The Chronotrace Sequence- The Complete Box Set

by D J Edwardson

  He jumped off the skiff and gave his final instructions to Seth. “Stay here as long as you can. If you get spotted or if the Persepolis takes off, I want you to flee back to the Maven. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, of course,” Seth replied.

  Gavin took off through the rubble. While he ran he opened up a connection to Halerin through his extractor.

  “Halerin, I need you to have the chronotrace follow Cyrith to see if you can find out if Adan has been captured. Be sure to monitor his thoughts as well.”

  “We’re taxing the Maven’s energy supply pretty heavily with all of this processing,” Halerin warned. “But I’ll do what I can.”

  “Just tell me if you find anything.” Gavin cleared the end of the street he was on and the massive praxis came into full view above the ruins of a flattened building.

  He had to enter the ten-story cruiser through Cade’s hole up top. He could have had Seth drop him off there, but Gavin didn’t want to put him in any more danger than he already had. Fortunately, Gavin had grabbed one of Raif’s utility pouches before he’d left.

  As Gavin sprinted towards the massive ship, he pulled an altitude capsule from the pouch on his belt. Without slowing his step, he twisted the black cylinder and felt it start to hum beneath his fingers. He took a few more strides, shoved his hands into the straps on either side, and then leapt into the air. At the same moment, he swiped the device with his thumb in an upward direction.

  With Gavin clinging to the capsule, it gradually floated off the ground. As Gavin rose, his reflection in the mirrored hull of the praxis rose steadily along with him. In less than a microslice his soft-souled feet made contact with the outer surface of the praxis half way up the side. Still gripping the capsule above his head, he began running along the velar plating.

  Padding his way up the smooth circumference, he passed an endless array of cannon barrels, triangular beam intensifiers, disruptor batteries, and other assorted anti-ship and antipersonnel weaponry. Once he reached the crest, he slid the altitude canister’s level down to nothing. He tucked the capsule back into his pouch and rushed over to the hole on the cruiser’s topside. Cade’s tunneler was parked beside it, held fast to the surface of the Persepolis by its own axom field.

  Though the pallium generator he had tucked away inside his belt would mask his presence from anyone with a bioseine, the administrators of the Persepolis’ esolace could detect him if they went off system. Normally Collective security forces didn’t do that because it required too much power, but Cyrith had been one step ahead of him all along, so Gavin had to be on his guard.

  “All right, Halerin, do you have anything for me?” Gavin asked, before jumping into the hole.

  “He’s definitely on the ship, but he’s been on the move ever since he boarded. I’m waiting for the chronotrace to catch up to give you the closest location. Adan’s team entered on level five. That’s as far as it’s gotten. Start heading that way and I’ll give you an update as soon as I can pin it down more precisely.”

  Gavin ground his teeth together. Five levels down and five levels back up meant it would be that much harder to get them out. But at least he had something to go on.

  Unfazed by the two span drop to the floor, Gavin launched himself into the perforation made by the tunneler. His bioseine enhanced reflexes kicked in, causing him to tumble gracefully when he hit the floor and then spring to his feet. No one was present in the hallway below, but piles of white clothing, all that remained of several somatarchs, lay in quiet heaps on the floor, evidencing Raif’s handiwork. Gavin touched the oscillathe he had on his belt, hoping he would not have to use it as well.

  “Hey, Raif, Where are you?” Gavin spoke into the emptiness, his extractor sending his voice out across the Sentient audio channel.

  “I’m on level five, still trying to clear a path to Cade. They must be scanning for pallium generators because I’ve had to fight somatarchs on every level just to get here.” Raif sounded winded.

  “Sit tight if you can. I’m headed your way. I might be able to help.” Gavin set off down the passage.

  “Okay, I suppose two guns are better than one. I’ll keep your seat warm,” Raif said. “Unless they send more hollow heads out to get me. Then I may have to jam.”

  The layout of the Persepolis was the same as the Maven. The safest way to get to level five undetected would be to travel through the maintenance conduits running between the various levels and on the outside of the ship.

