“We’re not sure. We might do it again,” Natalia told us.
My head snapped to stare at Magnus, who was conveniently silent for this part of the discussion. “You were gone for three years, and ended up in another dimension. What would drive you to do this again?” I asked him. The rest of the table went silent, waiting for his answer. Jules chatted softly with Patty beside her, who was showing her how to draw an animal, acting like an older cousin only could.
“Because it was exhilarating. The kids had a wonderful time. They made friends and enjoyed their lessons. Dean, you don’t understand. We were part of the community there, and you know as well as I do that the Keppe are a solid people. Plus, I love the food.” Magnus set his fork on his nearly empty plate.
I had a new idea, one Terrance and I had discussed on a few occasions, mostly late at night with a few glasses of Scotch in our bellies. “What if we had our own exploratory ships?” I asked, quieter than intended.
Slate leaned in, and Nat whispered something to Mary.
Magnus had the courtesy to smile at me. “I don’t think that’s the same thing.”
“Hear me out. We create a ship with members of the Alliance of Worlds as the crew, you as the captain. We don’t work for the Keppe, but instead, we work in tandem. Surveying the far reaches of space. We know now from the Crystal Map that there’s way more out there than we even comprehended.” I was selling myself on the idea, becoming excited by the prospect. Before, it had only been idle talk between friends around the dinner table. Now it was gaining momentum, becoming real.
The moment Magnus glanced over at Natalia, then at his kids, I felt the entire newly-formed plan coming to life before my eyes. Mary grinned at me and wrapped her arm around Jules’ small shoulders, pulling her in to kiss the top of her head.
“That does sound cool.” Slate was the first one to speak, and everyone laughed.
“Dean Parker, you’ve done it again. Why didn’t I think of that?” Magnus asked.
“So you’ll think about it?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “Nope, because we’ve already decided. We’ll do it.”
I glanced over at Natalia and could tell they’d shared some unspoken agreement with their eyes.
“That’s great. We can send word to Lord Crul at once. We’ll build a ship based on their specifications, but adjust it to accommodate the varying races we’ll be bringing aboard.” My heart rate increased as the ideas flooded my mind. I could picture a crew with Padlog, Hybrids, Bhlat, Molariuns, humans, Keppe, and Motrill. The Inlor might be interested as well, since they were new to interstellar space travel. Perhaps the Theos would be happy on board with Magnus and Nat. If the shared look between Karo and Ableen was telling me anything, they were already considering it.
I had no idea if Mary and I would be part of something like that. I felt like there was too much for us to do on our three worlds. But the idea of traveling around space for a couple of years with our closest friends on hand thrilled me.
“You better save a title for me. First Officer? Commander Campbell has a nice ring to it,” Slate said, and stopped when he realized it might mean leaving my side. “I mean… if everything works out.”
“I’m sure it will. Boy, am I glad we had this breakfast,” I told them. “Are we ready to plan this next mission yet?”
Magnus stood. “Let’s do this.”
“You don’t have to come. Are you sure it’s okay to run away again?” I asked him out of earshot of the others.
“Your last one took less than a day. This is a piece of cake,” he said.
I liked his optimism. “Let’s gather what we need and move.” My mind was hopeful the next Gatekeeper extraction would be as fast as the previous one, but my gut had other ideas.
Ten
We’d said our goodbyes, and Natalia, Mary, and Ableen remained at our penthouse with the kids. I was having a hard time leaving the family behind. As much as I’d wanted to fight them being along on the last mission, their presence had been comforting.
I told myself that the sooner we returned, the sooner we could switch gears.
The lander touched the ground outside the city of Haven, though there were more structures out in this remote area now. It was so different from when Slate, Mary, Mae, and I had first arrived with Clare and Nick. Thinking back to that time made me feel my age. So much had happened.
