Vertigo: Aurora Rising Book Two (50 page)

S
EATTLE

Richard stood in front of the door to the hotel room where Will was staying.

He was terrified he was making the wrong choice. He relied on his instincts in his work but now he didn’t dare trust them. The wound of betrayal still burned raw in his chest and another cut might be the killing blow.

But it was the end of the world and there may be no more second chances.

He swallowed and rang the bell.

It took ten seconds or so for Will to open the door. Though he doubtless could have checked to see who waited on the other side, his distracted manner and down-turned face when the door opened implied he’d neglected to do so.

Then he looked up. “Richard….” Emotion flooded bloodshot eyes. Surprise? Elation? Fear? Uncertainty? Again, Richard no longer trusted his instincts. “You—do you want—will you come in?”

Richard shook his head, firm and quick. “I thought you’d like to hear my trip went well.” Of course, he hardly needed to make a personal appearance to convey the tidbit. “We have the intel we need to dismantle the conspiracy. We’re already doing so, in fact. The Prime Minister’s dead, funny story.”

Will’s brow furrowed raggedly. “What? Never mind. I mean I know—not about the Prime Minister—I made Director Delavasi promise to relay the result, since I…I didn’t expect to hear it from you.” His gaze had roved around while he spoke, perhaps ashamed to remind Richard yet again just who he was, and wasn’t. Now, though, his eyes stilled and met Richard’s. “Please come in. I want to—”

“Do you love me?” Richard’s voice rang flat in his ears, deadened and weighted with the recognition there was only one chance, and a fool’s chance at that.

“Always. More than anything. More than everything.”

He no longer trusted his instincts; but if he had ever trusted them they told him the expression on his husband’s face spoke truth, and pain.

He nodded slowly. Carefully. “I realize you risked everything for the possibility of peace. Gave up your own happiness so others could be safe. The rest of the galaxy will never know, but I do. So, I guess what I’m trying to say is…if you want, you can stop by the house in the morning. I’ll cook breakfast. And we’ll…talk.”

Will’s eyes were shining a little too brightly, but he straightened his shoulders and raised his chin a notch. “I can. I will. Whatever it takes. I need you to know that.”

He needed to leave now or he wouldn’t leave at all. He moved back, creating distance between them.

“Then I’ll….” Richard stood frozen in the hotel hallway, paralyzed by the suspicion another step, no matter the direction, would irrevocably alter his fate.

“Oh, damn it all to Hell. Is there a chance I can come in?”

“A chance? Yeah…” Will’s jaw worked anxiously “…there’s a chance. The door’s open, and I’m
asking
you to come in. All you have to do is step through.”

Richard took a deep breath…and did exactly that.

53

KRYSK

S
ENECAN
F
EDERATION
C
OLONY

“
M
OMMY!”

Isabela wrapped her arms around the flurry of arms and legs and curls and squeezed with everything she had. “I missed you so much, sweetheart.”

The response was muffled into the fabric of her shirt. “I missed you too, Mommy.”

She hurriedly wiped away a tear before pulling back to inspect her daughter. No obvious injuries. No tears in her clothing from misadventures. No streaks of red in her eyes from too much crying. Instead they sparkled with the fiery spirit she recognized.

“I’m sorry I was late. Did you have fun staying at Anna’s house?”

Marlee’s head bobbed up and down with gusto. “She has a holovid of Punkie Bear & Saskoo we got to play in and we went to the amusement park and we ate spaghetti and sherbet and—”

She tousled her daughter’s hair, the way Caleb liked to do. “You can tell me all about it on the way home. I need to speak to Anna’s mother a minute. Go grab your bag, and don’t forget Mr. Freckles.”

Marlee dashed off, and Isabela rose and turned to Theresa Bishop. “I can’t thank you enough. I apologize for the delay. Consider me in your debt.”

“It’s not a problem. Is your mother doing better?”

She had lied to Theresa, spinning a tale of a nonexistent illness sickening her mother. A flash of guilt crossed her thoughts, but it wasn’t as though she could tell the woman the truth. “She is, thank you. I was allowed to take her home this morning.”

