Orin thrust two fingers forward, ordering his men to advance towards the panels, but they had barely taken two steps when a man rose up from behind the nearest section of instruments.
“Kessen, our eternity,” the stranger said in hoarse and ragged tones. The man had stringy gray hair down to his shoulders and a beard that was little more than thick stubble. His hollow eyes shone dully, as if he had seen far too much to care any more. The most unsettling thing about him, though, was the fact that he wore the silver and black uniform of a Delegation soldier. “If you approach the instruments, or make any hostile movements whatsoever, I will fire the omniclast.”
The man moved over to a panel which they could see. On the edge of it, nestled in with power level indicators, glowed a large white circle. His hand hovered over it, trembling slightly.
The soldiers stopped in their tracks, looking back to Orin. “Sir?” one of them addressed him.
“Hold,” ordered the commander. “Who are you?”
“Just a prop in your play,” said the renegade soldier, “You wouldn’t know me or care if you did.”
The commander snorted in frustration. “Listen, I am Sentinel Orin, Overseer of the Delegation forces from the planet of Kess. Identify yourself immediately or—”
“Or what? You’ll order your soldiers to shoot me down? What do I care? You’ve already taken everything I have. It would be a small thing for you to take my life as well.”
Orin’s fingers clamped around his pulser, but he held back, his eyes fixed on the man’s hand poised above the glowing white circle. Was the stranger just keeping them talking so the omniclast could fully charge? Or was he really going to fire?
“I don’t know who you are, but you have no authority on this ship,” Orin shouted. “The Nebula belongs to the Delegation. Now step away from the omniclast initiator or you’ll reap the whirlwind.”
The man leveled his sunken gaze at the commander.
“No, Sentinel Orin, it is you who has no authority on this ship. It’s been taken over it in the name of all the people you oppressed, slaughtered, tortured, and maimed to maintain your grip on our world. Our slavery to the Delegation ends today.”
Orin’s nostrils flared and his ears flushed crimson.
“Soldier, have you gone mad? You’re talking nonsense. What unit are you with? I order you to stand down immediately.”
Don’t lose your cool, Matthew thought. Something told him that this stranger was more dangerous than he appeared.
“We know why Deliverance destroyed Kess, sentinel, to end the Delegation atrocities that were ravaging our world. They would never have triggered The Purge if you had not created the omniclast first!” The man’s face grew even more grim, his resolve strengthening with every word he uttered.
“Nonsense! The Nebula was only built as a last resort—”
“I stand here today, the voice of all the people you murdered and crushed beneath your feet, the fathers and mothers, the children, the soldiers, the innocents. This is the day their cries for mercy shall be answered.” His hand quivered with excitement and anticipation above the white disc. Matthew had no doubt that he would fire the omniclast at any moment. The only question was why he hadn’t done it yet.
“You’re bluffing. You wouldn’t—” Orin began, but the soldier beside him tapped him on the shoulder.
“Sir, we have a positive ID,” the man said, lowering his voice. “The soldier is Kelm Brennan, an escalon.”
“The sidereal scout who signaled us to come here? That’s impossible,” Orin muttered in response.
A wild-eyed smile percolated across Kelm’s face.
Why isn’t he firing the weapon? The question bore down on Matthew, pressing into his thoughts. Kelm had to have a reason. If only Matthew were a memorant and could read his mind.
“Yes, I summoned you here half way across the galaxy,” Kelm said. “Kess was dying long before Deliverance destroyed it. And you are responsible for that. You poisoned the atmosphere knowing that only your augmented form of humanity would survive. Then you created the omniclast to ensure that no one would ever oppose you. But some of us did not forget the ones you killed, we did not lose hope that one day you would pay for your sins. And I am ready to die to see that happen.”
As Kelm spoke, spittle ejected from his mouth, a faint, bitter shower of hatred and bile. And yet, something in his eyes betrayed the fact that he did not really want to die, did not expect to die, but planned on coming out of this encounter alive. Matthew couldn’t say how he knew it, but he had a strong impression he had seen the eyes of a man bent on his own death before and they did not look like this.
At that moment two things happened at once.
Orin fired his weapon, shouting, “Take him down. Open fire!” With instincts honed and trained by years of military experience, the escalons around him lay down a swath of echoing pulses along with their commander.
At that exact same moment Matthew noticed something shimmering in the air. A faint sprinkling of light that lay suspended between Kelm and the soldiers. It was Kelm’s spittle. It had not dissolved in the air or fallen normally as it should have to the ground. Instead, little dots of it froze in midair. An invisible shield surrounded the instrument panels. Kelm had wanted them to fire all along.
“Stop…” Matthew shouted, but the volley had already been let loose.
Red pulser fire filled the room. It burst like sparks on the unseen barrier surrounding the controls, reflecting back the blasts and coating the room in burning scarlet beams. Matthew dove back into the tunnel, landing in the pile of dead somatarchs while screams of pain and horror echoed all around him.
Thirty-Seven
The Chronotrace Sequence
One of the soldiers fell hard on top of Matthew. His helmet slammed into Matthew’s skull and for a moment the tunnel went dark.
