“Why? What are you hoping to accomplish?” he asked.
“You wouldn’t understand.” Patty peered at Lan’i, and Jules followed her gaze, making eye contact with the Zan’ra boy. He seemed bored with their conversation already.
“Try me. Make me understand,” Dean pleaded.
“Fine. You’ve always been the golden child, and no matter what I’ve done, it’s never been good enough for Mom and Dad. It’s always Dean this, and did you hear about Dean that? It’s sickening.” Her stare broke from her brother and landed on Jules. “And you… we were best friends, and you ditched me. You left me behind for this new life, and not once thought about me.”
Jules’ heart twinged at the words, and she saw the tears forming in her friend’s eyes. “Patty, I didn’t mean to…”
“Sure you did. I was dead weight, no use to you. If I couldn’t help you become a Gatekeeper sooner, I was irrelevant. And don’t even get me started on whatever it is that’s going on between you. Pushed me right out, each of you taking my place for the other.” She cried openly now, and Lan’i moved closer.
“Come, my princess. It’s time.”
He spoke English; another Zan’ra ability, perhaps. Jules felt so foolish. She had no idea what they… or she was capable of, and didn’t think she was prepared for what was about to happen.
“You can’t go with him,” Jules said.
“Why not?”
“Because you don’t want to be a puppet for O’ri. He’s evil.” Jules moved toward Patty, but she floated backwards beside Lan’i.
“It’s not like that, Jules. You of all people should understand. You’re still you, yet you have Ja’ri within.” How did Patty know this?
Something had been bothering Jules, and she posed the question now. “How did you let him out? How did you speak to Lan’i?”
“You’re all so busy with yourselves that no one even noticed I was gone. I spent hours in there, watching him. I dozed off inside the room one day, and he met me in my dreams. Told me how to free him.” Patty looked pleased with herself. It was so obvious that Lan’i was only using her, a means to an end, but she didn’t see it, and explaining that wouldn’t help. It would only push her farther away.
“And the Pleva Corp ship?” Dean asked.
“A convenience, is all,” Lan’i told them. “Come. We’re done here.”
“Patty.” Dean ran forward. “Mom and Dad are missing.”
Patty stopped in her tracks. “What do you mean, missing?”
“They’re gone. The portal on Horizon has vanished from the Crystal Map. We think… there’s a new enemy… or an old one… the Arnap,” Dean told her.
Patty remained motionless, but Lan’i was having none of it. “We have no time for this. These people mean nothing to the Zan’ra. You will have all the powers you’ve ever dreamed of, like your once friend Ja’ri. Isn’t that what you seek?”
Patty nodded, and they turned, racing away from the ships and Jules and Dean. “Stay here!” Jules flew after them, higher into the sky, and she quickly spotted their destination. The ground was so dark purple, it could have been black. Lan’i lowered the pair in the center of a courtyard; sharp crystals jutted from the ground in a clean circle.
Clouds rolled in, and lightning flashed with far more intensity than an early storm should have held. She remembered her parents describing their quest on the Iskios world, when they thought they were finding the Theos, and the rainstorm that hit them so hard. That must have been Ja’ri coming to life, reaching out to latch on to a lifeform. She’d taken Jules, a helpless baby in her mother’s womb. Today, O’ri would take Patty, and Jules had no idea what, if any, of her friend would be left in the aftermath.
A fork of bright purple slammed into Jules’ shield, knocking her askew, then another and another, until she was falling toward the ground. She tossed a barrier at the ground just in time to keep her from flattening like a pancake on the hard surface. She found she could breathe even without the sphere, but she shot it up again regardless.
“Patty! Don’t do this! You have a choice! Return with us to Light, and help us find your parents.” Jules floated over the angry crystal fence and screamed when she saw the lightning begin to focus on the courtyard. It shot flash after flash into the middle where Patty stood, and her friend cried out in agony. Lan’i floated beside her, his eyes wild, his arms spread apart.
