“There is power in this place,” Azariah said, as she walked behind Karr, ducking around pipes and past the countless panels that blinked readings back at him. Too much for him to ever consider learning about beyond the basics he already knew.
This was always the mech’s job, a position that swapped out as often as Karr swapped out bits of charcoal for his drawings.
They passed theStarfall’s main engine; a beastly, greased-up thing that rumbled softly, ever-present in its power. But not near enough to keep the ship aloftandkeep Cade’s tools of imprisonment running at the same time.
No, there had to be something else… somethingmorethat he wouldn’t have taken any notice of. For how long had it been, since he’d come to this darkened space? Cade wouldn’t have evenhadto hide it.
“It calls to me,” Azariah said. “From just up ahead.”
Sonara spat on the ground behind her. “It’s putrid,” she said. “The aura of it. Power like the volcano that lies in waiting out in the Black Waters. Like a sleeping giant.”
There were only a few dim red emergency lights that glowed softly in the upper rafters of the cramped room, but it began to lighten as they came to the very center of theStarfall,where the ancient transporter base sat.
Not the actual transporter, for that tech had been outlawed ages ago, every last transporter removed and destroyed from all ships in the ITC. It was dangerous tech, the kind that allowed ships to soar into spaces previously thought uninhabitable or unwelcome, and simply remove what they chose—a tech that had the power to scientificallyliftan object from the ground with a tube-like force field that slowly drew them into the waiting ship.
Battles were won with it.
Cities were ransacked and picked clean.
“It wouldn’t be here,” Karr said.
But even as he said it, he felt sick.
For there was a dim blue glow, and a warmth in this space. And there were dark curtains hanging in the engine room that had never been there before, splitting the space in two.
“Here,” Azariah said. She held out her hands, her eyes narrowing as she nodded at the curtains before her, the blue light seeping under and around the gaps. “This is what calls to me. This is what we must destroy.”
Karr’s stomach churned, nausea suddenly washing over him.
He stepped forward and drew the dark curtains aside, knowing already what he’d find. Another unraveling thread in the truth behind Cade’s plan.
Somehow, Geisinger had replaced the transporter inside the ship. Or redesigned it, perhaps, because what Karr saw now was tech he’d never seen on such a condensed scale, so perfectly balanced inside of a single starship.
An atlas orb; the kind of clean, endless energy that powered entire cities on Beta Earth, discovered by Geisinger’s great-grandfather decades and decades ago on a planet at the edge of the galaxy.
The atlas orbs weremassive,back on Beta, but this one was no larger than a globe.
It hovered there over an open hatch in the engine room floor, the distant ground visible far below.
The atlas orb crackled with power, slowling spinning like a tiny planet on its own axis. Beneath the orb, past the open hatch in the floor, Karr could see the walls of Cade’s light-cage. They spanned from the center of the atlas orb, stretching far, far down to the ground like a cone, where it trapped everyone inside.
“What… is it?” Sonara asked.
Her face and hair were bathed entirely in cool blue; the exact shade Karr would have sketched her in, to paste upon the ceiling of his bunk.
“An atlas orb,” Karr said. “I don’t know how to stop it.”
“Turn it off,” Sonara said simply.
But as Karr looked at the orb, his eyes tracing the open hatch in which it hovered… he saw nothing that would give him any indication ofhowto stop it.
He’d never studied the atlas orbs, never knew how they were able to give such endless power, or if, once put in place, they could even be shut off. It was a job for scientists and specialists; a job for Geisinger, or perhaps Rohtt, who knew far more than he was letting on.
“I’m sorry,” Karr said. “There’s nothing I can do.”
Sonara turned to him, hands on her hips. “We did not come this far…”
“I didn’t know this would be here,” he explained. “I didn’t knowanything,though I’ve told you that before,countless times,about your brother, but you refuse to believe—”
