Confluence 2: Remanence

by Jennifer Foehner Wells

  Brai didn’t reply.

  “Do you not tire of the daily dose of bland chow? Come now, little kuba. You know you were meant for more.”

  Schlewan and Tinor got Ryliuk off the bridge and on the way to the medical facility to be checked, but Jane knew there was nowhere safe on this ship for Ryliuk if Kai’Memna decided to crush him. He could turn his brain like a screw and ruin him on a whim. She couldn’t protect him from that. It was terrifying.

  Ron had returned to his console. “The Colocallida is moving off.”

  Jaross added, “The Colocallida is spooling up in preparation for a jump.”

  It hit Jane like a brick to the head. The Colocallida was going to go tell the Swarm where Earth was. Kai’Memna had wriggled it out of her brain somehow. She started to tremble violently.

  Kai’Memna was treating Brai to a sequence of images, glimpses of what wild life was like. Capturing prey, swimming free in a vast ocean. It was visceral and savage.

  And she knew any kuboderan would find it compelling.

  Kai’Memna cajoled, “I have experienced these things. I have lived fully, without restriction, as all of the Kubodera should. You can too, if you join me. Live free, Ei’Brai. Join me.”

  Jane reached out to Brai. “Brai, report status on the jump sequence.”

  He either couldn’t hear or couldn’t respond. He was paralyzed, just as she had been.

  She refused to doubt him. He wouldn’t sacrifice them. She wouldn’t believe that could happen.

  They passed once again to the light side of Pliga.

  Kai’Memna’s voice still thundered in the back of her mind, persuasively telling Brai about the power he could have, the wonderful life he could lead if he joined Kai’Memna. And if he declined, his fate would be the same as the first three kuboderans they’d found.

  Jane knew Brai wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t condone killing on that scale, no matter the cause. They had to find another way out.

  Everything had spiraled out of control in just a few minutes. She had to stop Kai’Memna. She had to stop the Colocallida from getting to the Swarm.

  How could she?

  If she could just disrupt…

  “Alan!” Jane leapt from the command chair and grabbed Alan’s arm. She spoke English, pouring words out in a rush. “Go to your quarters and get the EM field generator. If we can obstruct Kai’Memna’s signal for even a minute, we should be able to jump.”

  He nodded. “I’ll have to boost the power to increase the range, but it should work. Give me a few minutes.” He dashed off.

  “This isn’t a true choice,” Brai told Kai’Memna.

  There were probably only seconds left to stop the Colocallida from jumping.

  Jane strode to the weapons station. She leaned over Ron, rapidly flipping switches and pulling up a schematic. Ron moved out of her way and watched her intently. She knew the weakest points on the Colocallida because they were the weakest points of her own ship. She pinned three targets on three precise locations on the other ship—one of which should breach their Tech Deck and hopefully disrupt the jump drive.

  Brai continued to attempt to reason with Kai’Memna. “What will happen when the Swarm have devoured all the Sentient worlds and turn on the Kubodera?”

  She hesitated for a split second. There were lives on that ship. But compared to an entire world of millions of people with no defenses…

  The stars started to smudge in front of the Colocallida.

  She fired three missiles in rapid succession and slid over to the laser controls.

  “Prepare three more missiles,” she barked.

  Ron bent over the console.

  Jane looked up. The Colocallida wasn’t blowing up, but it wasn’t jumping either. She’d definitely done some damage. There were three gaping holes in the hull. The stars receded back into points of light.

  Jaross called out, “The Colocallida’s jump drive has powered down, Qua’dux.”

  Brai was talking about her. About all the humans. Telling Kai’Memna how different humans were from the Sectilius. How they treated him as an equal instead of a servant. How they’d rescued him. How the terrans might be the true weapon against the Swarm that the entire galaxy had been waiting for. “To send Jane Augusta Holloway into dusk is to send hope for peace and unity there as well,” he said.

  Jane had disrupted a lot of neural-electric pathways with those missiles. The Colocallida wasn’t going anywhere. But it could still fire on the Speroancora. Surely it would at any moment.

  Brai had told her repeatedly that the escutcheon had been weakened. It would take at least a year to make enough squillae to replenish it and make it strong enough to protect the ship against severe external damage.

  “Murder is not the solution,” Brai said.

  Jane wiped fresh blood from under her nose and turned to Ron. “The lasers take a few moments to recharge. You’ll only get one good burst. If they open their missile bays, blast them before they can fire.” She pointed at the schematic, smearing it with blood. He nodded and eased back into place.

  She moved on to the emergency navigation console, leaving bloody fingerprints everywhere she touched. The irony wasn’t lost on her. She could move the ship, at least a little, without Brai. Her fingers knew where to touch practically without looking. Just fractions of a vastuumet were all she needed. It took seconds.

  The Speroancora changed course, shifting in her orbit to take up a spot in the shadow of the Portacollus, just beyond the Colocallida’s reach. Somehow they had to disable the Portacollus too—

  Brai and Kai’Memna winked out of her head. She staggered. Alan’s device had disrupted the all anipraxic communication between Brai and anyone else.

