Coalescence (Camden Investigations Book 1) (32 page)

“I
CAN’T
believe this.” DJ had taken her mother’s
hands into hers. They were warm, loving and best of all, contained a pulse. The
sidewalk had fallen wayside to a carpeting of stars.

She felt as if her and her mother were spinning together
in some circular fashion, maybe on some kind of carnival ride. It was not scary
like the car accident. It felt controllable and joyous.

“So, you finally are going to accept my love again,
child?”

DJ frowned. “Oh, I’m sorry. Is that the way I made you
feel? I didn’t mean that. I just couldn’t bear to see you after the accident.
It brought me so much pain.”

“Brought you so much pain?” Doris Jean scoffed. “What
about
my
pain?”

DJ inventoried her mother’s face. It was as if the
accident never occurred. And it wasn’t the Plaster of Paris patchwork job her
ghostly mother used previously to hide her scars. She had a natural glow to
her. What was odd was the spiraling. She and her mother were contained in some
sort of vortex. It spun along their perimeter without harming or even alerting
city pedestrians of its presence. They were an arm’s length away and a galaxy
away depending on DJ’s viewpoint.

“I could stay with you like this, forever.”

“So could I,” Doris Jean said aloud to her daughter.

“You can hear my thoughts, even here
 . . .
” DJ made parentheses with her arms to
encompass their private universe.

“Where do you
think
we are?”

“I
 . . .
I don’t know. I was dead. You were dead. But
this isn’t Heaven. If it isn’t
 . . .
” DJ’s eyes widened. “We’re in the time slip.”
She clapped her hands together. “That means Iris saved us
 . . .
well, saved most of us.”

“I need to save
you
as well, child.”

“What do you mean? We’re here together, in peace, and we
appear to be fine. Mom, I don’t need saving. In fact, I’ve never felt more
serene and at ease with myself. I don’t care if I ever investigate another
haunting or prep for another public speech.”

“That’s how you feel
in the moment.
You must
return.”

DJ shook her head side to side. “No. I don’t need to. I
don’t need to go back to a world under attack by freaking aliens.”

Doris Jean scowled. “That’s no way to talk. It’s your
other half that begs consideration.”

“My other half
 . . .
you mean, Darian?”

“No. I was referring to your Reptilian half. It helped
save your sister’s mission. It’s going to save you. You’re needed.”

DJ hugged her mother and buried her face in chest. “This
is the perfect moment. How could I be needed anywhere else?” A tear slid from
her eye.

Doris Jean grabbed her daughter about her shoulders and
pushed her backwards. DJ struggled. “You’ve got to hear what I say.” Tears slid
from both women’s cheeks.

“I love you with all my heart. That’s never going to
change. We can always visit. But if you are aware of your sister’s mission, you
are also aware time is fleeting. We cannot continue this existence.”

DJ wiped her eyes. “What is this existence?” She slid a
hand back into her mother’s.

“It’s beyond my scope of understanding. I bet your
scientist friends can explain.”

DJ balled a hand and held it at chest level. “I think I
know what’s happening. And it’s lovely. It’s the quintessential moment of
existence. We are both alive and dead. We are both injured yet healthy. It is a
conundrum. A paradox
 . . .
The point is I don’t care how you label or
explain it because this is what life really is.” DJ’s eyelids fluttered with
excitement.

“No. I’m sorry, child. I don’t agree.”

“Why can’t you?” DJ pouted. “All my life I felt like I
was living in a dream. Your accident and death were a nightmare. A part of me
felt as if I could never accept it, more precisely, never believe it. And now I
know why. Because it was a
dream
! Now, we are here in life’s reality. I
just know it.”

Doris Jean hugged her child. “I know, child. I know.” She
patted her back. “I’m not saying you’re right or wrong.”

DJ smiled. “Maybe here you can be both right and wrong.
Simultaneously! Think of how better our relationship could be. No need to argue.
Because there is no right or wrong answer! Mom, we’ve got to do whatever it
takes to stay here.”

A strange look enveloped Doris Jean’s face. DJ could not
decipher it but her mother appeared to have entered into a trance.

And in the next instant, the city street around their
bubble morphed into an enormous basin. A strange coin-shaped item reflected off
the ripples of water. A shadow of a serpent slithered along the basin’s walls.
The stars rolled up as if carpeting just like the sidewalk had done previously.

“What is this?” DJ growled. “Concentrate, Mom. We can use
our minds to stop this
 . . .
”

A shock froze DJ in place. It came in the form of
lightning. The charge, blue and silver, enveloped both mother and child. It was
spinning about the pair in a circular fashion.

Still frozen and unable to speak verbally or
telepathically, DJ gazed into her mother’s eyes. Like some kind of master of
balefire, Doris Jean pulled a strip of lightning from the arcing circle and
grasped it as easily as if it were a branch.

She spun the balefire and drips of energy leaked onto her
daughter’s chest, streaking it in silver and molten.

Although she could not converse, DJ still had the power
to think.
I love you, Mom. I love you more than you could ever know.
The
last thing she recalled was seeing her reflection in a basin of water.

H
OW DO
I operate?
Iris’s thought sounded no less ridiculous in Time/Space
than it would have in Space/Time.

She was puzzled. But it wasn’t simple curiosity that
compelled Iris Camden to fathom how her body had morphed into a starship. The
tiny dot on the horizon wasn’t so tiny anymore. She could make it out. Its
appearance was shrouded in black, much like the craft she had witnessed in mind
shares with Galloway. There was no doubt about it. It was the enemy ship as
suggested by that unknown voice in her head. It was coming to destroy her.
Perplexed, Iris called out.

