Shit! She sent the ‘eject’ command to the simulator and leapt out of the chair, then promptly stumbled forward and fell to her hands and knees. The transition from sim world to real world wasn’t designed to be navigated in half a second.
“Are you okay?” Marlee’s face appeared upside-down in front of hers, so close that the young woman’s raven-and-sapphire curls tickled at Morgan’s nose.
In other circumstances, she might have smiled. Instead, she growled and pushed herself to her feet. “I’m fine.” As soon as she was solidly upright, she spun up power in the tiny Caeles Prism latched to her belt and sent the mental command to open a wormhole—and nothing happened.
“Devon, why can’t I open a wormhole? I’ve got to get to Chalmun Station now!” She assumed without asking that he already knew why.
“Free wormholes aren’t allowed on HQ—not unless you have proper security clearance, which only about four people enjoy. Luckily, I’m one of them. Sending you the unlock code. Please don’t share it with anyone and get me fired.”
Marlee frowned at both of them. “What’s happening—wait, let me guess. Rasu?”
Morgan’s head jerked in a semblance of a nod as the fifty-two microseconds it took for the code from Devon to arrive stretched to the horizon. Her heart raced thinking of Purgatory, Solstan, her former employees…well, mostly Solstan.
As soon as the code arrived, she flashed it then opened the path to Purgatory.
Behind her, Devon sputtered. “Wait a minute. Morgan, you can’t be evacuating Chalmun Station thugs into the middle of Special Projects!”
“Then you had best get some security officers in here to guard your new guests once they arrive.” She took the first step to rush through, but Marlee grabbed her arm with surprising strength.
“I’m going with you.”
“No. I’m planning to throw a bunch of injured degenerates through this wormhole into the lab, and you need to take care of them.”
“Devon can do that!”
She forced herself to breathe in and give Marlee a weak smile. “I’m not trying to protect you or anything. Devon is in no way whatsoever qualified to handle terrified and wounded refugees. You are.”
Marlee blinked and let go of her arm. “Send them to me.”
Morgan vaulted through the wormhole and into Purgatory.
CHALMUN STATION ASTERIOD
The place looked as if the second-worst barfight it had ever seen had broken out (the worst barfight having occurred eighteen months earlier, resulting in the destruction of thirty percent of the fixtures and over 17K credits in damage). Tables and chairs were overturned, most of the light orbs lay smashed on the floor, and dust-covered patrons ran around in ineffectual circles. And everywhere, there permeated a low, rumbling noise from deep in the joints of the station.
She scanned the chaos until she spotted Solstan over to the right, kneeling in front of a Naraida woman who was curled up on the floor under a table. She ran up and crouched beside him. “Hey, come on. Let’s get out of here.”
Relief flooded his features when he saw her. “This woman is wounded.”
“We’ll carry her to safety.” Morgan scooted around to the other side of the trembling form and slid her arms under the woman’s knees and shoulders, then lifted. The woman hardly weighed anything at all. Were Naraida bones hollow or something?
Solstan stood as well and insisted on taking the woman from her. She acquiesced, but instantly started urging him toward her still-open wormhole. Two Dankaths ran through ahead of them, making them officially Marlee and Devon’s problem now.
Solstan glanced back at her as they reached the opening. “I will return once I have gotten her to safety.”
“No, you will not. You will keep your iridescent ass on Concord HQ. I’ll see to all these scoundrels.” Then hijack a ship and go shoot up those Rasu monsters outside. Probably not, but it felt good to think it.
“But you are not my employer any longer. You cannot dictate my actions.”
She pointed at the wormhole. “Through. Now.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She watched closely until he traversed the barrier, then shouted through it. “Marlee, don’t let Solstan come back over here!”
Most urgent priority handled, she spun and surveyed the situation anew—a thunderous roar shook the whole room, and off to the left, the VIP balcony teetered as one of its legs detached from the securing bedrock.
