We received the official report of the loss of the colony ship carrying the Common Council citizens an hour after Master Raychelle and I felt the brush of Fate that showed us its destruction.

“The colonization project is going to be halted,” Master Opal said.

“Everbright won’t be happy with that,” I said.

“He’ll be less happy with the investigation Verulia Industries is going to come under,” Master Raychelle said. “He sold the idea of the accelerated schedule with the promise that a smaller time window would let Verulia’s security forces focus their efforts more effectively. The first flight was supposed to the safest one.”

“What do you think happened?” I asked. I was angry at all sorts of things and wanted a good excuse to punch someone’s face into applesauce.

“It’s too early to jump to conclusions,” Raychelle said. “We’ll need to send a ship into warp space to investigate the site.”

“They’re not going to find that this was an accident, are they?” I asked.

“We don’t know what they’re going to find,” she said. “For now, we’ll focus our efforts on finding the pieces of Vunthor’s organization that are still on Hellsreach. It’s entirely possible that Vunthor himself is still here.”

I knew she was right, the plan she described was a smart one, but in my gut I couldn’t help feeling that she was terribly wrong too. I hadn’t been sidelined, but searching for Vunthor on Hellsreach still seemed like a step down from pursuing him across the galaxy.

Something troubled me about it too. Like there was a little voice in the back of my head that was sure he wasn’t still on Hellsreach, but I couldn’t place why I was so certain of that.

“I should go talk to Darius,” I said. “The Common Council is going to have questions and they might need our resources to get the answers they need.”

I stood to leave and Master Raychelle stood with me. She walked to the door of the room we were using before touching my arm to signal me to stop.

“This wasn’t your fault Mel,” she said, watching me carefully.

“Vunthor was the one responsible, and the people working with him.” I said. I’m sure it sounded like I was agreeing with her.

“Remember that,” she said. “There are going to be a lot of angry people, and they’re going to be looking for anyone they can pin the blame on for this.”

“You think they’ll blame us?” I asked.

“It’s the flipside to our reputations,” she said. “We can do more, so people expect us to be able to do everything. That’s never going to be the case though. We can make things better than they would be without us, but people will still get hurt. We can’t save everyone. Not all the time.”

“We can try though right?” I asked.

“To a certain extent,” she said. “But we have to remember that we’re worth saving too.”

I nodded. I understood what she was saying, and the message underneath it. I shouldn’t let myself shoulder too much of the blame or allow other people to put it on me, but knowing something and doing it are two separate things.

“I should talk to Darius,” I said, trying to get out before I had to make any promises that I wasn’t likely to keep.

“Let him know that Opal and I are both on this,” she said.

I nodded again and hurried down the hallway to the transfer hangar.

“I don’t see how this happened,” Fari said, appearing beside me as I jogged down the hallway. “I’ve got the inspection reports up and the Common Council ship was swept three times for any sign of sabotage, including immediately before launch.”

“What’s the story with the inspectors,” I asked. “Could any of them be on Vunthor’s team?”

“Not likely. They were all Imperial, and they’re all accounted for,” Fari said. “Security is already bringing them in for a debriefing.”

“What about the passengers on the colony ship? Could one of Vunthor’s followers have made it on to the wrong ship?” I asked.

“It’s possible but we were screening for that,” Fari said.

“Whoever it was, we should have caught them,” I said.

“I know,” Fari said.

I hadn’t noticed the pain in her voice until then. I’d been unconscious for two days and was blaming myself for not being there when I was needed. She’d spent that same time working to prevent this and things had still slipped by her. I stopped jogging and paused to consider that for a second.

“What Raychelle said to me, applies to you too,” I said.

“I know.” she said. She sounded like she was having the same trouble believing it as I was though.

I could have argued the point, I didn’t like seeing her feeling bad, especially when it wasn’t warranted. Instead though I decided to be honest.

“I hate getting beat,” I said.

“Me too,” she said.

“We’re going to get Vunthor,” I said.

“Will we?” she asked. “If he’s this far ahead of us, I don’t see why he’d stay around at Titanus.”

“You’re thinking he’s going to take over the colony ship and fly them somewhere else?” I asked.

“They’re out in frontier space. It would be all but impossible to follow them if they just went further on and knew how to obscure the trail they left behind.”

“So he takes off for a few years, builds up his forces and waits for Verulia’s security to grow lax?” It was a feasible plan, but only if enough of the other colonists were onboard with it.

“Or he finds a partner out there, one of the old Warlords, and makes his return even sooner,” she said.

“That would be close to the worst case scenario,” I said. “Verulia’s on the hook for providing security as part of their contract, so there won’t be any Imperial troops there a few years from now. With a Warlord behind him, Vunthor could stage an assault and wipe out all of the Garjarack’s on Titanus before anyone could mobilize to stop him.”

“Maybe Master Raychelle’s right though, maybe he hasn’t left the planet,” she said. “We had all of the checkpoint personnel looking for him specifically.”

“If he’s here, we’ll find him,” I said.

“And the others like him?” Fari asked.

I started to say that we’d get them too but I stopped myself.

“He’s only the first of many isn’t he?” I said. “Do we even have an estimate for how parties on each side didn’t want the war to end? Or how many are still fighting it?”

“The last poll had support for continuing the war at 42% for the humans offworlders and 44% for the Garjarack. The Common Council citizens ran lower but there were still about a third of them who want to see the other two sides kill each off entirely.”

“Maybe it would be simpler to just let them,” I said. “Let the mega-quakes get rid of them all and Verulia can have the planet fair and square.”

“Simpler, but that’s not an option is it?” Fari said.

“No,” I said and sighed. Nothing was ever simple or easy. “There’s the other half to two-thirds of the population to consider and even the war callers aren’t necessarily all bad.”

“So what are we going to do?” Fari asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Find Vunthor I guess. We’ve got to start somewhere and I think today puts him at the top of the list.”

“You don’t think he’s here do you?” she asked.

“That’s true, but I don’t know why,” I said.

“Let’s talk to Darius then,” she said.

“You think he’ll know the answer?” I asked.

“No, but I think if we can get your mind off it, and if you’re not thinking about it, your subconscious may be able to put the pieces together for you,” she said.

As it turned out, Fari was right, but not for the reasons we could have anticipated.

“There’s an emergency session of the Council going on now,” Darius said when we touched down in Zawalla City again. “They’re considering a resolution that will make it illegal to transfer property to Verulia Industries or any of its subsidiaries.”

“They don’t want another colony ship to be destroyed,” Fari said.

“It’s more than that,” Darius said. “They don’t want the citizens leaving their sphere of influence. I should have seen this coming.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You proved that the Council has as much rot in it as the other two factions,” he said. “I think this disaster may have been another ‘homegrown’ one.”

“What?” I asked. “How is that possible?”

“How can it be anyone else?” he asked. “The ship was searched top to bottom. They looked for everything that Major Vunthor’s group tried to do the Garjarack colony ship and the inspectors found nothing. It had to be an inside job.”

“But why?” I asked and before he could answer a flood of possible reasons poured into my brain. “Wait, the new cities, they’re not going to be organized the same way as the existing Council cities are they?”

“No. So a lot of the Council member’s constituencies are going to be jumbled up. There will have to be new voting regions drawn and put in place,” he said.

“And there are some people who won’t be elected again if their districts aren’t preserved,” I finished his thought. Power. One of the more common reasons for sapients being horrible to each other. “Who’s in favor of the resolution?”

“Most of the Council,” he said.

“Your Dads too?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “They don’t trust Verulia. I think that’s what’s driving a lot of the votes.”

“Are either of them in danger of losing their seats if the move to Titanus happens?” I asked.

“No one knows,” he said. “The new districting plan hasn’t been drawn up yet and Verulia hasn’t committed to a specific placement for the colonists yet.”

I sat down and started massaging my temples.

“I really need someone to hit,” I said. “This counter-planning and figuring out schemes is driving me nuts.”

“I know what you mean,” Darius said. “I volunteered for the Scout Corp because I wanted to make a difference. It was dangerous as hell and I’m an idiot for thinking this but now that I’m away from it, I kind of miss being a Scout. It was so much simpler.”

I lifted my head up to respond to him and froze. Words didn’t work for me for a moment and then the idea that my subconscious had been screaming at me finally broke through. I looked up at Darius with wonder and joy in my eyes.

“You’re brilliant,” I told him.

I was almost bouncing out of my seat as the pieces fell into place.

“Because I want to go back to being a Scout?” he asked.

“No,” I said, shaking my head and waving the idea away. “Not that. Vunthor! He did leave! He’s on the human ship!”

“You put something together, didn’t you?” Fari asked.

“Yes! It was his record, the one that I shared with Illya!” I said. “He never left the battle lines. Ever. He always led from the front. He specifically turned down any promotion that would land him a desk job or keep him out of combat. It was in his psyche profile. He didn’t delegate. Not the dangerous stuff. He has to be up there and in charge in person.”

“How would he have gotten an agent on board the Council colony ship?” Darius asked.

“I don’t know.” I said.

“And how did he get onto the Exxion IV forces colony ship?” Fari asked.

“Don’t know that either, but he’s definitely up there.” I said.

“So what are we going to do about that?” Darius asked.

“We’re going to go after him,” I said.

“Master Raychelle won’t allow you to,” Fari said.

“If she didn’t want me going into danger, then she shouldn’t have agreed to my becoming a Crystal Guardian,” I said. “This is what I do. It’s what I’m good for. Reviewing reports and coordinating security forces isn’t in my toolset. Smacking the hell out of people is though.”

“You’re good at more than that Mel,” Fari said.

“And you shouldn’t throw yourself into danger that easily.” Darius said.

“This isn’t about me. It’s about the human and Garjarack ships,” I said. “The smart move is to clean things up here so that no more problems arise and then deal with Vunthor’s forces in a permanent and overwhelming manner. You know that’s the option that Raychelle will pursue.”

“That’s probably true,” Fari said. “If you know it’s the right call why aren’t you willing to work with her on it?”

“It’s the smart call, it’s not the right one,” I said.

“You’re worried about Kallak’s family aren’t you?” Darius asked.

“Them and all the rest of the Gar,” I said. “And the human colonists. Without Vunthor in the picture there’s a chance they could start healing the wounds the war put on them. If he’s there to continue the battle though, both sides are going to get drawn up in it again.”

“Verulia’s security forces will be there to stop them though,” Fari said.

“Like they did this time?” I asked.

I looked at both of them and saw the concern they each had. I was more important to them than people they’d barely or never met. The same was true in reverse, except I knew we had the chance to remain safe, and no one on those ships did. I knew if I did nothing that some or all of them would die and I knew that giving up on them now would push me just a little closer to the emptiness I carried inside. I’d grow colder by degrees until what Echo had said would be true – I’d be alone because I just wouldn’t be able to care anymore.

“I can’t let those people die,” I said. “Raychelle has to look at the big picture. She doesn’t have someone higher up that she can count on to handle that. And she can’t ask me to handle something like this because it would be unfair to place that kind of burden on me, to ask someone who doesn’t have the training needed to handle a job this big.”

Fari and Darius both nodded in agreement.

“But this is my life. I have to live with the choice I make and the consequences it has,” I said.

“Even if they kick you out of the Guardians for it?” Fari asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Even if it means that.”

The original plans for the colonization of Titanus called for the Imperial Oversight committee to arrive there two weeks before the first colonists did. That plan had fallen into the depths of a black hole the moment the timetable was advanced.

The revised plan was that the Oversight committee would follow along two weeks after the first colony ship left. The colonists would spend their first few weeks in space rather than transferring to the ground habitats on arrival. The committee would get to perform an accelerated review of the planet’s safety and everything would proceed without issue.

Fari and I were the ones who set fire to that plan.

“Vunthar’s forces are small but efficient,” I said. “They’re going to make the best use of whatever time we give them.”

“And if you’ve judged this wrong and they’re still here?” Master Raychelle asked.

“It’s not an ‘if’, we know part of Vunthar’s loyalists and dozens of other hate groups are still active here,” Fari said.

“The only thing that sets Vunthar apart is that he seems to be in the lead in terms of bringing his plans together,” I said.

“That makes him one of the most dangerous actors on the field then,” Master Opal said. “And you’re still restricted from full casting. Why do you think one of us shouldn’t handle this?”

“A lot of reasons, but the biggest is that you’re too important,” I said. “Send me and people will think it’s a minor problem. If one of you two go, the whole colony move will start looking too dangerous.”

“I thought you had reservations about Verulia?” Master Raychelle said.

“I do,” I said. “But I also think we need to get people off Hellsreach. Even once the quakes settled down, the rest of the planet is too unstable.”

“Politically and socially?” Master Raychelle said.

“And tactically,” I said. “The Empire will keep a defense force here, but you know there’s going to be someone who makes a play for taking control of it. A warlord or a corrupt Imperial or just someone greedy and stupid enough to think they can pull it off. I know we’re good at stopping that sort of thing, but people will still get hurt in the process.”

I thought of the people I’d failed to save before I managed to stop Makkis and his conspiracy from turning Hellsreach into a super weapon that could wipe out its neighbor worlds. Makkis and his group played for keeps and there were hundreds of people who’d died as a direct result of their attempts to keep me off their trail.

“This wouldn’t be a problem if Titanus wasn’t a frontier world,” Opal said.

The communications blackout that prevented us from contacting the first colony ship was the result due several factors, not the least of which being that Titanus lacked most of the modern amenities like a planetary spell web infrastructure. Until the crisis on Hellsreach was revealed, Verulia wasn’t sure it was going to do anything with the system. In the months that followed, they’d started work on the magical frameworks needed to improve communication with the Imperial core worlds, but like most frontier worlds, the going had been slow.

“There’s still two issues to consider,” Master Raychelle said. “First, we’re still trying to determine what’s happened with your anima casting.”

“If Vunthar has five hundred troops at his disposal, I’m not going to stop him with anima casting,” I said. “I just need to be a messenger who knows to look for. Between Verulia security and the Imperial troops the auditors brought along, there should be plenty of casters to lock Vunthar and his forces down.”

Master Opal and Raychelle shared a laugh at that and I looked at them suspiciously.

“Remind her she said that later,” Opal said to Raychelle.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“What Master Opal is saying is that you’ll never have ‘plenty of casters’.” Raychelle said. “You can expect you’ll either have far too few or far too many. We don’t live the sort of lives where we have just as much as we want of any resource.”

