Myell slammed his hand against the tile and disrupted the images. Pain spiraled up his wrist and into his arm.
“I’m not,” he said. “I refuse.”
But when he closed his eyes he saw a hundred thousand Roon marching across a blistered countryside, their helmets blood red in the setting sun.
Once he was dressed again he sat on the divan where he and Jodenny had lain together and studied the galaxy beneath his toes. A whole universe out there, and he was just a very tiny part of it, his own needs and desires dwarfed. He could see Earth, if he tried. Earth, with ships of green surrounding it. So much fear there, so much uncertainty.
He squeezed both temples with his fingers, trying to drive the images away. Garanwa had done this to him. In his sleep, in the dark, in his dreams.
But that didn’t change the fact that the Roon were interlopers. That only one man could stop them, could steer them away.
Barefoot, damp, with swirls and whirls pulsing in his vision, he followed the gecko songline through sweet-scented rooms of flowers and trees to the chamber where the skin cloak hung.
“Chief?” Lavasseur was keeping watch, and like many sentries seemed bored at the task. “Is everything okay?”
Myell kept his gaze on the cloak. A thousand worlds. Multiple Eggs on each of them. A network larger than any of them had ever imagined. His to control. Jodenny would not be happy. Where was she? He thought she had come, that they had been together, that he’d listened to her heartbeat and tasted her mouth, but now she was gone, leaving him empty. His head began to hurt.
Lavasseur clicked on his radio. “Commander Nam? I think you’d better come.”
“I can send you home,” Myell murmured. “Back to Fortune. Do you want that?”
“Hell yes,” Lavasseur said, as if Myell had just offered him buckets of gold. “Right now?”
“Right now,” Myell said.
A crocodile ring appeared on the ground behind Myell. He didn’t have to turn around to see it. He commanded it. Commanded all of them through space and time …
He was inside Garanwa, inside the once-a-boy, running naked across the hard dirt of the outback in gasping terror, fleeing those who would kill him. His tribe. His kin. He fled, stomach churning, lungs laboring—
“Chief?” That was Nam, peering at him, slapping his cheeks. “What’s going on?”
—and they were chasing him with sticks and spears for his failure, for his cowardice, but the sky opened up and the Rainbow Serpent flicked its tongue—
“See if you can find Commander Scott,” Nam said to someone.
Myell focused on him. “I can send you back. To Fortune. You can warn them about the Roon.”
Nam jerked his head toward the crocodile ring. “Through that?”
“Sounds like a good deal to me, sir,” Lavasseur said.
Commander Gold, standing behind Nam, asked, “How can you, Chief? Do you know how the controls work?”
“They’re not controls.” Myell’s head was beginning to ache in earnest now. He was surprised that his brain wasn’t leaking out his ears. “Where’s Jodenny? I need—”
He went to his knees, unable to stand on weakened legs. The sound of his heartbeat thudded in his ears like a drum. Sick, he thought. Dying. Not him. Garanwa. The not-boy …
“Easy now.” Collins crouched next to him with his gib. “Deep breaths, Chief.”
“What’s wrong with him?” Nam asked.
“Pulse is high, blood pressure is skyrocketing—I need my medkit, sir.”
“Commander!” That was Gayle, arriving with Garanwa in her arms. The not-boy was gasping for breath, clearly in distress. Gayle’s face was blotchy red from exertion. “We need help here.”
“What did you do to him?” Nam asked.
“Nothing! He was in the passageway outside, couldn’t walk—”
Gold took the not-boy from her arms and laid him out on the ground near Myell. Nam radioed for Ensign Collins to bring the medkits, and for everyone else to fall back to the skin-cloak room.
“And keep your eyes out for Commander Scott,” he said. “She doesn’t have a radio.”
“Sir, should we leave or bring the aliens?” That was Breme’s voice, crackling loudly.
Nam said, “Bring them. Be quick about it.”
Garanwa’s head lolled to the side. Through darkening vision Myell saw the not-boy’s eyes wide open, drawing him into …
the Serpent’s embrace, the whisper, “You will be the helmsman,” the Eggs planted inside him …
“Chief, I need you to lie down,” Collins was saying, but Myell shook his hand off.
