“Why not?” He raised an empty glass to the servant. “Another?”
“Excellent,” Moss said. “Everyone else, please commiserate, celebrate, inebriate. Whatever suits. We live another day.”
Moss was right: The view from the balcony rocked. Stretching far out onto the grounds, a still lake illuminated from beneath the surface, creating the illusion of stars twinkling from a subterranean galaxy. Beyond the forest, Boston Prefecture lit the sky in golds, reds, and silver. This view beat the Pynn compound hands-down.
“What do you think?” Moss asked.
“I still think it’s all a damn dream, to be honest. This is the cool part. Back at the club, not so much.”
Moss stunned Michael with a supportive rub on the shoulder.
“It’s a great irony, Michael. We created a paradise, but we live in a nightmare.” Moss set down his drink on the balustrade and dropped his pipe into a jacket pocket. Then he sighed. “Listen, I want you to know something from my heart. What you did tonight ranks up there with the greatest raw courage I’ve seen in my life.
“I was in the Guard for eight years – only two of which were satisfying – and this idea of warriors built of superhuman courage is a myth. It’s not courageous to wear an impregnable bodysuit, fire weapons that render you invincible, and slaughter an enemy incapable of winning. But tonight, from the moment you made yourself a target on that stage, right to the very end, you displayed something I haven’t seen in a man in a long time. Thank you, Michael.” He extended his hand. “Thank you for my life.”
Michael took his hand, the grip resolute. He was too tired for the proper words, and the moment had no precedent.
“I don’t know what to say, Mr. Moss. You’re welcome? It’s just … nearabout every Chancellor I’ve ever known was … well …”
“Well, what?”
“Kind of an asshole, to be honest.”
Moss smiled crooked. “I’ve noticed you throw that word around.”
“Can’t think of a better one. Look, I trust one Chancellor. The woman I love. We’ve been through it all together. But even she had some of that asshole gene till I got to know her better. You … dude, you almost seem like you mean what you say.”
“Almost? Hmmph.” He sipped his drink. “I understand, Michael. You and I stand on opposite ends of a long bridge. We won’t cross it in a single night. You won’t trust me until I fulfill my promise.”
Michael pulled on the pipe and inhaled. “So, uh, what you said back in there? You’re going to take our platform seriously?”
“My debt demands it. And frankly, it’s something we should have done as a Chancellory long ago.”
“Then why hasn’t it happened?”
“Take a seat.” He led them to a pair of high-backed chairs. “Michael, I know shards of your story and what you sacrificed by coming from an Earth that does not officially exist. But I have two questions, and I need honesty.”
“Reckon I’ll do my best, Mr. Moss.”
“Finnegan. Please. You’ve earned the right. Now, to question one. Why do you fight and kill for the Solomons?”
Michael stopped his glass shy of his lips. The answer should have been easy, but the words arrived in a jumbled mess.
“Reckon it’s complicated. Solomons deserve better, and I’m one of them. Anything I can do to make a difference …”
Moss wagged a finger. “No, no. You see, the problem is you are not actually one of them. Not in the truest sense. All Solomons on Earth are born to the tri-crest. Except you. My understanding is you could have returned through the Interdimensional Fold. Still can. Yet you remain – perhaps for love, yes – but you fight harder and sacrifice more than ninety-nine percent of gene-born Solomons. Again I ask: Why?”
This time, the words flowed without hesitation or calculation.
“Because I’m a man, and I should never be held second to anyone. This is my home, Finnegan. I live here. I die here. I’m worth more than the Chancellory says. All us Solomons are. I couldn’t change anything on first Earth if I tried. But here, this is a fight we can win. Chancellors need us, and we need them.”
Moss never took his eyes off Michael. “And this first Earth, as you call it? Were you second class there as well?”
“The law said I wasn’t, but the truth said something else.”
“I see. Answer me this. If you could lay down your life, knowing it would bring about universal equity, end the civil war, and protect Samantha, would you do it?”
