“You have nothing to worry about, Michael. We are taking every precaution. Protecting you is part of that plan.”
“Huh. No offense, cause I’m sure you’re the top cat at whatever it is you do, but I figure your precautions didn’t do anyone a shitload of good back at the fold.”
Sammie shot Michael a cold glance, but Ophelia nodded.
“I deserve your mockery. Not only did another faction ambush my team, but Augustus Perrone swept in. Trust me, Michael, I want nothing more than to put that humiliation behind me and learn from it going forward. I have taken steps to do just that.”
She placed a finger over her lips and pointed to the landing’s balcony. Ophelia led the two outside. She closed the door behind them and tapped her amp. A cascade barrier blocked the view of the city, similar to the one that barricaded the shuttle parking bay. Michael’s stomach tightened. What now?
“I initiated a sound lock. We are alone.” She took a deep breath. “I have information for your ears only, and it cannot leave this balcony under any circumstances. Once you hear me out, you might reconsider going forward with us.”
Michael nodded. “My heart says you’d best get on with it.”
“Fine. We have a traitor among us, working for Augustus Perrone.”
Sammie took a step back. “What? How?”
“When we met for the first time in the tunnel, you remember how I initiated my stream? Others were watching the historic moment. Some members of my team, plus allies elsewhere. Perrone was not one of them. At least, he was not supposed to be. When he arrived at the fold to ‘save’ us, I realized he had an inside informant. Someone capable of breaking him into my circastream without leaving a signature. It requires a special skillset. Only today, while you were touring the city, did I learn the identity.”
“Who?” Michael demanded.
“No, Michael. No names. If the spy suspects you know, we will be in danger, and my source will be exposed. We need to play this card carefully. It’s more important you realize the threat.”
“Seriously? One of them three is trying to screw us in the ass, and I get to be paranoid about the whole lot of them because why?”
“Because the information the spy provided Perrone has already compromised our next mission. I have a plan in place to protect us. I have no guarantee it will work, but you will have to trust that confronting the spy now will cost lives—including your own.”
“Beautiful.” Michael pulled back on the rage, even as Sammie grabbed his hand and held tight. “So why even tell us?”
“Because you have a choice. Go with us on this mission, and wherever it takes us, or stay on Earth under Samantha’s protection.”
Sammie seemed more shocked than he.
“My protection?” She said. “Are you saying…?”
“Your descendency claim has gone through. Under the Collectorate Ex-Patriot Clause, your full rights as Chancellor have been established. Your gene sweep was conclusive. Access to all Pynn inheritance holdings will be expedited after a final hearing. You will be treated like anyone who has spent her life on an Ark Carrier but returns to Earth. Difference being, you’re already here. I can arrange for your instream ID, amp installation, presidium briefings, property reclamation claims, private tutor programs to bring you up to date on presidium bylaws, and also give you proprietor status.”
“Which means what?” Sammie asked.
“The power to hire your first Solomon.”
Michael was dumbstruck. “Hold the phone right there!”
Sammie held on to Michael even as he tried to push away.
“You said this would take days, at least.”
“I have allies,” Ophelia said. “Almost all outside the military’s power structure. The UG has no jurisdiction in Chancellory citizenship and property administration.”
“Property administration?” Those hairs on the back of his neck reached critical. “Property… like me? Proto-African boy?”
“Michael, please contain yourself. I am presenting you with an option. Samantha is about to become a full-fledged member of the Chancellory. She will become a significant property owner with presidium status. That may mean little to you now, but it might also shield you from the danger you face. If you become a Solomon on her payroll, you can live a comfortable lifestyle.”
“Hold on. You told me I’d probably die if I stayed on Earth. The Chief said about the same thing. What gives?”
“That was before I conceived this plan. You meant nothing to me at the time.” She softened her features. “But Samantha gave me a new insight into you. She knows what you sacrificed to cross the fold. She wants you to have the best start.”
The girl surprised him again. Michael felt like a jerk, but he couldn’t look at Sammie. Instead, he zeroed in on topic No. 1.