“We don’t have much time,” Myell said. “Get into the ring now if you want to go home.”
Saadi moved toward the crocodile ring. “For once I’m not going to argue.”
“Wait,” Nam ordered. “Why now, Chief? Why the hurry? We have to find out more about this station, the network—”
“There won’t be a station.” Myell tasted hot salty liquid against his lip, and wiped at blood trickling from his nose. “When he dies, this place dies.”
Nam asked, “How do you know?” and that was just it, Myell couldn’t explain, but he knew.
“Go, please,” Myell said. “I’ll follow.”
Nam met his gaze for a long moment, judging his truthfulness, before turning to Gold.
“You take them,” Nam said.
Gold’s eyes widened. “Not without you.”
Garanwa gave out a loud gasp. Collins, bending over him, said, “I don’t think the alien’s going to last much longer, sir.”
“They need you,” Nam said to Gold.
Gold shook his head.
The station rumbled from somewhere deep within, a growl of distant but sustained thunder. Some of the beehive towers started to crumble. The ground and walls suddenly lifted up and lurched sideways, a violent upheaval that sent Vao and Saadi stumbling to the ground.
“What the hell—” Nam asked.
“The whole place will come apart!” Saadi said.
The shudder subsided, but Myell knew the respite would be brief. The tremor would return. The whole place would collapse to ruin and ash, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
“You have to hurry,” he told Nam.
“Tom, please,” Nam said to Gold, and took his face between his hands, and kissed him hard.
When they broke apart, Gold said, “You better be right behind me.”
Nam unexpectedly grinned. “Count on it.”
More of Gold’s team arrived. Nam ushered them into the ring alongside Saadi and Lavasseur. Myell gathered the wild power in his head and sent them back to Fortune. Emerald-green light flashed, dazzling his eyes. He didn’t know how he was doing it, only that he could, that he could send anyone to anywhere—
Nam clicked on his radio. “Breme, Holt, Highcastle, where are you?”
Holt replied, “I think I’m close! But the rooms keep rearranging themselves.”
“We can’t find you!” Breme said. “We’re in the room with the stream in it—”
Gayle said, “I’ll go find them,” and dashed out before anyone could stop her.
The pain in his head was making it hard to stay conscious. Myell rocked back and forth, his vision gone hazy, his breathing harsh in his own ears. “Easy, easy,” Collins was saying, but there was nothing easy about this, not with the world ending in red agony. But still he managed to bring the crocodile ring back. It shimmered and hummed against the ground even as the rumbling returned, and more beehive towers of rock crumbled to dust.
Collins, his attention split between Myell and Garanwa, said, “I’ll stay here, Commander.”
“There’s nothing you can do for either of them,” Nam said. “Go back home, Ensign.”
The chamber lurched and shook, great sections of the ceiling buckling under the stress. Too soon, too soon; Myell couldn’t take the helm. But he didn’t have a choice. In his head he could see Breme and Highcastle, lurchi
ng along a passageway, frantic for rescue. He sent them a ring and the ring took them home. He saw Holt, lost in a room of vines and trees. Another ring, another green flash. He tried to find Jodenny but of her there was only a blur of white, of feathers like a bird—
Garanwa gave out a last shuddering gasp and went still.
Energy bolted out of the corpse, an explosion of hot frantic power, and lightning tore Myell’s world to shreds.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“I hate this place.” Jodenny hoped that the Great Egret was listening. “Hate it! Do you hear me?”
No answer. Jodenny had left the room with the starry floor and found the room with food in it, but she didn’t want fruit or bread or strange-looking vegetables. She picked the archway to the far right and followed it into a dark chamber with a blazing comet overhead. No sign of anyone, not Myell or Nam or anyone from the teams.
“What do you want from me?” she asked, fists clenched. Surely someone in charge here was screwing with her, making her deliberately lost and confused and frustrated.
No answer came from the dirt or walls or even the comet, which sailed across the universe in a streak of silent fire.
