“Come on,” Trey grabbed Adan by the arm, pulling him through the doorway.
The four of them plunged through the doorway. Inside they found a dimly lit ramp. The sounds of fleeing Waymen echoed down from higher up. Everyone sprinted after them, running circles around a central metal column. They fled upwards, the structure shuddering with each successive tremor. Locus pulser fire whistled through the air, growing louder the higher up they went.
As they reached the end of the ramp, Adan nearly collided into the Waymen in front of him who had come to an abrupt stop. Trey shouted at them, ordering them to get out of the way. Adan felt a twinge of fear, thinking that perhaps these men had decided to stand and fight after all. But his confusion passed, as did Trey’s anger, as soon as it became apparent what was hindering them. The ramp had ended. There was nowhere else to go.
They stood on top of what was essentially an isolated platform in the midst of a swath of desolation. The building they were in, whatever it might have once been besides a prison, was a flattened mess. Gnarled metal beams and shattered rooms lay open to the sky. Tendrils of dust rose up from the wreckage, writhing as if in pain. The ramp stood above the remains of the building, a full floor higher than its surroundings. The ceiling had been ripped away and the walls, except on one section, were little more than stubs. The place where they were standing was small, maybe twenty paces across, but it gave Adan a perfect window from which to survey the devastation which had been inflicted on Hull.
In between pockets of dust clouds blanketing the city, dozens of ships flashed in and out of view. Most of the towers along the walls lay in ruins, though most of the buildings remained untouched. Only the prison building beneath them and the docking area for the Waymen ships had suffered any major damage. Not far away, like a giant metallic eye, the praxis hovered in the air just as Trey had promised.
Adan was about to ask Trey how he planned to get them onto the ship when someone tackled him from behind. At the same moment, the ramp shook with such force that Adan and whoever was on top of him went hurtling towards the edge.
The drop-off zoomed towards him, but Adan was helpless to halt his slide. He braced himself to fly over the edge, but when his feet hit the end of the ramp someone grabbed his collar and jerked him back. He looked back and saw Trey holding onto some sort of cable with one hand and with his other gripping Adan’s collar.
As Adan scrambled back up the tilting platform, he saw that the one wall that was still intact had been cut in two. The Waymen were nowhere to be seen, gone along with the other half of the floor. Tarn and Sierra clung to the central column, unable to move. If they did, they would be joining Adan and Trey at the edge of the platform and probably send everyone over the edge.
Two attack skiffs piloted by somatarchs circled back around and a pair of lancers converged on the shattered ramp from a different direction. But as the ships sped towards them, a small pocket of ballast cruisers and sand dusters broke through the dust clouds and opened fire. Though their yellow rays dissolved harmlessly into the shields of the Collective ships, the attack drew their attention away from the ramp. The Collective forces veered to meet the incoming threat. Two dusters were instantly shredded by yellow beams from the skiffs, the various sections scuttling into the wreckage below.
“We’ve got to get to ground,” Trey cried out over the thunderous impacts of the ships.
The yawning gulf dangled beneath Adan’s feet. They were four stories off the ground at least, and even had they been closer, there was nothing but jagged wreckage to land in.
“It’s too far of a drop,” he shot back, vertigo sloshing around inside his head like wet char in a bucket.
“Trust me. I’m going to let go,” Trey said. The platform listed further in their direction. Metal groans from below told him the ramp was in its final moments. The structure swayed dizzily in the gusting wind.
“Wait, don’t—we’ll die if—” Adan began, but Sierra’s scream swallowed up the rest of his words. She lost her grip and careened towards him.
“Adan, help! I can’t stop!” she shouted. Tarn came sliding after her. They were heading straight for Trey and Adan and there was nothing they could do about it.
