Keystones: Tau Prime (19 page)

“I can get a flitter.” Her companions’ eyes turned to where Jamie had been standing. She was gone, and Deklan had the sense to look up. A flitter wobbled in the air as its occupants were thrown over the sides into the crowd. Deklan winced when he saw the impacts.

A second later Jamie was back on the stage and grabbing Jonny before vanishing again with him in tow. They reappeared next to the flitter before teleporting out of view.

Deklan suddenly found himself standing on air with nothing between him and the crowd. As he was dropped into the hovering flitter behind Jonny, his fingers clutched a seat. “How did you do that?” he asked, his voice a gasp.

Jamie looked over the flitter’s door at Calm as she answered, “Two rapid teleports so that you wouldn’t start falling.”

Deklan didn’t get a chance to ask another question before she teleported away. A second later she reappeared with Calm. In another second they were on the flitter, which wobbled under the additional passengers’ weight.

“This is your show, Mr. Day. Where to next?” As always Calm sounded unworried and unruffled, in stark contrast to Deklan’s concern.

Jonny pointed at the ocean of water above them. “Up. Strap in.”

No one protested as Jonny played with the controls. The flitter didn’t ascend with a smooth grace as it had for Eric, but it rose higher into the air.

Angry shrieks carried to them from below. “Hmm,” said Calm. “They’re shooting at us.” Again his tone was imperturbable.

“What do you mean?” replied Deklan.

“I’ve stopped over twenty projectiles.”

There didn’t seem to be anything that could serve as an appropriate response to that, though it did strike Deklan as odd that no Keystone abilities had been brought to bear against them. He turned his attention to Jonny. “What’s the plan after we reach the water?”

Jonny cleared his throat. “Calm, can you move water?”

“What do you mean ‘move’ water?” A hint of curiosity was latent in Calm’s voice.

Jonny looked straight ahead with an unwavering focus. “If I aim us straight at the water, we will be in zero gravity. Can you push it out of the way?”

Deklan didn’t like this gamble.

“I. . . .” Calm’s voice trailed off. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

Jonny grunted. “Maybe is going to have to be good enough.”

A glance over Deklan’s shoulder turned into a long stare. The air was filled with flitters in pursuit of them, bloodthirsty Tau Primans firing shots that ricocheted off Calm’s field of protection. Something large that looked like a hybrid of hi-tech and primitive rocketry was fired from the lead flitter.

Jamie smacked Deklan lightly and playfully on the shoulder. “Stop looking so worried,” she said. “You and Calm are going to be fine regardless.” She tilted her head back a few centimeters. “Is that a new foot I see?”

Deklan held up his hand. “And a new arm. Eric committed suicide, and some very well prepared security rushed in with a handgun that hit like a cannon.”

Jamie poked at his arm. “What did you do?”

“I bled out.”

Jamie didn’t look surprised, but from the stiffness of Calm and Jonny’s postures Deklan could tell that they found his comment harder to swallow than Jamie did.

“Calm,” he said, “that’s why you hired me. I’m hard to kill.” Deklan looked down at his torso. His power of regeneration or healing had been useful far too often on this little venture. “But let’s see whether we can finish the trip without my waking in another morgue or rejuvenation tank, shall we?”

Jamie took his hand and squeezed it. “You’re the most difficult patient I’ve ever had who survived.”

Jonny swung his head around to Jamie and Deklan. “Make sure you’re strapped in,” he cautioned. “I’m going to kill the speed to test this maneuver out, and I don’t want to lose anyone.”

Deklan had been ignoring the looming wall of water to the best of his ability. It reminded him of the journey through the wormhole wall. He didn’t want to wake up missing another limb.

The water dimpled smoothly off the flitter. “Yes!” said a triumphant Jonny. He laughed and accelerated into the water.

Clear water encircled Calm’s bubble of protection. It looked as though they were entering an inverted fish bowl. Thousands of curious aquatic visitors swarmed the edge of the barrier, their scales glinting in the light. The water’s surface was peppered by the impact of the Tau Primans’ weaponry that was now unimpeded by Calm’s influence. The fish around the submerged flitter scattered, streaking off into the blue depths.

