“Oh, FUCK,” Justine yelled. The Silverbird strengthened every defensive system it had.
The hyperspace shock wave struck the little ultradrive ship with the force of a wayward dinosaur. Justine screamed as she was flung out of the couch, crashing into the forward bulkhead. Alarms shrieked back at her. A multitude of exovision schematics turned amber and red.
The crowd of anti-invasion protesters down in the park gasped in unison as the Silverbird juddered, then let out a long “Ohooo” of wonder and relief. Araminta couldn’t help joining in, thankful Justine had survived the third shock wave propagated by the pursuing Raiel warships and was picking herself up off the cabin floor again. It was a sound that was replicated right across Colwyn City and beyond— a long way beyond.
She slipped in through the apartment block’s underground garage entrance. The door was still open a couple of meters, not wide enough to admit a capsule but sufficient for her to take her trike out. She’d deactivated the mechanism as she left, opening up the little control box and physically disconnecting the wiring. Now she plugged the colored cables back into their blocks. The door slid shut behind her, and she hurried through the nearly deserted concrete cave to the elevators.
“You okay?” Gore asked.
“Bastards!” Justine replied shakily. “What, this isn’t hard enough already?”
Araminta sank back against the cool metal wall of the elevator, feeling the way Justine looked. She’d driven around for an hour on the trike before parking it in a public bay at the Tala mall. Now there was nothing to prove she was at the apartment block; it was the best hideaway she could think of. The walk back to the Bodant district had taken forty minutes, during which the Raiel warships had started blowing up small moons to try to stop Justine. Everyone accessed that. It made her kind of conspicuous; she was just about the only person moving on Colwyn’s streets.
“You’re doing fine,” Gore assured his daughter. “Just fine.”
Araminta used her old override code to unlock the door to Danal’s apartment. Neither he nor Mareble was in. Presumably they were out partying with the occupying army, she thought resentfully. The bare structure of the place had just been finished when Araminta had handed it over. Since then, Mareble had moved in a few basic furnishings. Araminta gave the cooker a critical glare. The big metal thing looked ridiculously primitive. It had taken Mr. Bovey a long time to find it for her, and installing it had been a nightmare.
In Araminta’s exovision, Justine was climbing back into her chair, which folded protectively around her. “Main systems are functional. Drive units have reduced capacity. These energy bursts are stressing a lot of components. I guess they’re trying to wear me down.”
Araminta crept over to the balcony windows and peered out across the park. There were several Ellezelin capsules hanging above the encircling road. They were all stationary; like everyone else, their occupants were captivated by the chase thirty thousand light-years away. Below them, the crowd stared up into the heavens whose stars were smeared by the weather dome. She nodded in satisfaction.
“They’re firing again,” Justine yelped. “Oh, Christ.”
The Silverbird shuddered violently. Araminta gritted her teeth, feeling the huge tremor of anticipation in the gaiafield. More sections of the ship reported overloads. The speed fell off as the drive reconfigured its energy manipulation functions around degraded components. Justine changed course, streaking into the loop, the shortest distance to the barrier. Both Raiel warships followed unerringly, closing the gap.
Araminta pulled a big sky-blue cushion out of a nest pile and into the middle of the living room. She was annoyed to see that the ebony-wood parquet had been stripped back to the bare wood. Didn’t Mareble understand how difficult it was to get the varnish application correct? The work that had gone into cleaning the little wooden blocks!
She sat down on the cushion and crossed her legs, banishing such negative thoughts.
“Good strategy, darling,” Gore said. “There aren’t many planets inside the loop.”
Araminta retrieved Likan’s program from her storage lacuna, feeling her mind finally settle. It was a risk using this apartment, but she wasn’t sure how good Living Dream was at tracking people through the gaiafield. The day Danal had moved in, he’d confided to her that he was helping with the search for the Second Dreamer and explained how the confluence nests were being altered somehow to facilitate that. So she certainly didn’t want to be in her own place when she did this, just in case they were accurate enough to fix the exact location. And they might just think Danal’s apartment was some kind of false reading. She didn’t know anywhere else she could go other than to Mr. Bovey’s house, but that would expose him to the paramilitaries, which she could never do.