  Stopping at the white plastic door at the end of the hall, Gavin flicked on his cutter glove and made himself an opening.

  Beyond the doorway he grabbed onto the maintenance rungs running along the curved space between the outer hull and the rest of the ship. He started his descent at once, passing several of the excess vents to the outside on his way down. He was just passing the shaft leading back into the ductwork between levels four and five when Halerin’s voice came into his mind through the extractor.

  “Gavin, it’s too late. I’m not sure what they plan on doing to Sierra or Tarn, but they’re going to wipe Adan’s mind with an articulator,” Halerin said, anxiously.

  Gavin nearly slipped from the rung at the unexpectedness of the message.

  “Wait, what room? What level?”

  “Gavin, you have to get off that ship. They’re tracking you. They know where you are. They know where Raif is. Both of you have to get out of there now.”

  “But we can’t leave Cade and Adan. We can handle these—” Raif interjected.

  “They’re sending a team of assessors after the both of you and Xander is leading it. This is your last chance to get out before they reach your position.”

  Gavin hung suspended between two rungs of the ladder. If Halerin was right, then there wasn’t any way to save Adan, Cade, or any of the others. But if the Devs really did know where they were, there wasn’t much chance of him or Raif escaping either.

  “Halerin, thank you for that information,” he said, resuming his descent. “But I think our best chance out of this is to stand and fight.”

  “I’m with you,” Raif said. “Kick the door down or choke on the lock. Either way, we won’t go quietly.”

  “Gavin, Raif, I completely disagree with your decisions,” Halerin said desperately. “Don’t throw your lives away like this. You could still—”

  “Maybe if there was a way out, we’d try it, but even if we get off the ship, they’ll just track us down. This is the way it has to be.” Gavin said.

  Halerin was quiet for several moments. “Very well,” he said at last. “I may not agree with it, but I respect your decision. I should inform you, then, that we’ve already started receiving refugees. We’ve taken in over fifty so far. The Maven will soon have to take off, so if you do survive, it’s unlikely there will be a ship for you to return to. Whatever happens, I want both of you to know that I admire you tremendously. It has been an honor knowing and working with you. Maven, out.”

  With that the audio channel went silent.

  Twenty-Three

  Jettisoned

  Raif’s jagged grin flashed in the corridor outside the prison block. Though Gavin was panting, still recovering from his headlong run, Raif sauntered towards him as if they had casually bumped into each other on board the Maven.

  “Glad you could drop by.” Raif squeezed Gavin’s shoulder with his free hand. In his other he held a shiny oscillathe pistol.

  “You’re a hard man to track down,” Gavin said, and then got serious. “So we probably have less than a microslice before they arrive.”

  “Relax, I’ve got this one. You just watch my back and get any I miss.”

  Gavin pulled out his own oscillathe. “You have a plan?”

  Raif reached into a pouch on his belt and pulled out a black disc and a small metal bead. “Don’t you know it. Round things. A somatarch’s greatest weakness. They like everything straight and squared at the corners. They can’t handle my curves.”

  T
he black disc was a contingency trigger and Gavin had a hunch about the ball. “Is that what you used to fool the Collective ships?”

  Raif’s grin widened. “It’s called a mendax generator. This little combo has served me pretty well so far. Let’s just hope it gets us through one more time. Wait here.”

  He ran down the hallway into the middle of a T-intersection and flicked the ball up to where the ceiling met the wall and it stuck fast. Setting the black trigger on the floor just around the corner, he hurried back to join Gavin.

  “Ready?”

  “I’m not sure that Xander and the assessors will be so easy to fool,” Gavin commented.

  “I guess we’ll find out.”

  Within a few moments the sound of distant footsteps rumbled down the hallway. Gavin and Raif could not take cover in the passage they were in, but that wouldn’t matter if the Collective forces were using oscillathes. The two men stood in the middle of the hallway about equal distance between the intersection and the closed metal portal leading into the prison block.

