Quantum Tangle (The Targon Tales - Sethran Book 1)

by Chris Reher

  And for what? Seth left the cockpit and paced around the small, untidy cabin, feeling alternately anxious and exhausted. The painkillers had wrestled his headache into some manageable state but what damage had been done to him? The Shantir on Magra had warned of brain damage. Seth ran his hands through his hair and realized that they were trembling.

  “All right, Kada,” he mumbled to himself. “You’re upright, your brain’s working, so be happy with that.” He reached into a cabinet to find a medical scanner. “See?” he said after running it along his body. “Nothing leaking in there, nothing missing. Stop your damn worrying.”

  He looked toward the cockpit. Maybe it was time to cut his losses and let Air Command clean up this mess. The alien was gone from him and wasn’t that what he had set out to do? His well-developed sense of self-preservation told him to return to Csonne, scrounge some coolant from one of the outposts there, and then head straight back to Magra. See his little Bellac friend whose medical skills would ensure he’d not suffered from having been turned, however briefly, into a Dyad. And then put it all behind him as another peculiar adventure in his peculiar life.

  And maybe someday the bottomless hole Khoe left in his mind would close over. He stared at the lounge where they had spent hours talking, arguing, studying and quietly dreaming up ways of using their bodies that weren’t even physically possible. He could almost see her hovering at the edge of his vision but her gentle touch inside his head was now only a memory. Khoe! he shouted silently as if some last remnant in his brain was still somehow tangled up with her, somewhere. There was no answer for him.

  If the doctor had removed her without harm, was she still Khoe? Had she turned back into the shapeless net of particles that first arrived on the Dutchman? Would she remember him at all? Seth rubbed his eyes, trying not to imagine her caught inside one of those collector disks. Was she in pain?

  “I was right,” he said and returned to the cockpit to take helm control back from the auto-pilot. “I’ve lost my damn mind.”

  There was nothing more to think about. He brought the ship about and headed back, demanding top velocities from the Dutchman’s engines. Within minutes he entered the pursuing rebel ship’s weapons range and began a series of evasive maneuvers as he targeted their shield seams. The weapons system aboard the Dutchman was designed for Air Command’s Eagle class ship and the surprised enemy had little opportunity to return fire. Volley after volley of precisely plotted missiles slammed into their shields. The Dutchman shuddered when it passed through the debris field left by the disintegrating rebel plane.

  “One down,” Seth said, taking no time to relish the victory. He turned and once again raced toward the keyhole and the remaining rebel ships.

  They were waiting for him. Instead of rushing toward him, as he expected, the rebel cruisers formed a tight defensive line around the Stoyan, hovering close to the invisible breach in space. Puzzled, Seth ran his scanners over the field. Individually, he would have little trouble engaging them with the Dutchman’s superior weaponry and a lot of faith in his skills as pilot. Engaging all five of them at once took more recklessness than even he possessed.

  He shifted his attention to the research ship. The Stoyan’s design dedicated most of the available space to labs and equipment rather than passengers. And yet his scanners reported over fifty individuals aboard, far in excess of what the ship could support for long. Unwitting specimen in the doctor’s laboratory.

  He took full control of the Dutchman’s weapons system while issuing navigational commands via his neural interface. After belting into his pilot couch, he rerouted all of the ship’s resources, including those used by the gravity spinners, to the shields. The Stoyan, like most ships of that class, had few defensive systems and, if he could get the rebel cruisers out of the way, a standoff might just be possible.

  “Stand down, pilot.” The order came over his com system as he approached effective weapons range. “You have no business here.”

  “Just passing through.” Seth began his calculations of the enemy’s formation to find the best possible spread for his weaponry.

  Khoe would have supplied him with the mathematical odds of succeeding in some effort to be sensible about the whole thing. Then again, he thought, she also advised him to shoot himself in the foot to test her theory, so perhaps sensibility had little to do with anything on this day.