“Boss, do you mind taking this?” Slate shoved a heavy pack at me, and I slung it over my shoulder. We wore our white Gatekeeper EVAs again, and headed from outside toward the portal room. Soon we were inside, and I pulled the Crystal Map from my pack, laying it beside the Modifier.
“This is it?” Magnus asked, pointing at the compact flexible device.
“It is.” I attached it to the portal table, and the other end to my tablet. The now-familiar portal map appeared, and I isolated the last five trips from the stones. Some of them were ours, and I glazed over them until I found one that fit the timeline of Polvertan and Dreb’s trip. They’d been trying to travel to Shimmal after their swearing in, each of them intended to be paired with an experienced Gatekeeper. Instead, the portal had sent them far away.
“Karo, do you feel anything out of the ordinary?” I asked the tall Theos, who’d stayed quiet for most of the morning.
He reached below the table and set a hand on the stone. It instantly reacted to the contact and brightened. “Nothing has changed. They are there. I fear not for long, though.”
“That’s what we thought. All the more reason to make this fast,” I said, receiving firm nods from the three men at my side.
I zoomed in on the destination portal world, and instantly knew I didn’t recognize it. This was another planet that didn’t have a symbol loaded into our database. I was hoping it was something we could research quickly before going.
“Here goes nothing,” Slate said as he activated the two tools we needed to safely make the trip. We’d brought more supplies than we thought we’d need. It was better to be prepared than surprised.
Magnus shot me a grim look and the portal crystal glowed hot. It flickered, and for a moment, I didn’t expect it to function.
Everything dissolved into nothingness. I floated there in my EVA, weightless in a pool of bright light. This had happened once before, when we’d traveled through a stone with Leonard, who’d been possessed by an Iskios. Only then, it was a brief pause in the journey with no light or dark, and this change made me fear we were trapped in limbo.
I took in my surroundings, unsure if what I was seeing was real or not. My hand stretched in front of my face, and I waved it across my eyes. It seemed real enough.
“Magnus! Slate!” I shouted into my earpiece, but there was no reply. “Can you hear me?”
Nothing.
I floated and tried to remain calm, which wasn’t as easy as one might think. I searched for signs of anything past the thick cloud of light, but there was nothing there.
It felt like hours by the time a dot appeared in the brilliance. By then, I’d tried unsuccessfully to swim away, to use the tiny thrusters in the space suit I wore to push me from my position, and had even attempted a nap.
My pulse quickened with each passing breath as the dot grew larger. It was a Gatekeeper! “Magnus, Slate!” I shouted, seeing the familiar uniform. I couldn’t make out the face quite yet.
No response.
The figure slowed about a hundred yards away, and I lifted an arm to wave, and the newcomer mirrored my movement. An odd sensation rolled through my spine, and I tested the theory, raising my other arm. The figure copied the gesture on a half-second delay.
“What is this?” I asked no one, if only to hear another voice.
“What is this?” my voice echoed into my earpiece.
“Wait. Was that you?” I asked the figure, and it started moving toward me again.
This time, it didn’t parrot my words. It stopped closer now, and I understood. It was me inside the EVA.
“De
an?” I asked it, knowing full well this was some other entity copying my image to communicate with me. Karo had done something similar when I’d first arrived at the Theos home world.
“It’s me,” my voice said in return.
I saw his eyes now, and they were mine, but older, sadder eyes. “Why are we here?”
He shook his head slowly. “We’ve always been here.”
If I was a cat, I’d have hissed at my doppelganger. “What does that mean?”
“Do you believe in something bigger than you? Vaster than the Iskios and the Theos?” Not-Dean asked, his voice a rough version of my own.
I shrugged. “Sure. I mean, this all came from somewhere, right? I’ve seen too much.”
“Good. Good.” Not-Dean moved a little closer, floating in the light. I could now see he was about twenty years older than me: crow’s feet around his eyes, gray in his hair and beard.
“What is this?” I asked again.
“This is the end.”
“That’s a little ominous. Care to elaborate?” I asked him.
