Rubicon: Aurora Resonant Book Two (Aurora Rhapsody 8) Page 23

  Also, the personal work was now out of her hands for a time, so she might as well direct the pent-up energy into making herself useful.

  Kennedy was sitting cross-legged in the center the platform, wearing an oversized beige cable knit sweater and woolen leggings. A large rectangular box sat in front of her, a power amp off to the side.

  Alex squatted beside the box. “Interesting choice of testing location.”

  “Not my choice. Your mother decided it would be unwise to run any tests inside the hold of the Stalwart II—rightfully so I think—and Administrator Latro balked at letting me run tests inside any of their labs. I suggested one of the dining rooms, but he didn’t care for that idea, either, and I was banished out here.”

  “I guess there is a small chance of nearby objects blowing up, or being pulled into a supradimensional vortex then blowing up.”

  “Let’s just try to make sure it isn’t us.”

  “Noted. So, no Devon?”

  “He’s in the main tech lab geeking out with one of the Barisan analysts, so he’s close if we need him. But I doubt we will.”

  “Nah, we’ve got this. Valkyrie’s finished the operating code modifications. I know you came here to try to find a practical way around the Imperium shields, but I’m glad you’re here for this.”

  “Me, too. Incidentally, if this pans out, it could solve your Imperium problem, too. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  “What were you able to figure out about the Imperium shields, by the way?”

  Kennedy grimaced. “They work, in effect, as a shield of a shield—two separate layers of shielding with an active medium between the two. The whole operation is constantly cycling through the EM spectrum, with the interior layer acting as a backstop. And no, I haven’t figured out how they can be countered, so…” she activated the input panel on the top of the hardware “…make this work. Load up the modifications.”

  Alex dropped to her knees, shifted the box around and placed her index finger on the input slot. Since she and Valkyrie had written the original code, it hadn’t taken long to devise the changes needed, and now it was merely a matter of replacing a few key algorithms.

  Once finished, she sank back on her heels. “It’s going to need a small amount of power to get started. The projection distance is still twelve meters, but for now I’ve narrowed the spread to sixty degrees by forty-five degrees so it doesn’t eat the platform.”

  “Good idea. I don’t fancy getting dumped into the water.” Kennedy connected the power amp to the Rifter module. “Turning it on in five…four…now!” She scrambled backwards to put some distance between her and the hardware.

  The only indications the modified Rifter was active were two green lights on the panel and a faint shimmer to the air in an arc twelve meters out. Alex arched an eyebrow. “This is rather anti-climactic.”

  “What did you expect? Right now it’s simply…waiting. It looks the same as always, but if your modifications worked, should something fall into the rift now, the object would be trapped in an invisible dimension forever.”

  “So long as the device is running, it’ll be ricocheting between a bunch of dimensions. But when you shut it off, yes, whatever material fell in will stay trapped. Theoretically.” Alex stood and walked to the edge of the platform, giving the vague ripples a wide berth.

  She pushed her left sleeve up above her elbow, exposing the bracelet-turned-conductivity-lash. “Time to feed it a little energy.” She flicked her wrist and sent a quick stream of electricity into the undulating air.

  The ripples instantly gained more substance as the bounds of the rift began to glow amber. Increasing levels of light danced jaggedly across the span of the rift’s arc and bleed out into the air. Ions hissed in the humid air—then streaks of plasma poured out in all directions.

  “Fuck!” Alex ducked as a bolt of highly charged particles shot over her head. “Cut the external power!”

  She and Kennedy both dove for the power connector; Kennedy reached it first and yanked out the connection as Alex landed on her stomach beside it.

  The surrounding air settled down until the fine hairs on her arms no longer stood on end. Stray energy continued to leak out, but less violently so.

  Alex dropped her forehead to the platform and started laughing. “Just like university, isn’t it?”

  Kennedy’s cackle sounded vaguely hysterical, and Alex peered beside her to see her friend’s face animated and her skin flushed. “Almost—nothing’s actually blown up yet.”

