Beside him, Angel was practically bouncing with enthusiasm. Only his slower pace seemed to be keeping her from running fearlessly up to the portal and throwing herself against it. Clearly where she sensed opportunity and adventure, he sensed danger and menace—but perhaps that was because he’d already been to the Andromeda Galaxy and seen the ominous Zin world they must defeat.
They walked right up to the giant columns. He saw no instructions, no engravings, no control panel. The columns remained smooth shimmering gray bendar, and the rippling, shadowed portal stretched between them.
Kirek picked up a loose pebble and rolled it toward the portal. The pebble clearly stopped rolling, halted. But then it whooshed inside, sucked into the opening, but it had no more effect on the field than a rain droplet’s splash in the ocean.
“How do we operate this portal?” Angel asked, her tone light and inquisitive and a bit awed.
Where do you wish to go? A voice boomed from the rock’s face, but Kirek knew that no sound had come through his suit. The message was telepathic.
Kirek and Angel exchanged a long glance. Then Kirek spoke for them both. “We wish to use the portal to go to the Andromeda Galaxy.”
Understood.
“You can send us there?”
Affirmative.
“Can we return through this portal?” Kirek asked. The portal remained silent.
Angel tried again. “Can you tell us who built the portal?”
Again there was silence.
“I have coordinates for our destination.” Kirek read off a string of numbers. “Now what should we do?”
The portal’s voice remained steady and clear. Step through the portal.
“We wish to go in my space ship,” Angel said.
Affirmative.
“If we fly my ship through the portal, you will send us to the coordinates I gave you?” Angel asked.
Affirmative.
“Will we still be alive when we get there?” Kirek asked, but the portal didn’t answer. He turned to Angel. “I’d love to know how the portal works.”
“Maybe it’s better if we don’t know.” Awe in her voice, she turned away from the portal.
“Why?”
“Well if the damn thing is going to dematerialize us, scramble our brains, and then squeeze our atoms through a wormhole before reconstituting us later, I’d rather not know.”
Kirek tried one more question. “Does traveling through the portal affect time?”
But the portal didn’t deign to answer.
Angel frowned at him. “What kind of question is that?”
“It’s possible we could go through, complete our mission, and return to find a millennia has passed.”
“Now there’s a cheery thought. We save the Federation and return only to find everyone but us has evolved.” She frowned harder at him. “Sometimes you think too much.”
“My mother used to tell me that.” Kirek took her hand, and they headed back to the shuttle.
Chapter Nineteen
“KIREK.” ANGEL STALKED into the room on the ship that he’d appropriated for his workroom. Parts, wiring, chips, and diagrams, along with tools and fuel cells, surrounded Kirek. He’d been working steadily for two days to solve his power problem with the chip, but from the number of miscellaneous components, he appeared to have been moved in for weeks.
“Over here,” he answered, and she followed the sound of his voice to spot him and Frie behind a roll of bendar plating. He didn’t look up from screwing a wire onto a plate, but his voice greeted her warmly. “Have you come to watch our latest test?”
“Yes,” she lied, hoping he and Frie would succeed. Ever since Kirek had learned that the original device he’d ordered had failed, his mood had been brooding. Last night, she’d brought him dinner, and she could see from the leftovers he hadn’t touched it. She’d bet the Raven he hadn’t slept, either.
Kirek now had the chip enclosed in a box, connected to wires that led to Frie’s contraption, a sphere that would fit in the palm of her hand. Angel prayed the experiment would work, but her hopes weren’t high. This was the fifth prototype they’d made in as many hours.
“Throw the power switch,” Kirek directed.
Frie complied. Something hummed. The sphere cracked then popped open. A fire erupted, and the scent of burned wiring singed Angel’s nostrils.
Frie swore. Kirek’s shoulders slumped. But his voice remained steady. “We’ll try again. Maybe if we increase the diameter of the wiring—”
“There’s no time.” Angel hated to tell him the real reason she’d interrupted, but Kirek needed to know. She delayed by dumping his uneaten food into the recycler, but that only gained her a moment. “I’ve picked up encrypted news. Volcanic activity on several small planets has already led to core overheating. Federation scientists estimate that the temperatures of many smaller planets will rise enough to cause massive explosions within hours.”
Kirek’s eyes sparked with angry reddish-violet embers. “Take the Raven through the portal, but we’ll keep working here.”
“Leval.” Angel opened a com to the bridge. “Set a course through the portal.”
“Setting course, captain.”
Angel peered into a vidscreen, a new and convenient upgrade that allowed her to see and hear everything Leval did on the bridge from almost any position on the Raven. She could even watch their approach to the portal from here. While she’d have preferred to be on the bridge, she needed to talk to Kirek.
He’d been working round the clock, but it was now time for him to tell her the backup plan. The one that had caused his eyes to cloud over with such worry. Her stomach curled in dread.
While Frie cleared the smoking ruins of their failed experiment from the counter and Leval piloted the ship toward the portal, Angel approached Kirek. “If you can’t fix the power problem in time, what’s your backup plan?”