She pushed herself on through another archway, then another. When the station began to rumble and buckle beneath her, she feared not for her own safety but for Myell’s. Whatever forces ruled this place wanted him alive. Needed him alive. Wanted to steal him from her. She said, “Leave him alone, you bastards,” just as the ground tilted crazily and roared and she lost her balance. She landed hard on one arm, feeling something in it snap.
Pain knifed through her just as hot light exploded out of nowhere. Scorching and blue hot, it crackled across the adjacent chamber. The air came alive around her, sparking and tingling. The accompanying clap of thunder slammed through her like the volley of cannons. She couldn’t hear, couldn’t see, couldn’t think …
Then all fell silent and dark. She wasn’t even sure that she was still alive, but the gritty taste in her mouth as she gasped for air had to mean something.
Jodenny sat up. Pain sang along her right arm, wrist to elbow, bright and hot and demanding of attention. She wanted to vomit. Her ears felt numb but were quickly recovering, and blue-white imprints danced in her vision. The station had stopped rumbling, which she hoped was a good sign, but most of the ambient illumination had disappeared and the air smelled like char and ash. Legs wobbly, coughing out dirt, she found her footing, tried not to move her broken arm, and lurched to the archway of the beehive room.
At first she thought Myell was dead.
Nam, too. And Collins. All of them, sprawled on the ground and unmoving. Jodenny fell to her knees and touched Myell’s face ever so carefully. His skin was blistered and burned. His lips were slightly parted, and his faint breathing had a whistling sound to it. She didn’t want to touch him further, didn’t want to aggravate any injuries or cause him more pain, but it was a torture not to tug his head into her lap, to keep from pressing her head against his shoulder.
Collins stirred. Nam sat up with a groan. Under the dim, flickering light they looked as ghastly as Myell. Beside Collins was a shrunken gray thing that she realized was Garanwa’s corpse. It was shriveled like a dried fruit, and the lips were so retracted that she could see a half-dozen rotted teeth. The beehive towers of rock throughout the room had toppled or shattered, leaving the air thick and bitter.
“What happened?” Collins asked.
“Lightning Man,” Nam murmured, one hand pressed to his head.
Behind them, a green crocodile ring faded into existence. It glowed with an uneven light, as if it was barely sustaining itself.
The ground rumbled, an aftershock or a preamble of more devastation to come.
Collins started crawling toward Myell. He spared a glance for the crocodile ring, asking, “Last chance to escape?”
“Or a one-way trip to nowhere,” Nam said.
“Is your arm broken?” Collins asked Jodenny.
“I think so.” She touched Myell’s brow with the fingers of her left hand. “Is he … he’s burned. You all are.”
Collins had a gib, but it was a blackened, useless shell and he tossed it aside. The far-off rumbling increased, moving closer. Jodenny imagined a rock crusher or some other mammoth machine jawing toward them, devouring everything in its path.
“We have to get out of here, sir,” Collins said.
“Not until I know the others are safe,” Nam said. “Breme, Holt, Gayle…”
Jodenny understood. He was the commander of this mission, responsible for his team. Their lives were more valuable than his own. But she had no such burden of command. She hooked her left hand under Myell’s armpit.
“Help me,” she told Collins.
Together, using her one good arm and his two fully useful ones, they dragged Myell to the crocodile ring. He was heavier than Jodenny remembered. Deadweight. He made a faint protesting noise, a mewl of pain, but they could do nothing for him but escape, and hope for help wherever the token took them.
Nam got to his feet, his gaze on the archways. He tried his radio but it was as dead as Collins’s gib. He shouted out, “Gayle! Breme!”
No one answered. The only sounds were their own breathing, and the growing sound of thunder, and Myell’s increasing distress as he regained consciousness.
“Easy,” Collins said, as they tugged Myell over the ring’s edges. He himself didn’t enter the ring, but instead glanced back at Nam.
“Go,” Nam ordered.
“Another ring might not come,” Collins said.
Myell gasped and arched against the ground, his spine stiffening, his arms twitching. Jodenny bent close to his face and whispered, “Ssh, I’m here. It’s going to be okay.”
