Their arrival on Skyhold should have been a celebration, Trey thought.
He approached his life in a way that accumulated little in the way of regrets. Setbacks were bound to happen, things were bound to challenge his more carefully laid plans — that was life. One sets the course, and life says: let’s go in another direction altogether.
Sometimes things go exactly the way you want them to. Sometimes life surprises you and things go better than you could have ever dared to hope for.
And then there were times like these, which appeared to be the exact opposite.
They’d planned for a tough victory over this world. No one who had known about Skyhold’s challenges had thought that this was going to be a walk in the park. But Skyhold had challenges aplenty, more than they’d been prepared to handle so far. He was wondering if he’d made the right choice by setting this world as the destination for their home.
He wondered if he’d doomed his people to a fate that was worse than what Sanctuary would have held for them. It was the kind of thought he’d be able to dismiss with the smallest exertion of willpower. But everyone felt a bit out of their depth here. They were all overworked, a bit burned out, and had been feeling some degree of constant stress over the last few days. Sure, they had drawn up plans for worst-case scenarios, but they had not had the years he would have preferred to consider all the variables.
Variables such as getting shot down by people he had trusted to have his back. Creatures that defied their understanding of what was possible with etherium. Aggressive alien parasites which could drain a man of everything that seemed to show a sign of life; their blood, their musculature, their fat tissue.
Dozens of bodies lay lined up on the ground before him. They’d needed to be handled with care. Hazmat-covered soldiers were organizing the body bags. He felt like he had to see them up close.
He owed them that. It was he who had sentenced them to die here. He could rationalize the fact that he hadn’t known that these people would meet such a painful, indecent end at this outpost. But it was still his responsibility. They were here at his command. It was his fault that they were dead.
In this case, he wondered if the regret accompanied a lesson he needed to learn. Sometimes these emotions had a wisdom to them. Sometimes the pain needed to work through you in order for you to learn what they had to say.
If his judgement was off, if his assessment needed to be reassessed, then in the name of all that was good — in the name of integrity — he’d face the humiliation like a man.
But then again, he always felt like the same regret when his people were dying. He knew there was an entire chain of cause and effect that lead him to where he was, and he was sure that in time, he’d naturally forgive himself.
But for now, he would learn from the pain. He owed it to the people who died, and the people who were counting on him to make the right choices.
“We’ve swept the entire outpost, sir. Door to door, sewage, every nook and cranny we could find, we’ve checked,” Guard Captain Bell said, waking Trey from his contemplation of the tragic. He sighed.
“No signs of him, I take it?” Trey asked. Bell clenched his jaw.
“There are signs of him everywhere, sir. He and his men had become like rabid animals in the end. Some corpses we found, both men and women, the things that were done to them—”
“—I’ll read it in the report, Captain,” Trey said. He almost wanted to ask if the man wanted a break, but he knew Bell would take that as more of an insult than a gift.
“Of course, sir. We found some prisoners of Clarke’s too,” Guard Captain Bell said.
“Still living?” Trey asked, bracing himself to hear about more emaciated bodies and suffering beyond comprehension.
“Over half of them are still alive, sir. The ones I could move are waiting for treatment, the rest are receiving as much first-aid as we dare to give them without knowing how the parasite has, well—”
“More for the report, I’m sure,” Trey sighed.
“Yes, sir,” Guard Captain Bell said.
“Do we have enough medical staff?”
“Apart from the nurse we left at the Merciful Cloud in case of an emergency, what we’ve got is what we’ve got.”
“What a nightmare,” Trey muttered. “Any signs that the parasite is still contagious?”
“From what we’ve gathered, we shouldn’t be in danger. That being said, we’re operating with abundant caution, sir.”
Trey nodded. Guard Captain Bell tilted his head. Through the hazmat suit, Trey couldn’t hear what the man was saying. He could only assume he’d gotten a message from someone. His posture changed. Gone was the stature of a subordinate talking to his boss. The man standing in front of Trey had assumed full command.
“I want him surrounded. Get 10 men on him, and more watching the perimeter. I don’t want a single blade of grass to escape our notice, understand?”
Trey raised an eyebrow, not the Bell could see it.
“Sir, Clarke is here. He’s surrendered,” Captain Bell said.
