"The shuttle has docked with the unknown vessel," Cenz said to Urle.

"Just one shuttle? Where is the other?" Urle asked.

"It is still inside the temple," Cenz told him.

Urle's fingers formed into a fist. He did not like being kept in the dark when there was no clear reason. "Hail the ship again-" he began.

"They are hailing us," Eboh said. "It is a simple message that says that Captain Brooks has been recovered. There is no mention of anyone else."

They could be lying, Urle thought. But even if they were, the Craton had no ability right now to change things.

"Thank our friends, and tell them-" he began.

"Another message, marked urgent. It says that we must leave, now."

Urle stood. "We have to confirm that Brooks is on board before-"

Y's voice spoke in his ear. "Captain Urle, I urge you to trust our friends."

Urle fell silent.

"They are urging us to hurry, and slave our zerodrive to theirs," Eboh said. He frowned. "Is that even possible, I do not know if-"

"I can do that," Y said, his voice coming from every speaker on the bridge. "Combined, our power generation will be enough to open a sufficiently-sized zerospace portal. I will connect to their ship and handle all of the . . . details, if you wish, Captain Urle."

All eyes went to him again. Urle paused for a moment, and then nodded. "Doctor, tell our friends- what is that?"

He did not know if Y sent his partial message or not, as his eyes were drawn to the screen, at distant space even further out from the temple.

Where space itself was boiling. It surged, the light of stars in the distance growing distorted, turning to strange rings and circles, growing and shrinking as something twisted space.

Gravitational fields of a zerodrive - but like no other zerodrive he had ever seen.

There was no portal torn in space itself, but something began to emerge. Something with hard edges of a strange metal that glinted with an oily sheen. Its edges were rough, but still recognizably unnatural, and another appeared next to it. And then another.

More began to appear, none of them even touching, but always staying equidistant from each other, the gaps smaller or larger, but never huge. They moved at intervals, slowly rotating up or down. All one piece that was not even connected.

A dozen or more of them appeared, arrayed in a slowly sweeping line that reached its apex with the centermost block.

It was moving towards them.

"We must go now, Captain!" Eboh said. "Our allies are saying they will leave without us!"

"What is that?" Urle asked again, his voice a whisper.

He could not tear his eyes off of it.

Y spoke. "Accepting zerodrive handshake," his voice said. There was a distortion in it, but it continued on, the AI finally taking charge without Urle's order.

As they began to move, Urle's eyes were still on the strange vessel.

It was not moving towards them, he realized, as they changed position in relation to it. It was heading towards the temple.

He looked back at the temple, realizing now the colossal size of the cubes and the whole they made. Unlike they, in the kilometer-wide Craton, who were dwarfed by it, the strange cube-wing ship was . . . in scale with it.

Then his view faded, as the Craton was pulled into zerospace.

----------------------------------------

The shuttle had landed, and all aboard were told that they had successfully made the dive into zerospace, along with the Craton.

A cheer went up, but as relieved as Brooks was to hear it, he could not bring himself to feel happy.

Their trip back had not been a pause for him. Brecht had given him access to the data to see all that had occurred outside the enabling since they had entered.

He had seen the gamma ray burst, the destruction of the Raven's Ghost. Ambassador Jophiel, even, prior to her recovery.

And the arrival of the Leviathans.

Their positioning was not lost on him. The singular point they had encircled fit, as best he could tell, where the dark star had seemed to be.

They had focused on it, willed it into being.

And the Craton had filled a spot in their circle. Ignored but integral.

The clarity past the adrenaline was setting in now, though, and he knew that these thoughts, what he had learned, still had to be developed more.

One of the espatiers stood and guided Nadian and Katherine out of the ship. As they reached the ramp, he heard Nadian ask; "What about Brooks?"

"He is going off with our top man," the espatier told him.

Brecht approached him, and Brooks looked up at him.

"Are you the top man?" he asked the man he had thought was a mercenary. Who was, apparently, much more than that.

"I am," Brecht replied.

He walked past him, and Brooks unhooked from his seat, rising to follow him.

"Who are you people?" he asked Brecht, catching up to him at the bottom of the ramp.

Brecht said nothing for a few strides. Then he took a breath. "We have garnered several names. Requite Forces, Advent Soldiers. Miles Mortis." He paused. "And sometimes mercenaries."

"But you're not that," Brooks stated.