Trey didn’t wait for the impact. He let go, sending himself and Adan plunging into the open air. The ramp gave a shuddering boom and tumbled after them, girders and beams reaching out for them like twisted metal fingers. If they didn’t die from the fall they would certainly be killed from the building falling on top of them. But instead of falling along with the building, Adan’s headlong plunge stalled out in midair. It felt like the air compressed around him, cradling him in its invisible grip. The building cascaded into the scrap heap below, burying itself in a burst of dust and flying shrapnel.
Though the wind was rushing around him, that alone could not have saved him. In fact, the winds did not seem to be affecting him at all. His body floated forward like the time he had been rescued out of the storm in Oasis. He was drifting straight towards the praxis.
His head darted in every direction, searching for what was keeping him aloft. Suddenly he recalled when he and Gavin had been rescued out of the neophosphorous flows in Manx Core. They had been lifted up into the praxis by the ship’s axiom field. That must be what was happening now.
Trey glided beside him. Just behind them, Tarn and Sierra floated towards the ship as well, buoyed by the same invisible forces. Unlike the last time, they were not headed towards the underside of the ship and the cargo bay. Instead, they were being pulled toward a small opening about a quarter of the way up the side of the ship.
Adan spotted two lancers flying past the praxis. They must have been part of the Sentient forces because the cruiser wasn’t firing on it. They headed off in the direction of the skiffs and lancers which had been circling the prison ramp. Those ships were now engaging a ballast cruiser. Flashing bursts of yellow and white lit up the rolling mass of dust clouds around them as the cruiser shot down a sand duster.
Moments later, the landscape of war and rushing winds disappeared as they were sucked up into the praxis. The opening closed behind them and they found themselves within the safety of the Maven once again.
They stood on a black disc at one end of a long room covered in metal paneling. Adan had hoped that someone might be there to greet them when they arrived, but he never expected the sight which met his eyes.
A dozen somatarchs stood in a semi-circle before them. Each held a silver oscillathe in its hand, the weapons trained on Adan’s group. Adan’s first thought was that the praxis must have been overrun. He started to connect his mind to the black disc beneath his feet, to force it to take them back outside the ship, but Trey’s voice interrupted him.
“Don’t bother trying to escape,” Trey said, stepping off the platform. “You won’t be leaving this ship anytime soon.”
Unbelievably, he began walking towards the soulless somatarchs, who made no effort to attack or impede him in any way.
“Trey, no…” Sierra gasped.
Trey regarded her coldly, “Stay on the platform, Sierra. You’ll be safe there.”
A chill washed over Adan. “Trey, what’s going on?” he demanded.
“I should have thought it was obvious,” Trey replied. “You’ve been captured by the Collective. They have need of you.”
Adan took a step forward. “But I don’t understand. You’re not one of them—”
Trey lifted a hand in warning. “Don’t try anything, Adan. I know you’re a memorant, but these somatarchs are outside of your control. Come quietly and no one will get hurt.”
Eighteen
Another Experiment
“Two faced swedge!” Tarn lurched forward, his fists clenched, but Adan grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him back.
“Why, Trey?” Adan asked. “The Sentients saved your life. You’ve been with them from the beginning.”
“No, not from the beginning,” Sierra said. “He joined our cell a few days after the s
torm hit. He never did explain how he survived all that time on his own, but we were too busy fighting to give it much thought. We needed every person we could get.”
“You’ll see in time that it was for the best,” Trey said. “The Admins only want to help.”
“What happened to Raif and the rest of the ship?” Tarn demanded, straining against Adan’s grip.
“This is the enemy’s ship, Tarn,” Adan said quietly. “They have one just like ours.”
Trey eyed the Wayman cautiously, but there was no way they could take down that many somatarchs. Trey was right about them. These weren’t the kind Adan could control. But maybe he didn’t have to. With the miasma channel, he could connect to Trey’s mind and control them through him.
Adan closed his eyes and reached out to Trey’s mind, but the moment he did so crackling energy filled the air. He collapsed, along with Sierra and Tarn onto the black disc.
