The Deep Link (The Ascendancy Trilogy Book 1)

by Sicoe, Veronica

  We emerge into a broad corridor and my oxy-mask tightens around my head, signaling a difference in pressure. I check my nacom, but its tiny screen is black and lifeless.

  The sphere touches the next wall and another doorway peels open, this time on a narrow tube. The alien nudges me in and follows. The doorway contracts behind us. The elevator ascends, and I'm almost crushed by high-gravity inertia. I struggle to breathe as the alien watches, unmoved.

  The elevator slows and stops. It opens onto a broad, dim corridor with sparkling walls arched outward like the curvature of a tunnel. The alien nudges me out, and the shift in gravity shunts me into the air. I flail, but manage to land on my feet, my stomach in my throat.

  Half a g, at most. I bound across the elastic floor, an awkward smile creeping up my face as my mask relaxes. Soft blue light renders the glittering walls and floor into an uncannily good impression of outer space.

  The alien walks quietly beside me. I can't read its facial expression, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't enjoy the change of environment. It's tenser than before, its movements brisker.

  Curves and bends in the spacious corridor pass without comment, until the alien brings one hand down on my shoulder and halts us both.

  "Prepare," it rumbles, and turns me to face the wall on our right.

  A new doorway opens, and I'm pushed into a round room, maybe five meters wide. There's a single white chair at the center, reminiscent of a gamer's hub. But I doubt he brought me here to play VR games.

  "Prepare for what?"

  The alien grunts, picks me up as if I weigh nothing, and plants me into the chair.

  "Hey, wait a minute, this—"

  "Prepare."

  It presses a heavy hand against me, jabbing the barbs of my mandible pendant into my chest. I clench my jaw as the Dorylinae chitin punctures my skin. The alien rakes its claws along the side of the chair, and I'm immobilized. All I can do is stare into the glowing eyes of my alien captor.

  Then it rips my mask off.

  The air reeks of ethanol and molten plastic. My eyes and throat start to burn. Every muscle screams to fight, to run. But I can't move. Panic snakes through me, stirring up old nightmares.

  I was twelve when the TMC bombed the Dorylinae hives and killed everyone I knew. They weeded out survivors by their informative value, like data chips. I got passed along repeatedly until I landed on a command carrier, where I was recognized as the daughter of xenologist and traitor Gregory Harber, and his equally traitorous wife, Mira. I was suddenly interesting to the Ticks, and with that interest came a long procession of interrogations, brain probes, and drug-sustained virtual torture. The Ticks fucked with my mind so much it took me years—after I escaped and hitched a ride back to Maza—to sort my memories out and fully understand what had happened.

  Now I'm a prisoner again. But this time it's not a human in control, not someone I learned how to fight.

  My eyes plead with the alien, but it doesn't even blink. Instead, two metallic tendons detach from the chair rim and snake toward me. The alien steps back to watch.

  The tendrils latch onto my temples and jab long needles into my skull. Bright pain explodes as I press my tongue between my teeth, and my heart pounds against my ribs.

  The tendons unlatch with a hiss and withdraw into the chair. The wet feel of the needles lingers, acute and nauseating.

  The alien runs one hand along the chair's rim again, and I'm free. Blood rushes through my body, and I gasp for air.

  "You not lose awareness," the alien says in its broken English. A male, I think.

  I inspect my temples with trembling hands. Two small wet bumps are attached to my skin. They give way to my touch, then contract and throb. I wince as they slither away from my fingers and bury themselves deeper in my skull.

  My stomach convulses. I barely manage to bend over before I retch.

  The alien looks down at me. "—But you lose control of body." There's disappointment in his voice.

  I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, and swallow repeatedly. The vomit seeps into the floor and disappears. I almost throw up again.

  The alien reaches for me, but I raise my hands.

  "No, thanks. I'll walk."

  Shaking, still thoroughly sick, I follow him into the corridor.

  The walls seem to billow, as if I'm being passed through the gut of an enormous, indifferent creature. I brush the wall with the tips of my fingers, and the surface ripples like thick black oil. I pull my hand back.