The shadowy specters of sensation that lurked within her subconscious expanded outward. She let her attention swim across the myriad thoughts it contained, drifting, content in a way the program alone could never kindle.
Most of the thoughts she could ignore. Some were intriguing. One had a mental signature she knew, associated with a dark tone that almost made her shy away. Instead, she concentrated.
“My Lord,” Ethan was pleading. “Hear us, please.”
He was calling with all his mental strength, amplified by countless confluence nests, directing his appeal outward into the infinite. Wrong, she mused from her lofty Olympian distance. The Skylord is not beyond us; it is within.
She drifted further, devoid of urgency.
“If you don’t call them off, I will personally rip your fucking arkship apart molecule by molecule with all of you in it,” Gore was yelling. “You think the Void is a bad thing? Do you, huh? You believe that? Because let me tell you: It is your mommy with her titty out for you to suck on compared to me.”
Araminta couldn’t help grinning. Now, that’s the kind of father I would have liked. Out in the park, people were cheering, a cry taken up across hundreds of planets. The gaiafield filled with determination and support, the raw emotion of billions, swelling the sense of unification to near ecstasy. Go, Gore, humanity whooped. Araminta added her blessing, a whisper lost in the multitude.
“I can do nothing,” Qatux protested. “They are warrior Raiel. Not our kind, not any longer.”
“Find a fucking way!”
Araminta lifted herself away from the turmoil, drifting toward a strand of familiar quiet thought and opening herself in greeting. The nebulae of the Void emerged from darkness to glimmer spectacularly around her. Half of space was a gauzy splash of aquamarine with a few distant stars shining through. She recognized it as Odin’s Sea, where a Skylord coasted between two of the scarlet promontories, spikes of whorled gases light-years long, swelling to buds big enough to contain a globular cluster. And here the thoughts of what once was mingled with more purposeful notions. An awareness wove through this space, not conscious but knowing purpose.
The Silverbird burst out of the loop and streaked toward the final implacable barrier. All around it, broken stars sleeted inward, shedding the glowing husks of the planets they once had birthed as if they were an encumbrance during the final tumultuous plunge to extinction.
“Oh, God, here we go again,” Justine whimpered. Ten light-years behind her a gas giant imploded. Hyperluminal quantum distortions burst out from its vanishing point.
The Silverbird dropped out of hyperspace, flying free in a space-time that no human would recognize. It was a dark universe inside the Wall stars. Thick braids of dust and gas shielded the light of the galactic core behind the starship. Ahead, few photons escaped the macrogravity cloak of the Void as suns sank through the event horizon. A lurid vermilion band shimmered across space, the swirl of ion clouds enraged by the loop’s fatal discharge, illuminating the fuselage like the Devil’s own gaze. Radiation alarms howled in fright as the force field started to collapse. The fuselage blistered.
“One of us comes,” Araminta said. “See?”
The distortion shock wave was al
most unnoticeable in real space as it flashed past. Dead streamers of atoms were stirred briefly by the unquiet force leaking back out of the quantum interstices. The Silverbird powered back into hyperspace, smoldering from radiation burns.
“You,” Ethan exclaimed.
The Skylord resonated with interest. “I still search for you. The nucleus aches with longing.”
“I know. You must stop that. Please welcome our emissary. She approaches you.”
“Where? I sense you are so far away.”
“I am. She is close to you now. Feel for her. She bleeds emotion, as do we all. Guide her as you should. Open your boundary.”
“The Heart will welcome you.”
The two Raiel warships were closing on the Silverbird. Justine’s sensor display showed her another gas-giant-size mass barely five light-years away. If they targeted that, it would be the end. The Silverbird’s ultradrive was struggling to maintain acceleration now.
