Worlds Away (The Interstellar Age Book 3)

by Daniels, Valmore

  Shaking his head, Humberto said, “I don’t think so. No, I believe he is like every other powerful man; he simply wants more power. He suspects you are back in Honduras for a reason other than to escort Yaxche home. Whatever information he can get from you, he could then turn around and sell it to the highest bidder. I understand the Emperor of Sol System is generous in such matters.”

  Chow Yin! If that madman found out what Michael was doing, he would use every resource available to get that information and keep it for himself. Once again, Michael realized he’d been naïve to think that the Emperor’s reach wouldn’t extend so far.

  He looked up at Humberto “Where do you come into this?”

  “We are what we should have been: the Cruzados. When last we spoke, I told you I believed in their cause. Now, we work to restore ourselves to our rightful place.” He smiled widely. “Our mission is to protect the heritage of the Mayan Civilization. For the most part, we lobby for advocacy groups in Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico. There are many corporations and countries that wish to exploit our culture. We do everything in our power to prevent that.”

  “Including kidnapping me?”

  Humberto shrugged. “I prefer to think we liberated you from covert surveillance.”

  “Then you are not holding me hostage?”

  “Not at all. You are free to go any time you like. We will even take you back to your embassy, if you want—though I must insist that Yaxche remains under our protection. He’s one of our own. Without our assistance, he will be vulnerable to Oscar Ruiz and those who are like him.”

  Michael glanced over at Yaxche, who was listening, but didn’t seem very affected by the discussion.

  “What do you want with Yaxche?” he asked carefully.

  “We’ll bring him home, make sure he’s safe. Two of our men will remain in his village for protection.”

  Michael sat back on the sofa. “And that’s all you want to do, protect him?”

  Humberto nodded, then said, “Unless there is something more to your interest here? Perhaps we can help?”

  “You saved my life,” Michael said. “For that I owe you, but as you’ve illustrated, a lot has happened in the past four years.”

  “I see you do not trust me, mi amigo, and you are wise to be cautious.” He spread his hands. “However, I do not see how you have any other choice? Your government has little power here. Our government is not suited for subtle operations, and there is corruption everywhere. You need help from someone, or your purpose will have failed before it even started.”

  Michael still wasn’t completely convinced of Humberto’s intentions, but he wasn’t about to turn tail and go back to Canada with nothing to show for his efforts. Even Calbert would think him either incompetent, or that the entire mission had been a sham all along.

  “Let’s say I do trust you—” he began.

  “That would be nice.” Humberto gestured to Yaxche. “But it does not matter that you trust me. Only that abuelo trusts me, no?”

  Michael gave Yaxche a sharp look, but the older man regarded Humberto with consideration. “Ahyah,” he said finally. “I think my friend will like you, too.”

  21

  Kulsat Ship :

  Centauri System :

  The water was freezing, and the shock of it caused her to gasp. She swallowed a mouthful of the salty liquid and tried to choke it back up.

  Panic set in as she realized she was going to drown. In desperation, she tried to quantize herself, but she hadn’t charged herself nearly enough to make the transformation. If she didn’t do something, she was going to die.

  Three Crescents, whether he’d been pulled in by the current or had come closer of his own volition, was almost on top of her. He pointed his energy at her, but he seemed to be hesitating before finishing her off. Perhaps he was curious to see an air-breather drown. Whatever the reasons for his delaying the death blow, his proximity had the effect of pumping more radiation into Justine.

  It still wasn’t enough to let her convert her entire self to protons, but maybe, if she concentrated, she could convert a portion of herself. Knowing she had only seconds before she would pass out from oxygen deprivation, she tried to focus on her hand, wrapped around the sphere containing Kinemet.

  All she needed—she hoped—was a single proton to penetrate the outer shell of the container. The quantum drives they had developed at NASA had used hundreds of thousands of free protons to initiate the reaction in charged Kinemet. She had no idea what to expect, if her experiment worked.

  A ripple went through Three Crescents’ tentacles. He must have seen her clutching the sphere of Kinemet, Justine guessed. Bringing the energy rod up, he fired.

  Without consciously thinking about it, Justine willed her hand to convert from the physical to the photonic state. In a microsecond, the change occurred, and her hand passed through the sphere and to the grain of Kinemet within.

  Whatever the container was made of dampened the Kinemetic radiation, but wasn’t resistant to Justine’s photons.

  The boost of radiation was enough for her to quantize herself a split-second before the beam of energy would have sliced through her body, and before the water in her lungs would have drowned her.

  In the quantized state, she could no longer effectively hold the container, and the sphere fell to the floor of the lab.

  Justine instinctively stretched out her essence, one point reaching for the pebble of Kinemet, the other point extending toward Three Crescents. The moment she felt her photonic self come into contact with the Kinemetic atom, she willed a single proton to hit that atom with as much force as she could generate.

  A wave of energy coursed through her, coming up from that one point and traveling out of the other point, which had reached Three Crescents.

