‘But they might,’ said Delphine. ‘I know that look, Kiyoko. You want to stay as badly as I do.’
‘I abandoned our troops at Fayetteville,’ said Jones, opening her heart and thoughts in this decisive moment. ‘I have to believe there’s a way back for everyone...even me.’
‘Then?’
‘We stay,’ said the Admiral, ‘for as long as we can. We have to give them a chance.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Don’t thank me,’ said Admiral Jones. ‘Are you ready? This is the moment of truth.’
‘I’m ready,’ said Delphine.
‘Let’s see, then. Halley?’ said Jones. ‘Send general orders to the remaining fleet, please. Make preparations to return home on my orders.’
‘Understood, Admiral.’
‘And the Boston will stay.’
This was the moment. Jones found herself shifting toward the edge of her command chair.
‘Understood, Admiral. The Boston will remain. Should I offer my available resources to Dr. Mamet in her endeavour?’
Damn, thought Jones, that AI is smart.
She raised her eyebrows, questioning, to Delphine.
‘Yes, please. I could seriously use the help,’ said Dr. Mamet.
Both women smiled in relief. It was done. They would wait.
Delphine, with Halley’s vast intellect, would work on deciphering the script around the portal.
Delphine left and Jones called her staff back to the bridge to brief them, and give them the chance to leave aboard other ships if they wished. She only needed a skeleton crew, and something told her the academic minds aboard would not pass up the chance to work with Delphine on the alien artefact.
Perhaps it would be like Global Net planned and this moment might mean the highways to the stars themselves would open to humanity. She understood perfectly. It might just be that through all the death, a new age would be born in a universe of war, one in which glory and wonder might exist, too.
54.
Inside the Citadel
Alante Brockner
‘The walls are thick. Must have walked fifty meters to get inside and it looks like it’s all solid,’ said Alante. ‘The walls here are golden, like outside. It looks abandoned.’
‘Just us?’ asked Dawes.
‘I don’t see anything living. Nothing automated as far as I can tell. There’s a weird glow about the walls, but Dawes, it isn’t empty. There are hundreds. I can’t guess how many but...’
‘Hundreds of what?’
‘Dawes, I’m not exactly a tour guide, be patient,’ she said, then realised she was being a dick to a blind, dying man. ‘Sorry, Dawes.’ She gave his shoulder a squeeze.
‘It’s cool. I know,’ he said.
She didn’t need to ask what he knew – that she was as lost as he was, and he couldn’t see.
‘Hundreds of portals. Those confluxes. I think this is the nexus, or something like it. There are platforms all around. I’m guessing they’re elevators? I bet someone used this place to travel. Dawes, hold on to me. I need to get closer.’
She had to take more and more of Dawes’ weight, so much so that she put his arm over her shoulder so she was taking the brunt of his bulk. He was taller than she was, but they were all thin at this point in the war. You didn’t get to eat too much on a ship, either.
‘I don’t think this is even Cephal, Dawes. We’ve both seen what they’re like. This metal, it’s golden, but it’s different to theirs. There are markings, too, and...oh.’
‘Oh? Oh what?’
‘Dawes, these ones? You can see the other side.’
The one she led Dawes toward was not a perfect circle but oval, like a giant mirror. There was no strange surface distortion like the portal that had taken them from Zoa to this place, to Velasan. This was something different. The same tech but whoever might have constructed this place must have done so a long, long time ago. It felt abandoned, ancient, even.
‘The markings look like language. This is remarkable. This isn’t just Cephal...this is...’
She looked around.
‘This isn’t destruction, Dawes. I feel it. This is intelligence. Whoever or whatever made this many portals and put this place here...I bet they were explorers.’
‘Maybe they explored too far and met the Cephal.’
‘Maybe,’ said Alante.
Dawes grunted then. He staggered and fell to one knee. She followed him down.
Death wasn’t far off.
‘What do you want, Dawes?’
He was quiet. Both his eyes were haemorrhaged.
