The ancient book of the first emperor holds many secrets of the power of psi. He and his queens pushed the boundaries of what can and should be possible. But the power over the mind, the mind with power over reality, comes with a cost. Hidden records tell that the Aegeans and pretty much everyone in the galaxy descended from an ancient alien species called humans. A species with great ingenuity who ushered in the galactic age and touched the foundations of psi for the first time. But the weakness they had, the cost they paid, was the unraveling of their minds. Many records claim the weakness has been bred out, that any Psionic born is an example of stellar genes and pedigree, but they lie. The weakness was never bred out of our genes. It exists still to this day, manifesting in Psionics in different ways. The most common are psychopathic tendencies, sociopathic behavior, bipolar disorders, autism, mild to extreme dementia—even in psionics as young as three cycles old. But the most intense and dangerous of them all, the curse that almost always afflicts the most powerful Psionics...Split Personality Disorder.
PRESENT
The assassins sprang into motion. A storm of psionic energy warped around the casino as Cornelius waved his hand while running left. Flames spread in a wide arc from his palm, the heat distorting the air. Two of the assassins shifted their focus to Hera, opening fire as one—clearly a telekinetic—raised shards of glass into the air and sent them flying toward her like crystalline daggers.
In a surprising display of marksmanship, Hera spun and opened fire. Her bullets struck true, smashing through most of the glass cloud heading her way. The shards exploded into glittering fragments, but a few got through her defensive barrage. Her suit took hits in the shoulder and thigh, the material puncturing with sharp cracks. The armor was usually resistant to projectile damage, but a telekinetic didn't just move things with their mind—anything under the purview of kinetic energy fell completely under their control. That focused energy had enough power to punch through the empire's standard issue battle suit. Not that the suit was the best available. Every commander was expected to outfit his own army, and this was Orn just starting out, barely equipped before being saddled with this godforsaken mission.
Orn paused mid-stride. He chuckled softly. He hadn't even noticed the switch this time. He'd gotten angry and Cornelius had emerged. Cornelius got angry and he came back. Orn had absolutely no control over the personality switches—they came during moments of extreme emotional distress. Even assassins trying to kill him hadn't been enough to trigger it. Finding out his new bride orchestrated his assassination hadn't caused any ripple in his emotional state. But witnessing the level of destruction wrought on this fortress, seeing the gory remains left by either the now-crispy senator or the Black Sun assassins, had been enough to shake something loose inside him. And now Hera getting hurt had annoyed Cornelius.
Orn found it funny. They hated the woman. Or at least they were supposed to.
But now they were both angry, and Orn was going to act accordingly.
He stomped down hard. Psionic energy radiated from him in waves as he pulled all the oxygen and air toward himself. The atmosphere rushed forward in a violent gust, a howling blast that picked up the telekinetic assassin and dragged her bodily through the air. Her arms flailed as she tried to regain control, but Orn's manipulation of the air itself overwhelmed her grip on kinetic forces.
At that precise moment, the rest of the soldiers returned. These men had fought alongside Orn multiple times and knew exactly when it was safe to be around him. Cornelius was an unstable personality, more likely to hurt allies than enemies. Anything could trigger his wrath, and being as powerful as he was, that wrath usually left a trail of bodies—friend and foe alike.
The soldiers opened fire without hesitation. Their concentrated barrage caught the telekinetic while she was still suspended mid-air, helpless. She jerked and spasmed as rounds tore through her body, then dropped like a puppet with cut strings. The soldiers immediately took positions beside Hera, forming a defensive line to provide covering fire.
Just like that, the entire dynamic of the battle shifted. Three assassins remained. They retreated rapidly while returning fire, moving up one of the spiraling staircases before disappearing down a hallway on the second floor. Orn followed without pause, his soldiers falling in behind him. The team medic worked on Hera as they moved, administering first aid and sealing the breaches in her suit with emergency patches.
Orn reached the hallway entrance and had to duck back immediately as a volley of shots tore through the air where his head had been. He pressed against the wall as the lead assassin's voice rang out.
"I am going to kill you, Aegean!"
Orn chuckled, the sound dry and humorless. "From where I'm standing, it doesn't look that way!"
He stretched out his hand and one of his soldiers placed a flash grenade in his palm without being asked. Orn activated the device—a silver orb the size of a table tennis ball. He leaned out briefly and the assassins fired again, the shot passing close enough that he felt the heat. But the glimpse was enough. The hallway was a dead end. They'd need a pass key to access the rooms beyond, which they clearly didn't have, and they wouldn't have time to use their Psionic abilities to break through reinforced doors.
Orn pulled his head back just as another shot rang out, nearly taking it off. In the same motion, he threw the flash grenade at an angle that made it bounce off the wall. It arced through the air, spinning end over end, before detonating right in the middle of the hallway.
The bang was deafening. Orn felt his ears ringing even through his helmet, but they'd created the opening he needed. He'd take full advantage of it. Moving to the opposite side of the entrance, he immediately threw a second flash grenade into the hallway while the assassins were still reeling.
Grenades that dealt mental damage through bright lights or loud sounds were particularly effective against psionics. Even Orn couldn't withstand sonic grenades or sound-based attacks—for some reason he was extremely susceptible to them. But that weakness held true for every Psionic to varying degrees. The intensity just differed.
The second flash grenade doubled the sensory assault. The assassins faltered, clearly not expecting the follow-up. The soldiers piled through the entrance and opened fire. Their bullets rained down with concentrated fury on the Black Sun assassins. One of them fell almost immediately, her body jerking as rounds punched through her torso. Their numbers dropped to two.
