Vertigo: Aurora Rising Book Two

by Jennsen, G. S.

  A wide beam so deep red in hue it burned almost black shot out of the belly of the lead dreadnought and swept across the fighters, vaporizing four of them on contact. Two dodged the first shot and banked away in evasive maneuvers. The beam swung after each of them in turn, destroying both in seconds.

  Or not. She resumed running for the Palaimo offices.

  Chaos now descended in full on the streets, and it mimicked all the great disaster vids like a bad parody. People ran in every direction while exhibiting no clear purpose or destination, stumbling over one another, pushing and shoving and creating havoc. A rare few helped others but most were deep in the throes of abject panic.

  She made herself as unobtrusive as possible, slipping and shimmying and ducking as needed. Still, twice she got shoved into a building façade and narrowly missed being crushed to the ground by a passing stampede.

  The mob now swelled so thick she no longer dared divert her attention upward to check the sky. That is, until the screams ramped up to a fever pitch and a vibration of new, more urgent terror shot through the crowd like an errant lightning bolt.

  Above the cries of panic rose the screech of tearing metal, a sound she was intimately familiar with. All at once the press of bodies eased as people scattered in every direction.

  She looked up just in time to see a thirty-meter chunk of one of the orbital arrays, its scaffolding twisted and mangled and possibly on fire, shear off a corner of the roof of a tower across the street on its way to crashing down on top of her.

  PART II:

  REQUITAL

  “Fate is not satisfied with inflicting one calamity.”

  — Publilius Syrus

  15

  EARTH

  SAN FRANCISCO

  * * *

  ALEX FLOPPED DOWN IN A CHAIR at the kitchen table and tugged one of her feet up with her, letting her knee fall to rest along the bowed edge of the table. She snatched a blueberry muffin off the plate sitting in the center.

  Dad glanced over his shoulder from the kitchen counter, where he was slicing up mangos. “So what’s your day look like, milaya?”

  Her mouth was already full of steaming hot, deliciously moist muffin, but she nonetheless garbled an answer. “Mmmf mmhum fmmm.” She grabbed the glass of juice which had been waiting on her at the table and took a gulp, then tried again. “Physics exam today.”

  Plate of mangos in hand, he came and sat down opposite her. “Did you study?”

  She rolled her eyes at the ceiling. “I don’t have to study. The material’s easy anyway.”

  His distinguished eyebrows drew in to form a severe countenance. She straightened up in her chair. “Now, Alex, I know you’re brilliant, and your mother knows you’re brilliant, and you know you’re brilliant—but out there in the world test results matter. If you want to be the greatest starship captain the galaxy has ever seen, you need to ace your exams.”

  “I will, Dad. I promise. I understand the material…but I’ll leave a few minutes early and skim my notes before class.”

  She stood up, the remainder of the muffin left forgotten on her plate, as her mom walked in the kitchen. Like Dad, she was dressed in crisp navy blue BDUs. Her hair had been wound into a prim but pretty braid.

  “Alexis, where are you going? You haven’t finished your breakfast yet.”

  She nudged the chair under the table. “It’s no big deal. I need to get to school a few minutes early.”

  Dad tilted his head at her, a kind glint in his eyes. “I know you’re more than prepared, milaya, and will do well. Why don’t you stay and enjoy breakfast with us?”

  “Nah, want to make sure I’m ready.” Impulsively she grabbed another muffin and flashed a toothy smile. “I’ll eat this on the way!”

  Mom grunted in mild disapproval as her eyes flitted in Dad’s direction. “Fine, but watch out for traffic. Your teacher will get mad if you have to take the exam from the hospital.”

  Alex chewed on her lower lip and pulled on her shoes with one hand while making an effort to not smush the muffin with the other. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Shoes mostly on and muffin mostly intact, she rushed out the door, only to be assaulted by a punishing gust of wind. Her hair whipped across her face and tangled itself in her mouth. Good thing she hadn’t taken a bite of the new muffin yet; she did not need gooey crumbs in her hair. She checked her pants pockets…no hairband.

