Aurora Rising: The Complete Collection (73 page)

Instantly she was a flurry of activity, confirming the dampener field had engaged, beginning scans for threats or any movement whatsoever in the area and attuning the spectrum analyzer across all bands.

The flare from the pulsar leapt to life on the spectrum display. The gamma beam pulsed in a regular, rapid spin. She filtered it out—and immediately frowned. “It’s gone.”

“Everything?”

Her head shook minutely. “The gamma radiation, the local one whose source we weren’t able to pinpoint. The terahertz radiation, too.”

He leaned closer to stare at the spectrum display with her. “But not the TLF.”

“But not the TLF.” She blew out a long, slow breath. “Okay. Nothing to do but find out why.” She started the impulse engine.

The nebular clouds soon began to thin, then abruptly evaporate as before. Yet in stark and rather disturbing contrast to before, the clouds evaporated to reveal only the void.

The ships were gone.
And so was the portal.

Neither of them spoke. They simply regarded the empty blackness in stunned disbelief. She had prepared herself for a number of scenarios. None of those scenarios involved the portal being
gone
.

Because that was impossible.

He dropped his elbows to his knees with a heavy sigh. “So, new plan then.”

“No. The portal is there.”

His attention shifted from the viewport to her. His voice held calm conviction—and trust, she thought. “Okay. Why?”

“The same reason we’re here.”

“The TLF signal is still being generated from somewhere.”

“Correct. Now the question is….” With her left hand she strafed until the ship was positioned exactly perpendicular to the direction the wave propagated. She focused the spectrum analyzer sensors in on a point in space and took two snapshots. Then she threw both measurements to a waveform screen.

A wondrous breath fell from her lips as she sank into the chair. She was looking at a phase shift across the portal.

When measured given the precise point where the portal had floated as the origin, the TLF wave exhibited a 4.65° phase difference in each direction. On its own it didn’t tell her anything about the nature or breadth of the realm within the portal, as any number of cycles could have occurred inside—but it did tell her there existed a realm within the portal.

Caleb’s eyes narrowed at the screen for a moment before he shook his head and chuckled wryly. “And space falls back into alignment with the rules of the universe. The portal
is
there.”

“Told you.” She gave him a teasing if weighty smirk. “Now we just need to trigger it.”

“Which you’ve already determined how to do.”

The smirk softened to a smile. “Harmonics.”

He glanced at the row of screens and back to her. “The gamma radiation was a harmonic of the TLF, wasn’t it?”

“It was, though the frequency disparity was tremendous. I think the gamma frequency was an activation code. It kept the portal open while our alien friends traversed it and shut off once they no longer needed it. But I can mimic it.”

His gaze met hers, and the look in his eyes sent her stomach into somersaults and a delightful tingle rushing along her skin. She wanted nothing more in the world than to wind her fingers in his hair and pull him close and ask him if he might tell her what the look in his eyes meant.

Instead she swallowed and focused on the HUD. Her fingertips danced on a holographic panel to her left as she built the gamma wave. Once it was prepped she maneuvered the ship so it lined up directly on the invisible point which represented the center of the former portal.

“Here goes nothing….” She sucked in a deep breath and turned on the signal.

From nothingness burst forth a perfect circle of obsidian metal. Luminescent pale gold plasma filled the ring as it expanded in diameter. In two seconds it had attained its previous size and a halo of roiling clouds had billowed over its edges.

“Well that’s not something you see every day.” She nodded mutely in agreement.

After the explosion of energy which had propelled the ring outward vanished, a stilled silence seemed to engulf the landscape. The vertical pool of plasma undulated as peacefully as the surface of a pond on a quiet spring dawn. Even the churning clouds appeared to settle into a soothing rhythm. Other than the portal itself, there was no evidence of technology, of an alien force or any force at all.

The TLF wave continued to pulse—steady, deliberate and strong, as though it were the very heartbeat of the universe—from the exact center of the ring.

Like the dulcet tones of a siren it called to her, singing a promise of answers beneath the tranquil waters. Waters which happened to be composed of an unknown breed of plasma and ‘lapped’ vertically while suspended within a ring of unknown material and origin in the void of space.

Caleb’s presence beside her during the trip had been a comfort and a wonderful indulgence. But now it wasn’t close enough, for him or her. He pushed out of his chair to kneel in front of her and draw her into a slow, languorous kiss.

He drew back a mere centimeter, his voice a whisper upon her lips. “You realize we could die, simply by going through.”

She closed the centimeter to claim another kiss, lingering an eternal second beyond when it might have ended. She breathed in…breathed
him
in. “I do. But if we don’t go, maybe everyone dies. And even if I don’t particularly
like
most of everyone, I find I don’t want that on my conscience.”

He nodded against her. “Nor do I. So we go together—but only if you’re sure.”

She smiled—a tiny little smile—and bravely rolled her eyes as she straightened up and settled into the chair. “I’m sure. It’ll be an adventure. New sights, new wonders, new discoveries. It’s what I live for. You too, right?”