The remaining assassins dove behind a portable shield they'd set up, using it for cover while they tried to regroup. Orn didn't hesitate. He ran into the hallway at full sprint. The shield gave them protection from frontal assault, but Orn was already adjusting his angle of attack. He leaped sideways, his gravity boots engaging as he literally ran along the wall, his body horizontal to the floor. The boots hummed, keeping him anchored despite the impossible angle.
His rapid wall-running caught the assassins completely off guard. They'd been focused on the entrance, expecting a frontal assault. One of Orn's soldiers took advantage of their exposed position and fired. The sniper round caught one assassin in the head, the impact violent enough to blow her skull apart in a spray of gore. That left only the leader.
Orn launched himself off the wall and smashed a knee into the leader's face. His momentum carried them both forward until he drove the man's skull and body against the opposite wall. The impact should have been devastating, but the assassin was stronger than he looked. Orn felt a blast of kinetic energy throw him backward, his boots losing their grip. A sharp lance of pain stabbed through his head, blackening his vision for a moment as the Black Sun assassin leader rushed at him with a vibrating black dagger in hand.
The weapon hummed with lethal energy. Orn took a step back, the blade whistling through the air barely inches from his neck. He could feel the heat coming off it. He pivoted and smashed his foot forward into the assassin's chest, using the impact to create distance. As the man stumbled back, Orn grabbed hold of the air around them with his mind. He compressed it, shaped it, then released it in a focused blast that lifted the assassin off his feet and slammed him into the ceiling.
The crack was audible even over the ringing in Orn's ears. The assassin leader fell to the ground in a heap, his limbs at wrong angles. Orn didn't give him a chance to recover. He pointed both hands at the fallen man and flames billowed out, the color of a golden sun. The psionic fire was different from normal flames—hotter, more intense, fed by the power of his mind rather than oxygen.
The assassin might have been knocked unconscious or his neck might have been broken when Orn slammed him into the ceiling. Either way, it didn't matter. The flames rushed over his form, consuming everything. Psionic fire didn't just burn—it unmade things at a fundamental level. It took less than a minute for the assassin's body to be reduced to a crispy black state, burnt down to the very roots and the last atom. The smell of charred flesh filled the hallway.
Orn took several steps back, his chest heaving as he looked down at his hands. They were trembling slightly from the exertion. His suit had been damaged in the fight—he could see the breach indicators flashing on his HUD. Going out into space now would be suicide.
He turned and started moving through the hallways at a jog. "Major Hera, any idea how to locate the command deck for this fortress? Or is it possible to remote hack it now that we're on board? The shield needs to come down and we need to give the Norkel something to focus on while we take it out from behind."
They moved quickly through the corridors, Orn double-checking corners and ensuring no one was alive, especially the senator. You could never be too sure. But what would come next would ensure there were no survivors on this fortress anyway.
"We lack the capability or anyone talented enough to hack the fortress's systems, at least not as quickly as you need," Hera replied, studying a tablet in her hands. "But we can disable the shields and activate the weapons systems. That way while it's being destroyed, it can damage the Norkel before we have to handle the rest ourselves."
She came to a stop in front of a console positioned before the airlock. Without hesitation, she handed the tablet to another soldier who had more technical expertise. He went to work immediately, his fingers flying over the interface as he deactivated the shields and brought the fortress's weapons online.
Almost immediately, the entire structure shook violently. The roar of the enraged Norkel could be heard even through the walls—a sound that vibrated in their bones.
"Move out! Quickly!" Orn ordered.
They rushed toward the airlock. The drop ship had been powered up and was waiting for them just outside the barrier. They piled into it rapidly, but Orn lingered for a moment, planting explosive charges on the engines of the other ships still docked at the fortress. The Norkel loomed above them, its massive tentacles smashing into other sections of the structure. It was too close for comfort—close enough that they could see the alien texture of its flesh, the pulsing bioluminescence along its body.
"Go! Go! Go!" Orn shouted as he jumped into the drop ship.
It lifted immediately, engines screaming as they pulled away from the fortress. The craft accelerated toward the Honest Star while everyone aboard prayed to their ancestors that the Norkel wouldn't be drawn to their small ship as it pulled away from the object of its rage.
They'd barely reached a safe distance when other ships began rising from various docking ports on the fortress. Survivors attempting to flee. Orn smiled grimly. For an operation like this, no witnesses could be permitted. He'd suspected people were still hiding aboard—servants, staff, maybe even more guards—but he couldn't make a full sweep of the entire facility with the giant space monster right outside threatening to destroy them all.
But the charges he'd left on the engines of those ships were sufficient.
He pressed the trigger.
Explosions lit up the darkness of space like newborn stars. The detonations were bright enough to catch the Norkel's attention. It stretched out a tentacle with terrifying speed and smashed several of the fleeing ships to pieces before Orn could even destroy them with his charges. Debris scattered in all directions. But the explosions also drew the creature's focus to them, and by this point they were only halfway to the Honest Star.
In that critical moment, the fortress's weapon systems finished their charging cycle and fired. A massive cannon round blasted into the Norkel's body, tearing away a huge chunk of its flesh. Blood and pieces of tissue began floating in the vacuum of space, drifting like grotesque clouds. The creature screeched—a sound that seemed to resonate through psionic channels as much as physical space.
The weapon fired again, the second shot just as devastating. The Norkel's attention snapped back to the fortress with renewed fury. It abandoned the fleeing drop ship and renewed its assault on the structure that had wounded it.
That was all the time they needed. The drop ship streaked toward the Honest Star, its engines pushed to maximum. They reached the frigate and docked quickly, the crew already preparing for the next phase.
They'd completed the infiltration. They'd eliminated the assassins and the senator. Now came the next stage of their mission.
Hunting the Norkel.