by J M Guillen
“Son of a—” Wyatt growled, glancing at the module. “They screwed us, beginning to end!”
“Catching up to us, Wyatt.” My grim tone grated as I watched the Drażeri gain on us. Their ships skipped easily through the Maelstrom like a stone across water.
“Are they, Bishop?” He snapped, steering our craft like a brick with a sail on it. “Are they really?”
“Yes.” Anya blinked in confusion. “They are.”
“What I wonder,” Gideon coughed, “is why they aren’t firing on us? Their craft has weapons.”
“Perhaps they will not function within the Maelstrom.” Anya peered at our pursuers as well. I noticed she forcibly held her fingers still in her lap.
“Got one portside, Wyatt.” I fidgeted in my seat. “He’s closing in.”
“Hold on to yer butts,” Wyatt growled. He tapped three keys in quick succession, and then several more at once, more like a pianist than any kind of typist.
Our craft veered wildly to the left, straight toward the beating heart of midnight at the center of the Maelstrom. We picked up speed as Wyatt madly abused his keys.
“Speed is affected by resolving the algorithms faster.” He nodded. “Okay. I can play with that.”
“Need a calculator there, Chief?” I leaned over, watching.
“I need you freeloaders to hang on,” he called.
Seconds later we angled hard, tipping so far up I did have to hang on.
Three of the Drażeri craft adapted, quickly following, but the other far overshot. The slender Realmship sliced through the shadowed darkness in the exact opposite direction.
Three remained.
“Wow.” I clapped Wyatt on the shoulder. “Nice driving.”
“It’s not much like a stock car.” Wyatt chuckled as he continued his equation-ing. “But still—”
Our entire skiff jarred as something slammed into it from behind. An amber light angrily glared from the console.
“What the hell?” Wyatt glanced around.
“Checking.” I went to the back of the hold and peered out one of the port side windows.
“Our vectors just skewed!” he yelped. “What is it?”
“It’s a pronged harpoon. It’s pierced one of our back wings.” I glanced back at him. “We’re tethered to them.”
The Drażeri craft veered violently to one side and dragged us with them.
Wyatt swore.
A horrific grinding grated through our ship.
“That’s why they aren’t firing.” Gideon’s exhausted voice came from just behind me. “They Vyriim want to drag us back. They want us alive.”
As if he stood right next to me, I heard the words of Rudolfo Firenzei, uttered during our epic battle to the death.
“They wanted your pathetic asses alive,” he crowed. “All of you. Why do you think I haven’t slaughtered you yet?”
“Ineptitude?” I snarked. “Your parents were siblings?”
“Gideon’s right.” I glanced over my shoulder at the others. “If the Ts’kekegoth can take us alive, they will.”
“They’ll take us apart,” Sparks corrected me. “That’s what they want. Access to the ARC tech the Facility uses to create Assets.”
Gideon’s gaze met my own. Sparks didn’t know the Drażeri had already been inside Substation 306. How long had they held access to that location?
“They’re throwing off every calculation I make!” Wyatt’s panic unnerved me. “Our physical location corresponds to a specific—”
Both Realmships burst into a multicolored panorama of sparks that burned through reality.
This time we understood what happened. As matter shattered into fragments and gathered itself back together, we tumbled driftways into a topia unknown to us.
I swore, grasping Anya’s shoulder for balance.
Everything in existence again swirled into a multi-patterned oneness and dribbled together. With a BOOM we burst into an alien world.
As soon as I could breathe, I leapt to one of the starboard windows.
“Oh…Oh God!”
We careened through a verdant and trackless sky. Unfamiliar stars burned overhead, more like hateful eyes than distant suns. A vast desert stretched out below, speckled with an entire city of tents and small adobe buildings. I only just made out the multi-limbed people below. They gestured at us before fleeing for the safety of their structures.
“Assholes!” Wyatt’s tone contained more spit-fire rage than irritation. “Think they can drive better than I can math-i-matize? No. Not today.”
