Behind her, Torg came through the narrow passage left by the dismantled panel. The Dva reacted promptly, dropping their now useless tools and heading for the section of the tube flooded by the sgarfo. With trepidation she was careful not to show, Mallory followed suit. Once again mid-thigh in the freezing liquid, she turned to Torg and Squish and addressed the latter. “You’ll be able to guide me as we go?”
He replied with an affirmative chirp. She took a deep breath before pulling Rupo tightly against her and diving in. After a moment of absolute darkness, the points of light that indicated the Dvas’ locations appeared in her field of vision.
In less than a minute—a veritable eternity to Mallory—the yellow lights representing the little aliens began to disappear as they passed through the portal, emerging tens of thousands of miles away in the asteroid that contained the control node.
Mallory sped up, eager to reach fresh air. As she stepped through the dimensional door, she felt intense panic. Squish! What’s happening? She tried to go back, but it was too late: she had already emerged on the other side.
The abrupt transition between the two environments knocked her off-balance. With only one hand free, she had to choose between protecting Rupo and breaking her fall. Choosing the former, she shielded the injured Dva and smashed into the concrete, which was still covered with a thin layer of red liquid.
She remained on the ground, stunned and sitting in a pool of sgarfo. As she caught her breath, she tried to figure out what had happened when she had crossed between the asteroids. Once her breathing returned to normal, she rose cautiously. She found herself standing in the middle of a crowd of Dva. A few of them took over Rupo’s care. Somewhat relieved, Mallory turned toward the portal just in time to see Squish crawl through into the puddle on the floor. Alone. She rushed to the jufinol, reaching out, and he wrapped himself around her arm. A wave of anxiety washed over her immediately. “Where’s Torg?” she asked.
Squish was distraught. In thoughts, he communicated that the cybrid had deliberately broken away from him and pushed him through the opening, without explaining why.
Mallory stared at the portal with increasing anxiety. It remained stubbornly, uniformly black.
She was tempted to cross back through, but then reconsidered: blind and choking, she would be no help to her bodyguard, whatever had happened on the other side.
She planted her feet on the concrete floor, drew her weapon, and watched the portal.
Finally, when her nerves were stretched to the breaking point, she saw a disturbance on the mirror surface. Torg burst through, caught in a deadly embrace with a Saharj armed with a long knife.
Probably trapped in the ice, he must have freed himself when Mallory and her team entered the portal. What bad luck! she thought, before taking action. At the risk of injury, she approached close enough to touch them. “Hey, you!”
The Saharj turned his red glowing eyes to Mallory, who pushed the barrel of her gun into his mouth. She pulled the trigger, and the hypertrophic bullet forced its way down to whatever in the Saharj was equivalent to a stomach.
The result was striking. The mummy-like, sharp-toothed alien swelled suddenly like a bellows. The skeleton that protected it so well from external aggressions cracked under the internal pressure and tore through its flesh in a rain of blood and viscera. A large bluish stain spread on the surface of the sgarfo. The Saharj’s torso had disappeared, leaving only the shoulders and head. Its pelvis and a pair of legs fell several feet away.
Mallory bent over Torg, her throat knotted with concern. The Saharj’s unusual dagger had penetrated deep into the cybrid’s body, but he had taken worse blows and had always survived.
“Torg! We’re almost there. Please stand up.” She didn’t understand what was wrong. The injury wasn’t minor, but it shouldn’t have left Torg unmoving and unconscious. She examined the wound and its location again: it was about where the ribs in a human were. If the blade had… She repressed the thought, terrified that saying it would make it true. Snatching at her collar, she opened a channel to the Sirgan. “Jazz. Torg is injured, and I’m worried that a major organ has been hit.”
The Natural Intelligence responded immediately. “Move the navcom closer to him and give me a visual.”
Mallory followed Jazz’s instructions, who confirmed her fears.
“You’re right. His dorlon is perforated: he’ll be brain-dead, and his bodily functions will be suspended, until he gets a transplant.”