  Alex pushed up to a sitting position then to standing, still laughing. “Don’t speak too soon.” She cautiously took a few steps closer to the barrier, its parameters now clearly marked by visible oscillations of golden-hued energy. “So it’s definitely self-sustaining.”

  “More than self-sustaining, I think.” Kennedy retrieved a small orb and a probe from her bag. She sent the orb floating into the boundary of the pulsing light and checked the readout on the probe. “It’s generating forty-three megajoules along the outside…and rising 0.4% per second. If the power isn’t siphoned off or otherwise used, it’s going to continue to build and, eventually, blow things up.”

  “Makes sense that without an outlet it would build over time.”

  The models I ran did predict a rise in power of 0.3% to 0.6% per second.

  I know. I neglected to mention it to her. She always prefers hard data, and now she has it.

  Alex took another step forward and raised her left arm.

  “Don’t you dare.”

  “Oh, come on, Ken. I stick my hand in powered grids all the time.”

  “I know this about you, which is why I made you a thing to help keep you from getting electrocuted.” Kennedy rummaged around in her bag, then triumphantly produced a carbon-gray glove.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s woven through with silica-sapphire fibers to modulate the power flow that passes through it, like the filters on your ship.”

  “Huh.” Alex stared at the glove for a beat before slipping it on with an exaggerated pout. “If I must.” She gave Kennedy a chagrined look. “Thanks.”

  Ready, Valkyrie?

  Comforted by the knowledge that I will not be hit with a forty-nine megajoule jolt of electricity, yes, I am ready.

  Whatever. She closed the remaining distance and splayed an open palm onto the boundary of the field.

  Despite the fact that she was expecting it, the surge of power made her gasp. “Ahh!”

  “Alex?”

  “I’m good, I’m good. This should be more than enough power to move…me.” She transitioned to sidespace and focused on the far corner of the platform—

  —and she was there. She breathed the cool, damp air deep into her lungs. “We did it.”

  It was the second time she’d seen a traversal in action, but Kennedy’s expression remained one of amazement. “What’s it like?”

  Alex shrugged in feigned casualness, acting as if adrenaline didn’t hasten through her veins to the point of jitteriness. “It’s not like anything, really. There’s a sort of…glitch in the air around you, and you’re standing someplace else.”

  “Huh.”

  “Valkyrie, do you feel comfortable modifying our Rifter’s code to create the necessary power internally?”

  ‘With myself in control of the process, I do.’

  Alex went over and shut the module on the platform down completely. The power ebbed away, leaving the air feeling empty and still. After considering it for a second, she leaned down and offered Kennedy a hand. “Come on. Let’s go test this for real. In space.”

  “It’s your ship. Of course, it’s my life.”

  “We’ll be fine.” She dragged Kennedy down to the walkway and headed toward the Siyane’s platform. On the way she sent Caleb a pulse.

  Kennedy and I are making a run offworld to do a brief test. We won’t go far, and we’ll be back in a few hours.

  Okay. Have fun.

  The respon
se was unusually curt, but he was doubtless preoccupied with any one of a dozen ongoing endeavors.

  36

  PALAEMON

  ANARCH POST EPSILON

  * * *

  CALEB,

  Director Delavasi said he could get a message to you. I’m skeptical about trusting it to the man, but if you’re reading this, he kept his word.

  We’re doing fine, so don’t worry. Work is busy, so much so I’ve had to cut back to only teaching one class on account of all the consulting work. The creative ways in which young people are finding to ‘enhance’ themselves lately is providing no shortage of opportunities and problems alike.

  Marlee is obsessed with aliens now. She talks about ‘the rainbow aliens’ and ‘the tiger aliens’ all the time, and this weekend she figured out how to load the visuals Alex gave her into her holovid space so she could play with the aliens in her treehouse castle. I have to say, it was rather clever of her—though now I’m wondering what else she can do that I don’t know about. Being a parent is terrifying, by the way.

