The Shores Beyond Time Page 9

  “There are no stars.” Phoebe was gazing out at the fields of green nebula clouds.

  That’s what it was about this swath of space, Liam realized. Despite one or two little gleaming dots here and there, the space in all directions was empty, barren . . .

  “A dead universe,” said Kyla. “Just a few old neutron stars, but otherwise, there’s almost nothing here. Well, except for us. And this thing.”

  “But this machine isn’t dead . . . ,” said Phoebe, gazing down at the quiet buildings. “Is it?”

  “No,” said Kyla. “It looked that way when we arrived, but it was more like . . . dormant.”

  Waiting, Liam thought, though Iris had never said such a thing.

  Something flashed out beyond Dark Star. Liam saw a rectangular shape appear: the doorway, outlined in silver circuitry, but unlike when they’d seen it from the other side, in their universe, here it stood firmly at the end of one of Dark Star’s many curving arms, hundreds of meters tall, an extension of this place. As Liam watched, its inky center lit up, shimmering from midnight black to iridescent green, the light brightening in concentric circles like ripples on water.

  Liam felt an urge to run for that doorway, to get home right now—but he also felt a powerful curiosity stirring in him. This place could bridge the boundaries between universes; what else could it do? And she wants to show me.

  The doorway reached a brightness that made them squint and then all at once rippled out, back into darkness.

  “Captain’s back,” said Kyla.

  “From where?” Phoebe asked.

  Kyla didn’t answer. She guided the Carrion toward the top of the central core area of Dark Star. The source of that single light was a large dome-shaped structure. It reminded Liam of an old astronomical observatory on Mars, or in pictures of Earth, though this one seemed to be made of some sort of clear material, the light glowing out from inside.

  As they neared, they passed over a wide gap in the surface of the arm, just before it connected to the central core. Liam saw what appeared to be racks of ships nestled inside, hundreds of them, larger than this ship they were in. They were sleek and oblong, like oily teardrops. Liam had seen one before, while flying the skim drone at Saturn, in the timestream.

  Kyla brought them down over a hexagonal landing platform, just beside the observatory-shaped building. A Cosmic Cruiser was already parked there. As the Carrion touched down, a clear, liquid dome of energy materialized overhead, enclosing the platform.

  “This way.” Kyla led them out of the ship, not bothering to put on her helmet. Pale green nebula light bathed their faces as they crossed the platform. It was quiet, except for a slight hum from the energy field overhead and a low rumble somewhere far beneath their feet.

  “It’s lonely,” said Phoebe.

  But we’re not alone, Liam thought. Once again, he felt the urge to tell Phoebe about Iris, followed immediately by an urge not to, resulting in that frozen-in-place feeling.

  They followed Kyla across the platform to an entrance that led to the dome-shaped building. There was no airlock door or even any door-like structure, yet once they’d stepped into the corridor, the energy field winked out over the landing pad and re-formed as a solid barrier behind them.

  The walls of this corridor were similar to the insides of the Carrion, made of smoky glass, crisscrossed by networks of thin, curving tubes, with occasional lights pulsing through them. The floor was made of black metallic floor panels, which lit up and went dark sequentially as they walked, creating an island of lavender light that only glowed beneath their feet and a meter or so in front of and behind them.

  The short corridor opened into the wide domed room they’d seen from outside. It afforded a panoramic view of the ghostly nebula. The dome descended all the way to the floor, the view broken here and there only by threadlike black support beams.

  There were no physical structures in the room, no control systems, seats, or screens, except for a circular platform off to one side that was raised a meter off the floor. Beside this platform was another small collection of lights floating as if in orbit around each other. They were being moved around by the only other person in the room, a man wearing a jumpsuit identical to Kyla’s.

  “Hey, Jordy,” said Kyla as they crossed toward him.

  “Good timing,” said Jordy, glancing over his shoulder. It could have been the lighting in here, but Liam thought he saw the same dark circles under Jordy’s eyes as Kyla had. “Here he comes.”

