Unknown

by Microsoft Office User

  “CONFIRMED. PROCESSING.”

  The results were seconds away, she knew, but what she was now hearing on the RIF was gripping. Mifuro was speaking:

  - “we're 11 minutes from rendezvous, everyone. Here's what I've learned from the crew of the approaching craft. The navigator is Stephen Kreveld. That's right, the same family. He's Richard's nephew. They have ample room for all of us. Will be locking on with guidance tractor beam in seven minutes.”

  - “how are things progressing in the cargo bay?” Anatoly asked.

  - “delightfully, love. SIM-TRAC is a joy to work with. And so are you, Boris.”

  - “yes, Anatoly, should have bay prepared for entry,” Boris said with undeniable irritation as a follow-up to Susan.

  - “good to hear, folks,” Peter said. “I just wish to hell we could figure out this madness back here before our guests arrive. Fran, what are you reading …”

  Lara heard nothing for a couple of seconds.

  - “Fran? Fran?”

  - “I'm switching this monitor to visual, Peter,” said Anatoly.

  “PROGRAM COMPLETE.”

  Lara switched her attention immediately to the monitor before her, and the information was everything she needed.

  “Ohmigod.”

  All three of them accessed Miguel's quarters. She knew that would be the case – they already admitted to having seen Miguel's body slumped at his workstation. But not all of them accessed the quarters prior to that 25-minute period when Lara was ... somewhere else. And only one logged out nanotrax emulsion. And only one, according to the computer, programmed the quarter’s comm-link and printlock systems to automatically disengage after the next time the occupant accessed his water dispensary.

  “Oh, god. She's been my friend.”

  - “you seeing anything, Nat?” Peter said. Lara heard the words, but her mind was focused squarely on the monitor.

  - “no. And the heat sensor array isn't helping. All the lifeform readings are so congested. Holy ... Peter, this is incredible! What's left of the Fyal elsewhere on the ship is dissipating and showing up in the IPG core. Now at 80 percent, 82 percent, 83 percent.”

  - “goddammit.” Peter shouted. “Fran. Where the hell are you?”

  Anatoly's words lifted Lara out of her chair. She reached down and felt the lazgun in her hip pouch.

  Fyal coming together. One place.

  “Focus.” She startled herself.

  Sh’hun’s effort is nearly complete. When the echoes are gone, it will bring these ships to Earth. Once focus is regained, it should overwhelm the traveler's mind, and the identity of the traveler will become obvious.

  “Daniel,” she whispered, and she could see his face. These were his words, his warning. She felt a breeze against her back.

  You can't afford to wait that long.

  The words became more defined, and there were shapes and colors, but they bounced across her mind disjointed. She raced to the door, slapped the printlock, and it slipped open.

  “Liv …”

  Medpod was empty, but out of the corner of one eye, Lara thought she saw a Tube slide shut. All the doctor's workstation monitors were dark.

  Where did you go, Liv?

  She started quickly for the Tube, but she stumbled, had to catch herself against one of the beds. Lara realized what was happening.

  Information overload.

  She tried to listen to the increasing conversation on the RIF. She tried to process memories of a time and a place with Daniel that was coming back to her in a flurry. She tried to understand what possible reason Fran Conner would have to kill their captain.

  - “see if you can narrow the heat array,” Peter said. “I damn well don't like this.”

  - “trying to sort. The computer is having a real problem with this,” Anatoly replied.

  - “all right. I'm going to head toward the vent.”

  Then there was a female voice.

  - “heading your way, Peter. I've got a kit, in case Fran's injured.”

  Lara wanted to open her RIF vocal link and say something. A warning. Something. Anything. But what? What would anyone believe? I don't even know why she did this.

  Lara removed a hand from her face, and it was soaking. She was not surprised. She felt incredibly hot, and her head was beginning to throb – a deep, dull ache.

  She opened the hip pouch, wiped her left hand against her bodysuit, and satisfied that it was dry, reached into the pouch and removed the lazgun. She stared at the compact silver weapon, which was trembling along with her hand.

