She shot to her feet and ignored her aching limps. Her skin glowed red from where grains of sand had scoured her flesh and left red gashes down both sides.
"Cal, can you hear me?" she said. There was no response. She held her breath, waited. Without Cal and Crusader she was truly alone.
She was met with silence.
"Shit. Shit. Shit." She kicked the sand.
If there was something wrong with their communicators again, she was going to find the merchant that had sold them to her and make him eat them.
She stormed to the trees and scanned the sand around them. There were no tracks or pieces of equipment. Wherever the Ancients were, they'd taken all of their tools with them.
"What if they've already left?" she whispered to herself. She stared up at the sky.
Nova wasn't sure what she expected to see; what hint the stars could offer her that the Ancients were up there somewhere, on their way to reclaim their rule over the galaxies.
"Codon?" she whispered. Her only reply was the cool desert wind blowing across the sand.
There was only one place she could think to go; back into the tombs.
She pushed forward through the trees until she got to the tunnel entrance. Vines dangled over the sandstone and trees leaned forward across the open door.
"You move almost as quickly as the sand," she said, just to hear a familiar voice.
She paused at the entrance and listened. Silence.
She eased her shoulders back. She shouldn't be glad that she couldn't find the Ancients because it probably meant they were out destroying the rest of human civilization, but after the trauma of the last twenty-four hours, she found it difficult to care.
She stepped into the crypt. Darkness surrounded her. Before there had been lights in the walls but they were gone. Perhaps they only came on when the Ancients were around; without them there was no need for fancy lights.
The maze of sandstone tunnels was burned into Nova's memory like scar tissue and she strode forward, letting the light from her glowball guide her. She kept an eye on the floor for Codon's footprints, while also searching the darkness in front of her. There could still be Ancients lurking in the tunnels, or something else. She shivered as she thought about the desert beasts that might enjoy the relative safety of the catacombs.
She pulled her gun from its holster and rested her finger on its side, next to the trigger. She was exhausted, half-mad, and probably beyond saving, but it was an improvement to the complete hopelessness she'd felt before going to sleep. She was trying to accept whatever the time vortex had done to her, wrestling with reality. It didn't come easy.
She came to the small room where the two aliens with yellow eyes had spoken in her dream, or vision, or whatever it had been. She could see ghosts of them in the air, the spoke, touched palms, and then went their separate ways.
Nova entered the small room and studied the carvings in the wall. They looked different to the last time she'd seen them, they were covered in a dark layer, like soot. She stepped to the nearest wall and swiped her hand across it, her palm came away black but she'd cleared a streak of words and pictures. She moved left to see more but her foot caught on a hidden block and she sprawled sideways.
Her arm smashed into the ground and her gun skittered across the floor, out of sight. Her hip landed on top of the glowball and its light blinked out.
Nova's jaw smashed into the rocky ground and erupted with pain. She hissed and reached for her face but couldn't even see her hand through the darkness.
She reached down for the glowball, but it had come unclipped from her waist. "Cosmic craphole."
She got onto her hands and knees and felt along the rough ground for either her gun or the glowball. Sand crystals wedged under her fingernails and coated her hands in a fine layer of dust.
She went slowly. The last thing she needed was to smash her head open on the brick wall. In the darkness, the small room felt infinitely huge. She crawled for what felt like hours and still didn't reach the other side. Sand sifted between her fingers with no sign of her belongings.
She pushed forward. There wasn't even a shred of light for her eyes to adjust to. There was just her and the darkness. Rage curdled in her stomach, why couldn't she just get off the bloody planet and be done with it?
Her hand came to rest on something cold and smooth, metallic, but it didn't feel like her gun. She pulled the object closer and ran her hands along it. It had one hollow side. It almost felt like…
"A helmet!" she squeaked and tossed the helmet away from her body.
Her eyes darted around the room, looking for the rest of the Ancient. Nothing moved in the darkness.
She took a few deep breaths and kept moving. Further on, she found her gun. She clutched it close to her chest. She didn't have to see to know where the right button was.
A beam of light shot out and filled the room with bright white light that reflected off of the walls. The helmet rested in the corner, a shiny ball on the sand. Her glowball wasn't far from it, nestled in a small crater of sand. She clipped the glowball to her belt and surveyed the room.
A carving caught her eye. It didn't belong amongst the others; it gouged into some of the drawings, a scar. The letters were chillingly familiar.
Put it on the podium. NT
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Nova stared at the letters, mouth open. The words would mean nothing to most people, just graffiti by someone desperate to leave their mark. But to Nova, they represented something more. The letters were her own, even the sign-off at the end. It was hers. NT; Nova T—
Nova what?
Her heart constricted in her chest and pushed adrenalin through her veins. She'd forgotten her last name. Her breath caught in her throat, how could she forget something that was so much a part of her? It was the same as her home planet. She pushed her memory but her mind stayed blank. It was the time vortex, it had to be, not only had it pushed her over into madness but it had stolen her memories as well.
