“We must let the ships rest. This continuous firing is exhausting them. Keep the rebel ship in range, but do not engage for now. We will consider alternative tactics for when we resume the attack.”
I closed my eyes and sighed in relief. “Karsh. She’s all yours. The bad guys are taking a breather. I need one too.”
Shari squeezed my hand. Within seconds, I was fast asleep.
* * * *
Someone shook the bed. “Just another five minutes, Ma.”
“Sunrise!”
I awoke to Karsh’s urgent prompt, still floating in the command center and groggy from lack of sleep. It felt like I’d been out for only a few minutes. “Huh? What?”
“They are firing again.” Galla rocked from the blow.
“Uh, right. Okay. Same routine, everyone.”
As before, I listened in on the captains’ conversations and directed Galla’s movements. The captains were doing a better job of overlapping their firing patterns. We continued to slip through ever smaller gaps in the patterns, but we couldn’t continue this way forever. Sooner or later, Galla would tire or be injured. We needed to lose the bad guys somehow.
“Karsh?” I called out. “Is there anywhere Galla could hide where the other ships couldn’t follow?”
“Perhaps. There is a volcanic region containing many interconnected caverns and lava tubes less than an hour from here. If we reach that, we may be able to elude the other ships. However, the caverns are unstable, due to active volcanoes in the area. It is extremely dangerous.”
“So is being shot at by three heavily armed ships. We have to do something.”
“Very well. Try to keep us heading in this direction….” He projected an image of a map showing the direction we were heading and where the caverns were. “…as much as you can while avoiding the weapons fire.”
I tried to project confidence, but Shari sensed my doubts. She squeezed my hand. “You can do it honey. I know you can.”
I smiled and squeezed back. “We’ll get out of this. I promise.”
She smiled behind her threl. “That’s better. I’ll hold you to your promise.”
“Cross my heart and hope to— Never mind.”
The next fifty minutes or so were tense, to say the least. We went through periods where we avoided everything the other ships could throw at us and then two or three shots would get uncomfortably close, sloshing us around inside Galla. I knew the longer the chase lasted, the greater the probability a lucky shot would get us. Poor Galla was taking a beating. We had to find a way to end the impasse in our favor.
“Sunrise!”
“Yes, Karsh?”
“I detect two more ships at extreme range approaching from starboard.”
“Tell me they’re your ships.”
“I am afraid we have no other ships in this area.”
“Damn it. We can’t seem to catch a break. How far are we from those caverns we’re aiming for?”
“At least four minutes. The other ships will be within firing range before then.”
“Can we possibly get any more speed out of Galla? I know it’s a lot to ask for after all she’s been through, but if we don’t reach the caverns before the other ships get here….”
“I will see what I can do.”
“Let her know that if we reach the caverns safely and lose the other ships, she’ll be able to rest.”
“I will.”
I don’t know how much difference Karsh’s urging made, but the other two ships joined the fray with a bang. Literally. They announced their presence with a salvo that ripped my grip loose from Galla’s wall. I sensed a tremendous burst of pain from Galla as she cried out mentally. Our speed slowed dramatically. But then we were in the first cavern. I sensed Keldo attempting to heal Galla with his hands placed on the inside of her external “wall” near the site of the injury.
With my attention split among five ships’ captains, I couldn’t also take the time to visualize multiple caverns at a time to get a “big picture.” I had to hope I was steering us through the maze and not into a dead-end. At the very least, the meandering lava tubes meant that the pursuing ships couldn’t surround us. They had to follow through the same chambers. Some chambers were immense and the ships could spread out and more than one could take a shot, with Galla swooping and jinking to avoid being hit. But then they had to converge to pass single-file through the narrower opening to the next chamber.
Even though Galla was forced to limp along at less than half speed, the twists and turns of the passages precluded faster travel anyway. Even better, we were out of direct line of fire much of the time. Instead of nonstop firing, the Brotherhood ships were limited to occasional shots. Plus, once we reached the heart of the maze, they lost sight of us. The ships were forced to split up to cover all the possible directions we might have taken at certain junctures.
