The Deep Link (The Ascendancy Trilogy Book 1)

by Sicoe, Veronica

  I claw at the blanket and clench my fists as the makeshift ship gains speed and the inertial dampening field powers up in full, feigning a smooth glide through the radiation-filled void.

  "Ten minutes to FTL," the pilot announces, and my jaw locks.

  "Try to relax," Jade says from the bunkbed above mine. "You're gonna be fine, trust me."

  There's a series of beeps on the intercom, followed by a countdown. Then everything aboard is rendered immaterial, and all my worries and my nightmares along with it.

  -

  We're reshaped at the target coordinates on the cusp of another star system. Thrown out of the unintelligible FTL state into real spacetime with subtle but devastating force.

  No one's quite sure what causes FTL fugue. The best theory is that on reconstitution, every memory and physical sensation and every abstract thought and self-regulating impulse is equally strong and equally conscious. It causes a sort of overload from which only our most powerful impulse or memory can surface. Temporary insanity and loss of self-control follows. At least on that last point we all agree.

  Countless credits, years, and brilliant minds have been invested into figuring out how to prevent fugue, but so far no one's done it. They've only been able to limit the disastrous effects to temporary dysfunctions. And repeated exposure to the fugue has remained one of the greatest problems of interstellar society. Sometimes I think it's the only thing keeping the Ticks from turning the Confederacy into an expansionist Empire.

  My nightmare begins as it always does. I'm standing in the middle of a hive tunnel, looking for somebody, crying, and my hands and feet are stiff with cold. I call out but no sound escapes my mouth.

  A loud rumble shakes the walls, dislodging tiny pebbles and fragments from the tunnel ceiling. My knees shake and my vision blurs with tears. I want to run and find my parents, but I can't move.

  Then the ceiling comes tumbling down on me and knocks me to the ground.

  I see my father run toward me. He stumbles and falls. There are soldiers behind him in the tunnel, pointing guns at us. I try to scream, to warn him, but my mouth is filled with rubble and dust and I'm stuck. A soldier throws a grenade at my father, and he explodes in a spray of flesh and bone that pelts down on me. I'm drenched in his blood.

  I can't turn, but in the nightmare I can see my mother: she cowers in a crevice in the wall, eyes flared open in shock, hands and face all bloody. I scream and crawl, broken, toward her. A bunch of soldiers blast through the wall beside her and shoot her in the head.

  I can hear the Dorylinae screech and rumble through the hive, fighting for their lives and their home, dying by the thousands. My parents are dead. They're nothing but shards of bone and minced flesh that will never leave this tunnel again, and I... I'm a tightening knot of fear, despair, and hatred.

  Every time I Jump through space, I land right back at square one, reliving that nightmare, losing everything I love again.

  But this time my fugue is changing.

  I'm twirling and tumbling through black, acrid smoke. Then I drop to the ground on the edge of a copper-colored grassland. My toes dig into warm, gray sand.

  I'm holding someone's hand: the iridescent creature that knows me inside-out, that feels as I feel and thinks as I think. My brother—Amharr's twin.

  We step into the sand circle and death conquers everything again. We're fighting each other. Hurting each other. Turning into monsters.

  I'm killing my twin!

  I stagger backward from his corpse, and my back hits a solid wall. A cold, metal wall. A ship wall. I'm on a ship again—a human ship. Back inside my room on Preston's flying dumpster. And I brought Amharr along with me.

  I have to escape him.

  I tear the cubbyholes open and throw everything I find to the ground. The sound of falling things echoes in my head, lighting my thoughts on fire.

  I brought him with me. He's locked inside my head. I need to get out of my head!

  I chuckle maniacally and claw at my head.

  "Get out of me!" I scream. "What the fuck do you want?"

  Something moves behind me.

  I snap around in horror. My vision is blurred and I can't focus. I crouch and grab the first thing at my feet. It's a heavy, rigid object. Perfect.

  It comes closer now, breathing heavily. A tall, dark shadow tottering toward me.

  "Get away from me! Leave me the hell alone."