  And suddenly, she saw Daniel standing before her. Not at this moment, she knew, but very recently. He was talking.

  Ohmigod. Centauri III.

  He spoke with urgency and determination, and she knew this was all very real. Death is sometimes a necessity for life. You are the only barrier that stands between the existence of billions of souls. Please, Lara. Take one life to preserve all the others.

  She felt him against her. And she saw him vanish into receding light.

  There is always destiny.

  “How can you ask this?” She told herself to get on a SlipTube. Now. There's not much time.

  “Hurry, go,” she said, and a Tube arrived within 10 seconds. When the door wrapped open, Lara looked and hesitated. She was expecting someone to be there. No, a Fyal. She saw a Fyal the last time she had entered this Tube.

  She stepped forward with total realization, her feet fell upon the G-stamp, and the door wrapped shut.

  Daniel. Sh'hun. It was never a dream. Nya-phur’um is bringing them all here. Billions of Fyal!

  “Dear god. Fran is the traveler.”

  All the confusion vanished in an instant as clarifying as it was damning. She looked down again at the lazgun and rolled the weapon over to read the tiny wording next to a pair of red settings.

  Shock. Terminate.

  With the Nya-phur’um adrift, focus will be lost and the Fyal will not be able to travel to Earth. There really is no other way.

  “No other way.”

  The computer prompted her for the second time in the past few seconds: “PLEASE STATE DESTINATION.”

  “Oh, yes. Oh, engineering. No, ENG, sec ... No, I don't know the sec number. Just take me to the IPG. Now!!”

  “IMMEDIATE PROXIMITY TO ION PROPULSION GENERATOR IS ENG SEC 6, POD 1. DOES THIS ROUTE SATISFY YOUR NEEDS?”

  “Yes. Yes, dammit. Take me there now.”

  “CONFIRMED.”

  She felt the pulse of the Tube as it accelerated. “How long until we're there?”

  “31 SECONDS, COUNTING.”

  The final pieces of this puzzle fell into place, and for the first time since the moments after Daniel's death, she wasn't confused. From the specific times the computer provided her, Lara now realized when Fran might have sabotaged the water supply in Miguel's quarters. Shortly after Susan was overwhelmed in the cargo bay and brought to medpod, Fran cowered away, saying she had to “get out of here,” ostensibly in light of her handling of Susan's situation. Lara recalled the biologist wasn’t gone long, returning in time for Olivia to reveal her findings regarding Susan's chemical imbalance.

  Or perhaps, Lara theorized, Fran did it earlier, well before the stasis explosion, before the Nya-phur’um lost its focus. “And Fran wouldn't even have known she was doing it.” As Lara broke down the details, the latter scenario made more sense. Daniel told her how the Nya-phur’um grew desperate as it tried to maintain the illusion in the stasis chamber. Perhaps it decided to eliminate a suddenly healthy Miguel before he could become a threat. But Miguel did not use the water dispensary until hours later.

  As she thought through the when, Lara put together the why.

  Miguel must have known much more than he was willing to admit. Or perhaps his knowledge was so extreme that he thought it a product of his years in a ku-ccha-induced haze, and he refused to divulge it.

  “The Nya-phur�
�um must have realized he could figure this out in time. Susan gave it away. The link through the ku-ccha.”

  That, Lara realized, was the significance of the Carib woman's words to Miguel, when they faced each other in the cargo bay: Your feet are sour.

  The ku-ccha, Daniel told her, affected Miguel and Susan more than any others, so it made sense their mental link would also be the strongest. In her delusional rage, Susan must have equated Miguel with a Fyal. Somehow, she understood there was a threat.

  Fran was there, so the Nya-phur’um was there. In that moment, it must have felt them both. In all those years in a fog, Miguel must have learned all the Fyal’s plans.

  “He knew.” Lara almost cried and laughed at the same time. “He knew all along, but he couldn't put it in words.”

  Clarity was not so reassuring as it was terrifying.

  At the instant the Tube halted, Lara paid close attention to the RIF:

  - “not detecting a damn thing in the vent.” It was Peter.

