Under Desert Stars   Elen síla lúmenn’ omentielvo

Explanatory Note

While organizing files associated with previously published work, I came across material that originally served as a prologue for The Courage to Accept, the fourth book in the War of the Second Iteration series. It was removed when I decided against making Andrew Kester a viewpoint character in the story. Something of what follows was ultimately incorporated into The Courage to Accept, when Kester explains to Jan Costa how he came to possess the answer to a major question regarding the Faceless. The following “deleted scene” gives the full story of how Kester first encountered the Faceless, and glimpses the horrifying truth about the nature of the enemy.

This offering – developed from that discarded prologue – will of course be of most interest to those who have read the War of the Second Iteration, just as a deleted scene included as a DVD bonus feature makes more sense after you watch that movie. I hope readers as yet unfamiliar with these books will enjoy it all the same. Better still, may it motivate you to give these books a try.

Either way, and as always, thanks for reading!

Thomas Watson

The Traitor and the Faceless

Andrew Kester sat on the gray cot, feet on the dull, scuffed floor and bald head bowed between hunched shoulders. The walls of his cell were a dull gray. The lighting in the cell had a flat, lifeless quality that he believed was incapable of casting shadows. Certainly, there were none beneath the toilet and sink that were the only other furnishings. The expression on his blunt, square face was as bleak as his surroundings, that of a man no longer young, holding inside himself a toxic mix of resentment, betrayal, and guilt.

Sorry, Jimmy. I should have followed your plan. Thought I saw a way to fix it all. Should have known better. You were always the smart one. I let you down.

Kester tried not to, but really had nothing better to do with his time than dwell on his failure. He would never have the chance to make that apology in person. He would never again live outside the facility holding his bare cell. For Kester, this was an article of faith. He believed it implicitly and absolutely. When he had inquired as to his trial date, the prison staff actually laughed. Kester took that to mean there would never be a trial, fair or otherwise. He expected to live what was left of his life in this dull, gray place, marooned out on the edge of civilization.

For Kester’s prison was near the fringe of known space, the far side of what star charts of the Republic labeled The Rift. Between the facility and the Republic was a zone in which stars, and their associated trans-dimensional nodes, were very few and far between. Outward from the prison was the sparsely and recently settled frontier of the Trans-Rift sector. All of this he knew because he had, very early in his career, been assigned here as part of an interrogation crew. He’d recognized it as soon as he was brought on board. The prison station itself had no proper name, just the designation RDF DET 1167. Of his current situation, this was all Kester, formerly a Commodore in the Republic Defense Force, knew for certain. His black-clad keepers would tell him nothing more. Grim people, those who managed the facility. Men for the most part; that there were women on the crew was no source of comfort, for they were as hard as their male colleagues. Harder at times. They spoke to him only when necessary, giving directions and issuing orders. If he resisted those orders, stunners were used. Once had been quite enough, on that count.

Kester had long since given up trying to draw people out and gain news of the universe beyond the dull gray bulkheads. He wanted very much to know what was going on. His overreach at the Pr’pri Star System had failed horribly and drawn the RDF fleet into the attempted coup, which they promptly brought to an end. Kester most wanted to know how things had fallen out in the Disputed Zone between Leyra’an space and the Republic, seeking clues to the fate of his friend James Calavone, instigator of the failed coup. He didn’t dare ask about Calavone. The Republic surely knew by now that their most wanted criminal was still alive and well, but Kester was damned if he would give even the smallest clue that might lead to Calavone’s arrest.

Somehow, Kester had survived the debacle that should have gone into the history books as the Last Battle of Pr’pri. His preference would have been to die with his ship, the redoubtable heavy cruiser Vengeance. An injury during the last desperate battle with the Leyra’an ship Han’anga had left him helpless, and some compassionate fool had made sure he was stuffed into an escape pod before the Vengeance transformed herself into a cloud of plasma when her engines blew up.

The RDF had taken him, whisked him deep into the Republic, not to put him on trial but to keep him somewhere safe and available for interrogation, until they decided what to finally do with him.

Somewhere safe.

Three times on the long journey to this prison out back of beyond, someone had tried to kill Kester. The three would-be assassins had died by their own hands when they failed. Kester had no doubt they were sent by James Calavone, and he really didn’t blame his friend.

