“We’ll arrive at your destination shortly,” The Navigator said with a sigh of resignation as he powered down unnecessary systems and slumped in his chair with deflating exhalation of relief. A still calmness reverberated through the ship as it cruised through folded space. Agra translated his announcement to Taylor whose face lit up with excitement.
“I’m sure Liz and Jakob will want to hear the news,” Taylor said.
“I’ll join you.”
“I’ll keep an eye on this one,” Quintek assured Agra as she accompanied Taylor. The Navigator shrank from his malicious gaze.
“Stay away from me,” the Navigator whimpered. Quintek relaxed his aggressive stance and put some distance between himself and the Navigator with a curt chuckle. He settled on the sloping wall with his arms crossed
“Who would have known that the pure ones were so soft,” Quintek noted with an amused snap of his beak. “I knew children stronger than you. Those are the soldiers you send into battle.”
“Soldiers are the hands of the Divine one, nothing more nothing less,” The Navigator countered with blind dogma. Quintek responded with a quizzical look.
“What are you babbling about?” Quintek hissed.
“I don’t expect a creature like you to be familiar with the Edicts of the Divine One,” The Navigator scoffed with a brief resistant growl. His expression immediately softened into one of ambivalence. Why did Agra and her impure companion find it so easy to disregard the sacred edicts without apparent consequence? Was it their ignorance? The disillusioned Navigator slumped low in his chair as he tried to reconcile once immutable truths with his present circumstances.
“What’s wrong?” asked an intrusive voice within Quinteks mind. A surge of unfamiliar emotions flooded into the confused Syn mind as he relived a fragment of Agra’s past. A human man draped in dirty white cloth extended his hand with a trustworthy smile on his unkempt bearded face. “I here for you.” Greg Anson had earned Agra’s devotion for a reason Quintek thought as he experienced the second handrush of respect. This was something totally alien to his kind. It could be a powerful tool.
“What’s wrong,” Quintek asked. The Navigator gave him a strange look.
“I’m no different that you creature,” The Navigator spat with disgust, “I’ve defiled the Edicts and failed my duty. I’ve become impure in the eyes of the Divine One.”
“Why does that matter?” Quintek replied. “You’re with us now. You don’t have to worry about the Queens and their edicts anymore. We’re different; Agra would gladly accept your services should you chose to stand with her. She is obviously in need of a competent Navigator.”
“The Mistress-” the Navigator said before quickly correcting himself with a frowning snap of his beaky plated mouth “Agra, would ask me to join her?” The Navigator was flabbergasted. None of his kind had ever been given the choice. Impure soldiers and pure acolytes alike always served the dynasty they had been born into without question. This loyalty was one sided, a Queen not obligated to help her people if they were taken in sacred combat. Isn’t that what had happened to him the Navigator though with growing dread. Agra had compelled him to do what she wanted with the threat of force. Did that make him any different than the vast numbers of his kind that got traded between Matriarchs after sacred contests? Was that not how it was written in the edicts?
“And if I refuse her offer?” The Navigator ventured with a shrinking confidence.
“I suspect she would just let you go home once we no longer need you,” Quintek waved off with a dismissive gesture. The Navigator shot upright with wide eyed surprise.
“She’d let me complete my mission?”
Quintek pushed himself off the wall and marched up to the Navigator with a low trembling growl as he once sized up the Navigator with a predatory glare.
“You wouldn’t need to worry about failing your master if you stopped caring about them and more about yourself. It’s like I said before; it’s your choice,” Quintek sneered with a hiss. He stormed off leaving the Navigator alone to stew in his fearful dangerous thoughts.
The blasphemous soldier’s words did carry great weight with the Navigator. The fear of failure bred into him was beginning to form something new in the uncertain corners of his mind without the guiding voice of his Matriarch. Until now the Navigator could find some solace in the technicality that he would eventually deliver Agra to the Matriarch he still served. The Matriarch hadn’t necessarily given him a time restraint, just the expectation of success. She however was trapped in the nebula she called home while Agra lorded over his fate. What her Familiar said was disturbingly true. The Navigator was presented with a choice. He could either proceed with the possibility of failure or disregard his Matriarch and the Edicts entirely in pursuit of something even he didn’t quite understand. In some sense what Agra was offering was freedom. She really was a Devil he thought with dismay.
“I can’t believe I’ve actually escaped,” Agra confided in Taylor giddily as she followed him down the small ramp into the queen’s chamber. “Until you all arrived I thought I would be spending the rest of my life alone on that icy planet. I can’t thank you enough.”
