Chapter 5 #3
“But you don’t have a Ghan,” I interrupted. “And, if you’re so worried about losing me, be smart. What better way to keep me close than to have my mate as your right hand?”
That comment struck a nerve. By the look on his face, Vahl was seriously considering the merits of my statement.
It should have thrilled me, but I found myself a little uneasy about it.
From the moment my soul connected with Gavin’s, I felt at a visceral level that he and Vahl would develop the same type of brotherly and professional friendship as Dad and Uncle Ghan shared.
But I wanted Vahl and Gavin to become brothers organically, not as a ploy for my sibling to keep me nearby.
We reached the shuttle where the others waited for us with less than two minutes left before our allocated time was up.
By the look Sohr gave us, he wasn’t too impressed.
But it was the expressions on our teammates that affected me the most. A glance sufficed for them to understand we had patched things up.
Their relief and happiness both moved and shamed me.
I shouldn’t have allowed our disagreement to drag on this long.
We usually made it a point to just address issues head on right away instead of letting them fester while we pouted in our separate corners.
As we formed a very close-knit nucleus, whenever one of us had a falling out with another within the group, it made things awkward for everyone, especially if they felt forced to pick a side.
But the depth of the betrayal and hurt I had felt drove me to keep my distances longer.
After the cruel words I spoke to my father out of anger, I no longer trusted myself not to do it again. It still embarrassed me that I should have done such a thing, so unlike me.
As soon as Vahl and I settled in our seats, the shuttle immediately took off, Sohr piloting it.
It was less than a five-minute flight at high speed, just shy of us jumping into warp.
Why he would leave our main ship so far away confused me, but I cast out those wandering thoughts to focus on the mission at hand.
Based on the angle from which we approached the asteroid, my team would jump out first. Lenora, Trehvus, and Dhaxius all stood right after I did.
I exchanged a glance with Vahleryon. A silent communication passed between us.
Ever since our birth, he and I often did that.
We weren’t using our telepathic abilities.
We just exchange thoughts or emotions without actually wording them.
A single look sufficed for us to understand each other.
In this instance, it was a mix of ‘You’ve got this’ and ‘Stay safe.’ The containment field went up as soon as I activated the opening of the doors. It maintained the integrity of the ship while allowing us to jump out of the vessel. It resembled a semi-transparent energy field.
The void of space looked like a gaping mouth before us.
I pushed it to the back of my head and kept my eyes on the asteroid.
Very few things scared me. But I hated jet flying through space.
Although knowing the probability of something going awry and of me ending up floating endlessly into space until death claimed me were next to nil, it still made me feel queasy every time we jumped out of a moving ship.
Lenora was the exact opposite on that front.
That girl was an adrenaline junkie. During our initial training, she got disciplined a couple of times for wanting to do acrobatics instead of the more serious exercises we’d been expected to perform.
Personally, I was more than happy to enjoy the instant teleports that Rhadames usually blessed us with.
Still, as we flew through space, with the jetpack function of our celesium suits propelling us forward, the thrill of the mission steadily grew as we closed the distance with our destination.
We landed on the narrow platform next to the eastern hatch door.
Although we still could not perform any scans of the secret base within, whatever disruptor they were using did not impede my ability to track the movement of our shuttle or of my brother’s team.
They were flying to their own entrance and would land any minute now.
Lenora immediately burst into action, not needing any instruction from me. It was the beauty of not only having grown up together, but also of having been part of the same team forever. Everyone knew their role and little communication was necessary for us to work efficiently together.
Standing next to the rocky face of the asteroid not too far from the door, Lenora stabbed two shield spears into the ground, with a little over a meter distance between them.
Each spear—ten centimeters long and three centimeters in circumference—expanded to twice that length once both pieces of the set were planted.
A force field instantly formed between them.
It projected side walls towards the rock, creating a chamber that the four of us entered.
Once Lenora breached the outer wall, this safe space would prevent the secret base from losing oxygen or pressure.
My cousin walked up to the wall and pressed her palms against it.
The nanites of her armor spread around her hand forming a circular disk.
To an observer, it would look as if some sort of gripping tool extruded from her armored gloves.
In reality, the nanites forming the armor beneath her palms merely shifted to the side to grant her skin direct contact with the surface.
Traditionally, Veredian psionic powers required physical contact with the object or being we wanted to affect with our powers.
But all of us Titans—the children born of Veredians forced to couple with Korletheans in the old breeding compounds—possessed extra powers activated without contact.
Children born between Veredians and Xelixians also turned out to be Titans.
Lenora was the exception to the rule.
Of all the younger Veredians of our generation, she was the only one born of a coupling between a Veredian and a Guldan. Therefore, she didn’t qualify as a Titan as she had no remotely activated powers. But that didn’t make her kinetic abilities any less formidable.
Lenora slightly slid her hands sideways.
A small fissure appeared on the wall as it cracked open in response to her powers.
It split just wide and deep enough to allow me to release a tiny snitch the size of a coin inside in stealth mode.
The overhead display of our suits instantly showed the feed from the snitch’s camera.
Finding the coast clear, I activated the snitch’s holographic feature to create the illusion of a smooth wall to hide the breach.
Lenora then proceeded to widen the opening a great deal more to allow us to enter with our suits in stealth mode.
Heart beating with the rush of adrenalin, I led my team inside the deserted hallway. It was half carved in the rock of the asteroid, and the rest made of metal plates.
“We’re in,” I telepathically conveyed to Vahl.
“We’re in, as well,” he replied.
Sylvius possessed the same kinetic abilities as Lenora, which allowed him to let their team into the base.
However, I hated that they didn’t have a healer.
As silly as it sounded, I always felt overly protective of my brothers.
And as was common with Veredian healers, we constantly fought the urge to mend and soothe the slightest injury or basic ache anyone might feel.
Knowing that I was too far to tend to them should anything happen drove me bonkers.
While Trehvus placed a small holographic disc to hide the breach, thus relieving the snitch of its camouflage duties, I scanned our surroundings to further confirm the absence of any camera or motion detector.
That we found none didn’t mean anything.
Every day, new technology regularly offered ways to fool even the most advanced tools like the ones created by we Veredians.
However, while it showed no surveillance system, it also didn’t reveal the presence of any living souls on board.
That alone sufficed to confirm they had some scrambling system in place to trick us into a false sense of safety.
Moving swiftly, but quietly, we reached the central area of the asteroid where we found a giant, cylindrical structure in a massive pit, at least fifteen-meters deep, fifty meters long, and about thirty meters wide.
Electrical tendrils swirled around a bright, bluish beam of light shooting upward in the middle of the glass cylinder.
I presumed it was some sort of power core.
I jerked my head up as movement up ahead drew my attention. Relief and excitement coursed through me when I recognized Vahl and his team. Despite the stealth mode active on our suits, we could still see each other as ghostly silhouettes.
I gestured for him indicating that my team would go straight along the relatively wide path on our side of the pit.
It led to a doorway into a separate area where the map we consulted earlier showed the location of some holding cells.
He nodded and waved to the wide balcony at the end of the pathway on his own side, located on the upper floor.
The oddest wave of envy and pride swelled within me when Vahl spread his arms, palms facing up, then slightly lifted them up.
Instantly, he and his entire crew levitated all the way to the landing on the second floor, which spread over a large terrace.
Despite having my own badass abilities, I could never help being amazed by my siblings’ powers, and the effortlessness with which they wielded them.
He wasn’t showing off. Hover platforms appeared to be the only visible way to access the upper floor. The probability that using them would trigger some sort of alarm was much too high to risk it. Therefore, levitating instead was the smarter approach.