The Path to Loss (Approaching Infinity Book 4) Read online

  Of a sudden, his quarters, isolated from the rest of the Palace, were ripped asunder and half opened to the void of space. He was not in the habit of keeping much in the way of personal belongings here at the Palace—preferring his own retirement home on Planet 1026 for such purposes—but what little he had acquired over his two hundred years of reinstated service was whisked away in a cacophonous instant.

  Even through the noise and the chaos, his mind worked swiftly and he was able to save the one item, not really his, that required saving. An alcove in the wall at the head of his bed held the Yellow Diamond Spectacles and these he managed to snatch and retain.

  Metal tore through the skin of the Vine and into his room, filling it where empty space did not prevail. He would have been cut into six pieces if he hadn’t gone Dark reflexively. The thick sheets that continued to push into the Palace, squealed, buckled, and ruptured, pushing far past his meager living space. Some of the incoming steel was superheated under the immense pressures at work, melting into splashing pools of white hot slag. Oxygen gushed, threatening to cast him out, and all he could do was find something relatively stable to hold on to. He snaked his Dark arms through seams in the interior wall, around the half-meter-in-diameter support beam he knew he’d find there. He clung to this, thanking whatever providence had decided the form of his Darkened state. If he’d been any more solid, he’d have been split, ripped, gouged, burned, and broken several times over. So far, Stoakes himself had been proof against this calamity, but the wall and the support beam buckled and broke, sending him hurtling through a dark storm of debris, and headlong into unconsciousness.

  10,810.302.0550

  Stoakes awoke with a start. Despite this, it took some time to clear his muzzy head and for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He was still Dark, and drifting through the substantially weakened artificial gravity. Thankfully he hadn’t reverted to normal unconsciously. If he had, he’d surely be dead.

  Though everything was settled now, he had no idea where he was or how far removed he was from what had been his quarters. He was fairly certain he’d been drawn into the object that had collided with the Vine. Metal creaked ominously, strained beyond purpose and design, threatening to snap at any moment.

  He cursed audibly. Though communication between Artifacts was possible up to a range of two kilometers, Stoakes was under strict orders not to reveal himself to any of the current Shades. Communication with the Emperor or Witchlan, his avatar, in this way was not possible, which Stoakes had always thought strange. Usually, he was grateful for the privacy this disconnect granted him, but the crash had cut him off. He had no fear of dying, but being left behind, stranded, that was something else.

  He took a moment to calm down. Obviously the damage done was great. The Palace wouldn’t be picking up and reengaging the Stitch Drive for some time. First, whatever had penetrated the Palace would have to be sheared away; the breaches would have to be sealed. All of this would take time. The structure was manmade—of this there could be no doubt—and may require investigation, which could mean even more time.

  He wasn’t sure which way to go. He could feel the tenuous pull of artificial gravity from two different directions and didn’t know which of these originated from the Palace. There was no sign of Vine fiber anywhere to offer him a clue, either. There was nothing to do but choose one direction over the other. He wasted little time in doing this and set off on his way.

  From where he was, the going in either direction appeared to be easy at first, but he quickly ran into severe structural damage that forced him to test several points of entry before finding one that allowed progress. He couldn’t remember ever moving through such a cramped environment for so long. He made his living passing through the impassable, but this usually meant, at most, several meters at a time, and even then these ways often opened into crawl spaces large enough to accommodate him physically for part of the way. What he passed through now was like a contiguous crack through hundreds of meters that thankfully had not yet met with a dead end. He was starting to get concerned, though. He’d never been claustrophobic, and in spite of the fact that he wasn’t actually breathing or in need of oxygen while Dark, he imagined that he was becoming short of breath just the same.

  After several minutes more, dim light and palpable warmth were detectable ahead and spurred him forward at increased speed. He emerged into a space that, though far less confining, felt rather like a womb. The irony was not entirely lost on him. He fell to his hands and knees on the floor, which was soft and yielding, and panted with purely psychological relief. He flipped around to lie on his back and stared up at the strange ceiling, bulbous, pulsing, and somehow alive. The floor shifted and his Dark form slipped between to the true floor.

