Entanglement Bound: An Epic Space Opera Series (Entangled Universe Book 1)

by Mary E. Lowd

  "Irohann!" Clarity cried, knowing the radio wouldn't carry her voice. She hoped he'd hear her through the layers of spacesuit and over the cacophony of bells and buzzes anyway. To her horror, she heard her own voice echoed around her, slightly syncopated. Wishing she could cover her ears, she screamed, "We have to get out of here! Mazillion, are you still with us?"

  From all around, the buzzing modulated to say, "We will die to save the universe!"

  Outside the viewscreen, the haunting glow of Cassie's horn grew closer. Clarity had thought it was horrible to watch the image of The Serendipity being torn apart on Cassie's bank of viewscreens while she had stood safely in Cassie's cockpit. But that was nothing to this. It was far worse watching the tip of Cassie's horn pierce the Doraspian viewscreen; the screen shattered in a spider web pattern around the horn, and the spiraling horn barreled into the bridge like a battering ram, missing Clarity's chest by inches. She gasped, and in the stronger glow of the horn, she saw her spacesuit mirrored in kaleidoscopic patterns all around the tip of Cassie's horn. She looked back down to the base of the horn, and space made more sense there. Space-time must be fracturing more quickly at the back of the bridge.

  Around the base of Cassie's horn, the cracked viewscreen shot outward, breaking into glassy shards, blown apart by the explosive evacuation of the atmosphere inside the Doraspian bridge.

  Clarity and all of her mirror images were thrown into the blackness of space. She turned on her bioluminescent panels. The light wouldn't help the Doraspians now, and she needed to see what was happening.

  As Clarity flew through the void, away from the Doraspian vessel, her space-time reflections dwindled down to one. Wait, not even one. That spacesuit wasn't a reflection of her—it was Irohann, also flying away from the vessel. Thank heavens they'd still been wearing their spacesuits and hadn't been forced to take them off. And poor Mazillion. They'd have been blown apart by the blast.

  As she flew away from the explosion, Clarity saw Doraspians too, flailing and spinning in the vacuum of space. Their leaves and blossoms shriveled and withered, blackening at the tips. She wondered how long it would take the Doraspians to die. With their woody cores, plant sentients might be able to survive longer in a vacuum than mammals. She wasn't sure.

  Clarity used her spacesuit thrusters to turn herself around so she could see what was happening with Cassie and the Doraspian vessel. They were still flying away from her. Or she was flying away from them. She wasn't sure. In space, there are no reference points. Except, of course, there are—you simply have to pick them. And the most important reference point was the Devil's Radio. Was she flying toward it? Away from it? Clarity pressed hard on her right thruster, causing her to spin around. She spun until she saw a starry sky stretched before her. Every other direction was nothing but black.

  She flew hard and fast toward the stars. If she was within the grasp of the Devil's Radio's gravity well, then she was already falling toward the event horizon. Cassie couldn't save her if she fell into the event horizon of a black hole. Nothing could. Ever. It was only logical to spend every last fume in her spacesuit's thrusters on the chance of reaching escape velocity.

  She watched the field of stars as she flew desperately toward them. She imagined she saw them growing larger, filling more of her field of vision, even though she knew that was impossible. The rate she was accelerating at and the distance she was traveling were nothing compared to the astronomical size of the black hole warping the very starlight around her.

  Eventually, the electronics in Clarity's spacesuit came back to life. The radio flickered on, and she immediately called out, "Irohann, can you hear me? Iroh? I must be far enough away from the Merlin Particle for my radio to work. Where are you? Did you make it? Did you see what happened to Cassie?"

  Clarity didn't wait for answers, because she couldn't let a moment of silence lapse. She couldn't let herself hear that Irohann wasn't there.

  "Did we save the universe? Did the Doraspian vessel fall into the black hole? Did we fall into it? Are we dying in a black hole, right now? Answer me, Irohann, answer me goddammit it. I'll forgive everything if you just answer me. But if you don't, heaven help me, I will take my ass on the longest vacation ever straight into the heart of the Doraspian solar system. I will visit every goddamned beautiful planet there, and I will pay my respects to Queen Doripauli just to spite you for dying. And I will do it whether I'm stuck in the pull of a black hole's event horizon or not, because if you've gone and died on me, Irohann, so help me, I will be so angry it will tear the universe apart—just like the godforsaken Merlin Particle—except worse."

