Three arks were missing. They were some of the smallest in the fleet, but that didn’t alleviate Leon’s worry even a little bit.
“Which ones?” he whispered to the Jaguar after a furtive glance around the observation room to make sure that most people were distracted watching the fleet slowly converge on Bolt in Shadow.
The Jaguar frowned deeply. “Quick Raindrop, Wind’s Whisper, and Hailstone.”
Leon’s heart sank. Hundreds of his people crewed those arks, but Hailstone was a particularly personal blow as Elias, Alcander and Sofia’s younger son, had been aboard. When Leon glanced their way, the two seemed more subdued than the others, and while it may have been his imagination, he thought they might have been counting the destroyers for just this reason.
While he internally debated how he ought to handle the situation, Clear Day approached.
“Leon,” the tau gravely said, “I can speak with them, if you wish…”
“No,” Leon immediately replied. “I’ll handle that part. It’s my expedition, so I’ll take responsibility.”
Clear Day looked for a moment like he wanted to argue, but after that moment, he smiled grimly and backed away.
To the Jaguar, Leon ordered, “I want a report on how all of the arks are faring as soon as possible. And keep an eye out for our stragglers.”
The Jaguar dutifully nodded and began giving orders to his adjutants.
Meanwhile, Leon walked over to Alcander, a man who left his life in the Bull Kingdom behind to follow him south, and who had left much of that subsequent life behind to travel to Kataigida. This was the third time he’d left his life behind for Leon. The Tempest Knights remaining on Aeterna—representing ninety-five percent of the force—were in good hands thanks to the officers he and Alix had trained or recruited, but that didn’t mean leaving behind the majority of a knightly order he had run for decades was easy.
This, Leon knew, was going to be a much more personal loss for the large man, let alone his wife.
“Al,” Leon quietly said, drawing his retainer’s and his wife’s attention from the enormity of the Void.
“Your Majesty…” Alcander responded a little hesitantly, his eyes flitting to the projected window for a moment before settling back on Leon.
“You may have realized already,” Leon said as softly and comfortingly as he could, “we’re missing a few arks…”
Leon told Alcander and his wife about the missing arks, and one of Sofia’s hands immediately went to her mouth as tears filled her eyes.
“Are… are you sure?” Alcander asked, more composed.
“We can’t see them and they’re not responding to any attempts at communication,” Leon stated. “We’re… we’re not going to stop looking. We just haven’t found them yet.” Empty platitudes, he suspected. Possible that the arks were still somewhere, but they’d certainly not made it to the Nexus. Given how the other arks had arrived, he thought that the missing arks would’ve arrived nearby if they’d made it.
Sofia sniffled and wiped her eyes, unable to say anything. Alcander took a deep breath and slowly asked despite his voice breaking a few times, “What… do we do now, Leon?”
“We’re going to take stock and evaluate our options,” Leon decided. “It’s going to take at least a few days, possibly more, for the other arks to converge on us at these distances. Possibly even longer given the state this jump left them in…” While it may have run counter to his intention to give them a bit of hope, he couldn’t deny the damage that the other arks had sustained from one jump.
Leon continued, “We’re not going to give up. I’m not going to give up. Those arks may still arrive. There are all sorts of reasons why they may not be here, so we’re going to wait and see if they arrive. After these next few days… we’ll evaluate further options.”
Alcander held Sofia close, his face struggling to remain impassive. “Thank you, Leon,” he croaked.
Leon rested a hand on each of their shoulders for a moment and tried to smile comfortingly, but he didn’t think it had much effect—not that he thought it would. Then he stepped away, hoping that there might be some good news on that front soon. Elias was one man; hundreds of other families would go through the same grief if they couldn’t find those arks…
---
Under normal conditions, the commander of the Tempest Knights would be in the meeting room when Leon was hearing from his ministers, but given the circumstances with the missing arks, Alix was filling in for Alcander.
About six hours had passed since the jump. As Leon fretted over the fate of his three missing arks and hawkishly watched his remaining fleet for any signs of further damage from his remaining arks, the Thunderbird told him, [Don’t worry too much; you can’t do anything about it now. As far as such things go, your first jump was a grand success!]
Leon hadn’t been too comforted by it, but he refrained from responding at that time.
Now, he’d called his highest-ranking subordinates to this meeting so that they could hear any bad news and plan accordingly.
The briefing began when Lana had images of the fleet projected for everyone in the room to see with their damaged sections highlighted. Most eye-catching of all, however, were the three blank spots where the missing arks ought to have been.
Lana quickly summarized the damage each ark had suffered. None had been crippled, but the damage to many of the arks was severe. Leon noted that the smaller arks took far more damage than the larger ones did. While all of the recently-built arks in the fleet had ‘Nestorian drives’, each ark had a different model based on its class—the larger arks were given larger drives, and smaller arks were likewise given smaller drives.
