The Genesis Saga Chapter 204

Tassie looked around the bridge as her earlier tension bled out of her. Ava had remained behind to begin decoding the data crystal that they’d retrieved during the mission, while Adrian had disappeared into thin air. “Anybody know where Adrian went?” she asked the group.

“No,” Beor responded. “But I think he needs so ti alone right now,” he said thoughtfully. “After being experinted on again, I’m sure he needs so ti to process what happened to him.” He could hardly imagine what must be going through Adrian’s head at the mont. Inwardly, Beor wondered just what had been done to him that put him in the delirious state they’d found him in.

“Shouldn’t sobody go check on him?” Tassie fretted. She quashed her curiosity about the new experints perford on Adrian, deciding to put his wellbeing first for once. She felt bad about her burning desire to learn more, but knew she couldn’t help it. She doubted anybody could.

“I’ll go in half an hour,” Beor humd. “That should give him so ti to calm down.” Reluctantly, Tassie nodded and let the matter drop. True to his word, once half an hour had co to pass, Beor stood up from his station and wandered the ship, trying to find his wayward ward.

It took longer than he would’ve liked, but eventually he found Adrian holed up in Reya’s old room. When Beor walked through the door into the dimly lit room, he saw Adrian curled up on a ball on the bed, tucked away in the furthest corner. For a mont, Beor considered turning on the lights, but decided against it. If Adrian was most comfortable in the dark, who was he to rid him of that?

“How are you holding up?” Beor asked gently.

“Have you co for more answers to give back to your Tribunal?” Adrian said with a sniffle. “Because I don’t want to talk about it right now.” He closed in further on himself, the mory of being experinted on yet again almost too much for him to handle.

“I’m here to see how you’re doing,” Beor reiterated. “The Tribunal can ask their questions to you directly if they feel like it. I doubt they’ll care about what was done to you specifically in this instance. They’d probably want to know what the Highest’s objective in experinting on you again was.”

“And that’s supposed to make feel better?” Adrian snorted derisively.

Beor shrugged. “No,” he replied bluntly. “It’s simply the reality you’ll return to. Would you rather I sugarcoat it?”

“No need,” Adrian responded. He held back another sob. “I wish Reya was here right now.” He looked up towards Beor. “No offense,” he said, “but you’re not her.”

“I understand,” Beor said softly. “When we rescued Reya from the facility in the Arvis sector, I almost died. I only felt better once I was holding onto Rann again back on the ship. Sotis, it’s your other half that’s best suited to soothing you. Reya might not be here right now, but that doesn’t an you need to go through this alone.”

“I know that,” Adrian said. “But it’s still hard opening up, you know?” The pair continued to converse about light hearted topics, with Beor reiterating that Reya was at ho, waiting for him. The words struck Adrian. For the first ti in a long ti, he had a ho to return to. It was a revelation that shifted his entire world view. Earth was no longer his ho.

Reya was.

Wherever she was would be ho to him, for he knew without a shadow of a doubt that that was where he belonged. He endure if it ant being able to see her once more and build a future together.

Adrian saw Beor in a new light during their conversation. To his credit, not once did Beor question Adrian about what happened to him. All Adrian felt was a genuine concern over his wellbeing now that he’d been rescued.

The pair discussed the circumstances that led to the rescue mission, as well as what had happened on Verilia during Adrian’s absence. When he heard the estimated death toll, he paled significantly, unable to comprehend such loss. His heart broke for the Verilians forced to suffer such tragedy. Eventually, they ran out of topics to cover and Beor made a strategic exit so as not to make Adrian feel trapped into talking about what was truly on his mind.

“Beor?” Adrian called out as the man turned to leave. “Thank you. For coming to check on .”

Beor flashed Adrian a charming grin. “You’re welco,” he said. Without another word, Beor left Adrian alone with his thoughts, confident that he’d work through them now that he was sowhere safe.

***

Nessah grinned as she scoured the latest data the Fleet Commander had sent her before retreating. News that they had not only sabotaged the gru’ul’s networks but also possibly had access to their data elated her. The rescue mission had been far more successful than she could’ve imagined.

