Part 24 (1/2)
”Hexter, report,” said Lieutenant Commander el-Rashad.
Lieutenant Russell Hexter, the alpha-s.h.i.+ft officer of the watch who had been serving for the past few months as el-Rashad's XO, punched up a new screen of data on the science station's monitor. ”The scattering fields on the surface just collapsed.”
”Do we have a transporter lock yet?”
”Almost,” replied the lanky, rudder-nosed, red-haired American. ”The explosion kicked up a lot of interference.”
From the communications station, Ensign Remy Oliveira called out, ”I have a lock on Major Foyle's communicator. Relaying coordinates to the transporter room now.”
El-Rashad thumbed a switch on the arm of the command chair and opened an intras.h.i.+p comm to the engineering deck. ”Pierce! Power up the transporter, and stand by for full impulse!”
”Aye, sir,” said the acting chief engineer. ”We're patching in the coordinates now. Energizing in sixty seconds.”
”Acknowledged, bridge out.” El-Rashad closed the comm channel and said to the entire bridge crew, ”Look sharp, everyone. I get the feeling this one's going to be close.”
At first, Erika Hernandez thought she and the other captive officers were being visited by a swarm of fireflies. Then the gently buzzing cloud of glowing motes fused together and formed an incandescent sphere, which swiftly reshaped itself into Inyx.
The looming Caeliar scientist took a moment to a.s.sess Hernandez's predicament. Then he extended his hand, conjured a small cl.u.s.ter of radiant particles that descended on her and the others, and sent the glowing specks into a dizzying spin. Seconds later the tiny lights faded away to nothing, and the ropes that had held her were gone. She plucked the sock from her mouth and looked for any trace of the ropes behind her, but there wasn't so much as a loose thread or a stray fiber.
Hernandez turned to Inyx and ma.s.saged her rope-burned wrists. ”Foyle and his men are planning an attack.”
”Their scheme is already set in motion,” Inyx said. ”They have destroyed one of our cities by sabotaging a node of the apparatus, and they have seized another.”
Fletcher, Valerian, and Metzger gathered at Hernandez's sides. ”Can't you stop them?” Fletcher asked Inyx.
”They are threatening one of their own to keep us at bay,” Inyx said. ”For her sake, we are exercising caution.”
Hernandez fumed to think of Foyle and his men using Thayer as a p.a.w.n. Although Thayer had betrayed her by siding with the MACOs, she was still one of Hernandez's officers. ”Is she okay?”
”No,” Inyx said. ”She's badly wounded. She may die.”
Dr. Metzger said, ”Take me to her, please, I can-”
”Unacceptable,” Inyx said. ”Allowing you to regroup with the others is forbidden by order of the Quorum. I am here only because the gestalt saw that you four were not with the others, and we feared for your well-being.”
The doctor looked ready to argue with him, but Hernandez silenced her CMO with a raised hand. ”Inyx, take us to the Quorum, as fast as you can. We'll help you stop Foyle and his men before this gets any worse.” She saw him bristle at the notion. ”Please, Inyx. I'm begging you. Let us try to help. Bring us to the Quorum.”
Inyx pondered her request for a few seconds. He turned away and bowed his head ever so slightly, then he extended his arm toward the terrace outside the penthouse and summoned a pool of quicksilver from the dark marble tiles.
Valerian stared at the s.h.i.+fting metallic liquid and muttered, ”Talk about taking blood from a stone.”
Thousands of drops of s.h.i.+ning fluid floated upward and conglomerated a few centimeters above the terrace into a mirror-perfect, razor-thin transportation disk. Inyx walked forward, stepped onto the disk, and looked back at Hernandez.
”Events are accelerating,” he said. ”We should go.”
Major Foyle's vision pierced the white haze of the transporter effect as he rematerialized on D Deck inside the Columbia.
To his left was Lieutenant Yacavino, and in front of them, with their rifles in its back, was a Caeliar scientist. As soon as the rematerialization sequence finished, Foyle prodded the lanky, bulbous-headed alien forward. ”Move.”
The two MACO officers and the Caeliar stepped off the small transporter pad and were met by Corporal Hossad Mottaki and Private Ndufe Otumbo. Mottaki nodded at the Caeliar and asked Foyle, ”Who's your friend, sir?”
”He's not a friend, he's a prisoner,” Foyle said. ”Put him in the brig and keep an eye on him at all times. Understood?”
”Yes, sir,” Mottaki said, and he aimed his rifle at the Caeliar. ”Follow Private Otumbo.” The corporal nodded to the private, who led them out of the transporter bay.
Standing behind the transporter control console was Ensign Katrin Gunnarsdottir, from the s.h.i.+p's engineering division. The wide-eyed Icelander asked, ”Are you all right, sirs? I've never had to run a transport sequence that fast before.”
”We're fine,” Foyle said. ”Thank you, Ensign. I'm just glad you were ready when we needed you. Start scanning for the next round of transports, we don't have much time.” He signaled Yacavino with a nod toward the door. ”Let's get to the bridge.”