“The portals are dying, Dean. But there is a way to keep everything going.”
“How?” I asked.
“You’ll see. But that’s not why we’re here,” Not-Dean said. He met my gaze, and I saw a tear fall onto his cheek, a single drop shiny against his matte skin.
“Then why?” I asked, almost breathless. I was afraid of what this version of me was about to say. Was this really me, from the future?
“In eighteen years, you will have to make a choice,” he said.
“Go on,” I prompted him.
“Don’t screw it up. You can’t save them all,” he said, his voice cracking.
Ice filled my veins. “What are you talking about? Why do you have to be so indirect? Just say it! Does this have something to do with Lom of Pleva returning?” That would fit the timeline.
His expression told me I was on the right path. “Don’t make the same mistake I did. Don’t let them die.” His voice was pleading, desperate, and he reached out a hand, and I stretched mine out. Our gloved hands failed to reach one another, and he floated away, at first slowly, then faster, as if being reeled in by an immense fishing rod. “Don’t let them die, Dean!”
And then he was gone, and there was only darkness once again.
____________
“Dean. Dean, are you okay?” a voice asked, and I was being shaken by the shoulders.
I blinked my eyes open and saw Slate above me, his face etched with worry behind his mask. “There you are,” he said, and relaxed, sinking to a seated position beside me. I glanced up, and there was Magnus, leaning over me from above.
“Gave us quite the scare there.” Magnus made his way to my other side, and the two of them each offered a hand, helping me to my feet.
“Did you guys see anything?” I asked.
Slate looked around the room and shook his head. “See anything like what?”
“White light? An older Dean Parker?”
Magnus laughed. “Wow, you must have hit your head in between worlds. We arrived here instantly, and you’ve been on the ground for five minutes staring into space like a zombie.”
So it hadn’t happened. Or maybe it had, in the blink of an eye within the portal. I had no way of knowing.
“What exactly did you see? An older you?” Slate asked.
I steadied myself on the portal and peered around the room we entered into. Our packs were on the floor, and I felt to make sure the pulse rifle was intact. The space was dark rock, and the only light inside the portal room was that from Magnus’ and Slate’s EVAs. I activated my lights too, and saw the dim glow of the symbols on the black stone walls fade to nothing.
“The stones aren’t going to last long,” Karo said from the far edge of the room. I’d forgotten he was even with us, he’d stayed so silent. He flipped his own lights on, revealing an exit. There was no door per se, only a carved-out opening in the black rock.
I ran a finger along the wall, finding it slightly damp. “Do we know if this is the right world?” I asked.
“Magnus checked when we arrived. The Crystal Map tells us we’re at the same planet Polvertan and Dreb were sent to,” Slate advised.
I pointed to Karo. “Have you ventured beyond the doorway yet?”
“No. We were waiting for you to wake up,” Magnus told me.
“I’m up. Let’s go.” I shook the image of the older Dean from my mind, trying to forget the words escaping his lips. It was impossible. As I stepped forward, the phrase repeated in my mind.
Don’t let them die, Dean!
Who did he mean? Was he talking about my wife and daughter? Was it any of the people around me now? I glanced at Slate, and he grinned at me. Magnus took the lead, and Karo behind him as we moved through the exit and outside.
Wind buffeted our suits, and Magnus raised a hand, silently telling us to hold our positions. He flipped his lights off, and we each did the same. I took in the landscape.
The ground was black rock for as far as the eye could see, and there was no sign of vegetation. A red star set in the distance, or perhaps it was rising. I didn’t have anything to base that on. It was large and angry-looking, but my suit’s readouts told me it was around twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit. A winter’s day in Ohio.
“There.” Slate pointed to a source of light a few miles away. Otherwise, the land was devoid of… anything.
