“Their leader, describe him again, please?” Asked a voice in the crowd. Thomas thought it might’ve belonged to a Frenchman, but he couldn’t pick the speaker out from the horde surrounding him.

“It…no, he, it was definitely a he. He, uhm, was big and in golden armor. It looked pretty ornate.” His shirt felt heavy, clinging to his back in thick patches of sweat, and so large on him that only his fingers reached past the ends of his sleeves, like a toddler playing dress-up.

Idiot. You should’ve rolled them up tighter.

Another voice spoke up, and this one was a British woman. “You said it spoke English, correct? How would you describe its speech?”

“The speech? When I first saw him… he wasn’t speaking English then-”

“No, I mean his manner of speech. How would you describe his fluency in the English language?”

‘Are you truly so ignorant of what awaits them that you would deny them the mercy of death?’

An icy feeling filled his gut as if the booming voice was still echoing around in his head, dripping in righteousness. This was an enemy driven by something deeper than hate, and humanity was but a tiny obstacle before it.

Thomas swallowed, his throat bone dry. “Yeah…I…he definitely knew it well enough to have a way with words.”

He winced, unable to hide his embarrassment.

With a vivid description like that, I bet they feel like they were there.

His mind melted into jelly as dozens of voices enveloped him, demanding more answers. The podium sat at the bottom of the bowl-shaped speaking chamber, with the audience ringing the entire space. Every seat was filled, or at least he thought they were. His eyes were locked onto the steel podium even tighter than his hands.

“Enough.” Mythros's weathered voice of Mythros was projected throughout the chamber, and all fell silent. No one wanted to upset their host. “Ask your questions one at a time, or not at all.”

Thomas could see the back of his silver head below him at the base of the podium. Like Ithlin, his head was ornate and covered in inscriptions, except his were written in gold.

An electronic, monotone voice broke the silence, its words feeling more like an assembly of sounds rather than a proper sentence. “What manner of weapon did the enemy utilize?”

The voice had to have come from a translation device. He had thought he was only speaking to humans, and they were probably having a hard time making out his babble already.

“Human, I ask again, what manner of weapon did the enemy utilize?”

Thomas tugged back the sleeves of his shirt, past his lifeless watch, wishing he could take it off entirely. It clung to his raw skin like the ash he had spent the entire night washing off. He tried to look away from the beams of the chamber lights shining down upon him, threatening to burn him away, just like the others.

What are you afraid of here? There’s no one left to think less of you, so what does it matter?

“They were wielding staffs with long blades at one end,” Thomas said, “and the other shot some sort of beam. When you get hit… nothing’s left.”

“They are known as Sanctifiers,” Maruch said, stepping up from his seat. “They discharge a form of energy capable of generating immense heat from within one’s body. As far as my kind knows, no one has been able to replicate its effects.”

A wave of murmuring spread throughout the crowd.

“Do all of their warriors carry such weapons?” The alien asked.

“No. They are only wielded by their elite forces," Maruch said. “Lower-ranking warriors are afforded more…cost-effective weaponry.”

“Who gives a shit?” Someone shouted, “They’re more likely to just glass us from orbit like they did last time.”

The murmuring blossomed into a cacophony of chatter. Maruch turned and strode off the stage and down one of the passageways leading out of the chamber.

“They won’t,” said a voice Thomas was startled to realize was his own. “The golden one was clear, he was here for Ithlin, and he failed. When they come back, and they will come back, it’ll be for more than just a brief visit.”

The chatter exploded into a panicked roar.

A lot of good that did.

“BE SILENT,” Mythros said, clearly not happy to repeat himself. The din grew weaker but didn’t subside entirely. Thomas felt a hand gently rest on his back and turned to see that it was Veronica’s.

“Thank you, Mr. Gage, for your account,” Veronica said into her microphone while taking his place at the podium. Thomas slunk down the small stairway behind them and melted into an empty chair.

“You did well, Thomas,” said Ithlin, sitting next to him.

At least my pants are still dry.

“He’s right,” Veronica continued, “Hiding is no longer an option.”

“Then we run! We use the ships that took us here to find someplace else," said someone in the crowd.

“Not for free, you won’t,” said another electronic, masculine voice. It was from another translator, but the speech was far more fluid and even capable of expressing tone. Thomas looked to his right and saw the speaker, wearing a violet hood and some sort of tubed breathing apparatus over his mouth and nose. The upper part of his face had turquoise skin and misty, pink eyes.

