by Celeste Raye
The machine… Her eyes shifted away from the fading light and back along the corridor toward where the machine stood. The floor began to vibrate below her feet, a sure sign that the machine was growing in strength, crying out for what it needed.
Crying out to be released from its prison.
Her breath lifted and dropped her full breasts in rapid cycles of inhales and exhales. Her pulse sped up to a speed that threatened to make her dizzy and lightheaded. Sweat broke out along her high brow and ran down the long, highly knobbed column of her straight spine. Even her palms held a light sheen of perspiration within them as her fingers curled inward, her nails raking against that delicate flesh and her agitation.
If it were humans, what would she do?
Sure it was humans perhaps it would be better to do nothing. To simply wait and to see if there were indeed beasts willing to kill the human intruders as they attempted to make their way through the fortress into the room where the machine stood.
Where she stood.
She was the machine now. Not in whole, but in large part. She’d been implanted with so much of the machine; so much of it rested below her skin, and her immortality had been the only thing that had kept her alive during that ordeal.
Franchine’s insanity had been all-encompassing. He had been sure that if he could take one of their kind, implanted with everything that the machine also held, back into either of the closed-off universes, that he could not only live for all time, but that he would be the most powerful creature to have ever drawn breath.
And he would’ve been. That was why she had had to kill him. He had implanted in her the need to be obedient to him; he had instilled in her sleeping brain the order to never harm him.
But he’d been foolish and arrogant even in that.
His command had been to do no harm to him.
He had not mentioned killing.
It was a simple difference, but she had still been enough of herself, her brain had still had enough logic and reason as well as a motion to make that simple differentiation that had allowed her to overcome the programming that he had placed within her.
Lornia drew a shuddering breath and then moved onward. Part of her did not care what type of being was currently working its way through the obstacle course and the maze of time and space that held fast the machine.
It could be humans, and it might not be. She would not know until she saw them face to face. There was only one way to ensure a face-to-face meeting with the beings currently heading toward her, and that would be to make her way to the docks.
Or at least try to.
She wavered. The beast wars had been violent and awful. Before that experiment had implanted the war-machine within her, she’d been a gentle creature. Her areas of study and interest had been in botany and science. Gentle sciences, the science of bringing water from dried lands. The science of bringing food forth from places that were barren.
That was what had made her so desirable to the others who had sought to hold fast the doors on either side of the universe. With her assistance, they could eat well and always have clean water to drink.
She had sought only solitude, as ironic as that was now. She’d relished the idea of being someplace where she could spend her long years making things happen, things like growing food in the crevices of the ship floor. When she had imagined solitude, back in those years, she had imagined working for as long as she liked without interruption and speaking to those that she passed in halls and sat with at the communal table for meals if she felt like it, but no other time.
She wanted solitude. What she had gotten was silence. But that silence was about to be broken.
Lornia hurried now, her bare feet moving toward a hallway that she had not gone down in at least a hundred years. The arsenal, what was left of it, sat at the end of that hallway and her shoulders tensed and her breath sucked in, dragging her stomach toward her backbone as she took a few now hesitant steps past the doorway that led to that hall.
The doorway was half shut, and had been half shut for a very long time. No lights remained in the hallway that sat shrouded with vast webs from the Orb spiders that had died decades ago, just one more victim of extinction there in that forgotten place.
She made her way down the hallway with all of her senses alert. The Orbs might be dead but who knew what may have come into those rooms during her absence? Nothing. There was nothing there. Relief hit as she finally made her way to the vaulted door of the arsenal. She paused before it, her forehead wrinkling with thought.
What would she need? What was left of that arsenal anyway? So much of it had been used during the wars with the fearsome beasts, and she had not cared for the arsenal, which she now regretted. She’d been more interested in simply surviving what was unable to be killed with a mere weapon.
Lornia’s fingers spun the door lock, and it opened with a rusty wheeze. She tread inside lightly, allowing her eyes to grow used to the dimness before moving forward toward the racks and shelves where the weapons lay. Dismay hit. Time and the elements had taken their toll on those weapons, despite the airlock. Many had gray-blue dots of dampness upon their grips and triggers. Would they even work now?
She took a laser from one wall and aimed it toward an already-destroyed weapon. A quick and rapid burst from the laser made short work of the weapon she had fired upon. The weapon that she had destroyed lay cracked and broken, without even enough power to implode or explode in the face of the laser’s pointed ray.
“One laser is not enough.”
No, not at all. If she were to make her way to the docks, those long since deserted docs, and safely, she would need much more than a single laser. She was afraid to continue to test fire any of the weapons that she pulled down, so she contented herself with taking those that showed the fewest signs of wear and disuse. She strapped long ammo belts across her narrow waist and then over her slender shoulders. She wore those ammo belts well. A laser weapon hung from each slim hip, and additional weapons rested in the belt right below her flat belly.