As the two men headed for the exit, Gunnarsdottir called after them, ”Sirs? I'm only reading six communicator signals at the transport site. I can't get a lock on the captain, the XO, the doctor, or Ensign Valerian. Where are they?”
Foyle ignored his lieutenant's accusing stare and replied calmly, ”They didn't make it. Let's get the rest of our people home as soon as we can, Ensign.”
She averted her eyes and focused on her console. ”Aye, sir,” she said, with a vibrato of grief in her voice.
As he and Yacavino left the transporter bay, Foyle noted his lieutenant's tensed jaw and brooding glower. They didn't speak of his lie to the ensign as they moved down the corridor and entered the turbolift, and with every step they took, Foyle became more certain that they never would-because Yacavino was a good soldier, and he knew that war made its own demands.
Karl Graylock had only the vaguest idea what the machines in the Caeliar apparatus were, and he had no idea how the aliens made the system work. The Caeliar seemed to direct it by thought alone; so far as he could tell, it had no physical interface. The symbols that streamed past on the enormous liquid sheets that the Caeliar had produced in midair were gibberish to him.
He cast a wary look at the alien closest to him. ”How do I know you're programming the variables I asked for?”
The scientist had to twist his upper body to look at Graylock. With their ever-frowning, impenetrable visages, the Caeliar always looked disdainful, and their hauteur always conveyed a degree of condescension. As this one answered him, however, he couldn't mistake its obvious contempt. ”Shall I have the formulae translated into your primitive alphanumeric code?”
”If you wouldn't mind,” Graylock said, answering sarcasm with more of the same.
On the silver sheet above and in front of him, a ripple transformed the alien script and symbols into Arabic numerals and Earth-standard mathematical expressions. It was the most beautiful thing Graylock had ever seen. It was elegant and economical, it was mathematics and physics and temporal mechanics fused into one and reimagined as poetry.
He looked around, hoping to share his wonder with one of the other members of the Columbia landing party-and then he saw Thayer, lying on the floor, her jumpsuit soaked with her own blood, which still seeped from the ragged and meaty mess that used to be her left foot.
A Caeliar scientist said, ”It is ready.”
Graylock turned back to the formula and its creators. ”Then let's proceed. Open the pa.s.sage.”
The apparatus resonated with a deep droning, and Graylock felt it vibrating the fillings in his molars. Several liquid displays indicated sharp increases in power output, and another set its puzzle of Caeliar symbols racing. As they began to melt into a blur, he imagined he could almost see in it numbers and notations he understood. Then the image dissolved into a view of a dazzling rift in s.p.a.ce-time, in orbit of Erigol. Looking like a speck poised on its event horizon was the Columbia.
”Mein Gott,” Graylock said under his breath. ”We did it.” For a moment he could only stare in fascination at the temporally s.h.i.+fted subs.p.a.ce tunnel. He was unable to fathom how much raw energy was being expended to keep it open and stable. Recovering his wits, he grinned as he called over his shoulder to Pembleton, ”Hail the s.h.i.+p! The road is open.”
The last time Hernandez had visited the Quorum, the Caeliar had seemed aloof and reserved. Now, as she and her loyal officers ascended with Inyx into the center of the hall's main level, the clamor in the soaring s.p.a.ce was deafening. Scores of sliver-thin, levitating liquid screens raged with riots of color and sound. The hall was lit by thirty-six sunlike orbs, arranged in a circle high overhead, near the pyramidal chamber's peak.
None of the Caeliar spoke. Instead, they filled the air with an atonal humming punctuated by deep, vibrato drones, like the low groan of a didgeridoo she had once heard on Earth, in the silence of the deep Outback.
Fletcher stood on her right, Metzger on her left, and Valerian was close at her back. Inyx stepped a few paces ahead of Hernandez and spread his arms in a submissive gesture before the eastern tier, where the scarlet-robed tanwa-seynorral looked down at them. Ordemo Nordal appeared to be the only member of the Quorum who wasn't lost in the throes of a droning swoon.
”Captain Hernandez,” said the first-among-equals, ”you told us a short time ago that you and your kind posed no threat to us.” A wave of his hand united the many liquid screens around the hall into one enormous floating wall of quicksilver. An image rippled into focus-it was a Caeliar city being consumed in a fiery flash. When the blinding glare faded, it revealed an image of the MACO-led hostage crisis taking place in another city's apparatus control center. Her cheeks burned with shame as she watched her mutinous crew coerce the Caeliar by threatening the already wounded Lieutenant Thayer. ”It seems you underestimated your people's capacity for brutality.”
The Caeliar leader continued, ”Inyx, these savage beings were welcomed into our home at your urging. Now they have extinguished countless lives, minds that were integral to the gestalt, and they have interfered at a critical moment during the great work. Our link to the far galaxy has been corrupted.”
Inyx bowed low from the waist. ”Forgive me, tanwa-seynorral. I sought only knowledge and understanding.”
”I trust that you will remember this the next time you are tempted to indulge your curiosity at the expense of our safety.”