Warden's Fate

by Tony James Slater

  “Oh, I, er…”

  Her smile broadened. “You’re amazing, you know that? How can you still be this bashful, when you’ve explored every intimate part of my body a dozen times?”

  “Well, I just…” he couldn’t think of a good end to that sentence. His mind was reeling and he was finding it hard to focus.

  Ella didn’t seem too fazed by his inability to speak. “It’s okay. You’ve had a shock. But not to worry. I know how to make it all better.” She touched a stud on her swooping neckline, and her top split open slowly, right down the front. A sliver of alabaster skin was revealed, the curves of two small breasts peeking out enticingly. “Even this,” she added, tracing one lapel with a fingertip.

  Tris caught her meaning. It was a hypnotic sight, and one that her garment was designed to offer. Whereas Kyra tended to prefer at least partial armour, Ella lived and fought in a variety of skin-tight suits that left very little to the imagination. He’d always appreciated the effect, whilst idly wondering how much protection such a garment would give her.

  “They catch us and mould us,” she explained. “To be the perfect seductress, the perfect pilot… the perfect weapon. It takes decades, and it’s not a pleasant process. For a long time, I was upset about it. But I could never go back to being how I was before. I don’t even know what that girl would be like.” She shook her head. “Well, I do,” she corrected herself. “She’d be dead. The Priesthood gave me what I need to survive out here, and whilst I’m a little pissed that they did it without my permission, I’d rather be who I am now.”

  She reached out a hand and touched Tris’ cheek. “Just like I’d rather you be who you are now. ‘Not human’ is just the absence of a trait. The trait you have instead is ‘better’.” Her fingertip traced his jawline. “In the Priesthood, when they’re satisfied with our outcome, they call us ‘evolved’.”

  “Evolved?” he tried it on for size. It sounded more than a little daft coming from his lips. But if that was what gave him his uncanny combat skills, and the ability to shoot his first rifle like a special forces veteran... maybe she was right. Maybe it wasn’t that bad after all. “What if it’s different for me though?” He hated himself for sounding so whiney, but the question was stuck on the tip of his mind. “What if I’m some fucked-up half alien thing? What if I turn into a huge slobbering monster one night?”

  She locked eyes with him, and the empathy in that gaze told him she knew how serious this was for him. Humour had always been his way of deflecting, but she’d obviously figured that out.

  Genetically enhanced to read me like a book? It didn’t seem impossible.

  Taking his hands she stood up, drawing him to his feet. “I’ll take you as you are, Tris.” She pulled him into an embrace that was comforting, yet laden with promise. “Besides,” she whispered in his ear, “you drool in your sleep, so it wouldn’t be that much different.”

  ***

  Making love turned out to be exactly what Tris needed. Though on reflection, he couldn’t think of anything that a night in a cramped bunk with Ella’s flexible body wrapped around his couldn’t solve. Now, curled protectively around her, he thought back to his visions of the previous night. They didn’t seem nearly as damning. Sure, his unusual genetic cocktail had thrown up some surprises. But his dad had never looked at him like a monster. They’d shared so much closeness over the years, and this issue had never come up. If he still had any fears at that point he’d been keeping them a secret, and all the while training Tris up for a life he hoped would never happen.

  His worst fears did come true, Tris realised suddenly. His dad hadn’t been afraid of him; rather, he’d been afraid for him. Afraid that Kreon would come calling one day, to whisk Tris off into a life of unimaginable adventure. One with an infamously short shelf-life…

  Something dug into Tris’ hip. Trying to move carefully, so as not to disturb Ella’s deep, even breathing, he took his arm from around her and bent it awkwardly behind his back, groping for whatever was under him.

  As soon as his fingers closed on it, he knew what it was. The pendant had been the touchstone for his visions, and whilst part of him had been repulsed by them and wanted to throw it out, another part refused to let that happen.

  Because it was Dad’s… and he gave it to me.