  Lights began to flash in the air above the platform—not coming from physical sources, more like small lightning bolts seemingly blinking in and out of existence, with the overall effect of creating a vertical cylinder of light in the center of the platform. The lights flashed brighter and more rapidly. And now something began to take shape in that cone of light: a tall figure, with broad shoulders and thick arms and legs, made of sharp angles.

  There was a hum, a buzzing in the air, the lights growing almost blindingly bright, and then there he was, standing on the platform, ice fog steaming off him.

  The metal-suited man.

  Liam froze, his heart leaping into his throat.

  There was a glint of silver from his wrist, where he wore not one but two chronologist’s watches.

  “Welcome back, Captain,” said Jordy. “Mission accomplished?”

  “In more ways than one.” The metal-suited man turned his heavy helmet toward Liam, his face hidden by a lavender-tinted visor. “Hello, time traveler!” he called. “I’m so glad to finally see you here.”

  Spots in Liam’s vision. A storm of memories at once, spinning like a dust devil: the metal-suited man in the timestream on Mars, the ship flying toward him at Saturn, the boiling supernova, helpless—

  “And look,” said the metal-suited man. “I brought us a friend!”

  He held a black metallic weapon, something like a stun rifle, its housing flickering with glassy Dark Star technology, and he jabbed its end into the back of the blue-skinned, black-robed, many-legged chronologist standing beside him.

  5

  TIME TO DARK STAR FUNCTIONALITY: 15H:38M

  “Wait,” said Phoebe, gazing from the metal-suited man to Kyla and Jordy. “You guys are the Drove?”

  Seeing him standing here now, the realization sank into Liam, cold and heavy.

  “What’s she talking about?” said Jordy, rearranging the light spheres in the air in front of him.

  “Oh, that.” The metal-suited man’s visor slid up. He was older, his hair and beard mostly gray, only a few remaining flecks of black, but there was a youthful brightness in his brown eyes, and in his half smile, that was notably different from Kyla and Jordy’s appearance. “That was something I said to Liam when we first met on Mars. Just trying out a name for us, one that might scare off these meddlesome buggers.” He waved his weapon at the chronologist, who blinked and looked mildly around the room.

  “Doesn’t that make us sound kind of ominous, sir?” said Kyla. She and Jordy shared a look that Liam couldn’t quite read.

  “Well, that was the idea.”

  “To scare little kids?” said Jordy, his eyes shifting from Liam to the captain.

  “No, of course not.” The captain tapped the settings on his chest. Little bolts of white lightning slithered around his arms and legs. The suit hissed as a coating of frost melted, dripping on the platform. “Can I get this thing off yet?”

  “One more minute, sir.” Jordy turned his attention back to the hovering spheres. “You’re only seventy-five percent phase locked.”

  “Right, right.” The captain looked at Liam. “You have no idea how uncomfortable this suit is.”

  Liam averted his eyes, too stunned to think.

  “The Drove are human,” Phoebe said, like she was sliding heavy puzzle pieces into place.

  “The crew of the Artemis,” said Liam. He could scarcely wrap his mind around what this truly meant.

  “Okay. . . .” Jordy gripped one of the light s
pheres with two hands. It flashed briefly. “You’re locked in.”

  “Finally.” The captain unfastened his helmet and slid the thick, heavy unit over his head. He placed it on a metal rack that rose up from the platform. “Let’s start over: I’m Captain Barrie, ISA Artemis. I’m sorry if I frightened you earlier,” he said to Liam. “I’m as exhausted as the rest of the crew.”

  Liam had no idea what to think: The way that Captain Barrie was acting now was so different from when they’d first met. Which version was the real one? Did he remember that he’d basically chased Liam, demanding Liam give him the watch? And how long ago had that moment even been for him? Days ago? Hours? It was recent for Liam, too, in terms of conscious days, but those decades that had passed in stasis made the fear feel like something that had been with him a long time. Whereas Barrie acted as if that moment was barely significant.

