Masters of Fate

by A. K. DuBoff

  Toran straightened in his seat. “Not necessarily. That’s why we need to learn more about them. If the hypothesis pans out, then we won’t need to go through yet another timeline to beat these guys.”

  Colren came to attention. “Are you talking about the hyperdimensional origins theory?”

  “Yes, exactly. I’ve been talking it over with the research team at the Capital, and it’s the only explanation that accounts for all of our observations.”

  I normally zoned out when the technical speak came up, but ‘dimensional origins’ sounded a lot more interesting than signals and frequencies. “Was this what you were about to get into planetside?”

  He nodded. “The key bit of information we have about the aliens is that they seem to have remembered information from before prior resets. While it’s possible they have a direct link to hyperdimensional storage that we don’t, another possibility is that they’re simply unaffected by time.”

  Maris raised an eyebrow. “Wait, what?”

  “We might be dealing with higher dimensional beings—perhaps 5D, existing ‘above’ time, if you will.”

  I ran my fingers through my hair, brushing it back from my face. “Hold on a sec. If these are fifth-dimensional beings—assuming I remember anything from my physics class—then why in the stars would they have any interest in our measly spacetime reality? That’d be like us becoming obsessed with a stick drawing.”

  “Correct, which is where the transformed worlds come in,” Toran continued. “You’d posited, Elle, that they were after matter or dark matter. I don’t think that’s precisely it, but they do seem to be after something. Perhaps they can only access it through this plane for whatever reason.”

  “Regardless of their objective, we’re not going to learn anything more waiting around here,” Colren stated. “It’s time to see how they like someone pounding on their front door for a change.”

  2

  The Evangiel dropped out of hyperspace beyond visual range of the alien planet. I was still nauseated from the jump when we reported to the bridge, the hyperspace transit having been a longer ordeal than normal. I had no idea where we were or exactly how far we’d traveled, but it was clear we were very much on our own.

  Taking a series of slow deep breaths to try to settle my stomach, I turned my attention to the front viewport. Even with holographic augmentation, I still couldn’t make out our target. “Is it like the anomaly site from before—a dark gravity well?” I whispered to Kaiden.

  “No, we’re just a long way from the planet,” he replied. “I have a horrible feeling they’re going to send us across the system in a shuttle.”

  “Great. Now that you’ve said it, it’s sure to happen.” Even the five-hundred-meter-long Evangiel was tiny compared to the vast emptiness around us. The notion of venturing out in a shuttle was downright terrifying.

  So much for being ambitious and brave. I’d picked a great time to let nerves get the better of me. Or, maybe I was just wising up to the bleak realities of the situation.

  “Hey, it’s going to be fine,” Kaiden tried to assure me, seeing my worried expression.

  “I liked our odds better before I knew we might be going up against higher dimensional beings.”

  “Nah, it’s exciting!”

  I cast him a skeptical glance. “Not quite the word I’d pick.”

  Colren rose from his seat at the center of the bridge, interrupting our private exchange. “Preliminary scans indicate no sign of activity on the planet’s surface,” he began. “If there’s a civilization here, it’s well hidden.”

  “Or beyond our means of detection,” Toran said.

  “Yes. So, I’d like you to take a closer look,” the commander instructed.

  “Alone on a shuttle,” Kaiden muttered under his breath.

  “I don’t want to take the Evangiel any closer,” Colren continued. “You’ll travel on the Sanctum. Meet up in the hangar in fifteen minutes.”

  Kaiden pursed his lips. “I stand corrected.”

  “All right, let’s go,” I said to my teammates.

  We stopped by our quarters to clean up. I waited for Toran and Maris to enter their cabins, hanging back in the corridor with Kaiden.

  “I didn’t think we’d head out so quickly,” I told him as soon as we were alone, wishing there was time for more than a fleeting conversation.

  He took my hands. “We can get all the time together we can stomach once this is over.”

