by JM Guillen
PLEASE LINK FISSURES IN DESIRED ORDER
“Right.” I looked at my readout, which showed several temporal constructions. This had seemed far simpler a moment ago. I shut down my makeshift magma cannon, leaving open only the two fissures for our escape.
“We running?” Wyatt sounded exhausted.
“I think it’s the only way.” I glanced over my shoulder at the knot of Vyriim gathering together in the gloom. “We can’t take them. Not right now.”
Gideon nodded but didn’t say anything.
Our Alpha looked bad.
We had just limped our way through a pair of fissures, putting about a hundred meters between us and the Vyriim when Anya touched my shoulder. I winced. My pain mecha had started to wear thin. I wondered how my dislocated shoulder would feel later.
“Michael, I think I have the most efficient way forward.” Her voice was soft, as always, but it alarmed me how weary she sounded.
“Yeah?” I put one hand on her shoulder. “You okay, Anya?”
“I am functioning within a percentage of typical parameters.” She glanced behind us. In the distant shadows, we could see the Vyriim silhouetted against orange pillars of flame.
They didn’t know where we were, but they were searching.
“You have a something for us, Anya?” Gideon stood on his own two feet, but he didn’t make it look easy.
“While patching is impossible, I would like to point out that Crowe’s map shows an access tunnel, seven-point-two degrees to our left. It is section 90-I. I believe it might be a quicker access to the Broodwell than this passage.”
I pulled up Crowe’s intel and frowned. The access tunnel did go where we wanted but seemed longer. Anya saw my frown and continued.
“The smaller passage is a less direct route. However, it is unlikely to be as heavily fortified.”
“That would be nice,” Wyatt groused.
“I can see your point.” My frown grew deeper as I studied at the map. “It looks like a chasm lies all along the sides of our current room.” If it did, I needed to create an aperture across a wide-open abyss just to get to Anya’s access tunnel.
I regarded Gideon. “Is that right?”
“It looks that way to me too.” He nodded.
“Either way we should move along.” Wyatt watched behind us, a faint light radiating from the blue glass over his left eye. “They’re getting closer.”
Wyatt was right, but I deferred to Gideon, awaiting his order. More than anything, I wanted him to still be in charge, to issue a clear directive.
Finally Gideon nodded. “Let’s at least head in that direction. We’ll be further from the light, and maybe it will take them longer to find us.”
“Will comply.” I set another aperture before us, grateful that the distances had become easier with use.
Moments later we stood another fifty meters away from the writhing aberrations. Now we could see the chasm at the edge of the room, a great, black gulf before us.
“So. Section 90-I.” I peered into the shadows, wishing that Anya could patch me the data or place an indicator over my visual interface. “I’d say about there.” I pointed into the darkness.
“Set yerself an aperture, Hoss.” Wyatt grinned as he geared up the tangler. “Let me light you up.”
I did, placing one off in the darkness.
Then I ignited it, along with another right in front of us.
“Be quick.” Gideon glanced behind us. “If the Vyriim can see, we’re lit up like candles in this darkness.”
Wyatt stepped up to the aperture, tangler humming. He typed furiously at the crescent-shaped keyboard that hung from his belt and then fired a spike through the aperture. It shone with a cool blue light the moment it left the tangler.
It embedded itself in a wall of dark stone. Looking through the aperture, we couldn’t see anything of an access tunnel.
“Kill the spike and the aperture. Try again.” Gideon coughed, an alarmingly wet sound. Rachel began working her interface the moment she heard it.
Glancing over my shoulder, I killed the distant aperture. Then I created another one, ten meters further to the right. Wyatt stepped up again and fired a spike through.
No dice.
No dice on the next one, either.
“There’s four of them.” Rachel tracked the Vyriim while we worked. “They’re large. I don’t think I’ve seen any this large before.”