Lornia strode back out of the arsenal room and then paused. She alone knew where those weapons were. What if she needed more later? It would not do to leave the room open in case whatever was coming to that door turned out to be an enemy. She hastily locked it and then exited down the hallway and back toward the central corridor.
The light had changed, shifting toward a violent orange color. That meant that evening would not be far away. Time was strange there and evening might last for mere moments or for entire moon phases. She stared at the light. Perhaps it would be better not to try to go to the docks. She had no idea if the beings that were arriving would be arriving before she could make it to the docks or if they would be arriving far after she had arrived there.
There was nothing at the docks, no type of food or supplies. If there were indeed beasts along the way that she had to fight, she would need strength and sustenance as well. Tralam was vast; it had been built to hold thousands. It had been built to be a refuge for those who would hold the weapon prisoner, but in the end, so few had come in, so much of the fortress had never been used. Could not be used because there was simply nobody to use that space.
She would retrace her footsteps back to the gardens. She took a large bag and began to gather the large fatty nut-breads that grew below the wide and glossy leaves of their trees. A single nut-bread could sustain her for several days. Her appetite was poor, and had been for a very long time. Those who were coming might be large of appetite and in need of much nourishment, so she packed as many as she could readily carry on her back into a pack.
She added in a dozen of the juicy, puce-colored vegetables that could be eaten raw because they were so easily digestible, as well as some fruit and a few starchy roots just in case she needed them.
She added in herbs and salt, that common denominator of all universes. Without salt, there was no life. Next, Lornia found a large bag in which to carry a good supply of the freshwater from her pool
and then found herself unable to carry it. Some hasty rearranging of weapons and the pack that she carried enabled her to finally take the water along as well, but the weight was heavy, and she wondered how far she would be able to go under all of it.
She stood there, uncertainty freezing her feet to the floor once more. She was part of the machine. She had strength, that she knew, but that strength was mostly untested. She had had no cause to have to fight anyone other than her insane partial creator after her awakening. She’d never tried to journey through the fortress before either. She’d been content to stay in the sections of it that she knew the best and to let the rest rot away.
That was no longer an option.
Lornia set off, heading toward a series of switchback hallways and tunnels that would, eventually, take her to the docking stations.
Chapter 6 - Drake
Drake could barely breathe as they passed the last planet and circled around it. All of them, the entire pitiful little crew, were now gathered on the bridge.
Blade said, “He said that the only way in was out, and the only way out was in. You said you didn’t make it this far before. So it seems we come to an impasse.”
Drake nodded. Weariness had set in. “I told you I have no idea how to open the door.”
Talon spoke harshly. “I see no door.”
Margie stepped forward. The small ball of her belly rested inside the tunic that she wore, and she put her hands to it, a faraway expression coming up on her lovely face. “It’s there. Tell them where, Drake.”
His shoulders slumped. “We have to go back the way we came, back to the fire planet. Once we arrive there, the door will be in sight.”
Jessica let out a low cry of rage. “You could’ve seen fit to tell us that in the first place! You want us to make this trip twice? Already Talon is tired, and so are the rest of us.”
Drake drew himself up. His expression was placid; the anger lurked beneath it. “Nobody ever said this was easy. If it was easy, then anyone could do it. Do you want your names to go down in history or do you wish to simply float around out here in space where there is nothing and nowhere to go for the rest of your miserable lives?”
Talon drew a weapon. Drake faced him down without flinching. His voice didn’t quiver. “You can kill me if you like for speaking to your woman that way but it will not help you now. The true secret to the door is the one that I will tell you now. Space and time mean nothing here. Somehow they, the race that we all call the Speakers, folded it. They changed it and turned it in and on itself. I don’t know how they did it. How could I? That is exactly what they’ve done.”
Marik spoke. “You have seen it?”
Drake nodded. “I have. Only I had no idea how to open it. It will take more than just me, because by the time I reached that door, the number of my crew had dwindled mightily. Those who were left were worth nothing as far as their being willing or able to go through that doorway.”
Jeval spoke. “Then we turn around and go back. Talon, you are tired. Rest until we get to the planet made of water. That’s an order, by the way.”
Talon bristled. “Since when do you give me orders?”
Drake spoke into the tense silence. “Since he is your elder brother.”
The tension softened but did not break. Blade entered into that conversation with the mild comment, “Does this mean I get to order you around now, little brother?”
Little brother. How long had he waited to hear Blade say those words to him? That Blade was only speaking them in jest didn’t change the fact that he had used those words. Drake decided to roll with it, to try to help ease the thickening anger in the room. “I suppose it does. Just don’t get carried away.”
The tension snapped then, like a fine wire that had been pulled too tightly between two poles. Jessica reached for Talon. “He’s right. You need rest. It won’t be long until we get back to the planet made of water and then they will need you more than ever. Come on; let’s go get you a quiet place where you can lay your head down for a little while.”