“Though we often have as much as we truly need,” Opal said.

“Then it sounds like I’ll be fine there,” I said. It felt like they were teasing me, mostly because they were. Which was their right as experienced Guardians, but it was still annoying.

“There’s also the second issue to consider,” Master Raychelle said. “You’re still my apprentice. That means you’re supposed to go where I go and learn from what I do.”

“There will be a lot to learn from the situation here on Exxion III,” Master Opal said. “But in this instance there are other factors to consider as well.”

“You’re thinking that most apprentices are younger than Mel aren’t you?” Master Raychelle said.

“Yes, but also that she’s shown good judgment so far,” Master Opal said. “And that while she is your apprentice, she doesn’t have to be under your direction at all times.”

“Are you suggesting that I provide her a task and then entrust someone else with returning her to us safely?” Master Raychelle asked.

“Yes,” Master Opal said. “If only we could find someone who’s familiar with the peculiar challenges of keeping Mel safe from herself.”

“Is that my cue to join the discussion?” Master Hanq said as he walked into the small conference room that we had commandeered.

I was out of my chair and hugging him around his broad neck before he had the chance to get another word out.

Then it occurred to me what his presence meant.

“Wait a minute,” I said, backing away from him and turning an accusing eye on Raychelle and Opal. “You knew! You knew I was going to ask to do this and you sent for him days ago!”

“She is as quick as your reports say she is,” Master Opal said.

“Let’s just say that after you chased Makkis down through opposition that would give a full Guardian pause, we were concerned you might become somewhat fixated on Major Vunthror as well,” Master Raychelle said.

“Not that you’re wrong to be. As you say, he is in a particularly dangerous position,” Master Opal said.

“And, to be fair, I was in this sector already,” Master Hanq said. “You can thank Guardian Clearborn and her companion for that.”

“Yael sent you here?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “I saw her and Zyla about two weeks ago.”

“What were they doing?” I asked.

“Fate crafting up a storm,” Maste Hanq said. “Zyla was placed high enough in the Khan’s power structure that she had access to a lot of information on other Warlords who remained active outside the boundaries of the Empire. They’re trying to use that and their combined Aetherial casting power to stay ahead of some calamities that have been brewing for a while.”

“They’ve been meeting with some success from Yael’s last message to me,” Master Opal said. “The two of them negotiated an amnesty with one of the more amiable ex-Warlords and shut down scheme to dehydrate a water planet that was being spearheaded by a less amiable one.”

“Dehydrate a water planet?” I asked. I knew the rest of the galaxy had its own problems, but in the face of what I’d been involved with on Hellsreach it was easy to forget that we weren’t the only ones dealing with serious issues every day.

“It was a revenge thing,” Hanq said. “The Oulani were instrumental in taking Warlord Graize out of power. He couldn’t reconquer the system, so he tried to genocide the Oulani homeworld. Guardian Clearborn prevented that from happened and Zyla put an end to Graize.”

“Was it necessary that she kill him?” Opal asked, frowning in concern.

“She thought it was,” Hanq said. “Yael wasn’t as certain, but she was able to provide evidence that it was at least lawful.”

“Zyla’s not planning on becoming a Crystal Guardian is she?” Raychelle asked, as though confirming an earlier suspicion.

“I don’t think so,” Hanq said. “She and Yael seem to work well together.”

“And the Crystal Guardians are spread thin enough that we’d ask them to handle separate missions,” Opal said. “Do you think my former apprentice is having a positive influence on her?”

“I didn’t know Zyla before they met, but judging from the dinners we’ve had together, I’d say that’s a safe assumption to make,” Hanq said. “Zyla’s very protective of your former apprentice. I think that may have been where Graize tripped up. I gather he made some very specific threats and that…didn’t turn out so well for him.”

“How did you wind up having dinner with them?” I asked.

“Didn’t I tell you? Part of my amnesty was the allowance to join the Imperial Navy,” he said.

“I knew that part, but I thought you were commanding a fleet of ships?” I said.

“That’s technically true, but the fleet I run are all fast courier ships. They’re mine to command when the Empire wages a fleet action but under normal circumstances, the captains act independently and just submit reports to me.”

My brain almost let that slip by, but at the last second I caught the importance of what he’d said and put two and two together.

“You have a courier ship? How fast can you run the jump route to Titanus?” I said, feeling my pulse quicken and my heart pound out its beats like a hammer on an anvil.

“With a clear lane, we’ll make it there before two days the Colony ship arrives,” he said.

I felt my skin growing warm with delight. And then disturbingly warm.

In my happiness, I’d let a surge of physical anima flow through me. The flames reacted to that and I felt cold grip my chest once more as the thought of what flames hot enough to slag metal would do to a spaceship the size of the one we were on.

I couldn’t let that happen and, fortunately, I’d learned from the disaster in the colony ship’s engine room and from my..from Echo. This time I didn’t let the vicious cycle of danger and Void anima cocooning pull me under. The darkness in me was mine. My tool. My weapon.

Grasping the cold in my chest and calling up  the darkness that always lay a hair’s breadth beneath my surface, I formed it into a blade in my mind and sliced away at the flames from the inside. The fire blaze hotter inside me, so I slice deeper into it. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling but I wasn’t going to fall apart. Not again. The fire seemed to sense that and I felt it retreat before I reached its core. Bits of it remained behind and I snuffed those one by one until all the anima inside me felt properly settled. The whole exchange took only a couple of seconds and by the time I finished letting a slow breath out my skin was back to normal, the icy sense of danger was gone and I felt much more under control.

“Well that was interesting,” I said.

The others were looking at me with a concern in their eyes that said they’d all caught on to what was happening within me.

“Are you ok Mel?” Fari asked.

“Yeah, I think I am,” I said. “And I don’t think I’m going crazy.”

“What happened just now?” Master Raychelle asked.

“I got the fire under control,” I said.

“How?” she asked.

“Basically? I stabbed it in the face,” I said.

Master Raychelle regard me with a look that said I would be explaining things in much greater detail before she was satisfied.

Later, I thought. I could talk to her or Fari about Void anima but it was tough to explain to other people. I didn’t actually have a separate entity living within me, but sometimes that was the most useful metaphor to explain how I did what I did with Void anima.

“Why didn’t I ever adopt you?” Master Hanq asked, looking inordinately pleased.

Despite the fact that I was (technically) an adult, there was something touching about that. Hanq had been the closest thing I’d had to a father for well over a decade. I’d imagined him adopting me a lot, but somehow the Sisters had always felt like my replacement family. They were harsh sometimes, and often stern, but, when I thought back, never cruel. Well most of them. Well, not the ones I liked anyways.

“You could barely handle me for four hours a day,” I said. “I’d have broken you if you tried to deal with me the other twenty hours too.”

“Darius is going to riot if you try to leave him behind again,” Fari said.

“And who would Darius be?” Hanq asked.

Master Raychelle spared me from having to define my relationship with Darius to Master Hanq.

“A young gentleman who’s been of great assistance to Mel,” she said. “He’s been named the Common Council’s Liaison on Security Affairs hasn’t he? I expected having him along on the mission will fall within his remit.”

“With Admiral Okoro and Darius, that’s two strong casters,” Fair said. “Would you like a third?”

“Always!” I said, guessing that she was referring to herself.

“The Oversight committee isn’t scheduled to leave for the Titanus inspection for over another week,” Master Raychelle said. “I don’t think Mel and Master Okoro can delay that long.”

“I agree,” Fari said. “But as the Imperial Overseer I believe I’m empowered to change our schedule and staffing to meet unforeseen demands.”

“You intend to give yourself permission to leave early?” Master Opal asked.

“No. I intend to advance the committee’s timetable to match the accelerated colonization process,” Fari said. “It will be disruptive to the efforts here, but Major Vunthor’s actions highlight that Verulia Industries’ accelerated colonization plan has serious security holes in it.”

“The Ambassador will need to review your proposed plan, but I’m curious to hear it first,” Master Opal said.

“That won’t be possible,” Fari said. “He’s already reviewing it. In short though, I plan to take three of the analysts with me. We’ll backfill their positions here will two additional personnel who have a clear public record. The rest of the work log, I’ve already handled.”

“You move quickly.” Master Raychelle said.

“I don’t need to sleep, so I can get a lot done each day,” Fari said.

“It seems like you have the situation well in hand then,” Master Opal said.

Master Raychelle and I felt the brush of Aetherial magic flit through the room at the same time. Both of us were out of seats and shrouding everyone present in Void anima shields instantly but we were still too late.

The attack hadn’t been aimed at us. We were just receiving news of it.

The two of us reached out  to grab the thread of fate casting that was taunting us but it disintegrated on its too quickly. All I got was a single image from it.

One of the three colony ships that launched on the first day. It’s gray hull lit by the weird lights of warp space. The massive engines that fed its warp generator exploding in a multi-chromatic burst of pyrotechnics.

We’d lost one of them.

One of the first three.

Vunthor was that far ahead of us.

Worse, there wouldn’t be a clear warp lane for Master Hanq’s ship to transit through. Our chance to arrive at Titanus before Vunthor was gone. I looked at Master Raychelle and saw that something else had vanished too.

Vunthor had raised the stakes and proven that he was a serious threat. Raychelle wasn’t going to send an apprentice into that. She’d handle it herself and she’d go with overwhelming force. It was the smart play, the one that would protect the maximum number of lives.

Just not the ones on the other two ships.

I’d wanted to save them. To save Cadrus and Nenya and Kallak and even Eirda, but I’d been too slow.

For all of Hellsreach’s problems, I had to admit it was beautiful from far away. From the edge of space the only thing visible of the people who inhabited the troubled planet was the light they sent into black expanse that surrounded them.

“Can I give you a refill?” Darius asked. He was holding a fresh brewed pitcher of tea and from the aroma wafting through our small command ship, I hazarded a guess that he’d also popped another batch of sweetfruit cookies into the oven.

“Mmm, I know four cups should be enough but I can’t see ever getting tired of this,” I said.

“The galley’s well stocked,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll run out any time soon.”

“Oh, yeah, the tea’s nice too,” I said and let a mischievous smile play across my face.

Even with the steady infusion of tea, I was so tired I was feeling giddy. Echo – I couldn’t call her my Mom – had been right about the cost of spending time in a Void cocoon. It had taken me nearly a full day of rest to recover the strength I’d burned away with that trick. The good news though was that my healers had investigated me thoroughly and concluded that I hadn’t done any permanent damage to my anima reserves and that I was recovered to the state I’d been in before we arrived at Hellsreach.

The bad news was no one had any idea why or how I’d managed to slag the engine room of the Verulia colony ship, so I was still on restricted spell casting.

Apart from my continued lack of magical development though a lot had changed.

Fari was officially Imperial Overseer for the Colonization project. Opal and Raychelle hadn’t been able to make her a Crystal Guardian (that took a more thorough review and a board of at least five existing Guardians). Confirming her Imperial citizenship had been a breeze however and from there the Imperial Ambassador was able to appoint her to the Overseer role directly.

As I’d expected she took to it several hundred times better than I would have. In theory the actual work was being done by auditors from the ambassador’s staff, but Fari dove into it and within twelve hours had them caught up from the backlog they were crushed under by the advancement of the departure timeline. The best part though was that she seemed genuinely happy.

Since I’d met her on Belstarius, we’d been close, but apart from me I hadn’t seen her develop many other friendships. We’d talked about it and that was just who she was in part. From what she could remember, she’d always been someone who formed a few close friendships rather than many lighter ones.

In the auditors, it looked like she’d found a few other kindred spirits though, which wasn’t too surprising. Fari was a genius with Mental anima. We could talk about a lot of things, but I didn’t have the talent or understanding to follow the details of the more esoteric things she could do. Imperial auditors on the other hand are selected specifically for their intelligence. Even the ones who weren’t wizard class casters of Mental anima were so frighteningly good at dealing with data and information that it might as well have been magic.

Her success as Imperial Overseer didn’t entirely get me off the hook though. Any endeavor as large as relocating a planet’s entire population had lots of oversight positions that needed to be filled. My lack of training and spell casting capacity was an issue for some of them, but there were left plenty of roles where what was needed was simply someone trustworthy and, somehow, I still qualified as that.

“We got another set of dispatches in from the Council,” Darius said. “Unless you need a hand, I’m going to see if there’s anything in there that will interfere with the latest list of cargo restrictions that Verulia posted.”

“Go ahead, I’m down to a dozen personnel files to review before I get to dive into the real fun stuff,” I said.

“The open arrest files?” he guessed.

“Yep. All the criminals that no one knows where to find, and no one wants on the colony ships.”

Verulia Industries had a team dedicated to preventing known war criminals from using the colony transfer as a method of escaping to a new world. With the insane rush the accerlated schedule put everyone under though, Master Raychelle had asked me to act as an “unofficial” Overseer for the Verulia security efforts.

“How many are there?” Darius asked.

“Tens of thousands,” I said. “But the auditors have narrowed the list down to a little over a hundred who are likely to still be alive and could pass through the screening systems without being recognized.”

“A hundred ghosts,” Darius said. “They give you the bestest jobs don’t they?”

“I’d rather deal with literal ghosts to be honest. At least I can take a punch at them.”

“Based on past experience, I’d like to wager some money that you’ll be taking a punch at these ghosts before too long too.” he said.

“Oh, I’ll take that bet!” I said. “Either way I win!”

“I should bet you a kiss then.” Darius said. “That way both of us win.”

I tugged on his shirt and he dutifully bent down so that I could caress his lips with my own.

“I don’t know how you managed to pull Liason duty for the Common Council but I am so glad you’re here with me,” I said.

“There are certain perks that come from having two parents on the Common Council,” he said.

“Have I mentioned I love your Dads?” I said.

“They’re kind of fond of you too,” he said. “Which reminds me, when you’re feeling up to it they’d like to have an official private dinner with you.”

Darius and I had gone to dinner with his Dads a few times already. Normally they were casual affairs. Neither Hector nor Osgood were big on ceremony or formal ranks. Our conversations also tended to focus more on the mundane elements of our lives rather than anything we dealt with in our official roles as Crystal Guardian or Common Councilmember.

Not that our lives outside our official roles were all that mundane. Darius had plenty of stories from growing up on Hellsreach but it was Hector and Osgood who I was really amazed by.

