Thirty-eight days after the imperial ambassador’s murder.
Mining facility, Bellos III, 19:07, 3423 AA.
Three days after his bold resolution to solve the terrorist case on his own, Tarnhold lay in bed, utterly still and nonplussed at his idiocy. When the anger had waned enough, his determination wavered. He was one of the Order, one of the Val Tairi, and yet he thought of betraying the creed, of desertion – because of partial clues and scepticism. If there was a greater insult he could bring upon the Order, he didn’t know it.
He let out a deep breath, then turned his head to the side. A stack of papers lay next to his pillow: the various reports he’d gathered over the days, both old and new. He flipped through them distractedly, a mechanical motion at this point, then tossed them aside like garbage. He’d found nothing in them so far; today wouldn’t be any different.
Deciding he could no longer languish in bed, he dragged himself up and to the wardrobe. He went through the whole two sets of casual wear and picked out the dark-blue one. Then he moved in front of the mirror to inspect himself – casual or not, he had to look presentable. He straightened his collar, fixed his cuffs, styled his riotous mess of hair into a slick side part, and decided not to shave his stubble – that much he could afford.
Pleased with his look, he headed out of his room to the mess hall.
The corridors were more populated at this hour, but it made no difference. The crowd promptly parted before him, knots of people pressing themselves to the walls with more alacrity and vigour than they employed during working hours.
When he finally arrived at the mess hall, the others were already waiting for him. Eliseal tapped the seat adjacent to hers, immune to or ignoring the rising smirks and murmurs, notably from Valeri and Lars.
As Tarnhold sat down, Lars quirked a brow at him. “I’m proud of you, Vor.” He nodded his head towards Valeri and Nadak. “Our paltry teamwork is no match for you and Davaal. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you two were glued at the hip.”
Tarnhold thew him an annoyed stare, his gaze shifting from the messy dark hair to the cropped white shirt, left unbuttoned at the top, and with sleeves rolled up above the elbows. Quyin Lars was a man utterly unconcerned about a proper appearance, and his usually classless retorts completed the picture perfectly.
“They are glued at the hip,” Valeri said. “They’re both so obvious it’s painful, yet neither of them can grow a spine and take that last step.”
The clatter of tableware drew everyone’s attention to Eliseal, who said, “It appears you two are quite free. I’ll be happy to indulge your boredom in the training room.”
Valeri grinned at her. “Any day, Davaal. I’ve been itching for a rematch.”
“I’d rather you indulge that fiery passion elsewhere,” Lars muttered. “Somewhere away from us. Preferably with Vor, and in the bedroom.”
Tarnhold picked up his glass, seeking refuge in the wine.
Valeri nodded. “That’s true. Best to just get a room and go f—”
Tarnhold felt a chilly wave pass through him a fraction of a second before her voice cut off. The sensation set his nerves vibrating while goosebumps broke out over his arms – the distinct feeling of someone flaring the Gift. The unseen ripple emanated from an unlikely source: the taciturn and usually uninvolved Kassor Nadak, who lowered his fork onto the plate and slowly turned to Valeri. He stared at her impassively for a second or two while she struggled to get her words out. When her puzzlement dulled her fervour enough to sense his power, she glowered at him, her lips pressed into a thin line.
The power vanished in a blink, and the silence ward dissolved within moments. Nadak allowed a small smile. “While I can appreciate the necessity and value behind leisure time,” he said, his highborn background rolling off his tongue, “you should strive to maintain a modicum of restraint. Subtlety goes a long way towards achieving the same purpose.”
“He’s right, you know?” Lars said between bites. “You’ve got to ease them into it.”
“So what’s your brilliant idea? Don’t keep us waiting.” Valeri said.
Lars spread his arms wide. “A simple matter! We wait ‘till evening, like it is now; we get them drunk, like we will – and then we discreetly leave the room, dim the lights, and then we’ll probably wish we had silence wards set in place.”
“Definitely more sparring matches,” Eliseal whispered, just loud enough for Tarnhold to hear.
He shifted his eyes to Lars. “You’ve devised a whole theory,” he said, “yet you fail to ask the people involved for their opinion? Shouldn’t that be a priority? What you’re saying isn’t going to happen.” He took a sip of his wine, hoping the other man would take the hint.
Lars blinked and tilted his head. “Why? Unless this is your roundabout way of coming out?”
