36
And then, all at once, everything changed. A tremendous burst of reality-altering power came to him from a direction unseen, pouring out of a timeline not exactly his own. First, he and the young empress were violently stripped of disguise, blasted right back to their usual forms. No more cat-mechanic or sugar-glider, but V47 Pilot and Raine. The process was quick, rough and mostly painless as they boiled, swelled, tightened and shrank back to a tall cyborg elf and a young human child. The transformation was over in moments, bringing a flood of confusing sensory changes.
Second, their perception flowered. Just like that, the universe seemed to gain an extra dimension of space and of time. Suddenly, Pilot could see more than just the exterior, near-side of things. Now, he saw within and all around them as well; was able to sight along their tangle of future and past.
Turning his head brought disorientation. Made him feel sick, because he wasn’t just looking “around” anymore; because nothing was closed to his view, and distances weren’t what they had been. Right. Being a mech pilot, the cyborg didn’t go offline. He was accustomed to space folds, could increase his width along one dimension to flatten another, in battle. This change in perception wasn’t entirely alien. He could get used to seeing this way and look for his goal, spotting it…
There. Seemingly only a step or two off, lay the station’s abandoned command deck. Big, dark and apparently empty, the compartment had been sealed shut for galactic eons, its hatches welded tight and its atmosphere drained. The command deck was defended by weapons, robots and traps, all of which he could see laid out like a bobbing four-dimensional map. A normal being would not have been able to sneak in through all that, but in this state all Pilot had to do was cross “over” and “through”, bypassing walls the way he could step right across a painted line… If he could just work out how to move those two steps without flying completely apart. He could see that direction, just wasn’t sure how to get there.
As Pilot turned his head, objects streamed, everted and puddled like colorful paint blobs. People, too. The Rogue Flight team seemed to pop in his view like spiced grain-kernels, their insides open and flaring. Decks and machinery trickled past him, still surging and thumping along, somehow, just like those elven-stock people. Sounds echoed and boomed without any connection to what was causing them. Objects seemed to ooze and flow when he shifted his gaze, solidifying when they were stared at.
It was very unsettling. “Here” and “there”, “then” and “now” swelled, reversed, shrank and flipped as the cyborg adjusted his vision. The same way that an object seemed to drift against its background when you blinked alternate eyes or turned your head, so things and people shifted their “when” as he leaned first one way, then the other. They slid on their timeline like pulsing beads, growing older or younger accordingly.
V47 Pilot shielded Raine and the two alien ambassadors as well as he could, using raw manna and spliced-in patches of shimmering code. From this weird vantage point, everything around him had bits and symbols and digits composing its substance. It was all just data, which he could suddenly read, reach into and alter. Didn’t, though. Not at first.
Looking up-ana-ward, he saw the drones fanned out in sliced, clicking and quivering layers. His own fey-pockets were there, too; spread out all around him with their contents entirely visible. Those of Ace and the rest of the Rogue Flight team hung like a swarm of bees that encircled each pilot. Leaning closer, he spotted his memory-drive in one of Dethknell’s jammed fey-pockets. Tough to miss, because the drive was flashing and vibrating, giving off pulses of code as though sensing him, too. Palm-sized, cylindrical, made of dark plastic and metal, the memory-drive was an ancient and powerful artifact. More importantly, it contained Foryu’s stored data, and Pilot wanted it back.
He reached in and hooked the thing right out of Dethknell’s grasp. Opened a compartment in the cybernetic armor over his heart to place it in, hopefully well out of reach. He pinched Icebox’s energy blade after that, because his own was still missing. Also, because he’d hated being called “Kitty-cat”, and punching his former hero seemed pretty vile, when the big, blond actor couldn’t fight back.
“Thank you for donating to the cause, Mikale,” he told Icebox, patting the nearest floating blob of rigid shoulder. Winked at a glaring blue eye, saying, “You’re a real hero.”
Got a blistering threat in response, which just made him smile. 'Next time, Buddy,' he sent. 'Seriously, bring your best, because I will.'
Stepping away from the team, Pilot dared to look down at himself. There, whirling softly in one of his own extra-dimensional pockets, he glimpsed the masters’ stolen refuge. Not just the outside, either. Looking closer, Pilot was able to scan its contents, seeing all that lay within. The real V47 Pilot was there, surrounded by all he had ever wanted or loved, busily creating a beautiful wilderness realm. For a moment, their minds brushed together, which…
This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
He was welcome, Pilot sensed. He could enter the refuge to join his original self. Whisk along Raine and the aliens, even… leaving everyone else to their fate, just like the masters had done, so long before.
A quick burst of thought passed between them, bringing the offer, but Pilot couldn’t accept. Didn’t retreat to peace, love and safety, because he’d promised to end a war, not flee from it. He’d vowed to help bring about Someday for everyone, not just himself. But, oh, he wanted to.
