Vira Episode One Read online

  Vira looked confused, and it was quite a sight. She’d recovered from his throwaway comment about her living her life vicariously through screens, but she obviously didn’t know how to reply to his impassioned speech.

  Her gaze cut toward the Admiral, and that was all Forest required.

  She cleared her throat. Though she’d been watching the conversation until now, she took several steps toward them. “Vira, everything Park said is correct. We did not make this decision lightly. We have looked at every combat specialist we have, and we have come to the decision that Park is the most capable for this mission. Will you work with him?” she asked simply.

  Park wanted to point out to the Admiral that she was giving Vira too much latitude. It wasn’t a question of whether she wanted to work with him – she was part of the chain of command, and if the Admirals chose, then Vira did.

  Park didn’t dare mutter that out loud, and he was careful to keep control of his thoughts so Vira couldn’t pick them up.

  He waited.

  The Admiral waited.

  And Vira, with one more confused glance between the two of them, allowed her shoulders to deflate. She also took a step backward. There was nowhere to go – the couch was right there behind her. That didn’t matter as her body simply gracefully bent, hovered for several seconds, then fell down with a thump. She allowed her hands to drop into her lap and her head to slouch forward. “Fine,” she said in a defeated tone.

  The Admiral looked relieved.

  Park had won, technically, but he still wasn’t willing to bow out yet. “What did you say, Vira?”

  Slowly, she let her head rise up. With her hands still limp in her lap, she shot him one more penetrating look. “I’ll go on the mission with you,” she said in a clearer voice.

  That hadn’t been the comment he was fishing for. Park had wanted her to say “yes, sir,” just as any standard cadet would when following an order. Obviously her vicarious training through the Academy hadn’t been that great.

  But he knew not to push this time.

  He stood there, looming above her for several seconds until finally he took a stiff step back, then another.

  Admiral Forest followed suit, coming to rest beside him. She didn’t say anything but shot him a look that conveyed she was thankful. And relieved.

  It was a powerful emotion, too. Park didn’t have the psychic abilities Vira did, but he didn’t need to as he appreciated that the Admiral wouldn’t have known what to do if this conversation had gone differently.

  Park controlled his expression and nodded.

  The Admiral took a moment to compose herself. “Lieutenant Vira,” she said, “you will board the Apollo in approximately four hours with Lieutenant Park. At that time, you will fall under his complete command.”

  Vira didn’t react. She was still slumped on the couch, her hands limp in her lap, her expression unreadable. No, wait, it wasn’t entirely unreadable – it was… sad. Or was it vulnerable? Could a creature as powerful as Vira ever show true vulnerability?

  Maybe it was just an act. Maybe she really was a truculent child who was annoyed at the fact she hadn’t won this argument.

  Or maybe Park had no idea how a woman who’d been trapped in this room for the past 20 years and who had the hopes of the Coalition resting on her shoulders would think.

  “Do you understand?” Park said.

  “I understand.” Vira made eye contact. He swore he saw it again – this grain of… sad uncertainty. For some damn reason, it reminded him of a bird in a cage. He imagined it was the kind of look a canary might give before it was taken into a coal mine.

  But as soon as he thought that, he dismissed it. Vira was no canary. And though she’d been kept in this room for 20 years, it had been for her own safety. And now? Technically? She’d be free. Or at least as free as he would allow.

  Admiral Forest motioned for him to leave the room. As he followed her out, something struck him. The enormity of this mission. If he accepted it – and it really didn’t seem he could back out now – he would be responsible for shepherding Vira through this mission. This wouldn’t be a simple shoot-and-grab. Wouldn’t be some standard combat mission. This would be the most complex operation he would ever go on in his life. For to win this, he wouldn’t have to understand his enemy – he would have to understand Vira, perhaps the most complicated woman in all of the Milky Way.

  And Park really didn’t like complicated women.

