I glanced at the pharaoh. “Are you going into the Lock from here?” I saw nothing that remotely resembled a singularity in spacetime, whatever that looked like.
“I’m not going into the Lock.” Dyhianna walked with me across the gigantic mosaic circles that tiled the floor. She motioned toward the dais on the far side of the room. “I need that command chair.”
Ho! The three boxes I had likened to coffins during my first visit stood up there. Now they were in motion, rearranging their structures, morphing into a central tech-mech throne flanked by two smaller seats. The throne resembled the chair I had seen Dyhianna use at the Majda palace, but larger, with more lights flashing along its body. Its massive armrests were more than a handspan wide and embedded with panels. Exoskeletons glittered within all three chairs and visors overhung them, also neural caps that made the one Hack used look like child’s play.
I squinted at the chairs. “You’re going to sit up there?”
“In the center seat. It’s called a Triad Chair.” She glanced at me. “If you accept, you’ll sit in one of the other two.”
I stared at her, suddenly cold. “I can’t use the Lock. It would kill me.”
“You won’t need to use the Lock, not directly. You’ll be in contact only through me.”
“Is it safe for you?”
“As Ruby Key, yes.” She sounded perfectly relaxed, which would have reassured me, except then she added, “The fluxes of power would kill any other psions.”
I raked my hand through my already tousled hair. “I don’t see how I can help.”
“You know that EI in the Vanished Sea starships more than anyone else here.”
We had reached the dais. I walked up its steps with her, too uneasy to respond. She stopped by the throne and laid her hand on its massive armrest, her fingers long and slender. She looked so damn breakable. In a quiet voice, she said, “I ask only for your support, Major. Distract the EI while I work.”
“I would be honored.” I didn’t feel honorable, I felt like a coward given how much I wanted to say no, but I couldn’t desert her when she asked for help.
The pharaoh inclined her head in acknowledgement, then turned to the leader of her bodyguards. “Yours also, if you will take the other command chair.”
The Abaj nodded. “I too would be honored, Your Majesty.”
I spoke awkwardly. “Pharaoh Dyhianna, the last time you and I linked up, I had a convulsion.”
“I am sorry about that.” She pushed back her hair, which was escaping from its braid and curling haphazardly around her face. “I wasn’t prepared for how strongly you responded last time. I will build the link properly this time.”
I hoped so. I felt the power of the Lock, more distant than when I had climbed up the stairs, but still pressing on my mind. It messed with my neural patterns. “Doesn’t it make your head hurt?”
Dyhianna smiled. “Actually, I like this. Being near the Lock feels like—well, I’m not sure how to say it.” She paused, thinking. “Like singing in the void.”
Singing in the void. I had no clue what that meant.
“Music out of nothing,” Dyhianna added. “It’s exhilarating.”
“Ah.” Apparently the Lock liked her.
“I never thought of it that way,” she said.
Damn. She heard my thought. I raised my mental barriers.
The pharaoh spoke quietly. “Major, the more you protect yourself, the more difficult your interaction with the Lock. Try to relax.”
I doubted I could, but if it would help her fight the Vanished Sea EI, I’d do my best.
The Abaj nearest me lifted his hand, indicating the control chair on the right to me. I sat down, wishing I had a name for him. I didn’t even know if they used individual names, the same name for everyone in a clone group, or titles, like the Uzan.
One of the Abaj went to work at a console by my seat, and the others helped Dyhianna and the leader of her bodyguards in their chairs. Mine hummed, powering up its systems. Panels shifted into place around my body: holoscreens, mesh systems, and other controls I didn’t recognize. The exoskeleton closed around my body and clicked prongs into my gauntlets. As the visor lowered over my head, darkness surrounded me. I barely felt the filaments of the neural cap extending into my head.
Bhaaj, Max thought. Shall I allow this system access to your mesh?
Yah, go ahead. I wanted to say no. Giving the system access to my “mesh,” otherwise known as my brain, thrilled me about as much as having a tooth pulled out without benefit of modern dentistry, but what the hell. I’d survive. I hoped.