"No. We occasionally take contracts, to maintain charades and for money. But we have a purpose."

"Which is?"

"I will not tell you," Brecht said. "But perhaps she will."

They had come to the far bulkhead of the hangar, where a door was opened. "Straight down the hall," Brecht told him.

Brooks gave him one last look before heading down. At the end was another door.

It led to an airlock. The door behind him closed, and he was sprayed with a cleansing gas. It smelled harsh and foul.

The other door opened, and before him in the room beyond was, simply, a wall of lights. A single chair sat between he and it.

There were readouts and screens on the wall, that flashed and showed data that he could not parse. It made no sense to him.

This was more computing power than was needed for an AI, or to emulate a human mind. What was . . . ?

"Greetings, my intrepid Captain."

The voice of Vermillion Dawn.

Brooks froze, his eyes looking once again over the screens and readouts. They remained the same, but after a few moments the one nearest to him changed, turning to an image of a face.

It was not a detailed image; simply a grid of lights, their points taking on the shape of a human form. The same woman's face as the Present Mind on the enabling had taken.

How he remembered her, from years ago.

"Dawn," he said.

"Ian," she replied. "I told you that I would have further surprises for you when next we met."

His mind went back to the secret message that Y had brought to him when she had requested the audience with him.

It had not been all she had said to him, but it had been her parting promise.

"You also said the time was coming when you could tell me more," he said. "Is that time now?"

"Yes," she told him. A slight pop from the simple speaker brought out her sigh. "But let me first assure you that I am not far from you, Captain. I am not . . ." she hesitated. "I am not hiding from you now, as I was then."

"Then where are you?" he asked, though the truth was something that he had already realized.

"This is me now," she told him, confirming his worst fears.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

Brooks stepped closer to the wall, reaching up. It was still just cold metal and plastic. "Dawn, what happened to you?" he asked softly.

"I was not one to shed myself so easily," she began. It was, at best, a weak jest.

He could still picture her as she had been all those years ago; the small blonde woman, not beautiful but through the sheer power of her will . . . enrapturing.

They, along with the pirate-turned-savior Siilon, had run their private war against the lurking horrors that lived at the edge of humanity.

At that time they had thought those to be the Glorians, the Gohhians. The last remaining vestiges of humanity's cruelest past, metastasized into impossibly vast forces in the expanse of space. Though dwarfed by the humanity that had united and advanced, left the cruelties of the past behind, they had all become aware that the cancer was still there at the edge. Still blighting billions upon billions of lives.

At that time they had not known what else lurked out in the Dark.

They had fought tooth and nail, refusing to yield even after devastating defeats. Clinging to life so as to fight another day.

It had not been the hopelessness of their battle that had compelled he and Siilon to leave it and join the Union. It had been the realization that they had, ultimately, made no difference. All of their suffering and losses had saved a pittance of lives, and done little to undermine their enemies.

But Dawn had stayed; she would not abandon that fight. It had been a gulf they could not broach.

Yet now . . . Now she was gone. Now she was a digital memory.

"It is not the enemy who bested me," she admitted. "You have seen effects much like this. Your own man, Iago Caraval. I . . . looked where I should not have looked, Ian. It was a foolish weakness, a momentary mistake, seeking too blithely to find a new tool or weapon. Yet it was only a glimpse of an idea that undid my body.

"My mind, too, was affected. I hid the damage for years, and continued the fight. It was not simply the effects it had on my body and mind, but the ideas, Ian. They were a torture to see and understand. I understand them still, but . . . they cannot be put into words. I cannot express them to you. I have tried, with others, before.

"Their weight became so great that I decided, ultimately, that my only chance was to digitize my mind. I had made copies in the past, and I used those to fill in every gap and damaged point. Painstakingly did my most loyal fellows scan and translate every part of me into this system. I am now able to bear them better than I could in my original body.

"But this is not simply a copy of my mind, Ian. Such a mind, disconnected from material conditions, cannot help but to drift away from them. It cannot continue to understand and to care. Thus, every part of me was copied, and in this digital world I exist as a simulated whole. Flesh, bone, blood, and mind. Every part of me that existed in life, is recreated so that I may continue to pretend to be . . . human."

Brooks leaned forward, his forehead against the cold metal. His eyes stared downwards, trying to make his exhausted mind understand it all.

"I know that this is difficult to hear, Captain."