“Jamie’s got a mission, and it’s gonna take him… shit, a long way from Earth. I said I’d be with him. We both did. If we stay behind, and I’m Sammie’s hired dude, how am I supposed to live with that?”
Ophelia tapped her amp. The barrier fell along with the sound lock. She pointed inside the extravagant landing.
“Michael, you could live with it quite well. Solomons do. From what I have been told, James is in no danger. In fact, he appears to be in excellent condition. I don’t know what his mission is, but James is a human-Jewel hybrid, and we will fight dangerous battles over him and his kind. People will die. If you and Samantha give up this opportunity and join James on his mysterious mission, you will die. In days, a month, a standard year.” She opened the door. “His struggle does not have to be yours. You have an out, Michael. It is neither cowardly nor a betrayal. But it is a choice, and I will need yours before we leave.”
She left them alone. Michael’s emotions hit overdrive. He looked down and realized Sammie still held his hand.
He saw it in her eyes and in the crook of her smile.
This wasn’t even a choice.
27
The Interdimensional Fold, Ukraine
April 4, 1885
One standard day earlier
R AYNA TSUKANOVA CHARGED TOWARD THE MASSACRE on horseback, her rifle aimed. Five bodies lay ahead, three more several meters beyond, their horses scattered about the open pasture. To her west, the nuclear cloud roiled half-a-mile high like a vicious storm front, tinged brown by expelled Earth as lightning flickered orange and red. She paid no mind to her apocalyptic creation as she jumped from her horse, rifle extended, and examined the bodies. Rayna recognized five Doroshenkos and rejoiced, but triumph morphed into rage as she spotted the colors of her family on the three others.
Observers, all of them, but also friends and protectors. Two had pleaded with her to escape to the fold rather than rescue her father; the third broke his left leg and knew he’d be useless to Rayna. Yet you died anyway, Sasha. The man’s rifle lay at his side. I hope you killed a Doroshenko before the end.
Movements along the tree line shifted her aim in a flash. Before she recognized them, she heard a familiar voice.
“Rayna,” a man twice her age said in Russian. “You survived.”
Misha Tsukanov, her “cousin,” threw his arms open as he raced to Rayna. The tallest and blondest of the observers, Misha did the most to teach Rayna fighting techniques. Rayna’s rage fell as he approached.
As they hugged, he said, “The others doubted, but I told them our mission would not end in failure.” He looked past her. “Pyotr?”
“Dead. They slashed his neck. It was a trap, Misha. They also killed Arkadi and Galina.”
His brows furrowed. “I feared as much when we were ambushed. I should have been with you.”
“No. You would be dead. It was your place to defend the fold.”
“And a poor job I did of it.” He pointed to the dead Tsukanovs. “The Doroshenkos rode across the pasture, hailing us as friends. They were upon us before they reached for their weapons. Their first shot took Alina in the head. Before the others fired…”
Misha
looked up to the nuclear cloud. “The explosion gave us a reprieve. The Doroshenkos panicked. Their horses threw them. In the chaos, we killed three, but they returned fire.” He looked down again. “Fedir and Yana fell.” He pointed to Yana. “I loved her, but she never knew. When she fell, I hesitated. Then they came.”
He pointed to a Chancellor in a tight yellow-and-white bodysuit. She was taller than Misha, but slender of build, her ebony hair pulled back to highlight well-sculpted features. The Chancellor carried a silver weapon fashioned like a glove over her right hand.
“She was one of three Chancellors who crossed the fold, concerned about our fate. The weapon is a thump gun. The blast leveled our enemy, but not before they shot two of her colleagues.”
“Are they dead?”
The Chancellor replied. “You have caused enormous disruption, Rayna. And this,” she pointed to the cloud. “An unacceptable use of your most powerful feature. We will discuss this later. For now, we are pressed for time, and we have enemies on the other side.”
Rayna raised her rifle. “You speak Engleshe. It is trash language.”
“But one you have been taught, and also the official language of the Chancellory. You are done playing Cossack. Time to rejoin the world you were bred for.”
