“Thank you,” she said to Seth. He felt her soft lips brush over his. “It’s so hard to understand from your books, but I think I got to feel love.”
His smile was short-lived when he saw her tears. “Khoe…”
“I can’t stay with you,” she said. “The Alpha is with me now. I had to take it from that man or we would have lost it. It is the only way. I will make sure my people are safe.” She ran her fingers through his hair. “And yours, Sethran. Without the Alpha here we will both die. I know that now.”
“Khoe, no.” Seth felt the air punched out of his lungs. “There has to be a way.”
She kissed him again and the touch lingered when they entered the breach. The Big Empty. Where no sound or light existed. Where reality ended and only a growing terror remained when all senses failed.
And yet he perceived an eerie note thrumming through every atom that made up the ship and their bodies. It was both sound and color and it was beautiful. So immeasurably beautiful without form or dimension or any of the things she had found so fascinating in his world. He sighed, possessed by a sudden, painful longing to stay here, too. He felt her withdraw to expand into some infinite vastness even as he still saw her before him, fading.
Then she slipped away, releasing his mind with a gentle whisper as she drifted out of view. The last thing he felt was her smile.
Epilogue
From up here, it was almost possible to believe that no other place existed.
Seth propped his elbows on the sun-warmed stone parapet of the tower and gazed out over the valley to Magra’s endless horizon, moving from mountain wilderness to lush farmland and finally to the ocean itself. The spires of Magra Alaric’s towns rose glittering in the distance like smooth stalagmites reaching for the sky. One could imagine that the ships buzzing around those spires looking for places to land were birds coming home to roost. He closed his eyes to smell the trees and let the sound of the wind fill his mind.
“Not going to jump, are you?”
Seth smiled when Caelyn came to stand beside him. He looked down to the foot of the research tower, pleased to find that the last of the annoying vertigo had finally released him. The headaches, too, had ended. “One gets tired of all these stairs, Delphi.”
“That’s why we’ve installed the elevator, Centauri,” Caelyn replied. “Shan Quine sends greetings. He came by Delphi the day I was leaving.”
Seth took a closer look at Caelyn’s hands resting on the stone wall. “They did a good job with that.”
Caelyn lifted his hand and slowly closed and opened it again. It obeyed his mental commands to pick up a tiny sliver of stone from the parapet and move it deftly between his fingers. The engineers had matched his other hand down to the texture of his hairless skin and the blue cast of his fingernails. “It’s almost like it belongs there,” he said.
Seth watched him for a while, feeling an unpleasant mix of guilt and a bizarre, unreasonable envy at seeing Caelyn’s loss replaced while his own would never be.
“I didn’t think I’d still find you here,” Caelyn said.
“Would have been gone but Shan Saias said you were coming back early so I thought I’d wait to have a look at that paw. It’s amazing work.”
“It is. And you? How’s the head?”
“Back where it belongs.” Seth did not look at Caelyn when he said that. Quine had arranged for another Shantir, one schooled in the ancient Delphian methods of dealing with neurological conditions, to attend him here at the tower. Out of reach of Union interference and out of sight of Air Command, Seth allowed him to heal the physical scars left by Khoe on his brain. The ones left by her on his mind would probably never heal and he didn’t even mind that very much.
Some strange ghost of Khoe still haunted his thoughts now, weeks after leaving Csonne in Air Command custody. At times he almost saw her face or felt her smile tickle something deep inside his head. She was not the first woman to have touched him this profoundly but none had left him as empty and rudderless as she had.
He berated himself for having fallen like a schoolboy for the strange being who excited his mind and had done incredible things to his body. They had shared a few thrilling days of his life, but she was gone now and it was time to get back aboard the Dutchman. But still he loitered here, among these kind but distant people, reluctant to face the empty space waiting for him inside his ship.
But more than that, and not something he tried to express even to the Delphian Shantir, was the certain feeling that Khoe had not left him as he once was. For a short while, he had been someone else, a member of a strange new species who might never be seen out here again. What he had not realized at the time was that he had, for those moments, completely embraced the change, relinquished whatever it was that made him Centauri. He had lost himself and it didn’t even hurt. Perhaps a piece of her still lodged in his brain or maybe it was that brief glimpse of subspace that filled him with a peculiar sense of otherness.
“Shan Chion detected some strange structures still in my head that they can’t figure out, but it doesn’t seem to cause any problems.”
“Structures?”
“Yeah. Maybe some part of Khoe’s neural net.” He tossed a stone chip off the parapet and watched it disappear among the trees below. “It’s just there. Nothing that’ll let me hack into rebel networks, unfortunately.”
“I was about to ask.”
“I’ll stop by the enclave on Delphi if Quine can talk them into taking a look. They seem interested. But it’ll mean landing the Dutchman on the Air Command base there. So that might be a while.”
“Don’t leave it too long.” He regarded Seth for a while before speaking again. “I worry, my friend. She’s still on your mind.”