“Hurry. Please,” Araminta implored.
The Skylord radiated satisfaction as it receded.
“I thank you,” Gore said. “Whoever you are.”
Justine sank back into the couch, her mind fully open to the gaiafield, letting every emotion pour forth: hopes, fears, everything she was.
Ahead of the Silverbird, the Void boundary changed. A vast circular wave rippled out, creating a crater ten light-years across. From its center a smooth cone of pure blackness rose up toward the starship. Justine regarded the exovision images in surprise. She was gripping the couch arms tightly, her skin slick with sweat. “I’m not so sure—”
Behind her, the Raiel warships slowed, allowing the Silverbird to race onward.
“—this is such—”
At fifteen light-years high the cone stopped expanding.
“—a good—”
Its apex opened like a flower, petals of infinite night peeling back. Exquisite nebula-light shone out into the Gulf.
“—idea—”
The Silverbird passed across the threshold, into the Void.
“—after all.”
The cone closed up. It sank back into the now-quiescent boundary. The Silverbird’s communication link to the navy relay ended. Both Raiel warships executed tight curves and headed back toward the Wall.
“Please, talk to us,” Ethan appealed. “The Skylord has anointed you as our Second Dreamer. We await you. We need you.” He was given no reply.
Araminta slipped out of Danal’s apartment and tiptoed across the vestibule to her own. Outside, a brash dawn light was lapping against the weather dome. The crowd was cheering ecstatically. That felt good.
“Well, whaddya know, I saved the universe.” Araminta grinned wildly at the ridiculous knowledge, then yawned. Being a hero was actually quite exhausting. She sank down into the big old armchair with its strangely lumpy cushions. Just five minutes’ rest.
Cheriton McOnna didn’t like the “in character” clothes Beckia had produced for him out of the replicator on board Elvin’s Payback. He really didn’t. Nothing wrong with the touch of them, a cotton shirt, wool-lined waistcoat with brass buttons, and trousers that were like suede but a great deal softer. No, it was the colors and style, the shirt’s lace-up front, its gray-green color that was more like a stain than a dye, and the odd tight cut of the black trousers. He plain refused to wear the felt hat with its flamboyant green and blue feathers, although he reluctantly agreed to carry it after Beckia got all stroppy. It wasn’t good to get Beckia stroppy.
She’d been right, of course. As soon as he walked into the confluence nest building on Daryad Avenue in the center of town, he fitted in with the Ellezelin workforce. Security was strong around the building, an old brick cube with dark arching windows. Colwyn’s three confluence nests were the first priority for the occupying forces. But Liatris McPeierl had done his job well, infiltrating a complete legend for Cheriton, including DNA. When he walked into the airy marble-floored lobby, he was told to put his hand on a sensor pedestal while three armed and armored guards watched him cautiously. The building’s new net cleared him, and they waved him on. He gave them a cheery smile backed up with a contented emanation into the gaiafield.
The nest itself was housed on the fourth floor in a sterile chamber that took up half of the available floor space. He reported for duty to Dream Master Yenrol in the overseer’s office, which looked out into the nest chamber through a glass partition. The office was normally occupied only a few hours each day when the overseer or the assistant ran a six-hourly assessment to ensure the nest was operating smoothly. Now there were seven technicians all struggling for elbow room as they installed banks of new hardware, while on the other side of the glass more technicians were blending fresh bioneural clusters with the original nest.
“What’s your field?” Yenrol asked. He was both agitated and puzzled. Cheriton’s late assignment, coupled with the pressure to get the job done, was making him very twitchy.
“Pattern definition,” Cheriton replied equitably. “The routines I’ve developed will help isolate the Second Dreamer’s thoughts within the gaiafield. It should give us a stronger source to trace.”
“Good,” Yenrol said. “Okay, great. Start installing the routines.” He’d turned back to a half-completed hardware unit before Cheriton got a chance to reply.