  "Where are you taking me? And what was that—what did you do to my head?"

  "Replace," the alien says.

  I frown and swallow. My eyes and nose sting from the acrid air, throat still burning with acid.

  Replace...

  Replace what with what, and— "Why?"

  He grunts and smacks his jaws, a trail of slime oozing down to his chest. "Prepare."

  "For what?"

  The mirror-sphere soars quietly above us, then stops a bit further up and touches the wall. My upside-down reflection creeps along the sphere's surface again like a gray smear.

  "The Dominant see you now," the alien says. He leans in and stares at me insistently. "Not speak. Not lose awareness, not lose control of body."

  "Wait—"

  "Not resist."

  Then he shoves me in, and the wall shuts behind me.

  3

  The darkness reeks of ethanol and tears flood my eyes. I rub at them angrily, missing my oxy-mask. As the chilly stench creeps into my lungs, I clutch at my pendant through the sleek fabric of my skinsuit.

  I stare into the depths of the room. There's a smear some distance ahead. I rub my face one last time, and start toward it. "Hello? Is someone there?"

  Then I realize what I'm looking at, and stop.

  The alien rises before me like a pillar, two meters tall and ghostly pale. Two large black eyes open in an unreadable, mouthless face. Curved protrusions frame its head like a broken crown, thick tentacles snaking down from its head, coiling toward me.

  Jagged, layered armor plates cover the alien's shoulders, its torso bare and ribbed. A thick seam runs down the center of its chest to disappear into a broad belt at its waist. Dark-green fabric drapes down from it to cover the alien's legs and pool on the floor like a veil. I can't imagine the shape of its legs, but if its two fibrous, multi-jointed arms are any indication, the alien's agility and precision must be terrifying.

  It glides across the floor toward me. And when it stops my breath stops too. Up close, the alien's skin is glacial. I can't help but wonder if my touch might shatter it.

  The alien bends forward, eyes unblinking, not making a sound, not even breathing.

  In the suffocating silence of the room, all I hear is my heart beating in my eardrums.

  "I'm Taryn," I whisper, my throat constricted. "I'm a human. We came here to meet you."

  I remember the first alien's advice to remain quiet, and swallow hard. My hand drifts to my pendant.

  The alien zeroes in on my hand. It blows a gust of bitter fumes into my face. "Speak of that," it booms. Its voice resonates inside my ribcage like a blastwave.

  My temples itch with millions of tiny stings, and I'm unbearably sick. I want to run, but I just stare into its dead eyes and stumble backward.

  The alien lunges at me. Cold long fingers contract around my neck. I struggle, try to scream, to fight, but I can't breathe. I claw at its glassy skin until my nails break, and it doesn't even react. Its other hand comes up, latches onto my face. Two fingers jab at my forehead, and two on each side of my jaw. Their cold tips press into my skin, spread, and crack my mouth wide open.

  It lifts me off the floor and hundreds of hair-thin tendrils writhe from its palm, plunge down my throat, up into my sinuses, and straight into my head. I black out.

  An ocean of sticky darkness seeps into my mind. Something swims through it, hungry and enormous, tearing at my thoughts. Pain washes over me, and I convulse.

  The alien pulls me
closer until our foreheads are almost touching, noxious vapors steaming from its face.

  As the alien roots through my head, I see my mother's face, her soft black hair, the love for me in her eyes. She smiles wearily as she tucks me in, lies to me about the screams in the hive. I'm close to crying. I want to cling to her with all my might, but I promise to stay hidden inside this nook. To watch her leave, knowing she will die.

  I see my father's smile as he waves at me from afar. I run to him, to jump into his arms, but the blast of a grenade knocks me back into the tunnel. I watch him twirl and burn, screaming, under the embers raining from the hive crashing down on us.

  I see an avalanche of charcoal insectoids flow out of the dying hive that's been my home. See them torn apart by a hail of bullets from dozens of warships, and sprawled across the snow in rivers of thick yellow blood.

  Please no...

  I see myself spread out on a table, probed by droids and tools and rude gloved hands, stung and cut open and welded back shut.

