by C H Duryea
Wave after wave of intense heat washed over Zeke. He held out his hand and absorbed the worst of it.
And when that fire was finally quenched, all that remained of the uber-Tozzk was a crusty puddle of molten metal, warping and buckling the metal deck it now spread out upon.
Thirty-One
Zeke, Narissa’s voice buzzed in his head, Zeke! Lens alignment in less than two minutes!
Zeke stared at the molten and smoking smear that used to be the uber-Tozzk. A cold wind whipped the smoke out into the void beyond the ring.
A clattering sound over his shoulder brought him around and he turned. A ventilation grate exploded outward and a disembodied arm flew through the opening. It was hard shelled and ended with a set of powerful pincers.
“Qaant Yke?”
Then the rest of the alien crawled out of the vent, battered and cracked. Parts of his shell were fire engine red. He picked up his missing arm and stood, staring at the smoking puddle.
“Nitric acid,” Zeke explained. “I recognized it in its breath. It must be part of the Tozzk metabolic chemistry. Since the cyex fermented into an organic ultra-solvent, I figured it would give him a dose of heartburn.”
“You humans and your clever wordplay,” Qaant Yke said.
“It was too good to pass up,” Zeke said. “So are you going to give me a hand with this?”
“You just can't leave it alone can you?”
Augie, Zeke said over the MindLink, has Chuck returned?
I'm here, Zeke, Harbinger responded mentally. The Dodecahedron is locked down!
Good, he said. You guys dust off as soon as you're ready. We have to take out that last repulsor. He turned to Qaant Yke. “Let's go!"
They bounded back along the gradual sweep of the inner ring until they reached the second repulsor array—the one between the two they had already taken out.
“Without the proton gun," Qaant Yke said, “bypassing the electron force field will be difficult."
“You’re a master of understatement, as always,” Zeke said. “But I think I have that problem figured out. Stand behind me!"
He turned to face the repulsor array, the cold wind buffeting against him.
Zeke, Narissa called. The hyperstack node is in alignment. We have to do this now!
Zeke was sure about what he needed to do, but he didn't know yet whether he could actually do it.
I've channeled the gravitational force of a singularity, he thought. I should be able to do this.
He extended both hands towards the array. Within his body, he could still feel the energy he had absorbed from the uber-Tozzk’s destruction as potential energy within his core. He focused on that pure potential and called into his mind the precise wavelength of proton beam necessary to counteract the electron force field. When he had that wavelength clear as a crystal in his mind, he let loose. Power lashed out through his hand and struck the force field. As the proton beam struck, an explosion of gamma rays burst forth. He now focused on his other hand, forcing his will to divide itself between projecting the proton beam and absorbing the gamma rays at the same time. The gamma rays struck, and he felt their brutal and fundamental power funneling into his hand passing through his conduction suit, filling his core again with pure potential energy.
Now he had to do something he’d not tried before. With his mind divided between absorption and projection, he would now have to focus on yet a third objective.
This part would be the trickiest. He was pretty sure he could not project two wavelengths at the same time. He would need to shift his projection from the proton beam to another wavelength that would destroy the array—and he had to make that shift faster than the speed of thought.
He held the proton beam until he felt he could no longer absorb any more of the gamma rays. And then with every bit of concentration he could pour into the feat, he turned off the proton beam and shifted his output to pure accelerated tachyons.
The tachyon beam followed the last of the protons through the gap in the force field, striking the array and vaporizing the entire structure.
The platform is loose! Augie shouted. And it’s heading your way! Angle of descent 172°!
Now was the time.
Narissa, he called, if this doesn't work, I want you guys to get out of here!
We are not leaving you here, three voices on the ship echoed together.
If this doesn't work, there won't be enough of me to stick around for! Zeke shouted.
He watched the platform not so much fall but hurtle toward his position. What looked like a postage stamp before very quickly expanded to the size of a short haul shuttle.
If I die right now, he told himself, then I’ve got it coming.
He braced his legs as best he could against the surface of the deck, held out his hands wide and braced himself for impact.
The plummeting platform eclipsed his view of the upper arc of the ring and expanded to blot out the hyperstack from the sky and when it hit, Zeke felt like a fly under an asteroid strike. The flat underside of the platform slammed against him and the force of the impact screamed through every fiber of his body, kinetic energy venting through the conduction suit in the form of waste heat radiating out in all directions, warping the metal deck under his feet and the underside of the platform. Metal twisted, buckled and shrieked the way only tortured metal can, but both structures held firm.
He twisted and harnessed his pool of kinetic energy and thrust the platform aside. It skidded along the surface of the deck, coming to rest a few hundred meters away.
The force of the crash caused the entire structure to shudder, and deep within the ring itself, Zeke felt a deep, unsettling rumble.
Zeke, Narissa called over the MindLink, I think you just knocked the lens out of alignment!
That's good news, isn’t it?
Not so much, Narissa reported. The impact jarred the lens orientation from insertion to projection—and it’s coming into alignment with a different node.
