And then in the blink of an eye, Aurelius was back, immersed in pure darkness. Something bounced off the cockpit canopy with a
thud
, and he immediately killed thrust and flicked on his external running lights to see what it was.
It was Malgore. He and Reven were spinning off into the darkness, locked in a death struggle and heading for the nearby wall of the cavern-like space inside the asteroid. As Aurelius watched, Reven’s jaws clamped around Malgore’s leg. Malgore was kicking and struggling in vain to break free of the wolf, but soon they were both forced to let go as their blood began to boil. Now they were fighting for their lives against a mysterious force that was tearing them apart from the inside out. Their movements grew more and more frantic and then gradually slowed. Aurelius looked away, unable to watch Reven die. He closed his eyes and took a moment of silence for Reven before reluctantly turning back to see what had happened. Both Reven and Malgore were stiff and unmoving; they’d bloated grotesquely, and their eyes were open and staring as they drifted.
Remembering the relic Malgore had taken with him into the past, Aurelius zoomed in on the old man, searching . . . And then he saw a glowing, palm-sized sphere slowly floating out of Malgore’s outstretched hand. Aurelius didn’t think anything odd about it until he noticed the relic speeding up, flying more or less
at
him. He frowned a moment, trying to discern what forces were acting on it, but he couldn’t see anything. Maybe his grav gun was malfunctioning?
The relic flew straight past him and out of sight. Aurelius toggled his displays for a rear view and used the ship’s visual tracking to keep the glowing orb in sight. The relic flew straight out behind him and accelerated toward a second bright, glowing pinprick of light. Aurelius frowned, increasing the zoom level until that glowing speck resolved into a familiar orb.
Aurelius’s eyes widened suddenly. Gabrian had been right! Malgore’s taking the relic with him had created
two
, and like powerful magnets, they were rushing toward each other, about to collide with themselves. Aurelius quickly brought his ship about, pushing the throttle to max as he chased after the fleeing relic. He wasn't sure what would happen if the two relics were united, but he didn't think it would be good. He would ram the relic to knock it off course, and then he'd collect it with the grav gun.
But as he sped after the relic, he realized he wasn't going to make it. Aurelius gritted his teeth. There was an instant where both relics were still clearly visible as distinct specks of light in his forward viewport; then came a soft
clink,
simulated by the SISE as the glowing specks became one, followed by a loud
clunk!
as they collided with his cockpit canopy.
Aurelius held his breath; nothing had happened. He watched both glowing orbs go spinning off away from him. Then there came a blinding flash of light and a sound like breaking glass. Aurelius’s thoughts slowed, and then froze, as though the very fabric of space time had taken a deep breath and held it.
Break point.
Suddenly time sped up and his thoughts resumed their normal pace.
What was that?
Aurelius shook his head, feeling dazed and strangely violated. As he came back to his senses, he worried about the sound of breaking glass he’d heard and carefully checked the canopy to make sure it hadn’t cracked. It was pristine.
His gaze flicked over the various displays, and Aurelius noted that the visual tracking system was now showing only one relic. It was a lone, dazzling speck spinning casually off into space and disappearing against the multitude of stars. Aurelius stared blankly for a moment while the stars winked back. The sound of breaking glass must have been the other relic shattering. He’d thought the relic was indestructible. Then again, there was also only supposed to be one relic, and yet he’d been chasing
two
, each from a different time. He shook his head and gave up trying to understand what he’d witnessed. He still had a vague feeling that something was wrong, but he couldn’t pinpoint what it was.
He let out a long sigh and brought his ship around to set course for Meridia. Chances were good that he’d never fully understand everything that had happened to him, but maybe he didn't need to. He could pretend it had all just been a horrible dream. As Aurelius was setting course, he noticed something odd on sensors, and suddenly he realized what was bothering him.
The asteroids were all gone. He was no longer deep inside a giant asteroid, but floating freely in space. And there was no sign on scanners of either Malgore’s or Reven’s remains. Suddenly, Aurelius had a very bad feeling about the bright flash of light and the loud shattering sound he'd heard.
