Reality: The Struggle for Sternessence Page 11

  At that point, all the clouds disappeared, and myriads of people stood there beholding the woman. Both males and females, human and nonhuman, were watching her ecstatically with very different, yet very strong passions.

  “What’s your name?” Duncan asked.

  “I have no name. Just give me your heart, and I will be the light of your mind.”

  A strong impulse compelled Duncan to surrender his mind, his heart, his very self. His sight started to blur. His soul, craving for the possession of the woman, was already suffering from the crowded emptiness of loving her.

  “No!” he finally cried out, covering his eyes.

  Duncan awoke exhausted. It took him all morning to put away the feelings he had experienced, and to disregard the anguish he had suffered.

  29.

  O’sihn looked pensive, facing the stars through the transparent bulkheads of the observation bay. The Intrepid was making a stealth navigation towards her next assignment with minimum systems on. The mission had some unresolved uncertainties, but at that particular moment, they were not occupying the captain’s thoughts.

  “I don’t know,” Duncan said. “It was a strange dream. It doesn’t have to have a meaning.”

  “It reminds me of the Equel,” O’sihn commented, his eyes still perusing the stars.

  “Equel?”

  O’sihn nodded. “It is the prevalent belief among the officials of the Establishment, and was the unanimous belief of its founders.” The captain sat down on a comfortable glassy chair. He took a twees from one pocket, a small cane similar to a sugar cane but the size of a pen. “It’s a mystery-belief system based on the premise that everything is ruled by some entity, or rather some kind of something whose existence consists in equalizing every existence until existence and non-existence—or as they say, being and non-being—become one living idea that transcends all being.”

  Duncan grinned. “Does this . . . something have a name?”

  “The godless-goddess-self, the naked pleroma,” O’sihn sighed mildly. “The ethereal-everlasting-equalizer.”

  “Ethereal-everlasting-equalizer . . .” Duncan muttered.

  O’sihn tapped one end of his twees on one knee. “It is the mystery of nothingness, which cannot be understood, but from where everything flows, because it’s eternal and eternity itself. Everything has to resemble nothingness, if anybody or anything is to achieve completion. Pure equality, in removing all differences, leaves sameness, which is the living image of Nothingness—the utmost uniformity, the root of all peace, the never-ending rest, the source of ultimate happiness.”

  Duncan shook his head. “Nothingness . . . is just, nothing.”

  “Nothingness does persist because it can never perish, they would insist. The very fact that we can talk about it would show that, even for us, there is something comprehensible about it.”

  Duncan grimaced. “You said only a few follow these beliefs.”

  “No, I said it’s the prevalent belief among the officials of the Establishment. And they are doing a very good job of spreading it. It’s the ideological foundation of the Establishment, and the philosophical basis of the Equity, written almost two hundred years ago by Em-Rasinka.”

  Duncan had first heard about the Equity while staying in Realitas, after his mission in Veridiawa. It was the Magna Carta of the Establishment, but it was not a mere constitutional document. It went far beyond, reaching the status of a cultic emblem for many.

  “Nonsense.”

  “Agreed. Now tell me, where is the nonsense?” O’sihn said, raising an eyebrow.

  Duncan looked at the stars from his own glassy seat. “I don’t know,” he said, with a half-smile. “How to tackle such an idea?”

  “With Reality.” O’sihn paused. “And a dose of common sense.”

  30.

  After making a starfall68 with Gama-Algenib, the Intrepid left the pulsar off its down-port board, assuming a course that would take her to the rendezvous point. Three hours later, the ship joined with space carrier Freedom, which was escorted by the YSF Perseverance. The Intrepid maneuvered swiftly into formation position.

  Two light-hours69 ahead, nine small patrols joined the task force to provide a screen protection. All ships were traveling along inertial trajectories under strict silence procedures, which implied no engine activity.

