Vertigo: Aurora Rising Book Two

by Jennsen, G. S.

  We recognize your various factions. The fact remains, humanity must cease expansion in the identified direction.

  “And if we don’t?”

  There will be consequences.

  “Hyperion, I’m going to need you to be more specific.”

  Humanity cannot be permitted to settle beyond a line 5.48kpcs from Earth spanning across the Scutum-Crux Arm. If you do not cease the expansion, we will.

  “Are you threatening us?”

  Yes.

  Marcus forcibly buried his instinctive reaction. “You would attack us for approaching your region of space?”

  Not attack. Eradicate. Annihilate. Extinguish. Obliterate. Eliminate. Your language has a number of terms which suffice.

  “So it does. Very well. I will do what I can.”

  Marcus wandered out of his office in a daze. He lied to his wife and escaped the house. He needed to think, and to think he needed to be alone, free of expectations and the eternal façade.

  Washington was new to him, and he spent several hours walking the streets of Georgetown and the surrounding neighborhoods. He didn’t notice the landmarks or galleries or posh pubs but he did appreciate the damp breeze off the Potomac.

  He had no way to know whether Hyperion’s aliens were capable of successfully executing on the threat and no way to learn the answer. Clearly they possessed technology more advanced than humanity, at least with respect to communications. Beyond this he knew almost nothing about them for certain, other than they were profoundly arrogant and unquestionably alien.

  Taking Hyperion at his word—under the circumstances he saw no choice but to do so—he had been given a chance to save the human race from devastation. Possibly from extinction.

  Marcus had always been an ambitious man; he had no qualms admitting such. The trait had served him well, taking him from the streets of Rio to the Earth Alliance Cabinet in a few short decades. This ambition was a major reason why Hyperion approached him thirty-two years earlier and why it continued to come to him.

  The alien—maybe all the aliens—believed he possessed both the talent and the capability to shape galactic events. Hyperion seemed to believe he could shape the course of history itself.

  Could he?

  Perhaps not. But at this moment, there was no one else who could.

  It took two months for him to devise the rough outline of a plan, then another month for him to reach out to the woman who he had owed an implicit debt for fifty years.

  In time, he and Olivia would identify individuals in advantageous positions and recruit them for varying levels of participation. The methods of enticement were custom-tailored to take full advantage of each person’s particular weakness.

  Blind spots were, after all, the easiest of all foibles to exploit.

  27

  PORTAL PRIME

  UNCHARTED SPACE

  * * *

  CALEB NEARLY MISSED IT. For all that he continuously scanned the landscape for incongruities or any trace of disturbance in the native flow of the terrain, he almost hiked right past the subtle ledge outcropping.

  But he didn’t.

  A rock was missing. On a slope covered in small boulders seemingly arranged by nature, there was a conspicuous gap of disturbed soil, as if the rock formerly resting there had been dislodged by an external force.

  His gaze traveled up the slope past the gap to…there. A tree limb had been broken off, leaving splinters of wood jutting out from the trunk. The slope continued upward through dense trees until he caught a glimpse of it leveling off to what might be a small plateau.

  The area in question was three hundred meters above him. He took a long swig of water, rotated his arms a couple of times and loosened the strap across his chest. Then he trekked up the hill very, very quietly.

  The problem was going to be getting onto the plateau without being seen—assuming a dragon was there to see him. It was an assumption he had no choice but to adopt.

  As he drew closer he angled toward the incline, where the ledge blended back into the mountainside. Dragons had caves, right? Whether it was inside the cave or out in the open, staying out of sight until he could breach the ledge represented his best strategy.

  The mountain rose at a steep angle by this point, but it worked in his favor. He was able to practically flatten himself against the terrain as he crept forward and up.

  When the ledge was no more than two meters above him, he set his pack beside a tree and slid the sword out of the sheath. The lustered ebony shimmered subtly in the erratic rays of light sneaking through the tree limbs.

  He draped fingertips on the edge and dared a split-second peek over it.

  The dragon sunned itself on the plateau. Its long, serpentine tail curled around to tuck along a thick upper body. The steady rise and fall of its chest indicated it was sleeping.

  He allowed himself several blinks of disbelief. It was enormous. Chest to haunches alone had to be over ten meters, and its neck stretched nearly as long again. The deep red scales shone brilliantly, the reflected light giving them an almost metallic sheen. If he hadn’t spilled the guts of one the day before he’d likely have suspected the dragon was artificial. A machine.

  From this close a perspective, he identified the four-clawed feet as representing a significant threat. A single claw could slice him open from navel to throat in one casual slash. Not as great a threat as the fire, though, for he had seen firsthand how far and wide it reached. And of course he had to consider the teeth. The jaws rested closed in slumber, but he expected the teeth were as fearsome as the claws.

  There was only one location where he would be even marginally protected from the claws, the teeth and the fire.

  Should be fun.

  He vaulted up onto the plateau, primed his calves and toes and sprung forward, sprinting at full speed.

  The right eye popped open as he took the last stride, revealing a blazing red oval iris inside silver sclera.

