Fall

CHAPTER 13 — Fall

Zekra appeared on the navigation screen exactly as always.

Purple with turquoise mists.

But different.

The three noticed it at the same time without saying a word. It wasn't the planet they had left three weeks ago. Visually, it was the same, but something lay over it that changed everything about what it meant to see it.

Trinita ships.

In orbit.

Dozens of white dots arranged in a formation that left no angle uncovered.

Silence on the bridge.

"Zekra has been taken," Arlo said quietly.

It wasn't a question.

It was the confirmation of something all three had begun to suspect from the moment they found the trinita satellites in Earth space.

Sira stared at the screen without moving.

Marek's fists were clenched.

"Zarpon," he said.

A single word.

Carrying everything he didn't say.

---

"Can we get in without being detected?" Marek asked.

Arlo was already on the navigation systems.

His fingers moved with that particular speed he had when the problem was real and time was short.

"The trinita formation has blind spots," he murmured to himself. "Northeast sector. If we reduce the ship's energy signature to minimum and enter on a passive trajectory..."

"Will it work?" Sira said.

"It has reasonable chances of working."

"How reasonable is reasonable?"

Arlo hesitated for a second.

"Reasonable enough to try."

Marek looked at the screen.

The trinita ships in orbit. Zekra below. Somewhere on that planet was Zarpon, and everything they had built in three years.

"Let's try," he said.

---

Arlo adjusted the systems.

The ship slowed down. The energy signature dropped to minimum. The bridge lights dimmed automatically as part of the emission reduction protocol.

They advanced slowly.

In silence.

The northeast sector of the trinita formation grew closer on the screen. The blind spot Arlo had identified was small. A window of less than four hundred meters between two patrol ships whose scan cycles didn't fully overlap.

Narrow.

But possible.

One hundred meters from the perimeter.

Fifty.

The ship glided silently into the space between the two trinita patrols.

Twenty meters.

Ten.

---

The shot came from below.

Not from the patrols.

From a satellite that hadn't appeared in Arlo's records. Small. Static. Perfectly camouflaged among Zekra's natural orbital debris.

A trap satellite.

The impact struck directly at the ship's propulsion core.

It wasn't an explosion.

It was an energy shockwave that traveled through the entire hull in a fraction of a second.

The whole ship shook with a violence that had no comparison to the earlier impacts.

All three were thrown.

Arlo against the controls.

Sira against the side panel.

Marek against the back wall.

The screens exploded into static. The bridge lights flickered and went out. The sound of collapsing systems filled the space for two seconds.

Then silence.

---

Marek tried to get up.

The yellow aura sparked around his hands. Weak. Irregular. Like a flame in a strong wind that couldn't find anywhere to hold.

He tried to focus.

He couldn't.

The energy wave had interfered with something deeper than the ship's technology. Something that wasn't circuits or systems.

His hands didn't respond as they should.

He saw Sira on the bridge floor, trying to get up with one arm.

He saw Arlo, head resting against the controls, barely moving.

He tried to say something.

The words didn't come.

Darkness came first.

The last thing he registered before losing consciousness was the sound of the outer hatch opening from outside.

Trinita soldiers.

Entering.

And being unable to do anything about it.

---

He didn't know how much time passed.

Time had no shape in the darkness.

The first thing he felt when he returned was cold.

Artificial. Controlled. The kind of temperature that doesn't exist in nature, only in places designed to make someone feel like they didn't belong anywhere.

He opened his eyes slowly.

White walls.

Light blue lines along the edges.

Cold, uniform lighting with no visible source.

He sat up.

His body responded with less strength than he expected. When he tried to ignite his aura, it flickered briefly and went out on its own.

He looked around.

Sira was sitting against the right wall, back straight, arms over her knees. Conscious. A small cut above her left eyebrow that had already stopped bleeding.

Her eyes found his immediately.

"How are you?" she asked.

"Alive," Marek said. "You?"

"Same."

---

Arlo was in the left corner, lying back but with his eyes open, staring at the ceiling. Not the ceiling, really. He was staring at a fixed point with the particular concentration of someone processing something without instruments.

He had been like that for a moment when he spoke.

