Ouroboros 3: Repeat (14 page)

It was a terrifying one.

Now the entity had turned on them—or they’d turned on it—could they still use it to get home?

She withdrew into silence, her eyes narrowing as she stared over his left shoulder at the wall.
‘Yes. I can still access its energy. It will be a battle though,’ she added.

He shuddered at her admission.

‘But I can try,’ she let her gaze drift back to him, and as it searched his, she added, ‘I can try. So all hope isn’t lost. We aren’t necessarily stuck in the future. We can change this,’ she concluded.

He nodded. Low and firm, he simply kept bobbing his head up and down as his determination returned to him, trickle by trickle.

As it did, he swore the energy in the room changed. Or perhaps it was just the energy between them.

It solidified, became realer.

Back on Remus 12 when they had worked tirelessly to get this ship into orbit, he’d felt something shift between them.

Their interactions had become easier, more instinctual.

Now that ease doubled. No, tripled.

He found himself smiling automatically, reaching out to her automatically, and nodding automatically.

She smiled back, breathed hard, then nodded. ‘Right, now, shouldn’t you go back to bed?’

‘
Sorry?’ he blinked quickly.

‘
Before the entity went ballistic, you were sleeping, Carson. And you still look pretty tired.’

He had to laugh at that. Really? She thought
he
looked tired? She’d just miraculously fought the entity and won. He’d had to wake her up from unconsciousness. If anyone needed a rest, it was her.

Before he could say that, she just grabbed up his hand and led him from the med bay and back onto the bridge.

He tried to ignore the trail of tingles her firm touch sent through his hand and up into his arm, eventually tracing their way right into his chest.

He had to tell himself he was the lieutenant and she was the cadet.

He had to remind himself what kind of relationship they had.

 
. . . .

Except it was pointless. Because everything had changed.

So he let himself be pulled in by the sensation.

All at once he was reminded of what he’d told her. Those three little words he’d shouted when the entity had pressed him against the roof.

I love you.

He’d blurted them out in a moment of instinctual fear as he’d genuinely thought he’d lose his life.

Now he winced.

Wow
 . . . he’d said that.

Did she remember?

Had she even been conscious at the time?

Before he could settle too far into his embarrassing thoughts, she pointed at the command chair, told him to sit, then spent a few seconds pondering the view screen in silence.

When he hesitated, she turned over her shoulder and barked at him to, ‘sit.’

‘
Yes, ma’am,’ he mumbled as he followed her command.

Though he fought to stay awake, it was hard.

Every time he tried to wake himself back up, she would just snap at him to sleep, warning that she’d even go so far as to drug him if she had to.

So eventually he drifted off.

It was an uneasy sleep though. Of course it was. At any moment the entity could control Nida and send him hurtling toward the ceiling. At any moment the Vex could attack. At any moment they could come across the rest of the United Galactic Coalition Fleet.

Yet with Nida sitting quietly by his side, he managed it.

Cadet Nida Harper

Things were happening so very fast. She didn’t have time to think, let alone catch up to things.

Yet at least now she’d been provided with a moment of blessed silence and peace in which to think.

And think she did.

One thought in particular owned her mind.

The entity . . . .

What was it doing? More to the point, what the hell was it in the first place?

She’d felt how brutally it had fought against her as it had tried to flatten Carson to the ceiling. It had only been Nida’s own raw determination and willingness to do whatever she could that had seen her win in the end.

Not for the first time, and not for the last, she found herself staring down at her left hand.

The glow wasn’t there any more.

She’d pushed it back. All the way back, as far as it would go. And there she would keep it until
 . . . until what? What would happen next?

She swallowed hard, feeling a lump form instantly in her throat. She tried to breathe around it, but it was hard.

Blinking her eyes closed, she shook her head.

‘
You can do this,’ she promised herself out loud.

She would have to.

As Nida sat there considering her hand and what had happened to her, she reflexively began to pat her implant. At first it was a distracted move, then she pushed her fingers harder into that small circle of metal that lay flush with her skin.

