by Kyle Larson
Amelia took Kelvin by the arm and moved through the crowds of Gravity Warriors, taking him into the Archive. Inside, they reached the situation room, which looked more like an empty coliseum, with the queen and king in the center of the empty room, both looking down over a large screen embedded in the floor beneath them. As they got closer, the screen displayed a rendering of every ship that had been in orbit of Venus. The ships were in pieces, trapped between the vacuum of space and the intense gravity of Venus. Tendai and Etho looked white as ghosts and very upset when their eyes met Amelia and Kelvin’s.
“What is it?” Kelvin said.
“Your sister’s weapon exploded. All the Gravity Warriors we had up there may be dead,” Tendai said.
“But Teve’s up there,” Amelia said.
The weight of Tendai’s words was immediately felt by Amelia and Kelvin. Hundreds of lives, with each life hundreds of years. The look in Tendai’s face said it all. Not only was their friend and her only surviving child up there, but he could very well be dead. Each Gravity Warrior was regarded as a historian in their own right, as they’d seen Venusian history unfold, and those centuries of lives and stories may have just been erased. Kelvin knew this was Tendai’s worst nightmare.
“Every ship up there was destroyed,” Etho said. “Hundreds of lives lost in an instant.”
“I want to go up there,” Amelia said.
“Absolutely not,” Etho said. “You are children. I realize now how foolish it was to think you should stand with the Gravity Warriors. I treated this like it was a game and now my people – my son – have paid the price.”
“Then what are you waiting for?” Kelvin said. “Teve needs help. Why aren’t you going up there to help him?”
Tendai and Etho exchanged cold glances.
“Because, if anything happens, we need to be here to protect the planet with what’s left of the Gravity Warriors.”
“Then let us go! We’re children, but that’s not going to matter to the Wanderers! What they’ll do to us is worse than death. They’ll capture us, imprison us, and try to turn us into one of them! Let us defend ourselves and try to help Teve!” Amelia said. Kelvin could tell it took a lot for Amelia to speak up the way she did, as her hands shook.
“This is not a game!” Etho said.
“You seem to be the only ones who ever thought it was,” Amelia said.
“Amelia,” Kelvin said, shocked at how blunt she was being.
“She’s right,” Tendai said. “We underestimated our enemy and now our people have paid the price. They have a right, Etho. These two have a right to try and protect their teacher, just as all the others he trained take flight now. It is not our place to tell them what to do. They came here on their own and this decision is their’s to make.”
“They are children,” Etho said.
As the debate between Tendai and Etho continued, the reality of the Empress’ destruction began to dawn on Kelvin. Just as Teve would be in danger, Aren would be, too. In fact, she was probably dead. Kelvin hated that at this moment his sister was all he could think about. Aren was the one that brought the destruction to Venus and there was no more fitting punishment than the weapon she’d use to harm Venus being turned against her. But, Aren hadn’t hurt or killed anyone on Venus, which made Kelvin think that had been intentional on her part. If she wanted to she could have blasted Judur to pieces, but she seemed to stay as far away from the population as she could.
Kelvin unsheathed his staff and started to walk out of the situation room. He didn’t hear the argument stop behind him as they watched him walk away.
“Go,” Tendai said, loud enough for Kelvin to hear.
Etho shook his head and glared at her. Amelia said nothing to them and followed Kelvin.
On the balcony, Kelvin waited for her. When she stepped out of the stairway, he put his helmet on and prepared his armor to exit the atmosphere. Amelia did the same, as she unsheathed her staff and felt the recycled oxygen pass into her lungs. The sounds of Judur went mute and she could only hear her own breathing.
“Can you hear me?” Kelvin’s voice said through the speakers in her helmet.
“Loud and clear,” Amelia said. She tried to make her voice sound as calm as she could to make herself and Kelvin feel better. “Are you ready to do this, Kelvin? I don’t know if I am.”
“Well, you better be ready, because you’re the one I’m following,” Kelvin said. His joke didn’t manage to lighten the mood much.
