by JM Guillen
“Right.” Back at the Broodwell, the tentacles thrashed, and Vyriim splashed down into the vat of ichor. “I suppose we should run.” I glanced at her leg meaningfully. “Can you run?”
“Michael.” Her tone chided. “I’m beginning to think you just want to carry me again.”
I gaped at her. Had Anya made a joke?
“Heh.” Wyatt chuckled as he pushed by us. “This bullshit is what it takes for the ice princess to crack a funny.”
We followed Wyatt into the lurid shadows, dodging the falling Vyriim as we went. They didn’t seem to be dying but fell from the ceiling and violently whipped around where they lay. All through the Broodwell chamber, knots of the aberrations lay on the ground, or in some instances, flew into the walls, as if madly trying to escape something I couldn’t sense.
“Telemetry is getting less stable.” Anya slowed for a moment, and I almost slammed into her. “The quantum superposition is shifting.”
“I don’t care if the entire place falls into Hell; we just need to be gone.” Wyatt put one hand on her back and adopted an awful Russian accent. “Let’s go, Comrade. The time for readings is over.”
We still hadn’t found Gideon and Rachel, which worried me. We wound our way through crimson madness, getting turned around more than once. Past experience didn’t seem to be helpful, as if fundamental shifts altered the topography around us.
I was terrified that we would never find them.
“Hard to follow a man who keeps bouncing through apertures.” When I heard his voice, relief washed through me like cool rain.
Gideon wore a wide smile on his face as he shook my hand.
“Honestly. Bishop. If you’d sit still for a moment, I could track your holotecture.” Rachel shook her head.
“I’ve been busy.” I gestured at a knot of Vyriim, squirming wildly on the ground. “You know how it is.”
Gideon regarded Wyatt and then me. “Is it done then?” Before he finished speaking, a large knot of the creatures fell from the ceiling and landed less than three meters away. They writhed uncontrollably on the ground, as if in some unknowable agony.
“It is.” I ignited an aperture behind us. “Are we ready to leave?”
“Hours ago.” Wyatt chuckled. “I even have Zephyr’s number on speed dial. Let’s haul ass.” He fired up the tangler, its humming song sounding like victory.
“Do it, Bishop.” Gideon nodded.
I used the Temporal Corona to reach for one of the quarrels I had left, specifically the one where we were supposed to meet Zephyr.
For a moment, I was afraid that it had been too long or; that without the gatekeeper, my Crown augment wouldn’t sync up.
But it did.
The quarrel lit up with an aperture that automatically connected to mine, just as advertised.
“Go, go go!” I frantically gestured at the gateway.
Wyatt and Anya stepped through first, followed by Rachel.
“Good work, Bishop.” Gideon’s eyes sparkled as he hesitated on the threshold. “Truly exceptional job.”
“After you, Alpha.” I gestured to the aperture and then followed him through.
Zephyr waited there, along with the two males she had brought along earlier.
And a small army of Drazeri.
Easily fifty others holding matching jade spears stood behind her, along with two graceful, sleek craft floating in the air above them. The menacing vehicles hung there with bent turrets of amber and obsidian pointed straight at us.
—the trade is made, our compact complete.
Zephyr finished as I stepped through. She held her hand out in front of her, where a blue tetrahedron floated above her palm. Its faceted sides gleamed as it slowly rotated in midair.
She tossed the item toward us, and Wyatt fumbled the catch. It landed at his feet, not striking the ground. It floated where it landed, righting itself.
Was this the fuel we needed?
“Um, Gideon?” Wyatt’s tone held caution. “I didn’t exactly have to send the signal.” The tangler was still singing, but Wyatt hadn’t sent up his personal rave.
They had been waiting for us.
How had they known? And why was there a small contingent of Drażeri with her?
“We thank you for honoring your agreement.” Gideon’s tone remained wary. He bent and grasped the azure stone. I noticed that it didn’t touch his skin, as if he grasped only some field that prevented him from touching the stone. “Now, we will let—”
A bald, male Drażeri with brands of brilliant green hurled his jade spear into Gideon’s chest.
