When Araminta-two looked at Aaron for confirmation, he shook his head angrily.
“What?” Araminta-two protested. “That’s the great and wonderful plan, isn’t it?”
“The fleet is not part of the plan,” Aaron said.
“I got it safely through the barrier. That’s it. That’s all I ever said I’d do.”
“Get the Skylords to help,” Aaron ordered. “Come on, don’t wilt on us now.”
“Help do what?” Araminta-two asked. “We’re almost at Querencia. Nothing else matters. You don’t need me now, and I never needed the fleet.”
“You talked about responsibility,” Aaron said. “Those millions of dumb Living Dream followers placed their lives in your hands.”
“Waiting in space isn’t going to hurt them. It won’t be long. After all, this is about to end.”
“And if it doesn’t end in our favor?”
From the other side of the cramped cabin of the Mellanie’s Redemption, Araminta-two gave him a curious glance. “You? You have doubts?”
“I’ve always known what I have to do even though I don’t know why. It’s comfortable that way.” His face twisted in anguish. “I’ve remembered too much of her now, and it’s eating me alive. Memories of night and desolation are breaking loose. She thrives on them. I have to unknow again. I have to be free; I have to be clean. That or death. I would welcome death at this point. You, Corrie-Lyn, Inigo, the others, you all claimed that I needed to find myself, to be true to me. I don’t. I cannot be. I need to be what I was granted in return for my new life. That is me. And none of you accept that.”
“But—”
“Things go wrong!” Aaron almost shouted.
It was the thing Araminta had feared ever since Corrie-Lyn had told her about Aaron’s nearly total collapse in mindspace. He was the one who’d brought them all together, who’d relentlessly pushed them into the Void because of some plan his masters had conceived. He knew what to do. Even though his faith in that task was totally artificial, it had swept them all along. And now here they were, almost within reach of whatever goal they had to attain, and he was falling apart because of his past and the doubts it was inflicting.
“I’ll talk to the Skylords,” Araminta-two said earnestly. “I’ll fix this. The pilgrimage fleet will land on Querencia. They’ll be safe.”
He nodded, grimacing. “Thank you.”
Darraklan was giving Araminta a curious look as agitation built amid his thoughts. She realized that some suggestion of Aaron might have escaped from her shield.
“Dreamer?” It was almost a plea. Like all of them, he’d invested everything he had in her.
“It’s all right,” Araminta said, and held out her hand for him to touch. “I will talk to the Skylords. I will get us to Makkathran.” She faced the front of the observation deck again, focusing on the bereaved Skylords. “We seek fulfillment,” she told them calmly. “We seek guidance.”
Everything was calm. That wasn’t good.
The Delivery Man wanted some kind of evidence of the unimaginable nuclear hell that raged barely twenty meters from where he was sitting in the Last Throw’s cabin.
“This is really disturbing you, isn’t it?” Gore said over the TD channel. “Your emotions are hyping up the gaiafield. Why don’t you play some soothing music.”
“FUCK OFF.”
And still the Last Throw remained perfectly still. The Delivery Man desperately needed proof that he was actually descending through the photosphere of a midrange star, not that size truly mattered given the circumstances. Some shaking would be nice. Maybe the odd creak of the stress structure. And heat. There really, really ought to be an unpleasant amount of heat in the cabin.
There wasn’t a chance of that. The super-reinforced force fields cocooning the starship would work or they wouldn’t. There was no little margin for error that he could get through by gritting his teeth and heroically enduring some hardship. For all the difference it would make, he could quite easily be taking a comforting spore shower or maybe a little snooze in his sleep compartment. Oh, yes, that’s really going to happen.
The Last Throw was navigating by hysradar alone. None of its other sensors would be of the slightest use. They couldn’t even protrude through the ultrasilver one-hundred-percent-reflective surface of the outermost force field. Nothing material could survive the photosphere plasma.
