PART THREE

> “The universe doesn’t care about your power, your gumption, your beauty, or your intelligence. None of that matters if you want to win the cosmic game of evolution. You just need luck. Or knowledge of the future.”

- Unyat

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Galactic distances were negligible to Ariock. The cosmic route from Earth to Reject-20 was as traceable as the lines on the palm of his hand. All was dark, cold emptiness, except for the fierce luminosity of stars and their orbiting satellites. Ariock wished he had enough time to explore the fertile spheres. Instead, he hurtled, disembodied, past stars and planets, until he arrived at…

A fiery apocalypse.

Black smoke choked Freedomland. Military shuttles dropped towards the coastal city, or chased one another over its stratosphere, shooting missiles.

The Torth should not be able to swarm in so close.

They must have teleported into the spaceport and taken control of it. Ariock inwardly cursed himself. He never should have left Garrett in charge for so long. Where was the old man? Where was Evenjos? Was Kessa safe?

And why hadn’t Ariock received more than a single crisis signal?

The Torth must be wrecking his superluminal communications network.

Some vestigial part of Ariock’s disembodied mind remembered Vy and Thomas. He needed to protect his beloved city, but he ought to seek advice before he went charging in. So instead of rushing to rescue people, the way he wanted to, he snapped back to his body in Mongolia.

He opened his eyes to sunlit grass and a blue sky. Butterflies flittered off of wildflowers.

“Freedomland is being invaded by Torth,” Ariock told them.

Vy gasped. Thomas stepped close enough to scan Ariock’s mind. He paused for a second, which seemed to be enough time for him to weigh various options.

“I need to be on site,” Thomas said decisively. “Teleport me to the Twins’ bunker.”

Ariock began to suggest that Thomas would be safer on a planet that wasn’t under invasion. Perhaps he ought to just stay on Earth for a bit longer?

“You can’t leave me and Vy unprotected.” Thomas spoke before Ariock could say a word. “If any Torth scan your mind? They’ll learn we’re on Earth, and they’ll get to us before we can hike to my hidden spaceship in Siberia.”

Ariock clenched his jaw, hating the logic. It seemed wrong to bring a child into a war zone.

But he had learned that ignoring Thomas’s advice led to disasters, such as the Alashani underground being flooded, or a hundred warriors getting slaughtered.

Enough of that.

Thomas might not have time to explain the intricacies of his plan, or whatever inferences he had gleaned, but he knew what he was doing.

“The Twins’ bunker includes workstations that can hack into city controls and major weapons,” Thomas said. “The Torth may think they’ve taken control, but I have solo override access to everything. They’re not used to an individual who can take that much control. And my return won’t be common knowledge yet. That will give us a huge advantage.”

Thomas might be able to wallop a lot of Torth with all that technology at his fingertips. Ariock felt a bit of relief. He would not be the only warrior in this fight.

“One more thing,” Thomas said. “If the Twins are anywhere nearby, don’t appear to them in person. It’s a bad idea to startle them. Don’t pop into existence right next to them.”

Ariock wasn’t sure he wanted to think too hard about what that warning implied. Were the Twins on guard against enemy teleporters? Were they ready to defend themselves with a gaseous weapon? Perhaps the insanity gas?

“All right.” Ariock drew a breath, steeling himself for danger. He encompassed his friends and gear within his awareness.

Soon he was ghosting through fire, smoke, launchpads, bedrock, and a vestibule hidden well beneath the Academy. Overlapped chrome plates shielded the warren of underground bunkers which Ariock had carved out of bedrock. His perceptions slid helplessly off the chrome plating.

Fortunately, he had connected the bunker to the Academy by an underground passageway. One had to know where to look.

Ariock appeared in the secret passageway with a clap of thunder. He brought fresh air from Mongolia, along with his friends and gear. The displaced air caused a sudden pressure change and a mini-shockwave.

Booming sounds came from above. Bombs, or missiles, or blaster cannons.

“Don’t leave just yet, Ariock,” Thomas warned. “Let me suss out what’s happening.”

He led the way to the vault door of the bunker and tapped a keypad. The door retracted.

Inside the round room, ummins, govki, and other aliens gaped. The area was packed with lab technicians who had sought the nearest bomb shelter. There might be some students in the mix, too. Weak light filtered through the slitted sky shafts, wan and red.

“Thomas?” Kessa stood among them, gawking with disbelief. “Ariock?”

Thomas offered a nod of acknowledgment. “Hey Kessa.”

