Vortex, Part 15

VORTEX Part 15

The underground city didn’t seem so deserted to me at all, especially after I discovered Terek appearing behind me. He was clearly angry, but I didn't turn around. A-Tya knew what I was planning and also pretended not to notice him. Meanwhile, I carefully reached into my jacket pocket and disengaged the safety on the disperser. Then, as I pulled my hand out, I hid it in my palm so that Terek couldn't possibly see the weapon from behind. Only when I was absolutely sure did I turn around at lightning speed and aim the disperser at him.

"- Two against one! Terek, you don't stand a chance, give up."
"- A false calculation!"
"- Why? Me and A-Tya are two, you, however, are alone."
"- Don't be so sure."

Several other people emerged, all armed with state-of-the-art multidispersers; apparently, they were former followers of the Ectomorph. One of them stepped forward and said to Terek:

"- I thank you for your help, you can go now."
"- Who the hell are you, another Ectomorph?" I asked.
"- Varlon, Varlon, is your memory really that short-lived or do you truly not remember me? Well, that may be."
"- I don't know you!"
"- Yes, you do, but for the moment I would rather not reveal my name to you yet. Do you know what that is?" The stranger pointed at a kind of portal.
"- No! Maybe you could give me a hint?"

Surprisingly, Vahanara appeared and said:
"- But I know what it is! It's a time machine, one of the best ever built, but it has only been used once so far, namely to send your daughter to the Earth of the year 2002, but Lucifer has apparently already paid for it. You are the next one if you don't disappear immediately, T'K."
"- Aha, you apparently know who I am, Vahanara, why don't you tell Varlon?"
"- It wouldn't be any fun for him if I told him now. You would do well to disappear and never show your face again."
"- Well, I have time, we will surely see each other again, Varlon, Vahanara, and Tya."

Then he walked away slowly, followed by the other humans, and only the three of us remained.

"- Vahanara, where have you been, why did you steal DEON?"

A-Tya held me back and called out:
"- Cool down for a moment, she surely had her reasons."
"- Yes, I had my reasons, but I cannot reveal much of that."
"- Yes, you will, or I will break your hands, and then I will turn to your neck, which I..."
"- Var, stop threatening her, that's not how she will tell you anything!"
"- It's alright, Vahanara, tell us already," I said with quite a bit of anger in my gut.
"- Well, I cannot tell you everything, but only this: I had to borrow DEON because the Suspirions have erected an anti-wormhole shield around their planet to be safe from unwanted visits. I have convinced the Suspirions that they should spare us their games and instead turn to another source of danger, the T., oh, I better not reveal that!"

A-Tya looked at the portal a little more closely; there were no operating instruments on it, no displays or any other control elements. The only sign that the thing was in operation consisted of a continuous humming sound.

"- How do you operate this portal?" she asked Vahanara.
"- It is thought-controlled, you only need to think about where you want to be transported to, at what time, and it sends you there."

Tya dared to take a step forward, but before she could even think of anything, I pulled her back to me.

"- What's the matter with you? I wanted to go to Kara!" she cried, weeping.
"- But my dear, how do you think the chances are that you would come back?"
"- No chance," Vahanara said calmly.

I knew that I would have to go through the portal at some point, but I wanted to say goodbye to my sister first. The fact that there were no chances of my return to this time was secondary for someone who was immortal; the few years were nothing for me, but for A-Tya, on the other hand, it was a different story. At most with the substance that kept Kara alive, the Nostrum, the source of immortality.

"- Vahanara, can't you give A-Tya some Nostrum so that she doesn't age when we are in the past? Besides, Kara will also need some of it, you know yourself that she will die without the stuff."

Vahanara fished a few tablets out of her pockets:
"- Var, there is something I wanted to tell you, it's not the right time, though." She avoided any eye contact. "- But since you are asking now: I didn't even develop this substance that poisoned Kara; I thought it was a nerve agent that induces a death-like state in order to demoralize you."
"- Whaaat?!?" I shouted, somewhat surprised that Vahanara didn't even want to make my daughter dependent on Nostrum.
"- Yes, my plan was for you to believe that Kara was dead; then I would have had an easy game with you, but what happened also threw you off balance."
"- That is true, however. Where did you get this substance?"
"- He gave it to me, T'K, Tvorgh Kor!"

Now something was finally clear; my evil counterpart was responsible for the disaster. Shouldn't he actually be dead? Vahanara went toward the exit and added:
"- I am just surprised that you didn't recognize him just now, but that was also a stroke of luck, because otherwise he might have killed Tya just to hurt you."

