The Soul Continuum (43 page)

“The genoplant is two kliks away,” I tell Ironius. “It'll take him at least another eight minutes to get here. Quick, help me up. I'll take a look at what he was doing. Maybe we won't have to start from the beginning. That last blast was nearly the end of us.”

Eighty-one percent damage t-t-t-t-t-to genoplant. Soul
C-c-c-c-c-consortium iterations nine, thirty-one, and thirty-two have b-b-b-b-been consumed by a-n-n-n unknown aggressor.

“Thirty-one and thirty-two were the closest Consortiums to us,” I say, rubbing the back of my head as Ironius lifts me deftly from the ground. “No wonder we felt that.”

“If the genoplant is out, that means Demetri won't be showing up anytime soon, if at all.”

“He's probably been resurrected in Consortium fifty-five. That was the next closest one to us.” The pain in my back shoots through me like an electrical charge and I wince before steadying myself back at the console. “He was almost done. Can you check the jewel?”

“It's fine,” says Ironius. “Still hooked up. How much longer on your end?”

“Five minutes, maybe six, but . . .” I glance nervously
at the quivering mass of spiders surrounding Demetri's expired body. “I'll need to use those nanodrones to finish.”

“Need me to help you reroute?”

“Please.”

The two of us work the interface and I curse the fact that the Navigation Sphere cannot make use of a standard neural interface. Our proximity to so many contained singularities means that a coherent link could never be maintained. Everything has to be hardwired.

“There,” says Ironius, “all done.”

No sooner does he finish speaking than the prickly sensation of tiny spiked digits climbs my legs. I can feel them tugging at my robes and crawling underneath, biting through my skin to gain purchase. They scuttle into my ears to find the fastest route to my brain. Nausea comes like thick dough inside my stomach and I have to grasp the console tightly and squeeze my eyes shut to resist the pain.

“You done?” Ironius says, irritated. “We've got work to do.”

Another shift in gravity. Another tremble through the sphere.

Soul Consortium iteration ninety-six has been consumed by an unknown aggressor.

“See?” he says.

Ignoring him, I move to Vieta's jewel. Demetri has created a spherical cradle out of interlocked nanodrones, which are crawling around it as if it is a ripe fruit they are unable to eat. They have left a space for me to touch. The indigo jewel, plucked from Vieta's gnarly cane, is just as enigmatic as it was in the lives I have recently lived, and as I run the tips of my fingers over it, I can almost feel the exotic energies trapped beneath its smooth alien surface. A crackling sensation slides around the inside of my head like gravel crunching beneath my skull. The nanodrones are working hard to form a connection, translating the equation released by Oluvia's algorithm and pulsing it through the jewel and onward into the Slipstream drive. This is an unexpected advantage I had not thought of. The console is bypassed and our work is done.

“We're ready,” I tell Ironius.

“Can't be,” he says. “You have to patch in the equation from the console first.”

“We don't need to. The nanodrones extracted it from me directly. We can go as soon as the hypersingularity manifests. It should take ten minutes, maximum. Signal the others.”

Ironius reaches for his tie, loosens it, then nods.

T
he scene through the Navigation
Sphere's translucent floor is cataclysmic. It looks disturbingly similar
to the hallucinations I experienced in the neural flush, but instead of bubbles filled with horrific faces, the heavens are lit by hundreds of spinning balls of light: an army of Consortiums waging war against an unstoppable and invisible enemy. I know Qod must be doing everything she can to protect my Consortium as a priority because this one holds the key to ending the madness.

A single ray of white light stretches out from our core, ending in a single insignificant spot a million kliks away. In a few minutes it will collapse into a microscopic hypersingularity that, on contact, will catapult all the Consortiums to our remote destination. If we can survive long enough, all we need do is wait, but the speed at which individual Consortiums are being destroyed seems to be increasing, as if the Jagannath senses our goal and is increasing its efforts.

