The process continued until a seventh ring joined the inner six, at least fourteen feet in diameter. All seven rings glowed with those ancient silver glyphs. The rotation of the rings picked up speed until they were moving too quickly for the naked eye to track. They seemed to disappear, giving way to a seven-foot-tall quicksilver orb standing in the dead center of the platform.
“That is . . .,” Raiden started but trailed off with a slow shake of his head.
“Wow,” my mom said, her voice hushed.
“Yeah,” Raiden agreed. “It’s very wow.”
I exchanged a look with Hades over my shoulder, then glanced at Raiden and my mom sidelong, finally landing on Fiona, who gawked at the opening to a bridge that spanned worlds. A sly grin spread across my lips. “Now, are you impressed?”
Fiona guffawed, not tearing her eyes from the huge quicksilver orb. “Uh, yeah.”
My mom rubbed her hands together, her eyes filled with the hunger of a seasoned explorer catching her first glimpse of an as yet unexplored frontier.
“The bridge is now fully formed,” Hades informed us. A moment later, he sent a baseball-sized drone across the bridge and pulled up the screen on the holoband wrapped around his forearm as he assessed the readings being fed back to him. With a nod, he collapsed the holographic screen and lowered his arm. “It is safe on the other side,” he said. “We may depart when ready.”
Taking a deep breath, I turned my back to the gephyra and propped my doru against the backside of the control panel. “No time like the present,” I said as I reached for my pack. I settled the loaded bag on my shoulders, then reclaimed my weapon.
As the others donned their packs and readied for the journey, I deactivated my regulator, closing my eyes for a moment as I focused on blocking out the thoughts and emotions of everyone around me. We were heading into the relative unknown, and I needed to be on high alert. Their minds would only serve to distract me.
Once my mental blocks were in place and my mind was relatively clear, I opened my eyes, pleased to find the others with their packs snug on their backs and ready to go.
“Do you have any final questions?” Hades asked Emi as he made a small adjustment to his right shoulder strap.
Emi shook her head. “I don't think so.”
Hades nodded once to her, then turned to me and raised his eyebrows. “Are we ready?”
I inhaled deeply, my blood humming with excitement at the coming adventure and my heart filled with hope that we still might find a way to save Earth.
Raiden moved closer to Hades until they were standing side by side. “Good to go?”
I looked at the two men who occupied different parts of my heart, guilt twisting in my gut. I didn’t want to choose between them. I wanted them both. The Peri part of me saw no problem with such an arrangement, but the Cora part of me believed such a thing would be impossible.
Regardless of what might happen between the three of us in the future, I refused to play games with their hearts, or with mine. I would not make this situation any more difficult than it already was. Once I had a solid grasp on who I was, now, and who I wanted to be in the future, I vowed I would revisit this tangled situation.
Or, we might all die on some distant planet, in which case, it wouldn't matter.
Spirits oddly lifted by that thought, I turned my back to the men I loved and marched toward the gephyra. Even with their thoughts and emotions blocked from my mind, I sensed the others following behind me—first Raiden and Hades, then my mom and Fiona.
I paused at the base of the gephyra, giving us all a moment to grow accustomed to the uncomfortable static sensation emitted by the open bridge. I gripped my doru with both hands, charging the focus crystal until it blazed electric blue, ascended the steps, and plunged into the unknown.
16
Doru at the ready, I stepped out of the enormous quicksilver orb that marked the far side of the gephyra bridge and jogged down the trio of steps to the base of the platform, where I stopped to scan my surroundings. I shrugged off the disorientation and physical discomfort that came hand-in-hand with gephyra travel as I looked around. And then I frowned. There was no sense of Meg or our bond in my mind.
The gephyra was the only thing I could see that appeared to be undamaged amidst a sea of ruins in a barren landscape. This was nothing like the relatively intact Olympian settlements back on Earth. I glanced at the gephyra, comparing it to the wasted ruins surrounding me.
Not much could even put a scratch in pure orichalcum, so it wasn’t surprising that the gephyra looked to be in good shape, but most Olympian structures were built using various orichalcum alloys that strengthened them if not making them quite so indestructible. Apparently, the orichalcum alloy used during the construction of this settlement hadn’t been strong enough to withstand whatever had happened here.
Hades emerged from the gephyra and trotted down the stairs to join me, his eyes scanning the wasteland. A crease formed between his brows, the only outward sign that he was troubled by finding the colony in such a state.
Raiden came next, stumbling down the steps and dropping to one knee as soon as he reached the dusty ground. He bowed his head, taking deep, gasping breaths. Fiona followed, running down the steps and bending over to hurl up the contents of her stomach. My mom came through last and crouched with her hands on her knees, breathing hard as she looked around.
I moved closer to Fiona and rubbed her back as her stomach convulsed for a third time. “You guys all right?” I asked, looking from my mom to Raiden.
“Traveling through the gephyra can take some getting used to,” Hades said, mild amusement curving his lips, though it didn’t chase the shadows from his eyes.
“A little warning would have been nice,” Raiden said, his voice rough, but his breathing had slowed. He rose to his feet and placed his hands on his hips as he looked around.