Though late at night, his blood drenched in liquor and poltash, the weight of three killings upon him, Michael saw clearly.
“You wouldn’t have to ask twice, dude.”
Moss stared out toward the city. “You are the man I thought you were. I saw it in your eyes when you walked into the observatory. When I was nineteen, like you, I was mindlessly slaughtering indigos. I felt deep down this was the wrong fight, always had been. But I wasn’t willing to die for a new reality. To reset our future, end all this madness, we must find a few like-minded Chancellors. Right off hand, no one comes to mind.”
“Ain’t that the damn truth.” He set his second empty glass on a side table. “But I’ll bet you something, Finnegan. We stay out here all night, drinking and smoking and talking, I’ll bring you around to my way of thinking. Come sunrise, you’ll be a new man.”
“I’ll be asleep in my chair, as will you. But point taken.”
Michael steeled himself for what came next.
“So, what is it, Finnegan? What’s the biggest obstacle we got to jump over to make this right?”
“Unfortunately, it is the most change-resistant wall any society must face. It’s the reason Solomons serve Chancellors; the reason peacekeepers kill indigos; the reason the Chancellory ignores truth in the face of its own demise.” He sighed. “Tradition.”
“Makes sense. You lot been running the whole show for three thousand years. I reckon that throne ain’t big enough for partners.”
“No, it’s not. And now these terrorists are complicating the picture. I guarantee the Chancellors who want me dead are willing to sacrifice our identity to become a race of hybrids and immortals – so long as we don’t give up the throne. They want me gone because I am subsidizing private ventures to hunt down these monsters. The Guard can’t protect us, and we cannot allow these abominations to replace us. Michael, I know your connection to James Bouchet, and how you disavowed him long ago. But I have to wonder. If my private teams were to find him and kill him, how would you feel?”
Michael looked to the stars, remembering the vow he made long ago on a Pacific beach. His mind was clear.
“I’d ask to see his head. Then I’d thank you for saving me a trip.”
He conjured an image of that special moment, but Michael knew ridding the Collectorate of his former No. 1 would not be so easy.
He realized just how difficult moments later when David Ellstrom, Moss’s Chief of Staff, interrupted them.
“Sir,” he told Moss. “We received an encoded message to private stacks.” Ellstrom’s eyes twitched in Michael’s direction. “It’s Vasily Station. We have a problem.”
9
The Spearhead
3.6 Astronomical Units from Vasily Station
Three minutes before attack
V ALENTIN BOUCHET HATED THIS PART, even after surviving forty times – and despite his brother’s assurance of a full-proof design. A guarantee of success, he told James, did not lessen the agony of one’s insides being displaced. But the effect only lasts for three milliseconds, James argued. There is no long-term damage.
“You’re immortal,” the older brother reminded Valentin. “You’ll always be in pain, and it will never make a difference.”
Valentin winced every time he heard his brother’s dismissive tone. The pain caused by entering the Slope’s aperture field lingered for hours, sometimes days. A dull ache, as if suffering a chronic but undiagnosed muscular disorder. Yet Valentin resisted the urge to complain. He w
as a soldier. More to the point: Admiral of his brother’s seven-ship fleet and hero to the five hundred immortals liberated from the colonies.
Not that complaining would do any good. The bond which carried the brothers through the wild opening days of their insurrection faded after James implemented a regimented chain of command. Valentin understood the need for a hierarchy as they gained assets and allies, but he missed those free-flowing early days when they wrote their game plan on the fly.
Valentin studied an array of holoscreen analytics from his command station on the forward deck of Spearhead, a retrofitted cargo ship stolen six months after escape from Earth. The data tracked the interstitial zone between Spearhead and its destination, charted the stability of the magnetic cloak called Black Forest, and monitored the radiation signatures of Spearhead’s wormhole drivers.
