Legacy of Vale: A Space Opera Series (The Circuit Saga Book 2) Read online

  “Come on,” she urged him.

  He shook his head. “The plant.” He turned and sprinted back toward the facility as fast as he could.

  “He’s the son of a Tribune. Do not leave us behind!” Sage ordered the pilot before leaping out of the transport. She followed him back into the facility, hardly able to traverse the halls without being rocked from side to side.

  The entire floor was coming undone as the earth beneath it split apart. In the galley, the tables were flipped upside down, and even the building’s structure was beginning to rend.

  Another potent quake hurled her across the room, slamming her into a wall. Ignoring the sharp pain exploding in her side, she spotted Caleb holding onto the side of the door leading into the private lab. He cradled the plant’s container in his arm. Using the walls for support, he made his way to her and helped her up.

  They exchanged a nod and set off. Dodging falling equipment and the widening cracks in the floor, they moved as fast as they could back through the facility. Every few feet they were pitched off balance, but by using each other, they were able to make it all the way to the exit.

  When they emerged, the landing pad was splitting in half by a rapidly expanding fissure. The pilot of the first transport started taking off. The ship’s ion drive flared bright blue as it lifted up, but a tremor more powerful than all of the others that preceded it bellowed from the very core of the Earth. The control tower snapped in half. Jagged strips of its metal structure bowled over to clip the first transport’s engines in midair.

  The ship dipped to the side. The pilot desperately tried to regain control as it spun, but he couldn’t. It crashed into the ground, exploding in brilliant shades of blue and orange. Shrapnel shot out in every direction. Sage reached out as if to block a piece, but it shredded her arm on its way toward piercing Caleb’s chest.

  They howled simultaneously, falling to their knees. Blood sprayed everywhere. Caleb wasn’t moving. The pain was too excruciating to think or see straight. She just kept them upright with her healthy arm and dragged both of their bodies forward. It took all of her will to make it just a few meters, and when her body was about to give out, the surviving pilot sprinted across the pad and grabbed onto them both.

  “I’ve got you!” he gasped.

  He helped Sage haul Caleb across the landing pad and into the transport before yet another tremendous quake. Both of them heaved Caleb up before she was helped in. Caleb was convulsing, blood bubbling out of his mouth as they laid him down. Sage collapsed beside him, so exhausted she could hardly breathe. Her mangled arm remained pinned against his chest by a metal shard.

  “It’s going to be okay…” she whispered. “I promise… We’ll make it…”

  “Hatch is closing!” the pilot announced.

  The ship’s cabin doors slammed shut. Everything inside rattled as the engines kicked in. The rest of the control tower began to topple over, but they shot forward just beneath it, the landing gear scraping off across the roof of the facility.

  As the ship angled up into the sky, Sage noticed Caleb’s holorecorder rolling out of his pocket. She grabbed it with her mobile arm and placed it in his palm. He didn’t say anything, but his fingers squeezed weakly around it and her hand. He was alive.

  “We’ll make it…” she promised as she laid her head on his shoulder. “We have to…”

  Sage gasped for air as if she had been plunged underwater. Her eyes sprang open, but all she could see was a blur of white and silver blobs spinning all around her. The smell of the blood draining out of her arm was so tangible that she could taste it.

  She groped desperately with her natural hand, expecting to find a mangled stump of an arm, and then let out a sigh of relief when it fell upon the smooth metal of her artificial limb.

  Just a dream, she thought, just a dream.

  Only, it wasn’t. It was a memory from before she was an executor, one she’d spent years burying deep in the bowels of her mind. It was that day that convinced her to become an executor in the first place. She’d hoped that by doing so she’d never fail anyone she loved in the face of adversity again. That she might one day redeem him in the eyes of the Spirit for what he’d done, so that he might one day join its essence along with the fallen faithful.

  She managed to swing her feet off the edge of a hovering bed, pulling out needles she didn’t realize were plugged in all around her body. The movement caused a sudden pain to shoot up the back of her neck. She lurched and fell forward, her artificial arm keeping her nose from slamming onto the floor.