The words were a gross understatement. Yet Brooks understood through the reversion to his rank that their moment of intimate admissions was over.

He did not know what he might want to say to her, and in a way was almost relieved that he did not have to force himself to comprehend this all and come to some sort of conclusion at this moment. Not after all else he had learned.

He stepped back, sitting almost clumsily on the chair.

"Right now I speak to Nadian and Katherine through a puppet," she told him. "From him I have learned all that transpired on the station."

"How?" Brooks asked. "My . . . my system is blanked. Everything I gathered from within that room is gone."

"Except for this," she said.

A small panel opened on the wall, and sliding out on a tray was a strange, clay-like object. It was roughly a sphere, but on it were patterns that were strangely unnerving. There were parts in the pattern that almost resembled eyes, ears, nostrils, but were not truly like anything human.

"This is something we call a takwin," Dawn said. "A name from human history, rather than its true term. Whatever that may be, I cannot say. It is a form of relic technology - an empty vessel that can contain information against all loss.

"Nadian knew this, but not its origins, and carried it in with him at my behest. It observes, and remembers even where all other technology fails. So long as Nadian Farland made it out alive, I would know."

"So you were his backer," Brooks realized. "And you came because of this. Because of the data it obtained."

Dawn hesitated.

"I was his backer, yes," she said. "This is the only vessel under my command powerful enough to create a magnetic shield. As such, I had not wished to come in and face the risk - until the situation came to the point where my intercession was compelled. A Gamma Ray Burst is quite noticeable, after all."

Brooks watched quietly, and continued to watch after she had spoken. Sitting in silence for a time, he looked again at the takwin, at what vital information it must contain. It still sat there, and he wondered what would happen if he touched it.

It was not so much that he wished to, or even thought he could take it.

But it was of such value, such alien qualities, that he realized just how out of his depth he was.

She had drifted from him. She had kept up their fight and moved to a level he had not even known existed. He was a useful agent to help an agenda, not his own man.

"Please, Captain, do not take my words to seem I do not value you," she said softly.

He looked up. He wanted to believe her.

But he truly did not know if she would have let him, Nadian, and everyone on the Craton die if the takwin had not been there to recover.

He would never know, he thought.

A pressure fell upon him; a presence that he could mistake for none other.

"Ambassador," he said.

Kell stepped up, behind him.

Dawn took several moments to seem to realize that he was present.

"Begone from here," she said, her voice hostile, almost spitting. "This is not a place where your foulness belongs."

"Yet here I am," Kell said calmly.

Brooks stood, glancing to Kell. "Kell . . . why are you here?" he asked.

Kell looked at him, his eyes focusing on him. Brooks almost staggered under the intensity; the being was truly looking at him in that depth of his that weighed like an ocean's worth of pressure.

"I am here for you, Captain," Kell told him.

"Ah, so you are not my assassin today, monster," Dawn said, her voice almost mocking.

"No," Kell said, looking to the wall. "Not today."

"Do you two know each other?" Brooks asked, feeling a helplessness growing inside.

"No," Dawn said. "I know what he is, and that is enough."

"Tell him," Kell said, his own tone now openly mocking. "Tell the intrepid Captain just what I am."

"A thing both life and not-life," Dawn hissed. "A thing born of their world and of ours. A thing that all life, no matter its origin, hates, and must hate."

"I don't understand," Brooks said.

"The Shoggoth," Dawn replied. "Was created from both the mundane world of life, with an equal part of the unnatural order - the order of the Leviathans. Their form of 'life' is inimical to ours, and they detest our mundane reality. As thus, a being of such contradictory existence is eternally cursed."

Brooks looked to Kell, who was looking at the screen with complete serenity.

"Eternally unnatural," Dawn said.

Kell smiled. "And eternally hated," he said. He looked to Brooks. "This is why you feel my presence and shudder, Captain. I am the most perverse thing that could exist. Wrong on all levels." He paused. "And yet I am."

Brooks sat down on the chair.

Kell spoke, to Dawn. "At this moment we find ourselves with the same interests. The Xanagee have reclaimed the Enabling, and have taken it away. Where, I cannot see, yet. I am still bound temporally."

"The signs will appear, then," Dawn replied. "And soon."

"I agree," Kell said.

"What does this mean?" Brooks asked.