  The last ever such gift. Unless you counted the Folly.

  Thoughts of the pendant had intruded into his dreams, and he twiddled it between his fingers, trying to remember them. Slowly the fog of sleep parted, and he realised that his dream had been another episode of his dad’s life, played out in his subconscious. He’d been looking at the pendant just as Tris was now, fidgeting with it while he worked through some problem concerning it. It was broken, that much he knew; but even weirder, it had started to block the Gift completely whenever he put it on. It was still drawing from his metabolic energy, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t reach any other minds when he was wearing it. Was it a malfunction? Or an alternate mode? Had he somehow hit a selector switch and enabled a fascinating, but ultimately useless, ‘reverse’ mode?

  All he could think of was that he’d drawn upon its power so strongly to resist the madness of the dimension beyond the Portal that it had suffered some kind of emergency shutdown and reset. It made sense; all five of his comrades on that mission had been powerfully Gifted, and all had succumbed to psychosis within seconds. Whilst his talent was greater than any of theirs, it was possible that the extra power the pendant supplied had made some difference. He couldn’t remember drawing on it intentionally, as he’d been far too busy killing his friends… But there was no denying the facts. He’d gone through the Portal equipped with a potent psychic booster, and returned with a broken trinket that now obliterated his talent. It was worthless. Maybe he should hand it off to Kreon? If anyone could find a use for it, the old Warden could. Imprisoning a Gifted individual? His mind shied away from the thought. Having the Gift shut down left him shaky and sweating. It was like being voluntarily blinded. Forcing another person to undergo such deprivation was tantamount to torture.

  He shuddered, and pocketed the pendant. No. Kreon would find a use for this thing. Which was exactly why he shouldn’t be trusted with it. Wardens, eh? Even the best ones amongst us are bastards at heart.

  Tris came fully awake in a rush.

  The bits had just assembled in his mind, like a jigsaw he’d forgotten he was working on. Maybe it was Ella’s trance-inducing doodahs, but his sleeping self had sought the answer to a question that had been preying on his waking mind.

  And now he had it.

  The pendant.

  It wasn’t broken at all. It had just gone back to what it had been before…

  Before Dad took it through the Portal.

  The implications rushed in on him.

  Ella, feeling his agitation, unfurled and wriggled round on the narrow mattress to face him. “What is it?”

  “This.” He held up the pendant, its amber gem catching the tiny amount of light in the chamber. “I just figured it out. It saved Dad when he went through the Portal, just like it saved me when I did. But he gave it to me before he left... for his second trip through the Portal. Where he died. If he hadn’t given it to me…”

  “Tris, sweetie. You’ve got enough crosses to bear. Trust me, you don’t need to add guilt to them. That wasn’t your fault.”

  “No! You’re right, it wasn’t.” It felt good to be positive again. Even though his father’s death was a massive issue for him, it was long in the past. He could no more have changed it as a twelve-year-old boy than he could now. Besides which, he’d had no idea what his dad was up to back then. And he’d been asleep when he left.

  “That’s good,” Ella said, yawning.

  Tris felt a momentary burst of guilt for her — he’d been unburdening himself quite a lot, lately. “Look, I’ve got to go and tell Kreon. This could be important.”

  “Uh-huh.” She nestled back into the warm spot and drew her knees up
again. “Tell him I said hi.”

  Tris climbed out of the bunk backwards, and groped around in the dark for his jeans. “You should tell him yourself,” he said, keeping his voice low. “He doesn’t hold any of this against you. Kyra and Sharki, I mean.”

  “Mmnf,” she said, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

  Well, he supposed, that was progress.

  “Come to the bridge later,” he offered. “We should chat about our next step.”

  Ella stayed silent. Tris would have thought she’d dozed off again, except she’d once confided in him that she could never sleep if anyone else was awake nearby.