As long as it doesn’t point into the metaspace anymore, I don't care what it aligns to!
You might reconsider, Augie added, since it appears the new node opens up into an early plasma-state universe! And with the lens knocked off-kilter like that, whatever energy comes through is not going to get caught by the collector array.
You’re right, Augie! That is really sucky news! What’s our new timeline?
About three minutes.
Great!
Zeke bounded over to the platform and quickly climbed to its upper deck. On the opposite side of the deck, Qaant Yke was pulling himself up single-handedly to meet him.
“We gotta do this fast!” Zeke shouted. “In three minutes, the hyperstack’s going to unleash the energy of a Big Bang all over this installation!”
The surface of the platform was a wreck, but most of the cargo pods appeared intact, having been magnetically fastened to the deck surface.
“We gotta find which container she's in,” Zeke said. He toggled his heads-up, calibrated it to read for life signs, and scanned the entire deck.
“I'm not reading anything!” he shouted.
Qaant Yke pointed to a large cannon-like structure mounted at the center of the platform.
“That structure,” the alien said, “is likely the insertion projector.”
Zeke recalibrated the heads-up but still read no life signs. But something caught his eye.
“What's that?” he asked.
Next to the main barrel of the energy projector was something that looked like a large artillery shell about two meters long. Zeke scrambled through the wreckage and climbed up to the control platform of the projector. The twisted remains of several Tozzk technicians lay strewn about the deck. Zeke leapt over to the oversized projectile and saw a small window next to a control panel on its upper surface. He climbed to the top and looked in.
There she was. Inside, Vibeke lay with her eyes shut, preternaturally still. He pounded against the glass.
“Vee!
” he shouted. He pounded again, but she was completely unresponsive.
Qaant Yke made his way up and looked over Zeke’s shoulder.
“She appears to be in some kind of stasis,” he said.
“It’s chronospatially locked,” Zeke said, scanning the mechanism on his heads-up. “That explained why he picked up no life signs. This is how they planned to get her into the meta-space alive.”
Zeke readjusted his scanner and ran a full scan on the module.
“The locking console was damaged in the impact,” he said. “If we try to open this here, the temporal disequilibrium could kill her!”
Qaant Yke examined another panel on the side of the container that led to a larger mechanism hooked to the underside of the projector’s massive barrel.
“Notice the configuration of the interface,” the alien said.
He jumped over and scanned the setup. It was very similar to the Frogger’s interface panel. But he had no way of knowing if he could manage the operation out here.
Just then, the Friendly Card burst into view and maneuvered to station itself just outside the ring’s distortion field. Zeke stared at the ship for a long moment. His team looked back at them, visible through the viewports.
“We have to get this whole module back to the Card! It should just about fit in the Gold Bug’s hold if we remove the clockwork life-support.”
“Your suit’s life-support is damaged beyond operation,” Qaant Yke noted. “You would not survive the return trip.”
“You're right,” Zeke said. “I can't make the return trip. But you can."
“But you'll die,” Qaant Yke said.
“It's the only way,” Zeke said. “If we don't take out the life-support, the container won't fit in the hold, which means the only one who can get her safely back to the ship is you.”
The alien stared at him.
“Believe me,” he went on, “I’d much rather not die. But, as you’ve pointed out, I should have been dead a long time ago. You saved my life more times than I probably deserve, and you've been making yourself accountable to fate every time. Well, here's your chance to account. If you do this, you’ll no longer have to answer for what I do. But if you don’t, you’ll be responsible for what she doesn’t."
No way, Zeke! Narissa shouted. I'm going to bring the ship in closer! We can get you through the cargo bay!
No, Zeke said. The Card will never make it through the distortion field! This is the only way!
Unacceptable! Harbinger shouted over the MindLink. You do not get to invoke the no-win scenario!
Zeke found a rack of anti-grav handles and planted several against the sides of the container.
“We’re running out of time,” he said. “Qaant Yke, help me get this pod back to the Bug!”
They disengaged the maglock and wrestled the container back to the surface of the inner ring. From there, they ran it back to where the dropship had crashed.
“There is nothing,” Qaant Yke asked, “that will dissuade you from this course of action?”
“I thought,” Zeke said, “that you might be relieved. You're going to be off the hook.”
“But I will have lost a friend.” For the first time, Zeke thought he heard a note of sadness in the alien’s strange vocal intonations.
“I can't let you settle your account to fate with your own life. But you can settle your account with me by getting her home safely.”
“May your silt layer be ever replete with minerals of decomposition.”
“What?”
“It sounded much better in the language of my forehatchers.”
"I’m sure it did.”
Qaant Yke said nothing more and made quick work of tearing the life support from the Gold Bug’s hold. They secured the container inside and Zeke sealed the hatch.
“Goodbye, Vee,” he said under his breath.
We can't let you do this! Augie shouted.
We're not leaving without you, Narissa repeated.
