Sensus raised his hands, summoning luminescence around his open palms. “Everyone remain calm!”
The restless crowd in the CIC quieted their nervous chatter and looked to Sensus, shining like a beacon in the dark room.
He had wondered how he would be received by the non-radiant individuals his new post put him in close contact with. His chief concern was that his radiance might frighten them, but he found that in the right circumstances they welcomed small displays of his power, finding even the simplest manifestations impressive.
“What’s happening, General?” asked a frightened, but still composed voice.
“Albion is orbiting Bindhu Prime. The ship is furthering its transformation, and it seems to be ushering civilians to its center. That’s all we know at this time. Now, I need everyone to remain calm.”
The ship rocked again and the command crew stirred again, but this time there were no outbursts.
“I’m proud of all of you,” Sensus said, “and I am confident that Albion is looking after us. Now, resume your duties.”
“Thank you, General,” Commandant Preston said when Sensus returned to the tactical display.
Albion had indeed changed again. Its eight wing-like spans had spread, and the diamond at its core had unfolded, its interior revealed to be a series of seven rings that emerged, expanded, and now orbited the vessel.
“Civilians are being routed here,” said Preston, pointing to a lit pathway on the display of the vessel, “close to where those rings emerged.”
“These are all plazas and market squares,” Sensus noted. “Ideal places for crowds to congregate. If only more had listened to Eno and returned to their living spaces. Have we learned anything about those rings?”
“Their material composition is unknown. But their energy signature…”
“What about it?”
“It matches yours, Sir. They’re radiant.”
Sensus gently drummed his fist onto the table. “I don’t know if I should feel relieved or I should be facing an existential crisis. Any word on the Pinnacle Three?”
“Our scouts have contacted the Artifexus. Director Omri is working on established communications and internal scanning. Till then…”
“Comm coming through,” announced a crewman. “It’s Director Omri.”
“Patch her through,” said Sensus.
Her voice crackled. “General?”
“I’m here, Melody. What’s your status?”
“We’re slowly regaining control of essential systems. I have people in Oak, which is helping.”
“Good. Any word from the Sentinels?”
“They’re all in Samhadi.”
“All of them?” Sensus rubbed his temples in disbelief. He’d hoped to count on their help.
“All of them. General, is your tactical display functioning?”
“It is. Why?”
“Are you seeing what’s happening with those weapons?”
Sensus dialed up a status screen of Albion’s defensive systems. All rail guns, quench guns, torpedoes, missiles, point defense cannons, even the energy weapon batteries were all offline.
“They’re offline, Melody, just like before.”
“Not those weapons, General. Pull up a stage nine diagnostic screen.”
He did and stifled a gasp. The cyan glow of his eyes blended with the yellow lines of the diagnostic, turning orange to red where a collection of shapes emerged from the various separation along the ship’s wings. Rather than missile batteries, coil gun barrels or spherical laser turrets, the weapons Melody was referring to were orbs, orbited by what looked like diamonds tethered by some invisible attracting force.
“What are they?” Sensus asked.
“General!” Omikami shouted.
He looked toward her, then all around the room at the clusters of light. They were now flaring, and Sensus felt his own body charged with tremendous vibrations.
“General!” said Preston.
Sensus looked at Preston, leaning over the tactical station. The orbs were free of the ship, sending another shockwave through its bones, and with frightening speed and precision they rose one by one and spiraled around each other until, for an instant a blur, they formed a singular shape like revolver cylinder surrounding an eye. From the cylinder’s tubes sprouted what Sensus thought looked like massive spears.
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The diamonds orbiting the strange object coalesced into three larger ones and assumed an orbit around the new vessel.
“Give me live feed,” Sensus commanded.
The signal was spotty, but through the glitches he could see the ship drifting from Albion. Filaments like tails of white light spread behind the thing, sprouting, as close as Sensus could tell, from the rear of the cylinder. Those filaments flared and a field of charged ions spread in a wide circle from their tips. A sphere of distorted space then grew from a pinpoint to a globe, seconds before the vessel rocketed into it and was gone.
“What the hell was that?” said Sensus.
“I’ve never seen anything like it, sir,” Preston replied. “Sir...”
Sensus looked at his hands, glowing again, violet with rays beaming from his fingers. All his body felt scalding hot against the inside of his skin. He felt himself rising, and when he looked down the floor was a foot’s length beneath him. There was a moment where he couldn’t see, and when it passed, he was again on the ground, surrounded by half-open mouths too nervous to speak.
