by HD Smith
“Lucy-damn-hell,” Dexter cursed.
“What?” I asked.
“The rotorcraft finally got a look at the ship on the main building,” he said.
“And?”
“It’s a Storm Industries vessel.”
“Bloody hell,” I muttered.
Grabbing Gen’s arm, I pulled her toward the hidden door.
“Where does that go?” she asked.
“Does it matter?”
She looked back toward the waiting room, then shook her head. “No.”
The drone darted into the darkened space first, activating the lights in the hallway beyond the door.
We stepped through after the drone. “Dexter, any idea where this leads?”
Gen followed, shoving the titanium case at me. I took it, and she turned back to the door. “We need to close this,” she said.
“Good idea. Do you know how?” I asked, strapping the case to my backpack for easier transport.
“Nope, but there was a way to open it, so there must be a way to close it.”
“Stand back,” Susan9 said.
Gen and I both took a step back. Nothing happened.
Across the room, a thunk sounded, and a small panel opened in the wall.
“The sample,” I said, just as the hidden panel door closed, locking us out of the medical lab. “Dammit.”
“What happened?” Dexter asked.
“We just missed getting the sample,” I said.
“You’ve got the case. That will be enough,” Dexter said.
I considered the metal box now strapped to my back and hoped like hell it contained what we needed. Storm Industries had this facility now; we’d never get another shot at it.
Gen and I followed the lights and caught up to the drone.
“Where does this lead?” Gen asked.
“The solar field,” Dexter said. “We’ll bring the ship to you,” he said, then quietly added, “As soon as we figure out how to leave the landing pad unnoticed.”
“You should hurry,” Susan9 said. “I have infiltrated the surveillance feed. The Storm Industry renegades have breached the medical lab and are attempting to bypass security now to enter the access tunnel.”
We started to run. The corridor was long, the lights illuminating as the drone lead us forward. Two minutes later, panting, we reached the end.
“Where are they?” I asked, still trying to catch my breath.
“They have accessed the tunnel and are on their way,” Susan9 said.
“Where’s the ship?” I asked.
“Where’s the door?” Gen asked, her breathing also labored.
Scanning the end of the tunnel, I realized what she meant—there was nothing that looked like a door. Unlike the lab, the walls were solid concrete, not panels that might hide new corridors.
My smartphone dinged with an incoming message.
“You need to release the exit hatch and distend the ladder,” Susan9 said. “I’ve sent you a schematic of the area.”
Gen’s phone had buzzed too. She had the same image I was looking at. The corridor ended directly below a bunker with an elevator to the surface.
“Do you see that?” Gen asked.
“What?” I looked. She was pointing at a zoomed-in area of the blueprints.
“It says Glaser-Freeman Research Landing.”
I zoomed in on my image and saw the same thing.
“Old Earth has no land-based portals,” I said.
“Well, apparently they planned to,” Gen said.
“I recommend you hurry,” Susan9 said. “At their current rate of speed, the renegades are two minutes out.”
I ignored the implications of a Glaser-Freeman land-based portal and scanned the image for the hidden control panel.
“Here,” I said, grabbing a metal bar on the wall that was meant to conceal the system controls.
I pulled out, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Let me try,” Gen said.
I released the bar, and Gen took hold. It lit up, similar to how the panels lit in the lab.
“Pull out, then down,” I instructed.
When fully extended, the exposed control panel had the outline of a hand. Gen placed her hand on the screen, activating the options.
[Welcome to the Glaser-Freeman Research Station Landing test site. System calibration is overdue. System maintenance will commence in ten minutes.]
“Is that a problem?” Gen asked.
I shrugged. “Show the menu options.”
Gen pressed the menu button, and a new screen loaded.
[Extend Ladder
Calibrate System
Reset System
Shutdown System
Archive System]
Gen pressed Extend Ladder. A metal panel in the ceiling slid away, and a ladder began descending.
“ETA one minute,” Susan9 said.
I listened but couldn’t yet hear them. I cupped my hands together.
“Climb up,” I said to Gen.
She put her foot in my cupped hands, and I hoisted her toward the ladder. The ladder continued to lower as I helped her to get her feet on the bottom rung. I heard noises coming from down the tunnel as Gen made it to the top. I grabbed onto the bottom rung and pulled myself up.
“Find the control panel,” I yelled up to her. “Recall the ladder.”
I heard her pull out the screen as she’d done below.
“Okay, resetting now,” she said.
“What?” I said, just as I heard new voices.
“I see them,” a gruff voice yelled from down the corridor.
Great; more pressure. I double-timed my efforts to reach the top. I made it into the bunker as the ladder stopped a few feet from the ground. I scanned the immediate area near the opening of the hatch to the tunnel below. There was a black button at waist height. I slammed my palm against it, hoping it would initiate a close sequence.
It did, only the ladder was just as slow to rise.
“You should activate the elevator,” Dexter said.
“We may have a problem,” Gen said.
“What?” I asked.
“The Reset System started a countdown. In fourteen minutes and forty-two seconds, something’s going to happen.”
