EVE®: Templar One (49 page)

Or did it?
she wondered.

In her mind, Mens and his lapdog Rali were far too competent for this to have been a clumsy botch.
More likely it was a calculated risk; they wagered they could take her offer free of risk.
But even if this assumption was wrong, the penalty for dishonoring their agreement, regardless of reason, should have been no less severe.

Or maybe it didn’t have to be,
she thought.

Her doubt was growing because the tactical aftermath of her actions was now almost impossible to navigate.
With no options remaining, she considered the possibility that her reaction had been too impulsive.
That was uncharacteristic of her.
She searched her soul for the cause, wondering if her rage was fueled by her failed relationship with Mordu.
His son had most likely died, and for nothing—though it appeared some passengers had survived, and that Heth’s Dragonaurs were completely unprepared for the ferocity of Ishukone’s response.

Nevertheless, chances were he was dead.
And that was a good enough reason to hurt Mens back.

Wasn’t it?

A bridge was burned and a powerful potential ally was lost.
She tried to count how many friends she had left and found herself struggling to remember if she ever had any to begin with.
Money could always buy more, except now there wasn’t very much of that left either.

So this is how regret feels.

The Provist guards were standing much closer to her than usual.
Heth remained on screen, tracking the aftermath of events, belittling the incompetence of his hired guns while keeping the Navy’s inquiries at arm’s length.
He was in his military element again, playing the General he thought himself to be but never actually was.
Mega-corporation armed forces were anxiously trying to get information, but Heth was keeping quiet, except to say that a serious attempt on his life had been thwarted, and that under no circumstances were they to let the press find out.

The events set in motion at Myoklar were now spiraling out of control, and no one could make sense of the chaos—no one except for Haatakan.
Judging from Ishukone’s reaction, it was clear that Mens had found exactly what she said he would.

Fleet Admiral Morda Engsten, the highest ranking military official of the Caldari State beneath Tibus Heth, was now conferenced in.

“Ishukone has achieved maximum wartime readiness,” she said.
“They’ve invoked national emergency protocols, with twenty-five percent of their population converted to active reservist status.”

“Have they answered your queries?”
Heth asked.

“No response,” the Admiral said, “from anyone.”

“Alright then,” Heth said, balling his hands into fists.
“I think we just might have a fight coming.”

“I’m not so sure,” the Admiral said.
“We’re analyzing their mobilization.
If they were planning attacks against the State, their logistical patterns make no sense.
The ship movements we’ve tracked suggest they’re actually preparing to
leave
Caldari space, through the southern regions.”

“The south?”
Heth asked.

“Yes, toward Amarr space.”

“That doesn’t make any goddamn sense.”

“No, it doesn’t,” the Admiral said, narrowing her eyes at him.
“But knowing exactly what happened at Myoklar might provide some insight to their motives.”

“You’ll know when you need to,” Heth growled.

“Fair enough,” she replied.
“I realize Ishukone is a thorn in your side.
Don’t let them goad you into a civil war.”

“Point noted, Admiral,” Heth said.
“That will be all.”

As the Admiral’s image vanished, the dictator turned his icy glare back to Haatakan.

“You’ve been awfully quiet,” he said.

32

HEIMATAR REGION—HED CONSTELLATION

AMAMAKE SYSTEM—PLANET II: PIKE’S LANDING

TWENTY-FIVE KILOMETERS SOUTHEAST OF CORE FREEDOM COLONY—BADLANDS GRID

SOVEREIGNTY OF THE AMARR EMPIRE

Vince was so attuned to his surroundings that he swore he could hear the colony’s alarms—a shrill, unnatural cry that the wind carried across the open steppes and into the canyons of the badlands.
His TACNET sprang to life; he hadn’t been hearing things.
Federation dropships had entered their airspace, and the Paladins were preparing for the worst.

The assassin he was following noticed it as well: Her head perked upward, turning to face west.
He had been stalking her from high ground for hours, watching as she moved the bodies of the Federation commandos back to the gunship they arrived in with the strength of a machine; then she deftly dismantled the craft’s electronics, perhaps to disable its ability to broadcast.
She flew it down the riverbed, disappeared around its eastern bend, and reemerged a short while later on foot.

Vince was pondering why she would do this when he heard something else: A craft was approaching quickly.
A Federation Blackjack-class gunship suddenly roared overhead; the war machines were so proficient at masking their noise signature that even his enhanced senses had nearly missed it.

When he looked back down toward the riverbed, the assassin was gone.