It calmed her immeasurably.

When she’d fought the entity, she’d realised how similar the sensation had been to using her implant. The ability to make things move with her mind . . . .

Releasing a truly frustrated but thankfully quiet sigh, she tried to push all the thoughts from her mind.

They couldn’t do her any good. The only thing that could help her now was pushing forward. They had to get to the rest of the United Galactic Coalition fleet in the Coltex System.

And when they were there, they could gather as much information on the Vex attack as they could.

With that plan solidifying her will and concentrating her otherwise scatty mind, she closed her eyes.

Yet as soon as she did, she forced them open.

She still felt a latent tingle chasing through her arms and chest, concentrating especially on her pointing finger. The same finger she had used to gesture towards the roof when the entity had tried to kill Carson.

It was a horrible sensation, and she quickly brought up her other hand and tried to wipe it away.

‘Just concentrate on the plan,’ she told herself in a firm tone, ‘ignore everything else.’

Yet despite how often she repeated that mantra, it wouldn’t work.

Because, seriously, she had just discovered that the entity wasn’t the sweetness and light it had pretended to be.

It had been lying to her.

Manipulating her. Just like the Vex had done in the future.

She shuddered again. This time it was a full-bodied move that saw her quickly bring her arms around herself.

How could she have trusted it? How could she have taken what it said as fact?

‘
Don’t think about it,’ she tried.

Yet of course, once again, it didn’t work.

Something else did though.

Her exact thought was echoed by Carson as he suddenly roused.
‘Don’t think about it,’ he whispered as he pushed himself up in this chair.

She turned quickly, blinking back her surprise at his sudden interruption.

He pressed his fingers into his brow, gave a rather loud yawn, then shrugged his shoulders. ‘Just push it from your mind. We’ll find the fleet, we’ll find what they know, and we will fix this,’ he promised.

While she had not been able to push back her thoughts, one look into his fixed, if still tired gaze, managed to do it for her.

He could distract her with such carefree ease. But it was a completely different kind of distraction than that which the Vex had tried to use on her and Carson.

It was pleasant and wholly welcome.

Before she knew what she was doing, she stood up.

She wanted to walk over to him and
 . . . .

Ah, she didn’t know.

Her body had just acted spontaneously, and now her mind had pause to catch up to it, she realised she had no idea what she wanted.

.
 . . .

No, that was a lie.

Every second she spent with him, she realised more and more what she wanted.

At that thought, she swallowed, feeling her cheeks tinge with heat.

‘At least the colour is coming back to your cheeks,’ he said through another yawn.

She blushed even more vibrantly at that.

‘Now,’ Carson stood up and arched his back, paying especial attention to his neck, ‘it’s your turn to get some rest.’ he gestured towards the door, no doubt indicating the crew quarters.

She didn’t move.

‘Nida?’ he prompted her.

She shook her head.
‘I can’t.’

‘
I thought we talked about this? We need to look after ourselves.’

‘
I don’t want to go to sleep around it,’ she suddenly admitted in a small voice.

She hoped it was clear that by ‘it’, she meant the entity.

Carson didn’t say anything immediately. Instead, he considered her with a quiet, watchful expression. Then he nodded once in a stiff and sure move. ‘Okay. I’ll try to see what stimulation meds the computer can concoct. But . . . .’

‘
I’ll be fine. We just . . . I’ll be fine.’

Carson looked at her quietly.
‘You need your rest. We can’t run you dry.’

‘
I know,’ she brought up her right arm and trailed the fingers over her left wrist. Though she wanted to touch her left hand, she could not.

Carson noted the move with interest.
‘You said the entity is weak. Well maybe right now is the perfect time to get some rest.’

She considered his advice.

. . . .

He was probably right, but she just couldn’t put up with any more of its visions. She couldn’t bare standing on Remus 12 again only to see the stars fall from the sky.

As she thought about that, her eyes narrowed.

She’d gone through that vision so many times, and countless others, yet now she really stopped to consider whether they truly were visions.

