Rise of Aen (22 page)

“That is a hand yet to be played.” He said quietly. “I will not pretend to be the savior everyone labels me to be, but I will stand and fight nonetheless. What I can promise is to use whatever resources I have to help you prepare for the coming storm. Tactics, technology and habits of the Husk should all be able to be had if I can just find
them.”

“So what now?” Patterson
asked.

“Now you take this and these pictures,” Aen said as he threw the pictures he had shown his daughter on the table while motioning at the computer screen, “and you stand before the UN Council at their meeting in a week and show them the
danger.”

“Like they will believe any of this shit, son! I will be court-martialed and thrown in the loonie bin if I go to them with
this!”

“Show them the ship, show them the pictures and videos you have filed on your precious Subject Zero, do whatever it takes. Because if you fail to prepare them, the losses will be staggering and there will be nothing left by the time the Lyarran cruiser gets
here!”

“So, I have to breach every level of National Security and stand before the leaders of the free world alone to tell them all this? You can’t just pop in and make an appearance?” Patterson was growing
flustered.

“I will try and help you, but you will not be alone. There is one government that has known for ages about the Lyarrans and the threats that loom out in the dark. When it is time, they will come forward and stand with you with all the evidence you will ever need. Besides, the meeting is a closed one—no press—so the whole world won’t know what is
happening.”

Aen rose to his feet and slowly walked back to the ship. As he got close, the sheet covering the craft began to pull off of it as if some unseen force was tugging it away. In an instant, the ship was free of its wrappings and was in full view for the first time for Aen to see. He dragged his fingers across the hull and savored the feeling as it was the last connection to his mother he would ever have. There was a deep sadness in him for what had been done to her, and once again the anger and hate began to well up from the depths of his tattered
soul.

“Tell your team to meet me here the morning of the UN meeting—this is where our paths will cross one last time. Tell them I will save them the time of them hunting for me across the globe and I will meet them here to settle differences.” The hate and anger was dripping off every word Aen was
saying.

“You expect me to order those men to their deaths? How do you expect me to sleep at night after doing something like that?” the General was exasperated at the
request.

In an instant, Aen was standing toe-to-toe with him; crossing over a hundred feet of distance in the blink of an eye. His cold, black eyes stared deep down Patterson’s, seemingly right down to his soul. It felt like coming face-to-face with a tiger in the wild, with no weapon to help you—the general was helpless and felt every bit of
it.

“How can you sleep at night after doing this to me?” Aen demanded. “How can you sleep at night after destroying my family and their hopes and dreams? And how do you sleep knowing that you created a monster that cannot and will not ever bow to your will no matter how hard you
try?”

“Tread carefully with me, General Patterson. For now we are allies, but we are definitely not friends. If I hadn’t deemed you necessary for the fight ahead, I would have torn you limb from limb as you entered this hall of horrors.” He continued with venom. “Once the smoke clears, and if you still stand you too will own up to your actions. This war will cleanse many slates, but many more have too much red ink to simply be washed away by sudden
heroism.”

Patterson nodded his head and stood perfectly still as Aen backed away slowly. The old man never wavered in his composure from a visual standpoint, but inside he was scared as hell. There was not only the impossible task of preparing a cynical world against invasion and destruction but he had to also worry about coming face to face with the reaper himself afterwards and put his life in its hands to be judged. And as Aen disappeared from sight, Patterson didn’t like his odds of surviving that
task.

Lyarran Vessel Dark Light, near Eagle Nebula -
Five Months and Twenty Days until Arrival

Lyxia sat at her personal terminal on the main deck of the Dark Light and scoured through the mounds of data that were transmitted to them by the Amarra’s A.I. before they went to jump space. Other than her chats through the holo-link system with Ameia, the young Councillor knew little of the world she now sped towards to save, and figured she should find something about this planet to endear it to those under her
command.

Whispers had started in the past day or so—whispers of discontent and disbelief that they were defying the Council and speeding towards a fight with a Marauder alone. Many openly questioned Lyxia’s decision to risk them all for a non-member of the mighty Empire, many asked if she had a death wish and longed to be with her family—who had fallen to the Husk when she was a youngling and away at the Academy. These were whispers she anticipated—after all it was a monumental task for one cruiser to take on a Marauder alone, even if it was the state of the art Dark
Light.

Her ship was the crowning glory of the new age of ship-building, a testament to the strength of the Imperial Fleet. Lacking a designation for what it was, the admirals simply called it a cruiser, even though with its unheard of three forward plasma accelerator cannons and over thirty ship-to-ship defence plasma turrets made it more like the massive flying arsenals that were the warships. But she held a complement of over eighty thousand souls in her—eighty three thousand, seven hundred and sixty five to be exact—and was a moving colony of her own, hence the cruiser designation and her appointment as a Councillor. She was the appointed voice of the Empress aboard this vessel; Lyxia’s word was as good as the Empress’s
herself.

Her ship was massive—somewhere near the size of the state of California—and was a long, flattened cylinder with twin fusion drive engines mounted externally under its belly in two elongated oval appendages. The jump engines, the main drive unit for interstellar flight that folded time/space to shorten long distances, encircled the aft of the ship in a two hundred meter long tubular structure held away from the hull by long metal conduits. This engine created the entrance and exit to jump space and held the ship in that state until it could no longer maintain it. The ship was a deep blue/black mix of a color; in the dead of space, it was nearly invisible to the naked eye—even her thrusters on her sub-light engines were baffled as to not give her away to any lurking enemies. All in all, the Dark Light was the perfect predator in the galactic jungle and Lyxia was proud and honored to be hand-picked by the Empress herself to stand at her
helm.