  I hope you and Alex are…what? Healthy? Doing well? It would be horribly dense and tone-deaf of me to say ‘safe,’ so I won’t presume to. Instead, I’ll say that I hope you are kicking the enemy’s ass in the general direction of a black hole. Be extraordinary.

  Love,

  — Isabela

  P.S.: Marlee insisted I— “Auntie Alex, are there more aliens where you are? If there are, please please please please send images! Or vids! Images and vids! Hi, Uncle Caleb! Did you—”

  Sorry about that, she…well, you can imagine. Talk to you soon. Or later, after you’ve saved the world.

  Caleb wandered among the meticulously tended flora of the post’s arboretum while he reread Isabela’s message, then again. It made him smile, so he read it one more time.

  He’d found his way to the arboretum soon after leaving the Siyane; he wasn’t ready to let go of nature in bloom quite yet. They’d been running nonstop since returning from the Mosaic, and he craved another dose of the tranquil serenity Akeso and its environment had provided.

  Nisi had been full of probing questions about his destruction of the Ekos-3 moon—what the process had involved, the sensations it had evoked, his physical state during and after and so on—but answering the questions had ultimately been pointless. The Sator had merely nodded portentously and murmured ‘Hmm’ a lot. Caleb’s frustration level had been rising despite Akeso’s calming influence when Alex’s consequential pulse had come in, and he’d been grateful to change the subject.

  The lingering aftereffects of communing with Akeso weren’t so uniformly blissful and uplifting this time. His senses remained heightened, as did his perception of the physical world around him, but he also felt a disquieting unease and trepidation distinctly separate from his own.

  The entity had been changed by the attack on it, as were all sentient beings upon encountering the harsh reality of evil made manifest. It saddened him, but he preferred Akeso jaded and alive to innocent and dead.

  The petals his fingertips ran gently across weren’t alive in the way Akeso was, but he wondered if perhaps they could become so. The Kats had engineered sentient plant life at least once. Could they grant self-awareness to these flowers? Should they?

  Life, its creation, existence, destruction and even the possibility of its immortality, was on his mind for evident reasons. Meeting David Solovy had been a—

  Overly mindful of his surroundings as he was, he took note as a harsh chill descended on the air around him. Not a coldness of temperature but of ambiance. Before he was able to discover the source, a shout announced it.

  “Marano!”

  He let loose of the flowering bloom and turned to find Malcolm Jenner striding purposefully toward him. What Akeso interpreted as chill, Caleb identified as hostility. It radiated out from the man, and as he drew nearer Caleb started to wonder if the Marine intended to punch him.

  Caleb stood his ground, and Jenner pulled up to an abrupt stop a meter away, fists clenched at his sides. Good choice. “Brigadier, can I help you?”

  “I doubt it. If it were in my power, you would be in a prison cell right now.”

  “Then I’m glad it’s not in your power. What for?” There was, admittedly, more than one possibility.

  “The murder of Jude Winslow with premeditation and malice aforethought.”

  Oh, that. “Winslow was the murderer, a thousand times over. He wanted to kill my wife and your girlfriend, and he might have succeeded if he’d been a little bit more cunning. He was a monster and a cancer that couldn’t be allowed to survive to spread.”

  “So you took matters into your own hands, laws be damned.”

  “Yes.”

  Jenner blinked and stared at him incredulously. “You don’t have the right. It was for the legal system to mete out justice, not you.”

  “Sometimes the system can’t be trusted to act ethically. This was too important to leave to chance. What if he’d bought his way out? He would have picked up where he left off. Do you think AEGIS could have grown strong enough to be here now if OTS had continued to spread its brand of hate and violence? Do you think it would have been strong enough to win at the Provision Network Gateway?”

  “You can’t know what might have happened if he’d lived.”

  “I wasn’t willing to risk finding out.”

  “And that makes you a killer just like him.”

  Caleb scoffed. “I’ve never denied I’m a killer. But I am nothing like him.”

  “Because you say you’re not? You don’t get to make the determination.”

  “All evidence to the contrary.”

