Chapter Twenty-Five
Their path meandered through the gaps between ancient, crumpled machinery and warped structural support ribs. They snaked their way forward, often forced to duck underneath huge, low-hanging devices of unknown purpose. Nathan was tempted to turn back when the path narrowed to a low slot, but they pressed on, crawling forward on their hands and knees. Their perseverance paid off, and the path widened afterward.
Their course snaked away from the Stolen Dragon, twisting its way around or through hulking machines. His own breathing grated on him in the absence of other noises, but he pressed on, one careful foot in front of the other, his eyes scanning for hazards.
He wasn’t in his hard suit, after all, with its reassuring layers of protection, but a Jovian pressure suit for keeping organic prisoners alive and not much else. He wasn’t sure how the material would respond to a sharp edge, and he felt no need to test its durability. A roll of general-purpose adhesive tape hung from his belt, just in case he needed to plug a leak in an emergency.
“Stop.”
Aiko’s sudden voice pierced the silence, startling Nathan. His pulse quickened. He searched their surroundings but couldn’t spot any obvious dangers. A small, slanted gap ahead looked like it would lead into the wound cavern proper, judging by how distant the far wall was. He turned to Aiko, expecting some indication of what had prompted her to break radio silence, but only found her standing in the open, arms slack.
He walked back to her and pressed his helmet against her head.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Something’s wrong,” she said, her words vibrating through his helmet’s bubble.
A subtle tremor in her tone sent a chill down his spine. The change in her demeanor wasn’t pronounced or obvious, but he knew her well enough to sense it all the same. It was like an undercurrent of dread rippling just beneath serene waters.
Aiko had always been his fearless companion, a font of energy and enthusiasm, her ability to inhabit multiple bodies shielding her from permanent consequence. Perhaps the losses of her copies had finally begun to weigh on her mind?
Then again, he thought, considering where they were, maybe not.
“What’s wrong?” Nathan asked.
“I think we’re in a lot of trouble.”
“We knew this.”
“No. I don’t mean the Jovians. The statite, Nate. It’s wrong!”
He looked around again. “Wrong how?”
“It’s talking to me.”
“Wasn’t it doing that before?”
“Yeah, but it’s growing louder, more insistent. More . . . deranged. It’s like this huge presence is lurking behind me, screaming into my ears, pushing into my mind, sifting through my thoughts like they’re pages in a binder, and there isn’t a damned thing I can do to shut it out!”
“Can’t you ignore it? Isn’t that what you’ve been doing so far?”
“I’m trying!” Her cameras met his eyes. “Believe me, I am! But I don’t have a switch in my head like Rufus does! I can’t choose not to listen to this thing!”
“Okay, okay.” He placed his hands on her shoulders. “I hear you, but I’m not sure what we can do about it. Any idea what’s making it worse?”
“I think the statite is waking up. I think we disturbed its slumber.”
“But . . .” Nathan swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. “Rufus’s attempt to commune with it?”
She nodded against his helmet. “He succeeded, but not in the way we wanted.”
“Then does the statite know we’re here?”
“I don’t know. Its words are . . . confused. Demented, even. And angry. So very angry!”
“How bad is it?” Nathan asked. “For you, I mean. Can you push through?”
“For now, yeah. But it’s difficult, Nate. It’s so damn difficult! And it’s getting worse!”
“All right.” He pointed to the gap ahead. “Let’s push on for now. We’ve made it this far. Just a little farther, and we should be able to keep an eye on the wound.”
“Sure,” Aiko replied, sounding doubtful. “Just a little farther.”
“If it becomes unbearable for you, let me know. We’ll turn back.”
“Okay.” She put a hand over his and gave him a tender squeeze. “Thanks, Nate.”
“Come on.”
He led the way through the gap, which forced him to bend over at an awkward diagonal in order to slip through. He pressed his palms against the sloped wall and hand-walked his way to the other side, which opened to an incline leading up to a narrow ledge.
He climbed up to the ledge and crouched, the immense wound cavern sprawled out before him, a distant swatch of stars visible to his right. He switched off his helmet light, unclipped his binoculars, and zoomed in on the grinning, twisted cave mouth. Nearby wreckage allowed him to peer at the opening while only exposing his head and shoulders.
