He leaned forward. The flames from the fire licked upward, orange and red with blue at the very tips, “What actually lies on the other side of that door? And how does Tralam figure into all of this? My father said that the Federation is there. Apparently they are. Also, apparently they’re all dead. Why would we need to go there?”
The scent of the fire drifted upward, wood and flame. It was a good smell. It was the smell that signified life, and he savored it, for a moment of silence reigned all around him. It seemed that every question just brought another question along with it. There was no way to know if his father had been merely hallucinating and repeating some portion of an old tale. But the fact that the old tales specifically mentioned wormholes controlled by the Federation and a door closed by the Speakers was interesting.
It was also far too neat to be just coincidental. Why had his father said that he had to go to Tralam? Even if the place existed, what could possibly be there that would help anything or anyone at all?
For that matter, if it was an impenetrable fortress and nobody knew where it was, and it certainly seemed as if nobody had any clue as to where the hell it was, what good would it do to try to go there?
It was all just a wild goose chase, he decided as he stared into the flames. The heat of those flames beat against his face, and he found himself remembering again. When he had been a small boy, his father had been away a lot. Federation duty had meant that he was seldom at home. On one of his rare furloughs, General Bates had taken his young son on an expedition. They had walked for an entire day, eating rations and drinking purified water from refresher bottles. They had stopped in the old-growth forest outside Newport City and set up a meager shelter there. General Bates had started a fire and then turned to his son.
The young boy that Blade had been had stared up at his father’s face as General Bates said in a gruff voice, “This is where I leave you. You will find your way home, or you will never return home again.”
And with those words, a hovercraft had appeared, clearly called by his father. Blade, young and frightened and protesting wildly, had tried to climb aboard the craft as well. His father had pushed him away and left him seated there on the forest floor staring upward as the hovercraft crested the trees and then vanished.
He’d stayed the night there because he’d been too afraid to move. The next day he had dutifully put out the fire and then began the trek home. He had no rations. No water. No way to know in which direction he was traveling or how far he would have to go before he reached the city again.
And somewhere in the two and a half days that it took him to find his way back home, he became a man. He became a man who could listen hard and hear water running along the bank. A man who was unafraid to climb into a tree and steal eggs from a prey bird’s nest. A man who was young in age and body but strong in spirit and will and who had found his way home again.
The first thing he had done when he had walked through that door into his father’s house had been to punch his father directly in the nose, breaking it. He had stood there, his fingers burning and his rage burning even higher. To his shock, his father had merely looked at him and said, “Good for you. You hungry?”
And that had been the end of it.
Blade had never understood why his father had done that. Despite all the years between that day and the one he was currently living, he was still at a loss to understand why his father had done that.
Oh, he understood the reasons on the outside of that action. He’d been too young, and far too frail. He had always been a sickly child, and his mother had doted on him, always keeping him confined to bed or to hospital despite the hospital continually telling her that there was nothing wrong with him other than that he needed exercise and fresh air.
After that day, his mother had avoided him. Blade had seen the marks on her arms and cheek; he had known, he had not wanted to know, but he had known, that his father had put those marks there. He also knew that it was his father’s orders that kept her from denying him the right to run play and to be healthy.
His mother had been domineering and smothering. She had been sure that her son would die during an early childhood battle with some small disease and Blade knew, after he was much older, that that had been what had directed her actions toward his childhood and what made her so careful with him.
As he sat there now, staring at the flames, he found himself wondering if his father had done that to prove to his wife and Blade’s mother that Blade was, indeed, quite strong and capable, if he was only given the chance to be so.
Or perhaps he had done it to force his son to realize that he was indeed capable of all of the things that his mother swore that he was not.
Perhaps at the end, it didn’t matter what the reasoning behind that action was. What did matter was that Blade had been forever changed by the experience. And his hero-worship of his father had died that day. The biggest casualty from that day had been the relationship between boy and father.
Blade had never trusted his father after that. He knew that now and as he sat there trying to decipher some sort of reasoning from the old tale that had just been told and his father’s words.
Blade and his father had fought continually simply because there was no trust between them. And now he had to try to trust the words of his father, a man he had never trusted, not even after that very man had turned his back on the thing he held so dear his entire life.
He spoke again, shattering the silence. “I don’t know if this is something we should pursue. My father was a man who was reasonable to a fault, and perhaps his blood loss made his mind weak or something. I mean, how could we even find it, and why would we want to try when we need to do so much here, now that the war is really on?”
Jessica snorted. “If there is a fortress, and consider this for a moment, will you guys? How could there possibly be this place that none of us have ever seen or heard of? If it was an actual place, somebody would’ve found it by now.”
Tara’s hair brushed against his neck again as she leaned forward and wrapped one arm around his shoulders. The weight and heat of her arm centered Blade. Her words and settled him. “Because it is not in this universe and maybe the reason nobody has ever found it is because they went through the wormhole the wrong way. I mean, what if they went in the way that they thought was the direction because that is the direction they would go in, but that led nowhere? He said the exit-way is the entrance, after all.”
Talon’s fingers stroked along his chin. “That still doesn’t answer the question as to where this wormhole is. We do know, we know without a doubt, that the Federation was wild to get to it. We intend to blow it the hell up to prevent them from using it. But what if we went into it instead?”
Blade said, “I think that would be a mistake. We don’t have time for the foolish chasing of old tales. We have to fight now.”
Talon said, “Think on this for a second. If there really is a weapon there, some kind of tech that only the Speakers and the founding members could use, that would be an incredible tool for us to use. If there was something there that was used by the races before us and we could use it, and remember they were a warring universe from all accounts, could we not use that to take the Federation down in one fell swoop?”
Blade said, “You’re talking ancient tech. Tech none of us know how to use. We’d likely kill ourselves before we could figure out what to do with it.”
Jessica chuckled. “You know what would be great? If we could trap the Federation within an empty universe.”
Renall said, “But if there are doors out of that universe, the dead one, into ones that are peaceful and not advanced, we would be doing nothing but ensuring that the Federation was given a universe.”
Blade shook his head. “This is all just wild talk. We’re wasting time here. We need to call in more troops for the fighting going on along the outer rings of the Solaris system, and we need to put our energies into beating the Federation now and right here.”
