Miz sighed forcibly. It was a sigh that said a lot of things, none of them particularly complimentary about those around her.
“Just, like, get out of the way,” she said, marching over and pushing Loren aside with more force than was strictly necessary.
Cal raised a hand in a calming gesture. “Miz. Honey. Don’t hurt the kid, OK? Ripping her insides out through her throat will not help us figure out what’s wrong with her.”
“Technically, it might, sir,” Kevin pointed out. “You can learn a lot from an autopsy.”
“Well, sure. OK,” Cal conceded. “But unless we can put all the pieces back together again afterward, it’s not going to help get her better, is it? So, Miz, just step back and leave her…”
The words stopped coming when Miz knelt in front of the girl, bringing them both to the same height. She placed a furry hand on Tyrra’s cheek and caressed it gently. Her voice, when it came, was a soft, soothing whisper.
“Hey. Hey, it’s OK. You’re OK.”
Cal and Mech’s eyes met, shared their mutual surprise and asked a few questions of each other, before both men shrugged in response.
Miz brought up her other hand so she was cupping both of Tyrra’s cheeks. She held the girl gently, gazing deep into her black, shark-like eyes. “Can you hear me, kid?” she asked. “We’re going to take care of you, OK? Like, no one is going to hurt you. You’re safe now.”
Something swam in the dark pools of Tyrra’s eyes. Her mouth twitched.
“S-safe?”
“Uh-huh,” Miz confirmed, stroking one of her cheeks with a thumb. It was the most tender and caring Cal had ever seen Miz be with… Well, with anyone. “You’re safe. We got you, kid. No one is going to hurt you.”
Tyrra’s face thawed. That was the best way Cal could think to describe it. The muscles relaxed, just a fraction, and her features went from looking like a photograph to suddenly being alive.
“Safe,” she repeated, and then her mouth opened, her stomach tightened, and a series of powerful retches shuddered through her floating body.
Miz tried to hold on to the girl, but the force of her retching became too violent. She stepped back, the fur on the back of her neck rising as Tyrra thrashed and kicked in the air.
“What’s happening to her?” Miz barked. “What’s going on?”
“Fonked if I know,” said Cal, taking cover behind Mech again.
As he did, an alarm chirped from Mech’s forearm. He studied the scanner, then stumbled back, almost crushing Cal underfoot.
“Ow! Watch it!”
“We got an energy surge,” Mech announced. “Everyone back. She’s gonna blow.”
Miz whirled around. “Blow? What, up?”
“Well, mostly out, I think,” Mech said. “But sure, up too.”
“No,” said Miz. “Make it stop.”
Mech frowned. “How?”
“Well, like, I don’t know! You’re supposed to be the brainy one, or whatever!”
Cal snorted. “He’s the brainy one? Then we’re in bigger trouble than I thought,” he said, then he grinned and raised a hand to receive a high-five from nobody in particular. “Am I right?”
He held the hand there until it was clear everyone was going to leave him hanging, and then lowered it again. Damn. Where was Splurt when he needed him.
“OK, maybe that wasn’t the right time,” he admitted. He pointed at the thrashing Tyrra. “Mech, do something.”
“I already told you, I don’t know what to do!” Mech barked. “This ain’t like anything I’ve ever seen bef—”
Tyrra vomited something out. Or, more accurately, the thing that had been inside Tyrra vomited her off.
She flew several feet backward and flopped to the floor, sobbing and babbling, her smooth gray skin slick with sweat. Miz rushed to the girl’s side, and despite some initial flailing and snapping jaws, quickly surrendered and let Miz pull her into a hug.
Miz’s arms wrapped around the girl’s heaving body, holding her close. She rocked back and forth, whispering, “I got you. I got you,” soothingly in her ear. There was nothing kind or soothing about her gaze, though, as it locked onto the thing that now hovered in the space Tyrra had been occupying.
The thing that had emerged from inside the girl looked almost exactly like a bowling ball, aside from the fact that it was hovering in the center of the room and emitting a pulsing glow that cast a shimmering radiance across the bridge. Size and shape-wise, though, it was more or less bang-on.
