Back | Next
Contents

Chapter 27

icon


Ehran Tal huffed as he half jogged/half ran down a long passageway leading to docking bay 12. He’d been woken up in the middle of his well-known sleep hours. He was the Governance’s senior-most bureaucrat for the fleet anchorage in Nashar’s Star, and he expected a bit more deference and respect from the military—which he normally received!—but that damn Paragon had been most insistent on how his authority was different from Ehran’s government rank.

Ehran wiped sweat from his pudgy forehead as a buzzer sounded down the empty passageway. This part of the station was closed off for maintenance but whatever emergency that Ehran simply had to handle insisted on docking someplace where the arrival could be obfuscated.

“It is entirely too early in the morning for this.” He pressed his palm to a biometric reader and an access door slid open. The bay was empty, but the doors were already open to the void. An aquamarine ice giant turned in the distance; running lights on the orbital halos close to the visible pole blinked on and off as helium isotope harvesting continued.

Ehran put his hands on his hips and frowned. There was no one here. If this was all some sort of elaborate prank, the perpetrator would find themselves transferred to some crap world in the Deep and their finances audited after a series of phone calls. One did not poke a Governance civil servant of his stature without consequences.

The stars beyond the station wavered and a gunship de-cloaked as it slid through the force field. Heat-stained plasma cannons jutted out from beneath the prow of the ship; missile and torpedo ports closed as it sat down with barely a sound. A point-defense ventral turret slewed toward him and locked a pair of high-caliber coil guns on his august personage.

Ehran froze, unsure of what he’d done to bring such hostility into his life. One of his first official duties to the Governance was an incident and compensation report for a civilian ship that had “accidentally” been engaged by an Orbital Guard cutter’s coil guns. Any attempt to avoid the gunship’s fire would only expand the damage it would inflict on the station, and he wouldn’t wish the excess paperwork on any civil servant.

He looked over the gunship’s hull for any unit markings to complain to the commanding officer at least two levels above whoever was flying the ship. When he spotted none, his heart skipped a beat.

Things made much more sense now.

Ehran smoothed out his thinning hair over the top of his head and composed himself as best he could as a small ramp lowered from the gun ship. A pair of Marines in crimson Light Armor and coil carbines hoppd off the ramp and swept the dock with their weapons. One had the common courtesy to not point his muzzle at Ehran.

A moment later and a man in the same armor, but different from the others’ by a captain’s rank pip, marched down the ramp and made directly for Ehran. He removed his helmet and the glower of a young man who’d seen far too much death and destruction for one life met Ehran’s gaze.

“Well?” Captain Tarasin tucked his helmet under one arm.

“Yes? Yes! Sir, so sorry, I wasn’t expecting an Umbral team here. At this hour. Or at all. I do have the requisite clearances and am aware that no records of your transit through this station are to be recorded or transmitted through any—”

“Was it you that sent the Code Nine Nine to my ship while she was underway?” Tarasin asked.

“Code Nine . . . Nine?” Ehran’s mouth went dry and be began yammering. “Why would—No! It was absolutely not me. It was that Paragon! I didn’t want him on this station to begin with and he’s been nothing but a pest. To invoke that code is a massive—”

Tarasin put an armored hand on Ehran’s shoulder. Gouges down the forearm plating spoke of a recent battle against something clawed and awful.

“I have an idea which Paragon summoned me,” Tarasin said. “Take me to him. Now.”

“But he’s in the deep core with the way stone and—Right this way!” Ehran smiled.


The way stone in the center of the space station had been recovered in the upper atmosphere of the nearby ice giant several thousand years ago. The alliance of space-faring races that preceded the Governance had gone to great lengths and risk to raise the stone from the clouds and then build a focusing chamber around the way stone, which was oval shaped and nearly three times the size of the humans and alien Paragons who recovered it.

The way stone hung in the crystalline focusing chamber, silver light glinting off its alabaster-colored surface, thin lines of gold creeping over the surface. Some claimed the future could be derived from the patterns and signs gleaned from the threads. Many had stared at the way stone until they’d gone insane in the process.

Captain Tarasin arrived through a short entrance. He wasn’t sure if being required to crouch was done to force a sense of awe and respect for the way stone, or if the initial builders had just been rather diminutive compared to most species in the galaxy.

He straightened up and gazed upon the way stone. His jaw fell open as a wave of static washed through his nerves. The stone spun slowly, the gold lines skittering back and forth.

“It would be you, wouldn’t it?” a voice asked above him.

Tarasin looked up, one hand going to an empty holster.