Shoot the bastard between the eyes, Trey wanted to say. He bit his tongue, letting the caution he’d practiced for years take over. Intense emotion had its place, but that was when you had no other option. Often time, intense emotion could make it feel like there was no other option. It was only after seeing the consequences of believing your emotions that you understand that there was another option, a better one. But by that time it’s too late.
Hindsight is 20/20.
He took a deep, long breath.
“Let’s see what he has to say for himself,” Trey said.
“Sir, I highly recommend you stay back for this one. We need to contain him to assess his threat level. Some rumours we’ve heard would seem absurd, but given the surprises that Skyhold has given us so far…”
Trey wanted to refuse the recommendation out of reflex. He wanted to see Clarke with his own eyes. He wanted to understand why he’d done what he had.
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Was it the parasite, or was that just an excuse?
He hoped it was the latter. If it were the former, he would be at a loss. He wasn’t sure anyone could easily accept that Clarke wasn’t responsible for his own actions.
With that said, he also knew that working against the recommendations of his best people was not a luxury to indulge in without care.
“Do what you need to do, Captain. But I’ll want some words with him when he’s contained.”
“Yes, sir,” Guard Captain Bell said, and he left to join his men as they processed Clarke.
“Sir,” someone called. Trey turned to see who it was. It was the pilot from the scout shuttle that he’d ridden on the way to the outpost. “It’s the Merciful Cloud.”
Trey felt a sense of foreboding. Given how this day went, he fully expected to hear some tragic, unbearable news. Maybe a new A-Class had presented itself. Maybe there was an army of the damned beasts marching towards them, now.
“What is it?” he asked, a bit more harshly than he’d meant to.
“Commander Striker says that an unknown party has appeared outside the ship.
Panic flared in his chest. Unknown party could mean anything, but the first thought that came to mind was that it was Clarke’s men. Or worse, the Council had managed to find this place after all and was only now showing their hand.
The comms officer from the Cloud continued: “He says it’s a potential first contact situation.”
Trey blinked.
First and contact were two words he’s always considered possible to hear, but he’d never taken the possibility seriously. Either this would be great news, or a sign of more grief to come. Given what Skyhold had shown them so far, he wasn’t getting his hopes up.
“Did the Commander say anything else?”
“Sir, he said they require your presence as soon as possible.”
It was a very different storm of emotions that suddenly arose inside of Trey.
Absurdity. Some excitement, some curiosity. Regret. He needed to speak with Clarke.
His presence was required here. These people, the survivors, he owed them his presence. But his duty to the company as its leader meant he couldn’t be absent during a first-contact scenario. The first known first-contact scenario, no less.
“Damnit,” he muttered, then he spoke to the pilot, “tell the Commander I’m on my way.”
Trey sent a broadcast on an open frequency for the entire outpost.
“Guard captains Bell and Niklaus have command of the outpost. There’s been a development back at the Merciful Cloud. Captain Gregor, you can come with me.”
After Abraham caught up with him, they boarded the shuttle and the pilot activated the ship’s systems.
“What’s going on, sir?” Captain Gregor asked once the door to the shuttle closed. They both took off the covers of their hazmat suits.
“An unknown party has contacted the ship,” Trey said, watching the Captain’s eyes narrow. “Potential first contact scenario.”
Captain Gregor’s jaw started opened and closed a few times. He made a few sounds, like he was trying and failing to settle on an appropriate reaction.
“That’s unexpected.”
“Yeah,” Trey laughed. “Yeah, it is definitely unexpected.”
----------------------------------------
The shield around the Merciful Cloud acted as an insulator from both the heat and the cold. Therefore, the conditions outside the ship were comfortable. June and his disciples had started their meditations, which Hunter had watched with great interest. They hadn’t seemed to mind his presence, either. He wondered if his observations would reveal anything about their method, but he felt disappointed; he could feel that something etheric was going on, but it felt like most it was beyond what his sensitivity could communicate to him.
It was like a word that was on the tip of his tongue but would refuse to appear. Like something he should know, but was too slippery and vague for his mind to grasp onto. It was a feeling he associated with the presence of deeper etheric principles manifesting as an unknowable charge. He was blind to the most meaningful aspects of their ‘cultivation’ process.
And when had such a challenge ever dimmed his curiosity? Yet there was nothing he could do but stare at them like a weirdo. And that, he worried, wasn’t very diplomatic.