  Launching himself off his right leg, he leapt onto the dragon’s back and grabbed hold of a scale for leverage as the dragon rose to its feet.

  The edge of the scale, though not so sharp as a blade, sliced open his palm. He let the pain drive him forward and crawled fully atop the back to straddle the spine before the beast managed to throw him off.

  Seared heat from the flames spewing out of the dragon’s massive jaws washed over him, but he sat too high up the spine to burn; though long and flexible, the neck appeared to be unable to twist around so dramatically as to score a direct hit.

  The wings spread to full span and beat upward in preparation for taking flight. Flight was not good.

  He swung the sword sideways as they began rising into the air and sliced into the delicate membrane of one of the wings where it attached to the body. A howl preceded renewed fire when the wings beat downward and they slammed to the ground listing to the right.

  Gripping the wide spine using only his thighs, he seized the furthest scale he could reach and yanked it up and out of the way. He brought the sword up high and thrust it down into the now exposed hide.

  A scream such as he had never heard burst forth from the dragon’s mouth. The shrill, flanging cry vibrated so forcefully against his eardrums he worried they may burst.

  The beast thrashed and bucked beneath him in pain, anger and desperation, coming within a sliver of tossing him off and against the mountainside. Trees some fifty meters downhill now burned, set afire by the wild flames erupting out of the gnashing jaws.

  With a fierce wrench he twisted the sword until it was vertical alongside the spine and dragged it toward him. Anything less than nanoscale-forged metamat and the hide wouldn’t have sliced apart, so tough and leathery was the keratinous tissue. He jerked the sword around the edges of overlapping scales.

  Centimeter by centimeter he flayed the dragon while it writhed in agony and rage beneath him.

  A thud tremored through the ground as its legs at last collapsed and it dropped onto its belly. He kept p
ulling the sword toward him, moving carefully backwards until he risked death by flame. It would have to be enough.

  He leaned in, forcing it down all the way to the hilt, and twisted it around to shred what he hoped was one of the beast’s vital organs.

  The dragon’s long neck bucked to the sky in a final wail, then crashed to the ground. He felt the body sag in the relaxation of death beneath him. But he wasn’t taking any chances. He withdrew the sword, now dripping blood and viscera, crawled up to the neck and thrust it into the more flexible skin there.

  The stab evoked no response and the blood flowing out lacked the force of a heartbeat.

  Satisfied, he sank down to rest his cheek at the juncture of the spine and neck, exhausted and a little delirious with relief and adrenaline. Also pain.

  Both his palms were cut open in several places, his chest burned from abrasions and the muscles of his arms, shoulders and upper legs throbbed in protest against what had been asked of them. He suspected he had earned a ligament tear or two at a minimum.

  “Well,” he muttered into the dragon’s neck, “one more thing to add to my obituary.”

  Caleb Andreas Marano: Killer. Lover. Dragonslayer.

  A ragged laugh escaped his throat as he pushed himself up and climbed off the beast and onto the now-scorched plateau. He’d brought emergency medical supplies and could treat his palms, but he’d worry about it later.

  For sheared into the mountainside behind him stood not a cave, but rather an artificial structure.

  Crafted of a material he’d call frosted glass were he on a human planet and some ten meters in height, its design was minimalist in the extreme, with a long, flat roof and a single front wall stretching the width of the gouge into the terrain. He discerned no entrance.

  As he advanced toward it, though, swarming pinpoints of light began to coalesce in front of the wall. Icy blue in color, the swarm thickened into the roughest outline of a bipedal humanoid form.

  The alien watched him silently while he approached.

  When he was four meters away, Caleb stopped, shifted his grip on the sword at his side, and stared at the alien.

  “You are going to let me pass. And if she’s dead, I don’t give a goddamn how many dragons you throw at me—I will come for you.”

  The alien motioned to the wall, then dissipated into points of light which glided above the structure and off into the mountains.

  He stepped up before the alien changed its mind. There was still no evidence of an entrance, but he placed his palm on the wall. The opaqueness vanished, followed by a wide section of material.

  He had found his door.

  28

  MESSIUM

  EARTH ALLIANCE COLONY

  * * *

  “WELL OF COURSE THEY’RE ALIENS. No human group has ships like those. Who knows where they came from though—”

  “We do know. They came through some sort of portal in the Metis Nebula.”

  Noah gave Kennedy a dubious look.

  They had been in the basement for hours upon hours. The muffled racket from above continued unabated, though the time between the thunderous crashes marking the collapse of the more substantial buildings had gradually lengthened. The power had gone out two hours after they arrived at the basement.

  They couldn’t go anywhere or do anything until her leg healed up more. But as to where to go or what to do? The best he could offer was he was ‘working on it.’

  Messium was supposed to be an escape for him, a chance to lie low and elude those trying to kill him. But he had hardly gotten settled in when he became the target of an alien invasion. Well, not him specifically. Messium, the planet. All the people on it. As luck would have it the population included him, so the result was the same.

