Tethered Worlds: Blue Star Setting
Page 15
Jordahk looked back. The lab broke apart, large chunks moving independently before each sprouted a sphere of energy. When they were all engulfed by overlapping spheres, the thermo-magnetic at the center went off. A white flash was followed by a blue wave that shattered everything nearby. A combined sphere of plasma, debris, and gravitic disturbance shot out, filling the open space.
Then the asteroids bordering the eddy were pulverized, adding mass to the destruction wave. The next layer shattered, its pieces projected violently outward. The Archiver was just clear of it, swerving his way toward open space. The chunks smashed into his shields, which flared and failed. One of the corvette's large extended thruster assemblies was smashed completely. Then the expanding sphere hit the ship, driving it into the next layer of massive stone. It mashed against them for an instant before bursting. The explosion was quickly lost in the cacophony of new debris as the destruction continued outward.
They would be next if they didn't stay ahead of it.
"My father could have accomplished this without all of the havoc and fanciful display," Aristahl said.
Jordahk sighed to himself.
Is there a flesh and blood Thule-Riss Quext somewhere? Does he even know what a mess things have become?
They twisted and turned, racing for open space, but the wave was going to catch them first. The Sojourner-made scout was an amazing ship. Alb-Sone and its AI knew how to fly it. But there were certain laws of physics that couldn't be broken short of intervention by the Khromas. The destruction caught up to them when they were about three-quarters of the way out of the belt.
Rock fragments leading the wave hit them first. The bay came alive with thunder. Alb-Sone must have been re-pressurizing. They made a last-second tight maneuver, to get some open space before them. Then the energetic sphere slammed into the scout. Jordahk felt it through his grav weaves. It shoved them forward violently.
Objects, including Torious, flew. The pod broke loose from whatever was steadying it and tumbled across the bay. The interior spun. The bay filled with smashing equipment and debris.
She felt strange. It was a flood of new awareness. Intervals of intense, squeezing pressure from various directions. Energy tingled through her limbs, and her mind was aglow with new clarity. But accompanying it was a moving, dizzying sensation. It was confusing.
She had been dreaming for so long, but this reality was blurry. A pang of anxiety struck her. It felt horrible. She remembered experiencing it before, but never like this. Never so fresh and sharp. It wrenched at her gut, mixing with the squeezing sensations. She could not determine the veracity of any of her memories. They all felt less real than this moment.
Had she only ever lived a dream? With a frightful zoom everything she knew was receding, fading into a darkness speckled with splashes of light. She felt a great heaving. It was the most corporeal sensation ever experienced. Noise and heavy vibration assaulted her body. Powerful, yet muted.
The vision she had always known was gone. In the darkness and stillness after the heaving, she tried to stay calm. What was wrong with her vision? She forced her eyes open. The act felt strangely alien. Everything was blurry, punctuated by flashes and thunderous vibration. She blinked, but there was no change.
Quite suddenly, she was aware of being trapped. She was surrounded by viscosity she could not see through clearly. Her skin prickled. A burning sensation grew deep within her chest. She breathed deeply out of instinct, but there was no relief. The burning spread to her limbs. Panic was at the threshold.
Only her mind stayed clear, as other physical sensations began to fade. In her lucidity, she had to make a choice. Give in to panic or... what?
Then she felt it, like a cool breeze distantly remembered, flowing through her mind. Her body roared its discomfort, but she clung to this cool thread within her mind. She recognized it. She had communed with it at least twice before. It was friendly and carried an impression of white-capped mountains, and small, icy snowflakes.
Her body screamed, and with every last bit of resolve, she held onto that presence. She chose to trust instead of panicking. Then there was darkness.
The cliché thing to do would have been to feel himself, to see if he was all there. But a dull, post-concussive ache, something his suit was apparently unable to prevent, let him know he was whole. His view was jumbled. The pod, or what was left of it, made little sense. Between its bent and broken pieces, he saw the bay.
