Authors: Tony Gonzales
Mens held his glare for several seconds.
Rali accepted what was about to happen with a long exhale.
“Alright,” he said.
“Let’s start preparing.”
LONETREK REGION—KAINOKAI CONSTELLATION
THE TSUKURAS SYSTEM—PLANET IV: MYOKLAR
ISHUKONE FOUR-ABLE CRASH SITE
Captain Trevor Linden was awakened by a terrible bang.
His immediate concerns were of being unable to breathe properly and then of the blurry images taking shape above him.
Then he remembered the dropship he had been flying and the passengers whose safety he was charged with protecting.
“… on three, fellas,” he heard a voice say.
“One … two…”
Another ear-splitting bang rattled his consciousness, followed by a flash of pain.
The progress his vision was making was set back, and the fuzzy lines became more obscure.
“Shit, that was close,” he heard, followed by the staccato whine of a plasma rifle.
“Two meters … up … up!”
someone warned.
More gunfire slapped at his ears.
“There you go.”
Several men were crouched over him.
There was movement nearby.
“Bastards are using the thunder to mask their positions,” he heard a familiar voice say.
“Wish I could reach the heartbeat sensors in back—”
A series of metallic
kachink!
reports startled everyone.
“Guys, we need to move,” another stranger said.
“He’s waking up,” the familiar voice said.
Trevor finally recognized him: It was the asshole who broke into the cockpit before they were shot down.
It felt like someone was standing on his chest.
“Ready?”
said a voice.
“One … two …
three!
”
Explosive pain ripped through his chest; he would have screamed, except that doing so would require breathing.
Another deafening bang shook the surface beneath him so hard that it hurt his ears.
A heavy slab was dropped next to him.
“Get pressure on it,” he heard.
“Put your fingers in there, feel for the source.…”
“Found it.”
“Pinch, don’t let go.…”
“Yup…”
“Hold right there, and … gotcha.
It’s clamped.”
“Blood pressure’s still dropping.”
“Get biofoam into those.
Use these.…”
“Right…”
He recognized the emblem of the Ishukone Watch on the shoulder of one of the arms trying to help him.
Well, thank God for that.
“Alright, we’re moving,” a voice said.
“Covering fire, right into the tree line; wait for overwatch…”
Thunder rocked the cabin again; hard rain was striking him in the face.
“Wait … wait…” the voice said.
The whine of a gunship’s plasma engine drowned out the pelt of drops on metal.
Heavy cannon fire tore the sky in half.
“
Now!
”
Trevor screamed as he felt himself hauled off the ground.
“Hang in there!”
asshole yelled over the crash of gunfire.
“Stay with us!”
Before blacking out, Trevor noticed the man was bleeding from substantial wounds of his own.
GENESIS REGION—EVE CONSTELLATION
THE EVE GATE—POINT GENESIS
The
Significance
turned its instrument-laden bow toward a small yellow point in space—the New Eden star, some three light-years away.
All the final preparations were complete, and the ship was now flying on autopilot.
Marcus just assumed that Grious helped Mens Reppola find him.
Their conversation was shorter than he would have liked, but it served its purpose.
To control an inferno, one must destroy the path in front of the blaze.
Grious was right: Templar technology must be allowed to proliferate.
That grim conclusion stemmed from the fact that Amarr could bring soldiers to immortality only with a Sleeper implant.
The Other would stop at nothing to prevent them from learning an alternative.
Sadly, that discovery would be left to someone else.
Then, and only then, could humanity defend itself.
And for the moment, a stranger named Mens Reppola had a bigger head start than anyone, aside from the Amarr themselves, in the greatest arms race of all time.
Falek Grange brought unspeakable pain into two worlds, and Marcus was the one who had made that treachery possible.
He vowed to spend the waning moments of his life undoing that legacy.
Marcus composed himself as the
Significance
lurched into warp.
A cold and hateful presence surfaced in his mind immediately.
He hoped Grious had prepared him well.
DOMAIN REGION—THRONE WORLDS CONSTELLATION
THE AMARR SYSTEM—PLANET ORIS
EMPEROR FAMILY ACADEMY STATION: SAINT KURIA THE PROPHET CATHEDRAL
SOVEREIGNTY OF THE AMARR EMPIRE
Empress Jamyl believed it was time to expand the circle of those who knew about the Templars.
She didn’t need the consent of the heirs to launch a Reclaiming on her own.
But the event was of such historical consequence that gaining their public support would go a long way in preparing the Empire for what was to come.
The cathedral was an appropriate setting to share news of such magnitude, because it sent a clear reminder of where the real power was.
Each heir was a monarch in his own right.
But whether they agreed with Empress Jamyl or not, they were still beholden to her at all times.
Seated upon the altar’s holy throne, she took inventory of her guests.
Heir Yonis Ardishapur did not take kindly to being summoned by anyone, and as usual made no effort to hide his contempt.
Empress Jamyl tolerated it only because her spies kept a close eye on his efforts to undermine her power.
At first, he did so with pulpit-smashing public spectacles, challenging whether her royal ascension was in fact the ordained act of God, which so many believed it to be.
Getting nowhere with that approach, he had resorted to more opportunistic means by becoming the Empire’s most visible religious figure.
