Starbound: A Starstruck Novel (44 page)

Those other times, I’d at least been secure in his love and knew the separation was as painful for him as it was for me. And I’d had
some
reason to believe it wouldn’t be permanent. Not only was this separation permanent, but I was in pain all by myself. By now, Rigel didn’t even know who I was. Didn’t remember…anything that mattered.

I’d cried until no more tears would come, leaving me with a dull numbness that lasted all night. I welcomed it, clung to it even now. Numb was better. Easier. Maybe if I stayed numb long enough—

“M?” Molly’s voice filtered through the locked bedroom door. “Dad’s here. He says Eric Egan is finally awake.”
 

At her words, my sluggish brain started working again in spite of me. I resisted at first, fighting to hang onto the numb, because renewed capacity for thought meant renewed capacity for pain. But it was no use.

With a groan, I heaved myself to my feet and went to the bathroom to splash a bit of precious cold water on my face. It didn’t help—my eyes were still red-rimmed and puffy. I shrugged at myself in the mirror. Appearances didn’t matter any more. Nothing did. Not to me.

But I still had to put one foot in front of the other, at least for the next few hours. “Game on,” I said to my reflection, forcing myself to muster all the strength I had left for the challenge I’d come to Mars to face. Even with my heart ripped out, I had to do what I could to save Nuath from the Grentl.

After that, I could go back to numb. Maybe for good.

The others were waiting in the living room to urge breakfast on me before going to see Eric, but I refused everything but a few sips of tea.
 

“Let’s get on with it.” In a detached sort of way, I noticed how dead my voice sounded. If the others noticed, they didn’t comment on it.
 

Mr. O led the way to the guest wing, where Eric had spent the night. I followed docilely, Sean close by my side, Molly and Cormac two steps behind.

“How long do we have?” I heard Molly whisper fearfully to Sean as we walked.

“Nearly two hours,” he responded. “Plenty of time. Don’t worry, Mol.”

Two hours didn’t sound like plenty of time, but I couldn’t seem to summon any worry. Some remote corner of my mind knew I should be nervous, even afraid, but I wasn’t. Probably just as well.
 

Mr. O stopped in front of a door, pressed the chime, and it slid open. Inside, a woman in a metallic green uniform was helping Eric into a complicated-looking silver chair that hovered a few inches from the floor. At our entrance, both of them bowed to me, Eric from his chair.

“Thank you for coming, Eric,” I said mechanically. “I’m sorry it was necessary.”

“Quite all right, Excellency.” His voice was barely above a whisper. “It was my wish to come. You may leave me now,” he told the attendant. “This chair has everything I need, and it will notify the facility should my condition change. Whether I want it to or not.”

The woman frowned disapprovingly, but nodded and left. Forcing myself to really focus on Eric, I was momentarily shocked out of my numbness by the change two weeks had wrought. Old as he’d appeared before, now he looked like an animated, emaciated corpse, his skin sunken against his bones and his hands impossibly frail. Only his eyes showed that he was alive and conscious.

“I’m sorry,” I repeated, this time meaning it. “I had no idea—”

“My choice,” he interrupted wheezily. “Only reason I’m still around. Had I known I might deteriorate so quickly, I would have given you more information when we last met. Now…” He paused to catch his breath before continuing. “Now we have little time to waste. If my calculations are correct—”

I nodded. “Right. We have to do this in the next two hours. I know. Can you tell us where we need to go and exactly what I have to do when I get there? Then I can handle things myself and you can…rest.” He really did look and sound awful.

But he shook his head with surprising fierceness. “No! I—” He coughed, then cleared his throat. “I must take you. Show you. The room…intentionally difficult to find. Come.”

Eric led the way into the hall, guiding his chair around one corner, then another, taking us back the way we’d just come.

“It’s in my own apartment?” I asked, startled, as we approached to door.

“Not in. Through.” He paused by the door while I palmed it open. “Special access created for Sovereigns to avoid notice.”

Which made perfect sense, now I thought about it.
 