“Patty!” Jules moved to intercept them, but Patty shot a beam of energy stronger than any Jules had ever encountered. She was blasted back a hundred yards and landed forcefully.
The girl hovered over them now, Lan’i beside her. Jules saw them long enough to notice the bright burning purple eyes glowing in her friend’s face, before the pair of the Zan’ra departed, leaving Jules on the ground below. Dean caught up to her and watched as his sister flew away, intact with the powers to match Jules’ own.
“I’m sorry, Dean. I’m so sorry.” Jules lay there, and Dean didn’t say a word as the two Zan’ra grew to specks in the atmosphere, and then there was nothing.
____________
“What are we going to do?” Mary asked, and I paced the meeting room, making my tenth or so lap.
The entire bridge crew was present, and we’d asked Sarlun to join us from Shimmal. He’d come through the portal an hour ago, and already his expression told me he was exhausted after the intense conversations.
“We have to go after her,” Dean told us.
“Son, we don’t have any idea…” Sarlun started to say.
“Don’t call me that.” Dean was upset, and I didn’t blame him.
“Sarlun is right. We have absolutely no clue where Patty and Lan’i went, but Regnig and Fontem do have more to work with. They’ll search high and low, and team up with Jules to track their next moves, and you can join their group, Dean.” I stopped walking, facing the youth. His eyes were red, the bags under them telling me he hadn’t slept an ounce in the last day since his sister had departed the system.
Dean only nodded, his chin falling to his chest as he bowed his head, giving up the fight for now. Jules remained at his side, staying quiet as we discussed the plans. She’d filled me in on Fontem and Regnig’s theories about Lom of Pleva’s goals, and the Deity that might be able to help, but I didn’t like any of it. There were so many things escalating, and my head threatened to burst from all the decisions we needed to make.
“Which brings us to Mary’s question. What are we going to do?” Slate asked. He sat near the head of the table, with Loweck next to him. She sat straight-backed, listening intently.
“I want to hear from every one of you. Sergo, what do you suggest?” I asked the Padlog, and he appeared shocked to be called upon.
“I’d… we’re so close to returning Brik home. We should finish that mission, and then we wouldn’t need to continue here any longer. It would allow us to find the system Magnus was heading to, and check into the welfare of Horizon,” Sergo suggested, mirroring my own thoughts on our next move.
“Very good. Walo?” I asked.
“I think Sergo’s idea is sound,” Walo replied.
“Suma?”
She nodded. “I can get behind Sergo’s plan.”
I peered at Mary, and she gave me a tight-lipped nod, and my gaze settled on Dean. “And you? Does that sound reasonable? We drop Brik off, find your parents, and search for Patty while we travel to their aid.” I laid it out as clearly as I could, and he had no choice but to agree with the strategy.
“Okay. Thank you for caring, everyone,” Dean said quietly.
“Then it’s settled. Unless anyone has any objections?” When no one raised any, I tapped the lights on and closed the star map. We were only five hundred kilometers from the wormhole’s entrance, and I took a deep breath. “Let’s move to the bridge, and Rivo, can you ask Brik to meet us there? I’d like him to be with us while we make the final trek through the wormhole.”
“Consider it done, Captain.” Rivo rose, leaving the space first.
Soon it was only Mary, Jules, and me in the meeting room, everyone else already gone.
“Papa, I have a bad feeling about this,” Jules told me.
“With Patty? Why?” Mary asked.
Jules didn’t make eye contact, and her left arm curved over her stomach like it ached. “Not that. It’s… something else. The wormhole. I don’t know. It’s probably just Patty. Can I join you on the bridge?”
“You bet. Let’s get this over with. I need to find out what happened to Magnus. Mary, did we ever obtain the details of their destination?” I asked.
“We did. I’ll plug them in on the bridge, and we can have a look at the system.” Mary turned, leading us out of the meeting room. This trip had been a challenge, but at least we were near the end of it.
