The Crucible Page 11

  A single word flashed into his consciousness. “Door.”

  He glanced at the bronze door. What are you getting at?

  “Close.”

  What? You want me to lock you in with that thing? No way, I’m not doing that.

  “After… me…”

  Close the door after you? Okay, hang on a moment.

  He tossed the ball of string aside and hauled on the doorjamb. His fingers slipped against the metal, and the door barely moved. I can’t shift it.

  “String.”

  What?

  “String.”

  A picture appeared in his mind: cords looped around the door boss and extending around the jamb. It was worth a try. He retrieved the string and ventured inside the chamber. The floor shivered, and the air shook as the two minotaurs grappled with one another in a vain contest of equals. His hands trembled as he looped a dozen strands around the boss before retreating back around the door.

  After twisting the strands into an approximation of a rope, he heaved. The door still did not move. He lengthened the rope, wrapped it around his hands, shifted position, and pulled again. The door creaked and jerked forwards. Leaning on the rope, he pushed against the stone floor with his boots. The door gave again, a little more easily. Slowly, he dragged it until it was half a meter from closed.

  Okay, now! Through the opening, he watched as one minotaur shrank to Elinare size. Keiza turned and sprinted for the exit. Bellowing with rage, the remaining minotaur stomped after her, puffing smoke and flame. Half a step behind her, it stooped and bared swordlike incisors as she slipped through the gap in the door.

  She joined Quinn, and together they heaved on the makeshift rope. The minotaur tried to wedge a hoof inside the gap, but the door finally closed with a clang. The rope went limp. Quinn toppled to his rump, and she stood with her hands resting on her knees as they both fought to regain breath.

  “Can she come after us?” Quinn panted.

  “No,” Keiza replied. “She set the parameters of this re-creation, and now she’s trapped inside.”

  “So we’ve won?”

  “Unfortunately, no. She will be confined only for as long as the scenario lasts. The moment it ends, she will be free to draw on your memories and experiences once again. And since we must complete the process of navigating the ship back through the portal, the scenario must end.”

  “I have to do something—find some way of getting her out of my mind.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t see how. And right now, our priority is to return the ship to your universe.”

  “Right.” He waved an arm. “Lead on.”

  ~

  Quinn stood at the bottom of a flight of stone stairs as a shaft of sunlight warmed his face.

  The sunlight faded, the passage vanished, and he gazed up at a dome of hard pointed stars. We’re back.

  Quinn waved a palm over an armrest. The control interface fizzed out, and the chair lowered him to the floor of the Shanata vessel’s control room.

  Raised voices drifted over from the central table. He recognised snippets of Shanata and Badhati although he understood neither. Easing himself up from the chair, he made his way over. After days in the null universe, playing cat and mouse with the Damise fleet, he might have expected their safe return to meet with rejoicing, but the tone was closer to anger than joy.

  The Shanata and Badhati representatives looked up at his approach, and the Osei Quinn called Grey assumed a pink tinge. The conversation ceased as if someone had thrown a switch.

  Finally, the Badhati spoke in Ardalan. “There has been a development.”

  What, not even a word of thanks? And after a minotaur almost stomped me just to get you here? A stern inner voice lectured Quinn that now was not the time. He waited for someone to elaborate.

  “The fleet… Our fleet has been destroyed,” the Shanata said.

  “What? Are you certain?”

  “There is no room for doubt,” Grey said. “The event was witnessed by Osei. What is known by one is known to all our Unity.”

  “What happened?”

  “It seems the incident with the Badhati vessel at Pakravan alerted the Damise that we were invulnerable to absorption by the AI. Using a series of hit-and-run attacks, they manoeuvred the fleet to a system called Kor-Magida, where an AI-controlled flotilla of base vessels lay in wait. Our ships were annihilated in a matter of minutes.”

  “Our immunity to the AI originated when you purged our ships at the Korradan station.” The Shanata’s facial features were hidden behind his mask, but the words sounded perilously close to an accusation.