She looked at Torg again, while the Dva bustled around, lavishing him with what care they could provide under the circumstances.
Her voice was drawn with serious fatigue. “His… dorlon?” She was having trouble absorbing this sudden turn of events. Her invincible cybrid lay before her in some kind of coma.
“A cross between a liver and a kidney.”
Mallory, dazed, failed to react.
“Chin up, Captain! The big hairy guy’ll be fine. Look at what you’ve left behind you.”
Jazz added a video stream to the communications channel, and an image appeared in the pilot’s field of vision. What she saw was both fascinating and terrifying.
At the other end of the asteroid belt, a tiny utility ship flew at top speed between the enormous rocks. Laorcq and Delvo were in hot pursuit of Vassili. The Dva handled the pod’s controls. He seemed perfectly at ease, and besides, Laorcq had no idea how to operate the frail craft. All of his hopes rested on Delvo’s abilities. Unable to stand it any longer, he asked, “Are we going to be able to catch him or not?”
“We’re on the correct flight path, but he will soon be able to engage the synergetic group. If not for the battle being waged by the Vohrn and Saharj, which is interfering with most of the navigable vectors, he’d be long gone.”
Laorcq growled in frustration. Vassili’s ship was an Antarian jet. If they didn’t catch him now, he’d open up a days-long lead on them. He was not going to let Vassili escape with Alrine. There had to be a way! A thought dawned on him. “What an idiot! The Vohrn.” Then, addressing Delvo, “Open all the comm channels! We’re going to call for reinforcements.”
A minute later, the vessel sent out a message from Laorcq on all frequencies. While his message repeated on a loop, he stared anxiously at the holographic projection hanging over the Dva’s console. He was starting to expect that the symbol representing Vassili’s ship would disappear before help arrived.
Several thousand miles away, a Vohrn fighter left the field of combat to respond to the human’s request. Onboard, the pilot—whose life had been saved by Laorcq and Mallory during the attempted genocide on Kenval—broadcast a response on the same frequency.
“Warrior Rasolk in pursuit of the designated target. Your orders, Commander Adrinov?”
“Stop it from getting away. I’ll take care of the rest.”
The Vohrn warrior took off after the target at top speed.
The fighter looked like a pebble with pointed tips. It flew through the void, plunged into the asteroid belt, and settled itself into the Antarian jet’s wake.
Rasolk focused on the image of his prey’s enormous engine on his control panel. He was in range in no time.
The “jet” deserved its name in terms of long-distance flight. With a synergetic group accounting for eighty percent of its mass, however, it was painfully slow when conducting standard maneuvers.
The Vohrn locked his targeting system and opened fire. A glowing warhead emerged from the fighter’s nose and hit the huge ring formed by the engine. The helpless jet continued along its trajectory, no longer able to pick up speed.
Onboard the Dva capsule, Laorcq struggled to contain his impatience while Delvo maneuvered slowly to approach Vassili’s ship. Finally, he could make out the disabled vessel’s hull.
The attack from the Vohrn fighter had sliced the synergetic group practically in two and had damaged the maneuvering thrusters.
The crew compartment, protruding from the gigantic tube, only had one airlock.
Laorcq examined it. As he feared, the radically different design of the Dva device made it impossible for him to use it. He tried another approach. His gaze lingered on a smooth panel: the tailgate of the cargo hold. Compared to the belly of a freighter, it was ridiculously small, since the jet was primarily intended for personnel transport.
He sighed. It’ll be tight. Turning to Delvo, he asked him to tune into the hailing frequency. Once certain that Vassili would receive his message, he said, “You’re trapped. Decompress your hold and open up.”
To his surprise, Vassili replied immediately, “I have your friend. I suggest you let me go, and if all goes well, I won’t kill her.”
Of course. Laorcq suspected he would try to blackmail him. He played his one and only card. “The Vohrn aren’t susceptible to such arguments. Even if I try to intervene, you won’t be allowed to leave this system alive. On the other hand, if you touch Alrine, I’ll kill you myself.”
