.click.
Maybe that’s what has me so anxious, meeting the Angamons. Or maybe it’s Tyrone. Or maybe it’s the prospect of finding my sister. Or maybe it’s the thought of coming face-to-face once again with Kidar Frenzid.
There’s just too many possible reasons.
.click.
Strangely, with all their emphasis on technology, the Angamon rely almost exclusively on organic construction. They almost act as gardeners. Structures are planted, tended to, and grown.
Most governmental offices in the lake district in Ghat—including the Peace Center where the treaty signing takes place—resemble spores or mushrooms sprouting from the water or land. Some cluster together, others connect through suspension bridges made from high-tensile fiber-carbon nanonets. The organics contain phosphorus, and the nanonets are equipped with fiber optics. At night, everything glows in royal colors of purple, emerald, ruby, and sapphire, while the lakes reflect Orbanos’ two moons overhead. They shine like bright charms dangling from a bracelet of stars.
Because of all this beauty, all important business is conducted at night.
.click.
Especially UTSC signings.
Chapter 12
ON FINAL APPROACH, I return to the bridge. The front window shields have been removed. Tyrone’s still in the same chair. Lug sits at the other. It barely contains his bulk.
Orbano’s space station bears no resemblance to the ISS. It looks like delicate cotton pulled thinly across the cosmos; a gossamer spider web of wispy tendrils, each one reaching out to welcome vessels.
There’s something else. Something I don’t notice until we draw nearer: “It’s huge,” I say, almost in a whisper.
Haley pops her head up from the cockpit. Some spikes of hair have fallen, and her face glistens slightly of sweat. “They want full-auto, cap.”
Ignoring the look Lug throws him, Tyrone says, “Give it to ‘em.”
Dropping back down, Haley transfers override to Orbano Station. The Iron Heart quiets; the vibration and hum disappear. It’s like we’re attached to a kite string, riding a gentle breeze as we’re reeled into the bay and its fabric wraps around and latches.
Standing, Tyrone stretches and looks at me. “Let’s go find your sister.”
Chapter 13
WE DISEMBARK TO FIND an Orbanoan representative waiting. Even after preparing myself, I almost stop at the sight of him/her/it. The Angamon’s a foot taller than even Lug, with a delicate thin body. Its arms and legs are long and slender, ending in swirls that remind me of Christmas decorations. It appears feather-light, gently blowing in a wind I can’t feel. Its skin looks like gauze.
“Greetings,” it says. Its accent so odd, I barely understand. “I be Mindastla, Angamon male.” As it speaks, it changes, yet its basic form remains. The hollow gray eyes stretch and shrink. It’s simultaneously beautiful and grotesque. “I learned your English special so would not we need a translator use.”
“Perhaps a translator use we should,” Haley whispers. Catherine shushes her.
Tyrone salutes. “General Tyrone Lawrence. Human male. United States. We’re most appreciative of this most generous gesture.”
General Lawrence? What happened to Captain? My stomach turns over.
“Understand we you anxious are to meet with your terror others.”
“Yes, friend, if it’s convenient.”
Others? What others? Did he say terror?
“Come, follow.” In a breath, Mindastla turns through himself and heads away, appearing to float. We follow with difficulty. Other than running lights pulsing along the sides of the floor, the corridor’s transparent. It’s beautiful, but hard to convince my brain that I’m not stepping out into nothingness as I proceed.
Four Orbanoans float past the other way. Their forms change as Mindastla’s did as he spoke. They gesture with their hands like they’re conversing, but they make no sound. “Do they usually communicate telepathically?” Catherine whispers. “Maybe most of them are mute.”
“Wish ours was,” Haley says. Catherine shushes her.
Mindastla leads us to a space elevator. We enter the transparent box running on a twisted nanonet cable between the station and the planet’s equator. We fall and my breath catches, not from vertigo, but the view: a bright braid of stars fading to a watery blue as we plunge into the atmosphere.