  Gavin focused his thoughts on the door behind them. “What’s stopping them from sending another force from inside the prison?”

  “Oh, don’t worry. I took the door off system for a bit. Should hold long enough for us to wipe the floor with these hollows and be on our merry way.”

  The thud of booted footsteps grew louder. Soon Gavin could feel the vibrations in the floor. Two projections appeared in the middle of the intersection. They looked exactly like Gavin and Raif, down to the drops of sweat on Gavin’s brow.

  “Not bad, eh?” Raif beamed.

  “I’m far more handsome in real life,” Gavin remarked.

  Raif shook his head. “Next time you get your brain reworked, have them put in a sense of humor.”

  The duplicate images took off running down the hallway in opposite directions. Though the images lacked any definitive substance, the sound of their feet pounding the metal floor rang through the hallway in believable fashion, the auditory information projecting into the bioseines of anyone within range.

  “Where did you find the time to invent all these things?” Gavin asked.

  “Coming from you that’s pretty funny. I actually copied the projection technique from the chronotrace. I just tweaked it a bit to make it show something false instead of something real. I’m surprised that it actually worked. I have a million more ideas where this came from. Kind of like someone else I know.”

  “We need to talk when we get back to the Maven,” Gavin replied.

  A group of ten somatarchs rounded the corner of the intersection. The first five or so took off running after the false images and Gavin indulged himself with a silent cheer.

  Then the other five appeared, but instead of following the projections, they rounded the corner and headed towards the real Gavin and Raif. Their momentum carried them right into the path of the contingency trigger. The passage lit up with a brilliant burst of white light and a muffled whisper drifted through the hallway. When the light faded, the only things that remained were clattering guns and suits of white clothing, spiraling towards the ground.

  “That takes care of another patrol of hollow heads,” Raif declared.

  “But what about the assessors and Xander?”

  The sound of footsteps still resonated down the connected hallway, though the number was fewer and the pace had slackened.

  A black ball the size of Gavin’s fist rolled into the middle of the intersection from the direction of the incoming forces. It hit the wall and exploded into another, smaller burst of white light. The sounds of the fleeing mendax phantoms went away, replaced by the synchronized marching of the returning somatarchs.

  “They disabled the generator.” Raif’s thoughts turned this way and that, trying to think of what to do next. “We have to do something before the somatarchs get back. Let’s take out whoever tossed that disruptor.”

  Gavin grabbed Raif by the shoulder and pulled him back. “Halerin said they’re tracking us. They’ll know when we’re in range.”

  “So we fire first,” was Raif’s succinct reply.

  “But they could be assessors.”

  “I don’t want to kill anybody either, but do we really have a choice?”

  Gavin squeezed his oscillathe. Raif was right. They weren’t getting out of this without a fight. “I suppose they won’t be expecting a counterattack.”

  “Look,” Raif went on. “If they do fire on us, there’s no reason both of us should go down.”

  “They won’t kill a memorant.”

  “They tried to kill Adan once,” Raif reminded him. “Look, either way, I don’t see why both of us need to risk our necks. If anyone’s going to flame out it should be me. You’ve got a better shot of getting out of this than I do.”

  “No, I’ve got this,” Gavin pulled up his sleeve, revealing a nondescript, segmented black band. “Malthus gave it to me. It projects some sort of dispersion shield, but it’s better than any shielding technology I’ve come across. It’s able to modulate and protect from almost any weapon.”

  “Even oscillathes?”

  “Yes, though I never had time to actually test it. I would have made one for everyone, but I haven’t had time to reverse engineer it and figure out how it works.”

  “You’re just full of sur—” Raif’s thought was cut short by the appearance of a floating black sphere in the intersection. It whipped around the corner and headed straight for them.

  It came so fast, they didn’t even have time to run.

  “A contingency probe!” Gavin barely got the thought out before a dozen white neutralizer beams arced towards them. Several hit each of them, dropping Raif instantly, but fizzling harmlessly in the sudden shimmer which enveloped Gavin.

