Spinward Fringe Broadcast 7: Framework

by Randolph Lalonde

  The hatch in her quarters slid to the side and she shouted: “I told you, Victor, I don’t need guarding while I’m on the Clever Dream, and I don’t want you hovering…” she looked up and saw Liam Grady entering, looking uneasy.

  She hurriedly tried to remove the few clips she’d managed to attach on her shins. “Bloody thing won’t come off now,” she said. “Release, you terrible things.” At the command, her suit allowed the armour to detach.

  She wiped at her tears and threw herself into Liam’s arms. Within his embrace, she didn’t cry, but found herself breathing as though she had just finished a long run. His arms were wrapped around her tightly. One hand started to run up and down her back, comforting.

  “Your guardians say you won’t let them in,” he said. “What’s happened?”

  “Jason’s gone,” Ayan replied. “He’s taking the Victory Machine, he’s going to finish Roman’s work. He’s going to close it down somewhere far away, and he’ll die alone, in the dark. I tried to stop him,” she said. Her heart was racing, she couldn’t slow her breathing down, and she had no idea why, but she struggled against Liam’s embrace.

  “We can’t control people,” Liam said. He tried to hold on to her, but had to let her go when her attempts to win free became frantic.

  She summoned a reflective hologram and looked into her own puffy eyes, saw her disheveled appearance and tried to get herself in order. “I’m losing control, no one’s listening to me. I have to rally,” she said with no grief in her expression, yet tears still dropped down her cheeks.

  Liam stepped in behind her then, close enough to be in the reflective hologram, and he slowly closed his arms around her midsection. She watched him, how he looked down at her with concern, and couldn’t help but look back at herself. The young woman looked so weary and frightened. “Oz followed you, even though I know it’s the last thing he wanted to do. He and Alaka are leading the efforts out there, and it’s all because they believe in you. They believe without question, and they’ll work until they have to stop. They all will.” He kissed the top of her head.

  “They trust the woman I’m based on. Loosely based on. Her experiences, her training, her accomplishments,” Ayan replied. “I haven’t done anything to earn their trust.”

  Liam looked her in the eye using the reflection. “I didn’t know her,” he said. “I don’t care about her.” He swept strands of her hair out of her face then wrapped his arm around her waist. “Alaka and his family didn’t know that other woman, neither did thousands of people out there, but you’ve earned their trust since we got here. I’ve come to know a brilliant lady, who’s stealing my heart. She’s in pain right now, and it’s not the time to charge back in, but when you’re ready,” he gave her waist a squeeze. “It’ll be magnificent, because you’re so much more than the sum of your parts.”

  Ayan was calming down, the manic need to take control of everything around her was dissipating, and she was left with the moment she shared with the man in her quarters. The weeks with him at her side had been an impatient time, where things seemed to move a quarter as quickly as they ought to, but they were good times. Most of the good memories she had of her time in Port Rush were accompanied by his presence, or centered around time they spent together away, tending to things in Greydock, trying to further their cause. What Ayan felt was more than trust or respect.

  “You’re a rare woman, Ayan,” he said to her.

  She turned in his arms and pulled the collar of his vacsuit so she could reach his lips. Ayan curled the thick fabric in her fist as she closed her eyes and kissed him passionately. He returned the kiss and they were locked together for a long, warm moment before he pulled away, his calm demeanor broken.

  “This is wrong,” he said. “The timing-“

  She slipped her foot behind his knee and pushed his chest. He fell onto the bed and stared up at her in shock. “This is happening,” she said, falling on top of him. Her lips were on his, interrupting whatever objection was coming next. He wasn’t returning her affections, and she could feel grief threatening to return to the surface, her urges beginning to fade. “Don’t stop this,” she said, looking into his worried face.

  “I don’t want to,” Liam replied. “But this might not be coming from the right place.”

  “I want this, right now, whatever it is,” she replied. “I won’t regret it, not with you.”

