"There are several possibilities," Six Seven said. Our Assidic torturer was hovering in the background, probably to make sure we didn't murder our visitor for his clothing. "There's an almost infinite variety of possible outcomes, because there are different possibilities for each person—and we're talking about five people. One, Five, Nine, Twelve, and Thirteen. Those are the five of whom there is no trace. Because we don't know what happened to them, it means there may be a chance you will be successful. There's no hope for Beta Four—he was killed. That can't be prevented. It doesn't look too good for Beta One either. But there may be hope for the others."
New hope for the dead. At first I had just been thinking exclusively about Priestess—my whole focus had been on Priestess. But then I had started thinking—why just Priestess? If you're going to attempt this insanity, why not do it all? Why not all of them? They were all there, weren't they? If I could reach Priestess, I could reach the others as well. Beta, back from the dead!
"It could be," Six Seven was saying, "that they've all been killed, annihilated in the starmass. It could be that you'll show up there and find nothing. And the timing is critical. You might get there just in time to watch them die. Be prepared for that." He paused and licked his lips, hesitating. "But it could also be," he went on, "that you will find them—successfully. One or more of them. You see, this would explain why there were no bodies. It could be. You're not going to know until you get there. If you get there."
You will find them, I thought, repeating the phrase in my mind. It gave me a surge, right down to my toes. Dear holy God, Deadman, let it be! You will find them! You will find them! Lord, is it really possible?
***
They launched the ship one glorious day. We watched from a ragged clearing on the side of a forested hill several K away. Tara herself had christened it, a few hours earlier. The name had changed. Now it was the Confederation Ship Star of Dindabai. And an altogether fitting name it was.
The massive blast doors over the ship's berth rolled slowly back, allowing Dindabai's weak sunlight to fall for the first time on our ship.
As we watched, it rose silently from below, parallel to the ground, raising a whirlwind of dirt and snow around the great installation below. It rose like the sun, seemingly as weightless as a cloud, hovering overhead effortlessly, riding the air. Deadman, it was beautiful! If was a lovely, burnished silver, and as it paused there over K2 it was as if a great silver sword was poised, like the indestructible saber of some mighty God, to smite us. The cross of the Legion was fused into the fuselage, as if to remove any doubts as to the ship's intentions. All right, I'll admit it—my skin was crawling. I was proud of our ship. How could I not be proud, looking up at that incredible creation? It reflected all the power and glory of the Legion, and I don't think I had ever seen anything more wonderful in my life. It was our heavenly chariot, just as Tara had said. And we were going to use it to do things that nobody had ever done before. We were going to make history, we were going to hurtle into another universe, and maybe even into the past—for generations not yet born, and for the dead. Tara was absolutely right. How could I possibly miss a ride like this one? How could I stay home, with the Star of Dindabai floating in our pale winter sky? They'd have to put out my eyes to get me to stay behind!
I looked over at Tara. She was lost, looking up to the ship, paralyzed with pride. She might as well have named it Star of Tara, for that's what it was.
We were all there—Gildron, Tara, Dragon, Redhawk, Valkyrie, Whit, and me. Nobody said a word. We just stood there watching the Star of Dindabai, newly born, breathing in the air, tasting the sunlight, taking in the view. Our ship. We were going to ride it, blind, through another dimension and into another universe. Our training was over and we were all in terrific shape, as tough as biogens. My muscles were whipcord tight and I had never felt better. Even Whit was salty and aggressive—we had recently had to restrain her from punching out a supply clerk who had moved a little too slowly to suit her.
We did not know what awaited us in Plane Prime, but we didn't figure there was anything further we could do to prepare for it. We had literally been through Hell, in Basic. We ran through fire and swam in icy seas and leaped from terrifying heights and crawled through awful dirt tunnels with no light, far beneath the earth, and fought off multiple attackers, repeatedly, unarmed, and wasted an incredible amount of ammo firing everything from E's and SG's to Manlinks.
The Legion had done all it could to prepare us. Now it was up to us.
