First Contact

Chapter 964: The Shadows of Twilight

When you sup with the Devil, it is best to bring a long spoon. Bill "Shaky" Spearman, Terran Age of Expansion philosopher and movie producer

We are each our own Devil, and we each make the world our own Hell. - Oscar Wildman, Age of Expansion Bongistan Warlord

She comes with either thunder and brimstone, or silence and sweetness. Either way, it is always best to remember that she is the Detainee, and bound for a reason. - Tal.re'k, Trena'ad philosopher.

The Detainee is at her most dangerous when you feel you are beyond her power. - Da'amn'dmo'o, Lanaktallan Philosopher, before his disappearance from a locked room.

Nakteti set down the multitool and sat down, wiping her forehead. Her fur was matted with sweat, working out in the shadeless sun. There were no clouds in the sky to keep the anomaly from beating down on her, the strange radiations emitted by the anomaly converted into standard sunlight by some kind of field generated by the innermost layer of the SUDS.

They were almost done.

One more separation, and the intertwined timelines, slices of the past wedged against the present, would be undone. The SUDS would return to operating at a single temporal point.

Then the work to put back together the shielding around the anomaly could begin.

Nakteti looked at the buildings around her. All of them had a slight second image, like a light case of double-vision after too many narcobrews.

A far cry different from the multiple overlapping versions.

Storm clouds began to form over her as the temperature plummeted. Nakteti looked up to see the clouds spiraling out from a central point that was a dark mass in the sky. She reached up and touched her temple, putting two fingers on her datalink and opening a channel to her ship.

"Chuck, I've got storm clouds. I don't remember the weather generator scheduling any rainfall for today," Nakteti said.

There was no answer.

"Chuck, are you there?" Nakteti asked.

No answer. No hissing of 'dead air' where the implant added the hissing noise to let someone know the system was working, there just wasn't anyone there. It was dead silence.

"Nakteti to Surscee, can you hear me?" she asked.

Dead air.

"Nakteti to Magnus, do you read?" Nakteti asked.

Still nothing.

She pushed up the power and tried again.

And got nothing.

She stood up, squinting at the clouds. Wind was picking up, heavy with the smell of rain, and drops were starting to patter on the asphalt of the parking lot the last of the temporal disruptors were being set up.

"Anyone at all, can anyone read me on this channel?" she asked.

Dead air.

Before she could say anything else a hand dropped onto her shoulder and a voice spoke.

"Being alone is bitch, isn't it?"

She shrieked in fear, throwing herself forward into a roll, landing on her catching hands before kicking off, her gripping hands pulling her daggers from her belt. She came up smoothly, turning in place, to stare at who had touched her.

The Lady Lord of Hell stood next to the disruptor, lighting a cigarette with a steel cased lighter.

"You look like a fool," the Lady Lord of Hell said through the exhalation of smoke, tucking away the lighter and pack in one breast pocket on her dark blouse. She reached out and put one hand on the temporal disruptor even as she took another drag and removed the cigarette from her mouth, exhaling smoke.

Nakteti heaved a deep breath, slowly sheathing her daggers. Her muscles were twitching, thrumming, as fear chemicals raced through her bloodstream.

The Detainee was wearing her typical dark charcoal gray skirt and blouse ensemble, belted at the waist with a black belt, cufflinks with an odd rune on them, the flag lapel pin, and the red flower at her throat. Black boots with silver buckles that vanished under the ankle-length skirt. Her fingernails were manicured and enameled with blood red coloration.

"What do you want?" Nakteti asked, knowing her voice was hard and harsh due to the fear. She pushed the urge to submit down and away, clenching her teeth.

"You," the Matron of Hell said simply. She exhaled smoke again, even though she had not taken a drag, only her gunmetal gray eyes visible in the faint suggestion of a face through the smoke. Lightning flashed, reflecting off the smoke.

"I will not let you take me," Nakteti said.

The Lady Lord of Hell shrugged, stepping through the smoke as thunder rumbled.

