“I think we should get out of here. And then, after we're in space, ask the others to help power the transfer under our direction—if they're willing to do it that way. That's as far as I'm willing to go!” the woman who'd been a heavy cruiser's XO answered without hesitating. “Sorry, Linc, but you don't know what you're talking about. And I do."
The Morthan man nodded, accepting both Rachel's advice and Ewan's decision based upon it. Then he took his station. Everyone who was qualified for starship duty must have a station, for this bare-bones launch.
“How were you planning to do this without any Misties at all helping you, anyway?” Dan Archer asked his old friend, as the SHIP exited its subterranean berth without needing a physical gap in the dirt and rock above it, and then took to the air. Rising on its antigravs, and....
Shuddering and then hovering, like a moored balloon rising to the end of its tether. Which made Ewan swear, and his Mistie-paired crew members shudder right along with their SHIP.
“They're trying to hold us back, aren't they? The ones we're leaving behind. So much for hoping they'll really help us, if they get the other SHIPs aloft!” Casey and Romanova looked at each other, and then the Morthan man addressed his stepson again.
“Yes. And our own ‘Misties’ are having all they can do to keep those bastards from crashing us!” Ewan grated, helpless and hating it, and sounding (although he usually didn't) very much like his mother. “If more join ‘em, Linc, we're sunk."
“Who do we have who's not caught up in that?” Romanova watched the Mistie-paired crew members within her sight, and knew her firstborn was right. She also knew that they didn't have long to break this off, before those who were holding the line now would become exhausted. By which time the other SHIPs would have crews on board ... and then what would happen?
“We've got us. And them.” Linc answered her, whether or not she'd directed her question at him. He indicated the three Fralick brothers. “And the kids, of course. That's it!"
“Then we'll have to find a way to do it. I know you and Cash are both second-wave Morthans, love, and that means you're not able to initiate contact with other telepaths’ minds. But someone's got to reach beyond the Misties who're fighting us. Someone's got to find reinforcements, Misties who'll listen to what we're trying to do and give us their help.” She was asking him to attempt what he hadn't tried to do in years, because he'd learned long ago that he wasn't capable of it. Asking him for what she knew he couldn't give—but she was right. At least he had to try!
“Okay,” Casey said, not even mentioning young Cash. He gathered himself, made sure his flight harness was secured, and closed his eyes.
Katy joined him. Not physically, but mentally. And as he reached out, seeking other Morthans because that seemed like the natural point of contact (as it would have been, of course, for a first-wave member of his mother's species), she asked him through their silent and practiced link, Why not go for the Misties we've talked to like this before? The same way we did it when the Warden was helping us?
Why not, indeed? Casey altered his focus, and reached again. Not letting himself think about all the times he'd tried to do this in boyhood, with his cousins mocking him for his helplessness; or about his fellow Morthan cadets (all of them prospective medics, of course!) at the Academy, later on. Or about any of the occasions since, when someone expected him to do what to others of his kind came naturally—but wasn't even possible for him. He'd been able to communicate mind-to-mind, unaided, with three beings only before now. His mother, until she gradually severed the powerful early tie between them. Katy, after years of being her closest friend and constant professional companion. And, because he'd shared thoughts with Katy while she carried the child, Madeleine. But now he must try to find other beings’ minds, with only the very Human Katy to aid him—and somehow, he must succeed. He simply had to do this, even though he knew full well that he couldn't.
Just show them. Don't try to use words, love. Just picture, and feel, what we're trying to do. And why. Katy reminded him of what he hadn't thought about before, although he probably should have. Of being an infant, since Morthans—unlike Humans—could recall that time in their lives. Could, in fact, recall attaining consciousness within their mothers’ wombs, and being born. He remembered cuddling wordlessly to Kalitha's mind, and not needing more than images and emotions to express himself, or to understand her. And touching Maddy's mind, decades later, while his stepdaughter still lay hidden inside Katy's body.