  - “something just isn't right here,” Anatoly was saying. “Mifuro, look at this. I see only two humans in the IPG.”

  - “yes? Peter here, Olivia entering over here.”

  - “so where the hell is Fran? You should have gotten a focus on her by now.”

  - “negative, Peter. I've run every possible scan. She's not there.”

  Lara stepped out of the Tube. The corridor was long, about 20 meters to the portal through which she would enter the IPG. She took a deep breath.

  - “where the hell are you saying she'd …”

  - “hold on. Mifuro, look.” Anatoly interrupted. “Peter, this is incredible. The other Fyal are gone. I'm showing 98 percent, 99 percent, 100 percent in the IPG.”

  - “yep, not surprised, it's damn tight around here …”

  A deafening blast reverberated through the RIF, although Lara heard the actual source of the explosion not far away.

  - “fuck …”

  - “goddamn, what in the name of ...”

  - “hey, what was that?”

  - “Peter? We've lost visual. What was that? It looked almost like a lazgun blast.”

  - “Peter?”

  Lara stood still through the following seconds of silence, then looked down at her lazgun. She advanced the red setting from “Shock” to “Terminate.” But she did not release the safety.

  “Please give me the strength to do this, Daniel,” she whispered, and stepped forward, placed a hand upon the printlock.

  - “Liv?” Anatoly asked.

  - “I'm here. I've found Peter. He's been shot. Upper left quad. He's breathing but he's unconscious.”

  - “shot?”

  - “I saw the blast. Must have been Fran. Who else?”

  - “will go to assist,” Boris intervened.

  Lara tapped her vocal link. “No, Boris. No. I'm here. I'll help. It's too dangerous for someone else to be here.”

  - “yes, I will come now. Other ship is on tractor beam, will come in with no trouble.”

  - “I agree with Lara,” Mifuro intervened. “Stay there with Susan. Make sure no one leaves that craft until the decon sweep has passed through. Then, if we need their help, we'll get them involved.”

  “Please, Boris,” Lara said. “Stay where you are. This isn't about Fran. She's not who you think she is anymore. Please stay out of here. You can't do what has to be done. No one else can.”

  - “what?”

  - “what?”

  She didn't have time for their questions. She ventured deeper into the IPG.

  Lara only journeyed into this segment of the ship a handful of times since it left Earth. Of all those areas where her technical deficiencies were most pronounced, this chamber was foremost.

  The forward entry walk was intimidating. Cast in a soft banana glow, the sides of the walls, bent in at a 70-degree angle, were lined with massive black schematics and control boards, the colorful outline of the ship's ion propulsion network scaling the length of each panel. As she glimpsed these schematics, Lara recalled the mainframe design of the IPG and hence realized where she needed to go.

  One level below was the cloverleaf matrix of the hydrogen tunnels, where hydrogen would be mixed and then forced into the central core, shoving into an ion resonance field and interacting with the suction of tachyons entering through the giant scoops. The resulting explosion through the scoops propelled Andorran across the galaxy.

  But that event couldn’t happen now, not with Andorran safely in orbit and the IPG systems shut down. Lara realized she needed to head down to the hydrogen tunnels if she was to find Peter and Olivia.

  And Fran.

  “I need some help, Mifuro. How do I get down to them?”

  - “I've got you on visual, Lara. Proceed as you are. The core housing is 10 meters in front of you. As you round the core housing, to your right will be a printlock. Hit it, and the hatch will fall back.”

  The metallic walk took a bend around the core, which stood before her as a silent titanium dome. The walls around the outer rim of the walk fell back at 60 degrees, but against the decline a single printlock. Lara reached down to hit it, then hesitated. She looked around.

  Where are all the Fyal echoes? Anatoly said only moments ago that 100 percent of all 300-plus Fyal congregated within the IPG.

  Where are they?

  With dread in her stomach, she realized the answer to her own question a split second before the hatch slipped open. She looked down through the hole and to the bottom of the ladder. She saw tentacles.

