"Lotus, Red. Cloaking activated." The three Red fighters disappeared from the Demon scope. Wonderful!
"Red, Lotus, please decloak."
"Lotus, Red, we have decloaked." The three Red fighters reappeared on our scopes.
"Blue, Lotus, Please go to cloaking."
It worked the same way with Blue. Legion cloaking worked!
"Confirmation," the Prof said. "That's why we were able to defeat the Demon saucers on Galinta. They couldn't see us."
"All right, let's do some of this DX testing," Bird said. "Test AG. Prophet, please lean over here and place your hand over this control handle. Do not touch it."
I did as he asked, holding my hand over the handle.
"Any result?" the Prof asked.
"Can't tell," Bird replied. "We'll have to review the readings later."
"All right, let's do the antimat flight controls."
"Prophet," Bird said, "please pass one hand gently over the top of these grip controls. No touching please." I did so. The little glowing oblong lights flashed wildly, then settled down.
"Whoa!" Bird said.
"Look at that!" the general said.
"Spectacular!" the Prof said.
"What did I do?" I asked.
"We don't know yet, but I believe I can get you a new job as a test pilot. It doesn't pay much, but it's pretty exciting."
"Shall we try the DX?" Bird asked.
"No. No," the Prof said. "I want to review the results first. And see what it all means. Let's get back to the at."
We reentered the atmosphere and shot along at a high altitude. The escort fighters were still with us, just to make sure nobody else bothered us.
"Let's do the hands on test with the antimat flight controls," the Prof suggested.
"All right," the general said.
"Prophet, you are to take my seat," Bird said, unbuckling and getting up. "Just sit there, strap in, and don't touch anything."
I did it. The view was spectacular, an awesome panorama of a magical white world, streaked with snowy clouds, a brilliant blue star glittering in the sky. I could see all six fighters on the scope, struggling to stay up with us.
"Prophet, lay your hands gently on the grip controls," the general said. "If I call out, take your hands off instantly."
"Yes sir," I said. I gently touched the controls. A bunch of lights changed color from blue to red. Everything else continued as usual.
"Touch your right thumb very, very gently, one time, on that recessed purple tab by your right hand."
I did it. The Golden Lotus shot forward instantly, gaining speed.
"Wow," the Prof said. When the Prof says wow, it means something serious. What a view! I felt like a god, riding a golden chariot across the sky.
"ADX, Red, you're leaving us behind."
"Don't take it personally, Red, you have a very nice fighter there," Bird said. "Take it from an experienced bus driver." Bird really knew how to twist the knife.
Δ
Damn it! Saucers! IDAG saucers, shooting right over my head. I was on the ground, armored, unarmed, and it was freezing, my breath visible in the air. My visor was up. Why? I was in a forest. The saucers shot right over me, very low altitude, the faint metallic agate-like colors shimmering under a grey sky. A blinding flame crackled past the trees, not far off, dazzling my eyes. Damn, it was cold! More saucers. More! Now they burst upwards, climbing into the darkening sky. Count them, count them! Maybe four, six, more! Reinforcements! They were gliding along like they had not a care in the world. Arrogant bastards! Why was I unarmed, what the hell….
I awoke abruptly, thrashing around, growling my objections.
"What is it?" Honeyhair was by my side, holding on to me, trying to calm me down. "It's all right, it's all right, it was just a dream, Prophet. Just a dream."
Just a dream! I strained to remember it. It had seemed so real! Was this my DX side, calling out to me? Issuing a warning, maybe? Or was it just a dream, brought on by my flight in the Golden Lotus?
I told the Prof all about it. They gave me a brainscan, just to be sure we didn't miss anything. But there was not much to go on. No hint about where or when or even why. There was not much we could do about it.
Δ
"Your new duty station, Prophet. For awhile." We were down the hole, in an obscure corridor with threatening signs on the doors. The Prof opened a door to a little cube that was all dark inside. Then he touched a light and the interior lit up. It was a perfect duplicate of the IDAG cockpit.
