“I’m sorry. You’re right. Look you need to think about this, that’s all. If you agree to go, you’re going to be away from me and the girls for months at a time.”
“Technically, I’ll still be right here,” Lucien said.
“But your clone will be out there, and as soon as he comes back, he’ll be forced to integrate his memories with yours.”
“Sounds like having your sweet tart and eating it, too. What’s the problem with that?”
Tyra started to say something, but stopped herself and sighed. “Nothing.” She looked away, out the picture window, out over a forest of evergreens caked with snow. Beyond that she spied a frozen lake crowded with stay-at-home parents and their children, all skating on the ice. It was a glimpse of the life she was missing, the one where she always seemed to be the spectator and never the participant. If anyone needed a clone so that she could be in two places at once, it was her. How many others felt that way? No wonder the judiciary had ruled that clones had to integrate once they reached Astralis. If they didn’t, it was just a short leap from there to living multiple lives at once. Things would get out of hand really fast.
“What are you worried about?” Lucien prompted.
Tyra turned back to him, her constant guilt and her secret fears made her feel suddenly intensely vulnerable. She tried to keep her expression neutral, but she felt naked, like every whisper of a thought was written on her face.
She lived with the waking dread that one day she’d come home late and find that Lucien wasn’t there. She’d never voiced it to him. Weakness was a throat exposed, the jugular pulsing invitingly, and men were all hunters at heart. But if she didn’t share her fears, she couldn’t justify telling him to turn down the chance to get back out there and explore the universe.
Tyra took a deep, shuddery breath. “I’m worried about you. What if you fall out of love with me and in to love with someone else? What if you start to prefer your life out there, in the stars, with no responsibilities and no commitments? What if you get lonely and some woman seduces you?”
Lucien’s brow was skeptically raised, but the grave look in his eyes told her the truth: he’d just admitted the possibility to himself, and he was busy thinking about it, weighing the risk that he might actually succumb to such temptations—an affair that wasn’t an affair, his mind in two bodies, having your sweet tart and eating it, too, what happens in space stays in space....
Tyra swallowed a scream and did her best to look unconcerned.
“We’re married,” Lucien said finally. “We have two kids. They need their mother, not some other woman. I don’t want to make our lives any more complicated than they already are.”
“They need their mother. What do you need, Lucien?”
“I need you, too. But you’re never here.”
“I’m going to work on that. I promise. Things are going to be different.”
“Good. Then maybe you won’t need to worry about me having an affair, because you’ll be confident in what we have.”
Lucien’s words stabbed straight through to her heart. “So you’re saying I have a reason to be worried.”
“No, I’m saying your worries are a direct result of your guilt and the fact that you’re giving me more reason and opportunity than most men need. What you forget is that I’m not most men.”
“Maybe not, but you’re still human.”
He sighed. “You’re getting ahead of yourself. We don’t even know why Stavos called the Paragons together.”
Tyra snorted. “Yes we do. It doesn’t take an astrophysicist to figure that out.”
Lucien’s eyes narrowed. Poor choice of words. One of his lesser issues with her was how she was always patronizing him with her education. She’d been an astrophysicist before she’d decided to run for political office, and while he wasn’t un-educated, his education as a Paragon was only really applicable to expeditionary work, to exploring the stars and meeting new alien races, which he’d been unable to do for almost a decade.
Now he was about to get a second chance, and here she was telling him not to take it because she was scared that whatever threads were still holding them together wouldn’t be strong enough if he had some freedom.
She was being selfish and she knew it. “Look, just... consider the consequences, okay?”
Lucien nodded. “I will.” He grabbed her hand and gave it a quick squeeze before getting up from the couch and leaving the room once more.
Almost as an afterthought, Tyra thought to ask, “Where’s Theola?”
Lucien turned back to her from the front door, while he reached into the coat closet and withdrew his gloves and jacket. “She’s at daycare. I signed her up for one after I got the notice about the meeting. I figured you wouldn’t be able to watch her, so...”
Tyra nodded absently. “Okay. See you later,” she said, as he finished putting on his coat and gloves.
“See you,” he replied.
He opened the door and a blast of cold air gushed into the room, making Tyra shiver. He shut the door behind him, and Tyra sat staring at it for a long moment, her guts twisting with dread.
“I love you, too,” she whispered.
Chapter 27
Mokar
The Specter flew low over mottled blue and red forests of strange, cauliflower-shaped trees and vast open plains dry brown grass.
Both of Mokar’s suns were high in the sky, one as red as a Mokari’s eyes, the other campfire-orange. The sky was pinkish, almost white, while the clouds were salmon-colored.
Mokar was as unique as any world or facet of New Earth that Lucien had ever been to, and it was a far cry from the blue skies, white clouds, and typically-green trees of Astralis.
Along the horizon a cloud of black specks led the way. Mokari. They were taking the Specter to their underworld.
“How is it possible that one sun sets and the other doesn’t?” Addy asked, peering up through the top of the Specter’s canopy.
Katawa answered, “We landed at the North Pole. The planet’s tilt and rotation are such that at this time of year the most distant sun only sets three times a year, while the other one rises and sets a hundred times as often.”
