Awen saw herself sitting in her seat, harness fixed over her shoulders, braid floating in the air. She could see each tiny strand of her hair and marveled at the complexity of such a simple feature—the way each fiber interlaced with others, having chosen a seemingly random course through the interwoven locks. Yet the sum of the individual strands was bound in a larger well-ordered composition. It was poetry. It spoke of space-time, of chaos theory, of superpositions, and of the multiverse. It spoke of many destinies, many choices, but all of them leading to one conclusion that, from a distance, seemed as simple and intentional as a braid of hair.
Suddenly, the cockpit snapped back, and Awen vomited a piece of toast and maribliss jam on Ezo. She felt bad… but then, considering what he’d done to her, she didn’t feel bad at all.
“Whoops,” she said in a dry tone and wiped her mouth with her sleeve.
“We’ve successfully arrived in subspace level epsilon,” TO-96 noted. “Hull integrity at ninety-four percent, core levels nominal, and modulator reactor well within limits.”
“Fabulous,” Ezo said, wincing in disgust as something slimy trailed down the back of his neck. “Let’s try factor three.”
“Very good, sir. Modulating to factor three—in three… two… one…”
Once again, the cockpit moved away from Awen. Her stomach lurched, and her head thrummed. This time, however, the pain in her head was more intense. She felt… like she was dying. The sensation was horrible. She wanted to breathe but couldn’t, wanted to scream but didn’t have the strength. As before, she noticed her body sitting in its chair, but this time, everything shook in a violent blur. It was awful. She winced, or at least she thought she winced, trying to rationalize what was happening. It was as if everything was starting to separate, reality coming undone like the fibers of her braid, frayed at the edges.
Then everything slammed to a halt. When her senses came back, they did so with a loud pop in her ears. Her stomach lurched, and she dry heaved onto Ezo’s back. This time, she genuinely felt bad.
“I’m sorry,” she said, gasping for air.
“We’ve successfully arrived in subspace level zeta. Hull integrity at eighty-seven percent, core levels in the yellow, and modulator reactor showing signs of stress, but nothing out of the ordinary, sir.”
Ezo had shrugged his shoulders such that his neck had retreated inside his leather jacket. “Let’s keep it here. I’m going to my quarters, and I’ll be back after I’ve showered. You have the bridge, Ninety-Six.”
“Very good, sir.”
Ezo unbuckled and didn’t even look at Awen as he walked by. That was probably for the best.
* * *
Awen lay in a bunk, taking advantage of yet another peaceful opportunity to catch up on some much-needed sleep. She’d claimed the first open berth she could find and closed the door. Aside from the bed, the room had a sink, mirror, toilet, narrow closet, and a desk with a foldout wall seat. The room was bland, painted a dingy greenish gray, and a yellowing ceiling light did anything but convey hospitality. A blanket lay folded on the bed, and she found a second one stowed in the closet. She fluffed the pillow, smelling it to make sure it was relatively fresh, and settled herself in.
Even at the ship’s current rate, she felt like her spirit was still, as calm as a leaf sitting atop a pond in autumn. The Unity always seemed closer here in subspace, as if her very essence was a single breath away from being one with all things. She felt the same way when she was in or near water. Both places gave her the sense that a veil had been drawn between her and the Unity. She could not see it, but she knew it was there. And in certain thin places, the veil was so gossamer fine that she was sure she could reach right through it and step across to the other side, body and soul.
Awen wondered what would become of the Luma now—what would become of Willowood, of the other elders, of the students and the school. She worried about them in ways that surprised her, as if she wanted to gather everyone who might have been hurt by her strange departure and explain it all to them. She wanted to tell them that everything was going to be okay, even though she wasn’t convinced of that herself. But most of all, she wanted to tell them what So-Elku had tried to do to her.
Awen’s thoughts turned to her master—her former master. She wondered whether So-Elku’s plans had captured any other Luma minds as well or if he was acting alone. Perhaps Willowood was right to suspect that he had accomplices. If not, why were guns firing on Geronimo Nine? That couldn’t be the protocol for some miscreant ship, could it? The more Awen thought about it, the more she feared the worst.
