Chapter 14:
The Federation’s ships were still arriving. The others were gone now, out in the streets fighting to save those who had escaped the first wave of the bombs. Drake had not gone down; he was the commander of the weapon, and now that the time had come to deploy it, he was not sure if he could.
He kept trying to formulate a plan that would keep him from having to use her. A plan that would keep him from losing her.
He could refuse to use her.
He could turn her against them; it was obvious from her speech that she had the willingness to walk away from that fight—but maybe not the ability. If he was the one who guided the weapon, could he not simply refuse to fire it?
Yes, probably, but she might have the ability to use herself without his direction, and if she did, he would still lose her to Tralam.
Drake paced the floor, his body demanding action as he tried to overcome the sorrow and the anger that kept hitting him like a ton of bricks that had sharp edges along with a killing weight. He had to hurt her, turn her completely away from him so she would refuse to allow him to be the one who could guide that weapon within her, that weapon that was as seductive as it was deadly, that weapon that promised endless power and death to any who opposed him.
Had to. The desire to use her, to force her to use that weapon lodged within her to assure himself his place in history had been what had driven him away from her, and he hated himself for it even as he knew that he could not stay with her.
He would destroy her happiness and shatter her already fragile heart and mind, and all for the glory he wanted so desperately.
This was no longer about bringing peace and ensuring the fall of the Federation.
This had somehow become about nothing but power, power that he wanted so badly to wield, and he knew that he was already corrupted by the longing for power, the power Lornia could bring to him, but at such a great cost to her that he could not allow it to happen.
Power or love.
Those were his options, and the hell of it was to have her love, he had to leave her.
Because he loved her.
He loved her too much to see her be killed, and she would die if she released the full power of the weapon inside of her. He knew she would too. Lornia would do that because she loved him and because she had no idea what she was actually capable of; she had no idea of what he would do with the power her abilities could bring to his arsenal.
Why?
The question took him to his knees. Tears, the first he had cried in decades, welled up in his eyes. Why could he not loose that need, shake it off, and be a better man? Why could he not let go of the need to be someone important, someone who would be remembered for many centuries, and why could he not stop wanting that flow of power he felt every time he was near her?
She was everything he had ever wanted in a mate, and she was everything he needed too, but to stay with her would be to kill her and to kill off whatever goodness remained within himself too.
Blade spoke from close by. “She’s angry at you.”
Great. Just what he needed. Blade seeing him on the floor, bent and broken. Drake clambered to his feet slowly. “She has good reason to be.”
Blade stood there with his hair messy and his eyes hooded. “Now is not the time for you to have personal problems. The entire armada of the Federation is headed in our direction, and every ship is loaded with neutron bombs. Nothing can survive that onslaught. You have to know that. They will kill it all and then claim the remnants and start over. Good people will die. Innocents. You have to figure this out.”
“I can’t do this to her. I can’t. You know what will happen to her. She can’t stand that; you know that.”
Blade said, “I do. The weapon was built to protect the universes, and she is the weapon now.”
Drake said, “I can’t do that to her just to win this fight.”
Blade sighed. “I know how you feel. I don’t want this either. None of us do. But we don’t know what she wants and you walking away from her is not making her want to help us, that’s for sure. They’re coming, and if we don’t do something, everyone on this planet will die today. Her included.”
Drake ran his hands through his hair. “I won’t do this.”
Blade snarled, “You have to. Think of the greater good here, you idiot! Tralam is fallen, and the doors are open. So far, the other universe hasn’t been made aware of that, or doesn’t care. It will eventually though, and that universe can end this one even faster than the Federation. We need her. We need her to stop the Federation, and we need her to close that damned door again, to re-form Tralam.”
Drake’s words held all the bitterness within his heart and soul. “You mean we have to force her to imprison herself again, to first destroy all the Federation’s power and then, as a reward, leave her alone in a world where nobody else can enter. That would kill her. Once the weapon’s power has been drained, she will be broken, and she will die, but even that will not be enough.
Blade said, “We have to stop them, Drake, and you alone can control her.”
“I don’t want her dead.”
“Then do something, for God’s sake!” Blade’s voice lifted into a shout. “For pity’s sake, stop being a coward! We all have someone we love and whose life is being threatened at this very second while you stand there whining about you not being willing to use her for what she was made for.”
Drake’s heart showed in his next words, as did the love he felt for her. The love that was the only thing that could protect her from his twisted ambitions and desires, from his corruption by the power he wanted to hold so much that he could feel that wanting staining his very core black. “It was never up to her! She did not ask for this! It was done to her, and she didn’t deserve it! We did this, humans did that to her, and now she will die if we let her release what is inside her, and I fucking love her, yes I do! I love her, and I hate that I’m so weak that all I can think of is that centuries from now I will be remembered as the man who could control an ancient weapon, the only man who could control that ancient weapon, and did control it!”
