The Powers That Be by Aer-ki Jyr (best sci fi novels of all time .txt) 📕

no one around at the moment, at least not for a few hundred meters, so Esna had the view to herself and didn’t even bother to whisper. She often spoke to Rammak, knowing that wherever his Core was now it couldn’t hear her, but that didn’t matter. Speaking aloud what she was feeling helped her mind to analyze it better, and Rammak would always be the person she trusted and respected the most…even more than Davis and the trailblazers. Rammak is the one who had saved her from both death and the abyss of the wild. He was the one who had showed her what it meant to be Human, what it meant to be Star Force, and what the genetic legacy that her body held truly meant, and how it had been denied her by fate.

She owed everything to him, even though he hadn’t been able to save Teren. Sometimes Esna wondered if her brother would be beside her now if he’d lived, or if he’d have chosen another path in Star Force, but though their time together had been brief, Rammak was closer to her Core than her brother was…and that was saying a great deal, because Esna and Teren had been very close. They had to be in order to survive in the wild, and she still wished there had been some way to save him.

But not even Rammak had survived to make it back to Star Force territory, at least not to the ‘safe’ territory beyond the war zone…but he had set foot on a Star Force base again before dying in combat later on a worthless planet that Esna refused to set foot on again. It would always be the most hated place in the galaxy for her, and in a way that made the horrors of the Hadarak infestations a bit easier to face. Because she’d rather be there or anywhere else than on Darlek.

“The others are going to keep us alive…I know they are. But they don’t have a plan to win. I’m it, and the Director has given me the powers and responsibility of a trailblazer to make it happen. Did you see this potential in me back then? I don’t see how you could have, but it makes me wonder. I know with resources so stretched this wouldn’t be happening unless they had a great deal of faith in me, but I don’t see it in myself. But warriors rise to meet the call of battle as you taught me, and I will do so now. I just fear it may not be enough.”

Esna fell silent for a moment, wondering what Rammak would have said back to her, and usually she imagined something useful. This time she didn’t, and that hollowness only made her more convinced that she was going to fail. That the Hadarak were too big, too numerous, and too well entrenched to actually beat…and that the people who were capable of taking her idea and making it work were giving it to her because they didn’t truly believe in it, and that it was her idea to make succeed and they weren’t expecting to get anything out of it, but were so desperate they were willing to try anything.

Warriors are the most dangerous when their back is to the wall and they know they are about to die, his voice suddenly said from memory, because in that moment nothing can get worse. And when nothing can get worse you are free to fight boldly and fearlessly. Be fearless, little one.

“Fearless,” she repeated aloud as all responsibility and anxiety suddenly drained from her. No one was counting on her for anything. This was a long shot they had to take, because they needed something to work, but they weren’t counting on it. They were going to hold the line at the Grand Border without her help. If she failed, nothing would change…but if she succeeded…

And in that moment Esna was free.

There was no going back. No protecting others. No living a safe life. The Empire was in peril, and she had just been freed up from all responsibility for the lives of others. They had given her what she requested…to become a weapon. And weapons had only one purpose.

Esna used her new power to telepathically interlink with a control node behind the viewscreen and switched the local section over to a galactic map and zoomed in on the enemy-held center. She stared at them along with all the strength-level icons displayed from the most recent scouting missions overlaid on old data.

It was a massive fortification that had scared her up until this moment, but no longer. Now she saw weakness and vulnerability. Pathways to attack and distract. Supply lines to disrupt and Wardens to hunt. It wasn’t a place to fear…it was a place to be feared. It was the battlefield on which she would become the monster leading a Clan of monsters that had but one purpose, not above others, but exclusive of all others.

To hunt and destroy Hadarak…barring a time when negotiation became possible. Davis had made that clear just before he told her that he didn’t think it would ever happen, and that she shouldn’t pursue it unless it fell in her lap. Others would continue looking for a way to communicate and disrupt the genetic hold on the Wardens, the minions, and other Hadarak, but it didn’t look promising, and after the miracle Star Force had managed with the lizards, they had the experience going in to know what to look for…and they still thought it was impossible.

So Esna had her orders to become a hunter, something that Star Force was typically against, but the nature of the Hadarak made it a necessity in this case. They couldn’t be captured and contained…not with them choking the life out of the galaxy and the ability to reproduce so fast from so few. If they