Magnus looked at me, right eyebrow raised. “What kind of anomaly, Dubs?” he asked the android.
“Pigment. There is a section of crystalline material that is still amber in hue.” Even for an android, he seemed specific about things.
“Are you sure?” It might be a clue to Mary. Maybe she was still here after all.
“I released the probes upon entry, and the images sent back are free of tampering. I am sure,” W said.
“I never doubt a robot,” Slate said. “Come on, let’s go.”
Slate and Magnus ran for the corridor we’d entered from, and I took a final look at the room I’d last seen Mary in.
“Until we meet again,” I whispered.
Sixteen
“There it is,” Suma tweeted, her snout wagging side to side. She was more excited than I was about seeing what this could mean for us. A section of orange crystals could mean nothing on an entire world, or it could mean everything.
W set the ship down on a flat piece of land just outside the still-amber region. It was much a smaller section than I’d expected, maybe five thousand square feet.
In a couple minutes, we all found ourselves standing at the bottom of the ramp, three feet from the border between clear and orange crystal ground.
“I’ll go first,” I said, stepping down on the colored rock. Nothing happened. “Mary!” I called, wondering if she could be there, hiding among the protruding stones.
No response came back.
“What the hell are those?” Magnus asked, and I spun around to see dozens of the little gecko-cats with saucer-shaped eyes staring at us from the center of the area.
“Those are like the creature that led us to the throne room.” I had the urge to shoot them all, blast them each into nothing with my pulse rifle. They’d led us directly into danger, and seeing so many of them here now was like an alarm bell in the back of my mind.
Slate must have been thinking the same thing, because his gun came swinging into his gloved hand in an instant. “This can’t be good,” he said.
“Why not?” Leonard asked, eyes almost as wide as the small animals’.
“Because they led us into a trap last time.” I took a step toward them, and they didn’t flinch. “If they’re all here…”
Slate finished my thought. “Then one of the Iskios has been left behind.”
“It all makes sense now,” Suma said. “They were placed here by the Theos, their bodies sealed away in the stones. Their essence colored them, but when Mary…” She paused, looking at me before continuing. “When they left, they must have had the power to vacate the world.”
“They all went into Mary?” I asked.
Suma shook her head. “I don’t think so. That much energy… it would destroy any living creature. They had to have left in a different form. Something so full of energy…”
“That it could destroy a moon?” Magnus finished.
Suma softly chirped; the translator replied with a single word. “Yes.”
I was flabbergasted but glad to think Mary hadn’t been bombarded with the souls of millions of dead Iskios. “The Unwinding. They have to make up this energy source they were hinting at. They’re going to try to Unwind the universe, with nothing but the force of their own energy that had been trapped inside this crystal world.”
“That’s some serious stuff.” Magnus took a deep breath. He pointed to the standing orange crystals. “What about this?”
“I don’t know. It appears one of them was left behind.” I glanced over and spotted Leonard walking over to the small creatures, who didn’t seem afraid of the incoming guest.
“So those guys are here to lead someone to the Iskios, should they arrive. They must have been trained to do this. When we arrived near the blue crystal pyramid, it wasn’t long before one found us and gave chase,” I said.
“And now that the others are gone, they’re coming from around the planet to the last remaining spot with one of their owners. Poor little guys,” Slate said, looking over at them now too.
“They’re really quite harmless,” Leonard said, crouching down to pet one of them.
“Be careful, Leonard,” I urged, but it was too late. I saw the mist before he did. It rose quickly from the stone, the color lightening from the entire area as it lifted from the hard surface and into Leonard’s mouth.
“Help!” he called, stumbling forward. He groped at his helmet and tripped on a crystal end jutting from the ground. He tumbled to the ground, and I was at his side in a few seconds, rolling him onto his back.
“You’re going to be okay!” I shouted, but his eyes were already turning black.
“Dean… help…” He stopped talking, and his body went rigid. The small animals scurried away from us.
“Get back, Dean!” Slate shouted. He held his pulse rifle up, aimed at our young friend.
“You won’t shoot him,” I said to Slate, trying to sound as calm as I could. I couldn’t help but picture Slate’s large frame towering over Mae’s small body as she lay crumpled on the floor of the Bhlat base so long ago. “We don’t know what that would even do. It might just fly into me, or you.”
Slate lowered his gun.
I looked back to make sure everyone else was okay, and saw W standing on the ramp, watching us blankly. Suma was nowhere in sight.
Leonard got up, black mist covering his eyes. He smiled. It was grim, alien on his boyish face. It faltered as he heard a noise behind him, and then I saw Suma, raised above Leonard on a crystal mound. She dropped something over him, and four objects hit the ground before power shot out of them, surrounding Leonard.
The mist poured from him in the blink of an eye, and the black smoke rushed for the highest corner it could, trying to evade the blue energy surrounding it. It hit the invisible wall a split second later, the section buzzing blue. It scampered away, shooting toward the bottom right side. It met the same fate.
It was trapped.
“Get me out of here!” Leonard called, tears falling down his red cheeks. His fear dripped on each word, and I went for the wall, standing close.
