[Confluence 01.0] Fluency

by Jennifer Foehner Wells

  He would not.

  He set several thousand cadres of microscopic escutcheon squillae to move into the damaged areas. It would take years for them to close that gap, harvesting material from other areas of the ship molecule by molecule. But if anyone could guide them to such a feat, it was Kai’Negli.

  Then he saw it. Red light in his peripheral vision. He rotated his funnel to change direction and froze in place, his eyes widening. They wouldn’t dare.

  A laser was shining through the opening they’d created in the hull of the ship. They were slicing open his enclosure.

  He trembled with horror.

  How could they even contemplate such an action? Because he’d refused them? They would kill him for that? Why not just let him be? Move on?

  He had to verify it with his own eyes. He jetted closer to that end of his habitat. Without the tough exterior of the ship in the way and the escutcheon to re-form over the cuts, there was little to impede the laser. The line they were scribing was moving fast and water was already spilling out of the opening.

  He marshaled every squillae in the area to converge on the line already cut to re-bond the material. They moved en masse but most were caught up in the flood of escaping water, carried away to be lodged within shards frozen in the vacuum of space.

  Nothing could save him. He had nothing left. He was powerless to stop them.

  Perhaps they expected him to capitulate now, but he would never cooperate with thugs like this. This kind of behavior was beneath him.

  He watched the laser mercilessly cut across the barrier between himself and the void. Cracks began to form in the transparent material as the pressure of the water pushed against the weakened areas. He could hear the tank creaking and groaning under the strain.

  He never would have guessed he’d meet dusk in this manner.

  Suddenly it gave way.

  He didn’t even fight the rush of water.

  The sluice hurled him through the line of the laser itself. He barely registered the pain of amputation as he flipped end over end, his remaining limbs reaching out and finding nothing to cling to. He was thrown clear of the ship, his mantle fluttering with no water left to push against.

  The last thing he saw before dusk settled over him was the Portacollus initiating a jump sequence and leaving him behind.

  2

  Jane’s heart slammed against her rib cage as microseconds ticked by. She could see the leading edge of the swirl, smudging the stars beyond into indistinct commas of light. They were almost to the tunnel. Her vision blurred as the wormhole generator deep inside the ship roared to a crescendo, dominating her consciousness, linking machine to living flesh through Ei’Brai. She could feel it resonating in her bones.

  Almost…there…

  Absently, she felt her body lean against the straps, eagerly pushing toward the wormhole as if she could make the ship get there faster somehow. Pain pulsed in her head with every heartbeat. It felt like her brain could split in half. She did her best to ignore it. It wasn’t important. She focused all her concentration on the jump.

  Jane breathed shallowly, stubbornly clinging to consciousness and the mental link with Ei’Brai. She’d felt the rest of the crew wink out ages ago, though she knew it had only been tiny fractions of a second. It felt like forever.

  A seemingly endless stream of calculations—distance algorithms, wormhole formulae, coordinates in space—flowed from Ei’Brai through her, then the ship’s computer, and finally the drive in a seamless and nearly instantaneous cascade of incomprehensible data.

  She could not let go. If she did, the wormhole jump would fall short and they’d have to add another one to the route. That was the last thing she wanted to do. The fewer jumps they had to endure, the better.

  Ei’Brai’s consternation grumbled through her. The end of him and the beginning of her was indistinct. He didn’t know why jumping with her was so difficult, but every jump so far had been like this—grueling, with her barely making it to their destination conscious. He blamed it on her inexperience, on her otherness, but he didn’t really know the cause.

  He’d never jumped with any species aside from sectilians before he’d jumped with Jane. Human minds, as he often reminded her, were very different from sectilian minds—less organized, more tangentially driven—which under certain circumstances might be construed as a good thing, but not when jumping. It could be that or any of a billion other factors. She might never know.