Fortunately, by navigational design there were no rocks in the scout's path when the destruction wave hit. He knew that immediately, because things would have been much worse if it were not true. The sphere must have lost most of its energy, allowing them to regain control and clear the asteroid belt. It made sense, although his graphics were not working to confirm.
Nearby, he felt the subtle, reassuring presence of his grandfather. That made him relax. Somehow, Aristahl would get them through.
Grav weaves were a blessing, saving countless lives, and making so much possible. A drawback, however, was blockage of the inverted sensation. In a moment of clarity, what his eyes were trying to tell him clicked. He was upside down in relation to the rest of the bay. Adding to his confusion was Torious, suspended among debris, appearing right side up.
Jordahk was still attached to his seat, thrown free of the pod wreckage. There was something new in the back of his mind. It was near the area that made him apprehensive, the submerged place one had to go to touch the deep within through mystic. The subtle connection with his grandfather wasn't alone.
Jordahk had come to think of it as a close range thing, and a personal thing. He didn't feel it with Alb-Sone. Who else was nearby? Then he felt the shadow of that person's anxiety. It was the same presence that had stuck with him once when the darkness closed during his first encounter with Waxad. This time he knew in his heart that he was doing the same for her, and that she needed help.
He struggled to get out of the chair. "Max, release the auto restraints."
"I'm trying. Nothing's responding."
"Blow the explosive releases."
"They're trashed. I can't even connect."
Jordahk pulled vainly against the restraints.
"Stay calm, Jordahk," Aristahl said. He was within the crumpled body of the pod, beneath the inverted, suspended, and hopelessly entangled nurse.
"You're not going to say this is my fault, are you?" Torious asked.
"Pops, can you feel her? I think she's in trouble."
"I can, but not with the same clarity as you, it seems. It is going to take a few moments to break Torious and I out of this mess."
"I have made contact with a maintenance drone," Barrister said. "I'm overriding central control and ordering it to cut you free."
His hobby of mystic relic hunting had built quite a knowledge base. One difference between scientum ships and mystic was their stance on robotic maintenance. Conventional ships like the Monte Crest, which had taken him so far last year, used independently thinking maintenance bots. They were given orders and operated according to their own software packages.
Mystic ships used maintenance drones, controlled centrally by the ship AI. They were generally smaller and responded with the personality of the ship AI. One clawed its way to him through the debris. It was smoother than the average maintenance bot. Less cobbled together, and its surface appeared to be made entirely of lustrous, white-gray platinum. It worked for a moment, moving from chair to auto-restraints.
The presence in Jordahk's head was distant and fading —along with his patience. He knew to whom the presence belonged, and he had to help her. Finally, his restraints released and he dropped to the cluttered deck with sensations muffled by his suit.
The scout's bay was large enough to service a sneakership. It was filled with a jumble of broken things. A dark streak of damage from where the energy beam went astray was prominent. The equipment to receive the beam and house the girl was askew. Among the mountains of half-wrecked detritus, he spotted her cylinder.
Jordahk scoured the cylinder for a release, but the equipment wasn't made for entering and exiting. At the bottom of the cylinder, a compartment was open. Two red-hot cylinders had fallen out, smoking and whole, as if right out of the forge. Legacy shells.
"What?" He shook his head and pounded the crystal. It might as well have been granix. It was Sojourner work, so for all he knew it was harder than granix.
"She's suffocating!" Alb-Sone said over the comm from the bridge. "Get her out of the cylinder."
"I'm trying! It's all busted up down here." He looked back to where the drone was trying to free Aristahl and Torious. "Pops, I can't get her out!"
He picked up something that made a solid club and smashed it into the crystal. It was like hitting the side of a ship. He stepped back and drew his hunting grister. Lining up away from the girl, and cognizant of possible ricochet, he fired. The huge thud was muffled, but he could imagine how it sounded on the inside, carried by the fluid. He was glad she wasn't awake for that.
The result was otherwise underwhelming. Sparks erupted in another portion of the bay where where the deflected ammo nut impacted. But the crystal remained without a scratch.