The questions loomed over her like dark storm clouds rolling in from the sea. For the life of her, Awen couldn’t figure out what So-Elku wanted with the stardrive. Did he even know what was on it? And if so, why not celebrate its discovery? Instead, he’d acted like some malevolent traitor, unable to explain himself truthfully and willing to use the Unity against her and against Willowood.
Worse still, there remained the unanswered questions surrounding the bombing in Oosafar and who, exactly, had given the master information about her taking possession of the stardrive. I have to stop calling him that. He would never be her master again. He would only ever be So-Elku, traitor to the Order and despiser of the Luma.
Awen saw his face. She was back in Elder’s Hall, and So-Elku was demanding that she open the stardrive. He held her eyes, locked in a battle of wills that threatened to tear her mind into a thousand pieces. But she fought him, resisted him. She would not give in. It had been Willowood who’d truly saved her, however. Awen didn’t know how long she could have lasted against him.
But in this version of the memory, Willowood didn’t appear. Awen could see So-Elku’s face, eyes boring into her soul. She remained frozen, gripped by fear and by the Luma’s power within the Unity. She held the stardrive in her hand, her thumb putting pressure on the button. He was pushing her hard, demanding that she conform, that she obey. Awen kept expecting Willowood to burst through the doors and rescue her. But Awen couldn’t look away from So-Elku. He was watching her, searching her very soul.
Her thumb pressed down. The needle punctured her skin. Awen’s eyes went wide, and she tried to scream, but there was no air in her lungs. She couldn’t breathe, and she’d failed to resist him.
No! It can’t be! It’s not what happened!
And it wasn’t what had happened back at Elder’s Hall. That was not how the events had occurred. But it is what’s happening now. The contents spilled out of the stardrive like water from a broken vessel onto a floor of black marble. The shapes, the star map, the name of the Novia Minoosh, and TO-96’s data file—all of it was spread out on the floor for So-Elku to see. Awen wanted to try to put the vase together and scoop handfuls of the liquid back inside, but she could not pull herself from So-Elku’s gaze. His pupils were on fire, his brow furrowed, his lips snarling. And then she heard him speak.
I see you.
* * *
Two common days had passed before TO-96 stepped the Indomitable down from three tiers of subspace. It was the farthest any of them had ever traveled. In fact, TO-96 calculated that it was farther than their collective journeys combined—not because he had detailed records of their travels but simply because there was no way any of them could have previously accomplished such distances, given their respective lines of work. These kinds of jumps were for explorers with death wishes, not weekend warriors hoping to visit some interesting sectors on their bucket lists.
“Do we have a visual on the quantum tunnel yet?” Awen asked, and TO-96 looked back at her. “What?”
“Awen,” the bot said as tenderly as she’d ever heard him, “I’m sorry to inform you, but you cannot see a quantum tunnel. They are, by very definition, unseeable—at least in so far as a quantum tunnel resembles a black hole with an event horizon—since not even light can escape its gravitational pull.”
Awen had learned that in school and now felt rather sheepish. “Right. Thank you for t
he reminder, Ninety-Six.”
“My pleasure.”
“Coming up on it,” Ezo said. “Looks like five minutes at our current speed before its gravity takes us.”
“Affirmative, sir.”
“Okay,” Ezo said, making a few adjustments on the console. Then he turned to face Awen and the bot. “Now, before we do this, Ezo wants to make sure we’re all good here.”
“What an interesting concept,” Awen said through thin lips. “If you mean still livid with someone for selling us out, then, no, we’re not all good here.”
“Listen, Awen,” Ezo said, lifting his palms. “She’s not going to come after us. It’s not her style. That little charade was just her means of satisfying her curiosity.”
“Charade?”
“And secondly, she doesn’t have a bot capable of doing what Ninety-Six here can do.”
“Actually, sir—”
“Can it, ’Six!”
“Seriously?” Awen said, looking between the two of them. “For the love of all the mystics, you’re seriously going to lie to me right now, Ezo?”
