Crossroads of Fate (Cadicle #5): An Epic Space Opera Series (25 page)

“Michael, are any of the cruisers able to travel yet?” Wil asked.

Michael checked the reports again and saw that eight cruisers were reporting less than five percent damage. “Several.”

“Pick two and have them jump with us to…” Wil studied the map again, “…Merda.”

The planet was located midway along the rift corridor, passing by two intersecting pathways. “Are you hoping for a chain reaction?” Michael asked.

“May as well try,” Wil replied.

Michael selected two of the cruisers with the least damage and sent the command. “Ready.”

“Rianne, take us over,” Wil ordered.

“Aye,” she acknowledged and activated the jump.

The Conquest dropped out of subspace at the outermost end of visual range from the planet Merda. Their position was at the closest intersection of the target rift corridors. Michael swallowed hard.
We should be trying a small corridor first, not a full chain reaction.

Wil must have sensed his doubt because he glanced over at him. “Don’t worry, we’ll start small. I just figured this way we won’t have to relocate.”

Michael breathed a sigh of relief.
It must have taken hundreds of thousands of Bakzen to form the rift over the centuries. What kind of impact can a handful of us have?
“So what do we do?”

“I’ve never closed a rift before, so I really have no idea,” Wil admitted. He gripped his handholds. “Time to experiment.”

Grabbing his own handhold, Michael felt the now familiar surge of energy through the Conquest. The Captains established their positions in the telepathic connection and waited for Wil’s direction.

Wil led them toward one of the smaller corridors and began assessing it—pulling at the tendrils yanked apart from the natural energy grid to open up the rift. He directed a collective pulse of energy through the ship into the grid to test its reaction. The tendrils flickered and bent in the direction of the energy pulse, like a flower orienting toward sunlight.

“That’s it,”
Wil said.
“We can direct the grid.”

“It will take forever moving tendril by tendril,”
Ian protested.

“We shouldn’t go too fast. We have no idea how it will react to a greater concentration of energy,”
Michael cautioned the group.

“Ian is right,”
Wil said.
“We can’t go this slowly. We need to ramp it up.”
He began charging the ship for a new energy pulse, pausing when it was ten times the magnitude of the first.

The energy beam shot from the ship, directed at the center of the corridor where the smaller pulse had yielded success. Energy from the beam coalesced into an orb with spikes fanning out to the surrounding grid

The grid shuttered as it began to warp around the new energy orb. As it fused with the surrounding grid, the orb contracted, then quickly expanded as energy poured in through the spikes—creating an even larger sphere of unchecked power.

We need to get away.
Michael tugged at the minds of his comrades, but they were transfixed by the interplay of electromagnetic energy.

Wil reached out toward the forms, trying to guide the flow to repair the grid, just as he’d done before. But it was too much, moving far too quickly and still growing stronger.

Michael retreated, barely maintaining the neural link.
“Wil, stop!”
He shouted in his friend’s mind.

“I can fix it!”
Wil insisted.
“Let me—”

There was no time to find out. Michael disconnected from the neural link and dove toward Wil at his pedestal. The others released their handholds with a start, their link severed.

Outside, the blue energy orb exploded outward, sending a shockwave that rocked the Conquest. The waves cascaded through the very fabric of space around them along the rift corridor, illuminating briefly with a spark of blue light as the shockwave traveled outward.

“What happened?” Ethan asked.

Wil shoved Michael off of him. “I wasn’t finished.”

“That shockwave would have incinerated us if we’d been connected,” Michael shot back.

Curtis gestured to the viewing dome to bring up the map of the rift pathways. Everyone gasped when they saw the real-time readings.

“Stars! We made it worse,” Wil breathed.

There had been a chain reaction, as they had hoped—but their work had only served to rip the rift pathway even closer to Tararia. So close that a ship could practically cruise right to the planet through the rift, barely detectable. With the energy signature rippling back in the other direction, as well, they’d just sent the Bakzen an express invite to attack.

Wil gaped at the map. “We need to go for the Bakzen homeworld. Now.”

“We’re not prepared for a planetary invasion!” Michael exclaimed.

Wil dismissed his friend’s objection. “Now is our best shot. We’ll take off the head of the beast.
”
Before anyone else could protest, he initiated a telepathic link to his officers scattered around the fleet.
“We’re going for the Bakzen homeworld. All capable ships are to jump on my mark.”

“What’s the plan?” Ian asked.

Wil flashed a wry grin. “Shoot the bad guys.” He looked around at the concerned faces of his Command Center crew. “We have the telepathic commands down. It’s just like we used to practice—making up scenarios on the fly. Follow my lead and trust your instincts. We can do this.”

They took deep breaths and grabbed their handholds.

“And we need everyone,” Wil continued. “Ethan, is Tom healed enough to fly?”

Ethan nodded. “He’s rearing to go.”

“All right, have the Primus Squad suit up. Prep the rest of the fleet to jump.”

The next several minutes were a flurry of telepathic and spoken commands as the fleet prepared to mobilize.

“We’re ready,” Michael said at last.