“Sorry,” I said, flashing him an apologetic smile. With everything going on, the idea of warning them hadn’t even crossed my mind.
Raiden’s eyes narrowed as he continued his slow scan of the ruins surrounding us. “What the hell happened here? It looks like someone dropped a nuke on this place.”
My mom caught my eye, then glanced down at herself. “Do these fancy suits protect us from radiation?”
“For the most part, yes,” I told her. If her hoplon suit had been flush with psychic energy, she wouldn’t have had much to worry about. I could activate the energy helmet function, which would lock me in a self-contained, safe environment. But for my mom and Fiona—not to mention the guys in their Gargarian gear—that wasn’t an option. “But your head is exposed,” I added, “and the suit won’t protect you from breathing in particles in the air, so . . .” I looked to Hades, who was studying the small holographic screen projected up from his holoband, double-checking the readings from the drone hovering nearby. “Do we need masks?” I asked.
Hades shook his head. “The levels of harmful radiation are well within the realm of normal.” He lowered his arm, his focus hitching on me before sliding over to my mom. “We’re safe,” he assured her. “Whatever happened here, happened a long time ago.”
“Did everyone make it through safely?” Emi asked, the comms patch conducting her voice through the bones of my skull into my ear.
“Yep,” my mom said. “We’re all present and accounted for.” She glanced at Fiona, who was still doubled over, though the heaving seemed to have stopped. Now, she repeatedly spat saliva onto the barren ground, no doubt attempting to clear her mouth of the taste of bile. “You didn’t happen to pack any Dramamine into our first aid kits, did you, Em?” my mom asked.
“No,” Emi said, “but I have some here. Do you want me to send it through?”
Fiona waved a hand at my mom and shook her head. “No,” she said, her voice raspy. “It'll only make me sleepy.” She straightened, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “I'll be fine. I just need a minute.” When I patted her back, she flashed me a queasy
smile. “Thanks.”
I returned her smile. “You good?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.
Fiona nodded. She still looked a little green around the gills, but I could sense that the nausea was waning.
I turned away from her, placing my hands on my hips as I surveyed the lackluster landscape. “I’m a little surprised the gephyra here works,” I said, glancing at Hades. A gephyra was powered by chaos energy, either indirectly from the chaos stone powering a city or ship or directly through less potent chaos fragments stored in the guts of the gephyra itself. But I wouldn’t have expected either to be present in a settlement that had been so devastated.
Hades’ eyes met mine, just for a moment. “The chaos fragments are still in place.” He must have run a scan for traces of chaos energy.
“Huh,” I said, chewing on the inside of my cheek. “Alright, well, let's split up and spread out,” I told the others. “See if any parts of this place are in better shape.” I looked at my mom. “Mom, you go with Hades.” I glanced over my shoulder. “Fio, stick close to Raiden . . . just in case. Anything made of orichalcum should have survived—like the gephyra. If you find anything that appears to be in good shape, let Hades know.”
My attention returned to the ruins. A few taller structures rose above the rest, the remains of once soaring towers. “I'll get to higher ground to see if the destruction is localized to this area. Could be we’ll find a better location to search.”
Hades locked eyes with Raiden. “Don’t venture too far from the gephyra. I don't expect we'll be here long.”
Frowning, I headed into the ruins, picking my way over rubble and rusted shards of metal. What a depressing way to start our quest. Hades’ search for energy signatures would have tapped into the satellite system our people set up around every planet we colonized. The fact that he hadn’t found anything didn’t bode well for our search for a functioning ark ship.
I sensed the others branching out in pairs, my mom with Hades, and Fiona with Raiden.
“What do you think happened here?” Fiona asked over the comms patch. “Was it the Tsakali?”
I picked my way through the ruins, heading for the tallest remains of a tower within my line of sight, still some sixty yards out. It reached up thirty or forty feet toward the murky sky, ravaged edges like rusted claws.
“Might have been,” came Hades’ response. “We, too, have weapons capable of such destruction. Every colony is equipped with the means to self-destruct. There's no way to determine if this was self-inflicted.”
“You think they might’ve done this to themselves?” Fiona asked. “But why would they do that?”
The conversation over the comms went momentarily silent. When Hades finally responded, his voice was somber, and his words sent shivers trickling down my spine. “For the greater good,” he said.
We all knew what he meant. If the Tsakali had found this colony, then it would have been better for Olympian-kind—for the whole universe—if this place and all the knowledge it contained was destroyed rather than let the Tsakali get their hands on the secret of how to create chaos stones.
When I finally reached the crumbling tower, I pressed my hand to one unsteady post, reinforcing it with psychic energy. My hoplon suit might protect me from being crushed or impaled should the decrepit remains of the building collapse as I was climbing, but it would take the others time to dig me out, and we were racing against the clock. Hades had predicted the Tsakali ships would arrive in two months, and we needed to find an ark ship, load the Olympian consciousness orbs and preserved embryos onto the ship, self-destruct all Olympian sites on the planet, somehow convince the humans to destroy all knowledge of how to create a chaos stone, load up as many humans as possible, and get the hell out of there while we still had time to outrun the Tsakali. So, yeah, we didn’t have any time to spare.
