Indie Aisle

The Undeniable Labyrinth

by A. A. Roi

Smashwords Edition

Cover by Oort

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Special thanks to Janet, Hope and Steve

Althea – 01

Light and darkness spun around her. Althea stumbled into space. She slipped out of control, falling forward – reacted automatically – legs and arms extended, palms flat; fingers outstretched.

She felt sudden solidity. The vertigo and free fall spinning slowed, stopped.

Althea collapsed on a hard, cold surface, shuddering. Her body curled up in defensive instinct. Lights flashed around her, the portal roared its chimes – and against that – saturating Mirror Maze visions warred.

…“Your Consortia crutches!” …“Who will save you?!” …opponent is playing ...taunting ...earth shakes ...taller than buildings ...puppets ...corpore ...beyond arrogance! …thoughtless amusement …so fast …blow after blow …again and again …taste of blood …swing and kick …fist against flesh …measure and lunge…

Legion!

The air, sharp and cold, brought her back to reality. She willfully calmed her racing heart and mind.

Althea pulled herself to her knees, fought the dizziness, turned to look at the silvery light beaming from the active portal looming over her.

“Oneness,” she breathed. “That was…”

Memory returned. There was no time to waste. Vital, essential actions came to mind. She thought of Dorian – and the Macro risk – took in a deep breath.

“Transmissions?” Her voice didn’t sound right, it sounded choked, haggard.

Standard portal responses, Dorian told her, his words comfortably inside her head.

She felt relief – he was still with her. Althea checked herself. Everything seemed in its proper place. Kneeling, she brought her cold hands up from the freezing floor, waited a moment for her NANs to send warming blood to them. Around her, the lights flashed a kaleidoscope in monochrome from the still active portal. She rubbed her face, tried to focus.

The transit had been almost unbearably long. Filled with experiential fragments so intense she struggled to shake them out of her mind. But– that might mean she had reached her destination. Elysium was a long way from home.

“Good… good,” she forced out. “Check for Macro fragments in the control system’s foundation code.”

The last thing they needed was an active, alert Macro responding to their arrival when she was in such a vulnerable, dizzied state.

“Does– does it know we've arrived?”

…click click …clank clank …robots …hissing …cutting burning …surface warming shaking …vibrations stronger and stronger …what programming? …eyes into eyes …sorrow …predatory hunger …not kind …he believes …empathy …must not be abandoned …nodding agreement …shifting mirrors …portal winks …pounding behind her …pounding through her …heart pounding …legs pumping … metal screams …thrashing metal …last steps …push off …shattering glass…

Focus!

“What did you say?” She’d heard his reply, but couldn’t make it out. The hallucinations had been that intense.

There are traces of code, Dorian repeated, but I am not detecting any queries. It is surface embedded and inactive.

She smiled, again relieved. That didn’t mean that they were safe, but it did mean that they had time. She needed time.

Are you all right? he asked.

“It was such a long…” She couldn’t finish, couldn’t express what she’d experienced. “Did you–?”

Only the transition. You?

“Too much… too much,” she told him. Dorian didn’t experience nightmares or physical pain either. There were some advantages to being constructed from trinary code.

Brushing hair from her eyes, Althea tried to will the sensations away. She had to resist them. The real world demanded her attention.

“Begin shutdown,” she commanded.

Her vision was clearing as the portal lights began to slow their dancing, sharp chimes turning to low, treacle bubbling. The hall darkened, the afterglow from its massive columns now dominating the growing gloom. The air was still harsh and cold. She was beginning to feel the chill all over; alarms in her mind rang about circulation, heat loss, hypothermia. Her adaptive clothing wasn’t compensating. That wasn’t right at all. Her travel tunic and her memsuit underneath were capable of responding to categorically extreme temperatures. It was too cold!

She tried to stand, but vertigo and flashes of images, sounds, sensations, stopped her again.

…the mirror leans …pressing …staring down …deep …in the depths …woman …older …her …not her …behind another …and another …find us …all of us …who you are …you must …“How?” …“How do I get through?” …fists beating cold glass …harder and harder …will not break …each blow hurting …fists throbbing …figures fading … disappearing …crying out ….hot tears streaming …falling …sliding down …clutching fist …pain…

Althea was back again on her knees, looking down at her outstretched hands pressed hard against freezing solidity. How could she think that was not her? Straight black hair, smooth adult features with dark brown eyes and near the same shade of skin – that was who she was. She gritted her teeth.

Follow the plan!

02

“Follow the plan,” she repeated, felt her teeth begin to chatter.

Dorian signaled his assent. Althea gingerly got to her feet. She shivered, rubbed her arms, thought figures and scales in her mind. In a beat, a new wave of radiating warmth came from within as her NANs responded.

She glanced around for the station’s primary controls, spotted a vaguely mushroom shaped mound near her, perhaps two sixes away. She started in that direction, stepping carefully across the slick, ice coated floor.

“Dorian, it’s too cold here. Didn’t we arrive at the proper site?” There weren’t supposed to be ports in either of Elysium’s arctic zones.

The port's address information is a close approximation of our data, he told her. Perhaps there has been a shift in seasonal weather patterns.

Althea reached the mound. She activated the torch bracelet on her wrist, white light brightening the grey of her bodysuit’s sleeve, projected photons revealing what she’d suspected: underneath the thick, translucent coating were the station’s primary controls.

She looked them over, frowning.

The wide, slightly angled, waist high surface was totally covered in ice. Every access panel on it was thickly coated to nearly a double two, a handbreadth easily. Beneath, the surface lights did shine faint and dull – active – but inaccessible. The only way to get at them would be by smashing or melting.

All around, the walls had a far thicker coating, glittering with frost. It all looked too solid, too permanent.