  Admiral Forest didn’t say anything until they strode out into the corridor and the massive door closed behind them. As the atmosphere discharged around her ankles and was sucked into invisible vents along the floor, she tilted her head up. “Are you ready?”

  Park looked at her. His expression was as guarded as it could be. Because inside his head, a nightmare was playing out. To get to the location of the mission – the second moon in the Falax Expanse – they would have to endure a two-and-a-half-week voyage on the Apollo. He would have to keep Vira controlled all of that time. Worse? She would be a Lieutenant – the same rank is him.

  He swallowed. “Admiral, this—”

  “Before you back out, appreciate we don’t have anyone else. We also don’t have any time.” There was a true note of desperation in her tone, one that was matched by the flickering look in her eyes as she stared at him.

  Park’s stomach sank.

  “I appreciate this won’t be easy.” Before Park could snort derisively, the Admiral added, “I appreciate this will be the hardest mission you ever go on. Just as I appreciate that it will be no ordinary mission. Not only will you have to keep her under control while on the Apollo, but you will also have to control her when you arrive at the research facility on the second moon. But beyond that,” the Admiral’s jaw stiffened, and for the first time, so too did her gaze. Park saw a flicker of… a hardened determination that looked as if it had been forged by the hottest fire, “You must assist her in attempting to find the hidden Force technology under the surface of that moon. The Artaxan Prime has revealed to us that that moon was a key site in the original conflict between the first races of the Milky Way and the Force. You need that information. Whatever facts you can dig up from the past – we need them,” her words became short, sharp, constricted. “Devices, weapons, anything. The galaxy needs an edge,” her hard words became whispers, “before they come.”

  He didn’t need to ask who they were.

  All he had to do was stand there and appreciate the blunt force of her emotion. When Park had pointed out that her determination had looked as if it had been forged by the hottest fire, he suddenly appreciated that it had been. This – the Admiral’s unchecked emotion – came from her experience of the Force. Though to Park the Force were nothing more than an operational and historical fact, to the Admiral, they were a wound. One that would never close.

  Park knew he was good at switching off his emotions, and he could have done so now. He didn’t. Instead? He nodded. He also snapped a salute. “I’ll do it,” he found himself saying before he could stop himself.

  Once the words were out, he could not retract them.

  Hope engulfed the Admiral, and for a second, it almost robbed her of her balance as she teetered sideways. Before she could fall over, her exoskeleton clicked into gear.

  Park also shoved out a hand as quickly as he could and locked it on her shoulder, shoring up her stance. A part of him realized the irony of that. Back when this long meeting had first begun in her office, she’d almost fallen over too. And back then, he hadn’t moved a muscle.

  Now?

  Crap, now everything had changed.

  When it became clear she could stand, he took a step backward, blanching. He made no attempt to hide it. Why bother? He’d just accepted an impossible mission straight from Hell.

  The Admiral could obviously perceive Park’s contained terror. She took a solid breath. “Whatever you need, I’ll give it to you.”

  “Demote her,” he said flatly. “Or at least change
her rank, considering she’s not really in the Army in the first place,” he found himself babbling. “Point is, I don’t want her to be the same rank as me while we’re on the Apollo. I need to have perceived chain-of-command control over her.”

  The Admiral listened with an even expression, but once he was done, she shook her head. “We’ve already thought about this. Your time aboard the Apollo may be the hardest part of this mission, because it will be when you must forge trust with Vira.”

  “It’s when I’ll have to control her the most,” he snapped right back. “And I can’t do that if I don’t have seniority.”

  “If she’s an ensign, it will make her too vulnerable to the commands of others,” the Admiral said, picking over her words carefully.

  Park’s brow descended with a click. “What does that mean?”

  The Admiral’s expression stiffened. She also clasped her hands together in front of herself, which was a telling move indeed.

  “Let us say that Vira will… take things literally.”

  “What does that mean?” Park began, but then something started to click. He might have already blanched at the realization that he’d just taken on the mission from hell, but now a cold prickle escaped hard up his back.