“Okay. Let me scout ahead.” Wil slipped into a state of simultaneous observation, tethered to the ship. He reached outward toward Bakzen territory, taking in the various inhabited outposts dotting the rift, but those would all be easy to eliminate once the center of command was gone.
I just need to see where we’re going…
Wil reached out further, but his vision unexpectedly began to distort as he approached the main planet. He struggled to fight through the fog, but he couldn’t make out any details about the Bakzen forces surrounding the planet in normal space or the rift. After a full minute of trying to cut through and getting nowhere, he pulled back to his physical self. “Shite.”

“What was it?” Michael asked, frowning.

“I can’t get through whatever that was blocking my view. We’ll have to jump in blind.” Wil pulled up the command interface for the navigation network on the lower portion of the viewscreen. “This will all need to happen fast. Since we don’t have a nav beacon at the destination, we’ll need to feed coordinates to the ships that don’t have independent jump drives. The Conquest will jump in and relay the rendezvous details to the rest of the fleet. We’ll only have a few seconds to act and maintain the element of surprise.”

“I’m standing by,” Rianne assured him.

“All right. Now, I remember the Bakzen having the majority of their forces in the rift, so we’ll tackle that first and then pick off the rest in normal space. The planet is populated in normal space, just like any of ours,” Wil continued. “Michael, Ian, and Ethan, I want you to clear the rift. Curtis, assess the situation on the planet and figure out how to fence them in. I won’t be able to do much else while holding both of those visuals for you. Once we clear the rift, we’ll pull into normal space and finish off the planet.”

Curtis smirked. “Easy!”

“I knew you’d think so.” Wil tightened his grip on his handhold. “Let’s go!”

The Conquest vibrated with a surge of energy as it slipped into subspace. It hovered for a moment in the swirling cloud before dropping into normal space.

“Stars!” Wil breathed.

Taking up the entire front of the viewscreen, the Bakzen planet stood out against the blackness of space as a uniform brown. The Vanquish was situated toward the planet’s dawn, and the atmosphere glowed slightly in the rays of light. Wispy white clouds swirled in the sky over the barren rust-colored landscape below. In the areas still cast in shadow, lights illuminated massive cities laid out in precise grids around a central district, like spokes on a wheel. In orbit of the planet, massive spaceports housing warships were situated in geosynchronous orbit. If it wasn’t an enemy force, Wil would have been impressed with the scale and design of the structures—enough to rival the most developed Taran worlds. If the Bakzen could accomplish so much while relegated to the outskirts of society with minimal resources, he couldn’t help but wonder what would have been possible if the Bakzen had been embraced by Tarans as their creators originally intended.

“Coordinates acquired!” Rianne announced. “Transmitting to the fleet now.”

There was no time to waste. Wil detached from his physical self and pulled into a state of simultaneous observation. The clear image of normal space distorted as he passed through the dimensional veil. Beyond, he found the rift. Except, it was no longer the stockpile of weaponry he had witnessed as a teenager. There were spaceports surrounding the planet, but they were only empty skeletons.

The fleet is jumping to the wrong place!
Curtis’ tactical team would be completely exposed on its own.
“They’re not in the rift,”
Wil hurriedly told his officers.
“Head straight for normal space.”

He shifted his attention to observing the physical plane around him, but kept the back of his consciousness connected enough to the rift to detect any new Bakzen presence.

The planet below was fortified, but surprisingly few ships were standing guard. Then again, Tararia or any of the other planets didn’t have a large-scale defense fleet, either. The fight was never supposed to come to one’s front door.

A pang of guilt struck Wil.
This entire civilization is about to end
. He hated that truth, but he had no other choice. He needed to restore peace, and that would only be possible once the Bakzen were no longer a threat. Hatred for Tararia ran too deep for them to find any common ground. The outcome was decided well before he was ever born. He just needed to carry out the order.

Tek is down there,
he reminded himself, to fuel his motivation for the final hunt.
The war ends today.

The fleet emerged from subspace in one spectacular wave. As the blue-green cloud dissipated, Wil saw that only half the fleet had received the command to go to normal space rather than the rift. They’d have to make do until the rest could make the dimensional jump.

Determined to not allow himself to become distracted by the emotional weight of what he was about to do, Wil gripped his handhold tighter and began doling out commands.
“Michael, have the fleet concentrate on the space docks first. We need to drive them to the surface. Ian, send tactical teams to begin a bombardment on the main cities. Take out the command centers so they can’t mobilize.”

Wil swallowed the knot in his throat as the initial weapons fire rained from the ships on the viewscreen.
There’s no other way
. He got to work.

*       *       *

Another blast shook the administrative building, sending a shower of concrete dust onto Haersen’s shoulders.

“We need to get down to a bunker!” he insisted to Tek again.

The Imperial Director shook his head, not taking his gaze from the display on his wall. The grid of video feeds depicted the destruction all around the planet and its surrounding ports. Once majestic cities were slowly being reduced to rubble with each passing TSS bombardment.

“If we take the tunnels to the port—” Haersen began.

