Salvage

by R J Theodore

  Talis left Scrimshaw to continue observing however the tablet was able and paced back to the railing. Though the intensity of Nexus hurt her eyes, Talis let the details of its design and its movements fill her vision. Some of the layers rounded back on their paths halfway through, spun sinistral, slowed, rotated, and went back in the original direction. When her eyes began to sting, she realized she had not blinked in several minutes.

  She looked away and moved her neck side to side. The vertebrae clicked, and some tension at the base of her head subsided. But the frustration, the fear, the worry remained. They were so close. If the heart of Peridot held the answers to Amos and Kirna’s investigation, they were just a few tests away from being able to make a difference. Before the world outside fell to pieces in a way that Nexus’s power couldn’t fix.

  The rotation of the sphere was continuous though there seemed to be no pattern. No repetition in the sigils and bands that slid over the surface. No indication it was anything other than an enormous gyroscopic display piece.

  Until a twisting, spiral motion revealed a diamond-shaped opening in the surface. The layers within lined up, forming a stepped tunnel, and stayed that way. Nexus’s movements came to a complete stop, as though it held its breath to learn if they dared to enter.

  Was someone aware of the little ship lurking outside?

  Talis had a healthy imagination for catastrophe, and it helpfully provided images of their ship entering the tunnel and quickly being crushed within as the opening shut and the sphere resumed its movements.

  She made long strides to mount the highest point of the aft deck, scope already out, though she stopped at the shipwide comm receiver. “Professor. Kirna. Get back up on deck. Now.”

  Then she turned back to examine the maw of this ever-so-convenient tunnel. It was more than layers. There was a thick, green fog bank within, gently rolling like smoke without a wind to lead it away.

  Amos stepped up beside her. “Perhaps this would be a better source from which to retrieve the sample.”

  Talis muttered the only reasonable response, under her breath to keep from insulting the alchemist.

  “Oh, but he may be right, Captain.” Kirna had another jar rigged up to the boat hook; this one had some sort of filter over its mouth. “Different consistency, more vaporous. It might do the trick!”

  Behind her, Tisker looked for confirmation. “Captain? You want to go inside?”

  “No, I do not want to go inside. But we came all this way for a sample, and it appears to be hanging there in front of us.”

  She stood at the railing, staring into the open throat, willing it to remain stable. It gave her no indication of closing, but she struggled to give the command to take Fortune’s Storm inside. Looking up, the hood of her jacket blocked her view, and she yanked it back. She called to the dark figure perched on the ratlines. “Anything you wanna tell us about this?”

  Onaya, former resident of Nexus, let out a caw as though clearing her throat. “It’s an invitation.”

  Helpful as ever. That it was an invitation was clear. But who sent it? Was it safe?

  Talis could almost hear the seconds dripping out of the air, as loud as Kirna’s exclamation of awe. She braced herself for Nexus to close again as the ocean had. Nothing. The opening held.

  Well, then. “All right. Take us in.” Her words tried to close on the command as though her body objected to the very idea of it.

  The hum of the engines increased as Tisker pushed the lever. Fortune’s Storm moved forward.

  Everything, already tinted green, was washed in the color as they passed through the aperture. Her crew, their ship, all a monochrome gradient of the oversaturated hue. If Talis never saw the color green in her life again, it would be too soon. The light intensified, shadows fled, flattening the depth out of her world. She felt nauseated; her stomach soured.

  The tunnel had no branches, just forward and backward. The cloud hung before them, another two ship lengths ahead.

  “Professor, be ready. I don’t want to spend any more time in here than we have to. Get the sample soon as we reach the fog bank.”

  A grinding sound drowned out the professor’s reply.

  As their stern cleared the opening, the sphere began to move again. The layers forming their passageway rotated, twisted, and slid past each other. Whoever had made the invitation was not about to let them leave without saying hello.

