by A. K. DuBoff
Once presentable, we returned hand-in-hand to the lounge to find an impatient Maris and Toran waiting for us.
Maris looked us over. “Finally! About time you jumped each other. Okay, we have strategizing to do, so sit down.”
“Happy for you two,” Toran added.
My jaw dropped. I guess that happy glow I was feeling wasn’t as subtle as I thought.
“Uh…” Kaiden hesitantly approached his usual seat.
I slowly sat down next to him, certain my face was bright red. “So, the plan…”
“Not to a plan yet,” Maris continued like everything was normal. “We’re still at the information consolidation stage.”
“All right.” I tried to melt into my chair, wishing we could have stayed in bed awhile longer.
“We’ve been discussing the relationship between the elements in play here,” Toran began. “Specifically, the Saps are on the 6D plane, seeking to ascend to higher planes. The crystalline network is at 9D with close ties to consciousness at 10D. And we have access terminals in our spacetime, which provide a direct link to the hyperdimensional crystalline network. Now, the 9D crystalline network has a special relationship with the 11D Duzies, storing information about the configuration of our spacetime reality, which can then be rearranged according to instructions from the ‘reset terminals’ or by direct instruction from 10D consciousness.”
“Right, but…” I faded out. “Stars, I don’t even know if I should ask, but why are there only access terminals down on our plane?”
“That’s the question we kept coming back to,” Toran replied.
“The only place those links could be formed?” Kaiden speculated.
“But why are they needed at all?” I insisted. “Or resets, for that matter.”
Toran cracked a smile. “All the right questions. After talking it through, and getting some hints from Hoofy, the only reasonable conclusion is that life wasn’t always as it is now. Remember, there were Ancients… and they ascended.”
I thought about it. “Colren did indicate that the crystalline network was made, not a natural formation.”
“Exactly.” Toran nodded. “I’d bet that way back when, the Ancients found a way to step outside of time, away from their bodies. Physical reality was no longer a constraining factor, but they wanted a record of what they once had been. They devised a means to preserve those states through a civilization-wide network, stored indefinitely in the highest dimensions possible, to allow for effectively infinite capacity. Their descendants forgot that anyone had ever come before, and eventually they stumbled across the crystal interface and devised their own use for it—the ability to get a second chance whenever it was needed. And so, the quest to ascend began again with no memory that others had already walked that path.”
Kaiden let out a long breath. “You know, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if that’s exactly what happened.”
“So, the Saps,” Toran continued, “maybe they’re an offshoot of the Ancients who were never able to ascend completely, or perhaps they’re something else entirely. But they clearly understand the power of the crystalline network, and they’re sick of it being under our control.”
“Whoever they are, they’re hungry for power,” Kaiden agreed.
Toran looked around the room at us. “Agreed. And now that we have an inkling about what they’re trying to accomplish, what are we going to do about it?”
22
“It’s time for answers,” I said. “Hoofy, it’s now or never.” I agreed with Toran’s assessment about the Saps potentially being a rogue branch of the Ancients, but I wanted more than just hints to go on. The unicorn had been giving bits and pieces of some grand master plan to take down the Saps for hours, and I wasn’t interested in planning anything without getting a straight answer.
“Can we talk now?” Maris asked more gently.
“Yes, the context has been established. We may speak freely,” Hoofy replied, appearing once again as a ghostly image in the room.
“All right, so what’s this plan of yours?” I asked, folding my hands on the tabletop. “How do we trap the Saps?”
“In the same way I was trapped,” he replied. “You must create a dimensional anomaly and then seal the entry.”
Kaiden frowned. “You say that like it’s an easy thing to do.”
“It will not be, but it can be done.”
“Then explain,” I prompted.
“The pathways to enter 8D, which my kind use for migrations, are a natural form of these anomalies. In the anomaly, the division between the planes is… less distinct. In the locations where one of these anomalies exists, the affected planes behave as one.”
“And which planes are those?” Toran asked.
“Everything up through 6D, as you would distinguish them, become unified, but only a few access points from 6D through 7D to 8D would appear in specific locations. However, such shortcuts are only fleeting.”
Toran leaned back in his chair, pensive. “If that’s the case, would a spatial disruptor blast affect the higher planes?”
“It would, precisely. And, the energy grid linking the Overlords would carry that blast through everything under the influence of that central core.”
My stomach knotted. “That would kill them, not trap them.”
Hoofy shook his head. “No, you are thinking in terms of your physical forms. This would only be a setback, not death.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I don’t see how a ‘setback’ accomplishes our goal. We need to permanently disable them.”
“It would. Think about the anomaly.”
Kaiden held up his hands. “What anomaly? There isn’t some dimensional pocket thing that spans all of the territory the Saps now control.”
“Isn’t there? Have you forgotten about the Darkness?”
I did a doubletake. “Wait, what?”
“The Darkness is evidence of the collapsed dimensional barriers. Only you four can set foot there, because only you are infused with the Duzies—as you call them— which enable you to be present in any plane. The Overlords were using the crystalline network to enable the merging of their reality with yours, granting them easier access to the terminals that would give them a connection to their ultimate goal.”
