Images of violence flashed on the news broadcast in front of Flint, reflecting tiny squares in his emotionless eyes.
“NEO-TYMIN” INSURGENTS VOW TO RESTORE TYMIN’S GLORY, 33 KILLED IN VIOR INSURRECTION
These words slowly scrolled across the top of the screen, filling Flint with a familiar hopelessness. Green-suited, fiery-eyed Tymin revolutionaries were shown tearing apart a Vior base on what was once Tymin territory, shouting curses and pledging to take it back.
“Every time we strike, they seem to strike back harder,” Aurein said from beside him. He, Flint, and Allef were watching the screen silently as they were transported to Erista on their second Talo-sponsored mission to pursue the Terminus—at last, they had finally been permitted to return to the moon that had started it all.
“I thought we were making a difference,” Flint began, “but all we’ve done is make the fighting worse. How is anyone supposed to get anywhere like this? How am I supposed to actually do anything?”
“Would you not be angry if your faction was destroyed?” Allef added. “You need to quit the war entirely. Live like I did, apart from any faction. Get out of this madness.”
The copilot of the small Talo transport ship turned around from the front seat of the cockpit and gave a warning glare to Allef.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible, Allef,” Flint said quietly. “How else would we do missions like this? Alone, we just don’t have enough power.”
“Sure we do,” Allef said. “If we can break out of The Ray, we can do anything.”
“Even fight Zero?” Aurein shot. Allef immediately went pale, looking away. She gripped the pant leg of her Talo uniform tightly.
The transport ship was filled with an uncomfortable silence for the remainder of the travel to Erista.
Upon arriving on that barren, grey moon, Flint noticed very little change in its appearance. The gargantuan patch of dusty darkness remained largely untouched, save for the increase in bootprints uncovering brighter dust beneath. A couple dozen large, blocky shapes obstructed Erista’s regolith in neat, incomplete rows outside the abandoned Epicenter Research facility. One of those shapes was quickly recognized by Flint and Aurein as the Lucre Main, their ship which had been left behind upon their capture and imprisonment in The Ray. The pilot of the Talo transport ship parked in an open spot next to it.
“This is it, right?” Allef’s voice said from the speakers in the EVA helmet Flint had just put on in his preparation to disembark. “This is the ship you guys were talking about?”
“I’m a bit surprised it’s still here,” Flint remarked. “It’s a good thing they didn’t decide to strip it for parts or something.”
“The Lucre Main is old for the kind of ship it is,” Aurein explained. “Tymin has—or, had, before they collapsed—newer versions of it, so it makes sense that they didn’t add it to their fleet. If I could guess, they only used it as transport to and from Erista.”
“The way you said that makes it sound like the Lucre Main was originally Tymin’s ship,” Allef pointed.
“It was.”
Even through Allef’s tinted visors and the reflection of Erista’s surface, Flint could see her eyebrows raise.
“What?!” she exclaimed.
“Aurein stole this ship from his parents who belonged to Tymin,” Flint explained.
“Damn. Okay, fair, I suppose. I won’t pry, even though it sounds like quite the story.”
“It is quite the story,” Flint affirmed.
“But yes, please don’t pry. I’d rather not relive it at the moment”
As Aurein walked towards the Lucre Main to check on its vital systems, Allef looked after him with an expression that was a hard-to-decode mix of curiosity and concern.
Tymin’s Epicenter Research facility had been abandoned following Tymin’s collapse, and while it was absent of Tymin occupants, it was absent of any remaining evidence, as well. The facility had been haphazardly stripped of its most essential scientific and computing equipment, leaving nothing but the scaffolds of the in-situ structures and the epicenter itself—a set of bootprints in the regolith and the uncharred shadow of who was—if only for a moment—the most powerful being in the galaxy. Once again, Flint’s heart raced at the sight of the epicenter.
“Well,” Allef began, her voice coming from the speakers in Flint’s helmet, “we have to at least start by figuring out who this was. Whoever it was must have it now.”
