Hernandez had sensed the reduction in tension among the Caeliar in the Quorum hall as soon as Pembleton had lowered his weapon. She hoped that her role in ending the crisis might persuade the Caeliar not to take punitive measures against her ship or against Earth for the crimes that Foyle and the others had committed.
Her thoughts drifted while she watched el-Rashad direct the officers on the Columbia to arrest Foyle and Yacavino. How am I supposed to make amends for this? How do I apologize for the deaths of millions?
She was pulled back into the present moment by el-Rashad asking, "Sir?" She blinked once and looked up at his larger-than-life image on the liquid wall high above her. "We"re running low on provisions up here," he said. "Is there any chance the Caeliar might let us settle on the planet"s surface if we stay out of their cities?"
After what we just did? She sighed. "I don"t know Kalil. That"s a very good-"
A thunderclap rent the air, the glowing orbs at the top of the chamber were extinguished, and a flash reddened the night sky beyond the crystal-walled pyramid. Tremors shook the floor under Hernandez"s feet and knocked her down. The other Columbia officers fell beside her. The liquid screens evaporated and rained down like stardust. Inyx and the other Caeliar levitated upward, and then Hernandez saw why-the tiers on which they had been seated were collapsing, shearing away from the crystal walls of the pyramid with sharp splintering sounds.
An earsplitting crack made Hernandez wince, and when she opened her eyes again, a ragged fissure had bifurcated the magnificent, fractal starburst pattern that adorned the floor.
Over the steady rumble of an earthquake, she called out, "Inyx! What"s happening?"
Despite the tumult erupting around them, Inyx"s voice resonated clearly, as if it were amplified. "It"s a feedback pulse from the galaxy we contacted," he said. "A million times more powerful than we expected."
The reddish glow that suffused the chamber brightened. Outside the pyramid, the night sky had become almost bloodred.
Valerian shouted to Inyx, "A feedback pulse did this?"
"It disrupted all of our technology, including our deep-solar energy taps," Inyx said. "The gestalt is trying to contain the damage, but the signal appears to have been crafted with malicious intent. Please excuse me while I commune with the gestalt." Inyx turned away and stared into s.p.a.ce with the other Caeliar. Outside, lightning blazed across the sky. Then Inyx looked back at Hernandez and her officers. "We are unable to contain the reaction. We have very little time left."
Fletcher traded a terrified look with the captain and asked their Caeliar liaison, "Until what?"
"Until this star system is destroyed."
Karl Graylock stared in anger and disbelief at the Caeliar scientist and asked, "Are you serious?"
"The feedback pulse from the extragalactic signal has caused a chain reaction in our solar and geothermal taps," the alien replied. "The core of our star has been pushed past its supercritical point. Its detonation is imminent, and the solar ma.s.s ejection will be propelled at faster-than-light velocity by a subspatial shock wave. At the same time, explosive conditions are being generated inside Erigol"s core. The annihilation of this planet will be all but instantaneous."
Waving his hands at the darkened and sparking equipment in the sprawling laboratory, Graylock protested, "Can"t you stop it?" A violent shuddering motion was followed by a low, metallic groan from the structures around them.
"It is too late to save Erigol," the alien said. "But if you will permit us to work without interruptions, maybe we can save this city-and you, as well."
Graylock stepped away from the machines and said, "Do whatever you have to do." As the Caeliar started moving atoms around by the power of thought, and another temblor rattled the apparatus control room, Graylock flipped open his communicator, in the hope that the impending calamity had once again disabled the scattering field. "Graylock to Columbia. Come in, Columbia."
Static and squalls of noise half-buried el-Rashad"s reply. "Go ahead, Karl," said the second officer.
The chief engineer spoke loudly and slowly to improve the likelihood of his message being understood through the interference. "Kalil, the star and the planet are going to explode. Break orbit now! Get the h.e.l.l out of here!"
"What about the landing party?"
"Forget us," Graylock said. "Save the ship, Kalil!"
The channel was quiet for a few seconds before el-Rashad said, "Good luck, Karl. To all of you."
"Danke," Graylock said. Then he lowered his voice, pressed the communicator close to his mouth, and covered it with his free hand. "Kalil, the solar shock wave will be FTL. You can"t escape on impulse. You know what you have to do. Graylock out."
He flipped the communicator closed and prayed that his warning to the Columbia had been delivered in time.