‘No, no, no, this ice looks way too thick to be seasonal.” Althea felt a mounting anxiety. It wasn’t at all how she expected Elysium to be.

Was this the memorial world at all? She began to wonder, to doubt. Better to know sooner than later.

She performed a three-point check on the relative gravity, finding it noticeably weaker than expected. She considered the content of the air, started swearing under her breath. There were trace elements that could not possibly be present the Elysian atmosphere.

“It’s all wrong! None of this matches Elysium at all!” Dorian had warned her arrival wasn’t a certainty. She should have listened to him. But– all the marking symbols on the panels were obscured by the ice. “What planet is this?”

Do you want me to scan deeper?

“No!” she commanded sharply. “Too risky. I’ll break through the ice, access the board manually.”

My formula failed you.

No!… No.

“Dorian,” she implored. “It was a long transit, and our information is over two hundred anna off pattern.”

She paused for a moment.

“You did tell me there were no guarantees.”

He didn’t deserve the blame. The transit had been her choice, her decision. Althea took in a deep breath of the bitterly cold air, felt her thoughts clearing, echoes from the transit fading, gone. She glared at the iced-up controls, despondent.

What do you want to do now? Return to your port and try another formula?

And only improve her chances by a tiny fraction? With not even a cursory response from the world’s Macro, she was free for at least some investigation. They should have enough time to reactivate the portal and get out without any risk of it following them back.

“No, not yet.” It wasn’t too cold, she decided, to spend a little while looking for answers. They could easily triple their chances with new spatial data. “We need to find out where we’ve ended up.”

Althea pondered a mental list of possible worlds that they could have been bounced to, as she began to cut through the ice coating the main controls. There were potentially hundreds, none more than a partial match to what she had found. The temperature here couldn’t match any of them, not combined with the local gravity and atmospheric composition.

Where could she be?

The ice wasn’t thick, but it was solid. Even cut, the layers of on the controls took no small effort to shatter, reluctantly succumbing to her attacks of kinetics and heat. It was tricky to adjust her tiny projector to cut only the frozen layers and not damage the control surface beneath, the density of the layers being too variable.

Direct access would have been instantaneous, but there was no safe way for Dorian to activate the system, not without potentially exposing him to the local Macro. Human – manual operation – was the least dangerous way for her to bring up control fields, decrypt the local coding herself, time consuming though that would be.

She was quickly beginning to regret the decision, however, having to stop cutting through the ice – often – to allow her stressed NANs to stabilize, help adjust her body’s response to the cold air chilling her, biting into her lungs, with every breath.

Yellow and red lights blinked at her through the fragments of pulverized ice. She stopped for a moment, staring at the blurry screen beneath the final layers, shut, then reopened her eyes.

…Lying in a meadow …big yellow flowers on green …wavering in the leisurely breeze …sun high in a sapphire sky …a sharp glint of yellow-green high in the bright blue …sweltering heat …buttery smell …buzzing of insects …chirping of avians …voices calling her …hidden name …child’s name …“Tara, Tara, Tara” …male and female voices …adult …familiar …giggling …never find her here …she’ll be able to stay …lay in the flowers …away from the dark forest …forever…

Althea shivered – shook away the vision – leaned for a moment against the station controls, collecting her energy, her thoughts.

She’d taken long transits before out here, far longer than was allowed among the Palmyr worlds, certainly. Dreamlike sensations, strange compulsions, visions, voices – she had experienced them before – but they’d never lingered so long after arrival.

Should she abandon a direct route – formulate a series of shorter, more certain paths to Elysium?

But then… how many ruined worlds, how many more dead, how many Macros could she handle? She shut her eyes tight against the thought.

How many more Hadhalho’s, before she could find any kind of absolution?

Althea took in a breath, let it out, watched it billow into the air – forced herself to relax – then looked down at her dark skinned Emeralder hands. They were loosening their grip, but her nails had clearly gouged sharp lines over the glowing displays.

Whatever the hallucinations meant, pulled from her mind or not, figuring them out was not vital. Finding out what went wrong with the transit – where they were, and how to program the return formula – was. After Elysium, she could be more cautious; take shorter, safer, less harrowing transits.

With renewed focus, Althea scraped, smashed and pried off the last of the ice, exposing the primary controls and reactive display panels to her touch. The board arrangement was different than she was accustomed to, but still workable. She applied the default commands, waited for the system’s responses to appear – and waited. Nothing happened.

She looked up at the darkened portal, the dimming glow in the columns as the system cooled, steamed away the frost. When she looked back at the panels, there was still no change. The second and third tries produced the same result.

Frustrated, she complained: “The controls aren’t responding at all!”

They had to, or–

Dorian offered a thought.

Cryogenic damage?

She let another white breath out.

The suggestion wasn’t of practical help, although was likely accurate, and worrying. She didn’t want to have to try nanoscopic repair work in such conditions.

You could try the secondary controls.

Waste more time smashing ice? Althea shook her head, not wanting to entertain the idea, tried the activation sequence again. Nothing. She gave up.

“Fine, the secondaries.”

Shards and ice dust piled up around her feet, scattered on the floor, as she finished melting and smashing through to the secondary controls. She worked her commands again, waited – smiled. The glowing symbols transformed, shifted to green and blue. Satisfied, she brushed the dusty debris off the board then applied her requests.

Althea poked the interface controls lightly, tentatively – relieved by the positive responses, if not the system’s stuttering, freezing. More green and blue symbols lit up; details appeared. She conferred with Dorian, then provided the required sequence of trinary code through the manual interface. It took almost a two sixes to decrypt the control paths, but the result proved to be worth the effort.

The whole board brightened up, fields of data emerging, becoming clear; but the information they revealed was totally unexpected, and totally unacceptable.