“Melody, are you still there?”
“Yes, General.”
“Is there any way I can communicate with the Pinnacle Three?”
“Not that I know of.”
“You’re Director of the Artifexus, Melody.”
“Right. I’ll see if I can figure something out. Just so you know, Samhadi is one of the most advanced computer networks ever designed, and even my knowledge of lost tech is limited. I can’t make any promises.”
“Do your best, Melody. We are at war and have lost control of all our defenses. I need all hands on deck!”
“Understood, General.”
“Sensus,” said a voice.
He shook his head quickly and searched around him. For a moment he thought he heard Solomon, but it was the duke. “Hector?”
“General, what happened to you?”
“I wish I knew. I feel myself now, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“Sensus, if you of all people were compromised…”
“I know, Hector. But I’m fine.” He looked around the CIC at all the nervous faces. “I felt connected to something, the power within the ship. It felt... familiar.”
“Was it friendly?” asked the duchess.
“Not in the slightest. But I sensed no threat to us. Whatever is happening, it’s happening to our home. It’s our enemies who should be afraid, not us.”
“Enemies,” Salamanca muttered quietly.
Omikami looked knowingly at Salamanca. “Not now, Hector.”
Sensus went close to the two of them and spread his aura. “What?”
The duchess sighed. “We both are skeptical about the Tangents, general. Whatever happened in the past, this time, we were the aggressors.”
“And the wake of their past destruction? A destabilized galaxy thrown into a slow spiral of decay? Are you skeptical about that? Solomon...”
“Yes,” Salamanca interrupted. “Solomon was the first emissary of Briah they met. It’s no wonder they’re on the defensive.”
“The defensive? How are the Tangents on the defensive?” Sensus couldn’t stifle his disbelief. But the faces staring at him... “We’ll talk about this later.”
“General...”
Sensus turned to Preston, wondering what new cause for terror shook the soldier’s voice.
Those filaments of light, mysteriously hovering and pulsing, grew uncontrollably bright, but through the glaring blind, Sensus could feel them moving, reaching, travelling and wrapping around his arms and legs. He opened his mouth to issue a command, but the filaments invaded him and filled him with scalding heat.
Then he felt cool, laying in grass, wearing a white robe instead of armor. He sat upright, looked around, heard music, a tin whistle, a lovely melody, transcendent, sad.
It came from a grave, where a woman in a robe like his sat on her knees, playing the pipe to an onyx stone kept safe by an overwatch angel. Above them all was a dark sky of shifting blue and violet, threatened constantly by a spreading of black.
“It’s beautiful,” he said, marveling at the tragedy of the tune.
She stopped playing, and noticing her he saw she had no hair. She turned and he gasped, for she was beautiful and hideous in equal measure, being a fragile, delicate creature with the eyes of a fawn, her flesh a wreck of scars.
“Hypatia?”
She shed a tear.
“Is that you? It is, isn’t it?”
Then she laughed through her grief. “Of course I’m me. Who else would I be?”
“But you’re not you. You’re... human.”
“And what are you, General?”
He shrugged. “As you just said, if I’m not me, then who am I?”
“Come here.”
He stood and went to her, watching strange flowers blossom where his bare feet tread. He sat down by her and on the grave there was a basin.
“Look,” said Hypatia.
He looked in the water that filled the basin to its brim. In his reflection he saw many faces, knowing somehow that those closest to him were the 79th special assault team. But his own face struck him; dark, shaved from crown to chin, but his eyes, they were brown, and they did not glow.
“We’re in Samhadi.” He turned to S-17 Hypatia, now just Hypatia, she who is she who is who she is who she was. “How did I get here? I’m no machine.”
Hypatia touched the center of his brow. “Neither are we.”
“But your bodies are plugged into hardened access ports. I’m... I’m...”
“You’re light, as are our own minds, and all things that travel the rivers of copper.”
“But I was in the CIC. Not the Stone Byway.”
Hypatia put her hand on his shoulder. “We are all in Albion. So long as we are onboard the Holy City, the aged mother can reach us.”
“Eno.”
Hypatia nodded, then pointed upward. Sensus followed her finger.
Above, in the sky, hovering inside a wheel of water within a wheel of light, a woman, age bent and weeping, looked down with eyes that radiated raw power.