Aiko crouched beside him, equally hidden.
A Jovian corvette slid by the mouth, slowing and rotating to face the interior before it disappeared from view.
“It’s only a matter of time before they poke their noses in here.” He lowered the binoculars. He was about to settle into a more comfortable position when the rounded bow of a huge vessel peeked into view. He raised the binoculars again and studied the craft.
The Jovian warship bristled with heavy weapon batteries and thick armor plating. Nathan doubted any single ship in the Neptune Concord or even the Saturn Union could take that monster on one-on-one and win.
Nathan lowered the binoculars. He didn’t need them for a ship that big. He leaned back to Aiko, who pressed her head against his helmet.
“The Leviathan?” he asked.
“The Leviathan,” she confirmed. “I recognize the hull markings.”
They watched the Jovians for a good twenty minutes, alternating between hunkering down behind the debris and catching glimpses of the ship’s movements. The statite’s rotation brought the Leviathan of Io into view at regular intervals, the massive ship keeping watch outside the wound while its corvettes flitted about. Nathan counted three separate corvettes during one of the rotations, but he knew there could be more.
One of the corvettes ducked into the cavern and flew down the full length, far past his vantage point, then circled back around and returned to the entrance. It disappeared outside for several minutes, then a corvette—he couldn’t tell if it was the same one—flew back inside and landed half a kilometer back from the Stolen Dragon’s hiding spot.
Nathan lost sight of the corvette when it settled into the cavern’s twisted walls. He crouched back into cover and pressed his helmet against Aiko’s head.
“Think they have a path to reach us?”
She didn’t respond. Didn’t even move.
“Hey, Aiko?”
“Wh-what?” She shuddered and turned to him.
“That corvette. Can its crew reach the Dragon from where they landed?”
“Oh.” She paused for a while, staring at nothing. “I guess.”
“You hanging in there?”
She paused again before answering. “I’ll manage.”
Nathan’s original plan had been for Aiko to stay behind as their lookout, but he couldn’t leave her alone in her current state, and he also couldn’t return to the Stolen Dragon, since that would leave them blind to whatever the Jovians were up to, which meant both of them needed to stay behind.
“Okay,” Nathan said. “You let me know if—”
A gloved hand clenched around Nathan’s shoulder, and long, bony fingers dug into his flesh.
“What the?!” he blurted, recoiling from the hand. He spun around, pressed his back against the wreckage, and raised his leg for a reflexive kick, but then paused and lowered his leg when he saw who it was. “Rufus?”
The cleric backed away and held up both hands. Joshua shuffled into view behind him.
Nathan grumbled, more in frustration at himself than anything else. He slid down the incline behind the ledge and the three men pressed their helmets together.
“Sorry,” Rufus said.
“You scared the shit out of me!” Nathan said.
“I didn’t mean to. Just trying to maintain radio silence, like you said.”
“I—” Nathan took a deep breath to calm his racing heart. “Okay, good work on that front, but what are you two doing here? Shouldn’t you be searching for the statite’s soft underbelly?”
“We were,” Joshua said. “Until we found something.”
“Something that should connect to that ‘soft underbelly,’” Rufus added with a sly smile.
“There’s no straight path to it,” Joshua said, “but it’s only about two or three hundred meters from the ship. Not a bad hike, given how twisty this place is.”
“What is it?” Nathan asked.
“My guess is a computronium storage tank,” Joshua said. “We found a pumping station, and by the looks of it, it used to circulate computronium.”
“Then you think you might have found this place’s brain?”
“A path that should lead to it, yes.”
“And it’s right next to the wound cavern?” Nathan permitted himself a cold grin. “I guess we got lucky for a change.”
“The odds were in our favor on this one,” Joshua said. “Whatever created the wound wanted to do some serious damage, so it’s not surprising to find sensitive areas nearby. After we found the station, we backtracked to the ship, but Vess said you and Aiko were still out. She pointed us down the path you took, and here we are.”
“But we have another problem.” Rufus’s eyes turned cold and stern. “The statite is waking up.”
“Yeah, Aiko said the same thing.” Nathan put a hand on her shoulder, but she didn’t react. “Those voices are creeping her out.”