  A ring of stars before them turned to streaks, smudged by the gyre of the wormhole as it moved to envelop them. Through the lens in the center were the distant stars on the other side, many light-years away. She held her breath as the funnel sucked them in. There was a long moment of utter chaos during which no thought could find a place to stick.

  Then, relief. They’d arrived…somewhere, anyway.

  She sagged back in the oversized command chair, breathing raggedly, one critical question on her mind. She sent the thought to Ei’Brai, who had already receded from her to watch the computer analyze star maps. “Did we reach our destination?”

  He didn’t reply immediately. He put her on hold, a mental gesture, as if he were sticking up a finger as he watched data scroll by.

  They’d left Earth weeks before to begin a sequence of jumps toward the heart of the Milky Way galaxy. Their trajectory would eventually take them to the Sectilius system and the sibling worlds of Sectilia and her moon Atielle, where Jane would turn over the ship to its rightful owners. When Jane had taken command of the Speroancora, she’d pledged to take Ei’Brai home, and that was what she was doing. Once there, she hoped to find out who had orchestrated the genocide that had killed Ei’Brai’s original crew. She also hoped the Speroancora would be used in the search for the kuboderans stranded all over the galaxy. Jane and her human crew would join in that mission, if the Sectilius would have them.

  She’d never imagined the journey would be this difficult but that didn’t matter. She’d gladly face ten times worse for the opportunity to meet sectilians in person. She needed to go to Sectilius like she needed to breathe. She had to see it for herself, meet the people for herself, for reasons she couldn’t fully comprehend.

  Finally the strand of tension between herself and Ei’Brai broke. “Yes,” he said. “We have arrived at the target destination.” She felt him go limp, drifting, as he let go of his own anxiety, letting exhaustion take him. She did the same.

  “Jane?” Ajaya’s voice and gentle touch broke through the heavy blanket of sleep.

  Jane opened her eyes to find Ajaya Varma leaning over her, her hand on Jane’s arm, with a kindly look on her weary face.

  “What?” Jane stammered. “Oh. I…” Her mouth was dry. She needed a sip of water.

  “We all fell asleep, Commander,” Ajaya said kindly, in a manner probably meant to obviate Jane’s embarrassment. No one used the sectilian term Quasador Dux or Qua’dux except Ei’Brai, though Ron called her QD sometimes in a jocular way. Only Ajaya used the term Commander. Ajaya would feel the need to dignify Jane’s place as the leader of this ship, but apparently the alien title still felt odd on Ajaya’s tongue, despite the fact that she’d made great strides in learning the language.

  Ajaya straightened from her position stooped over Jane and glanced back.

  Ronald Gibbs stood behind her, rubbing his eyes sleepily. “Alan must have woken first. He’s probably off exploring Tech Deck again.”

  Jane pushed herself up, her body stiff and painful. She’d been slumped at a strange angle in the command chair. She had no idea how long she’d been like that. Too long, judging by the muscles protesting in her neck.

  Ei’Brai briefly checked in to confirm what Ron had said. Alan was on the deck that housed the engines, drives, and various electrical systems and water-processing systems. Alan called it Tech Deck, eschewing the longish Sectilius name for it: Tabulamachinium. They could have called it engineering, but Tech Deck was fine. It was probably better than “TMI deck,” which was wh
at she’d been calling it in avoidance of saying the name. She’d thought that was a mildly amusing name. No one else had.

  Jane frowned and wiped at her face, hoping she wouldn’t find drool there. She wished Ajaya would call her Jane. Mark Walsh had been the commander, but he wasn’t there anymore. He was safely back on Earth, along with a much-rejuvenated Tom Compton.

  Ajaya said, “You were positioned awkwardly, such that your airflow was restricted.” She paused, her lips pressed together.

  Jane wondered what Ajaya wasn’t saying. Then her sleepy brain caught up. Ugh. How embarrassing. She’d been snoring, not getting enough air. She sighed and shrugged at the ache in her neck and shoulder.

  Ajaya grimaced. “I felt it would be better to wake you and get you to your quarters and a proper bed where you might get more restful sleep.”

