“Careful, Eren, or some will start mistaking you for a leader.”
“Me?” He snorted. “Not a chance. But maybe…maybe I can be something more than the undisputed winner of the Most Audacious Act Leading Directly to Regenesis Award for nine decades running.”
Nisi arched an eyebrow in amusement. “Maybe so.”
It was as much of an endorsement as Eren was apt to get and a damn sight more of one than he deserved. “So what do you think?”
“I think if I’m to reach enough ears for it to matter, I’m going to need coordinated action by many dozens of in-place agents spread across galaxies. Will you help me make it happen?”
He smiled more vividly this time, adding his best flair to the expression. “It would be my honor, sir.”
“Empty promises will not be enough. We are the only port in the storm for these refugees, but what cause will Amaranthe’s citizens have to support a madman on a screen?”
Eren shrugged. “For most of the Anadens out there, no cause. But the integrals won’t let them play, regardless. Make the appeal to them, but it’ll just be for show. Your real audience is the Accepted Species, who but for a turn of fate could have been among these refugees here.”
“True, but seeing as fate did turn their way, relatively speaking, what do I have to offer them beyond the intangible, unlikely promise of nebulous freedom? If it was enough to get them to risk their lives to defy the Directorate, they would already be with us.”
“Exactly. They won’t risk their lives for our fight, because it’s the only life they have. Remove that variable, and you remove the Directorate’s most potent source of power. If you want the masses to join us, then promise them what everyone who isn’t Anaden dreams of most. Promise them regenesis.”
47
SIYANE
MILKY WAY SECTOR 17
* * *
KENNEDY’S SAFETY CONCERNS REGARDING the Caeles Prism didn’t apply to the Siyane, as such. Alternatively, because they’d tested the technology using the Siyane first, any safety concerns had already been satisfied. Or something to that effect. The rebuttal to any counter-argument consisted of one core truth: with Valkyrie in complete charge of all the mechanisms, whether physical or algorithmic, it was safe for the Siyane to use it.
Ostensibly, the jaunt Alex had planned was yet another test of the technology, as this would be its first intergalactic use. Would distance matter? It wouldn’t—any Prevo could tell you it wouldn’t—but it was a check box on AEGIS testing protocols, and in this instance Alex was happy to do the testing.
She eyed Caleb sideways. “Sure you want to come along?”
“Are you kidding? No way am I letting you do this alone. If we end up stranded somewhere between galaxies with no way home, we’ll be stranded together.”
“True, and preferable. Plus, then you can teleport us home.”
“The whole ship? Maybe…yeah. Or Mesme can come get us. The point is, I’ll be with you, whatever happens.”
“Good.” She squeezed his hand affectionately before turning her attention to the HUD. They were well outside Palaemon space and far from any structures that might suffer collateral damage if something went wrong. “Okay, Valkyrie. Let’s initiate the Caeles Prism. When you’re ready, we’ll open our wormhole and traverse it.”
‘Caeles Prism engaged. All readings nominal.’ A brief pause. ‘Power at target levels. Ready.’
From the view of sidespace, visually it was simply a matter of being there. She’d done it before, several times now. But while any Prevo could tell you the distance didn’t matter, she was human, too, and her brain refused to ignore the distance involved.
The air crackled with energy; it hummed through her bones. She felt more a part of the ship than she had in a long time, and possibly ever. It wasn’t merely her consciousness like before. Now it was her, whole and complete.
The target destination formed clear and strong in her mind. “Opening the wormhole.”
A tear in space formed in front of them. Jagged at first, through sheer mental will she widened and smoothed it out until it became a near-perfect oval wide enough for the Siyane to enter.
Again, it was simply a matter of being there. With a single intentional thought, she was capable of carrying them across a void too expansive to fit inside her tiny brain. But on each traversal she’d grown more confident, and also more interested in the details of the transition from one location to the next.
The last time they’d performed such a traversal, she’d perceived the gap between normal space and normal space. Now was later, and she wanted to know what filled it.
Would it resemble the distressing trip across galaxies Mesme had taken them on? She believed she was now far better prepared for such an experience if it were. But in case, she kept a hold of Caleb’s hand.
“I’m going to try a little experiment. Don’t…I was about to say ‘don’t panic,’ but you don’t do that. Just be ready if I do.”
“I’ll catch you.”
“I know.”
She moved the Siyane forward into the wormhole. The opening at the other end, and thus their destination, was right there, so close she could almost reach out and touch it. But she didn’t exit yet.
The scene around them, as she perceived it, was similar to what she’d seen during the trip with Mesme from Cetus Dwarf back to Triangulum and the Siyane. Tendrils cavorted in the corners of her vision, but refused to be caught. Spectral luminescence shone in brilliant strings, carried on waves of a medium best characterized as quantum foam.
This went beyond even the elemental perception she’d experienced while wearing the skin of the Siyane. It provided a glimpse of what, she suspected, was the fundamental quanta of matter holding the universe together, presented in the best manner her mind could conjure to interpret it.
Her surroundings didn’t frighten her now. Studying the wormholes and how they were created had extended her grasp of nonspatial dimensions to new, more enlightened places. While she was unable to put it into words as such, she understood what she saw.