She’d already experienced how technologically advanced the Vex of the future were. They had a device that could make one experience a simulation with perfect clarity and with every detail one would need to assume it was reality.

.
 . . .

Well that was eerily close to what the entity could do.

‘Nida?’ he asked quietly as he shifted close to her side.

Again he distracted her, and again it was the most welcome move he could make.

She found herself smiling despite the situation. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said again quietly.

‘
You need to rest. I can set the computer to monitor the activity of the entity. I can set it to monitor your neural activity too. I can wake you up the instant anything happens.’

She nodded at him, letting his words calm her.

Yet it wasn’t his words that finally made her nod her head and acquiesce to his request.
 

It was his presence, his mere proximity.
‘Just, be there,’ she added. A part of her was mortified that she’d actually said it, but she couldn’t stop. ‘Done leave me while I’m sleeping, please?’ she added in a croaked voice.

He smiled. It was a slow move that set his lips pulling apart and pushing into his cheeks.
‘Of course.’

She nodded, relief pushing through her.

Then, despite how scary a prospect it was, she finally settled down in the navigator chair to fall asleep.

Though she tried to fight it, all too soon she felt sleep claim her.

Then the visions started.

One after the other.

She would stand on the surface of Remus 12 and watch the stars fall form the sky. She would stand in that gleaming city and watch the people running from the wall of destruction that inevitably claimed them and turned them to nothing but dust rolling on the wind.

Over and over again.

Relentless.

And then, right at the end, something new.

. . . .

A field of golden grain swaying softly in the wind.

A star field above, bright and glorious.

A night warm and comforting around her.

And above her a faint blue glow.

It shifted towards the horizon, disappearing on the gentle breeze like nothing more than cloud.

Carson Blake

He watched her the entire time, with concentration so fixed that it soon gave him a headache.

He took something for the pain, and continued to relentlessly monitor the instruments and her quietly sleeping form.

At the first sign of anything nefarious, he was ready with a neural shock to wake her up.

It was such a tense time.

It also completely wiped away the few hours of slumber he’d been able to catch.

But right now was not the time to rest.

This situation, it seemed, would let neither of them do that.

Despite how sharply he had to pay attention, a distant part of Carson realised that when this was all over, he would need a holiday.

A really long holiday, and he promised himself then and there that he would take her with him.

It was clear that Nida hadn’t travelled much. Well, at least not into space. This was all very new to her. Then again, to be fair, it was all very new to him too. This kind of space travel—where you jumped back and forward in time with an evil entity—was very knew to him too. But the point was, he would relish the opportunity to show her the rest of the galaxy.

From the Sleeping Nebula to the lost dunes of Regus 7, he could take her everywhere. He could delight in her wonder, as if he was seeing all of those wonders for the first time too.

It was such a curious thing to consider whilst he stood over her, watchful in case the entity should take hold. At least it kept him sane though.

It also gave him something else to think about.

Nida wasn’t his type. Or at least he wouldn’t have thought she could be. Back at the Academy when he had first gotten to know her, he’d done so through a sense of duty. Yet over time, that duty had morphed into something else. Now he, quite literally, couldn’t imagine his life without her. Hence her inclusion in his future holiday plans.

Sighing deeply, he kept watch above her, and as he did, he kept imagining the future.

.
 . . .

The future.

One thing this crazy adventure had taught him was that the nature of time was completely different to what he’d once assumed. He was still trying to wrap his head around the fact time travel was possible.

And yet, no matter how surprised he was by it, he also got the niggling feeling that the surprises weren’t done yet. Before this whole epic journey was over, he’d be shaken to his bones a few more times, he knew that.

Yet nothing stopped him from standing there and keeping a watchful eye on those instruments as she slept softly.

She spoke occasionally.

But he couldn’t quite make the words out. He strained his hearing in case one phrase appeared, however: ‘help me.’

In fact, as he stood there, he kept replaying those first few experiences he’d had with Nida over and over again.
 

Especially the moment he’d saved her in her apartment. If he hadn’t been quick enough, if he hadn’t pushed her through her bedroom door and closed it in time, then she would be dead.