“Absolutely.” He returned to his chair, kicked his feet up on the dash and crossed his ankles. “Lead on. Show me this supposed ‘adventure.’”

“You got it.”

His hand reached over and wrapped around hers as she gunned the impulse engine to full power and accelerated into the portal.

V
ERTIGO

A
URORA
R
ISING
B
OOK
T
WO

BACK COVER BLURB

Where do you run when there is no escape? Where do you turn when the enemy within is as dangerous as the enemy unknown?

The year is 2322 and humanity is under attack.

An engineered war between rival superpowers escalates even as the shadowy Metigen armada begins attacking colonies on the frontiers of settled space.

Individuals from across the galaxy fight for their own survival and to protect those they hold dear, while a group of unlikely allies race to expose a secret cabal. As the aliens draw ever closer, leaving utter destruction and death in their wake, the strongest defenders of Earth and Seneca fall to one another in a war of lies and misdirection.

Alex Solovy and Caleb Marano stand accused of terrorism and murder. In a desperate gambit to clear their names and find a way to defeat the invaders, they breach the dimensional portal at the heart of the Metis Nebula. In a strange, mystical realm where nothing is what it seems, they will uncover secrets about humanity’s past and future—and one revelation which will change everything.

CONTENTS

P
ART
I

D
ESCENT

P
ART
II

R
EQUITAL

P
ART
III

M
AELSTROM

P
ART
IV

P
ARALLAX

PART
I
:

DESCENT

“For each one of us stands alone in the midst of a universe.”

— John Buchanan Robinson

1

SIYANE

B
EYOND THE
P
ORTAL

T
HEY WERE FALLING
into a black hole.

People referred to regions of space where the distance between stars stretched to kiloparsecs as ‘the void.’ But even the void retained a murmur of light in the pale glint of distant stars and infinite galaxies.

This darkness was boundless and unbroken.

Dizziness clawed at the corners of Alex Solovy’s vision, brought on by the absence of a fixed point, of any spatial reference whatsoever to lock onto as a lodestar.

In a fit of what could be mistaken for panic she cut propulsion and sought the rearcam visual—and found golden plasma rippling placidly inside the ring sustaining it. She let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, and the dizziness receded upon the knowledge they were not after all
in
a black hole.

The hand wrapped over hers squeezed with reassuring strength. She looked over to find Caleb wearing an air of easy confidence.

“Not dead.”

She knew the calm aura he projected was for her benefit, to give her comfort. And it worked. Her pulse slowed and the pounding receded from her ears. A laugh bubbled forth, only to morph into a mild protest halfway through. “Not dead. Excellent point. But what
is
this place?”

She returned the squeeze, then let go of his hand and directed her attention to the HUD as readings began coming in. Sensor sweeps were picking up no transmissions save the tremendously low frequency wave from the portal, which continued unabated for as far as her instruments reached. Analysis of the surroundings reported…nothing out of the ordinary.

“The immediate area has the same fundamental characteristics as our galaxy. According to these readings, the laws of physics are alive and well and functioning correctly. The impulse engine is able to operate within parameters. If the portal is a Brane intersection…” she glanced over with a frown “…the dimensions of this place are identical to ours. So
why
is it a portal?”

She checked the visual overlay. “We are definitely not anywhere in the Milky Way, though. It’ll take the system time to analyze all the possibilities, assuming it
can
with no locus…but I don’t believe we’re anywhere in mapped space.”

“Maybe the portal merely sent us a long way.” He shrugged. “Like ‘the other side of the universe’ long way?”

“Well the other side of the universe is a damn boring place. There’s nothing here.”

“But there
was
something here. There were ships here, a lot of them, and they had an origin point.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose in a futile attempt to ease the dull throbbing behind her forehead then rested her elbows on her knees.

This wasn’t what she had expected.

She hadn’t known what to expect. Perhaps a fresh armada of alien superdreadnoughts eager to return humanity to the stardust whence they came? Or more preferably, a dazzling civilization of exotic space stations, Dyson rings and planets subsumed beneath cities? She had idly entertained the notion of a mind-exploding dimensional shift to a gestalt of reality she hadn’t the acumen to comprehend.

But she hadn’t expected
this
.

She stared at the varied screens intended to display a plethora of information. One by one they updated.
Nothing.
Nothing save the portal and the
Siyane
. Yet somewhere beyond this barren expanse lived the aliens who dispatched an armada of warships through the Metis Nebula.

“I think…I think we follow the TLF wave for now. It’s still being generated by something farther in. We can use the portal as a heading reference so we don’t go in circles. I’ll keep scanning on wideband, and eventually that ‘something’ will show up. It has to.”

Hearing no agreement or any response at all, she toed the chair around to face Caleb. He was peering out the viewport, shoulders taut in a suggestion of unease. “What’s wrong?”

He blinked and straightened up in his chair. “Sorry. That sounds fine.” A corner of his mouth tweaked up in a hint of a smile. “I wouldn’t dream of arguing with you on the best way to navigate uncharted space. This is your show. But I was wondering…the portal had vanished until we reactivated it, which means they never expected anyone to come through it. So why are they hiding?”