‘Are they all awake?’ he asked in a slow, careful voice.
‘Active?’ she asked. She nodded, and remembered a person who could barely see his own hand wouldn’t see her nod. ‘I guess so, but I don’t know. Can you hold on?’
He nodded, pale. The wound in his head was terrible and though burned and not bleeding she could see a hint of a pulse inside that made her nauseous. She pushed that feeling aside though. She didn’t want him to know how bad it was. There was no way she was going to tell him, but Alante suspected he knew anyway.
She wanted to give him some comfort in his last minutes. There was no way Dawes got to live.
Do we all die, or is there a way?
Troops began to enter the structure behind them, tentatively moving inside. Four of them carried the damaged A.T. with the nuclear payload like a bier.
Alante scanned the portals, and saw one higher up which shimmered with a different light to the others she could see. Something about the light registered, called to her.
‘There is one,’ she told Dawes.
She knew what he was going to say before he said it.
‘I want to go through,’ he said.
‘I’ll take you up. It’s higher. Come on.’
Alante held out a hand to stall the team entering.
Should I have them blow it? Risk the mission for a pyramid full of magic?
She was the ranking officer. There was no one else to give the order.
Damn right I should.
She recognised one of armoured who’d used the power of his dog to drag the A.T. into the Citadel.
‘Samir,’ she said. ‘Hold everything. Everything. Do not execute the plan. You understand.
He exited his battered D-Guard and stepped down, even gave Alante a tired salute. ‘I understand, ma’am,’ he said. His eyes were large with awe, just like everyone else inside the Citadel.
‘Things have changed. I’m changing them. Does anyone have a problem with that?
There were around twenty Bear in the Citadel now, along with thirty or forty bleeding, broken and tired Patriot marines. None did.
‘Alante?’ said Dawes. ‘I can feel Death calling.’
She gave a nod to her soldiers, and to Patriot.
‘I’m going through, with Dawes.’
They understood. Some were looking at the portal with the familiar light, too, seeing her pointing hand.
‘If I don’t return, there are enough of us to try other portals. As the last one goes through, blow it. None of us have to die with the bomb. Is that understood? Is that understood? There is still hope.’
Alante took Dawes with his arm slung over her shoulders and dragged him with her to the platform which would take them upward, to the portal emitting the green, sickly glow Alante knew so well – it was very much like the power-saving lights of a human ship, one she’d spent nearly six weeks aboard.
She looked through the active portal, in this crossroads between worlds she couldn’t even begin to imagine.
‘What do you see?’
‘I see a ship,’ she said. Her voice was small with awe, but she didn’t forget her duty. She remembered the disorientation of travelling through a portal – she’d done it twice.
‘Bear, Patriot...there’s a ship on the other side. I’m going through. Hold. No matter what. For your lives, hold. I will return. I promise you.’
‘Know no gra
ve,’ said Greta, one of Bear Alante had known way back when Dwight Washington had extolled the virtues of 245th Armoured in Fort Bragg, so long ago.
‘You ready, Dawes? You’re not going alone, buddy. I wouldn’t miss this for anything.’
‘You want to do this, Alante?’
By way of an answer Alante took Dawes’ hand and they stepped toward that artificial green glow together.
55.
The Final Door
Vidar Dawes
We weren’t torn apart or hurtled away from each other. We only travelled at walking speed, as we had when we’d gone through the portal from Zoa to Velasan. The hardship and stress on mind and body was lessened, but still hard enough I cried out and found my mind scratchy with pain, as though some power from inside the warp were sandpaper abrading my exposed skull.
I couldn’t see, and then, I could.
I didn’t see with my eyes, though. I saw with Alante’s. Her hand was in mine, and my hand was in hers. It was as though the process of entering the conflux in contact had entwined us. I felt what she felt. I saw because she saw. I tried to speak, but I couldn’t. Sensation and thought were slow as I died, almost luxurious and I welcomed it. She knew that. She was in my head. I could feel her in there, her endless calm and strength, just like she would know the very heart of me, too.
