The Spiral Path

by Lisa Paitz Spindler

  Calendra’s snowy white tresses swirled like tentacles and her already clawlike fingers elongated to foot-long talons. She sped around the bridge and became a whirlwind. Her form multiplied, a crowd of copies trailing behind in a blur of white smoke and then snapping back to a single form.

  The remaining smoke filled the whole bridge. It wound its way around Lara and yanked her away from the men. Jagged pale tendrils pushed her across the floor until what had been a bulkhead stopped them. She choked and blinked her eyes. Calendra knelt in front of her, both hands around Lara’s throat.

  Lara gulped. “How did you—”

  “I have tried for a thousand years to leave this place, Captain. You think you know the way out?”

  “Just now. There were so many of you. How—”

  “There is no way out of this place for us. As payment for your lie, one of you will stay with me. You choose.”

  Both men jumped to their feet but ran only a few steps before Calendra held up a hand and stopped them with a wall of mist. Lara’s heart skidded to a halt and her scream came out a rasp. She grappled against Calendra’s unmovable grip as her panic rose. She had to focus Calendra’s attention back on her. Mitch and Rafael were too vulnerable.

  Lara knew the only way out now. Calendra wasn’t corporeal, but pure energy.

  “Me.” Lara’s voice grated like rusty metal. Calendra eased the pressure on her throat only a fraction, enough to enable her to speak. “I choose me. But I have a new plan.”

  “It won’t work.”

  “Calendra.” Mitch let Rafael pull him to his feet. “How can you pass up even a chance of getting free of the wormhole? Let us try.”

  “We can use the Trans-D buffers to pull your ship free of the wormhole horizon.” Lara gulped in a breath. “If it doesn’t work, I’ll stay with you. Just let them both go.”

  Lara searched the faces on the bridge. The Gryphon crew backed her plan even if the tension of their unease sludged around them. Several levels below, the Interlace Chimerans huddled in the cargo bay, scared but happy to be away from Calendra and her Revenant crew. The rest of the faces on the bridge belonged to the Revenant, and each one of them wore a wrist-sync.

  “Are all of the wrist-syncs networked to the Gryphon?”

  Mitch nodded. “Thanks to your father, yes. Hopefully, the ship will be able to modulate their phase frequency with a speed that matches their shifts.” He squared his shoulders and whispered low in her ear, his voice rough. “If you’re staying with Calendra, then so am I.”

  “No, you’re not. If this doesn’t work, I’ll need you to oversee Alpha Haven.” Lara tabbed through horizon protocols. “Ensign, de-sync the phase anchors and harmonize wrist-syncs on my mark.”

  In seconds, they would swing free of the wormhole. If the Revenant didn’t make it through, then neither would she. That was the deal. Not for a second would Lara regret her bargain.

  She stepped away from the console, but Mitch planted himself in her path. New creases had formed on his face in the last few hours, and they were all her fault. “You said never again. You’re shutting me out now, just like you did when you left the Union.”

  Lara leaned in closer and let Mitch’s musky scent sink into her pores. If her plan didn’t work, this would be their last moments for a lifetime. It would all be worth it, knowing Mitch and Rafael were free and safe, but molten terror pulsed under her skin like lava. Mitch had no idea that the heat of it threatened to erupt out of her if she let even one drop escape.

  Lara smoothed a wrinkle on his jacket and wrapped her hand around his arm. So solid and never shifting. “I’m not running away again, Mitch. I know this will work. And if it doesn’t—even without a wrist-sync, I have a much better chance of withstanding the wormhole phase shifts than you do. I need to know you’ll be there when I come home. And I will come home.”

  Mitch pressed his lips into a hard line, nodded and backed away. Lara gulped down a breath and strode around him to the command console.

  Calendra caught her gaze and held it as she paced across the bridge, multiple copies of herself trailing behind like dominoes and then disintegrating in vapor. She held up a slender limb wrapped with a wrist-sync like a huge gaudy bracelet on a child’s arm. “Explain again how this device works.”

  Lara notched down her pulse and looked away from the woman’s inky stare. “Just now, as you moved toward me, there was more than one of you.”