For a moment, there was a perfectly shaped hole in the smoke left behind by her passage.

"Take?" the Matron of Hell asked. She gave a low, sultry chuckle. "I did not come to take."

She took a drag off her cigarette, stopping just out of knife reach of Nakteti, looking down at the Tnvaru female.

"I need a Hell Guide," she said softly. "You'd make an outstanding one."

"A what?" Nakteti asked.

"A Lord of Hell, a Hell Guide, to find lost souls and bring them to me," the Matron of Hell said. "It would be you who would seek out the paths that have been lost or forgotten, gather the souls, and bring them back to me."

"Why would I do that?" Nakteti asked.

The Matron of Hell smiled, a mouth full of interlocked triangular teeth. "There are many reasons. After all, you have come to the end of your travels. The end of your journey. Serve me, and you can continue on exploring, blazing trails, and traveling," she smiled.

Nakteti frowned as the thunder boomed, closer now than before.

"Already your loyal crew have agreed to serve me, leaving you alone, Nakteti," the Lady Lord of Hell said. "Magnus and Surscee with just the temptation of sweet fruit, Chuck with the agreement to give him full rein over himself and freedom from enslavement of the biological," she said. Her smile got wider and wisps of smoke eeked from between her teeth. "You stand alone, now, Nakteti. With none to save you."

She turned and began walking in a circle around Nakteti, who turned to keep the Matron of Hell in sight.

"Magnus and Surscee abandoned you. Chuck has fled from your bondage. Even Major Carnight is beyond you. You are as alone now, even more so, than when Enraged Phillip saved your motley crew and badly damaged vessel by interposing himself between you and your natural predator," the Matron of Hell said.

"No, they would not abandon me. They swore oaths of blood and loyalty to me," Nakteti said.

The Lady Lord of Hell snorted. "To a xeno," she chuckled as the lightning flashed again, closer, from horizon to horizon. "To an alien. An oath to an alien."

"You have nothing to offer," Nakteti said. "Nothing that would convince them to break their oaths, their friendship, their loyalty." The last was said through the rumble of thunder.

The Lady Lord of Hell smiled wider. "In a time where their people are riven and essentially extinct, you think that an oath to an alien, a strange creature who is so inhuman that you have too many arms, holds more weight than the word of she who cares for the souls of the departed?"

"No, they would never break their oaths," she said. Lightning flashed, lighting everything up, so close that Nakteti felt her fur raise up.

The Detainee's face was still slightly shadowed.

The Lady Lord of Hell smiled wider as thunder rumbled around them. "I told them that you released them from their oaths. That you were done with them. They had served their purpose and you no longer needed them," she said. Lightning struck the ground around them, dozens, hundreds of bolts, scattered as far as Nakteti could see. The world turned bluish white for a moment.

Nakteti shook her head. "No, they would not believe you. You are the Detainee, the Lady Lord of Hell, the Matron of the Damned, lies slip from your lips as easy as breath to a baby," she said.

"If you think so," the Detainee chuckled, her voice almost lost in the bone-shaking crack of thunder that went on and on.

She stopped, holding out a hand, as the thunder faded.

An ice cube was in her hand, a tiny figure of a Terran inside. Lightning miles away glimmered on the surface of the ice.

"Of course, there is Major Carnight. Their uncle. Beloved brother to their mother," the Matron of the Damned smiled. "Leave them behind, be my Hell Guide, and I will restore him."

Nakteti shook her head as the thunder rumbled, shaking her bones. "No. He was my friend, my first human friend, and he would not have me make a deal with one such as you."

She closed her hand and steam burst from between her fingers with tiny screams.

"I can restore him. There are things beyond your knowledge, your understanding, that keep him frozen on ice. No true love's kiss will save him. No dragon's breath. By denying me, your quest to save him fails, Traveler. Swear allegiance to me, and I will restore him, restore the Twin's beloved uncle, and return to you your first human friend," the Detainee said. She exhaled smoke, the gunmetal gray eyes staring at Nakteti through the smoke.