“Unless they gave it to someone else,” Flint noted. Allef nodded, gaze still affixed to the epicenter.
“I don’t think it would just be given away so easily,” Aurein’s voice chimed. “Only someone truly power-hungry would want to have the Terminus. And that kind of person wouldn’t just give it up. Whoever had it here still has it now, and they’re the kind of person who’d make a fierce warlord. Nobody else would want or need this much power.”
“Are you sure?” Flint asked. “The Domain still hasn’t been taken over by a single warlord. There’s no ‘second coming’ of Teo Nora. If a power-hungry person had it now, the entire galaxy would be at that person’s mercy. Whoever had it must be dead now—that’s the only explanation.”
“There’s a third possibility, though,” Allef added. “What if that warlord person doesn’t exist now because, whoever had the Terminus, they were like us? What if they didn’t care about conquering the galaxy? What if they were peaceful?”
The three shared glances between each other, each equally unsure.
“No, I’m sorry for interjecting,” Allef apologized. “I shouldn’t have intruded. That idea must be impossible.”
“No, Allef, that’s absolutely an idea worth considering,” Flint said. “We just don’t know who this person is—or was. We have to consider every possibility. Can you get a picture of it?”
Allef extended her remaining robotic arm over the bootprints and contorted her fingers in a bizarre hand motion. With a small click, a small lens emerged from her palm. By tapping a finger against her thumb, she took several pictures of the bootprints from different angles, then retracted the lens.
“Can you press on the metal square on my wrist, please? I’d do it, but I’m still missing an arm.”
Flint obliged, pressing a gloved finger to a square-shaped piece of metal on Allef’s wrist. It depressed a tiny distance, then extended outwards when Flint took his finger away. A tiny pluggable drive dispensed from the extended piece of metal, falling slowly into Allef’s metal hand.
“Maybe we can get Talo to analyze these bootprints,” Allef said, holding up the drive between her fingers.
“We should,” Flint agreed. “It’s impossible to say who’s been to this moon over the last five years, both before and since the Erista Flash. Our only lead is those bootprints. Let’s take it to the Calamity Crew and see if they can run a scan.”
“The type and size of the bootprints will tell us a lot, not to mention the model of boot,” Aurein added.
“But wouldn’t Tymin also have been pursuing the bootprints?” Allef asked. “And with all that ‘Neo-Tymin’ bullshit going on, there could still be people out there looking for it. I doubt Tymin’s collapse would stop them from being the first to find the Terminus.”
“You’re exactly right,” Flint said. “But it’s our only lead, so we need to be prepared for anything.”
“And,” Allef added, striding towards the bootprints, “I think it’s best we make sure nobody else finds it. May I?” Allef gestured towards the prints in the dust. Flint nodded.
Allef stomped and rubbed out the bootprints in Erista’s regolith until they were nothing but memories and unrecognizable disturbances in the dust.
----------------------------------------
Nejla took the small data drive from Allef’s metal hand into his own gloved one, looked at it for a moment, and pocketed it.
“Thank you three for your service to Talo. This information will undoubtedly prove valuable to our efforts,” he addressed the group.
“Of course,” Flint replied. “It’s an honor to be able to help people this high up the chain of command. How long can we expect until the results are in?”
“I would estimate twenty to thirty minutes.”
“Why so long? Aren’t you just running a line of code?” Allef asked.
Nelja turned his gaze towards Allef, and there was a brief moment of silence broken only by the hum of the intense air conditioning in the front of the leader’s tower and the steps of high-ranking Talo members making the morning commute around them. Nelja’s tall, slender figure and sharp, angular facial features made his presence commanding even when he wasn’t speaking. Flint reflected once more on how unexpectedly tall this member of the Calamity Crew was when he wasn’t sitting.