  Calendra nodded. “I am the same as the energy in the wormhole. We are everywhere here all at once.”

  “What went wrong when you tried to leave before?”

  The woman’s form faded a few degrees. “We would reach the wormhole’s horizon and snap back to where we started.”

  Lara breathed deep. “Part of you must stay here, but another part of you—the part that remembers your original form—will be anchored to Terra’s phase with that wrist-sync. The ship will supply the power the devices don’t have individually.”

  “And if it doesn’t work?” Calendra smoothed her thumb over the device’s interface.

  “I’ll stay with you as I promised. That is, if the ship survives.”

  The other woman’s head shot up and a brief look of alarm crossed her delicate features. “That won’t happen. We will go back to the wormhole before the ship can be destroyed.”

  Lara wanted to thank her, but only nodded and turned away. She glanced at the console over her first officer’s shoulder. “Rossa, spin down the Trans-D engines.”

  On Cam’s count, the interface lit up, no errors. This was their chance.

  Cam ran though the checklists. “Trans-D engines powering down, Captain. Spin is diverging…now.”

  She felt Mitch’s gaze on her back and forced herself not to turn around. No doubt he wanted to be the one left behind, but that just wasn’t possible. If the worst happened, she would escape somehow and get back to him. When she had said never again, Lara meant it.

  The ship tilted and Lara latched on to a nearby console. Her head swam with dizziness and the familiar hum of the Revenant buzzed around her brain. In seconds they would be free of the wormhole, but at what cost, Lara had no idea. Her muscles cramped with the shifting phases, perhaps heightened by the presence of the Revenant or merely her extended time in the wormhole.

  Rafael’s knees buckled, but Mitch eased him down to the decking. The hum pitched high and mutated into banshee screams. Pain sliced Lara’s head in two and she ground her teeth. Nausea rose up in her throat and the floor tilted up to meet her.

  White mist tendrils corkscrewed around Lara’s body, suffusing every pore. Revenant voices raged through her mind as their souls were ripped free from the confines of the wormhole. Lara crawled her way to the captain’s console and yanked herself upright.

  Calendra and each one of her crew writhed with the phase shifts. Their bodies morphed back and forth from the taloned monster Calendra had formed on the Revenant’s bridge and back to the people they had once been. Rafael staggered toward Calendra but could do nothing except witness her pain. The Revenant crew multiplied and phantom versions of them took over the bridge.

  The Gryphon thundered through the wormhole throat as the color spectrum on board shifted to blue. The din of their pain made Lara’s eyes water. A groan rippled through her as her own body stretched out to its limits. From the beginning Lara, wondered if the Revenant would survive this tactic, but now she even doubted the Chimerans would survive.

  Tendons tearing, Lara’s body tried to multiply but merely distended. Calendra might be able to exist in more than one point of space, but Lara couldn’t. Even though for years she’d yearned to be able to run the Chimeran colonies and still be by Mitch’s side. For a thousand years Calendra didn’t have to choose, but if this worked, that would all change.

  Lara counted down the last few seconds with each rattle of the hull. Mitch stumbled to her and she clutched his hand.

  As quickly as it began, the purging chaos stopped. Calendra and all the Revenant
on the bridge slumped onto the decking. Rafael gulped in air as if he had forgotten how to breathe. Lara sat up just as Mitch helped him to his feet.

  This was the brother, the man, she grew up with. Gone was the deathly pallor and returned was the healthy olive glow of his skin, the warm dark brown and cool lavender of his mismatched eyes. Lara sobbed and ran to him, desperate to know that the one person who’d been with her since conception was still alive.

  They had succeeded.

  She wrapped an arm around both Rafael and Mitch as best she could. “Thank the gods.”

  Her brother’s face was drawn, but he said nothing. He kissed Lara’s cheek and shook Mitch’s hand, but stumbled right to the heap of flesh that had become Calendra.

  Lara held on tight to Mitch and feared they both would fall over if not for the other’s support. Rafael gently turned Calendra over and cradled her wasted body in his arms. When he caressed the now honey-blond hair off her hollow cheeks, Lara drew in a ragged breath.

  Calendra’s voice rasped from weakness, but this time it sounded like a faraway song. Her lips had no color. “How?”

