by David Beers
Frustration dawned on his face. “What is the saying? Herding cats? That’s what this is like. Some understand, and some are swearing their life to you. It is a difficult thing, changing the way someone thinks.”
Alistair chuckled. “Now you see what I had to deal with when you joined.”
He shook his head. “I was never this bad, Pro. Not possible.”
Alistair’s smile widened. He knew just how bad the giant had been when it came to understanding he wasn’t someone’s slave.
The giant shook his head again, then found Alistair’s eyes. “What brings you to the gigantes, Pro? Are things okay?”
“Yes and no. Governing the planet is going okay, but something else has come up.”
“That is the way of things, I think,” Caesar said. “Something always comes up. I often think back to before I met you. Life wasn’t necessarily easier, but it was simpler. I went where I was told, killed who I was told to kill. Now?” He rolled his eyes, and it made Alistair laugh aloud. “Now I have five hundred things going on at once.”
Alistair liked hearing the gigante talk like this. He was expanding as a being, becoming much more than the simple killer he’d once been. “How’s Nero?”
“He comes and goes as he wants, which is to be expected,” Caesar said. “He was here this morning and said he thought you might stop by.”
Alistair raised an eyebrow. “Did he really?” Nero was a very different gigante, one they called “touched.” From what he could tell, he had something similar to Alistair’s sight, the ability to see things that hadn’t happened yet. He seemed to be able to control the damned thing, which Alistair couldn’t do.
Caesar nodded. “He’s usually right about those things, so I’ve been expecting you. Now, enough catch-up. Why are you here, Pro?”
Alistair slowly laid down and stared up at the tent. The top of it was transparent, allowing whoever lay inside to see the sky. The purple lights stretched across his vision. He rehashed what had happened today and what he was supposed to do: figure out who was coming for them.
When he finished, he lay silently staring up.
“That seems simple, Pro,” the giant told him.
Alistair’s eyes widened. “Yeah? Simple? What do you recommend then, Caesar?”
The giant shrugged. “Use your mind. Your mind has shown you the future, saved my life, and any number of other things. There’s no reason it can’t do this. That’s what I would do.”
Alistair opened his mouth to say something, but he couldn’t find any words. His eyes were wide because what the gigante had said sounded so simple, but he didn’t understand how impossibly hard—
His wife’s voice interrupted his thoughts. It’s impossibly hard, Allie, because you’re making it so. There’s no reason you can’t do this, except in your mind, you’ve gotten to the place where you think you don’t understand yourself. You’re making this impossible. No one else.
She wasn’t usually wrong.
The giant certainly wasn’t wrong because what was he supposed to use if not his mind? The technology didn’t exist to do what was necessary. The AllMother had known, and the only way that could have happened was her abilities.
That was what she wanted of him. That was the next lesson: to figure out how to use his mind.
Alistair closed his eyes without saying anything more. Caesar remained quiet as well, though Alistair no longer focused on the giant.
He knew this place much better than he had months ago. He was in a place his mind had somehow created. It was of this universe and at the same time not. It wasn’t necessary for him to come here every time, but with something this massive, he needed to begin here.
Alistair felt a rush as his black place pushed through the clouds. His body was below in Caesar’s tent, but this part of him was now above the clouds and approaching the limits of the planet’s atmosphere. Soon, it would be in space.
He had never attempted anything like this, but he found he could do it easily. The black space behind his eyes was now populated with red dots he knew were stars, colored differently in this strange place. Space stretched for as far as he could see, and he knew he could rush forward again if he wanted to. Perhaps even visit other planets.
That wouldn’t get him what he needed, though.
You can do this, Luna told him. What do you need to find?
Those who wish me harm, was the cold answer, and Alistair understood he had to step away. His thoughts, his questions, were not what he needed now. He needed the warrior part of himself. He needed Prometheus.
The warrior stepped forward. In the tent, there was no change in the man’s body. His eyes remained closed. His breathing remained slow and steady.
In the black space of his mind where he stared at red stars, Prometheus understood what needed to be done. He pushed his mind higher, breaking through the outer limits of the planet’s atmosphere and thrusting himself into space. The red stars slowly spun as he turned, getting a 360-degree view of the area around him.
He saw only stars.
That made sense. He wouldn’t see anything here in this third dimension. They were traveling in the fourth, so that was where he had to go if he wished to see them.
Prometheus shoved…not up but in. He pierced the thin membrane that separated the two dimensions. He had no idea if any human had ever done that before, but he didn’t care. The warrior had only one purpose at that moment—to find those who wished him harm.
In the fourth dimension, the red stars disappeared. There was only blackness until he turned a hundred and eighty degrees. Then he saw them.
They appeared as a massive red cloud with small deep-red dots inside it. The cloud was rushing toward him with unfathomable speed, and it spread almost all the way across Pro’s vision. It was a force unlike anything he’d ever encountered, and it was coming at his planet faster than he thought possible.
Prometheus now understood that time was short. These violent creatures would be here soon, and he had to prepare their defenses, yet he wanted to see what was coming. He wanted to lay eyes on those he would soon kill.