We followed Eric across the huge main room to the Sovereign’s office, a room I’d only glanced into during my initial tour of the apartment. He led the way past several plush chairs and the big desk with its vidscreen to the far wall, which was of that crystal-studded non-reflective metal I’d noticed earlier. There, he finally stopped.

“Is there a…a secret door or something? How—?”

Eric pointed at one of the crystals, a blue, star-shaped one. “Blue. Your signal, when device activates. Otherwise, colorless. All these know?” He gestured weakly toward the others.

“Yes, I tried to message you. Quite a few people know now. It wasn’t my intention but it’s what got me Acclaimed in time.”
 

His eyes wandered from face to face. “You and you, accompany us,” he said to Mr. O and Sean. “You others wait here. Not enough space for all.”

Before either Cormac or Molly could protest, Mr. O said, “He’s right. No point all of us going. If we’re all still here two hours and—” He glanced at his omni— “seven minutes from now, you’ll know we were successful.”

They both bowed and left, Molly still obviously scared despite Sean’s whispered reassurance.
 

“Your hand,” Eric said to me. “There.” I touched the spot he indicated, just next to the blue crystal, and sure enough, a door that had been invisible a moment before slid down into the floor, revealing a tiny, softly-lit room. It was empty.

Eric motioned me inside, then followed, as did Mr. O and Sean, looking as confused as I was. Eric was right—there definitely wasn’t room for two more people in here. The door slid shut and I felt the floor descend beneath us.

A few seconds later the door opened again to reveal a long, dimly lit hallway. When we stepped out, the elevator door closed—and disappeared. A barely-discernible oval, marginally shinier than the surrounding wall, was the only indication of its location.

Now Eric led us down the hallway, past a series of huge doors spaced at regular intervals—storage rooms, maybe?—then stopped in front of one near the end of the passage. “Through here,” he whispered.

Mr. O touched the door’s access panel and the big door slid up into the ceiling. Behind it was a huge room filled with plastic and metal crates. Eric propelled his chair through the towering maze of stacked containers, turning corner after corner until we arrived at what appeared to be a blank wall.

“Again. Your palm.” He motioned me toward the wall.
 

I pressed my hand against it and the wall simply…disappeared. Behind it was a room maybe twice the size of the secret elevator.
 

“Come.” Eric moved ahead of me to an alcove on the far side that held what I assumed must be the Grentl communication device.
 

It was much smaller than I’d expected, a cube maybe ten inches on a side that appeared to be composed mostly of some kind of crystal, with copper projections at the near left and far right upper corners. Looking closer, I saw more coppery bits woven all through the semi-transparent crystal, from which emanated a faint glow.

“What…what do I have to do?” I whispered. My numbness gone for the moment, fingers of dread crawled up my spine.
 

“I’ll show you. But first, this.” Eric pointed to a tiny panel in the wall next to the Grentl device’s alcove.
 

The panel was so small I could cover the whole thing with my palm—which I tentatively did. I felt it slide open and jerked my hand away to see a small recess that held nothing but a smooth, flat, circular something.

“Take it,” Eric whispered.
 

Tensing for I’m not sure what, I reached in and pulled out the object, a purplish crystal two inches in diameter and not quite an inch thick. I turned the thing over in my hand. “What is it?” There were no identifying markings, nothing to give a hint of its purpose.

“Archive.” I had to stoop to hear him, his whisper was so faint now. “Can access after imprint on device. May help. Now.” He faced the square device again. “Left hand here. Right hand there. Simultaneous. Don’t…let go.”

Nodding, I set the archive stone back in its little cubby and positioned myself directly in front of the communication device, my heart pounding. My earlier numbness would have helped now, because I was as scared as I could ever remember being in my life. I could hear my own breath coming in shallow, frightened gasps.

Sean place a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Go on, you’ll be fine,” he whispered, but Eric waved him back.
 

“Mustn’t…touch her. Not for this.”

Taking one more fortifying breath, I extended my right hand until it was directly over the back projection and put my left over the nearer one. Then, counting silently to three, I grabbed both projections at the same instant.