“Well, Marlee was a joy, if a bit exhausting. I’m not sure I’m ready to have two of them full-time. She wore me out!”

Isabela grimaced. “She does that.”

“You were in Cavare. Did you hear anything about these alie—”

Marlee crashed into her legs from behind. “I’m ready, Mommy. Can we go to the gelato shop on the way home?”

“We’ll see. Tell Mrs. Bishop ‘thank you’ for taking care of you.”

Marlee straightened up and lifted her chin all proper-like. “Thank you for feeding me and taking me to school and letting me play with Anna and letting me sleep in your house, Mrs. Bishop.”

Theresa shook Marlee’s hand formally. “You’re very welcome, Marlee. I’m sure I’ll see you again soon.”

Grateful to not have to stay and answer uncomfortable questions regarding aliens and wars and her brother, she ushered Marlee out the door and to the car. After several seconds of convincing her to sit still long enough to strap her in, Isabela finally managed to circle to the driver’s side and climb in.

“Did you get to see Uncle Caleb when you were at Granmama’s?”

She quickly schooled her expression. Though his name had been cleared days earlier, he remained unreachable. She refused to believe he was dead but recognized she possessed no justification other than faith to do so.

“I’m afraid not. He’s on Elathan for work right now.”

“Can we go to Elathan? I wanna see Uncle Caleb again.”

Her chest constricted, and for what must be the thousandth time in the last two weeks she wished so badly Daniel were here. Damn him for dying, because she didn’t want to do this alone. “Not right now. I have to go back to work.”

At Marlee’s forlorn pout she sighed. “Maybe in a few weeks.”

“Yay!” Her daughter fiddled with Mr. Freckles. “Mommy, the news said stuff about a war. Are bad people coming to shoot at us?”

“No, sweetie. In fact, I think the war’s going to end real soon.” Director Delavasi had told her the conspiracy she helped reveal was related to the war and there was a good chance hostilities would cease in the near future. He had no answer when it came to the aliens, however. One crisis to the next.

But for today she wanted to focus on Marlee and on trying to rediscover her life as it had existed before she left for Cavare, difficult though it might prove to be. It felt as though she was walking through a dream with everything but she and her daughter painted in gauze and glycerin, sounds traveling through insulation before reaching her.

The truth was the world just didn’t look the same once you’d had a knife pressed to your throat.

Was this what Caleb experienced when he pretended to be an ordinary person—a normal, average assembly line manager building shuttles for a living? Had it been this way for him for the near-month he stayed with her? His visit seemed an eternity ago…from a different, simpler life.

She hoped he hadn’t felt that way. She hoped in her home he was comfortable enough to be himself, real and whole. She hoped someday she would be able to ask him.

The truth about her father remained her secret for now. She had no idea if telling her mother was the right thing to do…something else she desperately hoped to be able to ask Caleb, someday. But not today.

Banishing the dispiriting thoughts to a corner of her mind, she reached over and squeezed Marlee’s hand with a smile. “So what kind of gelato do you want? Strawberry? Chocolate?”

Her daughter’s eyes widened in glee. “Strawberry-chocolate-watermelon!”

54

SIYANE

P
ORTAL
P
RIME

I
WISH YOU FORTUNE
commensurate to your valor.

The flecks of light swirling around them like a sea of fireflies vanished and Mesme was gone.

“Not one for sentimental goodbyes, is it?”

“Somehow I’m not surprised.” Caleb placed both hands on her shoulders and urged her about to face the same direction he did.

Her mouth fell open in disbelief.
“Yebat’sya mne….”

Alex could feel him smirking behind her. “It’s beautiful.”

The
Siyane
sat peacefully eighty meters away, beyond the final slope of the mountains. Long grasses swayed beneath it in the gentle breeze. It was intact, undisturbed and a pure tungsten silver from bow to stern.

She cocked her head to the side. A brighter silver rippled over it, creating a pearled effect across the hull. “This shouldn’t have happened so fast—not the entire ship.”

