The Choice of Almag.

Page 1: The last journey home

The journey home had begun. It had not carried Mr Bigg beyond Almag’s reach. Before his transport left the planet’s vicinity, flight control recalled it to the departure station. The ships farther ahead continued toward Earth. In the cabin around him, the other humans slept on, unaware that their course had changed.

Back beneath the fixed sun, Alizean engineers worked beside Maggis technicians. A joint departure system was being assembled out of equipment that had once been built to keep the two peoples apart.

For the first time in generations, both civilisations had agreed on something: the humans would go home. The agreement was small, born from guilt and necessity. Still, it required them to stand beside one another and work.

Korren helped move the sleeping pods toward a waiting transport. Behind each pane, a passenger lay motionless. Bigg watched a pair of technicians check the seals. No human inside opened their eyes.

“Do you think you will ever be normal again?” Korren asked.

“Define normal.”

“Waking up without wondering whether your body will do something terrible.”

Bigg glanced at his hands. They looked familiar. That was no longer a reliable comfort. “I think we may have to discover a new kind of normal.”

Page 2: Something is coming

Thaeron approached Neris at the control platform. “The next transport departs within the hour.”

“And the joint security arrangement?”

“It remains in place until every human has been accounted for.”

“You sound almost hopeful.”

“Do not mistake caution for hope, Neris.”

“And do not mistake fear for wisdom, Commander.”

Bigg stopped moving. Something cold crossed his mind—a thought that did not seem to belong to anyone near him.

Let them gather. Let them trust. It will make the betrayal easier.

“No…” He turned toward the distant mountains.

“What’s wrong?” Korren asked.

“Something is coming.”

The explosion arrived before he could explain. A transport tore open in a flash of fire. The shockwave threw equipment across the platform. A second ship, already carrying humans in sealed sleeping pods, lifted clear of the blast, turned through the incoming fire and escaped.

Bigg remained on the field. He could see the escaping ship; he could not know the fate of everyone caught in the wreckage.

Page 3: A second was enough

Sirens cut through the smoke. A second explosion struck the joint control tower, scattering sparks across the platform.

“Maggis weapons!” an Alizean soldier shouted. “Incoming from the dark sector!”

A Maggis soldier answered from behind a fallen barrier. “We did not fire! The attack came from the eastern ridge!”

An officer brought Thaeron a ruined weapon casing. Its markings belonged to Maggis military equipment.

“Commander. We have identified the weapon.”

Thaeron turned the blackened fragment in his hand. “Confirm its origin.”

“Maggis manufacture. No doubt about it.”

Across the platform, Neris found an unexploded device carrying an Alizean insignia. She scanned it and called for it to be isolated. “Lord Korvax must see this.”

An Alizean soldier raised his weapon at a Maggis technician. “You killed our people!”

“I had nothing to do with this!”

A shot rang out. The technician fell. For one terrible second, the platform went silent. Then weapons rose on both sides.

The agreement had survived generations of suspicion long enough to bring them together. An explosion had placed them in danger. One soldier’s choice turned that danger into a battle.

Page 4: The future where no one listens

Thaeron led his soldiers toward the vessels. “Secure the station! Protect what can be salvaged!”

“Commander, the Maggis have broken the agreement!” Vorak shouted.

“We have not confirmed that!”

“Our people are dying!”

On the other side of the field, Korvax received the casualty reports. “The Alizeans attacked our technicians?”

“We don’t know who started this,” Neris said.

“Our dead do not have the luxury of waiting for certainty.” He turned to his soldiers. “Defend the station!”

Bigg dragged an injured Alizean away from the open platform. Thoughts collided inside his head. Protect the children. Kill them before they kill us. Where is my brother? I don’t want to die.

“Stop! Please, just stop!” Gunfire swallowed his voice.

Then the station changed. Blue light cut across the smoke, and he saw the burning capital and the collapsing Maggis territories again. In the vision, he stood alone among people he had failed to save.

“This is the future I saw.”

“What future?” Korren asked.

Bigg looked at him. “The one where nobody listens until there’s nobody left to save.”

Page 5: The mind behind the war

Far beneath the battlefield, a hidden chamber illuminated. A map of Almag filled the air with military movements, transport routes and the expanding marks of explosions.

A cloaked figure watched the map. “The first phase is complete.”

“Alizean and Maggis forces are engaging,” a mechanical voice answered. “Casualty levels are increasing.”

“Increase the transmission strength.”

Two transmitters awoke. One carried an order that made a Maggis invasion appear imminent. The other delivered its mirror to the Maggis command network.