  Images from her past flashed through her mind again, each memory aggravating old wounds. She began drawing long, calming breaths. As she did, she placed the thumb and forefinger of her human hand over her temples to try to force out the rampant thoughts.

  Once it started to subside a bit, she used the bed to pull herself to her feet. Her legs were still woozy from being asleep for Spirit knows how long.

  Where in the name of the Ancients am I? she wondered.

  She began to shuffle along, using the hovering bed as a crutch to bear most of her weight. Her vision was returning, the blur of shapes beginning to weave together into details. White plate-metal walls surrounded her, along with holoscreens, IV drips, and countless other medical apparatuses. It was definitely a lab, but not the one on Titan where she last remembered being.

  She located a strip of lighting outside an open doorway, and she headed toward it, the bed sliding alongside her.

  “You are still recovering, Executor Volus,” a strangely robotic, feminine voice echoed from somewhere in the ceiling. “Please return to the monitoring station.”

  Sage ignored it. She dragged her legs forward, feeling the strength augment in them with every step. By the time she reached the exit, she was able to step away from the bed and out into a corridor. She still needed the wall for support, but at least she could walk.

  Everything around her looked familiar, though she couldn’t place why. The sleek walls and ceiling reminded her of a place she’d been, and the mechanical systems hummed a recognizable melody. She attempted to reach into her suddenly rampant stream of memories to grasp the answer, but it was difficult enough to keep her brain from showing her Caleb’s death over and over again.

  Arriving at a horizontal viewport, she paused for a rest. All the walking had only made her fainter.

  Sage placed her hands along the top of the viewport’s burnished sill and leaned her sweating forehead against the glass. She took a few deep breaths and looked out through it, having to blink a few times to make sure that what she saw wasn’t just a figment of her imagination.

  She was on a ship in space. She expected to see a field of stars like usual, but they only dotted the edges of her view. In the center was a great patch of darkness. It wasn’t a piece of rock. She could make out the lines of plated metal illuminated by faintly glowing quad ion drives.

  Is that a ship? It’s huge. She leaned in to get a closer look and noticed a shimmering golden solar sail reeled in over a blocky bow.

  A solar-ark? She’d never seen one outside of a hologram representation before. Nobody had. They moved too fast. This one, however, moved at the same speed as whatever ship she was on.

  She wiped the sweat off her forehead and squeezed her eyelids shut. Then she opened them again to check once again that it was real. This time, she noticed her own pale reflection framing the ship and yelped. Her red hair was trimmed and messy, like a boy’s, and wrapped around it was a bloody bandage.

  Reaching up with a trembling hand, she wove her fingers through the short strands of hair and under the cloth. Her index finger grazed a line of smooth, lumpy skin, and as soon as it did, a stabbing pain seized her entire head, so intense it drove her to her knees.

  “Cassius, what have you done?” she wheezed, right before a needle pricked the side of her neck and she tipped over, unconscious again.

  2

  Chapter Two—Cassius

  The White Hand n
eared Cassius’ clandestine base on the asteroid Ennomos, but he wasn’t sitting on the command deck watching the stars race by like he usually did. Instead, he was in the medical bay.

  Since the White Hand’s construction, only one person had ever laid upon its bed, and presently, she was fast asleep. He remembered the first time she’d been there, some years ago, when her arm was little more than a mangled stump.

  His gaze unfolded over the artificial limb that he himself had placed there. His fingers danced, replaying the motions that had set all its parts in place—all the plates of dark metal and welded seals. All the circuitry.

  He lost himself in the memory, not realizing he’d grazed her arm until its powerful hand snapped to life and grasped him by the wrist.

  The cold metal fingers squeezed, threatening to snap his bone in two. He didn’t react. He endured the pain, staring into Sage’s waking eyes.

  “Where am I?” she asked, her voice raspy.

  “You’re safe, Sage,” Cassius responded. “Safely aboard the White Hand.”

