The Confluence: A Space Opera Adventure Series (The New Dawn Book 6)

by Valerie J Mikles

  “Plenty of doctors. Don’t need me,” Morrigan said.

  “Plenty of Terranan doctors,” Amanda countered. “You’re our doctor. We trust you.”

  Morrigan shook her head and sipped her bitter, Terranan coffee. “I’m not a doctor.”

  “Then you can be there as a friend of the family,” Saskia said. “If you’re not going to sleep, then get dressed.”

  Morrigan’s eyes narrowed and she defiantly took another drink. She was glad she could drink from the cup and not a straw, but it was sill weird in lunar gravity. Rolling her eyes, Saskia emptied the nightstand of anything that looked like medication and left. Morrigan felt violated, ashamed, and yet, relieved to be free of temptation.

  Amanda lingered, rocking on the bed, fingers tucked under her thighs.

  “Can Saskia help you?” Morrigan sighed, sensing a medical question.

  “I don’t know,” Amanda whispered. She took a deep breath, her eyes locked firmly on her knees. “I’m hearing things.”

  Morrigan frowned. “Did you take your meds this morning?”

  “They’re not helping.” She clawed at the sides of her face, yanking her sandy brown hair down across her cheeks.

  “What makes you think I can?” Morrigan asked, gripping Amanda’s wrists to keep her from pulling her hair out. “What do you hear?”

  “A baby crying,” Amanda whispered.

  “Ever hear sounds like that before?” Morrigan asked.

  Amanda nodded. “It’s very familiar. But I never heard it on Aquia. The last time I heard it, I was here. It was after Jo rescued me. Maybe before. It’s his baby.”

  “Oh. I didn’t realize he had a family,” Morrigan stammered. She didn’t know anything about the man, except that he was luna-born and her friend.

  “Well, he doesn’t. It’s our baby. In the future,” she explained.

  “You’ve lost me.”

  “When Galen takes people to Elysia, he keeps us there with dreams,” Amanda said. “That’s why I remember it as a good place. The memory feels wonderful.”

  “So wonderful you didn’t realize you were dying of starvation,” Morrigan said. As she understood, Amanda was near death when she’d escaped, and she’d spent the first several months cutting herself and begging to go back to her prison.

  “I never remembered this part before now. Santos said that Jo Disappeared, which means he’s there, having a dream,” Amanda said, her face getting red as her emotions took over.

  “You think you’re connected to him and seeing his dream?” Morrigan asked.

  “I don’t know. I think I’m remembering my dream,” Amanda cried. “But the baby is talking to me. It’s saying that I need to go find him. I need to go back. I need to Disappear. And I can’t. I keep trying, and I can’t. And the baby is telling me I’m screwing everything up.”

  Amanda whimpered and ducked her face between her hands, but Morrigan redirected her into a hug. She was pretty sure this was grief and not an episode, but grief could trigger an episode.

  “Amanda, sweetheart,” Morrigan said. “You don’t have a baby. There’s no baby. You’re not screwing anything up.”

  “I have to find him,” she whimpered.

  “Sweetheart, Danny searched ten years for you, and in the end, you found him,” Morrigan said. She scooted off the bed, tugging Amanda’s hand. “Let’s go watch a flicker. It’ll drown out the voices.”

  Draining the coffee, Morrigan set the cup on the dresser and rooted through the drawers for the clothes she thought would help her blend in at a Terranan hospital. She tossed a shirt and sweater toward the bed and missed. Things fell differently here.

  “Don’t you have to help Tray?” Amanda asked.

  Morrigan looked at the fallen clothes. She worried that her next attempt to help would get someone killed, and maybe a flicker could drown out that voice, too. “We’ll watch a short one.”

  15

  Diana sat on the bathroom floor of the Joslin clinic, her eyes drifting from the toilet to the mirror reflecting her weakness. She felt like she would throw up, but she hadn’t yet. She’d inflicted a lot of pain over the years. She’d dissolved a person’s skin before, but she controlled that situation. Tray Matthews barely got a nudge of artificial gravity, and it wasn’t just his skin that seemed to dissolve, but every blood vessel beneath. Something about it reminded her of Elysia and Galen’s horrid dream where the world was hers to control and she still couldn’t get the one thing she wanted. If she’d just gone to the 5 like Parker had asked… ordered.