At the bottom, I immediately notice the gravity difference. It’s like I’m a little child again as I step onto the white sand. It’s so hot, I feel the heat on my chin. Mindastla tells us not to worry. “Affair tonight happens north many spaces.” Nobody asks how big a space is.
“Now go we.” He becomes completely still for several seconds before raising his arm and pawing the air seven times. There’s a shimmer and he disappears. Startled, we look among ourselves, but before anyone speaks, we begin disappearing too.
One by one.
Chapter 14
IT FEELS LIKE DIVING under the sea—staying down deep until you can’t possibly hold your breath any longer. Then you rise, watching the sky brighten, feeling the pressure diminish. Then finally breaking the surface, gasping for air.
We break the surface north many spaces, ending up on a nanonet suspension bridge somewhere in what appears to be the lake district of Ghat. I guess this from the lakes spreading out in every direction beneath us; it’s a collection of emerald ponds attached by thin arteries. Sunlight skips across the water rippling under the light breeze.
Mindastla continues across the bridge, asking us to follow. I have to force my attention away from the incredible view to follow.
We enter a yellow-green mushroom structure. It’s like entering a blood cell. Thin, organic material stretches tightly, forming walls, ceilings, floors—everything. It’s all alive. I smell it before noticing a section of the wall actually throbs.
“Oh God, I’m gonna puke!” Haley pushes back outside, her hand over her mouth.
Tyrone waves Mindastla off when it glances back, concerned. “Don’t worry,” he tells it. “She’s fine.”
We continue following twisty corridors of tissue another thirty meters before our host stops, turning to a purple-veined violet membraneall. “There’s been no communication?” Tyrone asks.
“You asked none.” Mindastla says. His swirly hand makes a backwards S shape and the membrane dissolves, revealing a room behind it. My attention snaps to the man on the floor in the corner with the girl huddled beside him.
It’s Kidar Frenzid. Anger pumps from my heart. I begin clenching my fists.
Tyrone’s hand on my shoulder stops me. “There’ll be time for that later.”
I’m so consumed with hatred, I almost miss it. But I don’t. The man in the hat didn’t even know my capabilities. Yet this . . . this general . . . knows my tells. Before I fully consider this, I realize my rage blinded me also to the girl beside Kidar Frenzid. “Providence?” I ask.
She stares back. There’s no recognition in her eyes, only fear.
“Don’t be afraid,” I say. “I’m your brother. I’m Nashville. We’re twins. I won’t hurt you.” I step into the room. She pulls her legs up, cuddling closer to Kidar Frenzid.
“I don’t have a brother.” She glances into Kidar Frenzid’s face. “Right, Daddy?” His arm around her tightens, but he doesn’t answer.
Stunned, I shake my head. “Why would you think he’s your father? Do you have any idea who he really is? He killed my entire family.” Pain flashes in my skull. “And he made me watch.”
More pain. I struggle through it, though. “My entire family.”
“Then I can’t be your sister if your whole family’s dead.”
An explosion goes off behind my eyes. My hands clasp the sides of my head. “You are my sister! We’re twins!”
Again she looks to Kidar Frenzid. He doesn’t take his eyes from me.
“He’s not your father. He killed everyone I loved. My mother, father, brother . . . ”
Another explosion. I hear t
his one and it nearly deafens me. I scream. My brain’s on fire.
She screams louder. “Then I can’t be your sister. Look at me. I’m alive!”
She’s no longer in focus. My knees hit the floor. Blackness stabs at my brain. “I know! I know!” It’s why I can’t think of them too close together or a knife slices into my mind.
Slicing, slicing. The blackness stabs.
I fall forward. My face sinks into the moist ground.
The knife inside my head twists.
Chapter 15
BLACK.
Chapter 16
WHEN I FINALLY COME to and the world stops spinning, I open my eyes and see . . . nothing. Blackness. Am I dead? I don’t think so. My fingers touch the ground. Solid, not alien. I reach out slowly and discover I’m in a cage.