“Okay,” I leaned over his shoulder. “But what—?”
“This.” He struck a few more keys, and our skiff veered straight into the Drażeri craft, grinding metal on metal. Orange sparks burst from the contact, and the alloy screamed.
I made out the faces of the two males piloting the craft, shocked as Wyatt forced our vehicle into theirs.
I wasn’t as surprised. I’d seen him drive before.
For a long moment, the two craft pushed against one another, and Wyatt slowly, inexorably shoved them toward the jagged peaks of a mountain range. In this instance, driving a cinderblock paid off.
“I will crash us all, you Drażeri fucks!” In that moment, I believed him. “We go home, or no one does. That’s the deal.”
The Drażeri craft continually attempted to pull up and away, but our slightly larger clunker added too much inertia. They couldn’t resist Wyatt’s insanity.
The dark and jagged stone of the mountains grew closer, filling up our window.
“Wyatt.”
“Not now, Hoss.” He punched several keys, and our craft bore down harder against theirs.
“Guthrie,” Gideon labored over each syllable. “I think—”
“Respectfully, Alpha, I think I need to watch my equipment.”
“Okay. I just want—”
“Wyatt, you’ve made your point,” I offered.
“Michael.” His voice went ridiculously, maddeningly quiet. “Shut. The. Fuck. Up.”
I did.
As we drew ever closer to slamming both craft onto the side of the mountain, I watched the Drażeri frantically attempt to configure their systems. One of them met my gaze, his midnight eyes stark and terrible.
Arrogant. Foolish. Lost in—
The Drażeri cut off, mid telepathic-jibe, as Wyatt lurched away and then quickly ground the ships together, even harder.
“Trying to distract me.” He pounded his keys, a genius-savant madman. “We got nothin’ to lose. I got five calculations waiting for every move you make.”
The Drażeri certainly couldn’t hear him, but they seemed to understand. They frantically engaged their systems and the fireworks began to burst in ten thousand colors around them.
“Ha!” I clapped Wyatt on the back. “Way to play chicken, man.”
Less than twenty meters from impact, we punched back through the axiomatic realmwall of this world, dragged by the Drażeri craft.
This time, we quivered in that vast, color-and mind-rending space far longer than we had before. Wyatt continually sculpted equations with his keys, and the Drażeri physically dragged us this way and that via their tether. After what felt like an eternity, we punched back into the vast nothingness where the Maelstrom burned around us.
“YES!” Wyatt crowed, making more than one obscene gesture at the Drażeri craft.
“Good work, Guthrie.” Gideon’s voice sounded weak, smaller than I’d ever heard him. “Truly excellent.”
The truth ached inside me. Gideon didn’t have much time.
I glanced to Sparks. He didn’t appear much better.
Rachel leaned over our Alpha, her frown tight as she injected him with even more mecha. She met my gaze; despair haunted her face.
“That little maneuver of theirs cost us.” Concern laced Wyatt’s voice.
“What is it?” I turned away from the window, trying not to stare too long into the dizzying vista.
“Fuel, Hos
s.” Wyatt’s brow furrowed. “Look.”
I hadn’t seen the fuel module shift, but now an azure sphere hung in the receptacle, twinkling merrily.
“The final phase,” I breathed. “How far can it get us?”
“We didn’t start with much. It looks as if we consumed most of it by breaking through into a topia.”
Fuck. If that was the case, they had us. We remained tethered. The smart play would be to simply drag us through as many strange and forsaken skies as possible and wait for our fuel to run out. Then, they could tow us back to Dhire Lith.
I had no doubts what horrifying, bloody poetry awaited us there,
“Oh, damn it,” Wyatt softly swore, and the craft lurched to one side again. His fingers practically blurred as he jumbled numbers through his interface and his oculus danced with equations.
They’d started to pull us sideways again.
I closed my eyes as I realized the game had ended.
“You never would have made it,” Sparks pulled himself up a bit, “to Rationality.”
