Matthew ran towards the exit, expecting to hit the shield again, but he passed through the area unhindered. The doctor must have disabled it in all his mad pounding against the panels. Stepping into the carnage outside the instrument panels, Matthew scooped up one of the cast off helmets from the vaporized Delegation soldiers and shoved it on his head.
“Hello? Is anyone there? Anyone? This is escalon Matthew Yin,” he said, unsure how to trigger the audio system in the helmet. When he got no answer he tried again. “Is there anyone who can hear me? Sentinel Orin is dead. The omniclast has been fired. Is anyone getting this?”
He started running towards the tunnel, still hailing the Delegation via the helmet as he went, but no one answered.
“Technology,” Matthew muttered under his breath, realizing he had no idea how to operate the helmet. He cast it off in frustration and ran from the room.
He reached an access shaft in the ceiling half a microslice later. Racing up to the wall so fast he barely touched the rungs, he shot out of the floor on the main level of the Nebula. It was near one of the sectors the Delegation soldiers had invaded. The translucent barrier of locus energy sealed off this section of the ship where the breach had occurred. Beyond the sheet of energy waited the empty vacuum of space and, hopefully, one of the abandoned Delegation venators the escalons had used to board the ship. There were no ships left in the Collective fleet and the Nebula’s escape pods would only get him to the surface of the planet. With the omniclast eating through Nai’s crust, that would only relocate the place of his death. He had to get out into open space, far from the Nebula, and then figure out what to do from there.
To get to the venator, he had to get through the vacuum first. Unlike the Delegation soldiers, he had no suit to protect him. It would have taken precious time to go back and grab one from the dead soldiers, and they were probably damaged beyond repair anyway. But the Nebula was equipped with exactly what he needed.
He moved over to one of the safety panels on the side of the passage. He pressed a section of the floor with his foot and it slid away, revealing a compartment with a stack of small triangular plates embedded into a piece of foam. Above the foam in another compartment hung a silver helmet with a green tinted visor, very similar to the kind the Delegation soldiers wore.
Matthew pulled out one of the plates and slapped it onto his chest. The other plates, bound together via a low power axom field, floated after the first, wrapping themselves around him and forming a tessellated metallic suit that covered his entire frame. After the plates locked into place, he grabbed the helmet and shoved it onto his head where it formed a seal with the plates around his neck.
Protected inside the suit, he headed towards the locus barrier in the middle of the hallway. Though the shimmering wall kept out almost everything else, the material in Matthew’s suit allowed him to pass through. He stepped safely into the vacuum, his suit providing him with oxygen through the two circular converter panels on the back.
This section of hallway lacked any gravity. Matthew pushed off the floor and drifted towards the ceiling. A few moments later he spotted the breach in the hull. Using his hands to thrust himself back to the floor, he rebounded back up to the opening.
He breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of one of the venators standing motionless, its feet latched onto the Nebula’s outer surface by some invisible bond. It towered above him, four times his height. It had a human shape, though the head was more like an elongated cone left over from the vehicle’s ship form with the tip pointed downwards, like a giant beak.
Matthew slipped through the breach and out into open space. The brilliant green light of the paroxysm expanded off in the distance. It had swelled to five times its previous diameter, blocking out his view of the planet Nai. At that rate, he did not have long before it reached the Nebula.
Matthew shot upwards toward the exoskeleton’s body, gripping the many protrusions which ran along the machine’s channeled surface. He flipped around to the back of the ship and spotted a rectangular opening.
He ducked inside and the hatch sealed shut behind him. As he nestled into the venator’s cramped cockpit he took stock of the ship’s interior. The cockpit was little more than a human-shaped cavity with a separate space for his arms, head, and legs. He settled in and then realized another terrible truth: he had no idea how to operate this ship.
His hopes plummeted.
A blue light flashed across his eyes and he squinted instinctively, afraid it might be some sort of alarm system.
“Identification scan failed,” came a hollow sounding voice inside the cockpit.
“Oh, so this thing talks. Great. How do we transform the ship and launch?” Matthew asked.
“Maintain your eyes open for the scan,” said the ship.
Matthew kept his eyes open as wide as possible while the blue light flashed over them again.
“Pilot identified. Escalon Matthew Yin. You are authorized to pilot this vehicle. Welcome aboard.”
Soon the cockpit instruments lit up around him and the scanner screen appeared, translucent and superimposed over his vision.
Large green sensors flashed in front of him in the shape of hands. He pressed his palms against them. Small suction cups connected with his body all along his limbs and torso.
“Okay, please launch the ship,” Matthew said.
“The ship will mimic your movement while in exoskeleton form. Or would you prefer to transition to full flight mode?”
“Flight mode, yes—full flight mode—now!”
The venator’s metallic knees flexed and the giant machine leapt into space, leaving the Nebula behind. Once they cleared the hull, the armatus’ outer panels began to shift and swivel in all directions, re-forming the venator into a small, triangular space ship with two thrusters at the rear. As he pulled away from the massive space station, Matthew kept his eyes trained on the spatial map superimposed over his vision. The paroxysm dominated the read out, but off to his left, a tiny spec moved parallel to the blast and away from the Nebula.