And he could imagine—in perfect detail—what it would have looked like. Because he’d seen it. The Vex had been cruel enough to show it to him in their simulation.

She would have drawn limp in his grip, blood splattered over his face and hers.

Closing his eyes for only the briefest of moments, he collapsed his hand over them. His fingers were shaking and sweaty.

‘
Pull it together,’ he commanded as he finally forced his hand to drop.

Then it happened.

She woke up.

No, she bolted upright as if she’d been catapulted forward by some immense force.

In fact, she jumped right out of her chair, and if Carson hadn’t been standing right there to catch her, she would have fallen into the bank of consoles at the front of the bridge.

‘
Whoa,’ he spat, ‘you alright? What’s going on?’ He pushed her back slightly as he tried to get a good look at her face.

Her eyes were wild, yet they were, quite thankfully, not blue. Just white rimmed and obviously filled with surprise.

‘What happened?’ he asked as his heart beat hard in this chest, the vibration of it repeating up though his neck and jaw.

She took a moment to still herself, then she shook her head.
‘I’m fine,’ she whispered. ‘The entity is still controlled,’ she said, clearly knowing exactly what he wanted to hear.

He breathed a heady sigh of relief, letting his eyes close once more.

Then he snapped them open. Relief could come later. ‘What happened? Did you dream?’

She pressed her lips together and nodded. Though the move was somewhat fragile, and he could see that her eyes were shimmering with emotion, there was still a hard, determined edge to her look.
‘Yes,’ she confirmed in a soft voice.

‘
What of?’

‘
The same visions. Stars falling from the sky . . . ,’ she trailed off.

‘
We don’t’ know whether that will really happen,’ he suddenly interrupted, feeling the need to focus Nida before she could get pulled under by the entity’s manipulation.

‘
I know,’ she said.

He still had his hands on her shoulder, and she now reached up and rested her own hand against his. Again her touch was warm. In fact, it was always warm—now that she had discovered a way to push back the entity at last.

It was also a blessed kind of warmth, one Carson hadn’t ever really experienced. It seemed to bypass his skin and seep right down to his bones, imbuing them with energy and life.

He smiled. It was a kinked, curious move, but it felt good to display an emotion other than shock and sorrow.

She had a strange way of centring him, of stealing away his guilt and anguish.

He probably didn’t need to keep his hands on her shoulders any more; it was clear she could stand on her own. Yet, once again, he didn’t seem capable of moving away.

‘A field of grain,’ she suddenly said.

‘
Wait . . . what?’

She looked immeasurably distracted as she stared past his right shoulder at the wall behind him. Her gaze, though narrowed, had a far-off quality to it that sent a rush of nerves escaping up his back.

‘A field of grain . . . ,’ she shook her head. ‘Never mind. It was just one of the dreams the entity showed me,’ she clarified as she pushed a hand up and neatened her hair.

He took a deep sigh that reverberated up through his hands and into his chest.

She shifted back, and Carson almost wanted to double forward to put his hands on her shoulders once again. Even though she appeared capable and ready to stand without him, he couldn’t say the same about himself.

His fingers tingled with loss as she moved away.

Sighing to herself as she took a short walk around the bridge, she finally faced him once again. Slowly the far-off glint to her gaze lifted.

He swallowed.
‘Are you sure you’re alright?’

‘
Yeah,’ she nodded low.

He sighed. Yet it was ragged and shallow. Wiping the back of his hand over his mouth, he nodded.
‘Okay . . . well at least you got some rest, right?’

She pressed her brows together and nodded. She looked confused, yet more than that, thoughtful. Deeply thoughtful.

What exactly had she seen?

Whatever it was, she only mumbled something about a field of grain whenever he asked her.

Soon enough they both settled back into their duties. Yet, in all honesty, there wasn’t much to do. Everything was automated, and though Carson was ready at any moment to run into the Vex . . . it never happened.

Space seemed empty. Though they came across scraps of destroyed vessels here and there, and other signs of battle, that was it.