Memories burn inside me. My sister clinging to Kidar Frenzid, calling him Daddy. I can’t make sense of it. When I try, the logic disparity begins stabbing my brain again, and I have to stop.
I can’t think about it until it makes sense because of the pain it brings. And it won’t make sense until I can think about it.
Which makes it unsolvable.
I pound the floor and, for the first time in six years, I let tears come to my eyes. They feel good. I cry harder. The darkness swallows my sobs.
Then a small voice makes me jump. “Don’t. Please? Don’t cry.”
Sitting up, I wipe my face. “Who’s there?”
“Providence. Daddy’s here too. They put us in cages.”
My mind scrambles. “I’m in one too. Do you know where we are?”
“In their ship, beneath the FoldSpace drives,” says a voice with a slight Eastern European accent I haven’t heard in six years. “They had the cages already setup, waiting in the recreation facility.”
Heat rises through my skin. “I hate you!” I scream. “Why did you kill my family?” Another stab flashes white in my head.
“I didn’t kill anyone, Nash,” says Kidar Frenzid.
The anger now fully returns. “Liar! I saw. You made sure I watched.” My brain tears. I holler in agony. “You made my sister—” I struggle to finish, but end in a scream.
“I know what’s making you hurt,” he says. “There’s two memories fighting inside your mind that contradict each other. But you know which one’s true. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be here.”
“I . . . I don’t understand.” I don’t want to trust him, but the pain . . . the pain . . .
“You came for your sister, and here she is. This other thing—me killing your family—it must be a genetic memory imprint. Only, I don’t know why they didn’t mask your old memories.”
I breathe deep. Did I leave before they finished? “I escaped. A week after you abducted her.”
“He didn’t abduct me.”
“Let me, honey,” Kidar Frenzid says. “I brought Providence here to share her technology with the Coalition.”
“Daddy saved me! He’s trying to save everyone!”
I struggle to grasp the truth in this. “Why do you keep calling him Daddy?”
“Because, as much as possible, she’s my daughter.” He pauses. “And you’re my son.”
I grit my teeth. “All you do is lie!”
“No. I developed both of you for the Compound. Cloned you from parts of my own genes combined with enhancements. I was naïve. They told me you were the first steps toward a new world peace. I never even considered military potential. When you were ready, I planned on giving you to the world.”
“What about my parents?”
“You have no parents. They invented them.”
Another pulse beats through my head. “Why would they do that?”
“The UTSC Treaty will return the Earth’s power to its people, taking it away from the handful who have it now. They built the Compound to stop the Coalition movement. They failed. So they switched plans, deciding to lie in wait with their secret weapons—you and your sister—the only technology exclusive to them, making everyone else on earth inferior. You two are their edge. In their minds, as long as they control you, they can’t lose.”
“I don’t understand. Lose what?”
“The war,” he says.
“What war?”
“The war humans always expect, Nashville. The war humans even count on sometimes. That’s why I had to bring Providence here, to share her with the Coalition, cutting those back on Earth off at the knees before they could construct a battlefield.”
I desperately try to keep the pain out of my voice. “Why would they mess with my head?”
“My guess is they decided to turn you into my assassin just in case they failed to find us. Their types are always big on irony. Turned out they didn’t need you, though. We took months to get here. When we did, the Orbanoans had already been warned we’d be coming with weapons that worked through communication. They gave us no chance to explain why we were here before locking us away.”
“A communication weapon? That’s crazy. The Orbanoans wouldn’t believe that.”
“Sure they would,” Kidar says. “They’ve seen all sorts of technology, and the warning’s coming from the people being welcomed into their Coalition—people the rest of our planet trusted enough to give power to.”
“Why didn’t you escape using Providence’s powers? After all, she is dangerous. Just not the way they think she is.”
A pause. “Because I oppose the use of violence, Nash. I loathe the very thought of it. Besides, it would be undermining everything I—we—have struggled for.”
“You hate violence?” I ask. “Then why’d you make us into weapons?”
“That’s them talking. I made you powerful. Power itself is undefined until it’s used. I honestly thought you would lead the next generation out of violence.”
