Reflections

‘While reflection is encouraged to avoid repeating mistakes of the past, one should be cautious of dwelling excessively on things we cannot change.’ – High Spiritual, Ira Tolxa

Religious sectors existed in small pockets of the universe. The fantastical ideologies better left explored by scholars with the time to delve through their deep chasms. Gold, like any other soldier wearing the uniform of GLAD, were discouraged from promoting one way of living over another. The council alone shaped the cultural image. It was a soldier’s job to extend their metaphorical sword, opening the hearts of those they were ordered to, despite their beliefs. Yet, one religious practice, from the histories of a lost planet many eons ago, described a strange method of worshippers talking to their god by sitting in a small cubicle, confessing their sins to a holy man who allegedly had divine connections with God himself. It wasn’t often Gold thought about this silly ritual, but standing in the cramped storage closet across from Arker made him wonder if this was how those ancient penitents had felt.

“I am assuming you already know all about the mission the pelican wants to send us on?” Arker finally asked.

Gold fought the urge to storm back into the hallway. It wasn’t his discipline or self-control holding him back, it was pure, relentless curiosity magnetizing his boots to the metal grated floor.

“I am aware of the pelican,” he answered, cautiously, eyes locked on any movements Arker may make. “And vaguely aware of some mission. I do believe the pelican forgot to mention there would be companions for the mysterious journey, oddly enough.”

Directness offered clear advantage here; prolonging this engagement meant nothing but wasted moments trapped in a confined space with a woman he’d rather be drowning in one of the mop buckets stacked in the back corner. 

“Technically speaking,” Arker said, evenly, “the pelican only gave me the mission bullet points. Something about saving a race of beings who, by the pelican’s esteemed opinion, are superior to us in every way. There is a war brewing between powerful creators who’ve somehow stumbled upon a minefield they cannot navigate without blowing themselves to smithereens. Thus, insert our lowly, insignificant presence. I am still trying to surmise if we are just sacrificial lambs, no offense to lambs, or if there is a real expectation for us to succeed. Anyhow, like I said, that is all I got from the pelican.” 

Her voice grated against Gold’s nerves. Her tone, pitch, the very words she chose, all made him squirm beneath his metal encasing. Yet, deep down, Gold knew it really had nothing to do with any of those things. While GLAD discouraged from practicing religion, they generally overlooked most small congregations, permitting they didn’t obstruct, or interfere, with abilities to perform. Despite their small leniency there, GLAD strictly adhered to letting go of any personal bias in an attempt to dissuade anyone from condemning a fellow soldier for their beliefs. But standing here, staring at Arker, Gold failed that directive. Every action she took, past and present, ignited his anger, drawing it dangerously close to boiling over. Every fiber of his being yearned to coil and strike. The urge seeped from some primitive corner of his mind. He’d never coiled in his life and hated the idea of other people thinking about him in such a vulnerable position. Still, the impulse clawed at him relentlessly whenever Arker was involved.

“So,” Gold snapped, barely containing his anger, “you decided, on your own, to show up and ruin my day even further? On a whim, you thought, I bet Gold has also met this random, mysterious pelican. I had better go find him and talk with him to make sure he is miserable’?” 

Arker shook her head slowly, her deep green eyes locked unwaveringly onto his. 

“I came because once the pelican left, I got a second visitor,” Arker said confidence slowly returning. “Although, I must admit, this was more a vision than a physical face-to-face.”

“Great,” Gold flung his hands dramatically, “now you are coming to me with revelations that you now have some mystical powers?”

Gold thought the pelican had been enough to make him crazy. Now, Arker, who had an unmatched talent at digging in under his skin, was claiming prophetic visions. What next? Would one of the gods themselves waltz into the storage room and ask for the broom?

“I was awake, not dreaming,” Arker continued, almost appearing to be speaking to herself, if not for her unwavering eyes, locked so strongly onto Gold like she would pull some hidden truth from him. “I had to convince myself of that at first, but I remember having full control over my body, and I even blinked, at least a dozen times, trying to scatter the images in my head. It didn’t work. Mostly, I think, because the vision only existed here and not in the physical world.” Arker pointed to the side of her head before taking a big, deep breath and blowing out through flared nostrils. 