  “That better be soon. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

  “You’re not alone.” Kaiden pulled me into a hug. “We’ll get through this together.”

  We parted with a kiss and then went to our cabins to get ready. After a quick shower, I departed for the hangar with my team.

  I’d recognized the name of the Sanctum as being the scout ship that rescued us following the spatial disruptor detonation at the anomaly site. The vessel was tiny by most measures, but our standard shuttle could fit inside its cargo hold. The first time I’d seen the Sanctum, it had been a welcome sight—a connection to what had become my home away from home during our fight against the Darkness. As we prepared to board the ship this time, however, I instead felt like we were taking a step into the dangerous unknown.

  “Welcome aboard,” a dark-haired man in his thirties greeted us at the top of the ramp.

  “Try to bring it back it one piece, Richards,” Tami called from the deck outside, her lips pursing into a worried pout.

  “You know we always do, Chief,” Richards replied with a slight smile. He returned his attention to us, his gaze pausing on our weapons and modified physical features—a common reaction among crew members meeting us for the first time. “So, you’re the infamous Dark Sentinel team, hmm?”

  “And you’re Richards, it would seem,” Kaiden replied with an equally evaluative look.

  The man nodded. “Sanctum is normally Samwell’s baby, but I volunteered to escort you instead—couldn’t turn down the opportunity to see you in action.”

  “And Samwell was okay with that?” I asked, remembering the name of one of the officers who’d picked us up in our disabled shuttle.

  “Let’s just say that no one is particularly excited about heading into enemy territory like this. Didn’t take a lot of arm-twisting,” Richards responded.

  “We’ve always liked living on the edge.” A short-haired blonde woman poked her head out from the bridge and grinned. “I smell a promotion if we get you four back alive.”

  “This is hardly a time for career ambition,” Toran stated.

  The woman shrugged. “To each their own.”

  “To say Kess has a competitive streak would be a gross understatement,” Richards said with a nod toward the woman. “Don’t get her started.”

  “Hey, anyone willing to accompany us is good by me,” I said. “I’m Elle.”

  My teammates introduced themselves in turn.

  “Do you really have… magic?” Kess asked after the introductions, examining us.

  “That’s what we’re calling it, anyway,” Kaiden replied. “I know you want to see it, but if you do, that means things have already gone wrong.”

  Kess smiled. “Bring it on.”

  “Save it for the baddies, Kess.” Richards paused. “Hey, what are we calling these alien bastards, anyway?”

  I looked to my teammates. “You know, we haven’t really been calling them anything.”

  Kess raised an eyebrow. “Seriously, you gave yourselves a team name and didn’t name the bad guys?”

  Kaiden shrugged. “I dunno. I guess we figured the Hegemony had a name for them, or we’d find out what they call themselves.”

  “It’s always been ‘the Darkness’,” I added. “The beings themselves didn’t come into it until recently.”

  Kess rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Strap in back there.” She nodded toward a bank of seats along the outer bulkhead above the cargo hold. />
  “I’ll get her fired up,” Richards said, shimmying through the bridge entrance past Kess.

  I took a seat next to Kaiden in the indicated seats and started to strap in. “You know, they do have a point about a name for these bad guys.”

  “Well, ‘Creepy Alien Bastards Who Want to Destroy Us’ has been working for me,” Maris said.

  “Yeah… ‘cab-woo-du’ doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue or sound particularly menacing,” I said.

  Kaiden laughed. “Nor does ‘cabbies’ or anything else that comes to mind from that abbreviation.”

  “I suggest we table this issue for another time,” Toran advised. “Personally, I don’t care what we call them. Let’s just focus on the not-dying part of the mission.”

  “I can get behind that,” I agreed.

  As soon as we finished securing our flight harnesses, a low vibration spread through the floor of the vessel, and the scene out the side viewport shifted as the ship glided through the hangar. We passed through the electrostatic field into open space, and the Sanctum boosted toward the destination world.

