“Send a FLASH to Tenth Fleet,” she ordered the yeoman sitting at the fleet communications station, “and get confirmation that they have this information.”
While the analysts behind her were busy piecing together what information they had, she turned to her own console and hit a particular button. After a moment when all her screen said was “Call in Progress: Line Secure,” a bleary-eyed but alert face finally appeared.
“Admiral Zhukovski,” she said, “STARNET is declaring an impending invasion alert for Erlang, in the Trans-Grange sector.”
A man all too used to these calls in the middle of the night, Zhukovski’s expression hardened, a reflection of his soul as it readied itself for more bad news, the announcement that yet more human lives were about to be lost.
“Brief me, captain,” was all he said before he sat back, his good eye fixed on her image as he listened to her report, his good hand clenched tightly out of view of the monitor.
Thirty-Two
Enya sat quietly in the semi-darkness of the hastily completed command bunker, shielded from the ops section by a blanket hung over a cord strung between two walls. She was maintaining a vigil over Reza. Three days after she had touched the crystal and started the mysterious reaction, Reza still lay unconscious. His heart beat very slowly, his breathing slower still. In fact, were it not for the sophisticated medical instruments available to the company medics, they probably would have thought him dead.
In the meantime, the rain of ash from the disintegrating mountain had finally stopped, most of it consumed by the cutting beams originating in the center of the mountain. Finally spinning so fast that the beams became a nearly solid disk of energy, they began to sweep upward, forming a rapidly narrowing cone of brilliant cyan that quickly destroyed what was left of the mountain. They swept the debris up and away into the upper reaches of the atmosphere where it formed a cloud that easily rivaled the one on Earth after the explosion of Krakatoa centuries before. The area around the mountain had experienced horrendous winds that had done much damage to Mallory city and the nearby townships. But those, too, had finally subsided, leaving amazingly few casualties in their wake. After the beams had done their work clearing away the mountain top, they also disappeared, leaving behind a perfectly smooth bowl, a gigantic crater, that now radiated a ghostly blue glow, much less intense than the cutting beams, from its center into the dark heavens above.
“Any change?” Hawthorne asked quietly.
Enya shook her head. They had kept Reza here in the company firebase instead of moving him to the hospital in Mallory City mainly because Washington Hawthorne seemed to trust Belisle even less than the Mallorys did. Besides, Hawthorne had figured that it would not make any difference. A Mallory General Hospital neuro specialist had come and examined Reza, but could not make heads or tails of his vital signs and the basic changes in his physiology that had been wrought in the Empire. He wanted to run a quartermaster’s list of tests on him, but Hawthorne had politely refused and thanked the man for his time. He knew that the tests would only help satisfy the surgeon’s curiosity, and not help Reza to recover.
“No,” she said quietly, shaking her head dejectedly, “no change yet.” They had assured her that this was not her fault, but it was. If only she had not touched that… thing.
Washington put a massive hand lightly on her shoulder. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Reza’s a tough bastard. He’s breathing. He’ll be okay.”
“Oh, Mister Hawthorne,” she asked, “what have I done? What is that thing out there?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, probably better, because you seem to know something about most anything, or so Eustus tells me.” He smiled to make sure she knew it was intended as a compliment, and not sarcasm. She only managed a weak parody of a smile in return. “Look, why don’t we take a break and get some coffee? Eustus’ll be back pretty soon from checking on Counselor Savitch in the city, and I’d feel awful bad if he had to see you like this.”
“Thank you, but–”
“Enya, give it a rest. You can’t take the whole universe on your shoulders. Please, trust me. He’ll be all right. Erlang will be all right. I promise.”
She knew that he could not possibly keep such a promise, but his saying it seemed, for now, enough. “All right. I’ll take you up on it. But only if you find me some tea; your coffee is terrible.”
Hawthorne laughed quietly as he followed her out of the tiny cubicle and into the red and green glows of the equipment in the ops section.
“What is thy name, child?” a voice softly asked from somewhere near, somewhere far away, speaking in the Old Tongue.
“Reza,” he said, wondering if he had somehow been blinded by whatever had struck him. All around him was darkness, cold. And then he realized he had no eyes. No body. He floated in Nothingness, a spirit without form. “Where am I?” he asked, strangely unafraid. Thus has Death come, he thought.
“You are… here,” the voice said. “You are with Me.”
“Who are you?” He could sense the spirit that spoke to him as his feet sensed the earth: he could judge only that it was there, but not how great it might be.
“I am She,” the voice began with a flare of pride and power before it faltered. “I am… Keel-Tath.” Reza sensed time beyond his understanding in the brief pause that followed, time that spanned millennia. “Long has it been, my child. Long have I waited for you, for The One.”
Reza felt a spark of excitement, a tremor of fear. The One, who was to fulfill The Prophecy. “Keel-Tath,” he thought/spoke Her name in awe.
“Yes,” She said. “Yes, that is – was – my name before the Ascension, before… the Darkness.” He felt Her touch as might two clouds brushing against one another in the sky, their forms distinct, yet one. “Lonely have I been, My child, waiting for you to come, to awaken Me, with only the songs of the Guardians to keep Me company here, in this place of mourning.” Her spirit shimmered against him, a touch of leather, a touch of silk. Power. Curiosity. Love. Sadness. “But that time is past,” She said, Her spirit brightening as the sunrise over a tranquil sea. “You and I shall become as One, and all shall be forgiven.”
“My Empress,” Reza whispered, his spirit electrified by Her touch, and terrified of revealing the truth to Her, “I am not the vessel to bring you forth once again into the world.”
Curiosity again, so intense that he shrank back in fear, but there was nowhere for him to retreat to, for She was everywhere, everything; She was the Universe itself. “You were not born of My womb, yet you are of My blood,” She said as the eyes of Her spirit probed to his very core, all that he was and was not laid bare before Her inquisitive gaze. “You wear the collar of My honor, yet you are shunned by the peers. You are of the Way, yet you are apart, lost to the love of She-Who-Followed… and to She-Who-Shall-Come. A warrior priest of the Desh-Ka, the greatest order that ever was, that ever shall be, and who never again shall see his temple. You are The One, child.”
He felt her curiosity continue to swarm over him like a mass of inquisitive insects, hovering, darting, drawing out all that lay within his heart, his mind. He cried out in fear and pain, anguish and rage at what could have been, but would never be. He begged for Her to hold him, to comfort him against the pain. He begged for Her to destroy him, to cast him into the pit of Oblivion and the darkness of the damned.