Chapter Twenty

Hayden, Subcontinent

The wind was blowing up as Cassius finished locking down the home stead known affectionately as the ‘Sarges Hacienda’. It was a hell of a storm, he decided as he was buffeted by winds that seemed to come from all sides.

The sky was a deep grey, almost black in places even though it was still well into the daylight hours, and he wondered if they were going to get hail.

Hail in a subtropical environment seemed odd to many people, but it happened… and, often, when it did, it was far worse than the sort you got in colder climates. There, the cold kept the air from gathering much moisture, so there was a limit to how much could form together into an ice bomb.

Hayden’s humidity tended to range somewhere between the Everglades and Holy Fuck is that water I’m breathing, so there was lots of it to be sucked up into the colder upper atmosphere and freeze.

He expected that was probably one reason why Sorilla had opted for the overbuilt nature of her little spread here on the sub-continent.

One reason among many.

Cassius loved his daughter, but the girl made him worry sometimes when it came to preparations for future calamities. She took that stuff seriously. His little measly six months of food and largely self-sufficient lifestyle was practically a joke to her.

He understood the desire to have all your options covered and all, but really, he did believe that the armory she’d collected over the years was pushing things a little bit.

Be getting a visit from the Federal boys in short order if she had put this together back home.

Cassius supposed that was one big reason why she’d picked Hayden for her retirement spot, though her inside knowledge of what was likely coming certainly hadn’t hurt. SOLCOM’s desire for an embassy location in a system known to the Alliance was going to make his little girl a very wealthy woman in time, not that she needed it.

Anything she wanted, she basically could build, grow, or buy very cheap.

He was about back to the Sarge’s Hacienda when he heard a vague noise in the distance and paused, turning around to try and figure out what it had been. With wind buffeting him from all sides, Cassius peered into the landscape around him for a while before a flash of light from up near the ‘city’ caught his eye.

What in the hell… They should be locked down for the night. Goddamn it.

The wind was too bad for a flyer, but most of the way there was well sheltered by thick Hayden jungle growth, so he bundled his jacket in closer and started trudging through the wet and windy jungle, heading for the ‘city’.

*****

“Lock it down!”

The Engineers were struggling with the tie downs on the large drone surveyor that the Major had insisted they keep operating right up until the last moment. The wind was fighting them, however, and the fact that the landing pad was partially open to the elements wasn’t helping matters in the slightest.

A gust of wind swept through, causing the drone to tilt dangerously on the pad as a line snapped with a twang that was nearly swallowed up by the howl of the storm. Men rushed over, grabbing the whipping line, and put their weight into it to pull the expensive piece of equipment back into level.

The price wasn’t the real issue, though, no matter what the cost. The real issue was replacement turnaround. If they lost the drone, it would be weeks, at best, before another could be sourced and delivered to Hayden. Months was a more realistic notion, and years wasn’t out of the question.

So, they fought the wind, wrestling the ties into place and looping them around the anchors as firmly as they could against the swaying of the machine.

It was almost in place when another snapping sound rent the air before being swallowed by the storm, and they had to start everything all over again.

The drone lifted up off its rails, teetering dangerously on one point of contact as the wind got under the rotors and airfoils, only the weight of the machine and the remaining line keeping it from going over completely.

“Watch out!” The lead engineer yelled, waving at men who were right in the path of the drone if it went over. “Get out of there!”

He threw himself at the wildly swinging line, grabbing on, and pulling back with all his weight, barely even nudging the machine despite that. Another gust came in and he was pulled forward, then up off his feet into the air, and he figured that was it. He was going over with the machine and he’d be lucky to wind up in a ship’s infirmary before it was over.

Then his feet were back on the ground, and he felt the slack in the wire being pulled slowly but inexorably back.

Risking a glance behind him, he saw Cassius Aida looping the wire around an anchor bolt and using the leverage to keep drawing in slack whenever it was presented, then locking everything hard with friction when the gusts came back.

The moment of existential terror passed, and the engineer threw himself back into saving both the drone and the men who’d nearly been crushed under it from the storm.

*****

Portal Ship

Sorilla tasted blood as she picked herself up off the floor, wincing at the pain that she could feel in nearly every corner of her body as she did so.

Proc, Health Telemetry.

The subvocalized command quickly set up a chart in one corner of her vision, showing the areas of her body that were showing signs of injury according to her own bodily response. It wasn’t necessarily the most precise indicator of her state of health, but it got the general message across.

Explosions were nasty killers. Generally speaking, it wasn’t the fireball or the shrapnel that took you out, but the overpressure wave they pushed on ahead of those elements. At the speed of sound, a blast wave could turn your insides to jelly and be gone before you had the time to blink.

Armor helped, of course. Power armor like hers, even more so. But her armor was about the lightest power armor imaginable, with more flexible sections than stiff armor by necessity. More than capable of taking even high-powered rifle rounds, and standing up to the twisting of space and time the enemy weapons threw at her, but as with those weapons… some of the force couldn’t be entirely negated or deflected.