"Go on in, Prophet," Bird said. "This is where we train."
"Why didn't you run me through this before you gave me that test flight?"
"We wanted to confirm some things first. Your test flight confirmed it for us."
"What did it confirm?"
"It confirmed that you are going to pilot our initial test of the DX stardrive."
"Good lord!" I said. "Why me? Bird is the pilot. Or the general?"
"Sit down, Prophet. I'll explain," the Prof said. I took the right seat. It was a beautiful flight simulator. It looked exactly like the real thing. Bird sat beside me in the left seat. The Prof sat behind us.
"Here's the situation, Prophet," he said. "The controls of this ship interact better with you than with Bird or the general. It's because of the DX in your brain. Yes, we can control the ship and manipulate the antigav and the antimat flight controls and pretty much everything else. But there's one thing we cannot do."
"What's that?"
"We cannot manipulate the DX stardrive. Not at all. The DX stardrive does not respond to us. We have extensive information on the drive, we know how to use it but we cannot use it because it is a function of Dimension X, and we cannot interact with DX. But we believe you can."
"So I'm going to pilot this ship into stardrive – into Dimension X?"
"The plan is if all indications look good, you will do a star hop – in our universe – using this Dimension X stardrive. We're not going into their universe, and we're not going into Dimension X. We just want to start with a test hop."
"Oh man! Why choose me? I mean, why not Ice or Saka? They both outrank me."
"They were both wounded extensively. We are worried about them. You were unwounded. We believe you are a more healthy specimen, if I can put it that way. Sorry, Prophet."
"I'll be right beside you the whole time," Bird assured me. "And the general will be observing."
"Can I tell this to my grandchildren?"
"Only if it's been declassified by then," the Prof said, happily. "Prophet, we thank you. The Legion thanks you. ConFree thanks you. You are a patriot and a gentleman. If this works, we may be able to produce our own DX stardrive ships. That will be one of the goals."
Δ
After my first session on the saucer sim, the Prof took me to another level of the hole. "Do you remember Louie?" he asked.
"How could I forget?"
"He's changed a lot. Want to see him?"
"Sure!"
"Right here." There was a sealed double door with an armed and armored Assidic trooper on duty outside. He nodded at the Professor and let us in.
When the inner door snapped open, we walked into a very nice apartment suite. Louie was seated at a desk. He stood up and showed us his teeth. He was clad in a soft dark pullover jacket, athletic pants and slippers. He chattered at us happily in his language as the language unit simultaneously translated it all.
"Professor," he said. "How are you? It is good to see you again! And who is this? Ah, the Evil One! How are you, Evil One?"
"I am just fine, Louie. You're looking good!" I said.
"Well, of course I am! Professor takes good care of me. Have you dropped in to torture me?"
"Why no, Louie. You are one of my heroes. I was only pretending to be the bad guy so the Professor could get to know you better."
"Yes, I know. He told me that. You did a good job. There are no hard feelings."
I suddenly realized something. Call me s
low. Louie was not crawling with parasite worms. And he was not covered in worm crap either. There were no worms that I could see. His fur was clean and healthy looking.
"Louie," I said. "What happened to all your friends? Those worms. I thought you needed them, and they needed you."
"Oh, Professor has not told you. He identified the substance the worms use to keep us alive. I now take it as a medication. I was getting very tired of those parasites, anyway. I am grateful to Professor. You see, I trust him with my life. I have a new life now. But I have no sex. I still dream about mating with Yellowhair. But no luck so far. If she mated with me, she could tell her sistercells that she was the only one of them to have done that."
"She clearly has no imagination," I said.
"Evil One! Get me a choco donut!" he commanded, pointing out the donuts on the kitchenmod. I smiled, went over there, picked one up and handed it to Louie.
"I thank you, Evil One! I have wanted to do that for a long time. I may not have Yellowhair, but I have choco donuts. We must be thankful for what we have."