  She broke down in sobs. She couldn't do it anymore. She couldn't keep yelling into the darkness, fighting off the moment of realizing she was going to die, floating alone on the edge of a black hole, not knowing if they'd saved the universe. She'd die, and she wouldn't know if there had even been a good reason for it.

  Clarity sobbed until the breathing monitors in her spacesuit warned her she was hyperventilating. She had to work at calming her breathing down, even as tears continued to stream across her face.

  As she carefully controlled her breaths, maybe, hopefully, she would find out if they'd saved the universe. Maybe when the universe shattered, she'd have the front row view. Stars would swirl. The velvety blackness of space would explode into a final glowing orange sunset.

  Clarity tried to stop crying, to let the blur of tears clear out of her eyes so she could see the stars again, before they went out forever. Instead, the pinpoints of light continued to gleam in blurry smears across her vision; she couldn't wipe the tears away from her eyes with her hand, not while wearing a spacesuit.

  "Like hell you're visiting Doraspia," Irohann's voice crackled over the radio.

  "Damn you," she answered. "I'd just gotten the tears out of my eyes. You know, so I can watch the universe fold into a paper crane around us. Or whatever it's planning to do. And now you've got me crying all over again."

  "Where are you?" Irohann asked.

  "Deep space, on the cusp of a black hole."

  "Helpful."

  "I'm done being helpful," Clarity said. "Tell me a story while the universe ends."

  "What if it doesn't end?"

  "That's a beautiful story. Tell me a longer one."

  "Once upon a time, I met a young woman whose soul was as big as the universe, and she played tag with me, running from one planet to another, until the game changed." Irohann's voice sounded hoarse. He'd been crying too. "We hadn't changed. We were still children together, even though the universe had grown up around us." The time between one sentence and the next in his story grew longer and longer. He sounded out of breath as he talked. "When the rules changed and the game became deadly, we made believe it was nothing more than a game of hide-and-seek. And we hid on the edge of a black hole, waiting to see if our friends would ever find us."

  Clarity waited a long time before asking, "Did they find us?"

  Irohann didn't answer, and Clarity closed her eyes. Her air grew stuffy. The algae-scrubbers in her spacesuit wouldn't last forever. She had been crying for a long time before Irohann's radio started working. She wondered if that meant he'd only just escaped the effects of the Merlin Particle. The fracture in the universe could be close. The fracture could be growing. Or the particle could have safely disappeared into the Devil's Radio by now, rejoined with its entangled partner particle, dancing a sub-atomic waltz for all eternity in the heart of a black hole.

  Clarity opened her eyes again, wondering if it would be for the last time. They felt so heavy. In the darkness around herself, she saw tiny specks. Tiny insectoid bodies. A small sphere of them hovered a few inches in front of her faceplate, huddled tightly together, protecting the interior bodies with an exterior shell made up from more bodies, the outer ones being sacrificed to save the inner ones. More bodies, abandoned bodies, were littered around the space surrounding her, flying slowly away from the sphere hovering in front of her faceplate. Those bod
ies had been sacrificed as fuel, launched in the opposite direction to give this remaining sphere of Mazillion the thrust necessary to bring them here. To her.

  Clarity reached her hands out and let the spacesuit gloves hover on either side of Mazillion's mouth. They couldn't buzz in the vacuum of space. They couldn't speak to her. A mouth muted, silenced by the void. But they had come to her, so they would not die alone.

  "I'd let you into my spacesuit again if I could." She mouthed the words, not sparing the extra breath it would take to put her voice into them. Mazillion wouldn't hear her either way. "But I'm too greedy. I want to save the last few seconds of life I have. Maybe I'll dream something nice... I think I'm going to fall asleep soon."

  She must have put a little voice into some of the words, because Irohann's voice answered her over the radio.

  "What's that?" He sounded groggy. He'd been asleep already.

  Her big orange star. Her red giant. She felt his fluffy arms around her, and they were dancing across the sky again. Just like in her dreams. But it was real this time. Or maybe she was dreaming. She couldn't tell the difference anymore. But she could feel Irohann's arms—or maybe just hear his voice—either way, he was here. They were together, and she could see the stars. They danced with blue sparks, shimmering like fireworks in the night.