“We’ll keep you safe. I’m sorry,” I said as the mist realized it was trapped and had no exit.
As Leonard opened a confused mouth to make a reply to my statement, the mist shot right back into him. If we were going to trap it, it was going to trap our friend. The Iskios had made its point.
“Suma, where did you get that?” I asked her as she clambered down from the crystal perch.
“I told you I was a valuable asset.” I knew she would have smiled if her new friend hadn’t been trapped because of her.
“Good work.” I stood at the edge of the shield. It acted like a containment field, but it was some sort of portable shield. “It can’t get out?”
“Nothing gets out, or in.” Suma was now down and beside me, looking at Leonard, who was only a couple feet away. His smile had turned to a scowl upon the Iskios’ sudden return.
“How will he breathe?” Magnus asked.
“He’s in an EVA with a recycled air processor. He should be fine for the time being,” Suma said.
“Dathhe ablioni tremlle.” The words were uttered from Leonard’s mouth but weren’t his voice. “How dare you?” it then said in English.
I scoffed back a laugh. “How dare we? How dare we! You shoot yourself into our friend and have the nerve to ask us that?”
“Pitiful humans. I can feel his weakness even as I invade his body. He only uses a small part of his mind. How do you go on like this?” it asked with a thick, deep voice.
“You know of us?” I asked it.
“This low-functioning mind gives me some answers.”
“You might want to stop insulting us while we have you trapped,” Magnus suggested.
“Now this one.” Leonard shifted his gaze to Magnus. “I should have taken this formidable vessel.”
“Stop leering at me,” Magnus yelled.
I was getting tired of the Iskios already, but he
had valuable information we needed. “So they left you behind, did they? Didn’t make the team? Riding the pines all season while your friends attempt to destroy the universe? Must be difficult on you.”
Leonard’s head snapped back to stare at me. “I know what you’re attempting, but it will not work. It was merely a coincidence that I was left behind.”
“Or maybe, just maybe, they knew you’d just mess it all up, like you always have.” I threw more fuel on the fire, hoping it would catch. “You’re probably better off, because I hear this Unwinding has already sputtered out. Took down a few moons, a couple empty worlds, and poof” – I stretched my fingers out into the air – “nothing.”
“You speak lies. I can feel it. The energy is powerful. The Unwinding has just begun.” Already more information than we’d had. The Unwinding was real, and this one could sense it. Maybe we could get the location from it, use it as a homing beacon to Mary.
“I don’t believe you. Tell me what worlds it’s destroyed, and I’ll confirm you are the liar,” I said, mentally crossing my fingers.
“Do you think we are that foolish? Do you think I would betray my kind? We are Iskios, bringers of destruction, the balance of the universe.”
My heart raced in my chest. I’d been missing something this whole time. The balance. Good versus evil, the light against darkness. “The balance is off,” I said softly, feeling veins throb beneath my jumpsuit.
It stopped smiling now. I saw something new in Leonard’s black eyes: fear. “Yes, the balance is off. If you’re out there destroying things with the Unwinding, there’s been a shift in the galaxy. The Theos come. There is no other way.” I said the words as lies but felt them as truth.
Its deep voice got lower in pitch. “They are gone.”
“You’re wrong. They were like you. Lying dormant.” It all snapped into place, then and there. It was as if the skies had opened wide, shining a beam of light into my very essence.
“How do you know? We erased all knowledge of it. We spent centuries making sure it was gone from all records. You can’t know!” It screamed the last three words, spittle flying from Leonard’s mouth onto his helmet’s facemask.
“But I do know.”
It screamed again, this time the anguished cry of a trapped animal.
The others were looking at me with questions in their eyes.
We hadn’t found Mary, but I’d learned something perhaps even more important to the overall cause.
I knew where the Theos were hiding.
Seventeen
“Are you going to tell us your theory?” Magnus came into the bunk, where I was tucked away, sitting on a bed with my back against the room’s far wall.
“Not yet,” I said, breaking my gaze with the tablet to look him in the eyes.
His posture changed, as if all the air pushed out of his body and he was deflated. “Fine. I trust your caution.” The room had four bunks, and he took the one beside me and sat on it, his weight causing the frame to groan in protest.
“Thanks for understanding. I don’t want the Iskios to catch wind of my findings. I don’t know if they have supersonic hearing, or if they have other ways of digging information from our minds. It’s still contained?” I asked.
“Yep. Still in the closet Dubs had been hiding inside. Suma turned on the noise cancelation feature so we don’t have to hear its non-stop calls for freedom. That thing has a salty tongue. You should hear some of the things it’s going to do to us when it gets free.” Magnus made it sound like a joke, but his face was hard and stoic when he spoke.
“I imagine none of them involve dinner and a movie,” I said, getting a forced smile in return. Crows’ feet lined his eyes, and I noticed just how much older Magnus looked. He’d aged seven years while we’d chased the hybrids around through wormholes, and his duties as a general and father had taken their toll on the once-youthful face I remembered meeting all that time ago on a dirt road in South America.
“Still making jokes when you’re uncomfortable, I see.”
