She flashed him a grin and activated the sLume drive. They didn’t need to follow this particular ship. The portal was a bustling place, and there’d be plenty to choose from. “That will still be interesting.”
Minutes later she exited superluminal. They didn’t have long to wait, as one of the transports soon approached and traversed the portal.
They followed.
They had never witnessed a ship traverse the master portal from their lobby. But they weren’t in their lobby, and this version of the master portal was as busy as the Manhattan atmosphere corridor. Dozens of the enormous ships cast tiny black dots against the mammoth structure.
There seemed to be nothing to it. Ships entered and exited in the same manner they did the smaller lobby portal, without special procedures or fanfare. Only the relative scale differed.
Easy.
She gave up the struggle and slipped into the skin of the Siyane.
The portal transformed into a double-layered plasma of ionized exotic matter—
“Alex.”
She reluctantly backed out to reality and met his gaze. “We should do this. Now is the time. We can sneak in alongside one of these ships, and no one will be the wiser.”
He stared out the viewport and didn’t respond.
“Look, we now know whoever or whatever is through there, they eat food. This means it’s a tangible, multi-dimensional, livable space with organic beings in it—humanoids, even. We’ve seen them. We won’t die simply by existing there. It’s a real place.”
“That is…an excellent point.” He blew out a breath, long and slow, and regarded her wearing an expression layered in conflict.
Finally, he tilted his head and dropped his chin low. “Okay. A peek. But be ready to turn around and high-tail it out, and long before any spindly claws get themselves tangled in your hair.”
She smiled in appreciation of his attempt at levity, but also of his willingness to believe in her when it was entirely possible she was leading them to their death.
He reached out for her, but she’d already returned to the ship. The press of his hand was a distant, faint graze upon her corporeal body.
She didn’t leave time for second-guessing. A new ship advanced toward the master portal, and she eased in a close hundred meters below it.
Alex, this is an unwise escalation of an unwise course of action. Allow me to handle the traversal.
No.
The portal grew in size until it filled her vision, then her artificial senses, then every aspect of her perception.
Electric currents sparked and leapt out toward her, tickling her borrowed skin.
A buzz grew in her elemental hearing until it blended into the crackling electricity racing everywhere.
She closed the final picometers to the shimmering, undulating barrier—
44
SIYANE
AMARANTHE GATEWAY
* * *
THEY PITCHED BOW OVER STERN to spin out of control faster than Caleb could process what was happening.
The inertial dampeners went offline, sending his body and mind roiling within the confines of the restraints. Alarms flashed in garish, angry lights on the HUD. He squinted to his left, trying to find a stationary point he could focus on. “Alex?”
No response. His vision began to clear as the spinning eased to a less dizzying but more nauseating speed, and he saw her chin listing against her chest. Her eyes were closed, and blood seeped from both her nostrils. Shit.
He unfastened his harness and fell across the cockpit more or less into her lap—in the smallest of favors, the gravity plates continued to function. He lifted her chin. “Alex? Talk to me.” Still no response, but she was breathing. “Valkyrie, stabilize the ship and get us away from the portal.”
Silence.
“Valkyrie?” His voice echoed through the quiet cabin.
Fuck.
He felt along Alex’s neck for a pulse. It raced along at a perilous speed. Their spinning finally stopped, leaving the ship eerily still.
He unfastened her harness and straightened her up in the chair, then tapped on her cheeks. “Come on, Alex. Wake up.”
Her eyes flew open, wide and luminous with their artificial glow yet somehow bleary and unseeing. She groped around blindly. Her hands passed over his face and neck without stopping—
—she surged out of the chair, catching him by surprise and knocking him on his ass.
“Alex, calm down! We’re okay!” They weren’t remotely okay.
She fell to her knees, clung to the cockpit half-wall and pulled herself up, then lurched into the cabin to stumble around wildly.
He rushed out of the cockpit and tried to grab her, but she escaped his clutches twice. Damn those training lessons.
He pivoted and was lunging once more to snare her when she collapsed onto the edge of the couch and sank to the floor.
Instantly he was on his knees at her side. Blood now gushed out of her nostrils, covering her mouth and chin and soaking into her shirt.
She looked up and blinked. The synthetic glow left her irises. She immediately blinked again, and it was back.
Again.
Again.
Her connection to Valkyrie toggled on and off and on in succession like a strobe. The lights in the cabin also began dimming and brightening, but the pattern clashed, out of sync with her eyes.
“Hey, hey, hey….” He tried to gently hold her still, but she was shaking, her head and arms jerking as if being subjected to low-level shocks. Was she having a seizure?
His hands clasped the sides of her face and forcibly held it stationary. “Alex?”
She stared at him but did not see him, blinking rapidly—on off on off on off—and for the first time ever, what he saw frightened him. The being staring blankly at him in between blinks couldn’t be human.
She started coughing. Gagged on blood and spit it up—then abruptly she slumped over sideways until her head hit the floor.
He’d been too slow to catch her, too slow to let his hand take the blow for her.
He lifted her shoulders and propped her up against the couch, but her eyes were now closed and her body limp. Unconscious.
