by J. N. Chaney
His lungs burned.
He saw a face, an enormous one of metal and implacable strength, buried only an arm’s reach away. He scratched frantically at the diamond-hard ice, but it was no good. His air was gone, the last breath sucked out of him, and now he choked, nothing to breathe, nothing to breathe—
The face smiled. Dash smiled back. Warm, soft eyes, a cascade of long hair. Behind her, a lake lapped against the shore just beyond his feet. Above, the purpling sky loomed, full of possibilities, full of danger. But here, he was safe. There was air to breathe and this woman to watch over him.
“You fell asleep, Newt,” she said. “You’re always falling asleep.”
“I’m sorry, mom,” he replied, but a pair of feet walked past him, and his mother began to weep softly. Dash sat up from where he’d fallen asleep by the lake. The feet belonged to a man in combat armor, carrying a brutal, boxy auto-slugger. He turned as he walked past Dash, grinning back at him, but then his face grew—softer. Filled with a touch of wan sadness and affection, all vying for ground on the strong planes of his face.
“Dad?”
“Pay attention, son.”
His dad turned, walked, and knelt before his mom, full battle rattle creaking like trees in the wind. He took his wife’s hand, and she stared down at him, a half-smile on her face.
She was lit from within. She was beautiful.
“Some women deserve gifts, and some deserve to have stories written about them. Then there are women like you, who deserve both.”
She smiled, and her light grew brighter. “Tell me my story before you go.”
His dad shook his head once, then looked over at Dash. “He will be our story.”
Dash watched his mother smile, a brilliant thing of purest joy. She took her husband’s big hands and kissed them, then they parted, both looking at Dash with—
—pride.
“I’ll be around,” he said. “Take care of her like she does for you. Then, as long as you live, do what you say. Take blame when it’s yours. And give when you can.”
Dash nodded with the certainty of boyhood. “I will, dad.”
His father turned and resumed walking, splashing into the lake and vanishing, feet first, then legs, his torso, head, gone. His mother cried.
“He’s gone,” she said, her words awash in desolation.
Dash reached for his mom. He had to take care of her, but then he was—flying, in a flitter he’d built from stolen parts, the stink of used oil and electrical fires in his nose, ground streaking below him as his home rolled underneath.
“He’s never coming back,” he told the wind.
He was on the ground again, and his mother was there, patient. Waiting. Like she’d never left that spot.
“He’s never coming back!” Dash bawled at the water, only to see his father’s hand break the surface and slide back under. It was empty armor. His father was gone.
“War takes them all, son. You’ll take many. Look,” she said, pointing back to a low hill.
It was crowded with gravestones, leering like broken teeth. There were . . . thousands.
“Did I do this?”
His mother made to answer, but there was no sound. Only the wind, and the hum of guilt in Dash’s mind as he counted the stones—every grave a weight on his chest, and no answer other than making more to save his people.
“Dash.”
Dash thrashed, flailed, desperate to chase after them. He was losing them both, just like he’d lost everyone else, and he couldn’t—
“Dash, wake up.”
He yanked and thrashed.
“Dash, your cerebral activity indicates that you’re awake. Can you respond to me?”
“Mom?”
“No, despite thinking I was just a moment ago. I am Sentinel, and you’re aboard the Archetype.”
Dash blinked fast, trying to clear away the stubborn cobwebs that still clung to his thoughts. “Sentinel?”
“Yes.”
He glanced quickly around. He’d been disconnected from the Meld, so he hung in the cradle, only able to see the interior of the Archetype’s cockpit. The quiet solidity, the soft, purposeful hum of the mech’s systems, Sentinel’s voice—all of it finally brought his feet back onto firm mental ground.
“Are you rational now?”
Dash took a long, shuddering breath. “I think so, yeah. Just give me a minute, though.”
Dash just spent a moment breathing in, breathing out. Without the Meld active, his body was merely his own, not the vast extended form of the Archetype, so he could concentrate on his inner workings. Aside from that persistent fuzz that seemed to drag at his thoughts, nothing seemed especially amiss. He could feel his fingers, his toes, his pulse thumping away inside his ears. He eased out one more breath, and the last bits and pieces of his perceptions fell into place.
“Okay, Sentinel, where are we?”
“We are one hundred and sixty thousand, seven hundred light-years from the Forge.”
Dash blinked. “We’re—really? We’ve arrived?”
“Technically, we are in a continuous state of arriving somewhere, at all times.”
“Sentinel—!”
“Apologies. That was the longest period we’ve gone without communicating since you first discovered the Archetype, so some old habits may have crept back in.”
“So seven weeks have passed?”
“Seven weeks and two days, plus a few hours, yes.”
“And I take it there are no immediate threats?”
“None indicated, no.”
“Okay, then. Switch the Meld back on and let me see.”
A rush, as Dash’s senses suddenly swelled, his body becoming alloy and raw power, his senses powerful scanners able to see across spectra and into vast reaches of distance. The feeling rang inside him like a drug, like the warmth that washed through him after a good, strong drink. This hadn’t been just his longest separation from Sentinel. It had been his longest separation from the Meld. He’d started taking it for granted, had gotten used to switching his own body with the Archetype’s, the way he changed his clothes. Because of it, he’d forgotten just how remarkable an experience it was—
He froze. His mind had just tuned into what the Archetype’s optical scanners were seeing.
