Ouroboros- The Complete Series

by Odette C. Bell

  He was busy on the bridge, though, and would be until the destruction of Remus 12 was complete.

  She wasn’t needed, or maybe she wasn’t trusted enough to join him.

  Carson had apparently emphasized to Admiral Forest that Nida could be trusted, but she was still just a cadet, right? And a cadet had no place on the bridge of the Chronos as it extinguished a planet from existence.

  So what was she to do? Just stand here and stare out of her window, waiting for that brown ball to be obliterated? To be snuffed out and set tumbling into space like nothing more than a clod of dirt crushed under foot.

  Her stomach had once kicked with nerves, now it absolutely rocked with them. It felt like earthquakes tearing through her. It was a wonder she was still standing.

  She managed it, though. With one tightly clenched fist and a pounding heart, she stood there pressing the fingers of one hand into the glass. They left a sweaty mark over the surface, a smear over space.

  She couldn’t stand here waiting until the Chronos was ready to destroy Remus 12. Suddenly she twisted, pressing her back into the glass. She jerked her eyes closed, covering her face with both hands.

  She shook her head desperately. ‘Come on,’ she begged herself, ‘you know how to do this. You must. Just think,’ she begged over and over again as she let her extreme anxiety grow.

  She felt the entity, she heard it too. It didn’t speak in words, though, just raw emotion. It screamed at her, it begged, it pleaded to be let go so it could keep trying.

  It had not tried to save the Vex for countless, countless eons only to give up now.

  She hardened her teeth against it, pushed it back, and ignored its desperation for now.

  She pushed her hands harder and harder against her cheeks and forehead. The pressure, however, couldn’t push the solution from her brain. Instead, a jumble of memories and thoughts cascaded into her, swelling together like the billowing clouds before rain.

  She kept praying for a miracle, hoping that if she thought hard enough the solution would come to hand. And yet she stood there with her back to the view, as time kept running out. The pressure of the situation mounted and mounted, and it drew through her, locking her muscles in place like a virus of ice chilling through every fiber and tendon.

  Suddenly she sank her teeth into her lip so hard she quickly drew blood. It trickled over her lip and collected in a warm trail down her chin. That too did not bring the solution to hand.

  Beating herself wouldn’t do it. Berating herself wouldn’t do it. Begging herself wouldn’t do it either.

  Suddenly she snapped her eyes open and pushed herself forward. For just a second she wanted to throw herself on her bed, bury her head under her covers, and wrap her arms tightly around her pillow. She wanted to shut her senses out, to ignore what would happen next.

  The Chronos was so well shielded and enormous, that she wouldn’t hear Remus 12 being destroyed. The ship wouldn’t shake, nor would there be a deafening boom rattling through the windows.

  It could be destroyed completely, obliterated in an enormous burst of light, yet she’d have no idea unless she faced the windows to look.

  It would be so very easy to turn her back on it . . . .

  Though that desire built and built, and she even took a step towards her bed, she stopped herself in place. ‘Keep trying,’ she told herself in the softest voice that could barely break through her bleeding lips, ‘keep trying.’

  She pushed herself to think once more, and it felt as though she was desperately running through the corridor of her mind, opening door after door as she searched for her miracle. Door after door after door. But they were all empty.

  Tears began to trickle down her cheeks, as she forced herself to turn around and check on the view. With wide, shaking eyes, she saw that Remus 12 was still there. Yet at any moment she knew it could be destroyed.

  Though she wanted to believe it would take the Chronos at least an hour to prepare the device required to destroy an entire planet, that didn’t change the tension of the situation.

  She wanted to blink, but she couldn’t; she kept fixating on that brown orb as she remembered how beautiful Vex had been in the past. How lush. From the purple trees to its quaint forests, it would have been a delightful alien world to explore.

  Times had changed, though. She remembered the Vex of the future with its cold clinical buildings and the Vex of the present with nothing but rubble and dust.

  Time kept on changing. And now it was running out.

  ‘Time,’ she suddenly said out loud, that word stuck in her throat. If she didn’t say it, it felt as if it would choke her. ‘Time,’ she repeated once more, her voice echoing off the walls of her empty room.

  This all had to do with time. The entity could travel through it, or at least on Vex where the barrier of space-time was thin enough to manipulate.

  Nida had sifted through everything relating to Remus 12, desperately searching for a way to save it. She hadn’t focused on time, though. Time, after all, couldn’t save Vex; it could only condemn it.

  Yet as Nida stood there and let that word roll off her tongue once more, she remembered in a burst of energy how it felt to open a time gate. To use the entity and its unique power to travel through time as if it were nothing more than a stream one could swim across. She suddenly stood a little straighter, her eyes half closing as the view within became more important than that without.

  Was she somehow close to finding a solution?

  She had to press on. She had to find out.

  Nida walked into her room, slowly turning in a circle as she stared from the door to the carpet, to the bed, then back to Remus 12.

  ‘Time,’ she let the word peel from her lips like a breath of wind through gossamer curtains. This entire adventure had come down to time. She’d travelled from the present to the past to the future to the present once more. And though she thought her journey through time had come to an end, perhaps she was wrong. For perhaps the solution lay within time itself.

