by Jay Allan
The glowing pastels of the nearby fauna lingered in her vision when she closed her eyes and inhaled once more. Her ocular implant was enhanced to expand the spectrum of her sight beyond visible light into the ultraviolet range. The effect was spiritual in its beauty, but the odd hues tended to leave halos in their wake.
And hold…hold.
She opened her eyes to a shadow.
It broke her meditation, and she suppressed a frown as she twisted around—careful to engage her core—and looked up.
The shadow slithered across the landscape until it reached the water’s edge. Her frown deepened. Gaiae had no moons; there could be no eclipse.
What appeared next was of a nightmare. An impossibility. An evil blackness—harsh, bleak, cold metal surely made of the void itself.
It continued to grow in the sky, and soon veins of blood slashed the blackness like the war paint of ancient primitives.
Even as the breadth and length of the blooded darkness grew ever greater, another materialized alongside it. Then another. Soon a dozen phantasms—devils of Hades come to life—blanketed the sky, blotting out the sun and turning morning to dusk.
Seraphina stood to balance unsteadily atop the magnetic resistance. What horror might this be? She only rarely accessed the so-called ‘exanet,’ but she did not believe even the most powerful governments possessed ships such as these.
Gaiae was a peaceful planet. Its residents strived ever to be in harmony with all living creatures, with the land and the air and the stars. What sin against nature could possibly have brought such devils down upon them?
Then the bellies of the beasts wrent apart, and all legions spewed forth. Creatures born of the bowels of Tartarus, their arms counted greater than those of Mahākālī and writhed madly around blazing crimson eyes—a cyclopean blood-gorged eye for each creature in the legion army.
Their multitudes descended from the sky, and at last she screamed.
CHAPTER 73: Siyane
Metis Nebula
They approached Metis as quietly and furtively as the Siyane permitted. Their route was circuitous, winding around the Nebula until their trajectory was nearly opposite of before.
All her instincts screamed at her to hurry, to get there faster and to generally get on with it. Yet along about the time her fingers stretched out to hover above the controls, Caleb’s hand found its way to her shoulder or the curve of her jaw. She wouldn’t have expected him to be the calm one…though if she pondered it she had to concede he had often been the patient one.
When the golden-blue wisps of Metis’ outer bands at last surrounded them, she initiated the sLume drive a final time. One final run for the core at maximum speed, as swift as any human could travel across the stars.
They would drop out of superluminal 0.1 AU from the portal’s location but still within the thickest of the towering pillars of gas and dust. The instant the sLume drive idled the dampener field would kick in. She had paid a princely sum for a barely legal power allocation optimizer, and now the dampener field could operate at full strength without them being forced to freeze.
Still the trip took hours upon hours. As many hours as it had taken when they had previously made the journey, in fact. Unlike the prior journey, however, this night they spent together.
They passed the hours as couples facing the unknown yet temporarily powerless to influence their fate do: they made love as if it were the first time, murmured secrets to one another in the darkness, slept for a bit, and made love as if it were the last time.
Then there was no space left to travel and their fate returned to their hands.
They returned to the cockpit as the sLume drive idled and the scene beyond the viewport sharpened into clarity. The ship hovered in luminous, dense fog; as it did not actually travel forward under separate propulsion while inside the superluminal bubble, on exiting it the ship was already at rest.
Instantly she was a flurry of activity, confirming the dampener field had engaged, beginning scans for threats or any movement whatsoever in the area and attuning the spectrum analyzer across all bands.
The flare from the pulsar leapt to life on the spectrum display. The gamma beam pulsed in a regular, rapid spin. She filtered it out—and immediately frowned. “It’s gone.”
“Everything?”
Her head shook minutely. “The gamma radiation, the local one whose source we weren’t able to pinpoint. The terahertz radiation, too.”
He leaned closer to stare at the spectrum display with her. “But not the TLF.”
“But not the TLF.” She blew out a long, slow breath. “Okay. Nothing to do but find out why.” She started the impulse engine.
The nebular clouds soon began to thin, then abruptly evaporate as before. Yet in stark and rather disturbing contrast to before, the clouds evaporated to reveal only the void.
The ships were gone. And so was the portal.
Neither of them spoke. They simply regarded the empty blackness in stunned disbelief. She had prepared herself for a number of scenarios. None of those scenarios involved the portal being gone.
Because that was impossible.
He dropped his elbows to his knees with a heavy sigh. “So, new plan then.”
“No. The portal is there.”
His attention shifted from the viewport to her. His voice held calm conviction—and trust, she thought. “Okay. Why?”
“The same reason we’re here.”
“The TLF signal is still being generated from somewhere.”
“Correct. Now the question is….” With her left hand she strafed until the ship was positioned exactly perpendicular to the direction the wave propagated. She focused the spectrum analyzer sensors in on a point in space and took two snapshots. Then she threw both measurements to a waveform screen.
A wondrous breath fell from her lips as she sank into the chair. She was looking at a phase shift across the portal.