He went completely prone, nestling into the crevice of a rock outcrop.
A creature slithered nearby, but he ignored it as the gunship lumbered overhead, hovering momentarily over the riverbed before moving upstream.
The rocks were good cover; enough to prevent a thermal scan from giving his position away.
His elevated body temperature would stick out like an inferno on any scanner.

And, Vince just realized, to most of the wildlife in this ecosystem.

The slithering noise returned as Vince strained to peek between rocks downward, where he last saw the assassin.
Staying perfectly still, he could hear the Blackjack hovering low, perhaps trying to evade Imperial patrols, now that the colony knew they were there.

It was the craft’s roving spotlight that caused the animal slithering nearby to panic.
Vince had unwittingly put himself inside the nest of a local reptile species—in this case, an adult more than two meters long.
He found himself face-to-face with the serpentine-like creature, staring directly into its marble-black eyes as it reared its head backward like a coiling spring.

Strangely, Vince became mesmerized.
And then time stopped altogether.

Please don’t kill me,
something said.

Vince became horribly confused.

I don’t want to hurt anyone.

The creature was gone.
Something impossibly familiar and humanoid had replaced it.

We were preparing for journey’s end
.
The Enheduanni told us it was time to emerge and rebuild.

It was speaking in a language that Vince had never been taught; the same one that Templar Six had spoken.
He could see its written alphabet—undecipherable glyphs and symbols—and yet their meaning was perfectly clear to him.

They are destroying our home.
Why would anyone want to harm us?

Vince briefly saw a spectacular city hovering over vast oceans; then it was ablaze and crumbling into the sea.

I helped build this.
The ones I love are still there.
We achieved harmony.
The Other warned they would take it from us.
He was right.

In a blinding flash, the emotions that the Amarr had tried to suppress in him as a Templar were all resurrected.
He felt unimaginable sorrow and anguish; he was better prepared to take a bullet than answer to this.

You don’t belong in this world.
And I don’t belong in yours.
I don’t know how this happened.

The distant words of Instructor Muros, everything she had imparted to him, including the conviction of the Templar and the creed he defended, evaporated.

Is this real?

The being was now exploring Vince’s memories.
He was shown the footprints of Empress Jamyl and knew it was all a lie.

You are different from us.
Lost.
There is no harmony in your world.

Then Vince saw her, the one he swore he had recognized, as she was when he nearly shot her.

Her name is Gable.
You should remember her.

LONETREK REGION—KIANOKAI CONSTELLATION

THE KIRRAS SYSTEM—PLANET IX: LAI DAI EXCAVATIONS OUTPOST

SOVEREIGNTY OF THE CALDARI STATE

Seven Years Ago

When the rage subsided, the first words Vince heard were mumbled by his sister.

“Oh, my God…,” Téa said.

Unconscious for several minutes, she was now seeing the aftermath of her brother’s actions.

Gray matter was seeping like a wet sponge from a crack several centimeters wide in her husband’s skull.
His eyes had rolled in separate directions, one toward the top of his head, the other off to the side.

Vince just assumed his heart had stopped beating by now.
Blood was all over his own hands, smeared into his knuckles and the palms he’d used to repeatedly smash the man’s head onto the cement floor.

Téa tried to get to her feet but fell back down instead.
Two of her teeth were missing, her right eye was swollen shut, and her nose was horribly crooked.
The front of her neck and shirt were soaked in crimson.

As Vince stood to assist her, his foot accidentally kicked a small handgun.

“You’re shot,” Téa said.

Vince hadn’t even noticed until he went to move his right arm.
At such close range, the iridium round barely had time to fully convert to plasma.
The slug entered just below his clavicle and plowed a cauterized hole less than a centimeter wide all the way through its exit point at the rear deltoid.

Unfortunately, the shearing force of the mass blasting through muscle and bone had ripped open his thoracoacromial artery.
Since the entry and exit wounds were both sealed, Vince had no idea he was slowly bleeding to death.

“What’d I do?”
he said, at last succumbing to the adrenaline’s painful hangover.

“You killed him,” she said, using the wall for balance.

“Yeah, I guess I did,” he said, moving to help her stand.

The glass office, situated at the end of a floor where around twenty commodity traders sat, still had its blinds drawn.
Apart from the mess and a smoldering bullet hole in the ceiling rafter, the place was exactly as Kavon Giles had left it: executive furnishings, notably a plush couch with authentic leathering extracted from the hide of some ferocious beast nearing extinction on an exotic world; an oversize desk with an engraving of the monster’s name who sat behind it; a virtual terminal; and a handful of insignificant trophies, most of them awarded by the Lai Dai mega-corporation for accomplishing some managerial milestone or other.