  “Crap!” he shouted when the Dutchman’s alarms showed that the keyhole was beginning to expand. “Crap, damn, crap!” So much for his plan to trail the Stoyan into sub-space if she couldn’t be stopped out here. Without a spanner on board, he could not follow on his own. And with those damn rebel ships in his way, making a run for that gap was quite simply suicide.

  He swung into position for his attack, still mystified by the rebel ships’ reluctance to take the offensive. The keyhole was opening at an alarming rate and the Stoyan would soon ramp up her engines to reach the required velocity. Surprisingly, the rebel ships turned and also got into position to enter the breach.

  “Well, now I’m feeling a bit like you just don’t care,” Seth grumbled.

  The Dutchman reported that the keyhole had now turned into a sufficiently broad jumpsite. Seth took a deep breath. This wasn’t the first time that he would ride someone’s wake through a breach without knowing anything about its terminus, but he’d never get used to it. It wasn’t a highly recommended practice among deep space pilots.

  “What the…” he said, gaping at his screens.

  The wide-open gate before them suddenly spilled two battlecruisers and their accompanying fighter planes, the small and agile Kites, into real-space. At the rear came the mighty Ghoster, clearly having recovered her engines. All but one plane bore Air Command’s proud emblems.

  The five rebel cruisers veered aside, spreading in a wide formation as if they had hit a wall which, it would seem, they had. Seth dove out of the way when Air Command opened fire in pursuit of the ships, harassing them with the Kites to get them away from the jumpsite. His long experience with Air Command battle tactics made clear that those pilots were enjoying the chase.

  He left them to it and veered around the Stoyan. The Explorer had sprinted away in surprise and now came about again to take another run at the keyhole, now the only route to escape. He took after it, aware that one of the other ships now gained on him.

  “Dutchman!”

  Seth blinked. “Delphi?”

  “This is remarkably exhilarating,” Caelyn said over the Dutchman’s com system. Seth nearly severed the link before he realized that Caelyn encrypted his transmissions with a convoluted Delphian algorithm he had given to Seth not long ago.

  Seth frowned as he checked his scanners. “You’re on that rebel ship behind me? Tov Pald’s boat?”

  “Yes, isn’t it exciting? Apparently, it’s a very good quality ship. We’ve been here for hours. Major Terwood’s been slipping probes through the breach to wait for you to get here. He didn’t want to land on—”

  “I need your help,” Seth interrupted. He rolled out of the way when his sensors warned of an incoming volley from a rebel ship. A second one blasted his shields. He dove toward one of the Air Command Kites and then got out of there when the pilot took after the rebel. Caelyn’s cruiser streaked after the Dutchman when he turned toward the keyhole and away from the battle.

  “That Explorer over there, the Stoyan, is going to jump,” Seth said. “I have no idea where to. I could really use a spanner with me in case I lose them.” He glanced at his depleted coolant levels. “And to get back home, actually.”

  There was a short silence before Caelyn replied. “Major Terwood orders you to stand down, Seth. I’m sorry.”

  “We are going to lose the Stoyan!” Seth snapped. A quick check of the displays showed that the Ghoster had made its ponderous turn back toward the breach, leaving the rest of the small fleet to chase down the rebels. “They won’t get here before that keyhole opens.” He got into position to follow the Stoya
n into the breach. “Dammit, you’ll have to chase me, then.”

  “That’ll work,” Caelyn said. “Palas just received that order. Are you sure about this?”

  “They’re using civilians for their test,” Seth said. “And they’ve got Khoe. Yes, I’m damn sure.”

  “Khoe’s not with you anymore? You’re free? That’s fantastic news.”

  “We’ll celebrate later. Listen, you need to remove your interface links for the jump. All of you.” A ticking sound alerted Seth that someone had already decrypted their exchange.

  “That hardly seems advisable,” Caelyn said.

  “Just trust me. You can’t be plugged into your ship unless you’re looking for a hitchhiker.”