“We’d be trapped too if not for your people. They’re the ones we should be thankful for,” Taylor said as he considered the irony with a smile. “I guess they’re not all bad.”
“I suppose,” Agra acknowledged with a conflicted snap of her beak.
They found Liz and Jakob waiting for them in the dim blue glow of the ornately decorated domed chamber. The four other Syn looked up from where say sat or lay alongside the walls. A few blinked interest and drifted towards the others with low clicking noises. Agra stroked one of them as Liz greeted her with an expectant look on her weary face. She had just finished redressing Jakob’s bandages. He still reclined between the armrests of the throne. With a wincing expression Jakob turned his head to ask for an update with a groan.
“Can one of you tell us what the hell is going on out there?”
“We’re safe,” Taylor explained cheerfully. “Our Syn pilot flew us past the vanguard of the Syncline fleet and put the ship on a warp vector for SMCAF command.
“What?” Liz exclaimed.
“You don’t seem as enthusiastic as I thought you’d be,” Agra frowned. The Syn beside her mirrored her sudden sadness. In contrast to her own excitement Liz and Jakob did not seem in a celebratory mood.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“I thought we told you not to take us there,” Jakob groaned from where he reclined on the black Syn throne. Liz stood beside him with an expression of worried calculation.
“An Isolated outpost would have been preferable, unmanned survey stations have stocks of supplies and access to a DSN uplink console. We would have been picked up within a week.”
“A week?” Jakob interjected hoarsely. “Maybe Agra has the right idea. I can’t endure another week of this shit.”
“You said it yourself Jakob. If the offensive was as disastrous for the rest of the fleet as it was for the Orion then that means that they all would have fallen back to the redoubt. There is no way we get past the second marker with even a fraction of the fleet patrolling the defensive sphere. We cannot contact them to state our intentions. They will treat us like any other Syncline vessel and destroy us.”
“I’m not so sure,” Taylor insisted. “You didn’t see what this ship and the Navigator is capable of. We eluded the entire Syncline fleet. I’m sure we can survive a run in with our depleted and damaged fleet.”
“The Navigator?” Jakob asked. “You trust that Syn?”
“Not entirely but I am certain that letting himself and this ship be destroyed is the last thing he wants,” Agra said. “He is too proud to let himself fail his mission.”
“You’d let him complete his mission?” Liz asked. “Isn’t he supposed to take you to your Syn grandmother? You actually want to meet her?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Agra admitted. “Her willingness to attempt a rescue tells me that she is different than the others but I’m not sure what that implies yet. For now, I want to find out what happened to the rest of my Fathers family. He had a wife and daughter. Telling them what happened is the least I can do in his place. After that I can think about my future.”
“I guess we shouldn’t have expected things to get any easier,” Jakob said as he rubbed his freshly wrapped wound with a pained look on his face. The medication could only do so much. “If we have to blast our way into SMCAF then I guess it’s what we have to do.”
“We’ve made it this far with Syn help,” Taylor argued, “I’m sure we’ll make it home.”
“I guess it’s out of the frying pan and into the fire for us,” Liz said unconvinced.
Adelaide awoke from her dreamless drug induced sleep feeling groggy and disoriented. Locked within her coffin like sleeping cubicle she tugged her thin blanket over her face as the harsh overhead lighting automatically blinked on. The time allotted by the strict sleeping schedule never felt meaningful. Groaning Adelaide rolled over and shut out the world with her pillow until the insistent squawking of an alarm became unbearable.
“Alright alright, I’m up,” Adelaide said as she rubbed the crust from her eyes. Pressing a button on the overhead console unlocked the small rectangular hatch by her feet with a subtle click. The door rose slowly on pneumatic hinges and Adelaide slid out several feet onto the floor. A single dimly lit passage ran through the banks of sleeping cubicles stacked six high and running horizontally into the bulkhead several dozen meters away. A Commander and a Lieutenant stepped through the open passageway as Adelaide stowed her blankets and pillow in a slide out drawer.
“Lieutenant Adelaide Anson?” the Commander inquired impersonally.
“Commander,” Adelaide saluted. She sized up the serious looking woman with a blank stare. The name above her bar code read Audrey Sparks. The Lieutenant accompanying her was a young man about her age named Sam Satre. The stylized blue eagles of the SMCAF patches on their shoulders clutched the red sun motif of the Czarists in place of the Earth. Typical Adelaide thought spitefully.
“So you’re my transfer from the Western Sphere fleet operations,” Commander Sparks said with a patronizing tone, “the so called daughter of devils. I take it you didn’t receive my dispatch. I expected to see you an hour ago.”