She was bruised, bleeding… much of the latter, almost all in fact, was internal because her armor was more than good enough to handle any shrapnel that came her way. Neither she, nor her systems, had any idea yet just how bad that bleeding was. If she were lucky, it was just the equivalent of bad bruising, with no major leaks to worry about.

If she weren’t lucky?

Well, Sorilla would worry about that when it became something she couldn’t ignore. Worrying was for things you could do something about, and at that moment… she couldn’t.

So, limping, she pulled herself to her feet and started moving again, one hand on the wall for support as she walked away from the inferno behind her, and toward the goal ahead.

*****

A blade.

The conclave was rather displeased at the moment, combined with a fair amount of consternation.

How did she destroy an armored combat drone with a blade?

Dispatch projections from this to the construction divisions, A calmer voice interjected. We will expect corrections for this design flaw.

Flaw? Flaw!? She used a BLADE.

Those less personally aggravated among the conclave were working to get the group back on the track.

She is moving into the Paths.

That was all it took to shut everyone up.

*****

The portal room, as so designated by SOLCOM, was a visually insane thing to look upon. Sorilla had felt like her insides were trying to get outside the last time she’d seen it. This time, despite having a lot more time to get used to the enhanced spacetime sense her implants provided her was little better.

The big difference, in fact, was in the scanner she had active. It actually felt like it was sending multiple scans to her. She could feel things that both were and were not there. It took a few moments for Sorilla to realize that was the folds in the local spacetime, showing up both in the scans and her implants, but not to her eyes.

Alright, she took a breath, standing there in the open for a moment as she got her bearings and looked for the path she needed. There.

She could hear the movement behind her. Security forces had rallied enough to come chasing after her. If she were going to move, it had to be then. Sorilla found the mark she had pulled from the ship’s information hardline and pushed off the wall, limping at first but soon breaking into a loping gait that was only slightly uneven.

The twisting mass whirled in front of her, briefly showing her a reflection of herself before it moved on and she saw through to what looked like the other side of the room.

It wasn’t that, however.

Sorilla dove for it… and vanished into the ether.

*****

Parithalian Cruiser Upwind

Elim scowled as the continued scanning failed to confirm the location of the suspected Ross vessel. He was uncertain if it were there and just managing to stay below the detection threshold of the Upwind’s scanners, or if they’d gotten the wrong location entirely.

Both were possible at the range they were forced to work at, but he couldn’t just leave it at that.

The Master of Ship’s of the Upwind rose to his feet, stepping around his console, “Pilot.”

“Yes, Master of Ships!”

“Make our course for the current sector, half thrust on our main drives.”

“Course set, power set. Ready, Master of Ships.”

“Engage the course.”

“Course engaged.”

The ship didn’t make any sound or even feel like it was moving. Under normal thrust, he’d have been rather worried if it had, but the numbers for the navigation system began to change and so Elim knew they were moving.

It was risky, moving closer to where they believed the enemy was masking itself, especially with an enemy such as the Ross. It was, however, a calculated risk. Running was an option, of course, but without knowing the location of the Ross ship, running could be as lethal as remaining still or attempting to use the targeted Jump Point.

First, we confirm the location of the enemy, and then we decide what to do.

*****

“Interesting strategy,” Kriss said, sounding like he approved.

Sienele didn’t comment on that, as he knew damn well that the Lucian would approve of any strategy that involved closing with the enemy, even if he wasn’t the one leading the charge. As an intelligence specialist, determining proper strategy for combat in space was a long distance from his specialty, but he had an idea why the Master of Ships was taking such a risk, and the answer was his specialty.

Intelligence.

Without it, they were likely dead. With it… well, Sienele wasn’t quite ready to give up, but he was fairly certain that they were not in great circumstances even with complete intelligence on the enemy in this case.

A Ross vessel is just too powerful. A single cruiser has little chance but to outrun and hope they don’t give chase… but we don’t even know for certain where they are.

That made running pointless, particularly since it seemed that the Ross had every reason to give chase in this situation. The Ross vessels were known less for their speed than their implacable nature, but that was only because they rarely cared enough to really unleash what they could do.

He wasn’t completely certain, but Sienele deeply suspected that the Parithalian cruiser had very little chance of outrunning the Ross… not if they truly wanted to pursue, at any rate.

“One way or another,” He said aloud, “We will know soon.”

*****

Portal Ship

I am getting fatigued with someone screaming impossible, as it pertains to Entropy… but that was impossible.

The conclave, most of them shocked to silence, motioned their assent with little other commentary. They were mostly still watching the replaying projection in disbelief.

She… actually navigated the Paths? But to where?

That was the question that was driving them all completely insane by that point. Tracking an object through the paths was… non-trivial, even for them. Doing so off the cuff, with no trackers on the object, and with one as small as a single human soldier?

Well, the word impossible was coming up far too often with Subject: Entropy, but here they were yet again.

