“Would you care to repeat that with context this time?” Lyra deadpanned. “You sounded like you wanted to ransom Fayt.” Her eyes glowed a faint red as a show of intimidation which Cliff picked up on. A shiver ran down the Klausian’s spine.
“Uhh, right,” Cliff verbally stumbled. “Look, my boss wants to talk to Fayt about something. I can’t say what it is though.”
“Does it have to do with the Leingod Symbological Genetics experiments?” Cliff tensed at Lyra’s casual mentioning of sensitive information.
“What do you mean?” Fayt asked. “What does my father’s work have to do with me?”
Cliff struggled to find something to say. He didn’t want to give too much away with Fayt as an audience, but the mare before him was not making it easy.
Lyra picked up on that and placed a hand on Cliff’s arm. “You kids talk among yourselves, me and this guy need to have a chat.” She then teleported herself and Cliff to a distant area of the ruins. From where they appeared, Cliff fell to his hands and knees and struggled to keep his last meal from spilling onto the ground.
“You really need to work on your mental fortitude,” Lyra commented.
“Easy..for you to say,” Cliff said while panting. “Klausians are born with strength and stamina well above most races in the galaxy; the high gravity of our planet doesn’t do a thing for our minds. Whatever you did left me disoriented and nauseous.”
Lyra rolled her eyes while Cliff managed to get off the ground and avoid losing the contents of his stomach. “Are you ready for our chat yet?”
Cliff took a moment to calm his mind. He took a deep breath and responded, “Yeah, first off, who are you? Second, how do you know about the Leingod experiments?”
“The name’s Lyra Heartstrings. I have my own mission related to the Leingods and the children. My boss for this mission wants to learn more about the symbological genes placed into the three children. She has access to the Federation’s most guarded files.”
“Hang on, is your boss part of the Federation? Also, three?!”
“For the first question, yes and no. My boss operates the Federation through proxy but from what she said, I can guess that there are some corrupt elements within the government that try to undermine her authority; the Invisible for example. Second, I’m sure Maria knows the three surnames of the Leingod research team. Did she really not suspect that there would be a third from among the Esteeds?”
“Ya got a point there. So what was the deal with The Invisible, anyway?”
“From what my boss told me, the captain of that ship went rogue and tried to take out Quark for his own glory. Even if he succeeded, only a court martial awaited his return.”
“A vigilante, huh? Figures. Anyway, From what Maria gathered, her symbological power is called Alteration and Fayt’s is called Destruction, what’s Sophia’s?”
Lyra shrugged, “That we don’t know. The records only showed Maria’s power turning a quantum torpedo into a weapon capable of bypassing a ship’s shielding and destroying it in one go. My boss may have her suspicions though. She’s good at figuring things out as long as there’s a scientific explanation.”
Lyra paused for a moment before she smirked. “Also, my boss may want to tell Maria to work on her subtlety when she’s hacking into government databases.”
Cliff raised his eyebrows in surprise before he struggled and failed to hold back laughter. Lyra ended up joining the laughter a moment later. The two laughed for a few seconds before Cliff responded, “Yeah, everyone else on the Diplo knew of her attempts at getting into databases she shouldn’t have been messing around in. Not like we could stop her though, she’s quite the determined one. All we could do was keep an eye on her and make sure she didn’t get into any trouble. I figure if your boss knew of her hacking, she must have been covering for her.”
“Pretty much,” Lyra shrugged. She then schooled her expression, getting back on topic. “So what are Maria’s intentions? We know what she knows about the experiments, but we don’t know if she is planning revenge on the Leingods or something. I want to know if we can trust you and Maria.”
“I dunno all the details about Maria’s intentions, figure that she wants to know why she was experimented on so she can move on with her life. She didn’t seem too bitter about it, mainly confused and determined for answers.”
“I see,” Lyra responded. “As long as there’s no malice, then it should be fine to allow Fayt to meet Maria.”
“Yeah, but we need to keep Fayt in the dark about his powers until we can find a way to break it to him that won’t risk triggering them,” Cliff warned. “His power being Destruction, I figure that no matter where he awakens, something’s getting destroyed. I’d rather it not be me or his loved ones.”
Lyra nodded in agreement.
“One last thing, you know what happened to Fayt’s parents?” Cliff asked. “We couldn’t find any trace of them after the Helre was attacked.”
“They’re safely aboard my boss’s ship. Fayt will probably want to see them.”
Cliff nodded. With that, all relevant topics had been discussed so Lyra prepared another teleport back to the others. Cliff closed his eyes and held his breath, anything to prepare himself for the disorienting effects of the teleport. It helped somewhat as he was able to fight off the nausea more easily this time.