“Maybe the energy absorbed from two violent encounters with the barrier super-charged the process?”

She hardly realized she was walking toward it, her gaze never leaving her ship. Each step brought another subtle ripple along the hull. Intellectually she realized every shift in viewing angle presented a marginally different hue and reflection, but it evoked an impression of the hull itself being in constant motion.

When she reached the ship her hand rose to caress the bow. The material didn’t shine beyond the pearling, though it was subtly lustrous, and the reflection of light off the hull diffused despite the smoothness of the material.

She scanned the length of the ship for any streaks or marrings, but the transformation appeared complete and utterly flawless.

“It
is
beautiful.” She sensed Caleb’s presence and followed the statement with a peek over her shoulder, at which point he grabbed her and whirled her around, his lips meeting hers in a fierce kiss.

She let the sensations cascade through her: the warmth of his body, the taste of cinnamon and honey on his lips, the steady, comforting grasp of his arms. For just a moment she allowed herself to forget the ongoing destruction of civilization, the mind-fuck that had been the alien encounters and the daunting tasks lying before them. For just a moment she allowed herself to simply be.

Then the moment threatened to become too intense for the setting and she pulled away a fraction. “What was that for?”

“I need a reason to kiss you now?”

“No, you don’t. But still….”

His forehead dropped to rest on hers. “For being so damn remarkable.”

“Oh.” Her voice worked past the lump in her throat. “Come on. We have work to do.”

“Yes, your mysterious plan to defeat the alien armada. I will fulfill all your most secret and pornographic desires if you tell me what it is.”

She laughed as she opened the hatch and jogged up the ramp. “Not that work, the other work—and you already are.”

“More secret and more pornographic—what other work? The shield?”

Once inside she went straight to the control panel by the data center and fed it the information contained in her internal data store. In seconds the intricate code sprang to life above the table.

She leaned back against the desk, crossed her arms over her chest and studied it. Her initial impression in the few seconds she’d observed it had been largely correct: ternary programming repeating on an infinite loop. The fundamental qutrit formulation was different as it measured values between -1, 0 and 1, but it was logically consistent. She could shift it to a formulation her systems would understand.

But would her systems even accept ternary code? Such programming was the province of Artificials and as advanced as the tech in her ship was, it didn’t include ware quite that sophisticated.

“Alex.”

She jumped, startled. Caleb leaned into the data center opposite her. “While I am exceptionally skilled at reading you—arguably a master at it in fact—I cannot actually see inside your brain. What are you doing?”

“Sorry.” She gave him an apologetic smile. “Yes, this is the code from the orb powering their cloaking shield. If I can determine how to port it to the defense systems, we can use it to hide from the enemy ships on both sides of the portal.”

“Are you sure we should take the time to do this now? Hyperion didn’t seem too pleased by our presence here.”

“We don’t have a choice, Caleb. You saw those ships chasing us before. We might as well have been broadcasting our location on wideband, and we will not be able to outrun them.”

“Granted. And this kind of shielding will increase our ability to move around back home. Okay, I’m in. Next question: can you make it work?”

She nodded deliberately, her mind still racing through the details. “I seriously doubt we’ll be able to generate a pocket of shifted space-time, but I think we can generate a projection replicating the surrounding space. Mostly. Assuming I can make the
Siyane
understand ternary code.”

“Your systems merely require the instruction from the code, and those can be expressed in binary qubits easily enough.”

“Easily enough, huh? But you’re right. I’ll have to write an interpreter for both the input and the output and segregate the new ternary code so it doesn’t corrupt the ware running the ship.”

Her head fell back to glare at the ceiling. “This will be the worst sort of patchwork hack job. Reality is going to leak out. We’ll have to run the dampener field at max and hope between the two it’s enough. And it’ll take power to run the projection.”

She dropped her chin to regard him over the table. “We need more power. Ten, maybe twelve percent. Can you find it for me?”

A hint of astonishment flashed across his features before the trademark smirk replaced it. “You bet your ass I can.”