6. Strife and Assurance

The warp to the Temple of Unity took longer than any Airgoidh had taken in any memory, simply because her mind played at all the possibilities of what the Sun Warden had created out here in the stars. The rifter handled much better than the probe, she had to admit, although the design reminded her of two large . . ."

The rifter's warp engines became erratic, breaking her thoughts, and the ship began to decelerate. She imagined all sorts of things since first seeing the underground town, the panel, and of course, hearing Gaelbhan speak of the ways of the Paratwa. She imagined the temple to be nothing less than a floating city literally ripped from the malinite core of Amamake, and set adrift in the sky. She wanted it to be something of importance, and yet she wondered why she felt that way. What difference if the Temple were just rubble anchored in space?

She concentrated on activating the ship’s projection system, and the gel flowed into a fair view of what lay outside the ship. Although her eyes were shut, she saw this image as clearly in her mind as if standing in the noonday sun. The three ships slowly advanced in formation, and with a gentle nudge, the display rotated around her rifter as the ship’s camera drones moved to her command. A beacon appeared in the gel HUD display, passively indicating it's location simply through a blinking red light. Where was the Temple?

RageChild's rifter and Gaelbhan's Blackbird settled into orbit around the beacon. She had seen strange ships in her travels these last few months, but her sister's Caldari vessel seemed the least likely to fly.

"Where is it?" She said, automatically directing a comm-interlink to open. "I assume we came out here for something?"

"Sarcasm sister?" RageChild said in reply. She could be heard snickering in the channel.

A pulse of noise broke up the conversation, and Airgoidh covered her ears even though the sound was directly transmitted into her brain via the neural interface. As she attempted to close the channel, another pulse of noise bounced across her hull. She felt it even through the cushioning gel. The beacon reacted by becoming a steady blue light, now barely visible in space. The Blackbird had shifted position and Airgoidh could see the extruded antenna pulsing, active. Two more pulses of noise, like a thousand wasps enclosed in a bottle, echoed in her skull, in the ship, and out across the space between them and the beacon.

Airgoidh's rifter had slowly shifted downward, allowing her to see the Amamake star and the beacon. The blue light flashed, and then became a steady red once again. The gel began to brighten, and Airgoidh felt momentary panic. The gel had never reacted to outside activity in this way, even to the point of pushing against her as the gel created light. This glow appeared from every angle, from every particle of gel. Four bright spots of yellow light appeared in the HUD, perhaps 150 kilometers out and up into the y-axis. A series of lines were being drawn, for lack of a better word that she could think of, between these four points of pulsating light, like the ancient constellations maps she had seen in her Amarri owner's study. Each of the four lights now had a line drawn between them in a perfect geometric square, each line seemingly made up on liquid light itself. Airgoidh recognized the pattern. It was the Yasodhara.

Two more yellow lights appeared above and below the square, creating the Yasodhara from the panel of the Sun Warden. The comm-interlink clicked, and the coordinates that she had used to warp here were replaced with the Yasodhara design superimposed over the actual image of the Temple of Unity.

“It’s huge,” Airgoidh said, remembering that the comm-interlink was still open.

At 100 kilometers across each face, the Temple of Unity was really just points of light linked to each other by beams of light - no tangible floor or walls, really what need of such things as found on the soil of planets? How did one go about describing a design made of light?

She thought describing her soul would have more meaning.

Her rifter started to move toward the center of the Yasodhara as Gaelbhan placed the ships under her control. They crossed the barrier into the inner sanctum of the Temple, a brief tingling sensation that Airgoidh found cold even to her bones.

She panned the HUD, and no matter what kind of scan, the HUD would not display the Temple, the beacon or the other two ships. A square bit of rock appeared in her view plate. They were moving towards it, towards the center of the Temple. The rock appeared to be malinite, but Airgoidh just settled into the gel watching as the lights of Unity bathed her in a cold glow.

**

The ships were tethered to the rock, by what means Airgoidh could not imagine, and they had cross-connected all the ships’ pods into one central interface, affectionately referred to as a pressing-gang. Airgoidh could feel her own body, her rifter, her sisters’ ships and even the Temple as an extension of her thoughts. She could feel and touch the machinery with her mind, seeing the logical flow of information as streams of light as their ships attended to their autonomic systems. To her, the machinery within the Caldari ship might as well have been the whole of the wide world beyond her set of three small paddies - paddies tended since before she could remember. She did not feel small in comparison, just not as prepared as she had thought.

"You used your noise generators to open the pathway into the Temple," RageChild said.

Airgoidh brought her attention back to the two women, but still maintained a physical grasp on the condition of their vessels. Her two sisters appeared as double balls of light, which seemed strange. Her Paratwan mind connection with them was the inner ball, while the neural link apparently picked up on that genetic connection and encapsulated the ball with a larger outer globe of light.

Gaelbhan spoke. "The Sun Warden used white noise not only to battle enemies in the distant past, but also as the key to the Temple of Unity. Beyond this, I am . . . I am at a loss."