Hernandez was just starting to regain her footing when the violent shaking of Axion became a steady vibration, and then her sense of balance abandoned her and she tumbled backward. She expected to strike the floor and stop there, but she kept on rolling, tumbling sideways, realizing only after several disorienting seconds that the floor inside the Quorum hall was sitting at a steep angle and that she and her officers were being dragged across it by gravity.
All of this went unnoticed by the levitating Caeliar, who maintained their positions relative to the pyramid"s walls.
Fletcher was the first of the group to slam into the pile of wreckage from one of the collapsed seating tiers. Hernandez plowed into the broken stone and metal behind her first officer, with Valerian and Dr. Metzger making impact seconds later. It was Fletcher who asked, "What the h.e.l.l? Did the city fall over?"
"I don"t think so," Hernandez said, as she watched forks of lightning dance across the dark crystal walls of the pyramid, which was engulfed in glowing red mist. "I"d say we took off."
The four women clung to the apparently stationary wreckage as the ruddy clouds outside the pyramid cleared and revealed the broad sweep of the planet, from low orbit. Along the horizon, other Caeliar cities were rising from the surface, which was aglow with volcanic eruptions and wreathed in ashen smoke.
Above the cerulean halo of the thinning atmosphere, Erigol"s once-golden star had turned bloodred and expanded to frightening proportions. In higher orbit of the dying world, numerous tunnels of light were forming, and when Hernandez looked to the apex of the Quorum hall"s pyramid, she saw another such pa.s.sage directly ahead of Axion. They closed the distance to it in moments-then they stopped, hovering at its aperture.
Valerian was trembling and wide-eyed as she muttered, "What are they waiting for?"
Inyx was far away, but his voice was close. "We are trying to purge the equations that your engineer forced us to put into the system. The damage caused by the feedback pulse is slowing our efforts, but it is not safe to enter the pa.s.sage until we have stabilized the phenomena."
Fletcher pointed at the distant cities hanging in s.p.a.ce. "Why aren"t they leaving?"
"All our cities are linked nodes in the apparatus," Inyx said. "An error in one is an error for all. Harmony must be restored before we can proceed."
The star was enlarging at a rate swift enough to be seen by the naked eye. "I don"t think we have that much time," she said.
Shaking her head in denial, Valerian sounded hysterical. "It"s not real, it can"t be real. How can it be real?"
Dr. Metzger snapped, "What"re you talking about?"
"The sun," Valerian said. "The sun. We shouldn"t be able to see the effects yet. The inflation just started, it"s nine light-minutes away, we can"t really see it, it"s not real...."
"Subspatial lensing," Inyx"s voice explained. "The same phenomenon that will carry the supernova"s eruption to us is telegraphing its effects."
His answer didn"t seem to placate Valerian, who buried her face in her hands. Hernandez watched the red star dimming and swelling, and she felt her own anxiety swelling in equal measure. "Inyx, how much longer?" When he didn"t answer right away, she hollered at his distant form, "How long?"
"Not long," he said, "but too long, all the same."
"Fifteen seconds to the subs.p.a.ce tunnel," said helmsman Brynn Mealia.
El-Rashad watched the coruscating phenomenon grow larger on the main viewer as the Columbia broke free of the Caeliar"s tractor beam and accelerated toward freedom. The captain had told him not to do this, but she had been motivated by a fear of retaliation by the Caeliar against Earth. Based on the cataclysm that was unfolding in front of him, however, he doubted the aliens would be in a position to take their revenge, or that they would even notice the Columbia"s departure.
"Commander," said Ensign Diane Atlagic, who had taken over for Siguenza at tactical, "none of the Caeliar city-ships are entering the subs.p.a.ce tunnels. They"re all holding station at the apertures." He looked back at the dark-haired Croatian woman, who added, "Maybe they know something we don"t, sir."
He had only seconds to decide-proceed or hold? If the Caeliar don"t trust the pa.s.sages enough to use them, do I really want to take us in there? "Helm, all stop!"
"Answering all stop," Mealia said.
"Oliveira," el-Rashad said, "hail the Caeliar capital-ship, find out why they-" The main viewer whited out for a fraction of a second, and when it reset, Erigol was breaking apart like a marble struck by a hammer. A subspatial shock wave blasted scores of city-ships into vapors, and the subs.p.a.ce pa.s.sages dissolved in its wake. "Helm! Go!"
Mealia punched in full impulse power, and the Columbia hurtled forward into the breach.
