The Lady of Light - Chapter 2

Two months ago...

The battle was fierce. Sphere ships whizzed about and fired upon the rebel fleet. It was chaos.

"Hard to starboard!"

"Aye, sir!" The response of the ship almost beat Dahlia's words, so quick was her reactions. The young woman's skills had increased vastly over the last few years, and the Saint Nazaire responded even faster then when Wayan had shared the task. Weapons fire hit where they had been but seconds before. Cortes gritted his teeth, and surveyed the sky in the brief reprieve.

Sphere vessels outnumbered theirs two to one. Luckily, most  of the Sphere's fleet were S22s. Fast and with a decent amount of firepower, but could be knocked from the sky under concentrated fire in seconds. Fireballs and plummeting debris was more or less equal for each side. Mosquitoes whined past the forward windows like a flock of birds endowed with the teeth of wolves. Under Wayan's command that ever growing fleet tore through vessels ten times thier size. Behind all this, watching like a hungry predator, a Sphere flagship lazily parted the clouds and drifted towards the main battle. The apparent drift was deceptive; the vessel was moving quite quickly, but its massive size dwarfed everything about.

"I want the warships concentrating fire on the flagship!" Cortes barked into the fleet-wide communications.

Twenty of the larger rebel vessels responded; the designation of warship was loose, the rebel fleet was a haphazard conglomeration of all sorts of ships. They varied in age, though it was impossible to determine this in most, generally the hull was the oldest part with innumerable and unrecorded modifications, upgrades and retrofits.

A sleek red hulled vessel whipped between its counterparts, pulled a barrel roll and shot towards the towering flagship. Mahad. Cortes felt a brief flutter within his chest and winced. The young man still set him on edge with some of his maneuvers. But it was not this that worried him. Mahad could fly, Cortes knew that. It was the attitude. Despite the odds against them, the rebellion appeared to be steadily gaining ground. Both due to the growing power of the rebel fleet, and the even faster growth of the seijins under Mila's guidence. They had gained barely a dozen blocs to add to their claimed airspace, but the important factor was that they lost none of these. Once taken, the Sphere had been unable to reclaim, or even to enforce any regulations such as its water tax. These victories bred a boldness and confidence in the younger rebels that, though on the surface seemed to empower and drive them to even greater feats, brought an uncomfortable feeling to the gut of those who had been around a little longer. The attitude was not necessarily bad. What it was was familiar.

Personally, Cortes found the current atmosphere unbearable. As he watched the red vessel hurtle towards its target with reckless abandon, he found his mind wandering far back. A different vessel, smaller, red and white. Nearly twenty years ago, the rebellion had been in exactly this attitude before everything fell apart.

A flash of exploding shrapnel against the windscreen, metal shards clattering against the glass and protective metal mesh the resistance's engineers had insisted he put up there, brought Cortes sharply back to reality, acutely aware that he had no idea what had happened in the last few microseconds.

Dahlia swore, banking hard, and despite a brief moment where visibility was nil they pulled through, nothing that clattered against the hull sounded larger than a few square feet.

Cortes could feel his heart pounding now, and he was seconds away from activating a fleet-wide communication, calling for a retreat.

But that was not the right reaction either. He gripped the wheel in front of him, white-knuckled. He'd been here before, but this time he knew it. He would not blindly follow the momentum that had so quickly become a downward spiral. The rebels could not depend on their mounting victories, particularly as they seemed so in contrast to the rising forces of the Sphere.

In that moment Cortes realised they needed to do something differently to the last time, or they would follow the exact same spiral to disaster as they had before.

***

That one battle did not end in disaster. The Sphere flagship was not destroyed - this was one feat they had yet to accomplish, either this time round or the last. But it turned tail and fled when enough of the S22s that supported it were destroyed or disabled. The rebels still counted the fight as a victory, though they too had suffered losses.

In truth, Cortes realised he had been considering his next course of action for some time. It was not that moment in the heat of the battle where it had come to him, that had simply been when he had become aware of the thought's existence. It had crept up on him during sleepless nights spent listening to Sphere broadcasts, and remembering, in the wee hours of the morning when he barely clung to consciousness and his mind threw up long forgotten memories, the failures of the past.

