Survive

by Vera Nazarian

  “No, Father, you don’t need to say that now, you don’t—” Aeson’s voice is still perfectly controlled. It simply becomes more resonant, filling with subtle power without an outlet.

  The power of emotion without a name.

  “Ah, but I do.” The Imperator laughs. “I abdicate my Throne, and you are the new Imperator of Atlantida. The Court is now Blue. There, I’ve said it, and it has been witnessed by whomever is on your end. And such a relief it is, boy—never forget what a nasty, bitter, millennia-old burden you’ve just been gifted by your no-longer-Imperial Father. And for that, Son, I am genuinely sorry. But I have no doubt you will do very well.”

  The man who was Imperator pauses, growing solemn, and his dark blue eyes are full of liquid glimmer. “The pegasei are clamoring for me to end this. So . . . Quickly now, so I must—Gwen! Gwen Lark, who is Kassiopei indeed. You are now Imperatris. Continue to love my Son as you do. I was wrong, you know. He did well, choosing you. I—would’ve liked to see the little ones, the grandchildren. Take care of the Kassiopei—we are now yours, to the bitter end.”

  “I will,” I say softly, while a strange whirlwind of emotion rises inside me. “And you will also see your grandchildren, somehow—Amre-ter Romhutat.”

  “Somehow.” Romhutat chuckles bitterly, then nods at me. “My apologies. For everything, little girl with a Logos voice which you must use thoroughly. And now—” He glances again behind him, then around me at the ship’s chamber, and straightens. I notice his fingers are moving rapidly over a console near the screen, engaging controls.

  “Good luck, My Father . . .” Aeson says.

  “Luck is what you will need, all of you!” Romhutat Kassiopei says in an elevated voice full of energy—even as the chamber he’s in suddenly becomes brighter and brighter. “For that I give you my share of all the luck imaginable! And now—we go to close the bashtooh rift on the other end of the universe! Can you see how bright it’s gotten here? It’s time to Jump! Ah—and now the pegasei are singing! Can you hear it, the frequency? All of the frequencies! Sound must become light!”

  Suddenly, there is a bright flash, and the window on the tablet screen flares a blinding white.

  And then it goes dark.

  I stare at the blank screen, breathing fast, holding back a lump in my throat. I must calm my breathing, since I’ll need it to control my voice for the work at hand.

  Just as I do, Aeson’s voice comes in, steady and composed, over the interstellar comm linkup.

  “This is Astroctadra Mission Control,” says the SPC Commander, a man who has very likely just lost his father. “We now have confirmed hostile activity at Ishtar. Our predictions have been validated, and the light grid is building. Prepare to sing the voice sequence on my count in the next few daydreams as we analyze the optimal moment to engage before the grid is complete. Stand by!”

  Chapter 96

  And so, we wait once again, except this time my heart is pounding. Not sure how much time goes by. I watch Command Pilot Uluatl check his wrist comm frequently, and then I watch Erita check hers.

  “Ishtar Grid is now at 23% according to update,” she says to me. “Building rapidly, even with all the SPC Fleet ships from War-7 engaging in blocking maneuvers to slow down the process.”

  “What exactly are we waiting for?” I ask.

  “If we counterstrike too soon, before the grid is near completion, then this grid and all the others will still be dormant,” Erita explains. “According to Keruvat, who’s running the predictive strike pattern scenario, we need to act right at the moment the Ishtar grid is on its final row, about to power up, which will then awaken the entire grid network. That’s when we stop it—right as it powers up to do whatever system-level grand damage it has in mind. If it has a mind.”

  I make a sound of bitter amusement.

  We continue waiting.

  Almost an hour later, when the grid is at 95% despite the SPC Pilots’ best efforts at blocking it, Aeson’s voice returns on the interstellar comm.

  “This is Astroctadra Mission Control. Attention, all mission members, begin voice sequence on my count.”

  I stand up from my seat, as the others step back, giving me room.

  “Three . . .” Aeson says.

  I feel my gut cramping.

  “Two . . .”