A searing current arced through my body, from one hand to the other and back, making me gasp and
almost
forcing me to let go. I gritted my teeth and held on. The current continued to race across me—not quite electrical in nature, more like alternating hot and cold sensations that bordered on painful. I tightened my hands to a death grip, determined not to let go until Eric said I could, and the current slowly diminished to a gentle warmth that was almost pleasant. I was suddenly reminded of how the Royal Scepter had felt when I’d first touched it. This had the same
mine
-ness.
 

I turned my head to ask Eric if I could let go, but before I could form the question I was suddenly assaulted by a series of images—no, more than images.
Experiences
.
 

I was a child being led by the hand into the Royal Audience Hall, then handed onto the knee of the man on the throne—my father. I was older, about my own real age, being introduced to a handsome young man by my mother. He and I were studying together. Now I was a few years older, being handed the Royal Scepter, feeling it warm in my hands. Older still, I faced this same Grentl device, felt the current running across my body. Years later, I held my first child in my arms, a son. I named him Leontine.
 

The flashes came faster and faster, each one later in Aerleas’s life. I was elderly now…then abruptly I was a child again, a boy this time.
 

Leontine-me listened while my mother, Aerleas, handed out an edict from the throne. I visited the People’s House and asked questions of some of the legislators there. I met a beautiful girl but she left and I was sad, but then I met a different girl—no, a woman—and we took vows together. I held our firstborn, also a son. Now I was handed the Scepter, felt it become
mine.
The Grentl device again, and I approached it fearfully, nearly letting go during the imprinting process. Much older now, I stood in front of an angry mob, trying to calm them.

And then I was younger again, in my late teens, and angry, fighting with two other boys on a dirty city street beside a dumpster. Still angry, I sat by the bedside of a woman, my mother, as she died. I walked down the ramp from a space ship, scared and excited, taking in my very first glimpse of Nuath. Now I was giving an impassioned speech to a large group of people, shaking my fist. And again, to an even larger group. They’re cheering. An old man is lying at my feet, dead. Finally, the Grentl device again. It hurts terribly, searing my hands, but I can’t let go.

That last image faded from my mind, leaving me shaking and confused. Then, before I could release the device, I felt something totally different—something even scarier. Images again, but this time they were mine—experiences from my own life, beginning earlier than I’d ever consciously remembered, as an infant here in this very Palace, and continuing on through every year of my childhood right up to the present. It was like my thoughts, my very brain, was being sucked out of my skull, faster and faster, through the device to some unknown end.
 

Finally, finally, it stopped. While I was still gasping from the ordeal, the copper projections I held abruptly cooled, which I assumed meant they’d hung up. Carefully, gingerly, I let go. My palms were still tingling and my temples throbbed, but I didn’t seem to be injured in any way.
 

I took a step back, away from the terrifying device, and slowly turned to find Sean and Mr. O’Gara staring at me, clearly alarmed.

“M,” Sean said, reaching a hand toward me. “Are you okay? For a while there, we were afraid you might— That you—”

“What happened?” his father interrupted. “Were you communicating with them? Did it work? Will they stop manipulating the power supply?”

“I…I don’t know,” I stammered, still shell-shocked from my experience. “They didn’t…didn’t
say
anything to me. It was…it was…”

Mr. O held up his omni so that we could all see it. “We’ll know in a moment. The next outage was to occur in…seventeen seconds.”

Had I really been communing with the device for two whole hours? It had felt like seconds…and days.
 

We all tensed, barely breathing, as we watched the seconds count down on Mr. O’s omni. Two seconds. One. And…nothing. No change.
 

Mr. O went to the door of the room and looked out. “The lights are still on. I think…I think we may be all right.”
 

“You did it!” There was awe in Sean’s voice, and disbelief. Then, loud and exultant, “You did it!” Without warning, he hugged me to him and I was too stunned—by everything—to protest, or even to comprehend.
 

Slowly, by stages, it sank in. I
had
done it. We were still here. Nuath hadn’t been destroyed. Relief bubbled up in me, bittersweet because I couldn’t share it with Rigel, but relief all the same. I turned excitedly to Eric.