  All across the bridge, fallen Revenant lay in various states of consciousness. Death waited for their last breaths.

  Rafael tenderly kissed Calendra’s brow. “Later. You’re safe now.”

  Calendra relaxed and Rafael gathered her in his arms.

  Lara had no words. The enemy she’d fought for her brother’s freedom now lay expiring on her bridge deck. And her brother grieved.

  She clasped Mitch tighter.

  Rafe rested his forehead on the edge of the bed and squeezed his eyes shut as the room spun. He panted through the new wave of nausea and clasped his gaunt hand over Calendra’s cold one where she lay in front of him. No matter how much his body ached, she felt much, much worse.

  His mind drifted off and his thoughts emptied out. Sleep, or perhaps just profound exhaustion, took him over, but finally he stirred. Several minutes or hours could have passed. He had no idea. Nothing in this concrete world concerned him except the woman nearly comatose before him. In the chaos of the wormhole, Calendra had held his consciousness together through the force of her own will.

  Now he had to offer the same in return.

  In the first few hours after escaping the wormhole, Calendra had screamed with each phase fluctuation as her body struggled to maintain cohesion. Even now, two days later, the instability pained them both, but the attacks came less often and each one was easier to manage than the last. Despite the marked improvement early on, though, lethargy still plagued them, and fatigue had claimed Calendra into sleepy oblivion hours ago.

  On a sigh his roiling stomach eased and the tangible world of the Gryphon’s small quarters came into focus. Once their molecular connection ceased, would any sort of softer attachment remain? On the Revenant, they’d existed as pure energy. Bare to each other as no one else could fathom. If Calendra rejected him now, he would have no place to hide.

  In their quarters on the Gryphon, the soft coral light of the bedside lamp spread in a ray across the bedcovers. He tucked the fuzzy blanket snug around Calendra’s slight form, careful of the wrist-sync and saline patch. Her chest rose and fell in the steady rhythm of breath, something he never thought to see. That little motion sapped his fragile strength, and Rafe rested his cheek on the bed once more with one hand on Calendra’s hip. After a few minutes, she raked slender fingers through his hair. He gazed up at her to find clear blue eyes staring back at him.

  “You’re still here.” One corner of her mouth turned up in a small smile.

  Rafe clasped her hand and kissed her knuckles. “Where else would I be?”

  She pulled him closer then and he rested lengthwise beside her on the bed, hips touching. Calendra caressed up his neck to tangle her fingers in his nape. Her other hand settled on his chest with a small smile.

  “Your heart beats.”

  He nodded and dropped a weary head to her shoulder. Kissed her pulse. “As does yours.”

  She wrapped an arm around his back and closed the small distance between them. “I remember…I remember being everywhere. At once.”

  “You were. We were. The ship’s Trans-D buffers powered the wrist-syncs to entangle one copy of each of us to the ship. And each other.”

  “So part of us is still trapped in the wormhole.”

  “Afraid so. It’s better than the whole being stuck there forever, isn’t it?”

  Calendra nodded. Her gaze fell to his mouth. They leaned into each other, lips caressing. His blood warmed and the desire to test his body’s limits—and Calendra’s reaction—burned away the fatigue. Would she still want him in the flesh, or was the sensual nightmare of the wormhole just that, a dream?

  Rafe pressed her into the soft pillows and, when she moaned against his lips, reflexively ground his hips. Her cool touch edged under his shirt and pulled the garment over his head. When her soft breasts warmed against his chest, all Rafe’s nerve endings hummed and every detail took on a surreal clarity. As if he’d never before been with any other woman. As if he were brand new.

  Partly, they were both reborn. Having been without form, these bodies were unmarked and untouched. They had been to Hellas and back already, but never once to Heaven.

  Calendra yanked the blankets away and notched a bare thigh over his hip. Her breath sighed hot on his neck as her hands worked over his body with a strength he didn’t know she possessed. Rafe sank into her warmth and, as her hips ground up to his, he took her mouth again.