“This cannot be possible – It has to be wrong!”

What’s wrong?

“The system says that we are on Makan! Dorian, Statis Delcia Tres! It says we’re not even in the right Century!”

Her mind filled with knowledge of the world. Fun, exciting Makan, with third grade technology, unremarkable population and culture, economy centered on… tourism?! The Orealcean Century of cultures was galactic west, hundreds of light years from her intended destination.

Makan was not described as cold world.

“I know,” she choked out, still disbelieving. “We should be in a tropical zone, not a deep freeze!”

How could that have happened? How could she have ended up here?! Makan was so far away from Elysium. The probability of such a redirection was incredibly – unbearably – small. Yet… here they were.

There were hints in our records that the original settlers may have altered their world’s climate. Terraforming was very common in the Consortia.

“You think they would have been proud of that,” she replied angrily, “and maybe told somebody. That kind of climate work would be hard to control with just micronics.”

Perhaps the technology was provided by a higher-grade culture.

Orbital solar lenses, she decided. That would explain everything she saw.

Althea looked again around her at the thick ice, perhaps decades worth of deposit, coating the walls. The world was returning to its natural state. Not good for anyone, least of all her. She stared back at the confirmation report, accepted it. Portal Authority data didn’t lie. Gravity and air composition didn’t lie. They had to be on Makan.

“All right,” she agreed glumly, shivered again. A decision needed to be made, and soon.

Elysium might be worth risking her life, not this planet. It wouldn't have anything she wanted or needed, and, even if it did, she wasn’t prepared at all for such a hostile environment.

“Then we'd better leave before we attract any attention. There's nothing here of any use.” She glanced over the asymmetrical control layout, began pressing the sequence to reactivate the portal. In moments, the trilium columns along the walls began to glow again.

The symbols on fields, however, didn’t change, remained static; didn’t reveal any activation of the bridging fields.

“Damn.” She had entered the proper sequence, hadn’t she? Althea looked to the power columns; their light had turned dim, fading, dying. “The system isn’t reactivating.”

A light dust fell on the controls before her, glittering in the board’s glow. She brushed it away, clearing the panel. A vibration ran through it beneath her fingers, accompanied by a low, almost sub-sonic, rumbling.

She looked up.

What– what’s that sound?

Alarmed – Althea turned, looking, searching – straining for the source of the sound. Glittering frost was falling from the vaulted ceiling high overhead. The rumbling changed into low splintering, cracking noise coming from above – no – it was coming from all around! Panicking, she stabbed repeated startup sequences on the unresponsive control board with her, again, cold-numbed fingers.

They had to reactivate the portal, regardless of the risk.

“Dorian, access the core system. Start up the portal! Do it now!”

That would be dangerous. There is still a significant risk the Macro–

–had a thread into the control system. It didn’t matter; they had to get out of here. The power surge created by her arrival must have damaged the frozen port’s delicate structural balance. Above her, the decades’ worth of ice that had built up was splintering apart. There was no time – no time at all!

“The whole port is beginning to collapse!” she shouted. “The ice is breaking apart. If we don't get out of here now we'll be buried!”

So intent on the controls, discovering where she’d transited to, she hadn’t even thought to pay any attention to what was happening in the chamber around her.

A monstrous crack of thunder reverberated through the still air.

“Now, Dorian. Now!”

The control fields shifted achingly slowly, board indicators flickered back and forth. Althea jumped in shock as a chunk of ice several times her size shattered on the floor just a five from her, the impact spraying her frost and slivers. Quick glances up told her that blocks as big as that one, larger were breaking loose, about to fall.

It’s taking too long!

Activating… activating. The circuits have been cut. Neither the primary nor the secondary are responding.

“Reroute,” she commanded. “There have to be redundant systems somewhere here. There are always–”

Several control panels went dark.

“Dorian!”

Parts of the frozen vault above, progressively – frighteningly larger – were falling now, and not just ice; chunks of the port’s structure were crashing down as well. Althea stared upwards, praying that the whole vault above wasn't going to collapse on her before the portal re-activated.

The system has ceased. I cannot re-activate the portal.

She gaped at the board in disbelief, stabbed at the flickering interfaces in desperation.

I’m sorry.

Another thunderous crack, louder than before, reverberated around her. She glanced upwards, eyes widening in terror. The NANs in her body, now commanded by her overriding fear, tripped her perceptions up into overdrive, slowing everything around her to a perceptual crawl.

The falling blocks floated down towards her with glacial slowness. She could move, and move fast, but there was nowhere to run, nowhere safe she could reach. She had failed to reactivate the portal and any other exit was too far away. A vast section of the ceiling was separating, splintering – falling in massive pieces, straight down towards her.

“Oneness,” she forced out in a harsh whisper.

The spell broke, and she fell to her knees, lifting her arms up to block out the horrifying sight.

Traejan - 06

Time was tight. Traejan had less than thirteen seconds to reach the end of the corridor, burst through the barricades and cut the countdown.

“Almost there,” he whispered, cramped fingers losing their grip, slippery with sweat. The ratcheted-up opposition was relentless. “Almost there.”

He grimaced with the effort it took, having to blast everything that moved around him, but he reached the corner, with two seconds to spare, skidding to a stop before exposing himself. The triplet-gun raised high; he waited for the right moment.

Now!

Swinging into view, the grinning cyborg lowered his gatling blaster, the massive weapon spitting out fire.

“Not this time,” Traejan breathed as multiple bullets battered him, smiled. He’d positioned himself perfectly; in location, in time, and with enough life to absorb a few hits. He leveled his gun, squeezed the trigger – blew the monster to blood, bone and shrapnel.

Run, run, run!

He had only a few seconds to get to the gate, held his breath.

Get to the gate, stop the countdown, save the hostages, win! Five, four three two, jump!