  Gathering the rest of his clothes to finish dressing in the corridor, he palmed the door open. He turned back for one more look at that cascade of fiery red curls, the only bit of her now visible above the blankets. As always at times like these, he was struck with such intense emotion that he could almost believe she’d bewitched him. “I love you,” he whispered.

  “I know,” she muttered into the pillow.

  Tris waited until he was a few corridors and one full level above Ella’s quarters before he spoke out loud. “Mum? I need to find Kreon. Do you know where he is?”

  Silly question — of course she knew. But treating the AI with the same courtesy he would have used with his real mother felt like the right thing to do. She was nice enough to him, after all.

  Most of the time.

  “Lord Anakreon is currently on the bridge,” Askarra responded, her tone clipped. “He has been asking for you. However, I thought it best not to interrupt while you were… occupied.” Disapproval radiated from the walls. Tris swallowed, more embarrassed than ever at the thought of the computer monitoring his vital signs. He’d gotten in the habit of asking her not to monitor his quarters; hopefully Ella had done the same at some point.

  Askarra seemed to see-saw between friendship and borderline loathing for her fellow assassin. It was an odd fixation for a computer to have, but he couldn’t help feeling her displeasure about the whole thing. Certainly, he’d have preferred to hide an affair like this from his real mother, had she been alive, but that was hardly possible here.

  That’s when it occurred to him; it wasn’t Ella she was upset with, it was him. The AI had been programmed with every ounce of a mother’s love for her son — and that included overprotectiveness, a sense of shame, and maybe even a measure of jealousy. Tris made a face, as he boarded an elevator for the bridge level. No mother would approve of what he was up to; sneaking around, indulging his carnal desires at every opportunity, with no thought for the consequences. Or for what anyone else thought.

  Oh, bloody hell! What have I got to do, ask her to marry me?

  There was a downside to having a sentient battle station for a mother, after all.

  The bridge door slid open, and Tris braced himself for Kreon’s inevitable tirade. Not that the Warden often ranted at him; it was more like an aura of palpable disappointment that the old man could project like a forcefield.

  “Tristan.” Kreon turned to meet him with a scowl on his face.

  “Sorry,” Tris opened. “I was just—”

  “It is of no consequence,” Kreon interrupted him. “I have grave news to convey. I must apologise for my absence on the journey thus far.”

  Tris quirked an eyebrow at that. It was unexpected, to say the least.

  “However, my isolation served an urgent need. This enemy we have locked in our sights is too unknown a quantity for us to risk direct engagement. I have been studying the data from Oracle in the hope of discerning a pattern to their behaviour, an identifiable sequence we may be able to exploit.”

  “Great!” Tris was relieved he wasn’t about to get hauled across the coals for spending his own time more frivolously. “Any idea how we can beat them yet?”

  “I am currently developing a strategy.”

  “Ah. That means no, then.”

  Kreon’s eyes glittered. “It means that we have accumulated a vast quantity of information, recorded over several millennia by a wide variety of species most of which are now extinct. Sifting through it is both difficult and time-consuming. Your patience would be appreciated.”

  “Fair enough. What have you found out?”

  Kreon glanced around, as though wondering if anyone else would show up for his briefing. He needn’t have bothered; except for Ella, who was keeping her distance from him, they were alone on board the Folly.

  “Your father had long posited that the realm beyond the Portals was an alternate dimension, one separated from our universe and yet enmeshed with it in ways we cannot understand.”

  Tris nodded. “Dad… probably wouldn’t have put it that way, but I catch your drift.”

  Kreon was undeterred. “Extra-dimensional theories abound. Most agree that there are an untold number of dimensions. Some are microscopic, coiled up inside the space between molecules; some are as large or larger than our own universe, and intersect it in a manner impossible for us to measure. There is even speculation that our own universe is coiled up microscopically inside another.”

  Tris tried to look thoughtful, but gave it up as a bad job. “There’s not going to be a test on this, is there?”