  Confusion turned to frustration. He didn’t know what this room was lined with, but understanding began to creep in as he felt the slow, synchronous heartbeat feather-touching him at all points upon his wispy form. Reflexively he yanked his left hand away at a sudden, sharp pain. He examined his almost shapeless hand in the darkness and saw that blood was dripping from a wound. Frustration and confusion wrestled inside him, vying for dominance, and fueling each other to ever greater heights. What the hell?

  The floor, the false one, was suddenly moving. Waves of motion shot through it, keeping Stoakes off balance, setting him to bobbing within and upon it. An animal face, filled with long, sharp teeth presented itself to him and snapped. The jaws closed and snagged black wisps that trailed like ribbons. Blood, bright and warm, sprayed from an unidentifiable fount hidden in the black cloud of Stoakes’s chest to cover the undulating mass upon the floor. Heads splashed or even dotted with the blood perked up. These animals—all of them with translucent skin which revealed organs and muscle—sniffed at the thin but present air and licked at the welcome liquid with pink, searching tongues.

  Stoakes clutched at his pierced breast, his commingled confusion and frustration coalescing to rage. Over the course of his long career, Stoakes had encountered technology and opponents able to penetrate his Dark defense. He was not completely intangible. Nor was he invulnerable. But this was the first time he’d come across an animal capable harming him with its natural weapons. Perhaps those teeth were slightly more than natural. That might explain the mystery, but he had no time for further consideration. The false floor was astir now, with countless tooth-dominated muzzles turning his way.

  Jaws clapped down everywhere upon him. Blood spurted as from a wounded storm cloud. Stoakes scrambled to his feet, reaching reflexively for the Suicide Knife at the small of his back, though this was unnecessary, as he swept his left two-fingered secret sword fist in a two hundred and seventy degree arc around him. Now other blood mingled with his own, and he heard the satisfying squeal coming severally from a number of the beasts cut neatly in half. In this way he cleared the area immediately about him to gain secure footing and bring the Suicide Knife to bear. Though the secret sword fist might be sufficient, the Knife would give him increased power and range. He hadn’t bled like this since his active service as a 19th Generation General and wanted to take no chances. His Knife traced endless silver arcs and circles, turning the room into a slaughterhouse. Animals fell on him from above, came at him from all corners, seeking to sink their fangs into him, but no more succeeded in this. Now he bled them, and within fifteen minutes of ceaseless work, Stoakes was the only thing left living in the room.

  His breast was heaving, not so much from the effort alone, but from that combined with blood loss. He was shocked at how sharp their teeth must be. He knelt to steady himself and prevent the room from spinning. In another few minutes of stillness, his wounds had stopped bleeding and his heart was slowing its frantic pace.

  Careful to avoid the teeth, he kicked several carcasses out of his way as he took up the search for the way on. A slide of bodies now only half-covered a pressure door. Light had been coming from a small thick window set high in the door and diffusing through the bodies and translucent ski
ns of the nasty little things. He cleared these from the door and forced it open, ready again to bring his Knife to bear if necessary.

  It wasn’t.

  The pressure door opened into a vast corridor that went unobstructed for several hundred meters in both directions before narrowing to much smaller branching corridors. The room he’d just exited was a small, free-standing building, one of several. Stoakes eased out into what felt like the middle of a long-dead market street. Despite the regular modular construction, it had the feel of a shanty town. Signs in an unreadable language hung on what he guessed had been shop fronts. Over the door he’d just come out of was a symbol or picture that looked rather like a lightning bolt. A power regulation station perhaps? He didn’t care enough to go back in and sort through the mess to make sure.

