The Path to Loss (Approaching Infinity Book 4) (24 page)

Only it didn’t happen that way. Raohan La shocked humans and reptiles alike by offering another solution, one that would work for both sides. Seeing the benefit that the Kossig Engine provided to humans, Raohan La knew that to destroy it would cripple human society. They would likely survive the sudden loss of both worldwide power and the nurturing effects of the getnium rays, but they would be set back terribly. Oppositely, reptiles could not live in a world where getnium rays were allowed to shine. Raohan La had meditated long and hard on a solution, and his advance on Fortus was not to promote war, but to make his proposal to end it by relocating every reptile to Stolom’s primeval past. In his meditations, Raohan La had discovered the means to make this happen. That he’d proven his theory intellectually was tantamount to having taken action, which was proof that either the relocation would have no other future effects on Stolom or that the relocation was already a part of Stolom’s past.

At seventeen, and with both his father and grandfather killed in the assault on Fortus, Stol Kossig showed great restraint and maturity receiving Raohan La’s proposal, but such are the qualities of great leaders. Stol could see past his own personal loss, could acknowledge Raohan La’s sincerity, and could envision peace between man and reptile. That it was in fact banishment and not true peace saddened him, but both he and Raohan La knew that there was no other way. A great friendship was established that day and remains in effect.

The rest of the two populations took some convincing, but Raohan La was impossible to discredit and Stol both performed and inherited the role of humanity’s savior. Both leaders did their parts to ensure that their respective sides honored the proposal. Through collaboration, they issued a worldwide broadcast, declaring an end to all violence. The reptiles, wherever they were, whatever their clan, stopped fighting. Though only the Godsorts posed any real danger to the reptiles, humans were warned under strict penalty not to take advantage of the truce with any attempts at retaliation or vengeance.

Leaving his cousins to watch over Fortus, Stol accompanied Raohan La, leading the pilgrimage of reptiles away from the Engine and its harmful getnium rays. All looked on in wonder when Raohan La opened time and space to reveal the pristine, untouched landscape of Stolom’s distant past. The two giants stood as sentinels, ensuring that no one was left behind. When all the reptiles had passed through the opening, Stol—in his Godsort—and Raohan La gripped each other’s hands in friendship and parted.

Thus the war on Stolom ended and the ten-year reign of peace began in the present day. Through technology and Raohan La’s incredible mental powers, a portal was established so that communication and their great friendship could be maintained across time. Indeed, Raohan La, though physically absent, remained Stol’s top advisor thereafter.

“I tell you, Stol, my calculations are not wrong.”

Stol stared down the scaly muzzle into the glassy black eyes which hid the monstrous intelligence he knew could not, in fact, be wrong. The window through which they spoke, an impossibility linking them instantly across over two hundred million years, was a product of that intellect. The means to physically travel back to those primordial days of Stolom’s distant, verdant past was a product of that intellect. The ability to overcome well-founded, inter-species hatred for the sake of both races was also a product of that intellect. Reflecting on this last still moved Stol nearly to tears. Of course he believed Raohan La. There could be no question, but what did it mean? He shook his head.

“No, old friend, I don’t doubt you,” Stol said. “What you describe sounds dangerous, but exactly how dangerous is it to Stolom, to our generation? Suns expire. Seas dry up. Nature provides all manner of calamity. What can we do about inevitabilities?”

Raohan La shifted, his image flickering within the freestanding, ornate metal frame which made their communication possible. A fine sheen of rain had begun to fall, making the marble paving stones shimmer with false depth. Stol ignored the spray except to note how light from the temporal window caught each of the delicate droplets as they swirled in the summer breeze. The sun was starting its final descent into a bank of relenting clouds upon the horizon, and made him squint as it reflected harshly off the Godsorts. They’d been inert for the last ten years, lined up on the sward just beyond the open marble square, providing symbolic vigil.

“Stol,” Raohan La said, “I do not believe that this is natural or inevitable. Here, the universe is still expanding. It is possible that at some point during the course of the intervening two hundred and twenty-seven million years it reached the limit of its expansion and began to contract on its own, but the degree of contraction over the last ten years makes it highly unlikely that this is a natural occurrence. Additionally, it appears that Stolom lies in the path of advanced, localized collapse.”