He avoided looking at her. “I have to fix it. The device was supposed to store my psi and hide it from the Zin. If I go into their labyrinth with my psi still a part of me, they’ll recognize and stop me before I can even land a shuttle anywhere near the home planet.”
Since he hadn’t answered her question, she suggested, “Suppose we take the Raven in close? With the hull’s shapeshifting mode we can disguise her as a Zin ship.”
Kirek nodded and started to sketch a new design. “That was always part of the plan. But eventually I have to exit the Raven and make my way through the Zin labyrinth.”
“How long will it take you to leave the ship and navigate the labyrinth?” she asked.
“Longer than you can hold a shield over us both.” He obviously understood where she was taking this line of questioning.
“What if you separate your psi from your mind, but instead of placing it in the chip, you put it inside Ranth?” Angel suggested. After all, Ranth had a massive storage capacity and plenty of power to run it.
“That won’t work. I need my body to physically enter the Zin’s inner sanctum where they are vulnerable—the Zin core, the inmost circuitry and programming that drives them all—and after I arrive physically, I need my psi to merge with their circuitry and turn them off.”
Oh … God. He intended to merge his mind with the Zin? Suppose he merged and never came out? Suppose he became locked inside the Zin world? She swallowed back her fear of losing him. If he lost, they all lost. Kirek would die. She would die. The entire Federation would die.
Part of her admitted that she would have hated living without him anyway, but she shoved that terrifying thought aside.
“So what’s your backup plan?” she asked again, totally out of ideas.
He hesitated.
“Come on,” she prodded, “I know you have a backup plan. Preparation is your middle name.”
“If I gave my psi to you—”
“What?” She hadn’t thought that was possible. “You can transfer your psi?”
“Dora figured out how to do it when she became huma
n.”
Angel knew all about the computer who’d wanted to become human so she could fall in love. Yet she’d never been interested in the technical details. But Ranth needed a psi to operate this ship—so computers had them. “Dora was a computer who transferred her mind into a living body.”
“The transfer process is the same whether it’s machine-to-human or human-to-human or human-to-machine.”
“You’ve transferred your psi before?” she asked.
He shook his head. “The process isn’t that complex.”
Kirek sounded certain he could do it. But the idea of holding his psi inside her head—that was his grand plan? “Surely, even if you could transfer your ability to me, my mind couldn’t hold it.”
“I believe your psi may be as strong, if not stronger, than mine.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“You can make the shield to protect us.”
“That’s one little trick.”
“You may be the only person in the Federation who can do it. It’s likely you have the potential to do so much more but haven’t developed it.”
“Great. Now you sound like one of my teachers who always complained that I didn’t work up to my potential.”
He chuckled. “You may have the raw capacity to do more than me.”
“And I may not.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Even if what you say is true, won’t the Zin recognize your psi in my head?” Oh, she finally saw where he was going. “You think I can shield my mind and your psi, hiding it from the Zin, until you need it.”
“In theory.” Kirek frowned and gestured to the burnt experiments. “This is why I’ve been working so hard. I didn’t want to experiment on your brain. Because if we fail, if you can’t hold all that I need to transfer, then you could burn out …”
“We have no choice,” she whispered, excited and frightened and wondering what it would feel like to have his psi rattling around in her head. Would it fit? Would her brain cells fry? Would the link be intimate? Would they share all their memories and feelings and secrets? Could they really do such a thing? “You once told me that it was destiny for us to meet. Maybe you were right.”
“Yeah, and maybe I’m just a frustrated Rystani male who craves your luscious self.”
Frie laughed. Angel scowled. Although Frie, Leval, and Petroy were all aware that she and Kirek had a relationship, she remained uncomfortable talking about it openly when she’d only so recently admitted it to herself.
But even she realized that forming an attachment to Kirek frightened her more than confronting the Zin. The possibility of death didn’t scare her as much as the idea of being trapped by her feelings. Love for her mother at a tender age had confined her world, limiting her life to their impoverished home. Two failed marriages had done further damage, proving to her that she wasn’t cut out for a life of emotional entanglements. To be happy, Angel needed the freedom to roam and explore, and while she and Kirek were on this mission together, if they succeeded the mission would end. He’d eventually go home to family and friends.
She would stay to salvage the Zin world. So emotional entanglements that had to end would only bring her additional pain, and she prayed that if she carried Kirek’s psi, it would not increase her feelings for him. Already, she’d almost lost him several times, and she knew that after they parted ways, it would take a long time for her to get over him. Maybe forever.
THE RAVEN FLEW into the portal, and Angel held her breath. Even Kirek had stopped working on his device to place an arm over her shoulders and watch the vidscreen. Right up until the moment they entered, everything seemed normal.
Then the portal sucked the Raven into the gray shadows.
Angel had braced for the heightened sensitivities of hyperspace, but the p-space—short for portal space—which connected the two galaxies was spectacularly dull. No stars. No planets. No matter showed on their sensors. It was as if they’d entered a giant void.
“How long do you think it will be until we come out?” Angel asked.
Kirek sighed. “I’m not sure. We may not know until we return.”
“You don’t have an equation to predict—”
“I have lots of theories and equations. But I can’t solve them,” Kirek admitted.
