Of Crimson Indigo: Points of Origin

by Grant Fausey

  Crimson cradled the past, held it tight to her bosom as if it was her only way home. She had no choice but to shelter the moments of her existence in the hand-written tapestries she recorded of the past, like a road map she kept in her journal, hoping one day to reclaim the future and set the record straight. Her travel plans could no longer be altered. It had been fifty-eight years since she first set foot on Sodin, taking the little off-world trip with Jake and Rooka. But now she had no recollection of the events, her memories continuing to fade. In all her years aboard the Firehawk, the timeline had never been in such disarray, with one future traded for another.

  Thunder Runners crossed dimensions in order to eliminate the competition, a cold war that had gone hot. The tides of confrontation had once again swept across the boundary. The border world nations fought at the drop of a hat, if it meant obtaining the occasional share of profits made from such endeavors. War between the factions was relatively nothing more than a feud between the great houses of the Alliance, but now there was a new player in town. One both Krydal and Commander Patton had caught only a glimpse of. He was an adversary like no other, a facade of a man that didn’t exist. A change was coming to the arena with no warning, as if the course of the future had altered itself.

  Patton realized the inevitable … the future was colliding with another existence. It was fair to assess the outcome … only one universe would remain. The old woman remembered the last time the commander tried to save the world and smiled. He was distinguished, a quiet man with a quick wit, thirty years past his prime. However, Crimson knew he couldn’t just stand there and wait for something to happen. He had no choice but to act and quickly. She had to cross the boundary, rekindle her relationship with her beloved Indigo and forge a new romance with which she could alter the course of her own future, maybe avert the longevity of her predicament. It was risky; yet, something she had become proficient at.

  “Firehawk––”ordered the commander. Crimson watched as he requested extraction, scrambled, half crazed, slipping back into the shadows beyond where the squad readied to teleport to the gunship. Her thoughts lingered on the impossible. Patton had once told her of his home world, a planet so lush and green that it made Myatek look like a desert by comparison. His was a world concealed amidst a thin strip of stars spun together in the heart of an alternate reality. It was nothing like the distorted cosmos where she stood, or the bastard orphan at the center of Sodin’s existence.

  “Jake,” said Crimson. The freighter captain stood in the midst of the crowd with Krydal at his side. The old woman giggled, disengaged, vulnerable simply because she was in his presence, but the memory faded quickly. She dropped her bag in front of the pilot, bouncing back from the hauler captain as she screamed in a wild-eyed frenzy. The hauler pilot vanished into the smoky ethers of teleport, the world changing right in front of her, only to be renewed in the blink of a tired eye as she opened her mind to the memories of a new host, and blended with her essence to become Crimson Krydal Starr.

  THIRTY-ONE: Phoenix Station

  • • •

  The gunship materialized out of thin air, hovering for a long moment in the wake of the distortion then pushed forward in a fusion of light and sound that lit up the platform below the craft like a string of tree lights, flickering with electrical discharges generated by the craft’s massive energy ring. The pulses of electricity encircled the four rear engine pods, the forward stabilizer motors holding the ten-man craft aloft on a cushion of rarified air, in the dead of space.

  “You okay?” asked Krydal. Jake was clearly overwhelmed by the experience; his subconscious needed time to coalesce in conscious thought. He was reliving the moments of his past in intricate detail, allowing the symbiont to explore his memories, while repressing his current existence into the time stream. He was in transition, no worse the wear. But it was evident something about him had changed. There was more to him than a simple hauler pilot, he was becoming a warrior.

  “Up-linked complete,” said Patton, “downloading information into the ship’s database.”

  “There’s been a change in our travel plans,” said Hudson as he glanced down at the commander from his station in the flight deck. The flight officer adjusted his foot-peddles.

  “All right people,” insisted the commander, addressing the squad. Jake watched the keys rattled under Patton’s tutelage. Hs perception of the truth altered along with the timeline, his life nothing more than a squiggle on someone else’s existence.

  “Data stream engaged, Skipper.” Patton transferred the calculations, watching the lights go green across the threat board. “That’s got her,” he told the flight officer. “Stand by … Transmit.”

  The Ring Station Phoenix came into view, a sparkling white light in a sea of vibrant color, visible through the forward observation portholes in a churning caldron of compressed vortexes and streaming columns of rapidly dissipating temporal waves cycling around the event horizon, at the core of the depot. “Firehawk ready for docking,” said the flight officer, giving the crew time to take up their stations, or grip whatever handrail was within reach.

  “Thirty seconds,” announced the commander. A steady burst of thrust followed. The jumpship glided through a vast armada of warships into a variety of smaller vessels, all of which, humbled together in a circular pattern, defying the pull of the gravity well. “All right, people,” continued Patton, relieved. “Let’s get this bucket ready for re-supply.”

  The commander pressed a half a dozen keys, after which a nine-digit symbol appeared on the center screen. Jake tipped his wide-brim hat, feeling the camaraderie. He was a little like Alice slipping through the looking glass. Everything was different, a ruse maybe if history hadn’t run amuck. There was no normalcy to the union of space-time. He was in a parallel dimension, at the threshold of coexisting futures. The concept was completely alien to him.