  “All right, clear. We’re looking at about four hours of transit time,” Richards said over a central comm. “Get comfy.”

  Kaiden sighed. “I kinda miss being up front and in charge.”

  I swiveled my head, keeping a neutral expression. “This is my shocked face.”

  Toran chuckled. “It seems we’ve found our places.”

  “I feel all fancy getting transported around,” Maris said with an excited shiver. “My mom always told me that you know you’ve ‘made it’ as soon as you have a chauffeur.”

  “Not your chauffer,” Richards said over the comm. “You know we can hear you, right?”

  I cracked a smile. “Just friendly banter. We can keep this up for hours!”

  “Have fun with that. We’ll let you know when we’re nearing the planet,” Richards said. A chirp over the comm indicated that the channel had been muted.

  I scowled. “Okay, on a scale of ‘one’ to ‘annoying’, I’d say we were only at a three.”

  “Yeah, I’m surprised they cut us off like that,” Kaiden agreed. “Seemed friendlier when we met.”

  “They’re soldiers on a mission,” Toran reminded us.

  I slumped in my seat. “So long as they don’t ditch us on the planet, fine with me if they don’t want to chat.”

  Kaiden nodded. “I have no doubt they’ll come around once they witness our awesomeness firsthand.”

  “Not that they will see it. I mean, they aren’t coming down to the surface with us, are they?” I asked.

  “I’d hope not,” Toran replied. “I believe they meant that they’d be monitoring the feed from the recorders on our packs.”

  “Thrilling,” Maris said sarcastically.

  “Hey, that footage is probably restricted access normally,” Kaiden told her. “I guess I’d be pretty curious to see what allegedly magical abilities looked like in practice, too.”

  Maris got an excited glint in her eyes. “Well, guess we’ll need to put on a show.”

  We made small-talk for most of the journey, comfortable in each other’s company. I couldn’t resist taking Kaiden’s hand on occasion or giving him a pat on his arm or leg when he made a particularly eyeroll-worthy comment, but I tried to keep the contact to a minimum since I knew it made Maris and Toran feel awkward. I’d promised to make sure our team came before the relationship; I hadn’t been able to keep that promise one hundred percent of the time, but I still tried my best.

  For the final half hour of the voyage, Richards and Kess invited us to the bridge so we could watch the final approach to the planet on the holographic display overlaid on the front viewport. I appreciated the gesture, though I suspected it was a matter of practicality rather than them wanting us there.

  “It really doesn’t look like anything special,” Kaiden observed as he studied the augmented image of a barren, brown-gray planet.

  “Well, you have a breathable atmosphere, moderate temperature, and 0.9g, so it’s pretty spectacular in the grand scheme of things,” Richards replied.

  “Hey, at least we won’t die just from stepping outside the shuttle, so there’s that!” Maris said with forced enthusiasm.

  “What’s more curious is the signal.” Toran deftly moved his hands over the communications control panel at an auxiliary station.

  “Still can’t figure out where it’s coming from?” I asked.

  He frowned pensively. “You could say that… It’s really like it’s coming from everywhere. But it’s not a signal, exactly, more like a… signature.”

  “As in, a radiological signature?” Kess asked.

  “In a sense, yes, but not in that same core classification,” Toran confirmed. “I believe this may be a sort of quantum echo—something I’d discussed with the Hegemony’s research team. If that is the case…” he trailed off.

  “Then what, Toran?” I prompted.

  He took a slow breath. “Then that might indicate the presence of significant alien activity, only on a plane we can’t see.”

  Kaiden frowned. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  Kess swore under her breath. “I should have known something was up with this whole op.”

  Richards snorted. “Yeah, like this info would have made you second-guess the assignment.”

  “Irrelevant distinctions,” she replied.

  “It’s all speculation,” Toran continued. “If we want to confirm that hypothesis, we’ll need to get a closer look.”