“The age of Vyriim directly corresponds to levels of intellect and psionic capability.” Anya whispered in the dark, almost as if her somber quiet was rote for informing us of important data. “Given the size of these specimens, there is a strong probability that their combative capabilities are more than a match—”
“Thank you, Anya.” Gideon smiled.
But he sounded so very tired.
“There you are.” Wyatt pumped his fist when we found it.
The mouth around access tunnel glowed faintly across the chasm, just where the map showed. A small terrace surrounded it. A round egress, it looked to be lined with a silvery-blue metal.
The aperture hung over the chasm, and a wind rose from the abyss, a cool, foul breeze.
I hated the scent of it; it reminded me of the taste in my mouth after Caprice woke me. I closed the opening quickly.
“Set the aperture, Bishop.” Rachel gazed behind us again. “They’re getting much closer.”
She was right. Though the room was truly gargantuan, the Vyriim gracefully glided through the air like alien sea-life. No matter how large the room was, they would find us. I focused, setting the sphere just right in my mind. At approximately seventy meters, I’d never pushed the Corona so far.
“There. Done.” I grinned despite the massive pang in my head as the aperture blazed into existence. We could look through the one in front of us and see into the small, shadowed passage.
“Hold up. Let’s make certain we can actually see.” Wyatt stepped forward, killed the earlier spike, and fired the tangler through the fissure. A few keystrokes later, and his spike lit the opening’s interior with a cool, blue light.
“Seems clear.” He nodded to me, then gestured to Rachel. “Let’s get the Alpha through.”
“The Alpha can get himself through,” Gideon grumbled. “Wyatt and Anya first. Let’s get telemetry before we shut down the apertures.”
Moments later, Anya and Wyatt stepped through the gate, though Anya still limped a touch. It occurred to me that Rachel had surely given her pain-killing mecha, so she likely wasn’t limping from pain.
Anya’s leg wasn’t functioning properly.
In a few seconds, she gave us the all clear, then we stepped through.
The passage was long and cool. It stretched into the distant darkness, and we could not see very far.
There was, however, a lack of mind-rending monstrosities.
I sighed, certain we were all safe, and killed the fissure.
“We need safety protocols in place.” Gideon leaned against the rounded side of the passage. “It’s going to take some time to get us all green again.”
“Copy that, Alpha.” Wyatt stepped back to the terrace, and I heard the tangler whine.
I knew that, in our compromised state and hostile location, standard protocols called for a cocktail of spikes protecting us from either end. If anything came after us, it would need to push through a stasis field and several feet of volcanic temperatures before we were in any danger.
We were safe, for now.
As safe as we could be, at any rate.
21
Hours passed before Rachel declared our status green.
“Gideon is kind of an off yellow, honestly.” She scowled as she spoke. “The man had internal injuries. Hell, Bishop’s shoulder alone should be enough to put him off-duty, if I’m honest.”
“Let’s just tell the Vyriim.” Wyatt gave her a teasing grin. “Pardon us, we’re no longer fit for duty. We’d like to leave now.”
I chuckled; his jibe wasn�
�t too far from my thoughts. But that meant game over for Strategy One. I had the distinct impression that if we bowed out now, we wouldn’t get another chance.
“I’m fine, and you know it.” Gideon pushed himself up, grimacing a touch as he did.
I noted that pain or no, our Alpha still wobbled a touch.
That meant he had injuries that Rachel hadn’t time or resources to repair. I frowned.
“According to Crowe’s intel, we aren’t far from the Broodwell.” Gideon peered around at us. “We may not be at one hundred percent, but we aren’t out, either.”
“Telemetric fluctuations have decreased significantly in the past sixty-three minutes.” Anya didn’t look directly at us but instead stared into empty space as she spoke. “This suggests that the Vyriim servitors believe we have fled.”
“Fled or dead.” Wyatt leaned against the curved wall, calibrating the tangler. “Either belief is fine by me.”
“Losing the gatekeeper changes the game for me.” I sighed. “But I can still give us a back door. If I leave an aperture open here, I could link a second one to it. Give us a way back here if we need it.”