“Who are you? Why can’t you help me?”

The voice answered.
“This is the situation you longed
for.”

“What fucking situation? Are you space whacked? I never
imagined myself to be a ship in outer space. I never even imagined such things
ever existed!”

“You perceive only the mechanics of the situation, not
the situation itself. There is a reason for this, and if you are ever to be at
peace with yourself, you must face this challenge alone.”

For a long moment, Iris floated, puzzled by the voice’s
quantum logic. Then, from a sensor, or what might have been the corner of a
human’s eye, Iris detected yet another vessel. It communicated instantly. Iris
could not discern if the communiqué was telepathic or delivered via some sort
of outer space signaling system. The only thing she cared about at the moment
was that she could read it. If she still had a heart, it would have plummeted
to her stomach. Because she didn’t, she dipped and tumbled into an end-over-end
dive. The communiqué from the ship, which was now positioned at her aft, was
Mitchell. Mitchell was both the message and a ship in this paradox.

Iris understood the “situation” she was in now. She must
protect a colleague and lover from harm. But how could she? Her ignorance of
her propulsion system was obvious in reference to her free fall tumble. How
much longer did she have? She wanted to ask the ship’s computer but realized
she
was
the ship.
So, what now? What now?
Mentally, Iris pushed
buttons. She scanned her mind for a control panel or something that could
ignite propulsion engines, or at the very least, locate fuel in some storage
deck or nacelle.

That was about the extent of her knowledge. She
occasionally caught an episode of
Star Trek
or the remade
Battlestar
Galactica.
It was all presented as fiction. How in the fuck was she
supposed to learn the navigational ins and outs of her ship—or more
aptly, herself—in the span of time it would take the enemy to bear down
upon her and Mitchell?

She tried calling out to her lover. There was no
response. Was she now out range? How far had she tumbled? She again searched
for gauges. She imagined her imaginary hands pounding on an imaginary console.
At
least the fictional characters had a means to vent.

Trapped in her mind, Iris began to console herself.
Apparently, they had outfoxed the enemy and her plan had succeeded. Mitchell
was alive, he was now a ship at the moment, but he was alive. They had sidestepped
the plague. They had outmaneuvered rapid evolution.
How much fucking more do
you want?
She realized her question was ridiculous if not rhetorical. Other
than the unhelpful voice, who was hearing her? Mitchell was not responding.
Wait
a minute, the enemy ship
 . . .

Iris concentrated her signal. The ship might be able to
hear her. It might be reasoned with so as to obliterate the human male and
female responsible for thwarting its plans.
Yeah, right.

Hmmm. Maybe that’s it. Maybe I communicate with my controls
telepathically. I mean, if I don’t have consoles or engines or nacelles, I
might be able to mentally instruct my ship—I mean myself—to defend
itself
 . . .
or, at the very least, right myself.

As she struggled, Iris envisioned a view screen. Had she
activated it? If so, it was a good start. The bad thing about the view screen
was that Starship Mitchell seemed to have gotten the hang of flying, and if she
wasn’t mistaken, he was on an intercept course with the enemy.

“No! You can’t do this! Back off. Back off! I mean
 . . .
abort
 . . .
abort.”
Iris gasped. She didn’t know what lingo you
used to discourage your boyfriend-turned-ship to abandon course. It apparently
didn’t matter, he did not respond.

A second later, the purring noise resumed. It meant she
was back online as far as navigational meant. She could feel herself righting.
It made her quite dizzy. She didn’t care. She would do anything to save
Mitchell then she could die from what those Klingons called an “honorable
death.”

A missile or some laser beam of light whizzed past her.
What?
This can’t be. You’ve fired your last weapon. You’re spent. You should be
fucking spent!

A sickening realization dawned on her.
Since she
was in Time/Space, there were no laws of physics—at least not the kind
that governed her former Earth. That meant the enemy ship might have positioned
itself back in time as to when it still had weaponry. Maybe it wasn’t the life
altering plague beam but at this instant, any old missile would be enough to
extinguish Thaddeus Mitchell: UFO Chaser.

Okay. Okay. I must have weaponry as well.
She imagined firing a blast of light, simply
directing a beam of energy from her as if it were no harder than spitting
rainwater from her mouth.

It’s harder than you can imagine.
Iris railed at her misfortune. Another blast
from the enemy was on target. Not for her but for Starship Mitchell. It grazed
a wing. The Starship Mitchell assumed a forward tumble resembling the free fall
she had initiated earlier.

“Oh God. Oh God. Fucking voice, fucking Galloway, over,
respond
 . . .
”

Iris’s stress call was answered but not by anyone she had
ever conversed with prior. It was stilted conversation. As if something was
translating the original dialogue from alienese to English.

She didn’t need words to feel its pain. It was horribly
alone. It was lethally angry. It had spent its existence orbiting the Earth
seeking the gap that would allow it to complete the one mission it was designed
for. It wasn’t necessarily a Grey, but possibly a genetically created bio-ship.
It had sentience. It had feelings. It wanted vengeance. And after all those
long and lonely orbits, some woman who didn’t even believe in aliens had
managed to take away its one purpose. It all made sense. A ship filled with
Greys would likely perish in such a quest, and if a crew had survived would it
have been able to withstand the impact of the weapon release? Probably not. But
who knows? Iris realized the whole mechanics of the universe sometime came down
to the best guess.

Iris empathized with its plight for all of about a
nanosecond. Sure it got a raw deal. It was a slave ship. It would die
completing its only purpose. It had been stripped of any honor when that
purpose failed.