It might have been the hardest thing he’d ever had to do, but Pilot turned his back on paradise and shoved regret far away, down where it couldn’t touch him, or hurt. He spotted V47’s AI cartridge, next, which contained his partner, along with the mostly-patched Hana code. It was the work of a moment to retrieve her data, then push it off through his link to Miche and Val, sending her and the unborn little one “home”. Maybe one of his other selves could supply all of the missing details. Here and now, there was nothing else to be done.
“Good luck and glad tidings, my lady,” he murmured, transmitting her shielded, encrypted file.
As for the draug superior, its disguise had been roughly stripped off as well. No longer a digital timepiece, the gold-colored creature writhed and dribbled and pulsed beside/ miles away from Pilot, clotted with hate like a nest of dark thorns. Uh-huh. The dissident leader was not any better from this point of view, and clearly a genuine threat.
Somebody else’s problem now, because Pilot jammed the draug at Ace. Combined their code, just like in episode 46: Ride-along, where a gating accident had left Rogue Flight’s leader temporarily meshed with an exiled alien prince.
“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,” he said, meaning both of them. “You kids have fun.”
The mix-up shouldn’t be too hard to repair, given time and access to a transport gate. Besides, it was funny (and he left the solution with Brother, the only Rogue who’d trusted him).
“Cute,” said the husky mech-jockey, once Pilot explained what he’d done. “Well, I can’t say he didn’t have it coming, and I’ll keep them off your tail for a while, Ghost. Go do what you have to. I got your nadir and six.”
“Thank you, Kent,” Pilot replied, getting the hang of seeing those separate, rotating blobs as one person. “If you ever finish the show…”
“You’ll be written in as a rebellious, hot-shot newcomer who gets into trouble with Ace and Cerulean-1… and I promise the story will end with a bang,” laughed Brother, who’d been telling the truth all along. Right. So much for heroes and enemies.
Looking down brought him into direct contact with Raine’s mind, which was wide open, unguarded and simple to read.
“Just a bit longer, Majesty,” he said to her. “I believe I can shift us onto the command deck, which is… ana-way, over there up and across.”
Tough to describe and even harder to reach, because moving at all put him through and inside of things, or beyond the hull, in the midst of their space battle, two weeks before. Three times, his emergency helmet and shield formed, saving their lives as Pilot worked out how to move from one place to the next. Got just a bit zero-G-sick, breathless and frostbitten, but survived the sudden plunge into frigid black space, as lasers and missiles exploded and flared all around him. See, a half-step this way crossed miles, while in that direction, he went just a few inches (backward). Navigation had to be learned. Nor was that all, or worst.
Pilot encountered himself coming and going but never seemed to make eye-contact. Climbed through a forest of world-lines, switching personas until it was hard to recall who he’d been, or quite when they’d started.
There was Cerulean Dream, many thousands of years in the past. He saw the ship inside and out, back when the decision was made to conserve resources by leaving mech pilots in stasis for most of their lives, only waking them up to do battle. It wasn’t the masters who’d made that decision. The AIs and his own people had pulled that grim trigger, making their assets no more than a weapon. A thing to be used, recycled and then discarded as trash.
Looking forward through time, there was Raine, enthroned in power and glory in one future… imprisoned, sectioned and dead in another. Too many possible world-lines to count, and he wasn’t sure any longer which one was theirs. In the end, Pilot had to guess as well as he could, trying to remember what the steering-rockets or… wait… the solar panels? Altitude control system? What it had looked like, whichever it was. At last, he chose one and pulled them all into it.
“Pilot, I trust you. You know what you’re doing,” said the empress, in his head and his heart. Raine, he was sure of, because he’d never let the girl go, not setting her down for an instant. “Pick a direction and take us to the command deck. We have a promise to keep.”
Which was true. He nodded and immediately regretted it, for his head and two of the drones wound up in separate compartments, divided by nearly a month. That took some sorting, but then…
“Aye that, Majesty. It’s past time we were done with this, but entering the command deck without using the doors or an accepted friendship-protocol will trigger alarms and countermeasures. I’ll handle those. You be ready to pull OVR-Lord’s cartridge out of the control panel, no matter what happens to me.”
She looked in/ at/ through him, then shook her head no, leaving a trail of big brown eyes and cute snub noses all over Orbital Station and yesterday.
“I won’t give you up, Pilot, or the ambassadors, either,” Raine insisted. “What does anything else matter, if I can’t take care of my friends?”
Red-Blue-Gamma flashed enthusiastic agreement, while Right-Left-Top-Flip drummed a wild martial beat. The miniature aliens were having the time of their lives, he guessed, and they were eager for battle. Outnumbered, Pilot had to give in.
“Very well,” he said. “I will stay out of trouble just to keep you three quiet. Try to be quick though, Majesty, because I am not very good at… well… doing good.”
Never had been, as Val or Miche either, he sensed. Not so much a hero as the only fool on the spot who refused to back down. Right, so... Expressions were tough to parse in this expanded-dimensional view, but Pilot thought that the empress was smiling. She tipped upward to do something very like place a kiss on part of his spread-out and drifting face.
“I love you, Pilot,” she told him again, adding, “Now, let’s go conquer the Two Hundred Worlds.”
And so that’s what they did.