The Path to Loss (Approaching Infinity Book 4) (25 page)

The klaxon went silent and the regular lights came back on. “Breach sealed. Warp field integrity nominal. Minor course correction in progress,” the automatic voice said.

“How do you like the Titan Lance?” Vays said.

“I’m not sure,” Jav said, squeezing blood drops from his clenched fist. “Let’s try that again.”

Vays snorted. “You sure?”

Jav shrugged and launched forward. Vays stumbled backwards, reflexively aiming his sword at Jav, and set the Titan Lance in motion once again.

Jav knew what to expect now. He wanted to test both himself and Vays’s technique. The tip was coming straight for him at a speed and backed by a power Jav thought beyond Vays. He was impressed. He used AI to “create” space between them so that the blade seemed to extend interminably, never reaching him. Far, far away, he became aware of the vents upon Vays’s armor shifting, blasting out steam and shining with pinpoint red and green lights. Then the blade, already made heavy into the Single Element, threatened to overwhelm him like a sudden and unexpected surge in the tide. He calculated furiously, but couldn’t create space fast enough to keep up with the rush of the blade, until finally, his mental reflexes took over and unconsciously reworked the calculations to effect his uncanny displacement technique, the Ghost Kaiser.

Once out of the blade’s path, the fight was over. Jav followed the blade, striking it as he rushed back towards Vays to finally strike him, removing him from the gravity Block.

Still recovering from the shock of the previous alert, Raus wasn’t quite sure what he just saw. He watched Jav advance upon Vays, then both appeared to move in slow motion until Jav winked out of existence for a moment to reappear in staccato flashes, slowly approaching Vays and driving a palm into his face. Then time resumed and all the metal came clattering down out of nowhere like a rain of shrapnel.

Jav returned to normal and helped Vays to his feet. “That’s your win, Vays,” he said.

Vays cocked his head. “Mine?”

Jav nodded. “Keep working on that technique.”

“My win, but keep working on the technique?” Vays was teetering on anger, but Jav was already collecting his jacket and on his way out.

“Control during deployment,” Jav said at the door. “You’re a swordsman after all, not a marksman.”

The door shut and Vays just stared at it. After a moment he looked to Raus, who shrugged. Finally, he sighed. “He’s right. How does he do that?”

Raus shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t even know what just happened.”

Jav put his black leather jacket on as he walked the corridor. The cuts along his fingers from the Titan Lance were already sealed, leaving fine white scars that were nearly nearly invisible amongst the flex lines of the joints. He saw them, though, and felt a strange anxiety he couldn’t remember experiencing before. Was he afraid of that technique? Though powerful, it was overly simplistic, easy enough to avoid—if you could see it coming. If Vays followed his advice and learned to control the blade and direct it as it flowed forth, then he would have real cause to fear. But not until then.

He squeezed his hand into a fist, stepped into the personnel jump deck alcove, hit the keys to select his destination, winced at the grating noise of the warp field engaging, then stepped back off the deck and proceeded left down the new corridor. He stopped finally at a pressure door and entered the lock code on the keypad. Three separate doors pulling from right, left, then right again, slid away to give him access. He stared up at what had become a familiar sight.

The room appeared to be open to the black of space, though in fact a transparent bubble of vine resin kept the vacuum at bay. Six articulated arms, issuing from the walls, floor and ceiling, supported reverse gravity generators, each pressing towards a center with 25 gravities in perfect, opposing balance. Hovering in the middle of the heavy sphere was Hilene Tanser, Dark with the Attenuated Splitter. She was facing away from him, showed no reaction to his entrance, but addressed him just the same.

“Though I appreciate the sentiment, there was no need to collect me for planetfall,” she said.

Using AI, he rose up to a position parallel to hers. “I know.”

She turned to face him, returning to normal.

He still found her attractive—arrestingly so with her red eyes and hair, her white skin. He was not blind to her perfection, but that perfection was for someone else, not him.

“Then what?” she said with a well-worn smile.

“I envy you, you know.”

“Whatever for?”

“For what you can see.”

She pursed her lips. “A lot of it is ugly.”

Jav shook his head.

