Galactic Storm Read online

  She rallied, driving herself on by pure spirit. She willed a transition she’d only worn once before, when crossing the hyper-spatial bridge from the Earth to the Moon.

  If my regular body can’t channel the power I need, I need a body that can. I have to upgrade.

  There came a flash that made all others seem like the feeblest gleam of the farthest star. A fresh influx of power held her in bandwidths imperceptible due to sheer intensity.

  Max gave herself to the change, letting her quantum signature be rewritten. Her human flesh took on a state that was not quite matter or energy. The absence of pain was nearly an unbearable pleasure.

  Technically outside the universe—and its laws—her clothing and armor vanished. She used a thought to coalesce replacements. Metallic robes covered her. A mask enclosed her face—white gold with emerald eyes. The student becomes the teacher. Now, to take care of this star…

  The singularity clawed hungrily at her, but couldn’t close its grasp. Max was a pulsar dropping ever closer to the compressed core of the black hole.

  I better get this right the first time. I doubt I’ll get a second chance.

  She sensed time thinning, splintering into discordant frequencies, as the laws of physics unravelled. Time-ghosts, alternate images of her, appeared, ascending and descending, like Christmas lights strung on a tree. They were selves she’d been and were going be. The images slid through her, coming and going in a maddening blur. Their thoughts overlapped, threatening her concentration and her life.

  She knew what she had to do: Gotta go Zen. Flow into action. Move beyond thought.

  She cleared her mind, forcing it to surrender, and embrace the ultimate emptiness. Her psychic static subsided. Max found herself at the bottom of the chain of images. Her energy-sheathed feet touched the compressed material core of the singularity.

  There are no other ghosts of me from here on. Does that mean I have no future, or do I transcend the dimensions of space? Maybe blowing this dark star out will trap me in realities I can’t sense or imagine. No matter, I can’t let any of that stop me. This is for my friends…my world. Mom and Dad, I hope you guys know how much I love you!

  The door was open to the center of creation at the birth of time. Instead of pulling fresh power to herself, Max imploded, extending herself through the door, occupying two points in space by folding its weave. The tesseract brought her into direct contact with the Heart of the Unknown.

  Wonder smacked Max in the face. She sensed awareness within the eye of a primal universal storm. The force of its regard laid bare her soul, her memories. An incorporeal intelligence riffled avidly through her life, rereading her like an old, best-loved book.

  Who are you? Max dared to ask.

  I am the one served by all the Guardians that will ever be, in all the universes that will ever be. I have seen—and will see—birth, death, and rebirth times without number. I am the One Soul of Cosmos.

  Help me! Max pleaded.

  My power is now yours; you’ve burst your cocoon—finally taking wing. Help yourself.

  Just like that?

  Just so, but realize—if you take this final step, you cannot go back. You will be forever separate and alone, even among those who love you. Is this a price you truly wish to pay?

  There’s no other way to save all that I love. What happens to me doesn’t matter.

  Doesn’t it?

  Through with words, Max ignored the question. She removed her mask. Her hand felt for her face. It was gone. Her robes were displaced by the same emptiness as that which surrounded her. She had crossed a threshold that had always lain near, unseen, and could never completely surrender her again.

  Max grew, filling the eye of creation’s storm. Her light-formed clothing bled energy, growing with her. She untied the sash and opened her robe. The material fluttered without a wind, moving with a mind of its own. It enveloped the singularities core, wrapping it up. Max hugged the darkness, trapping it. Her nothingness unmade it.

  Closing her robe, she tied it once more. Max willed herself home. With the singularity gone, space became unstressed, her movements smooth. She fell inwardly, compressing a universal mass. The distant constellations returned.

  Max took on human form, knowing it was only one aspect of many she now had to choose from. For the sake of her parent’s sanity, she decided to keep that little secret to herself, erecting mental barriers between what she was and what she could be.

  She faced the cloud-swirled blue orb of Earth, heading home on wings of light, knowing the others would follow with questions she could never answer.