They’d met as rival politicians, both having been elected to the Common Council the same year. Hector had been in the party that favored developing a native military force that would be sufficiently armed to drive the non-native factions off the world. Osgood had been the most outspoken member of the party that favored an appeal for off world support.

Things had changed between them the year Darius was born. Hellsreach had been officially inducted into the Crystal Empire two years prior, but Imperial support was slow to arrive. Some of the worst fighting in the history of Hellsreach raged in the interim as all the sides tried to secure their position before Empire locked things down.

Darius’ mother was killed when fighting broke through Mapston, the former capital for the Human and Garjarack natives of Hellsreach. It was Osgood who rescued the infant Darius and kept him safe in the destroyed city through the long siege that followed. Osgood had thought that Hector had been killed as well and initially planned to protect and raise Darius as a tribute to the opponent whom he respected and admired.

Little by little though, Osgood began to feel the loss of his old rival and, seemingly too late, discovered that his feelings ran a lot deeper for Hector than he’d imagined.

Their reunion should have been been a happy occasion but life’s never quite that simple. The phrase “and I’ve still got the bolt caster scars to prove it” factored into that part of the tale more than once. In the end though, after events that make Hector cringe when he remembers them, they sorted through the misunderstandings and wound up together, happily, for the last sixteen years.

Wheedling out additional details from them was a fun game to play, especially since they often deflected the story in tales about Darius’ childhood that were delightful to listen to!

None of that was likely to be on the agenda for an “official private dinner”. If Hector and Osgood had requested that, it meant they needed to speak to me as members of the Hellsreach Common Council to a representative of the Crystal Empire. Nothing we said would be binding, but it was a chance to speak under the protection of a privacy screen, and I knew they wouldn’t invoke that unless they’d discovered something they weren’t free to act on themselves.

“Dinner would be wonderful,” I said. “When were they thinking of having it?”

“Tomorrow,” Darius said, “At our place.”

‘Our place’ in this context was Darius’ home. Having lost one spouse to violence, Hector had invested a frankly unreasonable sum of money to ensure that his home wouldn’t allow such an invasion again. It wasn’t the most secure facility on the planet, but that was largely because Hellsreach was a war world built by hyper-advanced aliens. Short of ancient artifact-level wards, their house was about as well defended as you could get and still be on Hellsreach.

I was about to agree to the dinner date when I flipped open the next personnel file on the colonist that traveled with the first wave of settlers the day before.

“We have a problem,” I said, double checking the file to make sure it was tagged correctly.

“What did you find?” Darius asked.

“The first colony ships that left, they held humans right?” I asked.

“Yeah, they took the townsfolk from Polsgard,” Darius said. “It was one of the human towns that got destroyed in the mega-quake. There wasn’t any housing for the people and all their stuff was destroyed, so there wasn’t much to be transported aside from the people themselves.”

“And Verulia security was responsible for cross checking that everyone who got on board the ship was a Polsgard resident right?” I asked.

“Actually we had an Imperial team and a couple of teams from the Council’s military working with them,” Darius said.

“Would any of them have been briefed on the latest additions to the Wanted list?” I asked.

“All of them should have been,” he said. “Who do you think they missed.”

I passed him the personnel file.

“Illya lived there,” I said. “What has me worried is that the ship departed with 509 colonists ‘confirmed by witness’. Meaning someone with proper ID confirmed to security that the other person was a resident.”

“So  you think Illya found someone to lie for her so that she could escape on the colony ship? That would explain why Fari wasn’t able to find her.”

“Titanus is far away, but she won’t be in a better position there. In fact we could almost find her more easily on Titanus than here on Hellsreach,so why go?” I asked.

“Verulia security should be keeping a close eye on the colonists that were only partially confirmed,” Darius said. “There shouldn’t be much that she can do there to get away any further.”

“They should be, but they’re rushing. Gan said they accelerated the timetable to bring a swift end to the in-fighting that remained but that doesn’t add up. By moving this fast Verulia has left open huge holes in its security net.”

“You think they’re under some other kind of pressure?” Darius asked.

“Yeah, spending things up wasn’t a trivial choice to make. It’s got to be costing Verulia a large portion of the profits they plan to make from their research here,” I said.

“Unless they plan to profit off more than what they showed you,” Darius said.

“That would make sense but I’ll need to track it down later,” I said. “For now there’s a more significant problem to handle.”

“How much damage do you think Illya can do on Titanus?” Darius asked.

“By herself, not much, but there were 509 colonists that were ‘verified by witness’. I think we have to assume that she’s not at all alone there.” I said.

“That’s not good,” Darius said.

“It gets worse,” I said. “The colony ship made it to the stellar warp gate twelve hours ago. We can’t contact them until they’ve landed on Titanus, which means Illya and her crew will have almost a month to prepare for us.”

“And we can’t stop the colony ships from leaving because we have no proof that they’re on board.”

“So we’re going to be walking into a trap, laid by highly trained and experienced professionals who have a fanatical hatred for the people we’re trying to protect,” I said.

“That sounds like fun. Shall I book us on the next ship out?” Darius asked.

The darkness that followed the flames was deeper than any I’d felt before. Elemental cold radiated through me in place of blood and my thoughts faded to a single word repeated over and over.

“Out.” I said without voice or breath or body to form the word.

On a subconscious level, I knew that there was something wrong. I’d been knocked out before and I’d been overwhelmed by Void anima before. Neither was fun but neither cut me off from the world and left me conscious of its loss at the same time. Being unconscious would have been a blessing, but the fact that I was aware of my lack of surroundings suggested that I was dealing with a whole different order of problem. I struggled, fighting back without any idea of how to land a blow against my problem (which could almost be the subtitle for my life) when things got weird.

“It’s not quite time yet,” a woman said.

“For what?” I asked.

The mere act of forming a word other than “out” was enough to push away the darkness that had consumed my thoughts.

“To be free,” she said.

“I don’t understand,” I said and the darkness roiled. Sensation came back to my skin and, through the cold that permeated me, I felt a breath-like warmth start to spread.

“You’re beginning to,” the woman said. “Focus on my voice and come back to us.”

“Ok,” I said. “What happened? Where I am?”

“Deep in your arts,” she said. “But you did save them.”

Satisfaction and relief rippled through me to hear that even though I had no idea who “they” were.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“It’s been so long,” my mother said.

I’d felt the destruction of a mega-quake. I’d heard continents shatter and crack. I didn’t break like that. I didn’t have to. I already had, years ago. Hearing my mother’s voice reminded me of the fact.

“You can’t be her.” I said. Anger as hot as lava surged up through the cracks that defined the unstable plates of my psyche.

“Much too long,” she said.

“Don’t pretend. Don’t you dare pretend to be her,” I said. I felt completely awake, completely in control of my powers and yet completely off balance too.

“I’m sorry Mel,” my mother said. “Sorry that you were pushed to this desperate of an act. Sorry that I’m not there for you. This isn’t how I imagined things turning out, but I guess it could have been worse.”

“Worse?” I said. “I’m so broken now I’m hallucinating. I can barely use my magic and I’m a danger to everyone if I even try.”

I felt a warm hand touch me on the arm and slapped it away.

“And now I’m leaving myself open for someone to manipulate like a five year old,” I said. “If you’re not a delusion, I’m going to do unspeakable things to you.”

“I’m not a delusion, and no, you’re not. My daughter is better than that. You always have been.”

“You can’t be my mother,” I said. “She’s gone. She’s been gone for a long time.”

“Dead isn’t gone,” she said. “Though the difference is somewhat debatable.”

“So you’re trying to tell me that you’re her ghost?” I asked.

“Ghost are impressions that dying people leave which are still connected with the anima they carried in life,” she said. “I’m not a copy, but I’m not all of who I was either. Think of me as an echo, I guess.”

“I don’t need an echo, and I don’t need you,” I said.

“I know,” my mother said. “You’re stronger than I ever could have imagined. They need that strength and they need you.”

“Who are they?” I asked.

“Do you know how few Void anima casters can form attachments with other people?” she asked. “We can be so quiet and hidden. Revealing ourselves enough that someone can care about us can be impossible sometimes.” she said.

“Master Raychelle gets along fine with people,” I said.

“And how many of them are more than acquaintances? Some, I think, but you’re measuring yourself against the wrong person if you trying to judge your worth that way.”

“Who else do I have?” I asked.

“Who you were and who you wish to be.” she said. “I know that doesn’t help though. When I was younger than you are now, my teacher gave me the same advice but life’s not that simple.”

“So what do you want from me Echo?” I asked.

“Grandchildren,” she said. “Someday. At the moment, I want you to unwrap yourself from the cocoon that you’re buried in.”

I did a double take at that and my disbelief faltered a bit. I couldn’t be haunted by my Mom, but Echo was doing a good job impersonating her. It wasn’t enough that I believed what she was saying but it did bother me that I couldn’t see what her real agenda was.

“Cocoon?” I asked.

“You were in danger and out of control,” my Mom said. “You did what you could to save yourself and the people you were caring for. The only problem was you went a little too far.”

“I did this?” I asked.

“Feel it, doesn’t the darkness seem familiar?” she asked.

I reach out at felt the void that we were in. It swirled around my hand.

“It’s my anima!” I said. “But it wasn’t like this last time!”

“Different castings, different effects,” Mom said. “You lost control of your anima before but that time the threat was external. This time it came from within you, so rather than striking outwards you wrapped yourself up in it. The problem was, you wrapped it so tightly, using your sense of danger to guide you that when the cocoon itself became a danger there was nothing to tell you when you were safe to stop.”

“I am really good at messing myself up with my own magics aren’t I?” I said.

“You’re exceptionally good at manipulating anima, you’re just about 14 years late on getting proper training on the things that you shouldn’t do with it,” Mom said. “For what it’s worth though, I did the same thing three time when I was learning to cast and it was for far less dire reasons than you had.”

“How did you get out your cocoon?” I asked.

“My mentor helped me recognize that I was trapped in one. Once I noticed that it’s not hard to pull your anima back in where it belongs.” she said.

“So I can leave here as soon as I want?” I asked.

“Yes. Probably the sooner the better too.” she said.

“Will you come with me?” I asked.

“I’m always with you,” she said. “But not like this. This part of me is part of the Void now. I can only speak with you now because you’ve suffused yourself too deeply into your anima.”

“What if I do that again?” I asked. “If it’s easy to get out of this state then we can talk more later right?”

“Leaving the cocoon is simple. What comes afterwards isn’t.” she said. “I wish it was easier. I wish we could speak like this whenever you needed, but the cost is more than you can afford, especially in the long term.”

“Isn’t that my choice to make?” I asked.

“I left a lot of things behind when I died, but my love for you wasn’t one them,” my Mom said. “There aren’t many ways that I can show that love to you anymore, but let me at least mother you this much: in this Void, many part of you will wither and fade away. Don’t give yourself up for me. So long as you flourish, another part of me lives on. One that’s much more important than this echo.”

“What if I don’t want to go?” I asked.

I felt like a four year old, being obstinate for no sane reason. There was a certain irony in that, but it still felt like I was asking a valid question.

“Then you’ll stay here. I can’t kick you out,” Mom said. “I can’t make any of your decisions for you. All I can do is ask if you really want to leave behind the people who are important to you. Raychelle? Darius? Fari? Would it be ok if you never saw them again.”

I scowled and tried to come up with a good counter argument to that. I take it as a small personal victory that I failed and had the good sense to admit defeat there.

“If you are her, you should find a way to talk to me,” I said. “If you’re not, then…thank you I guess.”

It hadn’t felt bad speaking with Echo and a part of me really did want to stay, but I knew she was right. My wasting away, cocooned inside a shroud of Void anima wasn’t going to do anyone any good.

“Good luck and try not to overdo it like this so much,” Mom said. “It’s ok to let other people help you once in a while. Trust me you’ll need it.”

I scowled again but couldn’t argue with that either.

Undoing the cocoon was as easy as she’d said it would be. It was all my own anima and all under my control. The problem had been I’d nearly strangled myself in it. In trying to get the fire under control I’d smothered not only the flames but also most of myself too. As I drew the anima safely back inside me where it belonged I heard other voices speaking.

“She’s starting to come out of it,” Master Raychelle said.

“What happened!” Fari screamed in my mind, her telepathic link forming faster than I could think.

“Ouch. Softer please.” I asked, replying on the telepathic link so that I could get a sense of the situation before I had to start dealing with it.

“Sorry,” she said. “You’ve had us scared to death for a while now.”

“How long was I out?” I asked.

“Two days,” she said.

“Oh, that’s not good,” I said, thinking of what my body was going to feel like after days without water or food.

“No it’s not,” Fari said. “So fill me in! What happened back on the ship there? One moment you were kicking butt and taking names and then next there was fire everywhere in the engine room.”

“That’s about all I remember from the ship too,” I said. “I guess I wrapped myself in a Void cocoon to stop the fire. What happened to the saboteurs though?

“They escaped, but we’re not certain how. I didn’t see them move through the hallways,” Fari said.

“What about Illya?” I asked.

“The same. I think she escaped with the strike team, but I don’t have proof of that.”

“I don’t think we need much. Did you see her move from the pressure cabin I left her in?” I asked.

“Nope. Which limits the options of how she ambushed you,” Fari said.

“The teleporter again?” I guessed.

“Seems like a safe bet. She’s someone Illya knows and would agree to help quickly like that. Plus it would explain how they moved around without the colony ship’s sensors detecting them.” Fari said.

“I’m guessing she hasn’t turned up since then right?”

“None of them have, and I’ve been keeping an eye out everywhere I can,” she said.

“What about Kallak?” I asked.

“He’s fine. He recovered yesterday, with a little help from some of the Verulia healers. He’s still stuck in space though. Chief Jallo is researching treatments for geomancers but they’re rare enough and Hellsreach is in such an unusual state that there’s not many previous cases to work from.”

“Good, so no one was hurt then,” I said.

“You’re not ‘no one’ Mel,” Fari said.

“No one else,” I amended my statement.

“Come on Mel, time to join us in the land of the living again. There’s lots you need to do here,” Master Raychelle said. I swept the rest of the Void anima away inside me and opened my eyes.