  This was the end. It wasn't a bad way to end.

  32 Out of the Fire, Into the Frying Pan

  Clarity woke up from her dreams aboard Cassie. She recognized the soft pink light, and the way the air moved gently over her, like she could feel her starwhal breathing. One of the anachronistic patchwork quilts was pulled up to her chin, and a cluster of Mazillion's bodies in the shape of an orb rested on the pillow beside her, buzzing softly.

  "Shouldn't you be in the scullery?" she asked. Her throat was sore and scratchy. "Eating and re-growing?"

  "We are," Mazillion said.

  "How?" she asked. "That's more of you than was left alive the last time I saw you."

  The orb of Mazillion hovered above the pillow, wobbled a few feet into the air, and said, "You slept all the way home."

  "Where?" she asked.

  "Crossroads Station."

  "That's not my home."

  The orb of Mazillion flattened and elongated before reforming back into a sphere. The gesture looked like the swarm-equivalent of a human shrug. "It is where we came together."

  It is where they would come apart. The unspoken half of Mazillion's thought left Clarity cold and shivering under the cozy patchwork quilt. "You're going back to live in the arboretum? And Roscoe? Am-lei?"

  Mazillion said, "Am-lei is on Leionaia with Jeko and their daughter. Roscoe's family has moved aboard Cassie; they fit perfectly. They'll be needing this room."

  Dreading the answer, Clarity asked, "Irohann?"

  "Gone."

  To the Genie Shop. He'd have changed his body and his identity already. She would never find him again. Clarity screamed, but her voice didn't work. She tried and tried again, until she woke herself up screaming. Slick and cold with sweat; hot with stuffy air. Still staring at the stars inside a spacesuit. The stars twinkled at her from behind the small orb of Mazillion floating in the harsh vacuum of space.

  Nightmares were not a good way to end her life. Couldn't she have pleasant dreams if she was about to die?

  What had woken her? she wondered. Then she noticed what was missing. Irohann's voice. He'd been droning on and on, telling her some story or other, and she'd woken up when he'd stopped talking.

  "Iroh?" she said, but no answer came back. Then she knew she was dreaming again, because she saw Cassie's unicorn horn slicing through the space in front of her. More nightmares. She was going to dream the explosion again, relive those moments of terror. Except this time, when Cassie's horn slid past her, Clarity continued hovering, perfectly calmly in space. No cracked viewscreen; no explosion.

  The purple bulk of the starwhal passed above Clarity. She saw the pink bioluminescent glow of Cassie's open airlock, a warm marsupial pouch coming to envelope her. She had no fuel left in her spacesuit, but Cassie maneuvered the open airlock down around her and Mazillion, without Clarity moving at all. Irohann was already inside, limply plastered against the airlock's inner door.

  As the nictitating membrane of the airlock's outer door sealed around them, Clarity knew she was home. She was too exhausted to be ecstatic. She'd have to settle for feeling deeply relieved. As soon as the airlock finished cycling, filling up with precious, precious air, she ripped the helmet off of her spacesuit and gulped deeply, lapsing into a coughing fit. She'd never hated her own diaphragm more than she did right then—making it hard for her to fill her body with the infinitely precious air she needed so much.

  Her coughing settled down, and Clarity found herself on her hands and knees, still in the airlock. Four of Am-lei's talon-like feet were in front of her, and Mazillion's bodies were scattered lifelessly on the floor. She spared a glance for Irohann; he was stirring. He'd been wearing a spacesuit like Clarity. He'd be okay. He had to be. She was less sure about Mazillion.

  Clarity unzipped the front of her spacesuit and pulled her arms out, leaving the top half of the suit dangling from her waist. She gently scooped up as many of Mazillion's bodies as she could. They felt so fragile in her hands. "Help me," she rasped to Am-lei. "We need to get Mazillion to the scullery."

  Two talons grabbed Clarity's shoulders, helping to lift her up from the ground; two more grabbed her around the waist. Am-lei helped Clarity limp her way down Cassie's vein-like halls. She held her cupped hands out in front of her, filled with the tiny black flecks of Mazillion. Some of them twitched, their translucent wings spasming. Mazillion wasn't dead. Not all the way.

