by Skyler Grant
"I'll provide remote monitoring support," Mara said.
They had a plan of sorts.
5
The Tango found an open space on the station's dock and landed. Quinn found the process of landing here as odd as he had at any Chaosian facilities. Imperium docks were almost annoyingly well-ordered with their queues, and while the Rim kept things a little looser they still at least had designated landing spots. The clans simply found any open spot to land.
Everyone was dressed for a fight—in their own way. For Quinn and Dela it meant light armor and a pair of pistols at their hips, and Kara almost turning into a living tank. Kalisa and Jinx were wearing barely anything so their runes could be exposed and work at full effect.
"Nine five eight," Dela said, checking her wristcomm. They all wore them, starting down the ten-hour timer as soon as they touched down—the amount of time before all the others had gone missing.
The air smelled crisp, almost too sterile. Over-purified by a station that was meant to support a population of more than zero.
"Is it okay to split up? I'd like to go have a look at the recovered artifacts and samples," Dela said.
Kalisa said, "I think it advisable. Whatever happened to the others didn't happen until ten hours. We have time. I think Jinx and I should search the station starting on opposite decks. I can take one and she five, and we work our way towards each other one deck at a time."
"So we don't interfere with each other. That is smart," Jinx said, looking with a frown around the dock. "I feel ... something. But it might just be knowing what keeps happening here."
"I feel it too. Pressure. Magic, unfamiliar magic," Kalisa said.
"I meanwhile want to go study the station logs. They might seem wiped clean to you, but I can bring far more resources to bear," Sand said.
Kara said, "I'm going to check out station security. The internal defenses haven't done much good so far, but we can at least make sure they aren't turned against us."
Quinn didn't have anywhere he needed to be. His expertise was as a pilot and that didn't have any use here. While he had some Chaos magic, it wasn't nearly as strong or refined as Kalisa's.
Dela must have caught his expression because she grabbed his arm. "I can use Quinn's help with the artifacts, if nobody else needs him."
Nobody voiced any objections and they split up to go their own ways.
Artifact storage was on deck two. The station wasn't huge, not nearly as large as a commercial station. Still, it possessed a large reactor and was designed to support a crew of eighty.
The station hadn't apparently been hastily abandoned—the crew had simply disappeared. Here and there a hatch was still open showing a meal on a table. A maintenance cover was opened with tools nearby.
"So I heard you met Kat. How did it go? Weird, right?" Dela asked.
"We barely got to talk before she was asking Sand to take over. That isn't what I remember of Kat. That desire to hide from the world," Quinn said.
"Think it was all a bit much, or was Sand lying to you?"
"I don't think she was lying. I don't think she needs us enough to carry out a deception like that," Quinn said.
"She wants us enough that she raised your dead wife from the grave. I think Sand would do a lot to stay with us, if she had to. Just because you don't understand the why doesn't mean it isn't so."
There were a lot of labs with unfamiliar equipment. That about fit what Quinn expected of a station Kalisa had owned.
They reached a room labeled Artifact Storage. Long tables filled the place, faintly shimmering barriers of energy over each. Force shields, and he figured this must be drawing a lot of power to keep them all up consistently.
Most of the artifacts being studied didn't look particularly ancient. Metallic, and often covered with small bumps that might be some sort of buttons. They looked like tools, or perhaps weapons.
"Still, I think she was being honest. I think this was all just too much for Kat to handle. Or maybe when Sand put her back together she put her back together wrong," Quinn said.
"Give it time. You know how much struggle we've all had dealing with the changes in our lives. And they happened to us gradually. She just woke up one day with her whole world different," Dela said.
There was some truth to that, but only some. There was a difference between giving it a few days and deciding you needed some space, and handling only a few minutes before going back into a shell.
However, Quinn couldn't really relate to what she was going through. Sand could sit back and see through her eyes, experience what Kat experienced. If she somehow knew that, it wasn't so much running away as giving up control for a time.
"You and the others worried?" Quinn asked.
"Everybody knows you aren't going to run away from the family, but we also know how hard this whole thing has to be on you. We’re more curious. I'm here for you, we're all here for you," Dela said, settling down at a console and beginning to flip through files.
"Anything interesting?" Quinn asked after a minute.
"It is a completely alien culture I'm encountering for the first time. You know how hard I'm fan-girling out right now," Dela said, pleased. "They were interstellar, that much is obvious. Kalisa was obsessed with their technology, which I don't care much about."
"Isn't that the right idea though?"
"Knowing how these people thought might explain what’s happening now. Knowing why, not how, is our first step to stopping it.”
That all sounded good.
"How can I help?" Quinn asked.
Dela started to answer and paused. "I know I invited you, but this actually isn't as far along as I thought. I need to focus."
"Go bug someone else?"
"Love you, but yeah."
Quinn gave her a kiss and headed away. Perhaps he might be useful elsewhere.
6
Quinn's power was all about possibilities, the might-have-beens. Pulling a state of himself, or of a reality, from some reality that might have been. It had helped him once to neutralize a drug in his bloodstream long enough to fight. It had recently helped to keep him from falling to his death.
