The Tigrens' Glory (24 page)

From the moment she’d opened her eyes that morning, the problem of how to find the Tigren had been foremost in her mind.  It’d been an almost constant worry on some level for days, but now it was nagging at her incessantly.  She’d spent a couple of hours working out in the rec room, then spent another couple of hours sparring with a weapons-bot, but had failed to distract herself for so much as a moment.  She’d finally given in and tried to do something constructive.  Unfortunately, several hours at the vid-terminal searching for information on Dream Walking had yielded no help whatsoever.

She reached into the shower to turn on the water when, out of nowhere, she was hit with a deep, compulsive need to talk to the Tigren.  Not tonight, not after lunch, not after her shower, but right that very moment.  Nothing like that had ever happened to her before, and she hesitated at first, wondering if the stressful day had gotten to her and she was imagining things.  But the feeling didn’t go away.  In fact, it got deeper and more compelling by the second until it became a sharp, physical need that she couldn’t ignore. 

She hurried out of the bathroom, grabbing the mosaic from the table where she’d left it.  She climbed onto the bed, placing the mosaic in front of her so she could both see it, and touch it, if she needed to.  She emptied her mind, entered the place of the Flame and the Door for the briefest of moments before conjuring up her dream valley.  She’d never done it so quickly before, or with so little effort, but such was her worry that she didn’t even notice how easy it had been. 

“Kyerion?” she called, quelling the spike of fear she felt when she didn’t see them in the valley.

“
Glory
?” he replied, his voice very faint, much like it had been before she’d started Dream Walking. 

“What’s the matter?” she asked, fear flooding her.  “Why are you so weak?”

“
We don’t know,”
he replied.
 “I’m sorry, Glory, but we aren’t strong enough to come to you.”

Glory’s heart skipped a beat, but she raised her chin and pushed all fear and worry from her mind.  “I’ll come to you and make you stronger.”

“You will cause yourself harm,”
Kyerion objected.  Glory latched on to the thread of his voice and began feeding small amounts of her own energy into it as she followed it.  Each time she Dream Walked she became stronger and more adept.  She had a better understanding of her own energy now, of how much she could spare, and how to regulate it.

“Hang on, I’m coming,” she said, racing along the thin thread.  She looked down, checking to be sure she wasn’t fading as she’d done before, and stumbled in shock.  Her valley was gone.  Instead, she was in an enormous room filled with row upon endless row of clear tubes.  There were thousands of them, divided into rectangular sections.  Roughly two thirds were lit with a dim reddish light.  The remaining third were mostly blue, with groups of white here and there.  Her stomach lurched when she realized that each tube held a shadowy occupant. 

She didn’t understand what she was seeing exactly, but one thing she did know.  This place was
real
.  Somehow, after all her efforts, she’d entered the Tigrens’ reality without even meaning to.  Now she just had to find them.  She pulled her attention from the tubes and continued to follow Kyerion’s thread across the vast room.  She had no idea of how far she’d gone before the thread began slanting downward.  She followed it to a section of tubes that glowed with a soft blue light. 

She reached the floor and looked up to see Kyerion floating in a clear, viscous fluid.  The tube to his left held Kirk, and the one to Kirk’s left held Cade.  All three of them floated upright within their tubes, naked except for their arm bands and torcs, their long hair spread out behind them in dark clouds. 

“I’m here, Kyerion, standing in front of you,” she said, shocked at herself.  “I can see all three of you.  You’re in hibernation tanks.  That’s why you can’t wake up.  What’s happening to you?”

“We don’t know,”
he replied.  “
We are...fading.  I don’t know how else to describe it.  What is a hibernation tank?”

“It’s a device that puts you in a deep sleep state where no time passes,”
Glory said, using the simplest explanation she could come up with on such short notice. 
“There are thousands of them in here, wherever
here
is.”

Glory fed small amounts of energy into each of the Tigren, monitoring her own strength carefully.  While she did that, she studied the control panel on the front of Kyerion’s tank.  None of the markings were in a language she recognized, which made the array of buttons, lights, and switches meaningless to her.  She cut the flow of her energy into the Tigren.  She had a feeling she was going to need it. 