Tarnhold spat some of his drink back into the glass, several droplets spattering down to the table. He coughed twice. “No.” He coughed again. “Relationships between team members aren’t permitted.” He spoke tersely, in a controlled manner, but he figured no one would take him seriously with the angry flush on his cheeks. “The rules are very clear on that.”
Valeri’s eyes widened in stark bewilderment. “Rules? You?” She looked between Nadak and Lars. “Do you hear this guy?”
The two of them nodded, then Lars said, “You sell him short, Valeri. He is an expert on rules.” He took a sip of his wine, a smirk curling the corner of his lips. “If it’s breaking them that is.”
“It was no better during the academy days, was it?” Valeri asked.
“No more than a few solitary reflection periods,” Tarnhold said, leaning back into his chair and crossing his arms. “Hardly something of note.”
Lars arched a brow. “If by a few you mean several hundred, then yes. I barely remember you being in class.” He threw a glance at Eliseal. “And Eliseal just so happened—”
“Silence is a virtue, Lars,” Eliseal said.
“—to be absent during most of those times as well. Can’t imagine why.”
“Doesn’t take a spec ops agent to figure it out,” Valeri said, rolling her eyes.
Tarnhold looked over at Eliseal. She was seething, unable to find a proper retort. He snapped his gaze away, unwilling to earn her ire. They weren’t wrong after all. Whenever he’d been locked in that blasted room for self-reflection, she’d been there, just outside his window; and she’d indeed spent hours with him. Some of those had certainly been during lectures, though she’d always vehemently denied it.
“I think Vor calmed down during the last few years, no?” Lars said. “Just a few warnings, but no disciplinary action. Quite the improvement.”
“I hope you’re not planning on repeating your bad habits, are you?” Valeri asked, scanning Tarnhold’s face. “Let’s just have a straightforward mission, yeah?”
Unable to handle any more of their scrutiny, he raised his arms in surrender. “Not this time.” Their eyes bulging in response was a vexing sight, but he kept quiet. Given his infamy with rule breaking, they were entitled to this much surprise.
“At the risk of sounding rude, have you been exposed to some of the vapours streaming upwards from the drill shafts? I inquired and I heard they produced ill effects in those who inhaled them.”
“You seem to be picking up Lars’ humour a bit more every day, Nadak,” Tarnhold said.
But no. I’m simply stumped this time. I’ve tried everything and nothing came of it.”
“And thank the Emperor for that.” Valeri raised her glass, offering a toast to the sky above.
Eliseal scoffed, staring at the other woman derisively. “You don’t even know what he was working on. If you did, you wouldn’t be so quick to discount his opinions.”
“Your girlfriend’s as quick to your defence as always, Vor,” Valeri said.
Before an argument between them could begin in earnest, Nadak said, “Perhaps it would be prudent to hear these opinions on the case, given Davaal’s conviction. Misgivings about Vor’s methods stem from past experiences, however, it is misguided to assume him always wrong.”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“I appreciate the leap of faith, but there really isn’t anything to go on. The only things I was able to discover were that the terrorists were after someone and that there was an augment present.”
“Must have been a VIP,” Valeri said, gulping down the rest of her wine. She lowered the glass onto the table with a sigh. “What did Durahein say?”
“To shelve it.”
“Makes sense.” She stared at her glass and tapped her finger on the table, a surprisingly good reproduction of the rhythm for a song that had been popular a few years back. “Colour me surprised, but I thought you’d continue regardless.”
“I may be a little wilful—”
“A little?” Lars asked.
“—but I’m not insubordinate,” Tarnhold finished, giving Lars a cross look.
“It is quite an intriguing scenario, isn’t it?” Nadak mused. “For someone to best an augment in combat.” When everyone present turned towards him, he blinked, then continued, “I sincerely doubt anyone would have escaped an augment’s pursuit otherwise.”
A thread of understanding wove around the various disjoined clues in Tarnhold’s mind, snapping them together into perfect order. The answer had been in front of him all along, and it was such a simple thing – to merely consider the process rather than just the end result. His obsession with the VIP had blinded him to everything else. The elation, however, soon faded into confusion; an unease settled into the pit of his stomach.
Why had he not reached this conclusion on his own? Reproducing the course of events was a logical step in every investigation, yet he’d not once thought of doing so in the days following his presentation with Eliseal. Scouring his memories, he found them muddled, his reading of the same reports repeating several times a day – something he’d never done before, at least not with such frequency.