  When she heard the name of the ship, her grip loosened. She blinked a few times before meeting his gaze.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You woke too early last time. It was dangerous. You still need some time to recover.”

  Her eyes suddenly went wide as if a wave of terrible memories had bombarded her. They were green and bright—verdant as the old forests of Earth. Cassius wasn’t sure exactly what it was she’d seen in her now-free head, but he didn’t have to think hard to imagine.

  He’d undergone the same operation when he removed his own implant before leaving the Tribune. It was like having the dust cleared off a thousand old books, bringing a library of faded memories back into focus.

  “What have you done to me?” she demanded.

  “Set you free.”

  “Liar!” Her artificial hand squeezed the side of the bed, crushing its metal frame.

  Cassius reached out and folded his hand over her artificial one, his fingers sliding beneath her plated joints. “Trust me, Sage,” he said, leaning in close. “No matter what I’ve ever done, no matter who I’ve ever hurt, know that I would never harm you.”

  Sage massaged her temples with her human hand. “Tell that to my head. I’m getting tired of waking up like this.”

  “Hopefully, this is the last time, my dear,” Cassius replied. He moved to sit at the end of the bed, making sure to keep his hands resting securely on his own lap. He’d seen enough of how her Tribunal masters treated her.

  “The symptoms from the extraction will pass soon,” he said.

  “What exactly did you do?” she asked.

  “Do you remember what we discussed on Titan? What you saw there?”

  Her face went pale. “I remember everything. Past, present—everything.”

  Cassius turned his head and gestured at the long jagged scar running down the back of his neck. “As I said there, the executor implant also tapped into occipital lobe, allowing the Tribune to see whatever they wanted through your eyes when it was active. They could have detonated it and killed you at any time as well. And they are nearly impossible to remove outside the Enclave without killing the host.”

  “Only you found a way.”

  “Yes,” he said proudly, “I had to. Yours was a bit more of a challenge. The explosion on New Terrene damaged the device’s link permanently. Not enough for the Tribune to notice after they assumed they’d repaired it, but they lack a certain… attention to detail. It is why, afterwards, you were beginning to become susceptible to the parts of yourself you thought were buried too deeply to ever be rediscovered. Now, however, you have been completely reawakened.”

  “What if—” Sage paused and focused on him. “I can see his face, Cassius. No matter where I look, he’s there. So clear. And not just him. Everyone I’ve ever lost or killed. I… What if I wanted to stay asleep?”

  “Then you’re already lost.”

  “What about you? First seizing freighters and now a solar-ark? I saw it out there. How can this all be for him?”

  “You really think this is solely about vengeance?” He scoffed. “That nobody could ever really turn their back on your beloved Tribune after suffering their lies?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think I want to know anymore. But if you ever had to feel what I feel now, then I am truly sorry.”

  “Never apologize for clarity!” Cassius growled.

  Sage flinched. Her gaze turned toward the floor. “I just want to stop hearing the screams.”

  He drew a deep breath. “And you will soon. The mind is like a river. Remove a single dam and it will surge through in a torrent, but soon, after enough land has been carved out, a steady stream will return. Calm.”

  “Painful.”

  Cassius placed a consoling hand on Sage’s shoulder. “Of course, but we are meant to feel. You are more than a weapon, Sage Volus. I have seen you smile, and love, and show kindness. You deserve more than turning into me.”

  “Do you expect me to abandon my vows just because you claim they were the ones looking through my eyes?” she said. “I only ever saw the screens in your compound.”

  “No. I expect you to open them for yourself.”

  Sage sighed and let her head fall back to rest on her pillow. “They were your vows as well, once,” she said. “You took the oath on the surface of Earth—dug your bare hands through the dirt of our homeworld as you spoke them.”

  “Twice I made the pilgrimage,” he explained. “Once when I was named an executor. Again, as a Tribune. Both times I let greed guide my hands. I conquered colonies, tore fleets apart piece by piece, and won the first real war humanity has known since Earthfall.”