“I still have a trick or two,” Wyatt protested. He jerked us first to starboard and then port, hard. I heard the tearing of metal as he jerked the craft free from the tether.
“Ha!” The barbarian grinned back at me.
“No,” Sparks raised one hand. “I’m saying you were deceived.”
“That seems obvious,” Anya answered him.
“That’s not—” He coughed for a moment, blood flecking his lips. “No, I mean, Crowe planned for as much.”
“Speak plainly, son.” Gideon groaned and Rachel began tinkering with her interface.
“Didn’t you offload the packet?” Sparks weakly pushed himself up to a sitting position. “It explained everything.”
“Each of those packets would have taken an entire day’s worth of mnemonic processing,” I explained to him. “We got through several, but not all.”
“There were… difficulties,” Rachel explained.
“Oh man. You’re flying blind. One of them…” His gaze grew a touch unfocused. “There! Number ten, the one titled Communique.”
Wyatt swore and veered sideward through the Maelstrom. I stumbled a bit.
“I suppose.” I turned to Anya. “Accessing the packet directly isn’t patching the thing to memory. I won’t trigger Tasia’s little present?”
“Correct, Michael. One may read the data, without danger.” She paused. “One assumes.”
“What?” Sparks blinked, dazed.
As I leaned against the back of Anya’s seat, I pulled up the packet, taking care not to download the thing to memory.
X COMMUNIQUE: Arbiter Assets
“Aberration 45171-R double crossed us every chance they got,” Sparks explained. “They’d follow their word to the letter, but then reveal something we didn’t know. Or they’d let us fall into our own assumptions.”
“Sounds familiar,” I muttered.
“Well, Crowe dealt them one back. Every time he spoke to one of the Drażeri regarding the fuel, he implied he wanted to make it to Rationality.”
“Asset 081 certainly did wish to return to Rationality,” Anya objected.
“Right,” Sparks insisted. “But he figured they’d follow him. Or muck up the fuel. Something.”
“Okay, so what?” Rachel sounded a bit testy.
“So…” His eyes went distant. “Select partition 67-R of packet ten. There’s a playback, but all you need is timeframe fifty-three to timeframe seventy.”
“I can’t. I’m saving everyone,” Wyatt groused.
“No problem. I got it,” I responded, thumbing through the packet. “Just keep us alive for a minute or two.”
“Oh, I will.” Wyatt grumbled, his fingers flying. “I’m a goddamn hero.”
2
I quickly found the partition Sparks indicated and noted a lengthy playback there.
Greetings, Asset 108. The executable whirred in my Crown. Do you wish to peruse this data with the assistance of an Adjunct?
For a moment I wondered about Synthea.
No. I don’t have one locally queued. Initiate playback at timeframe fifty-three.
Initiating manual perusal, the executable relayed. Will comply.
Over my visual array, a rectangular screen appeared. The controls for the Gatekeeper faded into the background as the screen flickered.
The Rook lay on his back under his Drażeri skiff—the same craft now performing somersaults through the Maelstrom. In this image, however, he disassembled the front panel. He looked like any typical guy working beneath a car.
Playback began with Crowe in mid-sentence.
“—requires psionic ignition. Tasia tried to pick out the primary frequencies but found she couldn’t.”
“Oh, man,” Sparks’ familiar voice came from my mouth, letting me know that, just like the first records, Sparks recorded this interaction through his Crown. “She knew all about the ship too. I forgot about that.”
“She knows everything.” Crowe affixed Alexander with a sharp gaze. “Knows. Not knew.”
“Right.” Spark’s tone sounded weak, sickened.
“Tasia knows where the substation is,” Crowe continued. “She can turn over all kinds of intel regarding our capabilities and strategies. That’s why I had you seal the entrance with the Elemental Loom.”
“I didn’t even think about what all she knows,” I/Sparks lamented.
“Right. We have to assume the Ts’kekegoth know everything a Facility Preceptor might know.”