  Please stop...

  I see the aliens I grew up with huddle in a corner, their plates cracked open, mandibles broken, antennae ripped free and strewn. Rows of soldiers stand at the ready. I stand among them like a soulless shell, ready my weapon, aim and shoot.

  No... Don't... Please...

  For a moment, the nightmares recede and I remember where I am.

  The fingers around my neck tighten, and my mouth bleeds. My fist clenches around the mandible pendant. With a single, vengeful jerk, I rip it off and ram it into the alien's neck.

  The barbs shred my glove, but the pendant pierces its skin, and I shove harder. Jerk the pendant up and down until I tear a gash through its throat and down into its chest. Hot, acrid blood sprays out and sizzles on my suit. The alien's glassy skin ripples, veins stippling beneath its skin like wild, poisonous roots.

  I slip back under and tumble down into the heaving ocean of memory. This time, the thing that follows me no longer roots randomly. It penetrates my mind, shredding everything in its path. Turns me inside out. Then crashes on me like a wave.

  I see faces, eyes, mouths, features of beings I don't know, hands striving to reach out and touch, tentacles, claws, all grasping for me. A featureless sea of countless creatures that boils around me—a maddening procession of worlds exploding, decaying, being reborn, then destroyed, until there is only death.

  My death. Quick and painless. Please...

  This can't be real.

  Then there is only one image: a frail creature, so little, caught in my grip. I watch it squirm and bleed, suffocate, and fade. It's very close. Inside of me.

  I see myself writhe in the alien's grip. I'm in the wrong mind, the wrong body—in him.

  I let go with a panicked twitch.

  Consciousness returns and I crumple to the floor, hacking up my lungs. The alien crouches beside me, stares at me with those unreadable eyes. He yanks the mandible out of his neck and the dark veins retreat from his skin. His wounds close like lips sealing, seamless and soft. The ice-blue glaze slides across his skin once more.

  I spasm violently. He stands up, his attention elsewhere. The massive, dark-green foot of another alien lands beside my head. The newcomer gurgles in his own tongue, and I find I understand him.

  "Must I end it?"

  "No," my tormentor says. His thunderous voice burrows through me. "Restrain it."

  Taloned hands lift me like a rag doll and throw me over a broad shoulder, my feet dangling down the alien's back, face buried in his chest. He carries me out into the gloomy corridor.

  I moan and lift my head to look at him. I recognize the marks on his face. Now I understand what they are, and how he must have got them. Even though I'm hardly breathing, a sob breaks loose. Hot tears fill my eyes and drop on his green velvet fur.

  "Stop that." He adjusts me gently. "You will dehydrate."

  I surrender, allowing his movements to rock me in and out of consciousness. Until he shrugs me off and lays me on the floor of another room. He bends down to inspect me with those small, luminescent eyes. "You did not listen to me. Why did I lose words to a reckless creature?"

  He turns away, and leaves me alone with my misery.

  I curl into a ball, wipe my face and mouth, and stare at the clotted blood on my hand. Stars twinkle in the darkening red, three tiny shards of metal with hair-thin tendrils winding out of them—the three interconnected nano meshes that used to be my synet, my colonial identity. My painstakingly hacked ticket to independence.

  Now it's disabled and ejected. Exorcised by an alien monster, like the rest of my mind. Ripped out.

  Replaced.

  4

  Dominant Amharr paces up and down the crux of his vessel, struggling to bring his nervous systems into alignment again. The soft but durable structure of his command room, with its control crescent in its center, and the master Onryss hovering near the exit wall, quivers and fails around him as if it were a mirage.

  He balls his fists until the tendons in his multi-jointed fingers stretch beyond their natural ability, and the nanites in his body take over hardening his fingers into a steely grip. He could easily crush every obstacle or enemy in sight. But this time, the opposition is inside of him.

  His skin has healed, and the wound in his neck and Phylra gland closed almost immediately. Nonetheless, damage was done. Despite the fact that his physical integrity is restored, it is undeniable that his identity has somehow been violated.