  And now he was trapped in a basement in a crumbling downtown under assault by alien ships with the heir to the Rossi fortune. A woman who had clear ideas on just about everything. Encompassed in ‘everything,’ it appeared, was the origins of their foe.

  “I’ll bite. How do you know they came through a portal in the Metis Nebula?”

  She regarded him as if the answer was juvenile in its obviousness. Didn’t seem so obvious to him. “Because my friend discovered them exiting the portal several weeks ago. The governments know—I mean, the Alliance and Federation leaders do. Didn’t help, apparently.”

  He groaned. Of course they had known, and of course they hadn’t warned the public. It figured. “Has anyone asked these aliens what they want?”

  “I don’t believe the opportunity has presented itself. Want to go outside and ask them yourself?”

  He wanted to be angry at her for being such an over-entitled smart-ass, but her captivating green eyes twinkled with mirth even now, silently telling him she had meant it in teasing. She’d done little else other than tease him in the hours they had been together in fact.

  It shouldn’t bother him. He was the guy who kept everything lighthearted, right? The guy to whom life was one long party, right? So why was it so important she take him seriously?

  He had gotten so wound around his own thoughts he missed her struggling to a standing position. On realizing it he leapt up and hurried to her side. “Hey, take it easy there, Blondie.”

  Her head shook as she tested placing weight on her left leg. “We can’t sit here and wait to die. I need to get to the lab.”

  “The lab? Do they have a nuclear-powered BFG which can take these monsters out?”

  “That would be awesome, wouldn’t it? Sadly, no. We need to figure out how they’re blocking communications. We’re never going to be able to fight them if we can’t talk to each other.” She grabbed her bag off the floor and began hobbling out of the room.

  “Wait—let me carry that!”

  She glanced over her shoulder at him and tossed the bag into his chest. “I thought you’d never ask. Come on, the lab is at the end of this hall.”

  Rows of servers lined the back wall of the lab. The long wall opposite the door contained standard testing benches and the near wall cabinets flush with tools and equipment. It reminded Noah of his own office, if ten times larger. But the organization was efficient, and he instantly felt at home.

  By the time he had tossed her bag in the corner Kennedy was rummaging through one of the cabinets. Grunts of frustration soon bubbled forth.

  “What are you hunting for?”

  “A quantum coherence analyzer. It measures the—”

  “I know what it does. But I bet it will be down here next to the….” He crossed the lab to the row of testing benches and scanned the shelf above the barrier cage. “Found one.”

  She stared at him curiously. He might venture a guess she looked impressed, but the room was dark and he was probably projecting.

  She hopped up on one of the work tables scattered down the middle of the wide room and waved him closer, only to shift back to the edge of the table. “Oh, my bag—”

  “I got it. Chill out. You’re injured.” Her lips smacked in annoyance while she waited for him to bring it to her, legs swinging beneath the table as if she were an impatient little girl. Damn, she was cute. And trouble he so did not need.

  As soon as he dropped the bag on the table she started rummaging through it—the woman could rummage like a champ—and in seconds pulled out a slender box bearing a translucent glass cover.

  He arched an eyebrow. “A mobile QEC? Nice.”

  “You recognize this, too? What is it you said you did for a living?”

  “I didn’t.” At her questioning gaze he shrugged. “Whatever I want. Are you going to turn it on or not?”

  “Yes.” She eyed him queerly in the breath before she focused on the box. Two fingers of her left hand input commands on the glass surface. “One this size is merely for basic data and signal transmission, but it should suffice. I realize we can’t contact anyone, but I’ll pretend I’m sending a data packet to the office.”

  She set the QEC on the table surface and carefully drew the analyz
er along it, then studied the results. “I was afraid of this. The coherence breaks down upon transmission.”

  Her face screwed up, triggering a debris-darkened curl to fall out of her messy ponytail across her forehead. She blew it out the way; it promptly tumbled down once more. “What does that?”

  Without thinking about it, he reached over and tucked the wayward curl behind her ear. “Nothing I’ve ever heard of.”

  At the flare in her eyes his hand fell away. He directed his attention to the bag beside her. “What else you got in your bag?”

  “Nothing to re-cohere qubits, I’m afraid. Though….” Her arms propelled her off the table and back into the cabinets. Her voice came out muffled from deep inside the storage. “Look around and see if you can find a wide-band receiver anywhere.”

  “Right.” At least she didn’t ask if he knew what one of those was.

  “Never mind, found one.” He turned around in time to see her hop back on the work table. She really needed to stop being…well, how she was being.

  She slid the small tower to the center of the table. When she rolled onto her stomach to face the tower he decided his best option was to do the same.

  A screen flickered to life beside the tower when she connected it to a tiny power generator. He watched her through the translucence. “What do you expect to find? Nothing’s getting out.”

  “No idea. I’ll let you know when I find it.”

  “What did you say you do again?”

  Her mouth quirked. “I didn’t. But I’m a ship designer. Materials, components, shields, power, you name it.”

  “In between black-tie parties and charity auctions, I imagine.”

  “I’m not a gilded princess, Noah. I do work for a living.”