  At long last, contact was made with an old space buoy close to the destination. The five main gates of space carrier Freedom yawned open, and four attack squads and a small division of landing vessels slipped into space. Within ten minutes, they would start their chemical engines to avoid detection, thus initiating the final approach to the mission target.

  31.

  Sternessence. After the battle onboard the Intrepid, when he’d finally found some free time, Duncan had checked the etymology of the word. He did find abundant references to it in the ship’s electronic library. The word was rooted in an ancient term that alluded to the essence of love. How could he have guessed the meaning of the word in the dream he had had before the battle? He did not remember having ever had any contact with the term before the scientific meeting at Cerendal, and after that, he had not thought much about its meaning. The strange insight and its relation to his presence in this alternate universe cast shadows on his thoughts. The sense of having a role in the tapestry of the war would, at times, shed rays of reassuring hope. But more often, Duncan would be under the impression that his uncanny vocation was but a mirage, a will-o’-the-wisp, a time-bomb fantasy that sooner or later would explode, exposing the shameful reality of his being nothing.

  “Initiating phase Z. Atmospheric reentry in T minus thirty seconds.”

  The intercom announcement brought Duncan back to more tangible matters. Red lights started blinking inside the tactical compartment of the assault shuttle. Nobody was talking. A loud signal whirled, and all helmets started clicking closed automatically. As the shuttle decelerated and the soldiers regained their own weights, the ship began to vibrate sharply. The vibrations waned, replaced by a hissing hum.

  Without further warning, the ship decelerated violently as it struck the surface. The landing hatchway hit the ground, and all forty-two soldiers popped out of the shuttle, deploying rapidly according to the prescribed assault configuration.

  The final destination was going to be a colorful planet with thick forests and a rich variety of vegetation—or so they had been told in the last briefing on board the Intrepid. However, a colorless, uniform landscape of grayish tones was what Duncan and the others encountered. The local atmosphere had suffered major changes connected to the environmental reconfiguration the Establishment military had performed to render the habitat suitable for their own leading species. The local fauna and flora had been adjusted to survive and even thrive under the new conditions. The forest was still lush, although stripped of any colors. However, the atmosphere was no longer breathable for the Realitian soldiers, who had to wear pressurized combat uniforms for the mission.

  Far ahead, in a valley, a construction was visible. It was noticeable amidst the abundant gray foliage. That construction was the mission target.

  Careful in their deployment, the soldiers started closing distances with no delay. Behind them, the landing ship waited over a hill, concealed by a large willow-like tree. Sensors did not register anything out of the ordinary. The only detectable source of energy was a dim grayish gleam emanating from the local sun.

  Everything was transpiring with absolute precision—too much precision. So far, it seemed like another exercise, at least for most of the team. Not as much to Duncan. For him, the stillness of the dark landscape created a sense of anxiety and distress.

  Suddenly everybody’s eyes were riveted to the ground. In the blink of an eye, the situation had turned chaotic and even desperate.

  “What was that?” someone yelled over the tactical network.

  “I didn’t see anything,” another voice replied.

  “Wait—”

  “Ah!
”

  Most of the soldiers were suddenly shooting almost randomly, and the tactical channels were quickly saturated with orders and counter-orders. An army of very swift slippery small gray creatures of different species—not native to that world—was popping up from everywhere. Dark and small, they were coming from under the ground.

  As soon as they surfaced, they shot and then literally dove under the ground again. This tactic, combined with the surprise factor and the appearance of the attackers—some rodent-like, others reptilian—was causing panic. In all his years of service, O’sihn had never faced a situation like it. The enemy had clearly been waiting in ambush.

  “Emergency orders, fall back, I repeat, emergency orders, fall back to the landing ship immediately.” The instructions were simple, and everybody in O’sihn’s team wanted to comply. However, proceeding accordingly was proving extremely difficult.