“Thank you, Representative Hyth,” said Veronica, a smile plastered onto her face. “But we don’t need the Technate’s services again, just yet.”

Now that he wasn’t in the spotlight, Thomas was finally able to bring himself to look at the crowd. The place was packed, mostly with humans, but at least a third of the audience was alien. There must’ve been at least a dozen different species in attendance, all survivors of the Idex onslaught. But strangely, he didn’t see any korokti.

“We cannot hide, we cannot run,” Veronica continued, “So our only course of action is to fight.”

For a heartbeat, the crowd fell into a quiet murmur before swelling into an uproar.

“What kind of joke is this? Are you out of ideas or something?”

“Only a handful of my kind remain, and you ask us to fight?”

Veronica stood at the podium, stone-faced and silent. Mythros shook his head. But Ithlin stood, and the chatter dimmed, if only enough for her to be heard.

"Is this how you honor your dead?” Ithlin said, her voice projecting throughout the chamber. “How many died so that you could stand here, so you could continue? What does their sacrifice mean if it has only bought you a lifetime of fear and suffering?”

“They wouldn’t want us to waste their sacrifice by throwing our lives away for nothing,” someone said.

“Death will chase you, no matter the path you take. But the choice of how you meet it is up to you," she said. “Do nothing, and perhaps you may live long enough to die a natural death before the Idex find you. But what of your children? Would you damn them to the fate that you cowered away from?”

From the corner of Thomas’s vision, he saw Maruch dragging something into the chamber, his whole strength behind the effort.

“You’re asking us to die,” someone said.

“I am asking you to live,” Ithlin said. “Is a death of the spirit better than a death of the body?”

Maruch came to a stop at the foot of the podium. At his feet was a massive bulk covered by a tarp.

A portly man with a red nose stood up in the front row of the crowd. “That’s easy for you to say. You have the technology to fight them. All we have is what we could carry with us off of Earth. Even at our strongest, we couldn’t touch them up there in space. Hell, most of us don’t even know what the Idex looks like.”

“Then allow me to remedy that,” said Maruch. In a single, swift movement, he tore away the tarp to reveal the bronze ruin of what had once been an Idex warrior. The thing was lying on its back with a gaping crater at the center of its chest, crusted in golden blood. Its helmet was removed to reveal its alabaster-white face. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on its face, its skin taut around the bones of its sunken nose and elongated chin. The lifeless alien’s eyes were pools of black and violet, staring up at nothing.

Thomas looked at the crowd. A mix of disgust, awe, and excitement arrayed across their faces. The lower rows stormed over the railings to gather and leer, eager to see the thing that had caused the end of the world. Ithlin’s gaze settled upon the corpse, unreadable behind her metal mask, but Thomas swore he saw the blue orbs of her eyes dim ever so slightly.

“Look upon it,” said Maruch, “The Idex are just as mortal as you or me, but unlike us, they have elected to stand alone. Join the fight, and you will not. My kind has fought this scourge for nearly a century. Let us learn from each other, and we shall reclaim this galaxy and our homes.”

The portly man scoffed. “Oh boy, one hundred years of failure, how promising. And there’s nothing left to reclaim anyway. The Idex burned Earth down to a cinder, we saw it when we left. We’d be risking the survival of our species for a graveyard.”

“No,” Ithlin said, “They didn’t.”

As soon as the words were uttered, every human eye fell upon her. Thomas thought he had only dreamt her words, but the ember in his chest lingered.

I still have a home.

“The Idex have struck a careful balance in their war,” Ithlin continued, “It is why they have persisted for so long without a true rival. They cannot afford to waste as precious a resource as your home world. Our scouts have seen it, albeit from a distance.”

“They are fortifying it and repurposing it for their own ends,” Maruch said. “Other worlds have met this fate. They will twist and pervert every aspect of it, from the oceans to the forests. Within a generation, few traces of the world it once was will remain, and it will be forever lost to you.”

An electric silence settled over the entire chamber, charged with possibility. Thomas could still feel fear twisting within the pit of his gut, but grappling with it now were the inklings of hope. And rage.

“The Penitent will not commit to violence,” Mythros said, “Our vows forbid this. But to ignore this threat to all life would be an even greater sin. To whoever takes up the sword against this foe, the forges of Akkaven will burn for you.”