“Talo’s quantum supercomputer is not merely scanning the images of the bootprints you have given me. Our supercomputer will digitally recreate the boots—their size, fit, stride, and of course, print—and then compare them with every bootprint on every single frame of security footage ever taken on any Talo-owned planet. If the boots or their owner had ever been recorded or captured in any digital form, and that information was accessible through Talo’s master database, we will know. Even with the immense power of the supercomputer, there are yottabytes of information to sort through—thirty minutes is miniscule for the scale of the task we are trying to accomplish.”
Allef simply raised her eyebrows.
“Oh. Neat.”
Flint heard a familiar teeth-grinding sound as Nejla turned towards him.
“Regardless,” Nejla began through just-unclenched teeth, “the three of you have had a long night with your journey to Erista. I imagine you must be tired. I advise you all try to get some rest while Talo’s supercomputer does its work. We will also take care of reapplying a Talo transponder to your ship, the Lucre Main, while you rest, alongside doing a more thorough scan of Tymin contraband it may contain. The results will be ready for you when you awaken.”
“Thank you,” Flint said. Nelja nodded and walked towards the elevator up the leader’s tower behind him. The doors opened, Nelja stepped inside, and was out of sight the moment they closed with a thunk.
“You know, I was hoping we were going to get paid for that,” Allef said as the three started to return to the residential dome. “For finding the bootprints and everything.”
“Me too, given how important they are. But that’s just the way things work around here,” Flint explained. “Going to Erista was a job that we specifically requested, so they were the ones doing us a favor.”
Allef was wearing an incredulous expression. “Pretty sure that giving Talo the biggest lead to the Terminus out there is doing them a favor, not us. But yes, I suppose we do just have to accept it if that’s how things work around here. Living in a faction is weird, though, I will say. It’s like they’re always just taking stuff from us.”
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
“It’s not usually like this. Most of the time we get paid fairly well,” Aurein said.
The three approached the hatch that marked the edge of Talo’s high-ranking dome. Through it was a tunnel that would take them back to the residential domes, and next to it was a screen displaying conditions of the desert outside. It read:
DANGER CLASS: 5
TEMPERATURE: 366 KELVIN
WIND SPEED: 48 M/S
TUNNEL STATUS: DEPLOYED
The hatch opened to reveal not the searing light and heat of the sun above, but rather a dark, rushing sandstorm of navy sand blocking all light outside of the clear-walled tunnel. The only way to see the ground and the hatch on the other side of the tunnel was by the glow of the dim yellow lights in the ceiling. The rushing blue sand pounded against the tunnel with a continuous hissing sound.
If a sandstorm like this wasn’t so commonplace in this desert, Flint might have been impressed.
“I think we’re going to have to go back to taking missions instead of starting them,” Flint suggested to Aurein as they walked through the dark tunnel, watching the swirling currents of sand beat the walls. “With Allef on our side, we can handle much more difficult and rewarding assassinations.” Seeing the expression on Allef’s face, he elaborated, “Or other kinds of missions. Assassinations were usually our thing before The Ray.”
“I just think it’s sort of messed up that the only way you can earn enough to be independent is by working for Talo all day instead of yourself,” Allef remarked, pushing open the hatch and stepping into the residential domes. “It’s like they’re penalizing us for being productive. Without our help, the Calamity Crew would never have been able to get that information about the Terminus! And, frankly, I’m sick of having to live in those shitty dormitories.”
Allef pointed to the corridor ahead of the group, where, past the bobbing heads of Talo members making their commute, rows and rows of windows stretched a hundred feet into the air, each divided by a balcony-like floor. Miniature elevators took two or three people up to their requested level at a time through clear tubes along each wall. The density of the rooms that the windows indicated at a glance made Flint’s heart sink. It would be impossible to sleep with the amount of activity going on here at all times.
“Well, again, it wasn’t always like this either. Aurein and I used to earn enough to have our own printed, custom room. Those rooms aren’t packed this closely together, either. Soon enough, you might be able to afford your own as well.”