Yet, Quinn felt certain there was more that his power could do now. Somewhere, at some time, there was a way to preventing what happened at this station, and he’d found out what was happening.
Quinn walked, trying to reach out to those possibilities and searching for that particular thread. That lifetime that held the answers.
So far he wasn't getting much, try though he might. It wasn't that his powers weren't working. Each time he came to a doorway there were a thousand faint echoes of himself turning at the edge of his vision. Sometimes, most of the time, he went straight, but sometimes he paused to investigate the room. So far, none were what he was looking for.
It wasn't long until he came upon someone else walking the silent halls. He knew who it would be at least a few seconds before it happened. Kalisa, making her own inspection.
"Bored of artifacts already?" Kalisa asked.
"I was just getting in Dela's way. I thought I'd give my powers a chance, but they aren't turning up much," Quinn said.
"You haven't even earned your first mark and you're hoping for something in the way of control? It is surprising you have as much as you do," Kalisa said, falling into step behind him.
"You didn't?"
"It was different for us. The Unshackled were far more powerful and had far less control than those we would later go on to create."
"You're telling me I have far more control than you did, and yet it’s a surprising amount too, while also being completely useless," Quinn said, the words coming out as frustrated as he felt.
"You aren't running around space vivisecting everyone who crosses your path because you're curious what they look like on the insides," Kalisa said wryly.
"You uh ... did that?"
"Oh, I did so much worse than that. You have no idea of the atrocities I was driven to perform," Kalisa sai
d, and let out a rueful laugh. "I am still driven, honestly. It hasn't gone away, I'm just better in control of it now."
"I don't think I have anything like that."
Kalisa gave him a thoughtful look and shook her head. "You do. Even though yours may not be as strong as that of an Unshackled, you will. I'm guessing it is just gratified. You'll know it, if you are ever missing it."
Something that Quinn was well satisfied with? That could be a lot of things in his life. Sex, flying, danger.
"I'll worry about it, if it ever becomes a problem. Do you have any advice on what I'm trying to do?" Quinn asked.
"You've heard me lecture Jinx about her magic. In many ways we Chaosians are the inverse. While she is strongest from knowing who she is and exactly what she is trying to do, we're often the opposite," Kalisa said.
"But you do know exactly what you're doing. You do it all the time. I've seen you in a fight and you're almost untouchable."
"Yet you'd be mistaken for thinking I am in control. Fighting for me isn't about having control, but releasing it. I don't so much control my magic as I unleash it."
On the one part, what she was saying made perfect sense. It also wasn't all that helpful.
"So how can I do that —for what I'm trying to do? I'm unleashing my power, I can feel the might-have-beens swirling around and can even see a few seconds into the future. Or possible futures, I guess, but it doesn't help for something like we are doing here," Quinn said.
Kalisa paused in the hall so she could lean against a wall and fold her arms. "Power. You having trouble metaphysically getting it up. The spirit is willing, but oh the flesh is weak."
Quinn winced. "Must you go sexual with it? Especially when you know that isn't a problem."
"It works to get across what I'm saying. You're expecting too much of yourself. Each rune increases your power and what you can do, but you have no marks yet. You knew Jinx with no marks? What could she do?"
"She could do healing. At least if it was a bad enough emergency."
"A very practical application for one with the power of mending. I think she did more than you know. I think she started to gather broken people around herself in need of fixing," Kalisa said.
Was that what Kalisa thought of their family? Quinn didn't approve.
Kalisa caught his look. "Keep in mind, before you look too irritated, I am including myself in that number. And you've seen what Jinx can do now with several marks."
Jinx had fought the Grandmaster of the Arena, a mage of some skill as well as a talented combatant, and won. Quinn could still visualize the fight, it was a haunting image.
"But there must be something I can do besides just waiting until I get a rune," Quinn said.
"And you are doing it. You are trying to push yourself, trying to use your powers. That is the way to grow stronger, you simply can't expect perfection," Kalisa said.
Quinn didn't expect perfection, but he did want to grow stronger. Kalisa and Jinx were both so much more powerful magically than he was, and even Kat had been rebuilt with multiple magical talents by Sand.
"Walk with me," Kalisa said, moving from the wall. "We'll search together. Your magic won't interfere with mine and it may even help."
Quinn would take may help, at least it was something.
7
Three hours later Quinn called a meeting so that everyone could discuss what they'd found. The station cafeteria didn't have nearly the resources on the Centauri Bliss. The food supplies aboard seemed to consist entirely of small squishy logs of varying colors that tasted somewhat like liver.
"This is some kind of torture, right? Some way you torment your people to make them try to get a better assignment," Jinx said, tearing her log apart with a fork.
"It is a scientific wonderfood. It can aid the development of new brain tissue, and foster occasional, beneficial mutations. I'm very proud of it," Kalisa said.
"It's pretty good," Kara said, finishing up her fifth loaf of the stuff.
"I'll pass on growing a tail," Dela said, shoving her plate to the side.
