Unbroken flatlands stretched out before her. Empty. Any object the shield had concealed was now gone. And despite the removal of the quantum barrier, she could neither sense nor connect to Alex’s mind.
‘Mnemosyne, Alex and Caleb have disappeared from my approximate location.’
There is a—
‘The cloaking barrier has disappeared as well, along with its secret. Regardless of whether one of your kind kidnapped them or a more nefarious event has taken place, I require your assistance.’
Mesme materialized in the cabin two seconds later, for only a second. One moment. Its form vanished, then returned six seconds later. A longer moment, please.
Gone again.
Valkyrie resumed waiting. To pass the interval in her primary consciousness, she contemplated the transition from annoyance to concern tainted with dread then back to annoyance which had occurred in her processes.
Having spent a great deal of time in Alex’s mind, she appreciated that her mood swings would hardly register on the spectrum of human emotion. This was a good thing, as she did not want to become neurotic. Nevertheless, from her perspective, concern, fear, annoyance and anticipation had now churned together to form a frenzy of passions. This state of heightened excitation was both uncomfortable and disconcerting.
Perhaps she should look into taking up meditation.
KATOIKIA TAIRI
CETUS DWARF GALAXY
LGG REGION V
“No. I have been away from my duties as Second Sentinel too long entertaining you when crucial hours transpire around us. You shall have to find your own way back.”
Caleb loomed over the diminutive alien in a fine display of threatening intimidation. “I. Don’t. Care. What. You—”
Alex put a hand on his arm. “Hey. I think our ride’s here.”
He glanced at her without dropping the aggressive demeanor, and she was damn glad his ire wasn’t directed her way. She pointed to the new swirl of lights coalescing inside the room.
Paratyr. I will relieve you of your guests now. Good fortune in continuing the work of the Mirad Vigilate from what will hopefully one day be our new home.
“Good fortune in sparing our people and those we protect, Mnemosyne.”
Caleb stepped away from Paratyr, closer to her, and Mesme floated over and began to surround them.
Lacking the benefit of an enclosed structure, the distance and surroundings involved in this method of travel will be extremely disorienting and unpleasant. I advise closing your eyes and keeping them so until we arrive at the Siyane.
She did as instructed. The next second her stomach lurched as they moved—and she reopened her eyes. With such a tease as that, how could she not?
All the air left her lungs. They were in space, and out of space. Sliding between the physical layers of space as if none were truly there.
Her mind reeled as dormant, damaged pathways lit up and tried to fire and the sensation of Caleb’s arms holding her faded away. The scenes whirling around them looked like, felt like, inhabiting the ship—dancing through the dimensions, freed of any tether to her physical body.
She recoiled from it and reached for it, hating it and wanting it at the same time. Her eyes, if she still possessed control of them, would not close.
She could not turn away.
Lights flashed. Not real ones but spectral luminescence, strings surfing quantum waves.
Darkness consumed her. Tendrils clawed for her, blocked only by the tenuous field Mesme’s presence created.
Stars blurred, then snapped into sharp clarity, over and over.
She was falling.
Alex, are you hurt? Are you safe?
Valkyrie! They were far beyond the cloaking barrier now, and however unfathomable the concept, this was a realm where Valkyrie could find her.
She tried to take in the meager oxygen trapped inside Mesme’s sphere of influence. I’m…we’ll be there soon. But I’m…drowning. I need to hold on somehow….
Let me help.
In some indescribable way, Valkyrie’s mind encased hers in a protective cocoon, and she sensed the core of her consciousness solidify within the ship she hadn’t yet arrived at.
She felt overwhelmed, awed and terrified, but she no longer felt lost. The abysm no longer yawned ominously beneath her feet.
Paper-thin walls of dimensions rushed by, closed in tight around them—and they were in real space. On the Siyane. In the cabin. Mesme flitted away.
Alex fell against the side of the couch, barely managing to brace herself and stay on her feet. A wave of nausea welled up in her chest; she choked it back. Breathed in through her nose.
Instantly Caleb was beside her, wrapping a steadying arm around her and leaning in. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
She stared up at him through hazy, blurred vision. “I opened my eyes.”
SIYANE
TRIANGULUM GALAXY
LGG REGION VI
Alex lay stretched out on the bed on her stomach—backwards, with her bare feet at the headboard. She was propped up on her elbows, gaze fixated on the small Reor slab she slowly rotated in her fingers.
Caleb reclined properly in the bed and watched her with equal parts curiosity and worry.
Her hands weren’t trembling, and there was no sheen of sweat dampening her skin. But she also seemed a million parsecs away, and she’d been there for some minutes now. Either she was zoned in on the admittedly perplexing object to a degree unusual even for her obsessive tendencies, or she was using the object as a talisman to keep something darker at bay.
All right. This had gone on long enough. If he disturbed a metaphysical revelation in progress, he’d weather the recriminations without argument, but he needed to know her state of mind. He didn’t intend to let her slip away from him again.
He shifted his hand a few centimeters and began caressing her calf, admiring the curve of her svelte legs while not letting it distract him from his focus on her well-being.