“And I’m sure you were both about to ask me if I’m ready to die among a flaming field of wreckage,” Mara said. “I’ll let you both know I’ve officially documented what you’re about to do as a terrible idea, in my opinion.”
“I can leave you down here, Mara. You’re right, you should get a choice in this,” Kelvin said.
“Oh no, I’m not going to miss a front row seat to the defining battle of the Nine Kingdoms. Besides, I’ve backed myself up in the cloud drive. If you get blown to pieces I’ll wake up in a server farm somewhere past Neptune,” Mara said. “I’ll make sure to write a beautiful eulogy for your funerals. I’m sure your parents will be okay, after time.”
“Okay, Mara, that’s enough. Just keep quiet while we do this,” Amelia said. She looked to Kelvin. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
The two of them slowly lifted off the balcony, but as soon as they were in the air, they blasted through the sky. It was seconds before they felt the heat of the ozone and entered the vacuum of space. The intense gravity of Venus was still very strong and kept them in flight. As soon as they were in space they had to dodge chunks of metal that hurtled toward the surface.
“Should we do something? Those could kill someone,” Kelvin said.
Amelia swooped around and followed a large piece back into the atmosphere. As the large piece reentered, the ozone of Venus burnt it up into ashes. She turned around and flew back up to meet Kelvin, no longer worried about the debris. The pieces were already mostly scorched and burnt, which told Amelia the explosion must have been extremely powerful. It was hard to scorch the hull of a spaceship like that, but since they were already so damaged, they burnt up like dry pine needles in a campfire.
“Nah, they’ll be dust in the clouds,” Amelia said and soared past Kelvin.
They flew into the clutter of wreckage, finding the spaces between massive pieces of ships that hurtled toward Venus. The debris sporadically lit up in fire, instantly extinguished by the lack of oxygen. Compared to what Kelvin and Amelia had been doing early with the drones, dodging the wreckage was no challenge, but it still slowed them down. Amelia was the first one to swat debris away with her staff, but what it ended up doing was shattering it and creating jagged metal shards that flew at them. One question the two of them forgot to ask Teve about the armor was how durable it was. Part of it was made from Venusian stone, but they didn’t imagine the glass of their view-shields would hold up to the jagged metal scraps that flew at them. They weren’t too keen to test that, so they continued to dodge the wreckage.
The gravity kept everything in clusters, so as soon as they cleared the first one, they could establish where they were. What remained was horrific. Skeletal, iron structures of the ships floated dead in space, but most of what had been the hulls were cavernous and burnt to a crisp. The ships had all been flash cooked by the super-cannons detonation. Kelvin’s heart sank as the prospect of anyone surviving this would’ve been impossible. In the distance, the largest ship, which they both assumed was the Empress still had half of its hull intact. In fact, judging by the lit portholes, there were survivors.
“Amelia, there’s still people onboard the Empress. Maybe that’s where Teve is.”
“Let’s go,” Amelia said.
She lead the way as they passed through a few more dense clusters of debris. The further they got from the planet, their speed hindered. The act of flight didn’t come as natural to them and they started to catch up with the other Gravity Warriors who’d been before them. The group was
gathered in a formation. Kelvin and Amelia joined them. The nearest Gravity Warrior to them looked back and scowled.
They both heard the click of a frequency connect to the communication link they shared. “You’re the Earthers,” she said. The Gravity Warrior didn’t appear to be much older than them, but it was likely she was centuries old. “What are you doing here? The queen said you both would remain on Judur.”
“It doesn’t matter. We’re here. Why are we stopped?” Kelvin said.
“The vacuum,” she said. “If we go further, we lose the protection of Venusian gravity. Your powers are bound to the gravity of Venus. Without it, you’d be sucked into space. The blast blew the Empress just beyond where we can go.”
“Don’t these suits have thrusters?” Kelvin asked.
“Of course they do, but we don’t know how to fly with thrusters,” the Gravity Warrior said. She lost interest and rejoined the conversation. Amelia and Kelvin were ignored as they tried to join in, with the other Gravity Warriors adjusting their comm frequencies so the two Earthers couldn’t hear them.
