“Andrus is fine. He’ll be along.” Coraolis let her take a little of his weight. One didn’t sprint through a spaceship after a trip through the Astral Plane. He was beyond winded. “We encountered Dante.”
She paled, and the grip on his arm tightened. “Tell me.”
Coraolis narrated their battle with the rogue from Dante’s demands to the way he had almost effortlessly defeated them. It was uncomfortable, telling her about their failure. He wanted to make an impact on her behalf; instead, he’d disappointed her.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It might take every Mystic alive to take Dante down; even then, I am unsure of the outcome.”
She exhaled. “I’ll get the ground troops ready.”
The ship shuddered. Coraolis stumbled, and Julia fell with him. He apologized, but she was already on her feet, lurching toward the captain’s chair as the ship shuddered a second time.
“Report!”
“Something came through the anomaly!” Lieutenant Gamal navigated through several screens at once. “What is that?”
“Show me,” she ordered.
Her clear, calm voice cut through the crew’s panic, and Gamal changed screens to a live feed of the rift. It hurt to watch, but Coraolis couldn’t look away. The rift split and tore at the edges. Tendrils of energy blurred the edges, reached out and probed like an octopus’ tentacles.
One seized Doomslayer.
Julia threw herself into her seat as the claxon started. “Sound general quarters! Cor, strap in. Weis, can you pull away?”
Coraolis fell into an empty seat and fumbled with the safety harness. The rest of the crew had already donned their harnesses as part of the general quarters protocol. Julia hadn’t yet. She was busy with her control screen, mesmerized by the tendril.
“The drive isn’t responding,” the young helmsman shouted.
“Keep trying. Gamal, see if you can get a target lock.”
“Negative, captain.”
“Get me Engineering.”
“Aye, sir," someone answered. “Comms are down.”
“Mike? What’ve you got for me?”
“I’m tapped out, captain,” he said.
A second energy tendril snaked around the ship. The screen went dark.
Julia’s gaze met Coraolis’s, her face grim. She had pinned her hopes on him. Technology was failing. She was grasping at the ether, the place he called home.
“I’ll do what I can,” he promised her. Coraolis closed his eyes, finding his way into a trance with shouting all around him and between bouts of shaking. He reached out.
Gamal cursed.
Then, Coraolis opened his eyes to darkness. Silence descended on the bridge. He only heard his own breathing. Artificial gravity was out. His body tried to float away from his seat.
Gravity returned with a vengeance. They fell. Julia shouted something. He couldn’t understand a word. It didn’t matter. He knew Cavey’s gravity had them and, without power, the planet wasn’t about to let go.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Former Mystic First Class Dante returned to his body and hunched over, seeking some control. He’d come close to killing the two Mystics, when he’d only meant to drive them away. He found his control was no stronger than a soap bubble balancing on his fingertip. Anything could make it burst, then there would be no one to stop the dragons. The ordinary Mystics hadn’t stood a chance against him. The dragons would crush them without a thought.
If they reached Cavey’s surface, they’d try to arrest him, but all they’d do was waste his time. He hoped he’d knocked Coraolis and Andrus out when he expelled them from the Astral Plane. Maybe that would slow them down.
The rift shrieked and tore, disrupting his thoughts. It was splitting. New cracks opened, stretching in every direction as the core expanded. Another dragon slipped through, followed by another. The hole in the world grew and the rift became large enough to cover the sky from horizon to horizon. Tendrils of energy reached out in all directions. They left him alone to watch the threads reach for the heavens.
Suddenly, like a meteorite, a ship hurtled through the atmosphere. He felt the impact when Doomslayer crash-landed nearby. If there were survivors, they’d be picked off by dragons. Julia Ronasuli had been on that ship. He’d gotten his revenge, but now he didn’t want it.