“In his defense,” TO-96 said, “he might not remember that he gave Sootriman a navigation bot as an engagement present.”
Awen closed her eyes and pressed her fingers to her temples.
“Hey, hey, what are you doing?” Ezo asked. “Don’t go all Luma on Ezo now, okay? You can trust Ezo. Sootriman isn’t going to—”
Awen opened her eyes and lowered her hand. “I’m not going to do anything to you, Ezo. I just need some time to process…” She paused. “All of you.”
“Ah, okay. Good to know.” He cleared his throat and smoothed his turtleneck. “Well, then, can we get back to the part about possibly getting crushed in a quantum event horizon again?” When Awen and TO-96 nodded, he continued. “So, as Ezo was saying, let’s just make sure we’re all agreed with what we’re about to do. Since there doesn’t seem to be another quantum tunnel next to this one to spit us back out, we may be looking at a one-way trip if we survive.”
“I’m not sure I understand, sir,” TO-96 said. “I’ve already informed you that all systems are—”
“I understand,” Awen replied. “He’s making sure that we’re ready to stop existing as we know it.”
“Ah,” the bot said. “A fine question to posit.”
“Because, well,” Ezo said, licking his lips, “Ezo’s never done this. Splick, no one has ever done this that Ezo knows of, and Ezo knows of a lot of shady characters.”
“He really does,” TO-96 said to Awen.
“So this is it, I guess,” Ezo concluded. “Ezo just, you know, wanted to double-check. It’s kind of a big deal.”
Awen felt she should say something. “The way I see it, there are some despicable people willing to kill innocent people to get to where we are right now. More than we can probably count. I burned my bridge to the Luma, and you’ve used up your last favor with your ex-wife.”
“Still wife,” TO-96 corrected.
“Right, still wife.” Awen stifled a smile. “There’s no way we can fight anyone in this rust bucket, and the mystics know I want to meet this new race. With regard to a return trip, I have to trust that these Novia Minoosh already have that worked out. Call it faith if you need to. So it seems that the only way out of this is to move forward. We get there before anyone else does and hope it’s the right call. I vote yes. Let’s do it.”
“I vote yes as well,” TO-96 said. “Let’s do it.”
Ezo looked between them. “You both know that we’re the craziest three beings in the galaxy, don’t you?” They nodded. Ezo clicked his tongue. “Let’s do this, then.” He accelerated the Indomitable toward the quantum tunnel’s gravity well.
“Oh, Awen?” Ezo turned back toward her with a sudden softness in his eyes as if he might cry.
The look almost overwhelmed her. Here, in their last moments together, Awen would catch a glimpse of the bounty hunter’s true self. “Yes, Ezo?”
“There’s a vomit bag under your seat.”
30
“Dammit, Nolan! Jettison the pods!” Magnus yelled over TACNET. He toggled his MAR30 to high frequency and reached around the forklift. He squeezed off several more bursts in a desperate effort to give Nolan time to launch the pods. Magnus pulled his weapon back and pressed himself behind cover. He looked across at Piper.
The little girl, still barely able to look over the lip of the viewing port, stared at him in panic. He could make out tears in those big blue eyes. Why wasn’t Nolan following orders? He was furious. Now this poor child would watch him be cut down by blaster fire and possibly not get away in time. Or worse still, he would watch her be captured or killed while he bled out, helpless to do anything about it.
Magnus would have walked across the corridor himself and pressed every launch button were it not for the fact that he’d be vaporized before getting halfway across. “Nolan! Do you copy?”
“I’m trying, Lieutenant!” Nolan sounded frustrated.
“What do you mean you’re trying?”
“The system’s not responding, sir.”
You’ve got to be kidding me. “They locked you out?” Magnus asked.
“Negative, sir. I’ve got access, it’s just not—I don’t know, sir.”
Magnus looked down and saw that his MAR30 was ready for another wide-displacement discharge. “Listen, Nolan, I’m going to create a window and then come across. I’ll hit as many of the launch buttons as I can, starting with the civilians. Whatever I don’t get—well, just keep trying.”
