“There,” Nani pointed and, as if extending a magic finger, the entire fore end of the cavern broke along one perfect edge and began sliding to the side. Into a recess, the mechanism so expertly finished that it hadn’t even been apparent until activated. The door spanned the height of the cavern and most of its breadth, wide enough (Jess presumed) to allow the Kel warship through.
Nani looked up, done tapping screens for the moment.
“The only risk is that I accelerate too fast,” she said. “That could draw a wake behind us and suck people out. I can’t hurry until we’re clear.”
Jess was patient. Made herself be. Her fear was that something would fail; the door would stick, someone would override it; the starship itself would get shut off remotely. So many things could yet prevent them.
Be patient.
They all watched as the giant door continued its move to the side, exposing more and more of the smoothly bored tunnel through which they would exit. At the far end, beyond the thickness of the mountain, another door could be seen moving aside at the same pace, exposing a clear blue afternoon. Jess still held the gun. So did Satori. Willet stood with them. Bianca at the front, right at the screen looking out; like a kid at a picture window, curious at the kids across the street. Wondering what the day might hold. Nani, their only source of understanding for all this, at her station, preparing. It was kind of a surreal moment. Such a normal, small group of people, standing in the middle of all that technology. All that potential.
And it was working.
“There they are,” Nani interrupted their rapture. Everyone followed her gaze to the side and down, at the entry to the lab. Far across the floor a group of armed soldiers had stormed in and were fanning out, Lindin in the lead.
“Damn.”
Nani was terrified all over again. She looked to Satori, then Jessica, second-guessing what they were doing. Jess gave her what she hoped was an encouraging look, trying to project the idea of keep going, this is what we’re doing. Nani turned to the console in earnest, checking and re-checking as she looked anxiously between the lumbering cavern door and the readouts. Jess wondered if the guys on the ground did have a way to override it.
“Remember we’re holding you hostage,” she said, feeling the machine-pistol in her grip. “If anything happens and we don’t make it, you’re just doing what we forced you to do. You won’t get in any trouble.” Keep opening! she willed the massive doors.
Nani kept checking things. Tapped a few controls.
“There,” she said at last. “I think we’re clear.” And she turned fully to the console and concentrated on what she was about to do. Systematically, one action after the next, keying up controls until … the ship moved. At first Jess didn’t feel it, just saw it. She reached a hand for the closest chair. Then realized she couldn’t feel any movement at all. She expected to feel it, but only her eyes told her things were changing position. Like watching a movie on a giant screen. Slowly the ship lifted a dozen feet into the air. Small distance in view of the size of the ship itself, but they rose. There was a thrum of titanic force through the superstructure, echoes of the power involved, but it was of such low frequency it only barely impinged on the edges of perception. It was incredible. The Reaver was probably as heavy as a US Navy warship and physics were physics, which meant that however the energy was transferred—with fields or with fire or a sprinkling of magic pixie dust—this was a huge amount of mass to move. That it could happen so quietly, with no shock, no evidence of that titanic force …
But it did. Outside in the lab nothing blew away. People scrambled against the far walls, of course, but not because anything made them. The Reaver lifted gently on a distant hum, like a giant magnet, then … began moving forward. Toward the door and out the cavern.
“You can’t even tell we’re moving,” Bianca marveled.
“Inertial dampers,” Nani said, almost proud that all was working as planned. “They’re not perfect, but at this acceleration you won’t feel a thing.”
They passed through the first door, all holding their breath that it didn’t go slamming closed and pin them in. Further they drifted, ever forward, into the tunnel and slowly, slowly toward the other opening at the far end, gradually picking up speed.
Bianca looked back from the front, directly at Jessica.
“We’re going home,” she said softly.
Jess nodded, knowing that really wasn’t the case. Bianca knew it too. They knew their lives on Earth were over. But Jess tried to let the thought of it sustain her. They had hope now. Possibility.
* *
“Do something!” Lindin was practically spitting, stepping first toward the technicians, desperate to get them to do anything to stop this impossible thing that was happening, then back toward the starship as it hovered slowly forward, through the massive doors. Hanging over the cavern floor as if suspended from invisible cables. Nice and slow, taunting him. Reflexively he reached out a hand, as if he might take hold and pull it back.
There was nothing to be done.
“What do you mean you can’t close the doors?!” He was infuriated. The nearest tech was attempting to explain, something about the way they’d set it up, fail-safes to prevent damage to the starship once it was in the tunnel, how they’d never anticipated a situation like this and blah, blah, blah—even as Lindin wanted to scream at him of course we never anticipated a situation like this! but do something!
He couldn’t bring it down. Not in there. Not that he would. He couldn’t close the doors. He couldn’t stop it.
The frantic scurrying of bodies eased and now everyone just kind of stood there, stunned. Helplessly watching the inevitable. Unreal. A nightmare come to life. Through the inner door and up the tunnel it went. Huge, black, shining perfection, sweeping out as if in slow attack; shape of it looking as if swooping for the kill, even when barely in motion, moving along an unerring, laser-straight path, up the wide, oval tunnel; too massive to be so smooth, so quiet, “wings” out to the sides like a bird of prey in flight.
