Chasing Solace
Page 29
“I ... Aegis, is that correct?”
“Yes. You have asked twelve questions. By their rules, that only leaves one.”
Opal knew she should ask them about their plans. It was the logical follow-on. It might affect her and Clarissa. It might have implications far bigger than that.
And yet ... the Oracles seemed so open and helpful and artless. And that always made her suspicious. She’d seen sleight-of-hand tricks in barracks and down side-streets. How many of the questions she’d asked had been fully her own, and how many had she been pushed towards thanks to cunning manipulation of the conversation and answers?
Sure, she should ask about plans, and world-destroying processes, and all the mysteries of the whole damned universe.
But she didn’t.
“I just want to get my sister and live a quiet life with her. That’s the lot. None of this other stuff. I never wanted our lives to get torn apart like they were. So my final question is: why me? What’s so damn important about me that I can’t be left alone?”
And they’d better not tell her that was two questions.
<
“There’s got to be more to it than that!”
<
“You’ve been trying to get me here since I got on a Lost Ship?”
<
“There’s precious little clarity for me.”
<
It sounded as creepily alien as she would have expected – and yet, she was conversing with beings that were hidden, communicating into her mind while branch-like limbs gesticulated behind a blinding layer of bright light which flared up when they spoke to her. She couldn’t get comfortable.
<
And Opal’s heart skipped a beat, and she checked the moving map – yes, the figure that should represent Clarissa really was nearly here. The suit noticed the heart rhythm irregularity and flagged it in the bodily status display. Opal ignored the question mark there. Aegis knew as well as she did how words could affect human anatomies.
“Let me see her.”
<
“And here’s the catch I’ve been waiting for.”
<
“I’m listening.”
<
“What?”
<
“How can I even promise that? I don’t know the details of what I’m agreeing to!”
<
“Talking with you is like talking with an AI.”
“Charmed,” said Aegis.
Opal ignored the interruption. “But I have to do this to get Clarissa?”
<
Opal muttered to herself about a fucking deal with the devil, then said, loudly, “I promise. To do whatever I have to do in order to get Clarissa back.”
<
The shapes in the sand melted away. It was difficult to see through the swirling rainbow bubble that held Opal’s life-sustaining atmosphere, but there was something beyond it, a raised form evident whenever the creatures she interacted with were silent and invisible, when their strange communication movements weren’t partly hidden by blinding light.
A humanoid shape. Though it wasn’t a human walking tall, as Opal had wished, when her mind filled with visions of her sister grown to adulthood in the fourteen years since she last saw her. In that dream Clarissa would walk through the bubble and hug Opal.
<
Another of the icy chill winds passed through Opal. “What do you mean?”
<
The shape was being transported, not walking of its own free will. It was shorter than Opal. Perhaps kneeling? She squinted for more detail.
<
“How many people do you have here?”
<
Thousands ... and yet, only one mattered right now.
The being slid through the bubble into Opal’s view, into her proximity.
But Opal didn’t step forward to hug her sister. Instead, Opal’s breath halted.
<
The thing in front of Opal was not her sister. It had a vague shape like a kneeling woman, but the scaly and tumorous-looking magenta tissue that formed its skin pulsed sickeningly as it hunched over, inert, and no longer human.
Revealing
< 5 >
“YOU BASTARDS!” SHE yelled, activating the wrist blades – though it wasn’t clear what target she could vent her anger on.
<
The anger needed to lash out and she turned, waving her arms, willing anything alien to step into her range. So much anger.
The thing was slumped, unmoving apart from the grotesque pulsing in the surface scaly layers of what now passed for its skin. Somehow, it had been her sister. Somehow, the aliens implied it still was. Could Clarissa comprehend the change? Was she aware of Opal’s disgust?
The first moments of their reuniting, and Opal disowned her sister in revulsion.
The anger evaporated. The blades retracted. Opal fell to her own knees in the sand, and looked at the opaque discs that were once eyes. If it was to end here, then she had to know. Had to make whatever peace she could before she wrought Armageddon on this little assemblage.
She leaned forward and hugged the scaly hardness. It yielded slightly as if the tissues were mobile, capable of shifting to adjust to external events.
“I’m sorry, I was too late,” Opal sobbed, squeezing tighter as she spoke, and ignoring the attempts of the aliens to push into her brain, ignored the concerned repetition of Opal’s name by the suit AI. Now was not the time for outsiders. It was the time for sisters. It was the time to say goodbye.