“The juncture is extremely agitated,” Rufus said. “I don’t dare try to connect.”
“And there’s more than just the signal,” Joshua added. “We’ve seen physical signs this place is waking up, too, like at the pumping station. Some machines started vibrating while we were there, and we could hear and feel material flowing through some of the pipes.”
“Great,” Nathan grunted. He shifted his stance and checked back on the wound’s mouth. The Leviathan came into view once more, firing its thrusters to bring its position closer. “So, do we take out those pumps? Will that cause enough damage?”
“No,” Joshua said. “We need to find the main storage tank. Hitting that should cripple this area of the statite.”
“Got it. All right, let’s—”
The ground trembled and shifted under their feet, and Nathan grabbed hold of a warped beam sticking out of the wreckage. Light bloomed outside the cavern, drawing his eye, and he watched as a brilliant beam struck the Leviathan’s bow. The light stung his eyes, but he found himself unable to turn away from the terrifying display of power.
Layered armor turned white hot, liquefying almost instantly under the beam’s onslaught. The attack punched past the ship’s protective shell like it wasn’t even there and then carved its way through the numerous decks and bulkheads underneath. The beam ate through the vessel’s long axis—an entire kilometer of Jovian warship—and blew out the far side.
The Leviathan’s thrusters cut out—what was left of them, anyway—and the beam arched upward through the vessel, splitting it into two neat halves. The cleaved segments floated away from each other, their exposed cross-sections glowing orange.
“Gods.” Nathan soaked in the destruction with stunned disbelief, his mouth hanging open. He shook his head, then turned back to the others. Joshua and Rufus shared similar expressions.
The true power of this ancient relic finally became clear in his mind. Before, the destruction it could wreak had been an abstract concept. A terrifying potential that, nonetheless, lacked a certain degree of reality.
But no more.
Now he knew how powerful the statite truly was, even in its wounded, derelict state.
“Did you see that?” Nathan exclaimed, his helmet pressed against Joshua’s.
“I saw,” Joshua replied weakly.
“I knew the star-lifting laser would be powerful. But that’s . . .”
“You’re wrong,” Joshua breathed, and Nathan turned to see a dark realization fill the man’s eyes. “That wasn’t the main laser,” he added, his gaze fixed on the wreckage, now drifting out of view below the wound.
“But . . .”
“Unless I’ve missed my guess”—Joshua paused to swallow—“that was one of the statite’s maneuvering jets.”
“No way. That had to be the main laser.”
“The angle’s wrong. It couldn’t fire on the Leviathan from this position. And haven’t you noticed? Doesn’t the gravity feel different now?”
“It—” Nathan shifted from one foot to the other. Joshua was right. Gravity had increased since the beam fired. “Yeah. Maybe a quarter of a gee.”
“Think about what we just witnessed.” He faced Nathan with grim eyes. “This place just cut a Jovian warship in two by accident, while doing nothing more than adjusting its spin!”
Nathan gazed back out the wound cavern and bit into his lower lip. His perception of the statite’s true power from a few moments ago wilted away, replaced with the cold realization that his tiny human brain simply couldn’t fathom how powerful the artifact truly was.
A Jovian corvette ducked into the wound cavern, followed by a smaller craft that may have been a shuttle carrying survivors from the Leviathan.
“I have a feeling it’s going to get crowded in here,” Joshua said.
“Yeah,” Nathan agreed. “We should go before one of them spots us. We’ll head back to the ship for now.”
He shook Aiko’s shoulder. She looked up at him, and he pointed a thumb back the way they came. She rose and followed him down the slope without a single word or gesture.
She never once looked at the destruction outside.
Nathan switched his helmet light back on and led the party toward the Stolen Dragon while stealing occasional glances back at Aiko. The Jovian trudged through the convoluted passages as if on a private form of autopilot, pulling up the rear with a downturned head and slumped shoulders.
The path back had changed, not in any physical way, but by nature of the stronger gravity and a slight shift in its angle.
They pressed on through the statite’s ruined guts, squeezing through a tight cleft between two mangled support pillars until it opened into a wider space. Nathan slowed and motioned Rufus and Joshua to pass him, then matched Aiko’s pace. He keyed his commect, judging the group to be far enough from the wound cavern for them to talk safely. Besides, he figured the Jovians were a bit distracted at the moment.