While the children weren’t at the destination, it didn’t take long for Lyra and Cliff to catch up to the others who were heading toward the exit of the ruins. Sophia informed the two that Fayt wanted to get Niklas back to Whipple and take care of a couple of things before he left the planet. One being that he wanted to fix the kid’s music box.
The return was uneventful. Fayt was the only one who entered the village because having others go with him would have led to problems they didn’t need. Fayt informed the villagers that Norton was no longer as much of a threat as before and told them about some features about Norton that they didn’t know in case they wanted to deal with him. The villagers quickly decided that Norton was a vampire. Fayt let them believe that for simplicity.
Once Niklas was safely returned and the music box fixed, Fayt quietly left the village.
While they were waiting, Sophia decided to ask Lyra something. “Hey, Lyra, do you think you could teach me how to fight?”
Lyra looked at her in confusion, “What brought this on? It’s not like you did poorly against Norton.”
“I know, but when I saw you fight at the evacuation facility on Hyda, I realized that there was something missing from my life. All my life I’ve had urges to go out and find someone to fight. My parents have tried to help me to control the urges through competitive sports, like fencing. They figured that I could get it out of my system if I enrolled into a Federation military academy. It turned out that I had a knack for strategy and tactics. My parents didn’t want me doing front line fighting though so they enrolled me in the Combat Symbology ROTC program at my school.
“Until Hyda, I figured that was as good as my life was going to get. When I saw you fight, I realized how empty I felt. I had a sense of longing to be able to fight like you can.”
That was an unexpected answer that Lyra heard. While some Humans were prone to a desire for strength and power, the way Sophia described her urges made Lyra wonder if there was something alien mixed in with her DNA, aside from the genetically modifying infestation and the Symbology. It almost appeared as if part of her heritage involved some warrior race.
The mystery of Sophia deepened.
Still, if the girl was willing to learn from Lyra as a means to satisfy her urges, it was probably as close to a declaration of commitment as she could have hoped.
“The style of fighting that I use is referred to as the Templar Arts,” Lyra began. “This style comes in three forms from what I have discovered. All three of them involve a combination of hand to hand combat and psionic powers. Two of them involve using those psychic powers to channel Void energies in different ways. One of the two use it to cloak themselves in shadow which allows for a wide variety of assassination techniques. The other uses those energies in destructive ways. One such way I demonstrated on Norton, by using Void energy to drain his life force.”
This small amount of information stirred a feeling of excitement from within Sophia. In fact, she had never felt this level of excitement before in all her life. Compared to her previous reactions to taking part in competitive sports and joining her school’s ROTC, this feeling felt foreign, yet so natural at the same time, as if being a Templar warrior was her destiny and the time had come to seize that destiny.
“Are you willing to fully commit to the ways of the Templar?” Lyra asked. “Are you willing to forsake the path of the mage for the path of the assassin?”
Sophia nodded vigorously, “Of course, although, I would still like to learn to fight with symbology on the side. It gives me another weapon in my arsenal.”
Lyra smiled. “Good answer, never hurts to have secondary weapons as long as you have enough proficiency to use them effectively in combat.”
Fayt returned from the village and rejoined the group. Lyra invited Cliff to her ship while Fayt was talking with his parents. Cliff accepted, then activated the communicator on his wrist.
“Hey, it’s me. Slight change in plans. Got the kid with me but we’re visiting the nearby Equestrian ship briefly. Huh? Whaddya mean you can’t pick it up on your sensors? Don’t see why they would lie. Right. I’ll be there soon.” Cliff ended his transmission.
Lyra activated her own communication link to Twilight and requested transport. A few moments later, the group was transported one by one aboard the Equestrian ship.
It wasn’t long after they left the transporter room that Fayt saw his parents in front of him. In his elation, Fayt rushed over to hug his parents. “After everything that happened, I thought you might have been captured or killed by the Vendeeni.”
“We might have been captured if it weren’t for Twilight and Lyra. They transported us to their ship after we launched our escape pods,” Robert said.
Fayt then turned to bow to Lyra, “Thank you so much!”
Robert and Ryoko glanced at each other for a moment then nodded to each other. “Fayt, could you come with us for a moment? We need to have a talk,” Robert requested in a tone that meant that the talk was quite serious.
Fayt gulped as he quietly followed his parents to an isolated room away from eavesdroppers. For good measure, Twilight placed a privacy spell on the room.
Inside the room, Fayt looked nervous as his parents looked at each other. His mother had a worried expression while his father was doing his best to put up a resolute expression.