“Good idea. Do that.” Gideon nodded. “Although I hope we don’t need it. Meanwhile, Wyatt leaves several stasis fields here to block anything slipping up from behind us.”
“Will comply.” Wyatt nodded.
I set the aperture, making certain it was quite far from Wyatt’s spikes. Teleporting into a stasis field did not sound fun.
Once we were finished, Gideon gave us our marching orders. Wyatt and I took point, while Gideon remained back with Anya and Rachel.
“Don’t be heroes,” Gideon growled sternly. “Our last encounter was too close. Without the link, I only have what our Preceptor and Caduceus can tell me about your systems.”
“Copy that, Alpha.” I had to admit, I was simply glad Gideon was back to himself. For a moment, when we were in the thick of things, he had seemed too injured to go on, incapable of command.
That had terrified me.
Wyatt and I had only been on the move for a couple of moments before he had to lay another spike for illumination. I had never realized how much I counted on the optics settings in my Crown, and without them, I felt small and helpless against the sable darkness.
“This way.” Wyatt shot a spike to mark our progress.
We passed several branching passages, but they seemed to grow more frequent the further we went. The side passages were all round and constructed of a metal I hadn’t seen before. Every few feet bands of obsidian-colored metal with detailed etchings ran along their insides. They were fantastically detailed, more like Egyptian hieroglyphics than actual writing.
Whatever they were, they were senseless to us, but I wasn’t above speculation.
“What do you think these are for?”
“Hard to say, Hoss.” Wyatt spoke softly, as our voices carried strangely in the small passages. “I keep trying to not notice that they’d be perfect passages for creatures that were made of tentacles who levitated through the air.”
I had also been trying not to notice that.
Wyatt continued, changing the subject, “The map shows a hatch just ahead. It leads straight into Locale One if our data’s correct.”
“No reason it wouldn’t be.” I had to wonder at Zephyr’s sources. How did an enemy faction obtain perfectly rendered maps to the Broodwells?
“Right.” He stopped in place. “We should wait on our cadre. Too much further, and we could encounter squiggly without backup.”
Well back from the hatch to Locale One, we stood guard for twelve minutes before the rest of our cadre arrived. They were a touch slower than expected, but when they arrived, I saw why. Though Anya gathered telemetry as they came, her steps came far more slowly than usual.
Her limp had grown worse.
“Her interface started lighting up about half an hour ago.” Gideon explained as the three of them approached. “Figured that this might be a once in a lifetime opportunity for the Facility to gather data about a Vyriim stronghold.”
In that moment, I realized what I loved best about Gideon Du’Marque. In his mind, there was absolutely no possibility that we were about to march into our agonizing and grisly deaths. We were going home. This was just another mission: Infiltrate Locale One. Sabotage enemy infrastructure. Pilot an alien vehicle with unknown controls through the seething Maelstrom that burned between and behind existence. Report in, safe and sound.
Simple.
“I haven’t ever synced the Gatekeeper.” Gideon leveled his gaze on me. “Do you need the actual weapon interface to create more than two apertures?”
“No.” I knew what he was asking. “I can create more that that while we’re in there but keeping track can get messy.”
“Close them at your discretion then.” He paused. “I don’t want to lose you when things are hot because you’re doing math.”
“Right.” I appreciated the thought. “I think I’ll close that one in that case. I still have active quarrels at several locations that the Temporal Corona can reach.”
“Copy that.” He paused. “I wish we had a typical plan of attack here, but we just don’t.” Gideon reached into his pack and retrieved the small cylinder. “We don’t exactly know what the end result is after all. Our data is simply a large room and the Rook’s guesses.”
I hated looking at the writhing larvae. It battered against the sides of its crystalline prison, and I had no doubt that if it had its way, we would all be dead.
“We know it’s bad, at least for some of them.” Wyatt chuckled. “I’d think bad equals good. For us anyway.”
