Destin's Hold (The Alliance #5)(53)

“I agree. If Kali had been there alone with Ami, it could have had a completely different outcome,” Destin replied. “Those were skilled assassins.”

“Be thankful they weren’t Drethulans,” Cutter muttered, glancing over his shoulder where Trig followed them in silence. “How is Dagger?”

“Dangerous,” Trig answered in a clipped tone. “Jordan is the only thing that keeps him grounded.”

Cutter nodded in satisfaction and turned to face forward again. “It is good he is alive,” he said before he slowed to a stop outside of the conference room.

“What is it?” Destin asked with a frown when he saw the steely expression in Cutter’s gaze.

“I’ve gone over the Waxian warship incident with Jag. We both felt something was wrong. Even outmatched, they should have put up more of a fight. Jag took the Star Raider to the location to investigate the wreckage. Until he files a report, we are on high alert. Razor believes there is a larger assault amassing against Earth. If it is true that the Drethulan and the Waxians are working together, we will have a fight on our hands,” Cutter informed Destin in a terse tone.

Destin glanced through the door at his men sitting around the table. They had a right to know what was going on. If the Drethulan and Waxians did attack, they would be in the middle of it.

“How soon will you know?” he asked, glancing back at Cutter.

“A few days. There is a lot of space out there and a lot of debris to shift through,” Cutter replied.

“Thank you for letting me know what is going on,” Destin said.

Cutter gave him a brief nod. “I’ve informed the human leaders of Earth and put our ground troops and ships on alert….”

“But…,” Destin inquired with a raised eyebrow.

“I received a message earlier,” Cutter admitted, lifting a hand to rub his jaw, his gaze moving from the conference room back to Destin. “It flashed for a brief moment, then disappeared.”

“What did it say? Who was it from?” Destin asked with a frown.

Cutter shook his head. “I don’t know who it was from and could not trace it. It was as if it never existed. The message consisted of three words. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought I had imagined it,” he admitted.

“What did it say?” Destin asked in exasperation.

Cutter dropped his hand and stared intently back at him. “It said protect Destin Parks,” he replied.



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Several hours later, Destin punched in the code to his living quarters that Tim had given him, then slid in a disk that would install a range extender and a new program for the sensors. With this he would be alerted when anyone approached the door, not just when they put their palm on the scanner or punched a wrong number into the keypad. Next he changed the code to one unique to him and Sula. It was the same one they had used on board the Star Raider. He ejected the disk and pocketed it.

It had been a long but informative day. Destin walked across the gleaming tile. The apartment was dark, lit only by the soft glow of the moonlight shining through the windows. With a murmured command, a set of accent lights came on. Most of the city finally had some form of power restored to it. The only areas missing were the ones still too heavily damaged to safely activate it.

The power grids were different from before. This time, alien technology was being employed. Destin was still trying to wrap his head around it, but each building, whether a home or a business, would have a self-contained energy source. The technology was a product of Trivator and Kassisan engineers working together to create something new.

In the early years when electricity was first being used, most buildings and streets had to be retrofitted with power lines and cables to a substation which received power from one major power plant.

Destin understood the hazards of that. It meant miles and miles of cables that needed to be maintained and upgraded to handle the additional load as the country grew. It also meant an area of weakness. A devastating storm, a demand overload, extreme temperatures, or an attack on the power sources could all lead to critical failure and mean days, weeks, months, or in the case of what happened when the aliens appeared, years of disruptions. The aliens had already discovered that was not a good idea.

“It is amazing that we made it as long as we did,” Destin murmured, walking over to stare out at the city far below him.

Low, shielded lights illuminated the streets, but he was unable to see them from this far. The idea was to preserve the natural balance of light and dark. Once humans had discovered artificial light, they had wanted to light up their world. Often driven by fear, misconceptions, and excellent marketing, homes, streets, and businesses had lit the night, drowning the brilliance of the night sky. The most densely populated areas hadn’t been hard to see from space, which had helped the Trivators decide where to contact first.

In contrast, Destin remembered the first time he had seen Rathon from space. It had been nighttime there and despite having two moons, the planet had been devoid of light. He had wondered if it was even inhabited until the shuttle he was in landed on the base. Their lighting was designed to preserve their night vision. He knew deep down that it would take a generation or two before humans fully adapted to the concept, despite the fact they had lived without electricity for thousands of years before that.