The more he tried to reconstruct the events of the previous days, the more his head throbbed in tandem with his heartbeat. Pressing his fingers to his temple, he peered at his glass and found it empty. He shouldn’t have drunk all the wine.
Doing his best to ignore the pain, he asked, “How about an experiment? Each of us should have the data we’ve gathered individually on our phones. We can sort this out now and be done with it before dinner ends.” He produced his phone from his back pocket. “What do you say?”
Valeri’s eyebrows pinched and she glanced uncertainly at Lars and Nadak. “I don’t know. Everything that starts out that simple usually gets out of hand.”
“I, for one, would like to indulge his curiosity,” Nadak said.
Valeri pressed a hand to her forehead and sighed. She bit her lip and looked once more at Nadak, searching his eyes for anything but approval. Finding nothing to dissuade her, she grudgingly nodded. “Fine. But nothing else save this.”
Once each person had brought out their phone, Tarnhold connected them. A holographic display appeared in front of everyone.
“Anyone got a clue how to start this show?” Lars asked.
“I do,” Eliseal said. “It’s rarely used, but we can get some estimation of what happened during the fight using the RISI method.” When she only got blank stares in response – except for Nadak, who nodded – her face turned sour. With a sigh and shake of her head, she continued. “Resistance intensity spectral imagining. You should know that each Furnace has its own energy field; and with each ship having one, we can use the varying vectors to estimate position. We can also extrapolate an adept’s strength.” A minute of her typing passed. “There we go.”
A hologram of the hangar deck appeared over the table and was overlayed with a heat map a second later. A massive and slightly curving red wall stood on one side, while the other was a jumble of green and yellow shapes.
“These are all constants, so by removing them…”
The hologram once more displayed only the hangar deck. Having found an appropriate starting point, Eliseal let it play.
Four icy-blue spheres appeared.
“Is this a joke? There were four of those things?” Lars said, staring at the blue shapes that represented augments.
No one answered him, and soon flashes of green, yellow, and orange appeared as well – adepts using the Gift. Tarnhold peered into the display, trying to glean something more. There was nothing. After a while, a bright flash of orange and yellow heralded the destruction of three augments. The fourth disappeared about half a minute later.
“Alright,” Valeri said, “so we know they killed the augments, but it doesn’t show us—”
A massive flare of red suffused the image, erupting from the hangar’s ground floor and permeating the entire deck. Then it disappeared, and the image was plunged into an icy blue.
No one uttered a word, and only Eliseal broke the silence after several seconds. “That was the warping of the Furnace core,” she said, her words grasping for some semblance of certainty. “However, for these energy readings, and to come from the hangar itself, it cannot be anything but an—”
“An amplifier,” Nadak finished, frowning at the holographic image.
The room lapsed into silence.
A grim determination gripped Tarnhold. The Val Tairi were kept informed of the position of every amplifier; for one to appear here, it meant it was from either the Kingdom or the Alliance. He clenched his hands into white-knuckled fists. Such extreme use of the Gift would have left traces, residue from which they could determine which country this spy – or whatever they were – belonged to. Since there was none, they were dealing with an Awakened.
“Void take us all,” Tarnhold muttered and stood from the table.
Eliseal looked up at him with alarm in her eyes. “Where are you going?”
“To Durahein. This can’t wait.” He stormed out of the room.
***
Durahein was unsurprisingly still in his office, hovering over his large desk and the scattered papers atop it. Also unsurprisingly, when Tarnhold approached, the leader gave him a perfunctory nod of acknowledgement, never removing his eyes from his work.
After an uncomfortable ten seconds of waiting, Tarnhol said, “Sir, do you have a moment?”
Durahein finally peeled his eyes from the reports and looked up, brown eyes weary and dissuading conversation. “Spit it out, Vor,” he said curtly. “I’ve got enough work without you bothering me when I’ve not summoned you.”
Standing straighter, Tarnhold squared his shoulders. “Sir, it’s about the events that have transpired in the station.” Durahein’s long sigh nearly made him falter, but he continued without pause, “After an additional review of the evidence, we’ve discovered that aside from the augments – of which there were at least four – there was an adept wielding an amplifier.”
That made Durahein perk up. He fixed Tarnhold’s gaze, his eyes exuding a fierce intensity, then it abated. “I see,” was all he said before looking down again.