Vassili was silent for a moment and then capitulated. “I have no choice then. Okay. I’m opening up.”
After the conversation, Laorcq couldn’t shake a vague feeling of discomfort. This is far too easy. He drew his gun and checked how many bullets he had left, while Delvo maneuvered the capsule into the jet. The opening was just wide enough. The small vessel made a low knocking sound as it came into contact with the floor, and the engine shut off. The sudden absence of vibration left Laorcq with a feeling of emptiness. The hold closed and the air pressure rose to an acceptable level.
Accompanied by the Dva, he walked to the cockpit through the ship’s only corridor.
Vassili greeted them with a look of disdain, carelessly leaning against one of the partitions separating them from space.
Laorcq knew that the individual in front of him was not really human. He had a painful and vivid memory of the ease with which he had gotten the better of him and Alrine by making them believe he was at their mercy. While keeping his gun pointed at him, he maintained a safe distance and said, “Where is Alrine?”
“In one of the cabins. The Saharj weren’t very nice to her, so I advise you to leave her in stasis for the time being.”
Images flashed through Laorcq’s mind. A Saharj dagger plunged into her flesh. One of their grinning faces, red eyes lacking any emotion. The blade abruptly torn out, the blood that dripped from the wound.
If that’s what had happened to Alrine… But she was strong. As much as Mallory or more. Nevertheless, Vassili’s words struck Laorcq in the guts like a spear of ice. Resisting the temptation to empty his magazine into the modified human’s abdomen, he retorted, “The Saharj are sadistic, but I haven’t forgotten who turned us over to them.”
With his free hand, he waved to Delvo to move aside and left the passage in turn. He made sure to keep his gun pointed at Vassili to prevent him from getting any closer. “Come out of there, so the Dva can frisk you.”
The man complied. Standing in the corridor, he let Delvo examine him vainly in search of a weapon.
Laorcq was still concerned by the situation. His instincts and combat experience were screaming that Vassili’s docility concealed his true intentions. Moreover, he realized that asking the Dva to search him had been a big mistake: he could have taken him hostage and threatened to kill him. As a result of his irritation, the veteran’s knuckles whitened around the butt of his revolver. In his haste to find his companion, he had acted contrary to common sense. However, Vassili didn’t lift a finger against Delvo, letting what seemed like a golden opportunity slip away.
On guard, Laorcq locked his prisoner in an empty compartment near the cockpit. Normally used for storing equipment, the door couldn’t be opened from the inside, making it a perfect improvised cell.
Once Vassili had been neutralized, Laorcq relaxed slightly. He searched the vessel and found Alrine’s stasis chamber in one of the cabins. The large, sarcophagus-like box stood on its end. All of the lights on the side of the machine were green. He ran a hand over the front of the box, which became transparent at face level. Inside, the policewoman seemed to be in a deep sleep, a long blonde lock hanging across her forehead. Laorcq lingered over her features, which were captivating despite the bruises on her jaw and her broken nose.
Speaking to him from the passageway, Delvo intruded on his contemplation.
“Something serious has occurred in the belt. The Saharj are very disturbed.”
Laorcq frowned. What now? He turned his back on the sleeping woman and left the room. One thing at a time: first to deliver Vassili to the Vohrn.
“Okay, let’s head for the cruiser.”
The human and the Dva settled in at the jet’s controls. This time the roles were reversed—Delvo watched Laorcq. He didn’t have Mallory’s talent for flying, but he managed to steer the damaged ship in the right direction. He engaged the maneuvering thrusters along an approximately correct vector before they stopped working for good. Escorted by the Vohrn fighter, they waited for Hanosk to pick them up.
Meanwhile, Vassil contemplated the walls of the “prison” where Laorcq and the Dva had locked him. He could easily tear through the metal panels with one hand and kill the scarred man, as he had done with the Saharj during his escape. He was abstaining for a very simple reason: it wouldn’t have served his interests.