  Erita gives me a solid smile and nod of encouragement, while Command Pilot Uluatl nods also.

  “One . . .”

  I press my right palm on the surface of the console, and hold the comm button with my left hand.

  And I begin to sing the voice keying command first portion of the sequence.

  My mezzo voice fills the grand expanse of the Resonance Chamber like amber ale pouring into a chalice. At once, the nature of the light coming from the wall panels intensifies, and the sound grows and grows, rebounding and then being swallowed up by the chamber which transmits it onward to its ultimate destination.

  At the same time, I hear the other five voices in the grand Logos Voice Chorus. Manala’s delicate, crystalline soprano acts like a fine razor blade cutting through the higher frequencies. Sheolaat’s deep alto is an anvil of iron and heavy metal as it bends and twists and dominates the sound frequencies at the lower registers. My voice continues to pour with richness in the middle.

  Aeson’s gorgeous baritone lends the low anchor points underneath all, while Anen and Gordie’ tenors drill through the fabric of space-time. . . .

  All this incredible sound fills the Resonance Chamber, at the same time as we are all heard the same way in each other’s locations, multiplying and amplifying our output, unto infinity.

  The power of our Logos voices combined is beyond words. The very air in the Resonance Chamber is now vibrating in a strange acoustic mirage. . . . I can feel the frequencies enter me—in particular, through the exposed skin of my face and hands—and rattle my bones, while the light level coming from the panels is now a fierce, blinding white.

  We complete the sequence, then begin again, even as I see from the corner of my eye the Command Pilot checking his wrist for real-time status updates. He nods at me—which I take as confirmation that we must be doing something right.

  And then, just as we complete the voice command sequence for the second time, and the echoes of our glorious sound are still rebounding around the chamber, there is a strange, high-pitched, alien, grating noise that seems to originate from somewhere outside. . . .

  From outside the Resonance Chamber.

  All of a sudden, the great ship around us seems to rumble and groan, and then there is a sensation of pulsing changes in gravity. No other way to describe it, since we’re presently levitating on a disembodied platform in the air, and wouldn’t feel a pitch or lurch of the battle barge or its collapsing decks.

  Even while I’m still paused in confusion, Erita goes into action. “Your helmet!” she exclaims to me. “Put your helmet on, now! Secure the space suit!”

  I turn to her dumbly—just as the creaking and groaning from the walls increases—but then the adrenaline takes over. I grab my helmet and put it on with shaking hands, so that it takes me five seconds of fumble to achieve the proper seal-locking twist—even as Erita yells at me, pointing to my gloves clipped on my waist.

  Command Pilot Uluatl is putting on his own helmet and gloves with practiced, controlled motions, and Erita does the same with her own suit components.

  Just then a blast of sound comes on the ship’s system, and it’s a powerful alarm siren, so strong that it is heard, muffled, through the layers of our own suits, here, inside the acoustically sealed Resonance Chamber. . . .

  Which means it’s no longer sealed properly.

  I stand balanced on the platform, feeling the continuing pulses of variable gravity, hearing the wailing siren, watching the Command Pilot start working the holo-grid on the console, switching from purple to white and other colors that control the various ship’s systems.

  Erita grabs my arm, and I see her pull a thick cabl
e from her waist and unspool it long enough to hook its one end onto my own suit near the waist, and then—

  The Resonance Chamber starts to show cracks. In a matter of heartbeats it breaks in two hemispheres along the seams defined by the acoustic panel tiles . . . and then it explodes around us.

  There is a blinding flash of white.

  I am tossed by a huge gravity wave . . . spun and twisted in every direction like a rag doll with the forces of many g’s, feeling no up, no down only the chaos of violent, deadly motion.

  Aeson! I think. My family! Atlantis! Earth!

  And then there’s nothing.

  I come to with a painful headache ringing in my head and residual vertigo. My eyes open onto a soothing black view. . . . Darkness. There’s a queasy feeling in my gut, ugh.

  I blink, take a shallow breath, and feel it strike and fog up the interior glassy surface inches before my face, then come back at me, blowing at my cheeks.