I set the tablet down on my lap. “What can I say, it’s a character flaw.”
“I don’t think so. It’s a good thing. It’s when you stop joking that I get worried. Like the last month.”
He was right. “A weight’s been lifted. I didn’t think she was going to be here, but I had to have the closure. At least we know she left with them. She’s their vessel, and they won’t let her get harmed. I just need to find a way to break her out of their possession.”
“That’s the tricky part. You really think we can get that misty bastard to lead us to them?” he asked.
“Here’s what I do know. There has to be a balance. You want to know part of my theory on these ancient races?”
Magnus leaned forward, nodding.
“The Iskios were a bunch of sickos. Sarlun told us that much. They were into pain. Killing things. They thought they were gods themselves, and when the Theos threatened them, they didn’t think the other race had the balls to do anything about it. When they started to get picked off by the Theos, they set this elaborate ruse to trick a worthy vessel into finding them.
“Only the Theos hadn’t thought it through. They were the first. The oldest. The ancient beings of the universe. When they packed the Iskios away on the crystal world, they unbalanced the universe. In order to right the path, they had to banish themselves away.” I was sure I was on the right track. Everything I read about them kept pointing back to the fact they were honorable, strong, but fair.
“Dean, that’s it. So where are they?” He looked into my eyes and smiled, genuinely this time. “Never mind. I don’t want to know, not yet. How about some dinner?”
“I’ll be along in a minute.”
He stood in the doorway a moment, a large shadow looming on my bed before he walked away. I went back to my tablet.
There isn’t much to know about the physical appearance of the Theos. Some texts say they are eight feet tall, thick as a glargon truck. Others say they appear different to different races; that they become what someone wants them to look like, to ease the minds of those around them.
Did this change anything? I didn’t think so. The Iskios said they’d ensured their history was wiped from the records. The same must be true of the Theos. The old saying about history being written by the victors sprang to mind.
I powered down the tablet and decided to take my growling stomach’s advice.
____________
“Captain, are you sure I can transport through the portal?” W asked, looking inside the portal room back on Larsk Two.
“There’s no reason you can’t. We bring through equipment all the time. No offense,” I said, cringing at my comment.
“None taken. I am, after all, machinery.”
“Dubs has broad shoulders, Dean.” Magnus hefted the last bag from the ship and tossed it into the center of the portal room beside the others.
I looked toward the containment shield, where Leonard was still invaded by the entity. It was being dragged along by Slate, and it was obviously fighting him the whole way.
“Everyone present and accounted for?” I asked. The rundown walls of the portal room were glowing from the main portal stone. The second the Iskios entered the room, the stone dimmed and began to flash.
“That can’t be good,” Slate said, sweat pouring down his face from exertion.
Excitement ran through me. This reiterated my assumption.
“Come on, let’s get out of here,” I suggested.
Leonard’s face was twisted in a look of abject terror, so much so that I worried for the man. Would this work?
“Bring him closer,” I said and scrolled through the table of symbols until I found the one for home: New Spero.
Magnus helped Slate as they dragged the corners of the shield toward us. Suma looked at the glowing portal stone with concern.
“Dean, I’ve never heard of this happening before,” she said. She would know, having grown up as the daughter of a
n important Gatekeeper. I suddenly wished Sarlun was with us. I could use his mastery of the portals.
As everyone stood there, waiting for me to hit the icon that would take us home, my hand shook as it hovered over the symbol. What if this didn’t work? What if it killed Leonard? I had to know if I was right about the Theos. Was it worth the risk? I closed my eyes, the flashing light burning red behind my tight eyelids.
I had to know. I pressed the symbol.
____________
I was stuck. Usually, I blinked and I was at my chosen destination. This time was different. I felt a struggle around me. I opened my eyes, but there was nothing to see. Not light, not darkness. Nothing. Panic raced through me, but it lasted only seconds.
One more breath, and I woke on the floor.
“Dean!” Slate stood over me, shaking my shoulders.
I tried to get up, but my head pounded so much I almost blacked out. “Enough, I’m fine.”
“What did you see?” Slate asked me.
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” The feeling of nothing around me sent a shiver down my spine. “Help me up.”
We were in the portal room outside Terran Five.
“Captain, I made it,” W said matter-of-factly.
I was leaning on Slate, my head still spinning when I heard Leonard’s voice. “Guys, what happened?”
Suma ran to the containment shield, which had stayed active through the portal. “Is it you, Leonard?” she squawked, translating to English.
“I hope so. I don’t remember… we were at the crystals…funny little animals.” His eyes went wide, and his hands raced to his mouth. “Then it came at me. Is it gone?” He scrambled to the back corner of the shield and frantically looked around for the black mist.
It worked. “I think it’s gone, Leonard.”
“Wait, how do you know?” Magnus looked at me skeptically.
“Because I know how the portal stones are powered.”
“You do?” Suma asked.
“Get him out of there. I’m sorry, Leonard, but I had to be sure.”
Suma turned off the containment shield and went in, giving Leonard a big hug. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
The Survivors: Books 1-6 Page 96