____________
Everyone convened on the bridge for the final act of this mission. The wormhole loomed a short distance away, and I confirmed with Suma and Sergo that it was by no means affecting our trajectory. Suma had a general understanding of wormholes, and Mary and I had traveled through them on our first trip from Earth to Haven in the year after the Event. That didn’t change the fact that I was nervous about bringing our immense starship through this one.
The Ginda system was quiet: no life among the ten planets. Part of me wanted to explore the world where Patty had just been infused with the Zan’ra, but time was also against us when it came to Magnus and Nat. The communicator sat in my pocket, and I touched it through the uniform fabric, silently willing my friend to contact me.
Brik stood near the left edge, staring at the giant viewscreen. For the first time, Light’s bridge felt lived in, not so white and gray and sterile. It was still bright and shiny, but with all these people on, their fears and excitement raging in their human and alien bodies, the place had a new sense of wonder to it.
Mary was beside me, her frown indicating she was trying to solve the Patty puzzle, and Jules was with Dean, quietly talking beside Suma’s console on my right. Jules was comforting Dean, and I thought the older boy was doing fairly well staying composed. I don’t think I’d have been as strong when I was eighteen.
Looking straight at the wormhole was like staring into a black pit, and we saw thousands of pinpricks of light beyond.
“Captain, I’ve been unable to connect the star positions across the rift to match anything on our records,” Suma said. “This could be because it’s projecting images of stars from all around its path.”
“Okay. Brik, are you prepared?” I asked, and he kept gawking forward, his long tail moving like a snake behind him.
Finally he turned, nodding to me, his words echoing through the bridge’s translator. “I am ready to go home.”
Sarlun remained with us on the ship, and he stood behind Slate and me, with Regnig and Fontem. The trio were silent as Sergo directed us forward and toward the wormhole.
“On your word, Captain,” the Padlog man said.
I took a lengthy breath, pausing before exhaling. This was it. One more stop before finding Magnus and Natalia. This trip hadn’t gone as we’d expected, not with Jules and this Lan’i, not to mention losing Patty to the Zan’ra. I’d decided to come out of retirement, and perhaps this was my punishment for being away for too long.
“Sergo, bring us through.”
I clutched Mary’s hand as we stood in front of our seats. The air was thick with tension; everyone seemed to take a sharp intake at the same moment, and the nose of our ship entered the wormhole. One second we were in the Ginda system; the next we were transported somewhere else, no worse for the wear. “Scans!” I called, and heard Rivo reply quickly.
“Light is in optimal working order, sir. We’ve deployed the probes…” She stopped herself as we saw the destruction before us on the viewscreen.
“My God. What is this?” Slate asked, stepping forward. He walked down the center aisle, between the main helm consoles, and I trailed after him, my brain trying to process what I was seeing.
The planet was some distance from the fold in space, but it was close enough for Suma to zoom and uncover something from our nightmares. Dozens of massive ships floated near the world; a giant space station hung there, between the planet and twin moons.
“Brik, are these your people?” I asked hesitantly. I was confident they weren’t. The design was nothing like the Ritair aesthetics.
Brik’s eyes were watering, his entire body gone stiff. His words relayed through the translator slowly as he stuttered his response. “This… can’t be. These are… the Arnap.”
Fontem was beside me, arms crossed over his chest. “Dean, I told you they never lose.”
I contemplated the puzzle and shook my head. “I’m sorry, Brik.” He’d finally been found, saved from the Collector, only to return to their new colony world to see that they’d been destroyed, perhaps enslaved by the same race that had bullied them from their home on Sterona. Anger filled my being, and I wanted to lash out at something, or someone.
Slate appeared to notice, and he became the common sense in the room. “Boss, there are too many of them. We’re going to have to retreat. By now, they may have located us.”
He was right, but how could we abandon the Ritair?
“If it’s any consolation, there’s no way they left the people alive.” Fontem’s words were of little help.
“Papa, we can’t abandon them. We can’t let the Arnap win!” Jules darted across the bridge, Dean at her heels.