“Both sides are receiving the fabricated commands.”

“Of course they are. They have spent generations believing the worst of one another.”

The figure lowered his hood. Metal covered part of an ancient face. One eye glowed gold; the other violet. On his chest lay a circle divided between light and darkness.

“They built their identities around the enemy I gave them.” He turned toward a screen showing Bigg. “But the human is becoming a problem.”

His hand closed. “Find Mr Bigg. Before he remembers everything.”

Page 6: The vision was a map

As the attack began, Neris requested Sera’s archive expertise. Sera had been under observation, not imprisoned; she joined Neris and Bigg in the damaged control room with the recovered archive crystal. The archivist set it on the scorched console and began to recover its contents.

“The weapons were modified,” Neris said. “Someone wanted each side to recognise the other’s technology.”

“So they would blame each other.”

“Exactly.”

Neris displayed a marking found on both devices. Bigg recognised the divided circle before Sera had finished connecting the crystal.

“I’ve seen that before.”

“Where?” Sera asked.

“In my visions. And in the memories I saw during the experiment.” He touched the hologram. Blue light broke across his hand.

He saw the ancient core, the sabotage and a figure behind the people operating the machinery. A control was pressed. Another image opened: the secret chamber beneath the old energy station.

“There. Beneath the old station.”

“What did you see?”

“Where the orders are coming from. Where the lies are being sent.”

Sera studied the route. “If we can shut down the transmitters, we may be able to stop the false commands.”

“We need Thaeron and Korvax to hear the truth.”

Neris looked toward the fighting. “Neither commander will listen while their people are dying.”

Bigg watched the symbol fade. “Then we find the person making sure they never get the chance.”

Page 7: Brothers in war

Thaeron and Korvax met between their forces. The injured lay behind them. Neither man looked far enough past the other to see how alike the two lines had become.

“Your forces attacked our transport ships!”

“Your soldiers executed our technicians!”

“We responded to an act of war!” Thaeron said.

“So did we!”

Thaeron drew his weapon. “For generations, we have tolerated your aggression.”

Korvax gave a bitter laugh. “Tolerated? You built your civilisation on the belief that we were beneath you.”

“And you taught your people that every Alizean was their enemy.”

“Because every time we trusted you, we paid for it.”

Both weapons rose. Their soldiers prepared to follow.

Bigg watched from a broken platform. He heard Thaeron’s fear of losing his people and Korvax’s shame over the casualties. Beneath them were soldiers who no longer understood what they were protecting.

“You’re both wrong!” Neither commander heard him.

The pulse escaped before Bigg knew how to shape it. For one second, soldiers on both sides experienced a fragment of the fear across from them. The gunfire faltered.

Page 8: What hatred covers

“What just happened?” Thaeron asked.

Bigg answered through the fragile connection. Nothing you have not been doing to yourselves for generations.

Explain.

You keep looking at one another and seeing the enemy. I can hear what is underneath that hatred. Underneath it, you are both terrified.

His knees weakened. A thin line of blood reached his upper lip. The connection snapped.

Sera caught his arm. “Bigg! You cannot hold them all!”

“I know.” Across the field, hands tightened around weapons again. A moment of another person’s fear had not removed a lifetime of reasons to distrust them.

Bigg looked toward the commanders. “That is why we need to find the person who keeps making sure you never get the truth.”

Neris held up the recovered crystal. They had material evidence as well as his impressions. They needed to trace it before another command made the decision for everyone.

Bigg wiped his nose. With Sera and Neris, he headed toward the command rooms.

Page 9: The betrayal within

Inside the Alizean command post, Vorak received an encrypted transmission. The screen carried the familiar signs of military authority.

The Maggis command structure has been compromised. Eliminate all Maggis personnel before the next transport departs.

An officer leaned closer. “General, should we verify the order with Commander Thaeron?”

“There is no time.”

Beneath the console, a device no one had entered into the equipment record gave a faint pulse.

If the Maggis strike first, Vorak thought, the council will finally give me the authority I deserve.

Across the station, Bigg stopped walking. “Vorak.”

“What?” Sera asked.

“He’s about to make this worse.”

He ran. Sera and Neris followed him into the command post just as Vorak raised his hand.

“Don’t do it!”

Vorak turned. “Remove this human!”

Page 10: What you choose next

“The message is fake,” Bigg said. “Someone is feeding you false orders.”

“Listen to him,” Sera urged. Neris stepped beside her.

Vorak hesitated. Bigg could hear the uncertainty behind his anger. “You don’t even know if that order came from your commander.”

“You dare accuse me of treason?”