He was always seen visiting the impoverished regions of the Empire, convincing the national press to consult him for the church’s perspective on natural disasters and other catastrophes.
His influence was powerful to begin with, but in recent years, he managed to position himself as the faith’s ambassador to the masses.
The most fundamental purists in the Empire were firmly in his camp, and that made him a dangerous political enemy.
Heir Aritcio Kor-Azor, on the other hand, was an idiot whose relevance in court came from the loyalist advisors who managed his affairs.
But in some ways that made him a greater threat than Ardishapur.
It was difficult to know exactly who was being represented—or what motives were driving his official position on policy.
Aritcio sat nervously, fidgeting with a datapad, blatantly uncomfortable because his counsel had no idea what the purpose of this meeting was.
On the other hand, Heir Uriam Kador, if not the most intelligent of the heirs, was certainly its most gifted politician—inasmuch as being an heir could allow.
He was popular with secular constituencies, living a public lifestyle that fell just short of socialite extravagance.
That placed him at odds with the church, except that the programs he supported were genuinely beneficial to spiritual teachings, making it difficult for them to decry his flamboyant lifestyle.
He sat with his legs crossed, in clothes more befitting a music star than royalty, waiting patiently for Jamyl to speak.
Last was Heiress Catiz Tash-Murkon, the only other woman in court.
She was someone whom Empress Jamyl had to admire in secret, lest the accusations of favoritism begin.
Catiz earned that respect by being cooperative and constructive, offering thoughtful, unbiased opinions, but only when asked.
She was brilliant at deflecting Ardishapur’s demands for allegiance, dismissive of Uriam’s occasional advances, and careful not to demean Aritcio’s clueless behavior.
Catiz rejected her royal birthright to rule but opted to earn it—also as much as Empire law and tradition allowed—by establishing herself as a businesswoman, eventually gaining cluster-wide recognition as a master financier.
Like Uriam Kador, she sat quietly, waiting for Jamyl to speak.
As far as the Empress’s spies could tell, the heirs had no idea the Templars existed, or that the Ministry of War was actively drafting soldiers into the program.
Lord Victor Eliade, still on Pike’s Landing, was in virtual attendance.
Grand Admiral Kezti Sundara sat by her side, as with the Court Chamberlain.
She had waited a long time to tell them this.
“I brought all of you here to witness to the greatest moment in our history,” she began, “if not for all of mankind as well.”
Lord Victor and the Admiral nodded in agreement, heightening the anticipation for the heirs.
“For too long, we have sought an end to the Empyrean War,” she continued.
“And though our troops are inspired, we have pushed them to their limits and exhausted every diplomatic measure to bring peace.”
Her eyes scanned the audience, searching out royal eyes to gaze into.
“I hail from a long, storied lineage of warriors,” she said.
“We know better than anyone that war brings nothing but suffering.
As you shall bear witness, I intend to end it once and for all.”
Schematics of the Templar clone and its Sleeper cybernetic implant appeared.
“Royal Heirs of Amarr,” she continued.
“Behold the first immortal soldiers.”
Yonis Ardishapur frowned; the rest remained impassive.
“We have married empyrean technology to our infantry,” she continued.
“The Templars are the most potent weapons ever conceived in ground warfare.
They are the beginning of an everlasting peace.”
A starmap showing the location of Pike’s Landing appeared.
“The prototypes took this colony with almost no support,” she said.
“Core Freedom has vexed us for years.
Thousands of Paladins gave their lives trying to reclaim it.
Today, it is in our hands.
I am raising an army of Templars, and they shall make war obsolete … a relic of history.
Soon, there will be no adversaries.
The Templars are the vanguard of the Final Reclaiming.”
Disbelief stretched across Yonis’s brow.
“Your Majesty,” he began, “am I correct in observing that these so-called ‘Templars’ took but a single colony, and by that one success you’re willing to gamble the future of our Empire?”
Just as she opened her mouth to answer, Jamyl felt a breathtaking stab of pain, as if an ice pick had been driven through her head.
She cried out, clutching her temples.
Grand Admiral Sundara jumped out of his seat to assist her.
“Oh,
God
!”
she winced, fighting against the Other’s attack with all her might.
“Not now!”
The fever rushed through her like a tsunami; she had not felt an attack this vicious in years.
Her vision tunneled; people were trying to help her, but she felt detached from her surroundings.
“
Why?
” she screamed aloud.
Then she realized the communications implant in her cerebral cortex was notifying her, and the Other couldn’t block it out.
Marcus Jror was frantically trying to contact her.
“Your Majesty,” he said.
“I don’t have much time.…”
“Marcus!”
she willed, unsure if she said his name aloud.
“Where are you?”
“The Templars are not what you think,” Marcus said.
“You won’t be able to control them.… The Other won’t let you know that.
It’s an army for
him,
not for Amarr!”
She was peripherally aware that Victor was trying to say something.
“Does Victor know?”
she asked.
“He has to,” Marcus answered.
“But the Other blocks him from your memory whenever he tries to warn you!”
Rage washed over her: This is what the Other was trying to hide all this time.
“What the hell is it, Marcus?”
she demanded.