Kell turned, crossing his arms and looking at him. "What we just observed was an atemporal event that crossed all points of existence. You can only interpret it as a singular moment, yet I can at least feel its permanence."

"The temple," Dawn continued. "It was a tool that enabled its creators to view the universe at any point in time. Through it you were able to observe all of the moments before and even after the atemporal event. You did truly witness the birth of the dark star, and its own collapse, triggered by the enabling itself."

"No," Kell disagreed. "It was alway doomed. The Elder Ones do not fully grasp temporal causality. This was always inevitable - the Xanagee structure only hastened the natural event."

"My god," Brooks gasped. "So our witnessing of it . . . the Leviathan that went to Terris . . . If the temple hastened the collapse, are we the reason it was trapped here? We activated the temple and therefore the event."

"No," Dawn said. "The temple has been used before. You are not responsible here, Captain. If I am correct, then the ancient species known as the Xanagee are the ones who unknowingly triggered it." The dot matrix face looked to Kell. "And it may have always been inevitable. This event cannot be approached or understood in sense of causality. It was always to be, always was, and always will."

"Outside of the temple, though - the Leviathans that appeared," Brooks said. "Was that another thing shown to us by the temple? It was them, wasn't it? They used their own mass to create the star that became their gateway."

Kell answered him. "It is another event that always was."

"Just as, it seems, one of the beings on your ship truly is a host for an Embrion," Dawn noted. "For the Craton to have filled your spot in their ring, it must be so."

Brooks's head spun. Apollonia, it had to be her.

Her, or if this was truly atemporal . . .

"Could I be the host of the Embrion?" he asked.

"You are not," Kell told him.

"I heard the Source calling when we sought the pirates," Brooks said. "Across light-years of distance I could hear it. You told me that, Kell, and you were right."

"You, Apollonia Nor, and Cathal Sair," Kell replied. "All of you heard it. As did I. Nor and Sair are both hosts. Sair's Embrion is dormant, but Nor's . . . it has been roused. It has always lulled near to that awakened state, yet now I believe she is aware of it and another step is taken by her along her inevitable path."

"Inevitable," Dawn said, "Only if we allow it."

"Do not try to harm her," Brooks warned.

Kell looked amused, and Dawn serious. "Violence is not the solution to this, Captain."

"Not yet," Kell added. "If I did wish her harm, Captain, I have had ample opportunity. It is not my goal."

"Then what is your goal, Kell?"

Kell seemed to have to consider that. "The survival of my people," he said. "No matter what the cost."

"Though they have banished you?" Dawn said. "How gloriously vain of you, Ambassador. A monster pretending itself noble."

"No matter the cost," Kell repeated, looking at her.

Brooks did not miss that. But he could not ask about it now. He still must know.

"If I am not a host, Kell," he said. "Then what am I? Because I heard the Source. I see . . . something, when I close my eyes. My mind has grown to ignore it, but it is there. I know it. It does not leave me with time, as I had hoped it would."

He hesitated, then spoke more. "I see it in my dreams."

Dawn was silent; her face looked to Kell, and he alone held any answer Brooks might be able to find.

"You have drawn the gaze of a Great One," Kell told him. "The Great One we encountered on the first day I joined your ship - you hurt it. I bear some of the blame, Captain. I advised you in a course of action, that you would cause it pain and it would never forget. I was correct. It does remember, will always remember. When it looked into the ship, it saw you as the one who led. God noticed an ant. While its gaze is on you, you are marked. Different. For good or ill."

Kell looked to Dawn. "It was important that we speak. You can see this now. It was important that the Captain understand more."

Dawn said nothing, but her face disappeared as the screen turned off.

"It is high time that you return to your ship, Captain," she said. "Take with you this thing. As correct as its words are, its presence causes me pain."

Kell nodded to Brooks. "I will see you upon your return to the Craton." He turned, walking - and his form was then gone.

A silence lingered in the air, the pressure of his presence disappearing.

"Dawn," Brooks said, looking to her.

"You must go, Captain. I do not lie when I say that its presence causes me pain. The mere existence of it is a cancer upon reality itself, and it bleeds into me, exasperating old wounds that cannot be stitched closed."

Brooks took a deep breath, the words he had been wanting to say fading in his mind. This was . . . not to be a time of reconciliation or resolution, not for them.

"Go in peace," he said.

"And you, Captain," she replied. "I do hope that we will see each other again. In better times."