Talon looked entirely offended by the suggestion, but the lines of fatigue on his face and the dark circles under his eyes said that rest was indeed something he actually needed at that moment. His shoulders slumped a bit, and he nodded. He said to Drake, “Do not destroy my ship. If you do, you had better die before I find you.”
Drake said, “I will keep that in mind.”
Drake and Blade went back to the controls, and eventually, all of the others left the bridge, leaving them alone. Silence drew out as they carefully navigated their way back around the dark side of the seventh planet in that line and headed toward the fiery one at the beginning of the system.
Blade spoke softly, “There is just something about space, isn’t there? From the moment I first flew, I understood how insignificant I am as a person. I also understood just how powerful the Federation is, to rule all of this emptiness and silence. To have full control of this vast and lethal but beautiful thing. To have control of space.”
Drake didn’t dare look away from the track that he was setting the ship onto. He said, “As I recall, you always did love to fly and love to fight more.”
Blade snorted. “As I recall, you were the one who was always fighting. I was the weakling and ill child when you first came into the household.”
Drake didn’t try to protest that. It was the truth; they both knew it. “That changed rather rapidly.”
“I imagine it would have changed for you too if you’d been in my shoes.”
Drake shot his older brother a look. “I would’ve given anything to have been in your shoes. I begged for that chance. I wanted nothing more than to prove to him that I was just as capable as you of surviving that challenge.”
Blade slid him a sidelong glance. “Then you’re a fool.”
Drake said, “I won’t argue that with you. I was a fool for ever thinking that in your absence he’d grow fond of me and see me as the son he could be proud of.”
Why was this happening? This was not something he wanted to do, and he certainly didn’t want to do it now.
Blade said, “That’s strange. The whole time I was out there fighting the Federation, rebelling, playing the traitor, all I could think of was how easy it must’ve been for him to let me go. I always thought you were his favorite. And you always thought I was his. Maybe the truth of it is that he loved us both, just in different ways and degrees.”
Drake knew that was true, but childhood, as short as it had been, was always only a single step behind him. He had lived his entire life trying to please a father who had been distant and incredibly hard to please. “You know what I wish? That he would’ve rebelled sooner. I wish he would have thrown his lot in with the rebels and just stated his cause. ”
Blade said, “I don’t think he could throw his lot in with the rebels before he did, I mean, he had me to consider. If there’s anything that I wish, it’s that I wish I had known what he had done for me all those years. What you had done for me all those years. I never got around to thanking you for that.”
Drake’s hands were steady on the controls. “You’re not actually thanking me now either.”
Blade said, “I will thank you when you get my ass out of this wormhole and back into the universe that I know and understand.”
Drake said, “I’m going to consider that a vow.”
Blade said, “Good, because it was a vow.”
The ship sailed on, space wrinkling around it. Blade spoke again. “I can see it. The way that space folds here. It’s as if somebody took a corner of the universe and tied it into a clever little knot.”
Drake said, “I believe that is just what they did.”
There was a high note of tension in Blade’s next question. “Do you think that is what the weapon is? Do you think it somehow has the ability to change space and time?”
“I wish I knew. I guess we’ll find out.”
Drake didn’t think that’s what it was. If that was all tha
t the weapon was, and all that it was capable of doing, then there would’ve been no need to hide it within its own little trick. His stomach let a little gurgle rise up and acid followed in its wake.
This weapon that he was so determined to have, what would it do?
It seemed that an eternity passed, but eventually they battled their way back to the planet made of fire. As they reached it, Drake, leaning close to the spaceships observation windows, let out a low cry of triumph.
“There! See it? That small sliver of light to the right? That is the door!”
Blade and Talon both stared at that narrow sliver of sliver light laced with gold along its edges. Drake smiled, “Quite beautiful, isn’t it?”
Blade said, “I have long known that the most beautiful things are generally the most deadly.”
Drake nodded “You’d be correct. Now that we’re here, we have to figure out how to open this door.”
Margie spoke up from behind them. “I know how.” All the men standing there turned to face her. She was flanked by the other women, and as she stepped forward, the other women fell into step.
There was an uneven number of people on that ship. Drake was the only one there without a mate. That thought hit him hard right in the middle of his heart. The women walking toward him were all strong and powerful women in their own right. They had all found mates who were equally strong and equally powerful. Where was his mate?
Why in the hell was he worried about such a thing, and now? It wasn’t something that he thought of much, but here lately he’d been considering that more and more. Maybe having women aboard the ship, women who were so obviously mated to the other men there, was making him soft and sentimental.
Marge spoke again, shattering his thoughts. “You tried to go in before, didn’t you?”
Drake nodded. “I did, and with no success.”
Marge came closer. A glow lifted up through the layers of her skin. Jeval reached out a hand, but she ignored it and stepped closer yet to Drake. Her voice lowered and changed a bit. “The door is the way out. The way in is not the door.”