  As the Kulsat had done to her when she was on the Ultio, Justine converted Three Crescents into particles of light. She hoped, because he’d been quantized by her, rather than having done it himself, he would not be aware while he was in that condition, as Justine had not been conscious when they’d done it to her.

  She waited for a few moments, carefully watching the collection of photons—Three Crescents—to see if the Kulsat would once again flee. The quantized essence continued to float where it was, and Justine’s theory was confirmed. The science leader was neutralized.

  Though she could manipulate electricity in her quantized state, she had no ability to move solid objects. She couldn’t convert back to her human self, or she would drown, and she wasn’t about to leave the Kinemet where it was. It was precious.

  She had an idea.

  Pushing her sight out, she saw that the non-Risen Kulsat were all aboard the shuttle, and it had already launched. They were several hundred meters away from the Kulsat mining ship. Changing direction, Justine searched the Kulsat ship. Her exploration confirmed that Long Fingers was the only other Risen on board. He was on the bridge, all eight tentacles working at a rapid pace on a bank of computer consoles.

  Justine felt a gravitational shift as the Kulsat ship slowed and banked, obviously coming around to pursue the shuttle. Deep down, she knew Long Fingers would destroy the other aliens.

  Extending herself back to the Kinemet on the floor, Justine attempted to quantize the Kulsat ship.

  She didn’t have nearly enough power. The attempt was like trying to open a magnetically sealed door by ramming it with her body. The ship remained unaffected, and Justine nearly knocked herself unconscious with the effort. If she lost awareness, she would be at Long Finger’s mercy.

  The Kulsat ship had completed its turn, and it rumbles as the engines went into overdrive. Whatever distance the shuttle had managed to gain would soon be cut short.

  There had to be another way to distract Long Fingers.

  She formed a plan, but before she tried it, she reached out to the Kinemet and absorbed all of its radiation as quickly as she could, becoming fully charged in a matter of seconds.

  With the layout of th
e ship clear in her mind, Justine raced toward the engine room, which housed both the Kulsat’s quantum drive and their normal space engines. She didn’t know what kind of propulsion the Kulsat used, but she did know they would use some form of electric power to run the computers. Risen or Kinemats—whatever they were called—could manipulate electrical current. She would shred every conduit and computer in that room.

  When she got to the engine room, she headed for the normal space engine first. It was unlike any other engine she’d seen before, but she detected trace elements of plasma. She guessed their engine used a form of ion propulsion, similar to what was equipped on the majority of ships in Sol System.

  Justine had to stop the Kulsat ship from accelerating. Reaching out with her senses, she traced the various conductors and capacitors, and forced as much electrical current through them as she could.

  Many of the systems were waterproofed, but as the first circuits overloaded and blew, the explosions ruptured the firewalls, and salty water poured into the computer banks. The few brief sparks were extinguished quickly, but the water itself did more damage than Justine. The entire array of computers beside the normal space engine fizzled and died.

  The plasma engine cooled, and then ceased to function.

  Next up was the quantum drive. Justine intended to cripple the Kulsat ship.

  Before she could turn her attention to the computers on the other side of the room, the quantum drive turned on. Long Fingers must have realized his ship was being sabotaged. If the ship were quantized, it would effectively stop any further destruction. Long Fingers could travel at light speed to the beacon, and simply return to his home system. Once there, he could marshal the military, warn them of the threat humanity posed, and return in force.

  Also, Justine had no idea what would happen to her if she were on a ship that quantized while she was already in the quantized state. Would she be trapped on the ship? Would she retain her consciousness? She didn’t want to find out.

  By force of will, she pushed her essence through the water environment toward the quantum engine control computers. Before she got there, however, she ran into something. That fact alone shocked her. She was made of photonic particles; what substance out there was dense enough to stop her?

  She realized there was some kind of damping shield around the quantum engines. Perhaps, she speculated, it was there to contain or focus the quantization procedure. The scientists back at Quantum Resources and NASA would kill to study the Kulsat technology. Whatever the reason for the damping field, it prevented her from sabotaging the engines. She could sense they would fire in a matter of seconds.

  Directing her energy toward the hull of the ship, she streaked to it, through it, and out into space mere moments before the Kulsat vessel quantized. It raced away at the speed of light.

  With her sight, she tracked it for the two seconds it took to reach the star beacon, over six-hundred-thousand kilometers away. One instant, the ship existed, and the next, it disappeared from the Centauri System.

  ∞

  Using her ability to visualize the space around her, Justine scanned for the Kulsat shuttle, and soon spied it flying toward a large asteroid in the distance. The shuttle had traveled over a hundred kilometers away in the few minutes since it had left the Kulsat ship. Justine propelled herself toward the small vessel. With her sight, she saw that she was closing the gap, though slowly. Although she was made of photonic particles, she did not seem to have the ability to push her essence even a fraction of the speed of light—obviously, another reason for a quantum engine.

  Even though she’d been fully irradiated, Justine knew from the experimentation on the Lucis Observatory that she would not be able to maintain her quantized form for more than a few hours without additional exposure to Kinemet. The shuttle, however, carried enough of the metal to fuel her for the rest of her life. With it, she would be able to scan the entire sector of the Centauri System in search of Alex and the others. She just needed to reach the shuttle before her radiation levels dropped to the point where she turned corporeal again.