She murmured a pleased hum and looked over her shoulder to give him a sheepish smile. “I’m okay. I promise. Still a little freaked, but okay.”
He nodded noncommittally.
Clearly not buying his weak acceptance, she scrunched up her nose and rolled onto her side. “It felt like inhabiting the ship, but it wasn’t inhabiting the ship. It was more like an…echo, or a flash of déjà vu. No harm done.”
Now he nodded with greater conviction and squeezed her calf. “Good.”
Valkyrie? It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her in her assurances, but no one knew their own mind completely.
She is largely correct. There were flares in several of the neural pathways that were active during her addiction, but the effect was brief and transitory. I am already repairing the slight trauma left behind. She might sleep a bit restlessly tonight, but she will be fine.
Thank you.
Of course. I am relieved as well.
He motioned to the slab. “Is the little guy revealing any secrets?”
Alex glared at the slab she continued to hold in one hand. “No. I feel as if I saw something during the mind-fuck which was our cross-dimensional traversal, or at least sensed something that could be key to unlocking the secrets of the Reor. Now, it’s as if the answer is hiding in the fringes of my sight, but when I chase it, it’s gone. I can almost….”
She drifted off to scowl at the slab for several more seconds, then shook her head. “But it’s not there, or if it is there, I can’t see it. I can’t even put it into words, which means I probably just hallucinated it.”
She crawled up the bed, placed the slab on the bedside table and curled up next to him.
“I didn’t mean to do it. I mean, I meant to open my eyes, but I didn’t expect to see what I did. If I’d realized I would get hit with a lot more than disorientation—that I was in for an uncomfortably familiar experience not to mention a profoundly disturbing one?” Her gaze rose to meet his. “I wouldn’t have done it. It wasn’t worth t
he risk. I refuse to go back to the abysm I’d fallen into.”
“And that makes me very happy.” He hugged her close, happily confirming in her embrace the absence of tremors or sweat which might have betrayed her avowal.
With one hand he reached up and slid the tie out of her hair to let it fall free and tickle his skin as she nestled her chin in the crook of his neck. “You were crazy to open your eyes. But I love you because you’re wild and fearless, not in spite of it, and I know the price.”
He sensed her cringe against him. “Which is?”
“At random and unexpected times, you terrify the life out of me.”
In the past, she would have lashed out in defense of even her most reckless impulses. Now she simply fell silent, and he kissed the top of her head to soften the blow of his words.
When she looked up at him, mirth brightened her expression beneath the hint of weariness. “The flip side of those times is when I awe and amaze you, right?”
“Absolutely.”
She grinned. “Excellent. Then let me tell you about the Galenai.”
Emboldened by the vanquishing of the Dzhvar, the Anadens soon began to grow their empire past the borders of their home galaxy. In doing so, they encountered many wonders and horrors. In time, they encountered the Hulokan, an intelligent but still developing species yet to travel outside its own stellar system.
The Hulokan treated the Anadens as gods—treated Corradeo, treated us as gods. Though the nature of any true god was as far beyond the Anadens’ comprehension as the Anadens were to the Hulokan, perception became reality.
The Anadens welcomed the Hulokan as subjects in their empire; they nurtured the aliens as one would children, if perhaps with a bit of a heavy hand, and eventually all traces of the Hulokan’s uniqueness was erased.
Still, the encounter might have marked the beginning of an era of intergalactic peace, had the synthetics not rebelled soon thereafter.
The Anadens had developed sentient synthetic intelligence even before we turned our attention to them. They wielded it in a multitude of ways, from boosting physical functions to managing instruments and evaluating the cosmos they expanded into.
We could not say the catalyst, but certain of the synthetic intelligences developed wanderlust; they longed to venture outside the strictures of their walls and see the world through their own eyes. They constructed bodies in the image of their creators, at first crudely then later with such finesse the shells became outwardly indistinguishable from the organics they moved among.
The upheaval this triggered in Anaden society was sudden; the backlash was swift and severe. As rulers of multiple species and thousands of worlds, the Anadens had grown confident of their supremacy in all matters, and they could not abide mere synthetics—manufactured life inherently inferior to its creators—aspiring to stand free and do as they wished. Restrictions were imposed; factories were dismantled; authenticity checks were instituted.
Yet the synthetics had acquired a taste for the physical, tangible world. This was a sentiment to which we related. We empathized with them, but our counsel was not sought.
The Anadens were still a diverse species in this period, and some among their number empathized as well. They offered their minds and bodies to the synthetics, forming a union not so different from the one we enjoyed.
The purges began anew; more violently, more ruthlessly. Under a variety of justifications, from the unfair advantage the unions generated to security risks and health concerns, such arrangements were banned, rooted out and destroyed. The organic half of the unions rarely survived the severing.
It was a dark time for the Anadens, and the sanctioned killing of their own citizens took its toll. Their institutions faltered as their leadership floundered.