He thrust his mind out, covering untold kilometers at untold rates. The cloud before him grew larger until he could see nothing else, then he was inside it.
It was no longer a cloud but ships of all sizes—dreadnoughts and corvettes, more than Pro had seen within the Commonwealth. He turned slowly, examining the armada, amazed. He could hardly believe anyone would send such a force for him, yet here it was, and he was inside it.
Prometheus would leave the questions for Alistair. He wanted to see who had coalesced this armada.
Three ships shone brighter red than the others, one on either end of the force and one in the middle. Prometheus’ mind went forth, hitting the ones on either side first. He found the men in charge, one fat with a scar down his face, one muscular but more effeminate. In a one-on-one battle, Prometheus had no fear of either of the men, even though their eyes gave them away as killers. This wasn’t a one-on-one battle, though.
In the middle ship, he found a woman.
The other two were important. They each controlled a third of this giant force. Prometheus knew now, though, where the danger lay—this woman. She was thin, not quite emaciated, but only a week’s worth of meals from it. Her hair was an ice-like blonde, and her eyes were the palest blue he’d ever seen. She sat in a chair with one leg crossed over the other, her face showing no emotion as she stared at the panels in front of her.
This woman would see the end of his insurrection if she could.
This woman would kill him, and she had summoned the greatest army he’d ever seen to do it.
Chapter Six
“This isn’t good,” Ares said as he stared at the monitors. “You know that, right? This wasn’t what I planned when we started.”
Veena ignored him from the captain’s chair. She was hammering on a digital keyboard and yelling commands to the ship’s AI, none of which were having any effect on their abil
ity to navigate.
Ares didn’t understand the details of what was happening, but he didn’t need to. He understood the larger picture, which was that their ship’s velocity had been decreased by half at first, then another half, and now they were starting to reverse course.
None of which was due to Veena’s commands.
Ares was on the bridge—if it could be called that, given the ship’s small size—wearing civilian clothes. There was only one thing he needed to know right now. “Do I need to suit up?”
He was referring to his MechSuit since if a battle was coming, he wasn’t going into it with just his Whip. The panels in front of him showed there was nothing around them, just the darkness of space and stars burning in the distance.
Veena ignored his question and shouted at the AI, “What is causing this? Eliminate all functions that aren’t mandatory to sustain life on the ship and focus all remaining compute power on what is causing this.”
“Please hold,” the AI said from the speakers above them.
An eerie silence fell on the bridge. Veena quit pounding on the keyboard. There seemed to be no sense in it because nothing they had done had stopped the reversal. They had to be in a tractor beam and the ship doing it had to be powerful, which made a StealthBlanket almost impossible.
Ares honestly didn’t know how this was happening, and neither did Veena.
Two long minutes passed in that silence, with Ares trying to decide whether he should run to his quarters and put the MechSuit on or wait to hear what was happening. He was just about to leave the bridge when the AI came back on.
“It’s a planet,” the AI said.
Veena stood. “Show me.”
The images on the monitors rotated, though the only way Ares could tell was from the movement of stars in the background. There wasn’t another reference point visible.
When the monitors finally stopped, the area looked the same.
“What am I looking at?” Veena demanded.
“A planet that isn’t on any known maps. It has no moons or stars and appears to reflect space. It is invisible to the eye and to all scans I was able to do until the last one, which showed a rectangular shape.”
Ares spoke up. “Planets aren’t rectangular.”
“It depends on your definition of a planet. This one appears to be manmade, though if so, it is the largest known manmade creation. Or not known, as the case may be.”
Ares looked at Veena, but she was still staring at the monitor. “Can you highlight the rectangle for me? What does a thermal scan show?”
A long green box appeared in the middle of the screen. Ares did some quick math from the scaling and saw that it was about half the size of Earth length-wise and a quarter width-wise. It was a massive structure.
“There is no heat escaping from the planet,” the AI said. “That is one of the reasons I was unable to detect it at first. The outside is the temperature of space.”
“That’s impossible,” Veena whispered. “Life can’t exist without heat, and there’s no way something that size could stop any heat leakage across the entire perimeter.”
“No heat can be detected,” the AI repeated.
Ares asked the only question that he thought mattered. “How long until we’re at the structure?”
“With no changes in speed or trajectory, five standard hours. If a speed increase is projected, along with a concurrent projected decrease before contact, one standard hour.”
“I’m suiting up,” Ares told Veena. “You two try to figure out what is inside that box.”
Ares, son of Adrian, left the bridge to prepare for war.
Veena remained seated and stared at the highlighted box on the monitor. She was trying to figure out what could have created it, as well as when. How long had it been out here in space with nothing around it for billions of kilometers?
Veena had been at the ship’s whim since they left the refueling station. They’d repeated the digits to the AI, and that had been all they could do. For the past forty-eight hours, the ship had traveled in the fourth dimension, dropping down into the third only moments before.
“Gods,” she whispered, having missed the obvious connection. Whatever map existed in those digits had brought them to this black waystation in the middle of nowhere. It was not accidental that they were being pulled into the black box. It had been inevitable from the moment they had given the coordinates to their ship.