  Pause. Then: “Heard, Dutchman.”

  The confiscated rebel cruiser joined the Dutchman as the three ships reached maximum velocity. By the time the transport entered the breach into nothing, Seth and Caelyn were close enough to slip inside without needing to create their own chart. Wherever the Stoyan went, so would they.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Seth was slow to recover from the jump that had taken all three ships through the unimaginable distance between the spanned keyholes. Convinced that he was upside down, or perhaps the contents of his head were, he groped around for something he might recognize. Gradually, he realized that his arms had floated up during the leap and that the Dutchman was still tumbling through space with reduced gravity.

  Shaking his head clear of the fog that came with a long jump, he ran through a quick diagnostic before spinning the gravity up to something a little more comfortable. His head still pounded steadily and his stomach was also not happy with the general state of things.

  “Centauri,” he heard Caelyn’s voice over the cockpit speakers. “Are you back with us?”

  “Barely,” Seth said. He reconnected his neural interface to take a look around. An annoying ringing in his ears had joined his headache. “That one hurt. Where are we?”

  “Precisely nowhere,” he heard another voice, clearly Delphian and clearly irritated. “There is nothing out here within travel distance. We’ll need to go back through that breach to return to Trans-Targon. What is that Explorer doing out here?”

  “Collecting more aliens,” Seth said.

  “I’ve sent a message packet back to Major Terwood to let him know where we emerged,” Palas said.

  Seth scanned the Stoyan now at a near standstill. The life signs aboard had dwindled to just over thirty. It did not take advanced mathematics to see that, indeed, her air reserves would barely support even that many people for the long trip back to Csonne. He opened another channel to hail the ship.

  “Stoyan,” he said after manipulating the output to disguise his voice. “I took damage back there. Going to have to lock on.” He held his breath as he waited for some reply that made clear that they knew who he was.

  But his gamble paid off. Instead of using what little armament they had to let him know what they thought of his ruse, they seemed far too busy with their own problems to realize that it wasn’t one of their own that had escaped the battle with Air Command. Were those even rebels in control of that ship, or merely the Stoyan’s own crew?

  “Lieutenant Palas,” he said, using the Delphian encryption when the Stoyan’s shields dropped. “Please lock on to that Explorer when I do. Expect casualties and maybe some armed resistance.”

  He swung around the side of the vessel to nudge the Dutchman into one of the docking ports while Palas executed the maneuver on the other side. He did not expect anyone to welcome him aboard when he stepped through the airlock but the pandemonium he encountered didn’t seem routine, either.

  Two technicians hurried past him, followed by someone in lab gear. He heard shouting and curses. Some alarm that nobody heeded was buzzing to itself somewhere. Environmental controls had been set to conserve resources and he smelled not only overused air but also something burning.

  The airlock opposite him opened and the two Delphians entered. As always, that otherworldly Delphian serenity seemed to promise that these tall, blue-braided individuals could never fall prey to misfortune and, despite himself and knowing better, Seth felt safer for having them aboard. The Human in engineer coveralls entering hesitantly behind them gave him the opposite impression.

  “Gods, what’s happening here?” Caelyn said when someone screamed nearby.

  Seth felt a pang of guilt when he saw the device protecting Caelyn’s arm in his sling. “Get up top and tell the flight crew not to re-enter the breach. Figure out how long we can stay here before we have to return. Use force if you have to.” He appraised the hulking build of the crew member they had brought aboard. He looked up to the task but there was something unsettling about him. He hunched tiredly, looking about himself with bloodshot eyes in a pale face. His lips moved soundlessly. “What’s the matter with this one?”

  The Human’s eyes shifted to Seth. “Just a bit of a bug, sir. Missed my last med check. Don’t be reporting me.”

  Seth frowned. “Get the bridge figured out. I’ll meet you up there.”