A rumbling reverberated through Galla’s walls. “What’s that? Another sort of weapon?”
Karsh signaled in the negative. “Seismic activity. I told you these caverns are unstable.”
Great. One more thing to worry about.
Eventually, three of the ships headed off on wild goose chases down irrelevant passages. That left two pursuers nearby. One was hot on our tail, and the other in a more-or-less parallel chamber that would intersect ours not far ahead. There was nowhere for us to exit before then. If we didn’t get past the intersection before the other ship got there, we’d be trapped between the two. That didn’t bode well for us.
I turned to Karsh. “I hate to ask, but is there any way to get Galla to speed up again?”
“Galla is seriously injured. She risks permanent damage if she overexerts herself.”
“I understand. I wouldn’t ask unless we had no other choice. Either we pass the next intersection before the ship that’s on an intercept course does, or we’re dead. It’s as simple as that.”
“Very well. I shall try.”
I sensed a renewed effort on the part of Galla, but she simply didn’t have the strength after this marathon run to put on a sustained burst of speed. Her speed quickly flagged, and I “saw” the intercepting ship draw closer to the intersection. He was going to reach it mere seconds before we would. If that weren’t bad enough, two large chunks of cavern ceiling broke loose in the next seismic shock and fell past us. The next one could injure Galla further or block the exit.
I couldn’t believe it would all end like this. We were unarmed, injured, trapped underground hundreds of feet beneath the sea in a chamber that might collapse on us at any moment, pursued by five ships bent on destroying us, and we’d just reached a dead end. In seconds, we’d run into a ship ready to fire at point-blank range. We couldn’t turn back, because the other ship was behind us and only seconds from rounding the final bend and getting a clear shot himself. There was nowhere to hide in this narrow lava tube; this was it—the end of the line.
All my friends in the entire universe were on this ship with me, and my wife of less than a day. There had to be a way out. It couldn’t end like this—it just couldn’t. Maybe the intercept ship would fly past the intersection without slowing, or wouldn’t see us coming. Yeah, and maybe I’d grow a cannon out of my forehead in the next few seconds and blast our way to freedom.
I desperately tried to come up with a way out of this mess, but I couldn’t think of anything. It would all be over in a few seconds. My mind’s eye followed the track of the other ship. Five seconds to intercept.
Come on, baby, keep going. Four. Don’t stop, don’t slow down, eyes forward. Three. Nothing to see. Keep going. Two. Blink, sneeze, anything. Don’t see us. One. Keep going!
The ship appeared directly in front of us. It slowed and stopped. It turned to face us and readied its pulse weapons. In a moment it would fire and we’d be dead. The captain waited another second to make sure he couldn’t miss before giving the order. It was whites-of-their-eyes time.
It couldn’t end like this. We’d fought too long and too
hard. Galla had suffered too much. The rebellion needed Karsh and Keldor and Galla, and Allara was too young to die. It…just…couldn’t…happen like this!
The captain had savored the moment long enough. Now it was time to end the chase and return to base. He commanded the weapons officers to fire. The ship was too close for me to try to deflect the gunner’s aim.
It couldn’t end like this, damn it. No, no, NO!
Chapter Sixteen
Darkness.
Death? Life? Something in-between?
After my earlier experience in the stasis chamber, I wasn’t as quick to assume I was dead this time. On the other hand, why wouldn’t I be dead? Hadn’t we just eaten several energy pulses point-blank?
Or had we? I didn’t recall actually seeing any. But perhaps the human brain doesn’t work fast enough to register the blasts before dying.
There was only one way to be sure. I tried to expand my consciousness to take in my surroundings. I saw Galla, drifting toward the intersection. I saw the ship behind us, drifting as well. The one blocking our way was nearly motionless, pushed backward slightly by our bow wave. In fact, the three other pursuers, located in various parts of the maze, were dead in the water as well. I sensed no consciousness in any of the six ships. Well, no consciousness but one.
