Chapter 4
Kael slipped beneath his emotions. Found his calm in the Void.
It wasn’t empty. There were ghosts—more and more as time went on.
His brother floated there; mouth open in a scream no one had heard. Frozen. Still reaching.
But he pushed past and below them to the quiet depths.
This particular trick was just another tool in his arsenal, although curiously it came in handy far more often in briefing rooms like this, than in the field.
He’d unpack her answers later. Right now he had a job to do.
He tapped his data pad and the pictures behind him began swapping between scenes of devastation.
Debris fields from destroyed ships. Smoldering ruins of frontier settlements.
Wraith looked impassively at them.
Charred bodies.
A child’s frozen corpse spun lazily across the screen, preserved in the vacuum of space like a specimen.
Her pupils didn’t even dilate.
“These aren’t from the War. These have all happened within the last six months.”
She looked bored, but that single finger tapped slowly and quietly on the table. Her heartbeat, perhaps?
He waited.
Wrapped the void around himself.
“Where?” she asked finally.
He pulled up a starmap, the points highlighted. Not all of them, the full scope of the attacks was classified, but enough.
The attacks had happened on the edges of their space. At first. She seemed to pick that up too.
“They’re moving in.”
He nodded. “They don’t stick around. Not yet. But we’re showing an uptick in attacks. And yes, each one is just a little bit further into our space.”
Her finger continued tapping. It had seemed random, but…
He waited. Watched.
Tap-pause. Tap. Tap-pause. Tap. Tap-pause. Tap-pause. Tap. Tap-pause
The pattern was off rhythm, but deliberate.
A code? A compulsion? He made a note to unpack it later as she stopped tapping and looked up at him.
“So, where do I come in?”
“As I told you before, we’re a little low on individuals that can navigate the Inbetween.”
Helios’s voice was calm. Almost wry. The Golden Boy thought he was funny.
His tanned face a sharp contrast to image of the child that still floated behind him. Frost on her lashes.
She couldn’t have been more than four.
“And using the Inbetween helps you… how? It wasn’t exactly stable last time I was there; I can’t imagine things have improved much since then.”
She stopped tapping and sat up straighter, falling into briefing mode. Part of her wanted to slouch, but there were more important things at stake than petty albeit satisfying rebellions.
Things like finding her team. Her family. If they were even alive.
War doesn’t discriminate. And neither do the Others.
She didn’t look at the child again.
“You’re right. It’s not stable. There have been incidents.”
There was a slight hesitation in his voice before the word incidents. Yeah. She knew exactly what those looked like.
“And I’m expendable?”
His head shot up, eyes flashing. It seemed there was some fire beneath that nice-guy calm after all.
“You are our best hope of figuring out how to get through it despite the issues.”
Interesting.
“I’m going to be honest with you, Captain, if we can’t figure out how to re-navigate the Inbetween in its current state, we may as well surrender now. The Others have better technology, better weaponry, and they slip through space like it’s not even there.”
She cocked her head, “You know they use the Inbetween, right?”
He leaned forward over the table, “That’s highly classified. And yes. More importantly, it doesn’t harm them the way it hurts us.”
“I suppose I should be grateful I’m not being dissected in a lab somewhere.”
A slight flicker around his eyes, barely there.
Uh oh.
“Your mission is threefold: first, we need to find your old teammates and you need to convince them to join us.”
“You don’t think your sparkling personality is going to be enough?”
He ignored her.
“Second, you have to advise our engineers on the shield upgrades and engines for the Inbetween. We’ve made strides, but it’s been hard to judge their effectiveness.”
He paused and she shrugged. Same old, same old. Hopefully she wouldn’t end up in MedBay again this time.
“And third, you map out the Inbetween for us.”
She raised an eyebrow. “That’s not possible.”
“High Command disagrees.”
She rolled her eyes. Five years and they were still morons.
“And what will you be doing while I’m traipsing around between reality? Gonna lengthen my leash?”
He smiled with teeth, and for the first time she spotted a person who might just be ruthless enough to be worth knowing.
“Simple, Captain. I’m going to be with you every step of the way.”
Kael looked up as the door opened; he smiled and stood.
Next to him, Wraith did the same, minus the smile. Also, he suspected standing had far more to do with positioning than respect.
The two new arrivals saluted him. Hound was a tank of a man; broad-shouldered, barrel chest, and his face scarred from laser burns. Patch Ortega was comparatively tiny next to him, her hair pulled back in a ponytail and grease staining her coveralls.
“At ease. Please, sit.”
They sat. Hound treated Wraith to his death stare. Patch looked at her with undisguised curiosity.
“Patch, Hound, meet Captain Ashley Raine, call sign Wraith. Wraith, meet Lieutenant Dain Vorsk, call sign Hound, and Chief Warrant Officer Talia Ortega, call sign Patch.”
Wraith nodded at them.
“Captain,” Hound sneered, and turned to him, “That’s no Captain, Sir, that’s a war criminal with a pulse.”
His tone left no doubt that he would remedy that situation if given half a chance. Kael had briefed them both before he’d left for the prison. Apparently, Hound’s disdain for the idea hadn’t lessened since then.
Patch smiled widely, “Come now, Hound, don’t be like that. She’s a genuine War relic. Has survived more time in the Fold than anyone else on record.” She turned to Kael, “Let me borrow her for twelve hours, Major, I’ll deliver that working shield algorithm.”
“She’s sitting right here,” Wraith noted, leaning back, completely at ease.
Shit.
He had to de-escalate this now, before the room turned into a blood bath and the mission ended before it even began.
He sank some steel into his tone, “Captain Raine will be working with you, with us, to ensure the continued survival of Humanity, Hound. And you’ll get your time with her, Patch, but for now you have to wait.”
He eyed both of them. Patch shrugged good naturedly, but her eyes drifted back to Wraith with a thoughtful look. Hound held his gaze a moment longer, before nodding curtly, his lip twitching in the ghost of a sneer.
“Yes, Sir,” he said.
Kael gave Wraith a long look, which bothered her not at all, before bringing the Ghost Command team up on screen.
“To business.”