Nicadzim, on the other hand, would lay awake that night. At no point did he depart his bed, and for the first time in many years he did not travel. Nicadzim had spent his life learning to accept the shifting variables of the future rather than fear it, but tonight was the exception. The catacomb inscriptions awoke some creeping, distant feeling in his soul. He did not truly appreciate or understand the sensation until it returned at far greater strength in the Hall of Dissolution. The feeling was … uncertain, a paradoxical collection of sensations and emotional impulses. He felt some winding connection to the unfurling events, but had no idea how to explore or analyze the feeling. At the moment he was simply in shock, something he realized he had never experienced.
Bryluen and Bel’Wa still had a number of things to attend to. Reports, communiques, after-action reports from their respective militaries. The wives disarmed, bathed, emerged in fresh clothing, and immediately left on a shuttle headed for Fort Salamis.
This left only Kirby sitting alone in the conference room. All was dark around her except for the glow of the holoprojector. She had not changed clothes or washed herself yet, and as such she still looked like a disaster. She sat in one of the conference chairs with one foot up on the seat with her. She held her own knee and glanced at the projector image. Her CSOE therapist was shown sitting at their desk three Gates away. Kirby knew she needed to get some things off of her chest before she could rest, and figured an emergency call to her therapist would suffice. The jockey had experienced an uncharacteristic difficulty in getting her ideas out. Most of what she said was little more than word-salad, but the therapist patiently asked questions and clarifications. Slowly, Kirby found the point she wanted to articulate.
"I mean … no, I ain’t … I ain’t talked to nobody about that still. Just you and my old Marine shrink. I ain’t had nobody close that I could tell, really."
The therapist was an older woman with kindly hazel eyes. She slowly sat back in her chair. "Well, from what you’ve told me, you have—"
"—Yeah. Yeah, that’s … that’s true, maybe. But … well, I dunno. Just now I’m wonderin’ if it matters at all."
"What do you mean, Kirby?"
"The-the vision, the tunnels. All those people screaming, dying. More … more species than we knew were even out there, just goin’ over like … not even cattle. More like germs on a counter top getting cleaned off. Their whole fuckin’ world just burning. And now the things that did it are here. They’re comin’ for us. We’ve got shit able to wipe civilizations off the map pouring outta space all around now. From what I can tell, we’re a level of fucked I’m not sure there’s a word for. Maybe I’ll … I mean if it’s gonna...when the time comes, maybe I’ll finally ..."
Kirby’s voice trailed off. She gazed into the corner of the room, her inner voice locked in a despairing debate with itself.
◆◆◆
Bryluen and Bel’Wa stood before the capsule inside Fort Salamis. The pair were a strong contrast; Bryluen in gray and black, Bel’Wa in a robe of brilliant orange. A large bay spread around them, sterile metal to every side. Various warehouse drones moved about in the distance, but the couple were the only living things in the bay. The area was both a warehouse, and a secure site for the many experiments to be conducted on both items recovered from Gru’Thiall.
The capsule sat upon an elevated platform with a wide open space around it. Across from it sat the Stone on a similar platform, surrounded in various forms of shielding to ward off any effects of the strange energies emanating from the dark object. The capsule’s white glow continued unabated in defiant opposition to the ruthless darkness of the Stone.
Bel’Wa squeezed Bryluen’s hand tightly. Bryluen glanced over to her wife and smiled, before once more gazing into the strange object’s warm light. The battle at Gru’Thiall was a great victory by most measures, but Bryluen felt little optimism at that moment. She knew that all they had learned amounted to little other than to inform them of how afraid they should be. No matter how many Dreaded they slew, one great and terrible fact remained:
Somewhere in the benighted emptiness between the stars, Jörmungandr stirred.
The Shadow Among The Stars Page 34