Jesus. Panic clawed at the edges of his perception, but he had to stay in control. He needed—
The ship shook violently and swung to port. That had been weapons fire hitting the hull. “Valkyrie, are you there?”
Silence.
Another hit sent them canting at a forty-five-degree angle.
He forced air into his lungs, lifted Alex up into his arms and carried her to the cockpit. He strapped her into her chair; the restraints would keep her from being flung around the cabin like a ragdoll, as well as upright and not choking on the blood still flowing from her nostrils.
Next he took the controls. The adiamene should theoretically hold for some period of time, but there were no guarantees. Obviously their cloaking shield was down.
The master portal hung off to starboard, and they were clearly still in the lobby space. He fired the thrusters. The ship fought him, jolting turbulently back and forth. “Dammit! Valkyrie, give me control of the goddamn ship!”
The ship moved—and stopped again. More vessels—or possibly different vessels—fired on them. The impacts threw him forward into the dash then to the floor.
He crawled back into his chair and strapped himself in, ignoring the warm ooze of blood dribbling down his temple. It had been stupid not to do it first, but it had seemed like there wasn’t time.
In desperation he engaged the sLume drive. Just a quick, seconds-long sprint to put distance between them, the portal and the attackers.
Alarms screamed but the drive didn’t engage. The lights blinked more furiously.
Valkyrie had control of the ship, and she was out of control. Unless he found a way to wrest command from her, they were dead in the air, floating helpless and easy pickings for the enemy.
The ship now shuddered continuously from a barrage of fire,
and yet more, louder alarms sounded. No metal could withstand this level of onslaught forever.
His fists slammed down on the dash in frustration. “Bloody hell!”
Was he helpless? Was there not one single goddamn thing he could do to save them? What options did he have left—
—the space outside the viewport brightened to gleam in pinpricks of light. Blue light, like the portal.
When the luminance overpowered all he could see, there was the sensation of motion. Smooth, not jarring as with the impacts, but still excessive enough to make his stomach lurch.
Then everything stilled.
He blinked. The light outside dissipated to reveal…mountains? And a meadow?
The scene was instantly recognizable. They were on Portal Prime, in sight of Mesme’s lake.
He didn’t stop to wonder how. He raced into the cabin for the med kit and a towel, then returned to lean over Alex and wipe the copious blood off her face. She’d lost a lot, though not a life-threatening amount. Once he’d cleared some of it away it looked as if the flow had slowed to a trickle.
Cloak yourselves.
He jumped at the voice. Mesme? Surely Mesme. “We can’t.”
No alternative instruction followed. He set the towel aside and ran the med scanner across her forehead and temple, hoping it would tell him what to do to help her.
She blinked, hesitantly this time, and opened her eyelids halfway.
“Hey. Don’t try to connect to Valkyrie.”
He saw the glint in her eyes as she began to do exactly that. He doubted it was out of spite or defiance, but instead merely instinctual. He grasped her shoulders firmly. “Don’t.”
She blinked once more, and the relief that surged through him when her irises remained normal was enough to make him dizzy. She gazed at him in confusion, but also in recognition.
He smiled and ran a hand along her cheek. His chest had seized up so viciously he wasn’t sure he would be able to speak; it took tremendous effort but he managed to force out a weak breath. “Welcome back, baby.”
“What—” She started coughing, grabbed the towel in her lap and held it to her mouth as her shoulders wracked. When it dropped from her hand it had darkened considerably. He hoped it was from blood she’d swallowed and not something worse.
“Where are we?” Her voice croaked, shaky and tentative. She cleared her throat and peered out the viewport. “Is this…Portal Prime?”
“I think so. I think Mesme transported us here.”
“The whole ship? Wait, why?”
He exhaled. It came out harsh, rough, frayed by the ragged edges of panic. “The portal bounced us, hard. Valkyrie went berserk, and you…you had some kind of seizure then passed out. I couldn’t get control of the ship away from her, and we came under attack by Metigen vessels.”
“Valkyrie? Are you all right?”
Silence lingered for several seconds, but eventually a response came. Soft and uncertain as well, but a response. ‘I…I believe I will be. Allow me to execute a full restart. I will return momentarily.’
Alex frowned and dragged a hand down her face, then deepened the frown when it came away streaked in blood. She gazed around in disbelief and mounting horror. “Why is there blood on everything? Why is there always fucking blood fucking everywhere when I wake up from being unconscious?”
“Hey!”
Startled, she gaped at him in shock for a beat, then deflated completely and sank bonelessly against the backrest. “What happened to me?”
He knelt beside her. “You were bleeding from your nose. A lot. You should take an iron supplement soon, or you’re going to be feeling really weak.”
“I had a brain hemorrhage?”
“I don’t….” He shook his head. Helplessly. “I don’t know.” The terror-turned-euphoria pounding in his chest and against his eardrums had begun to recede, leaving in its wake something he didn’t expect: anger.
“You were connected to the ship when we hit the portal, I’m assuming?”
She gave a weak nod in answer.
“You’re insane, I’m assuming?”