Kelvin brought up the thruster control stick from the belt on his armor. Amelia watched him fire it up and start charging the thrusters.
“Don’t even think about it, Kelvin. Whatever thrusters these things have, they’re for emergency landings. I already checked when you gave me the armor. They’re designed to stop a free fall in case a Gravity Warrior goes unconscious, like what happened to Teve. There’s no way they’ll get you to the Empress.”
“She is absolute, one-hundred percent correct, Kelvin. There’s not a chance in the Nine Kingdoms you’d be able to cover the distance between where we are and the Empress, not to mention the ship is still moving. What in the world would you do once you got there? You’re carrying a giant rock that weighs more than a star diver in normal gravity, which is what you’d be walking into.”
Kelvin didn’t answer. He quickly scrolled through the settings of the thruster pack. Both Amelia and Mara’s concerns were founded, but it wasn’t impossible to get to the Empress. It was extremely difficult and unsafe, but not impossible. He would have to disable many of the safety features and do a rapid burn that would essentially create an explosion, theoretically propelling him toward the ship. After his thruster pack was fried, he’d have to depend on what little bond to Venusian gravity he might have and hope the vacuum didn’t swallow him. If Kelvin could aim himself at the ship, he was confident the blast could get him there.
“Teve might be on that ship. That’s what they were all attacking before the super-cannon exploded,” Kelvin said.
“We don’t know that Kelvin, and whatever survivors are on that ship are Wanderers. They could be getting ready to escape on shuttles or star divers, back to the Antioch Belt. You’d be handing yourself over to them, even if you did make it. Mara’s right, all of our training and our staffs would be useless there.”
“Then what are we going to do? They won’t let us fight with them. They think we’re children,” Kelvin said. “They think we’re just children playing a game.”
Amelia knew he was trying to get a rise out of her or make her angry to the point where she’d help rationalize what he was about to do. She knew Kelvin was going to defy the advice she and Mara gave him. This time, Amelia wouldn’t be following him. For her, this battle was over, and the only thing she was concerned with was finding Teve and making sure he was okay. If Kelvin was going to put his life on the line in a foolish move like that, Amelia wouldn’t be a part of it. Amelia cared about her friend, but what she’d learned about Kelvin was that she needed to let him go.
Amelia was not defined by being Kelvin’s protector. Teve taught them each they could protect themselves and no longer needed to protect each other. There was a sadness in that, Amelia thought, but it was a truth she knew she needed to discover. It didn’t change Amelia’s desire to help Kelvin unite the Nine Kingdoms, but the part she had to play was hers, not the one Kelvin defined for her, whether he was aware he was doing it or not.
“Don’t do this, Kelvin. Earth Navy is almost here. The Uranian Corsairs are almost here. They have ships that can rescue whoever is aboard.” Those words were all Amelia could say to her friend, even with the knowledge that they were likely useless.
The words passed through Kelvin.
“I’ll come back, Millie.”
Kelvin turned his back on her and flew slowly toward the Empress. Shouts of other Gravity Warriors warning Kelvin not to do it echoed through their helmets. As soon as Kelvin was clear, the thruster pack on his back ignited and he vanished, thrust into the darkness of space juxtaposed by the wreckage of the Empress. Amelia had to let whatever worry go and trust Kelvin was able to take care of himself.
Then, overhead, the Monarch suddenly descended from behind the moon. It slowly floated past all the wreckage and started a descent into the Venusian atmosphere.
Neither Amelia or the Gravity Warriors had any idea the passengers it carried and the terror they would bring. To them, a friendly force had arrived to help them amidst the devastation. They didn’t know that the fight yet to come.
“Those are our people!” Juda shouted. The Colonel smiled back at her.
They were in an elevator, speeding away from the bridge of the Monarch. The giant glass window gave them a view of the empty city within the ship. It was mostly dark, save for the scattered blinking emergency lights that lined the perimeter, as the power had started to fluctuate within the last few minutes. Their crew of hackers was concerned someone might have hacked into their systems, and the Colonel began to share that concern as the lights flickered.