Nakteti shook her head. "No. I gave my oaths to them as surely as they gave them to me. Major Carnight is in my care, and I have sworn to protect him. I will not break my oaths, my bond, my word," Nakteti said.

The Detainee moved over to the disruptor and put her hand on it.

"All your effort will come to naught by your stubborn refusal to serve me, Traveler," the Matron of the Damned said, smiling that shark tooth smile again. "Swear to serve me," the last was said in iron hard tones.

"No," Nakteti said. Lightning flashed around them. Something in the distance exploded, sending up mile high trails of sparks.

"They have abandoned you. Serve me, join them," the Lady Lord of Hell said, her voice mixed with the thunder.

"No." Again, lightning flashed.

"Serve me, Traveler, save your first human friend," the Detainee stated, her voice cold as space as the lightning ripped and tore around them.

"No." Lightning hit so close that Nakteti's fur stood up and her fingertips went numb.

"Thrice asked, thrice denied," the Detainee said through the world-ending crash of thunder

She looked at the disruptor for a long moment. She pinched the top with two fingers, moving it over only a few feet before setting it down.

"So be it," she said. She looked off to the West, where lightning was raking the ground from the storm, then slowly to the east, her eyes narrowed, her mouth tight.

Her face hardened and she looked at the charge she had shifted.

Lightning began to arc from the sky and Nakteti realized with horror it was going to hit the disruptor/stabilization charge.

The Lady Lord of Hell touched the top and the charge fired off.

Through the howling of chronotrons, Nakteti heard the Detainee's voice even as the Matron of the Damned vanished as the lightning struck, missing the charge, the Detainee, and Nakteti.

"You'd have made an outstanding Hell Guide."

The explosion of the electricity superheating the air knocked Nakteti through the air and she hit the ground in a heap.

Darkness claimed her.

-----

"Easy now, milady," Magnus's voice was gentle. "You've got some burns. I gave you med injection, but your fur's a loss."

Nakteti's eyes fluttered and she opened them, looking up at the Terran, who was staring down at her.

"What happened?" Nakteti asked. She could feel the tingling burning of medical nanites at work, could smell burnt fur, and her right arms were numb.

"There was a slight radiation surge from the anomaly," Surscee said, from just beyond her sight. "Without the great panels, the SUDS tried to protect the surface with sudden storms, tried to discharge the energy as lightning by striking it into the superconductor grid built into the middle of the layer. Lightning hit our carefully planned setup, overcharging the system."

Nakteti sat up, wiping her mouth. Magnus helped her with careful hands.

Chuck was standing by the deployed disruptor/stabilizer.

"It's a good thing you adjusted for the slight elevation change," the Digital Sentience said. "If you had put it in the original position, the disruption would have failed and caused a cascade instead."

Nakteti slowly got to her feet, accepting Magnus's offer of a wineskin. The water inside tasted of limes and helped clear the strange taste of berries and tinfoil from her mouth.

"It wasn't me," Nakteti said. She looked around. "The Detainee came to me, told me each of you had sworn to serve her. Right before she left, she moved the charge and fired it."

Chuck frowned. "Are you sure?"

"Pretty sure," Nakteti said softly. She drew her sword slowly, grounding the tip and leaning against it.

Her legs were getting pins and needles as feeling came back.

"What's our status?" Nakteti asked.

"The layers are separating. The anomaly's gone back to normal," Chuck said. He pointed at the buildings at the bottom of the space elevator. "The mat-trans station came online. It goes to the primary control room."

"Hopefully we'll find the repair crew there," Nakteti said. She was breathing heavy. "Give me a minute to catch my breath and we'll head out."

Chuck nodded.

Nakteti looked at the other three. "I knew she was lying. None of you would break your oaths," she said. "We have come too far together. All of you value your own honor and your oaths too much to break them at the behest of the Devil."

All three nodded.

Nakteti looked at Chuck, straightening up. She slowly sheathed her blade.

"Where is the primary control room?" she asked.

Surscee smiled.

"Atlantis."