Millions of years have come and gone since I last saw ionized barriers raised, and even then, their charged energy could be seen only fleetingly when struck by something. Now, however, the barriers of Consortiums about to be destroyed are lit up so brightly they look like exploding suns. No longer are they testing fingers of glowing light. These are massive fronds of energy like writhing tentacles, thrashing around the Consortiums' spheres, vibrating them so violently that they splinter and collapse in minutes, and as their spheres crumple, vortexes appear with arced tusks of light lined around their circumferences so that they appear as gnashing maws biting down on the doomed structures. One Consortium fires blindly at the enemy, a barrage of quantum missiles, searing green lasers and lightning discharges blasting outward but striking nothing, great spherical waves of poryon energy radiating outward every two seconds to consume the enemy, only to fizzle into ash. Their defiance lasts but a few more fraught moments, and then they are gone, swallowed in eternal darkness.

“Reminds me of the Shakrimion colonies,” Ironius says grimly.

“You've been there?”

“Long time ago, yes. Ever seen that planet?”

“No.”

“Good for you. I died there. Actually, everyone died there.” He pauses to watch a nanospider crawling away from my right foot, then carefully places a heel on it to crush it.
“I was a soldier back then, part of the Black Platoon. Opera
tion Noah's Flood, they called it. We were twenty thousand strong, sent to end the Meme Plague and cleanse the infected population
before they tried to escape the system and spread the disease. It was supposed to be quick and clean. Nobody expected the nanodrones to be infected, but why wouldn't they be?”

A bright flare lights Ironius's face, causing him to blink.

Soul Consortium seventeen has been consumed by an unknown aggressor.

“It was night,” Ironius continues, frowning at the scene outside. “We spread out in position, ready to blow the charges and get out of there, but
they
were ready. We didn't see them, couldn't detect them at all, and then snap”—he clicks his fingers—“just like that, the man next to me vaporizes, burnt out of existence. A few seconds later—snap—another one gone, then another and another. It was random and we couldn't do a damn thing. Whole platoon, taken out in a few hours . . . just like this.”

I stare out at the battle, shielding my eyes as another Soul Consortium tries in vain to defend itself.

“Whose life did you live?” I ask.

He grins without humor. “Nobody's. That was my life.”

“Yours? But we've lived the same life. I don't remember—”

“Maybe you erased the memory, or maybe”—his grin widens—“it's because I've got a dirty secret.”

I have the feeling Ironius isn't going to tell me what that is about, and I don't have time to play his games or think on it. Communication is being patched in from one of the other Consortiums on a general broadcast.

“All, this is Seventy-Seven. Listen carefully. Shalom has analyzed the Jagannath attack pattern and I have devised a defensive strategy in response. The Jagannath is focusing its greatest efforts on one Consortium at a time; the other attacks are relatively harmless diversions to provide the appearance of continuous and simultaneous assault. It is using a complex but predictable sequence to select its targets. There is a very small window of opportunity before each real attack begins, and our weaponry is completely ineffective, so we should all configure our navigation systems to be ready to jump one klik away the moment it begins focusing on its target. Our counterstrategy won't last long before it changes the sequence. The next target will be iteration eighty-four. Be ready. If we can—”

I don't hear the rest of his words. Directly ahead, the Observation Sphere centers on a single bright spot of white light: a hyperslipstream node generated by our enhanced drive, and with the promise of using it, the algorithm sends a shot of endorphins through me.

“Control Core, I need to interrupt Seventy-Seven's broadcast. Patch me in and send the slipstream coordinates to all other Soul Consortiums.”

Broadcasting. Coordinates sent.

“Thank you, Seventy-Seven,” I say, “but save your strategy, our slipstream node is ready and we must all go through. All of you, follow my lead. If I am right, we are about to find the source of the Jagannath's power, and with a combined assault, we could end this.”

I nod to Ironius. He nods, and I give the command to initiate.

S
ome of the Soul Consortiums are still aflame when they come through, some are darkened wrecks, but many are still whole. Now that the algorithm has taken us to this place, our hope rests with the notion that our combined might is enough to deal with whatever it is that feeds the Jagannath's power, but if our performance so far is any kind of measure, our chances of ending this through an act of force seem remote.