Veena flicked a few of the controls to see if she could marshal any of the ship’s weapons.
“The planet also has control of our weapons and biological systems,” the AI said.
“Biological systems?” Veena could hardly believe that. The tractor could theoretically be so powerful that the ship’s turrets, plasma, and other guns couldn’t fire. To take control of the biological systems, though?
“Yes, I’ve confirmed three times,” the AI responded.
“Have they changed anything?” Veena asked, frantic for the first time.
“Not yet. I’m continuously monitoring and will alert you if anything is altered.”
“Try to make contact with it,” Veena said. “See if there’s any willingness to communicate.”
“I have been, and so far, none of my attempts have gained a response.”
This AI was a good one, and that was about the only positive thing Veena could say since her idiotic decision to leave the Commonwealth’s graces. In her career, she’d rarely relied on an AI, trusting her instincts and decision-making abilities. Right now, though, she was glad she had this one. “Is there anything I’m not thinking of? Anything that might make a difference?”
The AI answered quickly. “Everything that can be done has been done. As I’m sure you’ve already considered, this was planned long before we arrived.”
This was planned long before we arrived…
Veena stood then, understanding that she wouldn’t be able to do anything from the chair. She couldn’t pilot her way out of this.
She jogged to Ares’ quarters, wondering if he’d already figured out what she’d just been told.
He was in his full MechSuit, his helmet retracted into the neckline so his head remained visible. He looked at her through the open doorway with raised eyebrows. “Anything new?”
“Whatever that thing is,” she said as she took a step closer, “it’s been waiting for us. We might not even be the first people to come through here. If not, I imagine it was waiting for them too.”
She saw that he hadn’t been thinking about it, but it only took a few moments for him to understand her meaning. Young, sometimes arrogant, but not stupid.
He nodded, then reached for the Whip that lay on the cot next to him. “I don’t know whether that’s a good or bad thing. If others have been here and that piece of paper still existed back where we found it, I’m leaning toward it being bad.”
“I agree. It might also explain why the pirates we stole it from didn’t rush to get here. Maybe they knew more than we do.”
Ares hooked the Whip onto his suit. “You need to suit up, too. This might be the end of our non-lengthy lives, but I’m going to do everything I can not to let that be so.”
Veena looked at him for a second and realized that for perhaps the first time, her life was in his hands. Before there’d always been someone like Hel, or they’d been in her domain: space flight. She’d never been at his mercy like she would be now since they were entering his domain—hand-to-hand combat. Killing where you could see the enemy’s eyes.
Please be as good as you think you are, she said to herself. Aloud, she told him, “I’ll be back in twenty minutes. That should give us ten before we make contact.”
Ares was solemn as he nodded and bent to take a knee. Veena remained standing in the doorway and watched as his hand and forearm armor retracted. She knew what he was about to do, the ritual all Titans did before battle. He was no longer a Titan, but he continued to say the words. Continued cutting his arm. Continued wiping the blood on his
face.
For some reason Veena couldn’t place, she took comfort in that. She didn’t watch as he repeated the words of old but went to prepare herself for what came next. It was enough to know he was saying them.
“The planet is attempting to shut me—”
The AI fell silent. Ares glanced at the speakers, realizing the planet had attempted nothing. It had succeeded in shutting the AI down.
He and Veena were in the ship’s cargo bay, and the whole room suddenly shook. Ares’ head snapped to the bay’s door, figuring danger would come from there first. The shaking was the ship docking with the structure.
“They waited until we didn’t need the AI anymore before shutting it down,” Veena whispered from his side.
“Or until we would think we didn’t need it. Truthfully, I don’t think it’s done us much good since we got inside this thing’s pull. They just didn’t want us to panic.”
Veena stood next to him in armor. It wasn’t anything like the MechSuit he wore, but they had managed to find different pieces in their travels. She had a MechPulse strapped across her back and a beam in her right hand. He’d told her to use the beam until it overheated, then the pulse. It was a heavy weapon, and he thought her muscles might tire too quickly if she went in with that first.
A few minutes passed with nothing happening, just the two of them standing in silence, their ship either connected to this foreign structure or sitting inside it. Neither of them knew which.
The lights in the cargo bay shut off and Ares’ helmet auto-switched to dark view, though Veena would be able to see very little. “Get close to me,” he told her.
She stepped slightly behind his left foot, close enough that her body was touching his suit. “Don’t get any ideas,” she whispered.
Ares appreciated the attempt at levity. “You’re not my type,” he responded, his helmet making it sound like a robot was speaking.
The bay door began opening. Ares’ heads-up display was feeding him all the information it could. “Stay here,” he told Veena and took ten steps forward before stopping. He wanted the suit to analyze the atmosphere of the place, though they didn’t have a great plan if it was poisonous. Mainly, Veena would run deep into the ship and try to seal off a room from airflow. Given that this structure had nearly complete control over their ship, the safest option was for the atmosphere to be copacetic.