The Stars Blue Yonder (17 page)

He thought of Kyle and Twig, and nausea rose up his gullet.

As the lift descended, ship's bells rang oh-eight-hundred. Jodenny waited for them to pass and asked, “This war with the Roon. How long has it been going on?”

“Off and on, fifteen years,” Adryn said. “Since the two of you, and the entire Roon army, disappeared from atop Burringurrah back on Earth.”

Jodenny made a faint noise of surprise. “The army disappeared?”

“They've made a lot of movies about it,” Adryn assured them.

Myell asked, “Where are we, exactly?”

Ovadia said, “Perhaps this discussion can wait.”

“Their security clearances are a lot higher than ours, Chief.” Adryn turned to Myell. “We're about four months out from Mary River. We've been tracking the Roon fleet for the last several years and plan to intercept them just past a small planetoid called PX2-843. According to our long-range sensors, they've got six carriers and maybe a dozen more support ships.”

“And how many ships are in our fleet?” Jodenny asked.

She looked uncomfortable. “Fourteen.”

Fourteen ACF and Team Space ships against six Roon carriers.

“But that's not nearly enough . . .” Jodenny said, and then fell silent.

When the lift doors opened they walked a short distance to the Security Office and were met by a Team Space commander named Haines. He shook Myell's hand and then Jodenny's, but ignored Adryn and Ovadia.

“I'm with Research and Development,” he said. “First off, welcome back. Second off, I need to sit down with each of you for a preliminary debriefing.”

Myell wasn't surprised when Jodenny reached for his hand and grabbed it like a lifeline.

“Together,” Jodenny said. “You can interview us together or not at all.”

Haines's expression was perplexed. “I'm not sure that's feasible—”

Jodenny insisted, “Together. Don't upset me, Commander. I'm in a delicate condition, if you haven't noticed. And we don't have a lot of time left.”

“Left before what?” Haines asked.

Myell's hand was beginning to ache under the pressure of Jodenny's grip. “Before the ouroboros comes to take me away again.”

Jodenny looked unhappy at the word “me” but said nothing.

Haines pursed his lips, looking thoughtful, and then ushered them forward. Adryn was instructed to wait by the front desk. Jodenny and Myell were taken to a large conference room with an oval table in the middle of it. Bottles of water, a bowl of fruit, a tray of pastries, and a carafe of hot coffee had already been set up for them, giving the place an unexpectedly welcome air. Even the chairs were comfortable. Jodenny reassessed all she knew about Americans, took a pastry, and poured Myell a cup of coffee.

He was paler than she liked, and she knew why.

An entire Roon army was about to arrive on their doorstep.

The two guards remained outside the conference room, but Ovadia stood inside, by the hatch. Another commander, thin and wiry with dark red hair, entered the room. Haines introduced him.

“This is Commander Albright. He's in charge of ship's security. He's very interested in how you got onto the flight deck. How you got onto the ship, actually. You said it's an ouroboros?”

“That's not possible. The nearest Wondjina Sphere is back on Mary River,” Albright said, taking a seat at the far end of the table.

“There isn't any footage to view from security cameras?” Myell asked.

“There was a glitch,” Albright said, but he didn't elaborate.

Myell wrapped his hands around his coffee cup. “It was a Wondjina Transportation System ouroboros. My own personal albatross. It shows up and drags me off to somewhere else in the universe, other places and times. I can't stop it, and I can't control where I go.”

Albright didn't look reassured. “Wondjina tokens can only travel between Spheres.”

“Not this one,” Jodenny said.

Haines made a notation on a clipboard. “How long have you been traveling in this ring, Chief Myell?”

“I don't know about days. Sixty-five jumps or so, give or take a few. It's hard to keep track. For ten or eleven trips, I had my grandchildren with me. On this last trip, I had just Commander Scott and Commander Osherman.”

Neither of the men in front of him batted an eyelash at the mention of grandchildren. Instead Albright said, “Where did you come from most recently?”