Her lips parted to convey what might have been a retort, when the lights brightened and stayed that way.
‘I’m pleased to report I have regained full functionality.’
45
AURORA THESI (PORTAL PRIME)
ENISLE SEVENTEEN (PORTAL: AURORA)
* * *
ALEX RAN A HAND OVER the nose of the ship…and scowled. The adiamene was dented. The repulsion from the portal—whatever force the Metigens used to effect it—had been that strong.
Her brain felt dented. Dulled, with faint, jagged cracks splintering it. Valkyrie said there was no significant damage to the neural tissue. But then again, the Artificial might be dented, too.
Near as Valkyrie was able to determine, most of what had happened was Alex’s fault. Her mind, assimilated as it was into the atoms of the Siyane, had not been able to process the force of the ricochet the ship experienced when it impacted the portal. The resulting shock kicked off a chain reaction in her brain, which among other things disrupted the connection mechanism to Valkyrie—but not before the problems ricocheted further into Valkyrie’s processes as well.
If she hadn’t been linked to the ship when they made a run at the portal, Valkyrie might not have malfunctioned, she definitely would not have passed out, and they probably would have been able to leave under their own power before coming under attack.
The nose of the ship would still be dented, though. She focused her scowl on the hull; it seemed as suitable a victim as any to suffer her misdirected vexation and angst.
At least they weren’t going to need to remove the panel and physically repair the damage. Valkyrie was now so extensively integrated into the ship she claimed she’d be able to mold and shape the metal back to its normal configuration within a few hours.
Mesme was nowhere to be found. Not its consciousness, that was. They’d checked, and its unnerving little gray body still lay dormant in the stasis pod inside the small cabin.
Caleb paced in erratic circles around the lush meadow behind her. He’d been unusually quiet, bordering on taciturn, since the first minutes after she’d woken up. Now the tension radiated off of him in waves, ruffling the blades of grass on its way to suffocate her.
She pinched the bridge of her nose, in the hope applying pressure there could alleviate the pressure everywhere else. She didn’t want to have this conversation. But every minute they didn’t stood to make it so much more catastrophic.
She turned and leaned against the hull, crossing her arms at her waist. “I’m sorry, okay?” She tried to sound genuinely apologetic, but the words emerged pinched and strained. Pretty much like her.
He halted midway through a traversal and stared at her. His mouth opened. After a pause, he closed it.
“Please, just say what you want to say. This brooding is worse than anything you can throw at me.”
“Are you so sure about that?”
A warning fluttered in her chest, but she nodded.
“You could have died. We all could have died. What in the hell were you thinking?”
Well, she had asked for this. She worked past the raw lump in her throat…and chose the truth. “I wasn’t.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means…it means I got caught up in the rush.” Judging by the solidifying bleakness of his expression, the truth had been a mistake. She hurriedly backtracked in a bit of a panic. “But in my defense, it may not have mattered. Valkyrie may have gotten her circuits scrambled regardless.”
I told you I’m not at all certain that’s true.
Later, Valkyrie.
You are lying to him.
No, I’m not. We don’t know for sure.
But in her heart she did know, which explained the queasiness churning her stomach. They had a word for it: guilt.
“Then we’ll need to address that problem, too, because I had no control over
the ship. None. I had no ability to act, to defend us or save us, and that is unacceptable.”
“More safeguards, more failsafes. I get it.” It came out tinged in sarcasm. She hadn’t meant it that way. Everything was coming out wrong.
Caleb expression contorted into something she was afraid to decipher. “You think? Do you get what I’m saying? There was nothing I could do. Nothing except yank Valkyrie’s power. But considering how much of yourself you’ve given over to the ship, I would probably be unplugging you as well and—”
She gasped in abject dismay. It elicited a cringe from him, and his voice softened a touch. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
She’d been on his side; she’d been trying her damnedest to apologize. She understood how important being able to act when threatened was to him, and she knew she’d frightened him.
But his words were a bucket of ice water pitched in her face. She could hardly breathe from the shock of it. “Really? Because it kind of sounded like you did.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, amplifying the effect of the clenched muscles in his jaw and the fierce streaks of discontentment his eyebrows had become. “Really. I only meant…you were unconscious, and Valkyrie was not in control of her functions, and I had no way to predict what might happen to you if I shut her down improperly.”
His eyes reopened to reveal dark, storming irises, almost black against the fair periwinkle sky. “Alex, I have never in my life been so terrified, and…angry and frustrated and…helpless. Are you hearing me? There was nothing I could do. Helplessness is not a place I visit often, and for damn good reason. Jesus, I can’t….”
He threw his hands in the air rather than finish the sentence. Something told her it was for the best.
“I know. I am sorry. Please believe me, I didn’t mean to put you in that position.”
“But you did put me in that position. Your stunt was reckless and idiotic. Alex, you can’t be so careless with your safety! If you choose to place yourself in danger when the risk is worth it, when there’s a larger, more important goal at stake, I am there with you. I will stand beside you and risk everything without question. But you cannot continue acting like this on your random whim.”
Dissonance: Aurora Renegades Book Two (Aurora Rhapsody 5) Page 26