Amongst these he had remembered the machine. He'd nearly scoffed and dismissed it. But its existence was more solidly etched than memories of the prophecy, which in and of itself, as far as Cortes was concerned, deserved derision.

After that last battle was when he decided to pursue it. He'd heard rumours of Marcus, knew roughly where to find him and how to go about pinpointing his exact location. But such a task required a leave of absence, and whilst he knew it was too soon to disclose to the full council his intentions, Cortes knew he could not embark on that mission on his own whim alone.

His first port of call, predictably Cortes had to admit, was the Vector. The man's reaction, when Cortes told him of his intention, was not what he had anticipated nor what he was looking for. "So, Marcus is alive? Have you told Mila?"

The lighthouse was still the old man's favorite haunt. Cortes paced the floor, pent up tension in contrast to the Vector's calm. He stopped and fixed the Vector with a glare. "I didn't come to ask you about whether I should have told her, or not. That I can deal with. But the machine..." He trailed off and almost absentmindedly resumed his pacing.

"The machine is dangerous." The Vector finished for him.

"Did you ever see it?"

"No. You'd have to ask Marcus about that. Or perhaps Mila."

"I feel we're on the verge of either turning the tide on the Sphere. Or smashing ourselves to pieces on the rocks. Just like the last time." Cortes swallowed and turned his gaze out the window to the village below. The place and its people had long ago burrowed its way beneath his hard exterior. The thought of anything happening to Puerto Angel, especially if they blindly hurtled into the same mistakes as they had before, ate at him more and more each day. Something had to be done, but a part of him feared the solution would only make things worse.

"Are you sure you're not simply letting the past cloud your judgement?" The Vector came and stood beside him. "Simply because you failed then does not mean you will fail now."

"It... feels the same," Cortes said. He knew it was a weak argument.

"The mind can play tricks on you," the Vector said quietly. "What happened twenty years ago, not just to the resistance, but to you. That sort of thing burns itself into you. Anything similar that happens to you, you'll associate all the feelings you had at the initial incident with the present situation..."

Cortes felt himself bristle. "You're saying I'm imagining things... I don't have time for psychobabble..."

"Cortes, that's not what I meant. Look, when you see an S22, what do you feel?"

Cortes paused and swallowed. "A lot of things..." Because he couldn't quite bring himself to admit fear for a simple ship.

"Even if that S22 is crashed, disabled, unmanned, you feel the same, am I right?"

"Of course I do! I've seen them do...." he shook his head. "Even if they're dead in the air, what else do you expect me to think of when I see them?"

"The fact the S22, or the situation, is harmless, does nothing to invalidate those feelings. But if you did something stupid like waste all your weapons shooting a dead ship out of the sky, then you're letting those feelings get the best of you. All I'm saying is you need to make sure your fear is for what is happening now, not what happened twenty years ago."

Cortes huffed. "This is what I came to ask you about! I feel we need to change our course, but I don't know if it's the right thing to do!"

The Vector drew in a breath, and then shrugged. "Cortes, I don't know."

Cortes felt the urge to yell, but that passed in a moment, and instead he swallowed hard and looked away.

"I'm not that good at reading the signs of the times," the Vector continued. "I can tell you where a certain bloc will move in three months time, down to three hundred meters with certainty. Whether we're heading for disaster or not? I think you have a better idea than I do."

"This is not something I want to decide on alone. But if I go to the council we'll get bogged down in argument. If I bring them Marcus... he'll convince them a hell of a lot better than me. But a part of me is afraid that might not be a good thing."

The Vector moved back across the lighthouse and seated himself down at his desk. It was covered in paper and books. Cortes had no idea how the man worked at it. The Vector fumbled amongst the mess and pulled out a pair of reading glasses, something he had started using in recent years. Cortes was convinced he had only adopted these so he could glare over the top of them at anyone he'd decided he'd done talking with and wanted to leave him alone. "If you want an opinion from someone who has done this sort of thing before, who can look at where we are now relatively objectively, I might be able to point you in the right direction."

"Who?"

"Your brother."

For a moment Cortes stared at the Vector as if he had grown a second head. "I know he took off at Ronston, and I know he thought he was helping the resistance. If you're saying him predicting our downfall was anything other than coincidence..."