He walked through the crowd, as if his walking presence was completely normal. His colorful Mongolian woolens added to the strangeness.

Ariock ducked under the vault door. He had sized most rooms in his city to accommodate every species, including nussians, but he had purposely made bunker doors low. A bottleneck could be defensible against Torth invaders.

Clusters of workstations filled half the floorspace. Scattered people were clearly trying to bring the system online. The Twins floated in their own nook, and they stopped to stare at Thomas. They looked like children glimpsing a legendary hero.

Thomas didn’t even spare them a glance. He crossed the musty-smelling bunker, walking past offline monitors that were dark and dead. He seemed to choose a workstation at random. He flipped on its backup power supply and took a seat.

“The Torth have appropriated our own transports and major weapons.” Thomas opened and scanned menus on the holographic projection dashboard. “My guess is that they’ve enlisted help from the local penitent population.”

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Ariock frowned, trying to figure out how this invasion was possible. The lone shuttles that had slowly been invading his solar system had been too far away to pose any kind of threat. Unless…

Did every single one of them contain a teleporter?

Had they hopscotched from one satellite to another?

But Torth should not be able to do that without depleting themselves. Their power was too insignificant for galactic travel. They could not teleport across parsecs.

“It’s possible the Torth have figured out linking.” Thomas said that with casual nonchalance, as if it did not entail a cataclysm. “Or they might have figured out galactic teleportation.”

This was worse than a disaster.

The most powerful combatants in the known universe might be popping into Ariock’s centralized stronghold, without warning, and murdering his people. They could show up from anywhere in the galaxy. This was an apocalypse.

How many penitents had they enlisted? Hundreds? Thousands?

The Torth Empire must have detected Ariock’s long absence, and decided that now was their best chance to attack. They were all about striking while Ariock’s people were undefended.

He should never take a vacation ever again.

He should have killed all the space lurkers, as Garrett had suggested.

Vy looked sick with hopelessness.

“It’s not as bad as it seems.” Thomas gave them a reassuring glance. His quiet voice no longer had a prepubescent squeak. He had the timbre of an adult.

Somehow, Ariock felt a little bit less despairing. If Thomas thought there was a chance for victory, then there was a good chance.

“It looks like the Torth did destroy our supercom network.” Thomas scrolled through a minimalist menu. “And the planetary network as well.”

“Yup.” That was Varktezo. “We can’t get our defenses online.” The ummin had risen to his feet, having been hidden behind another cluster of workstations. “I guess they must have missed one relay satellite; otherwise you would not have received the emergency broadcast.”

Ariock could imagine that. His relay satellites were strung throughout the solar system, orbiting planets or masked as part of asteroids. The Torth attackers might well have missed one or two.

But in an emergency, wouldn’t Garrett have broken his promise about staying far away?

He would have visited Ariock and Thomas in person in order to alert them … unless he was overwhelmed with fending off the unexpected invasion. A journey to Earth would deplete one fifth of Garrett’s raw power. He would not risk that, if he was embattled.

Or incapacitated.

Or dead.

How many hours had Garrett been fighting?

Ariock decided that he could berate himself later. He needed to save people. Everything else had to wait.

“Ariock,” Thomas said, before Ariock could run out the door. “I need your help to repair the communications satellites.” He used his own holographic power to display different hardware parts. “You’ll put these together. Here and here.” He animated the diagram, demonstrating. “With luck, the Torth won’t notice the repairs until it’s too late for them.”

Ariock wasn’t sure why the planetary network should be a top priority, but he decided not to question it. “All right.”

“It’s not just for personal communication,” Thomas said. “It’s machine to machine. This will enable me to control all of our missile launchers. Not to mention the transports and shuttles, which I can fly as drones.”

“Got it.” Ariock expanded his awareness upward. He extended himself through the stratosphere and into orbital space.

He wished he was saving people, but instead, he allowed Thomas to walk him through the repairs, step by step. He used his powers to fuse machine parts together in orbital space.

“It’s online,” Thomas said with satisfaction, after running a test via his workstation. His fingers sped through holographic menus.

Workstations and lights throughout the bunker powered on. The immense wall monitors flickered and began to display different views of the city, obscured by smoke and ash. Flames licked at cliffside buildings.

A recorded voice played from multiple speakers. She spoke two words in the slave tongue: “System online.”

Ariock’s supercom vibrated.

“Ignore your queue of emergency notifications,” Thomas told Ariock. His fingers flew, and on the monitors, blaster cannons seemed to come alive and swivel towards airborne targets. “You’ll need to item-teleport vulnerable people to our underground bunkers. Save as many people as you can.”