“Don’t tell me . . .” Aurelius muttered under his breath. Had he been somehow catapulted back to the future? He felt a slowly dawning fear that that was
exactly
what had happened. This area of space looked identical to the way it had in the future. No asteroids. No mortal remains. Nothing. Just one relic, floating freely through space. Anxious to see if he was right, Aurelius maxed out the throttles and waited the long flight back to Meridia. When the familiar green and blue orb became a visible speck in the distance, he magnified it until it dominated the canopy.
Aurelius sat back suddenly. His skin was crawling, prickling with dread. Meridia looked exactly as it had in the future: continents mauled beyond recognition, ice caps melted, clouds unusually thick . . .
“Damn it!” Aurelius slammed a fist down on the dashboard.
He sat back in his chair with a frown, wondering what to do now. He remembered Esephalia’s talk with him about destiny, about the future being fixed, and everything already having been written. How else could one travel to the future if it weren’t already decided? Maybe it was his destiny to live out the rest of his life in Myrthdom.
Suddenly an image of Lashyla smiling seductively at him flashed into mind, and he wondered if that would be such a bad thing to live out the rest of his days in Mrythdom, after all. Arguably he’d had more of a life there than in his own time. . . .
Of course, he’d have to find Lashyla. She was probably on her way back to Meria already, and he couldn’t follow her there, not without the queen sending him back into the Ring, but he’d find a way to meet up with her. He’d send her a message somehow. . . .
Meanwhile, he decided it would be a good idea to do a fly over of his new world, maybe find a place to call his own. Half an hour later, he was roaring down through the skies above Mrythdom, searching for signs of life and civilization. There were a lot of familiar sights: he flew over the decaying ruins of cities from his time; the impossibly tall, snow-crusted forests of Nordom; the clear, steaming waters of Rainbow Lake; and the jungle-covered mountains of Gryphon isle. From there he flew down to the coast along the misty sea, where the water was covered by a thick, perpetual fog, created by steam rising off the warm water and meeting with the colder air. And finally, down to the Bay of Sirens and the giant port city of Telan . . .
Where he found nothing but empty, brown land. He soon encountered the monolithic remains of another city, followed by another, and then another until they stretched out endlessly against the horizon in a shattered metropolis. Aurelius began to have another bad feeling. His skin prickled with a cold sheen of sweat, and he switched scanners to infrared, hunting for lifeforms as he turned northward. There were a few little specks, but nothing significant, then he came upon another forest with tall, twisted trees that were nevertheless nothing compared to the towering heights of the Elder Forest in Nordom, and his scanners came alive with the heat signatures of warm-blooded creatures. He flew in closer and followed one of the larger ones out of the forest to the plains beyond.
A muscle-bound giant came stomping out of the trees with what looked like a dead deer draped over one massive shoulder. The giant stopped and stared up at the
Halycon Courier
as it roared by overhead. Aurelius stared back. It was impossible to mistake that giant for anything but a troll.
Aurelius shook his head, uncomprehending. So, if he were back in Mrythdom, where was the port of Telan?
Deep down, he had a feeling he knew the answer. Somehow he'd been brought to a time before the city had even been founded . . . or else
long
after it had been destroyed. He needed a way to verify what time he was in. But how? His ship’s date and time wouldn’t have changed, he already knew that from the last time.
He needed something that had been here on the surface all along, counting the years as they’d ticked by. But what? All the cities from his time were in ruins . . .
Aurelius’s eyes widened in sudden recollection. Not
all
the cities were in ruins. He brought his ship around in a tight arc, heading back to where Telan should have been. Passing over the spot, he flew straight into the thick fog lying over the Misty Sea. Shortly before he’d left Meria, he’d checked the date and time aboard the submarine. Based on the date it had shown, he suspected the submarine's computer might have suffered some kind of glitch, but with any luck it would still give him a handy frame of reference. He struggled to remember the date he’d seen. . . . 57,000-something. Good enough. He’d take the difference between then and now and assume that to be the number of years before or after the Mrythdom he’d known. Assuming, of course, that the ship’s date and time had suffered a simple displacement error rather than something more complex. . . . Maybe with a bit of work he could find the program error which had generated the bad date. . . .
Either way, it was definitely better than nothing.