“Sir?”
Durahein waved him to leave. “You brought it to my attention, and I’ll message the appropriate cells. At worst, Central Command will decide who to send instead. I hope you didn’t think this would change our mission in any way.”
“But we’re nearly at war! And there’s an individual – an Awakened – inside our borders and wielding a weapon that could decimate our forces without swift and adequate response.” The swift and adequate response being a Val Tairi with an amplifier of their own.
“I’ve spoken, Vor. The other cells will handle it.” Frustration seeped into the old man’s words, accentuated by the bulging vein on his neck. “We have our orders and our mission.”
“There are no teams close enough. It’ll take them days to come to this sector and days more to find the trail – which, if I may add, will likely be cold by that point.”
“There will be no reassignment.”
“Sir!” Tarnhold cried out in protest.
“Vor.” The leader walked over and stopped just in front of Tarnhold. “Do you believe I am in any way lacking for this position? Do you believe I have not thoroughly considered the choices, or am unprepared to face the consequences of the wrong one?”
Bowing his head, Tarnhold said, “No.”
Durahein raised his hand and slapped it atop Tarnhold’s shoulder, his expression mellowing slightly. “You should already know why I’m here, Vor. You are a bright mind – I do not wish to send you to As’al’Kaar – but I will not tolerate a lack of discipline. I will take the appropriate steps, so do not dwell on this any longer.”
There were no appropriate steps to take, however. The spy would be untraceable by the time the other teams arrived – that was a fact. The leader was wrong.
He blinked. He hadn’t noticed it before, but the leader’s eyes were crackling with certainty; surely such eyes couldn’t be with someone untrustworthy.
A breath of relief shuddered through him, cold and sobering. The leader knew what he was talking about, and he took Tarnhold’s warnings seriously. Moreover, it hadn’t been that the higher-ups were questioning Tarnhold’s ability, merely his conduct. His eagerness and effort were noted and appreciated; however, the leader was correct – wilfulness was undesirable in the Order. It was best to leave the chase in more capable hands, those who weren’t already handling another case.
He took a step back. “Thank you, Sir. I will leave you to your work.”
“It’s best you forget about this whole thing. Occupy yourself with something else.”
“Of course,” Tarnhold said as another chill raced through him, and he exited the room. He took a sharp right and headed for his room. For once, there was only tranquillity in his mind. Noticing goosebumps covering his arms, he rubbed at the skin through the fabric of his shirt. Had he dressed too lightly? The night was supposed to be quite warm, and it had been so far.
Shaking his head, he continued down the corridor.
After he passed the mess hall, he heard footsteps behind him and a voice that called out, “Vor!”
He turned to find Eliseal running after him. “What is it?” he asked.
“What did Durahein say?”
“Central Command will dispatch another team to handle the issue.” At Eliseal’s disbelieving gaze, he said, “You should speak with the leader as well if you wish – to clear your doubts.”
She nodded, staring at him with an odd look, and turned to head in the other direction. Tarnhold, instead, went on to his room. He arrived shortly after, lay in bed, and grabbed the reports – which he frowned at, not knowing why he had even taken them again. He flipped through them, indulging some muddled, distant part of him. A few minutes later, he tossed the papers aside, turned on his side, and closed his eyes, hoping that sleep would chase away the uneasiness ravaging his gut.
***
He awoke the next morning, drenched in sweat and with a massive headache. Throwing the damp sheets to the floor, he staggered into the shower. Fifteen minutes of warm water later and he was looking distinctly more human. The pain had even abated somewhat.
He stood in front of the mirror and scanned his haggard appearance, his dripping mess of hair, the bags under his eyes, the golden glint in his black eyes—
He blinked.
Golden threads burst into his consciousness with the intensity of a star being born. They pierced and wove through the murky waters of his mind, coiling around events and facts he had no recollection of, and snapping them in place of other mundane memories. These cold, hard facts glowed white-hot in the cloudiness of his mind, waypoints for his focus to retrace the past.
His mind shuttled down the golden threads of the web, past the incoherent conversation in the mess hall, arriving at Durahein’s office – going beyond the leader’s uncompromising mood, to the moment he scrambled Tarnhold’s memories.
The headache faded to a mild annoyance.
Tarnhold looked up at his reflection. The man staring back appeared nothing like a Val Tairi should, even at their worst.
“Emperor save us all…” he muttered.