“I’m accusing someone of using you. Maybe you should ask why they know exactly what you want to hear.”

Neris traced the signal to the underside of the console. Sera opened the housing. Inside, beneath the station’s familiar fittings, lay a device neither woman recognised as military equipment. Its inner plate carried the divided circle.

“This is not part of the Alizean system,” Sera said.

“Someone has infiltrated both command structures,” Neris added.

Vorak stared at the symbol. The officer still waited for permission to transmit the attack order.

“You’re not the only person being manipulated, General,” Bigg said. “But what you do next is still your choice.”

Vorak lowered his hand. Sera transmitted the device readings to Thaeron and Korvax. The recovered signal matched the route Bigg had seen beneath the old energy station. Evidence gave the two commanders a reason to leave the firing lines long enough to investigate.

Page 11: The name beneath the mask

The route ended beneath the old energy station. Bigg, Sera and Neris descended with Thaeron and Korvax into an archive antechamber adjoining the hidden machinery.

Sera connected the transmitter to the old system. Hidden records opened: altered histories, fabricated orders and attack reports rewritten before they reached either council.

“These records go back centuries.”

“Centuries?” Thaeron repeated.

“The records link major escalations to false signals,” Neris said. “Again and again.”

“Someone has been directing our war?” Korvax asked.

“Someone repeatedly made it difficult to distinguish an attack from a provocation.”

A recovered recording showed the ancient energy core before its destruction. This time the figure behind the operators could be seen issuing instructions to both sides.

When the core falls, the Alizeans will blame the Maggis. The Maggis will retaliate. Each act of revenge will become proof of the last lie.

“This is impossible,” Thaeron said.

“No,” Korvax answered. “It is worse than impossible.”

The recorded figure removed his mask. The archive matched the old face to a name: AUREX, FIRST KEEPER OF THE VEIL.

“Aurex,” Sera said. “The name was erased from our histories.”

Meet Aurex

First Keeper of the Veil

The recovered records finally give the hidden authority a name: Aurex. An ancient Alizean ruler, he has survived through mechanical support and an unbroken conviction that order requires a keeper.

He speaks of stability as though it belongs to him. Bigg must decide what that word conceals—and whether anyone has the right to choose for an entire world.

Page 12: The Keeper of the Veil

“Aurex died before my ancestors were born.” Thaeron’s voice sounded small against the archive.

A reply came through the chamber speakers. “That is what I wanted you to believe.”

A concealed door opened. The man from the recording stepped into the light, older than the records and sustained by machinery woven into his collar and armour. One side bore antique Alizean bronze; the other carried violet markings associated with the Maggis. Beneath it all, the face was Alizean.

“Welcome to the truth, children of Almag.” He looked from Thaeron to Korvax. “I have waited a very long time for you to stop fighting long enough to find me.” His smile offered no welcome.

Thaeron raised his weapon. “You caused the destruction of the ancient core.”

“I did.”

“You made our ancestors slaughter each other,” Korvax said.

“I gave them reasons to do what they were already capable of doing.”

Aurex turned toward the map. “Before the division, our peoples shared knowledge, resources and power. They were building a future in which neither needed a ruler to stand above the other.”

“And that frightened you?” Thaeron asked.

“It threatened the order I had built.”

“So you destroyed it?” Korvax said.

“I divided it.”

Page 13: A place above everyone

Aurex opened another layer of the archive. “I ensured that every generation inherited a different history. Your children learned to fear one another before they learned one another’s names.”

Sera watched the records change under his hand. Lessons, casualty reports and military orders fitted together with a precision no accident could explain.

“Your leaders learned that peace was weakness. Your soldiers learned that mercy was betrayal. Whenever the truth threatened to emerge, I gave you another enemy to blame.”

Bigg stepped forward. “Why?”

Aurex looked at him. “Because a united Almag would have no need for me.”

“You made two peoples suffer just to remain important?”

“I preserved stability.” He stood beneath the map as though the lights of every city were his possessions.

“No,” Bigg said. “You preserved your position. Those are not the same thing.”

For the first time, Aurex’s expression changed. He raised a hand. The chamber machinery answered.

“You mistake truth for victory, human. Knowing what happened will not erase centuries of grief.”

“Maybe not.” A faint blue light crossed Bigg’s eyes. “But it means you can no longer decide what that grief is supposed to mean.”

Page 14: The futures they were building

Aurex struck the console. The floor opened around an enormous structure, and thousands of energy channels illuminated the walls.

“You have seen fragments of the future, Mr Bigg. You have not seen the whole design.”

“What is this?”