I considered this. “I . . . I hate hurting people, too.”
“We all do,” Providence says. “Daddy, you, and me. We inherited that from Daddy. He made sure.”
Kidar breathes deep. “But I failed. Now you two could become the conduit for Earth’s most violent war ever. And once again, they’ll revel in their irony.”
My mind shoots back through my studies on Mosquito-Class starships, trying to form a plan. Problem is, even if we escaped the cages—which I’m sure are reinforced to Compound specifications—we’d never get through the bomb-blast door blocking the roof-hatch. We’d just be stuck in a bigger cage.
“Wait,” I say, “does Providence have any powers that I don’t? Something that might help us escape?”
Kidar sighs. “There’s nothing we can do.”
I reach into my pocket. “Oh, there might be.”
Chapter 17
AT ONE FREQUENCY OR another, everything vibrates.
I clip the subvocalsubvocal-setset I took from the man with the hat onto my cage. Kidar and I calculate the carbon-fiber nanotubes transverse and torsional frequencies will be high, but not higher than the unit’s capabilities. I give Providence the lower of the two. Because she and I will hear nothing but the subvocal-set squealing, Kidar will listen for the cage’s quiet ringing.
Providence goes first. The tone howls upwards faster and louder than I ever could make it do. In seconds, Kidar stops her. “There!”
She sustains the vibration while I squeeze my fingers into my palms, sounding out a second tone. It’s quieter than hers, the frequency rising much slower. I realize now that’s why Kidar brought her—she is better than me.
My tone creeps past hers, higher and higher, until . . .
Crack!
The cage splits open. Sweat trickles down my face. My heart’s in my throat.
Providence isn’t even out of breath. “Now mine!” she yells.
We do hers. Then Kidar’s.
“Now what?” he asks.
“My plan’s got another step.” I pull the poppers from my pocket. Neither of them know what they are, so I explain.
Kidar won’t even touch them. “An invention with the sole purpose
of inflicting pain and suffering. Why would anyone . . . ? Sometimes I’m so disgusted with my own species.” He nearly breaks down. “I’ll never understand humanity.”
I grapple for their hands in the dark. “Help me with the cages.” We pile them into a ladder. I climb up to place the poppers around the hatch, only: “There’s nothing to hold them.”
“I will,” Providence says.
“Weren’t you listening? You’ll blow your arm off.”
“From down here, silly.”
I pause. “You can do that?”
“You can’t?”
A minute later, a dozen poppers magically levitate around the perimeter of the bomb-blast cover, while we crouch in the room’s back corner. “You sure you got em?” I ask. I can’t see anything, but I imagine she’s struggling.
“Yep, no problem. Can I help explode ‘em, too?”
She’s better than me. I can’t believe it. “Sure.”
Kidar counts to three. I bring my fists to my chest. Who knows what Providence does, but the poppers blow like a concussion bomb, popping the bomb-blast cover straight up. It bounces off the ceiling and thuds onto the main floor.
“Holy,” Providence says.
“Yeah.” I climb to the main deck and dash to my room, pulling my Digimate™ from my pack as they come up. “We’ve gotten, maybe fifteen minutes.” Sitting on my bed, I flip through menus.
Providence holds Kidar’s hand. “Why aren’t we leaving?” she asks.
“My plan’s got another step.” I smile.
Chapter 18
WE ENTER THE PEACE Center just as Mindy Reno finishes signing the Treaty, sealing Earth’s entry into the Coalition.
Managing to make our way from the Iron Heart to the space elevator and down to the surface hadn’t been hard. Using the teleport-transit system was trickier. We ended up falling back on our “terrorist” status, threatening some poor Orbano civilian into helping.
Reno waves the Treaty above her head. “It’s a big day for Humanity!” she announces. A quiet cheer follows. Mostly Orbanoans are present, and they don’t cheer. Not like us, anyway.
Nashville Beaumont (and the Hyperbole Engine) Page 3