Though this was the first time Adan had ever been on a praxis cruiser, he had accessed a great deal of information about it from the ship’s esolace. Almost everything was connected to this invisible network. The esolace in Oasis had been capable of transporting everything from information to medicine to food. It could also create worlds in the mind which felt more real than ones you could feel and touch. The Maven’s esolace was not that comprehensive, however. It served only for communication, as a repository of information, and as a means to control the ship. Only someone with a bioseine could connect to it, though.
A bioseine had been grafted inside Adan’s body, as well as everyone who had been part of the Collective. This organic augmentation allowed him to communicate with anyone else possessing the same augmentation using only his thoughts, even with no esolace present, though then only at limited range. The one thing all of this amazing technology had been unable to give him, though, was the one thing he most wanted to know: his identity. That had been lost with the destruction of Oasis and Manx Core and the Repository where his memories had been stored.
Raif, the man piloting their ship, didn’t need to access the esolace to find out about the Maven. He already knew a great deal about these and other ships from his time as a member of the Collective. He had piloted virtually every ship ever produced through the esolace’s simulation capabilities. He loved anything that had to do with technology, the more unusual and esoteric the better.
While Raif guided the ship, Adan watched and waited like everyone else who wasn’t out scouring Oasis for survivors or processing the ones they had already rescued from the ruined city. He longed to be free from this place. Every moment they remained he worried the Collective fleet might return and pay them back for destroying their underground installation, though it wasn’t actually the Sentients who had done it, but rather this bizarre outburst of seismic activity.
“That’s the last of them,” Von informed them mentally through their bioseine link. Adan could sense a tenseness in his message, indicating that there may have been more, but it was getting too dangerous to keep searching. Quakes and tremors continued to rock the city, making it almost impossible to land and risky to fly anywhere near the few buildings left standing.
Raif, who was eyeing the massive wall of sand forming up on Virid Ridge in another section of the screen, gave the lancer a passing glance before shifting his focus back towards the dark, churning arm of the oncoming storm.
“Good. I don’t want to risk the Maven getting caught up in that dust storm that’s brewing out on the ridge. Not with that hole she’s still got in the top of her head,” Raif replied.
“Is the hole in the fuselage any threat to the overall integrity of the ship?” Adan wondered.
“Well, no, not strictly speaking. I just don’t want her getting all clogged up with more dust up top. She’ll start thinking I don’t care about her.” Raif patted the steering column tenderly and gave Adan a wry grin.
Sierra, who had been standing next to Adan while she surveyed the screens, walked over to Raif and swatted him on the shoulder.
“Since when is this your ship?” she asked, speaking aloud. Sierra still preferred to only use the esolace to communicate when she had to. “I’m the one who commandeered her.”
Raif frowned. “Aw, come on. You know I couldn’t go on without her. Have mercy on a poor miserable tech addict.”
She rolled her eyes. “Raif, you’re incorrigible.”
“So you’ll let me keep her? Please, please, please. I’ll be good to her, I promise.”
Sierra shook her head, but couldn’t keep from smiling.
Adan knew it was only playful banter, but somehow their little exchange made him uncomfortable. He still wasn’t entirely sure what his relationship with Sierra was, but he felt awkward listening to her joking with Raif. Maybe it was because they’d left him out of it? Or was it something else?
He was relieved when a message from Halerin came across the Collective channel. “Sierra, they need you in the infirmary. Some of the survivors have injuries that need to be looked at. They are pretty short handed and you have more experience than just about any of us.”
Halerin had been a part of one of the Sentient cells they had rescued from Manx Core. As a former assessor serving with the Collective security forces, he was a natural leader and had volunteered to head up the effort to organize the survivors pouring into the ship.
“I will be right there.” Sierra squeezed Adan’s shoulder as she brushed past him. His eyes followed her up the ramp, wondering what she was thinking. Normally his memorant abilities allowed him to read her easily, but his emotions were clouding his thinking.
She met Gavin at the door just as he entered. The two exchanged greetings before Sierra disappeared into the hallway.
“Adan, I need to tell you something,” Gavin began, using a private channel so that no one else could take part in their exchange.
They met each other at the base of the ramp leading down from the entrance. Gavin’s gaunt face and reddened eyes made it appear as if he had aged since their recent brush with death in the tunnels of the Viscera. He hadn’t slept all night, but neither had Adan. It had to be more than that, though. Something was weighing on his friend’s spirit and Adan reached out to him mentally to find out what it was.
Inside Gavin’s mind loomed the image of the large opening in the docking bay floor, the one that allowed ships in and out of the praxis. It was through that opening that he and Gavin had been rescued and lifted into the ship, but it was also the place where Malthus, one of the leaders of the Collective, had jumped to his death.
Gavin was unable to forget that moment. It lurked behind his every waking thought. But that was not what he had come to Adan about. Layered behind that first thought was another, even more urgent concern.
“It’s the tremors,” Gavin continued, “I’ve been recording the land’s stress patterns. They’re not letting up and I don’t think they are going to anytime soon.”
“But is that natural? Don’t quakes normally go away?”