“The original convergence engine. The device that once balanced the energy of Almag.”

The machine projected the cities Bigg had seen burning. Alizean weapons struck Maggis territory. Maggis weapons answered.

“This is the future created by their hatred.”

“You engineered this future!” Thaeron said.

“I made it possible. They made it probable.”

The image changed. Both civilisations worked on the old engine together. Their cities shared energy. In this possibility, Bigg helped repair the damage left by the experiments.

“This is the future we could have,” Neris said.

“Yes. But it requires something neither civilisation has been willing to offer.”

“What?” Korvax asked.

“Trust.”

Bigg recognised the ruined station, the ships and the moment he had stood alone among the fallen. “My visions were not showing me what must happen. They showed what could happen if you kept us divided.”

“And what will you do with that knowledge?”

“Give them the truth. Then let them decide.”

Page 15: The last order

Aurex entered a hidden sequence.

“Convergence engine overload initiated,” the computer announced. “Estimated planetary instability: critical.”

Neris turned toward him. “What have you done?”

“If Almag cannot remain under my control, it will not remain at all.”

Thaeron charged the console. An energy barrier threw him back. Korvax fired at the machinery, but the blast spread over the field without reaching its target.

“Shut it down!” Thaeron shouted.

“The engine cannot be stopped through force,” Aurex said. “It was designed to respond to a balanced energy signal from both hemispheres.”

Korvax looked at the two control channels, then at the man standing between them. “You made yourself the only person capable of controlling it.”

“Precisely.”

The confidence in his voice was almost complete. Bigg could hear the part that was missing.

Page 16: The choice he would not steal

Bigg closed his eyes and reached toward the thoughts around him. Aurex’s memories came in fragments: the core, the first sabotage, the orders sent into frightened command rooms.

Then he found a fear that did not match the threat Aurex had made. It was not death that occupied him. It was a world continuing without him, a future in which no one needed his name.

“That is what this has always been about.”

“Silence.”

“You couldn’t bear the thought of a world that didn’t need you.”

Aurex moved closer. “You could end this. Your ability is unlike anything this planet has produced. Connect the minds of both civilisations. Force them to cooperate.”

“Force them?”

“They will resist. They will fight. They will return to their old ways unless someone makes the choice for them.”

Bigg looked at Thaeron and Korvax. Both had made choices he could not excuse. Neither was an object for him to rearrange.

“No. That is how we got here.”

He turned back to Aurex. “I won’t become another person who decides what everyone else must believe.”

An outer control surface lay on their side of the barrier, linked to the same engine. Bigg placed his hand against it. “I’ll show them the truth. That’s all.”

Page 17: The truth reaches Almag

Bigg let the engine carry his signal farther than he could reach alone. Blue-white light spread through the chamber and entered the ancient channels.

Across Almag, communications towers awoke. The fabricated orders stopped arriving. In their place came the original historical records.

“Unauthorised historical archive broadcast detected.”

Aurex turned toward the displays. “What have you done?”

“Given them back their history.”

Alizean soldiers saw the original sabotage. Maggis citizens saw the orders manufactured in their names. Both peoples heard Aurex explain the mechanism of revenge in his own recorded voice.

Each act of revenge will become proof of the last lie.

A Maggis soldier lowered his weapon. Across the barricade, an Alizean commander ordered a halt.

The information did not compel them to obey Bigg. It gave them something the orders had withheld: a reason to question what they were being asked to do.

Page 18: The lives between the lines

Bigg showed what he had witnessed: the experiments, his pain, the bodies asleep behind glass. The other humans had not shared his knowledge of Almag. Their eyes remained closed throughout the memories he sent.

“You have seen what he did to your ancestors. Now see what your war has done to the people caught between you.”

Beside those memories, possible futures appeared in the wavering blue light: families waiting on Earth, survivors confronting abilities they had never asked for, damage no return journey could undo. Those images had not yet happened. They were consequences the living still had time to confront.

“We were not brought here because we were enemies. We were brought here because someone wanted to turn our lives into tools.”

Thaeron lowered his weapon. Korvax followed.

“Our people deserve to know the truth,” Thaeron said.

“And they deserve to decide what happens next.”

Aurex watched the military networks stop accepting his fabricated orders. “They cannot simply abandon everything they have believed!”

“They do not have to abandon their history,” Bigg answered. “They have to stop letting you write it for them.”

The room shuddered. The broadcast had broken Aurex’s hold on the orders. It had not stopped the overload he had begun.

Page 19: The price of doing nothing

“Critical instability. Planetary energy balance failing.”