My mind became attuned to Dyhianna and the Abaj leader as the command chairs linked our three brains. It gave me a better sense of the Abaj. Although he didn’t share my overt dislike of the Lock, he wasn’t at ease with it, either. The presence of the Lock saturated the link, unseen and alien. It allocated only a small part of its awareness to us, as if it put us in one room of a gigantic building while most of it existed elsewhere. Dyhianna’s mind felt radiant. She reveled in the Lock’s power; this experience came as close to joy as she could feel with an entity that didn’t experience emotions in any way our minds could interpret.
Come to me, she thought to the Lock.
An image formed in my mind of a giant chair with conduits glowing along its edges in blue, white, and green. The Lock’s thought rumbled: ATTENDING.
Prepare to commence, Dyhianna thought.
COMMENCED.
We dropped into darkness.
Major Bhaajan? Dyhianna asked. Her system converted her neural activity into signals and relayed them to Max, who sent them to the bioelectrodes that fired my neurons, translating the signals into thoughts. It wasn’t that different from what psions did, using brain waves and specialized organs in their cerebrums, but the chairs magnified the interaction until it became possible for all of us.
Bhaajan here, I thought.
Secondary Nazam? she thought.
A deep thought rumbled in our link. Attending.
Nazam. I had a name for the Abaj leader. Secondary meant he had a rank in the J-Force similar to a colonel in the army. Like Calaj.
The darkness lightened until I realized I was standing in the desert.
Is this a VR session? I asked.
I expected Dyhianna to reply, but someone, no something else answered. It didn’t come as a word, but an impression, powerful and impersonal. My mind translated that impression into a word.
NO, the Lock thought.
It is a simulation, though, Dyhianna added. The chairs translate my interaction with the Lock into sensory data that we can interpret more easily.
This area looks like the desert in the north, Nazam thought. It isn’t near Izu Yaxlan.
It’s where I last detected Calaj, I thought. The desert extended on all sides, an expanse of red sand with blue specks. Here and there, craggy spires of rock reached toward the sky like the skeletal fingers of a buried giant.
I was jogging across the sands, alone. Are you both here? I asked. I don’t see you.
Wait. Dyhianna paused. Ah, I see. You and Nazam are in different sims. I’ll link them.
Nazam appeared next to me, his long legs devouring the land as we ran. I stayed with him, keeping a steady pace that in real life I could never have managed even with the augmentations to my body. We approached the Vanished Sea starships at a surreally fast rate. Claimed by the passage of time, their half-buried bulks no longer looked like ships so much as vast rock formations, crumbling and scoured by sand.
We slowed down a few hundred meters from the ships. In real life, a guard would have stopped us by now, asking why we came; in the sim, the place looked empty—except for the mist leaking out of the ships. As we neared them, the mist thickened. This, on a world without fog. Within moments, I couldn’t see more than a handspan in front of my face. Another few steps, and the fog became so thick, it felt like we were walking through molasses. I could barely see Nazam at my side.
I st
opped. Maybe we should backtrack and go around all this.
I don’t think we can go back, Nazam answered.
Dyhianna’s thought came distantly through the fog. Will you release your security shield?
What? I asked.
The Lock answered her. RELEASED.
The fog vanished, and I squinted in the sudden light. On the real Raylicon, evening had descended, but here in the sim, the sun shone overhead.
Nazam and I strode toward the ships again. They filled our view, huge and eerie. Although the history texts claimed they were spheres, they looked like partial domes, most of their bulk submerged in the desert. Their hulls had once been gold, but time and sand had darkened the metal.
A woman stood by the closest of the three hulks, turned away from us, her figure small against the massive curve of the ship. We drew closer with uncanny speed. Suddenly we were in front of her.
Calaj? I asked. That the Lock could connect us to her even out here, where she had no physical link to its systems, told me more about her similarity to the ancients than any DNA file in her records.