Let you down, Jimmy, Kester thought as he contemplated his fate. Screwed up everything we worked for.

For not the first time, Kester was sorry the assassins had failed.

The temptation to take out his old adversary, Kr’nai Ersha, had simply been too great. Kester had been so certain it would work, and at first his plan had unfolded perfectly, delivering on his obligations to Calavone while putting Kester in just the right place to give him that moment of personal triumph. His task force had been on the point of overwhelming the defenses of Pr’pri Star System, when the RDF arrived. How had they known? How could they possibly have known? Kester was convinced he had been betrayed, and was equally certain he would never know the answer to the questions of culprit and circumstances.

Now he was slowly being driven mad by boredom, locked in a bland, gray world of gray clothing, gray food, and gray steel, populated by gray-clad prisoners and prison guards wearing unadorned black uniforms. Kester sat on his bunk, leaned his head back against a cold steel bulkhead, and sighed. He knew the time of day from the clock outside his cell, but had no idea what day it was, or the exact date and year. He was coming untethered in time, and that seriously bothered him for some reason.

The station’s daily cycle was as rigid as it was perfectly predictable. Which was why Kester was startled when he looked at that clock behind the officer on watch, out at the monitor station of the solitary confinement block. Lunch was late. It almost counted as an event worthy of note. Hard as these people were, they were also efficient, and things always happened the way they intended, when they intended. Delays of any sort were not tolerated by Commandant Worley. As Kester roused himself from his funk to consider this oddity, the lights flickered. They blinked again, and then the station’s general alert sounded. Kester came to his feet just in time to see the guard on duty rush to the door to the main corridor.

“Hey! What’s going on?”

There was no answer. Kester saw people hurrying through the corridor, briefly glimpsed beyond the man in the doorway. There was a muffled exchange of words, then the watch officer stepped out into the corridor, closing the door behind him.

 The alert siren continued to wail and the lighting system dimmed and brightened twice more, then flickered rapidly before returning to a normal steady glow. A feeling of something not being right rose up in him, and almost at the same moment Kester understood why. The usual steady breath of fresh air circulating through the cell had been stilled. The ventilation system had failed. Only the ear-pop of decompression could be more alarming to one who had spent a life in space.

“Hey!” he yelled again, hoping the electronic monitor systems were still functioning. When no response came, he shook his head and turned to sit back down. Whatever the emergency, there was nothing he could do but sit quiet and conserve his strength. And his breath.

Kester hadn’t quite settled when the door to the solitary confinement block retracted and three men rushed into the outer room. Two clutched rifles in white-knuckled hands and stared back out into the corridor. The third was Commandant Quint Morley, who had a sidearm drawn and ready, and wore a grimace of stark fear on his normally round, bland face. “Morley! What the hell’s going…”

Morley punched something on the vacant duty station. He looked at Kester and said, “Out!”

The bars slid away on Kester’s right even as Morley barked the order and Kester stepped out of the cell. Before he could react to the abrupt change in his situation, Morley headed out the door and into the corridor at a trot. The troopers with him hesitated just a moment, and Kester took his cue, following Morley at the same pace. It was immediately obvious that the armed men following him were far more interested in what might be behind them than in what their prisoner might do. Which made no sense to Kester, and more than anything else to that point worried him.

“Morley, what’s this all about?”

“Keep moving, Kester! Just keep moving! I’m damned if I’m leaving anyone to those fiends. Not even you.” All of it said without so much as a backward glance.

“What in God’s name is…”

“God has nothing to do with this!” Morley snapped.

They jogged through an intersection. From the passage on his left Kester heard weapons firing and voices raised in fear and anger. Morley led them straight on, and spoke into the com unit fastened to his collar. “Jepson, status! Good, you only need to hold the bastards a few more minutes. Davis will be ready to blow that deck any time now. Davis? Don’t make me a liar, Davis. What’s your status? Right, okay, it’ll have to be enough.”

Kester’s alarm was swept away by a cold rush of adrenaline. Blow a deck? Last resort for a station being boarded. It sounded like they were fighting for their very lives.