  Sophie cried out a warning in the same moment Talis saw it. Heard it. Felt it. Electricity danced across her skin, and she shuddered from somewhere in her core. Something inside her crawled, wanting out. She took a steadying breath, but the feeling only intensified.

  Nexus was made of souls, Scrimshaw said. Did her own soul want to abandon her body and join the larger mass?

  She felt certain if they stayed any longer than they had to, she’d find out.

  The only consolation to being stuck in Nexus was that Amos and Kirna were able to collect several samples of the Nexus gas, and the thinner material didn’t burst any of the crystals as long as they pulled the hook out again before they got too dark. Tisker moved as slowly as the engines would let him, cutting back on the throttle again and again to drift rather than propel. With the green everywhere and shadows almost nonexistent, the fog bank was especially dangerous. If the tunnel walls around them were as hard as Nexus’s exterior, the ship would smash apart like that first jar.

  According to the chronometer, they flew through the winding maze of Nexus for an hour. The tunnels collapsed behind them, layers closing off their retreat. Only the engines moved the air more than their own short, anxious breaths. The ship drooped on its course, the lift balloon less efficient in the warm air.

  Ahead of them, a gently sloping grade guided them upward. And finally, something other than green broke the monotony. Swirling blue and pulsating red. Water and flame.

  The ship emerged into a rounded cavity. From the curve of the walls it felt like it must be the center of Nexus, but they’d been turned around so many times on their way in, there was little way to know for sure.

  The water and fire danced together in the center of the room, thin tendrils tangling and braiding to form a cage. Steam rose, hissing, wherever the two elements got close enough to kiss. A dark figure sat within, dotted with points of blue light.

  “Meran.” Talis was surprised how her voice carried. It bounced back at her as though she’d shouted it into the shipwide comm.

  Through the elemental bars surrounding her, Meran watched them with glowing eyes. Two points of violent blue to match the pattern of markings on her skin, the unnatural light belying her alien origin.

  She stood, though her feet didn’t touch the bottom of the cage. Instead, she unfolded from a cross-legged position but remained hovering in mid-air. Her toes pointed, unfettered by gravity.

  At a flash of her enigmatic smile, Talis felt a chill down her spine, remembering the dangerous potential of that expression.

  “Talis.” Meran’s voice carried across the open air between them, reverberating against every solid surface, including the bones beneath Talis’s skin. “Good of you to accept my invitation.”

  Her voice, though melodic, was not warm. As if they were late.

  Talis took a deep breath and tightened her stomach against the vertigo as they passed across the swirling green.

  “Is this why you haven’t been outside Nexus all this time?” she asked. “I thought you got what you wanted.”

  Languid hands lifted to indicate her confinement. “Hardly.” She tilted her head, and it was as if her gaze physically scraped across Talis’s heart. “You did not bring me my rings.”

  Talis laughed, an angry burst of exasperation that withered to a nervous impulse under Meran’s piercing stare.

  “We’ve been busy,” she said.

  The flames flared, and the water bubbled as Meran ex
tended a hand toward the bars. She didn’t need to even come close to touching them for the elements to react.

  “Alas, I have not.”

  Meran turned her hand slowly, and Fortune’s Storm was finally close enough for Talis to see that the motion was not casual or serene, after all. She was fighting for every millimeter of motion.

  A rustle sounded from above, and they looked up. Onaya had taken wing. She circled the elemental prison and came around again to land on the railing, facing Talis. She leaned forward on her taloned feet, stretching out her head and neck. “Helsim Breaker has restrained the living tissue in her body.”

  “Living tissue? But the aliens made her body.” Talis squinted at Meran, then looked back to Onaya.

  The former goddess coughed, lifting her wings in a shrug. “Perhaps the better question is, from what did they make it?”

  Talis felt the skin beside her nose twitch in revulsion of the thought. “A conversation for another time, maybe. So, she’s helpless?”

  The raven turned her head to aim one of her brown eyes at the cage again. “Somehow I doubt that.”

