it’ll be her.”
“I do?” Samantha frowned. “What do you mean?”
“The answers to that will come in time, and you will get the full picture. Right now, suffice it to say that the mission your mother and the others went on will play a key role in Earth’s future.”
Everyone turned to Samantha to see what she had to offer, but she just nodded. If Hadrian felt it wasn’t the time to say more, it wasn’t the time. She got that.
“Makes sense to me,” Napalm stated. “I mean, one look into my eyes and most humans would piss themselves. And then there’s Dex. Sorry, Dex, but… yeah, they might fall down dead at the sight of you.”
Dex turned his hood toward Napalm, the blackness within masking his expression.
“I rest my case,” Napalm said, eyes wide as he faked a terrified shudder.
“Fine. We joined up to help you all, and turns out we’re prisoners on the ship—” Agathe started, but Hadrian held up a hand.
“You may go. At any time, you may go. But we’d have to drop you back off. Is that what you want?”
“NO!” Voira interjected, then blushed and repeated quietly, “No.”
Agathe shot her an annoyed look, but agreed with an abrupt nod. “We wouldn’t be welcome on a neutral planet after aligning ourselves with you. You know that.” For a moment she glared at Hadrian, then added, “Fine. At least tell us what happened back there on Entono Fos. We can’t keep flying in the dark here.”
“Fair enough.” Hadrian took a seat at the head of the table. He sat back and moved a hand across his chin. “The most likely scenario is that this is all connected—the situation on Earth, Entono Fos, and the Guardians. The alternate is that there’s a traitor amongst the Elders. A mole. But I don’t think so. Not a deliberate mole. The Guardians are acting outside their nature, the man who attempted to save Earth has become a tyrant, and someone—or a number of someones—on the Council of Elders has turned on me. I believe it’s all tied in to the Scrapulent’s ability to control minds.”
“But…?” Carma asked.
“But indeed. You see, the Scrapulent don’t have such power over the Elders. Weaker races, yes. But the Elders are all powerful. And humans, from my understanding by the way, are completely immune.”
“So you might be wrong about the connection,” Carma said.
“I might be.”
“You probably are.” She tilted her head as if challenging him.
“Am I missing something here?” Samantha asked, glancing from one to the other.
“Nothing worth explaining yet,” Hadrian replied. “Unless Carma would like to share.”
Carma’s eyes narrowed and she licked her upper lip, then glanced around the room. “Anyone here know what the powers of my people are?”
At first no one replied, but then Napalm cleared his throat and leaned forward. “Amplification.”
She smiled a sarcastic smile. “Exactly. You’re feeling a tingle of joy, we can turn that into a full-on explosion of ecstasy. It’s a matter of simply recognizing the patterns of an aura, reaching in mentally, and adjusting said aura to be receptive in certain ways. For us to be able to magnify the Scrapulent’s brain manipulation powers to the level Hadrian’s talking about would take much more power than any of my people are capable of. Even when all working together, men and women, which they wouldn’t.”
Hadrian nodded. “I agree, and that’s the conundrum. We can go after the Guardians and kill them, but that’s like cutting off a leg when the problem is infected blood cells throughout the body. And… there’s more to it. We must find and eradicate the disease.”
“And about that tingle of joy?” Napalm asked.
“Not the time,” Samantha chided him, earning her a respectful nod from Hadrian. She was glad to see he agreed, though there hadn’t been much of a doubt.
“This is what I need to figure out.” Hadrian stood now, pacing to the window, and then turning back to them. “If Carma’s race is somehow involved, how? If not, what’s allowing this enhancement of the Scrapulent powers? And once we figure that out, we’ll have to figure out how to stop them.”
A stunned silence followed as everyone considered the journey ahead of them.
“Get some rest,” Hadrian said, nodding to the group. “We’ll be entering atmosphere in a bit, and when that happens, I’ll wake you.”
Samantha hadn’t realized how exhausted she really was. With heavy eyelids, she stumbled back to her room and then collapsed on her bed.
Only, once she was there and trying to sleep, it just wasn’t coming. Instead, her mind kept wandering back to the fact that she was going to get a chance to see Earth again soon. After leaving with Hadrian, she had started to believe she would never return. She’d even thought she would probably die out here, considering what she had gone up against.
Maybe she would still die, but not before at least getting a chance to see Earth again. That made her smile. It also made her heart thump so that each rush of blood across her skull kept her from being able to drift off to the sleep she craved.
Finally she sat up and stared at the perfectly white wall. After a moment, she leaned back on her bed, pulled up her feet, and hugged her knees close to her chest. It was a position she had taken all too many times back on Earth, when hiding out and listening to drones, mechs, or the armies of Syndicate soldiers pass by.