You have no choice, Zeke insisted. This whole area is gonna be one huge ball of molten slag in about a minute and a half! Go! Find a universe that will let you fix the Frogger so you can return home! I got you all into this. It’s my mess to fix. This is the only way I can give the rest of you a fighting chance.
Qaant Yke climbed aboard and jammed himself into the pilot’s seat.
“The aerodynamics of this vessel,” he said, “will not be sufficient for a safe return to the ship.”
“Then ballistic motion will have to do,” Zeke said, holding up his hands, which continued to buzz with residual energy. “I’ll give you a shove. Hard enough to get you through the distortion membrane. The Card’s tractor beam will get you the rest of the way.”
He shut out the continued MindLink protestations of the others, helped Qaant Yke close the hatch, and stepped to the back of the Bug. Qaant Yke signed he was ready, and Zeke thrust forward and slammed his hands against the tail assembly, pushing hard and channeling whatever kinetic energy he still had into the dropship and willing it into forward momentum.
The Gold Bug shot off the edge of the ring, gliding in a gentle arc towards the ship. It rippled as it penetrated the distortion layer, then stabilized as the Friendly Card’s tractor beam took hold and pulled it in.
Zeke watched, just to make sure the Bug made it safely. He could see Augie, Narissa, and Harbinger all watching him from the viewports. He didn’t want to force them to leave with him watching, so he turned around—and lifted his gaze to the perverted physics of the hyperstack.
He could see the plasma-state node clearly now. It blazed on the stack’s curved surface like a crazed pulsar. A distant part of his mind suggested he shouldn’t look directly at it, but he didn’t listen. He wanted to look his death in the eye.
Deep within the damaged lens structure, some great engine turned the receptor arrays towards the node. The node flared and the whole ring around him began to glow. Then the surface of the spherical distortion field glazed over like a cataract, before coming alive with white-hot plasma.
It was as if he stood in the center of an inside-out star. The blinding surface sent plumes of energy inward, closing inexorably in on him. He considered trying to absorb it. But without anyplace to divert it, he would be just as fried. Besides—he was so very tired. So he remained where he stood, watching in wonder, and preparing himself for his final entropic phase shift.
A buzz suddenly whined in his head, like the chatter of a muffled but urgent conversation. It was the others, back on the ship. Some vestige of a signal made it through the MindLink. He couldn’t understand what was being said. But then he heard another voice, one he thought he would never hear again.
Where’s Zeke? he heard Vibeke say. Some more muffled buzz, then he heard—What?
Vibeke, no!
Leggo a’ me! she shouted. I can do it!
“Vee!” Zeke yelled. “What?” What was it she could do?
A blinding ice-blue flash erupted in the space about twenty meters above Zeke’s position. He looked up—and saw Vibeke, in the middle of the blazing hot air, in free fall, dropping towards him, looking like she was chasing terminal velocity.
He didn’t have time to be surprised. She opened her arms as she descended and slammed into him, grabbing him hard. They both fell but Zeke did not feel the impact—only the chill of another ice-blue flash.
And then they both collapsed, limbs tangled, on the deck of the Friendly Card’s engineering section.
“By Fafnir’s teeth,” Harbinger crowed. “She did it!”
Zeke lay on his back, dazed, dumbstruck and breathless, as Augie flew down the access chute and gave a triumphant whoop. Vibeke pulled herself over and looked down at Zeke, her blue eyes centimeters from his.
“Was that gallant,” he asked, “or stupid?”
“I was gonna ask you the same,” she said.
They laughed.
“Stupid,” they both said, and he kissed her.
Thirty-Two
The Friendly Card streaked away from the Tozzk complex and out of the plane of the accretion disk. Behind them, the fiery lens opened the gate to a flood of nascent cosmic plasma. The superheated energy shot from the misaligned refractors and washed over the entire Tozzk base, melting down the lens—and effectively glassing everything in its path.
Once the main surge of destruction had passed, they swung the ship back around for a fly-by. The entire connected network of asteroids was now a floating graveyard of great smoldering rocks. They found an asteroid a safe distance away from the destruction that still held some atmosphere courtesy of the hyperstack distortion field.
They set down, disembarked, and walked to the crest of spiny ridge that afforded a grand view of the devastation in the distance. The torrent of plasma had been stopped by the destruction of the lens array, and the residue of what was left oozed forth over an increasing radius. The plasma wave continued to ignite the asteroids in its path, but it was slowing.
“That,” Zeke said, “is one heck of a lot of slag.”
“I dare say,” Augie added, “that it exceeds the output of the ironworks of Io.”
“I’ve run campaigns where insane deities lay waste to entire worlds,” Harbinger said. “Even they never made this kind of a scene. So, Qaant Yke. Does your religion make us the gods of this orbiting slag heap?”
“My forehatchers would deem it so,” the alien said. The shoulder where his appendage had come off was sealed with a thick slathering of long-chain polymer. Despite the success of the mission, he seemed distant and pensive, even by Qaant Yke standards. “You have brought forth this immolation, this—slag. You are its god. Its master.”
“Is that what we’ve become?” Zeke asked. “The masters of slag?”