  Their skin slipped against each other, slick with sweat that made Rafe chuckle. They were alive. Calendra moaned his name. The sight of her cheeks, slightly pink, the spicy scent behind her ear, and the salty taste of her skin were real, so very real. This heady feast of the senses suddenly consumed their earlier cerebral experiences and anchored him finally back to the tangible world. The ghost, the dream, he met in the wormhole melted around him like a true lover.

  The wave of bliss overtook them both and Rafe collapsed next to Calendra on the bed, still careful of hurting her. Her arm wrapped around him and their breathing evened out together. The lasting adrenaline boost even temporarily eased the next phase fluctuation. Calendra traced lazy circles on his back while his mind drifted off toward sleep.

  “I want to go back.”

  Rafe’s eyes flew open and his muscles froze. “You want to visit Creed? Go back to your home?”

  Her long fingers traced an infinity symbol on his skin. “I want to go back into the wormhole.”

  He propped himself up on his elbows and cupped her head in his hands. Her eyes looked clear with normal pupil dilation. The wrist-sync hummed along happily, its readout showing no errors.

  “Rafe, did you hear me?”

  He sat up and scrubbed his face with his hands. “Yes, I heard you. Are you crazy?”

  Calendra propped herself up on the pillows and pulled the blanket up over her breasts. “I probably am a little mad, yes, but I have to know what went wrong with my experiment.”

  Rafe sighed. “I thought your frequency vibration calculations were off, but if not, then clearly my own weren’t correct either. One failed attempt is enough for me. Isn’t it enough for you too? I’d have thought being a prisoner for a thousand years would cure you of trying to make the experiment work.”

  She frowned and picked at the blanket. “So many died because of me, Rafe. I can’t let their deaths be for nothing.”

  “It’s not for nothing. Without your work, we’d never have figured out how to open the wormhole at all. Without your work, I’d have never existed.”

  She nodded and her lip trembled. This softer side of Calendra was a woman he’d never seen before.

  Rafe clasped her hand. “We’ll arrive at Alpha Haven in a few hours, but soon we’ll go back to Creed.” He kissed her knuckles and smiled. “I’ll show you my research if you show me yours.”

  She smiled back and opened her arms to him. As they settled under the covers, b
are limbs intertwined, Rafe still sensed her uneasiness. Calendra would not give up easily. It was not in her nature.

  And that gulf he had feared earlier opened wide between them. Deeper than a black hole.

  Lara leaned back in her chair and let the commotion of a return to Alpha Haven flow around her. The Centaur and Gryphon had both docked that morning, and the crews with their families packed Artie’s, all of them Chimeran. All but one.

  “They should be here any moment.” Mitch set down two fresh pints and sat across from her, relaxed in black fatigues. “This ale is amazing. Do you really brew this here?”

  Lara watched Mitch’s throat as he took another drink. This morning she’d woken him up in her captain’s quarters with her head on his shoulder and a kiss on his nape. Gone were the tense shoulders of the last few weeks, and a smile lurked just below the surface.

  She nodded. “We use Terran barley, Creed hops and a little something extra we grow here on Alpha Haven. So it has a short shelf life.”

  Her gaze drifted to the door again and her stomach churned. Still, no sight of her parents.

  A roar of delight sounded from one corner as the Centaur’s captain, Gabriel Rao, won again at poker. With his nephew Chandra seated next to him, the big man chuckled around a cigar clamped at the edge of his mouth and scooped his winnings toward him. Cam sat down for the next round, ale in hand. Everyone else, including Mitch, might be all loosened up, but Lara could barely stomach the ale. Some of the most important details of her life would be decided in the next few minutes. And Mitch was talking about beer.

  “Lara?” Mitch waved a hand in front of her face and her attention bounced back to him. “I just spoke to Rafe. He’s settling Calendra in their bungalow now, and then he’ll be over. Your parents are on their way.” He clasped her hand across the table. “Everything will be fine. We have a plan, remember?”

  Lara intertwined their fingers and nodded. “I just never thought I’d ever see this.”

  And then it happened. Javier Soto and Sabine Osai stood at the entrance to Artie’s. Side by side, her parents’ shoulders brushed against each other. They held each other’s hands. Their time alone together while Lara rescued Rafael had clearly brought them closer.