  “There’s a lot we need to talk about, but—”

  “You blew up the sun!” said Phoebe. “Your own sun. How could you?”

  “Look, I can see why you might say that, but—” Barrie paused, peering at her. “I’m sorry, who—or should I say what—are you?”

  “I’m Phoebe. I’m a Telphon. Your people destroyed my planet.”

  Liam saw the captain’s perplexed look and added, “With Phase One. Phoebe’s people have been at war with humanity ever since we left Mars.”

  “We’re at war?” Jordy said.

  “Upside,” said Kyla, “these two confirm that the fleet got out of the solar system before the nova. At least there’s that.”

  Jordy made a whistling sound and looked at the ceiling in relief. “Finally, some good news.”

  “There were casualties at Saturn Station, though,” said Liam, “and at Delphi. There might be more that we don’t know of.”

  Barrie was still gazing at Phoebe, his lips moving like he was making a calculation. “You’re part of a race of beings that lived on Aaru-5,” he reasoned. “Telphons, you said?”

  “Yeah. Billions of people died because of what you did here, so stop talking like it’s a game.”

  Barrie’s face fell, his voice growing quiet. “Oh, I never meant to imply that this was a game. Nor would I deny that we have blood on our hands. But I think, once we explain what has happened here, you may see things differently.”

  “So there are those aliens,” said Jordy, pointing to Phoebe, “and those aliens.” He pointed to the chronologist. “And whoever built this place? Any reason why I shouldn’t be more freaked out than I already was?”

  “It’s hardly surprising,” said Barrie, “especially given what we’ve learned here.” He held the Dark Star weapon out to Kyla. “Take this, and make sure he doesn’t run off,” he said, motioning to the chronologist.

  Kyla gripped the weapon and surveyed the chronologist uncertainly. “How do I make it listen to me?”

  “I can hear you just fine,” said the chronologist. He had a deeper voice than the being Liam and Phoebe had previously met. This chronologist was not holding one of those orange crystals, and yet everyone in the room seemed to understand him. Liam guessed that Dark Star was translating him, too. “And you needn’t worry. It is not in my nature to fight or contradict you.” His large pearlescent eyes found Liam. “After all, these things happen.”

  “Are you going to kill him, too?” Liam said to Captain Barrie.

  “No. That one on Mars—”

  “They’re called chronologists,” said Liam.

  “Ah, good to know. Yes, that was certainly a misstep on my part. I admit I was in a hurry—it’s been an intense few days here—and when I found that one snooping around, I thought it might be a threat, that they would try to stop us—”

  “Stop you from what?” Phoebe asked.

  “From saving my crew,” said Barrie. “From completing our mission here.”

  “The chronologists aren’t a threat,” said Liam. “They just record everything that happens in the universe.”

  “That may be so,” said Barrie, wagging his finger in the air. “But toward what end? That’s what you have to ask yourself.”

  “It’s . . . just what they do,” said Liam.

  Barrie shook his head. “No one just does anything. There’s always a reason, even if they themselves won’t admit it or, in some cases, don’t even realize it. Do you know, I saw one of these beings on Earth, when I was about your age?” Barrie gazed at the nebula outside, an almost dreamy look in his eye. “In fact, you could argue that what I saw that day led me all the way here. Not that there hasn’t been a cost. . . .” A shadow crossed his face. “At any rate, now that we have this chronologist, and perhaps with your help, we can figure out exactly what is going on here.”

  “The portal is causing damage,” said Liam. “If you keep using it, the universe is going to collapse.” He looked at the chronologist. “Right?”

  The chronologist was busy gazing around the room and seemed not to hear him.

  “Who told you that? Them?” said Barrie. “I mean, no doubt the portal causes some disturbance to space-time—it’s incredibly powerful—but according to the Dark Star logs, that rifting, while disruptive, is not going to tear apart the walls between universes or anything like that. Besides, we’re not the ones using the portal. It’s Dark Star.”