Tears welled in Nova's eyes. She clutched her head in her hands and squeezed her eyes shut.
That only made it worse.
She forced her eyes open, making herself focus on the words. Her words.
But how could that be? She'd left this room only the night before and there'd been no writing. There was no way her words could suddenly appear on the wall.
Her heart beat faster in her chest. The overwhelming confusion and madness from the day before crept up her spine. Her skin rose in small bumps and her breathing became hoarse. A hand gripped her chest and squeezed.
"I didn't write that," she whispered.
"But I must have," she replied. "That's my signature."
"Someone copied it."
"I don't think so."
She stepped closer to the letters and reached up a single, tentative finger. She traced the letters, one after another. The letters were too familiar. If she was going to carve on the wall, it's exactly how she'd do it. There was no way for her to argue it, she'd left this message.
"But when?"
She stepped away from the letters, whirled around, and surveyed the room. Her eyes took in things they hadn't noticed before, tiny details which would have been so obvious if only there weren't so many voices whispering into her ears.
"The lights," she said, spelling the clues out to herself. "The dust and soot. There's no sign of anyone."
She whirled around. This wasn't the next day, this was the future. It could be decades or even centuries from the moment that she'd fallen asleep in Codon's ship.
Her hands shook, sending the light from her gun zipping around the room. A hard ball of panic blocked her throat. Somehow she'd accidentally fallen into the future. That was why Codon was nowhere to be seen. That was why Cal didn't reply; his motor would have powered down years ago.
"They got out," she said. It was the only explanation. There was no sign of the Ancients' bodies. They had escaped from Archalon. There was probably nothing left; no Jagg
ed Maw, no bounty hunters, no Confederacy. If Codon had succeeded in killing the Ancients, there would be bodies.
"The helmet!" Nova whirled back to the corner of the room.
The bright light from her gun glinted off it. She frowned, bent down, and picked it up. Thick soot coated the helmet, broken up by her fingerprints.
"What—?"
She looked around. The rest of the room had soot, but nowhere near as thick as the helmet. What did that mean? The helmet had come from somewhere else. Some-when else.
She hadn't been trying to break through the time vortex, it was an accident. She'd tripped and fallen and she'd been annoyed, but it wasn't the bone-crunching anger she'd felt before, and yet she'd managed to drag the helmet through from wherever it had been.
"An accident," she whispered. She turned the helmet over in her hands.
A sticky gray substance coated the inside. She curled up her nose, but reached her soot-covered hand in anyway. Her fingers came away sticky, a mix of gray, red and green strung between them. The flesh looked dead, diseased.
"Diseased," Nova said, cursing herself for talking out loud. If she wasn't bordering on madness before, she certainly would be if she kept talking to herself.
She looked again at the massive letters carved into the wall. If she'd left that note then it was from the past and she'd written it for a reason.
What did it mean? Leave it on the Podium. Leave what?
She glanced down at the helmet. There was only one thing in this room which didn't belong.
Her head spun with the implications. Her future self had left a note in the past, but she had no idea what it meant, or why she'd leave it.
"So I know where it is," she whispered. It was the only thing she could think of. For some reason her future self wanted to know where the helmet would be.
She couldn't argue with herself.
She carried the helmet to the small podium set in the center of the room. She put it down the right way up so that the insect-like eyes stared straight at the entrance. It looked like it belonged there, overlooking the darkness.
Nova stepped away from the podium and the helmet and looked around the room. There was nothing else. No clues and no help. She made a mental note that when she carved massive letters into the wall, she would add a sub-note, instructions.
But it was in the past, she'd already done it, so she couldn't exactly go back and changed what she'd already done… could she?
She trudged out of the room. How long had the letters been there? Would future archaeologists curse her for ruining the ancient text? Probably. That was, if there were any future archaeologists and all of humankind hadn't been killed by the Ancients.
She shuffled through the tunnels, back the way she'd come. She only had one idea for how to get back to her proper time and it was less a plan and more a vain hope. She stumbled out into the desert.
The night wind beat at her and threw her coat out in whipping waves, trying to tug her off balance. It brought pelting grains of sand that slammed into Nova's exposed flesh and tried to pierce her eyes.
Something howled, something more than the wind.
She stumbled to a stop.
It sounded like a dog wailing in the darkness. Her heart beat faster and she turned in rapid circles.
A shadow darted to her right. She turned to face it, and was met with sand. Something ran past her left, she felt a brush of air as it went by. She turned again, but it was already gone.
Her hands shook and teeth chattered. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end and every part of her, every muscle, poised to spring.
Her imagination supplied a terrifying image of a massive black dog howling at the moon. Saliva dripped from its teeth and its yellow eyes glimmered. The black fur rose up as it howled and its sharp claws gouged into the sand.
Nova shook her head. It was just her imagination. But the howling was still there. She could hear it coming for her, getting closer.