  He looked to the vaulted ceiling, some thirty meters above, and saw that it was pocked with portholes. He leapt up, and though the gravity was much stronger here, it didn’t prevent him from hovering at the window. He looked in all directions, and taking advantage of his nearly intangible state, at an angle otherwise impossible to achieve, was able to catch sight of the Vine. It was no surprise now that he’d gone the wrong way, but the size of the tubular structure that had struck the Palace was staggering. That there were perhaps a hundred of these—that he could see—making a delicate web out here in interstitial space was even more so. Progress for the Palace would be sticky for some time to come.

  As he stared through the window, light came alive upon it, superimposing over what he first thought might be a speck of dust, but the speck moved and so did the light. Unintelligible script began to blink upon the window glass. He saw that all the other portholes facing the same direction were lighting up similarly. He’d seen data collection systems like this before. In fact, Raus Kapler had introduced a similar technology to the Empire when he joined them.

  He watched his window carefully, knowing that if enough data came through, his Artifact would eventually render it comprehensible. Another superimposed light shape appeared then another. Next to these were symbols now, which he found he understood: they were numbers, and they were rapidly decreasing in value. Stoakes strained to see what the windows were picking up, but whatever they were, they were still too far away. He sighed tiredly. Whether he could see them or not, it was highly likely that they were ships—a fleet or fleets of ships— and they were coming this way.

  He pushed against the ceiling wall to descend back down to the street. He quickly reentered the power regulation station, pushed through bodies to find the break in the wall, and retraced his path through the dark press. Finding himself back where he’d regained consciousness, he felt as though several hours had passed—and perhaps they had. Lack of sufficient sensory input had temporarily obliterated the workings of his internal clock.

  • • •

  Time would only elude him further on his return to the Palace, even though he was now going in the right direction. Most of the ways he chose were blocked, but eventually, after several false starts, he found passage through a tight-knit maze that gave him entry back into the Palace.

  There was still some distance to go before reaching an unaffected section of the Palace. The compartments through which he passed were compressed, often wall to wall, and sometimes with broken bodies or parts of bodies sticking to or smeared to the walls. The sight and smell made Stoakes a little sick and he wondered to himself if, after a whole career of offering this kind of wholesale death to native populations, he wasn’t softening, instead of the opposite, as he grew older. He knew some of the dead, had been close to one or two women he was certain couldn’t have survived, and supposed that this made all the difference.

  Finally he came through a ruptured wall into an otherwise intact chamber filled with repair crew personnel. He remained Dark, crept along the wall, hoping to remain unseen, found his way down the connecting corridor to a jump deck, and went immediately to the war room.

  Stepping from the deck, he returned to normal. He was naked save for the trunks he wore to bed, and his skin livid with mostly-healed bite marks. He slumped down into the nearest chair about the glass-topped round table that dominated the room.

  The screens through the room, always active, displayed the effects and extent of the damage done to the Palace via countless video feeds.

  From here, it was simple to summon Witchlan, using the equipment at the table. In just over a minute, the Minister of Affairs stepped whole from a portion of the wall that was raw Vine fiber, devoid of any machinery.

  “Mr. Stoakes,” Witchlan said, “we are very pleased to see that you are alive.”

  Something about the way Witchlan spoke made Stoakes nervous. Perhaps it was the unnatural sincerity—which he appreciated—or the fact that he should have been the last of Witchlan’s concerns under the current circumstances. Either way, he was uncomfortable. “Thank you, Minister.” He made a point to look around the war room, at all the flickering screens, to acknowledge the plight of the Palace. “Is something. . . else wrong, Minister?”

  Witchlan gave the equivalent of a trembling sigh. “Yes. We have detected an echo.”

  Stoakes frowned. “Here?”

  Witchlan nodded. “Somewhere. Her position is difficult to pinpoint. It’s erratic, but she’s close. Closer than we are used to.”

  Stoakes slumped further in his chair and shook his head. “And getting closer still?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s on a ship.”

  “A ship?”

  “That’s why I rushed back here. To warn you.”