“Is it true you killed a Syn with your bare hands?” Sam blurted out eagerly. Commander Sparks shut him up with a raised hand and a cold stare.
“It’s what they like to say,” Adelaide answered with a sardonic grin. Commander sparks was not at all satisfied.
“Don’t mistake me for another gullible fool Lieutenant Anson. Answer my subordinate’s question. Did you or did you not?” Commander Sparks demanded with a disapproving sneer.
“I honestly don’t remember. I must have otherwise I wouldn’t be have the honor of sharing your pleasant company today Commander, Sir,” Adelaide said crossing her arms. “I’ve taken down plenty of Syn with a pike though. They are not as useless as people think they are.”
“You must think all our efforts are a joke then” Commander Sparks growled. “You’d happily watch humanity slide into primitive savagery and extinction. Is that what the daughter of devils really wants?”
“If the Syn can beat us then did we ever deserve to win?” Adelaide responded coldy. “If billions of deaths and the loss of Earth couldn’t pressure us to throw aside our petty differences then I don’t know what would. We have only ourselves to blame for what has happened.”
“I’ve heard enough out of you,” the Commander exploded. “I’ve heard enough to know I don’t want you. Protecting this facility is serious business and I only want the best.”
“Works for me, you deal with Crozier.”
“You insolent-“
The Commanders rage was cut off by the shrill ringing of klaxon of the stations alarm. The overhead lights dimmed to a sinister red. Sparks spun around to face her lieutenant with a frantic look in her eyes.
“This isn’t a drill. An unscheduled temporal sink has been detected just outside the first marker. All defense battalions have been ordered to mobilize in preparation for a Syncline attack,” He said desperately swiping though a notification projected by his wrist comm.
“And I’m stuck here away from my troops!” Commander Sparks sneered as if it was Adelaide’s fault.
“You at least have me,” Adelaide offered semi-sarcastically.
Commander Sparks begrudgingly accepted her offer with a spiteful glare and a nod of her head.
“Come with us Lieutenant.”
Running after her uniformed comrades in the uniform jacket she had quickly slipped over her pajamas Adelaide tried to contact General Crozier. They ran through a hallway packed with confused soldiers who had been on their way to breakfast as the lights flashed red with frantic alarm.
“Adelaide where are you?” he finally answered with an exasperated voice.
“The unit Commander you had me assigned to decided to pay a friendly visit to my sleeping cubicle when they sounded general quarters. Crozier what the hell is going on?” Adelaide hissed into her wrist communicator.
“General Crozier?” Commander Sparks repeated with surprise. Coming to an abrupt stop, she and Lieutenant Satre turned towards Adelaide to listen to what the general had to say.
“Adelaide a small Syncline ship has just violated the outer defensive sphere and is maneuvering its way past everything the fleet can throw at it. It’s already forced its way past the third marker and is heading our way.”
“What can we do general?” Commander sparks asked the voice coming from Adelaide’s wrist.
“Who is this?” General Crozier hurriedly asked. “Never mind, be prepared for anything. I’ve got to go.”
“There is an observation deck on the level above us,” Lieutenant Satre said as the general’s voice cut out. “We can get a look at it from there.”
“Tell the other lieutenants to proceed at their own discretion. They know what to do. I want to see what we’re dealing with.”
Sam transcribed the order onto the tablet on his wrist as best he could as he chased after Adelaide and his Commander. They stormed up a small stairwell into passage lined with large circular portholes. From here they had a good view of the streams of flashing artillery which had begun to outnumber the stars. Two warships, a Czarist frigate and a Western Sphere dreadnaught were converging on the small swirling speck zipping effortlessly through their exploding plasma shells. Dozens of other surviving warships had also begun to alter their courses as their turrets swiveled.
“You ever see a Syn ship like that?” Lieutenant Satre asked Adelaide. She shook her head.
“It looks like a boarding barb though I didn’t think those were warp capable.”
“Boarding bards can carry up to 200 Syn soldiers,” Commander Sparks reminded them grimly.
“This isn’t like the Syn,” Adelaide appraised confidently; “They rely on overwhelming numbers to win their battles. They would send everything they had or nothing at all.”
“Maybe this is their play. Our defenses are mean to repel much larger much slower ships. The fleet isn’t prepared to stop a thing like that,” Satre said.
“You give the Syn too much credit,” Commander Sparks growled.
The arrowhead shaped craft was getting closer dodging volleys of defensive artillery as a swarm of fighter-interceptors frantically gave chase. It looked as though it was making straight for the nearby landing bays. Within moments it was clear that it was. The Syn craft committed to its final course and plunged soundlessly through sealed landing bay doors just outside the observation deck.