But as excited as she was, it also felt strange—going back to Earth This was her place now: in space, fighting the bigger war.
Maybe it was the knowledge that so many people she loved were now dead, while others were content in each other’s arms without her.
She didn’t want to think about all that. Her mind should be focused on the next mission, on taking out the bad guys and learning whatever they needed to know to ensure success, or at least bring the alliance once step closer to it.
This too, she reminded herself, was part of the mission. It wasn’t like Hadrian was sending her back to the kennel; he was just taking her for a quick intel-gathering mission. She could do this, she told herself, pushing aside all feelings of insecurity and c
onfusion.
With that thought—along with images of herself on the space dragon that day, conquering it with the gauntlet she had taken from Karstrack—her eyelids grew heavy once again. Finally, she found herself falling to sleep, soothed by the memories of victorious battles.
9
The Noraldian
Hadrian’s voice sounded over the speakers, waking Samantha from her sleep. “Attention, attention. All hands, we are entering Earth’s atmosphere.”
Samantha yawned, rotating her neck and cringing as it cracked. The right side was sore, pulling at the muscles. For a moment she groaned, and then all tiredness suddenly vanished.
She was home.
Her mind raced with questions. How long had she been gone? She wasn’t even sure it had been more than a few months, though a lot had happened in that time.
But when she looked in the mirror to freshen up, she noted a much older woman staring back. No, not older, maybe. More mature, more knowledgeable about the universe. A changed woman, that was for sure.
Feeling oddly uncomfortable with the thought, she put on her helmet and stared at her image now. Faceplate blacked out and hood up, she could almost be mistaken for an alien.
Death, even.
She could imagine herself floating down from the spaceship, the robes floating behind her, facemask dark. Death was certainly applicable if she had to think about all of the lives she had taken, including Elder Orlean’s. But that was something she tried not to think about.
“I am death,” she said in a dark, ominous tone, “and my shadow shall consume worlds.”
For a long beat she let that linger, thinking over the words. Had she become a destroyer? A consumer of worlds? In a way, that was her larger mission. They were black ops. Her training sent her to planets where she took out enemy upon enemy while grinding for skill points. And her big missions—the ones that took her to places like Karstrack’s fortress—those missions had made her into that all-consuming shadow.
At least Samantha recognized it, so she could embrace the idea. The worst thing one could do, in her mind, is run from themselves. Better to admit who you are, embrace it, and follow your destiny.
In this case, Hadrian was the guide for her destiny. Whatever he said, went.
And right now, he wanted her at the bridge for the descent, ready to disembark.
Pulling back the hood and helmet, she made her way through the halls and past the sliding doors. She found the others all gathered, watching as the fire disappeared and the blue and green of Earth grew closer and larger.
“It’s beautiful,” Agathe said in awe.
“I’ve seen better,” Ferder argued. “Enotono Fos, for one. But it’s not bad.”
“Unfortunately for us, this is as close as we go,” Jackal stated. He guided the ship in a tight arc and back up before leveling out and coming to a hover.
“Wait, seriously?” Voira protested.
“As I said,” Hadrian cut in. “We don’t want to start something in this moment. The world isn’t ready for you.” He turned to Samantha. “And you? Are you up for this?”
As she nodded, she did her best to ignore the jealousy flowing from the others.
“Bring us back some of those… what are they called…?”
Napalm glanced over to Hadrian, who smiled and said, “Jelly beans.”
“Yeah, if you’re able.”
“How do you even know what those are?” Samantha asked.
“Are you kidding?” Napalm laughed and made a wand with his finger, as if he were about to cast a spell. “Where I’m from, that Potter wizard film is a classic. If I could get some jelly beans to sell back home, maybe even say they’re from the movie itself, I’d be the coolest on my planet.”
“I… honestly don’t think we have jelly beans on Earth anymore.”
Hadrian chuckled. “Believe me, they’d last an eternity. Not as durable as Twinkies, mind you, but you humans have a real talent for making food that never goes bad. Though, calling it food is a bit of a stretch.”
“So you’ll bring me some?” The fire in Napalm’s eyes lit up.
“If I come across any, you have my word.”
“How exactly are you going to get down there?” Voira asked, eyes full of curiosity. “It’s a bit of a distance.”
“Another reason I can only take one of you,” Hadrian admitted. “My powers don’t allow for more than that.”
He gave Samantha a nod and she followed him out through the airlock and onto the landing deck, where her senses told her the wind was blowing and it was mighty cold. Lucky for her, she didn’t have to feel those sensations unless she chose to, and at the moment she definitely did not want to.
