Lightheaded, like he’d double-dosed a chimeral and forgotten to eat first.
Noah blinked in confusion. Why was everything sideways? His face rested against the marble floor beside the tumbled-over dais…he lifted his head up to find the gathered audience in variations of his own state.
“Kennedy?” He pushed up to his knees and crawled to the edge of the stage, then climbed down and stumbled toward where she’d been sitting.
“I’m all right.” Her carefully styled curls tumbled messily across her face, but she’d stood by the time he reached her and was turning to help her father up and into his seat. Noah scrambled to do the same for her mother.
The rumble of confused murmurs grew to fill the auditorium, and he leaned in close to Kennedy’s ear. “What happened? It looks as if everyone passed out, but that doesn’t make any sense.”
“I have no idea.” She wore a perplexed expression as she gathered her hair back in its clasp and tried to tame it. “Vii, any chance you know what just happened on Aquila?”
‘Not merely on Aquila. The anomaly occurred on numerous colonies—very possibly all colonies—simultaneously.’
Kennedy’s eyes widened. “What? Do you mean some sort of cosmic anomaly? What could it have been?”
‘Something wonderful.’
49
AFS STALWART II
MOSAIC PORTAL
SCULPTOR DWARF GALAXY
LGG REGION VIII
* * *
THE PORTAL EXPLODED, shredding the ring bounding it into thousands of shards flung outward into the void—but it didn’t just explode. The plasma filling it shot forward across the stars like the leading edge of a tsunami. It stretched and bent, and space stretched and bent around it.
Then it vanished, and space where the portal had hung stilled.
The images being fed to the conference room defied comprehension or even description. What could have caused the portal to erupt in such a violent manner? What had the eruption done to the fabric of space?
“Thomas, talk to me. What do we—”
An anguished gasp drowned Miriam out. She spun from the visuals to see Alex stifle a sob with a hand over her mouth as she staggered backwards, fumbling with her other hand for the wall behind her for support.
“Alex, what’s wrong? What’s happened?”
Her daughter looked up, tears flowing freely down her face, and tossed an aural toward the table. “Where is he, Valkyrie? Find him!”
‘His locater signal indicates he is currently atop the outer hull of the Stalwart II. But I am…not detecting any vital signs.’
Alex exploded off the wall in a full run and disappeared through the door.
Miriam hurriedly skimmed the words displayed on the aural Alex had left behind. “David—”
“I’m going.” He pivoted and took off through the door after her.
Alex,
I know why every child looks up at the stars at night in search of wonders, why every adult gazes up at them in search of some greater meaning to our existence. Humanity took to the stars in the hope of finding companionship, and instead found only a vast emptiness.
But we were never meant to be alone. We were meant to live in a universe teeming with life, and deep in our souls, we’ve always known it. We’ve always felt its absence. I can—and now I must—return us to our rightful place in the universe. Humanity’s destiny lies here, surrounded by a rich diversity of life and boundless possibilities. Here, anything is possible.
The Mosaic served a necessary purpose, but it’s no longer needed, so tell Mesme I’m closing up shop. I’m taking care of the battlecruiser and its cargo, too. The Machim Primor won’t trouble anyone again. Everyone back home, everyone we met in our travels, everyone living within the portal spaces—they will all be safe. Might have to hunt around a bit for them, but I’m making sure they all arrive in one piece.
There’s only one universe now. I hope humanity will take the lead in making it a good one.
I expect doing this will kill me. You saw how much the diati drained me to destroy the moon at Akeso; I fear it’s going to need every drop of my energy, of my life force, I suppose, to accomplish what I’m asking of it.
I don’t want to leave you. I want to spend the next hundred or thousand years chasing after you on ever-new escapades. I want to—but I can’t.
I know you’ll think I view this as penance for Solum, and maybe even for all the lives I’ve taken over the years. In a way, I do. It gives me comfort to replace the ruins of Solum with Earth—to bring Earth to a place where it can serve as a brighter, better, more worthy beacon at the center of civilization. It gives me comfort to replace despair with hope. To replace death with life. I’ve done a fair measure of both good and evil in my life, and a lot of gray in between. It gives me comfort to end it with an act of simple goodness.
I wish so much that doing so didn’t mean sacrificing my life, but it’s a sacrifice I must make. You’d tell me to be selfish, but I can’t. Not this time. I know you’ll mourn me, but don’t wait too long before getting back to exploring. A whole damn lot of stars are out there, and you need to meet the beings living around them. Welcome them to the family. Protect them.
You’ve been my savior, time and time again. But I can’t allow you to save me this last time, not when the lives and futures of everyone who will ever be are on the line. So I’ll do the saving this time, and I’ll pay the price it requires.
Eternally my love.
— Caleb
Alex was nowhere to be seen by the time David reached the first crossway. He hesitated in the intersection. “Thomas, help me out. Where is she?”
‘Alex is currently descending on Lift 2. If I may extrapolate a likely destination from the information on hand, I believe she is heading to Medical.’
“Hold Lift 3 for me.” He took a left and resumed running.