“Everyone, get to the center of the room! Look out above!” It was so loud in here that she wasn’t certain anyone more than a couple of meters away heard her. She settled for waving her arms around to get people’s attention while making exaggerated motions toward the evacuation route. A few people got the message—by and large, the patrons of Purgatory were not the brightest minds in Concord space—and started hurrying to safety.
The balcony came tumbling down, taking out two Anadens who’d persisted in loitering underneath it. Whatever, they’d wake up in a lab later. An ear-splitting series of clangs echoed through the bar as the bottles of spirits lining the back wall shattered on the floor, and her heart broke a little. Fuck those Rasu bastards.
Nothing left to do now but be a hero. She hurried up to the first idiot in her path. “Can you walk?”
The Khokteh…female?…nodded, bloody slobber dripping from her long jaws.
“Great. Through the wormhole, right there.” She didn’t stop to watch and confirm whether the Khokteh actually made it through before moving on to the next idiot and repeating the process.
The walls shook with renewed fervor; the strikes were coming faster now. Knowing what she did about the structural integrity of this rock, they had minutes at most before the ceiling collapsed and buried alive everyone who remained in her former enterprise.
Hurried movement flared in the corner of her vision, and her brain registered that someone she maybe recognized had stormed into the bar. She turned toward the movement, studying the Anaden with a mane of golden locks and far too much fashion sense for Chalmun Station…oh. Got it.
“Anarch! Over here!”
The Anaden spun around in response to her shout, his brow furrowing for a beat before he seemed to recognize her as well. “Fighter pilot!” He jogged over. “I got everyone out of Beggars’ Den and came searching for more people to shove through wormholes, but it looks like you’re doing a good job of that yourself.”
“I’m trying, but I can’t wander too far away from this one, or it will collapse. Help me corral these people through it?”
He glanced around, nodding. “Okay. You just keep waving your arms above your head so people can see you, and I’ll get to herding them your way—”
A deep, screeching sound reverberated from somewhere beneath their feet, and they both stared at each other.
“I’ll hurry.” He ran off toward a group of Barisans making a mess of trying to get out from under one of the larger overturned tables.
Morgan, you are not making my life easy here! We’re currently violating at least two dozen Concord security regulations simply by letting these thugs exist in Special Projects!
Devon, since when do you give a shit about security regulations?
Since I was in charge!
It was a fair response.
Blame it all on me. Tell Miriam Solovy to come arrest me when this is over. I don’t care.
No further protestations followed, and for the next minute she guided four, five…eight people to safety.
A burgeoning tremor gave her enough warning to crouch and throw her hands over her head as a seven-meter-wide chunk of ceiling tumbled to the floor centimeters away from where she stood. The wormhole wavered, and she had to focus to keep it open. “Anarch, I think it’s time we go!”
She heard no response, so once the wormhole had stabilized she scanned the wreckage that had once been her prized establishment. Where the hell was he?
Two seconds later, he came stumbling through the curtain of dust consuming the rear
of the bar, a bleeding Naraida on each arm. “What was that again, fighter pilot?”
“Our time’s up. We need to go.”
“No. Hundreds of people are running around in the tunnels.”
She cast her perception into sidespace and raced along what used to be the labyrinth of passageways outside Purgatory, then snapped back into her body. “I’m sorry, but most of the tunnels have collapsed. Only a couple are still standing nearby.”
He dragged the injured Naraida to the wormhole, and Marlee’s and someone else’s arms reached out through the tear in space to take them from him. The next second he was scrambling past debris, headed for the door. “Are you coming?”
She tried to shout above the clamor, but her voice was hoarse from all the dust she’d inhaled. “I told you, I have to keep the wormhole open.”
The anarch paused near the door and pointed off to the left. “Hey, problem solved!”
Her gaze went to where he was pointing. On the other side of what was left of Purgatory, two new wormholes were forming. The Connexus had finally gotten their act together and showed up.