A lie, obviously a lie, but he quieted at her voice. Twin drops of water landed on his cheeks. Jodenny wiped at her face, surprised to find tears there. Though Myell kept his eyelids closed, his mouth opened and he tried to speak.
“Ssh,” she said again. “Don’t talk.”
His cracked lips kept moving. Jodenny bent close, trying to make sense of his hoarse, broken whispers. When she looked up, Nam was giving them both a deeply etched frown.
“He says you have to come.” Jodenny’s voice choked in her throat. “Don’t kill yourself.”
“I’m not killing myself,” Nam said fiercely.
Collins said, “Commander, please.”
Myell stiffened again, letting out a sharp cry.
“The ring won’t leave without you,” Jodenny said.
“Breme!” Nam shouted out again. “Gayle! Holt!”
No answer, only the unseen beast drawing nearer. The lights in the damaged dome went dark, flickered on again, then started to rain down sparkles of green and white. Tiny specks of light, falling like stars. Cradling her broken arm, Jodenny shielded Myell before any could land on him. Three or four fell onto her exposed skin and melted like snowflakes.
Nam let out a long growl of words that might have been, “Goddamn heroics,” and joined them in the crocodile ring.
Jodenny closed her eyes against a bright green flash.
The next thing she saw was the overhead of the Kamchatka’s infirmary.
* * *
“Easy, now,” Farber said from nearby, as Jodenny tried to sit up. “You’re not ready for that yet.”
Jodenny agreed. Her mouth was sandpaper dry, her right arm had a twinge of pain in it, and she couldn’t quite remember why she should be in bed. Nevertheless, she pushed herself up from the pillow. The infirmary room started spinning around her, and she would have sagged back down again if not for Farber’s steadying hand and the sight of Myell lying in the next bed over.
Memory flooded back. Garanwa and the space station and the lightning.
“You’re fine. The doctors fixed you up,” Farber said. “Both of you, as best they could.”
For the first time Jodenny noticed a security tech in the small room with them. He was armed, and stationed
inside the hatch, not outside, which didn’t bode well.
She would worry about that later. Jodenny got herself standing, her bare feet cold against the deck, and lurched across the small space separating her bed from Myell’s. He was curled up on his side with his face to the bulkhead. Sleeping. His skin was no longer burned and the facial tattoos had faded to ghostly imprints. Under his eyelids, his eyes moved back and forth quickly.
“Commander Scott!” A thin, wiry doctor had entered the room while her attention was on Myell. “I’m Dr. Ruiz, ship’s Medical Officer.”
He didn’t appear old enough to be out of medical school, but Jodenny shook his hand anyway.
“You know my name,” she said, with a glance toward Farber.
“Oh, yes, we had to scan your embedded dog tag to access your medical profile. We ran Chief Myell’s tag too, and luckily the next-of-kin information is all up-to-date. You’d be amazed how many people forget to do that when they get married,” Ruiz said. “You can see we healed up the burns, we rehydrated him, blood pressure down, that’s all good. Do you know what exactly happened to him? I’ve been told he was hit by lightning. Twice. That would be amazingly bad luck.”
Farber asked, “Wouldn’t it have killed him?”
“Not necessarily. A lot of people get hit by lightning, and many of them survive, often with some disabilities—” Ruiz abruptly stopped, eyeing Farber and the security tech. “I’m sorry, Commander. Your husband does have the right to medical privacy. Do you want to speak alone?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Sorry, ma’am,” the security guard said. “I’m not authorized to leave.”
“The captain has some concerns,” Farber added.
Ruiz wrung his hands. “Team Space is very clear on the issue of medical privacy.”
Jodenny sighed. “I give you permission to go on.”
“Usually we’re talking frontal-lobe injuries, the neural circuits all fried up. Moodiness, sleep problems, memory problems, and depression are all common. Was he evidencing any of that?”
“He was tired,” she admitted, stroking the side of his face.
Ruiz nodded. “We’ll know more when he wakes up. His frontal lobe is scanning fine but there’s an unusual amount of dreaming going on, from what we can tell.”
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