Chapter 14
Plane Prime
We're here," Tara announced. It had been a long star run to get here, back in the Andrion Sector. I was on the bridge lounging in a VIP chair just behind Tara. We had just come hurtling out of stardrive into normal vac. The forward viewport was full of stars. The Star of Dindabai had worked just as advertised so far. They had tested it for months, first in the at, then out in the vac. They had done hundreds of test runs. She was tight as a virgin, they said, and as smooth as slick. High praise from the techs for our lovely ship. They were happy with it. We were all happy with it. It was a wondrous ship. And now, cruising the Outvac somewhere in the Andrion Sector, looking out at those stars, I could feel the longing in my heart for my wife and son on Andrion 2. They were still light-years away but I swear I could feel them on my skin.
"Look at those readings!" The techs were getting excited.
"Climbing into the red," somebody said. Plane Prime was close—so close our instruments were already detecting its presence. Once the indicators edged into the red it would signal extreme danger. No star pilot in his right mind would initiate a star hop in such close proximity to another universe. It was suicide—you would likely be sucked into the other universe from hyperspace, and never return.
"We're losing it."
"Auto correction—relax!" The Star of Dindabai was hunting down Plane Prime for us, seeking it out like a moth circling a naked flame. Gildron looked back at us and smiled confidently. He was a tower of strength, that's for sure. The Star was with him, in an inside pocket of his jacket. The Star was with him always.
"Three, Eight, what's the sit?" The voice crackled in my ears. Dragon and Redhawk and Valkyrie were with the Strike Force, huddled behind multiple bulkheads. The ship was on yellow alert, and they were missing the show.
"We've successfully exited stardrive into the Andrion Sector," I said into my shoulder mike. "We're chasing Plane Prime. It's here. We're close."
"You know," Whit remarked casually to Tara, "this is the craziest thing we've ever done."
"You can tell your grandchildren about it," Tara replied from the Command chair. A couple of the Legion's very best star jumpers were piloting the ship, Ice Two and Slambang Sue. Ice was as efficient as a biogen, and Slambang was equally good. She didn't get her name from her landings, but from what happened when she got a male alone in a cube.
All Tara had to do was make decisions. Whit was a good pilot as well but she was just along for the ride this time. Tara had insisted on her presence on the bridge. Superstition, maybe.
"Entering the red!" My heartbeat speeded up just a little. I closed my eyes. I remembered I used to gulp mags to ice out, going into action. But I didn't need the mags anymore. My mind was whirling with thoughts and images. We were superbly equipped. Even our clothing was specifically manufactured to maximize our chances. I was encased in a spun-cenite, fireproof, bulletproof litesuit. They'd have to hit me with starmass or x or laser to bother me. Unfortunately all those weapons were in the O's arsenal.
"WARNING! WE HAVE ENTERED A REDLINED SPACETIME DIMENSIONAL VORTEX! SEVERELY DISTORTED SPACETIME CONTINUUM INDICATES PRESENCE OF A NATURAL DIMENSIONAL STARGATE! STARLAUNCH IS FORBIDDEN!" The ship boomed out the warning. Normal people would have paid a lot of attention to that announcement.
"We're in the red," the pilot said. It was almost a whisper. I pulled on my gloves and secured them to the sleeves. The comtop was clipped to my belt.
"Fasten yo
ur seat belts, kiddies," Tara said. She was at her best in moments of crisis, I suppose. I was concentrating on what felt like an impending heart attack. I checked my harness—all secure.
"Locked in!" the pilot said. No, it was not going to get away from us. And we were not going to get away from it.
"Attention the ship!" Tara spoke into the Commander's mike. She sounded perfectly cool. Her voice was silky smooth. "We are about to launch into a natural stargate. We have located and zeroed our target. Plane Prime is just beyond the gates. You all know how important this mission is, and you all know the risks. If we succeed, we change history and humanity triumphs. If we fail, we die. It's that simple. But either way, we will have tried, and the future will be better because of it. I am proud to be serving with every one of you. You are the very best of the Legion. And no matter what happens, we will know that we did our very best. We are now initiating antimat drive. Please put on your comtops and stand by. And may Deadman be with us."