  Gavin’s cutter glove blaze yellow and he charged the shiny black probe, slicing it neatly in two.

  The sounds of the returning somatarchs reverberated down the hall. Their white forms came into view, but they were still at least a hundred paces away.

  Gavin ran back towards Raif, but a voice from behind stopped him in his tracks.

  “You’ve got some intriguing technology if you can withstand a neutralizer blast from a probe,” Xander said, standing in the intersection with three gray robed assessors. He himself wore a plain brown jumper. The three assessors had oscillathe rifles trained on him. Their range was much greater even than Gavin’s modified pistol. Xander appeared to be unarmed.

  The oscillathe blasts would not hurt Gavin. At least he was fairly certain they wouldn’t. But they would kill Raif.

  “We’ve tried bringing you in peacefully,” Xander went on. “Don’t force me to destroy a perfectly good memorant.”

  Xander was bluffing. He would never kill another memorant. He was just waiting for reinforcements.

  Gavin backpedalled until he was standing just over Raif. He could jolt him awake with his gloves, but then what? The somatarchs would reach the intersection any moment.

  It only took a moment for Gavin to make his decision. “Sorry, my friend,” he said, looking down at Raif. Gavin turned on his heel and sprinted down the hallway.

  “After him!” Xander shouted. At that moment the somatarchs arrived. They quickly passed the assessors and began gaining on Gavin.

  He reached the first connecting hallway just in time to beat a second force of somatarchs to the intersection, but they caught him a few steps past it. They bowled him over, but he activated the dispersion band and his hand glowed red. He sliced backwards, cleaving through two somatarchs with one motion. They fell instantly dead to the floor. The other four jumped him, heedless of his glowing hand and all of them fell, dismembered and mutilated to the floor.

  But the fight, brief as it was, had allowed another group of three contingency probes to appear in the intersection. They lit into him this time not with neutralizer blasts, but with locus pulser fire. They were actually trying to kill him!

  His multi-colored screen shielded him from the attacks,
but the dispersion band pulsed on his wrist afterwards and sent a warning to his bioseine.

  “Shields reduced thirty percent. Approximately five microslices before full recharge.”

  What? This thing had a limit? Maybe it wasn’t as different from conventional shields as he thought. But if they knew about the dispersion band, maybe they weren’t trying to kill him after all. Maybe they were just trying to reduce his shields. Either way, he had to get out of there.

  He charged the mindless probes and sliced them into scrap with his cutter. The other group of somatarchs was by now only fifty paces away.

  As Gavin turned and ran again, he fumbled around in his pouches and jacket for anything that might help him. His fingers brushed against a few viand nutrient patches, a tube of almamenth, a spare bismine crystal, a pair of lentes, and the altitude capsule, but nothing useful. If only he had another trigger like Raif’s, or even a disruptor pellet.

  A hissing sound signaled the opening of a door up ahead. How had he missed it? Two assessors stepped out. These were not armed with oscillathes, but long sleek locus rifles. They lit into Gavin with repeater fire, sucking his shields down.

  But Gavin refused to use his oscillathe on the assessors. He kept charging, his prismatic screen absorbing hit after hit.

  The dispersion shield was down eighty percent by the time he got in range to put them down with two neutralizer blasts from his gloves.

  “Fifteen microslices to full charge,” the bands told him.

  He could not take another round of that.

  The somatarchs were within twenty paces now.

  As he passed the door, it hissed shut and the sound jostled loose an idea. The altitude canister. Such devices had been known to malfunction when punctured, releasing all of their fuel in a short amount of time and sending whoever was using it plummeting to their death. But as the fuel ejected, it caused the device to generate tremendous lateral force from where it was punctured. At the end of the hallway was one of the maintenance shafts Gavin had used to crawl through the ship unnoticed. If he hit it at high enough speed, he would burst through the flimsy plastic door at the end of the hallway and fall down the shaft and out through the trash vents and then…well, the praxis had been floating about fifteen spans off the ground so it might end up very badly for him, but he had his bioseine to repress the pain.