  TWENTY-THREE

  One thought kept Ulrell going: The terrible loneliness will end if I can reach the edge of reality and burst through to whatever lies beyond. What tortured shape that out-lying dimension might take was unimaginable, but she believed it could be no worse than here.

  There was a shudder in the liquid medium of infinity. A monstrous new current appeared. It slammed her in a line perpendicular to her course. The bars of her cage were broken, by a fierce light, an opening eye pinning her with an intolerable stare. She’d have called it a star but it was smaller and brighter than anything she’d ever seen. White, blinding energy washed over her, turning the cosmic sea pale pink around her.

  Her wide, shallow waist arched in agony. Muscular legs kicked furiously. The tentacles branching from her shoulders writhed and knotted as she opened the beak in her bulbous head and gurgled in pain. Dissolution threatened her sense of self, but her plasma-sensitive skin cells drank in the fire. Consumption was the only defense she had.

  Agony yielded to ecstasy. She sensed thoughts for the first time in eons. Angry, fearful, violent thoughts, more alien than any she’d ever touched.

  Doesn’t matter. At least I am no longer alone!

  The current carried her away from the new star, but the sense of something alien followed. Ulrell’s vision returned. Several transparent lids now shielded her single eye from the receding glare. Against the burning backdrop, she saw a shapeless smudge, a pursuing shadow.

  Eventually, the current’s hold weakened. She was able to slow herself. The black patch pursuing her swelled larger, getting closer. A churning, seething mass, it kept forming distorted faces that collapsed like all the dreams Ulrell had ever known.

  She swam closer, possessed by fascination.

  The newcomer was pliant, asymmetrical, formed from metallic compounds. She didn’t understand how it could be alive but it was. She began deciphering some of the concepts in the creature’s twinned mind. It was lost, new to her universe, wounded by stresses that would have destroyed an organic being. Ulrell suspected insanity, but crazy or not, it was still company.

  She scanned its thoughts, finding a mind made of two incompatible psi-patterns that were careless entangled. She found two names that held a dying sense of self.

  Ashere. Mitron.

  All else was a trash. She separated the identities to better rummaging around in their minds.

  Who dares use me so? Ashere demanded an accounting.

  I am Ulrell, power-never-ending. Pity me.

  Long, have I sought such power, Ashere admitted. The other half of the creature was silent, buried in a strange emotion it called guilt.

  I have separated your psi patterns, but you are still linked in a mental circuit. It seems an elegant a solution to loneliness, Ulrell mused. Perhaps I should try this fusion.

  Her tentacles lashed out, pulling the strange metallic creature into an embrace. It became a second skin for her as Ulrell gathered in the electric webs of their minds, grafting links to her own mind. Through the new circuit, Ashere sought to dominate the union.

  Mitron ignored it all, too insane to care.

  Ulrell crushed Ashere’s resistance ruthlessly, but took care not to damage the new personality she hosted. She might play with the minds later, risking their survival, but now while the newness was so fresh.

  She shaped the inorganic substance of Ashere an
d Mitron, the alien protoplasm responding to her desires. Drawing on the technical knowledge of the aliens, she created inorganic weapon and propulsion systems and sensors that extended her natural perceptions far across the electromagnetic spectrum. She acquired knowledge of quantum physics, and mathematics to navigate hyper-dimensional space.

  She became a Goddess-class warship.

  How dare you steal my destiny! Ashere fumed in impotent rage. No being should be greater than I.

  Shut up, Mitron said. I’m trying to dissolve myself in pity, and you’re not helping.

  Ulrell sighed. Ah, it is a pleasure to have your querulous thoughts filling the endless silence. Don’t fear, my little friends. We will return to this marvelous universe of yours, and seize it for our own. The League worlds will carve their moons into my image, and worship my beauty with unending song. And when every galaxy has fallen at my feet, we shall take the next dimension…and the one after that… You have never dreamed of all I can give you at the cost of your souls.

  The mind that was Ashere grew calm within Ulrell. Perhaps this is not so bad an arrangement.