Once I was certain the structure would hold, I sheathed my doru on my back and started to climb. The view from the top was no less disappointing than from the ground. The destruction spread out as far as I could see.
“It's a wasteland, guys,” I shared remotely. “I think we should call it and move on to another colony. We’re just wasting time here.”
I quickly climbed down and hurried back to the gephyra. I was the last to arrive, having ventured out the farthest, but I easily settled into the sober mood.
Bunched together near the gephyra platform, we waited while Hades remotely reprogramed the gephyra back on Earth with the coordinates of our next destination. Once he was finished, he disconnected the bridge, waited for the rings to settle back into the platform, then opened the manual control panel in the base of the gephyra platform and input the new coordinates.
The rings started to spin, and as soon as the quicksilver orb appeared, water gushed out through the bridge opening.
“Shit!” I shouted, backing up a few steps to keep from having my feet washed out from under me by the current. The others scrambled farther away.
Hades clung to the base of the platform, his head bowed to avoid drowning under the deluge.
I raised my hands and created an electric-blue energy barrier snug around the bridge opening, containing the outpouring of water. “Shut it down!” Clearly, the gephyra on the far side of the bridge was submerged under water. For all intents and purposes, that colony truly was lost.
Hades coughed and sputtered, catching his breath. Moments later, the quicksilver orb vanished, and the rings slowed, once again settling into the platform. I released the energy barrier, and water splashed down around the gephyra, soaking Hades one more time.
Hades scrubbed his hands over his face, wiping away the remaining water, then reached into the control panel. He entered the next set of coordinates. The rings started to spin, and I held my breath as the quicksilver orb formed.
When nothing unexpected happened, I let out the held breath and drew my doru. Hades sent the scouting drone across the bridge first, and I watched him stare at the screen of his holoband, waiting for his nod telling me that the environment on the new planet was safe.
Hades’ eyes scanned the readings, then shifted to me, and he nodded.
I charged the doru’s focus crystal with psychic energy, gripped the staff in both hands, and marched across the bridge to another planet.
17
I emerged from the bridge and was smacked in the face with a wall of dry heat and blinding sunlight as sand ground beneath my boots. The gephyra was on a raised dais, a dozen or so weathered granite steps rising from the top of a tower, and the arid desert had swallowed much of the settlement surrounding the tower.
I jogged down the steps, stopping when I reached the thick layer of bone-dry sand gathered on the walkway surrounding the platform and surveyed the half-buried settlement spreading out around the tower. It was clear that this city had been designed using the standard settlement layout, like the Alpha site with land rings separating by canals, and it looked to be in decent shape, especially compared to the first colony we had visited. The exposed glass and metal of the towers should have gleamed in the sunlight, but the sand had worn down their exteriors over however many thousands of years this colony had been abandoned.
“Looks alright,” I told the others through the comms patch. “Come on through.”
They emerged from the gephyra in the same order as before, Hades first, followed by Raiden, then Fiona, and then my mom. The trip didn’t seem quite so upsetting to the novice travelers this time, though Fiona did have to sit down on one of the higher steps and put her head between her knees.
Hades immediately disconnected the bridge, then reconnected with Earth.
After we had checked in with Emi, my mom trudged through the sand toward the place where Hades and I stood together at the railing surrounding the top of the tower, studying the much more promising remains of what had once been a sprawling and glorious Olympian city. “Why are these colonies all above ground when the settlements on Earth were hidden?” she asked.
“An
astute observation,” Hades said as he squinted, staring off in the distance, and nodded slowly. “When we left Olympus,” he explained, “only the Tartarus and one other ship, the Elysium, were tasked with settling on an inhabited planet with the purpose of hybridizing the native olympianoid life-forms with our species. The others set out to settle uninhabited planets with the hopes that they could remain hidden from the Tsakali until they found a way to dispel the nano-virus plaguing our people. The hope was that the cure would be discovered before cloning sickness rendered our DNA nonviable.”
I turned to my mom, continuing the explanation. “Some of the colonies fell before we lost contact, but after a virus virtually wiped out the Beta site on Earth, Poseidon grew too paranoid to allow any off-world contact and ordered the colonies off-limits. We still checked in with them every once in a while—long-range communications only—but one by one they stopped responding until none responded any longer and all were considered lost.”
Raiden joined us. “No pressure or anything . . .”
I laughed under my breath and muttered, “No kidding.” There was a good chance that Hades and I weren’t only the last living Olympians on Earth, but the last living Olympians at all. That kind of pressure would crush us if we let it.
I pointed to a tower jutting out of the sand nearby. Assuming this settlement followed the standard layout to a T, that particular building would have belonged to Genetec and hosted all the city’s genetic research and cloning. “Hades, take Raiden and check out Genetec. See if there’s anything useful there.” If the settlers here had made any progress in counteracting the nano-virus, that invaluable data would be stored there.
I glanced at my mom. “Mom, you and Fio come with me.”
Raiden looked uncomfortable with being paired up with Hades, but Hades didn’t seem the least bit bothered by it.
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