To my left I saw a viewing window and the stars beyond it, which told me I was still in space. Darius was asleep on one of the chairs across from me in a position that looked like several degrees less than comfortable. I was resting above stone table, floating weightless in a field that exempted me from the ship’s conjured gravity. Master Raychell was to my right and was powering the field from what I could see.

“How did you move me in here?” I asked, thinking of the difficult of transporting me when I was encased in Void anima.

“Not easily, but this ship is well protected,” Master Raychelle said.

Darius started to stir in his sleep at the sound of our voices but it was going to take him a few moment to fully wake up, so I decided to get up to speed as quickly as I could in the interim.

“Thank you,” I said. “Sorry to be that much trouble.”

“You prevented the sabotage of a colony ship and disrupted several spells that were hidden on the engines. I think a little bit of trouble is allowable under the circumstances,” she said.

“What do you need me for now? Can I track down that strike team?” I asked.

“You’re going to need a little more recovery time than that,” Raychelle said. “I’ve got people working on the issue now.”

“What can I do then?”

“Mr. Everbright has made a plea to the Colonization Committee and has been granted an accelerated schedule for the process. He claims he doesn’t want to risk either side of the conflict trying to destroy the other, so Verulia is expediting their investment in order to resolve the difficulties between them as soon as possible.”

“When do they start leaving.

“Tomorrow.”

“But that’s not enough time to review anything!” I said.

“Yes, and isn’t that just a little too convenient for him?” she said.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“Go with them. Find out what the story is and report back to me. We can shut this whole thing down if we need to, but without some kind of proof of wrongdoing, this may be the best hope the people of this world have.”

The unexpected visitors on the Verulia colony ship could be there for any number of reasons. They might even have a valid right to be in possession of an Imperial transport. The the colony ship’s spellweb didn’t know where they were though so I had to bet we weren’t going to have a cordial exchange of pleasantries when I found them.

“Imperial Flight control, do you have a tracking link on an Imperial shuttle in this vicinity?” I asked via a private telepathic channel.

“Checking now,” Clar, the flight controller, said.

To my left, Gan was describing the various features of the colony ships. The people of Hellsreach would call the ship’s home for a month during the voyage and then another month once they made landfall on Titanus. Illya asked some sharp questions about the logistics of the operation and, to his credit, Gan had answers ready for most of them. I was a little disturbed though by how often his response was a variation of “Verulia’s local personnel will be coordinating that”. It wasn’t like they could relocate a planet full of people and expect them to sort of their new living arrangements on their own, but I got the sense that Verulia Industries was going to be very much in control of the colonists new lives. What incentive they would have to relinquish that control was unclear.

“No tracking link on any Imperial transports in your immediate vicinity Guardian. Do you have visual on one?” Clar asked.

“Yes. It’s a Red Sand model,” I said. I’d studied weird things as a kid. Crystal Empire warships and transports had been a craze for a few months and even half a decade later I remember a lot of the ship types that I’d been into. The Red Sands were a standard troops transport model. Fully enclosed, with light armor, a decent flight engine and room for a squad of twelve. There were a few famous ships that were conversions off the basic frame, but the one attached to Gan’s ship looked like one of the stock ships that we had in service for the last several months on Hellsreach.

“We have a report of a stolen transport, Red Sands model,” Clar said.

“Where was it’s last known position?” I asked.

“The Laris Central Processing Base,” Clar said.

I groaned. The Laris Central Processing Base was one of the larger human controlled military centers in the southern hemisphere of Hellsreach. There were dozens of transport ships there and tens of thousands of people who had access to them. The list of potential culprits was too large to determine who was waiting for us or what their goals were.

“Thank you Flight Control. I’ll see about retrieving our errant craft.”

Dealing with the thieves was going to involve a some serious risks. No one else on the transport with me had signed up for that sort of thing but I suspected some would feel like they were required to “help me out”. In Cadrus’ case that would be out of gratitude, but in Gan’s it would be to protect his investment. Whatever their reasons, I didn’t want to expose any of the people with me to that kind of danger.

Gan was talking with Cadrus while the seals between our transport and the colony ship were established and tested. I waited till he paused to take a breath (which took an annoyingly long time) and cut into the conversation.

“I want to go on ahead and talk to the inspection team before anyone disembarks,” I said. “If they’ve found the place safe enough then we can transfer Kallak over. If not then we’ll head back to the Imperial station while the issues are corrected.”

It was a valid cover story and I was pretty sure no one in the group was running a truth detection spell. Eirda looked at me suspiciously but then that was the way she looked at everyone so I was pretty sure she hadn’t picked up on my subterfuge.

The automatic checks on the seals finished and the passage between the two ships opened in time to punctuate my words. I stepped through without waiting for anyone to object to my plan and found Illya tailing after me.

“I’m supposed to stay with you right?” she asked.

I didn’t have anything to worry about in terms of her escaping custody from the transport shuttle, but I could see the nervousness in her eyes. She couldn’t stay with the Garjarack family.

“Right,” I said and proceeded inwards. I wasn’t exactly happy to have her with me, but some part of my brain wasn’t displeased with the notion of having a combat medic along when I might get banged up.

Not that she’d be able to heal me easily, given my relationship with Void anima and what it did to receiving spells from others. I’d been working on that while I convalesced but I still got less than a tenth of the energy from a healing spell as restorative anima. It kind of sucked but it was still better than nothing in dire cases.

“We’re not going to find the inspection team,” I said when the portals between the two ships closed again. I didn’t want to scare her but it definitely wouldn’t have been fair to lead her into a situation where violence was likely without prior warning.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“The Imperial shuttle that is docked here was stolen,” I told her. “I don’t know what the thieves are up to but I’m not thinking they’re going to be super happy to see me.”

“Why not wait for support?”

“Best case scenario, they’re peaceful but desperate and just need someone who will listen and help them out. Worst case, they intend to escape after destroying the colony ship and our transport if we don’t stop them first. Either way, Imperial support’s not going to get here in time.”

“Do you know what you’re facing? Are you sure you can handle them?” Illya asked.

“We’re in one of the auxiliary docking chambers,” I said. “That door leads to a pressure cabin. Head in there and you’ll be safe ok?”

“You want me to stay behind?” she asked.

“I want you to stay safe,” I said.

“What about you though?”

“I’m going to head to the engine room. Once I’ve dealt with the thieves, I’ll come back and collect you and the others.”

“And if you don’t come back?”

“I’ve come back from a lot worse that this,” I said.

That didn’t convince her, but I couldn’t blame her. Taking on an unknown number of unknown adversaries was the hallmark of a bad plan. I felt the remnants of the Fate weaving tugging at me and recognized this as the “stupid moment” I was being led to.

Even without magical coercion helping them, plans that are put in motion have a tendency to continue barreling on until someone gets in their way. With my spell casting limited and too many unknown’s to count lined up before me, I was perfectly situated to be crushed beneath whatever avalanche someone had setup.

Of course that all assumed I wasn’t more powerful than the avalanche.

Illya either saw the gleam of insanity in my eye, or decided that fighting me on this point wasn’t going to lead anywhere she wanted to go. Whichever was the case, she nodded to me and headed over to the pressure cabin.

“Fari, would you be so kind as the warn me if I’m doing anything stupid here?” I asked.

“Ok. Warning, you’re doing something stupid,” she said. “You’re under no orders to keep Verulia Industries property safe. Let them blow up the colony ship if they want. No one’s in it now. The safest move is to get back in the shuttle and wait for a squad of Imperial soldiers to arrive as back up.”

“They’ll get away if I do that,” I said.

“We can track their shuttle,” she said.

“Like it was tracked on its flight here?” I asked.

“That’s a fair point. Allow me to counter it with this though; I’ll be paying attention to it if it tries to leave.”

“Can you tell if they teleport off the ship before it lands?” I asked.

“Maybe,” she said. “I can probably detect a departure, if they’re not careful to disguise it, but I probably won’t be able to determine their arrival spot. I’d rather they get away though than lose you.”

“I appreciate the sentiment but you know I can’t take that risk. There’s Fate magic involved here. If they get away something unpleasant is going to happen, and it’ll be hard to see it coming.”

“So what’s your plan?” Fari asked.

“I’m guessing you’ve already hacked the colony ship’s spellweb right?” I asked.

“With the security they had on it, I’m not sure I can even justify calling it hacking,” she said.

“Can you make out the spells the thieves have in place to cloak their presence?” I asked.

“No. They’re actually pretty good. The local scrying nodes all show the ship empty and running automated tasks,” she said.

“Exxion IV covert ops personnel?” I asked.

“Very likely. Could be Gar military too, but the odds favor the humans given where the shuttle was stolen from.”

“Excellent. I don’t need to hold back then,” I said.

“I can’t locate them for you,” Fari said. “And the colony ship doesn’t have any internal defenses. Anti-boarding is going to be handled by Verulia security once the ships are underway.”

“All I need is for you to work the environmental controls,” I said as I wrapped a strip of cloth around my eyes.

With the blindfold on I couldn’t see anything. Not in the normal spectrum of light. That meant Fari was free to douse the lights throughout the ship and then strobe them at blinding intensity in random patterns.

She couldn’t detect the thieves, but she was able to project an overlay on my vision of the ship’s interior. Wandering around a wireframe version of the ship’s corridors was a little strange but I was able to make good time to the engine room. I figured the thieves either wanted to steal the colony ship or sabotage it. Stealing the ship would lead them to the control room but that was trivial to deal with. Fari had the systems locked down and I could call up an Imperial Cruiser to take them into custody long before they jumped out of the system. Sabotage was more problematic,  The engine room was where they had the best chance of doing the most damage there so I headed there to catch them in the middle of whatever they had in mind.

As it turned, out the sabotage guess was the correct one. I found the first two covert-ops guys guarding the door into the engine room. Bolt were holding fully charged bolt casters. I’d switched to Void anima vision on the way, so the men and the guns stood out against the dark corridor as radiant beacons of light.

Between the darkness and blinding lights plus random air horn blasts over the ship’s communication system, they never saw me coming. Ten steps from the corner of the hallway, seven punches and two kicks and they were sprawled on the ground while I was barely breathing hard.

I rolled through the doorway into the engine room and dodged the another attack. The two outside the door had a third as backup.

“Hostile! My position!” he shouted.

I spun and caught him with a flying elbow to the face that mashed his head into the wall. The impact knocked the sense out of him and the guard went limp as a soggy noodle.

That was the good new. The bad news was that I felt my arm burn where I struck him. I paused as I understood what that meant. He’d had a shield up. My Void anima had instinctively ripped it away. I felt my hands and feet burning too and realized that I’d done the same thing to the two guards in the hall.

Subconscious casting, especially with Void anima, was something I did fairly often. From what Master Raychelle said, I’d probably drilled on it from a young age. Like just after I started walking. When I’d lost my mother, I’d repressed a whole lot of things, including my powers. I’d hidden inside my Void anima, all the while unconsciously practicing how to to suppress the other magics that I was developing. Most people who use Void anima on themselves manage to die horrible and brief deaths. It’s seriously dangerous stuff. Yet I’d coexisted with it for well over a decade.

Given the kind of control I had with Void anima to do exist with it for so long, I couldn’t understand where the burning was coming from. It wasn’t Energetic anima. I didn’t have a ton of that, and I could have controlled it better if I did. The obvious answer was that it was psychosomatic, lingering trauma from my fight on the volcano but it felt terribly real. And I’d seen real smoke come up from my hand. I could be hallucinating too but I didn’t think I was that far gone.

Fari’s flashing lights bought me a second to get out of the line of fire of the rest of the soldiers. They couldn’t cast their light amplification spells for nighttime work and even heat sensing spells didn’t do them much good in the warm confines of the engine room. They all had plenty of anima though, so I was able to see them with no problems whatsoever.

I watched as one cast a Mental anima spell, to locate me by detecting my thoughts.

“That one’s clever,” I said to Fari. “Care to punish him for it?”

“Certainly”, she said with glee.

I watched the energy of the spell bend to report my position as being behind the next storage chamber over. Clever boy signalled his compatriots to circle around the containers and catch me in the crossfire. They did succeed in setting up a crossfire but, unfortunately for them, I wasn’t the one in the middle of it.

The soldier’s confusion over almost shooting one of their own gave me the opportunity to dispatch another one, but I could feel the cost of fighting beginning to add up.

My breath was hot. It felt like the fire had climbed inside my lungs. It was a unique experience. I couldn’t see any flames on me, but heat on my skin had moved past discomfort and onto pain. Not agonizing pain, but enough that I needed it to stop. Balanced against that was the need to put down the rest of the covert ops before they killed me.

“Ready anima blades,” their leader said. “Spread out and engage the hostile in melee.”

It shouldn’t have surprised me that they were armed with anima blades. I think I’d just really really hoped that they might have forgotten to bring their death swords along on the evil covert mission they were running.

“Better idea, throw your weapons down and surrender and I won’t make you eat them.” I had Fari pipe my words over the engine room’s comm speakers so they couldn’t identify where I was hiding.

“Who are you?” the leader asked.

“Guardian Mel Watersward of the Crystal Empire,” I said. “This is the only offer I’m going to make. Disarm and surrender now. You will be treated fairly and given a proper trial before an Imperial court.”

“One of the Guardians?” the leader said. “You are a human are you not Watersward?”

“Surrender now,” I said. “I have only disabled your personnel so far. Any further aggressive action on your part will be met with increased force.”

“You have no place here Watersward. Leave now and you won’t be part of the reckoning that’s coming.”

One of the other soldiers crept around the corner of warp gate capacitor I was hiding behind. He had his anima blade held warily in front of him and his reflexes were hyper-enhanced with Physical anima.

So I drained all of that delicious magic and planted his face into the floor hard enough to knock him out completely. I knew he’d need medical attention – you don’t KO someone without doing sigificant damage, but I had a medic and a doctor on call back where my transport was docked, so I wasn’t too worried for his long term safety.

The soldier’s anima blade (and then head) hitting the deckplate was enough to bring two more of his teammates scurrying to my position. The blaring horns had covered the noise of the engagement but the squad was tracking each other’s vital signs from what I could see by the spell links between them.

I moved to tackle one and drag us both behind cover from the other one, but I wasn’t able to drain his reflexes before he got a snap kick off into my chest. That knocked me back into his partner, who I all but devoured. The kick had hurt but the lingering pain was more from the burning of erecting my own shield than the damage the soldier had done.