  It’s a real bargain, Mitron said. I was done with my soul any way.

  Then let us breech the walls of space, Ulrell said, and move on to a universe that shall love us—or die trying.

  Agreed. Ashere turned her thoughts to Mitron. What of you? Are you sane enough to serve us in this pact?

  There was the equivalent of a mental shrug in the link. Sure. It’s not like I’ve anything better to do.

  * * *

  Jak’kim lounged on the mess deck of his cargo ship, sipping boiled hurti fiber. He had a hold full of the cloud-root, having trapped it on an uncharted ice planet. Naming the drink Lolli—after his sainted mother—he expected the spicy beverage to make him literal fortunes with its delicious and stimulating flavor. Not even addicting, non-narcotic, how could he lose?

  Its exotic rarity promised him a monopoly once they reached Osarra. All he had to do was get it to market—and keep Ryssa from finding out he had it on-board; she’d want to be cut in for a lion’s share since it was her ship.

  The ships navigation alarm rang throughout the ship. Jak’kim spit out a mouthful of Lolli. It burned down his chest. He jumped to his feet and ran toward the bridge.

  I just checked the route in-system after the jump. We were alone in this approach lane. There shouldn’t be anything out here to hit that our shields can’t handle. A major collision alarm doesn’t make sense.

  He burst through the bridge access hatch and crossed to the combination pilot-navigation console. He glared down at the sensor readings, then over to the holo-imager. Its globular field was a brassy haze of yellow with a strange object forming at its heart, near the wedge shape that represented their own ship. With reason crumbling, he studied the dwarfing image: an immense, armored female biped with mollusk-like properties.

  “What in the abyss? The imager must be broken.”

  Sitting at the console, the mechamorph navigator said, “Hang on to something. Whatever that is out there, I’m shearing away from it.”

  Jak’kim took his navigator’s advice, backing away to the captain’s seat. Flopping down, he activating chair’s restraints. The comm pinged in various tones as different personnel attempted to call through to the bridge. He cleared the circuits, opening a ship-wide channel. “Attention, all hands. Man emergency posts and brace for extreme course corrections. Passengers, remain where you are. We are experiencing some…difficulties…but everything is under control.” I hope. “You will be notified when the ship’s normal routine returns.”

  Next to the mechamorph navigator, the pilot commented without turning around. “You know half the crew and passengers are already heading for the life-pods right?”

  “Never mind that. Are we going to have a collision or not?”

  “Apparently not. That thing out there is changing course as well, though it will be a near miss.”

  A shrill voice stabbed onto the bridge. “What in space are you doing with my ship?”

  Jak’kim cringed.

  The owner stamped onto the bridge, latching on to the back of his chair. She yelled at him. “Well?”

  “Ryssa! Nice of you to join us.”

  “I asked you a question.”

  “I’m doing my best to keep us in one piece. An anomaly has just entered space in our path. I’m trying not to hit it.”

  “What kind of anomaly?”

  “Check the imager. Maybe you can make sense of the display.”

  Ryssa’s voice went hoarse and raspy with disbelief. “That can’t be what it looks like.”

  “Never mind that now,” Jak’kim said. “Take the comm station and start broadcasting an emergency alert. Get some League Patrol ships out here.”

  For once, Jak’kim didn’t get an argument out of her. While she was the owner of the ship, in space, the captain’s authority was absolute; he called the shots. Ryssa didn’t normally see it that way. She usually second-guessed him at every opportunity. Jak’kim smiled in involuntary satisfaction at the thought that he’d finally found something in the universe to shut her up—if only for a while.

  The navigator said, “Sensors read the anomaly as an organic-inorganic composite. I’m getting a life-form reading from the whole thing,” Tolum said. “It scans as a single massive life form.”

  Jak’kim could scarcely credit the report. “You mean that thing is exactly what it looks like?”

  “Apparently so,” the pilot answered. “Ryssa, you got anyone yet?”

