Music of the Spheres (22 page)

32

Lucis Observatory :

Venus Orbit :

It was the
most unique and wonderful sensation Justine had ever experienced.

Although she was no more than a collection of photons held
together by her electropathic ability, she was aware of herself and her
surroundings. Alex had remarked to her that he had no recollection during the
quantized state, as if he were in the midst of a deep sleep.

In her corporeal form, Justine was blind, and could only use
her senses of touch, smell and sound to interact with the world; now, she had a
sense of sight that was far more powerful than human vision. When she
concentrated, she could zoom her consciousness in to any object—as if through a
powerful microscope—and see the very particles of matter in their continuous
ballet.

She could also sense the planets in their inexorable orbit
around the Sun. It was as if she could feel their presence in Sol System, hear
the sounds of their heavenly song.

In a more subtle manner, she could sense the alien monument
on Pluto, the
Dis Pater,
like a dim beacon in the dark of space. Beyond
that, if she strained to the limits of her ability, she could also sense an
entire network of those monuments—thousands of them—spread throughout the
galaxy.

Justine had a moment of consternation when she sensed another
presence within Sol System. It was like a very faint flash in the distance, and
it took her a minute to realize that it was another Kinemetic being: Alex!

She wondered if Alex would be able to sense her, now that
she was irradiated with Kinemet.

When she focused on him, it came to her that he was
incomplete. His physical form was in one location, but his consciousness was
someplace else.

Alex’s essence was adrift, lost in the depths of this ghost
world they inhabited. Justine pushed her senses out to search for it, but could
not detect his consciousness.

It took her a moment to work through it. Alex wasn’t in a
quantized state. He had spoken before about the clairvoyant ability he had, and
was able to utilize when not in a quantized state. Justine assumed it was the
same as what she was currently experiencing—only, when she was in the quantized
state, it was an extremely powerful ability, far more than anything Alex had
described. In the back of her mind, she hoped that when she returned to normal,
she would retain the
sight
as Alex had. That would more than compensate
for her blindness. But she would worry about that later.

Right now, there were three issues she needed to address. One
was trying to figure out where Alex’s consciousness was.

The more immediate problem was that, as she moved her
photonic essence out of the lab, she saw that the main room had turned into a war
zone. People were dying.

There were two casualties already, though she did not
recognize their faces. She spotted Lieutenant Jeffries on his knees holding his
hand to his bloodied face while Corporal Marks wrestled with Klaus’s uncle.

Four other soldiers were busy restraining two Cruzados,
while Klaus seemed to be aware of Justine and was staring at her with a
startled look on his face.

The third thing Justine realized was that she was burning
through the Kinemetic radiation in her system at an alarming rate and would
very quickly run out of fuel. Like someone suddenly experiencing a pang of
hunger, she knew she would require more exposure to Kinemet if she was going to
continue existing in a quantized state. And she guessed that she wouldn’t be
able to help Alex if she was corporeal, nor would she be much use in the fight.

So, last thing first, she needed to refuel.

It only took a moment for her to sense where the cache of Kinemet
was kept in the observatory, and though it was difficult for her to cause her
photonic particles to move in tandem through physical space, she put all her
concentration into the task and exited the lab in a flash.

Klaus screamed after her as she left.

∞

She tried to devise a plan while she pushed her photonic
form down the hallway. In her quantized state, she had the ability to affect
electrical impulses—a quick test on a nearby light proved it—and she figured
that would carry over when she returned to normal, but only if she was
irradiated by enough Kinemet. When Alex had been depleted, he lost both the
clairvoyant and electropathic abilities, though he had retained his eidetic
memory (which, she surmised, might have been a more permanent physiological aspect
of the Kinemetic transformation).

Although she had only seen a dozen or so Cruzados on her
journey through the hall, she knew there had to be many more of them. Even if
Lieutenant Jeffries and his men were able to overcome Klaus and his uncle, they
were still outmatched by the rest of the observatory’s complement of rebels.

Justine was not a trained fighter or tactician, though she had
taken the basic mandatory courses in boot camp. They were outnumbered,
under-equipped, and malnourished. Brute force was not the answer, but she had a
thought that she might still be able to user her newfound abilities to their
advantage.

She sent her vision out, tracking ethereally to where the Kinemet
had been stored on the observatory’s lowest level, near the docking bay.

Though she was reduced to a mass of protons, she was still unable
to pass through solid matter, and she had to take the long way. In her
photonic-quantized state, it was actually more difficult for her to move her
essence through normal space than if she were solid matter. All of her photons,
held together either by some kind of mental force or physical attraction, were
in constant motion inside that intangible bubble.

When she finally reached the end of the hall, she began to
wind her way down the flights of stairs near the elevator.

Two floors down, she ran out of Kinemetic radiation, and
abruptly rematerialized into her human self. She was, however, a meter and a
half in the air and was still in motion.

In solid form, she arched and fell sharply to the landing in
a tangle of barked shins and banged elbows. The breath knocked out of her, head
ringing from impacting it on the wall, Justine lay in a stunned heap for almost
a full minute, naked and vulnerable until her breathing returned to normal.

Very slowly, and with great care, she gingerly gathered her
arms and legs under her and pushed herself up off the floor. Resisting the urge
to vomit from the combined effect of the de-quantizing and nausea from hitting
her head during the fall, Justine took a moment to steady herself by leaning
against the wall.

Once the feeling returned to her hands and feet, she took a
deep breath and oriented herself. There was a thin dribble of blood coming from
just under her hairline. She touched the wound experimentally, and winced at
the sharp resulting pain.