Myell squeezed Jodenny's hand. She said, “The planet where I've been living with the castaways from the TSS
Kamchatka
. We were flung through some kind of Alcheringa wormhole and landed there about six months ago.”

Albright and Haines exchanged looks. Albright said, “The
Kamchatka
disappeared fifteen years ago.”

“From your perspective,” Myell said. “But you scanned us while we were in Medical so you know that we haven't aged since that time. The ouroboros is taking us through time as well as space.”

Haines stood up. “I think we better pause for a moment. I need to ping some people.”

He and Albright both left the conference room. Myell was happy just to sit with Jodenny and his coffee, though Ovadia's unflinching scrutiny was disconcerting. He bit into a pastry—cream cheese and strawberry, very nice—and asked Ovadia, “Want one? They're good.”

“No,” Ovadia said, not moving from the hatch.

Soon the conference room was full of more people, Americanadian and Team Space both. Some of them were scientists. The rest were from Security, Weapons, and Engineering. Myell lost track of the names. They wanted to know more about the blue ouroboros and how it worked without a Sphere.

“I don't know,” Myell said. “It just does. It comes for me and takes me elsewhere, and dumps me for a while before it takes me away again. It's usually twenty-four hours or so, but it varies if someone made the last trip with me.”

“Does it breach the hull?” a worried-looking officer asked.

Jodenny gave him a sharp look. “Did it breach it when we arrived?”

“You said it moves you through time and space both,” Haines said. “Where have you been, Chief Myell, in all these trips you've taken?”

Myell closed his eyes for a moment. “Fortune, while Commander Scott was still in the academy. Then I saw her in the hospital on Kookaburra, after the
Yangtze
disaster. After that, I visited Providence when she was getting—well, about ten years had passed, which is still minus five from right now. I visited Kiwi and she was on a beach holiday. That happened a couple of times, actually. At least three times I saw her in the orphanage where she grew up, and there was another trip to the academy, and a couple more trips to the
Yangtze
, and Providence when she was seventy years old, and Providence just like you see her now. The rest is kind of blurry.”

He opened his eyes to find them all staring at him.

Jodenny's expression, especially, was one of wonder.

“All those times?” she asked. “And I never remembered you?”

He shrugged. Behind him, the hatch slid open and someone moved into the corner of his vision. He concentrated only on Haines. “Neither will you nor anyone else on this ship. Once the blue ouroboros comes, it'll take me away—”

“It's not going to,” Jodenny interrupted.

“—and none of you will remember a thing,” Myell said. “Time will not be changed or altered. Nothing I do makes a difference.”

Jodenny leaned forward, both her hands resting on junior's bump. “You have to deflect it, Commander Haines. You have to make sure that token doesn't take him away.”

“They can't,” Myell told her. He tried to sound patient, not helpless, though the idea of leaving her again made his stomach knot up. “Not a ring like this. They don't have the technology.”

“You're wrong,” said the man at the edge of Myell's vision. “Our technology's changed a lot since you were last around. No one's going anywhere.”

Myell turned. The last fifteen years hadn't been kind to Byron Nam. His hair was gray, his waist had thickened, and the worry lines in his forehead looked deep and permanent. His admiral's uniform bore an
impressive row of battle medals and his right hand was a silver prosthetic.

“We'll stop it,” Nam said confidently. “Welcome home, Chief.”

Jodenny had to go to the bathroom, but she wasn't about to excuse herself. Nam had ordered everyone out of the conference room except the three of them. He was sitting across from them now, his collar loosened and his hands, real and prosthetic, folded on the table.

“You died,” he said to Myell. “On Burringurrah. After you and I trekked half a continent to get there.”

Myell said, “The last thing I remember is being on Garanwa's station. It was all hot and burning.”

Jodenny rubbed his arm more for her own comfort than his.

Nam leaned back in his chair. “You saved us from the station as it was being destroyed and transported us to the
Kamchatka
. Later, we ended up on a lifeboat that crashed into Australia. You and I went to Burringurrah, where you were killed by the Roon and turned into a god.”

“I'll take your word for it.” Myell squeezed Jodenny's hand under the table. “And hers.”