His wife was right. This way he had a much better chance of doing what he'd set out to do. He focussed now on two things only. On Cloud-Folk (as he'd called them then) whom he and Katy had touched together—fourteen years earlier, and four hours ago, too. And on picturing this SHIP where he and the others wanted it to be. First in space, outside of Mistworld's star system; and then in the same place relative to Mistworld, with the system itself back where they'd come from ... just yesterday?
Yes. Just that short a time ago, they'd been in another galaxy where Narsai still was. Narsai and Mortha, Claymore and Farthinghome, and Kesra. Sestus 3, Sestus 4, New Orient, Terra, and all the other planets of what used to be the Commonwealth. Where Maddy was, and (Linc didn't doubt, although he realized Katy still held out hope otherwise) where her grandparents were no longer alive to take care of her.
He wanted to go back there. Katy wanted it far more than he did. And, because there they'd been able to exist unencumbered by bodies, he soon learned that the Mistworlders to whom he was communicating the image wanted it more than any mere mortal possibly could.
Was it the wanting, the desperate longing, that helped him get through to them? He didn't know what did it, but he knew beyond doubting when it happened at last.
From the SHIP around him he perceived a wave of relief, and the handful of minds fighting to keep the ancient spacecraft from falling back to the surface felt the resistance against them easing. After that came joy, as the SHIP soared aloft. As Ewan Fralick felt its controls responding again, and then....
Casey opened his eyes to see not just Mistworld on the viewscreen, but the planet's whole star system. With all of its inhabitants, except those too young to host (and therefore also too young to participate in this process), pouring power into its teleporters. The one on this SHIP, and those on the other, still grounded SHIPs, too.
He and Katy must focus that power. Together, they pictured the stars as they'd often seen them from Mistworld. Mistworld in its proper place in the universe ... proper, that was, as far as the planet's current inhabitants were concerned. Those whose bodies, eons ago, could not withstand such a transition; and those whose flesh had already withstood it once, and could again.
“NOW!” Ewan Fralick roared.
Linc's consciousness wavered, and then dropped out from under him. Dumped him unceremoniously into the deepest, blackest, and emptiest void imaginable, and left him there. Without first letting him see if the great effort, with all those thousands of minds behind it, had succeeded or failed.
* * *
Chapter 27
“It worked, Linc. We're back where we belong. So's the Mistworld star system.” Catherine Romanova spoke to her husband, using her voice as well as her thoughts, while she sat with his body slumped against hers for support and his head on her shoulder. She was fully conscious. Ewan, Bryce, and Marcus were, too; and so was Cash Nah Trang. And, of course, Katy's three tiny grandchildren. Paula Kane, Ewan Archer, and Lincoln Archer were all yelling at full volume over the comm system from the compartment where young Cash had taken them, and right now their grandmother felt very much like joining in. Because if they'd succeeded in transitioning SHIP and star system back to the galaxy where both belonged, but at the cost of doing permanent harm to the man she loved, Katy Romanova was going to have a hellishly hard time living with that outcome.
After a time he groaned. Katy was aware, vaguely, of the others—Dan and Rachel, Nadja Nah Trang and Astin Fort—waking up, and starting to move aroun
d. She knew that Ewan had brought the SHIP about, and that they were headed back into the system from which they'd come. But all her attention, now, belonged to Linc. Who was alive, and not (as she'd briefly feared) burned out by the intensity of what all those other minds had worked through him to accomplish.
So why wasn't he regaining consciousness, as the others already had? Katy leaned over him, pressed her cheek against his hair, and closed her eyes so she could tune everything else out. So she could join with him as she'd done so many other times; the two of them, now, by themselves again.
No. Not quite by themselves, after all. She felt Maddy there, and knew that this time it was happening without other and more psychically powerful minds to provide Linc's with “boost.” She felt desperation and terror, triumph and gladness, coming from her daughter in equal measures; and as she reached back, she and Linc working together as one, she saw two images in the young girl's mind.
Farren Kourdakov, lying dead in incongruous heroism. Narsai gone dark, and plunged into turmoil.
