Chapter Nineteen

Zoribhean

Timur looked toward the bow of the ship, but in fact his gaze was lost in the distance.

He was sitting on one of the benches under the eaves on one side of the bridge. In only a short time the sky had become overcast and the fine drizzle was now wetting the deck of the old cargo ship stranded where he was. The night scenery, that the bay of the old port of Leith offered, certainly had a gloomy atmosphere that night but, for someone like him, he could see a certain beauty in the place and in the distant lights of Burtisland and Kinghorn Loch. Although his vision was not what it once was. His poor eyesight made the distant lights look like a kind of ghostly glow, that extended into the sky.

The humidity in the place was uncomfortable, and he could feel how, in spite of his imposing appearance, pain was spreading through his joints, devouring his body. But he no longer cared, he knew his destiny from the moment he had been assigned to his mission. Decades ago. At some point his body would say enough, and he knew it, but he had decided to accept it.

Decay has its beauty, he thought, as he reached out a trembling hand and let the raindrops soak his hand. Then he clenched his fist, trying to stop his pulse from shaking, as if trying to grasp something invisible.

The north wind hit his face and he could feel the salty atmosphere seep into his lips. And yet he could see a beauty in it all. If it weren't for his mission, his work, he would never have seen so much in his life. Not so many people could say the same about their existence. Even though the price was getting higher and higher with each operation. His decline and the illnesses he had contracted seemed a more than fair price for the pain he had inflicted on a world that had done nothing to his own. Still, it was something that needed to be done.

The man stood up and approached the railing to get a better view of the place.

He needed to record that scene in his retinas, while his eyes could still catch something. One day, perhaps very soon, he would no longer be able to see any of it.

The waves were breaking against the rusty ship and, despite its enormous tonnage, it seemed to him that in some way it had a movement. The ship, called the Zoribhean, heeled a few degrees to port but it was still the one in the best condition on the site, and the one they had chosen as the base of operations for the mission.

[… ir]

The mission. Well, the mission had not gone as planned. They should have been the ones to kidnap the young woman named Sil Moore. They had been told that they had made the necessary preparations, in case they had to execute a plan B. And that was exactly what happened.

They had arrived Friday morning and were trying to find the target when the instrumentation had broken down due to movement on arrival and a solar flare, which although it had been the catalyst for starting the mission, had disrupted and ruined some of the equipment they had brought with them. They relocated it a few hours later that night, but no one was in any condition to move and do the operation at that time.

Timur knew something had happened. In all the time he had been working, nothing like that had ever happened.

Everyone was still suffering from the side effects of the jump, but they were too strong. Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and for Timur an uncontrollable tremor and migraines that forced him to lie still for hours after the jump. He had been through something similar before, so they activated plan B, to be carried out on Sunday. In the meantime, they would gather more data for the other teams, which was the second mission. After all, the mission had two objectives and the first was as important as the second.

Plan B was to use the local underworld services. They were forced to find help from local criminals offering their services on underground applications to kidnap Sil Moore.

Then came the problem of the murder. It had taken place without their knowledge. On Friday Sil had turned on the app at night, but was turned it off again shortly after. They would never imagine that on Saturday the place would be a hotbed of police. Timur cursed when he heard the police reports about the dead body discovered in the apartment.

[… ir!]

They had to call the burglars first, to bring them what was left of the body because someone had beaten them to it. That had him worried. He knew of only a few people who had the capacity to sabotage an operation that the higher-ups had been planning for months. And one of those people terrified him.

But at least that part had gone well. The two thieves had accomplished their objective quickly and effectively. The missing head was a setback, but Nak was taking care of that. Besides, they would not waste a day. They would leave at first light on Sunday morning.

[Sir!]

Timur came out of his musings ,surprised to hear the voice of one of his subordinates.

"What's going on?"

[Nak wants to see you in the infirmary, sir.]

Infirmary? It was merely a temporary title they had given to the part of the ship where they had been treated after the jump, it was also the place where Nak was working with Sil's body. "What he wants?"

[He wants the jump devices to be applied.]

" Already? I was hoping it would be done in a couple of hours."

[The second coronary mass discharge will occur in four hours. They're injecting everyone now for the acclimation."]

"Okay. What about the decompression chamber for our guest?"

[In two hours it will be completely ready.]

We're buying time, that's good, Timur thought and looked down. The foot patrol team was boarding the ship and another was going down for rotation. Nak must have called them to give them the injections for the next jump.

Timur started down the stairs and entered the ship. The lights inside had been restored by his crew, but he had ordered that no more light be shone than was necessary and, above all, that there be no light on the deck, so as not to attract the attention of likely onlookers. So far all that at least had gone well. Apart from the quick visit by the thieves, no one else had come near and they hadn't had to expend any ammunition yet.

The interior was as rusty as the exterior, and the dampness and saltpeter covered much of the walls with a sticky layer that seemed to be covering everything little by little. Still it was a good ship, and had endured more than a hundred years in place without sinking, like a corpse poking out of a hastily made grave.

Timur went down the stairs, rounded a bend in the road and found the compartment that was being used as an improvised medical wing. Inside was an individual hyperbaric decompression chamber being prepared by two technicians in similar attire to the rest of the platoon. Around it, were several black industrial suitcases.

Nak was near them, still with his eyes covered by his visor. He was finishing injecting two of the soldiers with an oblong syringe. They grimaced due the injection and walked away with a slight nod to the fey and Timur. Nak smiled and removed the syringe head to attach a new one.