A minute passed before his father looked at him. “Fayt, I want you to understand what I am about to ask of you as this request will be the most we have ever asked of you.” Robert took a deep breath. “Your mother and I are fully aware that we haven’t been there for you much while you were growing up. We did our best to be there, but please understand that our work is more important than you think.
“Our universe is in grave peril. Our research team discovered something truly terrifying and it decreed the annihilation of everyone in the galaxy. In response to this, we used our knowledge of Symbological Genetics to modify the genes of three children and turn them into weapons against the coming threat. You and Sophia are two of them.”
Fayt’s eyes widened from the shocking revelation. “What?! But, but why? Why us?”
“Because we felt that using the children of others would have been an even greater sin than what we did to you and Sophia.”
Fayt had trouble processing the revelation. He wanted to believe that his parents were joking with him for some reason and while he felt some anger toward his parents for making him their guinea pig, he hoped that the threat was truly as grave as they said to justify what they did to him. As these thoughts ran through his mind, he was curious about something.
“So does this mean that Sophia’s abnormal abilities have to do with the gene modifying?” Fayt asked.
“Actually, we don’t know how she’s doing that either. The symbols we placed in you two shouldn’t have any effect on your physical or mental abilities. We never could figure out how she’s been able to do what she does. Though I get the feeling that that aquamarine pony has a much better idea than we do.”
Fayt sighed before returning to the main topic. “Anyway, what kind of threat are we dealing with? And what makes you think modifying the genes of a few people will help deter this threat?”
Robert shook his head and sighed. “I’m not going to give you all of the answers up front, not yet, which brings us to our request. We know that we have no right to ask this of you after all we did, but perhaps this universe’s best chance of survival rests on you and Sophia reuniting with the person who is the current leader of Quark. When you find her, tell her that the answers you are looking for are at Moonbase. Your mother and I cannot accompany you on this journey you must take. We must return to Moonbase and make preparations for the coming threat that could make itself known any day now.”
“Why can’t you stay on this ship?”
“I doubt anywhere is truly safe from what’s to come. Don’t worry my son, your mother and I will do whatever it takes to weather the storm.”
Fayt resigned himself to accept his parents’ decision. That was when a sudden thought came to him. “You mentioned “reuniting” with Quark’s boss. Does that mean that I’ve met her before?”
“You likely don’t remember her as you were both infants at the time, but she was experimented on at around the same time you were. Jesse Traydor, who was among my research team, took her away and raised her as their own. While our family and the Esteeds moved to Earth, Jesse moved to Remote Station Seventeen and raised her there. We haven’t been in contact since then. The last I heard of them was when I heard about the news of the Aldian attack that destroyed the ship carrying Jesse. We thought we lost young Maria as well, until Twilight informed us that she was alive and leading Quark.”
“That explains why I’ve never heard of her before, and at least now I have a name to go on.” Fayt thought. “So why is it important for me to meet her?”
“Because the symbological genes within you three are designed to work together,” Robert explained. “While each gene has its own ability, the true power of the genes realize themselves when they are near one another.”
Fayt thought some more about the conversation to think about more questions. When he could no longer think of any, he sighed. “Alright, I’ll go with Quark.”
Robert smiled, “Thank you, and again I am truly sorry for what I did to you three.”
Fayt and his parents left the private room and rejoined the others. After Fayt told Cliff that he would go with him, the edges of the Klausian’s lips lifted slightly, glad that the mission could get back on track.
Twilight assured Fayt that they would be right behind them.
Fayt nodded and followed Cliff to the transporter room.
Twilight opened a communication channel to the Klausian ship and brought the image of the other ship’s cockpit on screen. The one to receive the transmission was a female Klausian with blonde hair and blue eyes. From what could be seen, the woman wore a black zip-up shirt with a black short jacket with short sleeves. The collar had reinforced padding.
Twilight and the woman, Mirage, introduced themselves before the mare requested for her to allow Fayt and Cliff to transport aboard her ship. Mirage acknowledged the request.
A few moments later, Fayt and Cliff boarded the Klausian ship. Fayt ended up getting lost momentarily in the Klausian woman’s beauty before Cliff warned him about how dangerous she can be. Mirage didn’t say anything or react to Cliff’s subtle jabs.
Mirage turned the ship to a specific destination and Twilight followed. The two ships activated their gravitic warp drives and entered gravitic space.
Sophia sat in her cabin thinking about recent events. The Leingods had just informed her about her own genetic modifications but also told her that they would only manifest once she reached a certain location. They didn’t tell her any more than that, saying that she would find out as long as she continued travelling with Fayt.