She thought she stood, and that Caleb stood with her. “What do you see?” Her voice sounded normal to her ears. Calm and lacking any traces of panic.
“Not much. Blackness, mostly, but also a thin ring of light around the edges of…nothing, shaped like an oval. The diati is getting jumpy, however, as if it expects to be called into action. Are we able to go through?”
“We are. I’m merely taking a look around.” She tilted her head to the side, trying to trace the path of one of the luminescent strings as it undulated toward her. She glanced down—it ran through her?
Now she cautiously shifted around, hoping she didn’t faint and lose the thread. So many of them ran through her! It must be a coincidence—they ran everywhere and nowhere, and she was included in ‘everywhere.’
But no. Their paths weren’t random, and they were quite distinctly traveling through…she reached into her pocket. She pulled the Reor slab out and held it aloft in front of her.
It had come to life to form a brilliant prism all its own, a supradimensional rainbow of colors and energy. The strings weren’t running through her, beyond incidentally so. They were running through, to and from the Reor slab.
To and from where? The other Reor slabs out there?
It is the most logical supposition.
I agree, but…all of them? That would mean….
Of course all of them.
Yes, it would.
She exhaled in wonder. No one knew…but now she did.
She brought the slab closer, level with her face. “You and I have much to talk about, don’t we? Soon, my sneaky little companion.”
“Alex?”
The waves and lights danced around Caleb, all lit up in crimson from the diati aura surrounding him. She smiled at him—
—and they were out the other side.
MAFFEI I GALAXY
BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES OF THE LOCAL GALACTIC GROUP
&nbs
p; ‘Scanning to confirm our location. Maffei I galaxy, Sector 5, approximately 4.1 megaparsecs from our origin point in the Milky Way galaxy, Sector 17. The Galenai homeworld is twenty-six megameters away on vector S 9° E z -18°.’
“Perfect, Valkyrie. Great job. Set a course for the planet, and when we arrive adopt a low-altitude orbit.” She collapsed into the cockpit chair then toed it around to face Caleb. “We’re still here.”
He held out his hands in front of him and wiggled them in the air. “And with all ten fingers, no less. I never doubted.”
She arched an eyebrow in skepticism.
“I didn’t. I believe that when it comes to what’s out there—” he motioned toward the viewport “—nothing is beyond your capabilities.”
Damn. He still made her feel all fluttery inside, saying things like that. She hoped he was able to read her well enough to see how much his support meant to her. “Thank you. I do try.”
The Galenai homeworld grew to dominate the viewport as they approached. Covered completely in water as Paratyr had reported, it resembled a richly marbled orb. Deep cerulean along the equator gradually faded toward an icy ivory at the poles.
‘Orbiting 1.6 megameters distance above the planet.’
Alex frowned. “I wish I could show them to you—I wish you could see what I’m able to see.”
‘There is no reason he cannot.’
“What?”
‘We don’t need to limit ourselves to a sidespace view. We can take the Siyane below the surface.’
She winced, instinctively protective of her ship to the last. “It’s not exactly built for underwater travel.”
‘Which is why we will not do too much traveling. But the plasma shield can hold back the water to create a bubble of air around the ship. So long as we keep the pulse detonation engine under eight percent thrust, we should not create problematic conditions either inside or outside of the bubble. I estimate we can maintain this state for twenty-three minutes before the environment within the bubble begins to deteriorate.’
“That’s brilliant, Valkyrie.” She shrugged at Caleb. “What do you think? Do you want to go down there?”
He laughed. “You’re asking me if I want to see, up close and in their native habitat, intelligent wild animals uncorrupted by the interference of more advanced species?”
“Good point. Descending into the atmosphere. We’ll skim the surface until we detect a settlement. This way we can minimize the strain on the ship’s systems and maximize our time underwater.”
The endless ocean soon raced beneath them. It reminded her of the trip from Seattle to the Northeast 1 Pacific Atmosphere Corridor she’d so often made on Earth—and for a moment she almost missed home. Almost. But this was her true home now—with Caleb at her side, wherever they ventured.
‘I am detecting a high level of activity in the vicinity of 31° latitude, 84° longitude, beginning at one hundred forty meters depth.’
“This is your show, Valkyrie. Make it happen—but can we be cloaked? I’m not certain we need to Prime Directive the encounter, but I don’t want to spook the Galenai, either.”
‘Cloaking will be the simplest part of the endeavor.’
“Right.” She cast a gaze to the HUD. In reality she’d know in her head if something was amiss at least half a second before anything registered on the HUD, but she felt better keeping one eye on the readings.
They dove beneath the surface in a rush of water, displaced six meters out from the hull to flow around and over them.
Caleb chuckled softly. “I was just thinking back to the trip we took beneath Lake Fuori in Cavare. We’ve come a long way, haven’t we?”
She reached out to squeeze his hand. “In more ways than one. I love you.”
“And I you—” His focus darted to the viewport at the first hint of motion in the distance.
She grinned and stood, pressing closer into the viewport alongside him.