Normally, in moments like this with Arker, Gold would have prepared for a flurry of spiteful comments and sarcasm, as this was her way of showing emotions. Right now, though, Gold saw something different, something new. It wasn’t just an overload, it was confusion, confusion rooted so deep, it had burrowed into her very core. 

“What do you think you saw?” he asked treading carefully.

“I saw you,” she said, her expression showing no signs of her normal smarminess. “You were talking with the pelican in your sitting room. At first, I couldn’t hear anything either of you spoke about, but I watched you fumble around with your blaster and then, I watched the pelican kill you.”

Gold’s hand moved instinctively to his neck. Surprisingly, there was no lingering soreness or pain. And yet, he remembered vividly the pelican choking the life from him. 

“Then,” Arker’s voice was just above a whisper now. “Something even stranger happened, he brought you back to life. I don’t know how he did it. He was just standing there, then he brushed your cheek, and you woke sputtering, like you hadn’t been sitting there stiff with death moments before.”

What Arker said made no sense, but if she hadn’t been having a true vision, how would she have known about the one-sided fight? Unless…

“Did you set all of this up?” Gold snarled, anger flaring. “Are you playing some type of sick, twisted game with me? Is this your attempt to take some ill-perceived revenge?” 

Suddenly, everything clicked into place. The nonsensical story from the pelican, Arker’s unexpected visit, her absurd claim of prophetic visions, all a carefully constructed show. Her grotesque need for self-flattery was behind this. Well, he wouldn’t give her such satisfaction. He would report to the bridge where his personnel awaited his arrival. Once he finished setting a course for world destruction quite literally, he would take care of Lieutenant General Arker by calling in her blatant insubordination to the council. They could take whatever measures they deemed necessary. He would not soil his hands for her ever again. 

Gold turned toward the storage room door, ignoring the lingering curiosity gnawing at him.

“I know what the council ordered you to do,” Arker said sharpy. “And I know exactly why they want you to do it.” 

Gold froze. Panic surged through him, swift and fierce. Perhaps Arker may have indeed found some way to control some extremely odd and undeniably physically strong pelican. She may have even designed a method to screw with his mind about time. Though, he would admit that the last one still confused him. So had magic tricks when he was a kid though, and he had known the entire time they were nothing more than sleight-of-hand, or mind. Discovering details of his meeting with the council would have been easy enough; after all, they’d announced it publicly as a sham trial over a week ago. But if she knew specifics-especially considering the council had supposedly erased the meeting entirely from official records, he needed some clarity immediately.  

“Speak quickly,” he said, barely opening his mouth for fear his voice would betray him.

He refused to turn around, not wanting her to see the turmoil in his eyes. Facing her would yield nothing positive. She could lie just as well to his back as she did to his face. Yet, a small part of him felt certain that if he could peer deeply enough into those cold green eyes, he’d find some hint of her true intentions. Logic quickly dismissed that naïve impulse; anyone foolish enough to rely on mere visual cues for insight typically found themselves staring down at the wrong end of a blaster. 

“The pelican left me after the vague mission request,” Arker began, a bit softer than before. “He had given me a lesson in flattery, and I almost wondered if I wanted to do this to impress him. To show someone, anyone, how valuable I could still be. I wanted to refuse being tucked away in a monastery like some monk. I’ve always been and always will be a soldier whether the council ever lets me demonstrate that side of myself ever or not is irrelevant; it’s who I am, and I won’t lie to myself or pretend otherwise.”

Her words flowed rapidly; a tidal wave unleashed by a faulty dam. Gold shook his head in manufactured contempt, though secretly acknowledging his love for the council was only a mask he wore for convenience. 

Still, he interrupted her, raising a hand to halt her momentum, putting up a barrier of feigned righteousness. 

“So,” Gold sneered, “you wanted to convince the world you were useful? You thought maybe competing against me in some made-up quest would allow everyone to see how much you have to offer? You would dare defy their will and yet still believe yourself deserving of their gratitude? They would order your execution themselves if I took them half the words you have spoken to me.” 