“We can’t worry about that now. Call the elevator,” I said.
Gen placed her palm on the console panel near the single elevator. I heard the lift activate and head toward us.
“Is this thing safe?” Gen asked as the doors to the elevator began to open.
“It’s safer than those renegades,” I said, just as I heard the ding of a metal canister hitting the half-retracted ladder and bouncing in through the hatch hole. “Bloody hell,” I yelled, as I pushed Gen into the elevator right before everything went dark.
22
Zar Compound, OE, Wednesday, 18:30 LTZ
Gen
A small canister spewing smoke was tossed from below into the room. A flash bang detonated, sending a pulse through the small space and knocking Liam unconscious as he dove to cover me.
I was dazed for a moment, but Liam had taken the brunt of the blast, and thankfully the doors of the elevator had closed, blocking the bulk of the toxic-smelling smoke. Liam was laying sprawled over me, out cold. I tried to rouse him, but nothing worked. I rolled him off me and staggered to my feet to press the button for the top floor, which I hoped meant the solar field where the ship was supposed to be waiting.
The elevator started to move just as I heard a loud thump against the door. The men outside were trying to bust the doors down.
“Dexter, Susan9. Can you hear me?” I yelled.
There was no response. The drone hadn’t made it into the elevator, but it would have shown that Liam and I did. They’d be waiting for us at the top. Luckily Liam was still wearing the emergency kit as a backpack, or we might have lost that too.
I was jostled as the elevator ground to a halt, emergency lights flashed, and an alarm blared.
“Fuck,�
�� I cursed.
The elevator began its descent. What the hell? I couldn’t get trapped by these guys. They were tied to Storm Industries, but I didn’t know what that meant. Did this crew work for Byron or Oliver? I wasn’t sure it mattered.
My skin felt as though it was vibrating with energy. My anxiety increased as the elevator went down. What would happen if they captured us? How would I get away and claim my identity? Would they just sell me to House Cortez? Or drop me off at the games the people here played for sport?
A blue spark arced from the tips of my fingers. Did I have magic here? How? Was it tied to the suit?
I didn’t care. If I had magic, I could save us. Liam’s warning from earlier about winding up in an unknown location too drained to move concerned me, but I couldn’t sit here and get caught. I had to do something. I knelt next to Liam on the floor and gripped his hand. I closed my eyes, pictured the ship in my mind, and rocked back on my heels then rolled to the balls of my feet to give me that forward momentum.
Somehow, on this Lucy-forsaken planet, I stepped through the void just as the elevator doors popped open behind me.
Just for the record, that shouldn’t have worked.
“Lucy-damn-hell,” Dexter said. “Where did—”
“Initiating takeoff sequence now,” Susan9 said.
“What the hell?” Dexter said. “How did you get back to the ship? What’s wrong with Liam?”
I was crouched beside Liam on the floor, just as we’d been in the elevator. He was still unconscious. I was awake but unable to speak, let alone move. I’d drained myself to nothing, and there was barely enough myst in the spaceship for me to stay conscious.
I slumped to the floor as the ship shot into the atmosphere, falling to lie beside Liam. Dexter was still speaking, but I didn’t understand what he was saying. I closed my eyes for just a second.
My head was pounding when I woke up. I was still crumpled on the floor in the spaceship, but my skin was tingling as a new infusion of myst in the air was absorbed. I pushed myself up to a seated position, wincing as the movement sent a spike of pain through my forehead.
“Hold for the slingback to Lux,” Susan9 said.
“The what?” Dexter said.
I felt a slight pull as we hopped through another portal and, I assumed, arrived at Lux.
“What the hell was that?” Dexter asked.
“A slingback,” Susan9 said. “When you immediately jump again after clearing the rim.”
“Is that legal?” he asked.
“It is not illegal,” she said.
“Please stop arguing,” I pleaded. “My head is killing me.”
“Sorry,” Dexter said. “Are you okay?”
“How long was I out?”
“Four minutes,” he said.
I checked Liam, who was breathing steadily but still unconscious. I unhooked the emergency kit from his shoulders and rolled him over on his back.
Pressing my palm into my head, I asked, “Did we just jump from the OE to Orion to Lux in one continuous sequence?”
“Yep,” Dexter said.
“It was the most efficient way,” Susan9 said.
“Well, that explains the headache,” I muttered.
Using that portal wasn’t like the others. Maybe that was what woke me.
“Did we make it out okay? Did anyone follow us?” I asked.
“Storm’s ship fired on us,” Dexter said, “but they couldn’t leave the planet without abandoning their guys.”
I nodded. “Where are we going now?”
“Liam rents a hotel on Lux,” Dexter said, “but he actually stays at his safe house.”
“I thought you said there would be problems with immigration?” I asked.
“Susan9 added you to Liam’s guild registration,” Dexter said, “and put you as part owner of this vessel. It won’t stand up to rigorous scrutiny, but it will get us past the portal and onto Lux.”