He was through. He was finished. The world exploded around him in a kaleidoscope of light, cheers. All lives saved, ninety-three point seven five percent score! It took the game twice as long as usual to compile all his bonus credits.

Gasping, Traejan leaned back in the mersion couch, soaked with sweat and strain, but soothed by his achievement.

“Ah… best score ever.” He closed his aching eyes for the first time in an hour. “Try topping that!” he challenged.

The stacks of gutted tech around him offered nothing in return.

The silence of solitude made him sink further in the chair. As good as he’d gotten, Mende would have kicked his ass at this game, Kaelin too. Kyso was still alive, but he didn’t care; he had his own nostalgic dreamland to escape to. Traejan opened his eyes again, as he heard the game’s master voice begin. It matched the bright bold characters, the display floating above him: “Total victory! Zero casualties! You’ve achieved the penultimate level!”

Traejan tried a smile, gave up, let his body relax, gave in to the fatigue. He closed his eyes.

From somewhere a rhythmic alarm began to ring.

Traejan shifted irritably, tried to ignore it, looked back up at the field matrix, the details of his achievement. He rubbed tickling moisture from his close-cropped hair.

The alarm stopped. Then it rang, again and again.

“Streck…” he swore – tried to pull himself out of the couch, wincing at the pain, the stiffness of his muscles, the complaining flesh.

On the second attempt he succeeded.

Twisting carefully, he slipped his thin frame through the labyrinthine stacks of garbage tech in the room, towards the source of the annoying, throbbing, alarm. He swore as a sharp edged bracket snagged his trousers, ripped them as he tore free.

“What the hell?” Traejan muttered, clearing out the micronics that blocked the source of the ringing. A monitor, screen cracked, yet active, displayed large characters blinking rapidly: PORTAL POWER SURGE. It glowed brightly with graphic details pulsing in underlying fields.

The pattern of the alarm began anew – he pressed a key to silence it. Afraid, he jabbed the key again. The alarm restarted.

Excitement gripped him. His fingers, so nimble and effective in the mersion game, stumbled over the verification sequence. He flicked the send function, waited; impatiently tapping the board as the system slowly digested his requests.

Years… years of silence, and it was finally ringing! A power surge could mean just one thing – the portal at End’Echea had been activated, The Consortia had come back!

Three seconds passed. It felt like an eternity.

“Verify,” he instructed. Then, exasperated, demanded: “Verify!”

The fields redrew into a new shape. The surge was confirmed.

“Verified. Confirm portal Activation!”

New fields lit up in the screen, clearly showing the flow of energy through the End’Echea Mirror Port, spikes of excessive generation in the tenth-magnitude range. It was absolute confirmation.

“Yes!”

One of the fields dropped out. Traejan blinked. Another dropped. The rest vanished from the display.

“No, no!”

He tapped out all the commands he knew, but the power fields graphs still read dead. All that remained active was the alarm pulse.

Traejan blinked hard, then called up the system records. He couldn’t have just imagined it all. The records didn’t disappoint. The mirror port had been activated. It had been running at maximum power for over ten minutes. Traejan had been up for twenty hours, mastering the mersion game, but he was more awake than he had been in weeks.

“Have to tell Kyso,” he muttered, “have to tell him now!” Where the streck was he? Traejan ran through the cold, empty corridors of the old resort, calling the old man’s name. He wasn’t in his workshop, kitchen, dome or sleeping quarters. Where was he?

The sound of music – the tangy smell – drew him to the darkened observation lounge, smoke of nostalgia hanging in the air over the Kyso’s slumped body. Traejan shook his head at the man’s stained ratty robe, lank white hair messily flowing over face and shoulders. The Trakka blared from some hidden speakers. He couldn’t turn it off, or even see where the music controls were. Turned to his last companion, he shook the man’s shoulder, slapped his slack brown cheeks.

“Kyso!” he shouted.

The old man shuddered, raised his head, squinting in Traejan’s direction – dark, unfocused eyes staring from a nest of wrinkles. “What is it boy?” he asked in a scratchy, lethargic voice, hand over mouth and beard, wiping.

“I was just in the–” Traejan started, stopped, gestured inadequately, frantically, then forced the words out. “The alarm has gone off!”

Kyso stared at him, blinked. “Alarm? What alarm?”

Traejan took him by the shoulders, shook him violently. “The End’Echea Mirror Port alarm!” He stared into the man’s now startled eyes. “It read a tenth-mag trilium displacement.”

Kyso’s eyes widened. He shook off Traejan’s grip, looked up at him.

“Are you sure?” he asked, brow furrowed in thought, focus, looked back up. “Tenth-magnitude? Not since…”

He grabbed the man’s left hand, pulled him to his feet. Kyso took a moment to steady himself, shaking his head as he fumbled over his robe’s tie. Traejan was already moving to the door, turned to wave urgently.

“Come on, Come on!”

For once Kyso managed some spring in his step – once fully awake, actually kept up with him – all the way back to the tech room. Traejan kicked away some of the equipment, shoved stacks aside so the both of them could look over the data he’d recorded.

“There it is,” he announced proudly, pulling up the recorded field pulses. “Verified and confirmed!”

Kyso fussed over the controls, peering at the data with suspicion, mumbling incoherent tech babble all the way. After a long silence, he nodded, turned back to Traejan.

“You’re right,” he said, a rare sober smile on his lips. The old man turned back to the display, poked the cracked screen. “That is a definite power surge. I remember those spikes.”

He backed a couple steps away from the screen, rubbed his moustache and beard with a thick-fingered hand.

“But what could cause that now?” he wondered.

“What else could it be?!” Traejan challenged. “Not bots or flyers. It’s well above the ice line. No scavenger knows how to open up the Mirror Maze. Consortia, it has to be!”