“All right.” She killed the power to hers and picked her way to the door, which was stuck half open. They shimmied through the opening into…damn, by definition it must be the passageway, but the dusty smoke was so thick that she couldn’t see twenty centimeters in front of her and could breathe even less.
Switching visual filters to infrared and thermal.
Thanks. That helps, a little.
A single form wavered hazy red in front of her. “What are we doing here, anarch?”
“We’re walking, or crawling, until we find people. Can you open a wormhole in these cramped quarters?”
“I think so.” She slipped into sidespace again, then grabbed his hand and tromped ahead. “To the left.”
They stumbled and tripped over debris to the first intersection and down the left tunnel. A few meters ahead, two Novoloume sat huddled on the floor, arms wrapped around one another. As they approached, one of the Novoloume peered up. “Help us! Her leg is broken.”
“Get them up.” Morgan spun up the power in her Caeles Prism and opened a wormhole, only to leap back as the edges sliced into the rocky walls to create yet more debris. She hurriedly shrunk the boundary until it fit into the confines of the tunnel, and she and the anarch helped the two Novoloume through the opening. The wounded one basically fell into Marlee’s arms, but the woman kept them both on their feet.
A series of insistent thuds echoed down the tunnel, and Morgan turned just in time to jump out of the way as a Dankath barreled straight past them and through to HQ.
The anarch snorted. “You’re welcome!”
The walls, floor and ceiling shuddered violently, raining stinging pellets of dirt down upon them, and Morgan hesitated about venturing any farther. But renewed shouts reverberated from down the tunnel, and she sighed. “Let’s check it out.”
She put a hand on the anarch’s shoulder so they didn’t get separated, and they staggered their way forward and around the corner—straight into a solid wall of rock.
“Arae!”
The selfish part of her was relieved. She was filthy, tired and bleeding from multiple scrapes. This kind of hands-on rescue operation had always been Brook’s purview, anyway. “We’ve done all we can—”
35
* * *
CONCORD HQ
Special Projects
Jagged shards of rock tumbled into the lab for an instant before the wormhole shut down, slicing a meter-wide boulder in half as it vanished.
Marlee dropped a bleeding Novoloume woman into a chair and spun to Devon. “Morgan and Eren didn’t come through. Where are they?”
Devon was talking in animated gestures to one of the arriving Vigil security officers and didn’t answer her.
“Devon!”
He dragged a hand down his face. “I don’t know. In one of the tunnels, it looked like. But this…” he indicated the rocks now decorating the lab floor “…the tunnel must have collapsed.”
“Well, find out.” She sent a quick pulse.
Morgan, are you there?
No response. Morgan could be too busy to answer, or she could be…buried. Crap, she didn’t have Eren’s private comm address to pulse him. Oh, she so wished she was able to access the Connexus, or even just the Noesis. Military Prevos were running evacuation wormholes throughout Chalmun; they would know what had happened, then she would know.
She tried to focus on triage for the refugees while she waited for someone to provide answers, but she did a poor job of it.
Abruptly Devon moved closer to her, though he seemed more interested in body-blocking a sealed lab enclosure behind her than in helping the injured. “That’s it. The roof’s collapsed in Purgatory and the surrounding tunnels.”
Her heart leapt into her throat. “What. About. Morgan?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think—” One of the Vigil officers interrupted him with some useless question, and despair seized her chest and squeezed tight. She felt so helpless….
“Oh my god. What the ebanatyi pidaraz is happening in here?”
“Alex!”
Like an angel sent from heaven to answer her desperate prayers, Alex sprinted from the doorway over to Marlee.
She immediately grabbed her aunt by the shoulders. “Morgan and Eren are trapped in the tunnels near Purgatory. Can you find them and get them out?”
Alex’s countenance darkened, but she wasted no time in closing her eyes.
CHALMUN STATION ASTEROID
Brain-cracking pain radiating from the rear of his skull welcomed Eren to conscious awareness, and he immediately tried to crawl back into the fog to escape it.