I was shaking from the pain, but at the same time I felt stronger than I had in months. Between the two soldiers and the anima blade that I’d partially drained I was carrying around a lot of force. With it channeled into my strength and speed I knew I could end the fight within the next three heartbeats.

That’s when Illya shot me in the head with a force bolt.

It was a great shot. Plenty of power to get through my shield but with a rippling effect so that the blow wouldn’t splatter my head across the deck. It was as potent a non-lethal shot as she could have put together.

Unfortunately for her, I felt it coming.

Through the burning in my body, I felt the cold talons of danger grip my chest. Instinct as much as anything else got my Void anima circle up in time. I absorbed Illya’s attack completely and took no damage at all from it.

No physical damage anyways The extra energy and spell casting pushed me over the edge.

Fire, literal flames, exploded from my body and I screamed. It wasn’t a scream of pain though. It was rage. Pure inhuman rage.

I tried to hold myself back but, around me, metal started to melt into slag as the whole world blurred into a brilliant orange haze.

Rising up beyond the borders of Hellsreach was more peaceful than I’d imagined it would be. The Verulia Industries flyer ascended with a gentle but constant acceleration the whole way into orbit but what really seemed to calm things down was the way Kallak’s condition improved as we passed beyond the edges of the breathable atmosphere.

“He’s retaining anima!” Chief Jallo called out as the stars came out around us and the sky faded to a vast and sheltering black. We were in one of the least hospitable climates possible, but the Garjarack family breathed a collective sigh of relief and even Illya seemed to relax.

“He will be ok?” Eirda asked.

“He’s improving. He had a lot taken out of him though. He’s going to need plenty of rest and time to recover.” Jallo said.

“Can we take him home now?” Eirda asked. “He’ll rest better there.”

“No, Illya was right. He can’t go back, not until he’s fully recovered,” Jallo said. “He’s so weak he probably wouldn’t survive another incident like that.”

“He shouldn’t go back at all,” Illya said. Stern Garjarack faces turned in her direction and she added, “At least not until the planet settles down. If another quake happens near him, he’ll suffer the same effects as he did this time. He’d be safer on another world.”

Eirda drew in a breath to speak but Gan managed to cut in before she had a chance.

“As it turns out, that’s not only an option, but one I think you’ll be happy to embrace.”

“Why would leave our home?” Nenya asked, sliding closer to her mother.

“To live in a better one,” Gan said. “My company is going to be buying all of the land on Hellsreach and providing you with a home on Titanus.”

He made a mistake there but he was in full sales pitch mode, so I opted to let him go. I wanted to see how he tried to sell his idea and how the people here reacted to it.

“Titanus is a freshly opened colony world. Verulia Industries, the company that I work for, is establishing several development centers there. You’ll be able to live and work with the people that you’ve known or strike out to settle new territory as it is opened up! No more strife, no more warfare, just safe, comfortable living on a virgin planet. It’s the fresh start that everyone here needs.”

Gan gave his speech with the fluidity of a practiced salesman. It always puzzled me that someone would choose to sound like that. I suppose it was persuasive to some people but for me it always raised giant warning flags. I could see a similar wariness settling over Cadrus and Eirda, as well as the other elder Garjarack. Even Nenya didn’t seem to be taken in by Gan’s spiel. Part of that was probably because the delivery was too slick but a larger issue came down to the speaker.

Gan thought of himself as separate from the humans of Hellsreach. Like me, he looked different from the human races that were common on Exxion, but in the eyes of the Garjarack’s one human was (to some extent) the same as any other. I’d saved their lives a few times and even with that I was pretty sure Eirda’s trust only extended as far as she could see me.

“All of the people of Hellsreach will be moving to Titanus?” Cadrus asked.

“All of the ones who choose to take our generous offer!” Gan said.

“Gar and Humans both?” Eirda asked.

“Yes,” Gan said. “But don’t worry, the cities we’re setting up will be on separate continents and will be overseen by Verulia security. There will be no war on Titanus.”

“And we can go there as long as we sell you our home?” Nenya asked. Some forms of body language are easier to read that others. Suspicion, anger, and distrust all push the speaker towards a more combative stance. That doesn’t always tell you much though. In Eirda’s case, watching her stance didn’t help because she always looked ready to rip someone’s head off. Nenya was more open than her mother however so when she crouched and coiled in on herself it got my attention. She wasn’t going to tear into Gan but she wasn’t happy with him either.

“You’ll find that the home’s we’re offering on Titanus will exceed the value of the homes you have here,” Gan said. “We’ve made sure to stock them with all the amenities that galactic society can offer too, customized to meet your needs. I believe the Garjarack homes come with sectional living areas to make them easy to expand for extended families, for example.”

“And if we don’t own anything here? What will we get then?” Eirda asked.

Gan let a moment of confusion sweep across his face. He glanced at me, and then back at the Eirda and then over at Kallak before understanding bloomed.

I fought back the urge to laugh at his expense. He’d assumed that the Eirda’s family were among the wealthy and important Gar who chose to live on Hellsreach. The one’s who’d built businesses here to either profit from the war, or profit from the resources in the areas that were safetly under their military’s control. It wasn’t a terrible assumption to make either. After all they had one of the three Crystal Guardians on the planet looking after them and for some reason merited express service to save the life of their child.

Gan did a remarkable job at hiding his disappointed when he put things together and saw that it had been compassion not greed that had motivated me to act on their behalf.

“If you aren’t a property owner, then there is still room for you on Titanus!” Gan said, rallying as best he could. “The New Colony Settlers Program which the Crystal Empire has instituted covers all residents of Hellsreach as part of the contract. There will be Verulia supplied housing both within the cities and in the outlying agricultural areas.”

“What kind of housing?” Nenya asked.

“Brand new, freshly constructed apartments and homesteads. The homesteads are at a premium, so we’ll be using a lottery system to determine which families they are allocated to first,” Gan said.

Gan’s sales pitch was refined enough that he was able to go on for a while longer, singing the praises of Titanus and the new opportunities there. As he blathered on, I watched not only the Garjaracks but Illya as well.

She was easier to read. She forced her face into a mask of disinterest, but I could see she was hanging on every word Gan said and thinking what his message meant for the people above Salmon Falls.

By the time Gan finished speaking, Kallak was beginning to regain consciousness. Chief Jallo let the family speak with him for a few minutes and then shooed them all away so that Kallak could sleep and regain his strength naturally.

That, in turn, led to the discussion of Kallak’s immediate need to be away from Hellsreach until he recovered. I offered to find a berth for him on the Imperial Station but Gan countered that with an offer to put the whole family up on the first of the Garjarack colonist transport ships. He claimed it was to give them a chance to evaluate the amenities that Verulia Industries had to offer, but I saw at least two other plans in motion there as well.

First, it was an action designed to appeal to me. I’d made the family important and Gan was showing that he was willing to treat them as such to get on my good side. Second though, the family themselves were a valuable resource. Verulia Industries probably didn’t have any Garjarack employees whom they could use as spokesmen for their plan. Even if they did, those Gar would be on an outer circle of association with the Gar on Hellsreach. In a society as conscious of degrees of relationship as the Gars were, having someone on an inside circle who would speak favorably of you was invaluable.

In the end Gan was able to convince Eirda that his offer gave them the best chance of seeing Kallak restored safely, and that was all it took to decide things for the family. I wasn’t sure he’d be earning their endorsement any time soon, but he had a foundation to start working from at least.

We logged an amended flight plan with the Imperial Station and I brought Fari and Darius up to speed on how things were going while we accelerated to the high orbit that the Verulia Industries colony ship was parked in.

“I’m going to do a bit of digging on Verulia,” Fari said after I filled her in on what had happened. “Everbright’s only message so far has been about the property exchange but there has to be a lot more going on there.”

“You’re wondering about the businesses and the publicly owned spaces?” I asked.

“That and a lot of other things. Hellsreach is a mess but its a complicated mess,” Fari said. “You can’t just pluck everyone up and drop them into a new planet and expect it to all work out.”

“Agreed. I’m nervous about how he keeps referencing things like Verulia Industries security providing law enforcement for the new colonies,” I said.

“Right, that leads to the bigger question of who’s going to be in charge. Is Verulia going to dissolve the Hellsreach Common Council? Who’s going to own the utilities and the infrastructure on Titanus? Where will supplies come from for the first few years while the colonies are establishing themselves? What contingencies are there for Verulia going out of business?”

“All good questions,” I said. “Which makes me realize something.”

“That you’re glad I’ve got your back on this?” Fari asked.

“Always.” I said. “But something more than that too.”

“That’s it’s kind of weird that Raychelle and Opal are dumping this on you rather than taking care of it themselves?” Fari guessed.

“No, I think that’s a sign of trust,” I said. “They’ll get to review the findings and recommendations of the Imperial Overseer before the final contracts are signed and certified.”

“What are you thinking then?”

“That I shouldn’t be the one in the Overseer role.”

“Why? Who else could do as good a job with it?” Fari asked.

“You,” I told her.

It’s rare that I get to surprise Fari. She’s smart enough that she sees all my best tricks coming and can turn them back on me before I get a chance to spring them. The one area where she has a blind spot though is herself and how amazing she is.

“But, I’m not a Crystal Guardian.” she said.

“Yeah, that’s something we should have taken care of a while ago,” I said.

“No one would accept me as a Guardian!” she protested.

“I do,” I said. “You’ve been as much a Guardian as I have, for as long as I have.”

“Yeah, but you’re my friend.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’ll let the facts speak for me. Without you I couldn’t have defeated the Karr Khan. You were the one who saved Hellsreach. All I did was act as an annoying distraction. Today, I managed to help one family and one small town. You and Opal saved thousands or millions of people by defusing the second mega-quake.”

“All of that is stuff I did with other people though,” Fari said.

“Which is why I think we need to recognize you for the person you are,” I said. “Let’s face it, you’re much better suited to oversee a complex project than I am. I know its kind of a scary prospect, and I’m not suggesting I’d toss this at you and flee to another star system. I just believe that this is something you can do. Probably better than anyone else here.”

“It seems like a huge step,” Fari said.

“It is,” I said. “And I don’t want to push it on you if you don’t feel ready for it, or if you’re not interested in becoming a Crystal Guardian at all. I think you’d make an amazing one, but there’s literally an entire galaxy out there with different choices to chose from.”

“Wow, I should probably think about that for a bit,” she said.

“That’s never a bad idea,” I said. “I can stay on as Overseer until you decide, however long that takes, if I can count on your support in the interim that is.”

“Always,” she said.

I felt the ship drift into contact with its destination as Gan’s voice came over the communication system.

“We’ve arrived at the Garjarack Colony ship. Prepare to disembark.”

On a private channel, Gan sent an additional message to me.

“I’m glad to see you’ve begun the inspection process already!” he said telepathically.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“There’s an Imperial shuttle docked with the transport ship,” he said, “They have an inspection request logged into our spell web. Technically you’re a little early. We haven’t finished certifying the ship for travel worthiness, but I’m sure that won’t be a problem. We keep our ships in excellent condition at all times.”

I could hear both the sales pitch and the prepared excuse for any shortcomings that the inspection found in his words. There was only one little problem.

I hadn’t ordered any inspection of the Colony ship and those weren’t official Imperial inspectors who were waiting on board for us.

It’s rare to see someone summon an anima blade without an anima device. The drain of manifesting anima in a tangible form is immense but its the focus that’s required which usually makes it impossible for people to achieve.

“You will take my child away over my dead body.” Eirda said.  Her voice was barely a whisper but it didn’t need to be any louder. The tent was dead silent. We were all riveted in place by the red glow of the weapon she’d conjured from sheer will. It was pointed at Illya, but in the close confines of the tent there wasn’t enough room for anyone to escape her wrath if Eirda lost control.

As the Crystal Guardian present it was my responsibility to resolve situations like this. As the person who’d brought Illya into the tent, it was my fault that it had occurred in the first place. There were at least a dozen things I could have said to defuse or resolve the potentially lethal problem before me but for a critical moment I couldn’t do anything but stare at Eirda’s anima blade.

My own defenses rallied within my hands and chest, moving according to subconscious designs and I felt my skin begin to burn again. This wasn’t right. I wasn’t done healing. Eirda wasn’t supposed to have access to a weapon like that.

I wasn’t going to let myself die. I knew that. What scared me, I think, was what I was going to do to ensure that I lived. My Void anima could eat Eirda’s anima blade. It was pure energy, no threat at all. I tried to convince myself that was true, except I felt the phantom flames spreading over me. Old wounds, long since healed flared with pain. The spots where I’d been stabbed with an anima blade before.

I bit down and gritted my teeth to hold in a scream. I knew I couldn’t freak out but apart from that my mind had gone blank.

“Kallak needs that energy,” Darius said, putting a hand on Eirda’s leg as he slumped away from the boy and sagged into unconsciousness.

That simple gesture broke Eirda’s focus. She looked back at her son and the human who’d been struggling to keep him alive and the blade in her hand shattered into a million particles of light.

“Get him over onto that bed,” Chief Jallo said, indicating where Cadrus should take Darius.

“You, sit down before the backlash hits you.” TJallo said to Eirda. Eirda was already sagging and all but tumbled the floor before her family caught her.

“And you, explain what you mean. What’s wrong with Kallak.” Jallo addressed this remark to Illya, while simultaneously recasting the regeneration spell that Darius had been laboring to hold together.

Part of me wanted to run to Darius’ side and make sure he was ok. Hours of spells casting can be dangerous and Physical anima wasn’t his forte. On the other hand, it seemed wise to stay in-between Illya and the Garjarack family, especially in case I needed to “escort” her out of the tent quickly.

There was also the problem that I could feel waves of delayed stress washing over me. My anima was wild and out of control and just barely staying inside me. I was irrationally concerned that if I took a step in any direction I might explode or burn to ash. I knew that was crazy but remaining where I was struck me as the best course of action all the same.

“When you had him tested for his anima potential, it showed he had a broad spectrum talent, didn’t it?” Illya asked. “He was above average in all areas, but seemed scattered and couldn’t pick up casting of any one anima type easily.”

Eirda roused herself from the stupor her hastily cast anima blade had knocked her into.

“How do you know that?”

“He’s able to focus better when his sister is with him though,” Illya continued. “He can cast whatever sort of spells she’s adept. Not as good as she can but better than anything else he tries.”

