Chapter 6:
Drake could barely breathe as they passed the last planet and circled around it. All of them, the entire pitiful little crew, were now gathered on the bridge.
Blade said, “He said that the only way in was out, and the only way out was in. You said you didn’t make it this far before. So it seems we come to an impasse.”
Drake nodded. Weariness had set in. “I told you I have no idea how to open the door.”
Talon spoke harshly. “I see no door.”
Margie stepped forward. The small ball of her belly rested inside the tunic that she wore, and she put her hands to it, a faraway expression coming up on her lovely face. “It’s there. Tell them where, Drake.”
His shoulders slumped. “We have to go back the way we came, back to the fire planet. Once we arrive there, the door will be in sight.”
Jessica let out a low cry of rage. “You could’ve seen fit to tell us that in the first place! You want us to make this trip twice? Already Talon is tired, and so are the rest of us.”
Drake drew himself up. His expression was placid; the anger lurked beneath it. “Nobody ever said this was easy. If it was easy, then anyone could do it. Do you want your names to go down in history or do you wish to simply float around out here in space where there is nothing and nowhere to go for the rest of your miserable lives?”
Talon drew a weapon. Drake faced him down without flinching. His voice didn’t quiver. “You can kill me if you like for speaking to your woman that way but it will not help you now. The true secret to the door is the one that I will tell you now. Space and time mean nothing here. Somehow they, the race that we all call the Speakers, folded it. They changed it and turned it in and on itself. I don’t know how they did it. How could I? That is exactly what they’ve done.”
Marik spoke. “You have seen it?”
Drake nodded. “I have. Only I had no idea how to open it. It will take more than just me, because by the time I reached that door, the number of my crew had dwindled mightily. Those who were left were worth nothing as far as their being willing or able to go through that doorway.”
Jeval spoke. “Then we turn around and go back. Talon, you are tired. Rest until we get to the planet made of water. That’s an order, by the way.”
Talon bristled. “Since when do you give me orders?”
Drake spoke into the tense silence. “Since he is your elder brother.”
The tension softened but did not break. Blade entered into that conversation with the mild comment, “Does this mean I get to order you around now, little brother?”
Little brother. How long had he waited to hear Blade say those words to him? That Blade was only speaking them in jest didn’t change the fact that he had used those words. Drake decided to roll with it, to try to help ease the thickening anger in the room. “I suppose it does. Just don’t get carried away.”
The tension snapped then, like a fine wire that had been pulled too tightly between two poles. Jessica reached for Talon. “He’s right. You need rest. It won’t be long until we get back to the planet made of water and then they will need you more than ever. Come on; let’s go get you a quiet place where you can lay your head down for a little while.”
Talon looked entirely offended by the suggestion, but the lines of fatigue on his face and the dark circles under his eyes said that rest was indeed something he actually needed at that moment. His shoulders slumped a bit, and he nodded. He said to Drake, “Do not destroy my ship. If you do, you had better die before I find you.”
Drake said, “I will keep that in mind.”
Drake and Blade went back to the controls, and eventually, all of the others left the bridge, leaving them alone. Silence drew out as they carefully navigated their way back around the dark side of the seventh planet in that line and headed toward the fiery one at the beginning of the system.
Blade spoke softly, “There is just something about space, isn’t there? From the moment I first flew, I understood how insignificant I am as a person. I also understood just how powerful the Federation is, to rule all of this emptiness and silence. To have full control of this vast and lethal but beautiful thing. To have control of space.”
Drake didn’t dare look away from the track that he was setting the ship onto. He said, “As I recall, you always did love to fly and love to fight more.”
Blade snorted. “As I recall, you were the one who was always fighting. I was the weakling and ill child when you first came into the household.”
Drake didn’t try to protest that. It was the truth; they both knew it. “That changed rather rapidly.”
“I imagine it would have changed for you too if you’d been in my shoes.”
Drake shot his older brother a look. “I would’ve given anything to have been in your shoes. I begged for that chance. I wanted nothing more than to prove to him that I was just as capable as you of surviving that challenge.”
Blade slid him a sidelong glance. “Then you’re a fool.”
Drake said, “I won’t argue that with you. I was a fool for ever thinking that in your absence he’d grow fond of me and see me as the son he could be proud of.”
Why was this happening? This was not something he wanted to do, and he certainly didn’t want to do it now.
Blade said, “That’s strange. The whole time I was out there fighting the Federation, rebelling, playing the traitor, all I could think of was how easy it must’ve been for him to let me go. I always thought you were his favorite. And you always thought I was his. Maybe the truth of it is that he loved us both, just in different ways and degrees.”
Drake knew that was true, but childhood, as short as it had been, was always only a single step behind him. He had lived his entire life trying to please a father who had been distant and incredibly hard to please. “You know what I wish? That he would’ve rebelled sooner. I wish he would have thrown his lot in with the rebels and just stated his cause. ”
Blade said, “I don’t think he could throw his lot in with the rebels before he did, I mean, he had me to consider. If there’s anything that I wish, it’s that I wish I had known what he had done for me all those years. What you had done for me all those years. I never got around to thanking you for that.”
Drake’s hands were steady on the controls. “You’re not actually thanking me now either.”
Blade said, “I will thank you when you get my ass out of this wormhole and back into the universe that I know and understand.”