“We search this area first. Sarlun told me they didn’t have their Gatekeeper IDs yet because they were picking them up on Shimmal.” I knew this was going to make the task all the more difficult. These were two missing persons we had to rescue. Our alliances were new and already only hanging on by goodwill, mostly between myself and the Empress in the Bhlat case. If we didn’t find Dreb, her hand-picked emissary, I didn’t know what she’d do.
The Empress was on Earth most of the time now, her home base at the Pyramids. She controlled the portal there, and I knew she could destroy everything we’d rebuilt on Earth in a handful of minutes. Even though I trusted her somewhat, it was imperative we did our part and located her subject.
“Let’s pair up.” Magnus was taking charge, and I was only too happy to let him lead. “Slate, you’re with Karo. Dean, stick with me.”
Slate didn’t look happy about it. I had a feeling he and Mary had an agreement that he’d protect me at all costs. It was the same deal I had with Slate to protect my family. At the end of the day, I would protect him with my own life too, and he knew it.
Magnus pulled a drone from his pack, and we watched as it hovered above, mapping the terrain leading toward the lights in the distance. Seconds later, we had a 3D map on our consoles.
“We’ll head this way, you go that way, and we’ll reconvene…” Magnus pushed a pin into a local map on his arm console. “Here. One hour. If there’s no sign of them or their camp, we’ll have to assume they headed for the light. Three months is a long time, and this land looks cold and unforgiving.”
Everyone agreed, and Magnus and I headed to the right. The ground was nothing but black rocks: some loose, but most were connected, like a sheer wall of slate. “Watch your step,” I told him after almost tripping on a rock.
“What happened back there? Really?” he asked, and I saw him adjust his mic so only I could hear. I did the same, leaving the receiver end open.
“I’m not sure. I could have been hallucinating or something. It was me. Twenty years older. I was warning myself to not let them die,” I admitted.
“Who?”
“I don’t know. Not-Dean wasn’t very forthcoming with his words. It has to do with Lom, I’m sure of it.”
Magnus used his flashlight, scanning the ground to the left of us. I did the same on the right side. “I wish there was a way to know what will happen in twenty years. Or eighteen, now.”
I cleared my throat, picturing Lom flailing as I shoved him through the time travel vortex. I had the device hidden away, and no one knew where it was. “We
can’t worry about it now, can we?”
“I suppose not. We have bigger fish to fry at the moment. Like tracking these rookies,” Magnus said.
He was wearing a Gatekeeper uniform, but he wasn’t actually one of us. Sarlun wouldn’t mind, I knew that much. He’d been invited but always had other pressing matters: first running New Spero’s military arm, then taking over as captain of a Keppe exploratory vessel.
“I’m trying to imagine this being my first mission for the Gatekeepers,” I said, letting myself laugh at the thought.
“What did happen on your first trip?” he asked.
I laughed more now. “You really don’t want to know. It was… memorable.”
“Slate won’t talk about it,” Magnus said, which told me he’d asked around.
“And rightfully so. Neither will Mary,” I told him.
“Fine. But I’ll pull the story out of you one day. Over a bottle of Scotch,” Magnus said.
It was nice chatting with him, even if it was a walk on an alien world we knew nothing about. “Let’s just say it involves a nude swim… that’s all I’m saying.”
Magnus laughed. “Now I’m not sure I want to hear it.” I could tell he wanted to change the subject.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Are we sure Nat, Mary, and Ableen heading out after us is a great idea?” Magnus checked his map and redirected us a few degrees.
“What choice do we have? Mag, buddy, we married some strong, resourceful women. Do you think they’d let us tell them they can’t go?”
“No. They wouldn’t. I’ve spent so much time with Nat and the kids on Fortune that I hate the idea of splitting apart at all these days,” he told me.
I understood only too well. “I hear you. I think Mary and I have been apart more than together since we were married.”
The red star was indeed setting, and the entire rock world cloaked in darkness as the last speck moved beyond the horizon. Stars in unfamiliar constellations lit the way through the cloudless sky.
The Gatekeepers (The Survivors Book Eight) Page 9