  Two more vessels filled with Shanata had been lost, on top of the destruction of their home world. Anger was an understandable reaction, and Rahada was no longer here to rein it in.

  Stick to the facts. “You’re saying this ship is now the only one in the Consensus not under Damise control.”

  “As far as we are aware, yes,” the Badhati replied.

  Quinn blew through his teeth.

  “We’re finished!” the Shanata said.

  “We have the advanced stealth technology the Farish installed,” the Badhati countered. “He also left us the specifications to construct more ka-horeth weapons.”

  The Shanata rounded on him. “We’re one ship! Our food, water, and resources are limited, and we have no means of resupply. The entire Consensus is under Damise control.”

  “Not quite.” Quinn felt everyone’s eyes on him. “The Shanata unleashed the gormgast on Nemazi. It and the other nebula worlds are untouched by the AI.”

  “How do you know this?” Grey asked.

  “A friend told me.” Quinn still wasn’t certain he counted Vil-gar as a friend, but this wasn’t the time to quibble over minutiae. “The nebula is the only remaining place where there’s active resistance. We have to reach it. If we can ally ourselves with the Shades, we might stand a chance.”

  “You’re crazy!” the Shanata said. “Even if you’re right and the gormgast haven’t already destroyed the Nemazi, the Shades hold the Fixed Races responsible for the Transformation, which laid waste to their worlds. They would never agree to an alliance with us.”

  “I managed it.”

  “Only by becoming a Shade yourself. Is that your scheme—to turn all of us into Shades as well?”

  Quinn folded his arms. “Fine. You want to seek out the Shades, or would you rather take your chances with the AI? Your choice.”

  The Shanata glared at him through eye slits.

  “I have been tracking Damise- and AI-controlled ships in adjacent sectors,” Grey trilled. “Their movements suggest they are unaware of our presence in this universe. The energy-dissipation net should prevent them from detecting us unless they are in extremely close range.”

  “Would it be enough to get us past the Nemazi blockade?” the Badhati asked.

  “Uncertain,” Grey replied.

  “If we make it through, we’ll have a powerful ship and Zothan, who is one of their own, to speak for us,” Quinn said. “I’d say we have a good chance of forming a pact with the Nemazi, and since they are the strongest of the Shade races, the others should fall into line.”

  The Badhati spoke in a deep-throated timbre. “If the gormgast are rampaging across their world, they will be locked in a battle for survival. They may not be in a position to help us.”

  “Perhaps,” Quinn agreed. “But we may be in a position to help them.”

  ~

  Quinn entered the landing bay and spotted the dolin at the far end, just where he had left it, not far from the Elinare sphere. The Agantzane-built construct had no need to eat or drink and no use for company, and the landing bay was one of the few areas of the ship that could accommodate its bulk, so leaving it here had just seemed sensible.

  Conor had formed an attachment to it, which Quinn attributed to his failure as a parent. Vyasa would say he was being hard on himself, but what parent wasn’t? Right then, Conor was absent from the landing ba
y. Quinn breathed a sigh of relief. He didn’t want the lad second-guessing his every word.

  Earlier, he had suggested the dolin learn to follow its own path. When challenged by Vil-gar, he had adopted the moral high ground, suggesting it had a right to self-determination. But circumstances had now changed. Their only remaining potential allies, the Nemazi, were facing annihilation.

  On Nemazi, he had abandoned his resolve not to kill and wiped out an assassination squad to protect Conor. Now, he was contemplating the destruction of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of semisentient creatures. He could almost hear Vil-gar’s thin, high voice: “Interesting how your high and mighty principles tend to evaporate in the heat of necessity, isn’t it?”

  Quinn dug his nails into his palms and marched up to the construct. “How are you?”

  The question sounded inane. The dolin was immune to pain and virtually indestructible. It regarded him with stone-faced indifference.

  He hurried on. “We’re headed for the Maaka nebula. Do you know of it?”