“Can you zoom in on that object?” Matthew asked.
The object grew larger until it filled about half the screen. It was the jettisoned storage module from the Nebula. He had completely forgotten about it in the fight with Kelm and the doctor. Gavin and the other Collectives still in cryo had been cast adrift and left to die. Based on their trajectory the little compartment would be consumed by the blast around the same time as the Nebula.
There are people you must save…the words of the eidos echoed again through his memory. He wasn’t certain whether these were the people the eidos was referring to or whether anyone on that module was even still alive, but the Nebula was lost, along with the Delegation ships and everyone on the planet below. These were the only people he could save.
A distance indicator appeared below the module on the scanner. It read two hundred fifteen clicks.
“How do I make this ship go faster?” Matthew asked.
“The thruster controls are near your thumbs. Your right hand controls forward thrust and your left the drift.”
Matthew touched the tiny balls near his thumbs. After a few moments of experimentation he found that by pressing on them or pushing them in different directions and with different levels of pressure he could make the ship go more or less wherever he wanted it to go. He engaged the thrusters at full and the venator shot off towards the wayward module.
His newly acquired ship streaked across the empty void, covering the distance between the module and the Nebula in little more than a microslice. In that time the paroxysm continued to grow at an ever increasing rate. Would he be able to reach Gavin’s module in time? And would he be able to outdistance the blast if he did?
“How far is the paroxysm?” Matthew asked.
“Two hundred and six clicks,” came the dry response.
He decreased the velocity as he prepared for the approach. The light from the paroxysm reflected off the metal hull of the module
like a polished jewel. The storage compartment was rotating slightly and he soon spotted some maintenance rungs on its underside. He cut the velocity more and more the closer he got. He wanted to ensure he could land on the module without bouncing off.
“Open up an audio transmission to that module,” he told the ship.
“External audio engaged,” the venator replied. “While active, you will need to preface any verbal commands to your ship with my call sign.”
“And what’s that?” Matthew asked impatiently.
“Venator EC-2.”
“Got it,” Matthew said. “Attention, Gavin, this is Aaron from the interstellar Nebula, are you there?” The module’s guide lights were off. It might be that the power was already gone. Without power, there was little chance anyone inside was still alive.
Matthew hoped the audio had simply malfunctioned or that they had disengaged it to conserve power. He repeated his call, “Gavin, this is Aaron, can you hear me?” Silence once again.
He studied the approaching blossom of destruction depicted on his scanners.
“Venator EC-2, how much time before the paroxysm overtakes this ship?”
“1.2 microslices,” answered the disembodied voice.
The thought crossed his mind again that everyone on the module might already be dead. Perhaps he was risking his life for nothing.
No. He couldn’t know that until he got inside the ship. He had to see this through.
It took almost half a microslice to close the remaining distance.
“Transform the ship into exoskeleton mode,” Matthew said.
The venator responded by shifting around him, morphing itself back into its bipedal form. The feet clamped onto the surface of the module through the same axom attractors that kept them on the Nebula. His momentum halted, he used his own body movements to control the ship. He pulled the venator’s feet up and rolled the exoskeleton around until he was crawling on the bottom of the storage unit, gripping a pair of maintenance rungs which were still intact.
The intensity of the paroxysm made it look like a massive star forming in space. The expanding wave of oblivion threatened to wash over him at any moment. Matthew shoved the head of the venator into two of the rungs.
“Venator EC-2, Shift back into full flight mode,” he commanded.
Several sections of the venator scraped against the bottom of the storage module during transition, but the rungs held. Matthew hit the thrusters the moment the ship reassembled. Emerald light streamed everywhere. Based on the scanner read out, they were on the very edge of the paroxysm, but somehow they still had a fraction of a click between themselves and oblivion. Matthew half shut his eyes, wondering if this would be the end. But just like that, the next moment the venator pulled away, surging out into the empty black.
“Is someone out there?” came a feeble voice over the venator’s audio as the ship pulled away from the entropic blast.
Matthew flinched at the unexpected transmission. Someone must have heard his ship scraping against the module and reengaged the audio.
“This is Aaron from the Nebula. Is that you, Gavin?” Matthew asked. Elation and terror warred inside of him. He was thrilled that there were survivors, but his eyes stayed glued to the scanner, watching as the paroxysm overwhelmed the nearby space station.
“Aaron? What are you doing out there?” Gavin’s voice brightened, though he still sounded incredibly weak.
“Just giving you a little push, that’s all,” Matthew said. The venator and the space module pulled further and further out into the deep nothingness of space. The Nebula was gone, consumed in a matter of moments, but the deadly light which had claimed it was no longer as close.
Matthew let out a deep sigh. They were safe.
Thank you, Numinae…wherever you are. He was convinced that this was what the eidos had sent him to do.
“Why? Why did you come for us?” Gavin asked.
Matthew thought for a while on how best to answer. A short time ago he could have cared less about the person asking the question. He had considered him a traitor. Now he was overjoyed to have just saved his life. How quickly things had changed.