“No.” Tek finally tore his attention from the screen. “They won’t stop until we’re destroyed. All of us. I would rather die in my home than run like a coward.”

“Yes, sir.”

To think after all those years and finally gaining the power Haersen had desired his whole life, the TSS would win in the end. The Bakzen were no doubt superior, but the TSS did have numbers on their side. In the end, perhaps that was enough.

The building shuttered as the adjacent plaza burst into flames.

Haersen took in his reflection against the glass of the window. His transformation was complete—he was one of the Bakzen, despite the odds. He had pledged to live as one of them, and so he would die as one. They had given him power and strength, but also the confidence to be himself. Though his time with them was short, it was the only opportunity he’d had to live to the fullest—the life he wanted to have. The pain, the sacrifice… every excruciating moment was worth it to have experienced the power that now coursed through him. Nothing could ever change that he had become his best self. He would rather die prematurely as a Bakzen than have lived his full life as a Taran.

“I didn’t think it would end like this,” Tek mused, breaking Haersen’s reverie. “Tararia was always supposed to be the one to fall.”

“If only Wil had died back then.” That failure was on both of them.

Tek let out a slow breath, surprisingly calm despite the building crumbling around them. “If it wasn’t him, then it would have been another.”

That was probably true. If Tarans were anything, they were tenacious. Wil could have died years before, but it could have just delayed the inevitable. When it came down to it, the Bakzen would always be outsiders—a deviation from the natural order. They would always have had to fight for survival. It would seem the odds were too much to overcome, despite their ambitions.

“At least I had a vision,” Tek continued. “I wanted more for us.”

“It was a glorious vision,” Haersen agreed.

“It’s a shame all of this was for nothing.”

“No, not nothing.” Haersen stepped toward his leader, unsteady on his feet as the building lurched again. “You showed what was possible—what could be achieved when a civilization unites. You showed a glimpse of what Tarans can become. They may be too blind to see it now, but you demonstrated that path. One day, they’ll thank you.”

“A day I’ll never get to see.”

“But you will die free and unburdened knowing that you did everything you could for your people.”

Tek nodded. “That I will.”

The power flickered, then cut out entirely. Only light cast from the smoldering plaza outside illuminated the office.

“Come. We have one more stop to make.” Tek headed for the door.

Haersen took in the office one last time—a place where he was finally respected. The place where his loyalty and dedication had granted him a role in bringing the Bakzen into a new era. That era would be the last, but it was also their greatest. He was in his true home, and for that he was eternally thankful.

*       *       *

“Don’t let any of the ships jump away!” Wil commanded as the main space station in orbit of the Bakzen planet succumbed to the weapons fire.

One of the TSS cruisers from the second wave of ships emerged from the rift and took aim at the Bakzen vessels attempting to flee. A Bakzen carrier separated itself from the fighting enough to initiate a jump, and a subspace glow formed around it.

“I’ve got it,” Ian stated.

Jets from Ian’s lead tactical unit swooped in, targeting their shots on the Bakzen ship’s jump drive. The engines exploded, and the subspace glow dissipated in an instant. With their target destroyed, the jets headed out toward the other large ships to ensure they were also disabled. A TSS cruiser opened fire on the stranded Bakzen carrier to finish it off, first taking out the weapons and shields. In a matter of seconds, it was completely at the mercy of the TSS fleet, charred and ragged. The ship was too close to the planet by the end of the fight, and it was drawn into the gravity. It burst into a fiery mass of twisted metal as it burned through the atmosphere.

The other ships fared no better. Most were soon reduced to scrap floating across the battlefield. The carnage was too much for Wil to absorb at once, so he kept his focus on the goal. They needed to take out the planet itself.

“All available ships, target the planetary shield,” Wil instructed.

“Sir, I’m getting an incoming communication,” Rianne stated. “It’s not one of ours.”

Wil’s officers glanced up with confusion for a moment, but quickly returned their attention to doling out telekinetic commands to finish off the remaining Bakzen vessels.

“Put it through,” Wil told Rianne.

The video feed resolved on the viewscreen. Smoke clouded the picture, but the faces of Tek and Haersen were unmistakable. The two of them took up the entire view, obscuring the background.

“Haersen,” Wil said, “so, you managed to worm your way right to the top with Tek.”

Rianne gasped, and Wil’s other officers paused their commands to stare at the viewscreen, in shock.

The Bakzen had never had a tangible face to them, Wil realized. They knew the names, but the enemy was always just a ship in the distance. Seeing that their leader was a person not too dissimilar from them changed that impression.
That’s why I couldn’t tell them who the Bakzen really are.

“I’ve made something of myself,” Haersen replied. “You do nothing but destroy.”

“They’re trying to distract us. Stay focused,”
Wil told his friends.

They returned to their commands, but eyes kept darting toward the viewscreen.

“I should have made sure you were dead,” Haersen sneered.

Wil could hardly believe the transformation of the former TSS officer. His skin had completely morphed into the tough orange-tinted exterior of the Bakzen, and his eyes shone with their characteristic red glow. Even his once thin frame was now muscular and broadened. “What have they done to you?”