While flying the jet, he had had an epiphany about the Vohrn cruiser’s arrival: the huge ship was perfect. Why create his own species of biogenic warriors on a distant world? Taking control of a vessel that could hold an entire microcosm was a much better alternative.
Instead of killing Laorcq and his alien comrade, he let them take him exactly where he wanted to go: to the Urkein’Naak.
Jazz shared the video stream with Mallory. She saw an asteroid and the Saharj flagship trapped by the frozen sgarfo. Nothing was moving, so she said, “I don’t see anything special.”
“Just wait. All of my sensors indicate intense activity. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The Natural Intelligence’s last words were uttered in a distorted voice. Mallory guessed he was under the influence of the chemical cocktail that accelerated his reasoning abilities. Having become comfortable in the Saharj data network, he combed through it meticulously, gathering all possible information in a few tenths of a second.
In the altered state induced by the stimulants, Jazz was able to fully leverage the processing resources at his disposal on the Sirgan. The conclusion came quickly but was hard to believe.
“Captain, this missile is the worst thing I’ve ever seen! It has created a rip in the very fabric of the universe.”
Before Mallory’s eyes, the holographic projection changed several times. The Natural Intelligence had managed to access the cameras on the Saharj ship. He flipped quickly between them until he found one that confirmed his theory.
The transmission had almost been cut off in midstream, but enough remained. The fabric of space as humans knew it had been torn. A passage hardly bigger than the tip of a needle now connected two dimensions.
Slowly, inexorably, the matter near the tear was being absorbed. The air in the compartment housing the missile was sucked out with unimaginable force.
Mallory felt cold fear in her guts, and her tattoos retracted into tiny rosebuds in response. For a pressure difference alone to cause such a violent reaction, the other side would have to be the absolute negation of all existence, an infinite absence of anything.
Jazz commented on the video stream while he switched between different points of view. “The numbers are staggering. In comparison, the vacuum of space is teeming with life.”
She gazed at the images in silence. No words seemed appropriate to her in the face of such chaos. The hardest elements underwent a sudden transformation at the molecular level as they came into contact with the breach. They shattered into myriad crystals, which splintered in turn, repeating the cycle until even steel turned to vapor.
Devoured from within by the unknown weapon, the Saharj flagship began to collapse in o
n itself. It looked as if a black hole had suddenly appeared, followed by the complete disintegration of everything nearby. Gradually, the tear spread beyond the warship and attacked the asteroid and the surrounding area.
Rock disintegrated, metal twisted, and the asteroid’s component matter and everything within a sixty-mile radius was swallowed by the rupture opened by the detonation of the missile. She saw boulders the size of ships shatter like clay under the influence of the strange death machine. Normally indestructible masses of rock disappeared as easily as paper, over and over again. Thick steel beams reinforcing the inside of the hollow asteroid stretched and melted before sliding into the breach.
It defied all reason. She had the impression that a whole section of space had been sliced off by a cosmic giant like a piece of paper, which he then crumpled and crushed into a tiny ball.
Through her link with the jufinol, Mallory felt discomfort and widespread pain. The Saharj aboard the flagship! Their suffering is so intense that Squish is sensing it directly.
Caught up in the maelstrom striving to compress millions of tons of rock into the size of a pinhead, they were effectively being tortured to death.
Wanting to help Squish withstand the torment flowing through his telepathic hypersensitivity, Mallory made a serious mistake. She opened her mind and reached out to the small animal cringing in her arms at the sudden influx of pain. Losing control of the link, she was caught up in the whirlwind of suffering. She could feel the Saharj succumbing one by one.
They reflexively linked to the gestalt. As they fought the Vohrn, their compatriots could not block out the torrent of pain, which spread like wildfire through the shared mental space. The collective consciousness took the full brunt of the deaths. The tortured Saharj were spreading chaos through the entire fleet.
With an effort of will, Mallory managed to isolate and protect the jufinol by dampening the gestalt’s presence. She found herself on her knees, Squish nestled in her arms. The Dva around her watched in silence: hundreds of yellow eyes gazed at her.
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