“I caught a nap.” She looked back to kiss him lightly. “I need you to do something for me.”
He ignored the warning twinge in his gut that whispered how history was surely intent on repeating itself. “Of course. Anything.”
“You should hear what it is first.” She shifted around in his arms. “I need you to design me a new body, one soaked through from head to toe in kyoseil.”
It was the last thing he’d expected her to ask of him. “I’m not a biologist.”
“I know. You’ll want to work with a regen expert, I assume. But you are our foremost expert on kyoseil. Here’s my reason for asking: kyoseil is not hindered by the quantum block. I suspect this means kyoseil should protect whatever is encased within it from the quantum block as well. I need its encasement to be me. I need to be able to transport, protect and deliver the virutox your people have developed into a Rasu system without the block interfering with the transmission.”
“The virutox? But the only Rasu systems are…” the twinge grew into dread “…you’re intending to go to Namino. But Nika—”
“I know there are several details to work out. Reaching the surface, then reaching our friends in their bunker, then choosing a worthy target and fighting our way to it. But now we know the others are alive and where they’re located, which is so much more than we knew yesterday. Dashiel, it’s time for me to go. But first, I need you to create a version of me that can succeed in my mission once I get there.”
So be it. He locked his jaw in resoluteness. We are forever. “I’m going with you.”
“No, you’re not. You’re staying here with me.”
“What?”
“I’m going to Plex this. One version of me will stay here. They—I—will be in constant communication with the version who goes to Namino. More than communication, I’ll see and hear everything they do. I can coordinate our actions, provide intel to everyone here, and plan our next moves on both planets.”
“Nika….”
“I’m not crazy about the idea either. I didn’t enjoy splitting myself into 8,000 shards on the Rasu stronghold. But this will merely be two shards, so.” She shrugged, adding a falsely lighthearted smile. “Now that Parc—on Namino—is healed up and marginally protected by Joaquim and Selene, I firmly believe he will be able to pinpoint the source of the quantum block. But wherever it’s located will be heavily defended, and they’ll probably have to take out massive Rasu defenses in order to reach and disable it. This virutox can do exactly that, faster and better than any other tool we can wield. I need to get it to Namino, because if we ever want to reclaim our world and rescue our people, we have to disable the quantum block.”
Her hand came up to drift along his jaw and down his neck. “So what do you think? Can you create what I need to make this happen? Will you?”
He took her hand in his and brought it to his lips. “You know it’s almost impossible for me to refuse you. I wish Forchelle were still alive, as he could do a superior job of it in a quarter of the time. But I have the notes he left behind detailing his work creating the first kyoseil-infused Asterion bodies, and I worked with Dr. Takeda to expedite your 8,000 copies. I’ll contact him first thing in the morning…which is about an hour from now.” He paused, searching her gaze and finding only steadfast determination painted atop desperation. “If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.” She wound her hands into his hair and drew him into her arms. “Thank you. I love you beyond words.”
“Even if I couldn’t produce you a kyoseil-laden body on demand?”
“Even if…but it doesn’t hurt that you can.”
CONCORD
41
* * *
CONCORD HQ
Command
“Let me see if I understand this correctly. The Machim Imperium that shot up a Concord station temporarily under Anaden control was actually piloted by the two of you?”
Alex swung her legs casually off the edge of the table she’d hopped on, while David wandered around the office rubbing his hands together. He glanced over at her, and they reluctantly met Miriam’s incredulous glare. “Yep.”
“You realize I was about five minutes away from formally declaring war on the Anadens for firing on Concord assets.”
David pivoted and raised his hands in the air. “We did realize this, belatedly, and thus rushed here to correct the record. I mean, we were going to tell you, obviously—” he checked with Alex, who hurriedly nodded agreement “—as soon as you had some free time.”
“Oh, obviously.” Her mother’s stern, disciplinarian countenance was such a spot-on match for the expression that had dogged Alex’s teenage years, any last traces of worry about the state of her mother’s soul faded away. This was definitely Miriam Solovy standing here scowling at her. “You could have been captured. Both of you.”
Her father’s brow furrowed, while Alex shrugged mildly. “Nah,” they answered in unison.
Her mother’s scowl held for a solid two seconds—then broke to allow an amused chuckle to escape her lips. “Galaxies should tremble when the two of you team up. It was still a reckless stunt, and you’re both still in trouble.” She glared at the ceiling rather than at them. “Was it worth it? What does Kennedy say?”
Alex hopped off the table wearing a self-satisfied grin. “Yes, it was. She’s currently ripping out the shielding module to install it in your nearly finished ship to save time, but she’s also confident she can manufacture new ones. You, and soon everyone, are going to have impenetrable shielding protecting indestructible hulls. No more Rasu ship infiltrations.”
Her mother’s gaze fell away to fixate on the floor, and she didn’t immediately respond.
“Mom?”
David was reaching out to touch Miriam’s shoulder when she looked up, eyes glistening and a radiant smile lighting her face. “No more infiltrations. This is a most welcome development.” She arched an eyebrow. “I suppose you’ll be expecting official commendations? Possibly medals?”