“Yes. And there have been periods when certain areas have subsided, but only for a time. Then they start up again. And they seem to be spreading. It makes no sense. One thing I do know is that if they don’t stop, the Vast will not survive, and neither will any of the people in it.”
Adan cast a quick glance around the room. He could see why Gavin had come to him first. They had enough to worry about scanning the city for survivors and monitoring the oncoming storm.
Raif was directing the praxis towards Virid Ridge, on the opposite side from where the storm front was coming in. On the wide view screen he could see the tremors causing the massive ridge to crumble before his eyes. Parts of it had already fallen into Oasis so that only a long slope of shifting rubble remained where once had been a steep rise of silt. Such raw power was more frightening than any threat the Collective possessed. He forced himself to turn his thoughts away from the turbulent scene and back to Gavin.
“What can we do about the quakes? Anything?”
“I think this has something to do with Bryce,” Gavin suggested. Bringing up the former leader of the Sentients was the last thing Adan had expected. “Zain told Sierra that he was ramming those tunnelers into a celerium vein.”
“But Bryce is dead. What does he have to do with these runaway tremors?”
“It’s possible that by destabilizing the vein he set off some sort of chain reaction in the planet’s crust. I can’t say for sure. We know hardly anything about celerium beyond its power amplification properties and we’re not even sure how those work. I’ve got the chronotrace running, trying to get back to what Bryce did after you were separated so that we can get some answers. I’ll let you know when it’s finished.”
Gavin had made dozens of improvements to the chronotrace’s time mapping capabilities while being held prisoner in Manx Core. Using it to open up windows to the past would certainly give them the answers they ne
eded. But at the moment, that wasn’t Adan’s chief concern. He was more worried about his friend.
He laid a hand on Gavin’s shoulder and surveyed his ragged face. “Are you going to be all right, Gavin?”
Gavin lowered his head. “It never ends, Adan.”
“What? What never ends?”
“The evil of this world. The weight of it. One terrible act spills into another until half the world is dragged over the cliff.” Gavin stared blankly into the viewing window of the praxis and the broiling storm ravaging the landscape of the Vast.
He blames himself, Adan realized.“But this is just a force of nature, Gavin, this is not evil. It’s just the way the world is. And there isn’t anything we can do about it.”
“I’m not so sure,” Gavin replied, “It may be that the fate of this planet and humanity are tied together somehow. I’ve often wondered if, just like in the physical world, there is not some tangible moral inertia at work in our lives, bringing us to some terrible end. First the storm and now the quakes. I’m beginning to wonder if any of us will survive what comes next.”
Gavin turned from the window, his hollow stare passing right through Adan as if he were not even there, his mind caught up in the vision which had seized him.
Adan moved to face his friend directly. “We will fight this. We nearly drowned together and yet we made it out. We walked out of a storm that destroyed an entire city. Alive. Whatever happens, I’ll stand with you to the end. And just like always, Numinae will protect us.” Adan said these words as much to himself as to Gavin. Numinae, the Creator of the universe, was the one force he could think of that was bigger than these unchecked tremors. But would he put an end to them? One could never be sure just what he would do. Sometimes, most of the time really, he appeared to do nothing at all. Adan thought of all the people he had lost, friends Numinae had chosen not to save. Despite the uncertainties, though, he still had faith. Numinae was at work in all of this somehow, even when he seemed distant and far away. “Don’t give up, Gavin. All things, in the end, are passing.”
“Thank you, Adan,” Gavin replied, a faint light returning to his eyes. As a memorant he surely saw Adan’s own struggles and doubts, but the glimmer of hope in his eyes was genuine. “I needed those words. Even if I do not fully believe them.”
Two
The Power of a Lie
Bryce had programmed the blast to take out most of the mining facility and everyone in it. That was the only way he could eliminate the somatarchs that were after him and the other Sentients. Waking up with his vision blurry and his head spinning was the last thing he had expected.
It was dark, but enough light pierced the cracks above him that he could see where he was. He lay underneath the remains of the hauler. A pile of fused metal crates propped it up and kept the massive vehicle from crushing him.
So that’s why I’m still alive. A freak accident.
He crawled out from under the ruined hauler and into the light. Blood dropped onto the rocks beneath him from a gash in his forehead. Cuts and burns crisscrossed his arms. His ankle was twisted so badly it could no longer hold his full weight. But he felt no pain. His bioseine, besides allowing him to interact with esolace technology, regulated his bodily systems and kept him from feeling the effects of his injuries.
As his vision adjusted he surveyed the aftermath of the explosion. All of the carts and tunnelers on his side of the mine were overturned or torn the shreds. The remains of crates sprinkled the wreckage. The bridge spanning the crevice running through the center of the cavern had several chunks missing.
A group of half a dozen white robed somatarchs were assisting a single technician manning an axom crane. The soulless somatarchs looked human, but lacked any true will of their own. They worked silently and tirelessly, helping the man operating the crane clear out the damaged equipment. The crane hauled over large equipment and the somatarchs broke it into smaller pieces with fractal rods. They only had to touch the rods to the vehicles and equipment for a few nanoslices before it separated into smaller components. They then tossed those pieces into a large melter floating nearby, a square container with thick edges and a white glow coming from the opening on top.
