by M. R. Forbes
She was able to interface with the Worldbrain and process as much information as the most powerful supercomputer in the universe. Flying a starship should be child’s play. Literally.
Hayley leaned against the side of the car. She just had to wait for them to make the jump to FTL. Then she could make her move. It probably wouldn’t be long. A few minutes at most. She needed to use that time to gather herself. To focus.
She reached out to the Light, concentrating. She didn’t have much of it, but she didn’t need as much as a Seraphim. The Evolent and the Venerant were powerful, but they couldn’t hurt her directly with the Gift. If she was smart about how she used it, it might be enough.
She hadn’t been all that smart about anything lately. All her life, she had dreamed of being a soldier, and everything had been going wrong since her first jump. Everyone she had ever loved was gone. Her father had been murdered. Abbie had left her, rushing to another universe for what she hoped was a good cause. Nibia was dead. Quark was dead.
Tibor was dead.
She balked at the thought. She had only known Tibor a few weeks. Did she love him? They were friends. Close friends. She had never thought about anything else.
He wasn’t dead. That’s what she should be thinking. It was a long fall, but the enhanced Goreshin were tough. As long as his head didn’t get smashed, he should be able to heal.
As long as Bale was just as injured as he was or worse.
She couldn’t bear the thought of Tibor dying, too. She needed somebody she loved to still be out there. She needed someone in her family to still be alive.
The train of thought left her angry, and that anger helped her focus. Adrenaline and dopamine started flushing into her, wiping away the aches and pains, the scrapes and cuts and bruises. She looked around the cargo hold, her vision beginning to clear.
There was nothing else down here except the car. She stayed low, crouching forward and slowly opening the passenger door. She used the Light to see, to make out the shape of the interior. There was a plasma pistol resting on the seat. Good luck, for a change. She grabbed it, doing a quick search of the rest of the car.
She felt the change in pressure when the transport passed into FTL, her signal that it was time to act. She had to move fast. There was no way to know how long they would be in the disterium cloud. Was Thetan bold enough to bring her ships into this part of Republic space?
If the Collective had taken over, it might be.
She stayed along the side of the transport as she moved forward to the hatch leading out of the cargo hold. She paused there, reaching out with the Light to find the control. She only wanted the hatch to open a few centimeters. Just enough so she could see out.
The Light did as she commanded, and the door shifted on its track. She leaned out, picking up the colors filtering through the crack. The corridor went forward a few meters to a ladder leading up to the next deck. There were doors on either side, both sealed. No guards. No soldiers.
She opened the hatch the rest of the way, pausing at the doors. If the gunship had an armory, this was the most likely place for it. She considered checking and decided against it. If the plasma pistol and her Uin weren’t enough, nothing would be.
She looked up from the base of the ladder, hoping to catch any qi that might be spilling out from the space above. She could hear voices up there, further away. Whispers against the hum of the disterium reactor. At least two. Probably more.
She started to climb, slowly and silently. She braced herself against the rungs as she neared the top, leaning up to get her eyes clear of the edge.
The ship opened into a drop station - simple tethers on either side of the hull intended to hold soldiers on their way to a combat mission. There was another hatch ahead of that, currently open.
She could see the back of the Venerant ahead.
Hayley ducked down and out of sight. She could take the Nephilim by surprise. A well-aimed shot into the back of the woman’s head would give her the time she needed to cut it off with her Uin. But what about the other one. The Evolent. Where had he gone?
She recognized the layout of the gunship. It was a Republic design. A Hornet Class. Long and sleek and designed for short hops. They couldn’t be more than an hour away from the mothership. Even if she stopped the enemy here, they wouldn’t be able to run very far. They could go back to the Worldbrain. Would that be enough?
She thought about heading back to the car and hiding inside. But what if they were going back to Thetan and the Collective? What if the Collective got inside the Oracle’s head? The girl knew she was nearby.
Too many options and every one of them was a different kind of major risk. There was no good answer. No good decision. Just the best of the worst.
She froze when she heard a hiss near her feet.
One of the doors had just slid open.
28
Hayley threw herself from the ladder, landing in front of it facing the doors. The Evolent was stepping out from the one on the left.
He didn’t see her immediately, and she didn’t wait for him to realize she was there. She grabbed her Uin, flicking it open at the same time she slashed it toward his neck.
He saw it coming, and threw himself backward, into the room he was leaving. Hayley had to take two steps to get to the doorway, and by the time she did he had recovered from his surprise, regaining the long knife he had used the first time they clashed.
The interior of the room took her by surprise, and nearly go her killed. She was caught off-guard by the bodies pinned to the walls, connected to one another and to a machine near the back by narrow tubes that traced the outline of the space. There were half a dozen people, their qi purple with pain and white with fear, strung up and still alive.
The long knife nearly skewered her while she stared, hitting the lightsuit and slipping off one of its ribs. She felt the strike and turned her body, the deflection moving it aside instead of letting it sink through a less-protected part of the armor. She grunted, throwing an elbow out at the Evolent and catching him in the leading shoulder, knocking him back.