“Eh, we’re good—”
A priority message arrived from Nika, and the subject line sent Alex stumbling backward to fall into one of the guest chairs. Time and her heart stopped in unison while she opened it.
Her father was kneeling in front of her even before she’d finished reading the message. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
She laughed through an aborted sob and shook her head. “Not wrong. Good.” She splayed her fingers wide to peer at her father. “He’s okay. For now, anyway. Marlee, too.”
David rocked back on his heels, then stood as Miriam joined him. “Milostivyy menya, this is good news. Most excellent news.”
Her mother reached out and patted her knee. Alex responded by leaping up and grabbing her mother in a hug. Was it possible the universe had, however grudgingly, ceded to her demand that she not lose anyone else? She didn’t want to get cocky, as Caleb and Marlee remained in terrible danger, but…
Miriam returned the embrace before stepping back a little. “I am so glad to hear it. But how do you know?”
“Apparently one of the Asterions on Namino figured out a limited way to communicate through the quantum block. He’s with Caleb and Marlee and a bunch of other people in one of the bunkers near DAF Command. Marlee was injured in the initial Rasu attack, but the Asterions helped her, and she’s healed up now.”
“That’s fantastic. Can we use this communication method to coordinate with the people on the ground there?”
“Um…” she pulled the message back up to reread it, as most of the content had blurred away in favor of words like CALEB and ALIVE and TOGETHER “…not easily, no. Nika didn’t share the details, but it seems to be an Asterion-specific solution and, as I said, limited. But Nika can talk to this guy, and vice versa. So that’s something.”
“When are they coming home? Caleb and Marlee?”
She kept reading…and her heart wrenched into knots all over again. “It sounds as if…not right away. The group they’re with
is trying to pinpoint the originating source of the quantum block. They want to try to take it out—which would be awesome—and Caleb and Marlee have decided to stay and help.” She pushed off the chair to stride across the office in an explosion of movement and emotion. “Goddamn him!”
David sighed. “Something tells me it’s more like ‘goddamn her.’ Marlee has found herself a righteous cause now, and I’d be willing to bet she’s refusing to give it up. And after going to such lengths to reach her, Caleb can’t exactly leave her there.”
Alex retraced her steps in growing agitation. “I guess she’s too old for him to grab around the waist and carry kicking and screaming back to the Ghost, huh?”
“Also might attract unwanted Rasu attention, what with the kicking and screaming.”
“Good point.” The pacing continued, until finally on her third pass around the office, her father blocked her path. “Alex, what are you thinking?”
“What? Nothing. Everything. Mostly I’m glad he got to her, they’re both okay, and they have a place to shelter, safe from the Rasu.” Her mind flashed back to the continuing maelstrom consuming her home on Akeso…‘okay’ was clearly a relative term.
Her mother stepped up beside David and took Alex’s hands in hers. “You should go.”
“Go where?”
“To Namino. Use the Siyane to get past the Rasu. Now that you know where they are, get to Caleb and Marlee and help them take out the quantum block. Save millions of lives—save their lives.”
A tumble of words caught in her throat. “Mom, no. You need me here to help you—”
“I do not. In point of fact, you are driving me insane with all your hovering and constant well-meaning questions and suffocating kid-glove treatment. I’m fine, Alex. It was an iffy first couple of days, I admit, but I’m doing much better now. And I won’t stand here and watch you drive yourself mad like this any longer. You have been incredible, and I couldn’t ask for a more wonderful daughter. I mean it. But now it’s time for you to go and do what you do best. Get the quantum block down, so I can redo that godforsaken Namino battle. Better this time.”
Her limbs felt frozen in place, while her heart and mind were being torn asunder, pulled to the breaking point in opposite directions. “Mom….”
Her father laid a hand on her arm. “Alex, she’s right. I can’t believe she all but ordered you to sneak into an active war zone, but she’s right. I wish I could go with you, but your mother genuinely does need me here.”
Miriam tilted her head in agreement, an almost smirky smile dancing on her lips.
Which meant it just might be true. All of it. She breathed in deeply and made the decision for herself. The rending ceased, to be replaced by a dizzying lightness of spirit. “All right. I’ll do it.” She hugged her mother tight, then reached over and hugged her father as well. “I love you both so, so much. Thank you.”
Alex’s muscles vibrated, blood pushing rapidly through her veins to spur her on to greater speeds. The temptation to leap into the Siyane, wormhole across five megaparsecs of space and touch down on Namino inside the hour was so powerful she could taste the anticipation.
But she’d only get one shot at this, and she owed it to Caleb, Marlee, her mother—to basically everyone—to calm down and do it properly. So she started making a mental list, then quickly converted it into a real list…then stopped in the middle of the hallway, moved out of the flow of traffic and concentrated on imposing order on the slapdash list. She still wanted to leave as soon as was humanly possible, so she needed to attack the list with efficiency and economy of motion.