  “The League ship Sword-of-Benevolence is in-system. They’re be here soon.”

  “I hope it’s soon enough,” Jak’kim muttered.

  “We’ve got another small problem,” Tolum reported. “One of our fool passengers has prematurely launched himself in an escape pod.”

  “So we’ll pick it up after this is all over,” Ryssa said.

  “We’re not going to get that chance,” Tolum said. “The pod is on a direct course for the anomaly.”

  “And pods are expensive,” Ryssa said.

  Jak’kim checked the imager. Between the wedge of his ship and the huge blue shape of the anomaly was a red pulsing dot—the pod. A long blue arm wrapped around it. The red dot vanished.

  Tolum spoke without emotion. “Sensors are detecting wreckage. The pod has been crushed. Whoever was onboard is dead. Very dead.”

  “Problem is,” Jak’kim announced, “the same could happen to us. We may not collide with that thing but it looks like we’re still within reach of its arms.”

  “Swing wider!” Ryssa ordered.

  “Not enough time,” Tolum said. “I could jump the ship, but we’d die just the same. We’re too far in-system for using the null drive.”

  With no other action available, Jak’kim ordered all crewmen and passengers to the pods. Some of them will survive to reach Osarra. That damned monster can’t catch them all. He noticed that Tolum and Ryssa made no effort to leave. “What are you waiting for? Get out of here.”

  “It’s my ship,” Ryssa said. “I’ll take my chances with her. That thing might not destroy us. A ship has more value than a pod after-all.”

  “And what do I need a pod for?” Tolum asked. “I’m an inorganic mechamorph. If I want a pod, I’ll just turn into one.”

  Resigned to dying with his friends, Jak’kim resorted to gallows humor to break the tension. “Well, if anyone wants to sob hysterically or run around in circles, this may be your last chance.”

  “I appreciate the offer, Captain.” Tolum’s voice was bland. “Maybe next time.”

  “I’ll pass too,” Ryssa said. “It wouldn’t be dignified.”

  In the imager, several tentacles were closing in on them, ignoring the swarm of escaping pods. Jak’kim caught Ryssa’s eyes with his stare, determined to die with her beauty haunting him.

  He regretted never telling her about the passion he harbored for her. It is best I take this burden with me to the grave, he decide
d—but his lips betrayed him. “I have always loved you,” he said.

  She smiled then scowled. “You couldn’t have brought this up before now?”

  There was a bone-jarring lurch. “It’s got us,” Tolum observed. “We’re locked together.”

  An alarm went off. Jak’kim freed himself from his chair, and lurched over to a bank of controls between his friends. He studied a stream of data across a screen. “The main hold is breeched,” he said. The area has been sealed off to keep atmospheric integrity.”

  “The cargo?” Ryssa asked.

  “Everything’s packed in sealed containers and netted to the deck as a precaution against system failure and the loss of artificial gravity. The cargo will be fine unless the entire ship is destroyed.” He killed the alarm that had served its purpose, but another took its place as the vessel shuddered.

  What now?

  He looked at the imager. A new shape filled its projection. Hope flared in his heart as he recognized the lines of a League military vessel. In the display, the Sword-of-Benevolence moved alongside the monstrous creature, showering it with emitter fire.

  Jak’kim focused on the developing battle as the anomaly’s tentacles retracted from his ship. In the imager, serpentine limbs altered shape, developing knobs on their ends that took on a machined aspect.

  Those look like…

  Tolum’s mechamorph voice spiked with a hint of emotion. “Sensors show the anomaly possesses the same power as my people. It’s arm-tips have just become particle beam projectors.”

  “Tolum? Are you all right?” Ryssa asked.

  He nodded. “A disconcerted feeling is attempting to escape the box I keep it in.”

  “The anomaly’s moving off after the patrol ship,” Ryssa said. “We’ve got a clear run in-system!”

  “I’m pushing the engines for all they can give,” the pilot said. “We should make it.”

  “Yeah, but the League ship’s going to pay an awful high price for having helped us,” Jak’kim said.