The Exiled Earthborn (15 page)

“But his work has proved useful. Most of it was being eaten away by a corruption algorithm by the time I reached it, but there were pieces that are quite valuable. One in particular.”

There was now a tangible excitement exuding from him, an energy Lucas had never seen him wear before. He motioned for them to come around to his side of the desk. He flung his claws outward and the screen he was working on expanded. In front of them were portraits of a dozen Xalans, each colored a variable shade of gray. Lucas could translate at least one word in the header: D
ANGEROUS
. Alpha elaborated.

“These are the leaders of the Xalan resistance, the sect that wishes the eternal Soran war to end and the Council to be overthrown and replaced with proper leaders who truly have the well-being of Xala at heart. Should we be able to reach any of these figures, they would be of invaluable help in spreading the message of my father to our people.”

Lucas was scanning the text under the pictures for words he could decipher. He saw terms like B
OMBING
, A
SSAULT
, R
EBELLION
, and T
REASON
repeated frequently. Alpha motioned to one of the portraits and it grew to consume the entire screen. It was a Xalan who was almost pure white. It had larger eyes than Alpha’s with rings of sky blue. Not the ice cold glare of the Shadows, but a softer gaze.

“This is [garbled],” Alpha said, his translator again refusing to convert Xalan names to anything understandable.

“Ah,” he said as he stopped himself. “Refer to her as … Zeta, I suppose.”

Another Greek letter. If they ever met more than twenty-four Xalans, Alpha was going to be out of luck fashioning identifiers for them.

“She is an old friend, and one I must admit I was shocked, and thrilled, to find on this list. We studied together a century ago at the Institute of [garbled] and both came from science-minded families, a common ground over which we formed a bond. We became … close.”

His eyes trailed off to some faraway place for a moment before snapping back toward them.

“When I became drafted into my father’s work fashioning weapons systems, she was tasked with designing interplanetary communication relays that could transmit orders instantaneously from Xala to the colonies, or vice-versa.”

He scanned through a number of data entries below her picture. “Though stationed trillions of miles apart, we kept in contact for years, until one day, she disappeared. I feared her dead, and had no reason to believe otherwise. During any leave I had from research, I scoured the colonies and Xala for her to no avail. She was gone, and no one could tell me what had happened to her. Until I discovered this.”

He pointed toward the screen.

“This decrypted file says that she was arrested twenty-three years ago for setting up backchannels for the resistance to communicate across planets, precisely when she vanished. She was sentenced for extermination, but escaped custody in transit and piloted her prison ship to [garbled]. To a nearby colony planet. She has not been heard from since, but the resistance communication network remains online. The coding of the backchannels is sufficiently complex that the Council believes she must still be running it remotely, and so her name remains on this list.”

Lucas studied the text. He could make out phrases that Alpha was glossing over in her file. “Resisted High-Level Interrogation” was one of them. Meanwhile, Asha was already thinking ahead.

“This sounds great, but how exactly do we find your girlfriend if she hasn’t been seen in two decades on this planet?”

Alpha was taken aback.

“Girl … friend? That Earth term has no bearing here. If you are implying we were … We were simply interested in the same—” he stammered.

“Alpha!” Lucas course corrected. “How do we find her?”

He nodded and went back on point.

“Long ago, we spoke in secret of the resistance and possible ways to aid them. Minds like ours see no purpose in war, and the desire for change was a seed planted in us during our youth as we witnessed the atrocities of the conflict and the effect it had on our people. She grew up to deliver on her promise, whereas I did not.”

His eyes were downcast.

“You are now,” Lucas said. “That’s what matters.”

Alpha ignored him and continued.

“We developed a communication system lest one of us be captured. It was a deeply encoded frequency only the pair of us would have access to.”

He paused, and let out a sigh.

“Every day after she disappeared, I monitored the frequency to no avail. Either it had been discovered or disabled, or wherever she was being held was blocking the signal. I checked the frequency when I came to Earth. I checked the frequency when I met you. I checked the frequency until the day my signal reader was destroyed when we fought Omicron.”

