Thirty-five days after the imperial ambassador’s murder.

Razan station crash site, Bellos III, 11:14, 3423 AA.

Pieces of Razan station floated above the crash site, suspended in the air with the power of the Gift. Tarnhold pushed at one of the pieces still on the ground, then watched as it drifted upward and joined the rest in a neat array. Both the smooth flight and the ease with which he had moved it were perfect. He looked down from the sky, grimacing.

“Nadak really outdid himself this time,” Eliseal said from an adjacent mound of debris.

Tarnhold said nothing. He continued working on his pile, brooding. What’s so special about this? He glanced up at the sky. A massive ward encompassed the area – invisible to him, but he could still feel it. That power was what lowered the weight of the station’s parts and held them in a state of zero gravity.

“Don’t get too impressed. It’s the amplifier, not him,” he said and regretted it. The words might have held more weight if they hadn’t come out as bitter as he thought they had. Nadak was a talented member of the Val Tairi, a genius at warding, and worthy of respect. Being granted an amplifier was a great privilege his exemplary record had earned him. It meant trust – something Tarnhold was still fighting tooth and nail for.

“Amplifier or not, you don’t build a ward this sophisticated on power alone,” Eliseal said.

There was a pause.

She nimbly manoeuvred through the debris to get to him. Two rapid taps on her earpiece shut off her comm. “Did you find anything?”

“Find what?”

“Are you messing with me?” She slapped his arm. A quick glance at the surroundings to check for anyone listening, and she was back to berating him, her voice lowered, however. “The thing you had me disobey orders for and practically lie to my superior. You remember? No? Well, it’s not like it was anything big.”

“No.” He moved to the next pile. There was still much for them to search through.

“That’s it?” she asked. “I do my best to stall the leader, help you as always, and I get a curt ‘no’?”

“I need more time. There’s something here, I can feel it, but I can’t conjure evidence from nothing.”

“Then you best go to Nadak and beg him for the amplifier. It works miracles I heard. Who knows, maybe you discover a way to halt time,” she said.

He looked at her; she was barely suppressing her anger.

“You went for one conversation, Vor. One. If that was enough to solve everything, there’d be no need for our Order.” She turned away. “Let’s just get to work.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Can it.” She began rummaging through a nearby pile; the bolts and wires floated up as soon as she swept them away. “You had high hopes for it, and you’re pissed off it didn’t work out. You can’t let the others see, so you let it out with me who already knows. I get it.”

She was right. She understood him perfectly – the anger he kept suppressed most of the time; the impatience for acknowledgement; the yearning for respect. She understood, and she deserved better. A pang of guilt struck him when he laid eyes on her. Despite his frustration and lack of results, he had no right to push her away. Not after what she’d done for him.

“Something was warped,” he said finally. “Something was warped from the station maybe ten-to-twenty minutes before it exploded.

She peeked at him over her shoulder. “What was it?”

He shrugged, shaking his head. “Something with enough power for a drunk guard to see its explosion, yet also not show up on any sensors.”

“That sounds—” she began.

“Impossible?” he finished. “Don’t I know it.”

She smiled at him. “I was going to say mildly difficult.”

Tarnhold returned the smile. They had had their share of fights over the years, some of which had lasted for weeks. At least this one had been settled easily. She wouldn’t have joked with him otherwise, right? He glanced at her. There had been times in the past when he had misread her, and she had ended up holding a grudge. He had learned two things then. One: women hold grudges far longer than men. Two: if a woman asks him what he’s apologizing for, he should never say he doesn’t remember.

A soft ping sounded in his ear. He motioned Eliseal to turn her comm back on.

“I don’t know what you lot have found, but you won’t believe what I’m seeing right now,” Valeri’s voice came through the device.

A moment later, a video arrived. When Tarnhold opened it, he saw the Furnace core room. It was… gone.

The video switched to a live feed as Valeri navigated through the spherical hollow where the room should have been, the space only slightly deformed from the crash. She placed her hand on the metal framework, running her fingers across a smooth cut. There was hesitation in her movements, a quivering of her breath from unspoken words. That’s from a warp and she knows it, Tarnhold thought. Void take him, he knew it and he couldn’t say it either.

The Furnace perfectly fit the profile of the source of the explosion he was looking for, though it also raised a different question: how, or worse… who. Tarnhold and Eliseal looked at each other. It was unthinkable, but if someone had managed to do it, then…

“That’s enough of the wild speculation,” Durahein said, making Tarnhold flinch. The leader shouldn’t have been included in this channel. “The crew did it. You kids may be green, but you should know your military strategy. It was a common tactic during the last war – warping the Furnace out once the ship or station was breached. It’s the first room the enemy tries to occupy.”