I fumbled with my comtop, slipping it over my head and snapping it on. I was sweating. Can I be excused for the rest of the afternoon? No, Tara wouldn't like that. I'd better suit up and shut down.
"Prep to launch."
"We're right in the bubble."
"WARNING! DIMENSIONAL STARGATE! STARLAUNCH IS FORBIDDEN!" The ship was insistent.
"Over-ride starlaunch auto warning."
"WARNING! YOU HAVE REQUESTED OVERRIDE OF STARLAUNCH AUTOWARNING! YOU ARE WITHIN A REDLINED SPACETIME DIMENSIONAL VORTEX! SEVERELY DISTORTED SPACETIME CONTINUUM INDICATES PRESENCE OF A NATURAL DIMENSIONAL STARGATE! STARLAUNCH IS FORBIDDEN! STARLAUNCH MAY RESULT IN DESTRUCTION OF THE SHIP OR POSSIBLE STARDRIVE EXIT IN AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE! DO NOT LAUNCH! REPEAT, DO NOT LAUNCH!"
"Can't say we weren't warned, huh?" Ice Two sounded almost bored. I was in agony, squirming in my seat.
"Autowarnings over-ridden."
"Let's do it."
"ALERT! ALERT! INITIATING STARLAUNCH! REPEAT, STARLAUNCH! SECURE ALL PERSONNEL!"
"Love you, Thinker." It was Valkyrie, whispering in my ears.
"Hold tight, Valkyrie. See you on the other side."
"Death," Tara announced to the ship and all on board. It was the Legion's war cry. I don't know why, but it made me feel just a little bit better. Death, I thought. Fine. If it is to be death, we're ready.
***
"Stop! Stop! I can't stand it! Isn't it going to end?" Someone was coming apart, shrieking hysterically. Blind panic was rushing over me. My eyes were shut tight and I was gritting my teeth, trying not to scream. Something was terribly wrong. We had starlaunched into the hole, and that queasy feeling had crept over my skin, the way it always did, and then it had started to go wrong. The ship had lurched like a wounded beast and shuddered and lurched again, generating tremendous grav, flattening us into our chairs. A terrible vibrating noise ran over the ship. My blood pressure shot skywards, and the visor of my comtop was full of red warning lights.
We should have broken through into the hole, into hyperspace, even on our way into another universe. It didn't happen. The ship leaped again. Unsecured gear flew around the bridge. That stuff should have been tied down! Something bounced off my comtop. It felt as if we were falling—falling wildly, out of control. I was completely helpless. All I could do was sit there, strapped in, eyes closed, praying for survival.
The ship spun around wildly. My stomach did, too. I was getting dizzy and wanted to vomit. I tried to fight it. I tried to close my mind, to think of something else—anything but this! Moontouch…a screeching, in the bones of the ship. I ventured a peek. Everyone was strapped in, but I was seeing double, then triple. The front viewport was black. I closed my eyes again. The gravs were building, threatening to tear me from the chair. Incredible, irresistible grav. My eyes were starting to pop out of their sockets. I was being battered from side to side in my chair. We were going to die, I decided. The mission has failed. Moontouch! I have abandoned you! Terror and regret flooded my veins. I cursed Tara. Damn her to Hell! Death, death, death!
"Please! Please! I can't stand it!"
"Shut down!"
"Can you read…the…status…"
"No!"
"Don't…touch…" The ship bucked again, berserk, and something crashed against a bulkhead. It wasn't going to end, I realized. It was going to go on like this, until we all died of exhaustion. We were trapped in some kind of dimensional maelstrom between two universes, something totally unexpected. We were trapped and doomed. The ship was bouncing around like a mote of dust in a hyperspace typhoon.
I closed my eyes again, as the grav forces slammed me around in my harness back and forth, back and forth. Sleep…die…sleep…I'm a soldier of the Legion, I thought. We can sleep anywhere. Sleep. Pass out. Fade away…we die with a whimper, not even noticed, not even objecting.
"Please! Please! Stop it!" And I tried to sleep, ignoring the screams. It was not going to end, I knew, and we were all going to die. I accepted it, and tried to dream sweet dreams, of Moontouch and Stormdawn and Priestess and Valkyrie.