Without even thinking about what she was doing, she lightly touched each of their minds.  Kirk and Cade were too weak to communicate with her, but she sensed them listening from within Kyerion’s mind.  Kyerion was still the strongest of them, but she knew it was her energy holding their connection. 

Satisfied that they were all right for the time being, she rose back up into the air and looked around.  There were no people in sight aside from those inside the tanks.  No technicians or scientists or maintenance people.  No one at all.

As she searched the cavernous room for signs of life, she noted that each section contained about a hundred tubes.  She went to a section of dark tubes and saw that the reddish light was coming from several tiny red lights on the front of each control panel.  The tubes themselves were dark, but the reddish light was enough for her to see that the occupants were dead.

She rose up high again, scanning the room once more for signs of life.  As she watched, a blue section flickered several times before going dark.  Her stomach rolled sickeningly. 

She returned to the Tigrens’ tubes and examined the control panels once more.  She noticed that there was a small red light flashing in the upper right corner of all the tubes in this section.  She rose up again and went to a section where the light was bright white.  The same light was green on those control panels.  She returned to the Tigrens’ tubes, her mind racing as she tried to put it all together. 

The Tigrens’ tanks were working for the moment, but she guessed that they’d failed for a short time, causing their current weakness and distress.  Then, a backup system had kicked in, which explained the blue light.  From the number of dark sections in the room, she didn’t think there was much chance anyone was going to come and fix the problem, whatever it was.  Nor did she think the backup system would last very long.

“Kyerion, I have to tell you something and it’s not good,” she said.

“Whatever it is, Glory, we will deal with it,”
he said, his voice calm as always.
 

“
There are thousands of hibernation tanks in this place, divided into sections of about a hundred each.  The sections are failing, one by one.  There’s no one here.  No technicians or doctors or scientists.  No one at all.  The majority of the tanks have already shut down, and the occupants are dead.  A handful are working normally.  The rest, including your tanks, are on backup, and I don’t have any idea how long that will last.  I have no idea what’s wrong, or how to fix it.”

There was a long silence, but Glory sensed that he was thinking the situation over in his mind.
  “Is there a way to remove us from the tanks?”
he asked.

Glory gasped.  Why hadn’t she thought of that?  Panic, she realized.  She needed to calm down and start using her head or she wasn’t going to be much help.  She reached for the mask that had served her so well for so long, but for once, she couldn’t grasp it.  Her heart began to race, and her fear doubled.  She was forced to waste precious minutes taking deep, calming breaths in an effort to clear her mind. 

She was a warrior.  She could do this.  When her tension finally eased, she took another deep breath and focused on what she needed to do.

“Let me look at these controls,”
she said for Kyerion’s benefit
. 
She knelt down and studied the panel more carefully, hoping to find a diagram or symbol that would make sense to her, but it was just as meaningless on her third examination as it had been on the first.  There was probably a button that would open the door, but she had no way of knowing which one it might be, and certainly couldn’t risk pressing them at random. 

She turned her attention to the tank itself, searching for a way to open it manually.  She was relieved to find a simple latch mechanism at one side of the tank.  She reached for it immediately, but her hand passed right through the cold metal.  Her heart sank.

“
There’s a manual latch on the door,”
she told Kyerion, refusing to allow the sobs building in her throat to escape
.
“Since I’m in a dream state here, I have no body, so I can’t open it.”

“The only thing I can think of that might help is Spirit,”
Kyerion said.
  “I’m sorry, Glory.  I know that’s impossible, but I have no other suggestions.”

Spirit?
  Where in the nine hells was she supposed to get Spirit?  Even if she had it, she wouldn’t know what to do with it.
 “
Kyerion, I need to return and speak with people who know more about these things than I do,” she said.  “I’ll return soon, I promise.”

“Why do I feel so much better now than I did?”
Kyerion asked.
  “Kirk and Cade are better too, though not strong enough to speak with you themselves.”

“I fed a little energy to all three of you,”
she said.  “Should I give you more?”

“No,”
he replied.
 “We’re fine, and you’ll need your own energy for what’s to come.”