“So twilight is going to fall again soon?”
“In five of your standard hours,” Katawa said.
“And you know all of this because...” Garek trailed off. “Wait, don’t tell me. The ship’s databanks, right?”
“Correct.”
“Is it much farther to the underworld?” Addy asked.
“I do not know.”
After another few minutes of standing and watching their progress from the Specter’s bridge, Lucien grew tired and took a seat in the co-pilot’s chair.
Katawa glanced sharply at him as he did so, and Lucien held up his hands. “I won’t touch anything. Promise.”
Katawa looked away. “It is not that. You sat on my lunch.”
Lucien felt around underneath his robes until his hand encountered something slimy and squishy. Lucien withdrew his hand in horror to find it coated with thick white slime. “Yuck!” He jumped up from the co-pilot’s chair and saw a plate filled with an assortment of colorful slug-like creatures, all flattened into a sticky paste.
Lucien’s nose wrinkled, and he used his clean hand to brush off the back of his robes. That hand came away dripping with slime, too.
“How is it possible that everyone this side of the Red Line eats such disgusting food?” Lucien asked, staring at his hands in dismay.
Addy laughed.
“It is not disgusting,” Katawa replied. “Try one. They are delicious.”
“I’m going to go wash up,” Lucien said. He squeezed by Katawa’s chair and hurried to the amidships washroom.
When he returned, he found Katawa devouring the remains of the slugs and licking his bony gray fingers. Addy sat beside him in the co-pilot’s chair, trying not to notice, and both Brak and Garek were gone, probably back in their quarters.
There
were only two seats on the bridge, so Lucien was forced to stand behind Addy’s chair.
The three of them remained silent for a while, watching the scenery roll by below. Lucien noticed that every now and then the plains would part to reveal a gaping black hole belching steam. Volcanic vents? Lucien wondered. That got him wondering about the Mokari underworld. Would it be volcanically active? Too hot to safely explore? Or perhaps the air was simply toxic. That would explain why no Mokari who’d ever gone there had returned.
Eventually Lucien grew tired of standing and he sat down on the deck with his back to one of the curving bulkheads. After about an hour of sitting, Lucien’s back and backside were aching enough to force him to his feet once more.
“I have a suggestion for you, Katawa,” he said, looming between the pilot’s and copilot’s chairs once more.
“Yes?”
“Install some extra seating up here.”
“Oh yes. That is a good idea. But we may have to survive on less appetizing meals from the fabricator in order to afford them.”
“Less appetizing? If the meals get any less appetizing I’m going to starve. Forget the chairs.” Lucien jerked his chin to the horizon where the Mokari were still flying on up ahead. “They haven’t even stopped for a break.”
“The Mokari are strong. They do not need breaks,” Katawa replied.
“They must have heard you. Look—” Addy pointed out the canopy. “They’re dropping down into that field. I guess they take breaks after all.”
Lucien leaned over her chair and peered into the distance. She was right. The black specks were growing larger and closer, and they were circling down. “So what do we do while we wait?” he asked. “Stop and hover, or go down and take a look around?”
Katawa hauled back on the throttle until they were hovering amidst a swarm of Mokari, all swooping and circling around them. Katawa pointed to something on the ship’s sensor display. “They did not stop for a break. They stopped because we have arrived.”
Lucien spent a moment trying to decipher the sensor display while Katawa hovered down for a landing.
“I don’t know what I’m looking at,” Lucien said.
Addy sucked in a breath. “Then you’re looking in the wrong place.”
Lucien looked up from the display and saw what she was talking about. As the Specter dropped down, the ground opened up beneath them in an enormous, almost perfectly circular opening that plunged straight down into darkness. Lucien couldn’t see the bottom of it. It just went on and on...
“How deep is that?” Addy asked.
“More than seven kilometers,” Katawa said as the Specter’s landing struts touched ground with a subtle jolt. The yawning hole leading into the Mokari Underworld was just a few meters from the bow of the ship.
“Seven kilometers?” Lucien asked. He imagined the edge of the hole crumbling and sending the Specter tumbling down. “Is it going to be safe down there? How thick is Mokar’s crust?” He assumed there must be magma after a certain point, since they’d seen steam rising from smaller vents along the way.
“It will not be safe, but if you mean to ask whether or not you’ll have to walk through magma, this will not be a concern. Thermal readings suggest that the crust is approximately fifty kilometers thick at this point.”
“Even so, we’ll need our suits. The temperature and air pressure are going to be a lot higher at the bottom.”
“Yes,” Katawa agreed.
Addy turned to him. “I thought you said the Mokari don’t like false skins.”
“They will not be going with you, so it will not be a problem.”
Something about what Katawa had just said bothered Lucien, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.
Addy figured it out first. “You?” she echoed.
That was it. Katawa’s choice of pronouns. He hadn’t included himself in that statement.
“You’re not going with us?” Lucien asked, his eyes narrowing with sudden suspicion.
“No. I cannot.”
“Why not?”
Katawa rotated his chair away from the ship’s controls to face Lucien. The alien’s face was expressionless, but he sat with his hands folded in his lap, and big black eyes blinking lazily.