“You’ve observed this?”

“Measured and recorded it.”

“So you believe that someone is making the universe collapse? And directing that collapse at Stolom?”

“Yes, it sounds ludicrous. I can’t know the particulars yet, but I have learned not to ignore my intuition.”

“As have I. What do you suggest?”

“Readiness.”

Stol took a deep breath. “On what order?”

“The grandest, if necessary. Listen, Stol. I cannot and will not accept that the natural end of all things—because that is, ultimately, what will result from a total collapse—is being accomplished by what amounts to a cosmic needle, knitting the universe together just as a tailor takes in a garment. Whatever is coming, I believe it to be tangible. I believe with a double front, your Godsorts, and my. . . more subtle talents, we can potentially stem the collapse, even stop it altogether.”

“The Godsorts will support you in any endeavor you propose, my friend. If with fists of steel we can avert disaster, then we will do all that is possible to do for Stolom’s past and present.”

“Thank you Stol. I only hope that our success will ensure Stolom’s
future
.”

Raus crumpled to the gravity block, both bolt-lined arms bent at wild, insupportable angles.

Jav walked forward and stood over him. “Can you move?”

“Not yet.”

“Does it hurt?”

Raus snorted. “It always hurts.”

Jav nodded. “Do you want me to help you up?”

“No, let me trouble Vays by laying here until I get some feeling back. I think your
tugging
might have wrenched my spine.”

Raus reflexively waited for an apology he no longer expected from Jav. It didn’t bother him that the apology didn’t come. Of Jav’s peers, Raus alone had some inkling of what was happening to Jav. It
did
bother him that there was no real way to address the problem. It was like a phantom limb, itching and aching, though long since severed. The analogy was appropriate and served to remind him of two things: that Jav still deserved his friendship, no matter how cold and how flat he’d become; and that the he might find himself in the same or similar circumstances if he did anything more than offer Jav his friendship. He had too much to lose by not playing ignorant. His brother was so close to a cure now. Reclaiming his home planet of Sarsa as his own upon retirement was also a strong incentive. With all the genetic material the Empire held in storage, he hoped to one day reproduce Milla Marz and settle their karmic feud, hopefully peaceably.

The current was pouring through Raus’s body now. He felt it surge down his spine, guided by the nerve wires of the Resurrection Bolts, mending the tear and making his legs twitch. His arms twisted, like hoses through which water is suddenly pumped, the bones realigning, setting, and stitching back together. He sat up and rolled his head upon his prodigious neck, eliciting pops that sounded as bad as the injury from which he was just now recovering. He sighed when he saw Vays, arms folded, glaring at him from off the gravity block.

“All right, I’m coming,” Raus said.

Raus shook his head. Vays. It wasn’t a glare so much as a permanent feature, like the color of his hair, but stemming from his general impatience and sense of superiority rather than genetics. He’d grown accustomed to Vays and his ego. Raus glanced at Jav who, still standing over him, shrugged. Everyone was accustomed to Vays and his ego.

As Raus stood, Jav clapped him on the shoulder. That single act nearly crippled him. The buried root of their friendship expressed itself in that moment and Raus hated himself for the secret he kept. After all that Jav had gone through, all that he had lost and was losing—because to Raus it was clear that pieces of Jav were being ripped away with nearly every planetfall—Jav was still sometimes able to claw through the mire of his special brand of torment and offer up a modicum of compassion, even if unvoiced. No matter how many times Jav crippled Raus on the gravity block, he never took Raus’s ability to heal for granted. It was a small thing, but Raus appreciated it. He only wished that he could do more for Jav, that he didn’t feel trapped by his own circumstances to help, if only by sharing his suspicions. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Raus knew he had a choice, but it was easier to think otherwise.

Vays shouldered past Raus on his way off the block. “You ready, Holson?” he said.

