Sanctuary Falling (53 page)

Kavir turned back from his vats, “I cannot leave my children, and if I let you go with her you will not return her to me,” he caressed her sleeping cheek, “But I cannot let her die, take her, but promise to let her return to me if she so chooses. I cannot take her as I did before, our time together has changed me too much.”

Max felt oddly bound to make the promise, and to keep it. Kavir wasn’t evil, just new to love and emotion, “I promise Kavir.”
 
Max settled the baby in one arm and wrapped the other around Yllera. Then teleported them all to Sanctuary. They arrived in an empty examination room. Max lowered Yllera’s head to the exam table and carried the infant out to call for help. “Somebody! Anybody! I have a medical emergency! Woman bleeding to death in here!”

Tina instantly appeared from around the corner, “Who’s bleeding to death?”

“Yllera, she had a baby and she’s hemorrhaging!” Max answered, gesturing with the baby.

Tina pulled out a pop-pad and yelled into it, “I need a pediatrician in exam five, and a suture kit,” Then she turned back to Max, “How did you find her?”

“She called me to her, needing help,” Max answered, bouncing the child again to quiet it.

Tina nodded absently as she bent to examine Yllera. Tina’s indrawn breath was enough to worry Max even further. Max was ready to challenge Tina for some answers when several other doctors entered. One surreptitiously relieved Max of the infant. Then Tina rose and gestured for Max to take a seat. Behind her two doctors started working on Yllera.

 
          
“She’s not doing well, you got her here in time though, I think,” Tina smiled stiffly, “Now the best thing you can do for the both of them step outside. That’ll keep you out of the way so we can help them.”

Max sat up straight, he wasn’t leaving Yllera, “No, I need to stay.” Tina glared at him until he rose and backed out of the room. He stood in the hall wondering how he’d been removed, but at least relieved that Yllera was receiving proper medical care. Still, just then he was feeling a little troubled by the amount of time he’d spent waiting at Yllera’s sickbed.

He paced the hallway for minutes which felt like years, until finally Tina stepped out of the room with a satisfied look on her face, “You can see them now.”

Max raced inside, the exam table had been replaced with a proper hospital bed, and Yllera sat propped up in it. She had her arms around her baby and her eyes on Max. “Max you came for me! Thank you! I couldn’t pull myself away from him. He had my mind, and clearly my body in his control,” Yllera cried.

“It’s okay you’re here now, and I’m never letting you go again,” Max walked to Yllera’s side as though pulled by gravity. He couldn’t be angry at her. She hadn’t chosen to bear Kavir’s spawn. Yllera reached around him with her empty arm and pulled him closer. Max buried his own tears in her shoulder as he embraced both her and the baby girl she held. “We’re a family, or at least we will be if you’ll marry me?”

Yllera blinked at him shocked, “Yes, of course as long as you’ll accept Ariel as your daughter.”

“Ariel, yes, I’ll think of her as a head start, though I hope you’ll give me a chance to make more of my own.”

Yllera smiled at him with tears still falling down her face, “Of course.” Max felt a bubble of happiness float through him, he couldn’t
 
care less if Sanctuary was doomed he’d found his pairmate and the world was good.

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Chapter 18

It All Comes Tumbling Down

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Annette threw her pop-pad at the wall, there was barely five minutes remaining until the evacuation had to be complete, and there were still fools whining about wanting more time or calling her with last minute glitches. Annette was tired of hearing about last minute glitches. Of course mass evacuating eighteen thousand people wasn’t going to be easy, she hadn’t expected it to be. What she had expected was that the adults of that number would act like adults.
 
That expectation was way off, since the announcement she’d received no less than five thousand complaints requesting more time to pack or say goodbye to their quarters or to dig up their dead pets to bring them along and re-bury them in Refuge. Two announcements later some people still hadn’t gotten the idea that she wasn’t in charge of when Sanctuary would collapse.

Annette had begun to let Prima handle her calls, only accepting ones offering new information. That extra help from Prima brought to the forefront of things one problem that had slipped through the cracks. Sentient programs were responsible for much of Sanctuary’s day to day running, from life support to basic food distribution. Artificial intelligences kept Sanctuary humming, but not a thought had been given to what would happen to them when Sanctuary went kaput.

That knowledge had given Annette more than a moment’s pause. Many programs could be transferred with only mild consequences to daily life especially as people began stepping across the event horizons of stasis loops to the official arrival date in Refuge.
 
The problem lay in the areas of life support which couldn’t be transferred until Sanctuary was cleared of its population, but the transfer would require some person or program to remain behind and initiate the transfer. If it were a program they’d be stuck behind, if they were a person they risked being caught in the implosion. That’s where Annette stood, barring some cataclysmic glitch she would throw the final switch, shutting down Sanctuary in slightly more than five minutes.

Annette telekinetically retrieved her pop-pad and checked it, almost everyone was out. Only one other
 
life sign was still wandering the deeper corridors. Annette cringed and teleported herself to join whomever it was in the practice cavern. It was a tall man with an overall tan and ice-blue eyes. “Excuse me sir but you need to get to an evacuation portal now! There are only a few minutes until the big implosion. You can’t be here when that happens.”

The man just stood looking at her, with big wet tears threatening to fall, “I’m sorry Annette, I just had something I had to do.” He spoke with a tone of familiarity that made Annette want to hold him,
 
comfort him, do anything just to keep those tears from falling.

“Okay, I hope you’re done, cause you have to go now!” Annette managed to growl tapping her pad for emphasis.

