“What happens when we die? Do we simply stop existing, or is our soul taken to another realm? Does the mind trapped in a Steel Cast body keep its soul? Mr. Antony, before you lecture me on interplanetary politics, perhaps you should question what we do to the soldiers who fall in service to our republic.” – From the first debate, May 2 3265

  There was something different about this thread. It was almost like tapping into an existing network rather than creating one of his own. Even that was a poor explanation of the sensation. It was like he was becoming a single point in a spider’s web that spanned the universe.

  The foreign network was actively rebelling against his Light. The only thing he knew was that his presence was hurting these creatures on a physical level. It refused to be part of him, tearing at his mind with claws that ripped into his psyche in their quest to be free of Jack’s power.

  Adding to his pain, but knowing that it was necessary, Jack gritted his teeth and reformed the audible link between the members of his squad.

  “Neilson, kill the bastard!” He cried, fury the only emotion clear in his voice.

  The team knew there was no time to waste and understood the need to use the window of opportunity to its fullest.

  Cecile fired a shot she’d been concentrating power into since her last one failed. It wasn’t perfect, but it was enough. When the fifty-caliber round struck the creature between the eyes, it didn’t laugh off the blow as it had before.

  It felt something.

  The next volley of attacks came from Alec before anyone could tell how much damage Cecile did to the target.

  Rounds previously absorbed into the body with nothing to show for their efforts were now ripping into the target and leaving massive, undeniable wounds. The attacks turned the alien into a pincushion, albeit one for incredibly large needles.

  Leaving nothing to chance, Nessa lept in with her blades drawn. In one swift movement that left the others speechless, she’d decapitated the creature and kicked its head as far down the hall as she could.

  “Thea! Hurry!” Jack yelled, “Diego’s hurt!”

  “On it,” she said, deftly dodging the others while the emerald Light of her corps danced across her fingertips.

  But it was obvious to anyone that Ortiz was already dead, and any attempt to heal him was a waste of time.

  Simply touching the body confirmed those fears. Every bone in his skull and neck was shattered, and the tissue was well beyond repair.

  Private Diego Ortiz of Charlie Company, 416th Battalion, was dead, and there was nothing anyone could do to change that.

  “Save him,” her boyfriend pleaded. Desperation clear in his tone.

  “Jack…” Thea said softly, standing up from the mangled corpse.

  “No, I don’t want to hear that you can’t. I need to know that you can.”

  “Bud, there ain’t nothin’ we can do for him now,” Dave said, putting his hand on his friend’s shoulder, “But we can move forward with the mission.”

  “How can you just ignore this?”

  “I’m not…” the cowboy said, slowly drawing Light back into his shield in case their enemies returned, “But there’s a job that needs doing, and we are the only ones here to do it.”

  Jack breathed deep and tried to recenter himself, bringing his mind back to the here and now. “Fine. We need to be ready for whatever comes around that corner. If another of these things shows up, let me know and we can try doing this with no casualties. Warren, is the engine ready to go?”

  “Yeah, but even pinging our location, the ship is having trouble locking on.”

  “Could you do it?”

  “I think so. But I would need to be up there.”

  Wordlessly, Jack brought his vision into the Light spectrum once more. Sure, he still had a headache from the fight, but this needed to be done. In the distance, he found a massive tangle of lines looped in ways that Light would never do on its own. Clearly identifying the ship, he pushed a single thread toward the spot with the most frequencies. Eventually, he found the computer system and locked on.

  After creating the bond, Jack touched Warren’s vision and finished the circuit.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “You’re connected to the Gate room. I think I found the control module, but I could be wrong. If I am, let me know and I’ll move it.” Jack said, voice devoid of emotion in a terrifying way. Not only was he emotionally numb from the loss of a friend, but this use of his power was something never even hinted at during his time on Algol.

  It was a strange feeling. Like two radios trying to talk to each other, but on slightly different frequencies. But instead of radios, it was a living mind. While he was comfortable moving his own perception, the idea of bringing along another was disconcerting.

  “I’m in,” Warren mumbled, creating a path to the mind server and transferring Diego’s consciousness before anything else. “Looks like they were close, but still about three hundred meters off target. If you give me a few minutes, I can trace a line back to us and get this thing open.”

  “Squad, you’re going to need to handle things the old-fashioned way for a bit. I’m still not one hundred percent back to fighting shape after that… thing.” Jack said, unhappy to admit weakness.

  “So, we get to play in the street with a blindfold on?” Nessa asked with a surprising amount of cheer.

  As if taking her words as a challenge, a group of Oteric entered the hallway and screamed a now-familiar battle cry. Their fury grew as they passed the piles of dead bodies on the ground, but didn’t seem to care about the strange pile of tentacles in the middle.