The room went blurry. Adan felt sure he was going under, but then he snapped back, fully awake. His limbs still tingled, but he didn’t need to move. His mind was a more powerful weapon than his body.
He sought out Trey’s mind again. Since no one in the Collective knew about the miasma channel he expected to seize control of him instantly, but instead he found nothing. Trey was blank, just like back in the prison. His bioseine had either been removed or shut down or…
Trey pulled up his sleeve, revealing the inhibitor he wore on his wrist, a black band with a small yellow chip in it.
“The Developer’s aren’t taking any chances with you this time,” he said.
Adan wasn’t close enough to use the miasma channel without bioseine augmentation. If he could get close enough though, he could access Trey’s mind directly.
Warmth flooded into this limbs as the feeling returned. He started forward, but ran smack into a shimmering barrier of white light which burst into existence around the black disc, imprisoning Adan and his unconscious friends in a translucent bubble of locus energy.
“Like I said, not taking any chances,” Trey said.
Still surrounded by the field of energy, the lev rose just up off the floor and whisked them down the corridor to the end of the hall.
He pounded against the wall of energy with his fists, but it was no use. He might as well have been banging against solid metal.
The platform soon left Trey and the somatarchs behind. The look of cold satisfaction on Trey’s face was the last sight Adan had of him. Adan might have felt the sting of his betrayal more if this had been the first time a friend had turned on him. As it was, he could muster nothing beyond sadness and pity for him. He doubted Trey had much say in what he had done in any case. He was a part of the Collective. His thoughts and motivations were not truly his own.
Adan, Sierra, and Tarn passed through a doorway and into one of the access shafts. The platform shot upwards, ascending through the heart of the ship.
Adan took a deep breath and tried to collect himself. If only he still had his cutter gloves, he could cut through this barrier or at least revive his friends. All he could do now was watch while the mobile prison surrounding them careened upwards.
Moments later, the ascent stopped. The lev moved forward through another doorway and out into a hall. It spun to the left and then shot off down another passage. At the end of this, the disc finally stopped in front of a much wider doorway. After a brief wait the new doors slid silently open.
The lev floated into a large room with a rounded ceiling and walls that mirrored the shape of his lev prison. The disc transporting Adan glided to a stop in the center of the room, still encased in its glowing bubble of light.
“Greetings, Adan,” came a voice from behind him.
Adan spun around to see Cyrith in a silver lab coat standing between himself and the doorway.
“Cyrith…” Just saying the name felt like an admission of defeat.
“You remember me,” said the scientist in crisp, efficient tones. “Do your remember our conversation as well? I was thinking we could pick up where we left off.”
Those words drained any hope Adan had of escape. The last time Cyrith talked to him he had explained what would happen when they initialized Adan’s bioseine for the first time.
He’s going to erase my memory. No. I can’t let that happen.
Adan’s thoughts returned to the miasma channel. It hadn’t worked on Trey, so it was even less likely to work on Cyrith, but he had to try. He focused in on the man before him. It only took a moment to confirm what he had already knew would be the case, there was nothing there.
“Your memorant abilities must be considerable,” Cyrith remarked casually, as if he were commenting on the color of Adan’s clothing or some other incidental detail. “We have learned that you are not to be underestimated. That is why I am speaking to you here as a projection. There is something unusual about you. And we intend to find out what that is.”
“What are you going to do to me?” Adan asked, guessing the answer to the question before Cyrith replied.
“We will incorporate you back into the Collective, of course.” Cyrith’s expression was as dispassionate as his voice.
Adan tried to maintain his composure, but it was one thing to see something horrible coming, and quite another have the horror arrive. His stomach turned in knots.
The door to the chamber slid away and half a dozen somatarchs marched into the room, their white robes swaying mechanically in rhythm like a single, giant, multi-legged organism.
Adan swallowed hard and attempted to keep his voice from wavering. “Why did you send Trey after me? I thought Hull was what you wanted.”