Brushing that thought aside, she was excited to be taught the Templar Arts. It felt strange because she had never been so excited about anything in her life before. For some reason, she felt like it was meant to be.
Sophia’s thoughts were disturbed by a knock at her door. She went to answer it and the door opened to reveal Lyra, who appeared to be carrying a small hypospray which contained a small amount of a strange purple liquid with veins of gold mixed in.
“What’s that?” Sophia asked.
“This is Terrarium, a compound mixture of Jorium and Terrazine,” Lyra answered. “Both substances affect brain chemistry. Jorium is known for awakening psychic powers and Terrazine amplifies them. Volunteer soldiers of my people’s covert ops program use this stuff to gain psychic powers; usually enough to use in combat.”
Sophia raised an eyebrow, “Don’t I already have strong psychic powers?”
“That’s why I’m only giving you a microdose. I’m hoping that will be enough to help you begin learning to actively control your powers without them going berserk.”
Sophia nodded and exposed her neck for the hypospray. The injection lasted a second. Lyra then walked just outside of the doorway and picked up a mechanical sphere about the size of a bowling ball and placed it on the floor in front of Sophia.
“This is a psychic training orb,” Lyra said. “It’s designed to be disassembled but reassembling it requires the steps taken to do so to be done simultaneously. Regular trainees use these to learn how to control and train their telekinetic powers by keeping it in the air and holding it in place. After that, they learn to move it around without hitting anything. Next comes the disassembling and reassembling. Powerful psychics like me and Twilight are actually able to crush these things.”
“So my first exercise is to keep it floating in place?” Lyra nodded.
The next few minutes were spent with Lyra observing Sophia trying to focus her mind on the orb.
During this time, Twilight had to watch in horror as the Klausian ship came under attack by two Vendeeni battleships. The Klausian ship started to reverse its course and turned around, attempting to outrun the battleships.
Twilight clenched her fists in frustration. “Just what is Azure Lazer thinking? Why is she so determined to hunt down Fayt?”
The Vendeeni ships were in hot pursuit of the Klausian ship. They fired a volley of torpedoes but the smaller ship managed to evade them. The Klausian ship moved toward a nearby planet. As the ship got close to the planet, with the Vendeeni closing in, it suddenly turned upward, away from the planet. With the battleships being slower to turn, the Klausian ship gained some distance. The battleships fired one last volley at the smaller ship and one managed to hit its mark, damaging its engines.
However, that wasn’t enough to disable the ship as it quickly reentered gravitic space, successfully escaping them.
With Twilight’s ship still in the Vendeeni battleships’ distortion field, Twilight had no time to move out of the field before they lost the signal.
She quickly weighed her options and came to the grim conclusion that she needed to get through the Vendeeni to keep track of Cliff’s ship.
With a resigned sigh, she held one open hand in front of her and channeled one of her administrative symbological powers through the ship. Dark purple circles of symbols appeared in front of the ship surrounding a violet orb of the same color.
Once the charge was complete, the Vendeeni ships picked up on the energy signature too late. The resulting blast hit both of the Vendeeni ships and surrounded them in several collapsing rings of purple symbols. Twilight made a grasping motion with her hand and in that instant, the Vendeeni battleships were erased from existence.
Twilight truly hated using that power against the denizens of the Eternal Sphere as it was the same as committing a mass murder. However, while lives were precious things to her, the Vendeeni gave her little choice as she couldn’t afford to lose track of Fayt.
She would mourn the lives she had taken later. Meanwhile, she put the ship back into gravitic space to pursue the damaged ship. The ship didn’t remain in that space for long as it arrived at the Klausian ship’s location.
A quick remote diagnostic scan of the ship told Twilight that the engines were no longer functional and they were now drifting.
Worse news was that the ship was caught in a nearby planet’s gravitational field. A scan of the ship’s trajectory made Twilight wince as it showed a city at the estimated crash point.
With the ship out of range of the transporters, Twilight had no choice but to enter the planet’s atmosphere after them.
However, a scan of the planet in question limited Twilight’s options. Not only were Cliff, Fayt and Mirage crash landing on an underdeveloped planet, but it was also Elicoor II.
Twilight facepalmed, “Why did they have to crash into this planet of all places in this galaxy?” she thought.
Sneaking the ship close to the surface was out of the question since using the Deletion ability also disabled the optical camouflage for a while. The ship could still avoid being detected by sensors but it could now be seen by the naked eye which was bad when trying to avoid detection on an underdeveloped planet.
Even worse, Elicoor II was home to a number of secrets that could lead to major trouble if they were discovered.
Twilight was feeling a headache coming as her stress levels rose.
The situation had become extremely complicated.