Now that she was corporeal, she had hoped that she would
retain the ability to see beyond herself, but couldn’t because she didn’t have
any of the Kinemetic radiation left in her system. She felt a sharp pain of
ethereal hunger. She
needed
Kinemet. If this is what Alex had gone
through for the past few years, no wonder he had deteriorated physiologically.

Justine would have to find her way to the stash of Kinemet from
memory, and she found that, as Alex’s memory had improved, she now possessed a
perfect image in her mind of the layout of Lucis Observatory.

Conscious of her nakedness, she drew one arm over her
breasts and resumed her descent of the stairs barefoot, hoping against hope
that none of the Cruzados had heard her crash and come to investigate.

∞

When she reached the bottom of the stairwell, she stopped at
the door and leaned her head against it, trying to hear any sign of the rebels
on the other side.

The resounding silence prompted her to pry the door open a
crack. She paused, listening, then opened the door all the way and tiptoed down
the hallway.

When she got near to the docking bay, she started to feel an
electrical buzz. The hairs on her arms stood up and she felt a warm tingle go
through her. The Kinemet was close.

As she moved farther down the hall, the sensation
intensified, and once she arrived at what she assumed was a storage lockup, she
knew the Kinemet was secured inside.

She tried the door, but it was locked. A sudden bout of
panic hit her. She had come all this way only to be stopped by a door lock.

Mentally, she kicked herself. Although the Kinemet was in a
different room, and most likely inside the titanium container, there was a
trickle of radiation leaking out. That was how she was sensing it. All she had
to do was stand there long enough to build up enough of a radiation level to
regain her electropathic ability, and then she could easily pop the lock and
gain entrance.

Pressing the entire length of her body up against the cold
door, she stood there, allowing the Kinemetic radiation into her system. She
was painfully aware of how vulnerable she was, and prayed that her luck would
hold out a little while longer.

She worried that by the time she was in a position to help
Lieutenant Jeffries and his men, it would be too late, but there was nothing
more she could do until she had recharged.

After what seemed like hours, but was probably only a few
minutes, she felt the flow of energy course through her veins as if she had
just taken a vitamin shot. The energy level in her was akin to a drop in a
bucket, but it was enough for her purpose.

A mere flicker of thought was all it took to trip the
electronic lock, and she darted inside the room. The door was pneumatic, and
automatically closed behind her.

A few more moments closer to the titanium container charged
her with enough radiation to open the lock that stood between her and the full
force of raw Kinemet.

Once it was open, the Kinemetic influence washed over her
like a tidal wave. She remembered the ecstatic look on Alex’s face when he was
in the presence of the rare metal, and for the first time, completely
understood it.

The clairvoyant vision started to return to her in stages.
At first, she had a disconnected awareness of her surroundings, and then the
objects closest to her slowly resolved into discernible forms.

She figured it would take at least an hour for her to be
fully irradiated; but less than a minute in, she heard the sound of a footfall
in the corridor outside the room.

One of the Cruzados threw open the door. He was momentarily
taken aback, glancing at her bare breasts. But then, with a roar of anger, he
swung his ion pulse rifle in her direction.

Just as he fired, Justine quantized herself, and the ion
stream passed right through her photonic self, doing no harm.

With a look of abject surprise, the Cruzado took a few steps
inside the room and let out a curse in Spanish.

Justine floated past him and out the door before it closed.
The man charged the door, but before he reached it, Justine used her ability to
engage the lock, and then blocked the power to the device.

The Cruzado hurled more muted curses as he tried to
physically knock the door down, to no effect. He was fully locked in the room
as if it were a maximum security prison cell.

This proved that Justine’s plan would work. Unable to
overcome the greater force of Cruzados, she would have to take them right out
of the situation. The entire observatory complex was run on electronic doors
and locks, and Justine was now a master of any electric current she sensed.

As she pushed her essence back down the hall toward the
stairs, she hoped she could get back to the lab before it was too late, and
before she once again ran out of Kinemetic radiation.

∞

Outside of the workshop’s main door, Justine paused and
extended her
sight
into the room.

There were several men on the floor, and the remaining five
were in a standoff. On one side of the room were Klaus and his uncle, Captain
Gruber, who was holding one arm limply to his side, blood soaking his shirt
sleeve. They had knocked a metal lab table over and were hiding behind it. They
each held a weapon. Gruber had an ion pistol in his good hand. Klaus, holding a
pulse rifle, was spitting out curses at the three soldiers who blocked his
escape.

Corporal Marks was dead, Justine saw. There was a trail of
blood on the tiles from where Gruber had shot him to where he now lay. It
looked as if he had not been killed right away, and had been pulled out of the
line of fire—in vain, as it turned out.

One of the other soldiers, Private Townsend, was face down
on the floor, also dead.

Justine felt a sudden pang of loss and anger. Over the past
week she had become fond of all the soldiers in Jeffries’ squad.

Lieutenant Jeffries and two men—Privates Vic Genero and
Tomas Hodges—were holed up behind a bank of computer servers. Between them,
they only had one pulse rifle, obviously taken from one of the dead Cruzados.
All three soldiers evidenced wounds and bruises, but nothing looked fatal. The
situation was dire, Justine saw when Vic checked the rifle’s meter and gave
Jeffries a helpless look. The rifle was void of any electrical charge.

Justine tried not to let her emotions get the better of her,
but the atrocities committed against her and the people she cared about stacked
up.

She couldn’t simply seal off the room unless she was able to
get Lieutenant Jeffries and his men out first, and the only way she could
communicate that plan was to rematerialize.

Scanning the area near the two holdouts, Justine looked for
anything electrical that she could use her powers on. If she could cause
something to blow up near Klaus, it could possibly disable them or provide
enough of a distraction to get Lieutenant Jeffries out. But there was nothing
she could see that would do what she wanted.