Getting away.
CHAPTER 7: FLIGHT
The Reaver slipped through the final, massive door into the sunlight, screen optics doing a perfect job of relaying the view outside. Under the overarching dome it was as if the small group stood atop the ship in the open air, like on the deck of a sailing vessel, some kind of pirate ship of old, or maybe even a Disney ride; something out of Peter Pan, gazing down on the splendor of the gray/white mountains as they sailed quietly over the peaks beneath a clear blue sky.
It was breathtaking.
Nani tapped the controls expertly, upped the acceleration and curving them to greater and greater heights. Soon they were high enough to see the ocean to the east, then the curve of the world itself and, soon enough, were fairly racing to orbit. The rate at which they gained velocity became visually alarming. Jess was reminded of UFO “re-enactment” videos, where a giant spacecraft would dart suddenly into the sky at impossible speed. She held tight to one of the chairs, though as yet felt little of the change in direction. It was as if she could easily step away and just stand there, unwavering as they blitzed into space; maybe even sip a cup of coffee, or even balance on one leg. Movement was that imperceptible.
Nani was hugely pleased with the results.
“It’s all working,” she said as they slipped free of the last shreds of atmosphere. Now that they were clear—boy are we, thought Jess, looking out at the rapidly darkening sky—Nani was transforming before her eyes. Lapsing fully into her passion for the machine. Their high treason, for the moment, forgotten. This was, in truth, the thing she’d been working toward for years and, though the circumstances were all wrong, she had at last achieved her ambition.
She was flying the ancient Kel starship.
Outside the black of space soon filled the view, the last wisps of air slipping away. Clouds blanketed the globe below, just like in every orbital video Jess had ever seen.
I’m in space.
She could hardly believe it.
Anitra spread beneath them, further as they rose, defining itself more and more each moment as a giant sphere. Just like Earth. Brown, some green, not quite as much blue, but otherwise a planet. Practically a mirror of her home, filled with life, covered in a nurturing blanket of air. Higher they went, moving further and further away, the globe becoming more and more defined, and she found herself standing at the wraparound screen beside Bianca looking at it receding. She noticed Willet and Satori had joined them.
Transfixed.
After a while Jess glanced to the side. Satori looked more stunned than Jess had ever seen her. In the silence that hung in the air, each of them gazing on that spectacular vista, processing their own thoughts—Nani alone busy, in quiet motion behind them, making it all work—Satori summed up the situation:
“Holy. Shit.”
Jess didn’t know if that was an Anitran slang too, or if Satori had just heard her or Bianca say it somewhere along the way, but it could not have been more appropriate for the moment.
Holy shit indeed.
At Satori’s apt assessment everyone kind of stared at each other, the full import of things seeming to settle over them all at once.
Utterly taken with what they’d done.
Nani had no time for such awe. Her mind was in motion, consumed, continuing her frantic working of the Reaver’s systems, nearly beside herself. “There’s so many things I want to check,” she said, filled all at once with a flood of scientific curiosity. Jess looked back at her. Couldn’t tell if the flurry of activity was still necessary or if Nani was simply pouring through more information, testing, evaluating. Finally getting the chance she’d been waiting for. Each second her fear of the epically punishable thing they’d just done morphed further into raw excitement.
As if sensing Jessica’s gaze her blonde head glanced up from the console and looked across the bridge.
“I’m setting up what we need to go find Zac,” she amended her enthusiasm. “I’ve got to move us further beyond the gravity well.” For a brief moment she lingered, admiring the spectacular view herself, having been consumed until then with what she was doing, then put her attention back at the controls.
The Reaver’s speed only seemed to increase. The entire planet came well into view. Continued moving away. For it to keep changing perspective at that rate Jess knew they had to be accelerating at a tremendous clip. She had no idea how fast, or how fast the ship could go, how hard Nani was pushing it and so on, but they were moving way faster than any rocket of Earth, that much was certain. It would take hours or even days to cover that kind of distance in a regular chemical rocket. Whatever powered the Reaver was impressive beyond any Earth reckoning. They were minutes into their flight and already Anitra had diminished to fill only half the screen.
And the Reaver could go further. Between the stars, if it worked. That it could be a thousand years old and fully functioning …
It was miraculous.
Jess looked around the bridge, admiring the power of it, the ease with which this ancient ship promised to bring her objectives to life.
And noticed most of her panic was gone.
After a few more minutes she walked carefully—steadily—back across the bridge, over to Nani, who’d stopped tapping controls and was now scanning screen after screen of information.
“Incredible,” she kept shaking her head.
“You think the …” Jess fished for the right term, “star drive will work?” She felt the urgency of Zac’s peril.
Nani looked to the screens. “We’ll know in a moment.”
Satori joined them. Jess noted both she and Satori still held the machine pistols.
It had been a tense escape.
She found a spot and laid hers down. Satori seemed to notice the gun all at once and put hers down too.
Jess glanced back toward the front, to Willet and Bianca who stood watching Anitra recede. For Willet his home, for Bianca an alien world, the mark of her first step through the looking glass.
