Music of the Spheres (26 page)

“Ahyah,” Yaxche said to the man. “Heloo.”

Finding his voice, the port officer said, “Who are you?”

Yaxche gave the man a toothy grin and, remembering to speak
into his translator, said, “I am Yaxche. I am on a journey to the heavens.”

“Uhm. Sir? Are you the only one on board? Can you turn the
ship around?”

Yaxche shrugged his shoulders. “I’m sorry, I am not able to
do that. This is only the second time I have been in a space ship.”

“Sir, did you press something you weren’t supposed to?” the
man asked. “If there is anyone else on that ship, please get them to the
console. You need to turn the ship around, right now.”

Yaxche said, “You look upset. Perhaps if you were to
practice meditation, you would be happier. I could show you how.”

Frustrated, the man opened his mouth to issue another
command, but something off the visual range distracted him, and he leaned away
for a moment.

When the port officer turned back, his voice took on a stern
tone. “Sir. Mr. Yaxche. I don’t know if you are in control of the ship or not,
but I’ve just been informed there is an armed spacecraft on approach. Somehow
they are aware of your activities and have issued a warning. Turn around and
dock now, or they will pursue and open fire—”

At the last, Justine reached over and severed the
communications link with CS3, and quickly ran her fingers over a number of holoslates.
When the ship’s diagnostics did not provide her with the information she
wanted, she stepped back, closed her eyes and concentrated.

She used her
sight
to scan in the general direction
of the Moon. Her body shook with the effort of straining against the limits of
her power, but the oncoming ship was too far away. It was pure instinct that
she changed tactic. Although she could not
see
past the hundred and
fifty kilometer range, she could sense any refined Kinemet or any object that
was irradiated by Kinemet at a much farther distance. Within a minute, found
what she was looking for.

And cursed.

She opened a communications link to the engine room.
“Michael. How are you guys coming with the installation?”

His voice was thin, as if he were speaking at a distance
away from the microphone. He would have remote activated the communications
console. “Uh, we barely got started.”

“I don’t think it’s an Arabian ship,” she said, acid in her
voice, “and they’re not coming from Luna.”

“What?”

“I don’t know who they are, but they’re coming from Venus.”

“Venus? Gruber?” Michael asked in speculation.

“I don’t know who it is, but they’ve got weaponized Kinemet on
board. I assume it’s been loaded into deep-range missiles.”

“What?” Michael repeated, and stepped into the video frame.
The side of his face was smeared with grease and soot. He had a laser iron in
his hand.
“They’re
using Kinemet as a nuclear weapon?”

“Yeah,” she said. “They know we’re on the run, and they know
our trajectory. They’re coming straight for us. If they fire their missiles and
hit us, the explosion will set off a chain reaction in our Kinemet. We’ll be
vaporized.”

“Why would they want to destroy us? Don’t they want the
chance to get the secret of the Kinemet from us?”

“Not if they’ve already figured it out and want to shut us
up so they can develop the technology first.”

Michael cursed. Then he said, “We’re going as fast as we can,
but the
Ultio
is using a proprietary operating system. Kenny’s rewriting
code while I install the engine. You’re going to have to give us at least a
couple more hours before we can patch it in.”

“Hold on to something, then,” she said. “I’m going to go to
maximum acceleration for two minutes—about three
g
of thrust. It’ll take
their ship at least an hour to course-correct. That should buy you another hour
and a half before they are within missile range.”

“Got it.” He broke the link, and Justine’s hands were a blur
on the controls.

To Yaxche, she spoke while she worked. “You’ll have to go
back and strap Alex in; yourself, too. It’s going to be a rough couple of
minutes.”

“Turbulence?” he asked, his face paling.

“Yeah. Something like that.”

∞

Once Justine had ensured all her passengers were secured, she
wiggled her fingers over the haptic console and fired the ion propulsion
thrusters.

