When the Singer found the General, he’d dressed in a new shirt and propped himself into a sitting position on his cot. His vapor machine sat at his bedside, and papers and booklets littered the bed for his perusal as he smoked. Arnarxx’s soft body took up most of the rest of the room, their documents and data-sticks piled beneath their many legs.

She caught them during a heated conversation about code algorithms, a pursuit she hadn’t expected the General to have an understanding of. When he realized she’d entered, he motioned for Arnarxx to be silent.

“Thank you, Arnarxx,” he said. “This has given me much to consider, but keep this between us. Is this all the data you pulled?” he asked with a gesture at the piles of data sticks.

“Yes, sir,” Arnarxx replied with an arachnid’s equivalent of a relieved sigh.

“Good. Dismantle your decoder and bring me the data crystal. There won’t be any more study in this direction,” he explained. “Please return to your work on the electronic warfare protocols.” Arnarxx, dismissed, quickly squeezed past the Singer to leave. “Shut the door, Singer, and take a seat,” the General told her as he reached for the mouthpiece of his vapor machine.

She closed the door and retrieved a stool from the corner of his room.

Once she was seated, the Singer explained the change of schedule, and what Charlele had revealed about the intelligence leak in the communications district. He listened with some difficulty as he puffed from his vapor machine; the furrowing of his brow told how difficult it still was for him to concentrate.

“If we can find this cousin of hers, I’d like to try to convince her to distance herself from things,” the Singer finished.

The General nodded, and as he spoke, the sweet vapor wafted around him. “I was worried this was the case. If we still had a week or two before the portal opened, I could probably make a decent enough recovery. As it is, you’ll have to take my place.”

“Take your place? What are you talking about?” the Singer asked incredulously. “You’re supposed to lead the raid on the ship.”

“Things will need to change now,” the General sighed as he chewed on the mouthpiece. “Before, the Viribus were going to lead the raids that would smokescreen our piracy long enough for us to avoid interception on the way to Laetus, and I would lead the boarding party to the ship.

“I’m not in much of a position to climb through a military vessel, though. Instead, I’ll leave the ship to the Poet Warriors. You’ll be leading the raids on the communications district now – and you’ll have a chance to keep your promise that way,” he explained. “Go into my wardrobe and open the top drawer, inside you’ll find a ring. The symbol on it will let my officers know that your word is the law.”

The Singer turned to his wardrobe and quickly found the ring. It was too big for her fingers, but she could fashion a serviceable necklace instead. The symbol gave her pause, however. She’d seen it once before, engraved onto the Viribus’ weapons and armor:

“An Ouroborus?” she asked as she examined the serpent coiled into a circle to bite its tail.

“A circle without an end,” the General said with the same reverence with which he’d prayed before. “Fitting, don’t you think? For a people who might experience death over and over again?” He blew a ring of sweet-smelling vapor toward her. “Only my officers know about this symbol, show them that, and they’ll be at your command without question. A warning, though:

“These herd species follow a maxim, even if they don’t realize it: Some may die, but the herd survives. They’ll happily leave behind an injured friend or challenge a leader who hesitates. And frankly, if left to their own devices, they would accomplish nothing. They need us, or they’ll just go right back to being the Empire’s fodder,” he explained.

The Singer blanched at the idea. “But aren’t your troops mostly T’nann and some Ventusi gangs? They’re fruit eaters and grass grazers,” she told him. Surely, by her reckoning, a species that spent their time grazing fruit from trees wasn’t going to be violent by nature.

“Prey species are often more violent than predators, Singer. Just think about the ones from Earth. They grow giant horns to fight each other and determine mating rights. T’nann and Ventusi aren’t very different. A fight won’t cripple the herd; in fact, it helps the herd’s genetics. Compare that to the wolf and the wolfpack: a crippled wolf becomes a burden on the entire pack,” the General explained. “Predators have to fight to live, and most prey animals live to fight. You have to remember, Singer, these are aliens: Their morals don’t always line up with ours.”

“This war of ours is proof enough of that,” she reluctantly agreed as she considered the Ouroborus in her hand. She supposed this change of plans was necessary, and she didn’t mind taking on a role in the return to Laetus. She assumed the General would simply lock himself up in here and direct the rest of the plan over the radio.

“There’s one more thing before you go,” the General said and gestured for her to sit again. The Singer pocketed the ring and sat back down. “Have you wondered where your memories are from, Singer?” he asked.

“Someone from Earth, I guess. There’s a lot of detail there for it to be made-up,” she said with a shrug. “Why?”

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

“Because I’m not so sure,” the General sighed and took a deep drag from his vapor machine. “Did any of the Poet warriors tell you what happened on Laetus? Before we left, that is.”

“No, they haven’t. And I’ve meant to ask,” the Singer said. She decided to humor the General. The Singer had figured out by now that he liked to circle his point before revealing it. And she could appreciate how it helped her to follow his thinking process.

“It had been almost a year since my escape, and the Empire’s army was only getting bigger despite our efforts. They were delving deeper into the Temple, and more equipment was being shipped to the surface every day. Sooner or later, they were going to start decanting people en mass,” he began. His gaze grew distant and haunted as he spoke, and the mouthpiece was left forgotten in his hand. “The Temple was surrounded by a concrete wall and a deforested kill zone. The wall only had one gate on its East side; researchers used to leave through it before our attacks made it too dangerous.