The ball cycled through a range of colors. Possibly all the colors, in fact. It ebbed through shades of sunrises and sunsets, of summer skies and of crisp fall leaves. From somewhere—not in his ear, nor in his head, but somewhere even deeper—Cal heard the sound of distant whale song.
Eventually, the color scheme settled on half a dozen shades of green and cycled so slowly between them that it was almost impossible to notice each change.
Cal whistled quietly. “I have puked up some crazy shizz in my time,” he mumbled. “But this beats all of it.”
He gave this a little more thought.
“Well, most of it.”
He took a shuffled step closer and peered into the ball’s brilliant glow. Despite its brightness, it didn’t hurt his eyes, or leave even a whisper of an imprint on them when he blinked. As he stared at it, he could swear he felt it stare back at him, too.
“Is that what I think it is?” he whispered.
Mech nodded slowly, the sensor screen on his arm flooded with data. “Yeah, man. Seems like it.”
Cal smacked his lips together. “OK. Cards on the table? I have no idea what that thing is,” he admitted.
“What? Yeah, you do. Look at it,” said Mech. “You’ve seen it before. You know what that is.”
Cal took a brief recess to rummage around in his memory, then shook his head. “I really don’t,” he said. “A glowy green thing? Is that it? Is it a glowy green thing?”
“No,” said Loren, stepping forward. “I mean, yes, obviously, but…”
She raised a hand. Flecks of green lights gathered like baby fireflies around her fingertips and tickled across her palm.
“It’s the Sentience,” she whispered. “This thing is the Symmorium Sentience.”
Loren looked back over her shoulder. “Tyrra wasn’t sick,” she explained. “She’d swallowed a god.”
Cal cocked his head. “Shizz. You’re right. Now I remember it.” He frowned. “Is it just me, or did it get smaller?”
Mech grunted. “Well, considering they had to build a fonking space station to contain it last time, yeah. Yeah, I’d say it got smaller.”
“But it’s friendly, right?” Cal asked. “I mean, we saved it’s life before. It has to be on our side.”
The light from the Sentience pulsed, becoming blindingly, blisteringly bright. The faint whining of the Untitled’s engines spluttered into silence. One by one, the ship’s lights clunked off, until only the shimmering aura of green remained.
Cal’s eyes darted around them. When he spoke, his breath came as a cloud of white vapor.
“Or, you know, maybe not.”
Eight
“What do we do?” Cal asked, his voice muffled by the darkness. And, to a greater extent, by his own fist, which he was anxiously gnawing on as he shuffled from foot to foot.
The temperature inside the bridge had plummeted. Swirls of frost bloomed on every metal surface and misted the viewscreen. Cal hugged himself and wriggled his toes inside his socks, trying to keep warm.
“I got no idea,” replied Mech. His own towering frame was developing the same delicate icy patterns as every other metal thing in the room. He ran a finger down his chest, leaving a trail that quickly frosted over again.
“K-Kevin, can you p-put the heating on?” Cal asked, shivering.
Kevin didn’t respond.
“Kevin? You there?” Cal asked, the fog of his breath a luminous green in the glow of the Sentience. “H-hello?”
Loren backed up to her console and tapped a couple of keys. “Controls are dead,” she announced. “I guess Kevin’s down, too.”
“It killed Kevin!” Cal yelped. “Th-that thing k-killed Kevin!”
He gave a nod of encouragement. “Get it, Mech.”
Mech scowled. “What?”
“Go get it. Show that f-fonk who’s b-boss.”
“Uh, no,” said Mech. “It’s a god. I ain’t taking on no damn god.”
“I will,” Miz hissed. She moved to get up, but Tyrra clung to her and sobbed into her fur, forcing her to stay on the floor.
“What if we all rush it at once?” Cal suggested. “And b-by ‘us all,’ I mostly mean Mech.”
“Already told you, man. Ain’t happening. It’s too powerful to fonk with.”
“Assertion: Rejected.”
The voice of the Symmorium Sentience did not enter their heads via the traditional method. In many ways, it didn’t enter their heads at all. It felt more like the words were exiting their heads, like they’d been there inside them the whole time and were only now making themselves known.
