by C. M. Kane
She could feel excitement … expectation, almost.
‘Oh crap.’
The lift stopped and the door opened to a darkened room.
‘Lights,’ she muttered, more in hope than in any expectation.
The bridge flooded with light. A massive view screen dominated the forward section of the bridge. It was divided into dozens of different outlooks, showing differing views of the nebula they were in. Workstations, complete with long curved, almost upright chairs, were dotted about in an order similar to what she had seen on the Hindishah, all with their companels alight, as if merely awaiting input. Tae glanced at the surrounding com-screens as she ventured into the huge room.
‘That’s pretty,’ she said, looking at one of the screens before her. A large, threedimensional picture of what she was staring at suddenly expanded before her. She walked toward it and entered the projection, looking around as she went. It was almost like walking into the nebula itself. She reached out her hand and waved it through a small field of dust particles watching, totally intrigued as her hand passed harmless through them. As she turned she looked back toward where she knew the captain and their second would sit and stopped dead.
Tae’s attention was riveted to a large black chair made out of some material she had never seen before. It almost seemed to glow, the darkness of it was so intense. Breaking the blackness were tiny red pinpricks of light that seemed to dance across it from within.
She watched the lights for a short time, their changing patterns seemed familiar somehow, like pictures that she couldn’t quite decipher the meaning of. Forgetting the display that surrounded her she walked toward what her mind had now nicknamed the star chair, captivated. It was long and wide like an enormous armchair with comfortable, fully extended leg rest. Its red pinprick stars glittered and winked on and off in their constantly shifting patterns. Tae felt drawn to it on a deep, fundamental level. Reaching out her hand she touched her finger to it gently, running it over the arm rest. It felt soft, warm, welcoming. She wanted … no, she needed to sit in it.
‘No, not yet Tae.’
A sharp voice intruded into her mesmerized mind.
‘If you sit you must bond, and to bond you will need more nanites. You must learn about Ouranos as Ouranos has been learning about you. As you are now your brain could never handle the sheer amount of information this ship could inadvertently flood you with.’
‘Cassandra?’ Tae asked, slowly coming out of her daze.
‘Come, Tae. As luck would have it I can see you will be doing this much sooner than I had anticipated. Come to my room and I will have Adam escort you to the infirmary.’
Tae reluctantly left the bridge and the star chair. Maybe soon she would be able to do what she felt compelled to do. Maybe soon she would be able to sit there she thought, with both a sense of dread and wonder.
Chapter 24
Tae pressed the turbo lift’s button to thirtyfive, Cassandra’s level. Nothing happened, the lift remained stationary. Frowning, she jabbed the button again … still nothing, then she realized, the Ouranos didn’t want her to leave.
‘Well this is might be a bit of a problem,’ she muttered. ‘Now what do I do?’ She walked back to the chair and placed her palm on it. Once again she was filled with contentment; she also noticed the need to sit grew more urgent the longer she rested her hand on it. She pushed it away, knowing it must be coming from the ship itself.
‘Stop it or I will take my hand away.’ Slowly the feeling eased.
‘Good, now we can talk,’ she said.
Tae placed pictures in her mind as Cassandra had once done to try to communicate with the ship. She imagined herself going back down the lift to Adam and him giving her more nanites. She then pictured herself coming back to the bridge and sitting in the chair.
‘That’s what has to happen,’ she said, ‘or you could hurt me, and then you’d be alone again, perhaps forever this time. I’m going back to Cassandra and Adam for a short time; I’ll be back a bit later, okay? I promise, trust me.’
She walked back over to the lift and pressed thirtyfive again. As if reluctantly, the doors closed and the lift moved back down. Tae ran her hand over the wall of the lift.
‘I’ll be back, I promise.’
At her soothing words the doors slid open and she went straight to Cassandra’s room. When she walked in she was immediately assailed by a feeling of dread. Adam was leaning over Cassandra’s body.
‘Not yet, my lady … please,’ he whispered.