She joined the Tribunal eting she had called after disseminating the intel to the Elders. She’d given them an appropriate amount of ti to read over the results. Six other figures appeared before her. Now more settled in her role as War Arbiter, the sight was less daunting than it had first been.

“I’ll be damned,” Darros said, “your hairbrained sche actually worked.” He was shocked that it had gone so well. Despite the success, the sobering casualty report doused any happiness he felt over the mission’s results. “Still though,” he continued, “it was incredibly costly.”

“I understand that,” Nessah acknowledged. “Yet, I still believe it was the right course of action to take. If Captain Jyn’s ship can successfully make it back to the main base with the decoded information, we’ll finally have the advantage we need to end this war once and for all.”

“You still want to go through with the genocide?” Orryn asked. “What if the intel we receive points to a better alternative?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Nessah replied harshly. “You lot left the final decision to , and I made the call. The gru’ul must be eliminated if we are to ever know peace. Darros was right. We cannot coexist with those monsters. I maintain my decision to commit genocide, even if it repulses on a personal level. In the month since the rescue team left Verilian controlled space, we’ve lost hundreds of millions more people. By the ti they return, and we launch our final offensive, who knows how many more we’ll have lost.”

“I understand that,” Orryn pressed, “but surely—”

“That’s enough,” Nessah barked, cutting Orryn off. “The die has been cast. I will not tolerate any other attempts to subvert this decision and my authority. Continue to do so and you will be dismissed from deciding how best to go about our offensive.”

Orryn swallowed her words, knowing that Nessah was wholly serious about her threat. Orryn refused to be absent for sothing so important. History would not rember her protests. Nor would it care. Only the results of the war mattered at this point, for if they fell, countless other planets were dood to a fate where the gru’ul remained the masters of the universe. “I understand,” she forced out.

“Good,” Nessah said. “Maraz, Darros, how are we doing for the weapons we’ll need?” she asked, opting to direct the eting towards sothing productive. She did not have any ti to spare on needless morals. Not when so many of her people were dying horrifically in the streets right that mont.

“We have crafted the blueprints for the bombs and missiles we’ll need,” Maraz replied. “Right now, our arsenal is under construction at a blinding pace.” It had taken so trial and error, but his team had succeeded in creating a diverse range of weapons to deliver their payload. Bombs, missiles, diffusers. Nothing was off the table for their final attack.

Maraz didn’t have the ti to design peak performance weaponry. Instead, he’d opted for cheap, dirty, and easily mass-produceable ones. His team’s designs would get the job done swiftly and efficiently, and he would have so many of the weapons that even if most of them missed, it wouldn’t matter. He launched into an explanation of their plans and options for the rest of the Elders to keep them inford of the situation.

Darros patiently waited for Maraz to finish before speaking up. “Production of the orange chemical has been ramped to maximum capacity. As much as I hate the idea of creating more of sothing so awful, researcher Roke has lived up to his promise of ensuring we would have enough to supply our weapons with. Much like Maraz, we’re on schedule to finish production for when the rescue team returns.”

“I assu everything is adapted for our fleet to use?” Nessah inquired.

“Correct,” Maraz said. “All of our new weapons are compatible with our existing ships’ systems. We won’t need to retrofit any ships or create new ones to house them.”

“Excellent,” Nessah bead. “Based on our analysts, here’s a projection of what our forces will look like one month from now.” She sent the information to each Elder and waited patiently for them to read it over. “Now then, let’s plan how we want to do this,” she said once they were done reading.

The discussion continued for hours and while there were no final decisions that were made, each Elder had contributed to the broad strokes of what their final attack would look like. It would be a risky affair, as the challenge lay in figuring out how to properly divide their fleet to ensure that adequate defenses remained stationed on Verilia to repel the remaining gru’ul.

Nessah left the eting, exhausted. Still, her day was far from over. There was one more eting she needed to have before she could finally take a break. After returning to her desk, she instructed her secretary, Sytha, to summon Reya to her office.

Nessah relished in the brief mont of peace she had while waiting for her guest to arrive. Unfortunately for her, Reya made fantastic ti, shortening Nessah’s reprieve to a scant ten minutes. From behind her desk, Nessah watched a nervous Reya enter her office and approach without any prompting on her part.