Rayna uttered a curse in Russian. Mentor checked his pocket watch.
“I told you the Chancellory would not be pleased, my dearest. They expected compliance, and here you are curling this one’s patience. She’s right. Engleshe will be the only game in town.”
“Then I will teach them a new language.”
“I think not. Your observers learned fluent Russian in three hours using a program. Chancellors can master any language, but they never leave Engleshe. My suggestion, dearest: Drop the attitude. Just because you can make one of those,” he nodded toward the cloud, “does not mean they cannot kill you on a whim.”
Rayna spoke halting Engleshe. “I go back with you,” she told the Chancellor. “But I have condition. My name stays. I am Rayna Tsukanova. You will not give me fake Chancellor name.”
The Chancellor laughed. “Not fake, Rayna. Legal, actually. But I’m sure we can work with you. My name is Penelope Harkness. Our team—what’s left of them—will be eager to meet you. I gather from these events, you have had a difficult day?”
“My father is dead. Is that difficult day by your standard?”
Penelope frowned. “Yes. I was anxious to see Peter again. I was there the day he crossed the fold with you. I was…”
“You know nothing of Pyotr Tsukanov.” She raised her rifle. “Speak of him again, and I will create large hole in your chest.”
“OK, Rayna. First, I am on your side. My people have been tasked to protect you. Second, there are those on the other side of the fold who wish you dead. We are racing against time to avoid another confrontation with those very people.”
“Are they traitors like Doroshenkos?”
“Traitor might be a harsh word. They are also Chancellors, but they have different ideas about the future. But to your larger point, they will kill any of us to get to you.”
Rayna smiled as a new strategy unfolded in her mind’s eye.
“So here is plan. Misha and me, we ride. We go through fold and surprise enemy. We are very good with rifles. Are you strong with rifles and horse?”
Penelope stepped away, glancing down at her thump gun.
“We don’t do horses. Sorry, no. And those rifles reload too slowly. I had no problem bringing down the last of the Doroshenkos.”
Rayna nodded. “Good. We clear path, then you come through fold, no problem. Or perhaps you wish to ride with Misha?”
Penelope sighed when Misha grabbed up two rifles and moved toward his horse. “You are insane,” she told Rayna.
“Yes. But I was not created by sane people. Is logical outcome.”
Penelope muttered something under her breath. “I’ll not debate ethics with a human-Jewel hybrid. But if you both plan to enter on horseback, prepare for a rough landing. The fold on the other side is five feet above the surface, and the surface is shifting under constant earthquakes. We leaped in from a shuttle.”
“Ah yes,” Misha said as he jumped upon his stallion. “The inertial drag between universes. Worse than usual?”
“Other than the occasional trenches opening up, the intensity is unchanged from fifteen years ago.”
“Is good,” Rayna said. “We bring horses to full gallop, as if leaping fence. Easy.”
Penelope shook her head. “The bifurcation zone between worlds is twenty meters across, Rayna. You will encounter a fog. When it begins to lift, the other side will fall off quickly. You are likely to fall and crash rather than stick a landing.”
She leaped upon her steed. “Then good you tell me distance, no? I am good with math. And you?”
Rayna beckoned her horse forward. The fold, visible thanks to the Caryllan pulse, lay fifty meters ahead. She was not surprised to look back and find Penelope jogging alongside Misha. She also saw one of the fallen Doroshenkos sitting up. Rayna turned her anger on the Chancellor in yellow.
“I thought you finished these traitors,” she shouted as a second Cossack moved his legs. Penelope held up her thump gun.
“This weapon incapacitates from a distance. It does not kill.”
Rayna grabbed the reins and signaled her steed forward.
“Chancellors are idiots,” she said as she galloped past, grabbing one of her rifles from its saddle pouch. She spat toward Penelope and aimed the weapon.
The first Cossack twisted about, looking for his rifle. Rayna ignored his pleas for life and pulled the trigger. A bullet cracked his skull. Rayna shot the other Doroshenko through the heart.