The Milky Way galaxy. All of it, from rim to rim. It hung at a shallow angle, the mech far enough above the galactic ecliptic that it formed a foreshortened pinwheel, glowing arms mottled darkly with dust and gas, swelling to a bulge of dazzling white radiance at its core. It still filled his field of view, but only just.
Dash just stared.
“No one has ever seen this before,” Sentinel said.
Dash didn’t answer right away. When he did, he managed a bit of a sardonic tone.
“The Deepers probably have. Any other species originating outside the galaxy probably has.”
Sentinel responded with something Dash had never heard from her before. It was laughter.
“I believe that counts as being hoisted by my own petard,” she replied.
Dash smiled, but he couldn’t tear his attention away from the epic splendor of his home galaxy. He could make out few individual stars, only the very brightest and most rimward ones. The rest, including humanity’s birthplace, Earth, were just a diffuse glow, a cloud of undifferentiated light.
But, he hadn’t come all this way just to sightsee. He spun the Archetype around, taking in the rest of his surroundings. He gasped in wonder as an even larger cloud of stars slid into view. It sprawled across his entire view, forcing him to look left and right, up and down, to take it all in. This close, the Large Magellanic Cloud lost its vaguely offset spiral form and was just a mass of stars, dust, and gas. The closest shone brightly as distinct points, and one truly massive one showed a visible disk.
Close by hung another star, another dim, white dwarf. Their destination. Custodian and the AIs believe it had been ejected in some ancient, unknown cataclysm from the LMC. Dash immediately sc
anned it for anything suggesting the presence of Deepers, but Sentinel already had. There were none. Just this lonely star, still almost a thousand light-years away from the recognizable boundary of the LMC.
Dash had to take another moment. The sudden transition from the intimate, inward world of his mind, his dreams, to the unthinkably vast expanse of space between him and home had left him reeling a bit. He felt sick, disoriented, and maudlin, without knowing the reason why. With an effort, he stilled his mind.
He had a purpose here, and he would fulfill it.
“Sentinel, let’s deploy the Radiant Point and see if this works—or if we’ve got another long flight home.”
The mech’s leg compartments opened, releasing the four remotes. They were hybrids, based on the semi-autonomous Red Barons that flew and fought along with their Denkillers and Super Makos. They could still do that, each still mounting a tandem dark-lance and rail gun, but they’d also been outfitted with the manipulators of a standard maintenance remote. Dash waited as they extracted the Radiant Point from the Archetype’s belly, then slowly eased it away.
He kept his attention fixed on the threat indicator. If there were Deepers nearby, they’d no doubt have reasoned that he’d made the unimaginably long journey here for only one rational reason, to deploy a Radiant Point. If they were going to attack, they’d do it now before they could use it to open a gate.
But the threat board stayed dark.
The remotes now hooked eight cables to the Radiant Point, spooled them out, then set the whole thing spinning. Centrifugal force slowly pulled the cables taut. Each was connected to the next at its far end, forming an octagonal loop that extended a klick across, with the Radiant Point as its hub. Custodian, Elois, and the other engineers who’d worked on the artifact weren’t sure that the cable loop was actually needed. But it would act to constrain the Radiant Point’s gate, giving it clearly defined margins, which would make controlling traffic through it easier.
That is, of course, if it worked at all.
The remotes backed away until they were well clear of the construct they’d built. The Radiant Point returned a green status to the Archetype.
“We’re ready to activate the gate,” Sentinel said.
“Okay then.” Dash braced himself. “Go ahead. Switch it on.”
The Radiant Point came to life, the plane of space outlined by the cables shimmering with a deep, purplish iridescence that reminded him of the phenomenon that outlined the Black Gate.
It also reminded him of the sky from the world he’d grown up on.
“The gate is activated,” Sentinel said.
“Alright.” He triggered the comm, transmitting a high-powered beam straight into the throat of the gate.
“This is the Messenger. If you can hear this, it’s done. The gate is active.”
He waited. The backup was to send one of the remotes through to broadcast the same message in case something blocked the comm beam. But they had to allow some time for those at the other end to react.
Dash took in a long, slow breath. “I wonder who’ll be first—”
Something bulbous suddenly poked out of the gate, more and more of it sliding into view, swelling into a massive shape, and a familiar one.
It was the Herald.
“Hey, sleeping beauty, you awake?” Benzel asked.
Dash let the breath back out as a laugh. The gate worked. The Cygnus Realm was now intergalactic.
A steady stream of ships followed the Herald through the gate and immediately began to deploy. The Polaris followed right behind the Victory, which immediately launched her fighter wings, including one of N’Teel Moonbanes. Jexin quickly organized them into a defensive screen, thickening the burgeoning defenses around the gate.
Dash just watched, listening in on the comm as pilots and crews caught their first glimpses of the new and awe-inspiring surroundings.
“Holy. Shit. That is all.”