Using his ship’s scanners to look for the city beneath the surface, he quickly found a large signature emitting plenty of electromagnetic radiation. Something was definitely still working in that city. His scanners pinpointed Thespia, or
Meria
, as it was now called, at some one hundred plus meters below the waves. Aurelius frowned as he circled the spot. How was he going to get down there? His ship was airtight, and built to withstand vacuum, so it could
conceivably
double for a submersible, but he’d never tried taking it below water before. He did, however, seem to vaguely recall that another gun runner he’d known had once successfully done that in order to escape patrols.
“I guess there’s only one way to find out . . .” Aurelius said to himself. And with that, he dove for the water. The rippling gray surface rushed up to greet him, and he winced as his ship collided with a
splash!
His shields and inertial compensators made certain he felt nothing from the impact, but it was still disconcerting. Water quickly enveloped the canopy and soon he was sinking straight down into the murky depths. As the murky blue water turned to black, he turned on his external lights and managed to illuminate a few dozen feet in front of his ship. It was almost useless to navigate by sight, so he kept his eyes glued to the scanners, watching the range to the center of that giant EM signature ticking down. When the water grew gradually lighter with the colorful, hazy glow of coral, Aurelius knew that he was close. He redirected course and cruised down to the sandy bottom where he intended to float around the city and find an opening.
That was when his bow lights flickered and died, followed by an abrupt silence as the engines’ comforting roar disappeared. He floated slowly down to the sea floor and hit with a
skrish
of sand scattering beneath the bow, then the aft of his ship hit a few seconds later with an ominous
thunk
, and then there was nothing but a deep, maddening silence.
He was stranded on the sea floor.
Aurelius sat there in the quiet darkness, staring out at the glowing reef which rose up before him like a shining, rainbow-colored mountain. He knew that beneath that seeming mountain lay an ancient city, the city of Thespia.
Red emergency lights flicked on inside the cockpit with a soft
click,
and Aurelius blinked, coming out of his daze. He suspected the way power had died so suddenly, that his ship had sprung a leak and some crucial components had gotten wet and shorted out. It was the matter of a moment spent querying the onboard computer before he found the problem. There was a leak somewhere in the reactor room, and several of the main power conduits were flooded. The auxiliaries had come online, but there wasn’t enough power in them to drive the engines. He’d have to patch the leak and drain the main conduits or else replace them. Draining and drying them out, which was the best option, would probably take at least a day. Aurelius grimaced and started aft. He hoped a day spent on the sea floor wouldn’t be enough time for his ship to spring any more leaks.
It took an hour to effect the necessary repairs, and once that was done, Aurelius was left twiddling his thumbs in the cockpit, contemplating all that had happened. He still couldn’t figure out what time he was in. The answer lay somewhere inside the sunken city of Thespia. Driven by his curiosity, Aurelius suddenly stood up and hurried aft. He went to the nearest airlock, which was the one he’d always used, and he was about to trigger the door to open so he could take a spacesuit and visit Meria, when he stopped himself and took a quick step back from the door.
He’d almost forgotten: the outer door was gone, ripped off by raging Gryphons, and the door sensors and fail safes that were meant to detect vacuum on the other side would have no qualms about opening the ship to water. If he’d opened the airlock, it would have flooded his entire ship, and then he’d never get it back up and running.
Aurelius turned instead and headed aft for the cargo bay. Theoretically the cargo airlock was only a larger version of the same one in the side of the ship, and it would work just as well. He stopped by the auxiliary equipment locker on his way and retrieved a spacesuit. It would double for diving equipment in a pinch.
When he was inside the cargo airlock and had just finished fastening his helmet seals, Aurelius turned to the outer doors and triggered the controls to equalize pressure inside the airlock. He hoped these controls wouldn’t short out when they got wet.
Water began gushing into the compartment. Soon it was swirling angrily around his feet. Aurelius watched it rising with growing apprehension. The water level reached his chest and then swiftly rose to cover his helmet. Then the pressure had equalized and the outer door slid open. Suddenly he was blinking out into the hazy depths of the sea. He walked slowly, ponderously out of the airlock and stepped out onto the sea floor, drifting down until he hit the sandy bottom. His weight combined with that of his pressurized air supply and spacesuit kept his feet rooted on the sandy bottom. He turned and began walking slowly toward the glowing reef. It loomed over him like the mystical underwater mountain that it was, the peak disappearing not into clouds, but into murky black water.