“Take my arm,” Hadrian commanded.
She did so, and then they were flashing through the air like darting bursts of light. Tall cranes and bits of floating metal were scattered like a defense system surrounding the world. When she scanned the area around her and Hadrian, she saw how large it really was. Impressive, to say the least.
“Are those defenses against internal or external threats?” Samantha asked into her helmet.
Moments later, Hadrian’s voice came back through the helmet’s speakers. “Both, perhaps. It’s my one hope for the Potentate. My one reason for believing there’s still some sanity left in there, some semblance of who he was.”
After passing through another large expanse of similar defensive construction, they came to what she suspected was a capital city. Maybe the capital? It was certainly different from the pictures she had seen of DC, its streets lined with smoking ruins interspersed with strange, alien constructions.
To add to the horrific picture, a tall structure stood in the distance. At its top, she recognized the sign of the Syndicate—a red snake curved around, its tail in its mouth as it proceeded to devour itself.
Samantha and Hadrian changed course and the snake disappeared from view. They came to another grand structure that was under construction—a command center of sorts, with a dome over a portion of it.
“And that?” Samantha asked.
“That is our destination today,” Hadrian replied.
She stared, momentarily lost in thought as she wondered where Dan and her other old teammates were, the ones she had left behind on Earth. Were they even alive?
Was Dan even alive?
As they drew close, she caught Hadrian glancing her way.
“You’re distracted,” he stated.
“Shouldn’t I be? I mean, wouldn’t anyone be in this situation?”
He nodded, holding out his hands, slowing their descent. “It’s him, isn’t it? You’re thinking about that Dan character. Wondering if he’s safe, if he thinks of you… if he lies in bed at night in the arms of another woman.”
“You’re not as perceptive as you like to think you are,” Samantha shot back.
“It’s not that I like to think I am,” he replied. “It’s that there are things I see. It’s as simple as that.”
“And do you see him?”
They passed through a cloud, and Hadrian’s response felt more like a voice of a god speaking into her ear as her suit told her moist particles were passing by.
“He’s alive, if that’s what you want to know. More than that seems rather unnecessary knowledge.”
She bit her tongue to avoid responding. It wasn’t her place to argue. The knowledge that he was alive was more than she would have known otherwise.
The clouds gave way, and they were upon the command center. They approached a side where Syndicate robots and soldiers were hard at work welding parts together, creating an elaborate contraption that Samantha could not guess the purpose of.
She scanned their defenses and found it odd that the Syndicate wasn’t attacking. At her glance, Hadrian said, “They don’t register us as enemies.”
“Why not?”
“Because we aren’t.” He landed first, metallic boots clanging on the base, and Samantha followed, her robes slowing—and soft
ening—her impact.
All she could think about was taking her sword out right there and tearing through every Syndicate soldier in sight, then diving into the command center and decapitating this Potentate once and for all.
They had destroyed her world, killed so many. How could Hadrian say they weren’t enemies? Could he be wrong, for the first time?
He slowed his pace, turning to her as he removed his helmet. His look of compassion made her suddenly feel guilty for her thoughts.
“It’s… not all making sense to me,” she admitted.
“And it won’t, not yet. But, Sam, you must trust me. I don’t have all the answers. But I know that for Earth to survive what is to come, we need your mother here. Need you both here actually, at the moment the Syndicate is taken down.”
“So… we’re coming back? I mean, when my mom comes here, and I get to be part of it?”
He nodded sadly. “But don’t revel in the act of death. It threatens to eat away at one’s soul after a while.”
She thought about those words as they strode right past a mech spider, taller than many of the surrounding buildings. A whole platoon of Syndicate soldiers was marching on the other side of it, drones were whirring about overhead, and several mechs were being prepped in the distance.
Every part of her being screamed for their destruction, and she did her best to keep her sword hand steady as they walked past.
They entered the building still under construction, taking care as they walked into an inner sanctum. The expansive hall appeared to have been a formal reception room in the past, and was now being converted into something much grander, with a high, domed ceiling that let in the light.
Samantha’s heart skipped a beat at the sight of the man standing in the middle of the room. He wore a hooded robe, his metallic mask and gleaming red armor taunting her. It took all of her control to not unleash on the man as he stood there, staring at her with a mix of compassion and contempt. This man, or alien—or whatever he was—needed to die.
Forget everything she had said, forget her promises. It needed to happen, if not for what she already knew about the Syndicate, then for the look those eyes were giving her right now. His expression was somewhere between contempt and affection, as if he knew everything about her, more than she could even know herself.