  “Where have you been, Mr. Stoakes?”

  Stoakes focused on one of the screens shining up through the glass table top, compared it with another, then pointed. “Here, I’d guess. One or more fleets are approaching from… here, I’d say,” he said pointing to another screen.”

  Witchlan bent to scrutinize, noted the location. “We wouldn’t have known to look, Mr. Stoakes. Thank you. This information is invaluable. Despite our wounds, we will not be caught off guard. Also, we are too close to The Place with Many Doors to risk a union between Mr. Holson and one of these echoes. We are relieved that you will be able to proceed with your assignment. But not before a small amount of rest and recuperation.

  “You will find temporary quarters immediately below Tether Launch Bay 116. I will send fresh clothing and someone to tend to your… physical needs.”

  Stoakes raised an eyebrow. “Minister?”

  “Consider it thanks for your very valuable information.”

  Stoakes nodded.

  “And, Mr. Stoakes, be aware that we’ve had a small infestation of voracious little creatures transferred to the Palace by way of the collision. If you should encounter any of these parasites, do not hesitate to put your skills to work upon them.”

  “Yes, Minister,” Stoakes said uneasily. He’d forgotten to mention his encounter with them.

  10,810.302.1000

  Tether Launch Bay 116 had its own jump deck. Since the bay had been and would be unmanned for the duration of transit, Stoakes stepped from the platform to darkness. The quiet, the towering silver tanks, the reinforced bay doors: all these made him feel a little more secure and at ease, although he knew that those doors could be ripped asunder just as easily has the wall of his previous quarters had. He shrugged. He didn’t know if there was another way into his new quarters, but sought out a seam between floor plates, went Dark, and descended into a room less cramped than what he was used to. He’d had identical accommodations in the past and walked straight to the bathroom. As he walked, he noted that there was a door leading out to the rest of the Palace, but his only interest was in taking a hot shower. He stripped off his trunks and entered the stall where he remained for nearly an hour, reveling in the cleansing warmth.

  Exiting the stall, gusts of warm air dried him before he crossed the threshold back into the main room, where he stopped suddenly gawking at something that was more of a shock than anything that had h
appened to him since waking this day.

  Standing just inside the room, with her arms supporting a bundle of dark fabric and her back close to the door, was Ana Tain. Her luxuriant, tight red curls were an elegant and careless splash spread across the front of her sleeveless white shift and reaching down to just past her shoulder blades. Her skin was smooth and unblemished, save for the freckles across her nose and cheeks—and the blush she was unable to hide while facing his nakedness. She was just as he remembered her at her most beautiful, but that had been a hundred and twenty years ago, before she’d died with tens of thousands of others when Garlin Braams had nearly destroyed the Palace.

  A holographic screen flickered into being, revealing Witchlan’s face.

  “Ah,” Witchlan said, “she’s arrived. She was your favorite, wasn’t she?”

  “What is she?”

  “Let’s at least whisper,” Witchlan said, whispering, “and pretend she can’t hear us, eh?”

  Stoakes moved closer to the screen, keeping an eye on the woman at all times.

  “That’s better,” Witchlan continued, in a low voice. “She is a modified gene soldier. Yours along with the codes to reproduce her. Hold your Knife up, will you?”

  Stoakes produced the Suicide Knife from thin air and held the blade before the screen which became a scramble of moving symbols.

  “Transmitting. . . There.”

  Witchlan’s face returned. Stoakes dropped his Knife to his side absently.

  “Now she is forever yours, indelibly recorded upon the Midnight Mirror.”

  “I thought that gene soldiers were outlawed,” Stoakes said, frowning, “the processing plants disassembled.”

  “Come now, Mr. Stoakes. You are a retired Shade of the Viscain Empire. And you continue to provide an invaluable service. With the proper codes, every former Root Palace can manufacture gene soldiers. True, the days of mass production are done, but for specialty models, exceptions can be made. Especially as incentives or small tokens of gratitude.