Morley was still talking. “Peterson! Transport One, status? Good! We’re on our way. Palmer has the rest of the prisoners on their way to you and Transport Two. Jepson! Fall back to the core, now! Meet us there and we’ll take the VIP launch.”

They turned a corner and flat-out ran the short distance to a lift station. Kester didn’t hesitate, but matched their pace. He was beyond asking questions. His gut told him they were on the edge of disaster, even if he didn’t understand the cause. From the right, down the corridor that fronted the lift station, came a dozen men and women, all of them with rifles. Two of them wore prison garb.

“Right on our asses, sir,” the leader of the group said between gasps of breath. “Not a lot of them, but they’re here.”

“Don’t take a lot of them,” muttered one of Morley’s people.

Morley cursed and slammed the call button. The station shuddered suddenly and people clutched at each other for support. “That was deck nine, where they first came aboard. Let’s hope that buys us the time we need to get clear.”

“We’ll need it, when the reactor blows,” a prison guard said.

“Oh, shit!”

The woman who had cursed was raising her weapon, and Kester looked in the direction of her aim. The corridor was filled with silvery forms, generally humanoid in shape, some taller than others. The armed men around him formed a line and opened fire. Where the advancing beings were hit, they vanished into clouds of glittering dust. The attackers surged forward, heedless of loss, and for a moment came within arm’s reach before being driven back. In that moment they made physical contact with a prisoner and a guard. Both men screamed, voices shrill with agony, then fell writhing to the deck, gleaming with silver light that seemed to come from within. They were swept back with the silvery white horde as it retreated.

Kester caught the rifle of one victim before it hit the deck, and started shooting. The defense was hot enough that the creatures drew back all the way to the next intersection, where they regrouped. One of the taller creatures faced him, and where a face should have been there was only a blank, silver space. Suddenly it had a face for real. It shifted, transformed, became recognizable.

With a shout of outright terror, Kester shot the thing, reducing it to a cloud of shining dust. The rifle was on full automatic and his spasm of fear kept the trigger engaged even as someone grabbed him from behind and hauled him into the lift. His last shot blew a hole in the lift capsule’s hatch.

“Jesus, Kester!” Morley shouted.

“That wasn’t real, that wasn’t real!” Terrified and disbelieving, Kester couldn’t stop the words rushing out. “That wasn’t him! Couldn’t have been him! No, it couldn’t…”

Morley twisted him around and slammed him into the wall of the capsule. “Kester! Get a grip, we need you!” Then, into his com, said, “Transports One and Two, depart immediately and make for the alternode. We blew the deck they boarded, but that’s not going to hold them. We’ll take the VIP launch and follow you.”

“What about that ship out there?” one of the guards asked. “Damned thing’s a heavy cruiser.”

“And it’s right on top of us,” Morley replied. “Four minutes and this whole place blows. Their ship is close enough to be disabled, at least. But I’ll settle for the diversion giving us time to make a break for it.” Morley glared at Kester. “You get to keep the gun, for now. All hands on deck.”

“Understood.” He didn’t, not really, but Kester knew then they really were fighting for their lives. He was, before anything else, a soldier. He shook himself and took a deep breath, fighting for self-control.

The lift capsule was shifting them toward the core, and the feeling of up and down faded away. Every time something clicked or banged those crowding inside with Kester gasped and looked around.

“Jepson? God, it’s good to hear your voice! How many of – ah, damn it!  I’m sorry, son. It’s not your fault. Best possible speed. Get the hell out.” Morley looked like he was about to burst into tears. “Half my command,” he said through his teeth. “Half of my people. God damn it!”

Kester only half-followed the exchange, his thoughts clouded by what he had seen, the face of the silver apparition. Not him! Not him! Can’t be him. How could it…?

“What the hell were those things?” Kester demanded, shaking himself out of that circle of thought. “What’s going on?”

When Morley set his jaw and said nothing, one of the uniformed prison guards unbent from the usual unresponsive posture. “No one knows. It’s some kind of invasion. Been hearing reports from all over the Trans-Rift frontier. These ships, RDF designs, appear but don’t answer hails. Then they attack with boarding parties of those – things. Don’t need weapons. They just come on until they can touch you. You’re dead, then. After word is received of an attack, nothing else is heard.”

“Hell, systems are dropping out of the loop without a word,” someone behind Kester added.