“Yes, but I don’t understand…” Eirda said.

“I think I do.” Chief Jallo said. “You think he’s a geomancer. Where have you seen one before?”

“My brother,” Illya said.

“How did he die?” Chief Jallo asked. It hadn’t been a difficult guess to make give the tone of Illya’s answer.

“The Gar,” Illya said. “Toxic cloud spell. It infected the land. We couldn’t separate him fast enough.”

“We’re going to need a room on the Imperial Station,” Chief Jallo said, finally turning to address me.

“Right, I’ll see how soon we can get an orbital shuttle down here,” I said, and sent out a mental ping to the Imperial station’s command and control room. Being within a fully functional spellweb had a lot things going for it, not the least of which was the ease of communication that came from having someone else pre-casting all of the telepathy spells you might need to use.

“You’re not taking my son,” Eirda said, though the weariness in her voice made it clear she wouldn’t be opposing that idea with another anima blade.

“A shuttle with room for all of you,” I said.

That was enough reassurance for Eirda it seemed. Her eyes sagged closed and her arms went limp as casting fatigue dragged her into sleep’s embrace.

“I’m not clear on what the diagnosis is and why we need to relocate to the Imperial station,” Cadrus said.

“Your son may have a rare gift, one which standard testing will often miss,” Chief Jallo said. “Medic Illya believes that he is a geomancer. This means that his anima is connected to the planet’s. There are many benefits to this but, apparently, there can also be drawbacks.”

“His anima is part of the magic that flows through Hellsreach,” Illya said. “If that energy is disrupted on a planetary scale though, his will follow it.”

“So the earthquake is responsible for his condition?” Cadrus asked.

“It’s possible,” Chief Jallo said. “The planet’s anima paths can be disrupted by large scale seismic activity. I didn’t know that it could affect a caster as strongly as this, but that would explain Kallak’s symptoms.”

“It fits with what I’m seeing too,” I said and explained what my Void anima sight showed me.

“And if we take him away from Hellsreach, that will save his life?” Cadrus asked.

“If Illya’s theory is correct, then I believe it will,” Chief Jallo said.

“Will he be able to return?” Cadrus asked.

“It’s too soon to say,” Jallo said. “Let’s focus on getting him stable again and then work from there.”

“I can agree to that,” Cadrus said. “How soon can we leave?”

“Imperial station C&C is saying the soonest they can get a full orbital shuttle here is two hours. They’ve got a couple of personal crafts that can get here sooner but they won’t fit your whole family,” I said, relaying the information that the Imperial flight controller was giving me.

“Can Kallak last two hours?” Cadrus asked.

“I can’t be certain. I haven’t treated someone with these symptoms before,” Jallo said.

“Wait, maybe he doesn’t have to wait that long!” I said. “Imperial Control, can you link me to Mister Gan Everbright?”

“Affirmative Guardian Watersward, we have him registered on the web,” the flighter controller said. “Initiating connection now.”

I waited a moment as the controller set up the spell links for me and got Gan on the link as well. Normally this sort of thing would be outside a flight controller’s responsibilities, but one of the perks of being a Crystal Guardian is that all Imperial personnel are expected to support you to the extent that their duties will allow. It’s the kind of blisteringly unfair privilege that I’d dreamed of having as a kid.  Ordering people around sounds like a ton of fun, but it’s less enjoyable when you see the impact it has on their workload and overall morale, so I try to use it only for simple tasks that can be resolved quickly.

“Guardian Watersward, to what do I owe the pleasure?” Gan said.

“You have an orbital shuttle at the aid station don’t you?” I asked.

“Do you have need of it?” he asked.

“Yes, how soon can you have it prepped for lift-off?” I asked.

“Ten minutes. Two if it’s an emergency,” he said.

“Make it two,” I said. “We have a patient in need of medical evac here.”

Kallak had lasted for hours but Gan had said he’d followed an Aetherial casting that brought him here. If he was looking for events that would convince the populace to leave Hellsreach then a rescue where time was of the essence seemed to be a likely scenario.

“There’s a charge for expedited service.” He said it as a joke, intending to diffuse the gravity of the situation, but at the same time I knew he fully intended to get paid for his part in saving Kallak.

“The Empire will cover your costs.” I said, committing to as little as I thought I could get away with.

“Our ship will be ready by the time you get the patient here.” Gan said.

Cadrus carried Kallak to Gan’s transport ship.

Eirda came along under her own power, but only with support from a few of her children.

“Are you going to send one of your staff up with us?” I asked Chief Jallo.

“No, we’re not due for another batch of wounded for half a day,” she said. “I want to watch this case myself. Once Kallak has stabilized I’ll trade off with one of the other healers.”

“Do you ever sleep?” I asked her.

“Certainly,” she said. “Once a week, like clockwork.”

Her skin was lighter than mine, but pretty similar to Darius, which put her on the dark end of the spectrum for Hellsreach and about standard for Galactic society. It also meant she was just dark enough that I couldn’t tell if the circles under her eyes were natural or the result of epic sleep deprivation. Her delivery was also so dry I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not.

“What about me?” Illya asked. “Should I go back to the prison ship?”

“Guardian Watersward has final say on that,” Chief Jallo says. “But is she sends my one available expert on geomancers to the brig when I have a geomancer to treat, I’m going to declare her unfit for duty and take you with me anyways.”

“Guardian Watersward will take that under advisement Chief Jallo,” I said and fought back a smile.

“I don’t believe I should go with you,” Illya said. Her spine was straight as an arrow and her jaw was set tight.

“Do you have a physical or anima-related condition that prevents you from venturing into space?” Jallo asked.

“No.” Illya said.

“Then you’re coming with me,” Jallo said. “I won’t ask you to stay with the Garjarack, but I will request that you assist me. We have a patient. We’re going to treat him. It’s as simple as that.”

It wasn’t of course. For Illya it couldn’t be, and none of us were under any illusions to the contrary, but sometimes what’s real is less important than what you choose to believe could become real.

“I’m coming too, if you don’t mind Chief,” Darius said.

“You should rest, you’ve already over-exerted yourself,” Jallo said.

“I’m not as bad off as I pretended to be,” he said.

“And you’re in worse shape than you realize,” she said. “We’re going to need you when the next batch of wounded come in. Get some sleep until then.”

Jallo looked over at me.

“Or whatever,” she added.

The warm sensation on my face had nothing to do with anima casting for a change. Unfortunately, I had to toss some cold water on that idea.

“I need to stay with Medic Illya,” I said. I’d had to arrest her to put her in the prison ship. Until that was resolved she either needed to be in custody or accompanied by a designated law enforcer. Chief Jallo was many things but a galactic cop was not one of them, which meant I was the only one available who could officially look after Illya outside of a secure holding area.

Darius frowned.

“What if you’re needed down here?” he asked.

“Raychelle and Opal have the Guardian angle covered,” I said. “In terms of the overall recovery, I think I can do more good by getting a read on Everbright. If he and his company are on the level, they might be the best solution we have to the problems here.”

“I’d definitely like to be along for that,” Darius said.

“I’ll give you the full run down when I get back,” I said. “You can be my ‘independent analyst’.”

“I’ve probably got several conflicts of interest in that case,” he said. “Just promise you’ll stay safe. Fari won’t be able to help you up there either.”

“I know,” I said. “Don’t worry, I won’t do anything stupid.”

As I said the words I felt a loop of Aetherial anima coil around me and my danger sense flared. There was a current of fate that wanted to put me in a situation where I’d have to try one of my less brilliant plans to survive. I grabbed the bit of magic before it could slide away and called up my Void anima.

The darkness in me swept out and devoured the magic that was trying to bind my destiny. I wanted to unleash it fully to stab whoever the caster of the Aetherial spell was but I saw wisps of smoke starting to drift up from my burning hands. Dropping the anima like a hot poker, I was staggered to see that there weren’t any blisters on my hands.

Had I just imagined the smoke? Was the burning just psychosomatic? The thought that I might be going crazy was a troubling one, but it felt wrong somehow. Too easy. I had issues. Deep ones, but the burning sensation didn’t move me the way they did.

I gave Darius a kiss goodbye that lasted a little longer than was necessary and fell far short of long enough. I was going to come back to him, and he would be there waiting for me. Whoever was casting Aetherial spells could have prevented me from seeing him again (whatever their real goals were) and whatever their excuse was they were going pay for that.

The wounded were arriving as Illya and I walked out of her transport ship prison. I’d been worried that she’d try to escape once she had the chance, but she followed me into the triage room without a word and got to work. She was quiet and spoke only to ask brief questions. It didn’t make for the best bedside manner, but under the circumstances it was exactly what was needed to sort the patients out and get them to the right areas for treatment.

I stayed with her and the wounded, rather than retreating to the command room to “stay on top of things”. Officially I’d report that it was to “ensure her behavior and the safety of the other people at the aid center.” That was a small part of the reason why. The truth was, I was fairly certain she wasn’t going to attack anyone at that point. I’d given her too much to think about. The revelations about Major Vunthar had shaken her despite the fact that they didn’t surprise me at all.

With a hundred years of bloody war behind them, the people on Hellsreach had a lot of issues to work though. As an outsider, it was easy to see the patterns of the harm they inflicted on each other and the atrocities they were capable of. Major Vunthar’s anger and thirst for revenge were present on all sides of the conflict. Given what I’d done to the Karr Khan when he showed up after killing my home town, I wasn’t sure I was in a position to condemn Vunthar, but that wasn’t going to prevent me from stopping him either.

For Illya it wasn’t an issue that Vunthar had betrayed the peace process and was threatening the safety of the world at large. With the pain she carried, I didn’t think she cared about things as grandiose as that. His actions hit her harder than I could gauge because they were a much more personal betrayal. In the face of all she’d lost, Vunthar had been the one force that seemed to on her side and paying attention to the needs of her people.

It didn’t take a lot of empathy to know that she shouldn’t be left alone after learning that wasn’t the case. Work would help give her some distance from the news. Keep her mind off processing it until the raw power of her emotions drained away a little. After that though she was going to have a lot to deal with.

On top of all that however I had one other reason for staying with Illya, and it was the simplest of all of them. Even without healing magics of my own, I was still able to help care for the wounded. Carrying people on stretchers, acting as a runner for medicines and water, or helping people fill out medical history forms to help with diagnosis and treatment plans. In the chaos of the recovery efforts, there were plenty of opportunities for me to be useful, which was more than I could say for the last couple of months.

I dove into the work and lost myself in it for a while, happy to be getting something done rather than waiting to heal for a change. We’d been working on the wounded for a few hours when it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen Darius since he went in to the Garjarack family’s tent.

“How are things going with Kallak?” I asked on the telepathic link that Fari had setup.

“Still working on him,” Darius said and I could hear the weariness in his mental voice.

I felt my pulse accelerate. It shouldn’t have taken hours to heal Kallak’s injuries and Darius wouldn’t have spent that long on one patient if Kallak’s condition wasn’t serious.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, bracing myself for the answer.

“I don’t know,” Darius said. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“Have you contacted Chief Jallo?” I asked. Jallo was the senior healer at the aid center. I’d seen her handling some of the cases that came in, but she was also managing the rest of the staff too, including Illya and I. I looked around and didn’t see her, though that wasn’t too surprising since the last of the wounded were being moved to the recovery rooms and the next batch wasn’t due in for over twelve hours.

“Yes, she’s here with me now,” Darius said. “I called her over before and she couldn’t make out what was wrong with him then so she had me stay to apply a low level regeneration spell to him while she helped the rest of the wounded.”

“What’s happening with him?” I asked.

“His anima’s leaking out of him, but he’s unwounded,” Darius said. “He collapsed because he literally ran out of energy. The regeneration spell is keeping him going but none of the anima staying within him.”

I shuddered at that thought. I knew what it was like to have your anima ripped out of you. I’d been hit with a planetary weapon systems that did just that. I’d been able to save myself but only because I was kind of a freak and doing so had still cost me months of recovery.

“I’ll be there in a minute,” I said.

I looked around and saw Illya reading over the medical history of her last patient. I’d helped his father fill it out. It was a single sheet and the man’s injuries hadn’t been severe or complicated (which was why he was one of the last who was treated).

“I think we’re done here,” I told her, putting a hand on her shoulder to get her attention.

She startled when I touched her and that broke her from whatever daze she’d drifted into.

“Back to the transport?” she asked.

“No, not yet,” I said. “There’s another patient I need to check on.”

“Did another batch arrive?” she asked.

“No, this one came in earlier,” I said.

Illya looked around the room for the mysterious patient, but settled in beside me as I gently pushed her forward. We got to the door out of the primary aid center before she realized who the patient had to be. I could see she wanted to freeze in place but I wasn’t about to let that happen.

“You did good work in there,” I said, holding the door open for her. “How long have you been a medic?”

“Since I was fourteen,” she said.

“I thought the minimum age for service was sixteen for the human forces?” I said.

“Its eighteen for offworld troops, the ones recruited from the homeworld,” Illya said. “My family is support services though, so I’m native born. They’ll take us as soon as we can cast reliably.”

We’d covered half the ground to the tent without her rabbiting on me, so I decided to dig a little deeper.

“I’ve heard that there wasn’t much promotion for the support services. How did you manage to get on the medic track?”

“I had a sponsor,” she said. “I actually learned how to cast healing spells really young. My family was assigned to a hot camp, one of the ones off the front line but still in the strike area for the Gar’s long range attacks. So I had a lot of practice.”

“How did you wind up in Salmon Falls?” I asked.

“The unit I was assigned to got transferred there just after the cease fire,” she said. There was a catch in her voice that left me a few guesses as to what was being left unsaid.

“Major Vunthar was the one who transferred your unit there wasn’t he?” I asked.

She nodded.

I’d already talked to Imperial command and asked the two actual Guardians on the planet if we could put out a warrant for Vunthar’s arrest. All of them had agreed to it without reservation when I explained the situation. Predictably though, Major Vunthar was nowhere to be found. He was also not responding to official communiques from his Exxion IV superiors.

With the disaster recovery still underway and my impending job as an Imperial Overseer (approved by Master Raychelle, to my surprise), I couldn’t afford to make Vunthar my top priority, but there was no way I was going to let him get away with what he’d done.

I filed that thought as a “future problem” though as we stepped into the tent.