“You never mentioned this before,” Lucas said.

“It was of no importance to you; why would I?” Alpha said, but Lucas remembered seeing him on the Ark’s security monitor working late in has lab some nights, staring hard at a screen with a resigned look on his face.

“When I saw her name on this list, the first thing I did was to rebuild the device needed to locate the signal.”

He threw up a garble of lines onto the screen that were pulsing with repeating frequency.

“I checked it, and it had been reactivated.”

Lucas’s eyes widened in surprise.

“You talked to her, after all this time?”

Alpha shook his head.

“Though the signal is active, it is too scrambled for anything resembling auditory or visual communication.”

“Then how does that help us?” Asha said, immune to what had been a rather touching story, Lucas thought.

“Though we could not speak, I traced the signal back to its origin point. I found her.”

He cycled through the controls in front of him and brought up a planet streaked with green and brown with only faint hints of blue, identified by indecipherable Xalan symbols. A dot of light was pulsing in one of the greener areas.

“This is the colony planet [garbled]. I leave it to you to invent a Soran or English name for it. Less than half the size of your Earth, it once was mostly covered in a lush jungle, but after being harvested for its water, 92.4 percent of the forests have died out. Only a few still remain, and Zeta is in one of them.”

The blinking light seemed to indicate where exactly they’d find her. Lucas supposed a jungle was an easier place to hide than a desert.

“[Garbled] was the last planet discovered and pillaged before Earth. Its Soran, or
human
population, if you still prefer the term, was quite primitive, and has since been purged out of existence. The Xalan colony there is the least populous of all our off-world homes, but more arrive every day as refugees from the ever inhospitable Xala. The resistance is rumored to have a strong presence on the surface, though I do not know the full extent of the operation.”

“Fantastic,” said Asha with now genuine enthusiasm. “So we go there, find your girl, give her your father’s message, and spread it to the resistance to mobilize the population?”

“She is not my …” started a flustered Alpha. “But yes, that is something resembling the plan I have devised. If we can incite open revolt on [garbled], something the message could achieve, it would buy Sora time as the Council is forced to deal with an uprising. With any luck, the message would spread across all the colonies shortly after. Mass rebellion across the entire population may itself be enough to end the war once and for all, though I fear swift and bloody retribution from the Council.”

“In any case,” Lucas said, “this sounds like our best option. Our only option, really.”

“Indeed it is, as direct military strikes against Xalan forces will only result in further stagnation and depletion of resources, something both sides should have learned by now.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” Asha said. “Let’s get on the Spear and head out there.”

Alpha fell silent, and the hovering screen went blank.

“As elated as I am to find [garbled], to find Zeta alive, it is not all good news I have discovered inside this core.”

“What do you mean?” Lucas asked cautiously.

Alpha flung up another document. Lucas quickly translated the title. O
RDER FOR
E
XTERMINATION
. As he kept reading, a knot began to tie in his stomach.

“Alpha, what is this?” he asked breathlessly.

“It appears the threats of my old mentor were not unfounded. The Council has indeed sent a new party to bring me to justice for my purported crimes. The Desecrator.”

There was an image accompanying the text, but it was blurred beyond recognition, like someone had tried to snap a shot of a car speeding by at a hundred miles an hour.

“The Desecrator?” Asha asked skeptically. “Who, or what, the hell is that?”

“I only know the stories I was told as a child. The Desecrator was a monster of alleged Soran origin. With the help of their ancient, wrathful gods, they created a being to terrorize the population of Xala without quarter, without mercy. To desecrate our homeworld to its very core. If your allegiance to Xala was anything but steadfast, he would prey on your weakness and consume your soul. The Sorans bred him to look like us, but he wielded unholy powers that could tear apart any foe.”

“That sounds familiar,” Lucas said.

“Indeed it does. Though the legend predates the psionic mutation of the Chosen Shadows. It may be the case that the Desecrator is something else entirely, something new. Or rather, something old.”

“Stronger than Omicron?” Lucas said, almost in a whisper.