  Then she fell to the floor, Kai’Memna pounding relentlessly on her brain in retaliation for what she had done to the Colocallida.

  Darkness pushed in on her vision.

  52

  The deck transport opened almost instantly, but it wasn’t fast enough. Alan raced down the corridor, berating himself the whole way. He’d stood there, watching something happening to Jane. He hadn’t been sure what was going on at first. All he could think about was that they needed to just leave. But even when he figured out that he was watching an evil squid crushing her brain, the device hadn’t even occurred to him.

  Why? Because he was fucking selfish. The only reason he’d ever set it up was to be alone. And later, it was perfect for having Jane all to himself. He’d never thought about how it could have other applications. He was a fool.

  But not Jane.

  He would have thought of it just a few seconds later. He would have. He was sure.

  He ran headlong to his door and hopped in place, cursing, while it took a split second to open. Then he was crashing around his place, searching for a suitable power supply. He needed something that could create enough voltage so that he could have a hope in hell of stopping that cretinous squid from hurting Jane or Brai.

  Sectilian engineering was pretty conservative with power. Most devices were designed to operate at low voltage. He picked up one, then another, examining the symbols on the sides, trying to find one that might work.

  He heard a deep rumbling sound and then a high-pitched whine. He paused for a second, wondering what that had been. Then he realized. Jane was shooting up the aliens. Shit.

  He was about to give up and head down to Tech Deck, where he would have the opposite problem, when he remembered a device Schlewan had asked him to fix. It had been low priority because there were duplicates on board. He pulled it out of a low drawer protruding from the wall. It was some kind of portable medical scanner and had an outrageous power supply. That would do it. He pried off the housing and separated the components. He threw the power supply in the bag he’d brought from Earth along with a few tools to deal with the wiring and was off again.

  The Squid had a habit of hanging out in a spot that wasn’t far from the bridge. He had a workstation there. Though he was connected with the ship
cybernetically, it contained monitors and other equipment he used. Alan headed there.

  When he arrived Brai was where he expected to find him. All his creepy legs were curled up tight around his head with those wicked sharp hooks sticking out. Brai looked damn prickly and pretty damn scary, honestly. He didn’t seem to notice that Alan was there.

  The monitors that lined the opposite wall of the tank were displaying various views outside and inside the ship. One showed Kai’Memna’s ship, Kai’Memna’s sidekick’s ship, and the disabled ship they’d found when they arrived. Another showed the bridge, and though Alan’s view was distorted through the transparent barrier plus water, he could make out Jane, which was reassuring. She was hovering over the weapons controls next to Ron.

  So it was a shooting match now? There was no way they could outgun that class-six ship. They needed to get away—and to do that, they needed the Squid.

  He dropped to his knees, dumped the contents of his bag on the floor, and got to work on assembling the device. Inside his head, he could hear the Squid making a case for humanity. He was arguing that Jane could change things, that humanity would soon be accepted into the galactic Hall of Justice or whatever and they wouldn’t stand for the way the kuboderans had been treated.

  He made the last connection between the magnetron and the power supply and frowned. Either Brai had a very high opinion of humans or he was bullshitting to stall for time. Whatever he was doing, it was working.

  Alan turned his contraption toward Ei’Brai and flipped on the device. He was starting at a low voltage because he wasn’t sure how this was going to work, having never tested it with this power source before. He didn’t know exactly how much juice this power supply could give.

  For him, the voices in his head went silent, but he couldn’t be sure how far the electromagnetic field would penetrate. He looked up to see if it was having any effect on Brai.

  At that moment Brai seemed to notice he was there. In the blink of an eye the Squid rushed him. His body ballooned up to twice its size. His legs flew out wide. Suddenly he was huge and he was slamming into the glass.

  Alan scrambled back.

  Damn it.

  The Squid was freaking the fuck out.

  He stood up, putting up his hands, then gestured at the device.

  Brai’s eyes were wild and rolling around, and his tentacles were thrashing all over the place. He kept crashing into the barrier.

  Alan guessed the field wasn’t strong enough. He squatted next to it and turned it up.

  Brai kept writhing and twisting and bumping against the glass.

  Alan gave it more juice, but now he was getting worried. This was probably not a good idea. He wasn’t sure if the little transducer he’d originally stuck on the magnetron could handle this kind of load. Even the switch was getting hot to the touch.

  But that seemed to do it. The Squid went quiet and finally showed signs that he recognized Alan. Then Brai swam back over to his station and started working. Hopefully he was getting them the fuck out of here.

  Alan glanced at the screens inside the tank. They’d changed course. They were below the big ship now. Then he looked at the bridge and saw Jane falling to the floor. He took a step toward the tank to try to see what was going on.

  Shit.

  If he’d known something like this was going to happen, he’d have made a dozen of these devices. The range was just too small to protect both Jane and Brai at the same time.

  Then he smelled it—the smell every engineer knows and hates—burning, hot, metallic, and waxy.

  The transducer was fried.

  But Jane was getting up. She was okay. Something was happening. He squinted. He saw movement on the screen, but the smell was getting stronger. He had to turn the device off. He’d try to wait until the last possible second, to give Brai enough time.