“Now?” Kyso questioned. He’d already started falling back into his listless dreamer fugue.

“They’re due, don’t you think?” Traejan countered, a bitter taste in his mouth. “It’s just been – what – two hundred and fifty years?!”

All he received was a skeptical look.

“We could find out what happened,” he continued excitedly. “What’s kept them so dammed long!”

Kyso raised a gnarled finger; gave him a stern, refocused look.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself with the assumption this is Legionary,” he asserted, pointed back at the screen. “All that is – is a blip. It could be any number of things. We need… need to consider our actions. We have very little left we can afford to lose boy.”

He wished Kyso would stop calling him that. He had been married; he was a man.

“We have to go,” Traejan insisted. “We have to at least take a closer look.”

The old man turned back to him, narrowed his gaze, nodded.

“Of course, of course,” he agreed, then added in a dour tone, “But don’t hold your hopes high. It’s probably nothing like what you’re dreaming of.”

A blistering wind blew across his face, merciless needles of ice peppering his exposed skin. The bone-deep chill kept creeping in, alternating with the burning heat of intense physical effort. Whoever had activated the mirror port hadn’t chosen the best time to do it. Winter was approaching – bitter cold, driving wind, and storm.

Traejan crouched, leaned forwards against the straps, exhausted from trudging through the ice for three days, the frigid wind lashing his face all the way. He stared through his frosted facemask into the relentless blowing snow ahead. Just in sight, the ghost-like shape of Kyso struggled, bent over as he forced his way through the constant stream of white.

Weeks of mersion games didn’t seem to have done much for his endurance. Surprising, considering how much energy they took to play.

Come on, you’re falling behind a frail oldster. Even a sled packed with supplies shouldn’t be killing you.

The snow pack under his feet deepened; he slowed a bit. The sled’s micro-thrusters weren’t working well, barely compensating for its mass. He was struggling for each step, gasping for breath. Traejan shut his eyes tight and pushed his way forward.

Shit, streck, shit, when is this going to end?

Abruptly, it did. He almost stumbled right into Kyso. Were they there, already?

His friend turned a masked face, held a thickly mittened hand up, then showed him why he’d stopped.

Traejan winced at the sight – cursed again. They’d gone way off course. The blowing snow was clearing away. They stood in sudden, brilliant sunlight. Bare gray rocks stuck out of the ice, against the empty blue sky. In the distance, high, white mountains cut the horizon. They’d missed the easy slope by kilometers.

Traejan released the straps, looked at the old man, who shrugged – motioned ahead.

They hunkered down in a crevice, sheltered from the worst of the wind. Kyso took out his binocs, turned them towards the wide valley below them. Traejan couldn't see the station with his naked eyes, but it was visible through his lenses, if only just. He adjusted his own binocs to maximum, but still couldn't coax out a good image – only a lump of structures poking out of the ice. The glare was too strong, solid white, hiding most details.

“I can’t see much from this distance.” Kyso’s voice rough, raw, and muffled by his mask, strained to rise above the howling wind. Traejan looked away from his binoc image to see the man shake his head.

“There’s a lot of blowing snow out there.” He pointed out into the blue. “I don’t see any evidence of activity.”

“We’re a solid fifty kilometers away,” Traejan knew. Fifty! That’s going to kill me for sure. “And whatever went on there happened inside – not out.”

“Still could be bots,” Kyso offered. “There’s been a lot of weather out here, could hide anything.”

“Couldn’t!” Traejan protested, irritated at the other man’s repeated contrariness. He wouldn’t accept that the things would come so far north.

“Still think you’re an expert on everything mech, do you?” Kyso shot back.

“As much as you are,” He retorted angrily. Kyso might have yelled something further. Traejan wasn’t listening. He crept over to the ledge – looked down. The ice and rock precipice beckoned. The base was not as far down as he’d expected, but easily enough to be a fatal drop.

It’d be quick though, he told himself, not a slow, tortuous wearing away. Maybe put the old man out of his misery. He turned, crawled back, motioned to Kyso.

“Want to try the short way down the cliff face?” he yelled, pointing towards the edge. “It’ll only take a few seconds!”

Kyso wasn’t interested. Instead, he pointed south, back to the safe route. Traejan looked out at the stark, white landscape, punctuated only by gray, bare rock.

When he looked back, Kyso had disappeared into the blow, his vague silhouette merge in with the darker, shadowy form of the sled. Must be break time, Traejan realized – not a moment to soon. He couldn’t feel his fingers anymore, or his toes.

It was a relief to be out of the wind, the numbing cold. Traejan joined his friend in the cramped, but warm space, sipped on hot soup, endured the pain as circulation returned to his hands, his feet. When he finished the ration, he looked over at Kyso, now lying back, weathered face slack, eyes closed, pretending to be asleep.

“Hey.” The three days in the snow compelled him to an old request. He reached out, nudged his friend’s leg. “Remind me that it was real.”

Kyso offered a momentary, thoughtful expression; then his face turned lax again, gaze questioning.

“Come again?”

“Remind me that it wasn’t always like this.” His voice cracked with the memory of ancient dreams, frustrated by a world that was now, “ice, snow, cold… that the forests, the sun, the warmth – that it was real.”

The old man responded with unexpected humor, eyes twinkling, lips returning to a smile.

“It was real Trae, this whole region was a tropical paradise! Must have been four million people hereabouts. They were quite a folk, the End’Echeans. I had a woman…”

Traejan expected another of Kyso’s tales of adventure and debauchery. It would start with a woman, then a man, then three, four, until it became an orgy that would carry on for weeks. Had it ever been real? Or just products of Nostalgia smoke? The real last twenty years were all ice and snow – and now – bitter isolation.