Blade let out a long breath. “No. You won’t be remembered at all. Not if you do nothing.”
“I’m not capable or worthy of that power.” The words held all his bitterness. “I never was. How I would end up in control of it and with her heart is beyond me. She deserves so much better. She deserves to live. We will fight the Federation without her or not at all.”
“We can’t win without her, and you know it.”
True.
It was all so true.
Drake stood there, torn and conflicted. How could he do it? How could he force her to first win this fight for them and then force her to rebuild that fortress and then imprison herself within it?
He couldn’t.
He wouldn’t.
Lornia’s voice came into the room, soft and slow, tinged by that odd accent of hers. “Drake, is this why you turned away from me? Is this what you fear? I knew, I have always known, that if I was ever used as the weapon, that I would have to hole myself away again, away from life and the universes. I hate that. I am afraid of that, yes. But…but you humans…”
She came into the room. Her silver hair spilled to the floor and shone and glittered like a river of precious metals. “I almost destroyed your world just a few minutes ago because I was so angry at you for turning away from me. I have that in me, the ability to kill at will. Perhaps my being in the world is not something I can live with, not knowing that I am capable of such harm simply because I am angry.”
Tears filled up in her eyes and ran down her face, breaking his heart. He held his hands out, wanting to touch that smooth and slightly hard skin of hers, to take her into his arms, but she stood her ground and fixed a long and intense gaze onto his face. One that saw right through to the very bottom of his heart. He said, “I’m weak and failing.”
She shook her head. “You are strong. Power corrupts, yes, but sometimes one must touch the poison to know how to avoid it later.”
He drew a deep breath. “I’ll lose you. You’ll be where I can never find you again.”
The tears running down her face left tracks as silvery as her hair on her translucent cheeks. “I know. Tralam will be rebuilt; there is no other way around that fact. As soon as I use the weapon within me, that fortress will begin to form. It will take me. The ancients created the weapon to first fire then hide itself. I can’t change that fact, and I can’t change the fact that right now warships are coming, and even though I have little love for humans after what was done to me, I do love many humans.
“You, Drake. I love you. That is how you control the weapon. The weapon was built for destruction and only creation—only love—can control it. It has to be you, and you have to do this. You have no more choice than I have.”
No choice. That chafed at him and made him angrier than ever. “We have a choice. We can fight in other ways.”
“Maybe you can. I can’t. If you do not let the weapon do what it was intended for, if you do not put your orders into my ears and send my abilities to the warships, then I will break apart. You will kill me by not using me.”
Drake searched Lornia’s face, hoping to see a lie written there. He knew that she was not lying. She, of all of them, knew best how the weapon was to be used. That her race had not created it, and that she had not asked to be implanted with that weapon’s abilities aside, she knew what it was capable of—and what would happen if she unleashed it.
He lifted his hands in a pleading gesture. The palms of his hands, lined and slightly pink, caught his attention. He had never surrendered once in his life, never, and he did not want to surrender to this either.
Drake said, “I cannot send you back to that loneliness.”
Her smile was better. “It’s not your choice. It was never your choice. Not that anyway.”
He pondered that for a moment. Had any of it been his choice? He had been drawn to that fortress and the weapon within it ever since he had first heard of it. He had never considered that the weapon might take the form of a beautiful creature that he would fall in love with. That he might one day have to deploy that weapon, and in doing so cost himself the love of that creature. That he might lose her.
He said, “There must be some other way.”
Lornia’s voice held a note of impatience. “No. There is no other way, and you know it. The Oracle foretold of my coming centuries ago. Perhaps it was always intended. Perhaps the founding members of this damned Federation knew exactly what they were doing when they sailed into Tralam with their words of wishing to lock themselves away from their creation. Oh, of course, they would say that! It was what we had done, and so they followed our example. Perhaps my creator had intended for this to happen all along.”
That was something he did not wish to believe, but he could see the truth in that. For so long the population of his universe had held the founding members of the Federation up as things to be revered. They had believed that they were peaceful and despised the sudden grab for power made by so many of those they had allied themselves with, but perhaps all of that was incorrect.
Perhaps the founding members of the Federation had indeed gone to that fortress where space and time folded in on itself and deliberately forged of the ancient Speaker that he loved so much a weapon, a weapon that could be removed from the fortress which had been its prison.
And if all of that were true, then he had played right into the Federation’s hands once again.