We were falling and walking at once. The buoyancy in this odd place between the Citadel on Velasan and whatever world waited on the other side kept us afloat and held onto us. I didn’t look to the left or right. I didn’t care what created the tunnel. I couldn’t tell Alante what her friendship meant to me, but she knew. I saw myself in her eyes. I was a wreck. My mouth hung open. My last breath would come soon. I wanted to tell her, to share more than just my death.
Maybe there was nothing at all outside of the endless and short tunnel through which we travelled. Maybe it was where Death waited. Perhaps we only travelled at Lord Death’s whims, and life and this wonder were mere gifts from him. Maybe Death didn’t deign to open the doors to his realm at all. Floating for eternity stuck with your own thoughts, seeing through other people’s eyes as you drifted forever. Was that what death was? Being left behind in another’s thoughts?
I felt my end getting closer in a realm where time and distance meant nothing at all.
She reached out for me, and I saw myself kiss myself on the cheek. I understood what she was doing. I couldn’t nod, but she was in my mind and I was in hers.
She took the ring from me. My memories were open to me and to her.
I know, she said inside my slowing thoughts. I know you loved her well.
She held my dog tags and the ring on the chain in her hand.
I remembered. I remembered that I meant to marry her. It was an engagement ring. We hadn’t rolled on the hood of a Bronco. I had knelt before her because we had always loved to sit out in the woods and watch the planes fly to imagined places we would never see.
I smiled. I didn’t cry. I felt...happy. There was something. Past and future. It wasn’t just life.
Thought persists for a moment as oxygen deserts a dying mind.
She let me go and I saw myself drift toward walls of a tunnel which didn’t exist.
It’s not about being a hero, is it? Soldiering? It’s about being a fighter. That’s what we do, and we fight all the way to Death, and he is proud of us.
Lord Death opened his doors for me. Then, I was gone.
Epilogue
Alante Brockner
Alante’s released Dawes to whatever might wait between the stars and life. In her right hand she held his dog tags and the ring he’d always kept on the chain around his neck.
He was gone, but she held him still, only now it was within her mind. The book of Vidar Dawes’ life was open to her. Halley routed the new development to Admiral Kiyoko Jones, but Alante heard none of it. She was lost in a moment, Dawes thoughts, memories, hopes, feelings, all flooding through her.
Delphine Mamet’s dropped the data pad with a clang to the floor of the Boston’s lower hold.
There were tears in her eyes as Alante said, ‘I met Death, and he was beautiful.’
The warrior everyone called Hard Dog fell to her knees and kissed the cold metal of the ship. Then, before anyone could stop her, she stepped back into the portal to the Citadel, where the bravest of the brave waited on her to bring them home.
The End
Read on for a free sample of Asylum
Prologue:
Folter
Hate. Rage. War. The relentlessly desired instinct to hunt down his enemies and exterminate their existence was the first concept to enter his mind when his proud, battle-scarred, warrior-like brown eyes flashed open. An irresistible rage burned his soul, demanding to release genocide of biblical proportions as it sweltered to the surface temperatures of hell. He couldn’t possibly yield the demon that yearned to condemn his bastard opposition to the mercy of his sadistic urges. The atrocities they had performed on his fellow Marines were unforgivable, and to formulate his response, he’d introduce the scum to Fear himself.
Corporal Alabama Fear had only just begun to regain consciousness after enduring a state of hibernation in what he could only presume was stasis based on the thin, chilly, transparent fluid his naked, titanic bulk was submerged in, gently bobbing up and down, and calmly side to side. His vision beginning to clear somewhat, Alabama peered down at his nude, muscular body—an abnormal specimen of gargantuan muscle, bulking from his behemoth, skull-sized biceps to his monstrous quadriceps that could easily pass for the size of an average man’s waistline, all of which took several years worth of punishment to perfect—and observed the series of chords and sensors connected to his body, some of which dipped beneath the flesh, or unpleasantly entered his orifices. These cables and tubes were what had supplied his body nutrients in his cycle of stasis, and he had only just begun to vaguely recall the ominous faces peering through the glass at him, and the monotone, almost robotically emotionless voices he had heard speaking in languages using scientific vocabulary that he couldn’t even possibly begin to comprehend.