“Do not mistake us,” said Maruch. His amber eyes flicked to Thomas and then back to the audience. “We are not making this request to your governments but to you as individuals. This is a war of annihilation, not of politics. With the technology of the Penitent and the experience of the Pyreborn, we will form a legion capable of fighting the Idex on equal ground.”

Thomas’s stomach twisted, and a bit of bile rose to the back of his throat.

Did he just look at me?

“This Idex, one of their most elite, was killed here on Akkaven,” said Veronica from the podium. “Our losses may have been heavy, but they were defeated. If we can win here, we can win back Earth.”

“It is as I said,” Ithlin said, “The Idex has struck a careful balance, and the smallest of feathers may yet upset it.”

 ***

The session adjourned to allow each of the representatives to discuss, stew, and no doubt spread the word about their findings. Attendees exited the chamber in a slow, thick stew of excitement and anxiety. The others sitting by the podium were hounded by both avid supporters and lambasting critics. Thomas, already feeling spent for the day, was all too happy to sit back and wait the full hour for the place to empty before taking his leave. It wasn’t like he had anywhere else to be anyway.

With nothing else to do, his mind wandered, and he found his thoughts drifting down to his watch, cracked and unusable. The music on it has been perfect for situations like this. Then he remembered the ashes that it had been buried in.

As the last attendee, a towering horned alien, ducked through the exit, Thomas pulled himself to his feet and made to follow suit.

“Master Gage,” said a familiar voice behind him.

God damn it.

He turned and found Ithlin and Maruch approaching him. The old robot walked upright, having abandoned the hunchbacked act she had performed when they had first met.

“Thomas, I just wanted to thank you for your testimony today,” said Ithlin.

“Your…welcome," said Thomas, his feet still facing the door. “I guess it’s better to recount it now while it’s still fresh.”

Her eyes dimmed, and she dipped her head. “I understand. What will you do now?”

Thomas looked at the ground. “I haven’t really thought about it. I guess I might try to find a job like the one I had back at Point Nemo.”

He felt his lip curl into a grimace as he said it, thinking of his last interaction with Richard.

Maruch snorted. “That option does not seem to entice you.’

“Finding a position like your old one may take time. You will have much competition," Ithlin said. “But there are other paths you may take.”

He remembered Richard’s words.

‘You’re not the only one itching for a better position back at the Atrium.’

Not for the first time, he kicked himself, wishing that the Idex had invaded after he had finished college.

“Enough with the pretense. I will state it plainly, Gage," Maruch said. “There is a place for you in this new legion, should you want it.”

Thomas’s head swam. “Wha…why? Why me?”

“Why not you?” asked Ithlin.

He looked down at his arms, thin and pale, and then at the corded muscle on Maruch’s.

“Well…I just don’t see what I would offer in that regard. I mean…I don’t have any skills or experience with fighting," Thomas said.

“You have technical skills, do you not?” Ithlin asked.

“Well, yeah. But I didn’t get a chance to finish school, and I wasn’t exactly at the top of my class.”

Ithlin chuckled. “But did you quit?”

“Well…no.”

“Did you plan to?”

“No. But I was going to need to get my ass in gear, though, if I wanted to pass.”

“The only skill that you truly need,” Ithlin said, “is perseverance. And I believe that is something you have already demonstrated.”

“Everything else will be hammered into you,” Maruch said. “Unless, of course, you break before then.”

Thomas blinked, his hands shaking. He tried to imagine himself fighting the Idex but could only conjure the image of Campbell, the soldier who had guarded him, dissolving into ash.

“We do not demand this from you, Thomas,” Ithlin said. “Heed the path that calls to you, and do not look back. You have been through more in the past week than one should in an entire lifetime, and should you accept this offer, I cannot promise you will return. But I believe you have a greater purpose. I only hope to be there when you find it.”

Thomas had never held any desire to join the military, and his parents certainly hadn’t either. He had never wanted to put them through the loss that losing a son would bring. His dream had always been to invent something, although he had never known what. It was why he had tried to become an engineer.

“I…I don’t know," Thomas said, forcing himself to look her in the eyes.

“Good," Ithlin said. “That means thinking it through, and we have little need for those who act rashly.”

“Sleep on it,” said Maruch, “You have until sunset tomorrow to decide.”