The ship pitched and rolled the moment it was inside the subs.p.a.ce tunnel. Darkness blinked in and out on the bridge as consoles erupted into flames and sparks showered down from overloaded relays in the overhead. A brutal jolt hurled el-Rashad from the command chair and pinned Mealia to the helm.
El-Rashad clawed his way across the deck, back to the chair, and jabbed the comlink to engineering. "Bridge to..."
The next word refused to leave his throat. A dry rasp rattled in his chest. His mouth felt as if it were carved from sand, and a burning sensation filled his eyes, his sinuses, and then every cell in his body.
Everyone on the bridge was in agony, just as he was. He saw their faces contort in horror, watched them fall to the deck beside him. They were all going through the motions of fighting for air, even though their bodies no longer had the ability to inhale. He felt his thoughts breaking down as his brain boiled and burned.
Mealia was the first to vanish in a cloud of ash, and Atlagic disintegrated into gray powder. Oliveira reached out to el-Rashad for one last moment of human contact before oblivion. He bridged the distance with his outstretched hand, but as she took it in hers, he couldn"t feel it.
Then both their hands crumbled to dust, and a few seconds later he felt absolutely nothing at all.
Planetary debris slammed into the spires of the Caeliar city-ship Mantilis and pulverized swaths of its platinum-white majesty. Behind it, Erigol was an expanding jumble of rocks and fire and gases, and a subspatial shock wave shattered dozens of city-ships in seconds.
Karl Graylock watched the mayhem on one of the Caeliar"s liquid screens as the alien scientists tinkered with numbers and symbols and generally acted as if nothing was wrong. The chief engineer grabbed one of them, spun the looming freak around to face him, and shouted, "Go! Go now! Or we"re all dead!"
"Temporal balance has not-"
Graylock shook him silent. "If you don"t go, you"re killing us! Go, scheisskopf! Schnell!"
The scientist became as insubstantial as a ghost and slipped from Graylock"s grasp. A moment later he resolidified in front of a large console of glowing liquid surfaces, waved his tendril-like fingers over it, and declared, "It is done."
On the liquid screen, the images of the cataclysm were replaced by the swirling, blue-white chaos of the subs.p.a.ce tunnel. A slight tremble in the floor made Graylock wonder if they would face turbulence inside the pa.s.sage.
Then a savage quaking gripped the lab, and the liquid screen showed him mighty towers being shorn from the city-ship and cast away into the uncharted realms of subs.p.a.ce, flotsam in the ether beyond s.p.a.ce and time.
"Mein Gott," Graylock said as the buildings were swallowed in the subs.p.a.ce vortex. "Don"t you have shields?"
The Caeliar scientist didn"t look at him as he replied. "They failed when we entered the pa.s.sage, as I feared."
The chief engineer was aghast. "Are you saying we"re exposed?"
"No," the Caeliar answered. "This lab is a protected environment. It will protect you from the pa.s.sage"s effects."
"But what about the rest of the city?"
All the Caeliar in the vast facility turned and faced him with their permanent frowns and cold, metallic-hued eyes. In an ominous tone, the one closest to him said, "The rest of the city is dead, Karl Graylock."
The city-ship Axion hurtled through the subs.p.a.ce pa.s.sage, buffeted by forces more powerful than Erika Hernandez could imagine. She hung on to a bent piece of wreckage from the tier. Veronica Fletcher hung on to Hernandez"s legs, and Valerian and Metzger were both clinging to Fletcher.
Hernandez and her officers all had watched in terrified silence as Erigol"s sun had exploded and the shock wave, propelled toward the planet at faster-than-light speed, had atomized scores of Caeliar cities hovering in orbit of the broken world. She had seen only two of the other cities escape destruction, by entering their swirling subs.p.a.ce pa.s.sages scant moments before the shock wave dispersed their apertures. Then Axion had raced into its own subspatial rift and left its shattered legacy behind.
Outside the dark-tinted pyramid of the Quorum hall, lashes of blue-white energy tore away chunks of the city"s periphery. Hernandez winced as ma.s.sive slabs of metal and landscaping were ripped from its edges and impacts flared against its protective energy shield, which appeared to be contracting. As the field"s outer edge shrank below the tips of Axion"s loftiest spires, the towers were rapidly shorn away and scattered into the blinding swirl of chaos that surrounded them.