"We're on a ship," he said.

Marek looked at him.

"How do you know?"

"The hum." Arlo didn't move. "Ground installations have a different vibration frequency. This is active propulsion. Engines running. They're taking us somewhere."

Silence.

"Trinita?" Sira asked.

"The wall design. The light blue lines." Arlo sat up slowly. "Yes. Trinita."

The three processed that in silence.

A trinita ship.

Moving.

Toward some destination they couldn't see or control.

Marek looked at the light blue lines along the edges of the walls.

"Don't touch the walls," Arlo said before anyone could ask. "Those kinds of lines in trinita cells are usually..."

"Electrified," said a voice from the darkest corner of the cell.

All three turned at once.

---

Zarpon was sitting against the back wall.

Not standing. Not in a ruler's posture.

Sitting on the floor, back against the white wall, his yellow eyes looking at them with an expression that held too many things at once to name them all.

Relief.

Guilt.

Something that resembled the pain of seeing people you cared about in a place they should never have been.

Marek looked at him for several seconds.

Then he walked over.

He sat on the floor in front of him.

They looked at each other up close for the first time since everything had changed.

"Zarpon," Marek said.

"Marek," Zarpon replied quietly.

A pause.

"I'm sorry," Zarpon said.

Marek shook his head slowly.

"No."

"I'm the one who brought you into this. Zekra. The Kratar. All of it..."

"No," Marek repeated, more firmly. "Don't start with that."

Zarpon looked at him.

Sira had moved closer too. Arlo stood behind Marek, arms crossed, eyes attentive.

"What happened?" Sira asked. "Tell us everything."

---

Zarpon told them.

The fleet. The confrontation on the surface. The battle. Germon.

And then something none of the three had expected.

He spoke of the prisoner. A man named Karum. Worn brown skin. Dark eyes. Weak and tired appearance. Someone he had shared a cell with for a time he couldn't measure precisely.

He spoke of how they had grown close, slowly. Of the conversations. Of how Karum had brought up the Kratar so naturally and so subtly that Zarpon hadn't seen it coming.

And he spoke of what he had given away without realizing it.

When he reached that part, he stopped for a moment.

"The guards came for Karum," he continued. "They said it was his time. I tried to stop them."

He looked at his hands.

"The walls stopped me."

No one spoke.

"Karum left with the guards. And shortly after, Germon entered. Alone. In his armor. His eyes. His usual calm." Zarpon paused. "He looked at me and said one word. 'Thank you.' And he left."

Silence in the cell.

"I never saw Karum become Germon," Zarpon said with direct honesty. "I can't prove it. But the sequence doesn't leave much room for another explanation. Karum disappears. Germon enters. Germon thanks me for exactly what Karum got out of me."

Arlo processed that aloud.

"So it's a deduction."

"It's the only logical deduction I can find," Zarpon replied.

Arlo nodded slowly.

"It's enough," he said.

---

"So Germon knows where we live," Arlo said. "He knows we have powers. He knows we had the Kratar. And now he has it."

"Yes," Zarpon said.

Sira looked at the floor for a moment.

"And the Kratar?" she asked. "Do you know where he has it?"

"No. I don't know. But I assume he has it."

Silence.

Arlo spoke without being asked.

"That's efficiently terrifying, honestly."

Sira looked at him.

"Efficiently terrifying?"

"I don't have a better description right now."

---

Marek had listened to everything in silence.

He was looking at the floor.

Not with rage. With something colder. Closer to the concentration of someone evaluating a situation from every angle before deciding how to respond.

He looked up at Zarpon.

"How long have you been here?"

"I don't know for sure. Time has no shape here."

"Guards?"

"Two shifts. They change at certain intervals. They only come in when they bring water or food, or when you accidentally trigger the wall system."

Marek nodded.

He looked at the cell.

The white walls. The light blue lines. The four of them on the floor of something moving toward some place none of them could see.

"Good," he said finally.

The three looked at him.

"We're together," Marek said. "That's the first thing."

No one answered immediately.

But something in the weight of the cell shifted slightly.

It didn't disappear.

But it was no longer the same.

END OF CHAPTER 13