She turned slowly, as if she were in pain. In her files, I had seen images of her in uniform, in combat, practicing tykado, at attention, at ease, laughing, angry, or staring at the camera as if she didn’t know what to do with having her picture taken. In real life she was a lean woman with black hair, dark eyes, and high cheekbones. In other words, she looked Raylican.
Here she looked like hell.
Her clothes, a grey shirt and trousers, hung on her emaciated body. Her gaze had a hollowed quality. The real Calaj was in her forties and looked like a kid in her twenties; here she seemed old, her hair streaked with grey and her body bent with age.
You shouldn’t have come, she told us.
Secondary Calaj. Dyhianna’s voice surrounded us. You don’t need to do this alone.
Pharaoh Dyhianna, you must go, Calaj answered. It wants you. It will use me to destroy you.
Is it controlling you? Nazam, asked.
I don’t know, Calaj whispered.
Calaj, come to me. Dyhianna’s thought, for all its power, felt gentle. Let me understand what it has done to you.
Calaj sunk to her knees, bending over, her arms folded across her stomach. Sand blew across her body. She had pulled her hair back, clipping it at her neck, but the wind tugged it free so the grey and black tendrils straggled around her face. Although none of us moved, the sim brought me closer to Calaj, closer, closer still.
The scene went dark.
Is anyone here? I asked. My thought echoed, bouncing in a great dark place.
The darkness lightened. I was still in the simulation, but it had become an empty room with grey walls. It seemed to go on forever in the east. Nazam was out there, walking toward me from far away, moving in slow motion.
What’s wrong? I asked. Where are we?
I contacted Calaj’s mesh, Dyhianna thought. This room is a simulation of her spinal node.
Nazam’s thought came from far away. The Vanished Sea EI erased her node.
Not just her node, I thought. This emptiness felt worse than lost mesh functions. It dissolved part of her mind as well.
A thought came to us like thunder growling through the ruins of Izu Yaxlan. She fought the destruction. She fights still.
I lifted my head, trying to identify this newcomer. His mind felt familiar. Yes, I knew him. The Uzan had joined us. But where? Far in the distant, in the desert beyond Nazam, a dark figure was walking toward us from Izu Yaxlan.
Calaj, Dyhianna thought. Come to me.
Light filled the cavernous room, flooding the greyness with glorious, healing radiance. It poured over Calaj, and she rose to her feet, her body haloed by its brilliance. She turned up her haggard face like a traveler dying of thirst gifted with a sudden, impossible rain.
Nazam was still walking out in the desert, barely coming any closer to us, though he kept walking. His thought to Calaj washed across our minds. Why does the EI affect you but no one else?
Calaj turned toward him. I can barely hear you.
Major Bhaajan, Dyhianna thought. You are better linked to Calaj than Nazam or the Uzan. Can you bring them closer to her?
Why would I be better linked? I asked.
We are all joined through Kyle space, Dyhianna answered. In the Kyle, thoughts determine proximity. Calaj knows about you. Her thoughts include you but not them.
Got it. I directed my thought toward Calaj. Secondary, you know the pharaoh has guards, yes?
Calaj turned toward me. Of course.
Nazam leads her bodyguards. I made an image of him in my mind.
I see him, she thought. He is an Abaj Tacalique warrior.
Yes, Nazam answered. He was suddenly standing next to me.
And the Uzan, I thought to Calaj. Do you recognize the title?
The hereditary leader of the Abaj. Her gaze shifted to the desert. From Izu Yaxlan.
The distant figure I could barely see suddenly appeared only a few meters away, still walking toward us, still slowed down, but closer to normal human speed.
Calaj turned to us. You asked why the EI affects me but no one else. It wanted Pharaoh Dyhianna. It couldn’t get to her. I was the closest it could manage.
Yes, I see, Dyhianna thought. The structure of your brain is similar to mine.
Are you and Calaj related? I asked, startled.
My family may have distant ties to the Ruby bloodline, Calaj thought. Nothing close.
The genes that give rise to Kyle traits are recessive, Dyhianna added. They can be dormant for many generations and then manifest.