“Someone told me I should,” was all he said. He didn’t think it was the right time to mention the eidos. It still felt a little unreal to him even now.
“You are an answer to my prayers,” Gavin said, breathing heavily.
“I believe you,” Matthew said. “I only wish I had listened to you before. Maybe somehow we could have saved the Nebula.”
“I doubt it,” Gavin said. “But you’re here now. That is what matters.”
They continued to pull away from the paroxysm. Eventually it would stop expanding, but not until it had run its course. Until then, they had to keep as far away from it as possible.
“I have to confess I was beginning to doubt whether you would come for me this time,” Gavin said. “But I should have learned by now never to count you out, or our mutual friend.”
“Our mutual friend?”
“The one who sent you to save me. The same one who sent me to bring you home.”
So had he guessed about the eidos after all? Perhaps memorants could read thoughts even when they couldn’t see you.
“Home…” Matthew repeated that word, wondering once again where exactly that might be.
“We’ll go back there—together.”
“Gavin, are there any other survivors besides you?”
“Approximately thirty. I put them back into cryo-sleep to conserve energy and resources. But even so…I think we’re down to less than thirty microslices of artificial atmosphere. “You need to get us out of this module. How big is your ship?”
Now the weakness in Matthew’s hastily conceived plan became clear. His ship would hold only a single occupant and they had nowhere else to go. He had saved them from oblivion only to lead them to die out in the void. If the omniclast hadn’t hit the planet, he could have guided them back to the surface, but out in the midst of space there was nothing but death and emptiness. Even the distant star, as bright as it shined, appeared cold and uncaring to him now.
Matthew’s voice caught in his throat as he struggled to find the right words to inform Gavin about the reality of the situation.
“You don’t have enough room for us, do you?” Gavin said, breaking the silence.
“I don’t,” Matthew admitted. “They fired the omniclast. I was in such a panic to get you out of the way of the paroxysm I didn’t think about what would happen if I actually managed to save you. The Nebula is gone. The Delegation ships are gone too. They hit the planet as well. There’s nowhere left for us to go.”
“Nai? They fired on the planet? But—but the Welkin, the Sentients…Senya…” His voice sounded more faint than ever.
“You had friends down there?” Matthew asked. Though Gavin gave no reply, his muffled sobs told Matthew all he needed to know.
The venator and the storage module drifted along in the desolation of space. Matthew had no words to comfort this grieving man. There was nothing he could say.
The thrusters flickered feebly behind them. It seemed like a useless expenditure of power now. Nai would be destroyed, like the planet Kess before it. The last remnants of humanity had fought each other into extinction. For all Matthew knew, he, Gavin, and the thirty prisoners clinging to life inside the frigid storage vault were all that was left of the human race.
“Seek out the remnant destined to survive,” the eidos had told him. Was this it? Were these the only people meant to survive? If so, for how long? The few microslices until the oxygen ran out? Why hadn’t he been able to stop the doctor from firing the weapon? Or why had Numinae even left it up to him in the first place? Couldn’t the eidos have stopped all of this if he had wanted to? Matthew couldn’t help but think that maybe Numinae had chosen the wrong person.
“Fly us to the planet’s surface,” Gavin said.
“But the omniclast—”
“The paroxysm will take s
ome time to destroy something as large as a planet. At least there we can breathe the open air and die as men. I don’t want to freeze to death out here, buried in all of this cold emptiness.”
Gavin’s words only deepened Matthew’s sense of hopelessness. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps it would be best to die with their feet on the ground instead of out here in the midst of space. There might yet be some island of rock down there amidst the destruction where they could wait until the end came upon them.
Though he didn’t even know him, Gavin had still tried to save him. If nothing else, at least Matthew owed it to him to honor his dying wish.
“Very well,” he agreed, engaging the lateral thrusters to begin changing course.
“Besides,” Gavin said. “Paroxysms are unpredictable. It may be that this one will expend itself before it destroys everything. Numinae may yet spare us in the end.”
Matthew wanted to believe that. But Gavin hadn’t seen the power levels on the omniclast when it fired. There was no doubt in Matthew’s mind the paroxysm would erase every last vestige of life on the planet’s surface. It would burn hundreds of micro-clicks down into the crust, leaving a world devoid of topography, divested of its atmosphere, and no longer able to support life. He did not mention these things to Gavin. It was enough that his body was going to die, Matthew refused to kill his spirit as well.
The venator and the storage module circled around and set themselves on a course for the planet. They could not head directly for it because of the massive paroxysm, but the venator was fast enough to skirt around the edge of the blast and make for the far side of the planet. Because of the longer route they would be forced to take, Matthew risked accelerating to maximum speed to ensure that Gavin and the others reached the surface before the module’s air supply ran out.
As they passed beyond the malevolent, verdant glare of the paroxysm, it continued to convulse and grow like some interstellar disease, but now Matthew got his first view of planet Nai. A third of the world was lit up by a nightmarish green glow. No clouds were visible through that awful brightness, but the ones beyond the blast seemed to writhe in fear, anticipating their imminent demise.
The Chronotrace Sequence- The Complete Box Set Page 100