Airgoidh could feel her sister's anguish at being stuck as quivering waves in her pod gel, and she understood how Gaelbhan must feel now that she was blocked from furtherance of anything more tangible. Their combined histories had seen many a brutal assault by the Amarr, reprisals and death handed back, and all to this point seemed a dream.

She found her hand reaching to enclose RageChild's globe of light, and tried to stop it. The gel moved and formed a perfect model of RageChild, and Airgoidh saw her brushing the woman's arm. She flinched, as did the gel simulacrum of her sister. Airgoidh saw six, no seven bright lights now, medical lights that drove into her brain. She could hear Gaelbhan and RageChild asking something, but the lights in her nind were so strong she could not block them even with her eyes closed. She was laying flat on her back inside a metal tube, the top half swing up and away. A man reached in and brushed her arm.

"Sister?"

Airgoidh felt the cool gel surrounding her, and her mind cleared. She could feel Gaelbhan and RageChild massaging her temples through the gel interface.

"I am all right, I think. I saw . . . a man." She touched RageChid’s globe, and felt the woman’s shaken emotions resonating across the interlink. “You saw a man. He touched your arm."

Was this the shared mind of the Paratwa?

RageChild's voice broke the silence. "That is my first memory."

"A cold tube?" Airgoidh felt the dismay from Gaelbhan, but she pressed the issue. The image had appeared in her mind, and if the Paratwa were connected, then she had to know even these deepest things no matter how painful. "I want to know."

RageChild spoke haltingly, her voice not as steady as Airgoidh had come to know. "That was my first memory. I opened my eyes, and there were these bright lights. It hurt so badly to even open my eyes. I saw a man lean over me, lean over the open tube. I wanted to thank him. He was blocking the light."

"He touched your arm."

"He touched me, and I slept. I woke up again and I was RageChild. I do not know what or who I was before, but quickly discovered I was in Red Light."

Airgoidh frowned. Red Light?

Gaelbhan answered the unspoken question. "Red Light is a black-market district."

"I don't know who they were, or what was happening but I ran. The whole place felt wrong, smelled wrong, and certainly looked worse."

"The Temple lights, they awakened that memory," Airgoidh said, continuing to probe.

She didn't just see the two women as lights in her mind any longer. The gel was interacting with their genetic connection, and as the minutes passed, she could feel them just under her skin, moving in unison inside her muscles and deep in her bones. Her heart felt as three, each beating in rhythm.

The three panned their gel HUD to view the entire Temple of Unity. The Yasodhara continued to appear in the display, the six points of light slowly pulsating. As she watched the Yasodhara pulsing, Airgoidh realized the lights were beating in time with their own hearts.

"Sisters, I think I know what to do." She wiped away the HUD with her hand, the image disappearing like a watery-mirrored image disturbed by a falling rock. She touched her sisters’ globes with her hands, and then willed the image of the Yasodhara to fill their minds.

**

Zayard didn't like the Ammatar, but his Amarrian superior was even worse. This Amarrian had a decided air of authority, none existent as it was here in Luci's Bar. As soon as the Ammatar inspector was about leave, finally, after two hours of questioning, the Amarr lieutenant arrived.

"That just isn't a satisfactory answer, Mister . . ."

"Zayard Zoist Fathrum Boyacovich," he answered, giving his full name for the hundredth time to this nit-wit Amarri.

"Yes, well . . ."

"And that is the answer that is, so take it or leave it. They ignored the public warning system, and died. Too bad for them."

The Amarr smiled, but his small stature and balding head typical of the race made the smile look comic rather than menacing. "Yes, the public warning system, that is a good topic for conversation. We know that the Peoples' Front use that system to broadcast terrorist information."

"Good for them," Zayard said, standing up.

The Ammatar stepped back in surprise and the Amarr made a very strange look that bordered almost on fury. Zayard did not care.

"Sit down," the Amarr said. "Or I'll put you down."

The Ammatar stepped back again.

Zayard nodded, grunting and pretended to take the seat again. Instead, his hands reached around the Amarr's neck, and a foot kicked the chair away, dropping the Amarri to the floor. Though small, the Amarr had quite a strong arm, but ultimately proving futile. Zayard had killed his owner the same way, nearly thirty years ago. The Amarr punched him in the face, his chest and beat on his arms to break the choke, but that effort slowed, and finally stopped.

Dragging the body by the neck, Zayard kicked the door open and flung the body into the street. A couple of Matari were outside, waiting, and carried the body off. How he loved his work. Right about now, any normal pilot worth his salt would have found himself waking in a clone tank, but this Amarrian had been a planet-sider. Zayard could smell man’s fear as he was choked, knowing this was his last.

The Ammatar stood just as he had before, idle, appearing ready to bolt.

Zayard turned to him, closing the door. "I lied."

The Ammatar nodded, looking at the table where the Amarr had just died, the overturned chairs and then back to the Matari. He nodded some more before whispering, "Lied about what?"

“Rememeber when I told you I was out of water? I lied. Do you want that water now?"

cont...