Epilogue
Zharina
Over the following days, we received an obscene number of submissions from people throughout the galaxy requesting to join the Vigil.
They hailed not only from our allied planets, but especially from lesser-known worlds in the Eastern Quadrants.
That initially baffled us until we questioned some of them about it.
It turned out that many of them didn’t want to join the Sentinels due to their ties to the Galactic Alliance.
They wanted to fight on the right side of the Great War, and the Vigil was the neutral army they felt comfortable finding a home in.
That struck a nerve and helped us better understand the reason for our existence. Initially, we wondered why an already established army didn’t take the lead instead. But now it all made sense. Our conversation with Svira further reinforced that understanding.
She genuinely wanted peace with us. That messed with my head.
Gavin had gone into extensive details about what Siona went through when the Draylians, Guldans, and Sarenian rebels attacked the imperial palace on Sarenia in an attempt to murder her.
Prince Zerien—now Emperor Zerien—had also told us much about it when he last visited us.
It still disturbed me to know how the Draylian mimics were able to not only take on our appearances but also harnessed our powers once they did.
Svira’s warning that Dread wasn’t their only mimic had not fallen on deaf ears.
During the Great War, facing off against a swarm of them would indeed lead to a bloodbath.
I didn’t know what challenges she had foreseen for us, but there was no question in my mind that we would prevail over them like we did with the previous ones.
That it could get a greater number of her people to side with us was a benefit we couldn’t spit on.
At the same time, I didn’t see how a collaboration with them would be possible without causing a major rift with our other allies.
Things were already complicated enough between the Sarenians and Korletheans.
They would only get uglier once we threw the Draylians into the mix.
But we would deal with that problem later.
For now, we took great heart in the fact that many planets asked to join the Coalition. While they didn’t actually send troops to join the Vigil, they pledged that large segments of their respective armies would follow the Vigil’s leadership during the Great War as soon as we called them to battle.
On that front as well, finding out how much the friends of the Coalition had already done totally blew our mind.
They had started—and in some cases completed—building ships for us, including an orbital station.
Both Gavin and I nearly fell off our chairs discovering that his father fully financed the construction of the station, which nearly rivaled the size of Venus Hive.
The fact that the luxury pleasure barge he had grown up in was actually the size of a small city blew my mind.
Earth, Xelix Prime, Veredia, Avea, Dantor, Sarenia, and many other planets deemed as part of the core Coalition provided specialists to manage the various administrative and technical needs of setting up this new army.
My poor brother had to make his first difficult call when Korlethea also offered to send its own specialists.
As a team, we discussed the matter and agreed to politely decline.
There was still too much bad blood with their homeworld.
After more than a decade, they still had not resolved the outstanding issues of reparations with many of the planets and species they had wronged with their experiments.
And above all, they had too many traitors in their midst, trying to force an alliance with Guldar instead, and eager to fight on the opposing side of the war.
At this early stage in our development, we weren’t ready to have to devote the necessary amount of energy and attention dealing with potential moles looking to destroy us from within.
To our complete shock, the Zolians also pledged their loyalty to the Coalition.
We silenced our initial knee jerk reaction of shutting them down.
After carefully considering all the evidence, including the extensive interrogations my Veredian sisters subjected the captives to—we had to admit that we couldn’t blame an entire planet over the actions of the few.
The males who fought us were all rebels and mercenaries.
And that also applied to the humans we battled.
Zolis was an emerging primitive planet at the far edge of the Eastern Quadrant.
Although they had achieved interstellar travel, their limited funds and shaky economy kept them from reaching their full potential.
Unfortunately, since the Galactic Alliance decided to expand its reach into their sector, things had taken a turn for the worse for them.
As they didn’t qualify to become one of its members—not that they really wanted to due to the Alliance’s increasingly coercive and controlling policies—the Zolians fell victim to the new trade embargoes.
It brought their people to the brink of starvation.
In many ways, their situation echoed the one the Braxians faced in the early years of Ravik’s reign as their Magnar.
Their world had been on the verge of bankruptcy.
That forced many clans to send some of their males off-world to work as mercenaries to bring back enough credits to feed their families.
Similarly, the Zolians had left their homes to find work where they could.
Since most mercenaries were too wise to accept the contracts both on Talabor and Dantor, the compensation offered had been extremely generous.
In their desperation, the Zolians readily accepted.
And while the Talabor mission failed in the end with all of us surviving, the mercenaries had correctly performed their task and received a hefty compensation for it.
This emboldened some of them into also signing up for the Dantor attack.
While that didn’t lessen their crimes, I was glad that Svira encouraged me to follow what my heart wanted to do from the start.
Resurrecting those people had been the right thing to do.
They weren’t evil, just desperate. Granted, now they would have to face the consequences of their actions.
However, they had a chance to turn their lives around further down the road.
Unfortunately, as all the recruitment took place through encrypted channels on the bounty hunter and mercenary servers, we had no way of tracking down the person who hired them to begin with.
Everything was done in a way to ensure anonymity specifically in the case that one of the parties was captured.
The credits were placed in escrow, guaranteeing that the person hired would receive their funds once they completed their task.
That said, it raised the serious question of how many other similar enemies would we face in the future?
How many bodies would be thrown at us to do the dirty work of the faceless enemy pulling the strings?
How many more innocents would be pushed to such dire circumstances that they would have no choice but to do things they didn’t want to in order to survive?
Gavin gently rubbing his hand down my back snapped me out of my dark musings.
I refocused on the three geokinetic Veredians excavating the location of our future home.
Their power allowed them to control and manipulate the earth, stones, and subterranean terrains.
They were masterfully laying down the foundation of the large mansion we were building, with at least five bedrooms for the children we hoped to have after the Great War.
With my parents’ blessing, we selected this plot of land on their property to erect our forever home.
The various Veredian kinetics would take approximately two weeks to finish the construction.
Naturally, Lenora threatened to disown me, both as her cousin and best friend, if we didn’t allow her to participate in the shaping of the house itself once the foundation was complete.
We’d been more than happy to agree. Until then, we would share the suite in my parents’ house.
“Can you believe it’s finally happening?” Gavin said wistfully, a happy smile on his handsome face as he looked at the construction site.
I nodded. “We’ve waited fifteen years for this.
Everyone doubted us, but we remained steadfast and committed to each other,” I said with a hint of anger at all the naysayers before turning to look at him.
“I don’t care what lies ahead and what prophecies may come.
We fought too hard for what we have today.
Nothing and no one will defeat us or take away the future you and I are building. ”
He smiled, brushed aside a rebellious lock of hair from my cheek, then drew me into his embrace.
“Nothing and no one will ever keep us apart. I love you, my Zhara.”
“I love you, my Gavin.”
THE END.