He understood the science behind these analytics, though it took weeks to wrap his head around concepts James mastered in hours after peering into the heart of the Jewel of Eternity. But Valentin struggled to comprehend the intense waves of quantum algorithms flickering across the screen like so much indiscriminate code. Inestimable calculations were charting the ship’s bending, spiraling tunnel through layers of dark matter followed by an exit into normalized space. The math would predict their exit to the square meter – with a precision that had not failed since early test-runs.
“Timing,” James insisted. “This must be perfect. Show them what we can do. Send her a message.”
James never explained his recent fixation on Samantha Pynn. Valentin insisted this mission was a distraction, but his brother claimed the future was coming together at last.
“This is one of the most important dominoes,” James said. “It will set so many steps into motion. No mistakes, Valentin.”
Or else …
James’s tone suggested the latter, although Valentin warned himself against paranoia. He’s my brother. He’s our salvation. He was also a fully evolved hybrid who owed as much allegiance to the Jewels as to humans. The volcanic glow in the corners of his eyes offered a continuous reminder.
Valentin swiveled about and observed the ship’s small crew.
Ulrich Rahm, one of the original ten Jewel hybrids, pivoted in the navigation cylinder, held steady by a rotating still-seat as he swiped through data streams. The three-dimensional vector graphic of their next wormhole displayed the event horizon on either end of their journey and the slender tunnel they would cut through sublayers of dark matter. Ulrich beamed while dancing his hands like a symphonic conductor. Ulrich was the happiest, most devoted of the hybrids from the day Valentin, James, and Ophelia Tomelin rescued him. No one took to the new quantum math like Ulrich.
“Drivers are initiated, Admiral,” the navigator announced. “Once the aperture is open, Slope time will be 22.45 seconds.”
Valentin turned to his Chief of Intelligence, Harrison Malwood, the first convert from among disaffected former peacekeepers. Harrison, a surly man who went native on Qasi Ransome after botched recursion therapy took his left eye, sat strapped at the flight deck’s rear bulkhead, racing through a holocube. His lips moved as he communicated with his contacts on Vasily Station.
“Vasily has been disabled,” Harrison said. “Our operatives are now engaged with the targets. I am feeding the platform rotation coordinates to the navcom. Ulrich, the operatives will be expelled in seventy-five seconds. Adjust your calculations.”
This must be perfect.
And yet, the physics seemed all but impossible to Valentin. Even the most precise calculations suggested their bid to save their operatives and flee Vasily command space in less than a minute faced daunting odds.
Why, brother? Why must we take these chances?
Valentin cast his doubts aside and strapped himself in.
“You’re clear to catalyze,” he told Ulrich. “Open the aperture.”
“Time to give these people a show they won’t forget,” the navigator said. “Catalyst drivers are spinning the magnetic field. Now infusing dark matter substrata. Slope aperture opens in twenty, nineteen, eighteen …”
Valentin cleared his mind of all emotional clutter as Ulrich announced the countdown. Sometimes, when he closed his eyes at launch, the disruption seemed less agonizing.
“Eight, seven, six … Slope time variation to 22.43 seconds … three, two, one …”
Spearhead lurched, as if thrown forward and hurled backward simultaneously. The aperture opened around the ship and consumed it. Valentin felt his lungs rise into his throat, his intestines twist around his spine, and his ears implode into his nasal cavity. Seconds later, he had a headache but no organs out of place. He opened his eyes and beheld the Slope – a tunnel through space no wider than the ship itself. A muddy haze, sometimes brightened by the flicker of nearby stars, offered no sense of movement. Only the turbulence caused by Spearhead bouncing off tunnel walls suggested travel. Unlike the Fulcrum, which existed long before the Collectorate and accommodated massive interstellar traffic, traveling the Slope was an exercise in claustrophobia. James once explained how localized wormholes could only be generated with apertures the size of the vessels which catalyze them.
“This will be good for us,” his brother claimed. “They’ll have no way to track us until we’re on top of them.”
The claim proved true, allowing victory upon victory. Every liberation, every supply or reconnaissance mission, every ambush, every slaughter. Consistently, the Guard or regional security forces mobilized too late. The same would happen at Vasily, even though it was already under assault. The only question for Valentin: Would Spearhead leave with two new passengers?