As she hugged the unresisting, heavy form in front of her, she manoeuvred her fist towards what might still be its stomach. Unless this had been changed too, its vital organs would be under any remaining ribs. When she extended the nanoblade it would puncture Clarissa’s heart. Death would be fast, and as painless as Opal could make it.
“If there’d been any way ... anything I could have done ...”
Opal pulled back for a moment to look into that grotesquely-distorted lumpy face, to see if any recognition sparked in it, any life in the sense that meant anything, before she finished it.
Nothing. It pulsed. The head lolled. The eyes and mouth remained closed.
Opal’s eyes flicked to the HUD controls that would extend the blades.
Then back to the head.
There had been a change.
Something on the creature’s – no, dammit, her sister’s – face. The cheek hung lower where Opal’s visor had mashed against it. Seemed to have slid, become detached. She reached out, delicately prodded it with an armoured finger, feeling the soft interpretation of pressure communicated by the suit’s inner layers, as if she really touched skin to skin.
The scale slid across a gel-like surface, revealing red flesh underneath. It was hardly attached.
She carefully peeled it back, wincing at the stringy tissue being stretched, but she persisted because a deeper red showed beneath ... no, not red, but brown, like Opal’s skin. Brown coated with red slime. She wiped some of it away with the edge of her gauntlet.
It looked like skin below.
Brown skin. Unbroken, beautiful, living, human brown skin.
She wiped more vigorously, scales sliding away to reveal part of a mouth. Opal prodded the lips apart, examined the white teeth visible through this small hole, checking that they were normal. She pushed more scales aside, ignoring the revolting greasiness of their undersides, let them fall to the sand in gooey thumps: and it revealed a closed eye, coated in the same red slime. Opal felt the urge to tear her helmet and gauntlets off, to spit on her unsuited palms, to rub the eye clean: the suit might be too blunt an instrument for such a delicate task, for cleaning such a beautiful face, so Opal just hugged again, squeezed as firmly as she could without crushing, whilst also being as gentle as her love allowed.
“It’s her,” she whispered, tears streaming down her face as she held the mass of tissue, which in turn held her sister. “She’s okay.”
<
It did not feel like they were moving. Opal looked through the dome, which still swirled with the dark rainbow colours of oil on water. Yes, beyond it the huge structures were slowly changing position – an illusion that made sense if it was actually the ground beneath Opal and Clarissa that moved.
“Can you hear me, Clarissa? I’m taking you home.” No response. The gummed-up eye did not open. She didn’t even seem to be breathing. “Clarissa?”
<
“She seems more like catatonic.”
<
“You believe she will recover?”
<
If she’d been able to see a physical presence behind the bright lights of communication, and if it had a form she could comprehend, then she’d have expected to see it shrug at that last sentence.
“We’ll get through this, Clarissa. You’ll be fine.”
<
“There always is.” Opal’s eyes were shut. She just hugged the form that contained her sister.
<
“Organic metals. Does that mean the Lost Ships are alive?”
<
“The
white acidic fizzing stuff. I guess it’s kind of their blood when they’re damaged.”
<
“The green specks, right. I still don’t see what the problem is?”
“I do,” replied Aegis, quietly. “It looks like I can’t come back with you.”
Parting
< 4 >
<
“But that will destroy it!”
<
“Opal,” interrupted Aegis. “We need to talk.”
To the Oracles she said, “Give me a few moments,” then she blinked on the “Okay, ready” message that was flashing on the HUD.
“I have now disabled the loudspeaker and as many suit emissions as I can, to try and give us some privacy,” said Aegis. “It may be for nothing when they can read your mind, but it’s worth a try. I can’t go back with you if it means there’s a chance it will cause navigational problems that destroy you and Clarissa. Much as I hate to fail in my duty of always being with you and protecting you, I can’t condone actions that might harm you.”
“Even if it was something I could agree to, what if they access – well, your mind, and Athene’s mind? Wouldn’t that be dangerous?”
“I think you are right. Even a cut-down version of Athene’s mind, such as I represent, could be a vastly powerful thing to hand over to barely-known entities. It would also take away any advantages that you may need in potential future scenarios.”
“See! I can’t leave you behind for them.”
“I could self-destruct once you and Clarissa are out of range, but that might make it even harder for you to cement a relationship based on trust. Archival data suggests making friends is already a problem for you, though I don’t understand why, since I find you to be personable and refreshingly brusque.”