Nam said, “As a god, you dissolved the entire Roon fleet and army. They vanished into thin air. Gone. Entirely. Along with Dr. Gayle, who appeared to be helping them. The Earth was saved. Mind you, the only surviving witnesses were myself, Commander Scott here, and Commander Osherman, plus a slightly crazy whirlybird pilot, and the three of you disappeared seconds later. Some people have had a hard time swallowing the turned-into-a-god part, but you can't argue with good results.”

Myell didn't look happy. Jodenny rubbed his arm a little harder. It hadn't escaped her notice that he hadn't mentioned a thing about Homer or the Flying Doctor to anyone. She could understand why. It was hard enough for anyone here to believe they were time travelers, never mind that they were being visited by a menacing Roon and a graduate student from the future.

“Sir, have you ever heard of Kultana?” she asked.

Under the table, Myell's hand jerked.

“Kultana,” Nam said. “Not offhand. Why?”

“I heard it somewhere,” Myell said. “Thought it might be important.”

Nam squeezed the bridge of his nose. “I'll tell you what's important. Every ship that Team Space and the ACF can dredge up is in this fleet, en route to intercept a Roon armada headed for Earth. Their weapons are better than ours. Their defense systems are better than ours. We've run into them, time and time again, out in the Wondjina Transportation System. Every time we try to establish a new colony, they destroy it. Every time we try diplomacy, they slaughter the diplomats. If Mary River falls, they'll gain access to the Big Alcheringa and all the Seven Sisters. They won't rest until they hunt down and destroy every one of us.”

Jodenny could anticipate what he was going to say next, and she didn't appreciate it at all.

“So do you think you could turn into a god again?” Nam asked. “We need the help.”

Myell stared at him.

Jodenny smothered a burp. She'd had one too many pastries. And she really had to pee. But if Nam thought he was going to talk her husband into sacrificing himself again, he was about to discover the wrath of a pregnant wife.

“First things first,” she said. “Stop the blue ring from taking him away. Then we can talk about saving the whole of mankind.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The
Confident
didn't have a lot of open workspace other than the flight deck, which wasn't feasible given the proximity of the Roon armada. A group of scientists from the
Melbourne
instead converted a botanical bay into their laboratory but removed only half the plants. Myell was sitting on a stool between a row of bamboo plants and potted ferns, answering questions from a dozen different scientists as they placed monitor pads on his skin. Jodenny sat nearby, her feet up. The botanical bay was hot and humid, and she felt like a bloated whale.

“Can I get you anything?” Adryn asked.

A pillow would have been nice, because she was so damn tired she could have fallen asleep standing up. But she said, “No. I'm fine.”

Adryn sat down on a stool. Chief Ovadia, constant bodyguard or just
plain guard, continued to stand by the bulkhead and watched everyone as they passed. Commander Haines was in the corner, making a call on his gib.

A grim-looking scientist with green eyes and bearded chin came over to Jodenny and offered his hand. “Commander. I'm Stefan Beranski. I'm in charge of stopping that ouroboros.”

“Can you really stop it?” Jodenny asked.

“Absolutely.” Beranski handed her a gib that was running different illustrations across its screen. “We've learned a lot about the Wondjina Transportation System over the years. How it works, how it's powered, how the tokens travel through the Universal Bulk to get here.”

Jodenny frowned. “The what?”

“The big cheese,” Beranski said. “You know. Everything. The world around us? A three-dimensional chunk of something a lot bigger.”

She raised her eyebrows. Myell looked blank.

Beranski kept talking. “I can give you a digital primer, if you'd like. The important thing is that we know how to capture an incoming token, and even more importantly, how to deflect one. We've had to, to keep the Roon from using the network to invade us.”

Jodenny marveled at what a difference fifteen years could make. “Have you mapped the entire system? The crew and passengers of the
Kamchatka
are stranded on a planet called Providence. We never found any Spheres, but maybe they were hidden. They could really use a rescue about now.”

Beranski gave a guilty look to Haines as the commander came their way.