  A nagging thought crept up from the back of her mind as she raced forward. When she’d been on Venus, she’d been able to sense Alex on Canada Station Three, even though his essence had been very faint to her. Now, she did not sense him at all. Although the Kulsat ship had traveled quite a distance away from the space port, it wasn’t even a fraction of the distance from Venus to Canada Station Three. Three Crescents had given her no indication that they had killed her friends, and the science leader had said that if she weren’t going to cooperate, they would gather the others for questioning.

  It made no sense to her, unless something had happened in the last few hours.

  After what seemed like an eternity, Justine halved the distance between her and the Kulsat shuttle. She estimated she would reach it before it arrived at the asteroid.

  Her sight still extended, she sensed the star beacon pulse. A moment later, a ship appeared in the Centauri System. Had the Kulsat returned already?

  Justine knew they would be able to sense her, and would head straight toward her. Even if she changed her course, they would eventually find their wayward shuttle and recover the cargo. She also knew there was a good chance they would kill all the Kulsat on board.

  With renewed determination, Justine pushed the limits of her powers. Though she had no idea what she was going to do when she got there, she knew she had to get to the shuttle before the Kulsat ship did.

  The newly arrived ship quantized, and the streak of light crossed the distance between the beacon and her in a blink.

  It rematerialized a few hundred meters away from her. Unlike the Kulsat ship, whose shape resembled a gigantic narwhal, this ship had the contours of an enormous bird. The hull, also made of Kinemet, swirled with reds and golds. Was this a Kulsat warship? Justine wondered.

  The ship seemed to sense the shuttle beyond them, and changed course, powering toward the helpless vessel. Even going as fast as she could, Justine knew she would never reach the shuttle in time. In a desperate gamble, Justine put herself on an intercept course with the new ship. She would do the same to it as she had to the first Kulsat ship; with the last bits of her Kinemetic power, she would tear it apart from within.

  When her essence raced through the hull, and into the belly of the ship, she felt a momentary disorientation. It took her a moment to realize she wasn’t floating in water. The inside of the new ship was filled with air. Instead of the dull gray sheen of metal that covered the walls and floors of the mining ship, the inner surfaces of this ship were painted in a mosaic of bright patterns.

  This isn’t a Kulsat ship, she realized.

  Detecting two Kinemetic presences on board, Justine flew in their direction instead of trying to find the engine room.

  At the bridge, she froze in momentary shock when she saw two tall, bird-like bipeds sitting at the controls. In front of them was an electronic display showing the Kulsat shuttle. Though Justine could not understand any of the words on the readout, she was very familiar with what a targeting system looked like.

  The new aliens were preparing to blast the shuttle, along with Red Spot and all the other Kulsat passengers, out of space.

  22

  Sierra de las Minas :

  Guatemala :

  Long Count: 10.0.0.0.0 :

  For the next two days, I treated the burns and did as much as I could to help the survivors recover from the tragedy.

  My mother and some of the other women had set blankets around the outside of her house to serve as beds. While they all had burned skin, soon they began to complain of upset stomachs. Some became so weak, they could not even lift themselves up off the blankets. Some soiled themselves where they lay.

  Those who were still able helped to bury those who had died, while I tended the sick as best I could.

  The three elders were dead, leaving me the only remaining adult male; and I was still not completely healed from my broken ribs.
<
br />   When one of the women from a nearby farm came to the village, I bade her travel to Copán and ask them to send help. By the time she gathered supplies for the journey there, she’d fallen ill and didn’t have the strength to pick up her pack, let alone hike the distance.

  Of the fifty-two women and children in our community, seventeen had been in the village itself when the star grain exploded. Four women and one child had been killed in the blast, and two children and an older woman had died from their burns the first night. By all accounts, there should have only been nine wounded left for me to tend, but as I surveyed my patients, I counted fifteen women and four children who needed my aid. Some of the women who had been on their farms were showing the same symptoms.

  My mother became ill as well, and had fallen into unconsciousness a number of times.

  She died that night, along with the rest of the women and children who had been in the village during the blast.

  By morning, every surviving member of our community made their way to me, begging me to help them.

  I had no idea how to do that. I had only read a few of Balam’s healing scrolls, and those had only told me how to heal physical wounds. Nothing I had read had given me the knowledge to treat inner sickness.

  Ysalane, who lived on the farm farthest from the village, was one of the few women left who could still walk around on their own. When she’d come to us with her two younger brothers yesterday, she had not shown any signs that she was burned, but by mid-morning, blisters were appearing on her arms and legs, and both of her brothers had started vomiting.

  By that afternoon, she became too weak to stand.

  I was completely overwhelmed by the death and pain surrounding me. There was nothing I could do to save them, and I couldn’t stand listening to the dozens of pleading voices begging me to ease their suffering.

  I ran into the woods east of our village, trying to escape the desperation I felt. When I reached the stream where we got our water, I fell to my knees along the bank and looked at my rippling reflection.