Lucien felt a growing sense of bewilderment and despair as he watched the Faros cheer. This couldn’t have already happened. The Polypus was showing him the future, or at least a possible future.
Lucien felt a comforting warmth spreading through him with that thought, as if to confirm it.
We’re not going to let this happen, Lucien said. He felt another flash of warmth from the Polypus, and the scene faded to a new one. He saw a vast fleet of hundreds of starships floating in space with nothing around them, and barely enough light from the nearest sun to illuminate their shining silver hulls. Those mirror-smooth, highly-reflective hulls were a trademark of Etherian starships. The lost fleet, Lucien thought, marveling at the sight. As he watched, the ships vanished, having engaged some type of cloaking shields.
Lucien shook his head at that, but again he felt no movement to accompany the gesture. We need to get to that fleet, he thought. We have to take it back to Etheria so the Faros can’t find it.
Another flashed of warmth. The Polypus seemed pleased with that idea.
The scene of the fleet faded, and back was the blinding white light of the extra-dimensional alien. The light retreated slowly, and once again Lucien saw currents and patterns in the Polypus’s radiance. Once the creature had retreated to about an arm’s length, something small and metallic fell out of it.
Lucien bent to pick it up. He examined it in the light of the creature hovering before him and saw what looked to be a small disc-shaped microchip, no bigger than the tip of his pinky. He rubbed it between his fingers and found that it was flexible, easily deformed into different shapes. It would have been easy to swallow something like that in his food and not notice.
“Looks like they found my tracker,” Lucien said. He turned to find Garek and Addy each examining matching microchips. Brak either didn’t have a tracker or hadn’t bothered to pick his up after the Polypus had extracted it.
Garek snorted and dropped his microchip to crush it under the heel of his boot.
Addy tossed her microchip aside, and Lucien did likewise.
“Did anyone else just experience some kind of vision?” Addy asked.
“Yesss,” Brak hissed. “I see the Faros reach New Earth. I see them round up the Gors and take them away as slavesss.”
“I saw my parents in Etheria,” Addy put in quietly. “The Faros killed them. And everyone else.”
“They showed me Astralis,” Garek put in. “It was surrounded by Faro ships, but then it somehow managed to jump away and escape.”
“I wonder if that’s what actually happened?” Lucien mused.
“What did you see?” Addy asked, nodding at him.
“I saw Abaddon in Halcyon, sitting on Etherus’s throne, and then I saw a city from Etheria. It was in ruins with Faros standing over dead Etherians and cheering.”
They spent a moment trading solemn looks with one another, while the four Polypuses hovered just a few feet away, waiting.
“What does all of it mean?” Addy asked.
“I think they were showing us the future,” Lucien said. “Except for Garek. He might have seen the past.” Lucien turned to the Polypus in front of him. “I’m right, aren’t I?” The creature grew momentarily brighter.
“How do we know if that’s a yes or a no?” Addy asked.
“Good point.” Facing the Polypus, he said, “Yes is brighter. No is darker.”
The Polypus glowed brighter once more.
“So they can predict the future?” Garek asked, sounding skeptical.
Lucien considered that. “If they exist outside of time, or can somehow see the future, it would make them gods.”
“Then maybe they are gods,” Addy said. The creature in front of her glowed darker. “Or not...” Addy amended, glancing at the Polypus.
“Gods or not, their extra-dimensionality makes them a force to be reckoned with,” Lucien said. “Maybe Etherus sent them to guard the lost fleet?” The Polypus in front of him glowed brighter at that.
“What are you?”
“I don’t think that’s a yes or no question,” Garek said.
“They can show us things in our minds,” Lucien replied. “They could explain with pictures. Show us who or what you are,” Lucien suggested, trying not to sound too demanding.
The creature in front of him grew darker.
“I think they’re done with explanations,” Addy said.
Her Polypus glowed brighter.
“Then what are they waiting for?” Lucien asked.
“They want us to decide what we’re going to do about what we saw,” Addy suggested.
Again, her Polypus glowed brighter.
“I told them we wouldn’t let what I saw come to pass,” Lucien said, “that we’d take the fleet back to Etheria to make sure the Faros couldn’t use it.”
All four Polypuses glowed brighter at that, and more of the extra-dimensional aliens came drifting down from the sky, out of the silver-treed forest, and through the seamless black walls of the tower beside them. Now the Polypuses were a dazzling sea of light everywhere Lucien looked.
“I think they like your idea,” Addy said slowly.
“What about Astralis?” Garek asked.
“You saw them escape, right?” Lucien said.
“Right...”
“Then they’re safe for now. We need to return the fleet to Etheria before we go looking for them.”
All of the Polypuses glowed brighter at once, making Lucien’s eyes ache. His faceplate auto-polarized in response.
“And after that? How do we get back to rescue them?” Garek demanded.
“We can ask Etherus to help us,” Lucien suggested. Again the Polypuses glowed brighter.
Garek snorted. “By sending another fleet that could be traced back to Etheria? Sounds like going in circles to me.”
The Polypuses darkened.