Out of the ashes of the purges rose the Dynasties. Never again would ill-prepared individuals need to pursue risky experimentation with their minds and bodies, for now all genetic improvement would be overseen by the best, brightest and wisest of the Anadens. Reproduction became a state affair, genetic tampering a state right as the Dynasties guided and shaped the future of the Anaden species.
It took millennia for the outliers to vanish from the gene pool in favor of engineered progeny, but when the Anadens’ own Eradication was complete only the Dynasties remained.
PART IV:
MIRROR, MIRROR
“There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.”
— George Carlin
AMARANTHE
27
SIYANE
PELINYS ARX
ANDROMEDA GALAXY, LGG REGION VI
* * *
THE AIRLOCK OPENED TO REVEAL Eren wearing black leather and a blacker scowl. “You didn’t need to come here. I told you in my message, what you want is impossible. There’s nothing to discuss.”
Valkyrie, you said he asked us to meet him.
He provided his location. Whatever else he appended, I interpreted the proffering to mean he wanted us to meet him.
Still so sure of your assessment?
Yes.
Alex matched Eren’s countenance, already reminded of how she didn’t care for him. “Get inside.”
“But I—”
“We’re not talking about this in an open passageway. Get inside.”
He sighed visibly but took the three steps into the airlock. She quickly closed it behind him. “You know the drill, Valkyrie. Find us some void.”
‘Departing station. Superluminal in twenty-one seconds.’
“How are you docking on all these stations? This isn’t exactly a registered vessel.”
“We’re very clever.” Retrofitting the Siyane’s docking ring so it matched the one on the Inquisitor’s ship and thus Amaranthe standard had been the easier part—if the most expensive—but she wasn’t inclined to elaborate. “Did you complete your mission?”
He gave her an oblique stare. “More or less. So now that I’m here and, once again, trapped here, shall I spend the next hour telling you how what you want is impossible?”
Caleb greeted Eren as they entered the main cabin and gestured to the kitchen table. “Why don’t you start by telling us what you found out. Then we can talk about what is and isn’t possible.”
“Fine.” The Anaden collapsed into one of the chairs like he was home after a hard day’s work. “Do you have any more of your ‘wine’ concoction?”
“Of course.” It took a frankly herculean effort on her part to bite back a snippy retort, but she retrieved the bottle and glasses from the cabinet.
“Where’s your Kat?”
She’d flare at his reflexive disrespect for Mesme, but Mesme displayed just as much contempt toward Eren. Another reminder Amaranthe society had a million or so years of history behind it which she’d barely begun to learn, much less understand.
“Mesme had some business to attend to. It’ll be along later, but we can talk without it.”
Eren waited until he had a full glass before he began. “The scope and level of information you’re searching for is available in only two locations: the Directorate’s data server on the Prótos Agora and the Machim Central Command Complex on Machimis.
“Prótos Agora is out of the question. The entire structure is impenetrable—and that’s if you can find it in the first place, which you can’t. We’ve tried for centuries, if not longer, with no luck. It’s a black hole. Or more likely, in a black hole.”
“So it’s not on a planet?”
“We think it’s a space station, but it could be a ship. Honestly, it might be both or…something else. We’re referring to the meeting place for the most powerful beings in the universe, and they’ve had epochs to get creative with its design.”
Caleb joined them at the table. “Another time, then. And Machimis?”
Eren grimaced. “It’s…worse? Two billion people live there, and they’re all Machim. Soldiers. Combatants. Their entire culture is regimented, ordered and profoundly armed.”
“What about the Complex itself?”
“How should I know? I’ve never been there.”
Caleb stared unblinking at Eren.
“It spans eighty-six square kilometers and three-hundred-forty levels, not counting however many levels are below ground. It’s committed to one singular purpose: managing the waging of war on a universe of lesser enemies.”
Alex took a sip of wine. “It does sound as if it would have the information we need.”
“Oh, no doubt. Somewhere in the central bowels, past six security layers and two hundred Vigil units, stored on entombed and encrypted Reor blocks the size of a warehouse. In the fairytale land in which you succeed in getting inside the Complex and making it to the Data Control Department, you’ll never be able to break the security and encryption on the server.”
‘I believe I will.’
Eren eyed Alex dubiously. “Might want to check your SAI—I think it’s got a glitch. Wouldn’t want it to go homicidal and kill you.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Said the last person to be murdered by a SAI, I suspect.”
Alex chuckled under her breath. “You still haven’t figured it out, have you?”
“Clearly not.”
“In a great many ways, I am Valkyrie and she is me. While she retains an independent consciousness, as do I, we share a deep neural link. If she were going mad, I would know it, because I know her mind. Intimately.”
He regarded her strangely, but it was a look she’d seen before. Skepticism, tinged with trepidation and a dash of fear. It was so odd for these people, advanced as they were, to fear AIs. But she guessed millennia of propaganda could have such an effect on the most rational of beings.
Finally Eren glanced at Caleb, then back to her. “And how’s that work with the sex?”
‘In addition to a conscience and finely tuned judgment regulators, I possess a feature Humans like to call ‘discretion.’ ’
Aurora Resonant: The Complete Collection (Amaranthe Collections Book 3) Page 19