  If she truly thought about the Vex’s unique situation, she appreciated it was like a knot in a rope or a snake swallowing its own tail. It had to be untied, the snake’s mouth forced open.

  If she wanted to solve this, she had to get Vex’s timeline to realign to the rest of the galaxy’s, she had to iron that kink out.

  But the only way to unravel a knot or force that to snake open its mouth would be to begin at the beginning. She was currently stuck in the middle of this, in the present, searching her mind desperately to find a solution, but here the solution would not be found.

  The only way to fix Vex’s timeline would be to travel back to the point it broke.

  As these thoughts thundered through Nida’s mind like an electrical storm picking up between her temples, her eyes snapped open so wide she could have cracked her lids.

  Pressing a shaking hand into her teeth and feeling the sweat against her gums, she whispered a startled, ‘God.’

  She still had the power to travel through time; she still had the entity locked within her left hand. She knew instinctively that if she travelled back to Remus 12, she could use it once more to open up a time gate.

  Before this entire adventure had begun, Nida, like everybody else, believed time travel was impossible. Now it was possible, she was trying to wrap her head around what it meant.

  Though the Coalition were pinning their hopes on the possibility of destroying Remus 12 obliterating the Vex for good they really had no idea whether that would work

  In fact, the more Nida questioned, the more she realized it was unlikely to work. If they destroyed the Remus 12 of the present, surely that couldn’t affect the Remus 12 of the past? Though the various engineers and scientists who’d worked on this conundrum hoped that by obliterating the planet they would somehow shatter its delicate timeline, it could be nothing more than an assumption.

  Slowly a conclusion built in Nida. It felt like a flame beginning to light in her toes, gently but s
urely spreading up her legs and into her belly before it ignited and shot towards her head.

  She kept saying she was running out of time. How could she possibly run out of time when she could travel through it?

  She stared again at her left hand.

  All the entity wanted to do was fix its mistake. Left unchecked, it would destroy everything else in order to achieve its task. Left unchecked, that was. What if it had a shepherd? Somebody who could control it and help it towards its goal in a moral, righteous manner?

  That conclusion now spread through her mind like wildfire, burning away every sense of fear and every ounce of tension.

  Nida had been looking at this problem all wrong. She’d pushed herself into believing they were running out of time, and that the only solution was to destroy Remus 12 or fight the Vex. But she was a fool—she could travel through time.

  ‘I can travel through time,’ the words ricocheted off the walls. ‘I can travel through time.’ Her eyes lit up as she realized what that meant.

  The entity had once used its control to force the Vex towards that one point in their future where their timeline aligned with the rest of the galaxy’s. It made them into brutal killing machines in order to steal the technology that might save them.

  But there was another way. There was another goddamn way: Nida could travel back in time. She could go down to Remus 12, and she could do it all over again. She could travel to the point where the entity had burst through into Vex.

  She could investigate. She could try to figure out what happened. Then she could travel forward in time, shepherding the Vex, preventing the entity from manipulating them once more.

  It would be hard work, but she could do it.

  She promised Carson she would push on, that she wouldn’t give up until she found a solution. Well, this was it. From this point on, Nida could devote her life to the Vex, to the entity, to finding that solution.

  The Coalition might be barely an hour away from destroying Remus 12, but if Nida could get down there, open a time gate, and travel back into the past, that wouldn’t matter. She’d have her time again, because she was never without time, not as long as the entity was within her.

  She could jump backwards and forwards through history itself.

  She let her hands drop to her side, her cheeks slack as her lips drew open silently. ‘My God,’ she said. She stared at the view of that planet through space.

  This was her miracle, and she was a fool for not thinking of it before.

  Within her grasp was the ability to keep trying. Sharpe had said that was the greatest quality, and he was right. She was the kind to keep trying over and over again, and if she could travel back and forth in history, using the entity’s power, she would do just that.

  She would try and she would try and she would try, never running out of time, for it was within her grasp until she found her solution.

  Nida shivered back. She fell to her knees, crumpled down as the surprise shook through her, but she didn’t let it last. Because although she now understood time was in her hands, it was also running out.

  She had to get down to Remus 12 before the Chronos destroyed it, or at least attempted to. Then Nida could jump back and devote herself to the entity’s task. Except she wouldn’t turn into it; she would control it and its desire until they both finally fixed its mistake and set Vex on its true path.

  Nida picked herself up and ran. She didn’t run to the Admiral; she knew she couldn’t exactly beg the woman to hold off on the destruction of Vex while Nida borrowed a craft and nipped down to the planet. They would think the entity was in control of her.

  Well, the entity wasn’t.

  Nida knew she could control it as long as she had her TI. She could keep it locked behind that wall. And even if she no longer had the TI, she was learning to control it even in her sleep. She could do this, she told herself as she gritted her teeth together, reached the door and flashed through it.

  First she’d have to escape the Chronos.

  Briefly she thought of telling him—of calling Carson, begging him to help her.

  He’d offered. She couldn’t draw him into this, though.

