by Grant Fausey
“How appropriate,” uttered the woman, “if it isn’t Jake Ramious…the infamous bounty hunter, Indigo?” Crimson smiled, her younger incarnation reporting the capture of her arch villain with the warm and fuzzy feeling of love rekindled.
“Sure you wouldn’t rather have that drink at Rusty’s?” asked the bounty hunter.
Commander Patton stepped up behind her, looked over her shoulder at Jake and smiled. “You okay here?”
“Just a little unfinished business,” she said. “I’ll be right with you, Commander.” Patton ordered an extraction. The ground shimmered beneath his feet, sparkling in the golden amber light of the transport beam.
Jake saw the revolution in her eyes, but Krydal stunned him anyway, just before teleporting away.
THIRTY-NINE: Grathamar’s Haven
• • •
Brakka swooped in from behind a smoldering cloud of dust and flying debris to find a home crouched on the ground near the old woman. “It’s time to go,” roared the machine, impatiently. A lifetime had passed since she vanished into the depths of another existence, passing through the portal to the worlds beyond. He wondered if she would ever find a way to bridge the universes, maybe uncover the realm where the future held her one true love at bay. It was the essence of hope. One day she would be reunited with her beloved and heal the wound in her heart. What she was looking for was right in front of her, hidden in plain sight among the symbols of a hand-scribed likeness, embedded in the bedrock of a small Mannukan temple. Grathamar Craton was right, one universe could not survive without the other; they were connected. The old wizard kept the belief alive. He knew that one day his young apprentice would reunite his estranged counterparts, live life beyond his years and discover the truth to pass onto the next generation. He knew what had come before, and what would happen again if only in a rendition of the past. The prospect of life renewed in the light of its own existence was difficult to comprehend. Grathamar believed in the sonance of life, answered the calling wherever it existed.
“Set course for the Abyss,” he told Haven with a kind word. “Best speed.” The living machine took notice, and breathed, softening the appearance of its wall to reveal the face of the ship in a wisp of color that touched life with love. The ship altered shades emanating its feelings, while Grathamar closed his eyes, feeling the warmth of the machine around him. He imagined a woman’s face, and awaited the kindness of loving her, impressionistic as it was, yet unconditionally real.
“Tell me of our journey here,” requested the vessel. “Are they’re more beings like me?”
“A universe full of them,” he told the starship. “Why do you ask?”
Grathamar opened his eyes, gazed upon the face of his companion. Inquisitively, the dream was understandable. Haven wanted nothing more than to learn of its place in the universe.
“Then I will no longer be unique?”
The wizard sat up.
“Not so,” said the alchemist. “All life is unique unto itself.”
“And Man … is he unique?”
“Yes, Haven,” said the alchemist. “Man is unique. That is why he searches for his place in the universe. He wishes to know who and what he is, just as you do.”
“Then we are alike?”
“Yes––” smiled the old scientist. A wisp of color danced across the interior forming a rainbow along the edge of the catwalk.
“Then we will survive.”
“Yes … and no.” The rear flight deck flared in a brilliant light, exploding in a wave of distortion that cut through the surface of the ship like light passing through the cutouts of a stencil. Grathamar gasped for air, reached for a place to steady himself and held on. Haven shattered in the wake of the distortion, drawn into the darkness until the last glimmer of light dwindled from its existence. They had crossed beyond the boundary into the abyss.
“Your future’s end is but a beginning,” he told the machine. “You have but to ask the universe and the cosmos will provide.
“You speak of paradox, not genesis,” insisted Haven, his light twinkling in the darkness.
“Not so …” answered Grathamar. “The past is but a steppingstone: a mere reflection of what has come before.”
“Then our future can be altered,” asked the machine.
“Change is inevitable,” answered the old man, “so long as the universe provides for it!” His voice diminished into nothingness as the light of his soul joined with him in the darkness of the abyss. The starship squinted out of existence. The last twinkle of light dimming into a new reality … one cosmos absorbing the other, until only a single world remained.
“That which is dead can no longer return to the same form,” said the being of light merging in the essence of one. “Just as I must be renewed in the light of a living universe, so must you be renewed through the rebirth of creation: All life must relearn that which it has learned.”