  “Come on, you bastards.” Nessa growled, “Your little squid friend killed one of ours! Now it’s time we paid it back in kind.”

  Heedless of the danger, she drew her weapons and charged into the group. With no gap between her and the enemy, she dropped and struck a horizontal blow that left the first creature devoid of legs. Turning with the strike, she raised her pistol and unloaded a trio of incendiary rounds into its chest.

  As reinforcements came, the other fighting members of Turaspeir joined Nessa in avenging the death of their friend. This was no longer a fight; it was a slaughter.

  Flashes of orange filled the hallways as Alec gave up on rebuilding the engine and joined his squad on the field. Somehow, the attacks didn’t just give off the color of their corps, but seemed to channel their collective rage at losing a friend. In this battle, the emotions of their wielders were on full display as more and more aliens died at their hands.

  Spinning to block an overhead attack, Nessa was surprised to see that the creature was no longer a threat. It was still there, but the fist-sized hole in its chest from Cecile’s weapon made it hard to continue doing simple things like breathing.

  The entrance to their portion of the tunnel was so crowded with enemies that it was no longer possible to fight without risking friendly fire. So Alec did the logical thing and fired a corrosive round. With a single fourteen-millimeter shell, he’d not only melted many enemies, but he’d cleared most of the hallway as well.

  Warren didn’t care that he was upsetting the Possessor in charge of maintaining the gate. He didn’t even care about the disciplinary action that was sure to be in his near future, either. No, all he cared about when he forcefully ejected the Gate Operator from the system was creating a connection and getting Ortiz’s body back to the ship.

  At that point, the engine was a whole lot farther down on his list of priorities.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Private? You haven't been properly trained on this,” said the operator, as his avatar re-materialized inside the machine. “You’re going to screw it all up and get the entire company stranded on world.”

  “Just like you’re doing now with your shitty attempts at locking on to our signal?” he shot back, knowing that he had the right of the situation.

  “Hey… I was close to finding you.”

  “Yeah, and how much longer would you have taken? This way, my team gets back on the ship and you get to look like the hero. The only people that will know the truth is Turaspeir… unless you turn this into something bigger.”

  Properly quelled, Warren returned his focus to the task at hand. He’d been able to locate his body, but the depth of the complex was throwing off his calculations. If he was right, he would open a Gate directly into the laboratory with no issues. If he was wrong… well, better not to think about such things.

  Pulling his consciousness back along the pathway Jack created, he was relieved when the far wall of the room warped like the air above an intense fire. A heartbeat later, the warping ceased, and a circle roughly four meters wide was ripped into the fabric of reality and seemed to crack like shattered glass.

  “Thea, help me get him through,” Warren shouted over the comm, the mangled body of Ortiz hanging from his shoulders.

  The Phantom replied quickly and quietly, not wasting a second as she grabbed an arm and helped the Possessor carry their squad mate to the ship.

  When they materialized back in company headquarters, the two soldiers placed the body on a stretcher that was permanently staged at the gates for situations just like these. Having accomplished their primary goal, the two soldiers stepped back through the Gate and into the fight.

  “I still need help. This thing is way too heavy for me to move alone,” Warren said, grabbing Thea’s hand and steering her toward the massive engine. “I tried to push it, but even with wheels, it is just too much.”

  “We got this. Jack, is there anyone over there that can help us out?”

  “Not really? I don’t know. How long do you need them?” The leader replied, gunshots peppering his transmission.

  “Don’t worry about time, Jack. I got a good charge on this Shield Generator,” Dave said, uncoupling a shield projector from his arm and slamming it into an open port on Alec’s armor, “Long as numb-nuts here doesn’t break it, it should hold for about thirty minutes.”

  “Damn…” Jack said, impressed. “Thea, you’ve got Dave for thirty minutes and counting. We need to get this thing done and get out of here.”

  Dave nodded and stepped into the lab, throwing his weight against the machine with a grunt. His large armor did more than just protect the wearer. It increased his strength to a level that was impossible for a normal soldier, much less a human.

  While they fought, they made progress. Warren sent a crawler drone to make yet another copy of the alien computers. If he’d learned anything from a lifetime of fighting with machines, it was to have backups of his backup.

  “Package secure, pull back,” Warren said after both the engine and crawler were through the gate, “Let’s get home so we can call this mission a success.”

  “Understood, incendiary grenade out,” Jack shouted, lobbing a disk glowing with violet Light down the hall.

  When the weapon inevitably exploded, the squad used the distraction to retreat into the lab and seal the doorway with one of Dave’s barriers. The illusion of safety provided more comfort than it was truly worth.