Jav turned, removed his black leather jacket, and said without looking, “Always.” He tossed the jacket onto a bench at the foot of the block and didn’t have to wait for Vays to seize the opportunity of a turned back.

The blade fell in an S pattern that should have cut Jav into thirds, but over a hundred years of leading the fight on the Viscain frontier had turned Jav’s facility with Approaching Infinity into a kind of sixth sense, so he evaded the blade easily, even without being able to see it. Vays had suspected this burgeoning ability, and more and more Jav seemed to taunt him with opportunities—traps, Vays now realized—just like this.

Jav ducked and stepped deftly, getting inside the reach of the blade. He never once turned to look, but he fell, almost clumsily in appearance, back into Vays, driving a right elbow into his midsection, then using both hands to anchor Vays in place by locking onto his sword hand so that the blade was pointing straight out, away from them both. Jav sank down as he shot the ball of his foot up to impact with the flat of the blade, causing it to explode into glitter with the application of AI. Jav turned around to face Vays, roughly releasing his sword hand in the process, and drove paired palms into his already smarting midsection. This time Vays lurched from his place upon the gravity block, sailing backwards like a sack of clothes before he regained enough control over his body to effect a semi-graceful landing in a skidding half-crouch.

Vays had learned his lesson. Light glared where he crouched, reflecting off of the steely angles of the armor provided by the Titan Star. From his helmet, the Titan Saber flashed and came one hundred and eight times like deadly horizontal rain. There were situations which made the Star Factory potentially deadly to Jav, but this was not one of them. Vays was fast, but it was a purely physical assault, reactive, and not yet empowered by the true application of his martial art..

The Star Factory
was
fast enough to require Jav to summon the Kaiser Bones, and the sight of them forced Vays to calm himself. Anger had its place, but the Single Element Ghost Sword demanded a cool head. Vays had a hot temper and an incomparable ego, but he knew better than to underestimate Jav. There were two people living that he genuinely respected, which is to say
feared
: Jav Holson, whom he viewed as his only peer, and Hilene Tanser, whom he viewed as an inhuman monster.

Vays stopped, stood straight, held the Titan Saber at his chest so that the blade made a vertical line before his gleaming faceplate. He knocked the knuckles of his left index and middle fingers upon the blade near the hilt, setting the steel to vibrate, to sing. Dull light shone from the center of the blade, all up its length. This took less than a second, but the gathering weight of the blade began to dominate the room instantly. He let the tip of the blade drop before him and then he was a blur.

He plied his blade with incomparable skill and grace and would have carved several lesser opponents to the bone several times over, but Jav matched Vays’s movements calmly, easily, almost mechanically, employing his own martial skill and the spatial sense he’d unconsciously developed over nearly two centuries. Whenever the blade came too close—when Vays particularly outdid himself—Jav met the flat of it with the palm of his hand or the Bones upon his forearms, always turning it harmlessly away, no matter how much Vays managed to gather into it. His Single Element Ghost Sword was superb, but Jav’s application of AI almost always robbed him of a clean victory.

Vays had been preparing in secret for over a year now, though, readying a new technique. He’d been biding his time, waiting for the right moment to unveil it, which was quite a feat given his impatience, but he felt confident that now was appropriate. He kicked off the block with mock force, which took him temporarily out of Jav’s reach, but the twenty-five gravities yanked him back down almost immediately. As they did, he thrust the Titan Saber towards Jav.

Jav was surprised by this simple frontal assault because of its obvious futility. There were countless ways for him to avoid or deflect it. He settled for a hand slap to guide the blade harmlessly past him, but was shocked by a pulsing sting from his fingers. As he directed his attention to his hand, a klaxon sounded and emergency lights flashed, bathing the facility with red light at intervals.

“Warning,” and automated voice called out. “Root Palace walls have been breached.”

Jav followed the length of the Titan Saber with his eyes from its hilt, past his hand, and through the facility wall. The blade was moving, like a river of silver pumping from a limitless source.

“Warning. Root Palace walls have been breached.”

Jav shot a glance back at Vays, who jerked the Titan Saber to retract the extended blade in an instant.”