  Ayan kissed him again, and let her instincts guide her, something she rarely did since she woke up for the first time in Freedom Tower. When he returned her affections, kissing and moving those wonderful hands across her body, it felt incredible.

  * * *

  “Fleet Warden Harrison,” addressed one of the Operations staff through the sound system in Kimberly Harrison’s quarters. She rolled out of bed and put her robe on.

  “Yes, what is it?” she answered, crossing to the narrow slit that served as a porthole. She could see the Carthan Fleet lazily moving in front of the Tamber moon. There were dozens of ships, all top of the line battleships and destroyers, fortresses of the stars.

  “The surface team is reporting an intrusion in Port Rush. Something entered the secure area,” reported the officer of the watch.

  “Tell me they captured the intruder, Officer,” she replied.

  “I’m afraid the Victory Machine is gone. Its operator, Roman, was left behind and is in care.”

  “Is he still comatose?” she asked.

  “No Ma’am, he’s brain dead. They were keeping him alive until you were informed.”

  Kimberly leaned against the bulkhead in front of her and sighed. “Maybe it’s better this way,” she whispered.

  “Pardon, Ma’am?” asked the watchman.

  “Never mind. Inform the volunteer operators for the Victory project that they won’t be needed and reduce their sentences accordingly. If they haven’t bought their freedom with their offer to volunteer, reassign them to their old units. Tell the techs on the planet to seal the hospital up, fill the contaminated rooms with plasticrete and get back up here. They have an hour to do their duty well, no sloppy work.”

  “And the security force?”

  Fleet Warden Harrison thought for a moment. “Petition Judge Lindt to add three years to their sentences.” She knew that he’d make it five; he was the hardest judge in the fleet.

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “Now, do we have any idea where the Victory Machine went? Or is this the end of that story?” the Fleet Warden asked.

  “None of our ships have picked it up. It seems it used a-“

  “Crush gate,” she interrupted. “A high powered wormhole.”

  “Yes Ma’am, we weren’t able to determine where it led to, but no damage was done to the lab.”

  “Good, that’s the end of our story with the Victory Machine,” Kimberly Harrisson said, taking her robe off and heading for the shower. “Thank God. Inform Command, I’m holding a priority briefing in half an hour.”

  “But you’ve only been on rest for three hours, Ma’am.”

  “I can never sleep the night before a battle,” she said.

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  * * *

  Transporting himself and the Victory Machine to the furthest strategic point from Tamber and the Rega Gain system was easy. Eden Four loomed large from where he drifted in space. Jason Everin had no weapons, but radiated incredible power. He knew the silver ships and pillar shaped stations hanging in orbit around the green-blue gem scanned him. Temporal radiation was a puzzle, he knew, and they wouldn’t know what to do.

  The Victory Machine told him he was in a place that was distant enough so whatever he did there wouldn’t effect the future promised to Ayan Rice the Second. It wouldn’t jeopardise the lives of his other friends, either. It would accomplish the opposite in some cases. Paradox was the enemy, and after only a few minutes with the Victory Machine, he knew how to avoid it. The directive was built in, and that made avoiding temporal implosions easy.

  Jason Ever
in knew exactly what would happen if he held on to the Victory Machine for too long. It would begin changing his past. Peering back along his own timeline, he saw different versions of his past where he was more and more ill, a plague on his life with Laura. Temporal radiation could ruin the days he’d already lived, making him ill in past tense, and he wouldn’t have that. Most of the years he had with his wife were wonderful, she was the constant good in his life. There was nothing he could do to change her death. That was what led him to take the Victory Machine himself.

  A mental flash brought an image of Ayan Rice the Second in front of a large monument. Lanterns burned around a large circular pedestal featuring quarter scale statues standing all around. She directed a toddler to a section of the monument where Jason and Laura had been immortalized. There were so many statues, many of them he didn’t recognize, others he did faintly, but most of them were changing before his eyes. The toddler crossed the distance and dropped a half-mangled lilac bunch at Laura and Jason’s feet before running back all smiles to Ayan, who embraced her girl. “Well done, they’ll love that,” she said.