With every step, his heart was breaking. She’d suffered the debilitating trauma of losing a parent as a child—his fault—and she should never have to experience the loss of someone so close to her again! His only solace was the knowledge that if she did, he was going to be there for her. This time, he would ease her pain rather than cause it.
He reached Lift 3 to find two enlisted grumbling about why it wasn’t working. He bullied them back with a glare and leapt inside. “Sorry, emergency.” Then he was speeding downward through the ship.
Too many seconds ticked by until he arrived at Deck 5, and he rushed off the lift before it had settled to the floor.
‘Left, sir, and take the third hallway.’
He reached the hallway in time to glimpse her sprinting down it. “Alex, wait! Let me go with you!”
“Then run faster!” She shouted over her shoulder without slowing.
Dammit, this body was still new, sporting a few kinks yet to be worked out…and she was propelled onward by a force capable of driving the human body to feats far beyond its natural capabilities: love.
Two more hallways and he burst into Medical only a few meters behind her. He stopped cold in the entrance, but Alex kept moving. Because she had known what they would find here. He, however, had not.
Valkyrie’s semi-physical representation rushed across the room toward a treatment alcove with a speed and finesse he also hadn’t known she possessed, Caleb’s limp form draped across her ghostly arms.
Two medics shook off any surprise they might have experienced at the most unusual sight and rushed forward as well, and at the cot they extracted him from her arms. A physician arrived the next instant, and a sequence of events he’d seen too many times in his life began to unfold.
Alex didn’t do what almost every family member did in such a situation, though. She didn’t rush to the cot in a panic and get in the way of the medical ministrations.
“Unresponsive—”
No, she merely stood in the center aisle, still as a stone and eyes locked on Caleb.
“I’m not detecting a pulse—”
V
alkyrie moved to hover next to David.
He studied her with one eye, the other remaining on Alex. “You went outside and got him. Thank you.”
“ECG is flat—”
The particles making up her presence quivered in the air. “It would have taken her, or anyone, far too long to don the necessary gear and make their way along the hull to reach him. So I did what I could, which seems like so very little now.”
He swallowed. “I think it was quite a lot.”
“Still no pulse—”
“I find I am questioning my choice of name. I believe I want no further association with death.”
He had no good response to that, so he stepped over and wound an arm around Alex’s shoulder. She showed no indication of noticing he was there.
The doctor sighed and took a step back. “All right. I’m calling it—”
Alex burst forward out of his grasp, as if a switch had been flipped on. “No. You hook him up to life support and you get him in a stasis chamber right now.”
“Ma’am, I’m sorry, but there’s nothing for us to sustain. There’s no brain activity, no heartbeat.”
“Did I stutter? Did I accidentally speak Communis? Beat his heart for him.”
“I don’t think—”
“Stasis chamber. They’re kept in Medical Storage C on Deck 12, and you can have one up here and operational in six minutes.”
The doctor gave her that look doctors gave the poor, pathetic family members of the lost, one of restrained condescension tempered by a pale imitation of true empathy because they’d lost their capacity to feel the real thing a few hundred deaths ago. “Are you his wife? A family member—?”
Alex’s glyphs and irises flared like a nova eruption, though Valkyrie’s presence did not fade in turn. “His wife? I am not just his wife. I am Alexis Mallory Solovy Marano, daughter of Commandant and Commander Solovy, first Prevo and goddamn savior of humanity thrice over.
“So listen to me very carefully. You are going to stop acting like fucking svilochnaya and get your yebanaya asses in gear, and you are going to do it this instant. You think I’m upset now? Have a stasis chamber in this room and operational in six minutes, or you’ll see something you haven’t seen before.”
The medics eyed the door uncertainly.
“Five minutes and fifty seconds.”
The doctor spun to the medics. “What are you waiting for? I want a Grade III stasis chamber up here ASAP. I’ll administer artificial ventilation until you return.”
50
AFS STALWART II
MOSAIC PORTAL
SCULPTOR DWARF GALAXY
LGG REGION VIII
* * *
DAVID, WHAT’S GOING ON?
Valkyrie transported him to Medical. It doesn’t look good.
The diati isn’t healing him?
Apparently not. There’s no sign it’s here at all and, well, his message….
Okay. Take care of her.
I will. You take care of everything else.
Miriam closed her eyes for a breath, allowed her heart to ache for the span of it…then reopened them and squared her shoulders. “Thomas, let’s try this again. What do we know?”
‘Very little. The eruption at the portal does not match the characteristics of any recorded astronomical or human-orchestrated event.’
“Lakhes, what are your agents telling you?” She turned toward the Kat as she asked the question—and found the area where it had hovered empty. She scanned the room. “Lakhes?”
Brigadier Jenner, who’d arrived a moment earlier, spoke up. “The Kat spun up in a tornado and vanished right after I walked in.”
“Well. Thomas, please convey my sincere interest in learning what it knows as soon as it is practicable for Lakhes to convey it.”
‘Message sent, with the appropriate nuances in tenor intact.’