The
Ultio
was basically a reconditioned space yacht, originally
designed for the comfort of its passengers. The military-class vessels used by
the U.S. Space Corp used a much more powerful hydrogen engine capable of greater
thrust, and Justine guessed that the enemy craft was outfitted with something
similar, and could easily overtake them.

After two minutes, the
Ultio’s
velocity was less than
a tenth of what the
Orcus
ships had been capable of.

They were racing against time, and the worst part was, once
Justine disengaged the thrusters, she was completely helpless. There was
nothing for her to do but wait and hope Michael and Kenny completed their
installation before they were all blasted out of space by their pursuers.

Rather than sit up alone in the cockpit and go stir crazy,
she decided to head back and check up on Yaxche and Alex. The captain’s cabin
had a bridge monitoring station, so she could keep an eye on things.

When she got there, she found Yaxche sitting in a short
legged chair he had pulled close to the captain’s bed. Alex was safely bundled
under a web of canvas straps, and though he was perfectly still, his eyes were
wide open and unfocused. It was more than a little eerie.

“How’s our patient?” she asked in a quiet tone, as if a loud
noise could wake Alex. There was a small nook cut into one bulkhead where a
short desk and metal bench chair were installed. She sat down on the seat and
leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees.

Yaxche spoke to her, but his eyes were on Alex.

“The spirit world is a sacred place to us. Our priests
meditated all their lives in their quest to learn to walk on the path of dreams
and commune with the gods. There is a story I remember my grandfather telling
me, about one of our holy men who had mastered the gift of entering the spirit
world through dreams. He preferred being there to being in our world, and one
day he set foot on the path and never returned, though his body remained until
his death.”

Justine thought about that. “Are you saying that even if we
are able to bring Alex to where his essence is anchored, he may not recover?
May not want to come back?”

Yaxche closed his eyes and nodded. “It is my fear. The Song
of the Stars is a powerful and mesmerizing thing.”

He spoke the truth, Justine thought to herself. When she had
been in a quantized state back on Venus, she had heard the hauntingly beautiful
sound that emanated from the planets in Sol System. Each voice was distinct in a
majestic symphony. In one of Yaxche’s interviews, he had called it the Music of
the Spheres. She suspected this was one way the Kinemats were able to navigate
in space.

For a brief moment back then, when Justine had focused her
senses outside the limits of Sol System, she had become aware of the pattern of
the star beacons she had sensed in the stellar distance. If she closed her eyes,
she could almost hear the much more powerful and eternal composition of the
Song of the Stars.

If the stars were the ethereal voices that had been calling
Alex home all these years, why would he ever consider returning to normal space?
It would be like having an opportunity to be in heaven. What could the mortal
world ever offer in comparison?

Justine was just too new at this to come up with any
conclusions, let alone viable theories on the cosmic impact of her and Alex’s
transformations. She was not a philosopher or a priest, nor was she a physicist
who might better explain what was happening.

“Yaxche,” Justine said after a time. “It occurred to me that
we never asked if you wanted to come with us. Worst case scenario, we might all
die; best case, if we are able to achieve light speed, it will be over four
years before we arrive in Centauri. I apologize for not talking with you
before.”

It was the better part of a full minute before Yaxche
replied. “I know my daughter loves me, but she has built a life with her
husband and her two daughters. She does not have time for an old man like me. I
had hoped my grandson, Te’irjiil, would follow in my footsteps and become a
caretaker for the Song of the Stars, but after his poor Itzel passed, he
drifted away from everyone. Now that he is gone, I have no reason to remain in
this world.”

He looked at Alex. “Except for the Sky Traveler. He needs my
guidance, and as long as he needs me, I will go where he goes.”

They both fell into an introspective silence then, and without
Justine really being aware of it, she started to nod off.

She suddenly sprang awake when the remote monitor sounded an
alert.

“Here we go,” she said to no one in particular, and hurried
out.