  Inhaling through her nose, she tilted toward the toilet one last time. Nothing came up. She could go to the 5 and rule her own little world there and let Parker have the rest of the city. Except Sky. Diana shuddered. Sky was one of the few people she’d ever loved. Diana didn’t know why it felt so important to protect that.

  Rolling to her feet, she brushed off her uniform and headed back through the hall she’d fled through earlier. The clinic had closed for the day, thanks to her ruthless entry. Rhodes shouldn’t have let them wander the city. He should have known they weren’t honestly seeking medical help.

  The blood had been wiped from the exit door, and Diana pushed through, making a bee-line for the 3. Most of the foot traffic was heading home through the 2-gate at this time of day. The 3 had less than fifty permanent residents, most descended from the same three families. When Diana came in, the workers that noticed her gave barely more than a disgruntled lip curl before adamantly ignoring her. At the Ag Center, she saw Lieutenant Carr standing by a fruit barrel, talking to a rail-thin teenaged orchard worker.

  Careful to avoid his notice, she used a side door to enter, then went to the second floor. The chaise where she and Parker used to make love was kicked over, the drapes were ripped from the window, and fresh fruit had been stomped into the slate floor. It bore the hallmarks of a tantrum, but not a struggle. In the middle of the room, Diana swore she saw a hand-sized portal and the fading golden glow of Elysia. She blinked, and the window was gone. Sky was gone, too.

  “She didn’t go to Elysia. She jumped out the window,” Carr said, startling Diana. “People saw her walking.”

  Swearing, Diana whipped around, slipping on a smashed peach and hurting her ankle. “How did you get up here?”

  “Not walking through one of those damn portals, that’s for sure,” Carr said, hanging by the door.

  “You saw it, too?” Diana asked. She couldn’t imagine Sky trapped in Galen’s catacombs. “Did Parker open it?”

  “I never see them when he’s around. There was one there, when I first got to the scene,” he said, pointing to the overturned table under the window. “I saw the creature that killed Tavos. Do you think Sky saw it and that’s why she jumped?”

  “Did no one think to lock the windows?” Diana asked. Then she looked again at Carr. “You see portals when Parker’s not around?”

  Carr’s lips parted, and he lowered his eyes, caught by his own confession.

  “Is there a trigger that you’ve noticed?” she asked.

  “His leaving, usually,” Carr said. “Every time he talks to me, I see one, but it never happens when he’s there.”

  “And this portal… when did Parker come here?” Diana asked.

  “Sometimes it happens at night,” Carr said, not hearing her. “Andrew never sees. Or he says he doesn’t.”

  “Carr,” Diana said, flicking his arm. He snapped to attention. “Has anything ever come through before? Besides Galen.”

  “Galen didn’t come through a portal when he killed Tavos. He was already here,” Carr said. “I only started seeing them after. I wish I weren’t the only one.”

  “I wish you didn’t see any,” Diana said. She knew they both needed a forum to talk about these things, and she felt the need to protect that, too. “Don’t Sky’s cuffs have trackers in them?”

  Carr lifted the dull gray polymer cuffs. “We found the cuffs. They’re unlocked, but the electronics still read as locked. Tech say
s they’ve never seen an error like that before.”

  “So Sky can teleport,” Diana said, her gut twisting. That explained why Parker kept her.

  “Not necessarily,” Carr said, bringing the cuffs over to show her. “If she could teleport, she wouldn’t have needed to unlock them. But maybe it’s some other kind of power. You said the different Elysians have different powers.”

  “Parker thinks they’ll conjure water for us and we won’t need to import any from Aquia anymore. That’s why he was so angry when the water arrived,” Diana said, mulling over the cuffs.

  “He’s going to be angry he lost his leverage over the other one,” Carr said, his eyes drifting toward the table, his brain hanging on the portal he’d seen there.

  “Is she still in the 3 or is there a gate log of her leaving?” Diana asked.