So … hysradar it was. The exovision display showed the macrohurricanes of the photosphere rampaging around him, particle gales so large and fearsome that their size actually made their surges and twists predictable. The smartcore could track and predict the impact vectors of the magnetosphere squalls and granulation eruptions braking around them, allowing the ingrav and regrav units to compensate, keeping them on course.
They were driving down vertically, forcing through the barrage of escaping plasma toward the siphon—now three thousand kilometers below Last Throw, submerged within the convection zone, where the temperature spiked up past two million degrees Celsius, with a density just over ten percent that of water. And life was going to get extremely dangerous, because as Gore had gleefully remarked, the photosphere was just the warm-up. The Delivery Man still didn’t know what to make of that sense of humor.
His one talisman was the Stardiver program, which had notched up some success over the centuries. Not that Stardiver probes were the most regular missions launched by the Greater Commonwealth Astronomical Agency. The hyperspace-spliced shielding perfected for them over eight hundred years hardly guaranteed success once the convection zone was entered.
The Delivery Man would have liked a few test flights first, each one dipping a little deeper, scientifically analyzing the results, seeing how the modified and expanded force field generators performed. Power consumption. Energy tolerance. Pressure resistance. Hyperspace shunts. But no …
“It either works or it doesn’t,” Gore had said. “There’s no halfway here.”
That didn’t mean one couldn’t be prudent. It wasn’t an argument the Delivery Man even bothered with. Besides, even he acknowledged that it wouldn’t do to pique the curiosity of the ship that had followed them. No Accelerator agent would ever permit any endeavor that might halt Ilanthe’s attempt to Fuse with the Void.
Two and a half thousand kilometers.
The Delivery Man had launched five hours after Justine’s last dream, and he hadn’t worked out what was so incredibly funny about the Lady’s statue. Gore—naturally!—had smirked and gone: “Well, who’d have guessed?” So they both knew who she was, some figure from ancient history, no doubt.
“How’s your infiltration going?” the Delivery Man asked.
“Everything’s in position,” Gore replied. “I won’t be starting the actual physical process until you’ve established command over the siphon.”
“What does Tyzak make of it all?”
“It’s just another sensor system to him.”
“We could maybe tell him the truth.”
“Sonny, we’re doing what we have to so we can protect our species—and his. He does what he has to do to guarantee his way of life. This is not a diplomatic negotiation so that we can find common ground. Both of us are genetically wired to be what we are. And right now there is no common purpose. That’s a fucking great shame, but it’s the way it is.”
“I know. I suppose I was hoping that meeting Justine might make him change his mind. If he could just understand what it is we’re all facing.”
“That’s the thing; he does understand. But that doesn’t mean he can change, not to the degree we need and certainly not in the time frame we have.”
“I know. Are you really not going to tell me who the Lady is?”
“It’s a complete irrelevance to this situation; besides, it keeps you distracted.”
“Yeah, right.” The Last Throw was now three hundred kilometers above the surface of the convection zone. Energy usage was growing as the drives fought to keep the ship stable against the monstrou
s tides of plasma streaking along the quivering flux lines. There was also the problem of the star’s own gravity. Five additional ingrav units had been included in the modification whose sole purpose was to negate that awesome crushing force. They were operating right at their maximum loading. If one of them glitched for even a second, he’d be squashed into a molecule-thick puddle of blood and flesh across the decking.
“Here it comes.” The Delivery Man braced himself as Last Throw approached the convection zone. There was no clean defining edge between the two. The photosphere simply grew hotter, with a corresponding shift in density.
The Last Throw’s ultradrive came on as the temperature rose from the relative cool of the photosphere shunting excess energy from the force fields away into hyperspace, a flow rate that was increasing at a nearly exponential rate. The Stardiver project engineers had soon learned that combining the force field energy dissipation function with an exotic component was the only way to deal with such extraordinary temperature loading.
“It’s holding,” the Delivery Man said in surprise as the starship began to descend through the convection zone. Now the biggest danger lay with the bubblelike granulations that bloomed thousands of kilometers across almost without warning and raced for the photosphere. One of the primary mission objectives for Stardiver probes was to study the factors that contributed to their gestation. Even now, with centuries of research and observation, that prediction was a very inexact science.