He said, “I will let you go. I will be right beside you. Even if I am forever lost in space as a result, even if time folds me away from you, even if I am killed in my endeavor to remain at your side, I will always be with you.”
The words were harsh, not just in tone but in the way that they ripped up from his chest, bolted up along his throat, and off of his tongue. He meant them. He would do everything he could to stay with her.
Lornia’s said, “I beg you, to let me go. When it begins, leave me.”
Blade interjected, “We cannot discuss this now. The ships are nearing. The bombs are locked on to us at this moment. We need help: Lornia’s. For God’s sake, Drake, deploy the weapon!”
Drake looked from Lornia’s face to Blade’s. His heart was heavy. This was what nobody ever mentioned about power. Its great and terrible weight. The awful responsibility of it. The terrible and unrelenting consequences of using it. His heart hurt. Everything in him hurt.
He nodded. “We go to the battlefield.”
Lornia reached for him. He resisted her touch, sure that if she laid a single finger upon him, his heart would not be able to bear it. That he would break and let the entire universe die in an attempt to save her from that fate, that fate of being trapped again in Tralam.
Her fingers stroked along his arm, and he took a deep breath. He reached back for her. His arms brought her to his chest and held her there. Her body was made for his. She was made for him. Everything about them fit, and he was about to use her in a way that he had agreed to long before he had ever seen her face, and that he now had no stomach for.
“The greater good.” Her face lifted. In her large golden eyes, he saw both sadness and rage. “There’s always a greater good to think of when it comes to life.”
Yes, there was, but it was so wrong and unfair that she was the one who had to sacrifice herself for it.
He nodded. “Yes. I know. I meant what I said. I am not letting go of you, Lornia. I won’t. If Tralam reforms and takes you into itself, I will spend my entire life searching for you, and I won’t stop until I do.”
Her lips met his, but the kiss was brief, and far too soft. That kiss tasted of goodbye.
Lornia moved out of the shelter of his arms. She said, “We have to go now.”
No. Not yet. The thought was strong, but he kept the words behind his lips. There was no more time. None at all.
Even as he spoke, he wondered if that was possible. If he could travel into that place when it began to form again. If he would ever be able to find her again.
He said, “It’s time.”
The words sounded like a death knell in his soul. They all turned and headed for the door of the room. The entire house buzzed with electricity and tension. Armed beings prepared themselves. On every face that turned toward them, Drake saw both hope and despair written large.
They all hoped that Lornia could do what she was supposed to do, but they had so little reason to believe that they would be saved by her that the hope on their faces was dim and fading fast.
Outside the building, the world smelled like death. The Federation had decided against ground warfare. This was to be their show of strength. They’d wipe out an entire system in one swift and lethal moment, proof that they might, was the one that all in the universe should fear.
It was a smart move, absolutely. The ships were firing smaller bombs at the moment, and they’d managed to fell most of the ships that had gotten off the ground before they ever had a chance. It was not a fair fight, and would never be a fair fight.
Talon said, “The bastards intend to destroy the whole system and then sail into another one. They won’t have to destroy many before the universe decides rebellion is not worth the cost. Millions upon millions will die today.”
Yes, they would. Unless he used the weapon.
The sky was dark; the heavens were blotted out by the hulls of the Federation ships. The ground was already scorched. The ships above were dropping bombs indiscriminately; destruction was everywhere. Lornia said, “They are hoping that fear alone will cause this system to kneel. That the mounting death toll will be enough to force submission.”
Talon said, “Every ship of the Federation’s fleet is here. They have brought even their trade ships into the fray, probably to supply the warships. They are going to kill this system even if it surrenders. They’re traitors that way.”
Drake’s eyes closed. His hands came up. His fingers wound into her hair and stroked down it. His voice was bleak as his eyes opened again and he stared at the reality that was power, the power he had coveted so much.
He spoke softly. “Systems, arm.”
Lornia’s face changed. The serene expression was replaced by one of sheer determination and courage, courage so real that it steadied him even as he wept inside for what he would do to her, had to do to her in the name of peace and survival of the universe. Her skin became porous and began to melt away to reveal the machinery below. A whirring, clicking noise ensued. Chips and wiring circuitry all began to beat and flash. She grew wider and taller, but her face remained unchanged, and he stared at it, torn by the need to save this universe and the billions of beings within it and the need to save her.
There was the real crux of power. The greater good balanced against what he wanted and needed: what he loved.
But inside him, the battle had already been lost. All of his defenses were crumbling. There was nothing left but his broken and shattered heart and the certain knowledge that this was the end of everything good about him. That he would never ever be able to recover even the slightest bit of goodness from within himself. Not even if he managed to stay with her. Especially if he couldn’t find a way to do so.