Her death was on him, as well as so many others. Maybe some of it was the dragon’s doing, but Dante was the one who’d given way to the monster. He hadn’t fought hard enough. He hadn’t found a way to warn the Side Liner’s crew. Everything that happened could be laid at his feet, and there was but one way to make it right.
He left the safety of the thicket. The rift’s static buzzed between his ears. Worse than nails on a chalkboard, like a swarm of bees inside his head hunting for a way out.
It worsened with every step. He used every scrap of discipline he’d learned as a Mystic to put one foot in front of the other. Andrus and Coraolis had the right idea about closing the rift. They’d just gone about it the wrong way.
He had two paths in front of him. One was the ‘easy’ path, where all he had to do was destroy the rift’s power source. Ensign Song would make for an easy target. She was unconscious. She wouldn’t feel a thing, but every part of him rebelled at the thought of harming her. Song had trusted him, and look how he’d repaid that.
No, he wouldn’t sacrifice any more of her life than he had. There was only one way to close the rift. He’d have to do it…from inside.
***
The moment he stepped into the rift, Dante lost all sense of direction. The physical world was somewhere behind him, but he was no longer sure what ‘behind him’ meant. He was not in the Material Plane, yet he hadn’t reached the Astral Plane either. He was somewhere in the middle, in a metaphysical no man's land that wasn’t supposed to exist.
As if standing in the midst of an aurora polaris, a multitude of lights swirled around him in a dizzying array of light and color. It was chaos incarnate. It was beautiful and terrifyingly orderless.
At least the buzzing in his head had stopped.
Dante shut his eyes and centered himself using old Academy exercises. He visualized a globe around his person, smooth and unmarked, with no up or down. He was the center, and everything else was relative to him.
He’d always found it an extraordinarily egocentric exercise, though it had proven useful in his first missions. It kept vertigo away by teaching him up and down didn’t matter. Direction was the way he was moving. The physical world became his six o’clock, the Astral Plane his twelve.
Now, he had direction. He took a step. No vertigo. He smiled and took another.
That’s far enough.
The world spasmed. A surge of power shattered the restraints he’d put on his mind, and the dragon broke free. Dante staggered as the monster materialized before him.
I am a creature of the Astral. Did you think to keep me caged in my own world?
Dante’s legs gave out, and his lips formed the word ‘no.’ He would not be caged again. He wasn’t anyone’s puppet, not anymore. He’d cut his strings for good. Dante heaved himself to his feet.
“Get out of my way. I’ve got work to do.”
I know your intent, little one. You will never close the rift. You haven’t the strength.
The dragon snapped its wings down, generating a great wind. Dante hit the ground hard enough to blast the breath from his lungs. He wheezed, reminded that he was there in the flesh with his human limitations. If he got hurt, it was likely permanent, and he had no other body to return to but his own.
When he stood, another Dante awaited him. He wore the same hair and eyes. It was much like looking into a mirror, only his reflection had seen the inside of a shower recently. It smirked.
“Well, if that isn’t unsettling,” he said.
His clone raised an eyebrow.
“Do you talk?” he asked.
This is as far as you go, Mystic. I have seen inside your mind. You got this far
on talent alone. You pursue that which only comes naturally to you. You have discipline, but it is fragile. Your will is weak. You have fooled everyone into thinking you are the greatest Mystic in the history of humanity, but deep inside, you know that is untrue. You were lucky to stumble on something you were good at without having to work. Genetics has served you well. Until now.
“I’m really a failure,” Dante’s reflection said. It was the same voice Dante heard inside his own mind when he’d been assigned to Swordfall. “I give up anything that doesn’t come to me easily. I work for nothing, so I have nothing.”
Exactly. The dragon sounded pleased. Turn around, return to your world, and be satisfied with your freedom. You can only proceed if you fight yourself, and we all know that you cannot.
“That’s a lie,” Dante said.