  The visions followed his thoughts, and eventually led him to one of the only other near-certainties of the future. He began having a vision featuring the Triton through the main display aboard the bridge of the Warlord. “Happy hunting, Warlord,” said the voice of Agameg Price. His tone was respectful, almost mournful. The Triton began to move away and cloaked.

  A look around the bridge of the Warlord revealed one central figure. Jacob Valent stood in armour Jason had never seen before: heavy overlapping plates that were sharpened to lethal edges with fine emitter grooves running down each one that faintly glowed red. One of Jake’s eyes was a dark coloured mechanism protected by an armoured lens. Over one shoulder, a half-shredded blue and red strand of cloth hung, over the other he wore a fresh white length of cloth that had a gold seal pressed onto it, a sunrise over sand.

  The captain’s seat was gone, and Jake stood in its place looking twenty years older than he ought to. Behind him a woman with straight auburn hair and an artificial eye nodded to herself and left quietly. Jason knew she was on her way off the ship, and she was leaving Jacob Valent alone. The vision was less than three years into the future, and Jason couldn’t help but investigate.

  He traced the mystery back to a vision of a grave on Tamber with Ayan Rice inside and he realized that there were two Ayans in the future. Jacob Valent knelt before the simple raised plaque with a white scarf clenched in his fist. “I will fight,” he said, furious and tearful, gnashing his teeth. “I will fight until the people who did this to you are remembered only for how I destroyed them. Until our galaxy is clean again.”

  That was the turning point. In his own way, Jacob Valent would become weak, a being without sympathy and a man fallen into the trap of perpetual revenge. Strength and companionship were the solutions and within seconds Jason knew exactly what to do. Out of all the people he knew, Jacob Valent’s future was in flux the least; change could be more reliably predicted. Remote viewing the strands connecting all the people he’d just seen led him to the components that would save Jacob Valent.

  “His daughter,” Jason said to himself as he discovered the location of Alice Valent. “She’s coming, he needs her, but he won’t be able to admit it after what’s coming.” He used the Victory Machine to propose sending a message to her and let it perform a simulation, then present a result. To his shock and dismay the single monument for Ayan became two, and a host of friends turned warriors stood around the graves instead of Jacob Valent.

  “I’m starting to understand why this Machine has to be destroyed,” Jason said as he mentally proposed another course of action to the machine. His mind was flooded with broadening results until finally, Jacob wasn’t standing alone on the bridge of the Warlord. He still seemed hardened, ready for battle, but his daughter stood at his side in similar armour. She looked younger, and her expression seemed proud instead of disappointed. Jason settled on the course of action that would lead to that possibility. “He won’t be alone, and she will survive.”

  Roman wasn’t strong enough for remote encounters with people by the end, but the Victory Machine was glad to open its systems and let him perform one. Alice Valent had a neural communications node, it was the key to communicating with her in the future. He reached out to her on the future battlefield and, with a gasp, he lived several minutes with her in the space of seconds. Before he was willing to let go of the future vision he shared with her, it came to an end. Distracting Alice in the future could cause more harm than good. “That’s done,” Jason said to himself. “Thank God I only have to send Jake a short message.”

  He sent his short transmission to Jacob Valent then began closing the wormholes the Victory Machine used to view the future, the present, and the past. As the Victory Machine slowly stopped expending energy, he could feel the power levels rise.

  Jason left one wormhole open and watched as Laura stepped into the Pilot’s Ball aboard the First Light. Seeing her again brought sadness and relief. She was so beautiful in her black dress, an obvious contrast to Ayan, but he only had eyes for his Laura. As her eyes found him standing near the dance floor, he was speechless, grinning like a fool, but unable to stop. “How did it get so complicated?” Jason asked as he watched himself cross the room to meet her in the past. He let the wormhole close slowly and set the replay of her entering the room to fill a corner of his mind.