  “Vira is in a unique position. She is extremely powerful. And though, on some level, she appreciates the necessity to keep her secret hidden from the rest of the galaxy until we are ready to reveal it, the rest of her wants to,” the Admiral looked over Park’s shoulder, locking her suddenly distant gaze on the wall, “act,” she said. There was such a specific quality to her voice on the word act that it sent another cold charge of nerves dancing down Park’s back.

  For a man who very rarely felt nerves, this situation was throwing him for six.

  He took a hard swallow, trying to use the muscular tension to shore up his stance, trying to convince himself that no matter how goddamn impossibly hard this seemed, he was Adaptable Park, and he would find a way.

  The Admiral didn’t expand, and she didn’t have to. Though Park certainly wasn’t some overpowered Spacer with the ability to physically fight unrestrained and unprotected in space, he was a highly trained combat soldier, and he could understand where Vira was coming from. Not, of course, that he would ever admit that to her face. But Park had felt frustration whenever he’d been forced to sit on the sidelines. And his cool down between missions was always short. What about Vira? With the power to literally change the course of massive wars with nothing more than her hands, she’d been forced to sit behind that megalithic metal door for the past 20 years.

  He swallowed again. This time it felt as if he were trying to digest his throat. Heck, why not swallow the rest of his body while he was there? Get this all over and done with before this mission inevitably ended with his head on a plate.

  The Admiral obviously caught sight of Park’s desperation, and she took a sigh that leveled her shoulders down a good inch. “It won’t be impossible, Park,” she said.

  Though Park could have assumed that the Admiral had read his mind, Vira’s display hadn’t made him paranoid. Admiral Forest was just an extremely good officer, and someone who had made a fine art out of perceiving people’s emotions.

  Though this was goddamn Admiral Forest, that didn’t stop him from snorting. It was a defensive, complicated, and confused move, and suffice to say, Park was seriously not a defensive, complicated, and confused man. Or at least, he hadn’t been until he’d accepted this fool’s mission.

  “Vira just needs somebody to guide her. She is fully capable of understanding that her secret, at this stage, is more important than saving… the occasional life,” Admiral Forest said, leaving a significant pause between saving and the occasional life. It was a hell of a thing to say, after all. Here was an Admiral, tasked by the Coalition Senate to do everything she could to hold the peace and save every life of every Galactic citizen she could. And yet, she was pretty much saying that people’s lives were expendable, as long as Vira’s secret didn’t get out.

  Park’s stomach didn’t pitch with disgust. He understood. It wasn’t a concept your average Galactic citizen could comprehend, but your average Galactic citizen wasn’t forced to make life-death decisions every day. More than that, they weren’t forced to make life-death decisions for whole groups of people going into the future. Yes, you could save one man today, but if saving that one man condemned a city five years down the track, then as hard as it was to accept, you let him die.

  The Admiral took a breath. “While you’re aboard the Apollo and while you’re at the research facility on the second moon you need to stop,” her lips stiffened, “Vira from taking her orders literally. Try to never leave her side, try to ensure that no one who outranks her ever gives her a categorical command. Because she’ll follow it. If someone tells her to do whatever she can to save the ship,” the Admiral’s expression changed, her cheeks becoming white, “then she will do whatever she can to save the ship.”

  Park winced. Not the most elegant of moves, and certainly not something a hardened combat soldier should do, but to hell with controlling his emotions. “So you’re essentially saying that I’ll have to tail her every second of every day. Can’t we just let the Captain know what’s going on?”

  At that suggestion, the Admiral’s eyes blasted wide. “No one else can know about Vira. We’ve been holding onto her secret for too long. If it gets out,” the Admiral’s teeth clenched hard, “and the Force find out that we’re finally utilizing her, they will send everything they have to kill her. She is our ace in the hole, Park, and if we lose her…” the Admiral didn’t finish.