Δ
I worked my ass off on the simulator. There was a whole lot to learn, but by the time Bird and the general signed off on me, I knew what I was doing. It was incredible how much we knew from examining the spacecraft. By then, we understood the D alphabet and could interpret the instructions and the starcharts and the autopilot and the autocombat controls. We had cranked out starcharts showing Mid Haven – all the primary destination stars, the Demon stars and the Bright stars. It was an incredible breakthrough, an amazing view into a universe we had never seen. But what we did not have was an understanding of how to make the stardrive go. We knew how to manipulate the controls to make it work, but we did not know exactly how Dimension X actually penetrated timespace to punch a shortcut between two impossibly distant locations in the cosmos.
And, of course, it did not work for people who did not have a DX "trigger" in their brains, according to the Prof. And that's why they needed me. Naturally, the simulator could not duplicate what would actually happen when I touched the real DX stardrive controls and activated them. That's why my adrenalin kicked in when Bird and the general told me I was ready.
Δ
"Like the view?" the Prof asked. We were cruising along in the vac, and we had left our escorts far behind. I was in the right seat, Bird was on the left, and General Huynh and the Prof were behind us. I had piloted the Golden Lotus up from the shaft and into the sunlight, spending close to an hour working the controls through the atmosphere, pushing the limits, then slowing down, hovering, touching down in an empty field, shooting off straight up, leaving the at like a reverse shooting star, up up up up into infinity. Finally cruising through holy vac, my blood ice cold in my veins. The mystery of the cosmos surrounded us, billions of stars, glorious milky gas clouds of starstuff, silent music blasting away in my ears like a chorus of angels. I could see Algenib off in the distance, a blazing, blue-white cosmic jewel; and I could see all of Pandaravos hanging in space like a vision of heaven.
"Not bad," I said. I was stunned.
"All right, let's get started," Bird said. "You ready?"
"Ready as I'll ever be. Aside from being stark terrified."
"You're not as scared as I am," Bird said. "I'm the guy who just turned the controls over to you."
"You've got a point there!"
"Put your right hand on the stardrive lever," Bird said. I did it. A whole lot of things happened on the console.
"All right, keep your hand right there," Bird said. "Prof, what does that text say?" They were looking at one of the readout screens that had just appeared.
"Preparation star flight," he said. "Enter destination/coords. That's what it means."
"Destination and coords," the general said. "Just above it. That's the one that has all the preset Mid Haven destinations and many coords for our own universe. So we have to manually enter a coord. Prophet, just above the lever, touch a finger to where it says 'coords'."
"Which one is that?"
"The text on the right – not the left. Right, Prof?"
"That's right."
"Please let me do the instructions, all," Bird said. "We don't want to confuse our pilot. Prophet, touch right there." Bird pointed to the alien lettering. I did it. The readout changed.
"Enter manual coords," the Prof said.
"Now that we know it’s there, can we get an auto Inter readout onto the screen?" Bird asked.
"Yes we can. Later. Bird, you have the coords. Prophet, do exactly as Bird says. There is no rush."
We did it. When the coords were in, I had to press a tab marked ACTIVATE.
Another notice appeared, in Demon script. "Stardrive ready. Press to activate drive," the Prof said.
I was sweating bullets. "Prof, I just realized I haven't put Honeyhair into my will yet. Can we do this another time?"
"Your wife will get everything if anything happens," he said. I could hear the smile in his voice. "So stop worrying. And activate the drive."
So I did. For an instant nothing happened, then there was a silky jolt, the stars all disappeared from the simport, and we seemed to be racing through an inky infinity. The lights on the panel illuminated us all. We were frozen in awesome silence. What kind of stardrive was this? I knew all our spooky instruments were sucking up every last detail of this alien starjump, but I had no idea what it all meant at that point. I didn’t feel any of the normal signs of stardrive. This one was certainly different.
"Prophet, are you sure you entered those coords exactly as I said?" Bird asked.
"Um, well, yeah, I think so. I mean I was a little nervous. I could have touched the wrong one by mistake. Maybe. But I think I got them."