Kaelin had tried to get him to appreciate her world. She’d dragged him out into it as often as she could. Naked in the fluffy drifts – even he couldn’t resist that. He’d had a woman…. She didn’t hate the cold. She loved it – of course, she’d been born to it.

Traejan remembered, only dimly now, walking under a warm sun, playing in grass, on sand, being told to stay out of the sun, the heat; a world that ended before he knew about debauchery, Kyso’s or anyone else’s. All those memories had been strong once, not anymore. They’d become as insubstantial as dreams.

The expected tale didn’t happen; Kyso just laid back again, closed his eyes. Traejan turned to look back at the continuing blow of white outside the sled’s cabin.

“It has to be,” he insisted. “It has to be The Consortia.” They would explain. They would explain why! They would turn things back.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, felt his friend’s close presence, his warmth. Kyso offered a yellow-toothed grin.

“Let’s go down now.”

“Yeah, down,” Traejan agreed glumly, then looked up, shocked. “It’s a long, long way down,” and the sled’s thrusters were barely handling horizontal travel.

“What is it, thirty, forty meters?”

“Sixty, I think,” Traejan corrected. “I didn’t measure it. The sled–”

“Still has a couple tricks in it,” Kyso responded confidently. “You’re not going to force me to spend streck knows how many extra days trudging through this knee-high stuff, are you?”

Traejan shook his head. No, they could do it, if they were careful – very careful – and the sled’s ancient thrusters didn’t rupture under the stain.

“Rest up then. I’ll work on the adjustments.” Kyso gave him a pat on the shoulder, leaving him with the only muffled wind for company.

Ironic to have woken up after over two hundred and twenty years, frozen in suspension – only to be returned to the world – now an alien one covered in ice.

He thought of her again, them again; warm, excited flesh against the chilling snow. Kaelin had loved this world, he reminded himself. She’d loved him. He’d loved her, missed her so much. He could never love this place – not ever.

The plain of ice that filled the wide End’Echean valley looked flat and smooth from a distance. Unfortunately, it was no easier to travel through than the mountains above had been. The depth of the snow varied widely, and the wind was much worse. Traejan had to work harder just to keep from shivering continuously.

Over two long arduous days, the mirror port grew from a speck in the distance to a bump, then to a collection of bumps. Periodically they checked their receiver, to ensure the signal, the portal pulse, was still broadcasting. The radio signal was weakening, intermittent, but still active.

Against the haze of dull pain and episodes of violent shivering, the quiet beeping was the beacon drawing him on. The hope it offered pulled Traejan through the misery.

Early on the third day crossing the valley, they reached the point where they could distinguish significant details with their binocs; parts of the port structure had simply disappeared.

“Right… There’s been some kind of damage – an internal collapse, it looks like,” Traejan noted, excited and appalled at the change in the port. He pointed at the crumpled top of the main tower.

“The roof and walls over the portal vault,” he said to Kyso. “That’s definitely new.”

Against the clear, pale blue sky, a sharp jagged edge of the massive structure jutted out, dark grey, not frosted white.

“Looks like,” the man agreed, his voice grim as he adjusted his binocs. “Get back to the sled. If we put a move on, we’ll get there while there’s still light.”

Despite Kyso’s vocal fears of a mech incursion, they encountered no sign of bot or flyer activity. Both the sky and the snow appeared untrammeled. With strength of purpose, Traejan pushed himself and Kyso to reach the port before dusk.

By late afternoon, they were in the shadows of the crumpled tower. Close enough to judge the damage, make detailed, revealing scans – for heat – for hope. Traejan smacked his scanner as it sluggishly responded in the bitter cold.

“Check with the deep thermal to confirm it was caused by the power surge,” Kyso told him. There would be a pattern difference, as if he couldn’t tell. The energy surge would have radiated from the mirror port chamber, through whatever conduits it could, causing sudden expansion in materials made brittle by the decades of subzero temperatures. That was probably the cause of the collapse – and unfortunately, it didn’t bode well for who, or what, might have transited in.

Traejan’s scans were inconclusive. Kyso suggested they split up – scan the complex from all sides. It took the rest of the day for them to cover all the structures still poking above the ice. After night fell, under the shelter of the sled’s canopy, they argued over the collected data.

“Look at this, there are still some lines radiating from the breaks,” Traejan told Kyso. The heat difference was minimal, suggesting that it was just a one-time burst, not sustained. What encouraged him was the array of the signatures, even taking into account the slight difference in temperature. “I know it’s just a degree or two now, but even so, they’re all along the port’s power matrix.”

Kyso grimaced as he looked over the images Traejan had beamed to his scanner. “There’s nothing that shows it’s warmer in the depths, beneath the vault,” he countered. “You’re guessing; you’re hoping.”

Traejan sighed loudly.

Kyso looked up at him, face shadowy, dark red to orange from his scanner’s glowing display.

“You’re sure you found no trace of mech activity?”

Traejan had checked all around, his own fears had pushed him to that. Beyond the collapse, the drifts were untouched. Crushed for the first time under his feet since they’d set the beacon, for all he knew.

“I didn’t find anything,” he replied. “You?”

Kyso shrugged. “There’s a lot of blowing snow…”

“Kyso! The heat pattern can only have radiated from beneath the vault – from the portal chamber!” Traejan pointed at the canopy’s transparency, at the massive structure looming over them.

“Boy,” Kyso cautioned. “It’s just residual.”

“So you’re saying even if someone came from the Mirror Maze – that even if they’re still here, since the port has collapsed – they must be dead? That we came here for nothing?!”

“The scans don’t confirm there are people down there,” he reminded Traejan. “And there’s hundreds of tons of unstable material between us and the main vault. What do you want? You’ve seen what’s going on, the structure is still settling. We should at least wait until morning.”

