Sidespace (2 page)

A chance meeting between Alex and a Federation intelligence agent, Caleb Marano, led them to discover an armada of alien warships emerging from a mysterious portal in the Metis Nebula.

The Metigens had been watching humanity via the portal for millennia; in an effort to forestall their detection, they used traitors among civilization’s elite to divert focus from Metis. When their plans failed, they invaded in order to protect their secrets.

The wars that ensued were brutal—first an engineered war between the Alliance and the Federation, then once it was revealed to be built on false pretenses, devastating clashes against the Metigen invaders as they advanced across settled space, destroying every colony in their path and killing tens of millions.

Alex and Caleb breached the aliens’ portal in an effort to find a way to stop the slaughter. There they encountered Mnemosyne, the Metigen watcher of the Aurora universe—our universe. Though enigmatic and evasive, the alien revealed the invading ships were driven by AIs and hinted the answer to defeating them lay in the merger of individuals with the powerful but dangerous quantum computers known as Artificials.

Before leaving the portal space, Alex and Caleb discovered a colossal master gateway. It generated 51 unique signals, each one leading to a new portal and a new universe. But with humanity facing extinction, they returned home armed with a daring plan to win the war.

In a desperate gambit to vanquish the enemy invaders before they reached the heart of civilization, four Prevos (human-synthetic meldings) were created and given command of the combined might of the Alliance and Federation militaries. Alex and her Artificial, Valkyrie, led the other Prevos and the military forces against the alien AI warships in climactic battles above Seneca and Romane. The invaders were defeated and ordered to withdraw through their portal, cease their observation of Aurora and not return.

Alex reconciled with her mother during the final hours of the war, and following the victory Alex and Caleb married and attempted to resume a normal life.

But new mysteries waited through the Metis portal. Determined to learn the secrets of the portal network and the multiverses it held, six months later Caleb, Alex and Valkyrie traversed it once more, leaving humanity behind to struggle with a new world of powerful quantum synthetics, posthumans, and an uneasy, fragile peace.

And in the realm beyond the portal, Mnemosyne watched.

AURORA THESI (PORTAL PRIME)

E
NISLE
S
EVENTEEN

I considered the inert form lying in the stasis chamber.

It appeared a stranger to me. I felt no kinship, no attachment to the body providing my life force. Memory my aspect, I no longer recalled having resided within it. To find oneself bound inside the confines of a small, frail body, rendered hapless by its myriad limitations, was anathema to me.

I moved the stasis chamber into the deepest corner of the structure. The life support system was designed to function for perpetuity without my intervention. Unseen, it would trouble me no further. Then I left the structure and its refuge behind to hover at the shore of my lake, finding myself uncertain of what to do next.

Exile.

Such had been the verdict of the Idryma Conclave. Exiled from their ranks in name, title and consciousness. Exiled from Amaranthe. My body retrieved from the
krypti
and relinquished to the dirt of Aurora Thesi.

A watcher with no subjects.

An Analystae with no dominion.

It would be far simpler if it were such a simple matter as this. But my task extended far beyond the rigid strictures of the Idryma. Aurora had been entrusted to me because I understood our purpose more deeply than anyone, save possibly Praetor Lakhes.

Histories. Futures. What was inevitable, and all that was not.

The Conclave called Aurora a failure. We would refocus our efforts on the other Enisles, Lakhes proclaimed, in the search for new and innovative prospects. We would try again, Hyperion declared, but ensure firmer restraints were in place from the beginning this time.

I believed the answers still resided in Aurora. For what the Conclave was too insular to see—or too fearful to admit if they did see—was this: the uprising by the Humans had in fact proven the validity of the principal hypothesis underlying Aurora’s existence. Now was not the time to recoil as mettle failed.

This was the kairos. This was what we had
wanted
. The others might flinch and turn away, but I would not.

Before departing Aurora for the last time, representatives of the Conclave had placed spatial triggers at the Metis Portal, designed to pitch the apparatus into a dimensional singularity upon its opening from the other side. It had been a near thing, our—their—decision to refrain from destroying the portal immediately. Only my most elegant arguments had convinced the Conclave they need not permanently foreclose this avenue.

But the Conclave, eager to be rid of the troublesome Aurora Enisle and its equally troublesome Analystae Mnemosyne, had perhaps not paid sufficient attention to the details.

I was and had always been the First Analystae of Aurora. This meant I controlled all the apparatuses of the Enisle, observational and otherwise.

The triggers had been deactivated. I could rearm them at any time, and should it become necessary—should the Humans or their scions attempt to launch an armada through the Metis Portal, one bent on wanton destruction of whatever they found—I would do so, regrettably but without hesitation.

But I was the First Analystae of Aurora, and this experiment was not over. Once a proud member of an underground resistance, I was now a rebel from the rebellion.

As the sea spread out beneath me, an alert transmitted the opening of the Metis Portal. I halted far above the waters and waited.

What emerged from the portal was not the feared armada. Instead, it was a single ship. A familiar ship. I felt a quickening in my atoms.