What Leon considered worse than the damage to the arks themselves, however, were the casualties reported—almost three dozen deaths spread across the present fleet, and more than a hundred injuries. Not all of the compartments breached by the strain of using their teleportation drives had been empty…
When Lana finished her damage summary, the room was silent, all eyes swiveling to Leon as they waited for his response.
For his part, Leon took a few moments to think, then glanced around the room. The Jaguar, Anshu, Alix, Marcus, Clear Day, and Mari were all present, but it wasn’t upon any of them that Leon’s eyes lingered on the longest—that dubious honor was reserved for Nestor.
After a quick sigh, Leon addressed the room, “Does anyone have anything they want to add?”
The Jaguar was the first to speak up. “We’re already making progress toward repairing most of our arks. It will take five days to regroup around Bolt in Shadow, and by then, all critical repairs are estimated to have been completed. By our estimation, we’d be about five days removed from the natural portal into the Nexus if we hadn’t been scattered and damaged, but we’ve revised that estimate to ten days distant.”
“Our frigates are faster than any other ark,” Anshu pointed out. “We can confirm how far we are by sending one or two ahead of the fleet to scout the portal’s location.”
“None of our frigates are undamaged,” the Jaguar countered. “Critical repairs still need to be completed before then.”
“We need to scout ahead,” Leon stated, “but before then, we need to regroup. We’ll evaluate our position then and adjust our plans accordingly, but right now, I’ll assume that we can send two frigates at least ahead of us to find the exact location of that portal.”
The Jaguar nodded in acknowledgment.
“As for those not with us…” Leon continued, his eyes momentarily flickering to the ark projections and the three empty spaces, “we’ll keep our eyes open over these next few days. They may have just gotten lost or their drives may have failed somehow, leaving them in the air above Aeterna.” Leon’s eyes again lingered on Nestor in an unspoken question. “If they’re capable of doing so, they’ll rendezvous with us here. If not…”
“Should we send an ark back to check?” Marcus asked, his tone steady enough but with an undercurrent of worry that Leon picked up on.
“How easily can the drives be used in sequence?” Leon asked Nestor and Mari despite already being aware of the answer.
“Not within a day,” Nestor immediately answered. “Longer for the newer drives. The ancient designs can be cleared and recharged within twenty-four hours. The newer drives will take longer than a week.”
“More like two at least,” Mari corrected as she stared at the damage projection. “See how much of the damage is concentrated ‘round the engineerin’ sections?”
Leon looked at the projection again and noted that most of the serious damage taken by his arks had been to the aft sections closer to the engines.
Mari continued, “I’m thinkin’ that we’re havin’ some trouble keepin’ the disparate elements of magic combined for the duration of the jump. Can’t say for certain without somethin’ like debris to examine, that’s just my guess.”
“Not a bad one,” Nestor conceded. “To answer your question: sending one of the older arks back to Aeterna will be doable tomorrow, but they won’t return until the day after.”
“How dangerous would that trip back be?” Leon asked.
“I’d have to check the arks themselves to know,” Nestor stated.
“I’ll have you transported over.”
Nestor slowly, rather unwillingly, nodded.
“If our missing arks don’t show up, what should we do?” the Jaguar asked.
Leon frowned deeply. He didn’t want to delay finding that portal too long, but he didn’t want to leave his people behind, either. Before he could voice his opinion aloud, however, Clear Day made a suggestion.
“I have no problem with the Void,” the tau stated. “I can fly ahead and check on the portal. I think I can fly faster than the arks, anyway, and ought to be back as the fleet regroups. If you’re willing, Your Majesty, I would offer to remain behind and wait a while longer, to see if our missing friends show up. Assuming we… haven’t found them before then…”
“I will take that offer,” Leon decided. “Prioritize your own safety, though, Clear.”
“I can be subtle when I need to be,” Clear Day replied with a grin.
Leon grimly nodded.
The meeting soon wrapped up with that decided upon. There wasn’t much left to do now but wait…
---
Following the meeting, most of the participants broke to see to their duties. Leon, however, didn’t have much to do other than watch everyone work and wait, and wanted to find something useful to do to fill the time. So, he met with Nestor privately while a transport was being prepared to ferry the dead man to Bright Intent.
“So,” Leon said once they were alone, “what’s your evaluation so far? I get that you need to study some of those Nestorian drives to figure out how they’re really performed, but we can look and see that it hasn’t been great, can’t we?”
Nestor grunted in displeasure. “They were probably too small and underpowered relative to the arks they were placed upon.”
“They shouldn’t have been,” Leon argued. “I saw the calculations you and the Ravens made; those drives should’ve performed better than they did.”
“And yet, they didn’t,” Nestor growled. “I suppose that would only leave user error, wouldn’t it?”
A thin-lipped smile graced Leon’s face. “Want to lay the blame at the feet of the ark pilots instead of with the hardware?”
