Amidst the buffeting storm of grief, fear, and anger, a smile curved the corners of his lips.
Angara noticed and her brows dropped. “Why do you smile now?”
He shook his head, not even wanting to voice the thought that had intruded upon this solemn, terrifying moment. But he couldn’t help it.
“All the shit I’ve been getting from all of you since before you even dragged me here … Every snide comment, dark look, and condescending smile … and you assholes have been squatting in my back yard for how many thousands of years?”
She recoiled a little at the venom in his voice, but then her eyes narrowed, she settled back into a more relaxed posture, and nodded. She might have even smiled a little smile, but he wasn’t paying enough attention to see.
He was staring at the chair again. “So, what we’re basically saying is that Humans built the Relic Core thousands upon thousands of years ago, and then abandoned it. Penumbra was raised up around it sometime between then and now, and here we are, being chased by an army of dog aliens howling for our blood, and it all comes down to me sitting in this chair and hoping that something happens to save us all?”
She nodded slightly. “It would appear so.”
The fear was a physical presence freezing his limbs into immobility. The chair loomed over him, the strange symbol seeming to mock him with its silence. But, even if no one had followed them down into the Core yet, they would be soon. And there was nothing that any of them could do to survive their arrival when they came.
They had killed Iphini Bha, they had probably killed Sihn Ve’Yan. And Angara obviously thought they had killed Justin. Justin, his best friend, who had stood beside him through most of his adult life, and been there for him in every moment of need. Justin, who he had failed, running instead to Sanctum following some strange siren’s call he couldn’t have explained if he had tried.
The siren’s call that had led him to this moment.
He was shaking as he forced his body to take a step toward the chair. The tremors grew worse with the next step. The next was nearly impossible as his muscles locked in terror against his obvious intentions.
But they had killed Justin. They had destroyed every good thing he had tried to accomplish.
And he would be damned if he was going to let them kill him before he found out what he had been running toward all this time.
He forced his body to turn, aware of Angara and Nhan staring at him in fascination as his body trembled with effort. He felt as if he had aged a hundred years, as if the shaking was the failure of an infirm body to respond to his simplest commands. But he wrestled control from his own terrified hindbrain and lowered himself into the vast, encompassing seat.
And fell right through it into darkness.
Chapter 30
He landed on his back, hard. The air rushed from his lungs in a painful gasp and his back and ribs throbbed with sudden, dull pain. But even in the depths of that sting, he knew something more was wrong. He hadn’t landed on the hard metal surface of the dais. His mind was confused, sending him mixed signals. It was a wooden floor. It was dirt and grass. It was a hard, flat, smooth surface, cool to the touch.
He touched the ground on either side with his hands. He still wasn’t sure what it was.
“Damn, that looked like it hurt!” The voice sounded familiar, and he opened his eyes to peer up at the shape looming over him. Beyond the figure’s head he thought he could see the shifting light of sun through leaves, or maybe bright, artificial light. It seemed as unsure as the surface beneath him.
“What?” He tried to talk, but his tortured lungs subjected him to a coughing fit instead, trying to suck air back in despite the insult he had done to them by falling on his back. When he was breathing more easily he repeated, “What?”
“That fall.” The voice was soft and kind, and for some reason, that worried him. And that worry further underscored that absence of the paralyzing fear that had gripped him only moments before.
The fear … What had he been afraid of?
“Are you okay?” A gentle hand took his shoulder in a comforting grip. “Can you stand?”
His vision was still blurry, and he couldn’t make out the face. Unkempt dark hair, five o’clock shadow along strong, well-defined jawline. He shook his head, trying to sit up. A friendly shoulder settled into his back, steadying him.
“Take it easy, now. That couldn’t have felt good.” The voice continued to speak in soothing tones. And that difference, rather than any similarity to past experiences, put it all into place.
“What the hell do you care?” He snapped, pushing the helping hand away.
The response, when it came, was not angry. Instead, it sounded almost amused. “Took you long enough.”
Marcus pushed himself to his feet, feeling an overwhelming urge to cry foul. Why should he feel such pain in his own fevered fantasy world?
“I’m not in the mood for a lecture or a threat.” He looked around them, but the details of their surroundings were fuzzy. He felt as if he was seeing a kaleidoscope impression of shifting foggy, obscured battlements, plywood backings with two by four supports, and distant fields in the corner of his vision, but whenever he turned to look directly at something, there was nothing there at all. They were encircled by gray, featureless fog and only the hints and illusions of surroundings.
His younger self gave him that smile that made him want to punch himself, and shrugged. “Nothing much to lecture you about now, big boy.” The smile became more of a smirk, and Marcus felt the first stirrings of the fear he had only recently left behind. At his double’s next words, the fear surged up, threatening once again to choke him. “You’ve gone and made the big move. Now all we can do is wait it out and see what happens.”