Allef took a tired yawn, and seemed to consider for a moment. She then said:
“Well, I suppose that sounds pretty good. I’m just still not used to working for a faction. Bit of a culture shock for me. I’m sure I could get used to it, though.”
“It’s not a bad way to live. Plus, depending on how the Calamity Crew’s analysis of the bootprints go, and whatever happens after that, you might have some Terminus-related news to look forward to as you work.”
The three were halfway towards the nearest elevator when a distant boom echoed through the hallway. In barely enough time for the three to realize what had happened, the painfully-loud breach alarms began their repetitive three-beep sequence, warning everyone in the domes to take cover. A light blue glow from warning lights in the ceiling bathed the ground below in even intervals.
“Shit!” Allef exclaimed. The flow of Talo members leaving the dormitories was violently stirred as people ran in seemingly every direction, people crowding around the stairs that took them up to higher levels. “We gotta do something!”
“Don’t panic!” Aurein shouted over the loud beeps and shouting people. “The dormitories act as a bomb shelter. We just need to take the stairs to our rooms and take cover!”
Aurein started to join the flow of people crowding around the stairs when Allef stopped him.
“No, I mean we need to help! Something exploded in the domes! People could be dying!” Allef shouted.
Flint looked between Aurein and Allef, both of whom were gazing at Flint with expectant expressions. He’d anticipated the answer to be obvious. Protocol stated clearly that in the event of a breach, every Talo member in the domes were to return to their reinforced rooms and await further instruction. But Allef had a point—what if the situation needed his help?
“Seriously? Come on, Flint!” Allef yelled to him. “What’s the worst that could happen? You die?!”
Without a further second of hesitation, Flint ran against the grain of the crowd towards the sound of the explosion, Allef just behind, Aurein joining the chase behind Allef after muttering a profanity.
Following the explosion’s source became an easy task the moment they left the dormitories, as dust-filled hallways led them directly towards the residential dome’s docks where the breach had occurred. The docks featured a brand-new, flagpole-sized tear in the metal plates in the far wall which usually protected the ships within from the harsh desert outside. Mangled titanium scraps dangled from the breach’s source—some large explosion, from the looks of it—and hung onto the wall with all their might as the relentless cobalt sandstorm rushed in, clouding everything with dust and sand.
The usually bright white overhead lights that illuminated the docks seemed to have been converted into deep blue spotlights that struggled to penetrate the sandstorm-induced darkness, hardly shedding enough light to reveal the infiltrator who seemed to have caused the breach in the first place. A tall woman holding a large, glowing sword was fighting off Talo members amidst the mayhem, severing the limbs of some and engulfing others in massive explosions that emanated from her sword.
Flint coughed as he inhaled a sand-filled breath, pulling his collar over his nose as he stabilized his wheezing. He summoned his ghostly pistol in his free hand and struggled to aim it at the sword-wielding attacker between his violent coughs and the beating of sand against his uniform. Eventually, he found an opening and pulled the trigger, watching his bullet soar and disappear into the sand-filled air. The sword-wielding woman snapped her gaze towards Flint and swung her sword in the bullet’s way just in time, sending a small shockwave into the air as the impact triggered another small explosion from the blade.
A particularly powerful gust of sand almost blocked Flint’s view of Allef leaping towards the attacker and extending a hand towards her. A yellow-orange glow penetrated the haze as Allef shot a plume of plasma from her rocket-engine palm at the woman. Another flash alerted Flint that the attacker had used the force of her sword’s explosion to leap into the air over Allef’s attack, falling towards Allef and preparing to strike her with the blade.
A ball of gold impacted the blade before it hit Allef, the gold wrapping around the sword as if it was made of liquid. Allef barely dodged out of the way in time, and the gold-covered sword struck the ground and exploded. The blast was dampened enough by the gold coating not to severely injure Allef, but she was still knocked away.
