15 Years Ago

  The two women sat at the table, its metal surface dented and scuffed from years of abuse. It sat in the corner of a neglected room, dimly lit by a single bulb hanging by a wire pulled out of the ceiling. In truth, the room the two women occupied was little more than an old storage closet in an abandoned building that sat in a decaying part of this moon’s one major city.

  It had been their home for six months now. Two sleeping pallets lay against a far wall, barely illuminated by the weak light above the table. One woman, slightly built and unremarkable, glanced over at the two forms occupying the pallets. Their companions had just reached them after a long, dangerous journey, and she knew they needed their sleep.

  “Quin,” the woman said, turning back to the task at hand, “anything new to report?”

  The woman in question, Quin, shook her head in reply while scrolling through reports on her data-pad.

  The pair of women, Quin and Ilona, had been in-system the longest, and they showed the strain of a long deployment. They had entered the Solvonus system together five years ago, emerging through the Rift in the Barrier that encapsulated the entire star system.

  Their mission objective was three-fold. Find out as much as possible about the system and its inhabitants. Create a plan to destabilize the system, and discover a way for the main fleet to breach the Barrier.

  The infiltrators had been in-system for five years and had only scratched the surface on their first objective. Solvonus, its planets, and people, especially these Powers they had heard of, were unlike anything they had experienced before. The first obstacle, one that would stall any invasion by the fleet, was the physical nature of the system.

  The Barrier, a force of unknown origin that surrounded and protected the entire star system. Communication across the Barrier was impossible. Any transit through the Rift, through which only a small craft or two could travel at a time, was treacherous at best. A full two-thirds of the ships sent in by the High Command failed to make it through. The Solvonus Imperial Navy’s defensive measures arrayed around the Rift, shooting down those that successfully made the transit and attempted evasion.

  The crews of the few Interloper vessels not destroyed allowed the marines to board their vessel while also setting their ships to self-destruct. This distraction allowed the two-person crew to board the docked HellWings. They hid until the spacecraft returned with the retreating marines to the starbase; specialized, intelligent camouflage mitigating the risk of detection. There, they could disappear into Solvonus society to begin their mission.

  Next was the fact that the system’s background radiation somehow made faster-than-light drives inoperable. This unwelcome surprise, discovered by the first ships through the Barrier, hampered any plans of invasion. The plan had been to navigate the Rift, evade any defenses on the other side long enough to engage the FTL drives, and regroup in deep space between planets. This complication caused the continued loss of ships until a brave pilot returned from the Rift with the information. The pilot didn’t survive, but her ship had, and the fleet mined the data from the ship’s computers.

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  If those two issues were not enough, this system had complex planetary orbits, which all but dictated the routes ships navigating the system had to take.

  Ilona, Quin, and a few others had survived the crossing, making it aboard Rift One. From there, they had spread throughout Solvonus, making tenuous contacts and gathering what information they could.

  In the five years since they had been in-system, the pair had operated independently, with sporadic contact with the other teams working in the system. Both women, chosen for their resilience and resourcefulness, had found this mission to be their most challenging yet. Because of the Barrier, this mission was presumably a one-way trip. There was the hope that, if successful, the fleet could enter the system, bringing with it the Enlightenment. If that happened, Ilona, Quin, and the others would be heroes. However, the unique conditions of this system were hard to ignore, and both women held little hope after all this time.

  The infiltrators had built an underground communications network throughout the system, using Solvonus’ own information net. The infiltrators knew the predetermined schedule for ships attempting to cross the Rift into the star system. When a fleet vessel breached the Barrier, a tight beam signal would be aimed at the Breach. The ship would intercept an updated data pack. If it could evade destruction, it would return through the Rift, carrying the vital information. In return, the in-system teams would receive their own data packet that included updated orders and other pertinent information.

  As unremarkable, and therefore forgettable, as Ilona, Quin put her data-pad down on the table. She stood and walked to a small counter built into the room’s back wall. She grabbed two cups from a shelf and poured them each a cup of coffee that had been percolating all day. It smelt burnt and stale, but it kept them awake, and that was enough.

  “Where are they headed?” Quin asked as she handed Ilona a coffee before sitting back down at the table, glancing at the pair sleeping on their pallets.

  Ilona took the coffee gratefully, taking a small sip of the steaming drink.

  “Looks like they’re headed towards Senovar to meet up with the team there before making their way to Talunne.”

  “Talunne,” Quin mused. “Must be nice. I hear Atlantara is a great city to spend time in. Not like this cesspool.”

  “They have their orders, just like us, Quin.”

  “I know, I know,” the other woman said. “I just don’t know why we have to live in squalor. This mission is hard enough without having to sleep on thin pallets in a cold storage room.”

  Ilona, the team’s leader, didn’t respond. She knew Quin's dedication to the mission. It was as unfailing as her own. They were both tired and strung out, and Quin was blowing off steam.

  Both women sat, lost in their thoughts, sipping the acrid coffee, until the data-pad chirped. They both looked, for a long moment, at the device where it lay on the beat up table.

  Ilona put her coffee down and reached for the pad. She tapped the screen, the security measures scanning her facial structure and fingerprint, ensuring Ilona was handling the device.

  Once the pad had ensured her identity, it opened the decrypted files. They had received the packet from the two companions resting on their sleeping pallets, and it had taken the underpowered data-pad a few hours to decrypt the message. Now Ilona could see why.

  As she read their new orders, she began to smile.

  Finally.

  “What is it?” Quin asked, her interest peaked by Ilona’s reaction.

  “Wake the others,” Ilona said. “We’ve got new orders and a lot of planning to do.”