“We need to go to the last point,” Jess tried to think of the best way to describe where they had to go. Where Zac would’ve gone, and where he might still be. “The one the second Icon was set to. You can reference that, right?”
Nani nodded that she could. Checked some more readings. Jess turned to look back across the bridge, at the colorful world that kept getting smaller and smaller. Anitra’s moon had come into view, looking like another world in itself, floating in the black of space in the distance, off to the port side. Polarizing filters kept the glare of the orange-tinged sun to a dull fire, giving everything a crisp visual edge.
They were covering distance at a truly amazing rate. Jess was having a hard time getting over it. If this were Earth they could’ve been halfway to the moon by now. It was absolutely stunning.
“Ok,” said Nani. “We’re ready.” She continued checking things, tapping now and again, setting whatever was involved in making the jump.
“We should probably sit,” she advised. “I don’t know what effect the state-shift will have on our physiology. We may lose our equilibrium.” Willet and Bianca turned from the fore screen as Nani continued: “We don’t actually travel through space, in the sense that we understand it. Just shift from one location to the next. The effect should be near instantaneous, from our perspective. I just don’t know what it will feel like.”
Jess figured it was probably like an Icon transfer, of which she and Bianca were the only ones there that had any experience. It was disorienting, yes, but the feeling passed quickly.
She and Satori looked at the available seats. The three at the center had to be command chairs; five more around the edges were control stations like Nani’s.
Willet came closer, looked at Jess and extended a hand to the central, highest chair. The one clearly reserved for the captain.
“It would only be fitting,” he said. Jess looked at it. Was about to defer then realized it was a stupid point to argue and, in the end, it really didn’t matter. Without comment she stepped over, stepped up and sat in the large, comfortable seat. It was big but not overly so. The Kel were clearly more or less human in size and so it fit. Settling in she looked around the bridge, feeling very much like Captain Kirk or something, ready to take command. Not only that—and though this was never intended—everyone’s plain, black Anitran clothes, what they all just happened to be wearing, almost made it look like they wore uniforms.
Like they were a real crew.
Willet took a seat in the chair to her right. Satori sat in the other, to her left. Bianca went and sat at the station near Nani.
When everyone was in place Jess gripped the arms of the chair and looked ahead.
“All right,” she said, thought for a surreal second to add something like, engage, maybe even point a finger toward the forward screen, but said instead: “Let’s go get Zac.”
* *
He’d done it. Kang had the Icon. With less difficulty than he imagined he’d directed these aliens across the void to retrieve the shiny device, and now held it in his hands. As he walked the corridors back to the bridge he looked down on it, catching his stretched and deformed reflection in its curved metallic surface.
The aliens had pulled alongside it with the same bay they’d used to retrieve him, making use of the same grappling arm—made all the more unwieldy by the size of the Icon itself. But he refused to go to the edge or in any other way risk the chance they might contrive a way to be rid of him, making them get it instead. And so now he had it. Raising the next most obvious question:
What to do with it?
All he knew of the Icon was as a holy relic. He’d never thought of it in terms of a portal device, but clearly that’s what it was. It had transferred him and Horus. Would it send him back? Surely it must. Using it again—however one used it—must return him to Anitra. But how much would be transported? Would it take only him? Would it take the whole ship? Whatever he touched? When H
orus activated it they brought grass and bits of the park with them. Was that just a localized effect?
One thing was for sure, if he used the Icon and it returned only him, and not the entire ship, this opportunity would be lost. Even if he then tried to pop back here it would only put him right back in the void, and there was no way he would get back aboard. And as he thought of that he realized the first thing he had to admit was that taking guesses at the Icon was foolhardy. He had no idea what exactly it did or how it worked.
But there was someone who did.
Horus.
He and his small group of escorts passed through the destroyed bulkhead door, last before the bridge, and stepped through, back into the busy command center of the mighty alien craft. The commander was there, impassive, staring at him with his unreadable yet brutal gaze.
Kang came to a stop and stood among them. Interrogating Horus had to be next. His nemesis knew the Icon, at least enough to use it. Perhaps the girl told him other things in that final moment, before he lunged at Kang and sent them both hurtling here, to this completely different star system. Ordering the aliens to blast Horus, floating helpless out there in space, had been forefront in his mind, his next action as their leader—to watch his enemy vaporized by the mighty warship’s guns—only now …
Now he realized he needed him.
If Horus knew something, as Kang was forced to admit might be the case, he must come to yet another change of heart. He must be smart about this. He must extract information about the Icon from Horus. The thought of doing so, the difficulty it would no doubt present, troubled him. But it was the only way. Whatever Kang had stumbled into, knowing the secrets of the Icon were, at the moment, paramount.
He must yield to reason.
Staring at the commander he grinned, though he was certain the alien leader had no idea why. Just another maniacal gesture from the crazy monster. For Kang the moment was a revelation. It seemed not long ago he’d been contemplating the end of all challenge, the conquering of Anitra imminent. Now this. It was as if some divine entity had opened up a brand new opportunity. His grin widened; turned to a low cackle.
Star Angel: Dawn of War (Star Angel Book 3) Page 7