“Gideon!” I screamed as he stumbled backward, knocking me over. Wyatt got to him, catching our Alpha before he fell.
The Oath, kept in word and deed, prize in hand.
Yet alone, marooned, in a hostile land.
The images that came with her words made everything quite clear. These were not our friends. She showed us images of torment, of being captured and bound, sliced by blades until we were taken to a Broodwell where the Vyriim invaded us. There we would hang until we too were emaciated husks. Never dying, ever seeking death.
They had used us.
“Fuck me.” Wyatt’s voice came in a soft puff.
Hovering behind Zephyr, the two realmships initiated their weaponry, crackling with an eldritch, blue light.
Then, the Drażeri began to close in.
25
I’ll admit, a half-dozen ideas flitted at the edge of my mind in that moment.
The Gatekeeper and I had become quite close on this particular assignment. In the little bit of spare time I had, I had come up with quite a few ways to slaughter someone using little more than momentum, gravity, and base physics. The moment I watched Zephyr’s man attack Gideon, I wanted all of those deaths for her. I wanted to rewrite physics into pain, all while Wyatt boiled her and melted her bones.
But a jade spear sliced through Gideon, in one side and out the other. I wasn’t a Caduceus, but any stretch of logic could tell me that our Alpha was in bad shape.
We had the fuel. We needed to run. Plain and simple.
I eyed Zephyr, her lip curled in disdain as the soldiers closed in on us. Several of them pulled iron rods from their backs, each one flaring with a malicious, verdant fury. The realmships hovered menacingly, their weapons singing soft songs that promised horrifying deaths.
It didn’t matter how much I wanted to smear her face across the ground, vengeance just wasn’t happening.
The first time we had met Zephyr, I had left a spike in the substation, as an emergency exit, if things went badly. Now, I groped for that spike with the Temporal Corona. Grateful that it remained, I ignited it into an aperture of crimson fire.
Then, calibrating the Corona for size, I set another one beneath my cadre, and we fell through.
We landed hard, stunned at the sudden displacement. Gideon grunted with pain, and I winced, hoping I hadn’t just killed him.
The substation lights flickered to life. I had no doubt it had also sent a prompt, but we couldn’t receive it.
“Aw, Hoss, I wanted to melt her face.” Even as he spoke, Wyatt climbed to his feet, pulling Gideon along.
“Maybe another time.” I killed the apertures just as the Drażeri began flinging swaths of emerald fury. I had no doubt they would be along soon.
“We—” Gideon gasped again, unable to finish the sentence.
“I’ll manage Gideon’s pain process, but we need to keep him in a stasis field.” Rachel glanced to Wyatt as they lifted him.
“That’s not happening.” I had never heard Wyatt sound so serious—or so helpless. “I may not exactly know how the Rook’s skiff works, but holding our Alpha in a stasis field will only strand him in Dhire Lith while we get away. It would literally anchor him in time and space. The tangler automatically calibrates stasis to adjust to local axioms like planetary rotation.” He paused. “But the space between topias? It’s too much to calculate, even for Rosie.” He patted the
tangler fondly, as if to assure her that this was not her fault.
I had to admit, I hadn’t thought of that. I imagined that we could free Sparks, drag him and Gideon into the skiff, set up another field and set out.
Nothing was ever easy.
“I’ll be okay.” Gideon had blanched pale, and his voice sounded weak. “Get to the ship and get us home, Wyatt. The Facility can fix me up.”
“Assuming your mecha can keep you going until then.” Rachel muttered, irritable, which I realized was her basic state under stress. “I’ll modulate them, but you must remain still.”
“I think I can manage that.” Gideon nodded.
The hanger where the realmship rested hadn’t originally been a hanger or even a room. Even the most cursory telemetry scans told Anya that a Veracitor loom had been used to create the large chamber, which held the sleek craft at one end and a stark, flat wall at the other. The room spanned almost three hundred meters, which Crowe had presumably calculated as enough space for the craft to pierce the veil of the axiomatic realmwall of Dhire Lith.
