“They’re waiting on you.”
Cole snapped his head up just in time to see a flash of red hair swirling through the air, following the speaker out through the door. Her voice rang in his ears, burning his cheeks. He shook his head and cursed at himself, then closed his eyes and pictured Molly.
With red hair.
“Aw, c’mon!” he said, clasping both hands to his face in frustration.
And regretting it immediately.
ѻѻѻѻ
When Cole left the room, he saw Mortimor and the Stanley conferring at the end of the hall; he hurried down to meet them.
“What did you do to your face?” Mortimor asked, his eyes wide.
Cole touched his bruised cheek, using the only hand he trusted at the moment. “I was practicing what I’m gonna do to the guy who took my arm,” he said.
“Oh, boy,” the Stanley said, smiling. “Another hothead.”
Cole returned the robot’s smirk, then noticed something strange about the Stanley. The skin around the mouth was perfectly natural, not folded and plastic-looking. Cole’s hand fell to own lip, his jaw dropping.
“We haven’t been formally introduced,” the man said. “I’m Arthur. Arthur Dakura.”
“You’re not a Stanley,” Cole said.
Arthur laughed. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “Well, not really. I guess you could say they’re me. I modeled them after me, anyway.”
Mortimor grinned and slapped Arthur on the back. “C’mon, let’s walk. You boys can chat on the way.”
He pulled Arthur along, and Cole hurried after them. At the end of the hallway, the trio turned a corner, and Cole got his first glimpse of the motley makeup of the place’s inhabitants. Callites and Delphians and several races he’d never seen pictures of strolled in and out of connecting passageways. The place had the bustle of the Academy during a drill. Hallways, offices, classrooms, dormitories—each room they passed had a chaos of bodies stirring within. All manner of creature moved between the doorways, but only a smattering of Humans.
Cole tried not to flinch as a male Drenard rounded the corner wearing a white combat suit. The blue alien nodded to Mortimor, who greeted the massive alien in a different language. Cole held up a finger, like a student with a question. He watched the Drenard pass, his jaw hanging agape. Arthur tugged him along, asking a question before Cole could get his own out:
“I take it from your confusion of my identity that you’ve met my simulacrums. How long ago were you there?”
“Dakura?” Cole looked over his shoulder as the Drenard ducked into another doorway. “Um, a week? Or less, actually. I’m not sure, to tell the truth.”
“Just a week?” Cole turned back to Arthur and saw the man’s eyes grow wide. Arthur rested a hand on Cole’s shoulder as they steered through traffic after Mortimor. “Tell me, how was the planet looking?”
“The planet? It was, uh, dark gray. Kinda boring, to be frank.”
“Dark gray? Excellent!” Arthur clapped his hands together. “Brilliant.”
“Yeah, real nice place you got there,” Cole said distractedly. He turned to watch a creature go by that seemed covered in plates of stone.
“Did you take a tour? Of LIFE, I mean?”
“Up close and personal,” Cole said, not caring to relate his run-in with security. He followed Mortimor through a door and into a stairwell; Cole held the door open for Arthur, who nodded politely like everything buzzing around them was perfectly natural.
“What’re you doing here?” Cole asked.
“Thank you,” Arthur said, shutting the door behind him. “Well, I wish I could say I was here on an important mission to save the galaxy, but I landed quite by accident. I was out training with my yacht—”
“You were showboating,” Mortimor called back. He had already begun to take the stairs two at a time.
Arthur smiled at Cole and winked. He rested a hand on Cole’s back and guided him up the stairs, talking as they went. “I was just having some fun in a time trial course, trying out some alterations to my own thruster design. I got in a spot and took a chance on jumping out. The rest is too long a story to relate.”
Cole shook his head. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean you specifically. What are all you people doing here? I don’t even recognize half the aliens back there.”
Arthur came up beside Cole, shaking his head. “The Luddites made this about race a while back. What you see here is just the fraction of the Underground that remains, and a lot of them are members from other galaxies. The majority of incoming are Human now, ever since the war in Darrin. Most of them are snagged by the Luddites before we can get to them. The Milky Way tends to dump out in the colds for whatever reason.”
“So this is where people disappear to?” Cole quickened his pace, trying to catch up with Mortimor. “Why can’t we just jump back out?”
The stairs ended on the next level, terminating at a single door. Mortimor had a tall locker open. He brought out sheets of plastic and what appeared to be goggles. “Doesn’t work that way,” Mortimor said. “Here, put these on.”
He handed Cole a clear poncho-like outfit and a pair of goggles. Cole worked the plastic over his head while Arthur did the same and continued talking:
“Normally, the little critters can’t see into hyperspace, what with the light and all. We’ve bred some that can, but they have the opposite problem: they can’t see out. Well, metaphorically speaking. Supposedly it’s two types of light, or the medium they vibrate in, but that’s more of Ryke’s bag, all I do is play doctor.” He glanced at Cole’s arm as Cole fumbled with his goggles. “Best I know how, anyway.” He met Cole’s gaze and frowned. “I’m sorry, you have no idea what I’m talking about, do you? Of course you don’t.”
“Fusion fuel,” Cole said. He strapped the goggles to his forehead and hoped he’d said it like it wasn’t one of the most recent things he’d learned, trying to come across as cool and adult-like as the other two. He pulled the hood of the poncho over his head, trying to copy what they were doing and not seem completely lost. “So we’re stuck here? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“You ever met a guy in a bar with a lot of cool stories from hyperspace?” Arthur asked.
Cole shook his head, getting the point.
“Grab your neighbor,” Mortimor said. He reached for Cole’s elbow and lowered his goggles. Cole did the same, making his world completely black as he reached out for Arthur.
“Ready?”
“You betcha,” Arthur said.
“Sure,” Cole said, not knowing what to expect.