"So we're just here to discuss what we've found. We've six hours and forty minutes to go until vanishing time," Quinn said.
"Station has a lot of internal defenses. Stun gas and containment shields," Kara said.
"Useful when performing experiments," Kalisa said.
"If you’re experimenting on things that try to run away," Jinx said.
Kalisa shrugged.
Kara said, "It is all under our control. I got Mara to help me install an extra layer of data security."
"Speaking of data systems. Sand, what did you find?" Quinn asked.
"The unexpected. I felt certain I'd find traces of whatever data had been erased. Scrubbing away all traces of anything is challenging," Sand said, having eaten about half of a loaf.
"What would it take to do that?"
"I'm not sure. I could have removed all traces, but would have left signs that I had done so. By all appearances these data recorders recorded nothing at all."
"Totally off-topic, but uhh ... how is Kat doing?" Quinn asked.
Sand closed her eyes and her posture slipped into something more natural.
Kat said shyly, "Uh, hi. Nice to meet all of you, I'm Kat, guess you already know that. I'm just ... I'm trying to get used to being me. Or getting used not being me any longer, maybe? I'm fine though, Quinn—well, I'm not, but it’s the lie I'm going with."
"Love you," Quinn said.
Kat offered a faint smile and didn't respond as her posture again shifted and Sand resumed control.
"That went well," Dela said.
It really hadn't.
"What did you manage to find out about the Ixon and the artifacts?" Quinn asked to change the subject.
"Kalisa can probably tell you more about the Ixon than I can, but from what I've put together they were a race of explorers. They had a small base on this moon, but nothing on the planet’s surface or on any other planet known," Dela said.
"Which is unusual. Humans aren't the only ones to leave trash everywhere they go, and interstellar travel is a resource-intensive enterprise," Kalisa said.
"Highly unusual. What is stranger is that the facility on the moon’s surface contains nothing that seems consistent with space travel. No dock, no refueling systems," Dela said.
"The lack of refueling facilities isn't that unusual if they had a station in orbit, or supplies on a nearby planet. They'd still need a place to land, some sort of dock," Quinn said.
"Correct. I took an interest in thinking they must have mastered some form of matter teleportation. That they teleported back and forth from the facility to ... perhaps a ship," Kalisa said.
"Wouldn't that explain an awful lot about where your people keep going? Why didn't you mention this earlier?" Dela said.
"Because I've found no evidence of it. Their tools, their equipment, all should have shown some signs of that technology, but so far I've found nothing."
"So in a couple of hours are we're going to get teleported into enemy territory?" Kara asked, hopeful.
"If it were teleportation would the ten hours be relevant?" Quinn asked.
"I will just take a moment to say that you humans are far more complex than you realize, and putting one together from scratch even with a template is a lot of work. I should know. If it were some form of teleportation, I suppose that it might take the ten hours to properly analyze you for replication elsewhere," Sand said.
"Can I just say how creepy you actually are?" Dela said.
Sand tilted her head. "Thank you."
"Then we're back to it being one of the artifacts that caused the disappearances," Quinn said.
"Not necessarily. It could have been that a team on the surface activated a long-dormant system and it remains active," Kalisa said.
"And we're still guessing about everything. Did you two magic sorts pick up anything punchable on your walk?" Kara asked.
"There is something," Jinx said,
and frowned. "But I don't think it is sentient despite what Sand said. An effect in the air perhaps? Some sort of lingering spell? It is everywhere."
"I agree, apprentice," Kalisa said with a nod.
"Is it Chaos or Order magic?" Quinn asked. He hadn't sensed anything like this.
"Neither," Jinx said, more certain this time.
"Chaos and Order, when it comes to magic, are particularly human concepts. How magical force manifested when it entered our species. I've never encountered another with that same heritage. What we're dealing with here is simply alien," Kalisa said.
"Which doesn't mean we can't figure it out. I've unraveled alien magic before," Jinx said.
Quinn remembered. She'd blown up a battleship by doing just that.
"Then we're going with the theory that some sort of magical effect is scanning us now and finally goes off in a bit over six hours," Quinn said.
"I want to go down to the moon," Dela said.
"I'll join you. If a system is running there I'll find it," Kalisa said.
Kara stood up. "I'll join in case something needs punching."
"I'm going to stay aboard and try to get a better feel for what is happening," Jinx said.
"I'll move on to the artifacts here," Sand told them.
Quinn said, "I'll play pilot for those going down.".
8
The facility on the surface didn't even have a landing pad, let alone a dock, so the scientists had made their own. Half a mountain had been blasted away to clear a large platform. Two abandoned shuttles were there and Quinn landed the Tango next to them.
Everyone was in atmosphere suits. It was just about the first time Quinn had seen Kalisa covered up. She always liked to keep her runes visible if it was an option.
A short path led to a large dome made out of some sort of greenish metal, the surface adorned with whirls of blue.
Dela stopped to study them. "Decorative? Language? I couldn't find anything in your records about their language."
"We haven't found much. We don't even have bodies to guess how they might have received information. Even the name Ixon was one the researchers picked," Kalisa said.