The lift capsule slowed to a stop; they left it as quickly as possible. They were in the small, brightly lit null-g docking facility of the station. The tube beside theirs released another half dozen men and women, all armed, all clearly and grimly frightened. Some of the men wore prison garb; no one seemed to notice or care.

Kester followed Morley into the passenger compartment of the VIP launch, flipping the safety on his rifle as he did so. He found himself small ship that had clearly not been design for prisoner transport. The compartment held rows of comfortably padded seats and there was fancy holographic projector in the ceiling of the forward end. There was a null-g wet bar on the bulkhead opposite the airlock. The disconnect between his surroundings and his bizarre circumstances blossomed into something like a waking nightmare.

People were moving too quickly, fumbling with straps and buckles in the crowded space. Curses were muttered between clenched teeth. The hatch to the command compartment was open and the pilot leaned into view. His short white hair was mussed and spiked out as he glared back at the crowd for a few seconds until he found Morley, who had taken the seat beside Kester’s. “Where’s the senator?” the pilot demanded.

“Dead,” Morley replied. “Saw him go down, along with his staff.”

“One of those things was wearin’ his face,” someone behind Kester said.

The ship shuddered violently and the pilot faced forward, tapped keys on instruments, then cursed vividly. “We’re boosting!”

Morley twisted in his seat and shouted, “Grab something. Now!”

Those not yet secured in seats scrambled and flailed. A woman in black was free-floating near Kester, nowhere near a seat or even a take-hold loop. He grabbed her leg and hauled her down. Without a word of protest, she curled against him, holding tight.

It felt as if something had kicked the ship sideways, a lurch that nearly tore his fellow passenger loose. At least two people were not so lucky, and Kester heard their bodies hit the bulkhead, wincing at the gasps of pain that followed. He saw Morley turn a horrid shade of paste white, clutching at the armrests of his seat. A moment later the kick was replaced by several seconds of crushing force as the ship’s main engines fired. The woman he held gasped and whimpered, and Kester was certain his chest would be crushed as acceleration pushed her down onto him.

Acceleration was mercifully brief. From the sounds that followed, more than one of his fellow refugees had been hurt, and quite possibly badly injured at that. Kester released the woman, a prison guard he remembered as one of the less friendly of the crew. Their eyes met and she nodded a wordless thanks, then performed a null-g crawl to the nearest seat and strapped herself in. “We’re clear and headed away,” the white-haired pilot of the VIP launch announced. “Transport One and Two report the same.”

“Show us what’s happening,” Morley demanded.

A holograph filled the forward display area. The unadorned space station was front and center, a fat ring connected by three spokes to a long, slim spindle. Just beyond it was what looked like an RDF heavy cruiser, a sight that brought a puzzled frown to Kester’s face. The Leyra’an had copied Human warships; were they behind all of this? Something in his gut denied it. Kester knew the Leyra’an better than most veterans of the long war with snake-skinned people. The things they’d shot in the corridor had nothing to do with the Leyra’an.

Small objects were pulling away from the station, headed toward them. Someone pointed that out.

“God,” said Morley. “If they reach us…”

“Missiles?” Kester asked.

“Some sort of transport device,” Morley replied, shaking his head. “That’s how they boarded the station. They…”

With a flare of light so bright the imaging system couldn’t quite control the glare – almost everyone looked away and blinked – the station turned into a ball of incandescent gas. The cruiser parked beside it vanished into the glare, then added its own explosion to the lurid display of destruction. All of the small transports vanished into the conflagration.

No one cheered. Someone half-whispered, “Holy Christ, it worked!”

“Davis was right,” Morley said as if speaking to himself. “The reactor was big enough. May God accept and keep his soul.”

Kester stared forward at the expanding ball of glowing gas and debris. For one horrible moment the silvery after-image, in hue so very much like the shining humanoids he had seen on the station, lingered in his vision. His imagination and memory, in a heartbeat of perversity, supplied the face Kester had seen on the creature he had destroyed. Fear and disbelief curdled within him, threatening to become nausea.

It wasn’t him! That’s just not possible!

In the moment before Kester had fired the rifle and killed the silver demon, it had worn the face of a friend. The friend he had accidentally betrayed.

The face of James Calavone.