  The others headed that way while Seth followed the sound of chaos down the cramped corridor. It was meant to be a wide passage, connecting the air locks to the lab and service area with plenty of room to move equipment. Now it was crammed with bins and racks surely not meant to be stored here permanently. Some of the equipment was strapped to the floors and walls with temporary restraints.

  More disorder greeted him in the main lab. Two rows of triple-level bunks took up much of the space. On some of them, people lay motionless with wires leading from their neural interface nodes to a bunched conduit along the wall. Some of the volunteers seemed unconscious, others moved weakly as if caught in some nightmare. Technicians scurried frantically from one to the next, restraining those who were clearly in the throes of some unimaginable terror. Some of the bunks were abandoned and motionless bodies had been pulled from the walkway between the bunks to line up against the wall.

  A young Centauri stumbled toward him, clawing at her own face. “Get it off, get it off, get it off!” Seth caught her in a bear hug until a medic came to press an inhaler to the girl’s face. She slumped in his arms and he lowered her onto a cot.

  “Cazun…” Seth breathed, looking up at the wall of hastily installed equipment. Piping ran along the bulkheads from an intricate device that looked very much like the storage system in the lab on Csonne. It crouched here like the malevolent mechanical monster of a children’s tale. Among the chaos a few of the test subjects rested placidly, even smiling, staring at the ceiling as if something entertained them up there. He bent over a Feydan woman whose lips moved without a sound. He tugged her headset away from her neural interface. Like all of the victims here, she was probably a technician or research assistant who shouldn’t have left Suncion this morning. Did they even know what was happening here?

  She blinked up at him. “Colors,” she said. “They’re colors. And so pretty.”

  He straightened up to grab the arm of a passing crew member. “Where is Doctor Tague?”

  “Tague? Crazy bastard is hiding in the control room probably.” She put her hand over Seth’s to squeeze it urgently. “Are you one of those Shri-Lan that’s been coming around? By all that’s still sacred around here, get us back right now. We were told to let them sleep and listen to their program for a few hours and then we’d head back. I don’t know what is going on or why we were attacked but these people need help now.”

  “Disconnect the interface to the program you’re running. Do you have something else?” He bit his lip, having nothing to draw on but his experience with Khoe. “Music or stories or even a damn weather report. Just something of no importance that’ll keep them busy.”

  “I… I don’t understand…”

  “Just do it!” Seth pulled away and headed to the end of the main cabin to a door that the technician seemed to have meant. It slid aside to reveal a dark, small space crammed with equipment. Noth
ing here looked even vaguely familiar.

  A lab worker whirled around when Seth entered, looking utterly frightened. Crumpled on the floor before him lay Doctor Tague, motionless.

  “Who are you? What do you want?” He peered more closely at Seth. “You’re the Centauri that had the alien. The one we took out. How did you get aboard?”

  Seth bent over the doctor. “What happened here? He’s dead.”

  “I can see that. Something got to him.” The technician gestured at a tilted control board along the wall. “Some feedback maybe. He was connected to the ship during the jump.”

  “Kind of a novice move, considering what’s going on here.”

  “This area and the ship’s mainframe is shielded and closed off from the outside. The Alpha itself is linked to the com system. Only the test subjects were exposed to anything in sub-space.”

  “That didn’t work out so well, did it?” Seth pointed up at several monitors recording the testing area outside. “At least not for your volunteers.”

  “We have six viable fusions so far,” he said, not without a hint of pride. “Six! We hoped for perhaps one or two. He was right. The incursion needs to happen in sub-space. We’ve accomplished much here today.”

  Seth was not a man who easily lost his temper but now he grasped the front of the tech’s jacket, ready to snap his neck. “You’re sacrificing all those people for that? For six Dyads?”

  Tague’s assistant tugged ineffectively on Seth’s wrists. “The Brothers demand results. We are giving them that. They’re already on their way to Csonne to see these for themselves.”

  “Reverse it!” Seth shouted and shoved him to the console. “All of it. The way you got the alien out of me. Those people are dying.”