“Time to go to Earth now,” she yelled to Misha. “Time to say hello. Yes?”
28
The Ukrainian Expanse
Standard Year (SY) 5355
R AYNA LANDED HER HORSE IN THE NEW WORLD with perfect form, seconds ahead of Misha. She grabbed a rifle from the saddle pouch and took quick stock of her surroundings. Unlike the world of her childhood, this version of Ukraine was stark in every direction—various ground covers, shrubs, monumental stones, and a surface that vibrated with a low rumble. Yet the contrast paled to what hovered nearby. She took a long breath to absorb the stunning reality of a crab-shaped vessel twenty meters off the ground.
Beneath the shuttle, six Chancellors in yellow-white bodysuits huddled. Two laid on the ground, their wounds being attended, while two others looked up at the shuttle while flicking their fingers through holographic projections. Rayna had seen it all before today thanks to Mentor’s encyclopedic teachings, but the reality threw her back. For a moment, the “idiots” impressed her.
The moment did not last.
Seconds after Penelope jumped from the fold, the Chancellors beneath the shuttle turned in Rayna’s direction—not to acknowledge her arrival, but to look beyond her and gasp. Rayna heard shouts, and the shuttle lurched to one side, firing retros. She and her companions twisted about and spotted a missile followed by a long contrail emerge from the setting sun.
Rayna blinked. The shuttle disintegrated, raining fire and tech upon the ground. Shrapnel spun outward, large pieces ripping apart bodies. Rayna heard the rush of tiny, bullet-sized shards fly past. The horses reared, but Rayna and Misha kept hold of the reins.
As they regrouped, their eyes fell upon Penelope, who stood between the horses. She wavered, but not from the continuing tremors. The woman reached for her gut, through which a twisted metal fragment impaled her. The Chancellor who moments earlier sought to put Rayna in her place, now struggled to speak. Instead, she tapped her amp and opened a holocube.
“Run,” she told Rayna and Misha. “Fast as you can. Find cover.”
Rayna did not argue, even though she saw no natural cover within eyesight. Perhaps those hills, she thought. At least two miles. The silhouette of another crab-shaped vessel emerged from the sunset. Rayna reached out a helpi
ng hand, but Penelope refused. Instead, she flicked her fingers through the holocube. She spoke in soft, urgent tones to someone Rayna could not see. Rayna heard the words final mission report.
She called to her steed, and they raced past the fallen Chancellors, only two of whom appeared alive. Rayna remembered Mentor’s warning about Chancellors being able to kill her on a whim. This new reality cut deep.
“If we push hard, we can make it,” Misha shouted from her horse. “They will stop to capture or kill the survivors first. If we are lucky, they may think we are ordinary fools who crossed the fold by mistake. Ride hard, Rayna.”
Rayna never knew Misha to deal in fantasies or retreats.
“And she called me insane,” Rayna said. “We have no hope to outrun that beast.”
“We might. Rayna, there are few horses on this Earth. All wild. Chancellors do not ride horses, not for two hundred years.”
Rayna’s disgust returned. “I was right. Chancellors are idiots.”
But not wrong, as she discovered.
When Rayna glanced back, the Scram slowed as it approached the survivors and hovered low about the fragmenting surface. Beyond it, the sun slipped beneath the horizon, casting brilliant hues of yellow, orange, and purple. Rayna’s training taught her distance was important, but nightfall critical to survival.
They charged with all due speed, their horses used to these demands but in constant danger of galloping into trenches along the cracked surface. They reached the halfway mark toward the hills when Rayna took another look behind and lost sight of the ship—until she looked up. The vessel produced running lights and a series of brilliant searchlights. She heard the engine fire and then…
The sun disappeared and rose at once. Or so Rayna thought.
Brilliant flashes fell from the sky, enormous ovoid waves of fire that appeared en route to decimate them both. But their course corrected, and they pummeled everything near the interdimensional fold. Flames took the form of gelatinous waves, bouncing up and down like explosive magma thrown from a volcano.
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