At the moment, the place smelled vaguely of burnt meat and ionized gas.

“Why’d you do this?”
she asked.

Vince became angry again.

“It was just a matter of time before that happened to you,” he said, motioning toward the corpse.
“I couldn’t take it anymore.”

The siblings believed they had turned their lives around since those dark days in Blackbourn City.
By the time Vince finished his labor sentencing, Téa had long since found administrative work in the Lai Dai mega-corporate bureaucracy.
He emerged as a welder qualified to operate in zero-G environments—a highly sought-after skill, given its attrition rate.
Téa’s contacts were able to arrange for both to find employment at the same mining outpost in Kirras.
It was a Lai Dai start-up venture, a tiny operation with a chance of becoming something worthwhile, depending on how some surveying went in the system.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said, lightly touching the puffy skin on her cheek.
She felt as if something heavy were tugging on her eye.
“There are cameras everywhere.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Vince said, wincing at the throbbing pain in his shoulder.

Having grown up with an abusive father and few friends, Téa often made poor choices when it came to companionship.
In her own mind, the opportunity to marry into the management tier of a mega-corporation was too enticing to pass up, no matter what the risks.
She had convinced herself it was necessary for her own survival.

“Jonas,” she said.
“We have to call him.”

“And ask for what?”
he snarled.
“He can’t cover this up.”

Vince had noticed the bruises from time to time and even confronted her about it directly on a few occasions.
She always denied anything was wrong, but it was obvious what was happening.

“We ask to go with him,” she said.
“He made the offer to us, and—
oww!
”

She grabbed at her abdomen, inside of which was a growing fetus.
Vince saw blood on the inside of her thighs.

“Oh, no,” he said.
“We have to get you help!”

Breathing heavily, she struggled to Kavon’s desk.
His terminal was still active.
Jonas Varitec was Vince’s direct manager in the outpost’s ship hangar; he had privately admitted that he was no fan of Lai Dai, and he had approached Vince directly and asked if he wanted a crew position on a frigate he’d bought with his own money.

“I’m sending a message to Jonas,” she said.
“We can’t walk back through that office now.
Not like this.”

Vince peeked through; the place was empty.
He knew it would be: The anonymous note he’d received an hour ago stated that Kavon had sent everyone home for the night and drawn the shades after Téa went into his office.
At last, someone’s conscience had finally prevailed.
Her bruises weren’t exactly a well-kept secret.
Whenever Vince came down here to visit, everyone avoided eye contact.

“Yes, sir, Mr.
Giles?”
Jonas said, in an eager, ass-kissing tone that made Vince sick.

“It’s me, Téa,” she grimaced.
“We need help.… I’m sending you security camera footage.… Make sure no one’s around.”

Vince doubted that security ever looked at these feeds.
Kavon Giles could buy off anyone here.
Today, Vince just happened to arrive as he was throwing a haymaker at Téa.
She was half dressed; what garments remained looked like they’d been ripped.
Apparently, she wasn’t in the mood, and Kavon had taken exception to that.
Then he told Vince he couldn’t do shit about it and hit her again.

“Please,” Téa begged.
“We need doctors.…”

“Holy
shit.
” Jonas winced, looking away.
“Fuck!
Let me think for a minute.…”

Vince wasn’t feeling well.

“She hasn’t done anything wrong,” he said.
“I’m taking her to the medbay.”

“No!”
Téa protested, then hunched over in pain.
“Oh, god…”

“Don’t fight me on this,” Vince said, taking her by the arm.
“C’mon, let’s go!”

He made it three steps and then collapsed.

Vince heard his sister panic and wanted to calm her.
But he couldn’t even speak—and he tasted blood in his mouth.
Every movement was a struggle; even his vision was starting to blur.

He knew what was happening and began to panic himself.

Death was coming for him, and he was desperate to escape from it.
There was no resignation or acceptance of this outcome; he felt no peace.

Lights faded, then returned.
Voices rose, then drifted away.

A violent shock jolted his senses; he saw Jonas above him, who was saying something encouraging.
Vince had barely enough strength left to beg him for help.

He felt his heart stop beating.
Darkness engulfed him, and Vince was unsure if he was alive or not.

An indeterminate period of time passed before a new voice called out.

“Hey tough guy, wake up,” she said.
“C’mon, you.
Snap out of it.”