The Garjarack family turned to look at us when we entered and Illya’s breath caught in her throat. Guilt? Shock? Anger? It was probably all of them and more.

Cadrus recognized me at first glance, and from his expression also recognized Illya as well.

“Guardian, this is not the best time for visitors,” he said.

“We won’t be long, I just wanted to see your son,” I said.

“He is not well,” Cadrus said.

“I know, I want to see if his affliction looks familiar,” I said.

Cadrus looked back and forth between Illya and I, and then nodded and moved aside to allow me to get closer. I stepped into the circle of family members and saw that both Chief Jallo and Darius were tending to the young Garjarack boy on the bed.

Darius’s eyes were closed and I could see a soft light pulsing from under his hands were he had laid them on the Kallak’s chest. Chief Jallo was more active, peering through a series of observation spells that provided her with all sorts of enhanced information. I could see from her expression though that the data she had wasn’t adding up to anything sensible.

I didn’t know the anima and life sensing spells that Chief Jallo did, but my Void anima vision did let me see magic in a way other spells couldn’t replicate. I called up an erg of it and felt my face grow warm with the casting.

In my altered vision I saw Darius suffused with an electric yellow light. Ripples of blue raced through him too, with the two colors representing his natural talents at Energetic and Mental animas. Chief Jallo by contrast was almost entirely lit in red. She had a great capacity for healing magics due in part to being unbalanced towards Physical anima similar to one other healer I knew.

Then there was Kallak. There was barely any light running through him at all.

I looked underneath him, expecting to see Void anima spikes plunged into his body as they had been in mine but there was nothing there. No Void anima spikes. No lurking spells at all. Just a trickle of physical anima pouring out of him and into the ground below.

“He’s not injured?” I asked.

“Clearly he is, we just haven’t found the location of the wound yet,” Chief Jallo said.

“It’s not a Void anima attack,” I said.

“I know, that was one of the first things I checked for,” Chief Jallo said.

“Then what could it be?” I asked.

“I’m working to determine that,” she said. I heard the annoyance in Jallo’s voice clearly that time.

I turned away from her and spoke with Cadrus in a low whisper.

“One of your other children was also afflicted by this weren’t they?” I asked, thinking back to the child who’d been in the other bed the last I was in the tent.

“Beneda, my youngest daughter,” Cadrus said. “She had similar symptoms but she responded to treatment better than Kallak has. Your friend was able to restore her before Chief Jallo got here.”

“Was they exposed to something that the rest of your family wasn’t?” I asked.

“No,” Cadris said. “Not within the last day. We’ve been together the whole time since then.”

“How long were they as frail as they were at Salmon Falls?” I asked.

“Weeks,” Cadrus said. “We haven’t eaten full rations in weeks. It wasn’t as bad as it was today, but Kallak has not been healthy since the cease fire.”

“Did something happen then?” I asked.

“Kallak collapsed then too,” Cadrus said. “We thought we were going to lose him but the next morning he was recovered. He never lost consciousness like this though.”

“Were he and his sister close?” Illya asked. It cost her to talk to the Garjarack. I could see that it was about the last thing in the world that she wanted to do. Cadrus didn’t seem to be able to read her expressions like I could though. Humans were probably as skewed in their body language to him as Garjarack were to me.

“Yes, they were always together,” Cadrus said.

“I know what’s wrong with your son then,” Illya said. “We need to get him out of here. He can’t stay on this world.”

I’d turned 18 while convalescing. All things considered it was one of my better birthdays. I finally had anima powers like everyone else (even if I couldn’t use them while I was healing), I had a boyfriend (even if I didn’t get to see him as much as either of us wanted too), and I had (arguably) the coolest job in the galaxy. There was a price to pay for all of that though; I also became an adult human.

Being an adult isn’t a bad thing of course, I’d basically acted and been treated like one for years. The catch with turning 18 was that I could legitimately be called upon to handle situations where my actions actually mattered. My apprentice status meant I wasn’t saddled with too much responsibility right away, but global disasters have a knack for tossing problems all over the place.

I was grumbling about that in a ‘why me?’ sort of mood as I made my way over to one of the Imperial transport ships. Thanks to my position, I was all on me to deal with Medic Illya and the unnecessary crisis that she represented. In theory the base commander could have taken over the matter but he was swamped with supporting the rescue work, and I preferred to have a shot determining Illya’s fate myself.

“I thought you were going to let me rot in here?” she said as I let myself into the transport’s small security area. The aid station wasn’t equipped to handle prisoners and I didn’t want to flag her as an official prisoner until I decided what to do with her.

That thought alone seemed alien to me. Thanks to my Guardian robes, I got to decide what to do with this woman who was at least ten years older than me and had a lifetime invested in helping the people of Hellsreach.

Or at least some of the people.

I didn’t respond to her question. I just sat down and looked at the personnel report that I’d had one of the base commander’s aide’s print out for me.

“You can’t hold me in here. There are still people who need me,” she said.

“Yes. There are.” I agreed and kept reading the personnel report. I didn’t need to; it was short and I’d read it on the way to the makeshift cell.

“You’re going to let them die?” she asked.

I kept reading. It made her uncomfortable and I was just angry enough that I didn’t care to offer her an reassurances.

“Look this isn’t about me. You have to let me help the people from Salmon Falls,” she said.

“The Garjaracks. What did they do to you?” I asked.

Silence was my only answer.

“There are people coming in who need help,” I said. “You’re a talented healer, but the fact of the matter is that you’re also an attempted murderer.”

“It wasn’t murder.” she said and went silent again.

“What did they do to you?” I asked again.

If hadn’t been hard for me to guess that Illya was the one who’d alerted the people from Salmon Falls that there were Garjarack at the Imperial aid center. She’d been one of the few non-Imperials to encounter them before they were brought to their tent. No one else who knew they were at the aid center had any reason to be hostile to them.

Fortunately, while Illya was a great medic, throwing together a plan to kill over a half dozen Garjarack’s wasn’t one her fortes. After she’d seen them she’d gone to the nearest scrying pool and used it to establish a link back to one of her friends from Salmon Falls. Discovering that had taken about five minutes and a simple replay spell to show the conversation she’d had.

Her friends had taken one of the fighters that was part of the base’s war cache and flown off to ‘eliminate their enemy’. The aid center didn’t have a squadron of its own for defense, so it should have been a simple mission for Illya’s co-conspirators. Except for the part where Fari turned the planet’s local defenses against them. Which, I suppose, they could be forgiven for not expecting.

That had ended the assault from the Salmon Falls area, and left me with a mess to sort out. The pilots were easy enough to deal with. They’d be bound for trial based on the recordings and their failure to communicate with the aid center’s flight tower. Illya would have to stand trial as well, again based on the evidence that was found. Trials take a long time to put together though and there were going to be people in need of Illya’s help landing within minutes.

So the question before me was could Illya be forgiven for attempting to murder Imperial citizens. At least enough to allow her the freedom she’d need to work on the wounded people who were brought to her.

If you’d asked me that question two months ago, the answer would have seemed clear. Combat trained anima casters are extremely dangerous. Releasing Illya from her bonds and allowing her full access to her casting abilities would mean risking the lives of those around her. Given the attempted murder charge against her, that should have made the answer a blindingly obvious “No”. Sitting across the table from her though, with my “adult” badge on, I was forced to admit that the answer was neither blindingly obvious nor likely to please people regardless of what I chose.

“They broke the peace. What I did wasn’t murder. It was war. We had to make it stop!” she said.

“How did they break the peace?” I asked.

“They attacked our town,” she said. “In the dead of night. With no provocation and no warning. They wanted our supplies and they murdered so many of us to get them.”

“If it was night, how do you know who was behind the attacks?” I asked.

“We saw their ships! We know what the Gar are like! I grew up my whole life listening to the sounds of them killing us. Before the Empire conquered us? After the Empire conquered us? It didn’t matter! The Gar are the murderers! Not us!”

“Is that why didn’t Salmon Falls report the attack that occurred after the ceasefire was declared?” I asked.

“We did report it! And you Imperials did nothing. Just like you’ve done nothing for the last twenty years!”

“Illya, no report of an attack on Salmon Falls has been reported in the last two months,” I told her.

“You lost the report? We’re dying because of bureaucratic incompetence?” she screamed.

“No. There was no report filed. At all. Not with Imperial command and not in the Exxion IV command web either,” I said, keeping my voice calm and measured.

“That’s impossible! Major Vunthar was there the next morning! He saw everything!” Illya said.

“Every weekly report from Major Vunthar’s office for the last two months says the same thing,” I told her and passed over one of the other print outs I had.

“Where did you get this?” she asked.

“My friend who hacked the planet’s defense systems to bring down your fighter? She’s very good at getting information from spell webs,” I said.

“This isn’t possible!” Illya said.

“I’m sorry Illya, but I have no reason to lie about this. For two months your Major Vunthar has been reporting ‘all actions proceeding as expected’, despite the fact that your people have been driven from their homes and are malnourished from running on three-quarter’s rations.”

“This doesn’t make sense.”

“Doesn’t it? Have you met Major Vunthar? I’ve only read his personnel file and his record practically tells the story for him.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“He lost his wife and three children to a Garjarack advance fifteen years ago. He lost all but one sibling over the last twenty years and he was one of the defenders of the town of Kelp’s Point when it fell to Garjarack hands and his parents were killed.”

“That not an unusual story,” Illya said.

“I know,” I said. Despite the war having raged on for over a century, the pattern of atrocities by each side on the other had been unbroken until a few months ago. “The unusual part are the commendations and the disciplinary notes he’s received.”

“I don’t see any disciplinary notes here?” Illya said.

“Right. Look at his earlier records,” I said. “Over the last fifteen years, he’s volunteered for some of the bloodiest campaigns on the planet and has been decorated in most of them. In the last few years though he’s received several disciplinary notes on his record for insubordination to superiors.”

“What did he do?” she asked.

“Argued against the peace process that was starting. With his fists.”

“Who could blame him. Peace is a lie here,” Illya said.

“It’s not,” I said. “And it never has been. Have you ever been to one of the native cities? I’ve seen humans and Garjarack living in peace with no problems.”

“That’s those humans and Gars,” Illya said. “They’re the freaks and aberrations that neither side wanted. We’re different. We’ve fought too hard and lost too much. The Gar are never going to forgive us and I’m certainly never going to forgive them.”

“That might be true. You might never be able to live together,” I said. “Your children, or your grandchildren might be a different story though.”

“I’m never going to have children,” Illya said. “Thanks to the Gar.”

“Spell damage, or they took someone close to you?” I asked. It was insensitive, but at this stage, I needed to understand what drove her.

“Both,” she said.

“In the attack on Salmon Falls?” I asked.

“The spell damage came from when I was young,” Illya said. “A toxic cloud spell that wasn’t neutralized fast enough. I pulled through, mostly.”

“And the one you cared about?”

“The first attack on Salmon Falls.”

“Illya, I know you don’t want to hear this, but look at the evidence before you,” I said. “I don’t think the Garjarack were responsible for that attack.”

“Lies. This is all lies.”

“It would be comforting if it was, wouldn’t it?” I asked. “Think about it though. We’ve been giving out relief supplies to everyone. Why hasn’t Salmon Falls gotten any?”

“There’s not enough to go around, so high priority targets are receiving the supplies first,” Illya said.

“Have you seen the supplies we have stockpiled here? At an aid base?” I asked. “Why would we stock up an aid base that might need to host refugees and not the town where they’re actually living?”

“You want everything under your control.” she said.

“No. We don’t. We’ve been giving ninety percent of the material we bring in to the existing supply chains. We can get food in easily. Replicating your existing distribution networks was too costly and pointless though. That’s what Major Vunthar and people like him are supposed to be in charge of.”

“We’ve been starving.” she said.

“Yes, because the human you depended on has been trying to wage his own private version of the war,” I said. “Or maybe he’s got broader ambitions. Maybe he thinks he can start it up again entirely? I don’t know what his story is. I don’t know that this evidence means he’s guilty. All I know is that there’s a good reason to think that the Garjarack family you tried to murder had nothing to do with what happened to Salmon Falls.”

“Why does it matter?” Illya asked.

“You tell me,” I said.

“Fine, I’m a murderer too then.” she said. “Convict me and let everyone I know die.”

“I can’t convict you,” I said. “I can’t even testify about what you’ve said, even that confession. My authority here covers emergency situations only. You’ll have a trial, in an Imperial court, and it’ll be a fair one. So why does what we’ve talked about matter.”

“Because you can decide whether I get to help the wounded,” she said.

“And?” I prompted her.

“And you need to know whether I’m going to try to kill the Gars again.” she said.

“Close, but not exactly it,” I said. “I need to know if you’re going to live to see the trial.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“The Gar have done horrible things to you, not the family out there maybe, but they all look the same to you right? They’re all responsible for the losses you’ve suffered,” I said.

Illya looked at me silently, trying to follow where I was going.

“We need your skills as a medic. I can unshackle you, but I can’t stop you from trying to kill the Gar family again,” I said. “To be clear; I can’t stop you from trying, but I can stop you.”

She was silent again, but she met my eyes. She’d seen the kind of response I could bring against a threat. She understood exactly how serious I was, but I didn’t want to leave anything unclear on that point.

“I want to speak at your trial Illya. I want to speak on your behalf and tell the jury that it was thanks to your work that lives were saved,” I said. “I want to do that, but if I have to, I’ll speak at your funeral.”

Illya nodded in understanding, and I could see the wheels turning in her head as she imagined the different futures that might be.

“Or you can stay here. If you don’t trust yourself. You’ve already helped out. If that’s all you can do, then that’s all you can do.”

She looked at me carefully, and then at the door behind me. I saw her gaze drift aimlessly into the middle distance as she looked inside herself. A moment later, she came back to the present and, with a sigh, looked me in the eyes again.

“Leave me here.”

I nodded and rose from chair.

“Is that what you really want?” I asked.

“No.”

She was staring blankly ahead, but I could feel the force of her will holding back the worries and fears that were raging inside her.

I traced a small sigil on the air and cast some of my Physical anima into it. My hand felt like I passed it through a fire, but that faded as the unlocking spell dissipated. The chains that bound Illya fell off her with a solid clunk.

“Then come with me. We have work to do.”