Traejan lowered his scanner, leaned forwards, pushed right up to challenge the man face to face.

“If there’s somebody – anyone – in there,” he restarted through clenched teeth, “they could be injured, they could be dying. Waiting until it’s safe – for us – could kill them!”

Kyso leaned back, crossed his arms; the lines in his brow deepened into furrows. “Kill who? Even if your theoretical Consortians aren’t dead, we’re hardly in a position to provide medical aid for someone crushed under that, are we?!”

True or not, it didn’t matter. He had to find out. He had to try.

“I’m going in.”

Kyso made a noise of protest. Traejan cut him off.

“I’ve been practicing rescue scenarios Kyso.”

“You’ve been playing games boy,” the old man replied harshly. “This is real. How long has it been since you’ve done something real?”

Kyso was one to talk, smoke fiend that he was, but… Traejan couldn’t snap back at him. It had been three years – three whole years, since the others had died, killed by the mechs. Deaths the old man hadn’t been there to witness. Streck, he wouldn’t even go to Pakan anymore.

“Beats the kick of Nostalgia smoke, don’t you think?” he managed in a low growl.

Kyso dropped his gaze.

“It’s about time I did something real again,” Traejan asserted. “It’s about time we both did. Why else did we even come?”

The old man looked back up at him, then shrugged.

“Do what you want,” he offered dismissively. “I’m not going in there.”

Traejan reached past him, grabbed a coil of rope.

“You’d better be out here when I get back.”

Minutes later, he was standing before a gaping, dark mouth, the broken remains of a window array. Shining a light revealed the frozen wreckage within. Traejan readied himself, shifted the pack on his back.

“Having second thoughts?” Kyso’s voice was sharp in the cold air. Traejan turned to see him walking up from the sled.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” he challenged.

Kyso smiled.

“Oh, I’m not,” he confirmed. “But you are going to need someone to guide you down.”

Traejan couldn’t help smiling back.

“Think you can still do it?”

Kyso let him hang for a moment.

“As long as I can run a line out here for heat.” He smiled briefly, then turned serious. “I want you coming out of there.”

Traejan looked into the darkness. He wanted to come back too. With something – anything.

“Get your stuff,” he told Kyso. “I’m not going to stand out here in the cold waiting for you.”

Kyso barked a laugh.

“Giving all the orders now, huh?” He pointed past Traejan. “Why don’t you clear some of the debris in there? I’m not going to work out here in the wind.

The floor he lay on was slippery, frigid, the chill seeping in even through layers of thick clothing. Traejan had no choice but to endure it as he crawled and slipped along. New collapses had left less than a meter of headway through the passage – the only route left to the portal chamber. Straining, he reached forwards, shone a beam of light towards the wreckage ahead. There was a space. He grinned, then shivered violently while his teeth chattered. Frost showered again on him, but the floor didn’t shake – this time.

Grin turned to grimace; Traejan gulped down cold air. The claustrophobia came and went, memories of when he was a boy, squeezing through ruins searching for anything usable; anything they could repair, restore, trade.

Keep going Trae. You did it before. You can do it now!

He was only three levels down, still far above the portal chamber. Carefully, he pulled himself along the icy surface, exhaled to squeeze under the broken supports, shivered again. Through, he found the room to stand up again, get away from the heat-sucking floor.

The torch flooded the cul-de-sac with light. He eased himself up, hands feeling cracks all along the wall as he rose.

Heavy breaths coming out in clouds, Traejan pulled out and tapped his transceiver. It had begun to buzz with static. The images on his scanner kept fading in and out. Residual power? Radiation? Or simply a failing battery?

He frowned.

“Increase the power from your end,” he told Kyso over the radio link. “There’s something interfering with the signal.”

Kyso sent it again. The imaging cleared up, then solidified. Heat, he could tell from the graphs – not much – but it was there, burning steadily.

He paused the playback loop.

“You see it, don’t you?” he said, excited, validated. “Something is still radiating heat in the portal chamber.”

“No doubt then.” Kyso sounded excited for the first time since they left the resort.

“I can’t make out the shape though,” he cautioned, pouring ice water on the fire. “There’s no telling what the source may be.”

I’ll find out soon enough.

Looking over again, the plan of the port, confirming his location, Traejan smiled. The main lift shaft was only ten meters in front of him. He could take that all the way down to the bottom, all the way down to the portal chamber.

It was deep, dark – but brightened by his torch, looked clear of dangerous obstructions as far as he could see. Traejan carefully tied his rope, clipped it to his belt. He made especially sure that the ledge wasn’t sharp in the slightest. One fall down an elevator shaft was enough for a lifetime.

Kyso called again, to remind him of that. Traejan swore.

“Yes, I checked.”

“It’s better to be safe Trae,” the old man advised.

“Next time you call,” Traejan warned. “It’d better be for a good reason.”

Did the man think he wanted to die in a place like this?

Traejan turned around, tested the line, pulled it taut, gripped it tightly through his gloves. Then he stepped backwards, and over the edge.

Slowly, carefully, Traejan climbed down, diligently testing the beams and dislodged wall panels beneath him, squeezing and slipping through the gaps in the wreckage that blocked his way.

“How’s the descent?” Kyso asked, for the fifth time since he’d started.

What did he think? Traejan bit his tongue.

“Difficult,” he replied tersely.

The building shook as he reached the portal level. For a long nervous moment he swung in the darkness, stared upwards as frost, bits of ice, fell from above. It was just another shake, he told himself. The structure was still settling, but remained solid. There had been half a dozen since he’d started down – and as before – the latest tremor stopped. Hanging on the taut rope, Traejan began the work to open the lift doors.