“Shari? Are you okay?”
“Don? You mean I’m not dead?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What happened?”
“Beats the hell out of me. I checked and it looks like everyone’s out cold, including the ships.”
“Except us?”
“Except us.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, but I think we’d better wake everyone up so we can get out of here before the bad guys start shooting again.”
“Damn straight.”
We went about calling out names and physically shaking those in the control room. It took several minutes to revive Karsh and the others. They seemed disoriented at first.
“Wha-what happened, Sunrise?”
“I don’t know, Karsh. I thought maybe you did. The ship in front of us didn’t fire, for some reason.”
“All I remember is hearing you shout no. My head hurt, and then I fell unconscious. I thought that was the end.”
“So did I.”
“Don, you idiot!”
“Huh? What? What’d I say?”
“You’re the reason the ship didn’t fire, why everyone fell unconscious. You and your stupid, wonderful, sledgehammer.”
Oh.
I had no idea I could have that kind of effect over a distance. My experiments with Aboro were done in the same room. Two of the Brotherhood ships were miles away.
Hey, if it worked, it worked. Who was I to argue?
I shrugged. “Why isn’t as important as getting our butts out of here. We have to wake up Galla and slip out of the maze while the other ships are still out cold.”
I crossed my fingers and hoped that was even possible. In Galla’s weakened and injured state, there was no telling what my mental blast might have done to her.
In trying to wake her, I had a moment of déjà vu, recalling my efforts with the comatose Shari. “Come on, Galla, wake up. You can do it, girl.” I changed the focus of my thoughts. “Karsh! Allara! Help me.”
It took many long minutes, minutes in which I fully expected to be blown out of the water any second. My shoulders were tight from tension. But we finally got a reaction.
“We need your help again, girl. We don’t need speed this time, but we do have to get going.”
I expanded my consciousness to take in the expanse of the caverns, hundreds of square miles of them. I found a route to the far side of the maze and steered Galla through it.
We traveled at a near-crawl, but with no one chasing us for the moment, that was plenty fast enough. Other than the few Azarti that Shari and I had roused, it looked like the others would be out for quite a while. Finally, I located a lava tube that led us out of the maze.
We needed a safe place to hole up while Galla healed. I didn’t doubt that Karsh had one in mind. Still, I couldn’t help wondering how the Brotherhood found our little island sanctuary in the middle of bloody nowhere, and whether that meant they knew about Shari and me.
* * * *
Karsh’s original plan was to rendezvous with a resistance cell more than four thousand miles from our island, but with Galla hurt, those plans changed. Instead, we met up with a small cell located only a couple of hundred miles from the lava tube maze. Because they hadn’t been expecting us, they hadn’t had time to plan for our arrival. As a result, they had to scramble to find a hiding place for Galla and a dry chamber and clothing for Shari and me. We hadn’t had time to pack, after all. Because the Azarti didn’t wear anything themselves but kilts, they had to weave something together from scratch for us.
Fortunately, as we’d discovered on the island, we were able to eat much of the sea life and some of the plants. So food wasn’t an issue. Finding a way to cook it, while in an underwater city was more problematic. While I did enjoy raw seafood from time to time back on Earth in the form of sashimi, three meals a day, every day, was a bit much. Still, it was that or starve. Fortunately, Essin—our housekeeper from the island—was quite the chef. She managed to keep the meals from getting too monotonous. After a week of recovery time, we left the cell with our thanks and moved on.
Life on Lasharr was quite unlike anything on Earth. We holed up in a structure near the outskirts of Ballan, the newly ordained capital city of Lasharr. I call it a structure because I’m not sure it could be called a “building”. It wasn’t exactly built. The living and working accommodations were all grown from huge living creatures attached to the sea floor and the sides of undersea cliffs—the Azarti equivalent of barnacles or coral. Over the course of millennia, the Azarti had cultivated the creatures and bred them for certain traits, much as we breed our dogs for size, color, temperament, and purpose.
