Although I knew that we were doomed, I refused to submit to the inevitabilityof it and began savagely shooting out lancing bolts of energy from theExplorer’s front laser cannons hitting tentacles, tumbling ships, and whateverelse might dare to come near us.
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There always seemed to be more, but a fierce and unwavering drive had taken holdof us. The thing below was growing frenzied too. Perhaps it had never felt the searingheat of a laser bolt. I fired with abandon, all sense of minutes or hours lost.
But for all our fury, it was to no avail. We were being herded.
Another cluster of tentacles lifted up to grab the corvette, forcing us to climb upout of the graveyard, only to loop over and descend right back into it again when wesaw what awaited us outside.
A gruesome army had gathered above the graveyard. Upon spotting us, they beganhurling roiling balls of flame that exploded all around us, demolishing wrecks, evensetting aflame some of the Void-Horror’s feelers. This resulted in a deafening screechand immediate retaliation.
The Void-Horror turned to these new targets. One of its appendages wrappedaround one of the exogorths and pulled it and its rider down. Another few snatchedone of the wicked-looking ships, tearing it apart. I hadn’t seen a mouth on the thingearlier, nor did I care to now, but its victims vanished into some tremendous openingthat might have passed as a maw. In response, a rain of fireballs was launched at it,followed by a legion of massive wasps. I recalled the Keeper saying that not all whodwelt in this expanse were friends.
But the voices from the floating cubes continued to drone, “There is no escape…”
“There is no escape,” I repeated.
“Hex, what are you saying?”
“There is no escape… There isn’t, but that dœsn’t mean we can’t take a few ofthem with us! Target the largest of them.”
“Blaze of glory it is,” Cuenyne affirmed.
An enormous blast of energy erupted from somewhere beyond the mælstrom,impacting on one of the fœtid creatures or ships (it was no longer possible to tell).Another beam scattered the cube-like beings, followed by another, splitting open oneof the exogorths, which spilled out a sickening purulence of entrails and shatteredcartilage.
“What was that!?” I shouted.
“There’s only one thing I can think of,” replied Cuenyne.
“But the gate was destroyed!”
“Maybe it’s your new friends,” Cuenyne reasoned. “Or maybe she just puts on agood show.”
“Why wouldn’t she just tell us?” A barrage of apparent asteroids came hurtlingacross our port bow, destroying and scattering our enemies.
“She may be protecting something… or someones,” Cuenyne offered, takingadvantage of the brief respite, “and dœsn’t want anyone to know. Historians have atendency to make things known.”
On the forward viewscreens, from the starboard side, rolled the strangest shape I’dever seen. It bore an implausible number of eyes and wings upon a revolving wheelwithin a wheel, which it raised in flight just as the giant spiral of the wormhole cameinto view.
“Did I just imagine that?”
“Are you still asking that?”
Streams of destructive energy continued lancing our enemies from beyond,thinning out the phantasmic armies. “The Watcher said the Firstborn had initiallyshared their discoveries with one another.” Cuenyne dodged a determined wasp thathad briefly landed atop us. “The force of the blast is not unlike what we know of theGuardian of Alashan. She could have other allies out here.”
What a powerful force these Progenitors would be together! “Well, whœver it wasbought us some time; best we not waste it. The Rebels fleeing the Charon used simplecoordinates to escape Otherspace.”
“Either an accident or they knew something we don’t,” Cuenyne replied. “Thecoordinates in this dimension aren’t so easy to ascertain in relation to time, I could figure it out.”
“The one thing we don’t have!”
“Well, we can’t fly back out that!”
Our window of escape closed. Whatever had kept our enemies at bay was no more.
At that moment, the head of Areana spoke… or rather croaked, its speechcapacitors all but fried. “The worms eat through space and time…”
“Oh dear, she’s at it again!” Cuenyne groused, wizzing the Explorer through a seaof corpses great and small.
To silence the hateful thing, I removed the rod still stuck in the one eye andplunged it hard into the other. If I’m being frank, I probably stabbed it a few and fire emerged from the nostrils and mouth along with some kind of foul,viscuous fluid. This was followed by a popping sound and a whirring noise. The headuttered a final, sibilant hiss before falling silent at last.
“The worms eat through space and time …” Cuenyne repeated.
“Wait… It couldn’t be, could it? The worms eat, as in make holes…” I crowed.“Wormholes! It’s a clue!”
“She was supposed to help us,” Cuenyne said regretfully.
“And I just destroyed it!”
“I have a thought… The odds are slim beyond reckoning, but it is a possibility.”
“Whatever it is, do it!” I said, jumping back in my seat just in time to dodge a newrain of conflagrant ships, talons, webs, and energy bolts, emboldened by the cessationof their mysterious adversaries. “We won’t survive in here much longer!”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” the droid stated.
“They rarely are. So what’s your grand plan!?”
“Oh, I never said it was grand,” he replied. “Steer for a bit.”