∞

According to the Pulse-Doppler radar system, the enemy ship
was closing in at five-thousand kilometers distance. If Justine remembered
correctly, the outside range any of the U.S. Space Corp. missiles could be
fired in space and still be guided with any measure of reliable control was
about two-thousand kilometers. At the speed difference between the two ships,
the enemy would reach optimal firing range in less than ten minutes.

Justine called down to the engine room.

“Heads up. We’ve got company. How are you coming along?”

After a long span, Michael answered the communication feed.
“Physically, it’s installed,” he said, his eyes showing how exhausted he was. “We
calculated how much Kinemet we would need for the trip out there and loaded it
in the quantum drive.”

“Perfect,” she said.

“Kenny’s got the initial computer systems up and working,
but we’re having trouble calibrating the Kinemetic dampers. There’s some kind
of interface issue. If we can’t get it working properly, we’d have a better
chance surviving the missile attack.” Unnecessarily, he added, “We’d reach our
destination only to blow up thirteen seconds later.”

“What’s the problem?” Justine asked, and endured the harried
look Michael gave her.

He scratched at the stubble growing on his jaw. “There’s
some kind of delay—about seven seconds—between the generator and the Kinemetic damper.
With the five additional seconds it takes for the generator to build up enough
power to engage the dampers, that won’t give you time enough to rematerialize
from a quantized state and start the generator in the first place.”

Justine laughed, almost too loud, in relieved surprise.

“What?” Michael said.

“There’s no re-materialization on my end,” she said. “That’s
the missing piece of the puzzle. I’m fully conscious and aware during
quantization. I can start the generator instantly once we arrive. Alex—and the
other test candidates—were never fully transformed into a Kinemat, and had no
awareness in the quantized state. Seven seconds may not be ideal, but it is
more than enough time.”

Michael stood there dumbfounded for a moment, then snapped
out of it. “All right, then. I’ll get Kenny to map the control functions to
your console. He’ll have to give you a rundown, since it’s a patchwork of
commands—”

Justine cut him off.

“Damn,” she said. “They’re not even going to try to parley.”

“What?”

She grimaced. “I can sense a quantity of Kinemet hurtling
toward us at high velocity. They’ve launched a missile.”

“Warning shot?” Michael said.

“Can’t chance it,” she said, her voice tight. “Can we engage
the quantum drive now?”

Looking off screen a moment, probably at Kenny, Michael
finally shook his head. “At least five minutes to finish mapping the controls.”

“We’ll be atoms in two.”

Michael said something more to her, but Justine didn’t hear
it. She shut all physical awareness from her mind, and concentrated on pushing
her
sight
out toward the oncoming ship.

At the speed the radar estimated the missile was traveling—a
little over one-hundred kilometers per second— it would breach the distance
between her outer limit of
sight
to the
Ultio
in less than two
seconds.

There was a chance she could sense it the moment it came
within range of her
sight
, and if her reaction time was quick enough,
she might be able to detonate the warhead before the reacting Kinemet got too
close and triggered their own cache of the metal.

She waited … and waited…

Like a lightning strike, the Kinemet burst into her
awareness, and for a split-second, she faltered and thought she had missed her
chance.

Desperately, she sent her electropathic sense on an
intercept course with the missile.

The radar on her holoslate blanked as it was overloaded with
feedback.

For a moment, she wondered if she had failed.

Then the
Ultio
bucked like an angry bronco, and
Justine was flung hard into the bank of controls. The bulkhead screamed and the
diagnostic console lit up as hundreds of sensors reported the sudden change in
conditions.

“What the hell just happened?” someone screamed through the
comlink.

“How’s the Kinemet?” Justine called back, holding her hand
to the side of her head and struggling back into the pilot’s chair.

“Fine.” Michael appeared on the comlink, wide-eyed. “Did you
just do what I think you did?”

“Yeah,” Justine said, still breathing hard. “One warhead
destroyed.”

“You all right?” he asked.

She nodded, though her head rang from the movement. “But as
soon as they realize their missile didn’t blow us to space junk, they’ll launch
two at a time.” She shook her head, wincing. “I can’t stop two.”