"It's no good."
"Yes, time is of the essence," Aristahl said, "and this drone is taking too long."
Jordahk felt that strange, sub-sensational phenomena again. He looked back intuitively. The wrecked shuttle pod began vibrating. His minimal graphics told him the bay was pressurized. Retracting his helmet crystal, he heard wrenching metal and snapping supports. Its loudness filled the bay. The nearly severed pod split the rest of the way with a crack and eruptions of sparks.
"Don't... don't strain yourself," Jordahk said. He wasn't sure why, but what had just happened filled him with concern.
Aristahl staggered out between the two broken halves. The inverted teardrop no-suit crystal opened revealing ashen skin. He grabbed hold of the wreckage to steady himself and then met Jordahk's eye. He stood with new resolve, and the color returned to his face.
"No need to worry." Aristahl moved through the wreckage with more grace than Jordahk, reaching into his ever present sling bag. A small, metal bird flitted on his palm. Not the naturally colored one he called, "Peri." This one had a rose tint and a matte surface. He looked at it intently, and it glowed briefly, its beak taking on a meatier, pointy shape.
Again, the relic hunter in Jordahk made sense of what he saw. "Ruthenium." It was the platinum group metal often weaved into the mix when a Sojourner needed something extremely hard. The bird darted up into the bay, flying in a widening circle as its speed increased. Its wings were a blur, and its fans whined beyond the point Jordahk thought they would break. The bird traveled so fast it formed a circle of blurry air suspended in the bay.
"Take cover," Aristahl said.
The suspended, blurry hoop disappeared. A thunderous boom was followed by an intense reverberation. Sparks flew as debris shards impacted like shots from a grister. Jordahk peaked around the machinery that served as his shield. The bird had disintegrated completely, but it left behind a deep divot in the still-intact crystal. Concentric circles of cracks emanated from it.
"Radiated thing!" Jordahk pounded the cracks to no avail. The girl looked even bluer, and the scrunched expression of fight in her eyes was no more. He was out of time and desperate. He needed his autobuss. He grabbed his grister instead. "Stay back."
He moved perpendicular to the divot for maximum striking power and shot again. The chunky gun leaped in his hand. He brought it back on target with training borne of much practice and let loose again. Shot after shot. Some ricocheted multiple times in the bay. Finally, the cracks spread. After a dozen shots, silence stretched before the bay rang with the deep gong of an ice cap breaking.
The crystal shattered outward and the fluid gushed forth, jostling the girl. Jordahk pushed through, punching away jagged shards of crystal, and retrieved her cold, naked body. He set her down on a flat piece of debris.
"Get Torious over here!"
"I'm still trapped," the robot said.
Jordahk felt powerless to help somebody whose last thoughts had reached out to him. She was still. Dead. Jordahk searched that inner mystic part of his brain. There was no connection, only a growing collection of energy looking for a mystic object upon which to release.
"Do not give up." Aristahl was climbing toward them.
If Jordahk felt this way, he could only imagine how it was for Aristahl, who had supported this project for centuries. Or Alb-Sone who had dedicated himself to it. Jordahk touched her hand, so devoid of life. But something beyond was not. He grasped her hand firmly and closed his eyes. Some small part of her mind was still there. It was a strange sensation, but one that invigorated him to action.
He turned her on her side and pressed firmly on her chest. Tinted fluid gushed out of her mouth.
"You can try resuscitating her manually," Max said.
Jordahk put his palms atop her sternum, leaning over her for an old technique, forcing a rhythm of life into her still heart. "Max, can you interact with her micros?"
"She's got stuff in her blood, but I've got no idea what to do with it. I can't even talk to it."
It seemed Wixom was fascinated by what he was seeing through contact, but he was also stymied.
"You will not make sense of her technology," Aristahl said. "Go on resuscitating."
So, there was tech that even mighty Wixom couldn't understand. Inexplicably, Jordahk felt the functions of her currently inactive systems. He moved to her mouth, preparing for more of the old technique. In the distance, a crash was followed by the complaint of a droning, metallic voice. Torious must be freed. Aristahl arrived and touched her skin.
