Sensus kneeled down and put his hand on the strange, heaving mass of micro filament cables. He felt the warmth of life but was afraid to peel away the fibers and pull Melody out from under them.
Holloway and Sam stood by, Holloway wide-eyed and trembling.
“What just happened, General?” he asked.
Melody. Sensus stood and turned to the others. They raised their hands to shield their eyes from the brilliant glow coming from his. “I’m still trying to understand.”
Sam knelt down and put his hand on the mass of fibers. “She’s alive.”
“I felt warmth,” said Sensus, “but no heartbeat.”
“It’s there,” said Sam, “but it’s changed. It’s…”
“It’s what?”
Sam leaned forward and put his ear slit to the mass, then sniffed. “Plant.” He sat upright and ran his fingers along the web of fibers. “These are the veins of leaves.”
“I didn’t even see her here.”
“Oh, she was here allright,” said Holloway, kneeling down. He put his hand on the fibers, then jerked it away. “Sweet Mithras! It feels spongy, like a fungus.” He poked at it. “But it looks like wires.”
“This ship is strange,” said Sam.
“Indeed it is," Sensus agreed. "In fact, I’m not so certain anymore that Albion truly is a spacecraft."
Holloway turned his head to look up at Sensus. His face was a portrait of confusion. “Whaddaya mean?”
Sensus gestured to their inexplicable surroundings. “What spacecraft would house such a facility as this? Or do any of the things we’ve seen it do?”
“What are ya sayin’, General?”
“That Albion’s alive.”
As if responding to Sensus, a sound like a massive bell toll reverberated throughout the chasm.
Sam looked suddenly nervous. “I feel we should leave.”
Sensus looked down sadly, his eyes shining bright spotlights on the mass of fungal tubules. “Melody…”
Holloway stood. “There’s nuthin’ we can do for her now, General.” He put his hand on Sensus’s shoulder, then pulled it away. “Hot damn! You’re blazin’, General.”
Another bell rang in the deep. Sam began backing away, turning towards the door they came in through.
“General,” said Holloway, “I think Sam’s right.”
The sound of massive joints articulating released a cascade of thunderous echoes and their platform shook.
“Come on, General!” Holloway followed Sam. “General!”
The platform shook again, then swung loose of the hallway and began to lower into the chasm. But Sensus remained where he was, hovering in midair he watched sorrowfully as what remained of the director, his friend, was swallowed by the unknowable mechanisms deep inside Albion. Only when she was completely gone from view did he turn and float after Holloway and Sam.
Once through the door, he lowered himself to the ground.
“What now, General?”
Sensus put his hand on Joshua’s shoulder, careful not to scorch the mortal’s flesh with his radiance. “We find out.”
“Find out?”
How could he explain to them? Maybe Sam would understand, but how could a commonplace man like Joshua fathom the whispers in Sensus’s ear, or the waves of microcosmic strands unravelling before his eyes?
“We need to find a safe place to wait this out,” he told his two followers.
“Lead the way,” said Holloway.
Sensus followed an unheard voice through Albion’s ever-changing layout. They navigated a landscape that tilted, twisted and fell away the moment their feet departed the ground, saved each time by force fields that kept the void of space at bay. Now and then Sensus would look over his shoulder to check on his companions. Holloway kept his head on a swivel, and his eyes looked ready to pop out of their sockets. Sam, however, kept his cool head pointed forwards, and his shock was well hidden.
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Melody…
They found themselves in what was once a park. The tennis courts were on the walls now, and the domed sim-sky screen had shifted from ceiling to floor. Above them was the black of space, brilliantly shot through by its uncountable suns.
“How do we get through this?” said Holloway.
Sensus spread his aura around them both. In prior days he felt his mind in command of sound when he’d done so. Now his fingertips scintillated with the wild sensation of gravity, and he carried his companions along behind him as he floated over the floor.
“Is it not solid?” asked Sam.
Holloway didn’t respond at first, doubtless amazed. “It’s… no. Not really. It’s a screen, and… we’d crack it and… there’s beams and rafters… Hey, General…”
Sensus felt increasingly fatigued from exerting his focus. Feathers became boulders as his aura strained and they were sinking.
“General…”
He groaned to push his will outward through his spread hands, but the best he could do was keep them level with the edge of the ceiling.
“General,” Sam said urgently, “let me go. I can tread weak surfaces. Please General. I have training.”