Marcus felt his hands tighten up into fists. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
His younger self shrugged again and paced around him, looking out into the fog as if he was seeing more than the swirling mists. “Something’s happening to you, again. Something a lot more profound than last time.” He turned to Marcus and reached out to tap him gently on the forehead. “They’re really messing with our brain this time, old son.”
Marcus sneered. “Now it’s our brain, is it?”
Again, that maddening shrug. “I told you, if you die, I die. Whatever you might want to think, the brain belongs to both of us.” He flinched as if something horrific had lunged at him out of the surrounding clouds. “And it’s taking a beating.”
Marcus paused, his brow furrowed, and tried to feel his mind, to sense whatever the doppelganger was claiming was being done to him, to the real him, wherever he was. He couldn’t feel anything.
“Who is it this time?” The memories before his fall were dim, he remembered standing with Angara and the little mystic. Had she done something to him again? Last time it had been her fault, he remembered. But at least now he understood her motives from the time before. Now, what would she be doing?
He remembered the big chair, and the fear rose up in his throat again. He remembered sitting down …
“It was that damned chair, wasn’t it.” It was a statement, not a question, and Marcus didn’t even need the other version of himself to respond. He knew it.
“I’d call it more of a throne than a chair, really, but yeah, that’d be my guess.” Those familiar dark eyes were peering into his again, looking around as if trying to see something. “You really can’t feel a thing? It’s crazy, what’s being done to us.”
He shook his head with exasperation. “No, I can’t!” he took a couple steps away to put some distance between them, but it did no good. The fog followed him, and so did the other figure, without apparent effort. He gave up. “Who the hell is doing this to me?”
“To us.” The other’s voice was smug.
Marcus decided not to rise to the bait. “Who?”
The other shrugged again. “There’s something here with us, much more powerful than last time.” He walked a
round, again looking out into the fog. “We’ve never encountered anything like this. In fact,” he tossed over his shoulder, “I don’t think anyone has encountered anything like this in a very, very long time.”
Marcus thought about that for a moment. “Angara seems to think the Relic Core was built by Humans.”
The younger man smiled again. “Well, that’s what you’ve thought for a while now, but you lacked the faith to admit it to yourself.” The smile widened. “Or, should I say, I’ve thought it for a while, but you wouldn’t listen.”
Marcus ignored him. “So, what does that mean?”
The smile on the other man’s face faded and he grew thoughtful. That was enough to bring the fear right back to full strength. “Well, I’ve been thinking a lot about everything the big red bastard said at that refueling station. About Humans being the ascendant species in the galaxy, and screwing it all up by being total assholes.” His face dismissed the concept with an eloquent expression. “Not that I have any trouble imagining that to be possible, but it doesn’t matter much now.” He gestured at the fog and turned back to Marcus. “Looks to me like we’re inheriting more than just that bad bogeyman rap, now.”
Marcus thought about that. “So, you do think this is some kind of greater bequest? It’s not just going to eat me?”
“I think something very powerful and very old is trying to communicate with us. And I think, for some reason, it’s got to change your brain to do so.” The smile was back. “I didn’t say it wasn’t going to eat you, too, however.”
Marcus felt the overwhelming urge to slap his younger self again, but before he could make any response, the young familiar face contorted in sudden pain, jerking around again as if he thought someone was sneaking up behind him.
“What’s wrong?” He didn’t want to care, but honestly, if something was stalking that version of himself in here, it was probably hunting him as well, he just hadn’t sensed it yet.
But the other made no reply, a look of confusion and fear swept across his features, his eyes twitched around him one more time, and then he fell backward into the fog.
“Hey!” Marcus scrambled over to follow him down, dropping to one knee to help, but when the swirling mist eddied out of the way, the ground, whatever it was, was bare.
Marcus was alone.
“Hey!” The fog sent back a thin echo of his own voice, but no reply from his other self. “Where’d you go?”
He turned one way, then the other, but nothing but featureless fog lay in every direction.
“This will do.”
He spun, looking frantically behind him. He hadn’t recognized the voice. It hadn’t even really sounded Human. It was heavy and almost painful to hear. There had been a grainy burr to it that sounded almost like an insect’s wings. The buzzing seemed to resonate oddly with his implanted enhancements, and he found himself opening and closing his jaw to try and alleviate the annoying pressure.
His double walked out of the fog in front of him, but his movements were all wrong. It was the same face, the same hair, the same body; but the motivating force within it was completely different. The body moved with a flowing, unnatural grace. It regarded him with an empty, enigmatic expression, its eyes dark, hollow depths.
Marcus stared at this new figment his subconscious had apparently thrown up, and his face tightened. He really wasn’t in the mood.
“And who are you, now?” He would have hoped his imagination would do better than to just reuse his own face for multiple repressed manifestations.
The figure cocked its eerie head to one side. “You may as well call me … Penumbra.”
He felt like someone had punched him in the stomach, and the fog dropped away without warning. The floor was a smooth, featureless black. And all around them was an infinite vastness, dark and empty.