Flint ran towards the attacker to join the fray and help Allef, but he found his sprint cut short by a hand pulling on his shoulder. Flint spun to face the hand’s owner, only to get less than a second’s view of their face before Flint felt the barrel of a gun pressed against his chest.
There were two loud bangs, and Flint was dead again.
His soul was thrown through the dizzying, vertigo-inducing barrier between dimensions, falling away from the land of the dead, until he found his feet on the sand-spattered surface of the docks floors again. His corpse, bleeding from bullet holes in the chest, was on the ground next to him, and his assailant was looking down at the corpse with a satisfied expression, holding a breathing mask to her face.
Flint looked behind him and back again in confusion. The sword-wielding woman was still fighting Allef and Aurein. Flint’s assailant was someone new. The new invader produced a transponder from her pocket and, still observing Flint’s corpse, pressed a button and held the transponder to her ear.
“Hello? Can you hear me?” she said into the transponder over the rushing of sand-filled wind. “The target’s dead. Tell Zero the job’s been done. I will-”
Out of the corner of her eye, Flint’s assailant noticed his ghost. He summoned his pistol and aimed it at her.
“What the hell?” she said, still speaking into the transponder. “He’s alive? No, the- the target’s ghost, it-”
But before she could utter another word, a spear stabbed into the side of her head, impaling her skull.
The spear’s wielder—yet another new figure—appeared at a glance to be a darkly-dressed woman, only her eyes visible through the iridescent red-orange head covering. The figure pulled the spear back out of the head of Flint’s killer and, before he knew it, she was gone, but in her place was a thin, faintly glowing white line which raced along the ground like a serpent towards the sword-wielding attacker at a frightening pace.
The clouds of blue dust made it impossible to tell exactly when or how, but the masked figure reappeared again behind the sword-wielding woman. The masked figure, in a swift movement that took advantage of her abrupt appearance, whipped out a pistol and shot the sword wielder in the back, sending her falling to the floor. Just like that, the attack was over, and Flint got one last glimpse of the masked figure before she—and the body of the sword wielder that she had felled—disappeared in the blink of an eye, the only evidence of their vanishing being the same white line which raced along the ground, through a wall, and out of sight.
Now it was time for the still-living Talo members in the docks to shift their focus onto the breach itself, swarming upon the wound in the dome’s side that freely bled blue sand blood into the chamber. Clever Val usage and large metal plates allowed for the breach to be sealed quickly—without Flint’s help, of course, as in his ghostly state, even lifting bricks was a tedious task.
The blaring alarms overhead ceased their warnings, and before long, the docks were flooded with emergency responders and cleanup crews. Unable to do anything in his state but sit and watch, Flint did exactly that. He sat upon a crate and pondered what had just occurred, thinking anything he could to distract himself from the frustration of losing another body. As he did, Flint stared down at the glassy eyes of the woman who had killed him. He picked up her fallen transponder and inspected it, but all communications with Keila she had previously established before were now permanently cut off.
“Excuse me.”
Flint turned to the voice in front of him. It was a tall man he didn’t recognize, wearing a sand-filtering mask over his mouth and carrying a box of tools.
“Yes?” Flint asked.
“Are you Flint?” the man asked. “The immortal ghost?”
Flint cocked his translucent head with curiosity.
“Yes, that’s me. I wouldn’t say I’m immortal though. I tend to… die a lot. As you can see.”
“Do you know what happened here?”
“I was gonna ask you the same thing. All I know is that woman,” Flint nodded towards his killer’s corpse on the floor next to his own, “got some order from Zero to kill me. And succeeded.”
The man in front of Flint looked to have a middle-aged appearance, but his amazement was genuine and youthful.
“From Zero himself? Oh… was it because of your encounter with him at Teo Nora’s grave?”
“Oh. You… know that?”
“Of course,” the man replied. “Word gets around, and nobody could just forget a person who faced off against Zero himself and lived.”
“Since you seem to be in the know about things…” Flint began, looking around at the remnants of the mayhem the breach triggered, “can you tell me if you have any idea what the hell happened here?”