Lucien glared. “Well?”
“I am a god to the Mokari,” Katawa explained, and left it at that, as if the rest should be self-evident.
“So what?” Addy said.
“So, I cannot go into their underworld. It would defile me, and they would no longer trust me to listen to their songs.”
“You’ve already heard their songs,” Lucien replied.
“They have others that may help us in our search. I will listen to them while I wait for you to return from the underworld.”
Lucien snorted and shook his head. “And what if we don’t return?”
“If you die, I will mourn your passing. As will the Mokari. Songs will be sung of you. I will make sure of it.”
“Gee, thanks,” Lucien said dryly. Suddenly he felt just as suspicious as Garek, and more. He had a bad feeling about this so-called underworld, and how Katawa seemed to know so much about Mokar and the Mokari, even though he’d supposedly never been here.
Maybe that was a lie. The truth could be far more sinister. They might be about to become Katawa’s latest victims. For all they knew, he’d already lured dozens (or hundreds!) of others to their deaths in the Mokari underworld, all of them looking for the magical key that would open the portal to the planet where the lost fleet had gone.
Now that Lucien thought about it, that would make a lot more sense. Katawa had been looking for his people and their lost fleet for thousands of years, so how was it possible that he was only now starting to follow all the rumors and legends he’d heard? It was far more likely that he’d followed them all already, and this Mokari legend was the last and most promising one—the one he’d been unable to follow because everyone he sent into the underworld ended up dead.
Addy shot him a worried look, and he wondered if she was thinking along similar lines.
“We should not delay,” Katawa said, after enduring the long silence of Lucien’s thoughts. “There is much to do to prepare you for your journey.” Katawa rose from his chair and walked by him, heading off the bridge.
“What if we decide not to go?” Lucien asked.
Katawa froze in the entrance of the bridge and slowly turned. “Why would you change your mind now, at the last possible second? Are you afraid of the underworld? I thought you were explorers. Paragons.”
“Paragons?” Lucien asked, the word slicing through him like a hot knife.
Katawa nodded slowly. “Yes. Trained to explore the universe. Etherus trained you himself, did he not?”
Lucien couldn’t believe what he was hearing, couldn’t bring himself to speak. Katawa had knocked the air right out of his lungs.
Addy stood up beside him, took his hand and squeezed it—hard. “We are Paragons,” she said. “We can handle this.”
“Good. This is what I thought. I am glad to not be mistaken,” Katawa replied. “Come, we must get the others.”
“Wait,” Addy said. “It would be better if we explained to them about you not coming with us—alone. If you’re there, they might think we’re being somehow coerced into this.”
Katawa blinked. “Coerced?”
“Garek is suspicious by nature. It’ll be easier to deal with his concerns without you there.”
“I see.”
“We’ll get our equipment together and put on our suits and then meet you at the rear airlock, fair enough?”
“Yes. Fair. I will meet you. Do not take long.”
“We won’t.”
Lucien watched Katawa leave, his thoughts racing and heart pounding. The little alien walked around a bend in the corridor and out of sight.
As soon as he was gone, Addy grabbed his arm and squeezed it to get his attention. “Garek was right,” she whispered. “Katawa is up to something.”<
br />
Lucien stared grimly back at her. “You figured it out, too.”
She nodded. “We never told him we were Paragons. And he’s been gone from the Etherian Empire for more than ten thousand years. The Paragons were only founded a little over thirty years ago, after we met Etherus for the first time. There’s no way he could have found out what we are unless someone told him.”
“And besides us, there’s only one person who could have told him that we’re Paragons.”
“Abaddon,” Addy breathed, her green eyes wide.
Lucien nodded slowly. “Abaddon.”
“What are we going to do?”
Lucien thought about it. “I think it’s time to execute Garek’s plan. We’re need to steal Katawa’s ship and get the frek out of here before it’s too late.”
Chapter 28
Mokar
“I knew it!” Garek said, and lashed out at the nearest bulkhead with his fist.
“I crack his head like egg!” Brak added.
Lucien suppressed a chill at Brak’s bloodthirstiness. “We don’t have to kill him. Just kick him out the airlock and fly off.”
Garek sent him a sour look. “It would be safer to kill him. What if he tells Abaddon we took his ship? We’ll have every Faro in the universe looking for us.”
“He might tell Abaddon what happened whether we kill him or not. For all we know he has a neural implant like ours that will transmit his consciousness to the nearest Faro ship when he dies.”
“Well, whatever we’re going to do, we’d better do it fast,” Addy said. “We’re going to make him suspicious if we take any longer.”
“You said we’d suit up and meet him at the rear airlock...” Lucien mused.
“So we’ll be armed,” Garek said, smiling wryly. “Smart move.” He walked over to the closet and opened it to reveal the gleaming silver armor of his exosuit. They’d all met in Garek’s quarters, so his suit was the one closest at hand.
“We’ll meet you at the cargo bay,” Lucien said. It was located right before the aft airlock where Katawa would be waiting for them.
Dark Space Universe (Book 2): The Enemy Within Page 20