Gan’s announcement should have been good news. A new home for the people of Hellsreach would solve a lot of problems. The cold talons in my chest that warned me of danger seemed weirdly out of place therefor. I scowled for a moment as I tried to work out what was wrong with the offer before a more obvious reason for the frosty alert presented itself.

“We’re triggering the next quake early,” Fari said. as she reappeared beside me.

“Why would you do that?” Cadrus asked. “Aren’t there still people being rescued?”

“The disaster response teams are bracing the buildings they’re still working on,” Fari said.

“How much time do we have?” I asked.

“About a minute,” Fari said. “We’re going to catch the aftershocks that are following the last one to help relieve the stress that’s set to power the next mega-quake.”

“Did you warn Darius?” I asked.

“Yes,” Fari said. “I’m warning as many people as I can.”

She flickered as she spoke, and I felt a stab of entirely non-supernatural worry course through me.

“Don’t spread yourself too thin,” I said. “Just let me know afterwards that you’re ok.”

She nodded and vanished again, returning to the planetary control system.

“Cadrus, Nenya, you should head back to your family,” I said. “You’ll be safe in the tent.”

“How bad is this quake that’s coming?” Gan asked.

“Bad enough that I needed to be warned about it,” I said.

“Looks like the fate casting we did worked perfectly then!” Gan said.

I stared at him for a moment in disbelief.

“You wanted to be here during a mega-quake?” I asked. My brain was spinning to put things together and clicked onto the answer before Gan found the words to explain himself. “Ah, of course. That’ll make it easier to talk people into leaving.”

“That’s what I’m here to speak with you about,” Gan said.

“Why me?” I asked.

“It’s unusual to find two Crystal Guardians working on a planet, much less three,” Gan said. “You are the one the Imperial Ambassador directed me to speak with. He said that Guardians Kinsguard and Blackbriar were fully engaged with the rescue operations that were underway.”

I wasn’t a full Guardian, but if the Imperial Ambassador wanted me to act as one in order to preserve Opal and Raychelle’s time then I wasn’t going to correct Mister Everbright on the subject.

“We should find somewhere safe to wait out the quake,” I said.

“If you’ll allow me?” Gan replied. Without waiting for my response he wove a shielding dome around us. It was beautiful work and he finished it with time to spare before the quake hit.

The ground shake was barely noticeable inside the dome but watching the way the buildings around us moved I could see it had been a strong one. The building didn’t fall down however which meant it was much weaker than the mega-quake that leveled Salmon Falls. Fari and Opal had timed the quake well. The rumbling lasted for over a minute, but diminished in severity almost immediately. Once it was done, everything was still and the planet had expended a lot of the energy stored in the local faultlines.

“That was more powerful than I expected it would be,” Gan said as he let down the shield bubble.

“You should have been here for the last one,” I said. It was a reflexive boast but it raised a question in my mind. Why hadn’t Gan been here for that? Or here a few weeks earlier? If he was working under a fate casting it meant he was trying to ensure his actions precipitated or canceled out some dramatic events. Showing up in the wake of one wouldn’t cancel it out, but he might be focused on reacting to a larger event that was still impending.

“We’ve been scrambling for two month to get the approvals in order,” Gan said. “It’s a miracle we made it here today at all.”

“Approvals for what exactly?” I asked as I led Gan back into the aid center building. I didn’t want to go running back to someone with real authority but I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of negotiating for unknown stakes on an issue I was unfamiliar with and having no one to back me up.

“Planetary property transfer,” Gan said.

“You’d said you were going to take the people here to a whole new world,” I said. “You meant that literally didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Gan said. “Exxion III is barely habitable. That’s been true for decades due to the war but even with the peace you’ve created this planet isn’t ready to support the population that’s here. There’s too much damage that needs to be undone. The mega-quakes you’ve seen are making that clear to everyone.”

“So what are you going to do with the people?” I asked.

“My company, Verulia Industries, intends to offer habitation plots on a world newly opened for colonization in exchange for land rights here on Hellsreach. We’ll provide transport to Titanus and the materials for colony development.”

“And in exchange you get ownership of Hellsreach,” I said. “So, if this planet is unlivable, how does this benefit you?”

We’d reached the Aid Center building  and people were scurrying around to deal with the impending arrival of the wounded from Salmon Falls. The third time a medic bumped into us I got the hint and dragged Gan into one of the unused conference rooms.

“There are artifacts that can be recovered from Exxion III. We’ve calculated they will be equal to the value of the land and supplies we’re providing, with a tidy profit left over for our troubles,” Gan said.

I thought about that for a moment and picked at the parts of it that felt wrong.

“If there’s value here why should people leave it to you and travel to somewhere that might collapse before it becomes viable?” I asked. Developing new colonies wasn’t easy. With as many populated worlds as there were in the galaxy, there was usually a good reason why an empty world was uninhabited.

“Verulia Industries is fully committed to the success of the Titanus colony,” Gan said. “As for value of the artifacts I spoke of, the people here lack the resources to exploit the opportunity that is literally under their feet.”

“Why not make a partnership of it then?” I asked.

“Partner with who?” Gan asked. “Even if we could get the locals to agree to that arrangement we wouldn’t be able to compensate them fairly.”

“Why?” I asked, though I could see a few of the problems that would stand in the way.

“Let’s say we find a medium value artifact beneath a Garjarack settlement,” Gan said. “That might be enough to pay for a hundred other dig sites. The Garjarack won’t be willing to take a 1/100th share though, especially not if the other 99 are all human settlements.”

“If you own all the settlements though, then the problem goes away,” I said. “What about the people who refuse to move.”

“We’ll be making a very attractive offer,” Gan said.

“And what about the one’s who get to Titanus and want to come back?” I asked.

“That will not be part of the offer,” Gan said. “We’re not going to require that anyone stay on Titanus. They’ll be free to sell their plot and travel anywhere they can afford to go, but the property exchange will have to be non-cancelable. Otherwise, as soon as we find an artifact site, the people who owned the land around it will want their property back to look for artifacts there too.”

“I thought you said the people didn’t have the resources to do that on their own?” I asked.

“They don’t, but if we do the preliminary work and identify a viable site, our competitors would jump at the chance to piggyback off that. They’ll back anyone with a claim that strong,” he said.

“How are you going to transport the people? That’s an enormous effort isn’t it?” I asked.

“We’ve contracted a personnel shipping company. They’ll be here by the end of the week and will be ready to transport the first batch of one hundred thousand colonists to Titanus within two weeks.”

“You’re moving very quickly,” I said.

“We’re a business Guardian Watersward,” Gan said. “We only survive by staying ahead of our competition.”

“I see. And what do you need me for?” I asked.

“Any project of this size requires an Imperial Overseer,” Gan said. “It’s not glamorous I’m afraid, but we’ll need your sign off at each of the gated stages of the project in order to proceed.”

“I’ll be getting reports and doing inspections I take it?” I asked.

“We’ll provide you with a staff to help with that if you like.” Gan said.

That sent up a few warning bells, but I let them pass. I could ask Master Raychelle about it once she wasn’t busy saving lives.

“I’ll confer with Guardian Kinsguard and Guardian Blackbriar on this, as well as the Ambassador, but for the moment I have no problem with filling that role,” I said.

“Good! Would you like to see our initial presentation? I can show you holo-vids of what Titanus looks like and how our proposed colonies will be set up,” Gan said.

Before I could answer an aide burst through the conference room’s door.

“Guardian Watersward?” she said as she processed that I was indeed who she was expecting to see. “The commander needs you in the communications center.”

“What’s happened?” I asked.

“There’s a fighter approaching,” she said. “From the direction of Salmon Falls.”

That got me up.

“I’m sorry. We’ll need to continue this later,” I said to Gan and followed the aide through the corridors to the aide center’s command room.

“Commander,” I said as I caught sight of him over one of the scrying pools in the room. “What can I do?”

“We have a link open to the craft but they’re not responding to us,” the commander said. “You met with them in person, so I’m hoping you can get a response out of them.”

“What’s their ETA?” I asked.

“Five minutes,” he said.

I turned to the aide who’d come in with me. “Can you run to the recovery wing and get Medic Illya. If I can’t reach them, maybe she’ll be able to.”

The aide virtually disappeared she took off so fast.

“Let me see if I can talk them down,” I said. “Which scrying pool has the link open to them?”

“This one,” the commander said, indicating a basin that was covered with a red velvet cloth.

I pulled the cloth free and dipped my fingers into the water. The sounds of a ship in flight sprang to life around me. I spent a second listening for conversation but whoever was flying the ship was doing so silently.

“This is Guardian Mel Watersward to the pilot of the approaching fighter craft please state your name and intention,” I said. “Do you have wounded. We will have clerics waiting when you arrive if so.”

I knew it was a longshot, but hoping the ship was flying here for a peaceful purpose seemed like a decent way to start a dialogue with them. As it turned out though all I got back was silence punctuated by the thrum of the fighter’s engine.

I wasn’t supposed to cast spells but there were some that weren’t terribly dangerous to work with. Sense enhancing spells for example. I wasn’t terribly good with them, but they took only a trifling amount of anima to pull off so the chance that I’d overcast one was all but non-existent.

Or at least that’s what I told myself as I went ahead and violated my healer’s orders for the first time in months.

Feeling my physical anima moving at my command again was glorious, as was the sense of completing a spell and the magic of it rising through me. I’d selected an auditory enhancement spell to let me hear through the link with superhuman ability. I could tell got it right because I was able to make out subtle creaks in the fighter’s airframe. With the spell cast correctly though I was at a loss to explain the burning sensation I felt on my skin.

I thought back to the last time I’d cast a spell. On the slopes of the volcano over the primary control site for Hellsreach’s weapon systems. I’d channeled so much force from the lava that I had literally caught on fire. I’d also nearly lost myself in the process. My recovery period had been as much about restoring the damage the fire had done to my mind as it had been healing the wounds to my body. The first thought I jumped to was that my physical recovery wasn’t complete and that I was about to self immolate again. When that didn’t happen, I had to start wondering if the problem was in my mind.

On the chance that the burning was a product of my imagination, I did what I always did with unpleasant memories and pushed the burning sensation to the back of my awarenessso that I could move forward. I’d have time to be crazy later.

“I repeat, identify yourself and your mission,” I said and then listened as intently as I could.

No response.

No heartbeats either.

“You wanted to see me commander?” Illya said as she and aide entered the room.

She looked nervous, which was natural for someone who’d been summoned to the commander’s office at a run. What wasn’t natural was how she was looking at me. She was angry, scared and guilty, and some part of her knew I would figure out what she had done.

“Illya, why is there an unmanned craft flying here from Salmon Falls?” I asked.

“An unmanned craft?” she asked. Her face was a carefully guarded mask, but I could hear her heartbeat speed up at just the wrong moment. She wasn’t surprised at all by the aircraft. She was surprised that I knew it was unmanned.

“Where did you find Medic Illya?” I asked the aide.

“She was outside on break,” the aide said.

“Near the tents?” I asked.

“Yes, how did you…?” the aide started to ask but I cut her off.

“Fari, we have a problem, can you bring one of the defense systems online?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “What’s happening?”

“There’s a fighter on an approach vector to the aide station. It’s unmanned. I need you to disable it,” I said.

“Is there any chance there’s someone inside it?” Fari asked.

“I don’t think so. No heartbeats, or are they under a silence spell, Illya?” I asked.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

“Ok, Fari, feel free to disintegrate it,” I said.

In the distance there was sound like thunder.

“You…you destroyed the ship?” Illya said, her mask crumbling.

“You said there was no one onboard right?” I asked her.

“I didn’t say anything. Why did you destroy the ship?” I saw her blinking back tears as she spoke.

“It was unresponsive. Clearly enchanted to carry out a specific attack pattern, probably on the refugees that we have here,” I said. “Though that sort of enchantment is tricky. It takes a while to set one in place from what Guardian Blackbriar has told me. Silence spells are a lot easier. Give a soldier a mission and hit him with one of those so no one can countermand the orders and it’s pretty much the same thing as the enchantment with far less time wasted.”

“But why did you disintegrate it?” she said.

“It was a fighter. You don’t fly one of those at an aide center unless you want to hurt someone,” I said.

“I see,” she said and her mask came back on. “Can I get back to my patients?”

“Not yet,” I said. “Come with me.”

Again I was glad that killing with a look wasn’t an easy trick to pull off. Illya said nothing, just fell into step behind me.

I dropped the sense enhancing spell and felt the burning sensation fade with it. Losing the enhanced hearing took away one of my potential defenses and with Illya walking where I couldn’t see her, she was in a perfect position to ambush me. I didn’t think she would though. She was withdrawing into herself not raging out of control. She could change her mind but I didn’t intend to give her long enough for that to occur.

We walked out to the landing area for incoming ships and found Gan waiting there.

“We were supposed to have clearance to land next,” he said. “What is this ship doing here?”

Illya’s eyes lit up at the sight of the craft before us. It was an Exxion IV fighter ship. Unremarkable in any sense, except for the fact that it wasn’t disintegrated at the moment.

“But you said…” Illya turned to me, her mask of anger shattered by her confusion.

“I said Fari was free to disintegrate it,” I said. “It’s not like she wasn’t going to check for herself though.”

“What was the explosion then?” Illya asked.

“Backfire from the warp guns firing,” Fari said and turned to me. “Oh, we’re down one battery of warp guns now by the way. It’ll take at least a week for them to recharge from a quick firing like that.”

“Thank you.” I said on our private telepathic channel.

“You’re welcome,” she replied. “Just remind me to take a week off after all this.”

“I can recommend a good recovery center!” I said.

The commander and a trio of Imperial guards exited the building after us.

“You’ll want to question the pilot of that ship,” I said. “And detain Medic Illya please. I’m going to need to speak with her.”

“There are injured arriving soon though!” Illya said.

“I know,” I said and nodded to one of the guards to take her away. We couldn’t afford to be down a medic, but I also couldn’t afford to let an attempted murderer roam free.

“I’ll call off my ship and let the wounded take our landing slot,” Gan said.

“Thank you,” I said. “I may have to keep you here longer than you planned.”

“Plans can change,” he said and smiled at me.

He was being so reasonable it was hard to mistrust him, but every time I looked at Gan Everbright and thought about the gift he was offering of Titanus, I felt the cold talons of danger digging into my chest. My time as an Imperial Overseer was not going to be easy, or safe, from what I could sense.