  The Firehawk settled into one of hundreds of berths, each identical, but too numerous to count. The station’s pylons were organic, darker and less lavish than the array of electronics interwoven with the combat gear aboard the gunship. The interior was a new addition to the fuselage extended from the forward bulkhead to the rear assembly overlooking the deployment grid, similar to a rail gun housing. The vehicle was undergoing reconstruction as if it was having a growth spurt. New components were popping up everywhere, in a kind of interspecies connection between the ship and the station. There was even a visible difference in the tonal vibrations rippling through the mainframe, which ended when Jake stepped onto the deployment grid. The craft’s uplink with the station apparently made adjustments on its own. Obviously, the device was more than a communications link or a data feed to a network. The transfer of information had triggered a ship-wide upgrade.

  Even Jake’s perception of the future changed. He seemed out of place as if everything about his experience was more memory than a direct experience. At least, now he had a sense of tangible evidence. Something he could only wonder about before. If he had done something to change history, he didn’t notice. The idea was intriguing, but the thought of manipulating time for one’s own personal gain was risky, if not unthinkable. Eliminating an incident all together, regardless of how miraculous the outcome was blatantly dangerous. Jake couldn’t help but believe things happen for a reason, as inconceivable as that was; he wondered if the entity he had discovered on the surface of the Sodin moon was some sort of hallucinogen.

  Whatever Nilana was, her influence had manifested itself in him. He had the feeling he was undergoing a manipulation of his own. Jake’s concerns were the direct result of making contact with the symbiont. He had stepped across an unseen boundary and allowed himself to be blended with a being from another existence. It was all so confusing, an altercation to the timeline that he simply couldn’t remember. He felt like he was in the midst of some grand experiment, of which, he was the basis of the experimentation. His own trials and tribulations were that of a test subject? Whatever error made his pre
dicament incomprehensible, now transmitted him to the recession of high-tech gadgetry above the core of an odd-looking apparatus, which suspended him centimeters above the floor.

  “Welcome home,” whispered a feminine voice over the static, her impulses racing along his synaptic nerves. The figure of a woman, a blue-skinned devil with black hair and a poignant smile, passed through several waves of distortion to peered in upon him, as she adjusted the instruments on a panel of holographic representations. Jake gasped. He was in the midst of another hallucination.

  THIRTY-TWO: Throttle Up

  • • •

  “Hoorah,” yelled Rooka, while trotting along the edge of the deployment grid. He lifted his chin sniffing the air like a garden-variety rodent with a smile. “Ah …” he said a matter-of-fact. “Good to be home, huh?” Jake chuckled, embarrassed. He had no idea what was coming next. Rooka urged him to mate with the corporate liaison, before he was too old to enjoy it. The rodent had the best of intentions; he just had to consider the source.

  “This way,” Krydal told the hauler captain, taking him by the arm. “You okay?”

  Jake nodded. The Firehawk was home, in the cradling arms of the docking facility. An assortment of interconnecting membranes slowly spiraled out to meet the ship accompanying a half dozen probes, all of which, clamped firmly against the outer hull, while other soft porous limbs made contact smothering the ship in the safety of warming fluids, flowing energy bonds and electrical impulses. Commander Patton dropped to the lower deck and stepped out through the open side hatch unto the landing platform next to Hudson Warner. He looked back along the side of the ship, half expecting the vehicle to disassemble in a holographic simulation, but it didn’t. The gunship was real. The fact that he was inside of a gargantuan living, breathing machine was spectacular, even the hiss of exhaust echoed with the rhythm of a heartbeat. The silence of being complacent was over. Discovery awaited him. The golden moment, as if the excitement paid homage to the evidence revealed in his eyes, had never before revealed such an event. But all Jake could think about was getting home. He had decided long ago, taking advice from a rat wasn’t in his best interest. He knew why! His love affair with Krydal was doomed from the start. But why spoil the moment? He was content to have her on his arm. They had bonded in silence, felt each other’s presence, each other’s pain. Now, with an inkling of the lives shared between them, they had become friends, and companions. Perhaps, eventually, with Rooka’s influence, Crimson Krydal Starr and Jake would once again become lovers. She was as much a part of him, as he was of her.

  “We call it sanctuary,” said Krydal. The moment of self-indulgence between them disappeared. The implausible truth of who the ITOL were and the future they wheeled from their fingertips was nothing less than astonishing. They preserved the past, allowing the powers that controlled their existence to dwell over every living thing in the galaxy. Theirs was a world of plots and counterplots, formulas and calculations, some of which left entire worlds devoid of life. The Phoenix was humanity’s last haven: A constant reminder of the fate awaiting mankind, hidden between universes where the last remnants of humanity gathered to face another day. The Firehawk was more than a formidable arsenal of weapons, or a converted transport, it was home for the squad. Jake couldn’t help but admire the courage with which Krydal and her team of ITOL warriors faced every day. They were more than trinkets of conquest, and he considered them the hope for the future.