“Time to see what
time
I’m in,” he said, the words echoing inside his helmet.
* * *
Lashyla was tired of waiting. Her legs ached from hiding in cramped quarters so long. By now Aurelius had to be back in his time, so it was safe for her to come out. If not, she couldn’t wait any longer. She needed to relieve herself. Lashyla popped the top of the cargo crate and climbed out. She was greeted to a strange, dim red light inside the ship rather than the usual brightness. It reminded her of certain places in Meria, lit by nothing but glowing red coral. It was a much nicer choice of lighting, and she began to wonder why Aurelius didn’t always use the more subtle red illumination.
Eager to find Aurelius, she walked all through the ship looking for him, but he wasn’t anywhere. She frowned to herself. Where had he gone?
He would come back. She knew he would. Meanwhile, she had needs to attend to. She found her way to the airlock which she’d left open only hours ago to make everyone think she’d left. It was closed now. She raised her hand to wave it over the door sensor. . . .
And was promptly knocked off her feet by a gushing torrent of water.
* * *
Climbing up the coral mountain had been long and hard, but Aurelius soon found a place where a broken viewport allowed him to squeeze into the city. The corridor he squeezed into was completely flooded and dark, but sparsely lit by glowing green and red coral. He moved slowly along the flooded corridor, using his hands to help push along the walls. He tried to still his racing heart and frantic breathing. If he didn’t find a way out of the corridor quickly, or worse, if self-sealing bulkheads had sealed to block it off, he could be walking into a dead end. He knew his air supply would last hours before it ran out, but it could easily take him hours to find a way into the city.
He raised his suit’s wrist-mounted air gauge to check how much time he had left—another two hours if he didn’t overly exert himself. He’d already taken one hour to get this far, so he couldn’t afford to take more than half an hour searching for a way into the city. The corridor stretched on endlessly ahead of him, but eventually he reached an elbow curve, turned the corner . . .
And the corridor stretched out endlessly once more until it disappeared into the murky black water. His heart beat faster.
Okay, stop it,
he said to himself.
You’re panicking.
It took a long, seemingly endless time of slowly walking down the corridor before the end of it swirled out of the murky depths, and then his worst fears were realized: the end of the corridor was blocked by a sealed bulkhead door. Aurelius stopped, hesitating halfway through another ponderous step. He turned to quickly look back the way he’d come, wondering if he should return to the ship, get a fresh air supply and try again later from another angle.
He checked his air supply.
Another two hours of air. That was easily enough for him to get back. He almost sighed with relief. Then he realized something, and his heart began a furious drumbeat in his ears; his breath began coming in quick, shallow gasps. He tapped the gauge on his wrist and waited for an anxious minute, watching for the digital display to mark off another minute, but it never did.
The timer was frozen at one hour and fifty eight minutes remaining, which meant he had no idea of how long he’d been out. For all he knew, he could have just one hour of air left . . .
Aurelius forced himself to breath slowly and evenly, using the slow, steady rhythm to cut through the panic and think clearly. If he didn’t have enough air to get back, nothing could fix that now and he’d have to spend every remaining moment trying to find a way into the city, but there was no guarantee that he would succeed before his air ran out. On the other hand, he’d spent a long time just climbing up the reefs to this point. Now he could shortcut that route by jumping off the reefs and floating down. . . . He could use gravity to make much faster progress on the way back.
Aurelius turned back to face the dead end corridor. His suit was equipped with some hydraulic strength enhancements for maintenance work, so it was just possible that he might be able to force the bulkhead doors open. While he was so close, he had to try it. He spent another precious five minutes of air struggling to the end of the corridor. Once there, he scanned the doors for handholds. There was the barest hint of a lip on the door just before it slid into the frame. He grabbed the lip and set his legs, bracing himself as he exerted the full, combined strength of his arms and the suit’s hydraulic enhancements to force the door open.
Nothing happened.