Now accustod to regularly eting High Command, Reya wasn’t as rattled as she once was when dealing with the military’s upper echelons. “War General,” Reya said formally, “what have you summoned for.” Her heart rate sped up. “Is it about Adrian?” she asked hopefully. “Do you have news from the rescue mission?”

Nessah nodded. “We do,” she replied. Reya leaned forward in anticipation as a beat passed while Nessah searched for her words. “The mission was a success,” she said with a smile. “Your team has successfully rescued Adrian. They’re on their way ho as we speak.”

Reya visibly brightened, her excitent palpable. “Thank the gods,” she said in relief. “I was worried sothing went wrong or that it was already too late to save Adrian.” She placed a hand over her heart. Nessah remained silent, her expression turning sad as she regarded Reya. Reya sensed that sothing was amiss. “Sothing else happened,” she stated. It wasn’t a question, for she was certain that there was more to the story than a happy ending.

“Saving Adrian ca at a great cost,” Nessah said somberly. She proceeded to tell Reya the mission’s casualty rate, making Reya turn a pallid shade of purple. “You once told that Adrian was worth it. Do you still believe that the life of one person was worth the sacrifice of so many?” she asked Reya quietly.

Reya stared at Nessah mutely. “My heart says yes,” she said as tears ford in her eyes. “But my mind says no,” she said bitterly. “Have you told their families yet?” she asked.

Nessah shook her head. “We haven’t had the ti. There are already so many casualties on a daily basis, both among our own and among the friends and family of those fallen in battle. It will have to wait until after the war is done. Given how much you pushed for this mission, I want you to be the one to make the announcent to the world alongside Miarre.”

“Do I have to?” Reya asked fearfully. “Won’t that paint a target on my back? People might bla for all of those deaths.”

“That would only be natural. You are in part to bla,” Nessah said. “You’re the one who pushed so hard for the mission. The one who made the case for it. Strategically, it made no sense to even consider saving Adrian. Yet, because of your insistence, we went through with it.”

Reya flinched. “You would have truly left Adrian to die at the hands of the gru’ul?” she asked.

“Put yourself in our shoes,” Nessah said. “We have an entire species to save. There are untold civilian deaths that could have been prevented if the soldiers sent to rescue Adrian had stayed behind to defend them. Your desire to save the man you love cost many others the people they hold dearest to them.”

Reya sniffled. “I’ll make the announcent after Adrian has made it back to the main base,” she said sullenly.

“Good,” Nessah said. Frankly, she didn’t want even more animosity directed towards High Command. Already, Mihn’s videos had turned a portion of the populace radically against them. Without Reya, Verilian society would have collapsed. “There’s one other thing you need to know,” Nessah started.

“What is it?” Reya asked.

“Jyn was shot with the orange chemical,” Nessah explained. “It’s uncertain whether he’ll wake up or even recover at all.”

Reya jolted in her seat, paling further. “No,” she breathed. “Please tell that’s a lie.” The thought of one of her friends, even Jyn, undergoing such unimaginable pain broke her heart. She might have her issues with the man, but never once had she wished such suffering upon him.

“I’m afraid it’s true,” Nessah replied. “I don’t have any other details beyond that, as the rescue fleet was forced to retreat soon after he was brought back aboard his ship. We’ll know more once they arrive back in Verilian-controlled space.”

Reya started crying in earnest. “Nobody deserves to go through that,” she choked out through her tears.

“I agree,” Nessah said. “Which is why you’ll need to be here for him once he gets back. He’s going to need all the support he can get. You and Adrian will be the best people to help him overco what’s happened to him.”

“Assuming he survives,” Reya said bitterly.

“Yes,” Nessah echoed. “Because if he dies, the last thing he’ll have known is true hell. One you’re intimately familiar with.”

Reya nodded mutely in response. Both won went silent, their thoughts on the brave soul who had paid the ultimate price to save Adrian. Neither was happy with the outco of the mission now that they knew the true price it had cost to save Adrian. But they would have to live with it.

For they were the ones responsible for it.