Somewhere distant, the ground rumbled like an earthquake. I looked around, trying to locate the source of the sound, but saw nothing. The Uzan and Nazam looked at me, and I saw my unease reflected in their eyes.
The Vanished Sea EI wants you to feel fear, Calaj thought. Ignore it.
Nazam spoke to her. It is helping you to hide from our sensors.
No, not helping me. Calaj watched us from within Dyhianna’s healing light. It burned out my biomech web and a substantial part of my brain. With pain, she added, I don’t need to hide my biomech signals or brain waves. They are mostly gone.
Gods almighty. How did she keep going?
The Uzan finally reached us. He walked in a measured stride, his steps long and slow, and stopped next to me. Power saturated his thought, a strength that healed. After such an attack, he asked Calaj, how are you alive?
She answered with grim satisfaction. I’m using the EI. It stretched itself too far reaching for the pharaoh. When it caught me instead, my spinal node hacked part of its code before the EI destroyed it. I’m using the EI’s memory of my mind as my own mind. Her hand shook as she pushed back her hair. But it is growing stronger, and as its power increases, I weaken. I’m losing control. She turned to me. I am sorry about the jumbler shot. I couldn’t stop.
I’m all right. I held up my wrist. It’s mostly healed. The rumbling I’d heard was getting louder.
Calaj, why did you shoot Tavan Ganz? Dyhianna asked.
I was half-crazed when the EI started deleting my mind, Calaj thought. Tavan was in front of me. I thought the attack came from him, that he meant to assassinate you or the Finance Counselor.
It sounded like a nightmare. What had Tavan Ganz thought in that instant before he died, the victim of an attack no one saw coming or understood. And Calaj? It was a miracle she remained sane.
I am sorry. Pain drenched Calaj’s thought. I felt him die. I knew then the attack didn’t come from him, but by then it was too late. I had killed an innocent, not your would-be-assassin.
You did this to protect me? Dyhianna asked.
With elegant simplicity, Calaj spoke an oath that all Jagernauts took when they received their commission. I swear my loyalty, my will, and my life to Your Majesty, the Ruby Pharaoh.
The pharaoh’s light poured over Calaj. Nothing would heal the Jagernaut; she couldn’t survive without her link to t
he EI, and she would go to her grave drowning in her guilt over Tavan. But Dyhianna eased her pain.
The rumble continued around us, shaking the ground under my feet.
Dyhianna’s voice changed, her power resonating. COME TO ME. COMMENCE.
The Lock answered, a huge presence. TIQUAL COMMENCES.
Ho! A chill went up my spine. The Titans of Raylicon were rising.
Another thought came, even bigger, as if the desert itself answered with many voices, the spirits of our ancestors. IZU YAXLAN COMMENCES.
The rumbling around us surged, rising like a specter in the desert, and a new thought thundered, neither male nor female, but rather, mechanized and inhuman:
OBLIVION COMMENCES.
XVII
The Death of Cries
Oblivion. The Vanished Sea EI named itself with a modern Iotic word that hadn’t existed when it was exiled to sleep for six thousand years. It was trying to intimidate us with our own language. EI trash talk.
The long room darkened around us, and the ground heaved under our feet.
It’s not a real earthquake, I told myself.
Bhaaj, the ground is actually shaking, Dyhianna thought. It isn’t just the simulation.
Bullshit. You’re Oblivion. The pharaoh never called me, “Bhaaj,” only “Major Bhaajan.”
A hand grabbed my arm, long fingers clenching my elbow, and I looked up to see the Uzan staring into the darkness. Izu Yaxlan is crumbling, he thought. I have failed.
No! I thought. This is still the simulation. The EI is trying to weaken us. We have to ignore it. In the real world, a large distance separated us from the Vanished Sea EI, and most methods of affecting neural processes in the human brain required proximity. The EI could try to act through the Kyle web, but its first attempt, when it grabbed Calaj, had backfired, giving Calaj access to its systems. Although it undoubtedly had other methods to destroy us human infestations, it wasn’t at full strength. We had to attack now, while it was weak.