“Then I shall choose my course carefully,” said the old man. “The future has many paths.”
Indigo climbed through a broken grate beneath the landing platform and joined her under the superstructure in the pouring rain. The ITOL gunship passed overhead, its searchlights slicing across the platform until it disappeared back into oblivion. “That’s the past,” said the bounty hunter. “You gotta like her style.”
“She’s not so hot,” said Nilana from the edge of the temporal zone. Another figure squeezed through the machinery onto the gantry just below the Chariot wreckage and stopped, cautious not to make a sound.
“That would be Denarak,” said Samuel Nomad as he watched the freighter roar overhead.
“I know you’re down there….” said Crimson, experiencing the memory of the old woman with a little added sarcasm. Their worlds had finally merged, a single future between them.
“You might as well show yourself.” Indigo glazed up through the platform. “Did you hear me?”
Again, the hauler pilot moved past Brennan. The chief investigator was headed into the bowels of the complex. Time was repeating itself, but the futures had merged into a single path.
“I heard you,” said the bounty hunter, unaware of the other’s presence. Indigo stepped through a maze of pipes cautiously traveling the distance between them as he emerged onto the platform beneath her.
“You’re not as clever as you used to be,” said the old woman. “It’s all too simple now.”
“And you’re not an assassin anymore.”
“I remember a different past,” admitted the former warrior. “One that we destroyed, remember?”
“Do you really think I’d forget?” The bounty hunter emerged from the scaffolding a younger man; repositioned himself to the sound of her voice.
“No––” she insisted. “But I can hope.” The old woman disengaged her armor from stealth mode. It wasn’t as functional as it used to be, and that made her nervous, if not vulnerable. Something had changed in her existences. “We had good times, you and I,” she continued, trying to keep him off balance. Indigo flipped off the safety on his weapon’s pulse generator.
“You don’t really think that makes a difference now, do you?”
Crimson spun around to face him, stared at her adversary as if he was an endangered species. “I know,” she said a matter of fact. “It won’t change a thing.” Her helmet retracted to reveal her appearance. She had grown old in his eyes, but through the process of the regeneration, he had grown younger, reborn in the spirit of his youth: his body the age of a younger man, in his twenties.
“Jake––” she said in kind; shocked by his appearance. “It’s me, Krydal.” Her voice softened. “Remember?”
“How could I forget?” he asked her in his moment of redemption, seeing through the facade to the woman hidden in the carcass past her age. The bounty hunter’s eyes gazed over in awe of her, shocked by the gray of her hair, and the wrinkle of he elderly skin. Yet, he saw past it to the beauty of it and stared at her for the longest time remembering her cuddled to him; h
er head on his shoulder as if it was yesterday. The chill of the salty night air reaching across time to pull her away, as she pressed her lips against his in a passionate embrace. Only time and space separated them. There was no predator’s lance discharged from Indigo’s weapon. No budging eyes, or wounded heart. Only her ego bruised, her body slamming into the landing grates on the day of doom.
“Maybe your right,” she said in a huff, her back to the hard curve of the platform. “Maybe there isn’t a place for us.”
The bounty hunter stood in triumph, never staring up the barrel of her pulse weapon, or feeling the butt of her gun. Time as they new it no longer played a roll in their lives, or orchestrated its little charade. The thrill of the kill coursed through his veins, but he felt no taste of victory, or defeat. Only the bittersweet taste of revenge seeped from his lips, as the old woman pulled a small vial from under her armor and rolled the container between her fingertips. Indigo’s eyes locked firmly on the vessel, widened with telltale fear as he paid witness to her intent. She meant to cause the world misery, and him with it. The bounty hunter had no cause for panic, except panic itself. What she proposed, he considered suicide. The regenerative material lingered in the palm of her hand for what seemed an eternity.
“Maybe this will help you remember,” she said appealing to the remnants of his humanity.
“No!” yelled the younger man. “You can’t do this!”
“What happened before will happen again,” she told the bounty hunter. “Unless we change it, turn the future back to its rightful path.”