The general laughed.
"Should it take this long?" I asked.
And suddenly we popped back into normal space, and we were surrounded by an infinity of spectacularly lovely stars.
"It's so beautiful," I said.
"You're looking at victory," the Prof said. "You have no idea how important this is."
Δ
We were all going to die. That much was certain. We spiraled in, into the ultimate dark, into Satan's realm. I felt we were falling just like a meteor, leaving a fiery tail as our last trace of our existence, against the inky dark. My heart was on overdrive. I was thinking about Honeyhair, about Delta, all of them, Ice and Saka and Bees and the Prof and Arie, all of them, everyone I loved. All right, I thought. We'll die for them, it's all right. We'll die for ConFree, for all of our people, for all those women and kids, for the future. And we'll rate a line in the history books. But that doesn’t matter. It was freezing cold.
"Prophet! Prophet! Wake up! It’s Kwan!" At first it did not register. It was dark, and Honeyhair was holding a comset out to me.
"What," I said.
"Prophet, get over here right away, right now!" Kwan said. "It’s Ice! She wants to see you right now, please. Please!" He sounded very stressed.
I staggered out of bed, fell to the floor, got up, struggled into some fatigue pants and ran barefoot out the door towards Ice's quarters. Honeyhair was right behind me, clad in a nightgown.
"What is it?" I asked, hurrying into the open doorway. Kwan rushed me into the bedroom. Ice had wrapped a sheet around herself and was shivering. She looked like she had been crying.
"I saw it, I saw it, Prophet! It was one of those visions. It was so real! I was there, I was there, oh my God it was horrible!"
"What did you see?" I asked, settling onto the bed.
"Oh my God, it was awful!" She was trembling. Honeyhair landed beside her, embraced her and tried to comfort her.
"They were everywhere. Those saucers! Everywhere! They filled the skies and they were dropping those – those – antimats. Right onto the city! It was real, a real city, real people! I was with them, running for my life! And the city was going up all around us. Antimat annihilation! The saucers were strafing us, with lasers, with tacstars. Just gunning everyone dow
n. I've never been so terrified in my life. I saw children cut in two, I saw women running, blown to bits. We tried to reach the air raid shelter but everything was just blowing up, and I had no idea where the shelter was. And then I reached it, I reached it. Oh God!" She burst into tears. "I reached it. And the ramp was piled high with bodies, hundreds of mutilated, smoking bodies." Another torrent of tears.
"Ice. Slow down, please. This is very important. Where was this? Where?"
"I don't know."
"You must have some idea. Any hints?"
"It was some place I'd never seen before. I got some glimpses of the city, before they hit it."
"The people running. Who were they?"
"They were Outworlders."
"Oh no," Honeyhair said, holding Ice tighter.
I raised my comset. It was still in my hands. I called the Prof. I had no idea what time it was but that did not matter.
"Yes?" He sounded sleepy.
"Prof, we've got to do a brainscan. Now! Get the techs together. See you in the office."
Δ
I guess we looked pretty funny, the whole brainscan gang gathered in the exam room at oh-dark-thirty in their pajamas with Ice lying on the scan table in her nightgown. As the techs secured the helmet around her head and did their thing, Kwan and I sipped dox to try and steady our nerves. The Professor was too excited to do anything but look at the images on the scans.
"So you saw the city, before it went up in antimats?" the Prof asked.
"Yes, I saw parts of it," Ice said.
"Was there anything that looked familiar to you?"
"Not particularly."
"Think you'd ever been in this city before?"
"I don't think so."
"Did you see any distinctive buildings?"
"There was a big air raid shelter. It looked kind of like the one in Quaba, but the architecture was different."
"Can you remember what it looked like?"
"I only got a quick glimpse."
"Try to imagine it."
The image flickered in the screens. With proper neural photo analysis, we might get a good idea of what it looked like.
"Any other buildings? Or structures?"
Prophet of ConFree (The Prophet of ConFree) Page 38
