ted the Helios, firing plasma charges. We were able to outrun them. The line sentinels seem to be very simplistic. They’re much slower than our ships. Our mission parameters called for comm silence, which we maintained. A few hours later, stable wormholes opened, and a new kind of sentinel arrived. Hundreds of them. They were much more… advanced. And aggressive.”
The screen behind him replayed the battle.
“Why didn’t you port to the fleet?”
“Fear. I feared I would lead these new sentinels to the Seventh Fleet and eventually home. I reasoned that our loss was justified. I had the same concern about transmitting our data to the fleet. I deployed the life rafts hoping the commanding officers might survive and that we could bring this intel back. I hoped the gravity mines would destroy the fleet of sentinels, and the subsequent wave would push the rafts far out of range of any sentinels late to join the battle. I spaced the rafts so that if one were destroyed, our evac tags would port us to the next raft in the chain. I wasn’t sure if it would work, but I hoped that the rafts could at least carry our logs and telemetry.”
“In that regard, we judge your mission to be a success, Ares. The intel you delivered may save us in this war.”
“War?”
The auditorium was silent.
“Am I to be briefed on the aftermath of my mission?”
“Yes. In private. By someone who’s very eager to see you.”
CHAPTER 29
The guards led Ares to a large stateroom that was much grander than his captain’s quarters on the Helios. They were treating him like a member of the admiralty. He tried the data terminal, hoping for answers, but it was off. What were they hiding?
The expeditionary fleet had known about the sentinels for over a hundred years but had assumed the spheres were simply relics of a long-extinct civilization, possibly science buoys studying stellar phenomena.
They were clearly much more.
The door opened, and his wife, Myra, stepped inside, tears welling in her bloodshot eyes.
Ares ran to her but stopped short. He stared at her protruding belly, trying to comprehend.
She closed the distance between them and hugged him tightly. He hugged her back, a million questions fighting a war in his mind, with a single thought winning out: I am alive, and she is here.
They moved to the couch, and she spoke first.
“I found out right after you deployed. I submitted several requests to override the comm silence order, but they were denied.”
“I’ve only been gone point one years.”
She swallowed. “They wanted me to tell you. You’ve actually been gone for point seven years. Missing, assumed killed in the line of duty for point five. We had your funeral.”
Ares stared at the floor. Gone for over half a year? What had happened to him? He should have been able to exit the medical pod in the life raft when the wave had passed, once he had stopped porting between the life rafts in the chain. But awareness hadn’t returned to him. It was as if time had disappeared, and his mind had broken from reality.
“I don’t understand.”
“The doctors think a part of your mind essentially shut down—it happened to all the officers. The others are still in a vegetative state, but physically, they’re fine. The doctors are very concerned about you. They want me to… assess you.”
“For what?”
“Any mental changes. They think the experience may have changed you—psychologically.”
“How?”
“They’re unsure. They think the experience may have expanded your mind’s pain tolerance and even permanently altered your brain wiring, making you capable of all kinds of… I don’t want to repeat it. They’re worried.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m the same man I was.”
“I see that. I’ll tell them. And even if there is… an issue, we’ll fix it—together.”
There was something different about him. Ares felt a low simmering rage growing inside him.
His wife broke the awkward silence. “After you went missing, I transferred to the Pylos. They searched for point two years. The funeral followed, but I convinced the captain to allow me to take one of the survey clippers to continue searching. I used up all my leave. I think fleet medical thought if I searched long enough, until I was satisfied, it would be healthier for me and for the pregnancy.”
“You found me?”
“No. I probably never would have. With the wide expanse of space and with the raft’s emergency signal off…”
“I had to.”
“I know. The sentinels would have found you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I found something else. My long-range scans showed massive changes in the sentinel line. Their alignment has broken. They’re retreating. We believe you opened a hole in the line, and someone is trying to come through. The sentinels are fighting them. The admiralty and global council think the sentinel’s enemy could be an ally for us—if we could join up with them.”
She took a pad out of her bag and handed it to Ares. “What I found out about the sentinel lines convinced fleet command to send all the expeditionary fleets to this side of the sentinel line. Every ship has been searching for you, deploying probes. The combined surveys revealed that the opening in the sentinel line is getting bigger.” She pulled up an image. “Here’s why.”
Ares almost drew back when he saw it. A battlefield with the debris of thousands of ships stretched out to a massive star.
“What—”
“This battlefield, it’s where our potential ally is trying to break through. And there’s more. They’re trying to contact us. Our probes have picked up a signal. It’s simplistic. Binary followed by some cipher with four base codes. We’re still working on it. We think this army has sacrificed a great deal to open this hole in the line—they concentrated on the place you first opened, where you led the spheres away from the line. The entire fleet is on their way there. We’ll reach it tomorrow.”
“Our mission?”
“Make contact. See if we have an ally and how we can help in the sentinel war.”
“What else do we know?”
“Not much. The sentinels have destroyed every one of our probes, but we have one image.” She tapped the pad, and a grainy image of a floating piece of a ship appeared. Ares stared at the round insignia, a serpent, eating its own tail.
“A serpent…”
“We’re calling them the Serpentine Army.”
“Are they human?”
“Based on the size of the corridors we can see in the cross section, it’s possible. And their code is readable to us. We’ll solve it soon.”
CHAPTER 30
For David, tearing his eyes away from the massive debris field that stretched from the military beacon to the burning star took an extreme act of will. The view was captivating. The mystery of what had happened here, of what could have destroyed thousands, perhaps millions of ships filled his mind with possibilities—and fear. The moment he had seen it, his entire perspective on their situation had changed, perhaps his entire perspective on life.
He turned. Paul, Mary, Milo, and Sonja waited, but he looked only at Kate, whose expression changed from dread to confusion as she tried to read him.
“Okay,” David said. “Kate says we’re safe here for the time being. We’re going to take this opportunity to get something we need.”
Haggard, defeated expressions greeted him. Not a single guess about what “they needed” was offered in the seconds that ticked by.
“Rest,” David said. “Everyone is going to eat, sleep, and shower—and nothing else for the next eight hours.”
Sonja glanced at the portal.
“No guard duty this time,” David said. “We’ll barricade the portal. We have plenty of supplies on this beacon. We’ll make secondary barricades at the corridor on both sides that lead out. That will be plenty of early warning if Sloane gets through.” He paused, letting the words sink in. “All right, let’s go. Sonja, if you’ll help me build the barricade. Milo, you too.”
Milo smiled, and then grew serious as he fell in with Sonja and David, grunting as he helped them carry the heavy silver crates out of the storage rooms and up the stairs to the portal area.
When the barricade was complete and everyone had retired to the residential pods, David put a hand on Milo’s shoulder. “Milo—”
“I know, I…”
“Let me finish. I told you before that you would understand when you’re an adult. My parents used to say that to me all the time when I was a kid.” He read Milo’s expression. “I know you’re not a kid, but it&rsqu