  “It is home to the Shade races.”

  “Right.” Quinn nodded. “That’s right. It’s the only part of the Consensus still free of Damise control… The thing is, the Shanata have unleashed the gormgast, and now the Nemazi are fighting for survival.”

  “They will lose.”

  “You know of the gormgast?”

  “Those who now call themselves Agantzane engineered semisentient beings as a way of enforcing the tenet of ‘one plus one equals two.’ But they are imposters. Their perfection does not approach that of the true Agantzane, my builders.”

  He and the dolin had made that discovery together on Pann’s ground level. An unseen plague had decimated the ancient Agantzane civilisation, which had then been replaced by a cabal drawn from other races determined to preserve the Agantzane system of order and justice. The dolin’s attitude towards the interlopers bordered on disgust. So far, the conversation was going better than Quinn had dared to hope.

  “We plan to contact the Nemazi and help them turn the tide,” Quinn said.

  “You do not have the means.”

  “We have you.”

  “You intend to restore my primary directive.”

  Quinn hesitated. That was an option he hadn’t considered. Zothan’s speciality was engineering. If he or someone of his race could figure out how to do it, it would certainly simplify matters. It might be risky, though. The Agantzane had ultimately shut down their creations, supposedly due to difficulties in controlling them. He had no idea how this one might react to an attempt to turn it back into a weapon.

  He decided to table the idea for now. “No, but your help could prove invaluable. If you were willing.”

  The dolin swept the landing bay with its orange eye beam before focusing on Quinn once again. “On the Damise vessel, you spoke of finding my own purpose. Ever since then, my processing units have been preoccupied with a single question. Am I alive?”

  Quinn chuckled. “I remember endless discussions with dusty old professors over questions like that. I’m no authority on the subject, but my gut feeling is that if you can conceive the question, then you probably are.”

  “I see… Then I have become something more than my creators intended.”

  “Ah, well, I don’t know about that—”

  “I have decided I will return to Castellan and awaken the others of my kind. If I have attained life, then it is possible they might make the same transition.”

  Quinn had a vision of hundreds, perhaps thousands of weaponized constructs rampaging across the galaxy. “Let’s try to focus on the current problem, shall we?”

  “The conflict in the nebula.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Does it impact on my current core directive?”

  “How do you mean?” Quinn asked.

  “I am to preserve the subjects—you and Conor. Does the gormgast invasion of Nemazi threaten your well-being?”

  Quinn felt as though he had been asked to hastily erect a house of cards. “If they overrun Nemazi, then the rest of the nebula will quickly fall. That will place the entire Consensus under Damise control. We are but one ship. We cannot survive on our own. Sooner or later, the Damise will destroy us as they have the rest of the fleet.”

  “Are the gormgast alive?”

  Quinn felt sideswiped by the question. “As I understand it, they’re semisentient bioengineered creatures.”

  “Could they learn to determine their own destiny?”

  “What? I have no idea. I doubt it.”

  “But do they not deserve the chance to explore the possibility?”

  Quinn massaged his forehead and tried to soothe a growing headache. “Look, sometimes you just have to follow the lesser of two evils.”

  “What is evil?”

  “I… guess one definition would be seeking to bring pain or destruction on another creature.”

  “Then I and my kin are the most evil beings ever conceived. The Agantzane were right to decommission us. I must abide by their wisdom.” The dolin’s eye beam shut off.

  “What? No, wait!” Quinn cried.

  The dolin’s head lowered to its chest.

  “What are you doing?”

  The giant stood immobile and silent as a pillar of rock.

  ~

  Quinn stared up at Zothan from the landing bay’s floor.

  The Nemazi perched on the dolin’s shoulder and peered inside an inspection port on the side of its head. “What did you say to it?”

  Conor addressed Quinn with a pinched expression. “Yes, Dad. What did you say?”

  Quinn reddened. “Nothing! It asked me whether it was alive. I gave some noncommittal answer. Next thing I knew, it had shut itself down.”