  Kreon gave him the same long-suffering stare he usually reserved for Kyra’s quips. Tris counted that as progress. “I forget, your education in matters of astrophysics is somewhat lacking,” he admitted. “Very well. Think of the way information is stored in a quantum system.”

  Tris looked blankly at him.

  Kreon sighed. “Then, think of making bubbles for a child…”

  “Okay, gotcha.”

  “All the bubbles in a cluster nestle against one another, and were they to move and twist, they would each contact different surfaces on different bubbles at the same time.”

  “Without popping,” Tris said, determined to prove he was following the analogy.

  “Indeed.” Kreon gave him a dark look. “Dimensions are unlike bubbles, in that they are potentially infinite and contain hundreds of billions of galaxies. Consequently, they do not ‘pop’.”

  “Okay. So what does this mean for the Black Ships?”

  “The ancient race we call the Kharash made a series of complex observations, and created a mathematical model which I believe represents the movements of the Black Ships’ dimension in relation to our own. Askarra?”

  The computer chimed, and a tiny hologram flickered into being. Kreon waved in the air, and the image expanded to fill the space between them. Tris tilted his head to study it. It did kind of look like a bunch of bubbles.

  “These represent the intersecting dimensions according to the Kharash. Our own is this blue sphere. I imagine the other which concerns us needs no introduction.”

  Tris peered into the depths of the hologram. Nestled in the centre was a marble-sized orb of pure darkness. “That’s where they live? It’s tiny.”

  “The model is not to scale, but your assumption is borne out by their data. It appears that the Black Ships dimension is minuscule in comparison to our own, perhaps not substantially greater in volume than a single solar system. However, observe how it rotates.”

  Kreon waved in the air again, and Askarra obliged him by animating the hologram. The coloured bubbles moved independently, twisting and turning against each other. Always they stayed in contact, but the points of contact — which ones touched, and where — changed constantly.

  Tris had a flash of memory. “It’s like those things in the British Museum. An… orrery?”

  Kreon looked surprised. “Correct, Tristan. This model predicts the movement of the various dimensions in relation to one another. Note how the Black dimension remains centred within the pack, touching different orbs in procession. It is almost as though its extreme density attracts the others, in the same way gravity calls planets to orbit a star.”

  “It touches Earth again and again.”

  “Indeed. This is only part of a vastly more complex model spanning thousands of years,
but this particular segment pertains to our current point in time. The Black dimension has been in regular contact with our own in recent weeks, and it will be on several more occasions before we move beyond its reach.”

  “And what happens then?”

  Kreon’s mouth curved up into a humourless smile. “Were we to survive this cycle, it would be well over ten-thousand years before our universe became a viable target again. However, we are fast approaching a point from which there is no return.”

  Tris cocked his head again, but there was nothing more to be learned by looking at the hologram. Not for him, anyway. “So what does this all mean? For us?”

  Kreon spread his hands, and the holo responded with a deep dive into the blue sphere. Stars and solar systems flew by at high speed, until the image stabilised on a fairly generic-looking view of a planetary system. “Using the expanded model, it is possible to approximate not only the time, but the location of their next strike.”

  Tris’ ears pricked up at that. Finally, a break! The elusiveness of the Black Ships had been their single biggest barrier to studying them, and eventually combatting them. If they knew where they were going to arrive ahead of schedule…

  “Where is it?” He could barely contain his excitement. “Where are they attacking next?”

  Kreon’s face turned grim. “I am sorry, Tristan. I have run this simulation many times now, and the result is always the same. I can predict with a reasonable degree of accuracy that on their next incursion, the Black Ships will target that which we hold most dear.” He reached out and placed a gloved hand on Tris’ arm. “Unless we are able to stop them, at some point within the next few days they will extinguish all life on Earth.”

  11

  Kreon had attempted to break the news gently to the boy, but there was little he could do to lessen a blow this significant.

  Tristan’s reaction was precisely as he’d anticipated.