  The shadow laughs hoarsely, then sings, "I swallowed knives, my guts are sliced—my tummy's full of deadly lies!" It throws itself at me.

  I dodge it, and hit back with my makeshift weapon as hard as I can. There's a loud thunk and a groan. Something kicks me in the stomach and knocks me down. I struggle to get back up, but a powerful vibration runs through the floor and I freeze.

  He's here. He's come to kill me.

  Sickness bubbles up inside of me and my stomach heaves. Everything swirls around me, muffled and damp, and it feels like I'm suffocating.

  I can make out a shape before me. A person, too small to be Amharr, too slow and indecisive... Jade?

  I wake with a start, and lash out violently.

  "Hey, it's okay. It's okay," Jade says. He grabs my hands and pins me to the mattress with all his weight.

  "Get off me! I need to get out of here. He's here, he found me, Amharr found me!"

  "No one's here, Taryn. Shh, it's okay." He ties my hands to the railing of the bunk bed.

  "You don't get it. He's inside me."

  "Nothing's inside you." He rubs my shoulders, strokes my hair. "Try to rest."

  "I can't... I can feel him..." I struggle against the restraints and start crying.

  "It's okay, Taryn." He wipes the sweat from my forehead. "We'll get you help soon. Get you a real nice, brand new synet. It's gonna be alright, try to get some sleep. I'll be here when you wake up. I'm right here."

  15

  Amharr paces back and forth through his vessel's crux, chasing one thought and then the next, unable to understand their chaotic procession. The human's mind has slipped away from his. He's going mad with contradictions and can't accept it.

  He'd just managed to establish a superficial silence, a peace between his own mind and the imprint of the human, when something went horribly wrong. Her input dwindled away and disappeared, leaving a sucking void inside of him. Then it returned in a howling madness that filled him with despair. He regained control of himself quickly, but that feeling... that feeling must never exist inside of him again.

  Amharr doesn't understand it. Even now, a considerable time after the flickering of the human's input, all he can think of is the chaos inside her mind and the terrible turmoil it causes her—him—the turmoil it causes them.

  "Dominant?"

  Gra'Ylgam stares at him from across the room, his inquiry about the next stage of the assessment still unanswered.

  "We will venture deeper into their territory," Amharr says. Where is she now? Is she alright? Why does it matter to me? "No—we will stay here," he amends.

  The Kolsamal looks confused.

  Amharr stops pacing in the middle of the room and stares at the floor, remembering Kriahm's defiance. Kriahm is avid and dangerous, and now out of his reach. An incalculable risk.

  Everything is out of my reach, Amharr thinks angrily. Everything has become a risk.

  "I need more time," he says.

  He approaches Gra'Ylgam and senses faint residues of the human's body in the thick layer of autotrophs covering the Kolsamal's skin. He leans forward, sniffing the air.

  Gra'Ylgam contracts his muscles and stands still.

  Amharr latches on to his face, his fingers instinctively finding the same spots of barren flesh as every time prior. His hand spreads, the Kolsamal's face opens, and thousands of nerve tendrils shoot out of the radix in Amharr's palm and into the Kolsamal's skull.

  They dig into his neuronal network and feast. They fire up and emulate, stimulate and duplicate, transport information and try to feed the insa
tiable need that smolders inside of Amharr. But, predictably, they fail. All he finds are Gra'Ylgam's memories of mindless chatter with the human. It satisfies nothing more than minor curiosities. It's better than nothing. It will do. For now.

  The overall sea of information in the Kolsamal's brain is held together by transitory links that break and reform as the need arises. Yet they always mirror the same basic attitudes: they're always tinged by the same ancient components—old bits of data stored in chemical chains that filter all sensations and shape each train of thought.

  The Kolsamal are shackled by their genetic memory. Even though at first, long ago, it made Amharr doubt their suitability as a dominated race, it has come to offer him a soothing, well-known tapestry of concepts that he sometimes indulges in exploring.