“No,” she said dropping her eyes briefly then meeting his again. “I can see the Kaiser Bones inside you and the Ritual Mask, too. I can see the Resurrection Bolts inside Raus and the network they’ve woven inside his body.”

“Are Artifacts so repellant?”

“It’s just that, when I can see them, it makes everyone seem so frail and vulnerable.”

“But you know otherwise.”

“Do I?” She eased through the gravity bubble, reached out from it to take his arm, and let the forces draw them back into the middle together. Their bodies pressed together, each slipping and moving and readjusting, vying for the equilibrium spot, but always together. She stared up at him, he down at her. They knew the curves of each others’ bodies intimately, and neither was the least bit uncomfortable. On the contrary, the contact was causing some physiological stirrings that Jav was having trouble ignoring.

He gripped her shoulders and breathed heavily, “I could take you right here.”

She laughed, her cheeks reddening. “Only if I let you. And I would. . . if that’s what you wanted.”

“It’s what I want right now.”

“That’s my fault. But you see? This is just one way in which you are frail and vulnerable.”

Jav nodded and let out a deep breath, attempting to cool down. “That’s fair. It
is
, however, a vulnerability I’m prepared to live with.”

“Or die with.”

“Why not? I can think of worse ways. Much worse ways. Countless thousands of ways.”

“I didn’t mean to suggest that intercourse would be fatal.”

“Right. Okay. So what are you trying to say?”

“I don’t know. I’ve spent several lifetimes trying to get close to you, but now I’m terrified to be near you.”

Jav cocked his head, studied her. “You don’t appear to be terrified right now.”

“Do you know how easy it would be to simply pass through you and liberate the Kaiser Bones?”

“Are you considering this?”

She lowered her eyes again.

He nodded, unperturbed. “Why?”

“Because I love you. You hurt every single day.”

She started to say more, but he touched her lips with his fingers to shush her and smiled a sad smile. “Hilene. If you decide that that’s what’s right, then take them. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t stop you. Not anymore. I made a promise to myself a long time ago to regret nothing, no action large or small, good or bad, until something greater than myself showed me that I was wrong, that everything I’ve done has been a mistake. If that is your role, then I welcome release.”

“Jav!” she blurted, her eyes wet with tears.

“Shhh. It’s okay. In a way it’s a relief.”

“A relief?” She shook her head, confused.

“I have no expectations, Hilene. I trust your judgement. What comes comes,” he said and started peeling away the thin sliver garment that did little to conceal her figure. “Tell me to stop if you want me to stop.”

Pouting with shame, she answered him with her lips firmly pressed to his.

Raohan La stared through the instrument which showed him what was happening in real time more than two hundred million years in the future. To his back was the apparatus through which his connection to the future was maintained. Stol Kossig stood, combat-ready with his helmet in the crook of his arm, on the other side of the temporal window. Arrayed further beyond him were the Godsorts, six primed and standing by, piloted by the other veterans of the previous war and by one newcomer: his twelve-year-old brother, Temmus.

The giant reptile, pulled away, bent his neck to scrutinize the readout on another machine, and spoke to Stol without looking at him. “You’d better get to your Godsort,” he said, adjusting a countdown timer that was visible to Stol. “Just in case.”

“Very well, old friend. I want to thank you again, to let you know how grateful we are for your continued help in prolonging our species. Not a man, woman, or child on Stolom does not know your value, your worth, or your sacrifice.”

“Your gratitude honors me, Stol Kossig, but it is not for your species alone that I—we—do this. It is for
everything
that lives, breathes, and thinks
everywhere
.

“Now get to your Godsort. My calculations are sound, but there are always variables for which one cannot account. See that the shelters are secure and keep your people confined to them until you hear otherwise.”

Stol nodded, hesitated for a moment, then turned, and sprinted for his Godsort.

Raohan La turned from the machine and stared after Stol. That such small, fragile creatures could be capable of such courage still humbled him. “Chushin La,” he cried out. “Why have you not gone with the others.”

“I will not leave you,” came his mate’s reply. She stood upon two legs, short and stout, her graceful neck gently curving to one side in an air of polite defiance.

He gave her his full attention now. “You cannot stay, my love. I require all of my faculties for what is coming. There can be no distractions. The time for your efforts and those of our fellows will come, but in this initial task, I must be able to concentrate fully. The machines alone will not accomplish what must be done.