  The feeling of that neophyte—that specimen of the newly spaceborne race he is meant to assess—lingers unnaturally long. He can still feel its erratic pulse, smell the organic residues staining his hands, taste its blood and saliva on his tendrils. He crawls with revulsion.

  The creature's brain was chaos. Worse, its memories mixed with his own. He is filled with confusion. Pacing doesn't calm him. His senses run amok regardless of his attempts to reassert control.

  It will fade, he reassures himself. But he knows it's a lie. Something like this doesn't heal.

  His three interlinked nervous systems approach overload, overexciting his nanites and making his skin glow faintly blue. The back of his neck prickles and stings, until the mounting energy reaches a tipping point and discharges through his nerves and the soles of his feet into the receptive floor.

  He waits for the calm fatigue that usually comes after he fuels the vessel with his energy. It doesn't come. He's still on edge. Still feels that abhorrent creature inside him. It stabbed him just as he was investigating its memories, trying to understand its motives and nature. When that horrid mandible pierced into his Phylra gland, it flooded his body—and through his tendrils, the neophyte's as well—with paired, ultra-sensitive Phylra particles. It happened precisely as his nervous systems were mirroring the neophyte's, and the ignorant creature likely caught a glimpse of his mind as a result.

  How is it even possible? High Emranti are engineered to be safe from this. They've long evolved beyond such primitive bonds and feral responses.

  Amharr presses his fingertips against the radices in his palms. Bitter antiseptic floods his tendrils, clearing them of any foreign particles and cleansing his gustatory sense. It doesn't help. He can still taste her in his mind.

  He remembers running through dirty catacombs, playing meaningless games with vulgar creatures, looking at faces he's never known before, and speaking in a language not his own. The vermin's mind has polluted his own. Has corrupted his awareness. Foreign information floods the vast neuronal pathways of his brain, rampant knowledge that has never been analyzed and cataloged. Its invasion is indiscriminate, unfiltered by nanites. He feels diseased.

  My mind knows things I don't.

  There are facts about himself, though, about his past, that help to ground him. Amharr recounts them like a silent mantra, pushing himself into accustomed clarity by brute force.

  Since they broke their ties to their homeworld and their ancestors, the High Emranti have continuously enhanced their bodies and adapt
ed them to life between the stars of the Grand Helix. One of the first things they shed was their primeval ability to form deep links. That... barbaric... means to share visceral input between mates and partners was superseded by the all but faultless bionic links, perfected through self-improving nanotechnology. Those temporary connections do not function outside their species. Not even with Primal Emranti, their distant relatives who chose to remain on their homeworld. What happened with the neophyte is not possible.

  And yet.

  This is my doom, Amharr realizes. He paces faster, strains to focus on other matters, but nothing helps. Nothing ever will. A horrible sense of vulnerability overwhelms him.

  With great difficulty, Amharr summons sufficient self-control to tackle matters constructively. The first problem on his list are the Kolsamal. Specifically, their current elder, Gra'Ylgam—docile intermediary to the Kolsamal flotilla populating the lower levels of the Undawan.

  Sharp and attentive, Gra'Ylgam must have realized Amharr's corruption the moment he entered the vessel's crux to retrieve the neophyte. But there had been no sense of imminent attack, which in itself was strange. The Kolsamal are a forcefully subdued species, and Gra'Ylgam in particular, as their elder, should have reacted with violence. But he tended to his duties instead. Perhaps he is only biding his time, analyzing the risks before he strikes.

  Amharr places his hands on the synaptic nubs of the command crescent. They glimmer and hum, rendering their diagnostics directly into his brain. Mnemonic patterns show him the Undawan's internal systems, every living being aboard, and every piece of equipment or ship currently in the bays.

  The technology of the small, crude neophyte ship is being assimilated and cataloged. A first analysis reveals its threat potential to be negligible. By the level of technology used, and all the probable variants the neophytes may have developed around it, their race won't pose any considerable problems. However his assessment of them turns out, they'll be easy to deal with. They are a typical, uninteresting candidate for yet another long integration process.

  Well, uninteresting except for their connection to the Totorkha.