  All the soldiers were striving to converge onto the assault ship, which had already started its engines. But the parched foliage had turned into a deadly trap. Patches of fire started by the gun blasts were rapidly merging into one another all over the foliage, helped by a breeze that was rapidly turning into a heavy, dry wind.

  “Follow me!” O’sihn yelled at Duncan.

  No sooner had they started running than a constrictor-like alien entangled the captain’s legs. Using its fangs, the attacker opened a rent on the pressurized uniform. Duncan stood frozen for an instant. Overcoming his shock, he activated an energy blade and cut the aggressor into four whirling pieces, which fell from O’sihn’s leg.

  Another creature stood up on its back legs and fixed its eyes on Duncan. It was small and very agile. It resembled a miniature kangaroo, with bear-like claws and the head of a rodent. It had two sets of fangs on each side, each fang dripping a substance that Duncan perceived as poison. A small device emerged on its right shoulder.

  A fraction of second later, a tree behind Duncan was cut in half as he rolled to the ground, successfully eluding the lethal blast. As he sat up on the grass, a glowing red spot materialized on his forehead. Duncan desperately crawled back, trying unsuccessfully to get on his feet. But at that moment, a silver arrow darted from the foliage, ripped through the attacker, and landed on a tree trunk.

  The enemy trooper was hanging dead on the arrow.

  Following the captain’s homing system, Duncan found O’sihn. He was lying on the ground, unable to move, his uniform hissing as air escaped through the rent in one of his trouser legs. Soon the hissing would stop and the caustic reconfigured atmosphere would rush inside the uniform, killing the captain in a matter of seconds.

  “Run. . . ., to the shuttle!” O’sihn yelled.

  Duncan looked at the captain reluctantly.

  “Run, boy, run!”

  Kneeling down, Duncan reached for an emergency patch from O’sihn’s combat belt. But the belt receptacle was stuck.

  Pulling out the arrow that had just saved his life (and shaking off the corpse that hung from it), Duncan began to force the receptacle’s lid using the arrow’s point. Abruptly, the lid flung open, and he hastily managed to get the leak to stop.

  Helped by Duncan, O’sihn got on his feet again, and both resumed their march. But they were not falling back with the rest. It was part of the plan that if the platoon were to find resistance, as it had, the team would lure the defenders towards the landing vessel, while Duncan and O’sihn would proceed on to the target. Through intelligence, they knew the potential resistance would be relatively small. If the platoon managed to distract them away from the mission target, few would remain to defend it during a critical time window. The one thing that intelligence had not predicted was the type of resistance they had encountered. Despite the element of surprise and the confusion caused by the very aggressive and unconventional attack—and the aversion associated with the external appearance and movements of the attackers—the operation was proceeding according to plan, and the rest of the platoon was safely back in the assault vessel.

  Duncan and O’sihn were now trying to make visual contact with the building that was supposed to be ahead. However, the thick smoke coming from the burning vegetation around them had drastically reduced visibility.

  On O’sihn’s and Duncan’s visors, a blinking yellow marker popped up, display-ing the bearing along which the target lay.

  “This way!” The captain raised one hand, showing the direction to follow. He was pointing straight to a sea of fire.

  Instinctively, Duncan lifted up one hand to shield his eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “Trust me.” O’sihn took Duncan by the elbow.

  Within seconds, Duncan was experiencing hell. The temperature inside his uniform climbed brutally. After covering what felt like many yards through the flames, the only thing Duncan could still see was more fire and dense smoke everywhere. Fear began to numb his senses, but he kept moving in he direction shown by the yellow marker.

  Suddenly, as if waking up from a nightmare, he found himself in the open. Right in front of him, a large solid building stood unscathed in the midst of the flames.

  32.

  Although control of the air space had finally been achieved, so far the landing forces had failed to establish any secured landhead.70 Nevertheless, the operation was still moving forward within the planned parameters.

  Commander Laida had been following all these events with growing concern, monitoring them over one of the tactical channels. She was closing distances to her target. About five hundred yards ahead, she spotted a high-tech Establishment construction, mostly concealed by the surrounding foliage.