At 22.43 seconds after the aperture opened, it closed, spitting the ship into open space. A blast of brilliant light and a shattering burst of thunder followed the same forward/backward lurch.
Full stop. Through the starboard viewport, Valentin saw Vasily, the oldest and grandest transfer station in the Collectorate. He also saw bodies hurtling uncontrollably from the facility’s inoperative ring.
He fingered ship diagnostics, confirmed position, and raised the central cargo hold’s cascade barrier. The starboard bulkhead pixelated. Several bodies raced past within meters of Spearhead.
“We have iso on our people,” Ulrich announced. “Pushing lateral thrusters by seven degrees. They’re coming in fast, might have a hard bounce against the portside bulkhead.”
Valentin opened a new window and saw the operatives, both in full-body shells trying to fight inertia by firing weapons. They came in hot but dead center through the open bulkhead. He closed the portal and brought down the cascade barrier. He turned to Ulrich, who offered a thumbs-up.
“Pivoting. Reverse aperture catalyzing. Drivers spinning the magnetic field. Dark matter substrata infusing. Hang on back there,” Ulrich said, presumably to their operatives. “Ten, nine, eight …”
Valentin made the mistake of thinking about home. He hadn’t been this close to Earth since escaping aboard the Passaic Dawn. He had no regrets and long ago pushed aside any distress over the death toll beneath SkyTower. But even venturing into the neighborhood felt …
His unexpected distraction made the pain of the aperture shock wave more acute. He cursed his stupidity.
Seconds later, the ship exited the Slope at its original staging coordinates and entered the protective cloak of Black Forest. Valentin checked the cargo hold’s data. Their operatives were unharmed, the cabin pressurized. He unbuckled and fought a sharper headache as he led Harrison Malwood to meet the agents. He stopped en route and whispered to his intelligence chief.
“If they made any mistakes, we vent them. Understand?”
As they entered the hold, a woman and a man who spent months in the fleet with Harrison and James before their mission, were unshelling. Their bodysuits, designed by fleet engineers on schematics James learned from the Jewel, dissolved like skin flaying from an animal. The shells dropped as Valentin offered each agent a side-nod. They responded in kind, no
physical or emotional hints of the terror they wreaked on Vasily.
“Congratulations,” Valentin said. “I’m sure Brother James will be grateful for a job well done. Is Samantha Pynn alive?”
The agents turned to each other and smiled.
“And well,” they said in unison, as if rehearsed. The larger agent – a female scientist who carried a blast rifle – added on. “But Patricia Wylehan is no longer an issue.”
“Wylehan? Samantha’s aide? You assassinated her?”
The woman frowned. “Of course. Brother James was specific.”
Valentin turned to Harrison, whose surviving eye expressed surprise. “You knew about this?”
“No. Brother James must have issued this directive himself.”
“I see.”
But Valentin didn’t see. Another mission, more secrets.
And still, the headaches. This time, Valentin vowed not to hold back. He was going to talk – and James was going to listen.
10
On approach to the Salvation Fleet
100,000 kilometers from Nexus One-Three
V ALENTIN WITNESSED A SPECTACLE when Spearhead emerged from its wormhole at mission’s end. The Enfidi Horse Nebula, a galactic painting in starry waves of pinks and purples, filled the viewport. The nebula kept his people company while they hid from the Collectorate in this dead system off an uncharted Nexus point.
“Could anything be more beautiful?” He asked Harrison Malwood, who shrugged his shoulders.
“Not bad,” the cynical intel chief said, “but it’s no more than illuminated gas and dust. To my mind, true beauty is what humans create out of nothing.”
“Such as?”
“These wormholes are a start. Don’t know why you complain about them, Admiral. The aperture doesn’t bother me in the least.”
Valentin winced. “When have you ever heard me complain?”
“I hear everything, Admiral. That’s my job.”
Now it made sense. “Ah. My brother has you watching me?”
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