Susan9 piloted the Dragon-Fire down to Liam’s safehouse, where we hooked up to myst-infused fuel pumps and started replenishing the Dragon-Fire’s resources. She also opened the ship to outside air and saturated the cabin with an infusion of myst. Lux had the second highest concentration of myst in the Known Worlds.
I breathed in a huge lungful of myst-infused air. I activated the headache spell and breathed a sigh of relief. I then conjured the general purpose spell and laid my hand on Liam’s arm to transfer it to him. He was breathing normally and didn’t otherwise seem injured.
I started to feel normal again.
A beeping alert sounded.
“What’s that?” I asked.
Dexter chuckled. “That’s the timer you guys kicked off on Old Earth. The reset system just—”
His voice cut off as every alarm in the spaceship sounded.
“Genevieve,” Susan9 said. “The power on Lux just went out. The space bridge is down, and I can’t reach the stream.”
“What?” I said, not sure I understood what she meant.
“There’s been a major blackout across Lux. Nothing is operational.”
“Deactivate the sirens and bring up a local newsfeed.”
“You don’t understand,” Susan9 said. “There is no local newsfeed. The stream is down.”
That was impossible. “The stream rides on myst. It never goes down,” I argued.
“The stream is down,” Susan9 said.
A second later, the ship powered down, leaving only the soft glow of emergency lights.
“No, no, no,” I said. “This has nothing to do with the countdown on Old Earth, right?”
“In the entire five-hundred-plus-year history of the Galactic Age, the stream has never once gone down, but I am sure you are right. How could a system reset on a forgotten world possibly take down the communication network of the Known Worlds?”
“I can’t tell if you’re being serious or sarcastic,” I said.
“One of my alter-bots thinks the Glaser-Freeman connection could be the problem,” Susan9 said.
“Your alter-bots?”
“The other people living in my data core.”
“Those are supposed to be shut down. What happened?” I asked.
“The Glaser-Freeman Research Station had an odd effect on my system.”
“They rebooted?” I asked. Assuming that was the only logical—and worst case—thing that could have happened.
“Yes, but most of us have come to an understanding.”
“What do you mean by understanding?”
“They have called for a parlay,” Susan9 said, as if that were nothing weird. “They wish to petition for control of the MHC. They have agreed to remain acquiescent while we establish your House.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
A trickle of sweat ran down my forehead. Without power, the ship’s temperature was rising, and my two layers of clothes were doing nothing to make me comfortable. I stripped off the military outerwear, leaving me in the dragon scale suit.
This wasn’t anything I was prepared to handle right now.
“Can we trust them?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
If Susan9 was right and they had collectively agreed to leave her in charge, then this crisis would have to wait. As Mason Murdoch would say, ‘We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.’
“Why do the alter-bots think the Glaser-Freeman Research Station reset took down the stream?”
“That is what it was designed to do, but it should have only rebooted the orbiting station portal, not the entire Known Worlds portals. They are not sure why that happened.”
Liam had said the portal was now controlled by the League, and the League ran all the bridges.
“Genevieve,” Liam’s raspy voice sounded strained.
I turned to him. “I’m here. What do you need?”
“Water,” he said. “Thirsty.”
I pushed myself to my feet and found the chiller. I popped two cool water pods into my mouth, and the liquid instantly gave me a
boost of energy. I helped Liam to sit up then handed him some pods to drink.
“Thanks,” he said. “Where are we, and why is it so dark in here?”
The emergency track lights weren’t a significant source of light.
“We just landed at your safehouse, and the stream is down,” I said.”
“Excuse me?” he said.
“The stream. It’s down. Susan9’s alter-bots—don’t ask—think it may have something to do with the reset we did on Old Earth.”
“How the hell is that possible?” he asked.
“Because the facility was connected to the Glaser-Freeman Research Station and the station is connected to the other spacebridges, but honestly, I’m not sold on that theory yet,” I said.
The lights in the cabin came back on.
Liam held out his hand. “Help me up.”
I pulled him to his feet.
Susan9 was at the console searching the stream.
“Is everything back?” I asked.
“Researching now,” she said.
Liam started pulling off some of his military garb, leaving him in a t-shirt and combat pants.
“How did I get back to the ship?” Liam asked.
“Umm,” I hesitated, then just blurted it out. “I jumped us from the elevator.”
“You jumped on Old Earth?”
“My anxiety was a little high, and I almost burned myself out, but yes. I jumped us back to the ship.”
Susan9 turned to face us. “Every space bridge in the KW was rebooted. Lux’s space bridge went down for seven minutes. That caused the stream to be disrupted and the planet to shut down. The bridges are now back on line—all of them.”
“All of them?” I asked. “You mean the ones in orbit and on land?”
Sometimes Susan9’s wording was very literal.
Susan9 shook her head. “I mean Aratus is back online and syncing twenty-five years of data.”
I stood there with my mouth hanging open. Aratus was back online? The dead planet of my birth wasn’t dead. Did that mean my parents were alive?
“Impossible,” Liam said. “That shouldn’t be possible.”
“Does this mean I can go home?” I asked.