Then the whirling brightness fell away and darkness returned. Hernandez felt the strain of gravitational forces release its hold on her, and Fletcher let go of her leg. Looking back, the captain saw her people all safe on the floor, looking scuffed and mussed but generally unhurt. The crystal walls of the pyramidal chamber lightened and became transparent. Once her eyes adjusted, Hernandez saw the vista of stars. Axion had returned to normal s.p.a.ce-time.
Fletcher was the first to get up, and she offered a hand to Hernandez. The XO asked, "Where are we?"
"No idea."
Valerian and Metzger were slow getting to their feet. The doctor rolled out a crick in her neck while the young Scotswoman brushed the dust off her blue jumpsuit uniform.
"I"m just glad we"re still alive," Metzger said.
Valerian added, "Aye, I"ll second that."
Above them, the hundreds of Caeliar, who had hovered undisturbed by the rougher moments of their subs.p.a.ce transit, floated down to the main level. They looked exhausted. As they descended closer, she realized that they actually appeared to be smaller than they had been before. Their bodies were emaciated and shorter, and the colors of their skin were blanched and dull. Once they touched down on the main level of the hall, the group quietly dispersed, wandering dazed like refugees from a war zone, singly and in small cl.u.s.ters. A few of them clung to one another for mutual support.
A lone figure emerged from the erratic, spreading crowd. Inyx limped in heavy steps toward the four humans, looking humbled and enervated. "Are any of you hurt?"
"No, Inyx," said Hernandez. "Thank you." Observing the slow, weary sway of his torso with every breath he drew and released, she asked, "How about you? Are you all right?"
"We are weakened. Much power was lost with our fallen cities. And the loss of minds has been a blow to the gestalt."
Fletcher said, "Looks like the city took a lot of damage."
"Nothing that can"t be repaired," Inyx said, but the sorrow in his voice betrayed his optimistic words as a lie.
Valerian cast a nervous glance at the stars. "Inyx, how far did we travel?"
"In s.p.a.ce, not far," Inyx said. "A few thousand light-years, by your species" reckoning."
His choice of words alarmed Hernandez. "In s.p.a.ce?"
"Because your engineer"s equations had polluted the neural network of the apparatus, the subs.p.a.ce tunnels we created were unstable. The induced detonation of our star introduced a cascade of high-energy tachyons that-"
Hernandez held up her hand. "No details, Inyx, just the summary. Where are we?"
"We are approximately half the distance from the galaxy"s core to its rim...and, using your chronological units, we have been displaced six hundred fifty years, seven months, eight days, eleven hours, and forty-three minutes into what was the past...and is now our present."
Shocked reactions were volleyed between the four Columbia officers. It took Hernandez a moment to process the news. "Well, we can"t stay here," she said to Inyx. "We have to go back."
"That will not be possible," Inyx said. "Not yet."
Commander Fletcher snapped, "Why the h.e.l.l not? The subs.p.a.ce tunnel brought us here, it can take us back the way we came."
"It cannot," Inyx said. "Because it traversed time as well as s.p.a.ce, it was extremely unstable. Only a focused effort by the gestalt was able to prevent its collapse before we reached its far terminus. As soon as we returned to normal s.p.a.ce, it collapsed behind us. It no longer exists."
Ensign Valerian"s temper flared, as well. "So? Moving forward in time can"t be that hard! We skipped twelve years in two months on the Columbia. You lot must have somethin" better, what with all your fancy tricks and gadgets."
"It is not a matter of ability," Inyx said. "It is a matter of law. For as long as we have known the methods of time travel, it has been strictly controlled by the Quorum. Careless jaunts either forward or backward in time carry the potential for great harm. It was permitted in this instance only to save your lives. Had you not been among us, we would have let ourselves perish rather than risk the integrity of the time line."
Dr. Metzger inquired, "So, what happens now?"
"First, we heal," Inyx said. "Then we mask our presence, to avoid anachronistic encounters. When that is done, we will a.n.a.lyze the causes of our world"s destruction, and we will attempt to determine if our presence in this earlier phase of the time line is an error that needs to be corrected."
"And what about us?" asked Hernandez. "We"re just supposed to sit quietly while you do all this?"
"Yes," Inyx said. "We will not skip forward in time unless we are certain that doing so is necessary, nor can we permit you to leave or return to your time with knowledge of us. All we can do now is seek the truth and go forward."
As usual, Hernandez realized, there was little point in arguing with the Caeliar. Then another worrisome thought occurred to her. She asked Inyx, "Is the Quorum going to blame us for what happened at Erigol?"