  “You want to lead this conversation, or should I?”

  Feathers ruffled down Onaya’s back, as if in distaste. Then she flapped her wings and lifted up again, disappearing toward the weather deck atop the lift balloon.

  “Coward,” Talis said after the retreating tail feathers.

  “Look, I know you want the rings.” Talis motioned for everyone else on deck to keep back. “But we have a more immediate problem. The aliens have just fired the first shots in a war that’s going to spread across the Cutter Empire, if not the whole planet. I’m sure you remember Hankirk?”

  Something prickled along Talis’s spine as she watched waves of anger roll across Meran’s face. In that perfectly smooth, artificial skin, it was easy to forget she was ancient. To forget within the woman’s form roiled the ageless spirit of an entire planet.

  And that planet was pissed. Yeah. She remembered Hankirk.

  “Well, Hankirk’s got himself a batch of the same weapon the Yu are wielding. Before we left Subrosa, I got him to promise to wait for us to figure out an antidote. Something tells me his patience will have run out. If I’m right, he’s probably moving that junk toward Diadem, and he’s going to use it on the aliens.”

  Meran moved, back and forth, feet flexing and extending as though she stalked on solid ground. “The solution taints quintessence. The cast out material is a corruption.” She spat the words as though they tasted bitter. “The trauma of being forced apart from their hosts . . . The rot will take generations to fade.”

  Meran seemed stronger, more in control. Her movements were faster as she paced the confines of her cage. Fire and water popped and sizzled as she passed close without touching. Her shoulders were taut, and her hands curled and uncurled again, fingers strained as though she would claw the corruption out of the world.

  “Sounds like a good reason to give us a bit of help. But I’m starting to think if you could, you already would have.”

  Meran fixed a baleful gaze upon Talis. “I could remove those involved with a twitch of my littlest toe. If you had brought me the rings.”

  Talis waved off the reproach. “Yes, fine, I should have found you the rings. Before I had a ship to move about the planet on? While someone else set this plan into motion? This is the situation we are in now, Meran. We don’t have the time to find your rings. We have time to stop this—maybe—or just barely. Can you help us or not?”

  Meran was silent for a moment. Her gaze drifted down, unfocused.

  Talis chewed on her anger for a moment. She was sick of waiting. “Maybe we should go find one of the gods to help us.”

  That got Meran’s attention back. She rolled her eyes as if they were the ones trapped helpless in the cage, and she was free to do as she pleased. “Maybe I should invite Hankirk here with his ring.”

  Well, hells. Talis was hoping Meran wouldn’t know about that.

  “I am concerned about the population’s souls, Talis. More than you can ever know. This corruption will change Nexus forever. It is urgent that you free me.”

  “With the rings, you mean.” Always the gods-rotted rings.

  “You may be a smuggler, but your sense of right and wrong is as pure as a priest’s. More pure, point of fact. The five false gods used those rings to take my power from me. You would be righting their crime.”

  Talis rankled at how well Meran knew her. How she’d use that to her advantage here. “Your idea of a wrong gave me the only life I’ve ever known. You’re asking me to change a crime so old it . . . that it’s just history.”

  Meran’s eyes narrowed, and the elemental cage around her reacted to an unseen threat. “I have healed you, and I have seen your heart and your mind. I have sailed into beside you. I believed you would be my champion, Talis.”

  When was Talis going to get to be her own gods-rotted champion? “What do you want from me, Meran?”

  “Restore me, so I can restore the planet.”

  Talis shook her head. Meran had more in mind for Peridot than just undoing whatever damage was done here, in the present. Talis could smell it. “Help us first. No, wait. Let me guess: if I don’t bring you the rings, you can’t help us.”

  Meran gestured vaguely at the cage around her. “If you do not bring me the rings, you are as much my captor as the so-called gods who conjured this cage. But if you do, I will correct all wrongs.”

  There Meran went, being all not-quite-specific about her intentions again.