  My helmet.

  I blink again, and I see stars.

  Real stars, pinpoints of them set against cosmic black velvet all around, as far as I can see in the limited view of my helmet.

  I am floating in space.

  Panic.

  Instant surge of terror. . . .

  It grips me, and I start to hyperventilate, then realize I have limited air in my suit, and hear no hiss of the recirculating life support system.

  Oh, God! I need to turn on the life support!

  I move my hands, my arms and legs, flounder in place, with no frame of reference—unsure if I am now spinning due to my own kicking efforts. Yes—as I peer closer at the dots of stars turning suddenly in a carousel in my view—apparently, I am.

  I am spinning.

  But not completely out of control. I feel a tug at my waist, as if some kind of anchor is pulling me in one direction in particular. I turn my head down and see the line of cable attached to my waist, and it’s a long, fully unspooled line of about two hundred feet.

  Erita, in a space suit, is on the other end of it.

  Her body inside the suit appears motionless, and I wonder if she is okay . . . if she is unconscious or dead—even as I continue to revolve as an orbiting body around the distant gravitational axis of Erita.

  Suddenly, Erita becomes my whole world.

  I frantically pull at the cable to draw us together.

  Even as I do so, the angle of my spinning rotation changes, and the stars start to turn their carousel in another direction, diagonally. . . .

  Suddenly my view is filled with things.

  Shiny metallic debris fill the viewscreen of my helmet. Pieces float and sail past me in the distance, and some appear to be moving in my general direction.

  Orichalcum panels comprise most of it. Some are charred with black, riddled with burn holes, others seemingly pristine. They are reflecting light, a bright radiance from an unknown light source, which I urgently need to locate.

  I stop trying to reel in Erita and force myself to turn in yet another direction, awkwardly, since the line keeps pulling me to rotate a certain way.

  And then I see it.

  Not Helios—though, its solar disk also shines fiercely from a point below.

  No, what I see is an infinitely long column of white plasma.

  The column is straight as an arrow, a spewing jet of white-gold-blue fire. It is many kilometers across—I cannot even begin to estimate, but I know just by looking that it is immense—and it’s coming directly from the solar disk that is Helios.

  This fiercely spewing jet is pointing directly here from the system center, originating from the star, Helios. And what remains of our battle barge, War-2 is floating in pieces around us.

  It occurs to me, with a sickening certainty of madness, that this spewing solar plasma jet—something that wasn’t here before, not when we first arrived at these coordinates—is what blasted us into pieces.

  Then, a different thought comes—at such a proximity, how is it that I’m still alive?

  I don’t have time to ponder any of this, because I feel a different kind of tug on my waist, and this time I see it’s Erita and not just rotational momentum. Her spacesuit is moving, and she is now reeling me in.

  Oh, thank God, she’s alive!

  I begin to pull her in also, and in moments, with our efforts combined, we are next to each other, then grabbing each other’s suits in an awkward embrace.

  I stare wildly inside the glassy helmet and see Erita’s familiar face, her frantic expression, and then she is tapping my forearm.

  Of course, my interstellar comm system. I tap the controls for a local linkup connection, and at once Erita’s voice sounds inside my helmet speakers: “Gwen! Your life support pack! Turn it on! There’s only half an hour of basic, built-in life support in the suit without it!”

  “Okay!” I say. “Where is it? Where?” Even as I try to move, I fumble with my hands around my suit, trying to recall where it was the last time I checked—at my back?

  “Hold still,” she says. “Let me try.” And then she turns me around and does something at the back of my suit, where I guess my pack has been attached all along and I forgot completely—it’s a small portable brick and slipped my mind since I attached it earlier this morning. Then she presses the control at my waist.

  A moment later, I hear the hiss of fresh air at my face, and the pressure normalizes. At once I feel better, and my headache and vertigo lessen.

  Stupid idiot Gwen, your suit wasn’t pressurized properly, no wonder you were sick!

  But there’s no time for pointless self-reproach.

