Tempest

18 - The Last Array

Tobias turned towards him. "Yeah, I heard about you. You destroyed the fold weapon. Sorry about your Titan."

He couldn't see Cooper's expression underneath that helmet, but he didn't sound too miffed. "Actually, I've been grounded here on Harmony because our scientists are testing a theory about reverse engineering a copy of BT stored in my helmet." He shrugged. "No real progress yet, but maybe they can bring him back."

Well that was certainly an interesting development, but not what he wanted to focus on right now.

Unfortunately, it seemed that a confrontation would have to wait. Gates glared at him. "This is what I meant about playing nice. Blisk is the head of IMC forces right now."

The mercenary nodded. "Marder put me in charge of forces within Harmony's system; despite our previous encounter, he agrees that I'm the best for the job. God knows what the hell Spyglass is doing; neither he nor the Remnant fleet have communicated in the last 24 hours. Part of me thinks the bastard is waiting this all out."

"They've been evacuating their people here too," Gates further explained, "to help with strengthening defense and all that."

Tobias shook his head. "None of that is going to matter unless I activate the Tempest."

Gates cocked her head. "You said that earlier. What is that?"

After they handed Al'cor off to some medics who left to treat her wounds, he began to explain his discovery with KT; how this all was a plan set in motion millions of years ago by the Architects, how Al'cor was responsible for him being the Inferno, exactly what the Seed and the Amalgamates were, and what they were trying to do; he ended by telling them about what he'd been trying to accomplish for the last day or so.

"So Harmony is the last array world," he finished. "Somewhere on this planet is an array that will cause the Tempest to occur, and sever the connection between the Seed and its 'other' in another reality."

"So we've got you to thank for all this?" clarified Blisk with a skeptical tone. "After all, you said that you sent it to our time."

He glared at the mercenary. "If I hadn't done it, then we would never have existed; all life would've been wiped out millions of years before we even evolved."

Blisk nodded. "Fair point."

Gates seemed to be thinking something over. "If this 'Seed' can truly appear anywhere, why hasn't it arrived already to kill us? Didn't you say it knows where we are?"

He actually had a theory about that. "Think about a dart board. You know where the target is, but it's still kinda difficult to nail down. So until you can land it, you just keep trying to see what sticks. This thing has been throwing its forces around to spread as much as possible, but precision is a completely different thing." He shuddered. "Still, I wouldn't put this off for too long. What do Briggs and Graves have to say on all of this?"

She shrugged. "We lost communication with them eight hours ago. Our communications relay was damaged by some wreckage from a ship we shot down in orbit. We can send messengers out, but without knowing what's out there ... it's best to stick here. We've got short range communication within the system, so that should be sufficient for your purposes until this is all over."

"Tobias," came KT's voice through his helmet, "there are some new arrivals here."

He was about to ask her about what she meant when he heard the patter of footsteps behind him, and he turned towards the entrance to the building. Jogging up to the command center were Vale and Tyra.

The Simulacrum looked him over and nodded approvingly. "Glad to see you're all in one piece," she joked. "Gates told us about your suicide mission. Thought you were gonna get yourself killed for sure."