“Good man,” Gore replied levelly. “Keep it coming.”
“Right.” The Delivery Man was shaking now. He wiped a hand across his forehead, dismayed to find out how much sweat was forming there, then ordered his biononics to initiate an adrenaline suppressor. He had to keep a clear head, and fear was degrading his ability to think straight. Yeah, as if staying sober and alert is going to help. One flaw in a system, one dodgy component, a single poorly written line of code, and it would be over in microseconds. At least I’ll never know. Until I get re-lifed. Except I won’t get re-lifed because according to Gore, this is the galaxy’s last chance. Oh, shit. I miss the kids.
This time the moisture staining his cheeks wasn’t coming from his brow.
“So when do you think Inigo is going to get to Makkathran?” he asked to distract himself from death, which was surely going to hit at any moment. He was still amazed at Paula Myo calling to tell Gore that Inigo, a weird duo-multiple Araminta, and a team of her agents had somehow raced Troblum’s starship ahead of the Pilgrimage fleet.
“It really shouldn’t be long, son. You’ll be out of there and back with your girls before you know it.”
“Yeah, sure.” His one remaining satisfaction was knowing that he was doing something to help Lizzie and the girls. By contrast, it would have been awful to be stuck inside the Sol barrier with them, not knowing what was happening outside, whether there was any hope. Not much, but enough, he promised his family. Given the not so small miracle Gore had worked in getting Inigo to help, he’d convinced himself there was a chance. A very small one, but it was real. All he had to do now was rendezvous with the siphon.
It took another fifty minutes to maneuver through the macrosurges of the convection zone’s deathly environment before the fifty-kilometer circle of the siphon force field was directly underneath Last Throw. Hysradar showed the torrent of two-million-degree hydrogen streaming in through the rim. The Delivery Man guided the starship across the curving upper surface of the giant lens shape and then slowly down until it was nose-on to the edge.
“That’s the weak part,” Gore said. “Show me what you can do.”
The Last Throw eased forward until its force field actually touched the protective shield around the siphon. That was when the Delivery Man finally got to feel some physical aspect of the flight. A low thrumming reverberated through the cabin as the starship was caught between the force field and the plasma hurtling past. He could feel the decking vibrate and grinned weakly. Maybe tranquillity was preferable, after all.
Sensors could just manage to scan through the semipermeable segment of the force field it was pressed against. The smartcore began to probe what it could of the siphon’s quantum signature, tracing ghostly outlines of the gigantic generator sheltered inside the force field. The map of its structure built slowly. Eventually there was enough for the Delivery Man to begin the second stage.
The Last Throw activated several TD channels, which were directed with impressive accuracy at the siphon’s control network. Low-level connections were created, and a software analysis was initiated.
“It’s not the same kind of semisentient that controls the elevation mechanism,” the Delivery Man reported. “More like a distributed AI routine, although the parallels with Commonwealth genetic software are minimal.”
“Can it be hacked?”
“There are a lot of safeguards, including an external override which will have to be neutralized, but the smartcore says we have several infiltrator packages which should work.”
“Launch them.”
It’s Gore. That was the thought Oscar awoke to. The medical capsule’s cover withdrew, showing a blurred figure peering down at him in the cargo hold’s dim green-tinged light. Gore is expecting someone to join Justine, and that’s what Aaron was committed to. Gore is Aaron’s controller.
The face above him resolved into Araminta-two, whose mind was badly agitated.
“It’s Gore,” Oscar croaked. Suspension had left him with stiff muscles everywhere and an embarrassingly full bladder.
“What is?” Araminta-two asked.
“The person behind Aaron, or at least one of them.”
“Oh. You mean because he’s directing everyone to Makkathran? Yeah, I figured that one out a few months back. Even Aaron agreed.”