When measured given the precise point where the portal had floated as the origin, the TLF wave exhibited a 4.65° phase difference in each direction. On its own it didn’t tell her anything about the nature or breadth of the realm within the portal, as any number of cycles could have occurred inside—but it did tell her there existed a realm within the portal.
Caleb’s eyes narrowed at the screen for a moment before he shook his head and chuckled wryly. “And space falls back into alignment with the rules of the universe. The portal is there.”
“Told you.” She gave him a teasing if weighty smirk. “Now we just need to trigger it.”
“Which you’ve already determined how to do.”
The smirk softened to a smile. “Harmonics.”
He glanced at the row of screens and back to her. “The gamma radiation was a harmonic of the TLF, wasn’t it?”
“It was, though the frequency disparity was tremendous. I think the gamma frequency was an activation code. It kept the portal open while our alien friends traversed it and shut off once they no longer needed it. But I can mimic it.”
His gaze met hers, and the look in his eyes sent her stomach into somersaults and a delightful tingle rushing along her skin. She wanted nothing more in the world than to wind her fingers in his hair and pull him close and ask him if he might tell her what the look in his eyes meant.
Instead she swallowed and focused on the HUD. Her fingertips danced on a holographic panel to her left as she built the gamma wave. Once it was prepped she maneuvered the ship so it lined up directly on the invisible point which represented the center of the former portal.
“Here goes nothing….” She sucked in a deep breath and turned on the signal.
From nothingness burst forth a perfect circle of obsidian metal. Luminescent pale gold plasma filled the ring as it expanded in diameter. In two seconds it had attained its previous size and a halo of roiling clouds had billowed over its edges.
“Well that’s not something you see every day.” She nodded mutely in agreement.
After the explosio
n of energy which had propelled the ring outward vanished, a stilled silence seemed to engulf the landscape. The vertical pool of plasma undulated as peacefully as the surface of a pond on a quiet spring dawn. Even the churning clouds appeared to settle into a soothing rhythm. Other than the portal itself, there was no evidence of technology, of an alien force or any force at all.
The TLF wave continued to pulse—steady, deliberate and strong, as though it were the very heartbeat of the universe—from the exact center of the ring.
Like the dulcet tones of a siren it called to her, singing a promise of answers beneath the tranquil waters. Waters which happened to be composed of an unknown breed of plasma and ‘lapped’ vertically while suspended within a ring of unknown material and origin in the void of space.
Caleb’s presence beside her during the trip had been a comfort and a wonderful indulgence. But now it wasn’t close enough, for him or her. He pushed out of his chair to kneel in front of her and draw her into a slow, languorous kiss.
He drew back a mere centimeter, his voice a whisper upon her lips. “You realize we could die, simply by going through.”
She closed the centimeter to claim another kiss, lingering an eternal second beyond when it might have ended. She breathed in…breathed him in. “I do. But if we don’t go, maybe everyone dies. And even if I don’t particularly like most of everyone, I find I don’t want that on my conscience.”
He nodded against her. “Nor do I. So we go together—but only if you’re sure.”
She smiled—a tiny little smile—and bravely rolled her eyes as she straightened up and settled into the chair. “I’m sure. It’ll be an adventure. New sights, new wonders, new discoveries. It’s what I live for. You too, right?”
“Absolutely.” He returned to his chair, kicked his feet up on the dash and crossed his ankles. “Lead on. Show me this supposed ‘adventure.’”
“You got it.”
His hand reached over and wrapped around hers as she gunned the impulse engine to full power and accelerated into the portal.
_o0o_
Read on for BONUS content!
BONUS CONTENT
RESTLESS
AN AURORA RISING SHORT STORY
_o0o_
RESTLESS
© G. S. Jennsen
All rights reserved.
2314
(Eight years before the events of Starshine)
Earth: San Francisco
I quit.
Alex Solovy rolled the words around in her mind, trying out different inflections and intonations and generally letting her brain grow comfortable with the notion. Not so much the words themselves as what they signified.
Freedom, in all its wondrous and terrifying splendor.
She was on pleasant terms with her boss at Pacifica Aerodynamics—if not necessarily her coworkers—and bore him and the enterprise he operated no particular ill will. The opposite in fact; it was a decent company as companies went, inasmuch as it hadn’t allowed two centuries worth of ship fabrication to weigh it down or stifle an innovative spirit.
No, unlike so many legions of corporate drones she wasn’t quitting because she hated her job. She was quitting because the job had always been nothing more than a means to an end—a way to gain a fulsome understanding of and skill in operating every conceivable system to be found on a starship, plus each one’s variations, quirks and maintenance requirements.
Two years before, she had left IS Design on Erisen because she had learned everything they had to teach her. Now she would leave Pacifica Aerodynamics for the same reason.
Seeing as they were the two premiere civilian starship manufacturers in the Earth Alliance, the only place where she could learn the remaining—and the most important—lessons was space itself.