"Nevertheless he did. And that's why I'm sure Christophe's thoughts on where we stand at this moment will be more beneficial to you than mine. Do you want advice or not?"

Cortes scowled. "Look, I know now his heart was in the right place. But what he did was reckless; I'm certain he never really thought it through. A part of me still wonders if it wasn't simply an act of foolish bravado."

"Well, if you decide to do this, and things go wrong, that may be exactly how your actions are viewed. Perhaps you should ask Christophe about how he handled that too."

***

Cortes found himself again thinking, in that irritating way that had snuck up on him of late, about how different it felt being able to locate his brother within a few hundred square meters and in so short a time. Even if Christophe wasn't on Puerto Angel it was usually only a matter of hours to either send a transmission, or days to wait for his return. It was impossible to bottle up his feelings, even on the numerous occasions that his brother found some way to cause havoc. He could yell at him anytime he wanted to. And more than that, he had been able to rectify any of the grievances they had held onto over the years they'd spent apart. Cortes found he had more chances now to find fault, grow irritated or duck a thoroughly un-warranted hug, but if asked he would probably say he was happier with their relationship now than he had ever been. Ignoring, of course, the fact he would never admit such a thing out loud.

Puerto Angel was one of the larger facilities within the currently held rebel blocs and it had become one of the focal points for the maintenance for both the Saint Nazaire, and much of the rebel fleet. With his apparently unequaled mechanic skills Christophe had ensured he found a position working on maintenance of the ships. However, his own view of his skills sometimes quite starkly contrasted with the lead engineer's. In fact, quite a number of their opinions on what should or shouldn't be done with a certain ship or ships conflicted. This was Cortes' greatest source of frustration with his brother lately. The last thing he needed was him stirring up trouble, and the worst part was he seemed to enjoy it.

It wasn't difficult for Cortes to spot Christophe amidst the flurry of activity. His brother was currently engaged in an animated discussion with said lead engineer. And as Cortes made his way across to the two he found himself growing apprehensive. What the hell was it this time?

"You know if you don't actually record what you've done to the damn ship, no one else is going to have a clue?"

"No one has a clue. These things have been butting around Skyland for god knows how many years..."

"Yeah, and you know how difficult it is to figure out whats been done to them?"

Christophe shrugged. "Yeah..."

"Well, if we record it now we won't have the same problem two years from now, just because you can't be bothered turning on the computer and telling it what you fixed!"

The words of the exchange became audible as he moved closer, but it was Christophe's movements that told Cortes his brother was on the losing end of this particular argument. It seemed he wouldn't be required to mediate in something he wasn't sure he completely understood. Christophe usually tried to affect an air of nonchalance, like he didn't really care what the other person was protesting about, or that they were being silly or illogical. This method was completely ineffective with Elise. Christophe had begun to shift uncomfortably under the engineer's demands, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck self consciously.

"Is he making a nuisance of himself again?" Cortes decided the argument was more or less won, and he would not be walking himself into a war zone.

"Captain." Elise was in her late thirties, dark hair scraped back in a short ponytail. She wore a greyish coverall that bore signs of grease and oil. She flashed him a tight smile. "No. No more so than usual."

Christophe let out a huff. "Aran. Right on cue. Can you tell Elise she's being unreasonable..."

"No," Cortes said curtly.

Christophe looked down at him with mock disappointment. "Aw, you always take her side."

Cortes felt himself tense. Great. His brother knew he'd lost, but now he was going to stir things up for sheer amusement. "That would be because she's always right, and you're always trying to take short cuts."

"Hmm," Elise mused. "No. I'm not always right. Just... what did we decide on Christophe, ninety two percent of the time?"

Christophe grinned. "I recall you had a couple more decimal points in there..."

"Ninety two point four."

"Sounds right."

Cortes was sure he had missed something. He glanced between the two for a moment; Christophe was grinning openly, and he was sure there was amusement in Elise's half smile, though she was keeping a far tighter reign on her expression than Christophe. "Look, have you sorted him out or not? I'd like to borrow him."

"Of course," Elise said. "Make sure he puts into the computer what he's supposed to, and he's all yours."

"Yes, ma'am," said Christophe.