“Maybe Etherus will ask New Earth to send a rescue fleet instead,” Lucien said.
The aliens glowed brighter.
“These guys seem to know a lot about what Etherus would and wouldn’t do...” Garek said. “How do we know we can trust them?”
“They saved our lives once,” Lucien pointed out. “And they saved mine twice.”
“Maybe they saved us so we could come here and relieve them of guard duty,” Garek said. “I’m sure extra-dimensional aliens have better things to do than hang around here, waiting for Faros to show up.”
“There’s no way they could have planned for us coming here,” Addy said. “That was Katawa’s doing. And probably Abaddon’s.”
Another flash of brightness from the Polypuses.
“It doesn’t matter how we ended up here, or why,” Lucien decided. “If we don’t take the lost fleet back to Etheria, Abaddon might find it, and then the future we saw will come to pass. There are trillions of lives at stake in Etheria and the rest of the Etherian Empire, and only a few hundred million on Astralis.”
“Fine. You win,” Garek said. He turned in a circle to address the waiting aliens with an open-handed shrug. “So? How do we get to this missing fleet?”
One of the Polypuses bobbed to the fore and dropped something at Garek’s feet. It hit the ground with a thunk, and rolled to a stop at the tip of his left boot. It was a glossy silver ball, just big enough to hold comfortably in one hand.
That done, the Polypuses began swarming back up into the sky, streaming toward the blue-white ball of light at the top of the tower. Lucien watched them go, marveling at how many of them there were. At least a thousand. Probably more.
Garek bent to examine the ball at his feet, but made no move to pick it up.
Lucien walked over to take a look, and Addy and Brak joined him. Soon they were all standing over the device, trying to figure out what it was.
“That must be the key to the gateway,” Addy said.
“You sure about that?” Garek asked, arching an eyebrow at her.
“Pretty sure. What else could it be?”
“If it is a key, then how do we use it? And where is this damn gateway, anyway?” Garek replied.
Lucien reached out to touch the silver ball. As soon as his fingertips grazed the mirror-smooth surface of it, an image flashed into his mind’s eye of him flying up to the top of the tower and throwing the ball into the light source at the center of the underworld. Moments later, the artificial light exploded to a hundred times its size, becoming a shimmering, spherical portal—a window into the bridge of a starship, an Etherian starship, if the familiar glossy white deck and the simulated, dome-shaped viewport above that were anything to go by.
“I know what to do,” Lucien said, and snatched up the silver ball.
“Yeah?” Garek asked, sounding more skeptical than ever. “Did one of your extra-dimensional squid friends whisper something in your ear?
“Follow me,” Lucien said, ignoring Garek’s sarcasm. He triggered his grav boosters at max thrust and shot into the air. Glancing at his sensor display, he noticed the others were flying up after him.
“Where are we going?” Addy asked over the comms.
“Through the gateway to the lost fleet,” Lucien replied, as if that should be obvious. He looked up, keeping his gaze fixed on the blue-white orb of light overhead. The smooth black sides of the tower raced by, faster and faster as he picked up speed.
Thanks to their grav boosters, they didn’t need to get inside that tower to use the key. The Polypuses must have known that, because they hadn’t bothered to show them a way inside.
In a matter of minutes, Lucien reached the top of the tower and stopped to hover directly in front of the artificial moon, but it no longer looked like a moon. Light flowed in rivers from the tops of the two towers, racing in circles to form a swirling vortex. The gravity here was almost non-existent, but Lucien could have sworn he felt a subtle tug pulling him toward the light. He gazed into the vortex, momentarily mesmerized by it.
The others came hovering up beside him.
“Now what?” Addy asked.
Lucien glanced at her, and then threw the silver ball as hard as he could into the vortex. It quickly vanished against the glare.
“What did you do that for?!” Addy screamed.
He had just enough time to question himself, imagining their one and only key to the gateway dropping straight down ten kilometers, and picking up speed on its way to shatter on the castcrete below.
But then the swirling vortex of light rippled, and abruptly expanded to a hundred times its size, just as he’d seen it would do when he’d touched the key. Now a shimmering, translucent skin was all that remained of the artificial moon, giving them a clear view into a giant, spherically-distorted portal. On the other side of that portal lay the bridge of an Etherian starship.
“Well, that’s new,” Garek said, sounding taken aback.
“Yesss...” Brak agreed.
Lucien understood those sentiments perfectly. This wasn’t a quantum junction that would teleport them from one place to another after making the necessary spatial and quantum calculations. It wasn’t even one of the antiquated SLS space gates that the Imperium of Star Systems had left littering the Milky Way before the Sythian invasion.
This was an entirely new technology, a persistent portal from one place to another, a doorway that could be opened and shut at will—just as long as you had the key.
Lucien turned to regard the others. “Ready?”
“On three,” Addy replied.
Lucien flashed her a grin. “On two—one... two!”
And with that, they all boosted straight into the shimmering portal.
Chapter 36
Astralis
The room was utterly dark. Chief Councilor Ellis sat in an armchair beside a real, floor-to-ceiling viewport in the outer hull of Astralis.
And so, too, sat Abaddon.