Glory hesitated, but she knew Kyerion was right.
 
“I’ll be back soon, all right?” she said again, worried about leaving them alone, but knowing she had no choice.  She wasn’t going to be able to save the Tigren without help.

“We shall await your return,”
he said.

Glory was surprised by the edge of humor in his voice, but she was far too frightened to share in it.  She closed her eyes and focused on returning her consciousness to the
Ugaztun
.

The moment she became aware of her physical body again, she opened her eyes and threw herself off the bed, running toward the door just as someone knocked on it.  She yanked it open, surprised to see Saige Lobo and her blue haired Rami, Faron, Dav and Ban.

“I need help,” Glory blurted in a near panic.  “They’re going to die.”

“Yes, I know,” Saige said as she reached for Glory’s hands and gazed straight into her eyes.  “We will do everything we can to help you save them Glory, but without you, they have no chance.  You must calm yourself.”

Glory took a deep breath and nodded, then stepped back to let the Lobos in.  Saige glanced at Faron.  “I need Lariah and Summer, as fast as possible please.”  He nodded and she turned her attention back to Glory, leading her over to the table where they each took a seat.  Just as they got settled the Dracons and the Katres speed traveled into the room.

“What’s going on?” Lariah asked Saige as she and Summer hurried toward the table, taking the two remaining chairs.  One look at Saige’s face as she sat down and Lariah understood.  “Riata?”

Saige nodded, then turned to Glory.  “It would take a long time to explain all of this, but in short, I have a Spirit Guide,” she said.  “A woman who was once a Healer, and now helps me to guide the Jasani.  Or I help her.  I’m not sure which.  Her name is Riata.”

Glory nodded.  She’d never heard of Spirit Guides, but that didn’t matter.  She’d never heard of most of the things she’d seen and experienced over the past couple of weeks.

“Riata just sent me an urgent message,” Saige said, casting a meaningful look at first Summer, then Lariah.  “The Three are to help Glory now, or the Tigren will be lost.  She said this is why we were given access to the
forgotten power
.
”
  The room went silent as everyone considered the meaning of that statement.

Glory leapt to her feet and went to her bed for the mosaic, barely noticing that the male Lobos, Dracons, and Katres, had positioned themselves in a circle around the table.  “I was just there,” she said, returning to the table with the mosaic in her hands.  “With the Tigren, in the place where their bodies are.”

“That isn’t an easy thing to do,” Summer said in surprise.  “Tell us, please.”

“The situation is very bad,” Glory began, then told them everything she’d seen as quickly as she could.  “I don’t know how to fix whatever’s wrong, or even if I could fix it if I knew,” she finished.  “Kyerion suggested getting them out of the tanks, and there’s a manual latch that I’m sure will open the door, but I don’t have a physical body there.  Kyerion said I’d need Spirit, but I’ve no idea where to find Spirit, or how to use it if I had it.”

“Lariah, Saige and I can provide you with Spirit,” Summer said confidently.  All of the men stared at her in surprise, though no one questioned her. 

“You can?” Glory asked.  “Kyerion said it would be impossible.”

“He’d be right, except that Spirit is the
forgotten power
the Three have been given access to,” Summer said. 

“Just out of curiosity, how do you know that?” Saige asked.

“After the meeting we had the other day when Spirit was mentioned, I gave it some thought,” she replied. “I think the Nine used Spirit, through us, to enable them to speak to the clans.  In doing so, they gave us access to it.”

“We channeled Spirit?” Lariah asked.  “Are you certain?”

“Yes, but even if I wasn’t, the fact that Glory needs Spirit and Riata sent us here to help her, would have convinced me,” Summer said. 

“That works for me,” Lariah said.  “Any ideas how we’re supposed to go about doing this without killing Glory in the process?” 

“Yes, that’s the big question, isn’t it?” Summer murmured thoughtfully.  They were all adept at feeding magic to their Rami, and it was easy enough for the men to feed energy to their Arimas.  Feeding magic or energy to a third party was a different matter altogether.  If Glory were
berezi
, and her future Rami were present, they could have done it, but that wasn’t the case.