  She was about to steal a ship, fight her way through security, and fly down to Remus 12. There’d be no turning back from this one. There’d be no forgiving her for what she was about to do. And if Carson came along, he’d ruin his career.

  She also couldn’t condemn him to travelling back and forth through Vex’s timeline; that wasn’t his destiny, it was hers.

  So instead she ran forward, shedding a tear as she did.

  She didn’t want to give him up, but she saw no other way.

  She ran, ran as fast as she could.

  Chapter 21

  Carson Blake

  He should be on the bridge, he wasn’t though. The Admiral wanted him there, but he’d excused himself. There was something he had to do, something that was calling him. A feeling, a niggling feeling that was creeping up his gut like a wave of spiders clambering towards his throat.

  Though he’d started off at a jog, now he was running. Not towards her room, because he’d already confirmed she wasn’t there. No, towards the main docking bay.

  In the hours since he’d left her, he’d had time to absorb his own advice. He told Nida to press on no matter what. To find a solution for the Vex.

  He’d only said that in order to raise her spirits, but now he was slowly realizing what kind of affect his words would have on her. Sharpe was right: she pushed on. That summed her up entirely. She pushed on and on and on, no matter the odds. She never gave up.

  So she wasn’t exactly going to give up now.

  Though he’d left her with a smile and a warm kiss, and a hope she’d be waiting when he returned, he now understood she wouldn’t be.

  A tumble of nerves hit his gut, and it told him she’d be giving it one last try.

  His instinct begged him to hurry.

  He ran now, sprinting as fast as his limbs would carry him.

  Though there were no klaxons going off in the corridor, a sense of doom descended on him. Something wasn’t right. Things were too quiet.

  What was going on?

  Where were all the people?

  Shit, he hadn’t passed another soul for at least two stretches of corridor.

  He had to get to her.

  ‘Nida?’ he said in a harsh breath.

  Suddenly he commanded his armor to turn on. It raced around him with silent, efficient ease.

  In barely a second, it formed over his whole body, his visor blinking into place over his eyes. Now he ran faster and faster, a black blur against the grey, gunmetal corridors of the Chronos. His metallic boots beat against the floor, and it was the only sound as he pounded on.

  He didn’t know how he knew it, but he was sure she’d be in the docking bay. She’d be heading down to the planet. Maybe the entity would be in control. Maybe it wouldn’t be.

  He’d set her the task of saving the Vex. And knowing Nida, she wouldn’t be giving up so easily.

  Despite the fact the Chronos was about to blow that planet out of the sky, she’d go down there. Because Cadet Harper didn’t give up.

  He was now running so fast, he taxed his armor to its fullest speed. It was a surprise steam didn’t start issuing from every pounding step.

  Soon enough he reached the docking bay. He didn’t pass another soul. He had no damn idea what was going on, but by the time he reached that door, he slammed a hand on the panel that would open it.

  It hissed open and he ran in.

  The docking bay of the Chronos was enormous, of course it was. This ship was huge, and required not only massive resources to run but needed to hold numerous smaller vessels for sorties and reconnaissance. The docking bay was usually a hub of activity, with engineers and officers working like busy bees in every corner and around every ship.

  Well, right now it was deserted, absolutely deserted.

  Every ship lay there locked agai
nst the black and silver hull as the enormous flickering blue shields that always protected the docking bay door cast their eerie glow over the room.

  Beyond the glow and the sleek ships, there was nothing. Nobody.

  This cavernous space was empty.

  Before he could send off a quick and desperate warning to the bridge, he saw her. Nida.

  He expected to see blue light cascading off her like water from a thunderous waterfall.

  He didn’t.

  She looked calm, collected, and totally fine.

  But she was completely alone.

  She was working near a small, fast reconnaissance ship, and it was clear she was getting ready to run.

  He slammed to a halt, his feet pounding so hard into the hull they sent a resounding clang echoing through this huge room.

  She froze.

  She lifted her head up and she stared at him.

  What was she doing? Christ, what was she doing?

  Suddenly his world bottomed out from his gut, feeling like it was tied to a superfast transport and shot halfway across the galaxy.

  ‘Nida?’ he croaked her name in a husky voice. ‘Nida?’

  At first she twitched her left hand up, opening her fingers with a quick flick. But suddenly she stopped, and he watched her eyes widen with recognition. ‘Carson?’

  He stared at her, his body locked in frozen in surprise. ‘What are you doing?’ he managed.

  Her own surprise now thawed to be replaced by a calm determination. She took a step back, closed her eyes, breathed, and nodded. ‘I’m going to fix it, she said in a breath that didn’t travel and yet one he could pick up easily with the acoustics of his armor.

  ‘What do you mean, Nida? What have you done? Where are the crew? What have you done?’

  ‘Carson, they’re fine. I haven’t done anything to them. I just need to get down to Remus 12.

  She opened her eyes and looked at him. Despite the situation, she smiled lovingly.

  ‘What do you mean? What’s going on? What are you doing? What do you mean get down to Remus 12?’ though Carson’s gut had told him to get here, and his instinct had somehow warned him of this exact situation, he couldn’t believe it.