If he had miscalculated, we’d end up smashed against the far wall of the chamber, dead before we fully knew what had happened.
Like the others we had just seen, the skiff was a slender craft, shaped like an elongated teardrop, with windows of orange glass and several short fins on either side.
The moment we opened the hatch, portions of the exterior surface shimmered and shifted, revealing dials and gears constructed of lapis lazuli, silver, and some verdant metal I didn’t recognize.
We quickly loaded Gideon into the skiff. Though there were two seats, we placed him in the spacious cargo hold so Rachel could move around him if need be.
“The specifications for fuel should be apparent.” Anya held the cerulean stone, floating above her palm. She peered at the console at the front of the craft.
“I’ll help Rach get Sparks, and then I’ll poke at it.” As Wyatt turned to leave, I realized I’d never seen him this serious.
He must actually be worried.
Anya and I poked around the console, looking for any kind of niche or opening for the stone, while Rachel and Wyatt went back for Sparks.
They soon returned with the Asset, who grinned manically.
“I feel like I just saw you guys.” He eyed us jubilantly. “Are we really going home?”
“That’s the plan.” I flashed him a confident smile, even though, truthfully, I had no idea what we were doing.
“Give me that, numbnuts.” Wyatt took the stone from my hands, his expression more than a little patronizing. “Let a man do a man’s job.”
“Copy that, Artisan.” I gave him a sarcastic salute. “Why don’t you show us how it’s done?”
The problem was, I knew that Wyatt wasn’t entirely educated in operating realmships himself. And now that Zephyr had double-crossed us, I grew more certain than ever that the Drażeri actually knew the general location of our substation. Therefore, any moment now…
Well, we needed to get moving.
“Wyatt, maybe—?” Gideon coughed, and I hated how wet it sounded. “See if Anya can figure out the fuel.” He paused for a long moment. “You need to leave some spikes. The substation can’t ever be found.”
It took a moment for the implications of Gideon’s words to sink in.
We couldn’t leave the substation to the Drażeri, that violated the Primary Protocol. But if we destroyed it and then couldn’t get the realmship to function, we had nowhere to run.
“Maybe just set some spikes that will blow after some time passes?” I scrambled to find some kind of loophole. “That way, if this thing doesn’t work—”
“The skiff requires the tangler’s interface for me to control it.” Wyatt shook his head, grim. “I can set spikes; I can even set them to melt the place in, say, an hour. But once I engage the realmship, that’s it. The tangler will form a required part of the interface. Once they’re connected, I couldn’t change the spikes even if I wanted to.” He shrugged. “The skiff needs precise controls to modulate axioms, and the tangler fits the bill. It’s just what Crowe knew best.”
My brain turned flips as I tried to puzzle out any other answer. We couldn’t allow the substation to be found, obviously. It was easy enough to leave spikes, but it sounded as if the moment we tried to engage the skiff, the tangler became something we could no longer rely on. We couldn’t change those spikes once they were set. If the realmship failed, we’d be trapped in here as the substation melted. Best case scenario, I could port us back to one of the quarrels outside, but then we’d still be adrift, without secondary comms, and down a gatekeeper, a tangler, and soon enough, an Alpha.
Not good.
“No pressure, man.” I clapped Wyatt on the back.
“Thanks.” Wyatt groused as he strode through the door to set his spikes. Moments later, I heard him taking care of business.
WHUF.WHUF. WHUF…
Then, it was done.
“Cadre,” Gideon wheezed when Wyatt returned. “I wanted you to know how proud I am to have served with you—”
“You can shut the fuck right up.” Wyatt didn’t even look at Gideon as he walked by. “I’m a busy man. I’ve got some equation-ing to do.”
“You can tell us when we get home, Gideon.” I nodded at him.
He smiled weakly.
“I will. I’ll tell you then.” He coughed as Rachel tapped at her interface.