“Unknown,” Alpha said. “There is no further information about the Desecrator here. His existence is apparently such a guarded secret even those assigned to handle him may not know the full extent of his origin or abilities.”

“What does this mean for the mission?” Asha asked, undeterred by the new threat.

“Whatever he is, even the Desecrator could likely not reach us on Sora. But offworld? If the Council catches wind of our plan, they will likely dispatch him along with any additional troops needed to secure us. The order you see before you is unmistakably specific in its instructions. I am not only marked for death, but the pair of you are as well.”

An unwanted chill shook Lucas as he stared at the blurred image of the Desecrator. The Council must have acquired full knowledge of their role in the murder of Omicron, and wanted blood in return. And now they were sending … what exactly for them? Lucas was sure he didn’t want to find out.

“How do we know this all isn’t a trap?” Asha asked.

“We do not,” Alpha said. “But if there is a chance Zeta is alive, I must go. And if there is a chance she could help us, we all must go.”

After a painful goodbye from an inconsolable Noah and another visit to the incubation chamber, Lucas and Asha descended back underneath the surface. Down in the hangar, the Spear was being hastily outfitted for another round of travel, and the small Guardian squad that had led the raid to recover Asha and capture Tulwar had doubled in size for the scope of the mission at hand. The existence of the Xalan sub-colonies was a revelation only a few months old, and due to the Spear’s exceptionally advanced white null core, this was the furthest any Soran would travel out into the galaxy. A historic occasion. Still, there were ripples of discontent through the troops.

“What’s up with them?” Lucas asked Silo when he found him next to Kiati as usual. Both were unarmored, yet still towered over him. She spoke before he could.

“Many Guardians are upset we are being drawn away from helping our brethren on Kollux in pursuit of some scrap of information pulled off a traitor’s data core,” she said, her voice dripping with contempt.

“It’s a scrap of information that could end up turning the entire tide of the war,” Lucas said, annoyed. He no longer had tolerance for Kiati’s attitude. She was beginning to sound like Maston.
And speak of the devil.

Maston strode toward them in full uniform. His appearance was meticulous, a far cry from the broken-down man Lucas had encountered outside the interrogation room.

“Get onboard,” he said to all four of them. “We don’t have the time to debate these orders. They are simply that: orders.”

Lucas was surprised he wasn’t raising hell like Kiati. She and Silo nodded and turned to walk onto the entry ramp with dozens of other Guardians.

Asha began to speak, but Maston cut her off.

“Your personal weapons are already in the armory. Get into your fatigues on that ship in the next two minutes or I swear to Kyneth I’ll leave you here, Vale orders aside.”

He did an about-face and left them standing looking at each other before either could even respond. Maston wasn’t messing around today. Lucas wondered how many of the lost on Kollux he had known.

Lucas and Asha stood in the first row of over a hundred Guardians who had assembled in the still-under-repair CIC of the Spear. Maston stood at the foot of the holotable and was issuing instructions for the voyage ahead.

“By now you’ve all read the brief and know where we’re going. They’re calling it ‘Makari,’ which, for the non-Ba’siri speakers, means ‘turning point’ in the old tongue. I don’t know if this place will be the salvation our newly appointed heroes claim,” he said, casting a hard glare toward the pair of them. “But it is our job to find out, and honor the memories of the fallen of Kollux as we do so. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Watchman!” came the cry all around them, one that used Maston’s official title as leader of the Guardians.

“Using this new Xalan hypercore, the trip is a mere sixty-eight days. The majority of you will be in cryo for that time, and will wake up refreshed and ready to serve. If you have been designated otherwise, report to me after this briefing.”

Lucas was not surprised to see that his set of orders had deemed him one of the chosen meant to speak to Maston. Asha had the same notation on her own display.

Sixty-eight days? That meant by the time they returned, if they returned, their child would be ready to be “born”—if the word was still appropriate—even with the additional time in the birthing tank normal on Sora that extended past a human’s nine-month pregnancy. And Noah would grow ever older, another stretch of time away from his surrogate family, with only Malorious Auran to take care of him. It was another reason to ensure that their mission was a success.