  “Last I checked, we don’t have hyperdimensional vision,” Maris stated.

  “Not exactly, but I believe we’ve been in contact with hyperdimensional access points in the past,” he went on. “The Master Archive, for example, we agreed wasn’t on Crystallis in a conventional sense.”

  I thought about what we’d observed. “That’s true. There was also the weird tower on the Valor world.”

  “Exactly. There’s a hyperdimensional connection between the crystalline network and the higher planes, so maybe that manifests in other ways,” Toran said.

  “What do the aliens have to do with that, though?” Kaiden asked.

  Toran shrugged. “That’s what we’re here to find out.”

  Maris propped her elbows on her thighs and leaned forward. “Those other places had connections into the higher planes. Do you think there might be an access point on this world?”

  “If there is, it’s likely connected to a crystal,” Kaiden said, twirling his pendant in his fingertips. “We already know how to find those.”

  Toran inclined his head. “Indeed, we do. Let’s take a look.”

  “What’s this, now?” Richards asked.

  “Think of it as a sort of magical crystal-detector,” Kaiden said.

  Kess’ expression brightened. “All right, now we’re getting to the interesting stuff.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “The idea that a civilization might extend into another dimensional plane wasn’t interesting enough?”

  “But… magic-detector,” Kess replied.

  I couldn’t argue with her logic. “Yeah, fair enough. Do you have everything you need for the interface, Toran?”

  “Mobile setup should be in my pack, hold on.” Toran disappeared into the cargo area of the ship.

  “How did you come up with this tech?” Richards asked.

  Kaiden gave a dismissive flip of his wrist. “Lucky guesses, mostly. Toran seems to have an instinct for this stuff.”

  “You’ve certainly won the commander’s respect,” Kess said.

  “Didn’t feel that way when he jumped without us,” I mumbled.

  Richards swiveled to face me. “You survived the disruptor wave, but the Evangiel wouldn’t have stood a chance. Only reason we’re here is because the commander made that call.”

  I knew in my heart that the soldier was right, but it had still distressed me to witnes
s firsthand that we were disposable. “I know he didn’t mean it personally,” I muttered in an attempt to smooth things over with our escorts.

  “This is war, not summer camp.” Richards eyed me. “But,” he took a deep breath, “you have made it this far, which is more than can be said for many soldiers. That’s why I volunteered to come—to see you in action, and to help you see this thing through. I’ve heard some crew members say you’re not up to it, but I think actions matter more than age or experience.”

  “After all, you survived a spatial disruptor detonation,” Kess cut in. “Considering that’s pretty much impossible, you have more than luck on your side.”

  “And, seriously, I’ve known the commander a long time. You can trust him,” Richards added, softer.

  I nodded, dropping my gaze to my hands. “I know. I get why we were left behind. Just… made everything more real, I guess.”

  Kaiden rubbed my back. “And showed us we can do what we thought was impossible.”

  Kess smiled. “We’re on your side. Anyone who doesn’t have faith in you is an idiot.”

  Perhaps I’d misread the soldiers’ intentions before when they’d relegated us to the cargo area for most of the journey; they were just focused on the mission, it wasn’t about excluding us.

  I wasn’t sure what had been going on with me over the past few days—moodiness, paranoia. Ever since the incident at the anomaly I’d been on edge. Based on how Kaiden kept glancing over at me with his brow creased, it appeared he was concerned about me, too. I suppose it had just been a matter of time before the stress and pressure got to me. Maybe I was finally cracking. Considering what we were about to do, the timing could be a lot better. I took a deep breath and tried to center myself.

  “All right, here we go,” Toran said, returning to the compact bridge carrying a device the size of his substantial fist.

  “What does it need to operate?” Richards asked.

  “I can tap it into the communications console. It’ll piggyback on the ship’s sensor suite to identify the specific signature of crystals on the planet,” Toran explained. “We’ll see if any of those look like a key location and investigate accordingly.”