The bounty hunter’s eyes went wide. Crimson tossed the vial and Jake leaped across the platform to catch the canister, but struck the gantry first, landing hard; his hand sliding under the falling vessel, only to have it shatter against the grates just beyond his fingertips, its contents spilling across the threshold into the convergence. The universe shuddered in the wake of the disturbance, consuming everything into a spinning caldron of energy that drew upon the very fabric of the cosmos to quench its lusty appetite. Even Crimson felt the pull of the vortex, the deafening sound of the interwoven waves of distortion that swept across the ground in a feeding frenzy, drawing upon Indigo’s body from across the expanding threshold.
On the other side of the vortex, Christopher Denarak emerged from the transport into something he never expected: A single cosmos of infinite dimensions. A literal crack in the fabric of space-time thundered its way into the universe distorting his body. He searched the sky with a heavy heart, his eyes twisting and turning with the elastic vibration, until the mixture consumed him with despair over the loss of his beloved master, Grathamar Craton. His was a journey of retribution, not redemption. He longed for the truth of what the alchemist had left behind; his mind pounding from the dark waves of energy that formed in the heavens. He was truly standing on the most inhospitable place in the cosmos: A world beyond the threshold of infant space, where its mother’s womb crowned an unsuspecting universe with the agility of a corkscrew. It was from here that the dark ooze secreted its path from the threshold, reminiscent of a sea monster passing from one universe to another.
Outstretched, and on the hunt, with tentacles of energy that spanned the framework of the biomass itself. The machine entity struggled to right itself as it crossed the threshold, but collapsed, exposed to the elements of the regenerative wave flowing through its body.
“This is it,” said Christopher speaking into a holographic recorder: It was an historic day, at the end of time. “We’ve found the remains of the biomass Grathamar wrote about in his journal.” He told Ralstar Malone. The baroness watched the sky intently, waiting and hoping to see Krydal and her survey team cross the boundary in infinite arrogance. But the didn’t. Their only legacy a blundered detonation of a weapon meant to save the world, but instead saved the future. The convergence collapsed in upon itself, leaving nothing to chance. The universe was different. The future a single path: what came before, repeated itself.
“Nothing’s been touched for centuries,” Denarak told the others, excited. Yet it seemed to move when he did.” The apprentice’s eyes widened curiously, concerned over the thoughts of his own longevity.
“I think we’ve found the portal,” said Ralstar. “It’s hard to believe any of this was ever real! It’s like something out of a dream.”
“A nightmare is more like it, if you ask me,” answered Denarak. “But it’s real enough, alright.”
“It’s not proof Grathamar found his way home, Kristic,” she insisted. “But there’s every possibility we’ll see him again. It’s only a matter of time before the ancient enemy returns.” The apprentice sighed, agreeing with the baroness. He knew the truth of it, even expected it. The other members of his rag-tag expedition urged him on, following his every move.
“Kristic,” said Ralstar Malone. “Come here. I think I’ve found something. I think I’ve found what you’re looking for.” Christopher pulled a journal from his pocket and opened it. He jotted down his own course though the wilderness, a winding path down a dirt ramp that would lead him to the excavation of an ancient temple. There he would find the wreckage of an old Windrigger, hidden amidst the cobblestone streets of the past. The future was upon him.
The baroness shinned a tiny flashlight across the dark interior of the temple. Her eyes widened at the sight of a hand carved message addressed to Christopher Denarak, the notorious pirate known as Kristic Kaa Creed.
FORTY: Nomad’s Choice
• • •
“Saddle up people,” ordered Patton, his brow furrowed in concentration. Crimson did a one-eighty behind him along the back railing of the troop staging area, her eye on the abyss that permeated the fabric of the space-time continuum. Above her, Hudson Warner danced around her like a schoolgirl in the wee hours of a December morning. “You’re on point,” Patton chuckled. He was next to the flight officer, studying the Threat Board on the other side of the Command and Control Center.
The young beauty swiped the vid-sheet out of his hand and opened it. “What’s this?” she asked politely, “Another excursion to the Rampian interface? It should be lovely this time of year, don’t you think?” Patton held his tongue; she was relieving the moment. He knew the roar of reentry would shatter her concentration. The Firehawk pivoted sharply, deploying its arsenal of pulse cannons and plasma beam accelerators. “Investigate temporal incursion and eliminate intruders,” she said under her breath. “You can’t be serious? We’ve done this a million times!”