  With a sigh she pivoted to run back inside and grab one. The door opened—

  “—I’m serious, David. You push her too hard. She would do anything to win your approval, or even a little praise.”

  Alex flattened herself against the wall and stuck her foot in the doorframe to keep it from closing all the way.

  “I’m not your father, Miri.”

  “I didn’t say…” Alex carefully peeked in to see her mom’s nose scrunch up “…alright, yes, it’s possible I’m sensitive when it comes to this topic. My father was demanding and cold and no matter how well I performed it wasn’t good enough for him. I understand you’re not him. You’re supportive and encouraging of her, two crucial traits my father never managed to develop. But still…she worships the ground you walk on. I won’t let you take advantage of her adoration and hurt her in the process.”

  “I would never hurt our little girl.”

  Her mom crossed to him and affectionately ran a hand through his hair. “Not intentionally, no. But you don’t always consider the consequences of your actions before charging ahead—don’t look at me that way. You know I’m right.”

  Dad’s chin dropped to his chest. “So you are. I’ll try to be more careful of how I phrase things to her. It’s just…she’s spilling over with imagination and talent and potential and I want to help her realize it.”

  Mom dropped her forehead to his. “As do I, and together we will. But she’s only eleven, David, and I worry she’ll become more afraid of disappointing you than excited about making you proud.”

  “I don’t want that, Miri. I truly don’t.”

  “I know. But be gentle with her, okay?”

  “Okay, dushen’ka.” He angled his face up to ki—

  Ewww. She slipped her foot out of the door and wandered toward her bike, no longer noticing the wind as she worked to wrap her mind around the confusing things her parents had said.

  She had completely forgotten about that conversation.

  Wait, what? How could she have forgotten about it when it just happened? What did—

  Claws ripping her shirt, gouging painfully into the skin of her shoulder.

  She forced aside the odd images flickering through her mind. She needed to hurry; at this rate she wasn’t going to be early for school, she was going to be late. She kneaded her temples, trying to clear the strange fog—

  Beautiful sapphire eyes, wide in horror—hands reaching for her before being torn away as he was flung through the air—

  CALEB.

  She shook her head roughly and blinked. And saw the world anew.

  She knew this place. Knew this day. “Sukin syn….”

  This was a memory. This was their house in San Francisco when her parents worked at North American Military Headquarters. Nestled against the edge of the San Pablo Preserve, the house’s synthetic hardwood siding caused it to blend naturally into the wooded surroundings. Across the street the mountain laurels grew so tall and thick any view of the Bay was obscured, though if she crawled out on the roof in the afternoon she could catch glimpses of the sunlight reflecting in the waters.

  She remembered.

  But this didn’t feel like a memory, or a dream. It felt like a full-sensory illusoire, so real her brain had for a time believed it to be so. And if it was a dream, why was she still here after awareness dawned?

  She wandered back to the house, curious, and peeked in the window to see her parents now seriously making out. Her mother had straddled him in his chair. One hand slipped under his shirt and the other ran along his jaw.

  Oh my. Yet seeing
them now from the perspective of decades past, she took in the details. Her father was handsome in a way a child couldn’t have recognized. Her mother looked so young, with a light in her eyes and animation in her bearing long since gone. She looked happy.

  Her father’s hand wound into her mother’s hair and yanked desperately at the braid. She pulled back a tiny bit with a weak protest. “David, we have to go to work and I don’t have time to re-braid my hair and you—”

  “Shush, Miri. We’re early every day…let’s be on time for once….”

  Her mother moaned against his mouth and—

  —well that was quite enough for even thirty-six-year-old Alex to see, thank you.

  This clearly wasn’t a memory, because she had most certainly never witnessed that interlude. She spun away, only to sink back upon the wall in shock as her eleven-year-old self climbed on her bike and wove out of the driveway and onto the street.