Clever, dangerous girl. I have been expecting you.

CONTENTS

PART I

W
ILD
T
HINGS

PART II

R
ELATIVISTIC
M
OTION

PART III

P
RINCIPLE OF
E
QUIVALENT
E
XCHANGE

PART IV

S
ERIATIM,
S
ERIATE

PART V

A
LL
T
HAT
W
E
A
RE

PART VI

E
VENT
H
ORIZON

PART VII

T
HE
S
TARS
L
IKE
G
ODS

CODA

E
X
M
ACHINA

SIDESPACE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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PART
I
:

WILD
THINGS

“Life is the fire that burns and the sun that gives light. Life is the wind and the rain and the thunder in the sky. Life is matter and is earth, what is and what is not, and what beyond is in Eternity.”

— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

P
ORTAL:
B
-3

S
YSTEM
D
ESIGNATION:
E
KOS

1

EKOS-1

A
THUNDERING BELLOW UNDULATED ACROSS
the grove as the forest roused itself to life, murderous intent in its heart.

“Get us out of here!”

Caleb’s retort came in the form of the bike leaping forward out of the small clearing and into the tangle of woods.

Alex gazed at the underbrush whizzing beneath her feet in fascination. Formerly placid, it now roiled like ocean waves advancing ahead of a hurricane. Before the bike’s speed became too great for her to perceive such details, she swore each individual blade of the broad, sage-hued grass reached up in an attempt to ensnare the wheels or frame of the bike, or even her feet.

“Holy hell.”

Her attention jerked forward at Caleb’s exclamation, at which point she could only concur. “
Svyatoy chyertu
….”

The foliage that wound parasitically around the trunks of the trees populating the lush woodland? It was unfurling to dart out through the air—toward them. She instinctively tucked her head against his back and drew her body in close.

In the corner of her vision the pliant, soft-wood limbs of those trees began to enlist in the campaign, lurching and clawing at their fleeing presence. Like the foliage, they seemed to be driven by a single, overriding purpose: to stop them, then to kill them.

Caleb expertly picked a path between narrow gaps in the trees at reckless speed, but the forest was increasing in thickness. She honestly didn’t know how he was going to get through such a dense chaparral, but she needed to help.

“I’m going to try shooting at the trees—maybe it will spook them long enough for us to squeak by.” Shooting at the apparently sentient trees, that was to say. She intensified her hold on his waist as her right hand went to her belt and unlatched her Daemon. She withdrew it from its holster and pointed it outward—

—a vine darted out, wrapped around the barrel and yanked it from her hand. She blinked, startled, then quickly pulled her arm in before some vine decided to do the same to it.

Wide, tall trees closed in ominously in front of them, blotting out the sun. “Um…can I borrow your gun?”

The jungle-like forest was also increasingly loud, the rumbling noise growing as every element of it sprang into action, and she wasn’t sure he heard her. In the absence of a response and not wanting to distract him, she reached down and jostled his Daemon out from the holster on his belt. This time she kept both it and her arm tucked in as she pointed it forward over his shoulder at a notably behemoth tree blocking their path. She pressed the trigger.

The laser tore into the timber in an explosion of splintered bark and vascular tissue. The topmost segment of the tree swayed to the left and fell away. As it did, the dull roar exploded into a furious cacophony. The surviving trees—all the trees except the one she’d shot apart—bowed in toward the bike, lashing out with greater vehemence.

“I think you made them angry.”

She snorted in the confines of her helmet. “Well, they’ve made me angry….”

Her voice trailed off as the air filled with a plethora of orange spores, seemingly released by the groundcover ferns. Individual plants began linking together, closing off what open space remained. The last of the faint light from the prairie in the distance vanished as the trees, vines and foliage snarled into a web in which to ensnare them.

“Shit!” She stretched up, farther over his shoulder, and opened up an unrelenting stream of laser fire directly ahead.

“Valkyrie, we’re going to need a little air support here—and a pickup, posthaste.”

‘I anticipated as much when every active sensor spiked. ETA 42 seconds.’

The laser succeeded in creating a jagged hole in the web, albeit one barely wider than the bike. Caleb raced headlong through it as vines sporting razor-sharp edges tore at them from all sides. The helmet kept the vines from ripping into Alex’s face and the protective clothing she wore mostly protected the rest, but a zing of pain at her wrist alerted her that a vine had found skin between sleeve and glove.

“We’re almost out. Just hang on.” Caleb’s voice was low and strained. Still, she took comfort from hearing it.

Hanging on, she could do. She could also keep firing ahead and help to clear the way. She sent a new stream into the living web.

A streak of
different
moved off to their right. She squinted several times, unable to accept what her eyes relayed to her brain. “Caleb….”

“I see it.” His voice had gained a rather forceful edge now.

A large…creature…loped across the woodland on an intercept trajectory toward them. Except it wasn’t a creature—it wasn’t an animal. Multiple bramble plants had combined to take the shape of a leopard-type beast, complete with two rows of thorns for teeth. But plants couldn’t travel—not of their own volition and not like this.