Deklan experienced a surreal sense of disorientation. In the last month he’d twice woken in a morgue, been left for dead, been teleported, been attacked by an alien race, and been on a spaceship that was destroyed. None of it, however, prepared him for the feeling of unreality that he was sensing now.

Jamie’s fingers tightened around Deklan’s hand, and her mouth opened in sheer wonderment. Deklan felt as she did: the experience was more spectacular than walking in space. Turbulent water sloshed around them, distorting what they could see, but it was still obvious that Jonny was taking them deeper down rather than skimming under the surface.

Deklan finally found his voice. “What’s the plan now?”

Jonny took his hands off the controls and sagged back in his seat, at least as much as anyone could sag in a weightless environment. “Well, for now we hide, but we have to get back to the beacon.”

“Why?” Deklan asked.

Calm turned to look at him. “Without our flight data we’ll never get home.”

Deklan couldn’t begin to imagine how they were going to retrieve the beacon without a confrontation. It was not an idea that appealed to him since they didn’t know what sorts of Keystones were on Tau Prime. All he knew was that for some reason the Keystones there hadn’t attacked them, but he couldn’t think of why that had been the case.

Hours passed as they dove deeper into the water, which had long since turned a midnight black, the only illumination being the dim lights from the foursome’s Uplinks. The fact that the flitter had no lights on it was odd unless there was no such thing as night on Tau Prime.

Jamie and Jonny had fallen asleep; Deklan and Calm hadn’t exchanged a word for at least half an hour. Then something huge swam by them. It conjured up a racial memory of ancient predators. All that could be glimpsed was an endless wall of scales.

“Well, this just got interesting.”

The cheer in Calm’s voice irritated Deklan. The man was always at his happiest when bad things were happening. “If by interesting you mean that we have a new problem, then, yes, this is very interesting.”

“Relax. We’re going to be fine.”

Rows of interlocking teeth came down around their bubble without touching it. The bottom of their sphere rested on a huge pink tongue.

“Fine?” exploded Deklan. “You call this fine?”

When Calm killed the flitter’s engine, Jamie shot awake. “What’s going on?” Her eyes were wide as she took in the view.

The teeth around them were each over three meters long, making their enclosure look like a primeval cage.

“We’ve been swallowed,” answered Deklan.

“Swallowed?” she squeaked.

“No,” contravened Calm, “we haven’t been swallowed. It’s not moving its tongue. Whatever is happening, it’s not trying to eat us.”

“Then it’s doing a bloody good impression of it,” Deklan snapped. A forward thrust like that of a fast vehicle pressed him into his seat. Water swirled up around them and against Calm’s bubble of protection.

“We’re moving,” Calm announced as he shook Jonny awake.

“What now?” asked Deklan, one arm around Jamie and the other crushed in her grip.

Calm held a hand to his face and tapped his lip. Tight skin around his eyes indicated rapid thought.

Then the cage of teeth opened and revealed a well-lit swath of water. Floating in it was a large structure of glass domes and metal tubes. It was long and wide, hundreds of meters on each side but not very deep.

“This just got even more interesting,” said Calm.

Light radiated from the domes, and outlines were visible against the glass.

A creepy sensation made Deklan look behind the flitter. There a crocodile was suspended motionless in the water, its head over fifteen meters wide and its body long enough to vanish into the murky darkness. It charged at the underside of one of the domes, and as it did so the rest of its body came into the light cast by the station. Then it suddenly shrank. Deklan lost sight of the crocodile beneath the dome.

“It was a Keystone,” declared Jamie, but her eyes didn’t focus on Deklan for long before drifting to the side to stare at nothing.

Deklan couldn’t help but wonder whether she were comparing her ability to the crocodile’s and fretting over what undiscovered traits she had. He couldn’t let her dwell on her fears, however. “Who else wants to see what’s in there?” asked Deklan.

Calm’s answering grin left Deklan without the faintest doubt as to how he felt about the question. Jonny seized the controls and pitched them forward, impelling the flitter toward the underside of the domes. They approached on a curved line that brought them closer to the structure while going under it. Deklan could see faint scratches and discoloration.

Ahead was a bright light and a large opening flooded with water. The mouth of the opening looked like that of an antique submarine bay. There was no sign of the crocodile.