  He pivoted to see smoke pouring out of the device. He reached for it. It popped with a flash of light. The magnetron was still going full tilt.

  Every time he got his hand anywhere near it, electricity arced and he barely missed getting electrocuted.

  Then it got worse.

  53

  Like an aperture, Jane’s vision opened again.

  Kai’Memna had taken leave of her.

  Brai was out of reach. She was alone in her own head, which felt like it was splitting in two. Alan must have gotten the device working. Was it able to reach so far that it could protect her too?

  She heard Ron mumbling under his breath and struggled to make sense of it. She grabbed the nearest console and pulled herself up until she could see what had captured Ron’s and Jaross’s attention.

  She couldn’t believe what she saw. She blinked. Was she seeing double because Kai’Memna had been messing around in her head?

  No…

  She was seeing the Oblignatus and the Colocallida together. The Oblignatus had moved. Ei’Pio was not locked into orbit around Pliga as Jane had assumed.

  And that wasn’t the most astounding thing. Ei’Pio had docked her ship with the Colocallida, as one would to transfer cargo in space. It looked like an absurd mating ritual, the ships stacked on top of each other with dark space above them and the pale gray skies of Pliga below.

  Ei’Pio was moving both ships, using the momentum of their orbit, effectively changing their course and aiming the Colocallida at the Portacollus—she’d hijacked the disabled ship and was using it like a massive projectile.

  It was happening fast. The ships had started out too close together. It seemed like the Portacollus was correcting course, but its size made it lumbering and slow.

  A fresh surge of adrenaline hit Jane with a jolt. She lurched for the emergency navigation controls to try to move them out of the path of this juggernaut.

  Seconds ticked by in a blur as she worked.

  She fired thrusters to starboard to push them up toward Pliga’s nearest pole. They were moving, but not fast enough. She needed Brai to calculate the most precise trajectory. She had none of his expertise in this.

  The Colocallida rammed the Portacollus, pieces of both hulls crumbling off and scattering wildly in every direction, fueled by the energy behind the impact. The hammerhead of the Colocallida crumpled as it plowed into the side of Kai’Memna’s now-ruined ship.

  Ei’Pio’s ship scraped over the top and released the Colocallida, moving away from the smashed ships. Jane couldn’t tell how damaged the Oblignatus was, if at all, after that maneuver, but the Portacollus was little more than wreckage. Already, shards of ice were forming like spikes around the point of impact, and more bubbled around the edges. Kai’Memna’s habitat had been compromised. Surely he wouldn’t survive that for long.

  There was an explosion—but not outside, not on the screen. The decking shook under her feet. It had been inside the Speroancora.

  What?

  Brai popped back into her head, broadcasting a level of panic she’d never felt from him before.

  Shreds of debris streamed toward them.

  “Jane! We’ve got a problem!” Alan shouted over the anipraxic network. He was running.

  Kai’Memna’s voice raged incoherently again, but it was weaker and fading.

  Jane felt numb. There was too much happening at once. She wasn’t sure what to do next. She stared dumbly at the viewscreen in horror as large pieces of the broken ships headed right for them. And without a fully functional escutcheon…

  She snapped out of her daze, hunching over the emergency navigation console, frantically trying to correct their course to avoid the debris storm, to increase speed, anything. “Brai, help me move the ship!”

  He responded sluggishly, locked into some kind of chaos of his own and possibly hurt. Jane didn’t know.

  Then she did know.

  Alan’s EM-field generator had worked to sever the anipraxic link with Kai’Memna, but required massive amounts of power to make a field big enough to do the job. He’d had to make do with the first power supply he could cobble together, and
it couldn’t take the load. It had exploded next to Brai’s enclosure, creating a massive crack in the surface that quickly turned into a fissure. The structure was weakening under the pressure of the volume of water it contained. The entire central core of the ship was going to flood.

  Brai assessed the trajectory of the wreckage and plotted a course to take them out of the path of the worst of it.

  It was too late. They couldn’t move fast enough to dodge all of the debris. It slammed into them.

  Jane was hurled across the bridge and landed with a thud against a wall. She blacked out for a few seconds.

  She lifted her head. Everything hurt. She was stiff. Moving was hard. On the viewscreen it was clear they were plummeting toward Pliga.

  “Brai…”

  The water in his tank was sloshing and rotating in a great whirlpool. He was fighting against this swirling current while trying to regain control of the ship.

  Heat built up on the outer hull.

  They’d passed to the dark side of Pliga at some point. They were going to crash into the white ice of that massive glacier.

  She had saved Earth. That was something. But the rest of the Sentients… No one knew. No one knew what was coming.

  Brai grappled with the failing controls, but his reaction times were lethargic. They’d taken too much damage. He wouldn’t be able to regain altitude. How could they survive this?

  The decking shuddered under her feet. The exterior of the ship glowed with heat. The beautiful extrusions were peeling off.

  Jane reached out to Ei’Pio. It was imperative that someone take the news where it could make a difference. “Ei’Pio, you must jump to Terac and tell the Unified Sentients what Kai’Memna was planning.”

  Ei’Pio was despondent. “What can I do to save you?”

  “Tell them. Make them listen to you. You’re the only one who knows.”