  “What happened?” I exclaim.

  “Shebet happened,” Erita retorts. “War-2 blew up. Probably as a result of the enemy attack—though, I’m not entirely sure how. I’m going to need to use your secure interstellar comm linkup to see if I can call out to the others so we can at least assess the situation and ask for help. My own suit comm is local radius only, and I tried it already to call for help, with no luck. If there are any survivors, they’re outside my radius. Right now, I don’t see any bodies floating around either, or any undamaged fighter ships, so we might be in deep trouble.”

  “Do you see that big light column thing behind us?” I ask. “What the hell is that? It’s coming from Helios. Did it destroy the ship?”

  “Yeah. Probably.” Erita says, turning her body slightly to stare at the stack of blinding light. “Magnetic solar flare, maybe. Relativistic jet. I don’t know. But it’s bad news for us. We’re gonna need to get as far away from it as possible.”

  “Oh, crap,” I whisper. “I think we’re actually drifting toward it.”

  “Bashtooh . . .” Erita sputters inside her helmet.

  “Is there a way to propel the suit?” I ask.

  “There’s an electromagnetic propulsion field generator. But it’s a clip-on attachment that doesn’t come standard with the suit, and we don’t have it on us.” Erita cusses again. “We’ll just have to toss-propel each other to achieve momentum. Basic space survival training.”

  “Which I haven’t had,” I conclude sadly.

  “I’ll teach you, it’s easy. But first, let me access your interstellar and borrow your tablet.”

  Moments later, Erita is cycling through screen windows on the tablet (which fortunately is space vacuum-proof), as both of us hold it and stare at the little screen, while the audio is being piped into our helmets. Good thing my tablet stayed attached to the suit!

  “Mission Control! Astroctadra Mission Control!” Erita says loudly. “This is Tefnut on behalf of Lark! Please acknowledge!” The window icon designated as Aeson’s linkup coordinates at Ishtar and War-7 does not answer.

  My heart starts to pound violently in my chest.

  “Aeson!” I exclaim. “Aeson, please, this is Gwen! Are you okay?”

  “Mission Control at Ishtar! Phoebos, respond! We need urgent assistance!”

  Then we try other windows. A vague crackle comes when we try Gordie’s location, a
nd some kind of video comes in but it’s a broken blur of images. Similar crackle and static from the other locations around the four planets in alignment.

  And then we try Manala, who is on the opposite side of Helios from us, on the same perpendicular plane.

  Suddenly, there’s a full picture, and our connection goes live immediately.

  There is some kind of fumble, and glimpses of space and stars tumbling, and suddenly the tablet on the other end is turned and steadied. We see a helmeted face staring at us, superimposed against a field of ship debris similar to ours.

  Only, the person in the helmet is not Manala—it is Hasmik.

  “Gwen! Gwen-janik!” she exclaims. “You are alive! So terrible here!”

  “Oh no, you too!” I respond. “Are you okay? Where is Manala? My brother George?”

  “I don’t know!” Hasmik exclaims, and her voice starts to crack. “I don’t know anything! We blew up! This tablet—she told me to hold it! She was very upset about her father . . . we had to calm her down so she could sing. Then—we were in the Resonance Chamber, she finished singing with all of you, and then there were alarms and explosions outside! I put my helmet on like they told me, and Xelio gave me his things to hold while he and George were helping her with the helmet and gloves, and Consul Denu also, and then, a super big, bright explosion!”

  “Same here,” Erita says.

  “Then I woke up here, in space, next to this thing!” Hasmik says, and she turns her tablet around to show a panorama of spacecraft debris, and another immense column of white fire spewing from Helios.

  “Yeah. We got that too.” Erita’s voice is grim.

  “The ship is gone,” Hasmik continues. “Everyone is gone, and all I know is how to use the tablet and some of the suit. I think I’m going to die here. There is no one! Atsvats! Inch petke anem?” And Hasmik goes silent, her voice cracking.

  “You’re not alone,” I say, my own voice faint with the rising cold of realization. “We are with you!”