torg 01 - Storm Knights (11 page)

It was this hand that would allow her to work on the sensover data plate she carried in her thigh pouch, to recreate in magnetic flux the world she loved. Sixteen years old, genius, prodigy, two doctorates in three years, and for two years she had fought in the Invasion War against the Sims. Sixteen years old and, for now, when she could forget her guilt, her laughter over the thrill of falling in an air sled for thirty feet sounded fresh and innocent.

32

Baruk Kaah rocked back on his tail and watched as an optant prayed to Lanala for the balls of sun to light the night sky. The edeinos priestess swayed back and forth, chanting her love for the goddess. Then, when her swaying became more frantic, she raised a clawed hand and a ball of sun appeared in the air.

"Excellent, optant," called the High Lord, "your love is strong this night!"

A stalenger swooped out of the darkness and came to rest in the air before Baruk Kaah. Its membrane was like stained glass this night, reflecting the light from the ball of sun into a multitude of colors. Baruk Kaah nodded, giving the servant permission to speak. With that, tentacles uncoiled from beneath its star-shaped body and snaked out to touch the High Lord.

"We have found the stormer you sought, Saar," said the stalenger with its taps and vibrations. "Two edeinos are bringing him and should arrive shortly."

Without a word, Baruk Kaah wiped away the tentacles, dismissing the servant. He rose to his full height and prepared to hold audience.

"Yes, you will want to look the part of conquerer when the conquered is brought before you."

Baruk Kaah turned angrily, his powerful tail raised to strike. But he stopped its descend immediately when he saw that the speaker was one of the ravagons.

"You speak dangerously, ravagon."

"You behave dangerously, High Lord. Why do you seek out a single stormer?"

"My actions are no concern of yours. But I shall tell you anyway, because it pleases me that you should know. This stormer is an optant of these soft-skinned ones. He chanted to a crowd of thousands, and they returned his chant with cheers and excitement. Such an optant must serve me, or he must die."

Minutes later, two edeinos approached. A soft-skinned male in tattered clothing walked between them. Baruk Kaah called to mind the language of these beings, remembering the words that Rec Pakken had whispered to him back in his cosm, back on Takta Ker.

"You are the optant of the soft-skinned tribe?"

The human appeared dazed. His head was bent and he stared at the ground. When he did not answer, Baruk Kaah motioned to the stalenger. It reached out with its long tentacles and attached them to the human's head. Then, gently, it raised the head so that the human was forced to look at the Saar.

"I ask you again, are you an optant?"

The human shuddered, then tried to compose himself as best he could. When he spoke, his voice sounded weak and frightened.

"I'm Eddie Paragon," he finally managed. "I'm just a rock'n'roll singer. Please don't kill me."

"No, singer Paragon, I will not kill you," Baruk Kaah said as soothingly as he could, "at least not while you serve me."

The two edeinos placed their hands on Paragon's shoulders and forced him to his knees. But they really didn't need to. The singer got the idea. He bowed his head to the Saar of the edeinos and choked on the words that escaped his lips.

"I ... will serve you."

Baruk Kaah smiled his lizard smile at the ravagon, totally pleased with the ease of this conversion. He didn't see the tears that streamed down Paragon's face, though.

But the ravagon did.

33

All the colors of the rainbow played over the grimy-rain-streaked bubble canopy of the air sled as it slid on its anti-grav units through the crowded streets of Cape City. The colors emanated from flashing, glowing, gas-filled tubes and liquid crystal displays of signs and building-sized screens that advertised everything from laxatives to prayer. Mara stared through the streaked colors at the collapsed, ruined section where the maelstrom bridge once arched from the sky. The sled whined along the street that paralleled the miles of tumbled metal that had fallen and crushed a half-mile wide path through the city, making a jumbled trail of cyclopean wreckage all the way to the bay.

"I hear the council wants to leave the bridgehead as a monument," said the driver as the sled passed the one section that still stood at the abutment of the bridge.

Mara turned away from the twisted metal. Even though it was ruined, its surface still seemed to ripple like the surface of a deep pond. And below the surface, she imagined she could still she the tortured souls that gave the metal its shape.

"A monument to my stupidity and all the torture and deaths it caused," she said miserably.

"The council cleared you. They said it was simply coincidence."

"Yeah," she said and remembered her vain, childish pride when her paper hypothesizing the cosmverse model of extradimensional space was published. She had propounded that the universe was but one cosm in a cosmverse composed of infinite reflections of an infinite number of realities. Her mathematics had been without flaw, and her conclusions irrefutable, if un-demonstrated. Undemonstrated until the maelstrom bridge had crashed into the city and the Invasion War had begun, a war carried to Mara's world by armies from one of those reflection worlds she had mathematically established as being in existence. Tangible proof of her proudly proposed theory brought her bitter shame and guilt as she began to believe that she had caused the Invasion War by acknowledging the possibility of the worlds from which the invaders came. That they flowed through the hole she opened with her cosmscope.

So, she had plugged in the multi-dimensional physics chip and the cosmverse logic chip into the slots behind her ear and immersed herself in her math. When her conclusions forced her up for air, she wrote another paper, taking full blame for the Invasion War. But curiosity urged her to look into the cosmverse again, and this time she saw another world. And the Sims, her calculations told her, saw it too. If they could not have Kadandra, they would conquer the unsuspecting world called Earth.

Mara proposed that an advisor be sent to this Earth to help it fend off the Sims the way Kadandra had. She had mathematically described a method for traveling through the cosmverse using the power that certain Kadandran's had demonstrated in the wake of the Sim's reality storms.

Using the chips Mara designed and built, Dr. Kendal and the rest of her team created the machine that would send the advisor to Earth cosm.

"Dr. Hachi, do you have a recommended candidate?" the World Council had asked her after clearing her of her self-confessed crime and accepting her proposal.