A sprawling city of coral spread out beneath them. Towers spiraled upward to create an outer ring, and broad arches connected disparate sections to one another.
Everywhere, Galenai swam—some in play or idleness, others in seemingly purposeful activity. Objects were carried from one place to another; meetings were held; children were shepherded.
She cursed the walls of the ship separating her from them. But dropping into sidespace meant missing Caleb’s delightful reactions, and she didn’t want to miss them.
The next second the walls faded away to apparent transparency—like the night after she’d severed her connection to the ship, when they orbited far above Romane.
A suitable compromise?
You’re wonderful, Valkyrie.
Yes.
They were close enough now to be hovering amid the periphery of activity, and two Galenai swept by a few meters above the hull. They followed their progress until they disappeared from sight.
Caleb looked as happy as a kid on Christmas morning. “You’re not taxing your processes too heavily juggling all these systems, are you, Valkyrie?”
‘As a matter of fact, I am utilizing 58.4% of my non-automated higher-order processes simultaneously. It is not a record, but it is not too far from one.’
“You have a reasonable buffer to work with, though.”
‘Until someone starts shooting at us, yes.’
Alex grimaced. “Don’t tempt fate. Paratyr said the Galenai had some ‘inventive’ defensive protocols.”
‘An unlikely complication, as we remain securely invisible.’ The ship swerved to starboard as a group of Galenai accelerated by them on the left. ‘Mostly securely.’
“Ha!” Alex breathed through the brief rush of adrenaline and took a few seconds to properly drink in the scene. She hadn’t been able to bring her father here yet, and his construct was currently in the hands of scientists back at Epsilon, so she couldn’t rig up a way to show him now. But she’d brought Caleb. She’d brought Valkyrie.
It was a damn fine start, and, if all went…well, perfectly, there would be plenty of time in the future to bring others. Perhaps one day, to meet the Galenai face (or fin) to face—and welcome them into the intergalactic community in freedom, not slavery.
She sighed. “I want to learn so much more about them. But for the time being it’s going to have to be enough to know they’re still here, safe and undisturbed. We should get back, lest everyone start thinking the test was a failure.”
Caleb nodded in reluctant agreement. “Valkyrie, do you know where the gateway the Directorate’s constructing to this galaxy is located?”
‘I do not, but this is information I can acquire.’
His eyes followed a large Galenai soaring above the coral city as they rose toward the surface. “Do that, if you would.”
48
PALAEMON
ANARCH POST EPSILON
* * *
THE FACT THAT IT TOOK THEM less than twenty minutes to return to Epsilon from a distant galaxy should have been more noteworthy than it was. But the competition for ‘noteworthy’ was pretty stiff these days.
As soon as they landed, Alex headed to the regenesis lab for a few minutes to check in on things, which mostly involved annoying Dimou with over-anxious questions.
Next she stopped in to see Kennedy and personally check off the ‘successful intergalactic travel’ box on the testing protocols. But Kennedy was busy in a meeting she promised would be over in five minutes.
While she waited, Alex rotated the small Reor slab around in her fingers, trying to study it with new eyes. Valkyrie, what do you think is up with the Reor? What did we see?
I can propose a reasonable working theory: the life form goes beyond merely accessing nonspatial dimensions as the Katasketousya do, to a state where it exists at every moment in numerous dimensions—possibly all dimensions, but definitely a great many. It may share this characteristic with the diati, but since the diati hides its nature nearly as well as the Reor, I can’t say for certain.
More
intriguing is the possibility that discrete Reor slabs communicate with one another in those nonspatial dimensions—or may even be permanently connected through them.
She peered at the filaments inside the mineral. The trails we saw were going somewhere. I’d really like to ask it where.
No one, not even the Kats, have succeeded in communicating with the Reor.
Is that a challenge?
Yes.
Accepted.
Then can we discuss a different matter related to our wormhole traversal?
Of course, Valkyrie.
The seconds you spent hovering between dimensions, with the wormhole open? The experience should have affected you similarly to how Mesme’s transport from Katoikia Tairi did. At a minimum, it should have triggered lingering aftereffects from your time joined with the Siyane. Yet it did not. Mentally—neurologically—you are unchanged by the experience. I am wondering why you think this is.
She smiled to herself. Does this mean you’ve developed a theory and want to see if I agree?
Perhaps.
All right, Mesme, have it your way. I think…paradoxically, controlling the act myself, with no filter, made it a less damaging experience. When I was joining with the ship, your hardware acted as an intermediary and buffer. Traveling from Katoikia Tairi, Mesme was in control and acted as a physical intermediary. With the wormholes, though, I’m in command of the opening, the closing and the traversal. I paused in the in-between of my own volition and chose to continue in the same way. You might have noticed, we humans like being in control.
Indisputably you do. I must quibble with your assertion, however, as I, too, am responsible for the wormholes opening and closing. It is a Prevo act, one in which the line of distinction between you and me becomes rather blurred. Or do you believe you can open a wormhole without my presence in your mind?
You’re always present in my mind now, Valkyrie.
I meant if our connection were to be toggled off.
Aurora Resonant: The Complete Collection (Amaranthe Collections Book 3) Page 70