“Commander Striker to Hunter, the meeting will start soon, sir,” the Commander said. Hunter double-clicked his transmit button. It would make a certain noise on the Commander’s end of the connection, confirming that he received the Commander’s message. He’d learned about that from the Guards he’d taken out to meet the Sabletown trio.
Sabletown. An interesting name, if only for its mundanity compared to the exotic circumstance. He’d expected more syllables from an alien civilization. As far as he knew, there were more syllables. Maybe the translation thingy was dumbing it down for him. If June and the disciples thought the name was mundane, then the translation thingy would communicate it that way.
But that was just a guess on his part. He had no way of checking what was going on under the hood of the translation thingy. After it finished its work, it dissolved. Yet, its effects persisted. More and more people could understand the Sabletown delegation. They hadn’t shown many people on the ship the footage of the meeting, but the ones who had seen it displayed signs of understanding at an accelerating rate. It was almost as if the translation thingy was working beyond the device itself.
So he couldn’t call it a device. Or a construct, which he’d initially been tempted to call it. It was incomprehensible to him. It was an anomaly. It was a functional, useable anomaly. It was a thingy.
He added his hundreds of thousands of questions to his existing millions. Were the effects permanent? Does that mean he was permanently affected? Was there any reason to worry?
And how did it work? That was the most pressing question on his mind.
How did anything in this order-forsaken world work? How much do the rules change with sufficient etheric saturation? The Class-2’s, those he felt he could wrap his mind around. They were like the mutations that Sanctuary humans had exhibited over the last couple of decades after prolonged usage of drawstones and sufficient AR development. But the Class-1’s and A-class were something else. He still couldn’t wrap his mind around those as easily as the Class-2’s. It wasn’t just an issue of waving the ‘evolution’ wand around and just accepting that it was what it was.
With etherium, he could never accept that. He needed to know.
He wanted to get a look at the cultivation manuals of these — what would he call them, etheric artists? Vital artists? Cultivators? He’d ask them when they were done with their meditations, and after he was done with his meeting with the Commander and Aera.
He made his way to the bridge, and a junior crewman pointed him towards the meeting room.
“What are they like, sir?” the crewman asked Hunter before he entered. “They seem human. They dress like monks, but they’ve got swords, and their tech is like nothing we’ve seen before. The translation device itself—”
Hunter held up his hand.
“They’re polite so far,” Hunter said, “And they’re capable of some interesting things, but you know about as much as I do.”
He was stretching the truth. He knew the trio were very etherically competent, given what he’d felt from them. Especially June. His intuition suggested a link between their auras, their meditation, and their etherium sensitivity. If he was right, their sensitivity might be deeper and stronger than his own.
That thought made him frustrated. He wanted to know everything they knew. But it’s not like he could just demand it from them. Especially if they were as powerful as Hunter assumed. By feeling June’s aura alone — and aura was the most accurate word he could use to describe it — Hunter assumed that the man could match blows with a Pyrothar. He was a walking tank. Maybe even more powerful than a tank, and it wasn’t unreasonable to assume so.
June had scaled his aura back in order to interact with Hunter and the Merciful Cloud’s personnel. What’s interesting was that no one else present seemed to feel the aura to the same extent he did. They’d all felt something; the Guards reported having felt some of the pressure Hunter had, but nowhere near to the same extent. They’d all chalked it up to their own nerves about meeting a potential threat to the safety of the ship and its crew.
Time would tell if his assumptions were correct.
“There he is,” Aera said as Hunter entered the meeting room.
“Here I am,” Hunter said, somewhat mindlessly, as the etheric enigmas presented by the trio still occupied his thoughts. He brought his attention to the meeting room. It was just the three of them. Most of the relevant command staff were helping at the outpost. Hunter hoped everything was alright over there. Apart from a brief message from Trey saying that they had made it there without incident, there had been no updates.
He took a seat beside Aera after pouring himself a cup of coffee.
Commander Striker cleared his throat.
“I’ve called Mr. Oberon and he’s already on his way with Captain Gregor. This meeting is more of a debrief, as we’ll need Mr. Oberon’s present to begin any sort of serious discussions or negotiations with the Sabletowners. First, Hunter, we’ll focus on your assessment.”
Hunter nodded. He started organizing his thoughts — what was useful and known? What was mere speculation?
Commander striker leaned forward slightly, radiating more curious interest, rather than authority.
“Let’s start from the beginning.”