  The Kolsamal almost faced containment when they were first discovered, due to their ability to encode information within their genes during a single lifetime. It was their symbiosis with the autotrophs living on their skin, making them independent from everything else but ultraviolet light and water, that made them a valuable asset. But the only way to keep them subdued was to separate and isolate them so that no information could ever be exchanged between castes. This way their knowledge could never accrue, preventing them from becoming a threat.

  Once every ten generations, the entire caste of Kolsamal aboard an Ascendancy vessel is wiped out and replaced with cloned offspring from a Nobelanin storage facility, carrying nothing but the limited information needed to perform their duty under a Dominant, their evolution as a species forever stifled.

  Gra'Ylgam is ninth generation, born in a lineage of caste leaders, slightly more intelligent and more docile than the other Kolsamal. Better suited for interaction with the Emranti. Because of this, Gra'Ylgam is wise and prudent, and very observant of his fellow Kolsamal. The abundance of his thoughts is always a treat for Amharr.

  Not this time.

  His ordered mind seems almost too familiar to Amharr, offers him no challenge, no resistance, no satisfaction. It is devoid of any flavor.

  Unlike hers.

  Amharr explores it nonetheless.

  He sees his own vessel with Gra'Ylgam's eyes, sees the walls and floors and rooms all changed, dark and cold, and menacingly alien. He feels his self-perception shift and settle within this foreign body, made of decaying flesh and indurated bone, so seductively self-sufficient and independent of its surroundings.

  Amharr drifts into Gra'Ylgam's most recent memories and easily classifies everything yet unknown to him. He hunts through episode after episode, through day after day, searching for any bit of news or irregularity. He finds nothing. He quickly grows restless again. But as Gra'Ylgam's pain gets stronger, his self-control fades. His thoughts keep darting back to something that fills him with dread. It draws Amharr's attention.

  What Amharr finds inside the Kolsamal's intricately woven thought patterns startles him. It's a memory of his caste, very recent, riddled with conflict and fear, and something else: hatred. Directed at him.

  Amharr gives heed to his curiosity and relives the memory at an accelerated speed. In it, Gra'Ylgam is facing a large number of Kolsamal youngsters, tenth generation, all in an uproar. One of them bellows out Amharr's name. He wants to slay him single-handed. The others spur him on, calling out reasons why it must be done, why the time is right for the Kolsamal race to break free of the Dominants.

  He sees a tide of glinting eyes and bared teeth, of sharp claws and flexing muscles—a deluge of ancient hatred triggered by young determination, closing in on him.

  Amharr also finds an unexpected sentiment in Gra'Ylgam. The elder is actually worried about Amharr being punished for something that is not his fault. Worried that the rioting youngsters will make matters even worse for all Kolsamal in the Ascendancy.

  Amharr breaks off his exploration. His tendrils retreat, and his hand dislodges from Gra'Ylgam's face. His legs tremble as he sits on the floor.

  Gra'Ylgam's face bleeds. He sits quietly next to Amharr.

  "Have you expected this development?" Amharr asks.

  "Yes, Dominant. But not so soon."

  "Is it because of the human?" Amharr already knows the answer.

  It was always a matter of time, though it's surprising how quickly his condition has become known to his serfs, without it ever having breached the ranks of the other Emranti aboard the Undawan. Is his race more ignorant than a dominated one?

  Gra'Ylgam blinks, and swallows the trickling blood and excess of cytoplasm oozing down his face.

  "Who will lead the mutiny?" Amharr asks.

  "Dha'Szato, the tenth generation leader who is to follow me. He is very young; the ancient truths are still fresh in his inherited memory and make him dare things otherwise forbidden. He knows his generation precedes a Clearing, and he will not accept it. He will take his kin into death against the Emranti on this vessel, even before we finish our current assignment and leave the sector."

  "Can you reason with him?"

  "I have failed thus far." Gra'Ylgam stares at him—insistent, hopeless. They both understand the stakes. The mutinous Kolsamal are fueled by their suspicion of Amharr's inability to lead, strong in their belief that they can gain the upper hand over the rest of the Emranti aboard the vessel without Amharr's command. If they revolt, the inevitable massacre will end in the loss of the Undawan, the alerting of the Raimerians and the subsequent annihilation of their entire caste. Not to mention Amharr's certain execution for treason.