“I feel I must bring up telemetric possibilities once the craft is in motion.” Anya’s tone felt reserved. “It might assist if I was able to provide a reading—”
“You’ll melt your damn brain is what you’ll do.” Wyatt continued tinkering with his interface without glancing up at her. “You know it as well as I do. No telemetry in the Maelstrom.”
“I simply thought—”
“No. You didn’t,” Wyatt growled in a stern tone. “You can’t help here, Anya. You can sit.” Glancing from one of us to the next, his mien softened. “That’s all any of you can do. I’ll get us home.”
“I know you will.” I nodded. “No doubts.”
He turned then, and the tangler whined. Wyatt fired three spikes into a flat, smooth surface at the front of the craft, his fingers dancing across the keys. Then, he shifted his shoulders and took the heavy pack from his back.
“I forget I have it on sometimes.” He gave us a nervous grin. Then, he tapped three keys, and one of the spikes glowed with a soft, amber light. A panel melted open, and Wyatt set the blue stone within it.
It shone with a beatific glow, humming softly.
“Well, I suppose that’s resolved,” Wyatt muttered. He crouched down, physically plugging in Crowe’s universal port lines from the craft to his pack. He positioned his equipment and tapped several more keys.
Flowing as smoothly as melted glass, part of his pack meshed with the controls of the ship. Only in liquid form for nanoseconds, it became part of the craft.
“No going back now.” He gave us a sickly smile.
“You’ve got this, Guthrie.” I gave him a firm nod. “You’ve gotta get home. That’s where all the strippers are.”
He barked a laugh and shook his head ruefully. Then, he positioned himself in the front seat.
Rachel busied herself with Gideon and Sparks, working to get their mecha tasked before we went careening through the Maelstrom.
Anya created a picture of nervousness, literally twiddling her thumbs as her eyes darted around, anxiously.
“Why don’t you take the second seat, Anya?” I flashed a graceful smile. “Your leg is still wounded, no matter if you needed to be carried or not. Also, even without telemetry, you’re the only one of us who could possibly help that jackass should he need it.”
“That’s sensible, Michael.” She still seemed nervous, though obviously attempting to remain calm.
“This is your Captain speaking.” Wyatt grinned as he situated himself, keyboard in front of him. “We will be shredding space-time as a he
ight of negative twenty-meters this afternoon.”
“Take us out, Guthrie.” Gideon’s tone was soft, but firm. “I’m tired of this shithole.”
“Yes, sir.” Wyatt’s fingers tapped at the keys, and the craft began to hum, an eerie, warbling sound that sunk to the depths of me.
“If my calculations are correct—” Rachel muttered. “—when this baby hits eighty-eight miles per hour... you’re gonna see some serious shit.”
“What?” I stared at her, confusion on my face.
“Nothing, Bishop.” She shook her head as if slightly disappointed.
Then we lifted.
In the glass before us, the room shifted apparently in sync with our momentum. Abruptly, we stopped with a loud grating as Wyatt brushed the craft against the left side of the chamber.
“Shit!” He made an adjustment. “Sorry.”
The hum grew louder, and the realmship lurched before pushing forward.
It didn’t feel as if we glided through space. Instead, the ship seemed somehow to grasp space around us, as if tethered to a rope that dragged us across the chamber faster and faster. Through the great, glass windows, multicolored sparks burst at the edge of the ship, cascading around us.
“Fuck.” Wyatt’s quiet voice was filled with terror. “Oh, fuck me.”
“Faster.” Anya stared at him. “We must go faster.”
“I know!” His fingers flew.
A loud grinding noise stopped as soon as it had started. We catapulted straight at the far wall of the room, while the world became a fractured, singing, blur of wild, cacophonous color.
Then, the realmship, and everything we knew, exploded.
26
Somewhere in the craft, someone shrieked like a little girl.
It might have been me.
Space warbled around us as the surface of the realmship burst into wild, unknowable color. Its matter literally fragmented and drifted apart, only to be followed by our own.
Of course it all happened in an instant, but that instant lasted several infinities.