“Honey, we’re armed like no other starship, but not enough to fight evenly.” I pointed at the image of the ten warships, each half the size of Light. The Arnap vessels were wide and stocky, and from what I could see, heavily loaded with munitions of all kinds. I saw a version of the pulse cannon protruding from the underbelly, the railguns along the sides. There would be countless other devices attached, some we likely hadn’t seen before, and I wasn’t willing to risk my crew and my family on this.
“Observe, record, report,” Mary whispered, staring at the viewscreen with everyone else.
“I don’t understand. If they have this much force out here, what of the planet Magnus was checking…” It hit me like a slap in the face. “Mary, did you give Suma the details from Sarlun?”
“They’re loaded.” Mary jogged to Suma and leaned over the console, her fingers typing quickly. A map appeared on the left edge of the viewscreen, and Mary cursed under her breath. She glanced over to me with panic on her face. “Dean, this is it. We’re in the same location that Magnus and Natalia had been heading on their mission.”
“How can this be?” I asked, peering at Sarlun.
“They didn’t know there was a wormhole that would take them here via Ginda. How could they have?” Sarlun asked.
“Are you saying my parents are here?” Dean asked, blocking my view of the screen.
“I’m not saying anything,” I told him.
“But this was their destination? They were coming to investigate the genocide of the Ritair? Brik’s people?” he asked, his voice climbing in volume.
Brik was a mess. He’d fallen to the ground and was repeating a mantra through his cries. His people were gone.
“We can’t confirm if Horizon…” I started, but Walo called to me.
“Captain, I’ve run a scan, and we’ve found their ship,” Walo told us, and I pushed past Dean to her console.
“Where?”
The image on the viewscreen shifted, and there she was: the familiar starship. The first human-led Alliance vessel… Horizon. It was dead: no lights on the exterior, nothing showing it had power. “Get me a readout.”
“Sensors picking up some energy inside. Most of the ship has been compromised,” Suma advised, and the image zoomed again, showing a chunk of Horizon missing. Hunks of the vessel floated nearby, along with some bodies, and my stomach clenched.
“We have to help them!” Dean shouted. He’d just lost his sister, and now he was being forced to see this. Slate grabbed the boy, dragging him from the screen.
“Calm down, Dean. We’re going to figure this out,” Slate urged him, but the young man was anything but relaxed, and I couldn’t blame him.
“Captain, it appears as though we’ve been detected. Something is moving toward us,” Loweck said. “Scratch that. Two warships are heading this way from near their world.”
The planet was halfway across the system, and Horizon was much closer to our position. I had an idea. “Time to intercept?”
“One hour and twelve minutes, Captain,” Loweck said.
“Do the math. How long to Horizon, then again through the wormhole?” I asked.
“Thirty-nine minutes.” Loweck glanced at me, and everyone awaited instructions.
I knew I should order us to return to Ginda, but I couldn’t, not with Magnus and Nat potentially alive inside there. “What are we waiting for? That gives us a half-hour to find survivors!”
Twenty-Two
Five of them piled into the Kraski ship, making it a tight squeeze. Papa and Mom slipped into their EVAs, while Uncle Zeke piloted them across the short distance to Horizon. Dean had been forced to stay behind on Light, and Jules’ heart had almost broken as he’d fought to get onto the vessel with them.
She leaned over the pilot’s seat, watching as the Alliance starship grew in the viewscreen. The battle had destroyed a lot of the craft, and Slate maneuvered them around floating debris. Jules recognized some workout equipment from the gym, and came across a few bodies frozen in horror. Loweck grabbed her gun, holding it at her chest in reaction, and Jules wasn’t sure if she’d ever seen the woman so angry before. She and Slate had worked on Horizon, had lived among the crew.
“I wish we knew what happened,” Slate said.
“Magnus arrived and found more than he bargained for. He must have gotten too close. He had no idea how bad these Arnap were,” her dad speculated.
“He wasn’t one to back down from a fight,” Slate said.
“He isn’t one to back down, Slate. Watch your tongue,” Mary corrected.
The Survivors (Book 12): New Discovery Page 20