A Paragon in dimly glowing Light Armor floated several yards away from Tarasin. The alien sat in the lotus position. His skin was magenta colored, long dark hair bound into a ponytail to reveal sharp ears. A tail bent over the alien’s left leg and wavered across his lap, at odds with his otherwise still poise. One leg was noticeably leaner than the other even in the armor.

“Kairos. I thought it might be you,” Tarasin inched back toward the chamber walls. Squat pyramid-shaped panels stretched from the floor all the way through the domed enclosure; each panel had a veil stone tip that gleamed with different colored lights. “You care to explain why you sent my ship an emergency message while we were underway in FTL? My shipmaster cracked his stone rerouting us through a hazard-rated shunt to get here and she is pissed like I have never seen before in my—”

“You are disrespecting the sanctity of this chamber,” Kairos said. “We rarely even allow your kind in here.”

“My kind? You pompous—Why did you call me here, Kairos? We’ve made our hellos,” Tarasin said.

“Does your shipmaster not feel it? She didn’t warn you?” Kairos floated down. One leg unlimbered from the lotus position easily, the other moved slower and stiffer. The alien took a moment to steady himself, like a sailor coming onto dry land for the first time in months. He opened pale yellow eyes that glowed slightly.

“She was preoccupied with keeping the ship stone from shattering.” Tarasin shook his head. “Out with it.”

“There’s an undercurrent beyond the Veil. I’ve never felt anything like that before. None of the other Paragons I’ve been able to contact through the way stones have either, but they do indeed feel it. How to explain it to someone without the sight . . . It’s like that time we made planetary assault on Orgithan and the shuttle’s engines failed. That moment between ‘everything is fine’ and ‘something is wrong.’ That feeling in your chest before the fear hits.”

“You brought me here because of your feelings?” Tarasin crossed his arms over his chest.

“There’s more than that.” Kairos raised a hand and a faint aurora formed around his fingers. The golden lines shifted into space lanes through the sector. Motes pooled along the routes, the brightest one closed toward the Nashar system. “Fleets are moving, Tarasin. Fleets I can’t identify or determine where they originated from.”

“Mmm,” Tarasin stroked his chin. He felt a slight stubble and chided himself for letting his discipline slip. “The Thirty-Seventh Fleet is anchored here. Did you think my Umbrals will turn the tide when there’s a dozen battleship-class ships of the line along with—”

“Always the line between arrogance and reasonability with you.” Kairos shook the aurora from his hand. “Do you know where Paragon Maru is?”

Tarasin’s face hardened.

“No. Why?”

“Last word we had from him is that he’s in this sector hunting down a gate world to escort everyone’s favorite heir apparent to claim a stone. I’ve known him long enough that I can sense him beyond the Veil. I believe they entered through Besh VIII but I may be wrong.” Kairos shook his head quickly. “I sensed him and then I was compelled to send a Code Nine Nine for assistance. Then you arrived and my faith is strengthened and my soul terrified by the implications.”

“Wait. You were communing with the great . . . beyond”—Tarasin shrugged—“and you got some sort of magic tinglies to skip at least three links in the chain of command and Governance review to send a Code Nine Nine and you weren’t sure why?”

“Yes. Precisely. Paragon Maru would understand. Any Attuned would understand, but your soul lacks the connection to—But you came. I sent the summons into the ether and it was your ship that answered and it is you that is here now. Not a coincidence.”

“I have criticism that I will not say in this holy of holies of yours,” Tarasin muttered. “So you’re saying the Veil wiggled your nose and that’s how I ended up here. That’s the will of . . . whatever it is your types go on your Pilgrimages to see.”

“You’re accepting this better than I thought you would,” Kairos said.

“I’ve served with enough Attuned to appreciate that strange things happen around you all. I’m here now. What do you need me to do?”

Kairos nodded. “I’m not entirely sure.”

“What? What about that fleet on approach?”

“Not sure, but it would be prudent to have the Thirty-Seventh alerted. I just divined the threat a few moments before you arrived. Again, too fortuitous to be a coincidence. I’ve sent an alert to the shipmaster of the Star Strider, that’s Admiral Julkatta’s flagship.”

“Do I . . . need to be in here?” Tarasin asked.

“Aboard the station? No . . . I’m rather surprised you came in here,” Kairos said.

Tarasin flapped his arms against his sides in frustration.

“I’ll contact the Star Strider . . . How’s your leg?” Tarasin glanced at the Paragon’s skinnier limb.

“Still artificial. Yes, I’m still angry with you.” Kairos unhooked his hilt from his belt and tapped the end cap against metal within his pants leg.

“I saved the rest of you, didn’t I?” Tarasin smiled.

Kairos did not smile back.


Back | Next
Framed