  If she hadn’t witnessed the encounter, who had? How was it in her head? What the ebanatyi pidaraz was going on here?

  She glared at the sky, robin’s egg blue on a rare clear San Francisco morning, and crossed her arms tightly over her chest in an act of defiance. “I know this isn’t real. I know you’re there. You might as well let me out of this mental cage you’ve snared me in so we can have a conversation.”

  Her head spun as a wave of dizziness washed over her and the surroundings blurred into indistinctness. She blinked hard and opened her eyes to find she was surrounded by…blinding white, interestingly.

  She looked down to find herself returned to her fully-formed adult body, wearing the clothes she had donned this morning on the ship. But they were pristine, unmarred. Not at all how they would be after having been manhandled by a giant dragon.

  Which meant this environment wasn’t real either. A holo perhaps? More likely it was simply taking place in her mind. Her body could be anywhere. Caleb could be anywhere. Had the dragon taken him, too? She didn’t think so. Was he okay? Why were there fucking dragons? Was he okay?

  She gazed around the sterile, bare white room. The walls, the floor, the ceiling—none of them bore any markings or distinguishing characteristics. She discerned no seams where one transitioned to the other. Definitely virtual.

  “Hello? You’ve got me here. You’re in my head, obviously, for some godforsaken reason. Care to show yourselves?”

  Silence greeted her for a long time, and she began considering an alternate tact. Then a voice was in her mind, audible yet not. It was wispy and ethereal, neither male nor female.

  You should not have come. You should not have discovered this place. Why are you here?

  She snorted incredulously at the empty ‘room.’ “I’m here because you framed my lover for mass murder, tried to kill my mother in that mass murder—oh, and you’re apparently intent on massacring billions of people. All of those actions annoy me a significant amount, so I’m here to stop you.”

  What gives you the right to stop us?

  PORTAL PRIME

  UNCHARTED SPACE

  * * *

  Waves of dizziness in darkness. Nothing solid to grasp onto and ease the spinning. Then abruptly everything but her reeling mind lurched to a halt.

  “I’m gonna go open ‘nother bottle.” Alex stumbled to her feet, sloshing wine over the edge of a not-yet-empty glass.

  Kennedy gestured in the direction of the kitchen then draped her legs out on the floor and sank lower along the front of the chair.

  Alex stared at the wine rack for a while. The wrought iron twisted into shapes like origami fractals.

  She was in her own head, oddly feeling as drunk as she had been.

  “Alex, you get lost?”

  She jerked out of her reverie and grabbed a random bottle out of the rack. “It’s my apartment, Ken. I did not get lost.”

  She wandered back into the living room and plopped down on the rug, the bottle, opener and glass balanced precariously in her arms. As soon as her ass hit the floor she leaned close to the bottle to study it intently.

  “Our apartment.”

  Their apartment in San Francisco, after university. A top-floor flat on Bay Street. Was Ethan here? No, he would be playing. He was always playing.

  “Whatever….”

  “Did you hear about Jamie?”

  Alex scowled at the bottle. Her nose crinkled up in annoyance when the opener failed to cooperate in doing its job of opening the wine. “Hear what?”

  “She was killed last night flying the Bridge.”

  Jamie. Crazy curly hair the color of roasted almonds. Freckles decorating a pug nose. A laugh that was always one pitch too high.

  “Damn.” She straightened up, celebrating as the cork finally came loose. “Sucks to be her…or not be her, I guess….” A fit of sloppy giggles sent her falling back against the edge of the couch.

  “Alex!”

  She struggled to shut herself up, or to force other thoughts off her tongue and onto her voice. But try as she might she was powerless to alter what transpired, to speak different words this time around.

  “What? I’m supposed to feel guilty because I taught her how to do it? I taught her right. It’s not my fault if she screwed it up.”

  Kennedy considered her half-full glass in the lambent candlelight, then turned it up and emptied it in one gulp. “Of course it isn’t your fault…” hiccup “…but don’t you feel a little bad about it? She was your…” hiccup “…friend.”