Mortimor cracked the door, letting in enough light to see clearly through the blackened spectacles. The three men stepped out onto a rooftop covered in water. Cole didn’t feel the rain at first; they were sheltered by the small stairwell sticking out of the roof. Once he stepped out, however, he saw it to either side—drifting sideways, parallel to the ground, just like the snow.
“That’s weird,” he said, still clinging to Arthur and fighting the vertigo.
“Makes perfect sense once you get a handle on the physics. Light and water, my friend, the components of life—”
“I didn’t bring you boys up here to discuss the weather,” Mortimor said. He leaned close so they could hear him clearly over the patter of rain on the back of the stairwell. “Follow me.”
Arthur shrugged at Cole and raised his eyebrows. The two of them turned and followed Mortimor around the stairwell and into the driving rain. Cole looked down at his feet as he walked so we wouldn’t feel so dizzy. He noticed the top of the building was coated with a rubbery surface, probably put there to provide traction through the film of water in addition to keeping the rain out of the structure beneath.
As they walked directly into the sideways torrent, the large drops of water popped up and down his chest, sounding much like the incessant gunfire of the Academy’s rifle range. Cole kept his head low and marched with the others toward the edge of the flat, rectangular roof, the size and shape of which reminded him of boring office buildings.
As they neared the edge, however, Cole realized the place was far more interesting than that. The entire structure was moving. Or maybe the ground below was simply sliding by beneath them. Either way, as Cole stopped a meter from the edge and looked down, Mortimor and Arthur had to reach out and grab his elbows to steady him before the vertigo sent him reeling.
“Don’t get too close,” Mortimor warned. He and Arthur pulled Cole away from the edge.
Cole found it hard to turn away from the sight of the land rushing by. The world below was a field of mud covered by a skim coat of water—an infinite, brownish mirror. The lowest layers of rain skipped right across it, leaving furrows like waterfowl coming in for a landing. And all of it slid beneath the building, giving it the appearance of a dirty, rippled ocean viewed from the bow of a steaming ship. Cole’s stomach began to protest all the myriad cues of motion that belied the solid footing beneath him.
“Best not to even look at it,” Mortimor said.
Cole agreed. He turned away from the sight and put his back to the rain, huddling close to the other two men.
“Then why bring me up here?” he asked.
“So we won’t be overheard,” Mortimor said.
“What, like spies?”
Cole looked to Arthur, whose grin had been replaced with tight, flat lips. “Is he serious?”
“We have a few embedded within the Luddites—we’re pretty sure they have some here. It’s complicated, but a lot of soldiers have defected over the years. It’s easy to forget why you’re here after a while. Some people flip just to see if they’ll be more comfortable on the other side.”
“Or because they’ve grown too comfortable,” Mortimor suggested. “Some just get bored.”
“So why are you here?” Cole asked. “And what’s up with this place? Is this building on wheels?” He concentrated on his feet, trying to sense any movement.
“Grav panels,” Arthur said rather loudly to compete with the rain. “They cycle, pushing and pulling, smooth as a baby’s—”
Mortimor waved him silent.
“Listen, son, there’s an invasion underway. A very nasty people—”
“The Bern.” Cole nodded. “They design the universe every time it goes around. I’m the Golden One. I got a lot of this from the armless dude.”
Mortimor’s eyes narrowed.
“Byrne. I told you he was here.”
“You didn’t tell me you talked to him,” Mortimor said.
“Well, I mostly listened.” Cole faced the far end of the roof, allowing the rain to smack the plastic across the back of his head. The men to either side of him did the same, the three of them standing in a line, their heads bent close to confer over the pattering drops.
“And he called you the golden one?”
“Or chosen, I can’t remember. Anyway, he said it was too late. Then a bunch of people came in, dressed in white—you guys, I take it—and everyone started getting hacked up—” Cole stopped.
“Yeah, that was some of our men,” Arthur said.
“I picked up a little of what Byrne was thinking,” Mortimor explained. “It was just coming through too damn slow to decipher easily. What part we got, well, no offense but I thought you were someone else.”
Cole glanced over at Mortimor. “Do what?”
“I picked up another name—” Mortimor looked across him to Arthur. “We thought Molly—”
“Yeah,” Cole said, “it sounded like Byrne was confused about something similar. And look, I’m sorry to disappoint, but I have no idea about any of this stuff. All I care about now is getting back to her. And maybe visiting that camp on the way and kicking some ass.” He held up his new arm, tenting the poncho in front of him. He clenched and unclenched a fist, visible through the clear plastic. “I’m ready to try out this new hand,” he said.
Mortimor shook his head. “Forget about it. We don’t go on raids for revenge. Besides, there’s an endless supply of idiots on both sides, there’s no changing anything by bashing against each other.” He gestured out to the moving, inundated world beyond. “The best we can hope for out here is to stay in one piece and in one place.”
“What kind of ship did you arrive in?” Arthur asked.
“Firehawk,” Cole said. He reached up to adjust his hood and keep the water from dripping in.
Arthur looked across at Mortimor, who shook his head.
“Why’d you guys bring me up here?” Cole asked, feeling like there was something they weren’t telling him.
“To ask you a favor,” Mortimor said. “But first, we need to know everything you know. Are you sure you never heard any news about Lok?”
Cole shook his head. “Like I told you yesterday, we were heading there, but we got picked up by the Navy—”
“That’s where the Firehawk came from?” Arthur asked.
“Yeah.”
“Why’d the Navy pick you up?” Mortimor asked.
“We were leaving Dakura where we— Molly’s mom, the one on the ship—”
He looked to Arthur for help, but got a blank look.
“We were told to unplug her mom—your wife, sir. I—I didn’t want to, but . . . you should have seen—”
“And did you?”