  He couldn’t feel the effects of the temporal radiation yet, but he knew it would be a matter of days before he did, and his past would change. That first encounter would never happen. “No, I want the life I had, flaws and all, it’s better than any I thought I’d get.”

  He watched the silver ships in the distance, darting about, perhaps wondering what to do about the strange man holding a powerful device in the distance and smiled. “This is a change they’ll notice, and someone will know it was me.”

  Energy continued to build up inside the Victory Machine, and he followed the directions he was given as he stole it. At its centre he forced a microscopic wormhole to open that led back into itself, and the energy began to multiply. It would grow exponentially in seconds, and when it went critical, it would only effect the present in one place.

  Jason found himself recalling the picture Oz had hanging in his quarters aboard the Sunspire when he was in command: the original crew of the First Light in their youthful and optimistic days. “I love you all,” he said. The replaying image of Laura from the Victory Machine persisted, and he watched her smile at him just like she did at the Pilot’s Ball.

  * * *

  The spectacle from Eden IV as the mysterious power source exploded was nothing short of awesome. After a bright light, a shockwave burst outward. The readings of temporal radiation were drawn into the forming black hole and disappeared.

  Millions of ships, hundreds of manufacturing facilities, and smaller metallic entities panicked as gravitational sensors read well beyond tolerance. Nothing in the Eden system stood a chance of surviving the hours that followed.

  Chapter 44

  Hodria

  “This port maneuvering chart is insane,” Ashley said as she looked at the visi version of navnet. It was mapped along the curvature of the planet, Hodria, instead of into small sectors. She had taken the navigator’s post, while Jacob piloted the ship himself. “Now I understand why you’re at the controls.”

  “I know you can pilot this,” Captain Valent said as he chose a broad holding pattern and set the ship’s autopilot to follow it. He still held the main pilot controls in his hands, however. “I just wanted you and Clara to get a good look at their navnet system. It’s called Gudouk, don’t ask me why. The name doesn’t translate.”

  “That’s because it’s an acronym,” Agameg offered from behind them.

  “What does it stand for?” Clara asked.

  “That doesn’t translate either,” Agameg said.

  “Oh, look, a pretty ship,” Ashl
ey said as she flicked a larger ship’s holographic image with her finger. The image copied into a secondary projector and increased in size so she could get a better look. It was a sleek, six hundred metre long vessel that looked almost windswept. “It’s a luxury liner.”

  “For jurriks. It must smell terrible inside,” Kadri commented from the communications station. “One of them opening their helmet is enough to clear a room.”

  “I’ve never met one,” Captain Valent said.

  “They are quite pleasant in general,” Agameg said. “They have such a strong fragrance because their mating materials are airborne. One of the most difficult races for shape shifters to imitate, mostly for that reason.”

  “Ew, ‘mating materials,’ thanks for sparing us the details, moving on,” Ashley said with a shudder. “I’m not seeing any offered landing patterns.”

  “Godouk routes are set by visi pilot ships,” Kadri explained. “I’m trying to contact several now.”

  “So we’ll be releasing our helm to another ship?” Clara asked.

  “Exactly,” Captain Valent said. “We take over for a few seconds while we’re passing through the atmosphere, then the ground stations pick us up and navigate us to our landing site.”

  “There are no ground stations here, Sir,” Kadri corrected. “We’ll be assigned to what they call a free port. A pilot ship has just picked us up. Their ident checks out, I’m sending their signal to the helm now.”

  “Thank you Kadri,” Captain Valent replied.

  The transit through orbital space was brisk and surprisingly straight considering the thousands of ships in holding patterns. There were heavy haulers, hundreds of different visi battleships running patrols, smaller fighting ships from every nearby government, more independent ships than any of them could count, and a smattering of other ships mixed in. Before they knew it, they were passing through the atmosphere, and Captain Valent was back in control.