“Thirty seconds,” said Patton. “Grab a hold of something.” The gunship buffeted in the turbulence, lisping against the planet’s gravity well. Its four main engines rotated in unison, flooding the main cabin with the golden amber light of the transport beam.
“Transmit,” ordered the commander. Crimson repelled the ground, her magnetic boots gripping at the deck plates. The transit wave reintegrated her body just short of the landing zone.
“Gotcha …” she shouted over her comlink. “We have a runner, commander. In the debris field.”
“Corporate?” asked Patton.
“No. Dogger,” she responded. “Probably caused it himself.”
The intruder dropped down a level, scrambling for cover.
“Clear,” said Hudson Warner. Crimson’s heart skipped a beat. The gunship dusted off in the background, while the intruder took advantage of the moment with greater mobility. Crimson did a one eighty, taking refuge in the shadow of a jagged rock formation. She hesitated, exercising her discretion. Again, there was movement; a figure in the distance transmuted the platform, slipping from one riser to another. Her hand went tight, her body vaporous and wraithlike in the waves of temporal flux. She slipped her weapon between her fingers. Drew a bead on her query.
“How appropriate!” she said dropping over the side in a leap of faith. There was a moment of familiarity … of forgotten passion. “If it isn’t Indigo.”
The old bounty hunter stopped short of the riser. She could feel his
presence, the warm scent of his body. The taste of lust wet her lips, quickly replaced with the memory of a love affair gone wrong. She waited. Watched. The intruder took to the high ground, hidden in plain sight. A man obscured in the horizontal rain. His heart an open rendition of her love as he waited, alone. There was no escape; every weapon was trained on target. She was in control. “Got him commander,” she said, invulnerably detained; the loose soil shifting beneath her feet like her emotions. There was no longer a need for invisibility. “What is it this time?” she asked. “You lose another client?”
“You always had a way with words,” said the bounty hunter in a whisper, an old man suddenly visible. Indigo catapulted past her, a phantom in the wind. “Sure you wouldn’t rather have a drink with Rusty?”
“Looks to me like you’ve already had a little too much kettle juice,” she told the old man. “You’re on the wrong side of the boundary, you know?” The old man ended up within the wreckage of a ground hauler, goose bumps rattling his nerves. The bounty hunter scurried backwards across the rubble, the young warrior’s weapon pressed into his stomach. Crimson stared at him for the longest moment, compromised. She loved him.
Indigo smiled in turn. He already knew. Her heart melted, disengaged from the holster of her armor. “You okay here?” asked Patton. The commander stepped up behind her, and glanced over her shoulder at the bounty hunter, sporting her view. Indigo was staring up the barrel of her M41 assault weapon.
“Just a little unfinished business,” answered Crimson. “I’ll be right with you, Commander.” Patton grinned, there was a note of satisfaction in her voice.
”Saddle up people,” he told the squad.
Crimson set her weapon to stun, squeezed the trigger, but the shot passed right through the old bounty hunter, reverberating off a shattered rock, and smacked the ground. The bounty hunter’s body fell silent, nestled against the ground hauler. The energy of another universe swirled around him, engulfing him within the space-time disturbance of a co-existing cosmos. Yet, he wasn’t alone in his misdemeanor. Crimson stared at the old man, watched his features regenerate in the blending of realities, until he transformed in the midst of the metamorphosis. She knew Patton would make accommodations. Her beloved would survive and be along shortly, drawn to her in his moment of reunion. What happened before would happen again, unless they altered the future, returned the essence of life to the right path. This was her chance. Crimson shuttered in the disturbance, her body melding with his in an alternate existence. She was no longer alone in her torment; her mind amiss in the prosperity of her own recollection. She understood the reality of her past; the faithful execution of living two lives, experiencing the memories of two existences, two triumphs, as well as the failures of her own making. She was in different dimensions of the same universe, residing in opposing futures: juxtaposed to one another, like the positive and negatives experiences of her own existence. One matter, one anti-matter: life, the other death. It was the story of her successes and failures. Yet, Krydal felt the old woman’s thoughts, recognized her existence just as she felt the thoughts of her life. She held the canister of biomass in her hand, rolling the vial between her fingertips. She remembered tossing it across the platform into the convergence even though it was something she never did.