As a result, certain varieties of rismal, as they’re called, grow tall and pliant, able to sway with the ocean currents and storm surge. They serve as oceanic research platforms, high-rise dwellings, and some even as a sort of water-jet elevator. Other rismal grow low, wide, and rigid, to serve as a sort of building block and base for other layers of rismal, like living house-sized bricks. They aren’t sentient, but they do respond to simple telepathic commands. They can turn transparent in sections to let light in, they can open and close entrance and exit tubes and pump water out of and into the room chambers—much like the palashi. Inside, the glossy pink surface reminded me somewhat of conch shells. Unlike conchs, though, the interior surfaces were spongy, not hard.
Some varieties of rismal are able to detach themselves from one anchorage, drift to another location, and then reattach. Imagine homes and office buildings able to move themselves! This capability also allowed those rismal to serve as shipping containers. They could be towed from one location to another and then temporarily anchored for loading and unloading.
I didn’t know whether the exterior colors were natural or bred for, but either way Ballan was alive with of cream yellow, baby blue, brilliant white, seafoam green, and practically any other shade you could think of—except red. There were no reds, pinks, or purples to be seen. At first glance, it almost looked as if a drunken artist had tripped and spilled his palette haphazardly over the city. Yet a closer examination revealed nuances of shading that suggested intent: chartreuse shading into teal here, navy blue flowing into emerald there, dappled cobalt blue and white deepening into inky shadow elsewhere. Everywhere I looked I saw riotous color.
There was no traffic congestion in Ballan. That was one of the first things I noticed. Because travelers were free to move about in three dimensions, traffic flowed (literally) in many layers. Swimmers tended to stay close to the ground, while cargo vessels zipped around nearer the surface. It was fortunate for us that Ballan was not situated deeper than it was. The human body, even augmente
d by the threl, could take only so much depth, for only so long. In Ballan, the tallest structures reached to within forty feet of the surface—deep enough to be unaffected by all but the worst storm surge—while the lowest parts of the city were closer to ninety feet down. A few willowy rismal extended all the way to the surface to help monitor atmospheric conditions.
Shari and I didn’t get to see much of the city, however. Because we were half again as large as the Azarti, it would have been impossible to disguise us so we could mingle with the populace. As a result, we were forced to be discreet when we did go out, which was seldom. The trouble with an underwater city, even a shallow one like Ballan, is that there are no real shadows to hide in during the day. The whole city is bathed in diffused light. The Azarti’s light-sensitive skin gave them a big visual advantage over human eyeballs in that respect.
Twice in the first three days we were in Ballan, we had to scramble to find a new place of shelter. Brotherhood patrols had begun random inspections of dwellings as well as unoccupied structures. Apparently the rebels had become a big enough nuisance that they were now worth rooting out.
After being shuttled around for the second time, I’d had enough of being kept in the dark. Shari and I finally confronted Karsh in the next hiding place, a multiroom rismal three levels up from the seafloor. Shari, Karsh and I gathered near one corner of the room.
“Look Karsh, if we’re going to be able to help your people, we have to know what’s going on. Not just the highlights, but the details.”
“Agreed. I have been preoccupied with other matters the past few days. But it is time you know what we are fighting for, and how you fit in.”
“Good. So, what is this Brotherhood, and what’s the rebellion all about.”
Karsh paused for a moment before speaking. “That is a long and unfortunate page in our history. Where to begin?” He paused again.
“Humans and Azarti are quite different in many respects, but there are parallels in our two histories. Like you, we once were divided into hundreds of nations and city-states. Over the course of centuries, countries joined forces or were conquered. Yes, our people fought incessant wars, just as yours do. Finally, this consolidation resulted in four superstates: Rygola, Semstat, Jesern, and Marpala. Rygola and Semstat were the most powerful of the four, both economically and militarily. Each eyed the two smaller states but was held in check by the other.
Sunrise Destiny Page 20