She had also spent the previous four years of gainful employment saving every spare credit to pass through her account. Never one to spend frivolously on consumer trappings, she had trimmed her expenses to the bone by sharing a flat with Kennedy while on Erisen and, upon returning to San Francisco, renting a modest one-bedroom apartment in a once-and-not-yet-again-trendy neighborhood.
The savings had built up quickly, albeit not so quickly as her innate restlessness might have liked. And now ninety-five percent of those savings had been spent on a ship of her own.
Her ship.
She let those words roll around exquisitely in her mind as she went to break the good news to her boss.
*
Seneca: Cavare
Caleb Marano flattened himself against the wall and readied the Daemon at his hip.
From the other side of the entrance Samuel counted down the seconds with his fingers. When the last finger dropped Samuel activated the door and they stormed into the room.
A makeshift office containing only a collapsible desk sitting askew and cartons stacked along both walls, the setting carried all the hallmarks of shady and transient criminal activity.
“Pascal Abelli, you are under arrest for blackmail and extortion of a government official. You may—”
“I don’t think so.” Abelli drew his own Daemon as footsteps pounded down the hallway behind them.
The investigation had fallen to the Division of Intelligence because there was some question as to whether a government official, Interior Director Orsi De Campo, had in truth engaged in the crime Abelli was blackmailing him to keep secret—selling Federation secrets to the Triene cartel. If the Director had not done so, the pertinent question became how classified material had found its way into Pascal Abelli’s hands.
Samuel shot Abelli before the gun made it halfway up. Caleb stayed by the entrance, waited a beat, then threw an elbow backwards to smash the face of the guard who burst through the doorway, knocking the man flat on his back as blood gushed from a crushed nasal septum.
He spun and fired as the guard tried to get up, confiscated the man’s gun and tossed it to Samuel. Next he crouched to search the now unconscious form for other weapons.
Laser fire streaked above his head. He lunged forward to tackle the second guard at the knees when the opposite wall turned red in a spray of blood propelled out of the hole burned through the man’s chest. The body collapsed to the floor.
After Caleb checked to confirm the hallway harbored no further attackers, he climbed to his feet and found Samuel lowering the gun Caleb had tossed to him, his personal shield sparking with residual energy dissipation.
“Guess his gun wasn’t set to stun. And I thought I might actually finish this op without having to kill anyone.”
“When was the last time that happened?”
“Too long ago to remember, seems like.” Samuel flipped Abelli’s prone body onto his stomach and secured his arms in wrist restraints. “This guy’s a lard-ass. Help me drag him out?”
Caleb wiped stray blood off his cheek using his shirt before grabbing hold of the unconscious man’s left arm. Together they hauled him past the two guards and down the hallway.
“Thanks for tagging along with me tonight—turns out I did need the backup. Logistics ought to be here by the time we get outside. I’d invite you to go get a beer or four, but I suspect I’m going to be ass-deep in red tape for hours. Killing politicians, their friends or even their enemies always means mountains of bureaucracy.”
A beer or four would serve well to calm the adrenaline still coursing hot through Caleb’s veins and the agitated energy which inevitably lingered longer than it should after such confrontations.
But there was more than one way to appease the restlessness.
“It’s all good. I’ve got plans on Romane later.” ‘Plans’ was perhaps a strong word, but Samuel didn’t need to know that. “Next time?”
Samuel grunted as they lugged Abelli around another corner. “Next time it is.”
*
Erisen: Earth Alliance Colony
“Are you ready?”
“For fuck’s sake, Ken, I’ve been waiting a month for the ship to be finished. I am beyond rea
dy.”
Kennedy Rossi rolled her eyes as they approached one of the hangar bays at IS Design’s production facility. “I just don’t want you to faint when you see it or anything.”
“I’ve never fainted in my life. Why on Earth would I faint now?”
“Well….” Kennedy entered a code on the panel beside the interior bay entrance and let the door slide open.
Alex crossed the threshold, at which point all other thoughts vacated her mind as her perception narrowed, transfixed by the vision exposed before her.
The ship gleamed a charcoal two shades from black. All curves and edges, the broad midsection flared out to expansive wings which housed—or would soon house—a plethora of instruments and sensors. From an aesthetic viewpoint, the silhouette resembled an Indian Black Eagle preparing to swoop upon its prey.
Her gaze ran bow to stern and back again. Though a small vessel by any objective measure, here in the hangar it loomed large and powerful to dominate its environs.
“You’re blocking the door, Alex.”
“I know I’m blocking the door. Give me a minute.”
She had to credit the engineers. She had provided them a design, and they had brought it to life more vividly than it had ever existed in her imagination. A grin spread across her face as she at last approached the ship.
“You would not believe how much grumbling I caught from, well, everyone on the project. ‘Nobody makes ships like this,’ ‘We’ll never fit slots for so many instruments on the frame,’ ‘I’ve never even heard of this material’…on and on it went.”
Alex ignored her to run a hand along the hull, following it all the way to the sLume drive suspended beneath a gracefully tapered tail section. Though faster than eighty percent of civilian drives, it was a previous-generation model and the most she could afford right now.