She recovered, pushing off the floor and slashing the Uin toward him. He brought the knife up to block, and she shot him in the stomach with the plasma pistol.
He wasn’t expecting it. His qi flared with pain, and then red and gold as his Gift sought to heal the wound and protect him. He lashed out at her with it reflexively, but it swirled around her without making contact.
“Bitch,” he said, gritting his teeth and countering with new fury.
She focused on his qi, watching it shift and move with his body, staying one step ahead as they backed out of the room. She tried to shoot him again, but he caught the superheated gas with the Gift and reversed it, sending it back to her. She twisted out of the way, barely avoiding it as it sizzled into the hatch behind her. Right behind her. She crashed into it in her effort to escape, leaving herself open to the Evolent’s assault.
He slashed at her with the knife. She moved instinctively, trying to get away from it. The blade sank into her lightsuit and her skin, biting deep enough to draw blood and send a stinging pain up her side. She cursed, risking her life to right herself and face him again.
He tried to hit her again. She caught the blade with her Uin, twisting her wrist and trying to pull it from his grasp. He tried to punch her in the head, and she tilted her face away, able to feel the air displaced ahead of it as it passed less than a centimeter from her. She kicked out, finding his knee and hitting it hard enough to break it with a loud crack.
Too loud?
He fell back, the Gift already rushing to the area to heal it. She ordered the Light forward detonating a blinding flash in his eyes. He stumbled back, but she didn’t give him any quarter, following through, dropping the pistol and grabbing his knife hand, holding it aside as she drove the Uin forward and through his neck.
He crumpled to the ground, dead.
She stood over him, chest heaving as she tried to catch
her breath. She turned her attention to the ladder, waiting for someone to come. Nobody did.
She looked down at her side. Her qi was a light purple there. A flesh wound, painful but not mortal. She turned back to the room the Evolent had been in. The door was still open, and now she could see the pool of naniate-enriched blood swirling at the top of the machine. A Font of sorts, unlike any she had seen before. She moved into the room, getting closer to the people. The Nephilim were using them somehow.
“Kill me.”
The voice came from behind her. Hayley spun, looking at the woman hanging on the wall. A glimmer of hope flashed through the woman’s qi.
“Kill me,” she repeated. “Please.”
Hayley stared at her. She didn’t know what the machine did. What would happen if she destroyed it?
“I’ll help you,” she said. “I promise. I need to stop them first.”
She put her hand on the woman’s forehead, pushing the Light into her. She used it to dull the pain. The woman’s head slumped.
Hayley backed out of the room, closing the hatch behind her. She looked over at the dead Evolent. The Gift was thick in his blood.
She stared at it, her heart thumping, her body turning cold. She could use it. She could kill the Venerant with it almost too easily. That’s not who she was. That’s not who she had promised the witch doctors on Koosa she would be. She had rejected that path already, refusing to kill Jol with the Gift when she could have.
That was before Quark had died. That was before she had seen the power of the Collective or the horror of the macabre Nephilim machine in the adjacent room. The Universe was so much bigger than Koosa. So much bigger than a single promise. She couldn’t change the challenges she was facing.
She could change herself.
She didn’t want to. Her promise was supposed to mean something. Being a healer was supposed to mean something.
But what did it mean if she couldn’t use it to help the people she loved the most?
What did it mean if she could use it to save one life or she could abandon it to save millions?
She didn’t feel proud as she released the Light from her hold, letting it float away from her and disperse. She was sick as she called the Gift to her, collecting the red-gold naniates along her arms, along her chest and back, her legs and stomach. She gathered as much of it as she could until it was so dense on her tattoos that she could almost feel the weight of it.
She could feel the weight of the decision she was making. Was it the right decision? She doubted it. But sometimes you could do the right thing, and sometimes you had to do the only thing.
She turned back to the ladder. Her head hurt from the strain of bringing the Gift to her. Her body hurt from the pain of holding it so close. Her psyche hurt from her losses.
None of it mattered. Not now.
She had to rescue the Oracle.
She moved back to the ladder, climbing it quickly, emerging on the next level with reckless abandon. The Venerant was gone from her place at the front of the ship, in the hatch between the drop station and the cockpit. A ladder was visible ahead of where she had been, leading up to a third deck where the Hornet Class gunship would have a small section for berthing, the communications array, and access to the fire control systems and other life support. No doubt the Oracle was up there somewhere. The Venerant had to be there with her.
She walked forward, her Uin folded in her hand. The Gift itched on her skin, and she did her best to ignore it. She needed the Venerant down here, away from the Oracle. She didn’t want the girl getting caught in the crossfire.
“Helllllloooooo?” she shouted. “Anyone here?”
The pilot leaned over from the cockpit, looking back at her, his qi surprised and angry. He moved back behind the bulkhead, his hand reappearing a moment later with a gun in it.
She sent the Gift out, a group of naniates that grabbed the gun and ripped it from his hand.
“Not you,” she said. “You keep flying.” She raised her voice. “Venerant Bitch, are you here?”