“I will not leave you,” she repeated.

With heavy, ground-shaking steps, Raohan La approached her through the clearing, with the machines standing in mute vigil along the jungle perimeter. He brushed his long, sinewy neck gently against hers, bringing their cheeks together. The surrounding treetops swayed in the breeze, just a few meters above eye level, the soughing leaves the only break in the otherwise still silence.

“I know your feelings, Chushin La. And you know mine. Guard our love, nourish it, and know that I hate sending you from me in any circumstance. But so it must be in this circumstance.”

She nuzzled closer before getting out half a nod and then she was gone, transported instantly to their waiting fellows several thousand kilometers away by the power of Raohan La’s mind.

He took a moment to compose himself, then bowed his head upon his trunk neck. The machines, arrayed in a circle as if to ward against all that was verdant and green, sprang to life, each humming with immeasurable power. Broadcast power was of course not unknown on Stolom, but the energy on which these machines now fed came from directly from Raohan La’s mind. Everything depended upon his mind. The machines were really only placeholders and calculators, checks to ensure that he would not fail in his efforts.

He raised his head and stared up at the cloud-streaked sky. He couldn’t help thinking that it was a beautiful day and was torn by whether that was a good omen or shameful waste. He’d never believed in omens, though. The streaks of clouds began to obey forces that did not include their normal master, the wind. A circle slowly took shape in the sky, growing and spinning lazily, with nothing but whirling cloud vapor to define its edges.

In an instant, though the sun was still high in the sky, the light was blotted out and the clearing was subjected to a shockwave which flattened the trees at the perimeter for kilometers in every direction. The machinery remained like a stone circle, defying the elements and the ages, helping to define the conduit that Raohan La was creating.

Darkness shone from the disk in the sky before something far more physical poured through, like the infected blood or bile-laden vomit of the sky itself. Raohan La’s eyes lost their color and flared like twin stars. The wind buffeted the clearing as he pulled the infection down from the heavens with all the resources of his vast and powerful mind. He’d snared it, but grounding it was imperative. The slightest slip in concentration would upset the conduit and his catch would elude him, landing on present-day Stolom instead of here, where it must be confined.

Raohan La bared his clenched teeth and pushed himself beyond every limit he’d ever known. The machines began to smoke and short out. Some exploded, some merely burned white hot, but even as they failed, one after another, Raohan La was sure of his success. He was sure that the fact that he was sill standing, exerting his mind, was proof that he’d been successful, for if the threat he expected were to have continued in Stolom’s ancient past, Stolom would not have developed as it had. There would have been no Kossig Engine, no Godsorts, no Raohan La, nothing. But here he was, and some fraction of his awareness acknowledged the Godsorts through the temporal window, still upon the sward, ready for his potential failure.

The dark, woody mass, kilometers across at its base and rich with life that was not life, fell from the sky. Its capture was a sure thing now, but it was still a danger. An immediate danger. In moments it would crush Raohan La with its size, weight, and velocity, each of which alone would be enough to qualify as a calamity. Taxed further than ever before, Raohan La reacted “physically”. He could have relocated himself to any place he’d ever been upon Stolom of this time or to any place he could see, but instead, he swatted the incoming immensity with his mind. The reaction was unthinking and animal, and so brutal.

With a boom that echoed for minutes after sounding, the Vine veered suddenly from its course to crash thunderously into the earth at a sixty degree angle, ten kilometers from where Raohan La stood. Though the ground rumbled, rippled, and cracked in all directions, Raohan La remained standing, staring defiantly at what he’d brought to Stolom’s past.

Jav had kept Hilene in the gravity bubble longer than was appropriate. He sighed at the irony of this thought since nothing about what they’d done was appropriate. Their act satisfied a need neither could ignore or deny, but he knew that every time he was weak in this way it hurt her a little more, widened the gulf between them by another degree. He learned a long time ago that the more he tried to be close to her the further she felt from him, but physical contact sometimes goaded him to folly. He hugged her naked body closer, wishing that things could be different. She, in turn, tightened her grip on him, and they spun around in place as all the opposing gravities responded to their slightest movements.