“Ah. Right. Need to pee.” Oscar levered himself upright on his elbows and nearly banged his head on the ceiling of the forward cargo hold. There wasn’t much room between the bulky medical cabinets. He saw that three of them were already empty.
I thought I was supposed to be first out. “Everything okay?”
“Just about,” Araminta-two answered with a whole load of glumness. Oscar gave him a good look; the Dreamer was wearing a baggy blue T-shirt and gray-green trousers that had a lot of spare fabric. For a moment Oscar thought he was dressing in Troblum’s old clothes before acknowledging the style was deliberately feminine. “What’s up? Have we arrived?”
“Our Skylord is decelerating us into Querencia orbit. Troblum has already detected the Silverbird’s beacon, so we know where Makkathran is. No need for observational orbits.”
“That’s good.” He really needed to pee.
“It’s been touch and go with Aaron,” Araminta-two blurted.
“Why?”
“His memories of the Cat are breaking through. He spends longer and longer asleep, wrestling with his nightmares. Yesterday he was only awake for five hours. And his body’s having some kind of psychosomatic reaction, I think enhanced by his psychic ability.”
“Oh, crap.” Oscar hunched down and made his way along the companionway to the main cabin. His u-shadow connected him to the smartcore, and an exoimage display showed him the planet ahead, expanding quite rapidly as they decelerated into orbit. “Seventy-three minutes out? And we spent three and a half months traveling. Not bad.” He made it into the cabin to find Inigo, Corrie-Lyn, and Tomansio waiting for him. “Gotta go.” He pointed urgently at the washroom cubicle. They all waved him on, offering sympathetic thoughts.
He was just sealing his fly when the deluge of senses hit him hard, foreign thoughts slicing clean through his basic mental shield, bringing vertiginous light, sensation, sound, taste, along with a primeval fear that numbed his hands as he tumbled down into someone else’s life.
It had been a fabulous holiday. When evening came, they’d taken one of the hundreds of tourist boats that nosed around the piers of Tridelta City and headed up the Dongara River for a night of partying and native spectacle. The planet�
�s native bioluminescent vegetation didn’t disappoint, glowing vividly against the dark skies. And the lounges on the boat provided a lot of wild fun, impressing even the most jaded passenger.
They disembarked at dawn and went back to their hotel on the top of the old Kinoki Tower three kilometers above the muddy waters of the rivers that shimmied around the city groynes. Daytime was spent eating, sleeping, and having furious sex. The Cat had no inhibitions, which was yet another reason he loved her so. Provocative and daring, she exhausted him and still wanted more, telling him what she expected his poor old flesh to perform.
“Let me have just one break.” He laughed, reaching for some of the chilled wine. But the bottle was lying on its side where it’d been kicked. He gave it a depressed stare and told his u-shadow to connect to—
The Cat rolled him onto his back and straddled him. A delightful victorious smile lit up her cute face. “Wrong answer,” she said, grinning. Her hand closed around his wrist, and the skin burned beneath her fingers. He screamed as the charred flesh welded itself onto the mattress. She gripped the other hand and seared that down, too. “Nobody denies me,” she told him.
He screamed again as she began on his ankles, spread-eagling him so he was held immobile by the stringy remains of his own smoldering flesh. Then her hands stroked nimbly along his chest. She stiffened her fingers and powered them down like a knife. Bones cracked, and blood welled up in deep punctures. “With your body gone, I will take your mind and finally your soul,” she promised. He screamed and screamed and twisted with all his strength to escape, prizing himself free—
“Shit!” Oscar juddered back, cracking the side of his head on the bulkhead of the tiny compartment. “Ow!” He pressed his hand to the rising bruise as biononics hurried to ease the damaged flesh. That was when he saw the red markings around his wrist. He stared at them in shock. They were an identical shape to the injury the Cat had inflicted on Aaron in the dream. “Bloody hell.” He stumbled out into the main cabin, holding up both arms incredulously to show his colleagues the sores.
The Void Trilogy 3-Book Bundle Page 214