Sera traced the network on her console. “The overload is still running. The engine is reacting to the loss of its control signals.”

“How do we stop it?” Thaeron asked.

“Both hemispheres must reconnect to the original network.”

Aurex seized Bigg and pulled him away from the surface. “You have destroyed centuries of order!”

“You mean centuries of control.”

The blow put Bigg on the floor. His glasses stayed on, crooked across his nose. He pushed himself up on one hand.

“Without me, they will tear one another apart!”

“Maybe they will make mistakes. Maybe they will fight again.” Bigg forced himself onto one knee. “Their future still belongs to them.”

Korvax looked across the engine at Thaeron. “We would need to cooperate.”

“Then we cooperate.” Thaeron turned toward Sera. “Tell us what to do.”

Page 20: The fall of the Keeper

Sera identified the paired terminals. They were links to the two hemispheres, not permission to control everyone living there.

“The old network requires simultaneous activation.”

Korvax placed his hand above the violet panel. Thaeron stood at the golden one. For a moment, neither moved.

“If this fails,” Korvax said, “our people may never forgive us.”

“If we do nothing, they may never have the chance.”

They activated the controls together.

The sound deepened. Energy entered the old channels from both sides and began to settle. The red warnings receded.

Aurex’s control console went dark. His primary life-support harness faltered, and his mask struck the floor. He dropped to his knees. A reserve indicator at his collar still pulsed; Neris moved to keep him breathing.

“You think this changes anything?” he asked Bigg. “You cannot erase the hatred I planted.”

“No. But you can no longer keep watering it.”

Aurex looked up. “They will remember what I did.”

“Yes.”

“They will hate me.”

“Perhaps. That choice belongs to them, too.”

Page 21: A chance, not an ending

Guards from both civilisations entered the chamber. Neris stabilised Aurex’s support equipment before they took him into custody. He left alive, his mask on the floor and his records preserved.

“You will answer for what you have done,” Thaeron said.

“Every record of your crimes will be available to both civilisations,” Korvax added.

The Keeper of the Veil was gone from the controls. The engine continued without him.

Above them, the fighting had stopped. Medical teams worked together among the wounded. The human subjects who remained at the station were moved in sealed sleeping pods toward the surviving transports. None woke. The ships that had already escaped continued their separate journey; their arrival was not yet known.

Bigg sat against a damaged pillar. Korren approached.

“Is it over?”

Bigg looked toward the entrance to the old chamber. “Aurex has been found. His lies are exposed. The fighting has stopped.”

“That sounds like it’s over.”

“It sounds like we’ve finally been given a chance.”

Page 22: The choice of Almag

Thaeron and Korvax stood before the soldiers who had nearly killed one another.

“Our ancestors were manipulated,” Thaeron said. “Our histories were altered. Our suffering was used to keep us divided. But the choices we made in response were still ours.”

Korvax stepped forward. “We cannot blame every act of cruelty on Aurex. We must confront what we did, what we allowed and what we taught our children.”

They announced a joint investigation, the release of the remaining human subjects and the restoration of the ancient records. Neither promised that peace had already been achieved.

Bigg rose unsteadily. “I saw two futures.”

“In one, you kept fighting until there was nothing left to protect. In the other, you learned that peace is not the absence of pain. It is what you decide to do with the pain you inherited.”

He looked across the assembled faces. “You cannot change what happened to your ancestors. You cannot bring back everyone who died. And you cannot build trust in a single day.”

“But you can choose what happens tomorrow.”

He let the words stand before adding, “That choice is yours.”

Nearby, an Alizean medic offered a wounded Maggis soldier a medical kit. The soldier hesitated, then accepted it.

The truth had ended the conspiracy. It had not erased the consequences. Almag’s people would now have to decide who they wanted to become without someone else choosing their enemies for them.

Page 23: The first gate

When Bigg boarded the surviving transport, the other humans were still asleep. They knew nothing of the battle, the man beneath the station or the choice that had kept Almag from destroying itself.

He heard the thought as he entered the cabin.

The Keeper has fallen.

It came from far beneath the planet. It did not feel like Aurex, or like any Alizean or Maggis mind he had encountered.

The first gate is open.

Bigg stopped. Blue light crossed his eyes. For an instant, he saw a vast network joining Almag to distant worlds. Countless lights awoke beyond them.

Now let us see whether they can choose unity when the truth is no longer enough.

He turned toward the window. The old boundary still divided the hemispheres. But the city lights were beginning to move in a new pattern, one side answering the other.

“What else is out there?”

The war had a name. The conspiracy had a face. The future still had a choice.