‘I’m sorry, Adam, but it’s almost time. I can feel the vision coming. I cannot prevent its arrival.’
‘What’s happening?’ asked Tae as she walked over to Adam. He was gently smoothing Cassandra’s hair back from her forehead. Tae noticed the woman’s skin was now almost translucent.
Adam turned to her, tears coursing unashamedly down his face.
‘She is going to have another vision, but her next one will kill her, she cannot stop it.’
‘Please Adam,’ Cassandra whispered. ‘We both knew this day was coming, I am only grateful I have lasted long enough to meet the Ouranos’ captain. Take Tae to the med bay and inject her with the nanites she will need. I think I have just enough time left to see her safely through if you hurry. Just remember that I love you, you are the son I never had. I do not want you to grieve for me, I want you to move on and be happy. Please, Adam, if you could ever grant me a wish, this is what it would be. I want you to find happiness with someone and start living for yourself, instead of dedicating yourself solely to this ship and its people. Promise me.’
‘You ask a lot of me, Cassandra, this has been all I have known for my entire life, but I promise I will try,’ he said.
Motioning to Tae he led her from the room. They went straight to the med bay without another word. Tae now knew Cassandra was going to die very soon; there was nothing she or Adam could do or say to stop it. Privately she thought Cassandra was weary, she didn’t seem to fear death. She had the feeling that Cassandra welcomed it after such a long life.
Adam went to a cupboard and drew out a small handheld device, then went to the wall beside the bed he had indicated Tae perch herself on when they had entered. He opened a panel beside her to give himself direct access to the ship’s inner workings. In front of her was what looked to be an extremely large vein. It was flushed with a deep reddish brown glowing substance that seemed to pulse through it. Adam pressed the device to the vein and pushed a button. When it beeped he withdrew it again and closed the panel.
‘Tae, I must warn you about what is about to happen, this is your last chance to back away, so please make your choice carefully. The amount of nanites I am about to implant in you could, by themselves, kill you.’ He sighed heavily.
‘We had hoped to be able to inject much smaller amounts over a few sessions to give your body time to adjust, but Cassandra has foreseen that you must have them all before she dies. If you don’t she will not be able to stop the Ouranos from forcing you into the star chair before you are ready. It would end in your death. You have to remember that the Ouranos is more than a Dreadnaught; she is also a giant mind. The human mind … well, any non artificial mind for that matter, could never hope to be able to process the vast amounts of information this ship could inadvertently dump into it. We hope that by having some of her nanites you will be able to control the amount of information she shares with you when you interact. Cassandra has tried to speak to the Ouranos about this, to warn her of the dangers that you will face from her, but we have no idea if she understands.
If we’re lucky and everything goes to plan with the bonding, your first, and most vital job, will be to assert your dominance over the ship. I can’t stress this highly enough. You must be able to bend her will to your own. The Ouranos is a very dangerous weapon, a weapon that can think and feel. You must be able to control it by sheer force of will if you have to.
Tae swallowed nervously, this was sounding more and more forbidding with ev
ery passing minute, still she nodded and he continued.
‘Cassandra told me to remind you of the dog analogy. Even if the dog is normally placid, given the wrong stimulus it can inflict a bad bite; the bigger the dog, the worse the bite. Do you understand?’ he asked.
Tae nodded. ‘I’m about to meet a very big arsed dog. Well, it’s too late now.’ She shrugged. ‘I promised, and I never break my word. Besides, I’ve already figured out that Ouranos could kill me anytime it wants, all it has to do is simply order the nanites I already have to kill me and I’m toast.’
Adam nodded. ‘I really am sorry, Tae, but there was no other way.’
Tae nodded ‘I know.’
Adam approached her with the small device. ‘If you could lay face down then please, and brace yourself. I will be injecting you with a tremendous amount of nanites compared to what you have now, and if it doesn’t kill you it will hurt … a lot.’