No such luck.
Resigned to being awake and miserable, he forced his eyes open, only to find the world had turned a sickly tangerine color. No, wait, that was the floor. He lifted his head a few centimeters to peer around. It seemed much darker in the space than it had been…whenever he’d been knocked out. But he was able to spot a trail of crimson weaving through the dirt floor to stop, or more likely start, at a mess of dust-covered chestnut hair. He’d been with someone before…the Human fighter pilot.
He struggled to get upright, then gently touched her shoulder. “Hey. Wake up.”
She didn’t so much as moan, though she did appear to be breathing, so he took a second to inspect their surroundings with greater care. As best as he could tell, the section of the tunnel they’d come from had collapsed behind them, leaving them pinned in a barely two-meter space between two solid walls of debris.
How were they going to get out of this one? With the fighter pilot down—
A loud hissing noise filled the air, followed by billowing smoke pouring out through crevices above, and he sank down against the wall behind him. That would be the atmospherics system croaking out.
He did the rough math in his head. With no ventilation, he figured they had around five minutes until the air ran out in the tiny space. If he breathed shallowly, he could maybe extend their time to seven or eight minutes. But why bother? Why not just surrender to the inevitable and, as he’d warned Corradeo, wake up in the HQ regenesis lab in a day or two?
Well, for one, he deeply didn’t want to hop on the regenesis train. He’d been in this body for less than two months, and if he had to integrate into another one so soon, he was going to be achy and creaky and generally a wreck. He spent every waking moment balancing on the ragged edge of sanity as it was, and he didn’t relish upping the difficulty level.
Two, he didn’t know what the fighter pilot’s situation was vis-à-vis whatever the Humans were doing with regenesis these days. He thought they were doing something or other with it, but he couldn’t say for certain. In his defense, he’d been otherwise occupied for a while now. So there was a decent chance that she’d die here, permanently; if so, it would be a damn shame. She’d played at projecting a recalcitrant, tough and grumpy attitude, but she’d save
d a lot of people here today.
So he inhaled as minimally as he could manage. The people at wherever her wormhole had led—at a glance it had resembled somewhere on HQ—would know there had been a cave-in. They would try to effect a rescue, but he didn’t care for their chances.
Eren, listen to me.
He jumped, banging his head on the wall and sending new shoots of pain ricocheting around his skull.
Alex? Your dulcet voice is most timely. I’ve got a situation—
I know. Can you move Morgan back toward you? As much as possible. Pull her up against your chest if you can. I need enough space to open a wormhole, and I don’t want to sever her leg.
Morgan? Is that her name?
Yes….
Fantastic. Lovely name.
He leaned forward and finagled his hands under the woman’s shoulders, then tugged. Oh, thank Athena, her feet weren’t pinned under the rubble, and her body slid bumpily toward him. He tugged again, then lifted her up, and her head lolled onto his chest. A weak moan emerged from her lips, followed by some mumbled words. “…hands off me….”
“Uh-huh. You’re going to be fine, fighter pilot.”
A shimmer lit the suspended dust particles as marvelously as dawn penetrating a forest canopy. The air wrent apart, gradually revealing a chaotic scene beyond their prison.
Fresh oxygen rushed through the opening, and he gulped it in like the dying man he was.
A second later, Alex appeared, her niece beside her. They were both on their hands and knees, as the wormhole could only extend up to half of standing height.
“Gods, you are a sight, my angels.”
Alex rolled her eyes. “You obviously got whacked on the head. We’re going to grab Morgan’s legs. Let’s try to ease her through—”
A loud rumble shook the tunnel, coating him in a fresh layer of dirt to top off all the other layers of dirt.
“Never mind, no time for easing. Let’s go.”
He kept the woman’s head off the ground as Alex and Marlee pulled her through the opening and to safety. Marlee gathered the woman up into her lap and scooted backward, out of the way, as Alex extended a hand to him.
All Our Tomorrows Page 20