His double laughed. “You’re the only one who lies to yourself. I speak the truth. You think you can rely on yourself now that you’ve become more self-aware? This is the gift that I’ve given you. If you defy me, you’re doomed to fail.” The double sauntered closer. His smirk became a sneer as he jabbed Dante’s chest with a real finger. “This is why you are alone. You are as unreliable as you believe them to be.”
Dante didn’t think. He punched. His fist connected with the double’s jaw, rocking him.
Dante’s own head snapped back as his punch connected. His world went white. He shook his head to clear it, and his double laughed, daring him to attack again.
“And the temper doesn’t help,” his double added.
“Funny,” Dante said.
“You’ve always thought you were, anyway,” the double agreed. “I’ll kill you, and then I’ll kill anyone who survived that wreck. After that, I’ll move on to the fleet. I’ll bring all dragonkind with me. No one will be able to stop us, and it’s all your fault.”
His double lashed out, aiming a kick at his ribs. It connected, and he heard a crack as bone gave way. The clone doubled over as Dante had, gasping in pain.
While Dante hunched over his injury, his double straightened and hissed through his body’s protests. “You see? You lose because you don’t want it enough.” The clone spat; red spattered on the ground. “There’s nothing you believe in more than yourself. You’re weak because your cause is weak. I’m going to win because I would give my own life to protect what’s mine.”
The false Dante doubled his fists and drove them into his injured side. Dante gasped, pain stealing his voice. His enemy grunted but didn’t seem nearly as affected. His sneer said it all. He could take it because his will was stronger. He wanted it more.
Dante was going to lose.
Everything they said was true. Dante had lucked into being a Mystic. He’d only taken the test on a whim and, since then, everything had fallen into place. He’d lost friends over it, yes, but he’d also improved on his natural strength while finding a new family. He’d been elevated to rock star status among his own kind. Yet, he hadn’t worked for any of it.
And here was his shadow self, superior in every way, willing to suffer to win. The dragon was gone; it had seen enough to know its construct would claim victory. Dante wondered what would happen after that. Would it take over his life? Would the dragon fuse with it again and be stronger because he was with a cooperative Mystic? How many people would they kill because Dante failed?
What price would he pay to correct the course the dragon had chosen?
Dante had seen enough. His will rushed in to fill the void. Accepting his life as forfeit gave him a courage he’d never felt. Not another person would be hurt merely because he was afraid. Never again.
He had Captain Ronasuli’s knife tucked in his boot. He never felt comfortable with a gun, so he’d fetched her weapon from the bottom of a river. He sighed before smiling at his construct. “I guess it’s time to finish this.” He reached into his boot, felt the blade’s edge, and grunted with grim pleasure when it broke the skin.
His double yelped and came at him.
Dante put the knife to his own throat.
The double froze. “You wouldn’t. You don’t have it in you.”
Dante shrugged. “Better us than another ship’s crew.”
The double’s eyes darted from Dante to the knife and back. It was thinking, weighing what it knew about him against what he was doing. The false Dante danced from one foot to the other. The genuine Dante tensed.
It charged.
He flexed his arm…and couldn’t do it. He pictured Ronasuli’s face and Ensign Song’s. Worse would happen if he didn’t follow through. More people would get hurt. The dragon would find another puppet, but he couldn’t do anything about that.
His double had a bruise darkening his jaw already. Hurting the clone would hurt Dante. He could guess what killing it would do.
He gritted his teeth and adjusted his grip. Just before his clone reached him, he brought the knife down, then forward. He screamed, calling for courage to steady his hand. He wasn’t ready, but he did it. He closed his eyes and thrust, aiming for the heart.
The knife cut through air. No resistance. Dante opened his eyes. His double was there, but its body was nearly see-through, like a ghost.
It smiled without its earlier malice. “I didn’t think you had it in you.” False Dante reached out as if to cup Dante’s face. “You’re ready now. Remember, the key that opened the door is the one to lock it.”
Then his double faded, and Dante was alone.