“Herald, I’ve got a request from the squadron commander. You’re blocking the best view of the Milky Way. Can you move about a klick to your right?”
“That is un-freakin-believable.”
“Wow. I mean, just—wow.”
The chatter went on and on. The fighter pilots were particularly vocal about the wonder and splendor, being able to spin their nimble little craft around in place and take in whatever view they pleased—at least until their flight and squadron commanders corralled them back to their duties.
It was almost an hour before Leira came through in the Swift, accompanied by Viktor in the Slipwing. By then, what had been a lonely and profoundly empty volume of space bustled with activity. Automated defense platforms quickly deployed, while minelayers, led by the Horse Nebula, began sowing their deadly ordnance around the gate, adding another layer of protection.
Dash swelled with pride. Everything was happening with smooth efficiency, everyone throwing themselves into their job with deft, quiet confidence. Even so, every ship that came through the gate did the same thing—spending a moment just taking in the view. They’d expected that and even accounted for it in their timetable.
“Now that is a picture worth putting up on the wall,” Leira said, bringing the Swift to a stop facing the Milky Way.
Dash chuckled. “Ain’t it, though?”
She switched to a private channel. “How are you doing, Dash?”
“Fine, actually. Oh, except for all the abnormal hair growth.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll shave you.” She paused a moment, then went on.
“I missed you, Dash.”
“I missed you, too.”
“Oh, you did not. You were asleep.”
“Okay, I would have missed you if I’d been conscious.”
She chuckled. “Okay, I believe you.” But her tone turned serious.
“How was the flight? Did you experience, well, anything?”
“You mean did I dream?”
“Yes. Or anything else noteworthy, for that matter.”
Dash paused, sifting the memory with care. “Closed my eyes, then opened them here, a hundred and sixty-odd thousand light-years later. Only one, ah, blip, along the way, really. From when I was a kid. I’ll tell you about it when we have time.”
“You okay?” There was enormous generosity and caring in those two words.
“I am, and thanks. Time to work?”
“Work it is. We’ll talk as soon as we can. It’s been a busy time. Glad you’re here.”
“Same,” Dash said.
She zipped off, taking the Swift to her assigned section of the defensive sphere now taking shape around the gate. Whatever interesting meant, it couldn’t be something especially dire. Even Leira, despite her wicked sense of humor, knew when it was okay to be coy and when it was time for business.
Dash applied power and moved to join in the burgeoning swell of activity around the new gate. Freighters laden with construction materials were already lumbering through, now that a firm defensive perimeter surrounded them.
As he wended his way among the Realm ships, Dash stretched and felt the hum of purpose return to his body—and his mind.
“Sentinel, make a note. I’m not allowed to take naps ever again.’
“Why?”
Dash kicked the drive up, veering around a pair of supply barges in a graceful arc as he drank in the entire scene. Everywhere, the realm fizzed with energy.
19
Dash gave Elois and Kai a doubtful glance, then leaned in to the vial and sniffed.
He winced and pulled back. “Okay, I’m getting hints of an unwashed bunk on a long haul, the essence of dirty socks, and maybe just a soupçon of wet dog.”
Dash straightened and looked around the lab, one of the Forge’s most spacious. Elois had moved most of her detailed work here, aboard the Forge, reserving the Absolute Zero for the more preliminary, on-site sorts of investigation. Privately, Dash wondered if there might be another reason for it. She and Kai had turned out to be kindred spirits, two people
whose identities were built around seeking and studying lore and gaining knowledge. They spent a lot of time together when off-duty, wandering among Freya’s park-like gardens that now sprawled through three full cargo bays of the Forge. Dash realized he didn’t know if Kai’s Order enforced a vow of chastity. It was certainly one of those things it was awkward to bring up in casual conversation.
He gave Elois a quizzical look. “So what is this foul-smelling stuff, anyway?”
“It’s the—I guess the best name for it is primordial ooze, the stuff that contained the Radiant Points, although ooze isn’t really correct. Compared to this stuff, the actual primordial ooze, the stuff that spawned life four and a half billion years ago was, chemically speaking, dead simple.”
“Which is saying quite a bit, considering that was an extremely complex mixture of organic compounds, most of which we can still only guess at,” Kai put in.
“So it’s not ooze, at least,” Elois went added.
Dash lifted his brows. “I noticed you didn’t say it’s not primordial.”
“Good catch, because it is. In fact, as near as we can tell, it’s as old as the universe, or pretty damned close to it. We’ve been able to get it to something between twelve and fourteen billion years old, which corresponds to not that long after the Big Bang.”
Dash looked back at the vial of blackish sludge sitting on the lab bench and whistled. “Okay, I guess that counts as primordial. So if it’s not ooze, what is it?”
Elois crossed her arms and stared at the vial. “Not natural, for a start. Some of it might be, but most of it isn’t. It seems to be the by-products of machines, mixed with genetic material, prions, what we think might be a whole suite of viral life, and some truly terrifying monocellular, ah—things—with rare elements inside their cellular walls. Oh, and the cells are made out of helium, and we don’t know why they aren’t melting right before our eyes.”
“And it’s open, and you’re encouraging people to smell it because?”