“Take us in, Mr. Day,” said Calm.

Jonny steered the flitter through the center of the opening. The walls inside bore the same scratches that could be seen on the structure’s outer hull. Behind them a pair of massive doors slid into place.

At the far end of the chamber people were visible, but they didn’t look like Tau Primans. They wore white, not red, and their heads were uncovered.

“That’s our invitation, Mr. Day.” Calm inclined his head forward, indicating that Jonny should take them ahead.

The flitter flew forward again. The second room was smaller and less grand than the first, looking like a cross between a repair bay and a docking bay that had not been designed for a zero-gravity environment. Robotic arms and clamps were mounted along the walls for work on things resting on the floor, and handholds were abundant.

The people waiting for them stood in a variety of different orientations, none of which respected a common direction as down. There were two women and an old man. Their faces showed a common background or heritage: pale skin, ice-blue eyes, and ash-blond hair. Their eyes were shaped like almonds, and their cheekbones were sharp, lending an angularity to their faces that Deklan had only seen in old movies.

Jonny broke the silence, sounded flippant and more like his old self. “So, are you going to shoot us?”

“Welcome to Sanctuary,” said the man in a thick voice that creaked with age. His rolled r’s and stretched-out vowels were similar to, but distinct from, the accent of Tau Primans. “We mean you no harm and apologize for the way that we brought you here. I trust that Arkady didn’t do any permanent damage.”

He sounded reassuring but looked peculiar. A clean-shaven jaw and unlined skin contrasted with a wasted and frail body under thin cloth. The women were in better shape. Their faces were puffy from too much time spent weightless, but their bodies looked fit, and they wore form-hugging garments.

“Arkady is the crocodile?” asked Jonny.

“Was the crocodile,” corrected the old man.

“Was? Is he human now?”

“She is one of your Keystones now. We all are.”

“And what is your name?”

“I am Daniil. These ladies are Darya and Veronika.”

“Why did you bring us here?”

“To warn you and others that your Terra Rings are in danger. AnnaLea, the First of Tau Prime, plans on leading the aliens straight to your home.”

Deklan’s mouth went dry when he opened his mouth to speak. Calm beat him to it. “Then we’ll stop them.”

It was Jamie who asked the important follow-up question. “How do you know, and why should we trust you?”

The answer came from outside the room in the form of a melodic yet harsh voice: “Because we want to escape.” A young woman came through an open door and floated over to join the others. Her appearance made it obvious that she was a Keystone. Her temples were decorated with large black scales that stopped before her jaw. The contrast between her ice-blue eyes and inky scales was stunning. “I’m Arkady,” she declared.

It was Deklan’s second surprise in less than a minute. At any other time he might have reacted in a stronger way, but the idea of aliens being led to the Terra Rings supplanted lesser concerns.

Jonny had a different reaction. Looking Arkady up and down, he said, “Hmm, I expected you to have bigger teeth.”

She flashed him a grin that showed off her white and even dental work. “Why should you trust us?” Arkady echoed, tapping her teeth. “Because I could already have eaten you.”

Jamie cleared her throat. “That’s hardly an adequate answer, but it will do for now.” Her next question held iron. “How do you know about the aliens?”

Arkady prefaced her answer with another shrug. “Veronika told us. Ever since The Sweep she’s been able to see things and show us things.”

An image like a hologram suddenly shimmered between Deklan’s group and the Keystones of Sanctuary. The hologram showed AnnaLea sitting at the head of a long table and surrounded by a war council of red-clad Tau Primans. “It’s done,” said AnnaLea. “We can dispatch a ship in less than two days. Our code-breakers cracked the beacon brought by those fools. We now know where the Terra Rings are.” She stood and pounded a fist on the table, a savage light gleaming in her eyes. “Soon we will be freer than we have ever been before.” The image shimmered away, and Veronika bowed.

“That’s your Keystone ability?” asked Jamie.

Veronika brought a hand to her lips and inclined her head slightly.

“Her ability came at a price,” said Daniil. “Her lips are now sealed. She does not either speak or eat.” After a pause he continued, “There is more bad news. The wormhole that brought you here has become unstable and dangerous.”