  “Call that Step Two. We’ll be back, if we survive this.” Talis walked back toward midship. “Get us out of here, Tisker.”

  Meran called to her. “You will want to find those rings before long, Talis.”

  “I know.” Talis didn’t look back or raise her voice. “But I’m prioritizing.”

  Tisker kicked the engines up again, gently.

  But they’d forgotten something. With an impudent call, Onaya Bone lifted off her perch and swept around the perimeter of Meran’s confinements.

  “You have the power, now, to restore me.” It was not a question. Meran trapped Onaya in that feather-bound body; Meran could change her back.

  “If I had reason.” Meran’s voice was placid, emotionless.

  “You must.” Onaya’s confident tone faltered a moment before she regained her composure. “I will aid them in collecting the rings for you.”

  “You will aid yourself as you have always done. You are the betrayer, Onaya Bone. Into ageless past immemorial, you have proven that you do only what benefits your self-interests.”

  “If it gets me my form back.” Onaya was pleading—genuinely pleading. “It is in my self-interest.”

  “Then do it. You can fly. You can speak. Ruby zoisite in white brass and copper with a hinged compartment. You knew where this ring was before I transformed you.” Meran closed her eyes.

  “And now that you have transformed me, it is beyond my reach!” The hackles on Onaya’s throat were raised like tiny black spikes.

  Meran was unmoved by the protest. If anything, she looked weary. “Your machinations have you closer to reaching it than perhaps you realize. You do not need your old form. You do not need your powers to tell them what you already know.”

  Onaya’s flight around the cell became agitated. She paused in front of Meran after one more loop, and her wings buffeted the air to hold her in place. “What if I lead them to the rings? What then? Will you restore me? Will you give your word?”

  Meran opened one eye, and it gave her the appearance of a playful wink. “It depends on which ‘you’ returns afterward.”

  A victorious cry echoed in the space and the raven swept up, over the lift balloon and back down, settling on the binnacle as though preparing for departure. Her nails clacked against the compass. Talis wondered how so
meone with a history for deception like Onaya Bone could trust the cryptic answer Meran had given.

  Talis muttered to herself. They were ganging up on her. The rings were far, far down the list of errands she felt compelled to run for Onaya or Meran.

  But as long as she had a ship and a crew and the breath in her lungs, she would focus on doing the most good she could. Now. In this moment.

  Chapter 43

  I don’t think we’re getting out this way.” It was the fourth time Sophie had said as much.

  Talis wasn’t feeling any more confident about their progress, but the tunnel only offered forward or backward, and they’d already been where they came from. “I thought she was letting us go.”

  Meran had not been happy but seemed resigned that they were going to leave and try to stop Hankirk. Then perhaps, as Onaya had agreed to help them, they would fetch the rings. The former goddess would lower herself to any depth, it seemed, to get what she wanted.

  But now, Nexus toyed with them, shifting its moving pieces in undulating ripples like the bones down a snake’s back. Between the layers, narrow spaces curved away, slivers not large enough for a body, never mind a ship.

  As for Helsim Breaker, Arthel Rak, and Lindent Vein, there was no evidence they knew the crew was there.

  The engines purred; the ship drifted under minimal output. They could sail no faster than the path opened ahead of them. The tunnel wound around, angling up, then to port, then down again, then tight to starboard. In circling loops, never with an indication the exit was forthcoming.

  “How are we supposed to find the rings if we can’t leave this place.” Tisker muttered only loud enough for Talis, who stood at his side beneath the wheelhouse, to hear.

  Talis still had to deal with how she intended to get back on Meran’s good side before the woman took over. The answer came back as it always did: gather the other four rings. And someday, maybe. But not today.

  She muttered beneath her breath to keep the words from reaching Onaya where she stowed away in the lift lines above. “What makes you think we’re going to get the rings? We’ve wasted enough time. Soon as the sky opens up again, we’re heading for Diadem to head Hankirk off.”