“Turin’eh went East to send one of their self-driving trucks we’d stolen into their Gate, packed with all the explosives we’d ever made or taken. Sheh’teh, Kanen’eh, and I went West, and when the bomb went off, we crossed the kill zone and climbed the wall. Kanen’eh went to the Officer’s quarters to steal all the documents he could carry, while Sheh’teh and I made a charge on the Temple Gate.”

He shivered slightly as if the room had suddenly grown cold, but his voice was calm. “The guards had all rushed off toward the explosion, so the way was clear. We passed through the entryway, but I got distracted. Sheh’teh started to close the doors: we had to seal the place and then immediately leave or become trapped inside. But I had this urge to run deep into the Temple. I told her I’d just be a moment, and I ran as fast as I could.

“Wasn’t sure what I was looking for, I just figured I’d run to the end of the hall, and if nothing stood out to me, I’d just run back to the door. That hall was longer than I thought and dark as pitch – I could barely see five feet in front of me. I don’t know how long I ran, but at the end of the hall, I found a pit. There wasn’t anything to mark the drop; the ground just fell away. I remember that I kicked this candle that was near the edge off, and I never did hear it hit bottom.”

The General took a shaky breath and turned toward the Singer, but his eyes looked past her. “There was something on the other side of the pit. I felt it before I saw it, but I never really saw it cause a spotlight blinded me with this golden light,” he said wistfully. “And it spoke to me. It said Noli timere.”

“Do not be afraid,” the Singer translated in the same moment he did, which finally snapped him out of the trance he’d entered. It surprised the Singer as much as it surprised him: she didn’t know any Latin phrases.

“I don’t remember much after that,” the General continued as he puffed on his mouthpiece again. “Sheh’teh says she came to look for me after a while and found me collapsed by the edge of the pit. She managed to complete the mission while carrying me on her back. But afterward, I had this idea that wouldn’t leave me alone: I was confident I could still hear the voice and even see the light when I closed my eyes. So, at Sheh’teh’s suggestion, I meditated on it.

“Don’t look at me like that, Singer,” he interrupted himself as he noticed her raised eyebrow. “Meditation isn’t some religious mumbo jumbo. It’s a way to focus your mind, and I’ve found it very useful. It was during this meditation that I began to grasp what I’d forgotten. I think that the Temple tried to tell me something, but it overwhelmed me before it could stick in my mind. It was trying to tell me how to use these things,” he said and tapped the disk at the back of his neck. “And I figured it out:

“They’re connections back to the Temple; I call them ‘Gates.’ A tiny wormhole powered on that end, through which it can contact us. And do things like changing our perception of time, which is how I beat Charlele in a shootout,” he explained.

“The Temple talked to you?” the Singer asked, and though she was incredulous at first, she began to see the logic behind the claim. If the Temple were, as the General had theorized, a colony ship, then that colony ship would need some form of an automated controller: an A.I. of unknown complexity – possibly so sophisticated that it could approach a kind of sentience. “But if the Temple could talk to you, why not just have a conversation?” she asked as she set aside his further claims for later.

“I’m not certain it can,” the General admitted. “I only have the one experience, but every time I’ve used these ‘Gates’ grafted onto me, I’ve heard that same phrase. It’s a recording that it’s utilizing. A computer that can solve intergalactic trajectories might not have any knowledge of how our language works, so when it tries to talk to us, we just can’t understand it. But there is one thing it can do: write memories into our heads,” he explained.

“And if it can’t talk, then it might just try to make us remember what it wants to tell us,” the Singer concluded. It made a ridiculous kind of sense. If the Temple were a colony ship, pushed into a situation it was never intended to encounter, it might have to resort to unorthodox methods to complete its tasks – which, presumably, was the survival of the human species.

The General nodded. “Every time I’ve opened a Gate, I can feel the Temple on the other end triggering memories in my mind to guide me. It’s been a useful tool, and I think you’ll need it going forward,” he finished.

“It can be taught?” the Singer asked after a moment’s consideration. The General talked about it like it was some sort of divine inspiration, which was concerning. And with that thought, his prayers began to make more sense.

“We’d better hope so, you’re going to need it,” he said gravely. “I’ve only ever opened the First Gate, this one,” he said as he tapped the disk at the base of his skull. “It expands my perception of time and lets me memorize and interpret information at an incredible rate. But only for a moment at a time. Opening it requires both astonishing focus and energy, which is why I can only open it for a moment on my own.

“Like the Terminal, opening a Gate requires power from both ends until it’s stabilized. Only once it’s already fully open can the Temple keep it open. When it opens, it absorbs energy in lots of different ways: body heat, the wires in the walls, even the sun seemed to get dimmer when I tried it on Laetus,” he explained.

“That sounds,” - horrifying - “stressful,” the Singer told him.

“Scared the piss out of me the first time,” he admitted in a surprising moment of levity. “Not the image I’m going for, you know? So, let’s begin. First-“

“Wait,” the Singer interrupted. “Why are you doing this? You’re making it sound like you’re dying or something.”

“Don’t be so worried about death, Singer,” the General said as he blew a ring of vapor. “It wasn’t so bad the first time.”