“Sir, I mean no disrespect,” Valeri said carefully, “but the newest regulations and security protocols should have made that impossible.”

“And that’s why you’re green. There’s always a bypass; they just don’t teach it to idiots.” No one answered after that. “Continue your work. Durahein out.”

Tarnhold closed the channel as well. Though the news had briefly sparked his imagination, even his speculations had limits. He sighed. The newest reveal made his discovery essentially worthless. The guard’s report may have turned out to be true, but there was nothing more to it. And it didn’t get rid of the feeling that there was more to this mission than catching a few terrorists.

Just get back to work, he thought. Physical labour, at least, helped clear his mind. The mission Durahein had assigned him and Eliseal was to find all the terrorist ships that had been docked at the hangar. Even he didn’t have anything to complain about with that.

As the sun made its arc above the duo, distractions faded, replaced by a rising fatigue. Though it was possible for him to use the Gift, the ward wouldn’t recognise it as debris removal. Nadak had left that condition out to reduce complexity but also for safety. On the off chance some of the terrorists had survived they couldn’t risk the ward mistaking their self-defence as something else and interfering.

His mind now calm, Tarnhold felt Eliseal’s eyes on him. The feeling became more frequent as the sky darkened. “You’ll stare a hole through me,” he said when he could no longer ignore it.

“I’m worried,” she said.

“About what?”

“That you’ll go off and do something stupid.”

“Don’t I always?” He smirked at her.

The answer came a few seconds later. “It’s different this time, Vor. Durahein’s different. We’ve not had anyone like him as leader before.” She came closer to him.

“I’ll play as the cards come,” he said. “But if later we get something that screams at me to investigate, I have to. I know something’s wrong with this case. Whatever Durahein says.” He turned back to the debris. There was something beneath this pile that had caught his interest: the hull of a ship quite different from the ones they had found so far.

“There’ll be other missions,” Eliseal said softly.

“What?”

“Don’t you realise Durahein isn’t just acting as the leader here? He’s here to monitor you. I wasn’t sure before, but after talking to him alone I realised it.”

“I know.”

“You know?”

He nodded. Tossing aside several metal pieces blocking his view, he found more of the ship’s hull intact. How promising. Looking at the curvature and the way the wreckage lay around them, the door had to be located…

“Then why aren’t you doing anything differently!” She shouted, then slapped her hand over her mouth, glancing around for anyone who might have heard. No one had. “You know he’s after you, yet you do nothing?” she continued in a softer tone.

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“And if I did? If I did change, act like everyone wanted me to, while Durahein’s here, wouldn’t it be a bigger lie? It wouldn’t be lying to do more good, it’d just be lying.”

She was silent for a moment. “You won’t be doing anyone any good if you’re back in As’al’Kaar for re-training.”

“Who knows? Maybe they beat the rebelliousness out of me.”

She sighed. “Can’t you be serious for five minutes?”

He didn’t answer.

“Vor?”

He heaved a large metal plate aside. “Here, I found the door to our mystery ship.”

From her expression, Eliseal wasn’t too pleased with the way he dodged their argument, but this was the mission – all other things came second to that.

Bringing his focus back to the ship, Tarnhold carefully inspected the area around the door. Although the ship had remained whole, the falling pieces of the station had bashed the locking mechanism in. The was no chance of hacking the mechanism. Perhaps someone with enough skill could find the correct wiring the open the door, but neither he nor Eliseal had any talent in the field.

Lacking any other means, he opened himself to the Gift. A stream of its power raced through him, bringing with it an all too familiar sight. He pulled on the shadowy images relating to the door, letting the others vanish.

“Get ready,” he said, taking the left side.

Eliseal took the right; no sign of her previous discontent visible on her face. Both put on their air filters.

“Now!”

Power flooded the spell construct and the metal tore open, zoomed past them, and slammed into a floating part of the station. A draft of stale air blew out of the ship. The two rushed inside, lights on, and shields at the ready.

Nothing moved.

Eliseal began typing on her wrist computer. The device beeped in response. “No radiation,” she said. “Oxygen levels are also normal.” Tarnhold nodded, and they proceeded further in.

Darkness covered everything inside, a pitch black seared away by the shaft of light coming from the opened door and the torches mounted on the two’s armour. There was no sound, not even a distant hum of the engines, nor a whir of the vents. Echoes from the outside waned as the two passed through empty corridors, leaving only the clanking of their steps.