  "How many have sided with him?" Amharr asks.

  "Almost two hundred and fifty."

  That makes for an even fight against the fifty Emranti aboard. But the Kolsamal are mad with the scent of opportunity, and the Emranti won't be aided by his connection to the vessel. Which is also beginning to fade, pushed out of his grasp by the increasing chaos of emotions spurred by her.

  Amharr rises and glares at Gra'Ylgam. "You do not have enough recollection of what interests me," he says. "I no longer need you."

  Gra'Ylgam wishes to say something, but hesitates.

  "You need not fear for your own life," Amharr assures him. "Or your place in my consideration."

  Gra'Ylgam nods his gratitude, and leaves.

  Amharr paces the room several times, trying to collect his thoughts. He is just as uncomfortable as before, unable to focus on the news of the mutiny, unable to think of a rational assessment, unable to regain his clarity and decisiveness however hard he tries.

  That despair... That horrible feeling that tore into him as the human's input disappeared from his mind fills him with renewed dread.

  She's all he can think of, and not even those thoughts are clear.

  -

  Back in his personal chamber, Amharr can barely quiet himself enough to sit in his nest.

  Throughout his adult life, through all the dangers and difficult situations he's seen, his anxiety has never remained this pitched for such a long time. And he's never been unable to control it. This time he may require external help, or even a complete purge of his median brain to rid himself of the unruly mixture of alien memories and unchecked urges. It's an appalling prospect. He will not purge, not lose so much of his own memories and correlations in the process, just to take the easy way out of his predicament. It's the coward's way—unfit for a Dominant.

  He relaxes and glances out the transparent wall of his room upon the crowded vastness of the Helix. So many stars, so many worlds and creatures, all frothing with life and activity. Everywhere he turns there is demand for order, and a readiness to break it. It is an endless process upon which he must act, and which acts upon him in return.

  So much demand, so little balance.

  His muscles tense again and the excitement buzzing through the nerves in his spine spills over once more. He releases the energy through his feet and hands, and the hungry vessel drinks it down.

  Has the human ever faced a demand for structure that can measure up to the one he faces constantly? Most likely no
t. Her species hasn't yet reached the awareness of the Helix that he has, that all High Emranti do. They have no knowledge or prediction of beings as complex and powerful as he is. How could she possibly understand him?

  I don't understand her either, Amharr admits. But that can be amended.

  Seated as comfortably as is possible of late, he closes his eyes and rummages through the human's memories.

  A particularly prominent one catches his attention. It's not recent, and doesn't seem to be related to any vital aspect of her existence, yet it's somehow linked to every major decision and choice the human has ever made. It even affects her interpretation of unrelated memories, older and newer, without any logical explanation.

  Amharr hasn't noticed this strange interconnectivity in the human's memories before. They don't appear to be ordered chronologically, or parsed by their relevance. They exist in multiple states at once, connected randomly. Their organization makes no sense to his highly structured mind.

  How is it possible for her to determine reality if her understanding of it isn't cumulative, but self-referential? How does she even remain sane?

  Amharr employs all the patience he can muster to study the piece of memory he has singled out—to understand it.

  In that memory, the human is still young but somewhat more evolved than in her faulty memory of the Totorkha's plasma feeding frenzy. She is among a large number of human nestlings of similar size, gathered in an enclosure with seating furnishings and various utensils, whose use is entirely incomprehensible to Amharr. The other humans are gathered around her, making pointless conversation, voicing observations and asking questions, most of which—all of which are perceived as hostile.

  Why would she regard herself in danger among her own kind? Among other nestlings, of all things.

  One of the nestlings stands out in particular. It seems to be a male, physically superior to her. He stands closer than the rest, and dominates the others. She sees him as an enemy, the manifestation of her fears and insecurities, the incarnation of her failure to measure up.