Straining, he jerked the squealing sliders a few centimeters, then a few more. After an interminable struggle, he pulled himself through the narrow gap. Past the doors, a strong, acrid odor hit him, not the clear harsh scent of cold and frost – the heavier smell of burnt carbon. Passing his light over the area, he could see why; thick scorch marks were scrawled all over the passage walls beyond.

The floor bucked, then again, more violently than ever. Traejan grabbed hold of the elevator’s doorframe, his feet skidding on the slippery floor as it lurched. Ice smashed onto the floor in front of him; debris tumbled down the shaft behind him.

He was gasping with fear long after the shaking stopped. A frantic call by Kyso followed.

“I’m all right!” he shouted.

“You have to come out. The next one could collapse the whole structure!”

“I’m not coming out – not till I find what’s down here! Streck, Kyso, I’m so close I can taste it!”

No fear of being buried would keep him from the portal chamber. Gingerly pulling his stiff fingers from the cold metal frame, Traejan steadied himself, began moving tentatively down the corridor.

“Please watch yourself,” Kyso warned. “Tell me, how extensive is the electrical damage?”

“I’m seeing some burn scoring from the surge.” Traejan scratched off the carbonization streaks, his scrubbing revealing the metallic silver underneath. “The circuits must have failed right here.”

“Avoid them,” Kyso ordered. “My scans suggest there may be still some undischarged power.”

Traejan jerked his fingers back from the wall.

“Couldn’t you have started with that,” he demanded, exasperated. He turned from the wall, scanned the corridor ahead, then began making his way over and through the debris and ice to the archway leading into the portal chamber. By the time he reached the rubble-strewn entrance, he couldn’t tell if he was shivering with cold or anticipation.

“I’ve reached the main entrance… oh hell.”

Traejan’s eyes widened at the sight.

“What do you see?” Kyso wanted to know. He repeated the question stridently.

Traejan shined his light around at the disaster area laid out before him.

“The interior dome has totally collapsed… took most of the support structure with it. There are huge blocks of ice and support members piled on top of each other.”

Kyso acknowledged his report. They fell into silence. Then Traejan remembered what he was there for. He crawled over the blocks, zeroing in on the thermal signature.

“I’m picking up the heat source….” It was close, just beyond a pile of smaller man-sized debris; just meters away…

Carefully, he stepped through, over, bend under, watching his scans, making sure he was closing in – but couldn’t see anything yet through the ice – just the rubble and the twinkling frost drifting down from above. He glanced back at the scanner’s screen. Heat was streaming through a break just ahead: orange, red and purple through the blue and white.

Just ahead!

“Ah, I’m at the source,” he announced, pushed the smaller blocks aside. “Oh!”

“What is it?” Kyso demanded to know.

“A hand – attached to an arm! It’s a human being!” Traejan forced out the words excitedly. “A human being, Kyso! A woman!”

She lay under the blocks of ice, dark hair frosted with white, dark-skinned face, eyes closed, shivering; her breath visible in brief white plumes.

“Kyso,” he shouted. “She’s alive!”

Althea – 13

The big yellow sun swam lazily through the sky, winked at her. She lay in the cool grass, a warm wind blowing over her, carrying the smell of butter. Althea soaked it in. It didn’t matter to her how she got there or why – just that she was happy and at peace – most of the time. The only thing that seemed wrong was the wind. It whispered intermittently, incoherently. She expected so much more. They belonged to each other; her and the wind. They were devoted.

Sometimes it whistled, sometimes it sounded like the buffeting of cloth, sometimes the howl of a monster– very, very rude – very wrong. The wind was supposed to be soothing, not a herald of pain and confusion.

Those times she felt tightly constricted, brutal sensations assaulted her – physically painful – nightmarish. But, somehow, she couldn’t muster the motivation to act.

She should – she needed to – didn’t she? She had somewhere to go, somewhere to be.

The first time that idea suggested itself was when the wind became especially loud: the sound of fabric, being beaten violently, by something powerful – something angry. There were voices inside the noise, speaking barely intelligible words that wandered in and out, floating around her in a worrying way.

Cold and ice, that should mean something. So should fracture and blood.

She couldn’t hold on to them, or make sense of them, and just as quickly, they were gone. She was back in the warm meadow, with no reason to be worried. She was just fine, didn’t need to act at all.

Then–

She was grabbed, jerked, pulled. She felt severe pain in her head, a change in pressure all over her body.

Her eyes wouldn’t open. The harsh sounds were back, the loud, beating noise again. Why wouldn’t someone stop it?!

“This doesn’t look proso,” she could hear a voice – understand it! It was male, it sounded old, grandfatherly, spoke in a slow drawl, a kind that was new to her.

“Her pupils are completely exposi,” the voice continued. “Her breathing is ineffi, I can barely find a pulso.”

Pupils dilated? Nerve injury? Head injury?

Another voice piped in, keeping her awake. It was younger, excited, also male. She felt bound, strained to float away.

“She should be glacia.” The younger voice sounded unhappy, even disappointed that she wasn’t. “She’s not wearing any cold weather apparati, and so thin…. What’s keeping her ferve?”

“She may be geneered,” the older voice guessed.

Althea wanted to giggle at the ludicrous suggestion. Visions of twisting DNA spiraled around her; nothing wrong with them, nothing in them other than unadulterated human genes. Of course, they weren’t alone; she did have millions of tiny, industrious friends to help her, sliding up and down the strands, to fix whatever might be broken.

She should be able to talk to them, to command them, to visualize what they were doing inside her, and to visualize herself.

Only… when she tried to, all the images she could muster shattered like glass in to pieces and splinters. She grew afraid.

Am I broken?

“She's still critically injured,” the older voice continued glumly. “I told you we weren’t prepared for this. We don't have the medtech.”

Of course they didn’t have th

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