  They're not real. Not real. Just an illusion created by the Nya-phur’um. Echoes. That's all.

  Her own persuasion did nothing to loosen the knot in her stomach, but she stepped through the hatch anyway and descended.

  “They're everywhere,” she said at a whisper. “Which way?”

  - “we're not far,” Olivia told her. “Proceed directly ahead and you'll veer right. It's the only way you can go at that point. We're by the external vent lock.”

  The Fyal occupied every square foot as far as Lara could see, and the phase-shifting was now less defined. The aliens seemed whole. Lara gulped, then stepped forward and walked right through the green and brown bodies.

  She felt alternately cold and hot, weak and strong. She felt the slime coating most of the aliens' bodies, even though none of it attached to her.

  - “150 seconds to docking,” Mifuro announced. “Boris and Susan, confirm you're clear.”

  - “yes, love. We're all tucked away nicely behind the observation shield.”

  - “raising bay doors.”

  - “how serious is Peter's condition?” Boris asked.

  - “don't like it. Definitely some internal bleeding. Pulse is weak and erratic. But he's opening his eyes. I'm doing everything I can right here. Once Lara and I get him back to medpod, I'll be able to take care of this.”

  - “we still cannot detect Fran,” Anatoly said. “Lara, please explain what is going on. What do you know?”

  As Lara rounded a bend of the silver hydrogen tunnel and spotted the ship's doctor and systems specialist, she said, “It's too much to tell all of you right now. But you must keep trying to find Fran. There's incredible danger. The Fyal are coming.”

  - “what?”

  - “should we abort docking?”

  “It won't make any difference. I have to find Fran to end this.”

  She bent down to Peter. He was groggy, little more than a moan emanating from his lips, a pronounced burn mark under his left collarbone. Olivia had stripped away that section of his bodysuit to examine the wound.

  “We've got to get him out of here,” Olivia said. “But we need to be gentle. Grab him firmly but carefully under his upper back and let's move him into an upright position. Then carefully reach under his arm and around and we'll lift him together. Understood?”

  “Yes.” Lara shoved the lazgun into her hip pouch.

  The movements
as the doctor described were executed perfectly, and when each of them had Peter on his feet, his arms wrapped around them, they proceeded slowly. His feet dragged the silver floor.

  - “what do you make of this?” It was Anatoly's distressed voice.

  - “what?” Mifuro answered.

  - “external field readings. This just developed in the last couple of minutes. I don't recognize it.”

  There was a substantial pause.

  - “what are you seeing?” Boris asked.

  - “not sure,” Anatoly said. “Intense gravitational fluctuation emitting from Andorran's stern.”

  - “recalibrate and focus,” Mifuro said.

  Progress toward the IPG hatch was steady, and Lara looked into Peter's eyes. She knew he was lost somewhere between the conscious and unconscious world.

  “Did you see that?” Olivia interrupted.

  “What? I ...” And then the anomaly struck Lara as well.

  There it was again.

  Some of the Fyal were disappearing. But not just disappearing; rather, being sucked out of existence, their bodies crumpling and dissolving into the surrounding tunnel walls.

  Where are you, Fran?

  - “what's happening down there?” Boris asked.

  - “wait a minute! Mifuro, look at this!” Anatoly raised his voice.

  - “what could that be?”

  - “some sort of gravity well, like a vortex. Emanating directly from the IPG core. It's like ... Oh, dammit!”

  At that instant, as Anatoly's words echoed through their ears, Lara and Olivia turned to each other. They stopped.

  The computer interrupted them all: “WARNING. ION PROPULSION VENT ACTIVATED. WARNING.”

  “Run!” Olivia shouted, but they each knew the effort would be futile. They heard the external vent lock slide open, not more than 15 meters behind. The tube's vacuum suction echoed through the tunnels with a dull roar.

  The force of the vacuum scooped all three off their feet. Lara tried to cling to Peter, but she was thrown hard against the tunnel ceiling, bounced off and flew backward, a violent wind swirling around her.

  She tried to flail her arms, hoping desperately that something, anything, would miraculously grab hold.