“Nothing to worry about. She’s not the first woman to dump me. Won’t be the last.”
“She was not just any woman.”
“No, not just.”
“She would have killed you if she’d stayed. Or destroyed her own kind if you’d kept the Alpha here. That isn’t a choice.”
Seth nodded. Shan Saias had spent many hours poring over Reylan Tague’s rambling notes and reviewing the Delphian research that had originally discovered Khoe’s strange species. Rushed, blemished by speculation and guesswork, Tague’s work offered a few more insights into the formation of the Dyad here in real-space. All of it depended on the presence of the Alpha either here or in subspace but not both.
It was only behind closed doors, in collaboration with Targon’s own physicists, that the possibility of more than one Alpha was raised. Such an event was likely a necessity if Khoe’s species were to survive and thrive, but what did that, eventually, mean for real-space inhabitants?
“At least you can say that, for a few days, you were a member of a whole new species.”
“Can’t,” Seth said. “Classified, remember?”
Caelyn laughed. “So you’re heading out now?”
“Tonight. I’m going to meet Colonel Carras on Aikhor.”
“Carras! The Vanguard commander? I’d think you’d want to avoid him for a while.”
“All is forgiven, apparently. Vanguard agents don’t exactly enjoy a long lifespan.”
“You trust him?”
Seth turned his back to the valley and leaned against the parapet to look up at the glittering antenna array above them. A row of gray-plumed birds peered back down. “Yeah. I do. He’s the one who pointed out to Air Command that I got those people back safely. At least the ones that survived the first trip.”
“Nothing said about stopping an alien species from invading Trans-Targon?”
“Nothing they’ll admit to. Carras is going to make me an offer, I think.”
Caelyn raised an eyebrow. “Will you accept?”
Seth shrugged. “I’ll see what he has to say.” He grinned. “Probably their way of keeping tabs on me.”
“Clever. I’m sure getting back into some sort of mischief is exactly what you need right now, Centauri.”
“You’re damn right, Delphi.”
Thank you for reading Quantum Tangle.
Seth returns in Terminus Shift - Available Now. He also stars in The Catalyst and makes an appearance in one or two Targon Tales.
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Starshine
Aurora Rising: Book One
By
G. S. Jennsen
Space is vast and untamed, and it holds many secrets. Now two individuals from opposite ends of settled space are on a collision course with the darkest of those secrets, even as the world threatens to explode around them.
The year is 2322. Humanity has expanded into the stars, inhabiting over 100 worlds across a third of the galaxy. Though thriving as never before, they have discovered neither alien life nor the key to utopia. Earth struggles to retain authority over far-flung planets and free-wheeling corporations while an uneasy armistice with a breakaway federation hangs by a thread as the former rebels rise in wealth and power.
Alexis Solovy is Earth Alliance royalty, her father a fallen war hero and her mother an influential military leader. But she seeks only the freedom of space and has made a fortune by reading the patterns in the chaos to discover the hidden wonders of the stars.
Nothing about her latest objective suggests the secret it conceals will turn her life— not to mention the entire galaxy—upside down. But a chance encounter with a mysterious spy leads to a discovery which will thrust Alex into the middle of a galactic power struggle and a sinister conspiracy, whether she likes it or not.
When faced with its greatest challenge, will humanity rise to triumph or fall to ruin?
Aurora Rising is an epic tale of galaxy-spanning adventure, of the thrill of discovery and the unquenchable desire to reach ever farther into the unknown. It's a tale of humanity at its best and worst, of love and loss, of fear and heroism. It's the story of a woman who sought the stars and found more than anyone imagined possible.
Colonized Milky Way
(View Online at http://www.gsjennsen.com/map)
Prologue
The end of the world began with a library query.
…or perhaps it was the space probe. The alien was being vexingly reticent on the matter, the man thought as he straightened his dinner jacket in the mirror.
“She is hardly the first person to express an interest in that region of space. Why are you so worried about her when the others didn’t concern you?”
The others did concern us, but they were deflected with little difficulty. This woman, however, has exhibited a notable talent for discovering what others cannot. As such, we would prefer she never look.
The man smoothed out a crease in one of the sleeves then fastened the antique pearl cufflinks, an heirloom passed down to him from a grandfather that never was. “Do you want me to have her killed?”
Not unless alternative methods are unsuccessful. Her death could cause the opposite effect of drawing further unwanted attention.
The man nodded cursorily and stepped out of the washroom, crossing his spacious office to the windows lining the far wall. “Very well. I’ll work to ensure she’s distracted from this pursuit. What about the Senecans?”
They are a more troublesome problem as they have already discovered an anomaly exists. They will send others to investigate.
From the top floor of the Earth Alliance Headquarters building the man could see guests beginning to arrive in the gardens below. Another ten minutes and it would be appropriate for him to join them. He frowned, brushing a piece of lint off his lapel before he turned from the windows to face where the alien might have stood, were he actually here. “You know there’s little I can do about them for the moment.”