“Qod,” I say, “are you still with us?”

More Soul Consortiums shimmer into view, still enveloped
by the stormy Jagannath clouds, but I am at least relieved to hear the welcome voice of Qod.

“Yes, Salem, I'm still with you, but I don't have long to talk. I believe our sudden relocation has confused the Jagannath attack, and the hyperslipstream bridge is stable, so we can still expect more iterations to come through, but the attack will escalate again soon, I can feel the pressure of it. What do you intend to do now that we're here?”

“Improvise. I sense from the algorithm that we're about to find something critical to the Jagannath's existence here. Reason with it, disable it, destroy it, bargain with it, whatever it takes. It's all over otherwise. Everything is.”

Ironius folds his arms and gazes upward. “Have you detected anything, Qod?”

“No,” she says, “but we offset the coordinates ten astronomical units from the target.”

“And can you detect anything at the actual coordinates?” I ask.

“Nothing, but that's to be expected,” she says. “I still
don't understand why you've come here. This region is the farthest extension of the Outer Phoradian Gulf. If there is anything out
this far, it is beyond even my ability to analyze. But . . .”

She goes silent.

“Qod?”

“There is . . . something . . . or . . .”

I glance at Ironius, he glances back, and I know he is feeling the same sense of discomfort, even fear. If Qod is nervous, then we should all be nervous, but the urgency of the algorithm is pulling at me harder than any of my fears, and I can already see one of the Consortiums glowing brighter as it resists another attack.

“Take us to the coordinates, Qod. Something has to be there.”

She says nothing, but the subtle change in perspective of the other Soul Consortiums tells me she has begun the maneuver.

“What do you expect to find there?” Ironius asks.

I do not know how to answer. It could be anything. A star, a planet or moon, or some other rogue astral body. It could be some sort of technological behemoth waiting for us, but I cannot shake the feeling it is beyond any of that. My greatest fear is that it is a manifestation of the Jagannath itself and that so far we have only experienced a projection of its power.

“I don't know, but I think we are about to find out.”

Something shifts in the distance, deep in the darkness, but it is less like a thing and more like the absence of a thing. There should be nothing in a Phoradian Gulf. It is a fantastically huge expanse of space where no atoms are present, though I know, from the knowledge I gleaned from Diabolis Evomere, that there are patterns of force and form existing in the so-called void that do not ordinarily interact with the matter and energy we have mastered. But to us, this region is the deep nothingness of the Quantum Abyss, the exact same hellish emptiness I have instinctively dreaded for so long. Not even light exists here. Our cosmos and all its cousins, exploding and dying in different sizes and velocities across the universe like raindrops in a puddle, have expanded so far apart that their light has no hope of reaching their neighbors.

Out here, we are the only light.

Against that light, the shadow ahead shrinks away like a sinister wraith. There is something here. Or rather, there is something
not
here. Perspective and imagination are skewed, and as we get closer I find myself rubbing my eyes, squinting, blinking, and jerking my head to make sense of the visual paradox coming into view. My eyes tell me nothing is there. Yet I know I am seeing . . . something. I feel like a stone statue that has been brought to life, trying to understand what sentience is; each time I think I am understanding a form, something like a churning wind smudges the impression, and a sensation of vertigo forces me to look away. That, and the resurgence of pain—a thing I am still not used to experiencing. Several times I try to look at the thing ahead, until eventually it seems that the very effort of comprehending its form has allowed something like raw fear to invade my skull, penetrating bone and matter, acidic emotion eating through my synapses. Not content with confusing my eyes and bringing pain, it is confusing my sense of hearing, too. A bass vibration like the growl of a dangerous animal surrounds us, growing in volume, increasing in pitch until I clutch my temples, screaming. Beside me, Ironius has dropped to his knees, gripping one of the fallen girders, clenching his teeth and squeezing his eyes shut in futile resistance.