When Matthew came to, he struggled to shove the soldier’s body off him. Part of his lab coat got caught on the soldier’s belt and ripped off a large section of fabric when Matthew pushed him away. Somehow the chronotrace came loose in the process, or maybe it had slipped out of his satchel when he dove to the ground. Either way, it landed just beyond his reach.
The rain of locus pulses inside the control room had died. All was quiet. Matthew strained to see what was going on, but his dimmed vision did not allow him to make out anything beyond the tunnel. He tried to shake off the stupor he had fallen into, but everything seemed to happen in slow motion.
A light shot out from the chronotrace, much brighter than any the machine had ever emitted before. It forced Matthew to shield his eyes.
He had not initiated a trace or a playback and the device could not have engaged on its own unless it was malfunctioning. He stretched out his mind to connect to it and shut it down, but he could not sense anything there.
A breeze swirled amidst the blazing light. Fear that there had been a malfunction in the ship’s environmental generators gripped him, but pulser fire shouldn’t have done any harm to the ship. Gusts swept past him in all directions, growing stronger by the moment. The tunnel seemed to open up and glimpses of purple smoke broke through high above him.
Without warning, two rays of light seared his vision, bright as pulser beams. He had no time to react. The glowing shafts burned into his skin as they swept across his body. He thought he should have been killed, but it turned out not to be pulser fire, just a constant stream of heat pouring over him.
It may not have been pulser fire, but the rays burned painfully. He had no idea what was happening in the bridge, but he could not escape that way. It was a dead end. Facing the source of the heat down the corridor was his only way out. He only hoped it didn’t get hotter further up.
Still covering his eyes against the flood of light, he struggled to his feet, taking only a single step before tripping over something on the floor.
As he slammed into the ground, he fell out of the scorching beams. A shadow fell upon him. Down near the floor the wind
s were not nearly as strong. Looking up, he saw an immense creature towering over him, twice as tall as himself. Though it had the frame of a human, it only took one look to realize that this was nothing from the world of men.
The creature’s silver skin sparkled like starlight shining on the water. Strips of luminous fabric wrapped its metallic flesh, but only loosely. They floated and fluttered as if caught up in their own slow and gentle wind despite the swirling tempest overtaking the corridor. But the most unnatural aspect of the creature was the eyes. Beams of light poured forth from them, burning him again and scattering the shadows which had momentarily allowed him to see.
Matthew shrank back in terror. If he had not already been prone, he would have collapsed to the ground. His limbs grew heavy, like he was treading water. The sense that his death was near overwhelmed him. The creature was the source of the heat, a living weapon from some other world sent to destroy him and anything else that stood in its way.
And then he remembered that he had seen one of these creatures before. This was the same sort of being which had caused Gavin’s trace to malfunction. Perhaps it was just some projection from the chronotrace then, another mistake like the Developers had claimed. But it felt too real, too terrible to be anything which existed in a mere projection. The longer he looked at it, the more convinced he became that one of these creatures had somehow boarded the Nebula and stood before him now.
“Matthew,” a voice spoke to him. “Do not be afraid.”
Though the creature’s lips didn’t move, he knew instinctively that the message came from the otherworldly being. The voice had sound, but it echoed directly into his thoughts, somewhat like the communications he received through his bioseine. It carried a frightening sense of power.
“What…what do you want with me?” Matthew ventured at last, mustering up every last bit of courage just to speak.
“I am an eidos, a messenger from Numinae.” The words resonated inside his head.
“Numinae,” Matthew mumbled reflexively. Something about the name made him feel like he ought to know it, but he could not recall who it belonged to. “Who is he?”
“The giver of life and the sustainer of all being,” came back the otherworldly voice. “You do not remember him because you choose to forget.”
“But—” Matthew started to reply, but words failed him. In the face of such raw power, what could he say that would not be the cause of his undoing? His life was forfeit and he dared not anger this being who stood before him.
“Others may hide the knowledge of your Creator from you, but he may always be found again by the smallest effort. You, however, have made no such effort.” The creature’s eyes glowed brighter and Matthew cringed, fearing the worst.
But then, unexpectedly, his mind was drawn back to recent events. He remembered asking Donovan about the sub-rational. The word was really just a euphemism for the supernatural. Donovan had dismissed it along with Matthew, based on nothing more than the authority of the scientists. He had not given a second thought as to why they rejected it. He accepted their claims on blind faith.
But hadn’t these same people also wiped out his memory? They could have lied to him a thousand times over without him ever knowing. Why should he trust anything they said? He wanted to believe the mind remapping was the real reason he had not bothered to consider such things, but he knew in his heart that he had no interest in anything he couldn’t measure, quantify, or explain in empirical terms. He had been all too willing to allow the Collective consensus to hold sway over him in this, as in all other things.
Somehow, this realization restored some of Matthew’s strength, enough at least to be able to respond.
“I am sorry,” he said. “You’re right. I—I didn’t really think things like you existed, or this—this Numinae you speak of. What does he want from me?”