“My power has left me,” the voice continued. “My end is imminent. Soon, I shall share the same fate as the Symmorium. As my children.”
The next word rose as a bubble of fear inside the heads of everyone listening.
“Extinction.”
“S-sorry to hear that, you’re S-Sentienceness,” Cal said. “But do you think you m-might turn the heating up just a smidgeon? K-kind of fr-freezing my butt off here.”
“Assertion: Rejected,” replied the Sentience. “I have no control over this vessel’s systems.”
“Well, you managed to s-switch it all off without t-too many problems,” Cal pointed out.
Loren prodded at a few more keys, then thumped a fist on the console. “I don’t think the systems are damaged. They’re just rebooting.”
“C-can they reb-boot faster?” Cal wondered, bouncing from foot to foot and hugging himself tightly. “Like bef-f-fore I f-freeze to d-death?”
Loren brushed a thin layer of ice from her chair, then sat in it. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Cal managed a single thumbs-up, then went back to hugging and slapping himself to encourage his blood to keep circulating.
“You claim to know me,” spoke the Sentience. “You claim to have saved me once.”
Cal’s head bobbed up and down. Little flakes of frost fell from his eyebrows. “We d-did.”
“Assertion: Rejected,” said the Sentience. “I do not know you. We have not met.”
“W-we have.”
“Assertion: Impossible,” insisted the Sentience. “My power is faded, but my knowledge remains. You are new to me. You are unknown.”
Cal shrugged, but his body was trembling so violently that it was impossible to tell. “T-time sh-sh-shizz,” he offered in explanation. “D-different t-time l-lines, and holy fonk, it is cold!”
“Almost got it,” Loren said.
“I must investigate,” said the Sentience. “Do I have your permission?”
“S-sure. Wh-whatever. Go for i-it.”
“Assertion: Appreciated,” replied the Sentience, then Cal yelped in terror when it came streaking through the air toward him.
It hit him in the face, but while Cal had valiantly tried to brace himself for the impact, there wasn’t one. Instead, he coughed and gagged as the bowling ball-sized orb forced itself into his mouth, stretching and elongating as it slithered down his throat.
“Heimlich! Heimlich!” Cal rasped, for the second time in as many hours. Before anyone could jump to help him, though, the Sentience passed down through his throat and plopped into his stomach.
Cal stumbled back, tearing open the front of his shirt to get a better look. The skin there was tinged faintly green, like an anemic Incredible Hulk. The Sentience churned unpleasantly through his guts, and while Cal’s first instinct was to shove two fingers down his throat and vomit the fonker back up, the warmth that radiated from it felt like absolute bliss in the coldness of the bridge. Even if it did kind of make him want to pee himself.
And then, the warmth became more than something physical. It no longer filled Cal’s body, it filled his head. Filled his spirit. Filled his soul. He saw nothing and saw everything, both at the same time. He knew things he couldn’t know, shouldn’t know, and would completely forget in a handful of seconds. He learned all there was to learn as all the thoughts and knowledge of the Symmorium Sentience flooded him from top to bottom.
And not just its knowledge, its feelings, too. All its love, all its pain, all its loss, and sorrow, and joy, and fear, all thrashing around inside him.
He coughed, hacked, then crashed backward onto the floor, the taste of the Sentience still fresh on his tongue. If he’d had to describe it, he’d have said it tasted like old batteries. And, in keeping with most things, a bit like chicken.
“What the fonk?” he wheezed, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “What did you do that for?”
The Symmorium Sentience was hanging in the air again, its colors pulsing, Cal’s gastric juices evaporating off it as threads of steam.
“You gave permission,” the Sentience said.
“Not to fonking violate me!” Cal protested. Mech offered him a hand and helped him to his feet. The cyborg’s metal frame was now almost completely frost-free.
“Hey, the lights are on,” said Cal, looking around the bridge.
Loren was standing by her console, which was back to being lit up like a Christmas tree. The viewscreen was back on, although still too fogged up to see through it clearly. The stars weren’t moving, though, so Cal assumed the ship wasn’t, either.