***
I awoke to a dead silence. I didn't know if I had passed out or slept, but I had certainly been out for some time. I opened my eyes carefully, fearful of what I would find. There was no movement on the bridge. It was still as a tomb. Everyone was still strapped into their seats. Debris was strewn all around the deck. I carefully unlinked my harness and rose from the chair. Ship's grav was normal. Every muscle was aching. My bruises had bruises. I crept forward to the Command chair and looked into Tara's visor, my heart thumping. Her eyes were closed, her brow was troubled, but I could see she was breathing. Asleep! A great relief flooded over me.
I moved painfully up to the pilot's chair. Ice Two turned slightly to look at me, then went back to the instruments. I looked out the viewport. Dark—it was dark. A cold hand seemed to be gripping my heart.
"Where are we?" I whispered. It was so quiet I dared not raise my voice.
"We made it," he whispered back. "It's Plane Prime. We're here."
"I don't see any stars," I said.
"There don't appear to be any," he confirmed. "We're searching."
Someone stirred lazily behind us in his seat—Gildron.
"How long did it last?" I asked Ice Two.
"Almost three hours."
Almost three hours! My eyes were drawn back to the viewport. No stars! I could see a little smudge somewhere out there, a slight frosty blur that could have been a cloud of cosmic dust, or maybe a smear on the plex. No stars. That was scary. I was too tired to investigate.
***
As people recovered their wits they returned to their duties, and we were soon fully functional. Damage reports revealed a lot of minor breakage to unsecured items, including a few minor fractures to crewmembers incautious enough to have unlinked during the storm, but no serious damage to the ship. Our lovely, tough ship had come through it all unscathed. We were all very, very happy about that, because this was not the place for a breakdown.
We had successfully made it to Plane Prime. I stood beside Tara on the bridge, looking out the main viewport as we awaited more results from the science sensors. It was profoundly dark out there. It seemed very, very cold to me right then.
"That's a galaxy," one of the analysts said, hunched over a glowing d-screen.
"What's the distance?" Tara asked.
"It's over ten billion light years away."
"I guess we can cross that one off."
"There's lots of stuff out there," Slambang said. "It's just not very bright."
"I've got more nebulae," another analyst said. "Dark nebulae."
"That's where we should find what we're looking for," Tara said. "It's out there. This universe is part of the cosmic glue that holds all creation together. And it's the D-neg that does it. It's out there, vast clouds of it. We'll find it."
"There's a lot of neutron stars coming on scope. And I've got white dwarfs, and black dwarfs, scattered widely. Incredible distances."
An ancient universe, I thought, where the stars have all burnt themselves out. A fossil universe, dying, winking out to extinction over billions of years. No wonder it seems so cold—this is the coldest place any human has ever visited. No wonder the O's want to leave.
"Take your time, guys," Tara said. "We've got plenty of time." She was looking very pleased with herself. I don't think I'd ever seen such a look of total triumph before. She answered my gaze with a slow smile. "You've got to have faith," she said. "Faith and determination will overcome all obstacles. Nobody can stop us, now. Nobody."
***
The D-neg probes looked almost like antimat torpedoes. We looked one over from a little walkway in the launch tube. It was a massive gleaming cylinder, dwarfing us as we stood beside it.
"How many of these guys do we have?" Ten asked.
"Eighteen," Tara replied. "It should be enough. All we need is one good hit. We launch them all into likely areas. The fuselage splits open, the impact buffers deploy around the probes. With luck, a tiny grain of D-neg hits the buffers and burns its way through the cenite baffles and impacts in the layer of aerogel crystalflash lining the base. Then we pull the probes in and analyze them. If we find any raw D-neg we isolate it, load it into the reactor, and strip away the extra atoms into a plasma of pure D-neg. It's only at that stage that it becomes an extremely dangerous substance of almost infinite density that will annihilate anything with which it comes in contact. But the idea is that it will never come into contact with anything else. The plasma is immediately directed into the unitium stasis. And once we've got it in stasis, it's ours—and we're well on the way to powering up the D-neg drive."
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