  The ITOL were the essence of life, spawned in the cool waters of the fast running brook of alternate realities. Not even Patton realized the provocations of his actions; the ITOL had no control over the past or how the agents of the master-builders eluded the present. How they played the game was a crapshoot, the results ever present. He knew it was only a matter of time before their influence and hidden agenda left civilizations devastated; entire worlds vanished at the pass of a hand. The reality of their existence reduced by the whirl of a pen, on some far off-world map, where the elite considered a world made-to-order. Patton’s squad kept track of such events, trying to stay one step ahead of the intruders; even though it meant their invalidation, or altering the universe to accommodate the Industrials newest venture. They were more than mere men, or the face of self proclaimed gods: They were ancient astronauts, on a mission to preserve the future of humanity.

  “Commander,” said Neffum Claris from across a catwalk, greeting Patton with a welcoming glance. The officer repelled the bliss the mammal, attempting to not appear too snide in his response. He had seen the ambassador before, recognized him from his stay on the planet Oceanna, a water world on the border of the Eden sector, where the kind-hearted Dakky paid witness to his diplomacy.

  “Assemblymen,” answered Patton. The Commander stepped lively to meet the dignitary halfway, passing the usual fin between them in a ritualistic greeting that exchanged skin and scales.

  “I understand we’ve had a development,” said the ambassador. The aquatic gestured for Patton to take the lead. Their conversation seemed informal enough, but the reality of it, less than admirable.

  “Yes, Sir,” answered Patton. “A collapse in the boundary layer. Our own universe has been affected.”

  Krydal and Jake walked on ahead of the ambassador, keeping a keen eye on Patton and his newfound friend. The freighter captain was more important than he realized, and the young corporate liaison had no intention of letting him out of her sight. Neffum Claris, on the other hand, was more ruler than ambassador; he was the leader of an underwater coalition, a race of beings known as the Dakky. Their world lingered on the dark horizons were mankind had yet to set foot; whether aboard the submariner, or a little pleasure yacht, he defended his rights, as if they had plotted the demise of his world on a regular basis. Jake wondered what triggered the mischief they were about to get themselves into; he had no idea what effect it would have on the rest of the Universe, or his own life. It wasn’t something he could see sending a raging fire through his veins for. Neffum Claris obviously had an agenda of his own. The hauler pilot raised an eyebrow, felt the essence of living light flare within him in a wave of distortion that engulfed everything in sight.

  “Krydal,” he said in a panic attack, but the words never came out. The hauler pilot turned around. His vision was that of an older man, illuminated by the dwindling overture of cataracts and glaucoma. He was standing in the dim light; the ground gritty beneath his feet, and moist. A dirty little drawstring dangled from a wooden table, decorating the carved bowels of a plank, which was then nailed to the top of a sawed off stump.

  “What is it?” asked a soft voice, forming a thought somewhere in the back of his mind.

  “Nilana?” he resounded, recalling her name. His eyes opened, but remained glazed, as if he was looking at a foggy apparition of himself. “Another memory?”

  “No––” he said, sarcastically. The symbiont responded with a jolt of electricity rippling along his arm. Jake quickly regained his composure and sense of reality.

  “Not a memory,” he told her. “It’s something intangible like déjà vu. I just can’t put my finger on it.”

  “Then you’re okay?” Jake turned around, facing the voice in his head as if she was a living, breathing flesh and blood being, not a memory come to life.

  “You look a little peaked,” said the corporate liaison.

  “I’m fine,” said the pilot. He looked at the woman oddly, as if seeing her for the first time. He wondered if she was really there, or if he was imagining her?

  “You’ve had another vision, haven’t you?”

  “Did I act like someone else?” The woman raised an eyebrow.

  “I’m acting like someone else?” Jake ran his hand through his hair. “I’m not someone else!”

  “What then?”

  “I don’t know,” he told his companion. “It’s like …”

  “Like what?” Nilana passed through the pilot to face-off against the dark-haired woman.

  “Honestly Jake,” said Kryd
al, “getting information out of you is worse than pulling teeth.”

  “Stop it,” snapped the pilot. “Give me a moment. I’m reliving an experience!”

  “You’re experiencing a shift in reality, aren’t you?”

  The freighter captain marched deeper into a makeshift shack. He could feel the cold coming in from somewhere outside, and stopped a couple of steps from the entrance, bending down slightly, before crossing the threshold into the shallow cavern. A cold breeze brushed past him, fluttering his garments against the tapestries. “I don’t know,” he said under his breath, searching the recesses of his mind in an attempt to reveal the secrets he held in his silence. But his thoughts drew him to a wailing wall, covered with etchings unlike anything he had seen before. He followed the edge of the stone with his eyes, annotated the history cradling the past in his heart, as if it was a precious journal.

  “It’s nothing,” said the pilot, turning to face the establishment. “Just a figment of my imagination I guess.”

  Again, he was a younger man. Krydal looked at him as if she had seen a ghost. “A fantasy? Ooh-la-la. I like the sound of that,” she told him. Jake opened his eyes wide to see the blue-skinned researcher staring down at him in the midst of an examination. But this time he wasn’t alone. A pair of bright lights glared down at him like a rack of sun flares, hovering over his face.

  “You’re mumbling,” said the observer.