“I’ve been thinking about our contact—Zephyr.” Rachel regarded me as she said the name. “I’m sure Anya’s telemetry readings offer us a better idea of what exactly Zephyr did to knock the Drażeri on their asses than my assessments, but I wonder if this sabotage will recreate it…or something like it?”
“It was a cataclysmic burst of axioms well above our level of awareness.” Anya sounded a touch distracted as she read her interface. “The idea that we are unknowingly engaging in some kind of psionic demolitions is a reasonable one.”
“I had assumed it was just some kind of psionic espionage.” Gideon cleared his throat. “There must be a reason the Drażeri cannot do this but we can. Lack of psionic sensitivity might actually be a bonus in this situation.”
“I think we can assume that things are going to be fucked up, no matter what.” For the thousandth time, I wished I had a cigarette.
“I’ve been thinking about our general lack of a plan.” Gideon gave me a canny eye and the beginnings of a smile spread across his face. “We may not know what we’re walking into or what kind of horrors are on the other side, but we know our goal.”
“Dunk squiggly in the Broodwell.” Wyatt nodded at the container. “That’s the touchdown, right there.”
“I think we’ve made this out to be more complex than it is.” Gideon nodded. “The number and type of enemy forces inside is unclear, and therefore cannot be planned for. But the goal is a known factor. As such, it’s fairly clear how to stack the deck.” Pausing for just a moment, he thrust the small, crystalline container at me.
“Ugh!” I didn’t reach for it. Within its small prison, the Vyriim pounded relentlessly against the transparent material.
“You’re the best choice.” Gideon didn’t relent. “This is a spatial problem. Therefore, the Temporal Corona is the game-ender here. If we can just see the Broodwell, it’s over.”
“Let Guthrie carry it. I’ll drop them both in the Broodwell.”
No one smiled.
“Fine.” I took the small canister, all the while heroically resisting the urge to shatter it and stomp on the vicious little monster. “Do we know how to open it?”
“There’s a spot to grasp the top. I assume it turns.”
“Fair enough.” I looked to the others, all solemn and grim. “What’s our marching order?”
“I think we stay together for this one. There’s no way to know what we’ll encounter, and I’d rather not have any surprises.” Gideon took a half-step toward Anya. “Anything interesting on telemetry?”
“It’s…chaotic.” Anya’s tone suggested she did not like the readings she found. “This entire city has been notable regarding the weakness of its topiatic aurora, which causes many places where the axiomatic realmwall is weaker than the standard model.”
“Right.” Gideon nodded. “Thin places.”
“The closer we come to the Broodwell, the truer that becomes. It’s an oddity because one would assume that a stronghold with such tactical importance would be constructed in a location that was more secure.” She regarded us curiously, her focus drifting away from her interface. “Yet the opposite is true.”
“Wait.” Wyatt held up one hand. “So the Broodwell is in a different topia?”
“No. Yes.” Anya grew a touch frustrated. “Perhaps. It’s a quantum superposition. The Broodwell is immersed in other topiatic realms but it also remains here.”
“Sounds like a cat I knew once,” Wyatt groused.
“Is it going to present a problem we should know about?” Gideon frowned.
“There is no way to ascertain that data, Alpha.” Anya’s gaze returned to the invisible world of her interface. “But it is something to remain aware of.”
“If we have a moment, I’d like to refresh the mecha in our systems.” Rachel tapped at her interface, and it shone with an azure light. “It occurs to me that having more mecha on standby would allow me to respond more fluidly, and this is a situation where that might be required.”
“Makes sense.” Gideon nodded. “Let’s do that and then move out.”
Moments later, we crept down the passageway toward the hatch. I took point, and Wyatt pulled up the rear.
Wh-om-om-omp. A faint sound echoed down the passageway accompanied by a slight breeze.
We all froze in place.
Wide eyed, I looked to the others. We all knew what Wyatt’s stasis fields sounded like when triggered.