He realized he was no longer trapped in his own mind. He swallowed. Apparently, wherever they were, when he got nervous, his throat still got dry.
“What do you want?” He was fairly proud he managed to get the words out in an even tone.
The eyes stared at him, lacking any Human expression. “We do not have much time. I am afraid the enhancements I required took longer than anticipated, and events within the command chamber have proceeded apace.”
That didn’t sound good. “What enhancements? What events? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Please.” The word was polite, but the voice didn’t carry an ounce of concern. “I know I must explain myself before we begin.”
Marcus shook his head. “That’s what I’m saying! What the hell are you doing? Who are you? What’s going on?”
The other cocked his head as if listening to something Marcus couldn’t hear. He wanted to scream again.
“There is no time.” The thing wearing his image stepped toward him without warning and reached out to grasp his wrist. There was a sharp shock, a jerking sensation, and then the harrowing sense of falling all over again. He squeezed his eyes shut, bracing himself for the impact –
*****
Marcus was floating in space. He gasped in fear; his emergency rebreathing membrane had not engaged. It was a moment before he realized that despite floating freely in open space, he appeared to be breathing normally, with no troubles at all. Then he looked around and realized that although he was seeing the empty void, he was not, after all, floating in it. He was observing things from some disembodied vantage, as if he were in a dream.
This just got stranger and stranger.
“There are seventy two hostile contacts within sensor range.” The strange voice was speaking in his ear, although the being that had called itself Penumbra was no more visible than he was. “Actions?”
Marcus looked down and saw the horseshoe shape of Penumbra floating beneath him. The city’s towers glittered with lights, looking warm and safe. But between his vantage and that safety swarmed a mass of starships engaged in desperate battle.
K’hzan’s forces had clearly not been able to escape, and had been pinned against the city while trying to extricate their comrades who had accompanied him in the assault. The city’s defenses were active, and fighting on the right side again, as far as he was concerned. The batteries sent bolts of coherent light up at the larger Council fleet. It was clear, though, that the fire from the city was less effectual than they had hoped. The combined power of the various towers was not enough to penetrate the fields of the larger ships, and the smaller Ntja vessels merely sheltered behind their more massive brethren.
Somehow, he knew that the last time anyone had attacked the city, shield technology had not been so advanced.
He could feel his mouth tightening into a cruel grin, wherever it was. Suddenly, he knew what Penumbra was asking of him. And there was no way it would be asking if it couldn’t deliver.
He opened his mouth to give it the order to destroy the Council fleet, but then stopped.
There was no way there were seventy two Ntja ships down there. He focused on them, intending to count them, and suddenly they were separated out of the snarling tangle by glowing lines and icons. There were forty eight Council ships in all. The two large warships at the core of the fleet were pounding the life out of the Variyar, their twenty four smaller ships being forced into a tighter and tighter formation.
Their defensive fields were crazing with each hit, close to giving out. K’hzan was using the larger ships to shelter the smaller ones, their fields overlapping in what he somehow knew was a dangerous, desperate maneuver, but the only gambit the demon-faced alien had open to him.
And then it hit him. God knew how long Penumbra had been dormant, or inoperative, or in whatever inactive state it had been in. To the entity curled within the Relic Core of the city, anything that was not Human was a hostile contact. It was offering him the chance to destroy them all.
“Stop!” He shouted, although he knew there was no need. Wherever he was, he was within Penumbra’s power, and there was little doubt that the entity would be
able to hear him. “The Variyar are our allies! Don’t destroy them!”
There was a hesitation in the strange voice that lasted less than half a heart-beat, but it was nice to know the creature wasn’t entirely unflappable. He would have liked nothing more than for the voice to question his statement, but in that he was disappointed.
“Designate hostile contacts.”
Marcus shook his head, but then looked down again at the battle unfolding below. The squat, ugly forms of the Ntja ships were easy to spot, and without even thinking about it, all forty eight ships were glowing with individual angry red haloes.
“Targets designated. Activate defenses?” He was forced once again to work his jaw against the annoying buzz, but he nodded with savage satisfaction. He had fought his way through an enemy army, been chased down through the tunnels behind the door that had not opened in millennia, and lost too many good friends to bring him to this point. He hoped the results were spectacular.
He had no need to fear.
The image of Penumbra floating below him started to change. The glowing blue cavern at the apex of the Gulf, known as the Furnace for millennia, began to pulse. With each beat, it became brighter, more intense, and Marcus imagined beams of power leaping out and scorching the Ntja. Somewhere, his teeth gritted with expectation.
He was not alone, however, and the Ntja commanders were not blind. The fleet began to drift away from the city as they saw the flaring light. The bolts flashing between the two fleets dropped off as the distance opened up, and Marcus was glad that K’hzan did not pursue. He had been careful to instruct the entity to target only the Council fleet, but the way the Furnace was glowing didn’t seem to indicate a fine-tuned, precision weapon. The farther away the Variyar were, the better.
Legacy of Shadow Page 50