She ran and her torn clothing streamed behind her. She sprinted up a hill of sand, her legs aching with the effort. She wouldn't be able to keep running for long.
A massive weight slammed into her spine and knocked her down, then sharp claws sunk into her back. The creature pinned her to the sand and sunk its teeth into the small of her back. Fiery agony raced through her.
She screamed and tried to crawl away but it held her down.
It tore away her flesh and bit into her spine. It wrenched out her nerves and stringy tendons came lose. She lost all sensation in her legs.
This was it. This was the end. She was paralyzed and dying, being mauled to death by some massive creature. She'd fought for so long that it was almost a relief to know that the end was near. She couldn't even run anymore, not without her legs.
Blood soaked her shirt and claws tore down into her shoulders. Her skin broke apart and hung in tattered flaps.
She screamed, her voice echoed over the desert.
The massive weight compressed her chest and made it hard to breathe. She drew one ragged gasp after another and her fingers clawed at the sand.
She closed her eyes and waited for it to be over.
A cool wind blew over her face and body. Her lower spine tingled.
She frowned. It shouldn't tingle. She should be dead. She opened her eyes and found herself lying face down in the sand. There was no sign of the beast.
She lifted her hands and patted them down her back. It was all in one piece. There were no gaping holes or trails of blood.
She rolled over and sat up. The sand around her body had claw marks in it, but they were from her. There were no massive footprints to suggest a creature had walked away. She looked over herself. The only blood on her clothes was the dried patches from Tobius.
She let her head drop into her hands and curled into a ball. She couldn't get up, couldn't face her hallucinations.
The wind howled and her mind filled with images of black dogs. Her spine tingled.
She pushed herself to her feet, her legs shook under the strain. Her muscles ached and so many parts of her cried out in pain that she'd lost track of all her injuries.
She staggered forward; if she could just get back to the ship then she'd be safe.
She climbed the sand dune against the side of Codon's ship. It made so much more sense now. If she was in the future, who was to say how long the sand had had to build up against the ship? It could have taken centuries.
She pushed herself to keep going, even though every step felt like ten, and stumbled through the door into the dark interior of the ship. She slammed her fist onto the close button. The door creaked and groaned but didn't move.
She cursed and grabbed hold of the manual handle. She heaved and strained. Shadows leapt across the sand. The black dog.
She heaved harder.
The rusted door screeched and her fear gave her strength. She wrenched it closed, plunging the ship into deeper darkness.
She sagged against the tilted wall and used the light from her gun to navigate her way through the debris and pieces of furniture to the command room. In the middle of the room, the only object not covered in dust, was the chair she'd woken up in.
She dropped into the chair with a groan and stretched her legs out.
If this didn't work, she was out of ideas.
She tried to push that thought out of her head; it certainly wouldn't help her get to sleep. She forced herself to close her eyes and take three deep breaths. She let her imagination wander. It was an exercise she was used to practicing. Sleep had always been difficult for her to find. It wasn't helped by having to grow up with a knife under her pillow.
In her adult life, when she found safety on-board Crusader, she'd learned to calm her nerves, to throw the worries of the day out, and let her body relax. She put her mind to it now. She pictured a serene ocean planet, like Mistylake or Selene; the entire surface covered with a sloshing ocean of blue. The water was pure, fresh and welcoming.
She felt the
warm sun engulf her in its rays as she dived from Crusader's door into the ocean below. The water was warm. It soothed her skin and her hurts, washed away the pain and the dirt of the day. Sometimes her friends would swim with her, but today she needed to be alone.
She relished in the cool water and dived below the surface to watch the many fish swim back and forth. She imagined being able to swim like them, moving her tail as she shot through the water. It was like flying, but without the fear of falling.
Before she knew it, she was asleep.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Nova blinked. Bright lights shone in her eyes. She squinted against the glare and looked around. She was still in the Confederacy ship's command pod, but all the lights were on. It looked almost new, if it weren't for the angle and the piles of debris stacked against the wall.
"Codon?" she said.
"Oh I see you've finally woken up," Codon said, stepping into Nova's field of view.
"How long have I been asleep?"
"About an hour. I was about to pull the chair out from under you to wake you up. There's been a lot of movement."
She blinked a few more times, clearing the miasma from her mind, and pushed herself higher in her chair. She looked up at a screen that took up most of the wall. It showed the view outside.
The Ancients had been busy. Half-built ships scattered across the sand between huge weapons that glowed red and blue.
"It won't be long before they're ready to go," Codon said. "I don't suppose you're ready to pull a miracle out of the air?"
"I had a dream of the future. I have to go back in there."
"Whoa, hang on. You had a dream and now you're going to give yourself a death sentence?"
"No. Yes. Maybe," Nova said, standing up. Her back and limbs were stiff, but some of the exhaustion from before was gone.
"What if it was just a dream?" Codon said, giving voice to Nova's biggest fear.
"Do you have a better plan?"
"No."
"Then I'm going in."
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