“Okay, then,” Cheriton mumbled, keeping his gaiafield emission a level flow of eagerness and enthusiasm. He found a free console seat and nodded to the man in the next seat.
“Welcome to the eye,” his new colleague said. “I’m Danal.”
“Glad to be here,” Cheriton said. “What do you mean, ‘eye’?”
“Of the storm.”
Cheriton grinned. “This is the quiet part?”
“Exactly!”
Danal, it turned out, had been on Viotia for some time now. He and Mareble had come in anticipation of being close to the Second Dreamer. “We wanted to be here when he revealed himself,” Danal admitted. “I’ve been upgrading nest sensitivity since we arrived in the hope our Dream Masters can locate him.” He gave Yenrol a guilty glance, stifling his gaiafield emissions for a moment. “I wasn’t expecting this,” he confided.
“I know what you mean,” Cheriton said, all sympathy. “I was praying to the Lady that Ethan would be elected Cleric Conservator, but I didn’t think anything like our presence here would be necessary.”
Danal gave an awkward shrug and got back to work. Cheriton continued loading in the routines he’d concocted. They did perform the recognition function, but in reverse, so that the nest would develop a mild blind spot if it received any thoughts originating from the Second Dreamer. It would inform Cheriton before reverting to the advertised function.
The modification team’s frantic work stalled as Justine’s madcap flight swamped the unisphere.
“She’s so close,” Danal said in awe as the Silverbird’s sensors revealed the undulating surface of the Void. Then everyone winced as the Raiel transformed the second moon into a hyperluminal quake.
“How are they doing that?” Cheriton murmured, fascinated by the level of extraordinarily sophisticated violence involved.
“Who cares?” Danal said. “The Void can resist their devilry. It has for a million years. That’s all that matters.”
Cheriton raised an eyebrow. It took a lot of self-control not to leak his dismay at the man’s bigotry into the gaiafield. “Let’s hope Justine’s ship can withstand it, too.”
“She’s not a believer. She’s an ANA creature.”
“She’s human,” Cheriton said. “That means she should be able to get inside. Somehow.”
“Ah. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Please,” Yenrol entreated the modification team. “Keep working. If the Second Dreamer is going to show himself, it will be tonight.”
Danal flashed Cheriton a shamefaced smile.
Oscar hadn’t expected things to happen quite this fast. He should have known better. If the Starflyer War had taught him nothing el
se, it was that events ruled people, not the other way around.
So here he was encased in a stiff paramilitary armor suit, sitting halfway down the passenger section of an Ellezelin police capsule, floating over the Cairns. Beckia was sitting on the bench next to him, and Tomansio was forward in the command seat. The capsules were designed to hold fifteen paramilitaries. However, the original occupants were now resting in a drug-induced coma back in the Bootel & Leicester warehouse, so he had plenty of room to stretch out.
Like the rest of the Commonwealth, they were accessing Justine’s mad dash through the Gulf.
“The welcome team has just stepped up to active status,” Liatris reported; he had stayed behind in the Elvin’s Payback to monitor the occupying forces and provide unisphere support. “Everyone thinks that the Second Dreamer will intervene for Justine.”
“He didn’t after Gore’s appeal,” Oscar said.
“The Raiel should give things a degree of urgency,” Beckia said. “I agree with Living Dream; if it’s going to happen, it’ll happen tonight.”
Oscar shrugged, which didn’t come off well in his armor.
“Did you know Gore and Justine?” Tomansio asked.
“I think I met her once; some senior officer function on High Angel. Everyone was trying to chat her up.”
“Including you?” Beckia teased.
“No, I was aiming for the ones she turned down. Rejection always leaves you vulnerable to a quick bout of cheap meaningless sex.”
“Ozzie, but you’re dreadful.”
“Anything from Cheriton?” Tomansio asked.
“Nothing since his last check-in,” Liatris reported. “Nobody questioned his appointment to Yenrol’s staff. He’s installed his routines in the nest.”
The Void Trilogy 3-Book Bundle Page 81