“You okay?” he asked, trying to keep his tone casual.
She didn’t answer immediately, just continued to march forward, her head low.
“Aiko?”
“I’m fine.”
“Just checking. You know, because I care that much.”
“I know.”
“Are you really fine?”
“That’s what I just said.”
Nathan sighed. “And so you did.”
He grimaced and quickened his pace, resuming his spot in front before the path constricted again. He ducked under the bulk of a massive, cylindrical device, cables hanging from it like pale vines. He pushed them aside and stepped carefully around the coiled ends, his mind falling back to Aiko.
He was so distracted that he didn’t see the Jovian commando up ahead until they almost collided.
The enemy soldier backpedaled into view, emerging swiftly from a dark side passage with his rifle aimed back the way he came. Nathan flinched in surprise, and the commando spun to face him, swinging the rifle around. Nathan’s eyes widened, drawn to the barrel coming around to face him—and the death it would bring—but then the back of one of the commando’s feet caught on a cable, and he tripped.
The commando fell back, off balance, the rifle tracking high. A quick burst of silent shots cut through the vacuum and flew wide over their heads, jostling cables and sparking against derelict machinery.
Nathan didn’t think, only acted. He rushed in, shoved the rifle barrel further upward, and tackled the commando in the chest.
“Gah!” he grunted, the soft meat of his shoulder crunching against Jovian armor. A small corner of his mind screamed at him that he was not in his hard suit and he should not be taking on a Jovian commando in close quarters! But the blossoming pain proved to be worth it, because the impact threw the commando off balance, and the rifle slipped from his fingers.
The weapon sailed across half the room and hit the ground on its side, sliding and spinning until it hit a mound of cables that resembled a tangle of gray pythons.
The commando landed on his back. He searched urgently for his weapon, spotted it, and began to scramble for it.
Nathan drew his pistol.
The commando froze.
No one moved. No one breathed.
The commando remained motionless, one arm reaching, yet frozen by the pistol aimed at him.
Nathan chanced a quick glance down the passage the commando had emerged from. He couldn’t see anything in that inky dark.
He returned his gaze to the commando, who hadn’t moved.
Yet.
This Jovian didn’t find us so much as stumble upon us, he thought, his mind struggling to catch up with events. Is it just me, or did he seem like he was fleeing something? But if not us, then what?
The Jovian’s head swiveled, facing the weapon, then Nathan’s gun.
Nathan bobbed the barrel to the side twice. The commando took the hint and backed away from his gun, both hands raised.
Good so far, Nathan thought, keeping his weapon trained on the Jovian. But what now? We’re not exactly in a position to take prisoners, but we can’t just leave—
The Jovian’s chest blew open in a flash of light, and the explosion flung the body back against the wall. More explosions wracked the machine, tracking upward until the Jovian’s head erupted in a spray of metal bits and black fluid.
Nathan searched for the source of the attack—
—only to find Aiko aiming down her rifle’s sights at what remained of the commando.
She lowered the rifle and assumed a casual pose, looking more like her usual confident self than she had all day.
Nathan stormed over to her and triggered his commect.
“What’d you do that for?” he demanded.
“Wh-what?”
“You shot an unarmed prisoner!”
“I . . . yes, but—”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, ‘why’? You told me to!”
“I most certainly did not!”
“But . . .” Aiko’s stance wilted, the weight of countless doubts pressing down upon her. “But you did. I heard you tell me to shoot. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have.”
“Aiko, how could I have done that when I was bracing my pistol with both hands?”
“You didn’t use your commect?” She sounded doubtful of her own words.
“Not until after you shot him!”
“But if you didn’t, then who . . . ?” Aiko lowered her head. “I could have sworn I heard you tell me to shoot.”
Rufus stepped up. “Nate, perhaps we should move on before more arrive.”
“Right. Let’s get going.” He turned back to Aiko.
“If you didn’t tell me to . . . then who . . . or what?”
“You going to be okay?”
She paused before answering, her cameras swiveling up to meet his eyes.
“I don’t know, Nate. I just don’t know.”