Finally satisfied with her plan of action, she sent a message detailing everything she knew about Caleb and Marlee to Isabela and a similar one to Mia. Then she set off for Special Projects.
42
* * *
CONCORD HQ
Special Projects
Alex was busily reordering her list for the third time as she walked into the enormous wing of HQ devoted to Concord Special Projects—
—she bumped into an unmoving object. “Pardon me, ma’am.”
She looked up to meet the suspicious stare of a tall Novoloume man with iridescent rose skin. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
“As is evident. May I inquire where you intended to be going? Special Projects is not open to tourists.”
She was too distracted to be offended. “I know. I have an appointment with the Director.” An appointment she’d scheduled approximately ninety seconds earlier, but whatever.
“I’ll let him know his appointment has arrived, if you’ll wait here.”
“I won’t take another step.”
“See that you don’t. Many of the objects in here do not respond favorably to getting knocked around.”
Wasn’t he just a bundle of joy. Alex made a show of crossing her arms over her chest and planting her feet in a wide stance as he disappeared around the corner.
Every surface of Special Projects shone and gleamed. Opaque glass walls divided the large main room into sections and obscured the mad-scientist work occurring behind them. Security doors on the left, right and rear sealed off even more secret areas, for the protection of the experiments as well as the thousands of people on the station.
“Alex!”
Devon Reynolds jogged toward her, and she readied a polite greeting. She bumped into him every few months or so, but the truth was he belonged to a part of her life she’d left behind after The Displacement. Left behind until now.
He clasped her shoulder in a side-hug, then backed away. “Have you talked to Mia recently? She is not in a good place right now.”
“I know. When did you see her?”
“You’re not the only Noetica Prevo suddenly in need of my rarified services. My feelings should be hurt that it takes mortal danger and gut-wrenching loss to bring you all to my door.”
“But?”
He shrugged and motioned for her to follow him through the maze. “I get it. It’s not like I made a point to go visit you guys, either.”
“Nope. Listen, I’d like to catch up, but I am in one ferocious hurry.”
“I understand. You want Rasu-killing weapons.”
“Not for the Siyane. Weapons I can use on the ground. Ideally ones that destroy Rasu, yes, but I’ll take slowing them down if that’s what’s available.”
“Then you’re lucky creating such weapons has been my driving focus for the last few weeks. I can hook you up with some outrageous shit.”
Devon removed one of three small ring-shaped modules from a carbon composite case. “First off, you’ll want this.”
She studied the ring, but its exterior gave no hints as to its purpose. “What is it?”
“Our newest defensive shield tech protecting against physical blows. If a Rasu takes a swipe at you with one of its sword-hands, this ought to hold it off from cutting through you long enough for you to scurry out of reach.”
“Scurry?”
“Or whatever you do to get away. It’ll provide decent protection from energy blasts as well—better than whatever you currently have on hand.”
“Great.” She pointed to the case. “I need the other two modules as well.”
“But those are all we’ve made. The new model’s not scheduled to go into full production until next week.”
“Do you expect a ground force squad consisting of two people to be facing Rasu in hand-to-hand combat in the next week?”
“No, but—”
“Then I need them.”
“All right, fine.” He reached into the case, retrieved the other two modules and handed them to her.
She dropped all three into her bag. “What else do you have?”
He motioned her out of the cubicle and strode toward the opposite side of the room. Three times he got stopped by employees, and by the second time she was tapping her foot impatiently.
Finally he scanned them through the left-side security doors. Beyond the doors waited
a long hall with many windowless doors; he unlocked the last door on the left.
As soon as they stepped inside, she felt the suffocating silence of heavily shielded walls. “Welcome to our lab for weapons that will destroy everything they touch, including us.”
“Is it a good idea to have such a lab here on the station?”
“It’s perfectly safe. The safety measures in place will contain any explosion to the area inside these walls.”
“If you say so. What’s in here?”
“So much.” He went over to a worktable positioned near the door. On it sat a long box made of polycrystalline alumina glass, which held some sort of device in a soft, velvety casing. “For you, this.”
She leaned down and peered at it more closely. It vaguely resembled a handgun, if only because the lower half consisted of a fairly traditional grip. The rest of the body, however, was a sort of smushed orb ending in a tiny opening. “Is it a gun?”
“A gun? Ha!” He chuckled to himself. “Well, yes, but not just any gun—a negative energy gun. We’re calling it the Rectifier.”
She eyed him dubiously.
“What? One of the biggest advantages of this job is that I get to make up cool names for dangerous objects, and everyone has to use the names.”
“True enough.” She frowned. “Is it fragile? I don’t think carrying it around in this case is going to be practical where I’m headed.”
“No, no, this is merely for show.” He opened the case and reverently lifted the gun out of its velvet shroud. “Now, don’t ask for two more of these, because this is literally the only one in existence—at least until tomorrow.”
She took the weapon from him, turning it over in her hands and letting her fingers run across its length. Unusually for a handgun, the metal shell was coarse and rough to the touch, almost dimpled. “Talk to me about how it works.”
Inversion (Riven Worlds Book Two) Page 26