“Sir, no. I’ll figure this out.”
“I sure hope you do, for your sake, Nolan. Because if you don’t, I’m going to fill your head with plasma myself.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Here goes nothing.” Magnus toggled his MAR30’s fire-modes switch. As his arm brought the weapon around, Magnus caught sight of Piper again. He feared this would be the last glimpse he’d ever get of her. He hated that she looked afraid—that was no way to remember a child. But then again, he wouldn’t be living long enough to revisit any memories. Then he noticed her eyes. They were no longer panicked—they were filled with rage.
Magnus was so startled by Piper’s expression that he yanked his weapon back to his chest. She didn’t look like a child who was upset with an unreasonable parent or a school bully. No, she looked like she was a lioness about to maul an invading pack of hyenas who’d just taken her cubs. Her brow was furrowed, eyes bloodshot, and he was sure that if he could see her mouth, she would have been baring her teeth. It was, perhaps, the most arresting face he’d ever seen on a child. And it scared the living splick out of him.
A burst of brilliant-white energy exploded from Piper’s capsule as if someone had detonated a quantum warhead on the surface of a planet. The shock wave came at him so fast he didn’t even have time to flinch. His body was flung backward, colliding with the wall as searing light filled his helmet. The action was followed by a subsonic blast of energy that compressed his chest and squeezed his temples. Even squinting, all Magnus could see was white.
What in all the cosmos was that?
Everything went silent. Well, except for the ringing in his ears. Magnus’s HUD was off-line. In fact, his entire system seemed dead, rendering the helmet inoperable. Given the low light, he couldn’t see a thing through his visor besides streaks of blaster fire. He pulled off the helmet and blinked several times.
The very first thing Magnus saw when his vision stabilized was Piper’s face, eyes staring across the hallway at him. Her look of anger relaxed the moment she noticed Magnus was moving.
Did she just… did she just do that? Magnus was utterly beside himself. He realized he’d been holding his breath and took in a deep lungful of air. Then he looked at the other capsules and saw most of the people slumped to the sides of their pods, each trying to find their bearings. Valerie seemed the most alert of them all, rubbing one of her temples and looking across at Magnus in surprise. The senator l
ooked the worst. In fact, with the amount of blood coming out of his nose and mouth, Magnus was quite sure he was dead. What in the hell had happened to him? Magnus didn’t remember him getting shot.
Magnus rolled onto his hands and knees, pulled his MAR30 up from its sling, and carefully leaned around the forklift. To his utter astonishment, every enemy trooper at the opposite end of the corridor was laid out cold. Whether stunned or dead, he did not know.
He heard a fist pounding on glass and looked to where Nolan was slamming his pod’s cockpit window. He was mouthing the words “good to go” and raising his thumbs.
Magnus didn’t need any more prompting. He scrambled to his feet, bolted to the next open emergency capsule, and slid in. He jammed his MAR30 along his right leg and felt it maglock against his thigh. Then he wedged his helmet over his shoulder, buckled his harness, and punched the ready button. A moment later, all the pods launched from the Bull Wraith on Nolan’s command, and Magnus was thrown against the straps.
The scream of the pod’s main engine rattled above Magnus’s head as he shot away from the Bull Wraith. He was instantly immersed in the void, swallowed by a sea of stars—a sea of stars and a planet below his feet.
We’ve got a planet! Hope kindled in him. This was the best possible scenario, the one he’d hoped for but just assumed he wouldn’t be granted because… well, because that was just the way the universe acted. But apparently, not that day. Their luck seemed to continue, Magnus noted, as he strained to look over his shoulder, wondering if the Bull Wraith’s turrets would attempt to pick them off. It had been several seconds already, and no shots had been fired.
Magnus took a deep breath and leaned forward to see if he could identify the planet. Beneath the refracted pale blue of the bending horizon lay an endless sea of tan illuminated by the system’s star. No notable bodies of water, no polar caps, and very few mountain ranges as far as Magnus could tell. It looked just like…
Ruins of the Galaxy Box Set: Books 1-6 Page 23