You needn’t concern yourself with the matter. Other resources are at our disposal.
“I’m sure. And remember, you only need stall them for a short while. Soon everyone will be distracted, and humanity will be focused inward for quite some time.”
Go forward with your plan. We hope you accomplish your objectives. Nonetheless, events are converging rapidly and they are not all within your control. Escalation may be unavoidable.
The man pulsed his wife to let her know he would meet her in the lobby shortly. “At least give me the opportunity to alter our course before you act. It won’t be long now.”
Certainly. Know, however, that the precipice is upon you; it may already have been crossed.
Preparations have begun.
Part 1
DOMINOES
“There are two kinds of light –
the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.”
* * *
— James Thurber
1 Earth
Seattle
“Alex, I’m ready when you are.”
“One more second…okay, Charlie, go ahead.” The muffled response came from within the hull.
The young mechanic wove the crystalline fiber of a conduit into the power control grid. It took only seconds. He squinted into the magnification overlay to confirm the contact points. “All set.”
“Here goes nothing.”
Colonel Richard Navick watched from the entry of the hangar bay as a shimmer passed over the smooth, midnight black exterior of the ship.
Even marred by the docking clamps, the Siyane was sleek and graceful, with sweeping curves that converged on acute edges. Technical instruments and sensors were tucked discreetly under the wing-like midsection while the sLume drive was an elusive shadow beneath the tapered tail. The elegant lines disguised its size. Fully forty-two meters from bow to stern, it was enormous—at least for a personal scout ship.
He cleared his throat to announce his presence and stepped into the bay. “Alex, are you in there somewhere?”
A head dropped out of the belly of the ship. It was upside down and encircled by the orbiting screens of a holographic interface. “Richard, is that you?”
“Guilty as charged.”
A pair of long legs appeared next as she swung out of the exposed engineering well and dropped a meter to land nimbly on the floor of the bay. The interface winked out of existence.
He was struck—as he always was after he hadn’t seen her for some time—by how much she looked like her father. Tall and slender, with high, distinctive cheekbones and bright silver-gray eyes, she cut almost as dramatic a figure as David Solovy once had. In fact, the sole feature of note she had inherited from her mother was the thick, dark mane of hair. Whereas David’s had been dusky blond, hers was the color of fine aged Bordeaux.
It was also currently twisted up in a messy knot, flyaway strands escaping to soften her features. She wiped streaks of a viscous gel off her hands and onto snug black workpants as she jogged over.
When she reached him she embraced him in a quick hug born of years of familiarity. “It’s been too long, Richard.”
“If you would stay in this sector for longer than a week at a time, I might actually get to see you once in a while.”
Her eyes rolled a little as she settled onto her back leg. “Ah, no can do, I’m afraid. All the fun’s out there.” A corner of her mouth quirked up in a tease of a grin. He believed her.
“So I hear. All the money too, apparently.” He canted his head toward the gleaming hull.
Her face instantly lit up; it often did when she was talking about her ship. “I just painted on a new f-graphene alloy lattice. It will reduce drag by another twelve percent, which will mean faster travel using less fuel.”
“Nice….” The reduction from pico- to femto-scale alloys had only become commercially available nine months earlier; he shuddered to think of the credits she must have forked over for the new lattice. “We should have the budget to roll those out to the fleet in a decade or so.”
She shrugged as if to say ‘your loss’ and met his gaze. For most people it would have been an uncomfortable experience. “So is this a social call? As glad as I am to see you—and I really am—I’m kind of
in the middle of installing a stealth system upgrade. We could maybe have dinner this evening if you’d like?”
He mentally braced himself for the reaction he knew would be coming. “You caught me. It’s not entirely a social call. Your mother wants you to come by the office if you have any free time this afternoon.”
Her pupils constricted, the tiny flash of an ocular implant a hint she was checking her comms. They quickly focused back on him, bearing more than a little less warmth. “I don’t have a message from her.”
“I know. She thought the likelihood of you responding would increase considerably if I came in person.”
An eyebrow arched. “She have you running her errands for her now? Isn’t that a bit below your pay grade?”
“No. I volunteered, because I wanted to see you.”
She smiled with what he recognized as kindness, but it was transitory to her glance over her shoulder at the ship that dominated the hanger. “Well, sorry, but I can’t. I have to run diagnostics on the new dampener field and recalibrate the power system ratios. Assuming everything tests out okay, then I have to secure the fiber line to the hull and shield it.”
His gaze flitted pointedly to the young man swinging in a harness near the stern of the ship. “Can’t your mechanic do some of those things for you?”
At her deepening frown his brow creased in beseechment. “Please? For me? It’ll only take an hour or two, and it…” he knew saying it would make her mother happy would be counterproductive “…will make my life rather easier.”
Her eyes narrowed; her arms stiffened against her chest to complete the impression of staunch resoluteness. But this was not the first time he had faced down her defiant glare. He relaxed his posture, softened his expression and met her scowl with a pleasant smile.
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