It would have been simple to light the ship using the Gift, but neither Tarnhold nor Eliseal did so. Using the Gift took focus, no matter how small the power, and a moment was all it took to get killed in action. Tarnhold always kept in mind the conversations of those more experienced in the Order – the times when they had talked of their missions. Val Tairi rarely died in combat. They died in moments of carelessness when they thought it was safe. It had been a sobering thought for Tarnhold.

Ten minutes into their crawl through the ship, they arrived at the bridge. Ten more of tenacious searching and they only came up with lacking results.

“Anything?” Eliseal asked.

“Memory cores are corrupted,” Tarnhold said. He hooked one after the other to his phone, establishing a link and trying to read their contents. “I might be able to pull something off them, but it’ll be up to luck if it’s useful to us.”

“Nav logs are a mess too,” she said. “I even checked the black-box – it’s been heavily modified. We won’t find anything there.”

“Other things?”

“Communications look promising.” She continued typing on her phone. “Seems they were broadcasting everything to another ship nearby – two ships.”

“Can you track it?”

“With some proper equipment? Probably. I can certainly do more than I can with this. Come on.” She stood up, dusting her trousers. “We’ll take the cores and tell the others about this place; pull it apart, maybe we find something more.”

“I’m surprised we even found this much. Without the crew, the reactor should have blown at least half the ship up when the station crashed.”

“I can’t decide if you’re impressed or trying to tell me this is a very elaborate trap.”

He smirked, then went back to searching. Pulling open a new metal pane and looking through the memory cores, he found a situation similar to before. While the ship had survived, the heat from entering the planet’s atmosphere had caused several power spikes that had fried most of the electronics before the reactor had shut down. It’s a game of luck now.

Tarnhold recalled the time when he had played with the other kids in the forest near his home. Their favourite had been a sort of treasure hunt. They hid their belongings on branches or in the undergrowth, then searched for the others’ things. Whoever found the most was the winner, though the game had often ended without anyone finding anything. That had been about luck as well. Effort and skill had only helped a little, just like now.

Two short beeps from his phone signalled that the data he was trying to read was corrupted. Tarnhold tossed the memory core aside and pulled a new one free from the computer. Glancing to the left where a small pile stood, he saw he was already on his tenth core. There were twelve in total.

Frustrated by their wasted effort, he thought back to the attack on the station. Why did they even board it? He had checked the station’s specs, and its defences were paltry at best – close to a decade since the last maintenance and upgrades. The patrol had been destroyed near the beginning of the assault as well. The enemy ships should have been fully capable of destroying the station long before reinforcements arrived.

“Does it make sense to you?” he asked. Eliseal looked at him. “That they only came to wreck the station?”

“Vor…”

“Let’s just think about it, alright? Three ships minimum. One docks at the station, two watch from a distance.” She nodded. “Why board? Bombarding the station would have done it.”

“That’s what we’ll find out here.”

If we’re lucky, he thought. “Isn’t it better to already have some ideas?”

“What’s the point of making assumptions if a piece of evidence denies all of them?” She shrugged.

“Maybe they wanted something onboard the station…”

“You’re impossible. I’ll wait for you outside.”

“You don’t want to spend more time with me?” he asked, tossing her a playful grin. Despite his joking tone, the sentiment was true. Her presence helped him a lot. Eliseal knew how to pull him back when he dove too deep into his speculations.

“Depends,” she said, considering. “Will you stop obsessing over this case?”

“Of course not.”

“A girl can dream.” She waved at him as she exited the room.

Tarnhold went back to pulling out memory cores, though his thoughts drifted back to the attack again. The feeling that he had missed something kept him replaying everything he knew. Nothing came of it. The memory cores were the only thing that could shed some light on this case. If the damage was too great and all the data had been corrupted, he could only give up.

***

The sun was already setting by the time Tarnhold and Eliseal were back at the facility, the rocky mountain sides outlined in a deep red. It was one of the rare few days when the ever-present storms gave respite to the land.

From the last minutes of daylight to near midnight, Tarnhold had buried his head in work. It was only when Durahein called him and Eliseal that he found the strength in his legs to trudge to the leader’s office. However, there was something new: a seed of excitement ready to sprout and pierce through the layer of exhaustion it was buried under. Whether it was luck or skill, he didn’t care. He had found a new lead.

Eliseal was already waiting for him in front of the office. With a quick nod, they went inside.

The room was bare, only a few papers placed on the table proving anyone occupied it. The leader was known to always leave a minimal amount of paperwork unfinished for times when his other work required pause or he needed a distraction.