“He sent me to show you the way home. You may have forgotten him, but he has not forgotten you.” The lights in the eidos’ eyes softened and it became less painful to be in his presence. Though they remained white and without pupils, Matthew thought that for the first time they appeared vaguely human.
“Home?” Matthew asked. The word felt strange to say. He had no concept of what it meant beyond the fact that it was a place where someone lived. It didn’t fit the Collective’s pursuit of a new world to colonize and he had no idea whether it meant anything to the Delegation.
And then a terrible thought occurred to him. What if the eidos was speaking of its home, what if it was referring to the place where creatures like this one dwelled? Matthew did not think he could survive one moment in a place native to such beings. They were creatures of light and he, nothing more than dust and ashes.
“Where is that?” he asked, his limbs quivering in fear.
“Your true home is far from here. It is a place where you will pass beyond time and space, beyond pain and suffering.” The words of the eidos evoked both peace and dread at the same time. “But you will not see that place today, for your time has not yet come. I am only here to set your feet on the path, that you may enter into that final rest one day.” The creature pointed a long smooth finger towards whatever lay behind Matthew. Like everything else in this strange vision the area remained swathed in wind and light. “Hear me now. There are people you must save, people whom you alone can save. Seek out the remnant destined to survive and do whatever is in your power to lead them to safety. Heed the words of Numinae and live.”
The light grew brighter once again and nigh unbearable. The winds raged so fierce it was a wonder Matthew’s clothes were not ripped from his body.
“What people?” he shouted into the wind, hoping that the eidos would still be able to hear him. “Who are they? How will I find them?”
And then, just as quickly as they arose, the winds subsided. Had they not, they would certainly have torn him apart. The light faded and the eidos was nowhere to be found.
“Wait—I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do!”
An enduring silence was his only answer. The eidos had left and Matthew found himself once again alone in the tunnel, surrounded by the bodies of the fallen somatarchs.
Part of him wished he could remain there with these lifeless bodies. He had no idea how he could go on after this awful vision. But then he heard a small, gentle voice, like the rustling of the wind. “Your success lies only in the attempt. Trust Numinae and though the stars fall down around you, he will see you through.”
The lights were gone. The chronotrace lay dark and still amongst the carnage. Matthew’s face was covered by the charred remains of the somatarchs. He tried to wipe off the soot, but his hands came back streaked in black and he only succeeded in rubbing it in further. Burn marks ran down one arm and the top of his shoulder, but they were not severe.
Matthew caught the sound of movement coming from the control room.
Still not knowing what to do, he wobbled to his feet, his head so dizzy that he nearly fell back down again. After taking a moment to find his balance, he got his legs under him and rushed back down the ramp. Maybe the people he was meant to save were the Delegation soldiers in the control room. He stumbled towards the auxiliary bridge, hoping someone up ahead was still alive.
The soldiers of Xenon unit lay dead around the instrument panels, many of them so covered in burns that they were little more than charred remains. Matthew’s eyes passed over them quickly, his attention focused on the center of the control room, beyond the invisible shield. Orin, badly burned and wincing in pain, was wrestling Kelm to get at the panel controlling the omniclast.
Numbers flashed across the view screens. 0:24…0:23… Kelm had initiated the omniclast firing sequence.
Matthew stared at the scene in shock. Perhaps he had misjudged Kelm, perhaps he truly did want to die. Or maybe he had set the omniclast to fire far enough away so that the Nebula would not be consumed in the blast. Wherever it was aimed, he had to stop it from firing. To do that he would f
irst have to take out Kelm.
Matthew ran straight at the shield. It was based on the re-calibration of space which scattered all forms of energy directed towards it. Such barriers were mostly used on the outside of ships, but it was not unheard of to use it to protect high security areas inside as well. More importantly to Matthew’s purpose, a shield such as this was not impenetrable.
“I should have killed all of you when I had the chance,” Orin shouted as the two men crashed to the floor. Matthew lost sight of them behind the instrument panels.
He hit the invisible wall at 0:20.
It was an odd sensation passing through the shield, a little like trudging through a wall of sludge. His forward movement slowed almost to nothing. His legs dragged like they were being pulled backwards by unseen hands.
Matthew led with his pulser in hand, knowing he could fire it before the rest of his body passed through if he got a clear shot. A moment later, he felt the knuckles of his pulser hand pop free of the barrier. The two brawlers rolled into view, Orin on top of Kelm, blocking the shot. Matthew had been so caught up in their struggle that he had not noticed the bodies of Xander, Trey, and Donovan nearby. They lay next to each other under the far left instrument panel, multiple pulser burns crisscrossing their bodies. The sight sent a shiver down his spine. He wondered if anyone would get off of this ship alive.
The timer on the screens read 0:17.
The sentinel fought to wrest something from Kelm’s grasp. Matthew couldn’t see what it was. His hand slipped free up to the wrist while his foot and nose escaped the invisible pull of the shield.
The Chronotrace Sequence- The Complete Box Set Page 98