Of course, Gold had no intention of bringing anything to the council. Their inevitable questions, and there would be many of them, would lead them right to his own experience with the pelican. If Arker spoke of his miserable failure, his ambitions to become the most powerful General the universe had ever known would crumble to pieces right at his mechanical feet.

“There’s more to life than the council’s approval,” Arker said firmly, her previous sharpness now tempered by conviction. “At least, there should be. If what the pelican said is even partly true, then there is something far beyond our own personal ambitions at stake.” 

“Do you intend to sit in this closet all day and repeat that drivel until I’m convinced this isn’t a setup?” Gold said, impatience seeping through. “I only stayed because you claimed to know something about the council’s orders. What of them do you honestly know?”

At this moment, Gold’s primary concern was clear: if Arker left this closet spewing nonsensical stories about mystical visions and magical pelicans, she’d quickly be disgraced and discarded. However, if she truly knew anything about his secret mission from the council, she may have just enough to sway the public’s opinion. To appease the outraged masses, the council would, without a thought, throw him into the void, declaring him a traitor and disgrace. They’d certainly hold be a tribunal, post-mortem, that would find him guilty of treason. 

Arker drew in an audible deep breath, “the planet they want you to rid them of is not what you believe it to be. Along with seeing the council give you an order that placed you right into the scope of the public assassination, I also received a message. A voice told me to find you, warn you that once your mission is complete, the council would publicly brand you a failure to conceal the real purpose for their barbarity.” 

Gold chuckled impulsively, dismissing her words with exaggerated contempt. If this was all Arker had to scare him, then it was pitiful. He could simply draw his blaster, discard her corpse in the incendiary, and be done with this whole tedious performance once and for all.

“Is that all?” Gold mocked. “A warning that I’m merely a pawn? I believe you, I just do not believe it is the council attempting to make me a fool. If you plan to be promoted, Lieutenant General, you will not do so off my downfall.”

He reached instinctively for his weapon, but Arker halted him with her next words. 

“If I am lying, then tell me this, why was General Sorder summoned to the chambers immediately after you left, and given orders to apprehend you the moment the deed is done?” 

The name sent shivers down Gold’s scales. General Sorder, his bitter rival and only true competition for rank, was a scheming, maniacal scourge.

“Do you have any more proof of this other than some vision sent to you by a mysterious source?” Gold demanded. Yet, even as he spoke, dread settled heavily in his gut. He didn’t need Arker to prove it to him, he knew deep down how far the council would go to prevent themselves being seen in a displeasing light. What better morsel to serve the starving masses than one who had already started to simmer from the heat of their scrutiny? 

“I can tell you exactly where General Soder’s ship is docked,” Arker replied evenly, “and I can help you put it out of service long enough for you to avoid the fate they have arranged for you.” 

“Why?” It was a simple question, but Gold knew the answer wouldn’t be. Arker had every reason to let him fall. His death would be the sweetest boon for her. His death would grant her freedom from exile, restoring her position without Gold’s influence.

“Because there’s something bigger than the council out there,” she said firmly. Gold finally turned back to her and saw a pair of unwavering eyes staring back at him. “Whatever it is, I intend to be the one who finds it first.” 

Gold took a slow, steady breath and carefully withdrew his hand from the butt of his blaster. “Then,” he said reluctantly, “I suppose we should get to planning.” 

Privately, he hoped he had not just leapt from his perch into a pile of burning manure.

***

The very last place Gold would have ever imagined talking with Arker in collusion had been his own quarters. If anyone had tried to convince him, even two hours ago, that he’d willingly choose this scenario, he’d have promptly thrown them off his ship for such absurdity. No sane person could have predicted this. Any person with any measure of self-preservation would have foregone implying this was Gold’s destined path.

Even now, staring across the makeshift battle table at Arker, Gold struggled to fully grasp the insanity of it all. What in the universe had he been thinking? Was there any chance the pelican had drugged him? It would explain the confusion, loss of time, and his willingness to step into a room with Arker again. The only thing ensuring him he controlled his own faculties laid in his ability to still think through the levels of his decisions. Ironically, if he had truly been drugged, he probably wouldn’t even question his circumstances, and he’d likely have no knowledge of his lacking.