“Thank you.” She checked the constantly updating long-range sensor readings. “No sign of the Machim battlecruiser. It’s entirely possible it’s been destroyed, but we need to keep scanning for it nonetheless. Now—”
‘I apologize for interrupting, Commandant, but the prime minister is on the priority communications channel. He would like to know ‘quoi au nom de Dieu just happened.’ ’
“What prime minister?”
“Prime Minister Gagnon of the Earth Alliance.”
She should have realized from the particular flavor of the cursing, but the impossibility of it being Gagnon interfered with such a conclusion. “How interesting. Tell him I will speak with him the instant I can answer that question.” She gazed around the room. “Everyone, we need to be able to answer that question.”
‘Everyone’ consisted of more holos than physical bodies, since she’d ordered the Stalwart II stripped to a skeleton crew for the Prótos Agora mission and most of the Council members were either on Tarach or onboard their respective ships with the rest of the fleet.
Mia tilted her head, uncertainty animating her face. “I can hear the Noesis—the main one.”
Commander Lekkas quickly motioned in agreement. “So can I. I assumed I’d developed a glitch, but maybe not. There’s a lot of excited chatter…something about people passing out for a few minutes. Everyone…everywhere? Then they all woke back up…at the same time?”
Mia leaned into the frame of her holo. “Scientists are picking up an avalanche of unusual readings from deep space sensors. It’s as if….” Her eyes were wide as they rose to stare at Miriam. “I think they’re here.”
“Under the circumstances, I need you to be more specific.”
“I think Aurora is here, in Amaranthe. Our colonized worlds at a minimum, and maybe much more. Our telescopes, our scientific research probes, our exanet infrastructure?” The young woman nodded with increasing confidence. “Use the Caeles Prism and go to Solum.”
“Solum is a debris field.”
“I…think we should check and confirm if that’s still true.”
SOL STELLAR SYSTEM
MILKY WAY SECTOR 1
“That’s not Solum.”
‘No, Commandant. It is Earth.’
Miriam had departed the conference room for the bridge, because this she had to see with her own eyes. Now she stood at the wide forward viewport, seeing it with her own eyes yet having difficulty accepting what they showed her.
No trace of the expansive debris field Solum’s destruction had created remained. In its place, orbiting 1 AU from a Sol lacking Dyson rings, was Earth—Earth as she’d seen it a few short weeks earlier.
And not only Earth, either—it came with its full complement of orbital satellites, space stations and an intact Terrestrial Defense Grid. A quick scan had already confirmed that the moon was their moon, dotted with human rather than Anaden structures. Mars was their Mars. It now seemed inevitable that longer-range scans would soon report the news of Jupiter being their Jupiter, and so on.
Exactly as Caleb had described in his message to Alex.
To her left, increasing brightness heralded the arrival of a Kat. “Lakhes?”
Pardon my delay, but there has been much information to analyze and confirm.
“Of this I have no doubt. What has this information told you?”
The Mosaic is indeed gone—or the portals to access it are gone, which effects the same end. Our Idryma has been relocated into Amaranthean space, however, as has, self-evidently, the Aurora Enisle. We’ve confirmed the presence of the contents of three additional enisles elsewhere in Amaranthe thus far, which is a number large enough for us to draw a preliminary conclusion.
“Which is?”
Caleb Marano ordered the diati he controlled to draw the enisles of the Mosaic into Amaranthe. He ordered it to place the Sol system in its natural location and move the astronomical and Anaden-constructed bodies of the original Sol system to a comparatively empty region of space twenty-two parsecs away.
The other planets and systems of Aurora are not always located at their precise prior coordinates,
as they are in nearly every instance duplicates of objects existing here. But you can expect to find them in proximity thereto. The contents of the other enisles we have identified were discovered here and there within the bounds of the Local Galactic Group.
Her attention returned to the planet orbiting below. Silence lingered as, fact by fact, the import of Lakhes’ statements sank in and the unfathomable became truth. “So we are all one universe now.”
Amaranthe has always been the universe. Now, it is the only universe.
She found she was smiling. “Thank you, Lakhes. Alert me immediately to any relevant threats you discover arising as a result of this…alteration in the scenery, but otherwise, please see to your duties, which I’m sure are significant.”
It will be so. The Kat faded away.
“Thomas, let Prime Minister Gagnon know I’m ready to speak to him now—and please invite Chairman Vranas and Governor Ledesme to the meeting as well. I’m going to have to repeat this incredible story to dubious audiences enough in the coming days as it is.”
51
PRESIDIO
GALACTIC COMMON DEFENSE ACCORD (GCDA) HEADQUARTERS
MILKY WAY SECTOR 9
* * *
THE ASCEND DIRECTOR OF MEDICAL RESEARCH looked appropriately sympathetic, if far too condescending. Everyone in the parade of doctors had worn the same expression, but Alex found she just didn’t care. She didn’t need their sympathy, whether real or false. She only needed their medical expertise.
“We have exhausted all options currently within our capabilities, as well as several approaches suggested by consultants from Amaran—from the anarch medical staff. Despite our efforts, we’ve been unable to induce the resumption of brain activity. Perhaps if we had access to a recent neural imprint, even a partial—”
Aurora Resonant: The Complete Collection (Amaranthe Collections Book 3) Page 112