“If they already know everything, we might as well leave the station behind when we go. No use destroying it. The Primary Protocol doesn’t matter.”
“That’s a later choice.” Crowe waved one hand. “I wanted to show you something else entirely.”
For a moment, Asset 081 fiddled with some control beneath the visible panels. He muttered and swore before removing a series of cables.
A faint blue glow sputtered and sparked approximately six centimeters above the primary control system. After a moment, it resolved to a clear image.
“Boxes?” Sparks leaned closer, peering at the holographic display. “Like, a bunch of cubes?”
“The yellow one matters.” Crowe sat up and pinched his fingers around the projection, pulling it wider. “You see all the tiny dots?”
“Yeah,” Sparks breathed. “What are they?”
“This cube is Dhire Lith. That’s why it connects to so many of these other boxes.”
“So it’s a map!” Sparks’ enthusiasm piqued. “What all can you make out?”
“Well, I believe each of those dots is a breach in the axiomatic realmwall.”
“Apertures through?” Sparks leaned closer. “Do any of them go home?”
“No.” Crowe tilted his head. “Well, perhaps.”
“You sound so certain,” Sparks teased.
“Here’s the thing. That’s not what matters.”
“What?”
“I entered the telemetric readings Tasia picked up on the main system. Then I associated those numbers with Dhire Lith’s location on the map.” Crowe paused for a long moment, adjusting some part of the ships internals.
“Okay?” I completely understood Sparks’ impatience.
“I also entered the basic facets of Rationality.” Crowe turned toward the display. “Remember, axiomatic statistics indicate both the local makeup of physics AND the location of a topia within the Maelstrom.”
“Right.”
“Once I entered the facets, I compared it to Dhire Lith’s location.”
A cube almost a meter away from the pulsing yellow one turned a bright spring green.
“That’s Rationality,” Sparks breathed. He turned my head from the display back to Crowe. “It’s so far.”
“It is,” Crowe confirmed. “Even if one of those weak spots connected with our world, discovering which one is rather daunting. There’s no direct link.”
“But at least we have a map.”
; “We won’t for long. This entire interface has to go. I’m working up something a little more attuned to our capabilities.”
“Then why show this to me at all?”
“I’m not finished.” Crowe gave him a crafty smile. “There’s an overlay for the map, something the Drażeri use. It makes it a bit more like a political map.”
Crowe tweaked a set of wires and the holo-visual flickered. Like a semi-transparent sheet, a two dimensional plane settled over the map.
“It’s these symbols. I just discovered them last night.” Crowe pointed to one and then another. “I think they show factions. Nation-states of the multiverse.”
“Okay.” I could hear that Sparks didn’t exactly follow.
“So, see the symbol over Rationality?” Crowe pinched at the display again, making it larger.
“It looks like a lopsided, upside down letter V,” Sparks noted. “With a dot inside.”
“Okay, let’s assume that symbol signifies the Facility, watching over Rationality. What’s this?” He grasped another area of the hologram, pulling it large.
“It’s the same symbol.” Spark breathed.
“Right. Same one here. And here. And here.” Crowe pointed at each.
“Oh! Oh man.”
“So if the Facility has all these locations, scattered across existence, with their symbol on them, what do you think those are?”
“Arbiter Assets.” Certainty swelled in Spark’s voice. “Those are Facility locations—substations in the Maelstrom!”
“Yes!” Crowe punctuated this one word with a fierce point at Sparks. “Every Arbiter Station has an active Hyper-Pylon, geared for Rationaliy. If we make it to any one of those, we’re as good as home!”
“And Tasia doesn’t know any of this?”
“Not a whit.” Crowe grinned. “Those snakey bastards can’t suck this plan out of her pretty little head.”
“That one’s far closer to Dhire Lith.” I saw Sparks’ hand as he gestured.
“It’s the closest, and it’s the reason I’m showing you all of this.” Crowe pinched that cube, drawing it wider. “I notated it, and I want you to have it in your Crown, in case anything happens to me.”