“Are you paying any attention to what I am saying?” Arker asked, frustration coating her tone.

Gold took a moment to compose himself. “This has been quite a lot to take in all at once. Today was never meant to be an ordinary day, I fully expected to be thrown off my game a bit due to the sham trial the council had planned for me. However, even my strategic planning and wily cunning could have never foreseen anything like this.” 

Gold’s mind swam like a newborn tadpole looking for food in a vat of oil, or to make the analogy simpler, it moved in slow motion, followed by a sudden sense of drowning.

“Do you think I woke up this morning determined to hunt you down?” Arker snapped back. “Believe it or not, I have no reason to yearn for a reunion with you. If you recall, it was I who received the negatives from our last encounter. As I recall, you were given the wings of valor and a fancy new title of General. All I got was a new home world they described to me as a chance to recoup, recover, and assist them in gaining internal intelligence. What it truly meant was that they had thrown me in a prison but couldn’t even bother with putting up the bars.”

Contempt flared from Arker’s very being, revealing a side of Arker unseen during this entire exchange. But it was familiar enough, he vividly remembered the storms of passion and the way her temper coalesced into a whirlwind almost as famous as Gold’s mechanical suit. A long time ago, their pairing had been spoken of as a miracle of the gods, proof of GLAD’s righteous cause. Those days were long dead, but the feelings of such a tumultuous period still lingered, repeating every excruciating detail in high definition and ten times slower playback to really let it sink in.

“You pretend as if the council showered me in flowers, set me off into good graces, and lined my pockets with credits,” Gold retorted bitterly. “What you may have failed to notice in your low stakes, comfortable exile is that I was given the new role of destroyer, incinerator, and, ultimately, blamed for all that is wrong with the council’s war plans. Yes, I was promoted, sure, I received tokens of fake admiration, but, in truth, I received a sentence of banishment far worse than any cell filled with flower gardens, warm teas, and servants. Do you understand how many times I have stood in front of the council being only a stiff breeze away from it becoming the last time I stood anywhere? The void lives within the confines of my dreams as if it had bought real estate and set up a luxurious home.”

Gold understood how their fallout must appear from Arker’s perspective. To most, his rise through the ranks undoubtedly looked like a special favor, a prestigious accolade showered upon a loyal drone. Yet, he knew without a doubt his escalation had only served to ruffle the feathers of those who screamed for more peaceful resolutions and respect for the way of life on newly discovered worlds. The blame for every harsh decision rested squarely on Gold’s shoulders, as if he were more than a puppet whose strings danced to the whims and impulses of a puppeteering council. 

Logically, they all knew the truth. They also realized their words would fall onto deaf ears if they bombarded the council with their hatred. That was if the council decided not to march them to the void to rid themselves of such annoyances. That is what they all truly were to the council. Frustrating gnats who could be swatted without the flutter of an eye. However, to keep the illusion of peace, they instead propped up General Gold, offering him as an easy target for the public’s ire. The citizen led groups lapped up the scant morsels fed to them and pretended right along with the council that Gold held any real influence over policy or destiny.

“Yes, yes,” Arker said, breaking Gold’s reverie, “we can fight over who had it worse, which of us is more of a sad sack, and who should feel blessed to be where they are today. Or we can do what needs to be done to keep this ship out of General Soder’s crosshairs. Which do you prefer?”

Gold leaned back over the small blueprint Arker had thrown together within the first half hour of them arriving in his quarters. Gold busied himself securing a block of time for them to be alone on the pretense of an important military matter, effectively barring any of his subordinates from making an untimely visit. If anyone discovered that Arker was not only aboard the ship but secretly collaborating in his own quarters, mutiny would swiftly follow, and somehow, that would still be the least of his worries. The council wouldn’t hesitate to order his return to their chambers. How Arker had gotten off her posting without alerting them, still baffled Gold. If the council hadn’t set this up, which was still a possibility he hadn’t completely discarded, then Arker was already committing treason by just being here. Which meant, even if Gold backed off right now, he’d have to justify why he’d delayed reporting her from the start.