  “There’s a gate log, but it’s like the cuffs. It reads locked, like there was an alert in the decontamination loop,” Carr said, rubbing his hands together. “That’s why I was originally alerted. We thought we’d open the chamber and pull her out, but the chamber was empty. I suppose she could have teleported out from there.”

  His Virp beeped and he rubbed his hands together before checking. “That’s Colonel Rhodes.”

  Diana sucked in her cheeks. Rhodes had been beeping her today, too, but since she was supposed to be in the 5, she’d been stalling.

  “Am I going to the 5?” Carr asked, his face getting pale.

  “Why? You’re here for a malfunctioning gate,” Diana said, giving the room one last look before pushing Carr out. “Did Sky have anything besides her clothes?”

  Carr shook his head. “Nothing here. Mr. Parker has her satchel.”

  Deivon Parker cracked his knuckles as he walked, loving the feeling of power that came with the restored health in his hand. He felt the weight of Sky’s grav-gun tucked into his coat, and he trotted down the stairs to the interrogation room that held Janiya. Galen had called the grav-source the Confluence, and after an hour of research, Parker found the word as an object, not just a human-spirit connection. The Elysian mythology mentioned the Confluence as the power source for a portal between the physical realm and the spirit realm. No one in modern times associated the Confluence with modern gravity sources or any other moon rock. Given the desire of the Elysians to remain hidden, Parker had to wonder if the connection had been intentionally obscured over the centuries.

  He’d tried connecting with the gravity-source again and again, but without the hand Galen had given him, it didn’t seem to do anything. Aside from create a localized gravity well and bruise his palm. Janiya was the only one who could help him. Unless Rhodes found that other teleporter who had come to see Cheoff. There was no doubt in Parker’s mind that Galen was trying to warn him about the intruder and the sooner he reconnected, the better prepared he’d be to deal with him.

  “That husband of yours hasn’t killed me yet,” Parker taunted, squatting in front of her cage. Janiya lay on her side, her eyes closed, her body relaxed. She narrowed her eyes at him, letting the look carry the accusation. Reaching into his jacket, he drew the grav-gun, hoping she wouldn’t reach in and steal the power source.

  “Don’t shoot the cage,” Rhodes warned, coming in with a box. “I brought what you asked. What do you intend to do with the Hanyu ore?”

  “Testing a theory,” Parker said. He picked up one of the jagged black rocks with crystalline streaks. Hanyu had been mined for decorative purposes before the process of turning it into a gravity source was developed. Parker wanted to know if the raw ore was sufficient for a connection, or if his ancestors four centuries prior had gravity-tech in their Confluence machine. “There’s more moonslate than Hanyu in this.”

  “The pouch on the side has a clean jewelry piece,” Rhodes said. “I put a few grav-devices in there, too.”

  “Perfect,” Parker smiled. “What have you put her through today?”

  “Haven’t had time to play with her. It’s been a busy day,” Rhodes said, bringing in a cart of assorted interrogation drugs and incentives. “Do you want her in the chair?”

  “I need to touch her,” Parker said.

  Rhodes tapped something into his console and the woman’s cage filled with yellow smoke. A minute later, the cage beeped and opened, the scent of rotting fish leaking out with the smoky air. Rhodes donned a mask before reaching into the cage, and extracted the woman.

  The chair had restraints from head to toe. It was slightly reclined like a dentist chair, and the padding along the back was lined with electrodes. Rhodes strapped the woman’s legs, arms, and chest into the leather restraints. He took another vial from his case and waved it under the woman’s nose. Parker could smell the ammonia from across the room.

  Janiya stirred and jerked against the restraints. She cried out again and again, and it took a few minutes before Parker realized she wasn’t screaming incoherently. She was using Moonspeak.

  “Has she used Moonspeak before?” Parker asked.

  “No, this is new,” Rhodes said.

  Moonspeak was a dead giveaway that her spirit side was active. The sound was only part of the language, and unless she initiated a telepathic connection, he wouldn’t understand her.

  “Colonel, please step outside,” Parker said, taking the tiny Hanyu gem from the pouch, and putting it in his pocket. Then he picked out two of the gravity-devices, figuring he’d start with something he knew would work.