Find her! She went somewhere, whether by intent or by accident. Send to all ships and stations, inform all sector conclaves, dispatch her description to everyone. She is in the Paths and we cannot allow that to pass unchallenged!

The conclave acceded to the orders, dispatching the requested commands across the network with haste as they continued to attempt both work out how the human had been able to enter the paths in the first place, given that the very nature of them was that they required precise entry points to even come close, and… admittedly more importantly for the moment, where the blasted creature had travelled to.

If she hadn’t known how to access the paths correctly, or had been off slightly, there was no telling where she’d be spat out.

*****

Sorilla hit the deck in a skid, turning over onto her side and curling up as she careened across the floor and slammed into the far wall. The shock that did transfer through her armor was enough to make her feel every bruise in her body… of which, at the moment, there really only seemed to be one. One very big bruise that covered everything.

Except her middle toe on her left foot. That wasn’t hurting at the moment.

She lay there for a moment, just breathing as softly as she could while she tried to push the pain down. Her body was reaching the limit of which adrenaline and endorphins could really help, even with the boosts from her armor’s small batch supplies of combat drugs and the encouragement of her implants on her glandular hormone production.

Eventually, no matter what toys or boosts you had, it always came down to will. Do you have the will to get up even when everything in the universe was screaming at you to stay down?

Sorilla rolled over onto her belly, bending on leg up under her as she pushed off the deck and got up to one knee.

She looked around, eyes, suit, and scanner examining the room around her.

It looked precisely like the room she’d been in before she took that dive, but that was more or less what she’d expected and hoped for. She planted her hands on her knee and pushed as she forced herself fully up to her feet, swaying slightly as she found her balance was almost entirely shot to hell.

The transition had been… indescribable.

She hoped that the recordings helped SOLCOM with it, assuming she ever got back, because she didn’t have any words to explain what the Hell she’d just experienced, and she wasn’t even going to try.

If I got the right vector… well, I hope I got the right vector, Sorilla thought as she limped out of the room, her next goal the only thing she was keeping in her mind for the moment.

The Ross ships were all alike, carbon copies of one another. That somewhat disappointed her, if she were honest about it. She’d kind of expected that higher technical levels would bring more creativity back into the culture. It seemed like that on Earth and human colonies. Fabricators could make custom versions of any base tech, done to your specifications whether you wanted something with a practical difference or just a stylistic one.

Somehow, she supposed that she had expected an advanced race to be all about custom one off builds.

The Ross weren’t exactly keeping with her image of an ideal advanced race, though, so she supposed she wasn’t going to throw the hope out just yet.

The corridors were empty, unlike the ones she’d left. No security mechanoids were awaiting her as she shuffled through the ship, making her way to the secure terminal room closest to her position.

She wondered if they knew she was there, or if she’d managed to give them the slip for a time?

She was hoping for the second, but realistically it was more likely that the first was true and they just hadn’t been able to scramble security that quickly.

Whatever. She’d take it.

The door to the secure terminal center opened easily enough. She didn’t even need to fry the spacetime circuitry to get in. That was always a plus.

Limping over to the terminal, Sorilla dipped her fingers into the wells in spacetime that made up the interface controls and powered it up. The projection that appeared in front of her wasn’t merely a hologram - it felt as real as it looked, both to her sense of touch but also to the accelerometers and the scanner she still had running.

Sorilla confirmed her location first, breathing a sigh of relief when she saw it was precisely what she’d aimed for.

Now, let’s throw a proverbial little wrench into the gears you don’t use, shall we?

*****

Parithalian Cruiser Upwind

Master of Ships Elim could feel the tension mounting as the ship closed on the sector of space they’d originally scanned the anomaly within. Soon they would be close enough to be certain of having detected the ship, if it were there at least. At that point, he’d have a decision to make, and neither option was entirely pleasing to him.

Or at all pleasing to him, in reality.

The best-case scenario, in the short term, was that they detected nothing. False alarm, start over from the beginning.

That wasn’t good, but it was better than facing off against a Ross ship intent on their death, and better even than trying run from a Ross ship intent on same. Normally, then, he’d be rooting for the best case even while preparing for the worst.

However, right now, the best case still meant that the ship was intent on killing them… it just meant that they wouldn’t know where the ship was. Which, to be frank, wasn’t all that good a case. It might even be worse than the worst case.

His head hurt from thinking in twisted knots.

“Master of ships!”

“What is it?” He asked, turning to look at the communications section, surprised that there was anything going on there that might concern him. He hadn’t thought there was anyone in the system to send messages to them at the moment.

“Signal originating from the target sector. The coding is unknown, however.”

“Ross encryption?”

“No. Nothing like their work. We’re applying filters against everything in our computers now, but it will take a while.”

“Fine,” Elim said. “Continue with that. In the meantime, we have at least one response to our question… something is out there, but not it seems it might not be what we thought it was. All stations stand by for change in orders.”

“Yes, Master of Ships. All stations report standing ready.”

Elim scowled, eyes dipping to the data that was feeding through his system concerning the unknown signal.

What in the abyss is going on?

*****