“If the drives are not to blame, then we can only blame the operators for their subpar performance,” Nestor shot back. “As of yet, we don’t know if the drives are to blame. The truth is likely somewhere in the middle—inexperience and some flaw in the design compounding each other.”
“Our people were extensively trained, and the drives were tested,” Leon protested.
“And yet this was our first long-distance jump,” Nestor riposted. “Could’ve been worse, Leon. Could’ve been much worse. Right now, I’m going to focus on seeing what can be seen from what we have. I’ll have a better plan for how to proceed later.”
Leon scowled, but let the dead man go. The transport was almost ready anyway, and getting either Silver Spear or Bright Intent to check on Aeterna to see if their missing arks were still there was a huge priority. Still, he refused to accept that ‘it could’ve been worse’. Any failure was his. It would have to be fixed before any further large-scale jumps were attempted.
That, unfortunately, also left his expedition even more alone than they had been planning. Aeterna might’ve sent additional forces in a couple years, but Leon wasn’t going to allow that if such damage was what they could expect. He had to get those drives fixed or improved before additional arks and lives were lost.
---
The next five days passed agonizingly slowly for Leon’s liking. He could look out of a projected window, or simply project his magic senses, and he could see his arks getting closer, but watching them move amidst the empty Void versus over Aeterna were completely different experiences, even if the most distant ark was still closer to Bolt in Shadow than the Bull Kingdom was to Kataigida.
As planned, Clear Day left to scout their portal and returned almost five days later. By then, they were only waiting on three arks to limp into formation. According to Clear Day’s report, the portal was just as they’d been led to believe: unused and without much infrastructure around it.
Leon had been led to believe that the larger portals were generally where people congregated, with small micro-planes or fortresses hovering in the Void around the portals to control that point of entry. The smaller portals were usually farther away from population centers and much less controlled, if at all.
Their portal didn’t even have a single ark keeping an eye on it, let alone micro-planes or huge Void-capable flying fortresses.
In worse news, their missing arks did not arrive in those few days. It was decided that Silver Spear would return to Aeterna to check on those arks, and when it returned on the third day, it came with the unsettling report that all the arks sent from Aeterna had successfully entered their portals generated by the Nestorian drives.
That left only speculation to answer the question of what happened to those three arks.
Alcander took the news as professionally as he could, but Sofia was downright inconsolable and locked herself in their shared cabin. Leon felt for them, but the expedition had to continue.
As arranged, Clear Day remained behind in the Void, waiting to see if the arks would show up at some point. Before the fleet continued, however, Leon made sure that the tau knew to follow them after ten days. It was difficult to tell the passage of time out in the Void, but he trusted Clear Day to not be too early or too late.
And so, the fleet moved on after regrouping. A week later, they reached the portal.
It was a strange-looking thing. About as wide across as a small village, it looked almost like a hole in space. It was a black sphere, missing the tinge of blue that would normally let someone identify a teleportation portal. Magic swirled around it, creating a mild storm of chaotic power—though curiously, the storm only ranged along a single axis, leaving the portal to look almost like a black marble stuck into the center of a sheet of multi-colored paper.
Leon was hesitant to fly into such a dark and chaotic thing, but Nestor, the Thunderbird, and Xaphan all assured him of the safety of the natural portals. No damage should be done to the remaining arks, they told him, since they weren’t engaging their Nestorian drives. They were simply flying into a natural teleportation portal.
That didn’t leave Leon too reassured, but he ordered the fleet to continue anyway.
He expected Bolt in Shadow to shake and shudder when they led the way into the portal, but he didn’t sense any such vibrations. Instead, the Thunderbird Clan heavy cruiser plunged into the black sphere as if it were naught but empty air.
As the ark dove in, Leon’s senses were completely blacked out. He could still feel what was around him, but he could neither see nor hear anything around him.
And then they were through. Bolt in Shadow came rocketing out of a nearly-identical black sphere, though instead of hanging in the Void with the brilliantly shining Nexus as its backdrop, this sphere was nestled in a desolate mountain range. The storm that surrounded it blew through the valleys, tearing away all but the burned and blackened stone that surrounded the portal.
That desolate landscape continued for dozens of miles, but around it were mountains in two directions and plains in the other two. The plains were blanketed in green grass, and the mountains had a sparser blanket of stubby trees with dull red leaves.
Above the portal was a bright blue sky, hanging in the center of which was a bright orb of rippling light. Clouds were blown about by a gentle wind, and the air was saturated with magic power such that Leon could imagine someone living in this environment could reach the fourth-tier without a single moment of training, simply from breathing in and absorbing all of this magic.
Most interesting to Leon, however, was that in the distance, he could just barely make out the land starting to turn upward before fading into the blue of the sky.
He’d made it to the interior of the Nexus.
—-
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