  “I recommend starting with the center of the hand. The impulse of the prisoner to pull away yields several breaks from the start,” Rhodes suggested.

  “I have my own ideas. Leave us,” Parker ordered again. He ran his finger tauntingly down Janiya’s cheek, quieting her raving, drawing her eyes toward him.

  “Why Moonspeak, my dear? What do you feel?” Parker crooned, circling the chair. He glanced at her wrists, making sure that she hadn’t teleported through the restraints. “Can you still understand me?”

  She made a few sounds that he didn’t understand, mimicking his tone. He loosened the strap at the wrist so he could turn her palm, and she watched curiously. Then he slipped the grav-source from the device casing and placed it on the palm of her hand. The iridescent stone was the size of a pinhead and seemed to disappear through her skin.

  “Do you know what the Confluence is, my dear?” he asked. “Is it this?”

  Janiya looked down at the stone and squirmed. Parker pulled the Hanyu gem from his pocket, and traded the gravity-source for the thumbnail sized pendant. Almost instantly, he felt a repulsive force, like she’d thrown another gravity-device at him. The strap holding her down seemed to disappear and her arm came free. She squeezed the stone in her hand, then screeched and tossed it away.

  “They’re hurting me!” she hollered in Moonspeak. The mental connection lasted for only a second, and then her words became indiscernible again. Was she the one Galen meant to warn him about? Her hand was free, but she did not try to undo the other restraints.

  Parker picked up the pendant that she’d tossed. He’d have to be careful if the Hanyu stone gave her the ability to escape the restraints.

  “Hand out,” he ordered. Her jaw set with determination, but she held out her hand. Was it fear, or did the Confluence give him control over her. He’d felt control when he forced Galen to talk, too.

  “Let’s try this again,” Parker said.

  16

  Sky lay on her bed, a Virclutch in front of her projecting a long scroll of mathematical formulas that she’d been poking at for the last two hours. Her elbows sank into the mattress, her shoulders getting tired of holding the position. She added a line, but she’d worked herself into a corner, and chewing on her long, blonde hair hadn’t provided any insight.

  “Did you get it, Reyl?” Coral asked, slithering into the bed, his naked body tickling against hers. The night was warm, and the blanket had disappeared somewhere during their last round of lovemaking. Coral, a mathematical genius in a Dome filled with idiots, was in hi
s early twenties, with strawberry hair and freckles from head to toe.

  “Stuck again,” Sky replied, spitting out her hair, slamming the Virclutch on the pillow. The projection shifted to the ceiling, and Coral rolled onto his back, pulling Sky’s hand across his chest. “Go up. Five lines,” he said, pointing to the projection, spotting the math error easily. “See the problem?”

  “No,” Sky muttered, rubbing her blue eyes.

  “You got lazy and eliminated those three solutions as non-physical,” he chuckled. “Get your manifolds in order and—”

  Sky shoved her tongue into his mouth, and he responded, kissing back with virulent lust. It was her insistence on learning the new math that had been stalling their intercourse and fueling his impatience. Pushing Sky onto her stomach, he coated her limbs with his, then lifted her head, putting the Virclutch in front of them.

  “You have no idea how much it turns me on to see you get this far on your own, Reyl,” he growled in her ear, his body hot against her bare skin. “I had no idea I could be so excited—Having someone who isn’t struggling to keep up. Having someone understand this. Having… you’re going to finish, right?”

  “Finish me first,” Sky groaned, digging her fingers into the pillow. As much as she loved the feel of him on top of her—as much as she wanted to bury her face, blot out all the light, and feel only him—she couldn’t. Spirit would not let her enjoy him. Taking the Virclutch, she erased her mistake and began the fix. Coral groaned, as if she were manipulating his body rather than the math.

  Sky slanted her smile toward him, and he laughed, kissing her shoulder, then down her back. There was no way Sky could concentrate. She felt fire shooting through her fingers and the Virclutch disappeared from her hand. It became something else. Something strange and metal.

  The earthy smell of avalan overtook the room, and she felt a weight on her shoulders.