“Because you are a dangerous person, Adan,” Cyrith said.
The somatarchs marched towards him.
“Why? What’s so special about me?” Adan asked, his eyes strayed to the white robed figures coming his way.
Help me, Numinae, he pleaded.
“You are a memorant who has twice broken through our security and caused inconceivable damage to the Collective. There’s something you know that we don’t. A secret, Xander suspects. And we are not very tolerant of secrets in the Collective,” Cyrith said, continuing with his clinical tone.
Adan tried not to think about what was about to happen to him, and about what would happen to Sierra and Tarn. It would be better not to know. He didn’t think he could take it, even if Cyrith told him the truth.
The somatarchs fanned out around the sphere. Three of them pulled zoeliths from their belts, the silvery discs on the end of the stocky black instruments reflecting the multitude of lighted panels in the walls.
The energy barrier surrounding him faded, but the somatarchs made no move towards him, as if waiting for him to act first.
Whatever happens to me, please protect my friends, he prayed. Especially Sierra. Don’t let her forget.
Cyrith’s voice interrupted his prayer. “You will be fine once we restore you back to the baseline generational map. You will learn to thrive in our society. If you knew what was best for you, you would embrace the path before you.”
“You can’t just make people into what you want them to be. Forced salvation is no different than slavery,” Adan said defiantly.
“You would choose freedom over life itself?” The slight lift in Cyrith’s voice suggested that Adan’s response had evoked some measure of actual curiosity.
“You can’t treat people like this. I’m not just another experiment.” Adan’s lips began to quiver. He couldn’t tell if he was about to scream or burst into tears.
Cyrith responded with an impassive stare.
Though Adan knew it was only a projection, he rushed forward, charging the Developer as if he could wring an answer from the man’s anemic throat.
“Tell me who I am!” he shouted.
The somatarchs rushed in around him and smothered him, ramming him into the floor and knocking the wind out of him.
As soon as he caught his breath, Adan screamed out, “Tell me!”
> All possibility of discovering the answer vanished with the cold metal of the zoelith connecting to his forehead.
Nineteen
Assault on Hull
The long, sleek citus dropped out of the underside of the Maven and into the swirling torrents of sand. Raif piloted the ship above while Cade and three other Sentients rode in the tunneler, held fast beneath the citus by its powerful axom field. Von, Jax, Conner, and Lan followed after them inside their lancers. Together the five ships which comprised Dreamer flight soon distanced themselves from the floating fortress from which they had emerged.
“Okay, dreamers, are we ready to crack this giant floating skull?” Raif asked over the ship’s audio relay system. The ships flew in tight formation, close enough for mental communication, but they needed to use the audio to stay in contact with the Maven.
“We’ll follow your lead for now,” Von answered back.
“Just be sure not to get in range of the Persepolis’ weapons until we give you the go,” Jax said.
The warning was extremely premature. The Persepolis was nowhere in sight. But that was the way Jax liked to roll, everything squared and prepared. He was about as tight as a sonic screw, but Raif didn’t let it bother him.
“I’ll be glad when the Maven is the biggest cog in the machine,” Raif said. “Then we’ll put her through her paces and take her on a tour of the whole Vast. There’s got to be more than just dunes and dust on this giant rock.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Von cautioned. “This plan is hardly foolproof.”
Raif shook his head inside the cockpit. Von was little better than Jax when it came to keeping up people’s spirits, but Raif wasn’t going to let those two get sand in his eye. All Dreamer flight had to do was keep the Collective ships and the Persepolis distracted long enough for Cade to get in, free the prisoners, and get out. And since they knew the prisoners’ exact location from the chronotrace, that shouldn’t take long. Add to that the fact that the Collective would be focused on attacking Hull and they had the element of surprise as well. All in all Raif felt fairly confident about their chances. And if the mission went sour, he had a few tricks up his sleeve.
The Chronotrace Sequence- The Complete Box Set Page 83