  “Thank you, but I think I’ve slept enough. There’s work to be done.” Too much work. She felt an urgency to accomplish as much as she could before they reached Sectilius. She wanted to turn over the ship in the best condition possible.

  Ajaya shook her head. “You need to rest, Commander. The jumps are taking a physical toll on you.”

  Ron moved closer, a wry look on his face as he rolled his shoulders. “There’s always work to be done.” He came up to stand behind Ajaya as though lending his support to her argument. His large, brown hand came to rest casually on Ajaya’s shoulder.

  Jane stifled a yawn, nodded her agreement to Ajaya and Ron, and headed for Tech Deck. She’d rest a little as soon as she finished this next task. A batch of squillae had recently completed production, and she needed to distribute them as soon as possible. These sectilian nanites, programmed to repair and maintain every ship system, made it possible for such a small crew to manage the city-sized vessel. Normally the ship would replenish and distribute the tiny machines automatically, but since they’d been forced to destroy every last one of them to survive, she’d taken on the task of personally dispersing them to the most critical areas herself. It would take a full year to manufacture them to the level they’d been at before she’d obliterated them. It left the ship vulnerable and that wasn’t okay. This was her ship, at least for now, she thought wistfully. She had to optimize its condition.

  As she walked through the corridors, the need for sleep pressed on her. She stretched her arms out and twisted her head to one side and then the other, trying to push the sluggishness back, wake up more fully, and get rid of the creaky feeling in her neck that kept making her wince. Duty had kept her on her feet long past the point of sanity.

  Her somnolent brain drifted as she went. Echoes of the former Qua’dux Rageth’s memories crept to the forefront. She could see the empty corridors as they were, but also as they had been in Rageth’s time, full of bustling people—a mixture of short, stocky sectilians with corded muscles and willowy atellans from Sectilius’s moon, Atielle. They all shared an angularity—high, geometric cheekbones and froths of bushy curled hair ranging from light gray-brown to medium brown. She wondered what thoughts had been lurking behind their somber expressions. Then she could see those thoughts in Rageth’s mind too, funneled through Ei’Brai’s perception of the crowd. They all had been filled with purpose, just as she was, driven to complete their myriad goals. These sectilians were gone, but surely someone had survived on the sibling planets. She couldn’t wait to meet them.

  Need more? Continue the saga now!

  REMANENCE Confluence Book 2 is now available on Amazon.com in ebook, paperback, and audio book.

  Also by Jennifer Foehner Wells

  NOVELS

  Fluency (Confluence Book 1)

  Valence (Confluence Book 3) COMING JUNE 2017!

  The Druid Gene

  (The Druid Gene takes place in the same universe as the Confluence series but with new characters and a story arc that twines with your favorite Confluence characters.)

  SHORT FICTION

  The Grove (free)

  Symbiont Seeking Symbiont (free)

  ANTHOLOGIES

  Dark Beyond the Stars (Contains my short story “Carindi.”)

  The Z Chronicles (The Future Chronicles) (Contains my short story “The Fall of the Percedus.”

  THE DRUID GENE

  New series. New characters. New challenges.

  Same universe—a story that twines with the Confluence series.

  It’s A Most Dangerous Game

  Abducted. Forced to fight against her will.

  Darcy has a 10,000 year old secret buried in her genetic code.

  The Druid Gene makes her a target, but it may also save her.

  About the Author

  Jennifer Foehner Wells lives an alternately chaotic and fairly bucolic existence in Indiana with two boisterous little boys and two semi-rabid chihuahua mixes. You can find her on Twitter, extolling science and scifi fandoms, as @Jenthulhu. To find out more about Jen, visit: www.jenthulhu.com.

  Please consider leaving a review. It’s the best way to help other readers find this book, thereby helping to support the authors you want to read more of.

  For More Jen-fo:

  @Jenthulhu

  Jennifer Foehner Wells

  www.jenthulhu.com

  jen@jenthulhu.com