"Come on," Cortes grabbed Christophe by the arm and steered him away before he could think of something else to joke around about.

"And I want you putting complete sentences in there, Christophe!" Elise shouted after him. "None of this 'fixed' garbage!"

His brother was never really a sore loser, but it seemed of late he was more than happy to be chewed out by the engineer. It hadn't been so when she'd first arrived. Their initial arguments had been louder, longer, and left each in far fouler moods than they were in now. Christophe was used to doing what he wanted, whenever he wanted and how he wanted. That applied both to how he went about repairing ships and basically anything else he set his mind to.

On the other hand Elise had been trained by the Sphere and it was somewhat ingrained in her psyche that there was a certain way things were to be done. Not doing it the right way was likely to get you shot - she had mentioned as much to him once, laced in sarcasm and almost as a joke but in such a short snappish manner and with an immediate change of subject that Cortes had strongly suspected that she was referring to an actual incident.

It was almost by chance that she had joined the resistance. The rebels had destroyed a Sphere base; they would have left the workers they deemed harmless there to be picked up by the Sphere, but Elise had seen her chance and taken it. One of the rebels ships had taken a hit in the rear manifold that, whilst not endangering any lives, had rendered the ship immovable. Under the threat of Sphere reinforecments ariving at the base in mere hours they would have been forced to leave it behind. Elise had ordered her engineers to repair the damage in record time. And then she'd demanded protection for herself and the small group of engineers she was in charge of. In exchange, she'd promised she'd take in hand the mounting problem of maintaining the rebel fleet. Escalating fights with the Sphere had not been kind to the aging ships. It had been a little rough at first - there was a vast difference between the rusting rebel fleet and the sleek Sphere fighters. The engineers quickly found that the tight controls they were used to simply didn't work with the rebel ships. But Elise had managed to adapt, and dragged the slack approach the rebels had previously employed somewhat closer to what she considered ideal.

Some of the upgrades she'd made to the Saint Nazaire had made Cortes a little uncomfortable at first, but none had had any adverse effect. In fact, he found his ship running better and with less sudden breakdowns. Most importantly, she actually let him and the other captains know what she had touched. If someone had to fiddle with his ship, Cortes would much rather it was Elise than Christophe.

After Christophe washed up and stopped at the dedicated maintenance computer (Cortes was sure his brother only punched in something along the lines as 'fixed as per instructions'), Cortes led him to the tavern. As he did he mulled over in his mind how to approach the issue. He found he had no clue where to start.

But Christophe surprised him, because upon sitting down with their drinks at an out of the way table he seemed to drop his jovial mood, and without any preamble asked: "So what's wrong?"

Despite the fact he'd decided to talk to him about this, Cortes felt himself tense up. He shifted in his chair and glanced away. "What makes you say that?"

"Aran, you didn't call me off duty half an hour early because you wanted to get drunk."

"You've got water, Christophe."

Christophe paused briefly, then shrugged. "Exactly."

Cortes huffed. It bothered him he was so easy to read, even by his brother. But he was letting himself get ruffled, and he knew it wasn't something he could blame Christophe for. He felt his shoulders slump. "You're right. There was something I wanted to ask you."

He explained everything that he had previously told the Vector. All the while focusing on his water bottle. It was harder than he'd expected. Though they had come miles in their relationship Cortes still found it difficult to ask Christophe certain things. Ronston was one, and though he now only related the current events that had him on edge it would not be long before he had to reveal the reason he was asking his brother's advice.

Again, Christophe beat him to the punch. "So what you're saying is you're worried about where the resistance is heading, but everyone else seems oblivious. You're considering doing something you're not sure will work out, something that if it fails will probably make everyone hate you, and might even work against the resistance." He paused and then added. "And if you really screw up, they might even label you a traitor."

Cortes risked a glance up at his brother then. Completely gone was any sign of his usually animated expressions; he simply stared across the table at him. For the brief moment Cortes managed to meet his eyes, he found he couldn't read what emotion currently dominated behind them.

"That's what you want to know, isn't it? Why I did what I did at Ronston?"

"Yes. I just... I don't know whether I can trust what I'm feeling about... everything. I need an objective opinion..."