The Colonel didn’t have time to think about that problem. There wasn’t anything he could do about it. He was more concerned about the plan he’d been preparing for the last ten years. Now that the gravity shield was down and the Gravity Warriors were greatly reduced in numbers and confused, he could carry out the real plan.
The Colonel was not concerned about conquering Venus, he was concerned about what he could take from Venus. Juda, along with hundreds of others, had been trained as Gravity Warriors. The only thing they lacked was experience in Venusian gravity. Once the Colonel could get them to the Sanctuary Spring, their physiology would be changed and they’d have all the powers of a Gravity Warrior. The Colonel would have his own army of Gravity Warriors.
Justeph Leray’s new order of Gravity Warriors would be how he’d win the war and conquer the Nine Kingdoms. While Riz rebuilt their fleet in the Antioch Belt, the Colonel would build up their soldiers on Venus. He knew an army of them in flight was just as powerful as a fleet of ships. If they took Venus, eventually all the Wanderers could be trained as Gravity Warriors and Venus would be their stronghold. The Colonel marveled in his head at the fleet of ships they could build using the elements of Venusian stone. Where the Gravity Warriors had reserved their power, the Colonel would unleash that power across the Nine Kingdoms.
The Colonel was confident his army could finish off what was left of the Gravity Warriors who were loyal to Queen Tendai. He figured most of them were died when the Empress exploded, but he knew there would be a contingent at the Royal Palace he would have to face. Some of them might even be former students of his. Before Justeph Leray turned against Venus and the Dubak family, he was one of the best teachers in the Order of the Gravity Warriors. That was a different life, though, and the Colonel had no hesitation about fighting his former students.
Juda demanded answers for the Colonel’s detonation of the Empress. As far as she knew, that was not part of the plan, and was now concerned about what other aspects the Colonel kept from her. Juda didn’t want anyone else to die, especially their own people. Many of the people on the Empress and other ships that had been blown up were her friends. Even the hackers, who barely showed any emotion, seemed shocked the Colonel had done this. They probably felt especially guilty, since they had no doubt given him the tools to do it, not knowing that was his intention.
“You sa
id no more deaths!” Juda said. “That’s how you trained us. You always said that if people die, then we’re not doing it right. In less than twenty-four hours after you gunned down a fleet of unarmed star divers, you kill hundreds of people, many of them your own. You are a murderer!”
“Oh please,” the Colonel said. “What did you think I was going to do? You think that I would allow someone like Aren Sellwood to have control of a weapon like that? You don’t think I know that woman’s every move? I’m the one that gave her the flawed design to the super-cannon without her knowing I could control it. If I hadn’t done that, she would have killed millions. It was a trap to stop here. You know who and what she is –– and that she would kill all of us to take control of our people. She was angry and bloodthirsty. She forgot how smart she used to be and only fought with her feelings. Those people were loyal to her and they would’ve killed many more if I hadn’t made the hard choice to stop them. You think I wanted to kill them?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“That was all I could do to stop her. If I hadn’t done it, I guarantee you the Monarch would have been her next target, then the people of Venus. This way Earth Navy and the Uranian Corsairs don’t come to Venus, guns blazing and we have a chance to take Venus without having to sacrifice more lives. Do you understand me?”
Juda hated it, but she did understand the Colonel’s point of view. The reality of the cause she’d chosen and what the Wanderers had done set in. It’s likely Aren would have killed all of those people anyway and this way they destroyed the terrible weapon too. However it was rationalized, the Colonel still lost a lot of trust with her. She didn’t believe he felt any remorse and it seemed convenient that he’d altered the plan. Originally, the plan had been to simply disable the super-cannon, not overheat it to the point of explosion.
“Look,” the Colonel said, “this is what we’ve prepared for. Today, you finally get to use your training. We’re going to liberate Venus. We’re going to build a fortress here and then we’ll launch our ships throughout the Nine Kingdoms from Venus. The Gravity Warriors will do what they were always meant to do: fight and liberate. That’s what we need to be talking about. This discussion is over.”