Tarnhold had never understood such thinking, instead opting to have everything he needed for a case displayed across the table – and sometimes the floor. Anything less was insufficient – something that slowed down the investigation.

“Vor,” Durahein said, beckoning him to come closer.

“Yes, sir,” Tarnhold said and stepped up. With a flick of his finger over his phone, he sent the contents to the main projection screen at Durahein’s table.

Fourteen neatly arrayed images appeared, their contents fuzzy in some parts where the data had been damaged. They displayed the view from the front cameras of the ship, looking out to the hangar deck. About half showed scenes of the destruction after the assault had started.

“I’ve found two things after examining the data from the cameras and the communications, both of which point to the same thing.” Tarnhold enlarged one of the images where a black figure could be seen.

A soft gasp from behind told him Eliseal had recognized what it was. Durahein only frowned, though that was more than enough. An organisation that could bring in an augment was by no means a small terrorist group.

“Here are some parts of the conversations I managed to extract.” He pressed several buttons on his phone and the first recording began to play.

“This is Bravo One. Do you copy?”

“Copy, Bravo One. This is Nest.”

“The station is secure. We’ll begin searching for the target now.”

The second one.

“This is Transport One. Bravo One has engaged the target.”

“Copy Transport One. Be swift with the extraction, imperials are on the way.”

The third.

“Sho—!”

Tarnhold closed the files on his phone. “Although the recordings are short, they prove that the terrorists were looking for someone. Someone they consider important enough to warrant the use of an augment. I believe that is what our focus should be. If we find the target, we’ll find them as well.”

Durahein regarded him for several seconds, then turned his gaze toward Eliseal. “Davaal.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, sending her own findings to the projection. The hologram displayed a three-dimensional view of the planet and the station. Two yellow arrowheads stood a distance away from the station.

“After examining the logs, I found that there were two ships that the one we discovered had been in constant communication with. Based on the time delay between the responses, I’ve deduced their approximate positions.” Two irregular areas of a red colour appeared around the arrowheads.

“When the crew warped the Furnace,” she continued, “it seems that the blast caught the two ships.” Durahein nodded. Following what he had said, the station’s crew would have aimed to take out the hostiles in that way. “One was completely destroyed, but it seems the other survived. Based on the last few messages and the way the communications array had moved, this should be where it landed on the planet.”

One of the arrowheads disappeared, while yellow dots made a path from the second ship to the planet. If they used one of their smaller vessels, they should be able to cover the distance in a few hours at most.

“That is all,” she said. Unlike Tarnhold, she never gave a suggestion unless the leader asked for it.

Durahein nodded, closing the projection. “You both did well on this.”

“Thank you, sir,” they said in unison.

“We’ll have a strategy meeting tomorrow to discuss more,” Durahein said, “but I’ll tell you in advance since I think you’ve earned it. We’ll be going after that crashed ship. No split in forces.”

Tarnhold’s eyes widened. No split in forces? It was the same as saying that they’d ignore his findings completely until everything else was done. Finding the ship had its advantages, of course. The data would be intact and there would be suspects to interrogate. However, ignoring the terrorists’ aim was… It’s insane, he thought, but there was nothing for him to do. He pushed his frustration down and schooled his expression. The anger remained. Another drop in the already-filled bucket.

“Dismissed,” Durahein said, opening several reports on the projection and turning his attention to those.

Once the door to the office had closed behind them, Tarnhold and Eliseal were left alone in the corridor. On instinct, they headed up to their rooms. The silence lasted for a while.

“I’m sorry,” Eliseal said.

“Why? Because the leader picked your find over mine? Because you didn’t support my suggestion?” he asked. “It was the leader’s choice, not something we had any say in.”

“I know, and I didn’t say it because of that.” She looked at him, her eyes meeting his. “I said it because you needed to hear those words. Your work wouldn’t get the recognition it deserves otherwise.” Her smile was mirthless. “Sleep well, Vor.”

Walking back to his room, Tarnhold thought of her words, a warm smile creeping up on his face. At least she believed in him.

He turned his gaze toward the mountains in the distance. A storm loomed above them, lightning striking over the sharp peaks. At least one more day. The storms on Bellos III were usually extremely violent. A smaller ship would have trouble flying through it, and they needed to use one to not alert their enemies. The trip would be for naught if the terrorists destroyed the data on the ship. Those people needed to believe they hadn’t been found and that there was a chance of escaping.

One more day, the thought came again. One more day for the terrorists to catch the person they were after. He couldn’t allow that. There was still evidence to go through and he would chase this lead. Even if he had to do it alone.