He strained harder, until beads of sweat began prickling out beneath his suit and the veins stood out in pulsing lines on his forehead. He held that level of force for a long minute, straining viciously against the door. . . .
But it didn’t even budge. Maybe it had frozen shut with grime and sand, or maybe the inner workings had long-since seized up. Either way, any further effort would be wasted and he knew it. He let go of the door with an irritated sigh, and then kicked it furiously with his boot. He stood there panting, glaring resentfully at the bulkhead door, and feeling an intense need to wipe the sweat from his brow where it was trickling down from his matted hair.
He had to go back.
Now.
Before it was too late.
Aurelius turned and began hurrying back the way he’d come. He began experimenting with different forms of locomotion—swimming, bouncing, taking longer strides—in order to quicken his pace, but his progress was still maddeningly slow.
He scanned every viewport he passed, looking for one that was broken like the one through which he’d crawled into the city, but they were all pristine. Transparalloy was incredibly strong. It was a wonder that one of the viewports had been broken at all.
He reached a crevice of glowing blue and green coral where the corridor was all but sealed by the living rock. He remembered having passed this point shortly after entering the city. He was almost there. He turned sideways and squeezed through. A large, shining blue fish darted out from behind the rocks and led the way out. He almost stepped on a scuttling green crab as he climbed out onto the reef.
By now he felt short of breath, but he told himself it was from the exertion and not a lack of oxygen. He allowed himself to drift down a few dozen feet from the ledge below the broken viewport to the nearest, rocky bluff below. The sea floor was visible below him, and his ship was a dark and blurry shape, seeming tantalizingly close to the base of the city.
He took a great leap from the coral cliff where he was standing and drifted down to the next one, like a falling leaf, and then from there he bounded down to the next one. His progress was getting better. He dared himself to hope that he might make it. Climbing up had been hard, but with gravity to help him on the way down, he had almost reached the sea floor in just a few minutes.
Moments later he hit the sea floor with a hazy puff of sand, and then he began the long, plodding journey back to his ship. It grew closer and closer, whilst he felt his lungs straining for air. He saw spots dancing before his eyes when he was only minutes from reaching his ship, and again he didn’t know if that was from a lack of air or sheer exertion. His heart was pounding furiously. He was drenched in sweat beneath his suit, and it itched so badly he wished he could just scratch his skin right off. He dreamed of reaching his ship’s airlock, of opening the doors to clean, fresh air.
He imagined it as though it were a deep, leafy green forest, with air so fresh that he could taste it. . . . Suddenly, Aurelius realized that his eyes had drifted closed and he’d unconsciously stopped moving. He shook himself awake and forced himself on, seeing spots once more. The aft airlock was only a few dozen feet off. He passed the one with the broken outer door at midships, and wished desperately that it were working. He cast it a longing glance. . . .
And then his hammering heart seemed to freeze in his chest. He stood there panting, his breath coming in shallow gasps as he tried to blink the spots out of his eyes. There was something wrong with the deep, forbidding darkness of the airlock, the way it disappeared into nothingness. The inner door should have been clearly visible, but it was not. All he saw was blackness, almost as though . . .
He shook his head. No, he was hallucinating. The door hadn’t opened. He’d stopped himself before opening the inner door and flooding his ship.
Aurelius forced himself to put one foot in front of the other until he was climbing wearily, dizzily into the open cargo airlock. He barely had the strength to stand up straight inside the chamber. He blinked to clear his dancing, blurry vision and focus on the control panel before him, but when he pressed the button to cycle the outer doors closed, nothing happened. Wondering if maybe the control system had flooded, he turned to the manual crank wheel beside him. He spare a glance for the giant doors of the cargo airlock . . . it would take at least a few minutes of turning that manual crank wheel to close the doors. Thinking about that, he felt a sudden, overwhelming urge to just lay down and sleep, but he knew that would mean death, and so he forced himself to begin turning the wheel. The doors began to gradually slide shut, while his ragged breathing grew slower and shallower with every passing second. His eyes were slowly closing with what seemed like the weight of a thousand sleepless nights. The doors were only a few feet from shut when his hands slipped weakly from the wheel and he drifted down to the floor of the cargo airlock. His thoughts and consciousness slipped away from him with a sigh.