* * * *
The Marine Corps boat carrying out Ambassador Paré's final order lasted only long enough to blast the master power relay before the Star Service vessel commanded by Lucien Douglas blasted the boat, in turn. Vaporizing it, which was probably a much better fate for those aboard than falling into the hands of Narsatians whose world depended on that relay for so much.
Councilor Madeleine Romanova, standing in the assembly hall (or ballroom, or banquet room) at the Terran Embassy, rubbed her streaming eyes in the wake of the flash that made it through with near-blinding brightness despite the display's limitations. She wondered why the hall's lights flickered, with the Embassy still on its own auxiliary power system. She didn't wonder why the screen itself went dead. After a surge like that, it could hardly do otherwise.
Cousin Johnnie burst through the hall's inner doorway before she lost the ghostly retina-burned image of the relay's destruction. He asked, “Did it happen the way Paré threatened, Maddy?"
“What?” She'd heard no threat. But then, she had remained here after taking control of the captured embassy. While Johnnie, she remembered as if it had happened a lifetime ago instead of more like five minutes, followed Paré and the Ambassador's armed escort to the room that not long ago was the Romanov family's prison.
“She said that if the relay went, it was going to generate a surge that would blow out everything on Narsai. Did that happen? Does anyone know?” Johnnie raised his powerful voice, one accustomed to shouting across the Farmstead's reaches, and aimed the words at everyone still alive inside the banquet hall.
The viewscreen was gone, but the audio commlink burbled back to life in the silent moment that followed Romanov's bellow. “This is Narsai Control,” announced a feminine voice. “Shannandore Neilsen. My supervisor's dead, and so's our main panel. But this backup seems to be working—who's hearing me? Please respond."
Maddy slapped the pickup, joyfully. “Madeleine Romanova at the Terran Embassy!” she answered. “What used to be their embassy, I mean. I guess I'll be acting as senior chair councilor until things get sorted out."
“This is Tania Alleluyeva, captain of the SHIP that just arrived in system,” came another voice, calm but puzzled. “Did your power grid go, along with that main relay? I was told by one of my Morthan people that would happen, but I'm seeing some lights on your planet's night side."
“This is Lucien Douglas on the Europa. Nice to have you, Captain!” The young officer who'd been left in a situation similar to Maddy Romanova's own, when Admiral Benedon's battle group fell to the gen mutiny, spoke up with relief in his voice. “What was your rank, by the way, when you were—well—alive, before?"
Alleluyeva laughed. She said, “I was a commander. Why?"
“Because in that case, I yield to you. You're senior to me, ma'am, and you're welcome to the job. I've had it long enough, thank you very much."
Maddy shook her head, and then remembered that most of the Mistworld vessels had as their officers people like her three older brothers. Disembodied Star Service folk who'd died at that long-ago battle, walking about now in borrowed flesh. She asked sharply, “Captain, how many lights are you seeing? Where? And can anyone reach the habitats?"
There was a pause. Then the voice from Narsai Control replied, “I'm not Captain Alleluyeva, but I just heard from one of the habitats, Councilor. They need power back on. Now. They were sending on emergency batteries."
“I'd say that's what I'm seeing from orbit, Councilor.” The next speaker was the SHIP's captain. “Islands of light where there's a backup system of some sort on line. As to whether or not there were system blowouts, like your Control center apparently experienced, elsewhere ... I've no way of knowing without contacting the cities and industries individually."
“No more than I have.” Maddy sighed, and pictured all of Narsai's population centers. Its factories, farmsteads, and ranches. What a job that would be, to contact every one of them! She thought for a moment, and then asked with excitement in her voice, “Captain Alleluyeva, does your SHIP have a teleporter?"
“Of course it does, Councilor. Would you like to come up here, and take a look at your world from orbit?” The woman caught the girl's thought immediately, without either being a telepath. “I'll have some of our on-board Misties grab you with it, then. Hold on for just a moment."
Maddy cleared her thoughts. She waited. And then found herself on board a SHIP ... but not the one Alleluyeva commanded.