As I took over, an assortment of impossibly long and jointed legs wrapped itselfaround the port side of the Explorer, halting its movement mid-flight. Mercifully, atthat very moment, a burning missile flashed across the creature’s femur and tibia,and, with a nauseating chirrup, it let go. I slipped the ship around, unfortunatelyright into the path of a giant exogorth which slammed headlong into our aft section.
“Our shields are gone!” I howled. The diminutive robot didn’t respond, havingbegun communications with the ship while performing a series of technicalmanipulations that included attaching Areana’s ruined head into a coiled cable thathe’d ripped from the bulkhead. “How is that possible?” I asked while weaving thecorvette in and out of a ferocity of hurtling fireballs, giant vespidæ, and long-deadships.
“You’re thinking modern tech. Areana’s older and far more advanced. Hercomponents were designed to automatically adapt to whatever they’re connected to.”
I momentarily wondered at the value of introducing such technology to the galaxybefore realizing that the first thing they would do with it was make weapons. “Don’tlook now,” I warned. The swirling mass of the wormhole appeared before us like themonstrous exhalation of a raging god annihilating all in its path.
“Head into the mouth of the tunnel,” the droid urged.
“Are you certain that’s what we want to do?!”
“Not at all,” he said worriedly, keeping his photoreceptor on the task, “but I’mpretty sure there’s a trick to it that should give us a window. It should work like theEndor Gate. You just need a key. I think she has it. No guarantees, so don’t goblaming me if we blow up, get sucked into the void, or wind up in the middle of asun.”
“I’ll try not to. What now?”
“We just fly in. She’ll course correct.”
“Assuming she dœsn’t still hate us.”
“I don’t think she’s still alive, but that dœsn’t mean she can’t still function like anadvanced computer. The Watcher sent her with us for a reason. Besides, I’d say deathby-calamitous-flight-through-wormhole is preferable to any of the other optionscurrently facing us.”
Those other options began to manifest.
As if they’d surmised our escape plan, into the chaos swam the three cyclopeanhorrors led by the thing called Ooradryl. Everything in their path was invisibly hurledaside as they regally floated into the whirling debris before them. They were followedby the tenebrous army of flying worms, wraiths, insectoids, and bizarre ships.
“In case we don’t make it,” I started, faltering, “I’m sorry for dragging you intothis. I just wish we’d gotten some hard evidence.”
“I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. And we do have evidence!”
“Her?” I asked, pointing to what was left of Areana’s head.
“No. That has barely enough juice to do what it’s hopefully doing.” We were in thewhirling mælstrom now, but the horrors were just behind us.
“Well, don’t keep me in suspense!”
“What do you think all that beeping was when the Watcher said goodbye? Shewasn’t serenading us. She was transmitting the Osserians’ records into my databanks!”
“That great—wait, why didn’t she just give you the coordinates that way?”
“Maybe she wanted to get rid of the android. Maybe she surmised her instability andhoped that with us she’d get better.”
“No, she made a choice…”
Before I could say anything further, our senses were assaulted by a terrible screechingsound of metal being rent, which could only mean one thing: something had us in itsgrasp! And, at that very moment, we soared, hurtling the wrong way up a wormhole!
The trip back was, if possible, more harrowing than the trip there. At least for mesince Cuenyne didn’t see the colossal faces that emerged out of the kaleidoscope swirlthat was the wormhole. Their grim visages wore expressions that had never knownlove or mercy; they did not stir but gazed upon us ghoulishly with the blackest ofeyes. I could feel the cells in my bloodstream curdling, shutting down, and dying.
And just like that, they were gone… But in my nightmares, before I awake in anicy sweat, I see them still.
We were back in Realspace, but the XS-Explorer was catastrophically damaged,and in moments we’d be sucked right back into the dimension from which we’d onlybarely escaped. Despite the protective crash webbing, I’d been thrown from thecockpit and was trapped underneath a fallen bulkhead. Thankfully, the hull hadn’tyet ruptured, but that was a mere detail at this point.
“You have to go,” I urged Cuenyne. “Take a lifeboat. Get to Attahox; from thereyou can find your way to Daalang or Fusai. The information you carry is all thatmatters. I’ll follow if I can.”
“Arhul,” he said glumly. In all the years I’d known him he’d never called me that.“You know as well as I do that no one’s going to accept the word of a droid. Not evenone as advanced as I am. Without you, the information is as good as worthless. I’mgoing to try and lift this debris…”
“They’re going to have to! Listen, the pull of the wormhole is too strong, and in afew minutes we’ll both be trapped back in Otherspace. Don’t worry about me. I neverexpected to come back. I never needed to, except to bring this information. You askedme why I was doing this. The answer is… well, you know… Now, you have to go. Youhave to make them understand… so that it wasn’t in vain….”
The droid was silent.
“Are you hearing me?”
“Yes, but… Wait. I understand now. I’ll see you later, Hex.”
“I’ll see you later, Q9-X7.”