The man leaned forward and kissed her, Annette kissed back. Before Annette could respond further the man disappeared.

Annette checked her pad and found he had joined the last of the evacuees. Annette then teleported herself to the computer core and began the final shut down and transfer operations. All around her circuit, relays and lights went cold and dark. The ventilation system stopped and soon the only light came from her pop-pad. She was alone in Sanctuary, not even Prima was with her. Annette set her pad to use as a flashlight and teleported to the Evacuation portal she had chosen, it was still held open from the other side.

Sanctuary was eerily silent, now that even the air recycling system was shut down. Annette paused savoring the idea that she was the last person to set foot within Sanctuary. As she passed through the portal Annette felt a strange cold shiver up and down her spine.
 
It felt like she was stepping through the doorway of her own tomb. For half an instant she thought she had been caught and would be destroyed with Sanctuary. Then she was there, Refuge. The air was sweeter than Sanctuary’s had ever been, full of the distant smells of life, plant, animal and otherwise. Behind her the portal flashed brightly for an instant then disappeared. That was the end, of Sanctuary anyway.

Annette crossed the grassy clearing to an elevated platform in front of crowd of people all of which had arrived in Refuge at nearly the same time.
 
Annette stood on the makeshift platform and stared out at the milling crowd. Over fifty thousand people, Annette knew from the evacuation counts. To her eyes and her mind the concept of the number blurred. Never had Sanctuary held this many, in one place or otherwise. They may as well be a million, trampling the sod that had only recently taken proper root. With the eyes of a city planner she made note that the area would have to be re-seeded after this.

Annette tapped the microphone and the speakers floating over the crowd amplified the sound drawing the crowd’s attention. “Ladies and gentlemen, old friends and new, I would like to declare the evacuation successful and to welcome you to Refuge.”

The crowd roared, verbally and telepathically, to the point that Annette had to project one of Carl’s bubbles of silence around herself to shield herself from discomfort. She held up her hands and peeked telepathically, waiting for the crowd to subside.

Finally, the noise abated, “As I was saying, welcome. Now I would like to introduce someone most of you know and respect, our chief factor, Angela Daniel’s.” Again the crowd roared, this time Annette stepped back leaving the mike to Angela and retreating into her projected buffer of silence.
 
She looked down at the crowd and blurred the focus of her eyes, comfortably distancing herself, until Carl jabbed her in the rib.

“Annette, wake up and say something,” He poked into her mind.

“What? What about?” She asked him telepathically.

“Angela just stepped down, and gave her job to you. You’re the new chief,” Carl informed her. For a shocked instant, Annette dropped all of her shields, and almost fainted. She raised her shields again rapidly, and slowly processed everything that glimpse had told her, including the fact that Carl wasn’t kidding and that everyone in the crowd was in utter agreement with the passing of the baton.

Angela smiled at her from the microphone and gestured for Annette to take it.
 
Numbly, Annette stepped back up to the mike. Annette’s mind flailed for a response as it played back the crowd’s memories of the exact words Angela had used.
 
Angela hadn’t offered the job; she had presented the news of a completed fact, almost taking the tone that she had discussed the prospect at length. Annette didn’t know who Angela had discussed it with, but she did wish Angela had at least given her some warning. One didn’t just slap a person upside the head with something like that. What was Annette supposed to do step up to the microphone and refuse to take the job?

“Clearly, ladies and gentlemen, our new leader is completely speechless,” Carl said, taking the microphone, “I think she was the only one here caught completely by surprise about this announcement. Even though most of us knew she was the chief, even if not in title. You can’t really blame her though; she was just so busy doing all of the things that really earned her this new honor, that she didn’t see it coming.” Carl shoved the microphone back in Annette’s face, “Come on Annette! Speech! Speech!” The crowd took up the chant.

Tears welled up in Annette’s eyes, chief factor? It hadn’t been that long ago that Annette had given up hope of being a factor at all, now she was chief? Annette’s throat felt dry and she hoped she could speak, “I just can’t believe it. When I was a little girl there was nothing more I wanted to be than a factor. I dreamed every night about someday becoming a tertiary factor or maybe even secondary.
 
I thought my dream had come true when Angela first told me that maybe someday I could even be a Prime factor and that I would definitely be a primary. The day I got my Prime jacket I thought I must’ve died and gone to heaven. This. . . honor was beyond anything I had even dreamed. I don’t know what else to say except that I will do my best.” The crowd roared and Annette let herself hear every decibel of it, it didn’t even hurt.

Carl took the microphone, “Okay, people, can we quiet down long enough for me to explain a few things. People from Sanctuary, you all have your pop-pads and your housing assignments if you have any questions ask your pad. Refugees, I guess that’s not as descriptive as it would have been seeing as we’re all Refugees now. Refugees not from Sanctuary, there are factors waiting to assist you in locating your quarters. These guides will all be wearing white berets. By the way, people put on your hats now. Okay that’s the news, for now. Once you’re settled in, if you want any more information channel one on the media screens is running an informative documentary. It can give you most of the information you will require, but if. . . .”

Annette’s attention to the announcement faded. After all, she had written it.
 
Her attention turned to Angela, who was making a quiet escape from the platform. Annette followed her mentor with her eyes as the older woman surreptitiously blended into the crowd. Telepathically, and inwardly Annette knew Angela was finally more at peace with herself than she had been in their entire acquaintanceship. The tired old sheriff could finally rest. Annette realized that the construction of Refuge left her far from being finished with the mission Angela had given her. Annette still had to turn it into a community. As for the factors’ fight against the dark, this was only a fresh beginning.