  “I know.” The corners of her lips lifted into a smile for the faintest moment and then quickly reverted to a straight line. “Caleb wanted to be just like you.”

  “I’m glad he wasn’t. I may have won all my dreams on the battlefield, but it wasn’t my war. Victory takes a heavy toll.”

  “One worth fighting for,” Sage added, sitting back up. “It wasn’t just Caleb. Every person in the Tribune wanted to be like the great Cassius Vale. I used to see your face on the holoscreens throughout New Terrene when I was a child. After every victory, they’d praise you as if you embodied the Spirit of the Earth yourself. The executor who rose from the shadow to take Earth back from the Ceresian Pact and become a Tribune himself. I wanted to be like you, too. You were the only reason I couldn’t wait to serve when I was nothing but an orphan girl in a home.” Her brow wrinkled with both pain and vexation. “How could you betray us so easily?”

  She’s trying to understand, Cassius thought. But she never will. He approached the screen monitoring Sage. Swiping through a few feeds, he made sure there was nothing out of the ordinary about her vitals.

  “Cassius?” she asked.

  He craned over the console, staring down at the tops of his pale, liver-spotted hands. The years hadn’t been kind.

  “Have I ever told you the real story about why I became an executor?” he asked.

  “No,” Sage said.

  “I was never close with my father. I won’t claim to hate him—it’s been far too long for that—but that’s the truth. You see, while I was growing up on Titan, before the Tribune took over, I, too, wanted to be a soldier. I used to read old stories of the era of conflict before my ancestors united Saturn, dreaming about what it would be like to be in battle. Unfortunately, my father barely let me step outside our compound. ‘It is dangerous for a Vale out there,’ he’d say. The frightened old man.

  “I didn’t listen very well. I’d sneak out whenever I got the chance and wander Edeoria’s earthscrapers. I’d hide my identity and pick fights at the bars, have the guards arrest me, and then force them to keep it a secret once they found out who I really was. There was little else I could do. My father was the prefect of Titan. I was his only heir.

  “The position had been passed down through g
enerations of my family—a bloodline that is said to date back to the very first Ancients who fled Earth. We were traders and merchants, peaceful people gaining our wealth by selling water from Saturn’s rings to fringe settlements and valuable gases from the planet herself to everyone else. Our shipments filled the cargo holds of the solar-arks from end to end. Titan was a true jewel of the Circuit.”

  Cassius walked back to Sage’s bed and leaned against the end of it, half sitting.

  “I was young when the Tribune entered a war with the Ceresians,” he continued. “Jupiter was the first to face the repercussions. All her moons, many of them once proud sovereign settlements, were forced to choose sides. It became a constant battleground. The heart of the early Reclaimer War.”

  “I know Tribunal history, Cassius,” Sage groaned. “I grew up there.”

  “Of course, but most people forget that Titan didn’t choose a side in the war. Not until the Tribune set their sights on us. We were in a perfect location to safely prepare an offensive against the growing Ceresian opposition, and we guarded a surplus of vital gases needed to power engines that the Circuit’s shipments couldn’t provide fast enough for a war. My father initially followed the path of the Keepers, declaring his neutrality, but do you think that stopped the Tribune? No. We were all faithless to them, whether we aggressively pursued robotics like the Ceresians or not.”

  Cassius closed his eyes.

  “They arrived soon after, and not with emissaries or diplomats. No, I remember that day like it was yesterday. The stormy skies of Titan went black with shadows as the entire Tribunal fleet descended over us. They didn’t bother to transmit a request for landing until they were already through the atmosphere. I was standing on the terrace outside my father’s quarters, watching ship after ship pierce the clouds. Up to that point in my sheltered life, it was the most impressive, terrifying thing I’d ever experienced.

  “I begged my father to stand against them. ‘The Vales have always ruled Saturn,’ I told him. ‘They have no right to demand anything from us.’ All he did was stare at the sky and mumble under his breath like a loon. He didn’t even lift a finger to oppose it. Even as Tribunal mechs flooded into Edeoria.”