Cal glanced to the ceiling. “Kevin, you back with us, buddy?”
“Mostly, sir,” Kevin replied. “Some of my databanks are still rebooting, so I may not be as much use to you as I usually am.”
“Jesus, I can’t even imagine what that would look like,” Cal muttered.
“Sorry, sir?”
“Nothing, Kevin. Good to have you back with us,” Cal said. “Do we have engines?”
“Not yet, sir. I shall endeavor to bring them online at the earliest possible.”
Cal waited.
“Earliest possible what?”
“Sorry, sir. I think that word must be on one of the databanks that haven’t yet fully rebooted,” Kevin explained. “I’m sure, based on context, you can fill in the.”
Cal waited.
“Blanks?” he guessed.
“Hmm?”
“Fill in the blanks?”
“If you say so, sir.”
Cal shook his head, choosing not to get any more involved in the conversation than he already was. He looked over to Miz, who was now sitting in one of the guest chairs, with Tyrra propped up against her. “You guys OK?”
Miz glanced up from the girl, nodded once, shot the Sentience a positively evil look that, god or not, made Cal fear for its safety, then she turned her attention back to Tyrra.
“Right. So, we’re all good. Ish,” Cal said. He gestured to the Sentience. “And what about you? You get what you need in there?”
“Assertion: Accepted,” said the Sentience. “Though I do not know you, you know me. You all know me. You were friends, when I needed you most. You saved me.”
The voice sounded weaker, like the effort of burrowing through Cal’s innards had taken even more of a toll on the Sentience than it had on Cal.
“Save me again,” it said, its voice pleading.
Miz hissed out a mirthless laugh. “Save you? Like, no way. You were totally killing this poor kid.”
“Assertion: Rejected,” the Sentience said. “Tyrra is of the Symmorium. One of my children. The last, I fear. We sustain each other. We were attempting to return to my point of origin, that my power might return. That I might fully restore the Symmorium.”
“Restore the Symmorium?” asked Cal. “You mean, like, bring them back?”
The Sentience pulsed fa
intly in response.
“Help me. Please,” it said, its voice cracking with emotion that they all felt, rather than heard. “Save me, as you saved me once before. Help me restore the Symmorium.”
“How?” asked Loren. “Where do we need to take you?”
“I… do not remember,” the Sentience said. “I have forgotten.”
The orb fell silent. Cal sucked in his bottom lip, then spat it out again. “Well, that was careless,” he said.
Then, before he could say anything else, something flashed on the misted-up screen. Another something flashed close to it a moment later, followed by a third.
“What’s that?” Cal wondered.
“Shizz. Ships,” said Loren, checking her screen. “Incoming ships dropping out of warp.”
“Are they nice ships?” asked Cal, more hopefully than experience told him he had any real right to be.
“Zertex,” said Loren. “They must’ve tracked us somehow.”
“Since when could they track a ship going at warp speed?” Mech asked.
“It’s EDI technology, sir. From Earth,” Kevin said. “Rather clever, really. Zertex simply reverse-engineered it.”
“Ha! From Earth,” said Cal. He grinned at Mizette. “Still think Mech’s the brainy one? Earth invented that thing.”
“But, like, you didn’t invent it,” Miz pointed out.
“Not me personally, maybe, but I’m from Earth, so… You know. It was kind of me.” He gave Mech a consolatory pat on the back. “Better luck next time, big guy.”
Miz rolled her eyes and tutted. Beside her, Tyrra’s cries had fallen into a sort of shocked mute silence, broken only occasionally by the odd throaty sob.
“Zertex ships locking weapons, sir,” Kevin announced.
Cal groaned. “Damn it. On us?”
“On us, sir, yes,” Kevin confirmed.
“Who the fonk else would they be locking weapons on?” Mech grunted.
“Indeed, sir. I did rather think that was something of a given.”
Cal gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “OK, OK, it was a long shot, I’ll give you that. Do we have engines yet?”
“Still working on it, sir.”
“Shizz. Shields?”
Space Team- The Collected Adventures 4 Page 38