Oh crap, not again. Why do these things always have to hurt, and what in Hades’ name does he mean by a lot anyway? She thought, as dread crept into her mind at the thought of yet more pain, before she could change her mind she lay on her stomach and carefully positioned her face in the hole at the top of the bed.
She felt Adam move behind her and wipe something cool against the base of her skull where it joined her neck.
‘I am giving you an injection of Freya’s Breath, it is a rare drug derived from the Chena home world. It will paralyze your body for several hours. It will not affect your brain in any way though, it works by adhering itself to the spinal cord just under the brain stem. You will only need a minuscule amount as it is incredibly powerful. You will still be able to feel, speak, and move your head a little, but you’ll be unmoving from the neck down. Unfortunately, for the nanites to work as they are intended to, you must remain fully conscious and immobile, with nothing affecting the brain itself.’
‘Good luck, Miss Tae. I’ll see you soon.’ He strapped her head down firmly with a large piece of molded leather which fitted across the back of her skull; it pushed her face tightly into the hole in the bed. She couldn’t move even an inch if she tried.
She could hear Adam moving behind her before she felt a light pressure at the base of her neck followed by a light sting. Her whole body went numb from the chest and shoulders down. No, not numb, she thought. She could still feel her body, she just couldn’t move it.
‘It’s done’ said Adam from somewhere behind her.
Gentle warmth began to creep up her neck and into her cheeks … just before her head exploded in agony and she began to scream.
Tae floated through world after world of excruciating pain, there was no escape, no respite. It followed her along every path to oblivion her mind fled down like a relentless hound. A small part of her thought she heard someone screaming from far away. Finally, all rational thought left her, leaving just a brutal animalistic form of herself alone with the agony.
‘Stay with me, Tae,’ a voice whispered to her, faint at first then growing stronger.
What was left of Tae’s conscious mind focused on it. The pain seemed to recede the closer she moved to the voice. It was Cassandra.
‘I’m here, Tae. Come with me on my last vision; see what I see before I die. I will help you leave this misery, if only for a short time. You will travel with me into what might be, if the right circumstances prevail. Come with me, Tae. Come now.’
Tae’s mind fled to the voice, to Cassandra, anything to escape the misery of her own mind.
Silence, she opened her eyes and found herself floating in space. Her mind and body were finally free from the agony at last, except now she was in an airless void, she started to panic as she gasped for air.
‘Do not be scared, Tae. We are mere observers, only our minds are here, our bodies are safely tucked away back onboard the Ouranos. We can neither affect nor interact with anything we see. We are here to witness something before I die. I have known since I first saw you that you must see this before I leave this mortal plane. That it is in fact, imperative, that you see what is coming.’
Tae calmed down at Cassandra’s soothing words and began to breathe more slowly. She drifted along peacefully beside her, as she watched the planet with its twin moons in the distance. She thought vaguely that she had seen this place somewhere before. The picture in Valaria’s apartment back on Earth flashed into her mind. Of course, this was Salernis, the home world of the Vampire. A disturbance between the moons drew their attention as the portal to the world opened. One by one various ships began to move through.
‘Oh by the gods, no!’ cried Cassandra.
Tae looked on in horror as the Orion and Khopesh class warships entered the space above Salernis in a seemingly steady, neverending stream. Somehow she was sharing in Cassandra’s knowledge of who was in these ships, and that knowledge made her share her terror equally. The Titans had finally found a portal to these realms. They were coming.
‘How long do we have?’ Tae asked.
She felt Cassandra’s mind already weakening, she was starting to slip away from her.
‘Not long,’ Cassandra said faintly. ‘Six months, maybe, definitely no longer. It is vague to me. You must stop them, Tae. Destroy Hera then find the Felice, it is the only way I can see …’ their connection was almost gone when she heard Cassandra’s soft whisper.
‘You must, or you are all lost.’
Cassandra’s presence receded into nothingness and she felt an overwhelming sense of loss. She knew Cassandra had just died.