  In the scullery, Clarity limped over to the hollowed-out basin under the udder-like organs. She leaned against the trough and said, "Can you synthesize a bowl or something?"

  Am-lei said, "The synthesizers are down."

  Clarity had been staring at Mazillion's twitching bodies in her hands, but now she looked up to see that the control panel on the food synthesizer was dark. She looked over at the large viewscreen embedded in the curved wall and saw it was dark too. Not the intense blackness of the Devil's Radio. The plain almost-gray blackness of a dead viewscreen.

  "Are the computers working?" Clarity asked.

  "They shut down shortly before we speared the Doraspian vessel." Am-lei shifted her weight from three legs to a different three legs. "The computers came on briefly after Cassie slipped back out of subspace... but not for long."

  "Out of subspace? What?" Clarity's head hurt, probably from the oxygen deprivation while she'd been floating in space waiting to die.

  "Cassie flies through subspace," Am-lei said.

  That made sense, although Clarity hadn't actually thought about how Cassie flew faster than light-speed. "Okay, but... You didn't go anywhere."

  "We slipped into subspace with the Doraspian vessel speared on Cassie's horn, pulling the vessel along with us. Only a short jump." Am-lei's antennae bent toward each other. If they were longer, they might have twisted nervously around each other. "When we emerged, Cassie came to a full stop, and the Doraspian vessel slid off her horn, still flying toward the Devil's Radio's event horizon with enough momentum to send them over. They were damaged. They had no chance to stop the fall into the black hole."

  "You must have been awfully close to the edge of the event horizon," Clarity said. She carefully tilted one of her palms, pouring all of Mazillion's tiny bodies into her other hand. She squeezed the tip of one of the udders between her thumb and fingers in the empty hand. A few drops of golden liquid fell out onto the fingertips of her hand full of Mazillion. "Come on," she whispered to the tiny bodies. "There's food for you. Eat it and regrow."

  "We were very close," Am-lei said. "The event horizon looks like fire around the periphery of your vision when you're that close. Fire you can only see out of the corner of your eye." Am-lei's eyes had a lot of corners with their disc
o ball facets.

  "That sounds frightening." Clarity spoke the words carefully, cautiously optimistic that this story would end well. Or at least without fatal disaster. After all, Cassie had managed to come rescue her, Iroh, and Mazillion. Nonetheless, Clarity couldn't quite bring herself to ask Am-lei what had happened next. It seemed far too likely that they'd all fallen into the black hole. Maybe that was only the fear and exhaustion speaking, but Clarity couldn't shake the feeling. Everything was too quiet, too calm, given she'd just nearly died floating in space and, before that, had been standing on the bridge of a Doraspian vessel as their prisoner.

  Am-lei was trying to hard to act normal. So was Clarity. It was the kind of calm that happens in the eye of a storm, or in the moments before someone dies. Or just inside the event horizon of a black hole. Nothing should feel normal right now. Perhaps it was superstition or paranoia, but Clarity felt like the Devil's Radio was watching them, waiting to swallow them.

  They could be inside the Devil's Radio right now.

  "At least my daughter's safe," Am-lei said. "Jeko will take care of her. They'll take care of each other. I wish I were there with them on Leionaia."

  No one talks about their family like that unless they expect to never see them again.

  Maybe it was just the panic telling her that they were inside the black hole—surely there'd be a sign if they were? Crushing gravity? Death? Clarity didn't know. But even if they weren't inside the event horizon, Clarity realized, they were probably still within the gravity well of the Devil's Radio, falling toward it. And if Cassie were dead in space, the rest of them would be dead shortly too.

  Clarity heard the words, over and over in her head, insisting that she say them aloud: Are we dead in space? But she wouldn't say them. She didn't want to know. The golden dribbles on her fingertips proved Cassie was still alive. Perhaps she'd exhausted herself, dragging another vessel through subspace with her, but the plucky little starwhal would recover. Clarity couldn't lose another spaceship again so soon. She couldn't stand it if Cassie died around her, the pink bioluminescence of her walls fading and the breath-like movement of her air stilling.