He’d booked this luxury hotel suite in District One under the guise of showing his support to residents who’d lost their homes and businesses when the Faros’ bomb had ripped a hole in the hull.
Abaddon gazed out the viewport, surveying his kingdom. Countless bright specks of light gazed back at him, but he barely noticed. Most people looked out at space and saw the stars, their eyes drawn to those comforting specks of light, but when Abaddon looked out, all he saw was a vast sea of darkness, gathering to snuff out the light.
Abaddon smiled—or tried to—the corners of his mouth refused to obey, twitching reluctantly as Ellis resisted, but that battle of wills only lasted for a second. He was in control of this body, just as he was now in control of Astralis. In just one day he’d gone from the glorified mouthpiece for Astralis’s bloated representative democracy to its sole ruler.
It was almost depressing how easy it had all been, but Abaddon had to remind himself that the real challenge lay in defeating Etherus—not in subjugating this small band of humans.
Now that Abaddon and his like-minded cohorts were in sole command of Astralis, they could proceed more openly with their plans.
Just over an hour ago, Abaddon had ordered General Graves to head over to Hangar Bay 18, where the Farosien boarding shuttles were being kept; there he had Graves retrieve a portable long-range comms unit from one of the shuttles and deliver it here.
The blocky unit now sat on the table beside his chair, its green status lights glowing—ready and waiting. Faro comms technology was a lot faster than the human variety. Unfortunately, it could still be jammed and detected, so Abaddon had needed to make a few arrangements before using the device.
First, he got Admiral Stavos to turn off Astralis’s outbound comms jamming. Next he’d arranged for a power surge to take down the power in District One, so that his use of the device and the message he sent wouldn’t be detected by Astralis’s comms operators.
Now, with that done, Abaddon was ready to send his message. He turned and activated the comm unit. A holographic control panel sprang to life above the device, and he hurried to enter the coordinates for Mokar. When he was finished, he recorded his transmission.
“Katawa, it’s Abaddon. What news do you have of your search for the lost fleet? I have a brief window to speak without being detected. Do not transmit more than once, and do not send a reply if it will arrive more than an hour after this one.” Abaddon sent the message.
The comm unit estimated the arrival time to be just a little under fifteen minutes. That was remarkable considering the tens of billions of light years between Astralis and Mokar. That feat of near-instant communication wasn’t accomplished by the Faro’s superior technology, but by their application of it.
Abaddon’s message would be relayed to Mokar along the quantanet, a network of relays with pre-calculated connections that provided a hyper-fast solution to interstellar travel and communications in the Farosien Empire. Of course, the quantanet was too dangerous to let just anyone have access to, so Abaddon reserved use of the network to himself and those he personally authorized.
Barely half an hour later, the comm unit chimed with Katawa’s message, and Abaddon queued it for playback. Katawa must have seen his message and replied almost immediately. The little gray alien’s halting voice rippled out of the unit’s speakers moments later.
“Abaddon. The humans became suspicious of me. I was able to strand them in the underworld. They reached the gateway and made contact with the guardians, who then found and removed the humans’ tracking devices just as you predicted. Two of the trackers survived removal, and I was able to detect the opening of the gateway. You were right about that as well. The guardians only attack when they read bad intentions in the minds of those who would use the gate.”
Who needs bad intentions when you’ve got good ones? Abaddon thought, smiling. The road to the netherworld has to be paved with something.
Katawa went on, “I do not understand how this helps you reach the lost fleet, but I have done my part. You will release my people now and grant them full citizenship in the empire. I await news that this has occurred. If it does not happen p
romptly, I will go down to the underworld and warn the guardians myself.”
Abaddon’s lips curled into a sneer at the threat, but he had no intention of reneging on their deal. What did emancipating a few billion slaves matter? There were countless trillions more where they’d come from, and soon he’d have the Etherians to replace them, anyway.
Abaddon hurriedly composed two more messages: one to Katawa, reassuring the spiteful little alien, and another to issue the emancipation order for the Grays, and to request that a ship be sent to Mokar to pick up Katawa.
He sent both messages and then shut off the device. That done, he reclined his chair and folded his hands over his chest. Everything was proceeding according to plan. Now all he had to do was wait for the Etherian Fleet to come to him.
It was a detestably passive plan, but thanks to the mind-reading ghosts guarding the gateway, there was no active way to reach the fleet. Until now, everyone he’d sent after it had been killed—Faros, Elementals, Abaddons, Grays, Mokari... It didn’t matter who he sent, the problem was that he’d sent them, and the guardians of the gate could tell.
This time was different. This time, the people he sent weren’t working for him. Perhaps even more importantly, they were humans, and citizens of the Etherian Empire, so the guardians weren’t suspicious of them.
But that would be their undoing. Abaddon knew Garek well enough from having looked into his mind that he’d use the fleet to come straight to Astralis, and as for Lucien, Abaddon didn’t even need to look into his mind to know what he would do. He knew Lucien as well as he knew himself.
Dark Space Universe (Books 1-3): The Third Dark Space Trilogy (Dark Space Trilogies) Page 52