Though they were only twenty paces away, they were too focused on their task to notice his appearance, but Bryce ducked back into the shadows beneath the hauler just in case.
He wondered momentarily where all the casualties from the explosion were, but then a body slipped loose out from under some rubble when the crane pulled a tunneler off it. One of the somatarchs, silently and mechanically recovered the body and tossed it into the melter along with the rest of the scrap.
Though the body was unrecognizable Bryce was certain it wasn’t one of the Sentients who had come with him to Manx Core. He’d made sure they weren’t caught in the blast. Hopefully they had managed to escape and free the imprisoned Sentients, but he had no way of knowing. His bioseine told him that a whole slice had passed since he’d set off the blast. By now their mission would have succeeded or failed. That didn’t mean he was out of options, though. The real reason he’d come here wasn’t to free prisoners anyway.
But he was getting ahead of himself. First he had to deal with that maintenance crew. He pulled out another contingency trigger. His fingers swiped the glass panels on the compact black disk and ordered up another blast. The crew had helpfully already cleared the ground between Bryce and the crane. He waited for the crane’s axom disk to release a large tunneler it had pulled in. The somatarchs moved in with their rods and began fracturing it down into more manageable chunks for the melter. They were all bunched in together, nice and close.
Reaching out from under his hiding place, Bryce tossed the trigger right over to the base of the crane. One of the somatarchs twitched and locked its eyes upon him. But that was the last thing it did. A second blast rocked the cavern, obliterating the crane and the somatarchs in a whirlwind of white light and concussive force.
Bryce crawled out from the shadows and scanned the room one last time. The maintenance crew was just another part of the wreckage now. Satisfied he was alone, his eyes came to rest on three mangled tunnelers near the enormous celerium vein at the back of the cavern. These huge, cylindrical machines had been savaged by his initial blast, but one of them appeared like it might still be operational.
Limping across the wreckage, he made his way towards the vein, drawn as if by a magnet to the smooth dark rock. The finger of stone ran up the cavern wall and disappeared into the bedrock above. The vein both amazed and unsettled him. Its blue flicks glinted, clearly marking it from the surrounding rock. He was mesmerized by the celerium’s beauty, but something in the back of his mind told him he should not be looking at this, that he was not meant to be here. The feeling gave him pause. Should he really go through with this? Nolan sent him to destroy the Collective, but he hadn’t said anything about the mines or this underground base. They had talked about these strange rocks, though. According to Nolan, they ran all through the crust of this planet. Much of how they functioned was a mystery, but Nolan believed they were alive and that the veins were all interconnected somehow. Destroying one could destabilize all the surrounding veins as well. Before Will had come along with the virus, Nolan had discussed the possibility of using these rocks against the Collective, but the opportunity had never presented itself—until now.
“Everything has to come to an end sometime,” Bryce muttered to himself.
Arriving at the tunneler, a quick mental connection with the machine told him the device was still operational. He raised his good foot onto a maintenance ladder on the side, but before he got to the second rung, his other foot caught on something and yanked him to the floor. His head banged against the rocks as he came crashing down. He tried to scramble back to his feet, but a bloody hand reached out from underneath the tunneler and latched onto his foot. The rest of the body remained hidden, as did the face, but Bryce had no doubt it was one of the mindless somatarchs. Nothing else c
ould have survived being crushed like that.
Bryce lunged backwards, but the hand refused to let go. With unbelievable strength it wrenched him in the other direction, pulling him underneath the tunneler. He scrambled to grab onto anything nearby, but only managed to scratch through loose rubble. With a jerk, the hand disappeared along with his foot underneath the machine.
“No!” Bryce screamed.
In the midst of his panic he remembered that he had one last contingency trigger tucked away inside his coat. Running his fingers across it, he programmed the device for a small, localized blast. He knew what it would do to his leg, but he didn’t care. He had to get free.
Bryce chucked the black disc into the opening beside his leg. A booming blast rocked the wreckage and the pulling stopped. He would have pulled his foot out then, but there was nothing left to pull. The blast had obliterated it, leaving nothing more than a bloody stump on the end of his leg. No matter, he wouldn’t be needing his foot anymore anyway.
Steeling himself, he hobbled up the ladder, relying on his arms and his one good leg. He crested the top of the vehicle and dragged himself over to the banged up hatch. The emergency release lever beside it wouldn’t budge. He pulled on it again and again, but nothing happened. Finally, he got out one of the javelins strapped to his back and wedged it into the gap around the edge. Shoving and rocking the shaft back and forth he eventually managed to broaden the gap until the hatch popped open.
He slipped down another set of rungs inside the machine. Once inside, Bryce sat down in one of the operator chairs. With a mental command, he fired up the forward screen and surveyed the celerium vein which flashed into view. He had no assurance that the Developers wouldn’t shut him down once he started up the tunneler, but he engaged the drilling cone anyway. The bright blue field of energy shimmered to life in front of the vehicle, but then faded as the viewing screen adjusted to allow Bryce to see where he was going.
The Chronotrace Sequence- The Complete Box Set Page 70