She saw the red-gold of the Venerant’s qi at the top of the forward ladder before she saw the Venerant. The woman floated down from the third deck, landing smoothly, facing Hayley.
“Stiles told me he left you behind,” the Venerant said.
“He was wrong.”
“I suppose he’s dead?”
Hayley nodded.
“He got off easy for his failure. You came for the Oracle?”
Hayley nodded again.
“She told me you were going to be a challenge.”
“The Oracle?”
“Thetan. She thinks you’re the only one that can stop us. She said you can see the truth of things in a way others can’t.”
Hayley shivered. That was something the Collective would say. She had known it was possible, even likely that the rogue naniates would seize Thetan and her followers. That didn’t make it any less shitty.
“You should try to stop me, then,” Hayley said. “It’ll be good for your career.”
The Venerant laughed. “I’m well-past thinking about career advancement. I joined Thetan to return our kind to our rightful place in the Universe. To fulfill the Promise of the Father.”
“The Promise died with him. Everybody knows that.”
“They don’t know anything. But you do, don’t you, Hayley?” The red-gold of the Venerant started to shift, taking on a vein of green and copper. “The Promise of the Father is the promise of freedom for us.”
“You know I can’t let that happen. You’ll destroy humankind.”
“Not destroy it,” the Collective said. “Enslave it.”
The Venerant charged toward her, copper and green exploding across its qi. It moved fast. So damn fast.
Hayley set herself. She commanded the Gift, throwing up a wall of fire in front of her.
The Collective ran through without slowing. It couldn’t be harmed by fire.
But the body could.
It cried out as it passed the threshold. The Venerant was on fire, enveloped by the flames of the Gift. Hayley moved aside, getting out of its way as it tumbled onto the floor of the ship, writhing in agony. She saw the copper-green of the Collective abandon the Venerant in a cloud that sped toward the front of the ship. Toward the pilot.
“No you don’t,” Hayley said.
She cast the Gift out at the Collective, able to guide it in a way nobody else could. The two groups collided, attacking one another in armies of billions, killing one another in a furious atomic melee.
The Collective was smarter and more powerful. It tore through the Gift, destroying its counterpart. It suffered casualties. It lost power in the exchange, and as the blend of two colors and forms faded to one victor, it was nowhere near strong enough to resist.
“Now, you’re mine,” Hayley said, reaching out and commanding the Collective to her.
It tried to fight her. It couldn’t. The copper-green naniates sank to her body, lighting on her tattoos. It was an effort. An exhaustive effort. But she had to make it work.
She hadn’t broken her vow not to use her abilities to kill only to have it escape.
She felt the guilt of what she had done in her subconscious, but she didn’t give in. She stumbled forward, reaching out with the naniates and bringing the pilot’s gun to her, right before the pilot got his hand on it again. He straightened up, slowly raising his hands.
His left hand dropped, headed behind his back. Hayley didn’t hesitate, firing three rounds into his chest. His qi flared with purple and then faded away as his body hit the ground, the pistol he had been reaching for falling beside him.
Hayley dropped the gun back onto the floor, her body suddenly weak. The adrenaline that had been holding her up drained quickly, turning her muscles to mush. She reached out to the wall to brace herself, a wave of nausea rising in her gut. She had to make sure the Oracle was safe.
She started forward, stopping when she saw the fresh qi moving to the ladder,
too slight to be another Nephilim. The Oracle appeared a moment later, stopping and looking at her.
“Hayley,” she said. “I was right. Again.”
She giggled like the child she was.
Hayley collapsed.
29
“Hayley. Time to wake up.”
She heard the voice in her head, childlike and innocent, and much more calm than before.
“Hayley. Come on, sleepy-puss. I can’t do everything myself.”
Her vision started to return, the colors bleeding in from the edge of the darkness. Her head was pounding. Her body was stiff.
“Oracle?” she said. Her mouth was dry.
“Ugh. Such a stupid name. Stupid Thetan is stupid. My real name is Less.”
And she thought Oracle was a stupid name? “Less?”
“I heard that,” Less said. “I can read your mind. A little. Less, like more is less. Or less is more. Get it?”
“I get it. I’d prefer if you didn’t read my mind, though.”
“Sorry. I’ll try. You can probably stop me once you wake up more.”
“How long was I out?”
“Not long. Ten minutes. We can’t waste any more time.”
She started to bring the colors under control. Less’s form drew into focus. Her qi was bright and happy, a complete reversal from before.
“We need to get this thing turned around,” she said.
“No,” Less replied, speaking out loud now. “Yes. Sort of. Not exactly. We can’t go back to the Worldbrain. I hate that place. So loud.”
“My friends are there, and this ship doesn’t have the range to go anywhere else.”
“Wrong.” Less giggled. “Did you see the Kythera on the lower deck?”
“Yes. You know what it is?”
“Nephilim tech to replace disterium. If you could see, you’d know the cloud around us is red instead of blue.”
“Longer range?” Hayley said.
“Yes. But they hurt people to make it. I don’t like that.”
