Chapter 3:
Jessica watched Drake carefully. He didn’t blame her. He was dangerous, and he knew it.
But so was she.
Jessica was Talon’s woman, and she would probably kill him without a shred of remorse, something else Drake knew all too well. He ignored that fact as he watched the edges of the wormhole come into his field of vision. It sat at the very end of the universe, hidden behind a gaseous planet that was avoided simply because it was so dangerous. Drake knew damn well that Blade was used to hiding in places that read out as uninhabitable, most of the crew on that ship were used to the same thing, but this planet was a whole new animal. The entire system they were passing into was lethal. One small breach of the hull and they’d all die choking on their own lungs, or clawing at their suddenly fiery skin.
He’d never been with people on this trip, and it had been years since he had entered this space—and he had hoped to never have to return either.
Jessica said, “You had better be right about this, Drake.”
He gave her a dead-even glare. “Do you honestly believe that I would put myself into such serious danger if there was not something on the other side of it?”
Jessica stared right back, her gaze unwavering. “I have known people to do the very same thing you just suggested. Especially people who are deluded. I would hate to think that you are insane because I don’t truly enjoy killing insane people. That is unless they are power-mad. That’s a whole other kind of crazy right there.”
An unwilling grin tugged the corners of Drake’s lips upward. “I will concede that point to you without a quarrel. This is the way. It is the only way to enter. I must warn you, again, that once we are inside, I have no idea how to open the Speakers Door.
“I know how the legends say it must be opened, but I cannot do it alone. I will need all of you. Especially those of you who can fight. We may actually be doing nothing more than putting ourselves into an even larger battle than the one that we are leaving behind.”
Jessica didn’t flinch nor look away. “The Federation is a formidable enemy. I’ve been fighting them for years now. Whatever lies beyond that door, we may not be ready for it, but I can promise you that it’s not ready for us either.”
That was another point he had no wish to quarrel with her. She was probably right. His mood swung between anticipation and worry. He had long wanted to know the secret that dwelled behind the door that barred the two universes from meeting.
Solving that mystery would forever ensure his entry into history, something that he wanted desperately. Drake knew that was a dangerous thing to want. Arrogance and pride were often the things that failed the mightiest of warriors, and the weakest. It was those two things that also felled the mightiest of men, and the weakest.
History wrote itself for the most part and he needed desperately to be included. To be forgotten was the one thing they could not face. Dying was incidental, just another stone on the path that every single being ever created walked.
Death he could stand.
An ignominious and forgotten life, however, that he could never stand.
He knew that part of that stemmed from his childhood and he had the rueful thought that he really needed to work out his Daddy issues. Now was not the time to try to do that though. Now was the time to band together with this ragtag crew of misfits that had somehow all managed to find each other, this pack of warriors and wise people, of healers and death bringers, and try to put an end to the Federation for once and for all.
To do that, he needed what lay behind that door.
If it was still there.
That last thought made his nerves flutter. That was the rub of it. This was a long shot, and everyone on the ship knew it. It was highly possible that whatever the Speakers, an ancient race who had brought life into the universe that all of them on the ship called home, had placed behind that door was gone now.
It was said that the founding members of the Federation had found a way to enter that place—the place called Tralam—and that they had hidden themselves there in an effort to distance themselves from the very thing that they had created.
He spoke aloud without meaning to. “Do you suppose that the founding members of the Federation were disappointed in what they had created? Or do you suppose they were frightened of it?”
Jessica’s eyebrows rose toward her blonde head. “I have no idea. I have no idea why they ever thought the Federation was a good thing.”
Jenny chose that moment to join them. She spoke softly, as she generally did. “Because peace is something everyone wants. I believe that the founding members of the Federation honestly believed that they had the ability to not only bring you peace, but to maintain it. Perhaps their hearts were too pure, or perhaps they were too naïve about the ways that power can corrupt. Or perhaps they knew that it would happen eventually but thought that the peace that they could bring before that happened was worth it.”
Margie stepped up. She was Jeval’s woman and obviously pregnant, something that worried Drake to no end. He had no idea why she’d even been allowed to take the trip. Margie said, “I don’t really care what their reasons were for secreting themselves away. They’d be dead by now anyway, and there is no way we can ever ask them.”
Drake’s gut tightened again. If the things that his father had told him were true, the founding members of the Federation were not, in fact, dead. His father had been sure that the ancient race called the Speakers had somehow found the key to immortality, or that they possessed it naturally. That they had met there with the founding members of the Federation and given them that code or that key to it. That even now they lived, those founding members, and were simply awaiting the time that they could be rescued.
Legend had it that the founding members had jettisoned the ships away from Tralam in a bid to remain undisturbed. If that were true, they could be taken back to the universe from which they had come. If the current powers that were in the Federation had no choice but to cede over their posts to those who had wanted peace, then peace would reign.
If there were no Federation members still alive, then there was the weapon. The weapon: it was like no other. The weapon that they could bear back into the universe and demand that those who held power in the Federation ,accept that the Federation would have no choice but to bow to or spell out their own destruction.
Talon approached and slung an arm around Jessica’s shoulders. Their bodies pressed together, and for a moment Drake felt nothing but regret. Of all the women that he had known and loved over the years, there had never been one that he wanted to stay with. One who would have protected him even as he protected her. One who would have gone to the ends of the earth with him.
What would it have been like to have known that? Talon said, “The nav systems are dead. I need you front and center now, Drake.”
Drake said, “I can captain the ship into the inner ring.”
Talon said, “It’s not just that I doubt your skill. It’s that I prefer mine.”
Drake advised himself toward caution. Talon truly was the best in the universe, but this was a place that required more than skill. It required knowledge of it. The first time that Drake had entered it, he had entered it with a map and a code, and all of that had proven to be wrong. He had barely survived. But he had marked well that passage. Many of the crew that had been on board with him that day had died. He had nearly died himself. Of all of those who had survived the initial horrors of that wormhole, he alone still lived.
Talon’s eyes scanned across his face. Drake kept his expression open and relaxed. Talon nodded. “Then I shall fly beside you.”
Drake said, “I would appreciate that.”
They headed back toward the other side of the bridge, toward the actual flight deck. Talon stepped into his usual place and Drake stepped in beside him, settling into the co-captain spot with real ease. Even that rankled. He should not be so comfortable being second-in-command. But he was. His early life and predisposed him to that, and that too irritated Drake.
They had breached the inner ring of the planet’s atmosphere now. The fire belched consistently from the surface, igniting the gaseous ring. Solar flares struck the planet, chipping away more and more of it with each strike.
They passed that planet and found themselves facing seven more. The planets ranged in size from what had once been the large first planet to the tiniest planet at the back end of the galaxy. The system had always reminded him of the galaxy that Old Earth had once sat in. Not that Old Earth still existed. It had been bombed into nothingness and not so long ago.
The memory of all of the people that he loved there on the planet he had spent so much time on made his shoulders tightened. He knew that the Federation was capricious and that at any moment they could do the same thing to his home planet: Newport.
The igniting atmosphere was not the least of their worries. They had barely passed the fire with the next stage began. Ice. So much of it that if they did not fly fast and true, the ship would be mired down and become frozen. Everything within it would also freeze solid, including them. Drake’s hands were steady on the control, but his thoughts were chaotic.
What lay behind that door?