I followed her and asked:
"- But what is this plague doing here? I sent him into the Earth's interior via wormhole myself back then."
"- Do you know what happens when you open another wormhole inside a wormhole?"
"- That is scientifically impossible!"
"- Not quite. I knew even then that Tvorgh comes from this parallel universe, but not exactly what he was planning. For some inexplicable reason, I gave him a tip on how to create such a wormhole cascade."
"- Create and not manipulate? I thought that creating them would also be impossible."
"- There are some civilizations that have solved this problem, but what I am actually concerned about is that you unintentionally detached him from this universe during your wormhole experiment back then, and that he catapulted himself back here by creating a wormhole inside a wormhole."

We had arrived at the exit and got into the antigrav car, and Vahanara said something else:
"- Var, I still haven't told you everything and now I finally have to unburden my conscience. I also lied to you about the destruction of Terra Prime."
"- What was untrue about that? I saw the remains of Terra Prime myself."
"- You saw the remains of ONE Terra Prime, in another parallel universe whose only difference from ours is that Lucifer's attack was more successful there."
"- Does that mean that this Tero is not my sister at all?"
"- Yes, she is, theoretically, but only theoretically, because practically your sister is still stuck on Ikarus and awaits your return."

The prospect was good that I could be happy again soon, although I had to find Kara again somehow.

"- Vahanara, could the Suspirions help us get Kara back from the past?"
"- The Suspirions? You can forget about them, and to be honest, they can kiss my ass. I made it clear to them that they should take care of their own affairs."
"- Excuse my naivety, Vahanara, but in what way could you make it clear to the Suspirions that they should not interfere? They are omnipotent, aren't they?"
"- Omnipotent, but reasonable, because they also have their fears; a war over the dominance in the universe has been raging between them and the C'thulhu for millennia. I made it clear to the Suspirions that if they continue to interfere, the C'thulhu would get some advantages for the war."
"- What kind of advantages could you offer the C'thulhu, who are certainly so powerful that they can stand up to the Suspirions on their own?"
"- Me and my access to God's memory. It is sometimes an advantage if you know what the opponent will do next."
"- You really wanted to do that for me? How cute!"

Vahanara leaned forward and whispered to me:
"- I never said that."

ALPHA landed in the middle of the city right next to DEON. I immediately stepped on the gas and arrived just as the hatch opened. Tero was the first to get out and came straight toward me, armed with a thick file folder. She handed it to me and said:

"- Do you actually know what I found out? Proxima is not a triple system at all, but a quadruple star; only around one of the stars was a unique crust built which makes the star invisible. That's why you won't find any ores here and that's why half of the planets from this system have disappeared. They built a Dyson sphere!"
"- Very nice, now we at least know where we stand and where the civilization from here has emigrated to."
"- Don't be too sure about that, little brother, I tried to make contact with the sphere, but there was no answer."
"- For that, I have a few answers..."

I couldn't finish the sentence because suddenly a sharp pain shot through me, and like a while ago, everyone fell down in rows. I knew of nothing that would trigger such pain without leaving visible damage; I was burning inside and it wouldn't stop.

Writhed in pain, I took an analysis device in my hand and looked at the values on the display. The pain was apparently transmitted telepathically because I was receiving signals on the general brain frequency of a few hundred gigahertz on the biological band. It affected all brains equally and I was able to determine the origin; it was Elnor.

This time the pain lasted a little longer than last time, but little by little it became gentler. But we couldn't recover, because immediately after the pain became bearable, Master One's units attacked us. I...

...never thought he could attain such strength so quickly, or even build tanks, but we saw it with our own eyes: an armored division was rolling into the unfortified city. Tvorgh Kor stood behind me, laughing like a madman—in all likelihood, he was indeed insane.

I dragged Tya, Vahanara, and Tero aboard the ALPHA and took my place in the command chair. The neural probes drilled into my brain, and we launched immediately. Vahanara took over weapons control and fired at the tanks with all dispersers. I couldn't resist aiming one of the dispersers at Tvorgh, but it was useless; the beam didn't leave so much as a single scratch. I might as well have saved the energy—for some reason, Tvorgh was invulnerable. He simply walked away in calm composure.

The invasion force didn't stand the slightest chance against the ALPHA. Every tank was incinerated in the dispersion fire, but I knew that if the ALPHA hadn't returned, we would all be dead by now—except, perhaps, for me.