"Me," she had answered.

34

On a rocky outcropping on the Kimberley coast of Australia, an elderly Aborigine sat and watched the Timor Sea. The waves were rough and black this day, thought Djilangulyip, smashing angrily against the land. The sea was pounding on their door, warning them of the danger. But the people had lost the ability to see.

But Djil saw, and that made him responsible.

Far out to sea, where the islands of Indonesia interrupted the waves, an evil had invaded the world. And the world did not like that, oh no. And the world called to its children for assistance. But the children had lost the ability to hear.

But Djil heard, and it scared him so.

He looked to the horizon, and there, at the very edge of his sight, he could see the storm front where the world rebelled against the invaders. His hands moved over the rope he held of their own accord, tying knot after knot into the coiled fabric. He looked down at the knotted rope and knew what it was telling him. The world, like the rope, needed to be tied back together in the places the invaders had frayed. But how, world? he asked silently. How do you knot reality back together?

He contemplated the knots throughout the long night.

35

The air sled reached the parking garage of the Transference Facility, after having passed through three security checks.

"Go save a world," said the driver as he solemnly shook Mara's hand in farewell.

"With luck," answered Mara, remembering Randin-Six.

"Always pick the fast drop," he grinned, offering the best advice he could think of for what she was about to do.

Mara smiled back at him and said, "No other way to go."

Then she turned and entered the main lobby of the facility which had been built for the single purpose of sending her to another cosm. Once again dressed in her black jumpsuit after the cybertechs had plugged into her and jolted her, and the medtechs had prodded and poked her, after she had been issued a laser pistol and an assortment of enhancement chips and had stored them in her thigh pouch and in the pockets of her jumpsuit, she was ushered into the main chamber.

Around the periphery of the room, the other cy-bernetically-enhanced volunteers were plugged into the consoles at which they sat. Their heads were resting in the headrests of their seats. Their eyes were closed, and she knew they were lost in the sparkling, glittering pathways of the cybernet. It was their bio-electronic circuitry and their logic pathways that gave the transference machine its power. But it was something else about these people, some intangible constant that she had been able to measure but not identify, that gave the machine the final boost that allowed it to shove her into another dimension.

She tried not to think about being on the Earth world, stranded without this intricate machinery and the enhanced mentalities to help her make the trip home. She nodded to Dr. Mikkos where he sat at the main console. But Alec — Dr. Kendal — was nowhere to be seen. It hurt that he was not here to see her off, but time was running out.

Mara watched as Dr. Mikkos punched in the final codes of the starting procedure. He didn't like goodbyes, and she didn't force hers on him. During the theory and construction phase of the transference machine project, he had treated her as he would his own daughter, and had also come to think of her in that way. Mara, not having seen her father since her parents' divorce, responded to Dr. Mikkos as she would to her actual father. They had said their farewell over a quiet dinner the night before, and both of them were willing to leave it at that. Perhaps, they were hesitant to add more, fearing he would say, "Don't go," or she would say, "I don't want to go."

Mara walked over to the cyberdrive console and inserted her right index finger into the security socket on the console. The implant in her elbow had nearly finished its job of sending coded pulses along the microfilament in her arm and finger, giving the final clearance to the transference system. The final tingle of electricity was leaving her hand when she heard a noise behind her. Without removing her finger from the socket, she turned to see what had caused the noise.

Dr. Mikkos sat slumped over the keyboard of the main console. Blood from his torn throat spurted over the white keys. Standing next to the dead physicist was one of the creatures that she had spent two years fighting, one of the demons who had come over the maelstrom bridge to wreak havoc upon her world before they were finally beaten back by the technology of Mara's world. A Sim.

The Sim had cruel features and blue-black skin that shone in the glittering, flashing lights of the main console. His hands were clawed and the left one dripped blood from where it had torn through Mikkos' throat. His right arm was as cybernetically enhanced as Mara's own. The military-issue tunic and slacks looked incongruous on his feral form.

"Greetings, Dr. Hachi, allow me to introduce myself," the Sim said, bowing from the waist slightly, but never taking his eyes off of Mara. His leering grin revealed yellowed, pointed teeth. Mara looked about her for help, but all of the volunteers were locked in the cybernet and unaware of the happenings in the chamber. She knew that if the Sim had gotten this far, there were no living security guards left behind him.

She was on her own.

"My name is Thratchen. And, I'm afraid, I must ask you to move away from that console."

"Why should I?" asked Mara, stalling for time and hoping to learn something of the Sim's purpose.

"Ah," smiled Thratchen, "because I would like to find out from you, firsthand, how you discovered our plans of invasion. Dr. Kendal was not very cooperative, if you catch my meaning. He actually was able to shut down his mind before I could glean much more than the location of this facility. Remarkable man, really."

"Alec?" Mara screamed in panic. "You hurt Alec, too?"

Thratchen shrugged. "I sorted his mind, my dear. Even if he lives he will be little more than a lump of flesh with no thoughts to speak of. Now, step away from that machine."

The Sim flexed his claws and moved toward the closest console. He eyed the exposed neck below the thrown back head of the plugged in volunteer.

"So, you have found an interesting use for stormers," Thratchen chuckled. "We never were able to do all that much with them ourselves."

With her mind racing, Mara knew she couldn't get to her laser pistol in time to save the volunteer, maybe not even in time to save herself. She had fought these creatures and knew how fast they were in battle. Maybe she could save a world, though. She flexed her elbow and twisted her finger in the security socket. Lights flashed from every screen at every console; printers began chattering, and warning bells chimed. The access hatch on the transference cylinder popped open. For a spilt second, Thratchen's attention was drawn away from her and the volunteer. In that time, Mara leaped into the cylinder and slammed the hatch.