Drake said, “I’m going to consider that a vow.”
Blade said, “Good, because it was a vow.”
The ship sailed on, space wrinkling around it. Blade spoke again. “I can see it. The way that space folds here. It’s as if somebody took a corner of the universe and tied it into a clever little knot.”
Drake said, “I believe that is just what they did.”
There was a high note of tension in Blade’s next question. “Do you think that is what the weapon is? Do you think it somehow has the ability to change space and time?”
“I wish I knew. I guess we’ll find out.”
Drake didn’t think that’s what it was. If that was all that the weapon was, and all that it was capable of doing, then there would’ve been no need to hide it within its own little trick. His stomach let a little gurgle rise up and acid followed in its wake.
This weapon that he was so determined to have, what would it do?
It seemed that an eternity passed, but eventually they battled their way back to the planet made of fire. As they reached it, Drake, leaning close to the spaceships observation windows, let out a low cry of triumph.
“There! See it? That small sliver of light to the right? That is the door!”
Blade and Talon both stared at that narrow sliver of sliver light laced with gold along its edges. Drake smiled, “Quite beautiful, isn’t it?”
Blade said, “I have long known that the most beautiful things are generally the most deadly.”
Drake nodded “You’d be correct. Now that we’re here, we have to figure out how to open this door.”
Margie spoke up from behind them. “I know how.” All the men standing there turned to face her. She was flanked by the other women, and as she stepped forward, the other women fell into step.
There was an uneven number of people on that ship. Drake was the only one there without a mate. That thought hit him hard right in the middle of his heart. The women walking toward him were all strong and powerful women in their own right. They had all found mates who were equally strong and equally powerful. Where was his mate?
Why in the hell was he worried about such a thing, and now? It wasn’t something that he thought of much, but here lately he’d been considering that more and more. Maybe having women aboard the ship, women who were so obviously mated to the other men there, was making him soft and sentimental.
Marge spoke again, shattering his thoughts. “You tried to go in before, didn’t you?”
Drake nodded. “I did, and with no success.”
Marge came closer. A glow lifted up through the layers of her skin. Jeval reached out a hand, but she ignored it and stepped closer yet to Drake. Her voice lowered and changed a bit. “The door is the way out. The way in is not the door.”
More riddles. Irritation sizzled along his central nervous system. “Please just speak plainly.”
Talon said, “It’s not her talking; it’s the Oracle.”
This again. All right. Let it be. Drake said, “Can the Oracle speak plainly?”
Marge lifted a hand. Her fingers pointed to the far left side of the slash of pure light and energy. “We go in by what we would imagine would be the exit. When you fly into a space rip—”
“You get out by flying horizontally until you break free of its grip!” Talon turned back to the controls, taking the ship away from the light and toward the darkness beyond it.
They all stood there, not speaking as the ship soared toward what looked like emptiness, but wasn’t, because as the ship hit that space, it changed.
A pulse ran through the ship. A loud cracking sound rang out. Jenny loosed a small scream and Marik grabbed her and held on, his face wan and his features gone deathly still. Jessica’s hands went to her weapons, something that was a little funny since the enemy was space itself.
Talon shouted, “I need help!”
He did. The ship was plummeting downward, falling so fast that Drake’s feet left the deck and his head hit the top of the ceiling. Pain shot through his skull. Margie and Jeval were holding onto the bolted down chairs and Marik and Jenny had been thrown a few feet away. Jenny was crying, and Marik was trying to reach her. Just as Drake was sure the pressure was going to snap his neck, the gravity changed, and he was slammed back to the floor so hard he heard his spine creak.
Blade groaned from somewhere nearby and stood. Talon cried out again. The ship buckled and shifted back and forth as they all staggered toward the control panels and the co-captain’s consoles.
Margie was on the floor, curled up now and not speaking. Jeval hovered over her, his hands resting on her skull and face. Blade moved as fast as he could given that he had a wound in his cheek now; a slice of skin was missing, and Jenny went to him and tilted his head to one side before calling for medication and bandages.
The darkness was complete. It was lightlessness that Drake stared at, awed and terrified at once. That darkness was so…so empty and so pervasive. There was nothing, not even a faint glimmer. He’d seen deep space and its darkness before. This was not that. This was a blackness that was so complete, not even the powerful beams of the ships guiding systems could cut through it or lighten it.
Talon spoke in a strained voice. “I can barely see my controls! I know we need to go to the east, but goddammit, where is east? The controls are spinning so much that I can’t tell.”
Blade said, “No idea. The whole world feels upside down and backward.”
Margie said, “Maybe it is. Go with your gut, Talon.”
Talon said, “Great. Thanks. I’ll do that.”
The sarcasm made Drake chuckle despite the grimness of the situation. The ship buckled and tore through the atmosphere. The space unfolded all around them, threatening to suck them in and lose them in its grip. It was too late to go back now.
They’d passed the point of no return.
Light burst into being. Someone screamed. The hull of the ship let out a long scream and Drake was sure that Margie had gotten it wrong somehow, or she had been used by the Oracle that she carried within her womb to take them all to their destruction.
Then it appeared: a crumbling and monstrous thing made of some material that resembled brick and gable but wasn’t. Tralam was there, in all its ruined glory, and the ship sailed right into its maw.