The man scoffed and gazed around at the explosion-caused craters in the floor and the bodies that were scattered upon it.
“I mean… shit, we haven’t had a breach this bad here in ages. Not since Spine’s capture by the Zystinian army and the power vacuum that caused. Tell you what… actually, how long have you lived in the Epstrum Superdomes?”
“Two or three years.”
“Then you don’t know what it was like here with Spine in charge. He would have never let an invader come and cause all of this mess like the way it happened today.”
Flint looked down at the corpse of the Keila member who had shot him.
“Two invaders,” Flint corrected.
“My point exactly. Spine was a fitting name for the man because he was Talo’s backbone. Jim and the Calamity Crew are weak leaders in comparison, Jim especially.”
“It seems like he’s been doing a decent job so far. Talo hasn’t lost any planets since his instatement as supreme commander.”
“But we haven't gained any, either. Jim refuses to fight any more than absolutely necessary. Now more than ever, Talo needs Spine’s resolve to push forward and fight for what matters. Especially with everyone coming after the Terminus now. You were the one who discovered it, weren’t you?”
Flint twisted his face into a look of hesitation.
“I wouldn’t say I discovered it, since that was Tymin’s doing, but I suppose I’ve been working pretty hard to find it.”
The man looked at—or maybe through—Flint with a serious look.
“In all seriousness, you might be onto something. Hell, I think you’d probably make a better leader than Jim and the rest of the Calamity Crew. Spine had a lot of determination like you have, fighting for the Terminus like you have been.”
If Flint had had a body, he would have blushed. He, a leader?
“Really?”
“Sure. Why not, right?”
This train of thought, exhilarating as following it was, made Flint uncomfortable. Surely he couldn’t just… become leader? Changing the subject, he asked:
“So who the hell was that person who took out the invaders? And did they just… take… the exploding sword lady?”
“Oh, right,” the man nodded, looking in the direction of where the mysterious masked figure had disappeared to. “I think that was Bane.”
“That’s Bane? I’ve heard of her, but never seen her before. Part of me assumed she was a myth.”
“Oh, she’s real, alright. Only shows up in a situation where she can stay obscured and keep her identity hidden. Talo’s masked protector, or something like that. I’d wager she’s taking the one who caused the breach straight to the Calamity Crew for questioning right now. Once again, the fact that Bane’s presence was even necessary shows how far Talo has fallen. You know, I was serious about you becoming a leader.”
Flint chuckled nervously. “But I couldn’t just become Talo’s supreme commander like that. I’m a soldier. I have to climb the ranks.”
“Sure you could. Tradition in the Domain says that anyone who can beat their faction’s leader in battle can take their place.”
“I’m sorry, but I could never beat Jim in a fight. Have you even seen him? He’s a monster!”
“Ah, but you can’t die. You don’t have to survive, just outlast him. The Calamity Crew probably don’t even have Vals if they spend all day sitting around in their tower anyway, so I’m sure you could beat them no problem. All I’m saying is, think about it. Talo needs people like you in charge.”
The man joined the rest of the Talo members in the cleanup of the breach, leaving Flint alone with his thoughts and a growing sense of excitement.
Was he fit to be a leader?
Flint, Allef, and Aurein were sent back to their quarters as Talo officials came to the docks to investigate the nature of their invasion. Flint sat on a bed that creaked with every movement, turning his transponder—recovered from his corpse—over in his hands, awaiting the moment it lit up with information about the bootprints.
Two hours had passed since the Calamity Crew had been given the image of the bootprints. This made Flint anxious—Nelja had assured them that the scan would take no longer than thirty minutes.
Then, finally, his transponder buzzed. The screen lit up with a new message. Flint read it, gave a look of confusion, and then turned to Allef and Aurein, who were lounging tiredly elsewhere in the room.
“The Calamity Crew wants us at the Leader’s Tower. It’s about the results of the scan.”