“Fine,” Gold conceded seeing no other clear path. “I recognize when I’ve been dealt a losing hand. Anyone who wishes to continue playing must know when to fold.” 

He turned his attention back to the schematics. Arker had somehow obtained a detailed copy of General Soder’s orders, but more than that, she also had a keen, intimate knowledge of his vessel, a fact that unsettled Gold about as much as it reassured him.

“Don’t sit there wondering if I got these through other means,” Arker said, noticing Gold’s hesitation. “This was a vision, and the details are all just as mysterious to me as they are to you.”

“Then, why trust them?” Gold countered. “If we sabotage Soder without definitive proof, we leave ourselves open for a quick demise. Who is to say the council hasn’t decided to rid themselves of two hassles with one stone? Send out a messenger who can starts the wheels in motion on the erasure of two officers who have become annoyances by using their troubled history to cover a scheme just wild enough to proclaim us traitors and justifying our marching into the void.”

Arker paused, her fingers steadied in mid-pursuit across the thin black lines representing her proposed route to Soder’s mainframe. Her eyes shifted; uncertainty flashed briefly across her face.

“You know,” she admitted quietly, “I hadn’t thought of that.” 

Gold felt a thousand thoughts pounding against his skull. This deep well of madness only continued to grow.

“If the pelican gave us nothing more than headaches and riddles,” Gold said, thinking out loud, “then the secondary vision must have been another source.”

“Why do you think that?” Arker diverted her attention back to him.

“Well,” Gold took a deep breath, gathering his racing thoughts as best he could. “If the pelican had the information you received from the vision, wouldn’t he have just given it to you then and there? There wasn’t any need for him to give you visions.” 

Gold had no real certainty about anything that happened today, but if he was already up to his neck, then he may as well commit fully. If this all crumbled, he’d at least go down with a fight.

“That makes sense, I suppose,” Arker said, her head bobbing up and down. Her eyes brightened as she leaned forward toward the map again. “If the second message was another source, then maybe there are multiple factions gunning for whatever it is the pelican needs our services for.”

“Well, that is just what I said, but with different words,” Gold snapped, irritation flaring at the sudden excitement in Arker’s voice. 

“Then, if there are at least two parties,” Arker continued, ignoring Gold’s retort, “there is no need for the council to have devised such a convoluted scheme. Any engineer knows that crossing too many wires will only lead to a shock when they inevitably become exposed. The best laid plans are often the simplest to pull off. All the council needed to do was send you off to complete a grand mission to keep you busy. Then, when you did as you were told, like a good boy, they would reward you with a blaster beam to the back from none other than their next golden boy. It is the plan with the least room for failure. It makes the most sense from their perspective.” Arker tapped her finger rapidly on the representation of Soder’s mainframe. “We have a wrench to throw into those plans now though, and I plan to throw it as hard as I can, making as big of an impact as possible.” Her tapping stopped abruptly, her eyes darting back to Gold. “Are you going to stand back and watch it explode, or will you be there with me to scavenge the rubble for the answers?”

Gold doubted any amount of wrench throwing, no matter how hard, could truly unseat the council from their perch upon GLAD’s empire. However, if he managed to do just enough to foil their plans of making him the fall man for their sins, he could live to formulate a way out of this without losing his life or his position. His goal had always been to make himself indispensable. Nothing had changed, not really. Anyone with half a brain understood the variability of the council’s pendulum. At any given moment, it was just as likely to swing toward death as it was toward glory, only they truly knew how one would fair. Even then, it was unlikely that they knew from day to day how they would use their tools. That meant one thing for Gold. Just because today cast him in the shadows, it didn’t mean he had to linger there. All he had to do was find the light.

“Let’s get going,” Gold said, resolve steadying his voice. “Soder won’t wait around for long before he realizes something is wrong.” 

Arker tapped the marker one final time, nodding, before she turned to grab her weapon’s belt.