"Your turn," Nak said.

"All these years and I still hate those things."

"Stop whining, big guy."

Nak pressed the syringe head against Timur's palm and he made a disgusted expression. "So many years and at least the higher ups would have thought to put raspberry or something in those things. It leaves a bitter and a shitty taste."

"If there's anyone who shouldn't dislike it should be you. Son of iron."

"Don't call me that. I hate it."

Nak took the hand he had just injected between his two wrinkled hands. "You've been through too much," he said and then ran one of his hands over Timur's face. The latter almost flinched at the feel of the ice-cold hands, but let him do it.

"We're not doing this because we like it, and you know it."

"I know, we're all running out of time. But still, survival for survival's sake is no life. In the end there will be nothing left to save."

He considered Nak a companion and friend, but could not deny that he was often difficult to understand. Timur looked around quizzically. "Where is the body?"

"In the other room. We were cramped in here."

"So? How much information can we get out?"

Nak wiped the smile from his lips and put on a serious expression. "More than I thought. She's not just one of them, she's a lot more than we thought."

"What do you mean?"

"Come, there is something else." he said whispering in his ear, so the other two in the room wouldn't hear.

Timur escorted the fey into the other room, looking at his bare feet. He couldn't deny that he felt sorry for him at the sight of his condition, but that was just the way he was. Nak, like the others feys, processed thoughts and information in a different way, even though they had a semi-humanoid form.

But what he saw in the other room made him forget his sorrow for his partner in crime.
There rested the headless body of Sil Moore suspended in mid-air. From different parts of the body were still attached the motion sensors, that the girl had put on before she died. And from them sprouted different glowing thin white threads that intercommunicated with each other, and from other parts emerged other threads that were going to communicate to a briefcase. Inside it there was an iridescent green cube that changed its shape at every moment, rotating on itself.

Timur, beyond his rank as a commander, had a military training and ignored much of the ingenuity that military technicians or Nak made in their missions. But that didn't stop him from being surprised every time he saw the capabilities the fey had. "What are you doing to her?"

"I had thought of using the cellular memory to extract the information of the tune, but this girl left me something much better. A copy of the code. We need to reconvert it once we're back, but we have a pretty complete part of the palindrome symphony."

"And it's enough to decode how much?"

"Minutes. Probably a couple but it's more than enough." Then he look at the body. "She's certainly a very strange girl. I'm going to spend a lot of time studying those memory banks."

"Why strange?"

"There's something strange about her. I'm not sure how to explain it."

"Much stranger than getting to know part of the Symphony of the Spheres?"

"Yes. Though we'll probably know better once we get her body back to the labs." Nak put on a serious expression again and walked over to the body and looked at one of the threads coming out of her back. "What is this?"

With his long fingers he took the thread and it deformed and widened forming a kind of bulb, where patterns in an unintelligible language could be seen circulating. With a gesture of his hand the bulb broke into even finer threads, one of them showed patterns of a green tone and another of them produced an intermittent appearing and disappearing.

"Fuck! They know we're here!"

"What?" It was what Timur had feared.

"Someone is tracking the location of the app! The police must have put something on this girl's body!" Nak said pointing to the green thread and then his voice trembled, looking at the other flashing thread. "They know about it too. The black suits."

Entanglement. Now it all fit together for Timur "The head was detached for the purpose of detecting our location through the body." Timur paled, and brought his hand to his left ear. "Activate the Phase Shift Disruptors right now!!!" he vociferated over the bone conductive communication system to the team in the ship's command cabin.

In the command cabin stood three soldiers, with a tubular device from which several rings with inscriptions were spinning in different directions. "They are activated sir."

"It's too late. Who knows how long the signal has been active. I hadn't detected it," Nak said in annoyance.

Timur bit his lip. He didn't want to say the words, but the mission was more important than any personal feelings he might have at the moment. "Activate your enhancements. We have company," he said, giving the order to everyone.

The more than thirty soldiers in the platoon heard the order and looked at each other. Despite the masks covering their faces, they knew that each was putting on a similar expression under them. Still there was not a moment's hesitation and a series of clicks were heard in each other's bodies, akin to the crunching of bones.

"Nak," said Timur. "Take the body and go down to the hold and activate a barrier of your own. They can't take her. We'll have to jump right now."

"The chamber isn't ready. If we do it without security measures we could lose some of the data in the decohesion during the jump. The body is not ready, and neither are any of us! Acclimation will take two hours." Timur simply gives him a solemn look and Nak understood. He's not thinking about getting out of this alive.

The man unbuttoned and removed his jacket and then did the same with his shirt. His body looked like it had been sculpted. He had excellent musculature, although near his chest there was a black spot with veins extending like tentacles over his pecs. Nak saw the spots and thought, he doesn't have much left. On his back there were metal parts covering the spine and shoulder blades.

"We need twenty minutes to get the portal up and running. They have to synchronize the other side. The discharge won't happen until later. You know what that means, not all of us are going to survive if we jump in these conditions."

"Let's see if we can survive those twenty minutes first," Timur said with a grim gesture. "Team Chimera keep your potions out and deal with the police when they show up! Team Hippogriff, take care of the shadow bastards from the deck! Team Dragon and Manticore, use everything you have on hand to keep them from reaching the cargo hold position in case they pass Hippogriff Team! We need to buy time while Nak and the others synchronize the portal harmonics. Our priority is to transfer the collected data and subject 3-72U to our side!"