Now she had to justify to her crew why they were out on this chase, and she might just have found what she was looking for. It was a text from ancient Earth history and might do the trick to win the crew over. Lyxia rushed over to the comm line and began to address the entire
ship.

“I know what you all are feeling, for I too feel the hesitation in my heart. The Council had decided to leave this world to the Harvesters, but the more I listened to the creature making his pleas to us, I could not abide by their ruling. We are a race of warriors, and to back away from a fight is dishonorable, but so is standing back and watching innocents suffer when our direct actions could save them.” Lyxia took a breath and looked at those in the Operations Center smile back at her in
approval.

“So I began to study up on this Terra Sol—this lonely rim planet—and discovered something we all can admire in these creatures. In a time when their world was more primitive, a warlord brought to a peaceful shore his army of a hundred thousand strong. They were met by the king of that small country and a small band of three hundred soldiers—Spartans, I believe they called them. Like our situation, their council would not declare open war so these men and their king were all alone. For three days these brave Spartans held off the legions of the warlord; killing all who faced them in wave after wave as they worked and acted as one. These men were not farmers, not smiths, they were born-and-bred soldiers, and until they were betrayed they were more than winning the battle at hand. All of them perished, but in killing the king himself, the warlord forced the country to avenge their leader and destroy the army of
invaders.”

She paused, more for breath than for effect, but it was a powerful pause and had the perfect effect on the crew of the Dark Light. Already she could hear the whispers fade and the cry for action rise. It was the perfect tale of war and heroism that was needed—warriors respected
warriors.

“These are the descendants of those great men, although lost in their ways now. From this time, new heroes will rise from the ashes of their old world, and songs will be sung and tales will be told of their deeds. These are the creatures that Lyarran and Paxyn have fought and died within the past, and I for one will be proud to fight and die with them as
well.”

In one short moment, the entire ship exploded into a cry of agreement and adulation that echoing down the halls of the ship. Cheers arose from every inch of the ships long span; she had done her job and done it well. Gone were the whispers of malcontent and along with any doubt to why she had decided this course of action. Lyxia smiled to herself—it was a good story and it was great that they all believed this is why she chose to fight, but it was hardly the reasoning behind her decision. In truth, it was the creature that had made the plea, the one with the sorrowful and stunning eyes. Her heart had sunk as she felt his inner pain and she identified with his feeling of loss deeply. It was the way he carried himself, no fear in the face of things he had never seen before and no fear of the Empress herself. There was something driving such a broken soul to fight when she could tell all he wanted to do was cry in a dark corner. Her decision was not made because of anything she had read about the humans—her decision was made because in that brief moment when she locked eyes with him she began to fall in love with him and her heart willed her to do anything to see him
again.

Gertse, Tibet - Five Months and Ten Days until Arrival

The morning mist had settled into this strange new land, and Krista and her daughter ventured through it to their next rendezvous slowly. Tibet was like the place time had forgotten—at least to someone from the western world, it was. Everything was so…simple here. There was no hustle and bustle of traffic, no pollution, no throngs of people moving to and fro. There was just a quiet, easy pace to life up here amongst the clouds and part of her was starting to enjoy it while the other part of her was still shaking off the last remnants of jet
lag.

The flight here had been long and arduous, almost as much as the fight Sara had to convince her mother to come along without spilling the truth. It took a few days, but the prospect of a great adventure with her daughter to rebind what had been broken with Aaron’s death was too inviting to pass up. A heart broken longs to be mended, and Krista’s heart was in dire need of just that. So both women pulled together funds, in addition to the mysteriously-purchased tickets, and arranged to leave on a long holiday. But the twenty-plus hours in the air and confined to the inside of a jumbo jet made Krista doubt this trip’s
worth.

But once on the ground and donning their backpacks to hike up the hills at the base of the mountains, Krista began to feel alive again for the first time since that horrid phone call had destroyed her life. The world out here was so different and so unique that it was hard for her to believe that this place existed on the same planet, and out here Krista began to feel free. For too long she had woken every morning and put on a strong face for life to keep going, but now she could actually breathe and move
on.

She watched quietly as Sara questioned their guide on when they would reach their next stop, and began to see her daughter in a whole new light. In the last few years she had really grown up, but recently something had been triggered in her that had led to a previous unseen drive. Krista was proud of the young woman Sara was quickly becoming and thought to herself that this trip, no matter how inconvenient the timing was, had been absolutely necessary for them to bond once
more.

“Just a few more blocks to go, then we get to the Jeeps.” Sara said with a frazzled grin on her face as translating for the Sherpa’s dialect had stressed her out to no end. Between their broken English skills and Sara’s short fuse, the exchanges had become almost comical in the last few hours even if to Sara they were anything
but.

“It’s fine honey,” Krista replied. “I’m stronger than I look, I promise.” It was the truth. Though she looked to be small in stature, years of fitness training at the gym had moulded her into a secret powerhouse of strength and
endurance.

“Cool, they say the fog should lift by lunchtime, than we can set out up the mountain to the monastery. If the roads are still ok they say we should get there just after
sunset.”

“Sara, honey, why a monastery? I mean, aren’t there more picturesque places to go than somewhere like that?” Krista asked
sincerely.

Her daughter hesitated at the question and Krista confirmed in her mind that there was more going on here than Sara was telling her. She had been too frantic to get further on this journey every day now, almost pushed by some unseen or unsaid force to get up that mountain. As Krista awaited the response, she thought she would let whatever fib needed to be told to her and let it all play out. Once they reached this Temple of Lyarra’s Light—or whatever it was called—Krista would push for the real
answers.