  The weight of the world, no, the weight of the whole goddamn galaxy descended on Park’s shoulders. He was a strong man, but he wasn’t this damn strong.

  Before he could turn right around and tell the Admiral to find someone else, she suddenly switched her gaze to his right wrist. His standard Coalition issue wrist device was on his left wrist, so he had no idea what she was looking at.

  “We have approximately four hours before you will board the Apollo. You need to head to the med bay. Not the standard med bay,” she added quickly, “the one on the third basement level. Doctor Shavar is waiting for you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we need to fit you with her kill switch,” the Admiral said.

  Park’s stomach might not have recoiled at the prospect that the Admiral was happy to sacrifice the occasional life for Vira’s secret, but now it pitched. “Sorry?”

  “We’re not going to leave you completely defenseless against Vira’s whims, Lieutenant. We need to ensure if she contravenes one of your orders in such a way that she will reveal her secret, you will be able to shut her down. And that’s what the kill switch will do. It will maintain a continuous subspace connection between the implant Shavar will graft onto your right wrist bone and Vira’s mind. If you need to – and only if you need to – you’ll flick it.”

  “What will happen?” Park paled. He got it – Vira was one hell of a powerful and potentially uncontrollable weapon, but the very idea that the Coalition had put a so-called kill switch in her head? It didn’t feel right. And that was coming from Adaptable Park who’d never had a problem accepting a single order in his life.

  “Don’t worry – she will simply fall unconscious until you flick the kill switch again. It’s a last-ditch measure, though, and you mustn’t use it until or unless you have to. It will cost you Vira’s trust,” she added. “And trust me, that isn’t easy to earn.”

  For the first time since this serious conversation had begun in the corridor, Park chuckled. It was short, sharp, and to the point. “No, I imagine it’s the rarest thing in the whole damn Milky Way.”

  “You can do this, Lieutenant. I wasn’t lying back then when I said that the rest of the Admirals and I vetted every single combat specialist under our command. We chose you.” She half bowed her head.

  Park wasn’t usually one to feel a swell of patriotic pride, but there wa
s nothing to stop the warm, powerful feeling from spreading through his chest. It made him stand a little taller, made his head angle down, and, more than anything, made him wonder if he had a shadow of a chance to get through this impossible mission.

  The Admiral suddenly snapped a salute. She made enduring eye contact. “Head to the med bay, Lieutenant. And good luck.”

  He’d need it.

  Chapter 3

  Doctor Paxar, research facility, second moon of the Falax Expanse

  “I don’t care how much energy it takes – redirect more to the structural shields.”

  Her second-in-command looked at her, but he knew enough about this situation to keep his exasperation in check.

  The Chief Engineer of the research facility, however, did not. And her brow crumpled down, covering her expressive eyes. “Sir, with all due respect,” she began.

  Paxar’s second-in-command cleared his throat gruffly. “That’s an order, and you will follow it.”

  “But it’s a completely unnecessary waste of energy. Whilst I agree that the seismic activity on this moon is substantial, a level II shield is more than enough—“

  Paxar leveled her gaze at her engineer. The woman was a competent scientist, and even better engineer, and had been hand-picked for this operation. But, despite her exemplary record, she was not privy to the secret. The secret of why this archaeological dig was occurring in the first place. To the outside world, it was a hunt for information on the original race that once inhabited the Expanse. To the Doctor and four other members of her senior staff, it was a hunt for the Force. For the Force had been on this moon – millennia upon millennia ago. But if the Prime Queen of the Artaxans was right, shadows of their technology still remained.

  And it was at that word – shadows – that the Doctor’s back stiffened. A tight, racing chill cascaded down her back. At the same time, as if on cue, the structural sensors throughout the research facility gave a warning beep. Not a blare – a programed voice did not tell them to rush for cover. Just a beep to indicate that the structural shields had stopped another massive earthquake from tearing the facility right out of the rock in which it was embedded.