His legs gave way, and he sat down hard, his hands shaking from his return to life. His mind had started to flee the corpse he knew he would be, senses reluctantly returning. The knife wanted to slip from his hands, but he didn’t let it. He was too afraid it would slip into the void, and he’d have nothing.
“I guess it’s poetic.” He pretended the knife could hear him. It was only slightly better than talking to himself. He twisted the blade, catching the colorful light. If he was going to die, at least it was somewhere pretty.
“I’m sorry.” He spoke out loud, knowing no one would hear him. Maybe Ensign Song could, through her connection to the rift. He couldn’t ask for her forgiveness, but he could hope that she’d recover.
The ritual had connected Song and Side Liner’s crew to the rift. It drained their life force while they lay in stasis. That link was powerful, but he knew he could break it if he released all of his own energy at once. The key that had opened the door was the one that would close it. His own will was all it took. He just had to want it more than his own life.
***
Side Liner suffered a slowly degrading orbit. In every room, on every deck, its personnel lay unconscious. They sprawled where they’d been working when the rift opened, cocooned in golden light. First, it sapped their strength, then their endurance. Their lives fed the rift, and the rift kept them alive.
It was a painless way to go. The weakest would soon be drained. Once that happened, they’d be gone. The rest would follow, in time, depending on their strength. The fusion of Dragon and Dante had been compassionate enough to make sure they didn’t suffer.
Commander Vang lay next to the captain’s chair. He woke up to a vicious leg cramp. He cried out and beat at the muscle with a fist, massaging it back to life as his mind caught up with his body.
He’d been on his way to the galley for a cup of coffee. Now, he was on the floor, and he was starving. He rolled onto his back to the sound of the bridge crew’s confusion. They were picking themselves up, same as he. Vang dropped into the captain’s chair, searching his mind for a clue.
“What happened? Did life support malfunction?”
“I don’t think so,” Olsen said. “All systems are green.”
Vang stared at his terminal as the last of the fog lifted. He’d locked in on the date. It was way off or else his memory was shot.
“What is that?” Ensign Toman asked from the helm, scrolling frantically through screens that had nothing to do with piloting the runabout. Vang wasn’t about to chastise him. He wanted to know
and didn’t care who figured out the answer.
“Put it up front,” he ordered.
“Aye, sir.”
Toman put the image on screen, subjecting Vang and everyone else to something out of a bad dream—a hole torn in space between Side Liner and Cavey. It diminished rapidly, swallowing the surrounding light. The sight made Vang feel better. Stronger.
“What is that? Can you get a reading?”
“Unclear, sir. The data doesn’t make any sense,” Olsen replied.
“I’ve got two dozen pings,” Sokolov announced. “All E.F., but I have no idea where they came from.”
Vang pulled up the tactical display. Beyond the twin moons, a fleet of E.F. vessels floated in a defensive formation. They were welcome, but their appearance remained a mystery. The ship’s chronometer wasn’t wrong. Weeks had vanished. No wonder he felt hungry.
The pieces fit, but he didn’t like the picture they painted; still, that didn’t make it wrong.
“Hail the Fleet,” he said.
“Aye, sir.”
Sokolov opened a channel. After a moment, the comms signaled green.
Vang toggled his mic. “Unknown Earth Fleet vessels, this is Commander Vang of Side Liner. It’s good to see you here.” He hesitated, then looked at the date again. “You’re not going to believe this…but I think we’ve all been asleep.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Julia’s hands ached. Her fingers were clenched on the armrests tight enough to leave permanent indentations. Slowly, she took inventory. She could feel her toes. Her back ached all the way up to the base of her skull, which throbbed in its own rhythm. She’d bitten her tongue. Her hair was in her face. Beyond its veil, everything was red.
Her mind was foggy on the previous several minutes of her life, but one thing stood out. The rift had attacked them. They’d lost power and crashed. They’d regained power just in time to control the landing, but it was messy. At least the emergency lights worked.
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