“The Duzies themselves—to control everything.” My jaw went slack.
“Yes.”
Kaiden swore under his breath. “I thought the worlds themselves were transformed.”
“They were… just not in the way we thought.” My head swam. Had we really been looking at everything incorrectly the whole time?
Maris’ eyebrows drew together. “Does that mean we were wrong before?”
Toran was silent, thinking through the new information from Hoofy. “The Saps did gain partial control of the crystalline network—we detected the signals through the crystals and on their ship. But, it would seem that the spread of the Darkness was actually the expansion of the anomaly—not the result of reprogramming the crystalline network’s reset mechanism.”
“Except, we saw hybrid creatures,” I pointed out. “We’ve been to those worlds—it wasn’t just some blurred line with 6D!”
“Yeah, a lot of other things were different,” Kaiden agreed.
Toran nodded. “Knowing what we do now, though, I think our assumptions about the mode of transformation were incorrect. Perhaps the alien hybrids were the result of each planet’s native life being exposed to the Sap’s energy grid.”
“Huh.” Kaiden absorbed the words. “That makes sense. Some things were able to meld with the grid, and they morphed to survive in the dimensional anomaly. Anything that didn’t adapt… I bet the vegetation and everything falling apart when we touched it—and the corrosion of ships—was just the physical bonds breaking down from the forced transition to a higher plane.”
“Yeah.” I felt like my entire sense of reality had been pulled out from under me. “Stars! Somehow, this is
so much worse.”
Maris looked ill. “What about the black particles we all saw in the crystals?”
“They must have been the leading edge of the anomaly,” Toran replied. “Most of the alien energy grid didn’t appear to be quite solid when we saw it in our plane. Think about the conduits we saw radiating from the crystal in the town square on Windau.”
“That’s true. Some things were solid—the transformed stuff, I guess—but all of those ‘energy conduits’ did have a distinct not-quite-there-ness. One, giant spatial anomaly,” I murmured.
“That would explain why our comms didn’t work right on the Darkness-infected worlds,” Toran said. “Spacetime was… different.”
Wonder spread across Kaiden’s face. “Only your modification to the comms to use the crystalline network itself could bypass that.”
“And Crystallis… it has some sort of dimensional-alternateness of its own,” I realized.
Kaiden sat up straighter. “Hold on, the Archive wouldn’t be hurt by the disruptor wave, right?”
“No, it is not connected to the Overlord’s network. Not yet, anyway. They are headed for it. It is a place of great power, which they have sought to control for a long time,” Hoofy replied.
“Okay, so every place that we’ve seen the Darkness is connected to the energy core on the planet, and all of those places are within a broad-reaching spatial anomaly with blurry dimensional plane lines, right?” I summarized. “But on the Saps’ home planet itself—there’s only limited evidence of the Darkness around the viewing-sphere. Is there an anomaly, or…?”
“No, that is the issue,” Hoofy said. “They have been careful to prevent the anomaly from breaking down the dimensional membrane around their home planet, to protect the core of their civilization and energy grid which empowers them. A disruptor would need to be placed in their native plane, but then the echo would carry to the other worlds.”
Kaiden placed a hand on his chin. “Problem: how do we do that?”
“Yes, a serious concern, indeed,” Toran concurred. “Analysis of the detonation at the anomaly site revealed that the spatial disruptor functions up to 5D on its own. So, the device would need to be deployed on a higher plane in order to affect the Saps in 6D. However, the disruptor would need to be Duzie super-saturated in order for us to bring it with us through the dimensional transition.”
“I am aware of that, and I do have a potential solution,” Hoofy said. “I have spent my time with you on this ship studying your technology and capabilities. I believe I have devised a way to supercharge your disruptor by creating an anomalous cross-universe dimensional rift at the epicenter, which can then expand to take out everything within the rest of the network. This transitory bridge would essentially suck out everything linked to the Overlord’s energy grid and force it into a pocket universe that is confined to the 6D plane. The Overlords could never return to our universe.”
Maris blinked. “How could we make this anomaly-universe-bridge thing?”
“By using the properties of your artifacts and the viewing-sphere from your ship.”
I winced. “Oh, Colren would not be happy about that.”
“That sphere is our only means to initiate a universal reset after the battle has been won,” Toran said.
“Short of going to the Archive,” Kaiden pointed out.
“No, there’s still the other sphere on the planet,” Maris interjected. “Couldn’t we use that one instead?”
“That would require going back to that place,” I replied. “And, they’d certainly be waiting for us.”
Kaiden brightened. “Unless we took 7D pathways to get there, the same way as when we went to the core earlier today. We could use the Evangiel’s sphere to enter 7D, then travel to the sphere on the planet, pick it up, bring it to the core’s spacetime location along with a spatial disruptor—”
“Nope,” I cut him off. “Can’t travel through 7D with the disruptor, remember? Not unless you want to hug it for a few days to get it all Duzie-saturated.”