It was a truly eerie experience. It felt far worse than if they’d encountered ship graveyard after graveyard. Because this ignited more questions than it answered. Just where was everyone? Were the Vex so powerful that they could blast ships out of the air and leave no trace at all?

The Coltex System wasn’t all that far away. Just five days of travel at maximum speed, or one day if Carson took the top priority transport hubs.

Ordinarily the top priority hubs were exclusively kept open for traffic of the most important kind. From United Galactic Coalition cruisers rushing out to save planets or fight off Barbarian incursions, you needed full clearance from the Academy or United Galactic Coalition Council to use one.

Well now there was, quite literally, no one and nothing to stop Carson.

Because there was no one and nothing around.

A few times he logged back into the communication system to ensure that the generalised United Galactic Coalition distress call was still in effect.

It was. And it still told all remaining Coalition ships to redirect to the Coltex System.

As the questions built within Carson, so did the frustration.

He hated being in the dark, because being in the dark had caused this whole thing.

From trusting the entity and its version of events to trusting people like Cara, Carson knew he had done more damage than if he had relied on his own intuition.

Nida was dutifully silent as he went about his tasks. She did what she was told, and mostly kept to herself. He could tell she was thinking about what was happening to her. How couldn’t she be?

Just as he was lost in his own thoughts, she would be drowning in hers.

Too much was happening too quickly for either of them to gain any much-needed clarity.

Yet, of all the indecision and uncertainty, there was one fact of which he was sure.

He wasn’t going to leave her again. He wasn’t going to abandon her like he had on the Vex of the past, and neither was he going to forget her like he had during his simulation manufactured by the Vex of the future.

Because, god dammit, she was all he had.

Every single time Carson considered those thoughts, his feelings for her grew. Yet he wasn’t about to do anything about them. Not here, not now. They had to focus. Plus, he had absolutely no idea how she felt about him.

.
 . . .

The closer they got to the Coltex System, the more anticipation built within him until it felt like a thundering wall of water surging towards him and blocking out the light.

His heart beat so fast that he actually had to get the computer to manufacture a mild sedative just to calm him down.

He stood on the bridge—in fact, he didn’t move from it.

By his estimate, they were barely an hour away from Coltex.

So he stood there in the centre of the bridge, his back so straight it was as if someone had replaced his spine with a metal rod.

Nida sat straight in her chair too, her hands white with tension as she clutched hold of the console before her.

They both knew the stakes here, they also both knew what was likely to face them.

The Vex . . . or so they thought.

‘
Anything yet? Anything at all?’ he mumbled to the computer as he paced back and forth.

‘
Scanners still have not detected the presence of any ships,’ the computer answered immediately.

Carson let a pressured breath through his teeth. It sent a sharp tingle through his lips and into his chin, but he just ignored it as he swung around and started pacing in the other direction.

‘We should have faced something by now,’ Carson said for about the 50th time.

To Nida’s credit, she hadn’t told him to shut up yet. Instead, she just sat there and stared at her console with fixed attention. He’d given her the task of monitoring the sensor system for the first sign of activity. And she was doing a remarkably diligently job of it.

When they got back to the Academy, he would have to tell Sharpe to cut her some slack. She certainly wasn’t the worst recruit in 1000 years—she’d just been untested. And now this incredible adventure was testing her to the max, she was proving herself to be more than capable.

‘
Carson, it will be okay,’ she said distractedly as she continued her task.

He simply took a breath rather than answering.

. . . .

He wanted it to be okay, god knows that, but all signs pointed to the fact it wouldn’t be.

Though he’d never faced a situation as harrowing as the near-complete destruction of the United Galactic Coalition, he had faced dire battle. He’d been in space, he’d been in combat.

And this
 . . . didn’t make any sense.

If the Vex had waged an all-out war with the Coalition, then there would be more signs. More broken ships, more dead bodies tumbling in the vacuum of space.

Yet, so far, the only real destruction they’d witnessed had been on Remus 12. All those partially destroyed and disabled Coalition cruisers.