  Laida and her team stopped and began scanning for potential enemy activity. She instructed her team to go around the target following a particular reckoning pattern. Fifteen minutes later, the platoon met back behind the construction. There were no signs of enemy presence, but a sudden electronic blackout reignited the platoon’s tension. They had lost contact with mission control and the rest of the platoons.

  The team maintained its position, waiting for directives from any element of the tactical operation. About half an hour later, having received no instructions, Laida judged they had waited long enough and decided to proceed with the last phase of her mission.

  After planting explosives in carefully selected spots around the target, Laida blasted the entrance to the building open with her gun. She led her team underground through a pitch-black corridor, guided by visualization systems on each soldier’s visor. About fifty yards below, the group met the target: a chamber containing a row of three-foot-tall crystals that glowed with a grayish intensity. Using a super-conductive wire, the team proceeded to link the crystals to a device designed to short-circuit them.

  Other teams were simultaneously attacking similar targets. The success of the operation depended on neutralizing more than eighty percent of such buildings, in which resided the power sources for maintaining the reconfigured environment in that area. Laida’s target was of particular relevance for the completion of O’sihn’s assignment.

  Laida made a sign with one fist, and the team began evacuating the chamber at once, moving in a fast and orderly fashion. However, on reaching the entrance, they met a drastic change in their tactical situation.

  33.

  Duncan raised his head. Dark walls, smudged with dust and mold, rose up into the discolored clouds. The building and the whole area around it looked calm, desolate, cold. Panting, Duncan bent forward with his hands on his knees. The wind was blowing against the fire behind him, keeping the area safe and clear of smoke.

  Suddenly, O’sihn emerged from the flames. “Watch out, we may be under surveillance.”

  Duncan turned around.

  “This way,” O’sihn said, moving stealthily towards the entrance. He motioned to Duncan, and both flung themselves against the walls, holding their guns to their chests.

  “Now!” O’sihn called.

  Throwing themselves to the ground, they rolled over in front of the entrance wit
h their guns pointing ahead. They could see a long corridor. O’sihn aimed his biodetector into the building.

  At that point, someone shot at them. They returned fire, and each ran to a side of the entrance. A rapid exchange of blasts followed, until O’sihn threw a grenade inside.

  “Take cover!”

  Following the captain, Duncan plunged back inside the sea of fire, seeking shelter behind a rock. A smoldering blast of heat, followed by a tide of black smoke, bathed Duncan’s suit.

  “It’s getting too hot!”

  “Hold on,” O’sihn called through his speaker, checking his biodetector. Duncan began to cough. “To the target.”

  Muffled by the intense crackling of the burning forest, O’sihn’s command did not reach Duncan. Suddenly, he saw O’sihn’s right arm emerge from the flames and grab his own. He let himself be dragged, until he and the captain emerged back into the open.

  Running towards the entrance, Duncan squinted, trying to see inside the corridor. His sight was somewhat impaired, like most of his senses.

  “The corridor is clear.” O’sihn waved Duncan in; he followed with an awkward stride. Following the readings from O’sihn’s scanner, they crossed three more corridors until finding the elevator they were looking for. On reaching the upper level, they threw themselves to the floor, guns pointing ahead.

  “Sensor registers three individuals on target level,” O’sihn muttered. “Be prudent. They may be part of the technical crew.”

  Duncan nodded, and the doors opened.

  Three blasts hit the back panels of the elevator. O’sihn fired back with precision, disabling the gun that had opened fire, without harming the shooter or anybody else. “Put your hands behind your necks—behind your necks, I said!” he yelled.

  Sluggishly, the three individuals complied with the command. Bipedal and tall, they bore similar traits to humans. The clothes they used were typical of Kervian technicians, although they themselves were not Kervian. O’sihn checked them from his spot using a scanner. They were unarmed.