That was what Ariock wanted to hear.

“Don’t get near any Torth,” Thomas warned. “They likely have all three gasses in play on this battlefield. The smoke will mask the danger to you. Please, be extra cautious.”

Inhibitor gas. Telepathy gas. And insanity gas.

The threat made Ariock’s blood feel like it was boiling and freezing at the same time. Those gasses meant that he would only dare to use his powers from afar. That compounded the risks. Big action—earthquakes, tornadoes—always carried a risk of hurting his own people.

Vy gripped him and pulled him into a fierce hug. “Stay safe.”

She kissed him.

“You too,” Ariock said fervently. This wasn’t his nightmare, he reassured himself. He didn’t want to abandon Vy during a dangerous time, but some instinct told him that this bunker was the safest place she could be.

He jogged towards the exit. Since he could not teleport through chrome-plated walls or ceilings, he had to enter and leave this place the same way everyone else did, though the vault door.

“Call me if there’s an emergency,” he called over his shoulder.

At least emergency calls could get through, now that he’d repaired the main satellites. This invasion must have been extra terrifying due to the obliteration of communications. That explained why so many people were stranded aboveground, in shops or apartments or classrooms.

And it was so easy for the Torth to learn things when they were on the ground, wreaking havoc.

As soon as Ariock was away from the mirror trap of the bunker, he stretched his awareness far upward. The smoke from fires and explosions had created particle thunderheads.

He teleported himself inside an immense cloud. He ignored frigid temperatures and icy dust. All he cared about was finding survivors.

He found them. Life sparks filled his city, in closets or in locked rooms.

The glow of Evenjos was sedate, rather than a fierce thrum. She hid under the ocean, no doubt afraid to reveal herself, since inhibitor gas could end her life. Ariock imagined her as kelp, caught helplessly in ocean froth. She must be in a pathetic mood.

Yet her diminished status hinted that she had actually risked her life to protect the city. Ariock saw telltale signs as he inhabited buildings and streets. The wreckage here did have a border.

Evenjos must have expanded into a monstrosity and shielded the city from aerial bombardment.

In fact, she had ferried thousands of people—mostly shani—to a rocky island. She must be shielding them there, and she had probably healed countless injuries. Nothing else would deplete her so much.

The life sparks could not tell Ariock anything more. If Garrett had any power left, he was indistinguishable from the thousands of Rosies and Servants who were marauding through the streets and slaughtering innocent people.

It was time to be a hero.

Ariock rocketed up high, into the stratosphere. Then he let himself go into free fall.

While his body plunged through the mass of smoke clouds, he went into a clairvoyant trance. It was unnerving, letting his body fall while utterly vulnerable, but it wasn’t his first time. Enemy transports tended to avoid smoke and turbulence. He estimated that he had at least a full minute before his body encountered any region of risk. That was plenty of time for a practiced teleporter like himself to get things done.

He ghosted through the Academy.

He glided in and out of halls and secret passageways faster than an eye blink. Although he did not find Garrett or Cherise, he did encounter classrooms full of cowering people.

He entered one for a split second without bringing his body all the way through. The moment in which even a hair on his head entered the classroom gave him enough of a mental edge to widen his awareness and encompass all the people and desks and chairs in the vicinity. He did not waste time on rounding up the people. He simply scooped it all up within his awareness, desks and people alike, and then he deposited them all into the secret tunnel.

The surprised people would get the idea and find their way into the safe bunker.

Done.

Ariock’s consciousness slammed back inside his free falling body. He fought vertigo and reversed his fall.

He supposed that he could have stowed himself somewhere less dynamic, but would a random basement truly be any safer than the clouds in motion?

He didn’t think so. Like Thomas had said, there were the gaseous weapons to consider. The Torth must have suffused most of the city with telepathy gas and worse.

They would set traps for Ariock. They knew that he would return.

The sky was a pastel emptiness, banded with stripes from the gas giant which neighbored Reject-20. It was so huge, and Ariock was so good at defying gravity, he nearly tricked his brain into believing that the largest void was below him instead of overhead. He rocketed through this windy region of the stratosphere—and abandoned his body again.

He ghosted, uncaring about his helplessly falling body. He located more people who needed saving.

He blinked through classrooms, lab rooms, warehouse closets, and more. He scooped a hundred people here, a hundred there, and exported them to safety.

The Torth Empire would not murder all of his people. Not if he could stop them.