  Jenner took a half-step forward, and Caleb held out a hand, palm raised. “Don’t. Hitting me won’t settle anything and will only land you in the infirmary.”

  “You arrogant ass. I don’t think so.”

  “Fine, since I don’t particularly care what you think. In fact, I’m done with this conversation.” He hated Jenner for ruining the spell of the arboretum and stealing more of the dwindling peace still remaining inside him. If there was to be blood spilt, it shouldn’t be in here.

  He turned his back on the man and began walking toward the exit. Between the excited diati and the anxious traces of Akeso, he’d sense Jenner coming for him from a kilometer away.

  When he did, he let the man come.

  “I’m not done.” Two meters from the exit, Jenner’s hand landed hard on his shoulder.

  In a flash Caleb had grabbed it, spun and locked Jenner’s elbow. The Marine was strong, muscular, and likely fast, too, but Caleb now had the advantaged angle.

  He wasn’t going to use the diati—it was reserved for the real enemy. He kept the lock in place where he held it, but he didn’t push it further, for Mia’s sake. If a fight happened, no matter who was victorious, no one would come out a winner. “I said don’t.”

  Jenner’s jaw flexed beneath his skin, but after two seconds he nodded minutely. Caleb loosened his grip, and the man stepped back. “You should be in a cell. Everyone has to be held accountable.”

  “I saved a fucking planet this week. Hold me accountable for that.”

  “You really don’t get it, do you? Whatever good you may do, nothing gives you the authority to decide who lives and who dies. Civilization is built on laws and people recognizing and obeying those laws. Those who don’t are punished by those laws, not by vigilantes. Down your path leads barbarism.”

  “When the system works, I’m perfectly happy to let it. But it doesn’t always work, and deep down you know it. You wouldn’t have obeyed unjust orders from O’Connell, would you have? From Pamela Winslow? Surely you wouldn’t obey unjust orders from the Directorate if it was your overlord.

  “The system is only as good as its leaders. And when they fail—when the system fails—you better damn well hope I’m there to pick up the slack.”

  Jenner continued to glower, but it lost some of its fervor. “No one appointed you humanit
y’s protector.”

  “No one had to—and if you don’t understand why that is, then you’re not nearly the man I was told you are. I’m leaving now, and I’m going to assume we’re done. But if you threaten me again, you had better bring help.”

  Jenner snorted. “Don’t worry. Alex’s husband and Miriam’s son-in-law, Nisi’s ‘chosen one’? I know I can’t touch you. But I will never trust you.”

  “Doubt I’ll ever need you to. Are we finished?”

  “Yeah. We’re finished.”

  Caleb pivoted and headed for the exit.

  “Hey!”

  He half-turned, a non-committal expression on his face. He did not intend to take any more abuse, but he was mildly curious why they apparently weren’t finished.

  Jenner now looked surprisingly uncertain, given the heated vitriol of their interchange. “Question, since you seem to be the only person who can answer it. How did Mia actually escape the Triene cartel on Pandora all those years ago? You were there. What did she do?”

  Caleb frowned, perplexed. He wasn’t the only person who could answer it…then the pieces fell into place and he imagined how the interchange between Jenner and Mia must have played out. Bastard.

  He shook his head, a bitter chuckle on his lips. “You are such a goddamn moron.”

  Then he pivoted and walked out.

  37

  SIYANE

  MILKY WAY SECTOR 17

  * * *

  THEY PICKED A LOCATION A FULL FORTY AU from Palaemon to conduct the test. No one would complain about safety issues at such a distance—or wouldn’t if they were told, which they were not.

  Kennedy leaned on the cockpit half-wall, watching Alex with her arms crossed over her chest and a dubious look on her face.

  If she wanted to continue professing skepticism after all she’d seen, it was her prerogative, so Alex ignored the subtext of the pose. “I’ve picked a target destination 3.6 AU away. Not far at all, but far enough away to measure.” She motioned to the HUD. “Do you want to confirm that all the readings are within safety parameters?”