Christophe smiled faintly. "Are you sure you're asking the right person?"

"Don't make this anymore difficult for me than is already is," Cortes snapped. He swallowed, and made an attempt to reign in his irritation before if got the better of him. "You predicted the resistance's downfall once before. I figure you may have the same feelings I do, assuming that I'm right."

"How long have you been worried?"

Cortes harrumphed.

"Bad phrasing," Christophe admitted. "I mean, how long have you been thinking we're heading for failure. And how long have you been thinking about this machine, about Marcus, and whether finding either of them is a good idea or not?"

"A few weeks."

"Hmm." Christophe frowned. "I can't say I'm entirely comfortable with how things are going either. It does remind me of things just before Ronston. If you want me to be honest, I do have a bad feeling in my guts."

"So that's all you based it on. A feeling in your gut?"

"What are you basing your feelings on, Aran? If you had anything solid, you wouldn't be talking to me, you'd be talking to the council."

"I can't take this to them. It'd never go anywhere..."

"Because it's just a feeling in your gut," Christophe finished for him. "You know, you don't have to fear what you're feeling? Maybe it's telling you something you haven't quite worked out in your head."

"Did you take any thought about changing sides at Ronston?" Cortes growled. He could hear the tension creeping into his voice, and he was fast losing his ability to control it. But that had always been precarious.

Christophe sighed. "Yes, I did. If you're willing to believe me. That's why I asked how long you'd been thinking over this. There are some things I'll do on a whim, but changing sides is not one of them. I considered what I had planned for weeks, and I figured that the fact I hadn't changed my mind meant I was on the right course, even if I couldn't explain it to anyone... even my own brother."

Cortes stared down at the table. "Look, I know we don't talk about this much," He felt as if he were forcing his words through a sieve. "I don't care that you did what you did without telling me; I'm over that. But I really need your help on this. However it looked, however I felt about you because of it, you were still right..."

"I wasn't right," Christophe cut him off, "I may have predicted what was going to happen. But I got everything else wrong. I barely made a difference, what confidence I was able to build with the Sphere was only good for getting away with..." he squeezed his eyes shut briefly and shook his head, "stupid shit on the black market. My entire crew left me, my first mate nearly beat me senseless when he'd had enough, I couldn't show my face on a rebel bloc for years. And you know how long it took me to win back your trust."

Cortes swallowed. "So should I do this or not?"

"If you don't, would anything convince you we're not going to run into trouble?"

"No." Cortes found himself answering before he even had a chance to think it through.

"Then stop deliberating, and do it. Even if you find Marcus, you can still change your mind on the machine. And the council won't take you seriously until you do. But, you do have to be prepared for the fact your actions might not be taken well by everyone. Just make sure you consider what could go wrong; don't let it stop you from doing this, but make sure you're willing to live with the consequences if they do."

Cortes swallowed again, staring at the table as his mind spun. Far from calming him, speaking to his brother had put him even further on edge. But as he thought about it, he knew he could not forgive himself if he was idle and the same thing happened to the resistance as it had under Marcus. Stifled and buried memories rose, spinning across his minds eye. Burning ships falling from the skies, the squawk and crackle of a hundred voices fighting for dominance, calling for help across the overloaded communications systems. Those voices falling silent. Tian. Drawing her last breath in his arms and begging him to take care of her newborn son. When Cortes finally spoke, he found his throat dry. "I don't think I can live with the consequences if I do nothing."

Christophe reached across the table and grasped Cortes by his lower arm, pushing the last persistent threads of memories away and bringing him sharply back to the present moment. "Aran, whatever you decide to do, I'll be behind you all the way. I know what it's like to have no one believe in you. But let me know what you're doing? I've heard it's a lot easier to trust someone's actions when they're honest with you."

For a moment Cortes felt the pull of his usual resistance to anything risky, anything that required him to step out of his comfort zone. He knew this was dangerous. But there was a point where he could no longer bury his head in the sand and he'd tip over into that steely determination he found equal parts terrifying and empowering. He had reached that point. He looked back up at Christophe, finally able to steadily meet his brother's gaze. "Can you help me?"

The corner of Christophe's lip twitched up into a crooked smile. "Just tell me what we need to do, little brother."