I decided to settle things with Master One once and for all and flew straight toward his base.

Chapter 5 – Shadows of Death

The ALPHA handled somewhat stubbornly, as if it had hit an air pocket, yet the instruments clearly showed the air was calm. It felt somewhat eerie, as the ship was being jolted as if by an invisible hand. I pursued the rapidly fleeing tanks and touched down behind them.

A volley of small antimatter rockets exploding directly in front of the tanks brought the fugitives to a halt. Several hatches opened and the soldiers climbed out; a few tanks tried to flee through the woods, but most got stuck in the mud because Master One had fitted them with wheels instead of tracks. And I had been afraid of him?

We were about to step out and take the humans prisoner when Tya noticed a dust cloud racing toward us at breakneck speed. Even at the external cameras' maximum magnification, I couldn't make out what was causing the cloud, but a terrible feeling began brewing inside me. Over the ship's loudspeakers, I shouted:

"Attention, everyone off the road, turn around and drive away!"

The humans now saw the cloud too and tried to turn their vehicles around, but it was already too late. I just barely managed to pull the ALPHA up when I saw them—indirectly, of course, through the light refraction—but they were unmistakably Bends. They fell upon the small army and slaughtered them indiscriminately.

The tanks were tossed through the air like toys, and the soldiers had their heads ripped off, were gutted, or killed in other brutal ways. We were horrified and helpless, for some of the Bends were gigantic and seemed invulnerable, evident from the fact that the tanks capable of firing did no damage at all.

Vahanara fired from all dispersion banks, but even that didn't help—quite the contrary, the Bends absorbed the energy, amplified it, and hurled it right back.

The impact was so tremendous that the Alpha surely would have been lost without transatomic armor, but the shock was so violent that the Alpha was hurled clean out of Sek's atmosphere, knocking all of us unconscious.

When ALPHA entered Elnor's atmosphere, the violent vibrations woke me up. The readouts fed directly into my brain showed that the temperature on ALPHA's underside was already over 300 degrees; as I said, without transatomic armor, we would have been baked crisp or deep-fried. Unfortunately, the antigrav drives didn't work particularly well at these temperatures, and the wormhole expander didn't make a peep anymore. With great difficulty, I tried to reduce our speed; I partially succeeded, but shortly before reaching the planetary surface, the antigrav burned out completely. Alpha dropped like a stone, melted through the layer of ice, and sank deeper and deeper.

The hull temperature kept dropping until it was barely above the boiling point of water, and finally the ship came to a halt. Unfortunately, with the fried antigrav coil, I couldn't take off, and I could already see trouble brewing. The melted water immediately froze solid again at the local temperatures, sealing off our way back; even if I managed to repair the antigrav, we wouldn't have enough power to break through to the surface, and it was common knowledge that dispersers do not work under water or ice.

Tero finally came to his senses and immediately spoke up:

"Great job, Varlon. Now we're stuck here for all eternity, and we don't have a bite to eat on board except for those two over there," he said, pointing at Vahanara and Tya, who were also just coming around.

Naturally, Vahanara wasn't thrilled at all that Tero wanted to dine on them, even if it was meant as a joke—a Genomorph shouldn't joke about such things. She said:

"Hey Tero, I might look edible, but believe me, I taste awful!"

I was slowly losing my patience with the two of them; Genomorphs could really get on your nerves. So I said:

"Nobody is going to eat anybody here, so stop cracking stupid jokes. I'll find a way for us to escape."

"How, exactly? The antigrav is completely wrecked—what, are you going to build a new one?"

In our situation, repairing the antigrav was impossible; both Vahanara and I knew that, since neither of us had thought to load spare parts.

Almost everything around us was already frozen over, though it would take a few more hours before the perpetual ice sealed the Alpha in forever, so I used the time to examine our surroundings. The cameras extended and delivered a 3D image of the entire area. Surprise, surprise—ALPHA was resting on the edge of a cylindrical mountain peak. I examined it more closely and realized that it wasn't a cylindrical mountain at all, but an artificially created concrete cylinder rising only a few meters above the clay floor.

According to our readings, we were trapped a kilometer beneath the ice sheet—too far to break through from a standstill, but not deep enough to hold a Genomorph prisoner forever. One way or another, we would get out eventually; whether Tya would survive that long was another question, however. Even with Nostrum, it would be difficult without food.

The ultrasound scan of the cylinder showed that its interior was mostly hollow—an unmistakable sign that it could not have formed by natural means.

End