  He held up his wrist with the two chronologist’s watches. “Thank you for bringing this, by the way,” he said to Liam, tapping one of them. “I had a feeling when I first saw you in the timestream that a device like this might help me get some answers. And am I to deduce that you were able to travel in time using only this watch?”

  “Sort of,” said Liam.

  “Curious. It only works for me when I have this suit on. And even then, I cannot quite anchor myself in another time. The only beings who’ve even noticed me are these chronologists and you. Nevertheless, it led me right to their library, or whatever that place was.”

  He pressed a series of buttons around the collar of the suit. It separated down the center, folding open with another hiss and allowing Barrie to step out. “That’s better.” He hung the suit on the rack beside the helmet and shook his arms, then hopped off the platform and strode to the center of the room.

  “This technology is so far beyond our comprehension,” he said, motioning to the curling, shadowy arms of Dark Star. “This station, the portal we flew through. Take that suit: I believe it was created for the purpose of performing maintenance and repair work on the portal. I’ve used it to travel through space and time with relative ease, and yet we barely understand how it works.”

  “How are you using it, then, if you know so little about it?” Liam asked.

  “Because Dark Star is allowing us to,” said Barrie. “It translates certain systems and allows access to certain functions. It seems to sense what we need and respond to it . . . but nothing more. We can barely begin to comprehend this technology on our own, and as a result, we’ve learned a great deal about this place, and yet almost nothing at all.”

  Iris sensed what I needed too, Liam thought. Responding to his needs, just like what Barrie was describing, and yet she was in many ways as mysterious to Liam as this station was to Barrie and his crew.

  “Hold on,” said Phoebe. “Did you just say you flew through the portal? I thought it sucked you in.”

  “Well, the portal exerted an incredibly strong gravitational disturbance. I had to weigh the odds of trying to escape that force, which all reports indicated might well tear the ship apart, or to fly through and take our chances with whatever was on the other side. Whether that was the right call or not is still hard to say, but the cost has certainly been high.”

  Liam noticed that Kyla had crossed her arms and averted her eyes.

  “You’re making it sound like you didn’t want to blow up a bunch of stars and nearly exterminate at least two races that we know of,” said Phoebe.

  Barrie sighed. “Of course we didn’t. Why on earth would we want to blow up our own sun? We didn’t even . . .
I should start at the beginning, if that’s possible.” He raised his hands to the view beyond the dome. “Our home universe is a shade under fourteen billion years old. Based on the neutron stars we can see here, we estimate this universe to be over ten trillion. And Dark Star may be even older than that. Its metallic composition doesn’t even respond to carbon dating—it seems to continuously refresh its molecular structure, on a subatomic level.

  “When we arrived, it was completely silent. Other than that portal, it was as dead as everything else here. Even if the Artemis hadn’t been too damaged to risk leaving, we knew we were staring at a massive discovery, and it was our duty as both a military and a research vessel to at least perform a preliminary investigation. Apparently this is old news to the two of you, but in our timeline, there had been no evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial life—”

  “Almost none,” Phoebe muttered under her breath.

  Barrie paused. “Yes, well . . . never mind the existence of a multiverse, and potentially of beings with power we could scarcely comprehend. Also, we needed to know if Dark Star could be a safe haven, should the damage to the Artemis prove to be beyond repair.

  “So I assembled a small recon team. We’d barely departed the Artemis when that landing platform outside lit up. And as we touched down, the energy field came on. . . . It was as if Dark Star was inviting us in. Lights led us to this control room, where it greeted us with these displays.” He motioned to the floating spheres near Jordy. “Not only that, it showed us how to activate the gravity and life-support systems, and the settings were configured perfectly for humans. In that moment, we still had no idea what this place was, or what it would do, and given the dire condition of the Artemis, naturally we chose to test these systems. So we turned them on. . . .”

  Barrie’s eyes flashed to Kyla and Jordy, both of whom were gazing elsewhere, their faces ashen.