* * * *
“Maddy! Oh, Maddy.” Katy simply didn't believe it when her youngest child appeared on the SHIP's bridge, desperately though she'd been longing to simply whisk Madeleine away from what was happening on Narsai. She leaped from her flight chair, nevertheless, and snatched the girl into her embrace without giving herself time to worry about how this could happen. She only knew that Maddy was here now, with her, and safe. Headed back toward Mistworld, where they would drop off those who belonged there ... and then what?
“Mum, I have to go back!” Maddy took only a few seconds to return her mother's hug before she pulled away. A Maddy who looked older than when Katy's eyes last saw her, and not just by the actual time that had passed.
“Why?” With part of her mind, Katy reached again for Linc. She heard his voice at the same time she felt his thoughts.
“Sorry, hon,” he said to his stepdaughter, as he got up—with weariness all too plain in the way he moved—and walked across the small distance to where they were. Maddy, and her mother. “You needed us to come there, didn't you? Not bring you here. Well, at least that's actually easier to do! In a way."
“With everyone on the planet helping, Linc, we can move damn near anything damn near anywhere.” Ewan Fralick grinned from the command chair. “Not that I'm part of doing the work, I realize! Mads, how urgent is it? Do we have time to give the folks that will be doing it a breather first?"
His sister shook her head. “Paré had all our leaders called to the Embassy,” she said, clearly trying to figure out how to cram everything she needed to say into the smallest possible number of words. “She wanted Farren and me as the only Councilors, and she had Farren's parents and grandparents as hostages to make us do what she wanted. But she didn't realize she was pushing everybody too far. A lot of people died, including Farren, but we got control of the Embassy. She's dead. The battle group's gone; the gens aboard the big ships mutinied, and the little ships don't have a commander anymore now that gens have done the same thing all over the Star Service and the Inner Worlds. So when the other SHIP came back to help us, Lieutenant Douglas put the little ones left from the battle group under their captain—and the last thing Paré did was get her Marines to blow out our main power relay. The habitats are on emergency life support, and Narsai's whole grid is gone. And Mum, Granma and Granfer...."
“I know,” Katy said gently, believing it now. And putting it aside, so she could deal with it later. Next she directed her voice to the commlink. “Cash, can
you stand those triplets a little while longer? Good. Glad to hear it, because we don't have time to drop you or anyone else off before we transition to Narsai! We can manage it, can't we, Linc? Without waiting?” She turned her face toward her husband's, and ached for the exhaustion she saw etched there. Yet he'd always been willing to give everything he had to protect others, and a Star Service officer's oath to do that didn't end with his years of active service. Or even, as in Linc's case, with the post-retirement retraction of his commission.
“Seems to me we'd better arrive home with an answer to that master power relay's absence, though.” Casey answered her question implicitly, and with a tired smile. “The blown-out stuff on the ground can be fixed, and so can the habitats. But Narsai hasn't the capacity to manufacture a master relay with capacity enough to power an entire planet—no more than it could come up with its own replacement for that comm booster we had to do without for so long. Can we grab one from somewhere else, Maddy? Some world with a backup, that's still operational?"
He was making it sound easy, when he knew it couldn't be. A power relay, after all, couldn't do what Maddy had just done. Couldn't assist him, or anyone else, in finding it and pulling it from where it was, to where he and those helping him wanted it to be. But the thought of habitats operating on emergency life support horrified him as much as it would have any other career star traveler; and he knew that tying into a ship's grid, or setting up solar collectors on each habitat's surface, would be stopgap measures at best. Just ways to buy time, while at least some of the people at risk of dying got off the orbital colonies and down to the planet's surface.
Where they would be able to breathe, at least, without power. Able to keep warm enough to survive, too, on most of Narsai's surface (because even in those regions where it was winter, they could always burn whatever fuel they might find). Yet having the planet's flow of essentially limitless solar energy interrupted meant that its people were going to take a giant step backward, inevitably, unless a substitute for that master relay could be procured. And damn quickly, too.
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