Sensus let Sam drop, slowly at first, releasing him altogether when he was only ten feet above the screen. I heard the polyfiber glass crack. He wanted to look down, but he needed all his focus to keep himself and Holloway level. They finally reached the lip of the dome and were sitting on flat ground. Sensus felt sweat pouring down his brow and was relieved to see Sam had managed to not fall through the screen. Once he’d lithely scaled to the dome’s edge they resumed their trek, traversing a floor of many textured surfaces that spiraled around them, though their feet always landed on flat ground.
At the end of that whirlwind hallway was a portal of swirling energy that opened into empty space. Sensus kept his eyes trained forward, seeing a doorway across the empty space. He dug deep, recalling every grueling thing he’d endured in his many Harbinger operations. Not looking down at whatever sort of surface lay far below, he spread his aura and with immense effort hurtled them all forward, using what strength he had to keep them afloat til they reached the other side.
“If this ship’s alive, General,” said Holloway, “then it ain’t happy.”
The door was spinning fast. Sensus gathered light into his palms and raised his hands. He felt the weight of worlds straining against his strength. He groaned, then howled, then wailed in pain when it felt like his arms were going to be torn from his body. Light traveled of its own accord to his shoulders to keep his limbs attached, and with that added force he slowed the spin of the door, though the polycast panels cracked around them.
“Go!”
Josh and Sam ran through the door. He felt a wave of relief which weakened him, and the door slipped out of his grip.
He roared in pain, feeling his arms ripped from their sockets. Cursing himself for his Newtonian thinking, he forced his mind into fourths, realizing in piteous hindsight that the movement he perceived was no mere causal materialism. This was Albion, and Albion was now revealing itself to be a universe of its own. Sensus felt the waves and strands of the vessel, ignoring the fibers of the bulkheads and compartments, and, weakened by his injury and the signals sent to his nerves, he pushed through his pain with anger and in desperation blasted a hole large enough for a tank to drive through.
And then the spinning stopped.
His companions both stood still, watching with their individual expressions of shock; Holloway wide-eyed, Sam reverently calm.
“You okay, General?” asked Holloway.
“Never better. Come on. We have to keep moving.”
Sensus could hardly interpret what he saw next. The hallways, compartments and the spacious, unused bays coveted by forward-thinking trade moguls had broken into floating panels over empty space, all shifting in a miasma of unexplained movement. They jumped from one to the next, and Sensus frequently had to stretch his aura to prevent the others from falling. It left him breathless and too nauseated to focus, so he guided them to a path where larger platforms flew in a slightly less chaotic pattern. Many times, he saw a doorway in a still portion of wall, and other times he saw an expanse of flooring left undisturbed. But his stomach twisted into a knot at the thought of taking those seemingly easy ways, so he kept them moving over the shifting floor. Now and then he chanced a look down and saw strange sights below: a glowing sphere surrounded by savage tendrils of light, a cluster of gears the size of a large home, or swarms of metallic shards flying in formation like a school of minnows evading a shark.
He was captivated by what looked like pairs of wings fluttering with no birds to carry when he heard Holloway shout. Sensus looked up in time to see him in the air, the panel he leapt for passing quickly underneath him. Sensus tried to catch him, but he hadn’t the strength, and Holloway landed over void.
“Josh!”
He stood on nothing, the panels whizzing under his feet.
Sam came into Sensus’s view, walking casually, then he sat down on the invisible ground to catch his breath.
Sensus gravely needed rest, but he was nervous to stop there. “Let’s keep moving.”
“How is this happening?” Holloway asked as they walked.
“I asked that question every day at least twice after coming here,” said Sam.
“He’s right,” said Sensus. “Albion is home to many fantastic technologies that even the Artifexus barely understands. We’re just seeing parts of the ship that were hidden before.”
“But how are we floatin’?”
“Albion generates gravity, Josh. And without orbital mass. That’s all the answer you’re going to get from me, I’m afraid.”
But nothing he said to Holloway generated conviction in his own mind. There was a will at work, pulling him along by an invisible thread, paving the steps before his feet as soon as they rose from their last. Solomon found Sensus’s conjoining of echo and ohr on a derelict frigate huddled between a trio of stars, and only heard stories of Albion’s finding. He’d scoffed when told it looked alive, deep within Luna, like an animal in its den rising in spring. Now he felt those descriptions failed to convey the presence of consciousness within Albion. They may have lived within a vast generation ship, its components made of engineered materials powered by reactors of megatherian construction, but those components were wrapped around essence, being, soul, and that soul had revealed nothing of its intentions or desire, only it's monstrous power. Along with his nervous faith, Sensus felt afraid.