His face took on a far-off look before he nodded. "Continue."
Her lips were soft against Jordahk's, but cold. It was eerie, made worse by the inorganic, alien taste of the fluid. He pressed hard to seal. His mind seemed to race through her breathless body of its own volition. He felt closer to her than ever, yet her consciousness was still receding. He glimpsed it afar off in his mind.
He blew warm, life-filled air from his lungs into hers. He began to do it automatically, in a rhythm. His mind traveling within her farther than the air, going to and fro to fill every place, coaxing her body, cajoling it, wheedling it into action. Distantly, he noticed Aristahl pumping her chest to the same rhythm as his resuscitation breaths.
Jordahk acted on deep impulse, defying explanation. He sensed cold areas, pouring his warmth into them. Her mind, her consciousness, was mystifying. Even at a great distance, it struck him as strange and marvelous. He wanted to interact with it out of curiosity and compassion. He touched it gently around the edges, trying to stroke away its cold loneliness.
He retained awareness of the bay. Torious had reached them, but Aristahl ordered him to stand by. That was strange.
Jordahk wrapped two mental hands around the unique construct he thought of as "her presence." He was so close, but he didn't know what to do. Desperate, he pooled his strength and willed his own energy into that presence.
It came alive with the suddenness of a lightning bolt. It crackled like a ball of current and bounced back into Jordahk without warning. His body convulsed, and he was flung off the girl. He struggled to his feet, more bewildered than shaky.
"You did it," Aristahl said. He stopped the compressions. Below, her chest moved with the faintest independent motion.
"I have no idea what just happened," Torious droned.
Jordahk was pleasantly shocked. "Uh, me neither."
The blue faded from the girl's skin, and her still form was animated s
uddenly by convulsive coughs.
"Oh, thank the Creator," Alb-Sone said, climbing over a pile toward them.
Her head was surrounded by a fanned-out mane of shiny, onyx-like hair. Jordahk knelt next to it and helped Aristahl steady her as the coughs faded. Her eyes moved beneath the lids then opened wide. It was startling. Her irises were pure palladium, but even as Jordahk watched, their texture turned to sand. The tiny palladium grains seemed to disappear, replaced with a nonmetallic, natural gray.
Her eyes focused on Jordahk. They bored into him with an intensity that cared less about her medical state, nakedness, or even the semi-destroyed bay around them. The look carried personal recognition and more. It was shocking. As if she knew more about him than he did.
"She recognizes your line," Wixom said.
Aristahl seem poised to shut him down, but the enigmatic AI said no more.
Jordahk was weary and frazzled, with jumbled emotions. He was elated they were able to save the girl even while being nagged by insecurity and questions. What had he done? Could he unknowingly be a danger to those around him?
Alb-Sone knelt with them, wearing a mystic suit, although not a no-suit. He placed a coat gently over her torso. She looked at him with warmth and recognition.
Her mouth opened, but only a raspy whisper came out. She swallowed hard and tried again. "Uncle..."
Alb-Sone smiled.
Torious seemed quite put off. "A medical emergency, yet I'm uncharacteristically useless. I'll just go find our trunks, then."
NEW FLEETWIDE MANEUVERS PROJECT POWER AND ENSURE STABILITY
From the First Cruiser, Location Undisclosed
(Ithaca Parchment, Confederated Comm senior staff writer. 2 12 /2614)
Despite minor complications from an unexpectedly powerful test, the First Cruiser is continuing its shakedown cruise. The Prime Orator is more determined than ever to show even non-egressed associate worlds the value of being a Perigeum protectorate. To that end, he has left the beaten path and visited worlds which have not seen a First Fleet since the war. Prime Orator Janus released a nexus statement: “Those within the Perigeum can rest assured we are protecting you and your commerce. And to those without, we welcome you as trade partners but remind you that unfair exchange will be shut down."