“Ran—”
“Don’t ask him,” Kirek instructed. “I don’t want his logic loops twisted into a puzzle and using up too much of his brain when he should be focusing on the power problem.”
“I appreciate that you are worried about me,” Angel told him, looking away from the boring grayness on the vidscreen into Kirek’s warm gaze. “But if you don’t succeed, we’re all going to die anyway.”
As if sensing they needed a private conversation, Frie left the room. A muscle in Kirek’s neck throbbed, and his jaw tightened. “Remember when I told you that Dora had worked out a way to transfer my psi into you?”
“Yes?”
“Well, we aren’t sure if you’ll be able to separate your psi from mine and transfer it back.”
“You mean you might have to live the rest of your life without your psi?” For Kirek, it would be like living with half his mind. He would have no more ability than Lion, and he’d forever be dependent on others to survive.
“You’re missing the important point. If I can’t merge with the Zin, then you will have to do it.”
She swallowed hard. “How?”
“You would have to secretly link with the Zin, find the circuitry that turns them off, flip the switch, then get out before it dies—or you might be trapped in the Zin mind and die with them.”
“Show me what I’d have to do.”
He turned on the vidscreen and she saw a three-dimensional representation of what looked like a maze. He pointed. “We go in here.” A blinking light zigzagged through the three-dimensional maze and mapped out the route. “When you reach the nucleus, you shut them down.”
The idea of entering a machine with her mind and getting trapped inside it was a notion that made her grow cold. She shivered. “I’m confused. Are the Zin a hive mentality?”
“Not exactly.” Kirek drew her against his chest and into his arms. “The Zin are half machine, half intelligent life form. Each unit is capable of independent thought to complete its task, but they take their orders from the Zin home world.”
“So why do you have to go at all? If I can hold your psi behind my shield and do what must be done, then there’s no reason to put yourself at risk.”
“You may not be physically strong enough to get past the obstacles.” He wrapped his arms around her and held her tight. “Besides, there’s no way in the Seven Hells of Daragon I’d let you face them alone.”
She didn’t argue. His tone was determined, final, and very certain. Besides, she wanted him there to steady her.
“But we’re getting way ahead of ourselves. We still may find a way to make the power work with the chip. In theory there’s no reason that you won’t be able to separate my psi and give it back when it’s time. Most likely, I’ll be the one going in. I just want to prepare for every contingency.” He tipped up her chin. “What’s making you tremble?”
Of all the things he’d told her, one stood out and bothered her above the rest. For much of her adult life, she’d run from intimacy and emotional entanglements, and now he was asking her to take his psi inside her head. It seemed petty to mention that she feared she’d never be free again, when he had to face losing his psi forever.
But fear made her ask another question. “What’s it going to feel like, if I hold your psi in my head?”
“I don’t know.” Kirek must have known that she desperately needed reassurance, but he’d told her the truth—she could hear it in his sad tone.
When he kissed her, she clung to him, appreciating how he wrapped her in gentle strength. It seemed like forever since he’d held her in his arms and enveloped her in his heat. But the moment was cut all too short when they exited p-space.
Every alarm in
the Raven sounded at once. Purple lights flashed. Sirens rang.
Ranth’s voice warned, “Zin battleships have locked on the Raven and are preparing to fire.”
“Alarms off,” Angel ordered, pulling away from his arms. “Shields up. Shapeshift to mimic Zin battleship mode.”
Changing the Raven’s shape to match the Zin ships had been impossible until Ranth had scanned their shape. While Kirek had scouted this area almost a decade ago, apparently the Zin had upgraded their ship designs after the wormhole explosion had wiped out most of their fleet.
Angel held her breath as the Raven’s hull altered. “Status?”
Ranth answered, “Zin ships arc standing down. They believe they had a hiccup in their system. We’ve been ordered by the Zin home world to enter the solar system and maintain an orbit until we can come in for resupply.”
“How long do we have?” Kirek asked, already heading back to his diagrams.
“One hour.”
“What?” Angel consulted her vidscreen. “Ranth, we can’t make it to the home world in an hour.”
“A Zin ship can.”
“Send a communication to the home world that we’ve suffered damage and will have to limp in. That should buy us a day.”
“Three hours,” Ranth corrected. “Otherwise a faulty delay will cause them to send out repair technicians.”
THREE HOURS HADN’T been enough time for Frie, Kirek, and Ranth to fix the power supply. With Angel’s shield up, Leval brought the Raven into orbit.
Angel and Kirek flew the shuttle toward the Zin world. Since he had been here before and knew the route, she took the copilot seat.
And oh … my. Kirek had been correct about the value of the metal. Salvaging the Zin home world would keep a fleet of ships busy for years. About the size of Jupiter, the surface appeared to be almost solid metal cities and complexes composed of bendar plus a shimmering green metal she didn’t recognize. According to her sensor readings the circuitry and metal surface layer was several miles thick. In addition, the Zin had huge space stations, orbiting satellites, and a busy spaceport filled with exotic ships designed in everything from insectoid shapes to giant ovules that were several miles long.
Rystani Warrior 04 - The Quest Page 24