  “I may’ve been her friend—doesn’t mean she was mine.” She hurriedly refilled her glass before Kennedy snatched the bottle from her, and took a long sip. “People die, Ken. They die, and the world keeps right on spinning, and nobody cares. I’m merely doing what all the cool kids do.”

  She hadn’t meant it. Even at the time she hadn’t meant it. The next morning she had woken up sorrowful (also hung over). She had attended the funeral and hugged teary-eyed friends, though she had shed no tears herself.

  Crying wasn’t something she did by that point in her life.

  Another rush of dizziness. How long had she been unaware? It might have been seconds or days. She had no sense of the passage of time.

  Alex glanced over from the counter to where Malcolm stood, one shoulder propped on the wall, perfectly groomed and perfectly handsome in his BDUs. “Malcolm, I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  The loft, not so long ago. She yearned to take solace in the familiar setting, but unfortunately this scene was headed nowhere good. She’d figured out the rules of this voyage through memory hell now and resigned herself to watching helplessly.

  A harsh sigh punctuated his reaction. He was frustrated with her—she could tell by the way his eyes creased at the edges and his mouth shrunk into a thin line. “Alex, it’s my only sister’s wedding and I’m giving her away, for Christ’s sake. You’re telling me you can’t put off your damn expedition for five lousy days, scrounge up a dress and be at my side?”

  “Your sister isn’t going to care if I’m there or not.”

  “I’ll care if you’re there. This is important—to me. Dammit! You want me to go stag to my sister’s wedding? You want me to take someone else? What?”

  She frowned. “No, of course not.”

  The thought of him taking someone else had triggered a pang of jealousy and an impulsive possessiveness. She remembered. It hadn’t been a strong enough compulsion to persuade her to change her mind, however.

  She crossed the room to Malcolm and took his hands in hers while brandishing an apologetic expression. “It’s just…this is an extremely lucrative contract, and it has a time limit. If I don’t get out there soon I’ll miss out on the find and the proceeds. I really am sorry. I’m sure it will be a beautiful ceremony, and you will do a fabulous job of escorting your sister down the aisle. Give everyone my regrets?”

  She kissed him on the corner of his mouth before backing away and heading upstairs. “I’m going to run through the shower, then we can go out if you want.”

  Her
perception remained as her body departed; it was as though she was being forced to witness the consequences which flowed inextricably from her actions. And she supposed she was.

  Malcolm gritted his teeth as his posture faltered and his shoulders slumped in an act of defeat. “I don’t want to go out. I don’t….”

  His eyes closed and his voice dropped low, no longer speaking to her. “I don’t think I can do this anymore.”

  No justification existed to condone her actions this time. She had been a narcissistic bitch, no doubt about it. But it had worked out for the best for both of them in the end….

  “Young lady, you will not leave this house. You march yourself back upstairs to your room this instant or you won’t be leaving again this year.”

  Woah, she was young once more. Fourteen, she thought. Maybe fifteen. Long, scrawny legs and a hint of nascent curves.

  Alex whipped around and got in her mother’s face. Already as tall as her, she met her mother’s glare with a sneer. “How are you going to stop me? Are you going to lock me up like a criminal? Maybe hit me? It’s what soldiers do, isn’t it?”

  Miriam’s voice was ice, her features etched in granite. “You. Will. Go. Upstairs. Now.”

  She didn’t want to see this. She tried squeezing her ‘eyes’ shut…it came as no surprise when it didn’t work. No way was she getting off that easy.

  “I won’t.” Alex spun to the door to storm out, only to find it code-locked. In frustration and a touch of panic she pounded her fists on it, then resorted to trying to pry it open using her fingers.

  Failing to make a centimeter of progress, she charged past her mother in search of another door through which to flee. But there was solely the patio door and it too was locked tight.

  “I hate you! I wish you had been the one to die!”