When the connection broke Tae’s mind fully returned to her own body, the onslaught of pain shocked her back to her reality quickly as it once more set about attacking her. This time though, it didn’t have quite the same intensity. It was bearable … just. Tae filled her mind with thoughts of Cassandra to distract herself from the continuing pain.
I promise, she said to herself over and over again, like a chant. It became her litany to the dead oracle, until at long last, she mercifully sank into oblivion.
The first thing she recognized as she fought her way back to consciousness was pain. Not the souldestroying agony she had experienced before, now it was more like someone was inside her skull with a hammer trying to beat their way out. She cracked open her eyes, she was lying on her back on a sleeping pallet in a darkened room.
‘You’re awake at last, Tae,’ said a familiar soft voice to her left.
Turning her head slowly Tae saw Xirra smiling at her, she was sitting beside her bed watching her closely.
Time to make a move Tae thought reluctantly, groaning and holding her head as if it could actually explode at any minute. She eased herself up and leant against the wall of the ship, the pain eased a little at the contact.
She licked her dry lips. ‘How long was I out for?’ She thought it must be a while, because her mouth felt like a family of field mice had set up home and built a nest, it was so dry.
‘Thirtythree standard hours, but you have been slowly coming back to us for the last three.’ Said Xirra handing Tae a glass filled with a green fluid.
‘Here, this will help,’ she said. ‘It’s Rafa juice, Adam says it is a little like your orange juice, but more refreshing.’
Tae drank it gratefully; it was tangy and tasted like mangos and oranges mixed with something unidentifiable.
‘Cassandra?’ she asked, hoping that what she had felt had been wrong.
Xirra’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Our Lady Cassandra passed beyond the veil just as you came back to us. Adam thought we would lose you both for a time; your screams were a terrible thing … Such pain.’ Her eyes filled with compassion.
‘He asked if I could help while he took care of our lady and saw to her arrangements. He thought you might like to have a friend near you, and he said that you liked me. I have not left your side since.’ She smiled shyly as she took Tae’s empty glass from her. ‘Would you like another drink? You must be thirsty after so long asleep, and the screaming must have hurt your throat.’
‘Yes please.’ Tae accepted another glass which she sipped slowly.
‘What happens now?’ she asked.
‘I think we wait for Adam.’ She looked hopefully toward the door.
‘We have all said our final goodbyes to our lady. She is now at peace drifting within the nebula, as was her final request. Adam is sleeping now, but he should be here shortly after he awakens. In the meantime I will go to the mess hall and get you some food so you may replenish yourself.’ She walked to the door then turned to Tae and smiled.
‘It is good to have you back, Tae.’ she said.
When she felt a little stronger Tae started to try to think about what she needed to do next. Her mind was a jumble of conflicted thoughts and feelings as she tried to sort through all Cassandra had shown her. She just couldn’t seem to come to terms with everything she had just been through, everything she now knew was heading towards her like a meteor.
What do I do now? There’s just so much … too much.
She hit the bed in frustration. Music, she thought, I need some music.
She got up and walked gingerly over to a companel against the wall and touched her hand to it, only meaning to see if she could find some music onboard the ship. Immediately she felt an overwhelming urge to go to the bridge. The star chair screamed for her. Her migraine intensified and her knees buckled. After all she had seen and endured Tae had finally had enough.
‘Stop it,’ she said angrily. ‘I told you I would come back to you and I will. I just nearly died, you selfish great lump, and if you continue to harass me I will make sure I take even longer to get to you.’
The urge to go to the bridge eased, replaced by disappointment, and what Tae was pretty sure was sulking. The building migraine lessened to a dull pounding in her head.
‘This is how you get my thoughts, isn’t it?’ she asked, only now fully coming to terms with how the Ouranos was able to know her.
‘Your nanites have been downloading everything I download straight to you, haven’t they? That way you’d truly have an idea of what I’m like from what I download.’ The feeling of eagerness returned.