  The gathering of Shanata and Badhati at his back shifted their feet.

  “We are barely four of your hours from the nebula,” rumbled the Badhati representative known as Yahani. “You assured us the dolin would turn back the gormgast tide and help us secure an alliance with the Shades.”

  Quinn wished the bay floor would open and swallow him up. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  The Shanata representative, named Adza, ran to a metal ladder, shinned up with the dexterity of a spider monkey, and joined Zothan on the giant’s shoulder. To Quinn’s surprise, he tore off his face mask and stared into the construct’s inner workings. His chiselled features were topped off by a shock of black hair. He and Zothan exchanged something inaudible.

  “You must have triggered an emergency protocol,” Zothan called. “Did the dolin say anything before it deactivated?”

  “I don’t know. Something about how it deserved to be shut down. I tried to reason with it, but it wouldn’t listen.”

  Zothan closed the inspection hatch. Adza descended the ladder.

  “W-what are you going to do?” Quinn asked.

  “Nothing,” Zothan replied in his gravelly voice.

  “No, no, you have to get it going again!”

  “Its components are extremely old, and its design is based on lost technology. I do not have even a basic schematic to work from. I would likely do more damage than good.”

  “No, you have to try.”

  “The Nemazi is right,” Adza said. “If we were to lose control of the construct, it could wreak havoc. The risk to the ship is too great.”

  “You killed it!” Conor said. “I don’t believe you!”

  The crowd parted as he stormed off. Quinn stared openmouthed at his retreating back.

  Adza addressed Yahani. “Come, we must prepare.”

  The tall Badhati nodded, and together they headed towards the exit. The gathering broke up and drifted after them. Zothan passed by Quinn without a glance.

  They filed out of the landing bay, leaving Quinn alone with a silent, stone hulk.

  ~

  It was the night of the Eire Colony Hurling Championship, though “Championship” was a bit grandiose, considering the colony boasted only two teams—New Waterford and the Kilk
enny Cougars. Deep in the second half, the right corner forward and star of the first period, Sean Culligan, fell victim to a high snig and missed an open goal, losing the match and the cup for the Cougars. Quinn recalled the mud-spattered boy’s sullen, dejected expression as the final whistle blew and he stomped from the field, head hung in shame. In thirty minutes, he had gone from hero to zero.

  Quinn had grown accustomed to the limelight. His Shade abilities had given him a kind of mystique. His link with the dolin made him appear powerful. Having an Elinare inside him made him chief negotiator with the Founder Race, which meant that, aside from Vil-gar, he was the only one capable of navigating them through the null universe.

  But they were no longer in the null universe. Another creature bent on his destruction had supplanted the Elinare within him, and his use of Shade abilities had transformed him into a circus freak. Now, the dolin had effectively committed suicide.

  He slunk around the landing bay for half an hour before taking a transit to the forward section. The Badhati and Shanata he encountered on the way avoided him like a bad smell. He entered the control section, where Adza, Yahani, and Grey were locked in discussion around the central table. Shanata cut across his path as if he were invisible. The truth stuck in his craw like a dry walnut. I’m useless.

  He left the control area and reboarded the transit, heading back to the rear section. As the tunnel lights flashed past, his thoughts turned to Conor. Have to try to explain to him what happened. The transit slowed to a stop, and its gull-wing doors hissed open. He waited for a trio of Shanata to leave before disembarking. An elevator just beyond the platform whisked him to the deck that contained his assigned quarters.

  As he passed by a door, it slid open, and ethereal light spilled into the passageway. Curiosity aroused, he peeked inside.

  Eight Osei were gathered in a circle around a glowing fibre-optic bush. He had seen similar devices before, but their exact nature remained a mystery, as did the anemone-like creatures entwining their tentacles around its glassy strands. A ceremony perhaps? Or were they communing for some special purpose? Either way, it was not his place to interfere.