“Hard pass,” he replied. “If we can’t bring the disruptor with us, then instead we need a shortcut. We could still enter the chamber containing the viewing-sphere on the planet through 7D, but not exit that way.”
“What’s the alternative?” Maris asked.
“We pop in, plant a locator to pinpoint the chamber’s location on the planet, blast a tunnel to the surface, then pick up the sphere with a shuttle,” he stated.
I laughed. “Yeah. Right.”
“I’m serious. It could work,” he insisted.
“But, the energy core location,” I continued. “We’d still have to get there to plant the disruptor, and how would we know where that is?”
He shrugged. “Same strategy.”
Sex really did make people lose their minds. “It would never work,” I said.
“Not in that order, but if we located the spacetime location of the core first, then go after the viewing-sphere and are able to take a direct path back to the core’s position, maybe,” Toran stated.
I stared agape at him. “You’ve both gone insane.”
Maris shimmied her shoulders. “I dunno, sounds kind of daring and exciting.”
“Hey, I’m supposed to be the one with the crazy ideas.” I sighed.
Kaiden nudged me. “You know you love it.”
“I think we’re doomed.”
He smiled. “But you kinda want to try it now, don’t you?”
I rolled my eyes. He already knew me too well “Okay, yes, it’s so crazy, I do want it to work.” I paused. “How would we blast those holes, though? A shuttle doesn’t have that kind of firepower.”
“The Sanctum does though, right?” Maris suggested. “Richards and Kess were all about seeing us in action.”
“They’d be even crazier than us to agree to this plan,” Toran said.
Kaiden nodded. “Which is exactly why they will.”
“But, will Colren authorize the use of a disruptor?” I pointed out. “I mean, he wants us to extract the core intact. The disruptor is, well, destructive in that ‘obliterate everything’ kind of way.”
“That part we won’t know without asking,” Kaiden replied. “But, I think this plan is just unconventional enough that the Saps won’t see it coming and we have a genuine chance of pulling it off.”
“We’ll only get one shot,” I said.
Kaiden grinned. “The Dark Sentinels only need one.”
Maris chuckled. “This is either going to be amazing or fail spectacularly.”
“Come on, have a little faith!” Kaiden urged. “We’ve tackled way worse.”
I cast him a skeptical glance. “Oh, really?”
He faltered. “Okay, so maybe this is the most ‘out there’ thing we’ve attempted. But, I believe in us.”
“This is what we were called to do.” Toran nodded solemnly.
I clapped my hands together. “All right, let’s get the pieces moving.”
We found Colren in his usual place on the bridge and pulled him aside into Central Command’s conference room. After a brief summary of the information we’d pieced together regarding the true nature of the Darkness and the alien invasion, we laid out our plan. Not surprisingly, he didn’t seem overjoyed.
“That’s, um…” I hadn’t often seen Colren at a loss for words, but I couldn’t blame his reaction in this instance.
“I know it’s crazy,” I said. “I thought the same thing.”
“But, I really think this has merit,” Kaiden insisted.
“Frankly, I’m in no position to question it,” the commander replied after a long pause. “I haven’t seen what you’ve seen, and I simply must trust that your recommendations are informed and in the Hegemony’s best interests. I’ve conveyed to you the wishes of my superiors, which is all my position allows for me to do with non-military citizens.”
It didn’t take much to read between the lines. “A di
sruptor is essential to our plan. Will we be able to have access to another one?” I asked.
He inclined his head. “I’ll put in the request immediately.”
“And the Sanctum?” Kaiden questioned.
“You’ll have what you need for your mission,” Colren assured us. “This is a time for decisive action. We can’t hold back.”
I nodded. “We’re ready.”
“I’ll make the necessary preparations. Stand by.” He dismissed us, and we returned to our lounge to wait for the go-ahead.
“This is it, team,” Kaiden said as we settled around the table. “The final battle is nigh.”
“Dramatic much?” I raised an eyebrow.
“I hope this is really the end. I want to get back home,” Maris said.
“If all goes well, we’ll never know we were gone,” Toran replied. “Now that we’re almost to the end, I’m saddened to think I may not remember this time we’ve spent together.”
Another pang struck my heart as I was once again reminded of that reality. “We’ll figure out a way to find each other.”
“What an unusual sight that would be, seeing the four of us meet up in a bar.” Maris laughed.
I smiled at the mental image. “A Dark Sentinels reunion.”
“It’ll happen,” Kaiden said with assurance. He took my hand under the table and gave it a loving squeeze.
I hoped more than anything he was right.
“Aside from the disruptor, do we need anything else?” Maris asked.
“Not that I can think of,” Toran replied.
“You know, by the time we got to this point, I figured we’d be getting all sorts of new, fancy equipment,” I mused.
Kaiden smiled. “Yeah, like that powered armor we saw!”
“Exactly. But,” I looked down at my clothes, “now I can’t imagine replacing this Duzie-saturated set.”
“I never thought I’d utter these words,” Maris took a deep breath, “but I’m actually satisfied only having one outfit. I mean, I even had this one patched when it was ripped rather than getting a new shirt.” She bit her lip. “Stars, I don’t know what’s happened to me!”