“I see that the specimen has substantially recovered from its injuries. I have noticed its healing has occurred much more rapidly than I had anticipated,” Alabama recalled in one of the more clearer conversations he had heard, but he could not see the faces in his level of consciousness at that time.
“Yes, it’s only necessary as the parasite will require his body to be fully functional once it has been revived,” chimed in a second voice almost excitedly, unlike the cold, sinister, analytic tone of the first speaker. “Because of this, I have made some alterations to the healing process.”
“Alterations?” the first voice questioned in a menacing manner. “We agreed upon only the most strict and natural treatment for the specimen, Lenard. Do not forget that this specimen is extremely valuable to me, and an alteration as minor as a change in the chemical composition of the fluids being pumped into its veins could cause defects. Defects that you would be held responsible for.”
“That’s a risk I’m willing to take in order for you to jump-start phase two,” responded the second voice—presumably Lenard. “We are running out of time, Dallas, and—"
“—Do not perform such a reckless action again, Lenard,” the second voice—Dallas—interrupted. “You were wise not to alter the experiment further, else I would not let you off without much more than a mere warning.”
Lenard proceeded to snicker impudently in the presence of his superior before embittering his final comment.
“You are a very somber man, Dallas…”
Lenard and Dallas…
Finally, Alabama began to feel the sore, achiness that engulfed his bones and muscles. Then, beginning to observe his body more, he began to notice the arrays of staples bolted into the layers of mammoth muscle that encased his bones, arranged in grid-like patterns of surgical scars. Based on the disastrous amount of bullet holes that had permeated his flesh these stap
les had been surgically implanted into his flesh to seal, his body looked like one gigantic slab of stitched-together muscle. However, the excessive and quickly repaired mutilation of his body didn’t capture his attention for as long as the thick, oozing sheet of crimson smeared sloppily across the exterior of his glass prison. His eyes widening with astonishment at the grotesque abnormality, Alabama began to notice small chunks of fractured vertebrae and ribcage rippling out of the tenderly raw nerve-endings exposed in the red meaty mass that besmeared the transparent surface.
Alabama couldn’t see beyond the gory muck oozing down the sides of his test-tube-like chamber, nor could he really move his freshly enlivening limbs. Instead, he could only helplessly bob in his liquid containment knowing that something on the other side of that glass had awakened him from his slumber. Feeling adrenaline begin to streak thunder and lightning throughout his blood vessels, Alabama grew uncomfortably sober with his surroundings, and was alarmed by the blood-soaked hand that suddenly penetrated the gore smothered on his cell, the ensanguined palm then proceeding to drag down the glass wall, tearing layers of carnage—
--Exposing the mutilated man—presumably a scientist based on his tattered, blood-doused lab coat—who managed to make eye contact with Alabama as he sunk to his belly, against the cell, too overwhelmed in pain to stand. Alabama simply gazed back into the man’s horrified, wide-eyed, blood-caked face, quickly observing the hundreds of glass shards embezzled in his scalp, and followed the trail of embroidered pieces down the man’s back to his--
--Alabama gasped, immensely startled when the man’s legs entirely disappeared, replaced by a fleshy, blood-sputtering stub at the waistline, which oozed various organs and leaked entrails, which Alabama followed halfway across the gore-suffused room that had been transformed into a sea of littered glass and dismembered limbs, and tracked the internals to where they literally rose out of the carnage, and stretched towards the ceiling, where he discovered several streaks of pulsating, worm-like viscera tangled throughout the rafters in the fashion of a toilet-paper rolled house. Just glancing below the macabre of entrails, Alabama saw where the other half of the man’s body was, dangling just a couple feet off the ground, still attached to the intestines wrapped in the rafters above, rotating slowly like a neglected piñata would.
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